22: Kidsmoke

23: Black Cow

fucking nosebleed every fucking time in the parking lots no exception to all this abject retardity just once one fucking time it would be nice a straight line through a parking lot at peak hours a simple understanding of civility it wouldn't kill you how do the old fucks do it without a stroke and a change of diapers every fucking time was that fun asshole was that your idea of entertainment can't afford cable never learned to make a fist and shake your wrist asshole cumsmear i swear i understand the nra your taurus vs me and smith and wesson how would you feel whose idea was it to arm this entire country with 2 ton bullets just once respect the idea of a motherfucker trying to get to point b keep your fucking paw on the right pedal look think a little reminder that we built pyramids and invented cake and holland all out of dirt and twigs what do you do for a living what do you do with your fucking brain all day you're allowed access all day just once across the lot fucking nosebleed this was a nice shirt

24: The Bends

The man owed them money

and he had money

too much of it probably

he was used to petty childish pleasures

Twinkies before dinner

"I'm not convinced he'll have it, Evan."

"1200 dollars? Not on him. Not likely. Don't get me wrong, we're not leaving town empty-handed, but you better let go of that figure."

"You make it sound like business; this is revenge."

"Revenge is for fucking Cro-magnon. This is not that."

"This feels like that."

"Kadrey, when I play by the rules, I adhere fully. He stiffed us and this is what follows. If so then."

"If so what. Why don't we drop it? We need milk money that bad?"

"The precedent: We give this guy the idea that you can treat labor a certain way then we are partly responsible for every moe he rips off from now till kingdom come."

"That's very Hammer and Sickle of you."

"Kadrey, that's a great idea. You wait here, I'll get hammers."

In the hours we stood there in the narrow shadow of the corridor, the rain teased us several times. Never enough to get wet, but we were moist the whole time; in combination with an unrelenting wind this kept me cold and lucid for every second of it. I counted the windows that offered up some view of the little scene we had planned. I noticed the ridiculous absence of the police force except for a magnanimous meter maid at sunset. I compared, several dozen times, how many seconds it would take our man to get from car to door and how many it would take us to rush from shadow to door and statistically we failed. I checked on that fat nut of fear suspended in my chest. I was not afraid of what Evan was about to do, I had seen him do it several times. You get used to anything. I felt miscast, quite frankly, for this little slice of noir, and something about being made of the wrong stuff, standing on some other man's mark, must have been the source of my fear. I say this because in the deep of my pocket was a pez dispenser as ontologically misplaced as I was in this never ending moment, and the fat nut was obscured every time I slipped a pez out of Deputy Dog's face.

25: I'm a Wheel

There is a volatile alchemy of blood and words.

Whispers from a stranger engorge capillaries.

Consequences wait offstage.

26: Night by Night

On the way down

The body is the instrument

Fell by drink, fatigue, or violence

That describes an arc

A shift in perspective

With point of view doggedly intact

A paradox for moron

A short trip with a Keystone punchline

On the way out

There is usually a quiz

A pretty pointless one word query

With answers that devolve into explanations

Then strengthen into stories

Anecdotes illustrated by scar tissue

Bunched up beneath epidermis

Discreet but fully present

On the way up

There is nothing

A blank page

An empty glass

A clearing of the throat

A kind word toward your mother

To set up the night's entertainment

27: Knives Out

The world out the windows is flat and black. The road offers up a long series of soft, small curves, like a string of honey poured by an octogenarian. The forward motion, the push against the wind, the tread on blacktop, it all becomes melody, sweetly vibrating in Kadrey's skull.

Evan is in the back. Asleep. Maybe. He's so quiet that Kadrey is afraid that he'll die one day, in the dark, and his body will be cold and stiff before morning can reveal the stone-like nature of expired skin.

It is very hard not to think about sudden endings; so many creatures have had their bellies split, theirs skulls caved in on the asphalt band. The headlights define a tiny, ever-changing kingdom. Red trails come in and out of clarity. Blood arabesques to deepen the music.

Strange that there are no carcasses on the road, just evidence of collisions. It must be that the road rejects anything that static. Still, it leaves constant reminders, some of them fresh enough to glint in the beams, that eventually there is not enough space for everyone. We are, every single one of us, headed for a crash.