Books are Overdue

Two hundred miles to go before I sleep, and there’s a bag of no doze in the back seat. I’m swimming in cooling coffee like a frog unboiling alive, coming back to life with each sloshing sip, proteins unbinding, rubber skin turning supple again. At gas stations we compare the weight of baggage under our eyes, stare south of each other’s pupils at the swollen magenta excess, poke soft flesh and imagine disappearing into the folds. Sucked into the abyss by our fingertips, dissolving ourselves into ourselves like sand into sand. We trade cigarettes and lines off the dash arranged in clinical perfection by a battered library card. 

You can do anything with a library card. You know that? 

I ask it or you ask it or no one does, and we fall into it.

I got twenty books overdue.

Only read a few.

Got that librarian’s number too.

Think her name was Sue.

Cuttin’ lines for all my crew.

Trimmin’ grass till we blue.

Jimmy a lock or two.

When the rent comes due.

Bet I could buy God too.

Not much a library card can’t do.

We hyena howl whooping laughter into rushing summer night air brain buzzing nose singing eyes wide and wild awake now and forever more. You light us cigarettes to calm shaking legs, a steering wheel that won’t stop twitching, jumping median lines that pass with tick ticktick tick as our tires go over and back again. I inhale deep rich burn down into black lungs and let the chemicals disperse in my veins with closed eyes, just a second a minute an hour a lifetime with them shut to a glowing red cherry backlight, and when I open them again the Buick coughs for me, wheezing fumes as it stutters and bucks, gauge pinned to empty, and damn we got miles to go before we sleep.

Aw fuck we intone together, but then see the mercury glow of another kiwk mart awning on the horizon and exhale. Candy red and yellow dayglow in the thick night. The Buick ratchets, gasps, dies, and we coast down the highway in its tomb towards that beacon of life, chewing the cud of our thoughts, trying to predict if we’re walking that final mile or will drift in like champions. I coax the beast on.

We’re moving walking speed, wheel bearings whirring, when I muscle the nose over the shoulder line and drift silent towards the field of pumps. Fifteen stations with triple grade selectors, credit card terminals blinking asynchronous, lit from heaven above, playing a cheery fuel additive jingle in overlapping timing into the empty night—a choir of plastic angels trumpeting capitalism.

Not a single one of ‘em in use.

Steering wheel a dead weight without power, I lean into it and pilot the Buick into position at caterpillar speed. Your fingers drumming a haphazard anxiety against the metal door. We inch into the firing line and she finally quits.

We need chips.

And something to sip.

I grab the deck of plastic rectangles from the ashtray, adult trading cards, each with a different name and number, and shuffle to the pump. I scan each until one rings green, toss the reds on the ground beside me. Load the barrel into the beast, and pull the trigger to whooshing clicking petrol smell. 

We stumble towards the beacon of light, we things of night. Door swings wide to jingling bells, cloying incense smoke, a raised eye and grunt from the man behind bulletproof plastic inside. In the corner, days old dogs creak on a rotating grill, reheated coffee burns to third life, walk-in refrigerator compressor wheezes on.

Bathroom?

In this tomb?

The man in the safety box throws a broken hubcap on the counter, key looped on with safety wire. Points down a hallway without looking up. Flips through memes on his phone with his other hand.

Be right back.

I’ll figure out snacks.

Hallway signs show bathrooms end of the aisle and to the left. A framed photograph of a burly white man man in denim overalls eating a hotdog stares down, mustard dripping down his black t-shirt. Peeling linoleum off-white tunnel to a disappearing corner. Funneled down by blue placards with arrows. I turn. I follow. Another photograph—same man, same hotdog. I turn again. Ten more steps to another corner, each footfall counting off the row of photographs on the ceiling above. Should be inside the cooler now but just another corridor. Hallways to hallways to hallways. Another left turn and finally I’m in a hallway lined with metal doors on either side. Photographs of a man eating a hotdog, denim overalls, mustard stain t-shirt line every square inch of wall, wrap around onto ceiling. 

The first door is labeled overalls. The second door is labeled mustard. The third door is labeled hotdog. I say fuck it, shake my head, put the key in. Tumblers click acceptance and the lock turns, door handle gliding down against heavy spring weight. I push against the cold steel and my shoes squeak across a floor of spongey roasted tube flesh, oil leaching into sneaker fabric, smell an overpowering pork brine. Tiled walkway, mirror to my left, lonely sink and soap dispenser, toilet to the side—all of it made from glistening, split-skin-pink-flesh-inside, roasted hotdog. 

I stare in for a minute, imagine walking on bouncy pork byproduct, ground up hooves and noses and brains, casings splitting under foot, sinking into cooked meat. I decide it’s not my scene. Weird fucking kink of a bathroom.

I pause at the mustard door, curious, then push on to the denim door. Key works and it swings wide to a blue room, every surface quilted in rough stitched fabric like a renegade art installation. I step in and inhale the deep Levi’s scent, feel the rough fabric under foot. I stare into the denim mirror, seeing none of myself, only a shadow on back pocket folds sewn together. Turn on the sink like grabbing someone’s belt loop. Denim scraps spray out in herky jerky stop motion. They crumple and swirl in the acid wash cotton bowl, disappear down the navy colored drain.

I decide to piss outside.

I exit to a hallway that extends in both directions. Not the ten steps to the corner I went down, but a branching myriad of corners, each ten steps from the next, stretching to a disappearing dot on the horizon. 

The fuck.

Hurry it up, buck.

The walls blast your words from hidden speakers.

Think I’m stuck.

Sounds like bad luck.

Somethin’ wild in that dust we took?

That was high quality guck.

I walk left to the first hallway corner, turn right. Same way I came in, that’s what makes sense to do but sense ain’t got nothing to do with this place. The corridor extends to more bathroom doors. These cut like triangles, labels all garbled symbols and text—a shotgun blast of incomprehensible meaning. I touch the key to the first one and it springs open like a rat trap, flipping up backwards inside the room. A meat tongue flops into the hallway, same size as me, drooling across the linoleum. Inside is a pulsing triangular tunnel of pink flesh lined with spirals of teeth. 

I go the other direction.

You comin’ dude?

Man, I almost got chewed.

I think you’re comin’ unglued.

The next branching corridor is only ten paces long and ends with a turn to the right. Covered in photographs. The floor slants downward. Must be the way I came in, but I don’t remember climbing. I descend the ramp of linoleum, and at the corner find another hallway, slanting further down. Something rustles behind me and I whirl around.

A towering giant pastiche horror fills the hallway. Twenty crooked cigarette stilt legs scurrying and writhing, hotdog antennae tasting the air, a body of bunching wet muscled tongue flesh, dripping dripping dripping onto stained white faux tile. The tip splits open, rending flesh with an audible tear, into a gulping maw lined with rows of library card teeth. It roars, spraying the walls with astringent yellow mustard that hisses and smokes where it lands.

I bolt down the descending ramp, sneakers squeaking across plastic floor, as it crashes and scuttles behind me with wet slaps and the tick-tick-tick of nicotine legs. Somewhere off camera you hum.

I got twenty books overdue.

Only read a few.

Crash into the next corner, a crunching from my left shoulder as I collide with the wall, and the thing's on the ramp above me. Next hallway plummets deeper and I rush towards it.

Got that librarian’s number too.

Think her name was Sue.

Feet go over the steep edge and I run faster, try to keep up with the grade but lose it in two steps and tangle my shoes together, airborne, finally free, should have buckled that seat belt I guess, should have taken a nap, should have split up the drive, should have should have should have, come down in a tangle of limbs and roll violent end over end over end until I smash into the wall at the bottom.

Cuttin’ lines for all my crew.

Trimmin’ grass till we blue.

Above me the thing roars again, spitting mustard that splashes all around and burns cold. In the overhead lighting, the library card teeth flash sharp.

Jimmy a lock or two.

When the rent comes due.

Turn my aching neck and see an open narrow door at the bottom of the next ramp. I crawl for the step, hallway lined with framed photographs of a man eating a hotdog eating a man eating a hotdog eating a man, and I crawl as the thing behind races forward—ticktickticktick—and fingernails on the edge, I pull myself over, and belly slide down towards the slit, the aperture, the canal. Your voice loud on the other side.

Bet I could buy God too.

Not much a library card can’t do.

I slap into wet pulsing flesh tunnel, barely big enough for me to wriggle into its slimy warmth, army crawl forward as behind me the beast crashes and thrashes against the entrance, digging at my heels with blunted cancer sticks. I crawl towards light, towards meaning, towards your humming. 

A dark horizon. 

I crawl.

Fabric lined seats. 

I crawl.

Sculpted lines and cigarettes laid out.

I pop through between the back seat cushions next to a bag of empty no-doze bottles and the greasy mustard remains of half-eaten hotdogs, a miniature invader to a past replaying. I watch myself talking to myself. Myself cutting lines for myself. Myself lighting cigarettes for myself. Myself twitching the steering wheel as the median lines go tick ticktick tick under bald tires.

There never was a you.

There was only ever me.

I watch myself herkjerk at the last moment. Realization? Feel the steering wheel under my hand. The hard press against brake pedal. Screeching rubber across asphalt. The eyes widening in terror. 

Then I he we hit the guardrail on the corner, and tumble into oblivion.