Chapter I
I think I broke reality. I'm not sure, but it seems a reasonably logical explanation for the direction my life has taken. I'm pretty sure that normal reality is a bit more sane, with less blue-and-pink striped elephants and clowns in camel suits and talking ostriches. Then again, maybe this is the real reality, and the one I'd always known was just a bad trip.
It could happen. But it's not very likely.
I guess I should start at the beginning. It'll be a bit before we get to the exciting parts, but then I guess that's the way everything is.
August 14, 2009
It was morning, and I was at work. I work at a grocery store in a small town, bagging the fattening results of single mothers' foodstamps-sponsored shopping sprees. More milk, eggs and chocolate goes through my hands on a daily basis than a third-world country sees in a year.
The cashier I was working with that day was cute. In fact, all of our cashiers were cute. That's why they got hired. The Manager, Mike "Crikey" Sykes, was an infamous lecher. The way he figured, the cash registers could do most of the thinking, so the cashiers just needed cute faces, nice breasts, and firm buttocks. Whether he intended it or not, the result was that we got the most business from single (and not-so-single) men of all the stores in town.
Anyway, Rebecka was cute. She was also smart, and had the most incredible laugh. Unfortunately, she also had a boyfriend. At least that's what she told everyone at the store. No one had ever actually seen him, but everyone had a theory about who he was, ranging from a football player from the local college (that was Marla, who had a thing for muscle-bound morons; yes, I'm bitter) to the governor's son (who lived in Atlanta, over an hour's drive away, but this was coming from Jimbo, who pushed shopping carts in the hot sun all day). Personally, I thought she might not even like guys.
As I was idly grouping milk and juice in a doubled bag, the woman behind the current customer suddenly let out an ear-piercing scream. It happened to be a one Mrs. Ample, and she lived up to her surname in pretty much every regard. She was a regular customer, and slightly eccentric, but generally a nice lady. She always tipped us bag boys.
"IT'S ALLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!" She screamed.
Sure enough, the bag of dog food in her cart (special only on Tuesdays, on Aisle 7) was squirming, thrashing about the bottom of the cart like a thing possessed. Rebecka promptly fainted, and there was the moment I'd been waiting for since I got this crappy job. In an instant, all the missed opportunities in my life flashed before me. It was a short and rather depressing flash. But this was different. This time I would dive around the counter, slide effortlessly to a stop just behind her as she fell, and catch her limp body up in my strong, manly arms just before she nearly brained herself on the hard linoleum floor. I would be a hero.
It would have worked perfectly, if she hadn't fallen forward instead of backward, and if I hadn't tripped over my shoelaces (how they got untied is, to this day, a mystery to me). As it turned out, Rebecka wound up sprawled across the cash register, while I fell face-first into Rebecka Bloomfield's firm, perfect, heart-shaped rear. In any other circumstances, this might have been heavenly. In this particular scenario, it was not. On the impact of my nose, chin and forehead (in that order; I was horrifically aware of every nanosecond) in her astoundingly perfect posterior, she was startled out of her faint. After a brief moment of understandable disorientation, she seemed to realize that the bag boy had just face-planted into her ass.
About the time she started to scream in righteous indignation, Mrs. Ample's chihuahua, Beeboo, burst forth from the bag of Kibble N' Bits, yapping furiously, wanting to know what all the fuss was about. I was still trying to figure out exactly how I'd wound up with my face where it was, and not at all sure that I really wanted to move it anytime soon, but I had the distinct feeling that I probably should. The very hard and pointy heel that contacted unerringly with my groin suddenly told me that perhaps I should have moved sooner.
That was the day I got fired.
August 15, 2009
"Dude, your face is green."
My face was green. "No it's not," I replied, trying to look less green.
"If you were a lime, you'd be ripe. I almost thought you were a lime, and I worked at a lime orchard in Mexico once."
"I'm not a lime. Your mom is a lime, possibly." It was weak, but then, so was I at the moment. A punch to the balls will do that to a man.
"You're getting gangrene. I bet your balls will fall off."
"How do you know? I'm not getting gangrene."
"My dad's a doctor, remember? I know what gangrene looks like."
"Does it look like a lime?" I hobbled inside, the ancient screen door swinging shut behind me just before Clark caught the handle.
"No, you idiot, gangrene looks like bacteria and cells and sh-stuff." He retorted, following me inside. He didn't say 'shit' because my mom was in the room, and she didn't tolerate that shit, as she put it. Quite ironically.
"So you can see bacteria with your naked eyes now? Isn't that one of Superman's superpowers?"
"Shut up, you little shi-"
"Would you like to stay for supper, Clark?" That was my mother. She could make the most innocent question, statement or comment a threat, and she made this one a humdinger.
"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am." Only my mother could make Clark say 'ma'am'. His own mother tried, and got cussed out for her trouble. Then, her cooking never could compare to my mother's.
Clark Kent (see why he cussed out his mother?) had been my best friend since grade school. We were like hammer and nail, drill and bit, stereo and speaker. I tossed him around like the little shrimp that he was, and he called me names and cussed me to hell and back in the way that only a best friend truly can. We were inseparable. I was wild, he was crazy. In junior high, I'd stolen his girlfriend the night of the school dance, so he showed up with her mom and didn't speak to me for three days.
Turning back to me, he waggled his eyebrows in that way he thinks my mom can't see, then coughed guiltily, and spoke as if suddenly remembering something. "Oh! Man, I almost forgot. I have to go visit my uncle in Nevada next week. He wouldn't tell me what for, but he sent me a check for gas money and stuff. You wanna come? I'll pay."
I took a moment to think it over. On the one hand, I could stay here and rot, alone with my parents for a week, looking for a new job, doing odd jobs around the house . . . or I could go on a roadtrip to Nevada with my best friend to visit his mysterious uncle under even more mysterious circumstances, all expenses paid. Damn, a tough choice.
"Let me think. Yes. When do we leave?"
"We can go tonight, my truck's loaded. Just throw some clothes and stuff together and we'll go after supper."
"Sounds like a plan."
Later that night, after supper, and desert, and coffee, and afters, and a snack, and popcorn, and another snack, I packed a bag and we left. I was feeling much better, my green face being mostly due to Clark having punched me in the nuts. More on this later. I had thought it would be just me and Clark on our roadtrip to Nevada, but as we pulled out onto the road, my thinking was changed.
"So, man, you know that girl I've been telling you about?" He had never mentioned a girl before, to my knowledge, unless Whoopi Goldberg counted, and that mention had involved gruesome murder. Remind me never to watch Ghost on late night TV after a night on the town drinking cheap beer.
"You mean Whoopi Goldberg?"
"No, fartface, the girl I'm dating. I told you last week. I said, 'Hey man, I'm seeing this awesome girl tonight. We're going to Columbus to the theater and and Chef Lee's. You'd crap your pants at how hot she is.' That's what I said."
"I don't remember that. I think I would remember that."
"Look, anyway, I invited her along too, okay? So we're picking her up when she gets off work. Which was an hour ago, so we're late. I'm telling her it was your fault. your grandmother died."
"Which one?"
"The one that's dead, you moron."
"Oh. I thought you just wanted me to make it up."
"No, I'll make it up."
"But she died before I was born."
"No, she died today."
"Then why am I leaving town? Wouldn't I want to stay for the funeral?"
"Oh. Good catch. She died last week; the funeral was today."
"Whatever. Who is this girl, anyway?"
"You'll see her in like ten minutes, man. She's awesome. She's smart, and hot. Great legs. Firm buttocks."
"What's her name?"
"Becky."
We drove in silence until we were nearly into town, then he looked over at me and asked, "Kier, man, do I look okay?"
"You look like you always look, Clark. Like a mild-mannered reporter by day, muscle-bound superhero by night." It was a longstanding joke between us. Only I could get away with it; if anybody else so much as mentioned Superman in front of him, he'd go into a ten-minute-long swearing streak, cuss their mother, their father, their dog, and then punch them in the nuts and walk away. With me, he just punched me in the nuts. Seeing as he was driving, he didn't punch me in the nuts now, but instead ignored it and acted like he'd never asked.
It wasn't long before we pulled into the grocery store parking lot, to find Rebecka Bloomfield waiting for us. Clark indicated that I should get out, and let her slide into the middle seat, over the gearshift. This was going to be awkward.
I got out, looking down as if i found the pavement oddly fascinating, and then sheepishly smiled at Rebecka. I guess now I knew who her mysterious boyfriend was. "I guess now I know who your mysterious boyfriend is." Shit, I'd just said that out loud, hadn't I? "Shit, I just said that out loud, didn't I? I mean hi!"
She studiously did not look at me, ignoring me so thoroughly, in fact, that I began to wonder if I was really still there. "Am I still here?"
Crap, I did it again. I have a tendency, you see, to speak whatever I happen to be thinking when I'm nervous. This has, at times, got me in quite a bit of trouble. I tried not to think anything else as I clambered back into Clark's old beat-up F-250, careful not to slide in too far, hanging close by my door.
"Becky, you know Kieran, right? He used to work here. He quit because of something about pears." I'd not not anyone of the exact circumstances behind my recent unemployment, instead leaving it open for guesswork. My mother had decided that I'd left because they were trying to sell rotten fruit for the same price as good fruit. Apparently that struck a nerve with her when she came in to buy some pears, and had decided to assume that my moral upbringing simply would not allow me to work at a place where they sold rotten produce at unfair prices, so I'd quit. I hadn't bothered to correct her, so that basically became the unofficial official story.
'Becky' glanced sidelong at me with a look of something akin to disgust, and my balls winced in memory of the kick her three-inch heel had delivered.
"I know him." Her voice was not cold, as I expected it would be, but falsely warm. It promised torture and misery to me, and warmth and pleasantry to Clark, all in those three little words.
This was going to be a very interesting roadtrip. Little did I know...
I knew a guy who had a steel plate where his forehead used to be, once. He had gotten hit by shrapnel from a car bomb in Iraq. He worked private security in the States, and one night protecting some random singer some moron tried to mug the guy. Kyle stepped in (the guy I know) and the mugger shot him in the forehead. Kyle didn't even flinch, just took the guy down with a knife-hand to the windpipe.
