Dumb

I have had a rough time getting the time and energy to get in here and write something. Sorry.
Right now, I'm putting a hold on the "all the riches of this earth" story. I want to polish this crappy plastic little piece of bling and maybe send it on to Analog or something else. Suffice it to say it is a silly story involving an alien janitor, a long journey, a brothel, crab lice,vestigal antennae, balls out trippin', and the true underlying nature of desire and fame.

Today,I saw something lovely and heartwarming. I was stuck behind a car at a light. The driver of the car in front was on her cel. phone throughout the whole green arrow phase of the light. I honked politely and she continued to ignore the light. What sunk in like a hand grenade with a thirty second fuse, is that she had two bumper stickers. On the right she had one that read "WORK HARDER, millions of welfare recipients depend on you" on the left she had
"God doesn't believe in atheists"

I wonder if I could print up stickers and put them on unsuspecting bumpers some day.
like...."GEORGE W. CUNT" or "Ask me about my Fistula" "I'm pro-life and I swallow"
"my other car is a slave wagon" Believe me, there are other far more offensive stickers, but I really don't feel like poppin' them off unless somebody asks.

The riches of the earth....

Far away in the deep cold reaches of space, there lived an alien race spread out over two planets and a dozen moons. That stuff isn't really that important. They were pleasant enough and they had been out of the trees far longer than we have. By trees, I really mean the jagged rocks pointing their way out of the shallows of a methane sea. This race was..or I should say is about the same size as we humans and they have the same number of limbs we do....after adolescence anyway.They live a very long time. It's this almost-immortality that makes this a story.
Now, when we imagine an ancient alien race, we imagine a smooth, efficient bunch of creatures with great technological advancements. In this case we'd be right, but not everything is so orderly. You see, no matter how awesome a society is, i still has individuals who are brilliant, sexy, and popular and those who are just sucking wind. This story is about an alien who just couldn't seem to get any respect on his native planet of Foo. He was a maintainence engineer in the great galactic department of motor vehicles.

BORIS..final

Butch has a life-flashing-before-his-eyes kind of moment. Cinderblocks through windows, a skinny hand clutching a chockfull of nuts can full of twenties. Girls with dead eyes riding his johnson high as hell....pistol whipping an accountant turned crackhead while his ex-wife walks in the door with the kid for weekend custody drop off...
Seeing his degenerate gambler dad beg and plead for one more chance to lose more money he didn't have. Even the bookie's giant cousin had a queasy look on his face witnessing this display..Butch looked on wishing someone would kick his dad's face in..

A shadow fills the door. Butch is barely conscious of this. Boris is here to score a bit for some shitty music fest out in the desert. He sees the gruesome scene. Shudders a bit and then he sees the bag full of cash and drugs. This is the beautiful pearl of his wishes and dreams, lying there in the blood and the glass. He goes and grabs it, then stops. An old plastic phone is on the dingy wall right by the couch. Like in the movies, he wraps his shirt tail around it pushes the buttons with only his fingernail.
"911 do you need police, fire, or EMS?"
"someone here is been shooted and dying. Other one is dead."
Boris gives the address one time and drops the phone. The dispatchers voice is still squawking at the other end. He splits with the bag full of incriminating evidence that would give Butch at least twenty years to remember rule #2 of dealing drugs..."never keep the weight where you lay your head."

Sirens and flashing lights are the next set of backdrops for Butch. He flickers in and out of this world. The doctors manage to get things sewed up and put enough A+ back inside of his carcass to bring him back.
Later, the Doctor is swimming laps at the health club. He stops to catch his breath and thinks about the scruffy gunshot he helped patch up, satisfied at being able to do something so real and important, and thinking to himself that, true to form, he'll probably see him again shot or stabbed or overdosed. He puts his face back into the silent water and kicks forward, not knowing that he is completely wrong.

Boris #4

They drove along. Tom began his story.
"I was raised by my mom and grandparents. I grew up and went into the Army. I signed up when I was seventeen so that I had about ten days between graduation and boot camp. I was a mechanic and I really liked working on anything that rolled. I re-enlisted, but in my sixth year, my leg got tore up and I got discharged. 20% disability. I worked out here in a shop and when the owner died, he left it to me. such as it was.....I got married that year to my girlfriend. She's from Louisiana and the best cook in the world. We have two daughters, Lucy, She's seven, and
Fran, she's twelve. ..Fran is short for Francesca. That's pretty much all there is to me. It ain't much, but I never wanted a whole lot. You might want to hold pressure on that wound and try to keep still. That's all I'm sayin'."
Later, they were parked in front of Tom's shop. "Meyer's Automotive". "I kept the name, because it only seemed right. I really looked up to him. He treated me like a son, no offense"
"Nah, that's cool"
It was dark now and they were sitting on the warm hood of the car. Butch counted at least three shooting stars.
"What'd you wish for? Tom asked.
" Another chance"
Tom turned slowly to face him. As though with another voice he asked, "What's the worst thing you ever did?
The falling star overhead stopped in its tracks. The world stopped and he turned his thoughts inward. He had been lying on the floor bleeding for two minutes...

Boris #3

He sits down in the passenger seat. Butch looks over at him as the car begins rolling along, crunching gravel then more rapidly they get to highway speed. The scrub whizzes by and the sun still beats down. ....
Time for small talk, Butch notices scrapes on the back of the hitch hiker's left hand. He seems to be in his thirties with tanned skin and strong features. His eyes are a deep blue which stand out like they were brand new.
"Hey, how's it goin' ?"
"Better now that you're giving me a lift and all"
"Butch" he extends his hand. The other guy shakes it firmly. He has callouses which is a good sign. That means a working man and not some convict or doper.
"Tom Grider...Really thanks for picking me up" The mans eyes never leave his face.
"Well, I kinda had no choice. The car just goes where it wants to."
"Maybe it goes where it HAS to." Tom pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. He shakes one out. Butch notices that he flipped a lucky, which is something he always did.
"want one?"
"Hells yeah" says Butch. Tom hands one over. It smelled good. He flicked his zippo and the smell of the fluid was sharp and strong, like jet fuel or a cookout.
"So, how are YOU doin' Butch? "
"Pretty bad. I'm dying right now. Right now, I'm laying on a dirty floor and I'm bleeding."
"Life's a bitch. It's funny though. I mean besides that you don't have any other problems to worry about, huh?
Butch was starting to feel....comfortable. The pain in his shins was subsiding. Tom went on,
"Well, I died in my other life. But I didn't really know that I was dead. Then I got this life."
"What do you mean?"
"Well Dad, I was kind vacumed out of mom and poof. I didn't even know what darkness was. I was high as hell though"
Butch felt a deep hurt..
"No no no, what I really mean is that my life force was redirected or that the chances lined up or whatever and here I am. "
"How?"
"In one time, My Mama scored dope from a guy who was watching Space Ghost and he was distracted from cutting it right. The guy who was supposed to step on it before he got it was running late for his cousin's baptism did a piss poor job of it too."
Butch felt a small twinge of relief when he realized that he had never been all that into Space Ghost and never watched TV and chopped at the same time.
"In the other time, she got pulled over for a broken tailight with two balloons of smack in her purse and got the chain put on her. She kicked in jail and had me seven months later. In the first one, she OD'd and went comatose and I was out. The second one is what you see here Dad.
"Oh, shit."
"Yeah, you are in deep kimchi right about now."
"So, who are you besides a name, Tom...son?"

boris #2

He finds himself driving an old blue ford he used to own when he was a teenager. The seat springs poke into his back at odd uncomfortable angles. There is a searing heat that seems to come from the engine compartment or a heater vent that's open full blast. It feels like his shins are on a slow bake. The landscape outside is washed in sun. There are rocks and scrub brush and naked barbed wire on the side of the road. This has to be West Texas or another more lush state in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The dash is cracked and covered in dust. He turns on the radio, which is AM only. It only gets one station. It comes in with crackles and buzzes like far off lightning strikes. It sounds like talk radio with a fuzzy drift of Mexican music that drops in from time to time like sets of waves on a deserted beach. There is too much sun and his eyes hurt. Not even a windmill breaks the monotony. Far off, he sees a black shape standing by the road. He feels a creeping unease. A dark haired man in an old green coat and jeans has his hand out thumbing a ride. Butch pushes the accelerator and passes him by....
"What these people fail to realize is that...el gallo de cielo...no way that they are ever going..en mi corazoooooooon...a responsibility for their own....y te quiero cada vez.....it's just
class warfare.....por favor no me......completely hate america and the oil.....Bzzzzzz....
amoooooooooor....."
Miles later, he sees the same hitchhiker up ahead holding his thumb out. The car slows down and stops on its own. The man looks in the back before getting in. Butch is not in control. He realizes that this is a dream or a vision

(DRAFT--Boris gets the Bag)

This story is a road to nowhere.
There is no such thing as a ghost, but here we are able to listen in on thoughts and see what lies ahead sometimes even guide the hands of the people that we create. There are three things you know about Butch. He is what's left of a kid who grew up with no guidance and spends his time accordingly getting fucked up and making money off of other people getting high. The second thing you know about him is that he hates being alone and surrounds himself with people who are even more fucked up than he is. Finally, in the next few moments of this story, he is going to see the light. He is going to get shot and all his iniquities will be laid bare.
There's a knock on the door and he crosses the dirty floor from his old nappy couch to answer it. He opens up and sees Nacho with his dark eyes and shaved head. Nacho looks exactly like what he is. He grew up with plenty of guidance, but not from mom and dad. He tilts his chin up all cool and cholo and comes in all slow. Butch tells him to have a seat like he was one of the dozens of burn outs and tweakers that fall by to score dope or coke and end up staying high for a while on the couch. Nacho says he'd rather stand looking at the dirty chairs and couch and then back to his clean pressed dickies and checkered shirt. Butch goes to the room where he keeps the detritus of his personal life and his mattress on the floor. He picks up a yellow gym bag with the big black block letters on it spelling out "Sport Life". The irony of this has managed to escape Butch's limited mind for the entire time he has had it. In the bag is the product he hasn't sold yet and the money for all the weight he has moved already. In the business world, this is called a "feld audit". Everything should add up. He is confident of this as Nacho goes through the bag. This is rule one of staying in one piece. "Don't fuck with your connection".
Nacho squats down and counts it out. It's all there. Butch is smiling, he always makes sure to turn on the goofy surfer dude charm when he deals with these people. He always offers a bong hit and tries to be as mellow as possible even though, no because, they scare the shit out of him. Nacho stands and reaches behind him as though he's pulling out his wallet to make change. Out comes the gun. It's a .380 new back in the day when they were playing New Order in the dance clubs. Black, cheap, and thick as a brick.
Butch would have been a decent tennis player if he hadn't spent most of his time getting high in the wooded area behind school. This is relevant because just as the first shot goes into his lower abdomen, the three foot glass bong with the heavy ceramic base is hitting nacho on his left cheekbone just under the eye. The bong is really a thing of beauty from an engineering standpoint. It is a perfect cylinder of thick, heat resistant glass securely fused to a base made up of a soup can filled with concrete that has been embedded in a heavy ceramic base that has been colorfully decorated and glazed with skulls wearing party hats. There is one hole in this cylinder. In it is a rubber donut with a glass stem poking out. In that stem is a smaller, delicate glass stem with a blown bowl and a little handle for pulling it out. In the bowl is a glowing bud of sticky reefer waiting to give up its smoke.
This bong, without being too tedious, has been used and abused and superheated by Butch's crackhead girlfriend which explains why it shattered cutting the thick artery on Nacho's neck.
Both men are on the floor. Butch is screaming like a hog on the killing floor and pulls himself up Nacho's pant leg and swings the base of the bong onto his face like a gavel. The gun is just out of Nacho's reach and he feebly tries to pick glass out of his neck. Things are not supposed to be like this. He starts to fade out. The irony of the skulls wearing party hats is completely lost on him. There is bong water on the floor and a smoking wad of pot on his checkered chest.
At some point, Butch realizes he has shit his pants and he can't get up and didn't feel much like getting up anyhow........ (to be continued)