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I was minding my own business going through my leftover product in the junk yard because that’s what you do in this town. Cyber City ain’t a city to stand by and people watch, it’s a city that’ll eat you alive if you don’t know how to play with its own rules. It’s a city that’ll grab you by your throat and sink you under the tar pit it’s metaphorically built on top of and it’ll watch you drown with disinterest then look down at their wristwatch and carry on with their day. It ain’t a place to stand around and not mind your business, so I was there minding it and I got lost.
You ever get lost in a place you know? You ever look at a street you’re certain you’ve been to but things seem alien, out of place, like they’re there but a little bit to the left of where they should be, or inverted, or on the wrong side of the street? That alleyway looked like that, and that’s an alleyway I’ve been spending most of my life since it went down the drain and when I was walking then and there I was wondering if it was that weird sequined burger I found in the trash the other night and finally got courage to eat giving me some crazy bonkers side effects of decomposition or if I was finally getting that stroke needles warned me about 20 years ago, but it didn’t seem any less real, and I didn’t collapse on the floor foaming at the mouth so I guess it wasn’t any of those.
There was an alleyway and then there was nothing, and it kept being nothing for miles and miles, forwards and backwards and every other direction. I wondered if I died and wasn’t sent a notice. I wondered if that was Hell, finally, and the Devil would soon claim me as I was thinking He would when He stopped calling me, that bastard son of a bitch, left me to rot after all that I’ve done for Him.
But no, He wasn’t there.
So there was nothing else I could do but walk forwards right, eventually I would either find something or I’d pass out and that all-consuming darkness and cold and wind would wrap over my unrested body and eat me alive in my slumber and then maybe I’d be sent to the Pearly Gates like I truly wanted. Like I said, there was nothing. I wasn’t even sure I was going anywhere. Not a landmark in sight.
I collapsed and it could’ve been 20 minutes or 3 days from when I got lost because if there’s one thing harder than keeping track of time without a clock is keeping track of time without anything but when I came to I saw myself somewhere with three and a half walls of concrete and iron bars, which is different than where I was before I passed out, and usually when that happens I’m struck with fear and panic because I have no idea what they possibly did to me while I was out cold, but right now that change of scenary brought me comfort. I was somewhere. I was somewhere. I had my head sitting on the lap of a hooved creature who smelled of old cotton candy and damp mold.
Jevil looked down at me with his smile full of crooked teeth a deranged dentist would love to work on, and told me I’d appeared on his outside, which is what he calls his prison, and he’d nursed me back to unfortunate consciousness oh, just to feel something. We’d met many years ago, certainly more than I can count, and not only he’d made me a fool in front of the entire City but also made me realize just how powerful your fat stacks can be if you need to lobby for something to never set foot in your city again. So, you win some you lose some. Good that he’s in jail now, the carefree lunatic. He studied me almost like he was hungry and I studied him like I wanted to see just how venomous my biters could be. “How delightful is your visit”, he said, and then repeated the last word like an imbecile. “Even from the wrong side.” I was at my wit’s end so I said eat my ass and he said “gladly” and I said no, not like that and he laughed that mirthful laugh that he does while bouncing on his tail and unfortunately got the last word because I had a hiccup of a glitch and froze for a millisecond and that was long enough for me to lose the verbial momentum. Deranged. Sick in the head.
We sat there staring at each other and my stomach announced in no uncertain terms that I was hungry, and when questioned on what was there to eat the insane clown gave me a non-answer like “moss” or “your ass”, but I was in no mood to argue. I’m never in mood to argue, except on the occasions that I am. I like to treat myself like that sometimes. I looked over to the jail bars, chewing on my tongue, thinking. I’m always thinking, even when it looks like I’m not, and even if the subject of what I’m thinking is nothing. The cogs in my brain never stop turning, babey. I was figuring out what to do next, because when you don’t have a home to go back to your priorities are always the now and the next, and my now wanted to possibly not starve and my next wanted to get the hell out of there. I turned back to Jevil. D’you wanna get outta here? He answers “where to?”. I shrug my shoulders and make a sneer and flick my brow up like I’m saying ‘I dunno’. Maybe I also say it out loud but it comes out like a grunt not unlike a beast acknowledging another. He tells me, “you’re such a card”, he says, and stands up and leans onto his scythe because he’s always had trouble walking on those sticks he calls legs, and I open the door and we walk out. The jail locks only from the inside.
The rest of the walk out is a bit of a blur to me because my hunger pains were taking control of my entire being like I was turning into a wereaddison, like I was just a puppet and something else that was me but not my conscience was controlling me, I was seeing red and losing blood sugar real fast until we leaned on a tree to the side of a trail and Jevil shoved a rich and creamy fruit he grabbed from the leaves above us right on my mouth and I instinctively bit down like a nutcracker. My teeth sunk grooves into the soft skin of the fruit while its juice invaded my mouth and dripped on my chin and over my shirt and in any other context I would consider that extremely erotic but. You have to understand. I was hungry.
I regained control of my motor skills for the second time in half an hour and quickly went through the process of acquiring more of those magenta bitches, and despite my insistence I could get them on my own Jevil held me by my legs to give me a height boost to grab them. “Those are dark candies, Spamzy” he tells me, and I cringe at the nickname I didn’t ask him to use, “they taste like marshmallows, they do.”
Him and I eat about a pound of them and I feel my rotten teeth get even worse, and while contemplating whether the red juices on my collar make me look insane or not I look around the trail and towards the small village up ahead and I wonder out loud that if we’re gonna get by in this world, we’re gonna need some money. Can’t expect all our nourishment to come from trees. His tail bats on the floor puzzled like I just spoke hieroglyphs. Papa likes his cigars, I tell him, and better clothes, and the thrill of the wind on my hair, and he laughs at me again. Puffy pants thinks it’s funny to want things. Maybe he oughta stayed in that cell if he’s content with nothing. He tells me that it’s no fun, and I tell him exactly. He spits out a seed. I start walking towards the village.
The Card Kingdom doesn’t do beggars like Cyber City does, as far as I could tell, so it’s pretty easy to get some coin from the suit people walking by if I look sad and grovel enough. They just all go “oh what a poor old man, so far away from home” and give me enough change to buy some lunch or maybe a nice little medieval looking shirt or trimmers for my friend over there’s overgrown hooves, and if I do this to enough people I soon have enough for quite a nice meal. Definitely more than I’ve had in a good while. I got back to Jevil and showed him my earnings and he’s just sitting there scratching his belly and staring. I gotta do all the work around here. I always gotta do all the work. I took advantage of the fact nobody here seems to remember me or my bedevilled companion, as much as it irritates me to think about that. You revolutionize an entire world, you give it beautiful paved roads and highways and avenues with trees on the middle and ways to go anywhere as long as you got a Cungadero 4.0 (tm) available to purchase right now to drive on the streets with, and 20 years later all that’s left of all that work is the cracked pavement and the knowledge that someone paid for that, but nobody knows who it was. And on the other hand, 20 years later, everybody hears about that smelly addison with no roof over his head and half his face burned off and he’s not allowed anywhere, because he’s bothering the customers and scaring the children and proselytizing without a license and transmitting viruses and and and.
So taking advantage of the fact nobody remembers me and nobody knows me, I stock up on travel supplies. Feels like shopping for a camping trip if I was also playing Dungeons and Dragons. When I get out of that little store Jevil is still in the same place. He looks like he was taking a nap, which is damn well everything he’s been doing for the last hundred years. I poke him with the tip of my foot and I guess that if you were looking at us then you could’ve mistaken it for a kick on the side but you have to remember that he’s the one that’s unbothered with everything and I’m the one that has to carry his ass everywhere or else he’s not gonna get anything done. I say, we need to keep moving, I tell him, and he’s massaging his side and making the effort to stand up and find his balance and asks me “what for?” and I stay a long time quiet because what first starts as me pondering the question slowly turns into nothingness in my head as I can’t find an answer to it. I start thinking about sharks, about a piece I read about them on the paper many years ago, how they’re always swimming because it’s the force of their movement that flows the water through their gills and then they can breathe. Without moving, they sink and die. I remember reading that over breakfast while the big bird told queenie beanie all about her day as if they were her personal assistant and thinking woah, that’s just like me, but I never really thought on why I thought that, because my coffee was going cold and I had a meeting at 8:30 I needed to go and my nose was itching really bad. I know why now. I answer Jevil that otherwise we’ll drown, and it satisfies him, so he offers a hand to carry all the shit I’ve picked up and we start moving.
We don’t make a lot of conversation at first, but I start talking anyway. The words just pour out of my mouth, I don’t like silence if I know it’s fine not to have it. Jevil is quiet, but I don’t think it’s for lack of words because I know (from experience) that he’s got quite a silver tongue for any kind of spell, I think he just doesn’t wanna interrupt me. I’m not gonna stop saying my opinions just so bobo the fool can blurt out a limerick or whatever, so he better feel comfortable with unsaid words. It’s kinda hard to say what I mean because the Doctor poisoned my words and corrupted my throat and now if I want to say anything longer than maybe six or seven words I risk them getting overloaded with things I don’t want to say. This doesn’t intrigue my jesterly companion though. As far as I can tell he doesn’t care enough about anything to merit his questioning. When I lose the words, he chimes in, and takes them from the air and gives them back to me, and I take them but I’m bitter about it, because he doesn’t have any business being nice to me because I’m a public nuisance and he’s also a public nuisance, but somehow worse than I am. He’s worse. I’m better.
He laughs at my jokes and agrees with my anecdotes. We pass the time.
Doesn’t take long we arrive in a small little town on the corner of the Cyber Fields. This is the kind of town that subsides on tourist traps and passing around the exact same 20 dark dollars, but it’s a good enough escape from the noise of the city if you’re looking for some peace and quiet and trying to avoid the tabloid rats trying to get their new celebrity scoop. I have a plan in mind, because my cogs are always jogging, remember that, and I quickly drag Jevil to the town’s used car salesman, a smiley green addison type who can’t be older than 30. They make my blood boil, looking at us with that toothy smile and perfectly slicked back hair and tie matching their pants perfectly. They start giving us the regular “which car do you need” quiz, but I already knew what I had my eyes on.
Sleek, convertible, red, white top. A red shark to swim forever with and not drown. It was right at the front and I know for a fact due to being an experienced addison in the field that you display your best models at the front of the lot, so that had real good promise to me. I look to Jevil, and he looks at me. It’s like our brainwaves synchronized because he knew exactly what I wanted him to do, and he started to distract the guy while I disappeared in the lot.
You see, a skill you pick up when you’re undesirable is learning how to disappear. If people don’t want you around, you’re more likely to not be noticed. Mind your own business, and it’s like you were never there. I learned that through trial and error.
A lot of trial and error.
I look for the keys to the car in that jackass’s office and take the time to snoop around because I think it’s funny to find things in their life to mock. What, they have a spouse, a kid, a diploma from the College of Business of Cyber City? That’s nothing, anyone can have that. It’s only a matter of time until luck turns around for this stupid asshole.
Only a matter of time. Only a matter of time.
They called back my attention and I turn around because I wasn’t gonna let myself be caught red handed any time soon, and they jingle the keys in their palm like I’m a toddler that needs a distraction and ask me if I wanna go for a test drive. I say about time you offered. I might’ve said some more things, being that I’m a more experienced, finely aged, previously highly successful salesman in the same area of expertise. They didn’t ask, but they didn’t need to. I can tell.
Taking a car’s wheel again in my grip for the first time in decades is like getting high for the first time, which means I’m feeling like a God and that I should kill all other divine beings standing in my way, no offense to the Almighty Angels, and as I strut around the lot on that convertible with Jevil sitting his fat ass on the passenger seat, the guy watching us from the back of the lot, I start looking for opportunities to rev up the gear and bolt out of there, which comes to me in due time anyway. I can see the guy running behind us in defeat from the rearview mirror while Jevil clings on for dear life in his seat, because apparently, peasant that he is, he’s never set foot in a vehicle like that before, and that makes me smile and I squint at the wind in my face and revel on the way it makes my overgrown hair float and enjoy the way the wind brushes against the mannequin of my cheeks.
I don’t have time to narrate a chase scene. I could say it was full of uppers, downers, laughers and screamers, but you don’t need to hear that, and I don’t need to tell it. It’s easy to run from the needles when they’re on foot and I’m in a shiny red convertible which is new enough to be going for a pretty penny in a used car lot. Right now, this is my world, and they’re all just living in it. I’m laughing like a maniac.
After they’re left behind eating dust, I start cruising on the highway, and turn around to Jevil, and he’s spooked but he’ll get better. I ask where to, and he says “wherever you want, Spamzy” in a wheezy little voice that can’t help but make me chortle and we circle back around to Cyber City, because I designed these roads to always go from anywhere to everywhere, and soon enough we’re coming in to the city from a side I don’t usually visit. Come again I don’t know why I went there because that’s the city that ruined my life but then again it’s the only city I know, so why not start there. We had a few scraps left from my shop trip but if we wanna make it comfortably in this dark, yet darker world we gotta always be able to pay for a meal or two. Believe it or not Cyber World and Card Kingdom aren’t the only places I wanna be. Having a car in our possession means easy access to more places, North, South, East, West, maybe even more. I’ve never been up North.
But first we need money. Yes, money. We could always go with more money. If we’re ever in a tight spot I can inhale it right then and there, might be awful tasting but that’s what addisons are for. Jevil doesn’t need to eat, but he eats because he wants to. We station in a side road off a larger avenue with a blocked off section for people to transit without their very own cars of different brandings and models of which I will not speak of, because apparently they were missing that. Places to walk. Can never go wrong with paved passageways and gardens and shopfronts. I grab some hard candy fruit we hunted and gathered on our way and help him off the car because someone needs to support him if you don’t want him to take ages to find his footing.
He’s on juggle duty. I’m in barking duty. Together we’ll make millions.
I’m pretty good at carnival barking and that’s a skill that I’m proud of and if I can, boys and girls and children of all ages, I’ll scream to the far corners of the dark earth just to bring folks up. Step right up and watch this carnivorous clown perform feats of skill you wouldn’t believe without your very own eyes! But beware of the biters! He can juggle, he can balance on his tail, he can do flips more times than I can count in my little fingers! He was unearthed from his perilous old tomb just to provide you the best entertainment your petty change can afford! Please pass the hat around (I have a barking boater hat) so this dangerous little fella can get his lunch, you are all very lovely people.
We do this for a few hours. We buy supplies. We hit the road. Rinse and repeat, with a bit more sight-seeing, and I’ve got all I could ever want in a life for a forced-retiree. We see wonderful places I’ve never been to before, places where people don’t know me but they still treat me kindly, places where I don’t have to hold my tongue because we’re just passing through anyway, places I can take a laugh at with my devilish companion and nag him when he falls asleep and misses a cool landscape and yank at his tail and drag him where I want to go. He likes being leaded. Or he likes it when I’m leading him, I can’t tell. He’s a quiet, dopey companion and I’m the guy who’s doing the work. For all intents and purposes I bet he enjoys when I’m doing the work because then he gets to lay about like the lazy old codger he is.
When night falls and we’re on the plain desert road, no rest stop village city or bed & breakfast anywhere around us, I go off road and park by the side of a rock or under a sign and we keep the covers down because the nights in this place are beautiful, all the speckled stars under the dead dark of the sky, and since I’ve lost most of my skin when I went to Hell for the first time a few decades ago I’m very chilly so I get close to him and he wraps the travel blanket we got in Card Kingdom around us and I soak in his warmth and I hear the murmur of his breathing and I mumble something about what we should do or what we should buy the next town we find as I’m buzzing off and I think then and there that if I was in any way literate, this is the story I’d like to write about.