Chapter 1
The dead inhabited Dean's dream . . . as well as most of his other dreams current to that time . . . but not as zombies by a long shot, but vital and quick. It was his Dad, Grandma, and Aunt Laura . . . Alive and well, appearing every night, on the stage in my head.
Dean woke up groggy, remembering the words she had spoken ". . . It's about being dead inside," Kiki Lee said, "about refusal to enjoy life on life's terms . . . "
At some point Dean found himself walking along railroad tracks with a person that strongly inhabits the murky depth of his head. Primarily the sexual fantasy lobe of his brain.
A hazy green smoky smell followed Kiki Lee almost everywhere she went, although the smell of diesel and heavy grease overwhelmed the nose. There was also the metallic heat scent from the friction of iron wheels on rails. They were walking almost ten feet away from a slowly moving freight train. The hugeness of a train that close drowned out the scenery, blindsided by the dirt brown boxcars, splashed with bright graffiti tags and oil vanquished what our eyes could see otherwise. They walked quietly in the intermittent shadows like vampire ninjas. A solid downpour broke from the the clouds, it was a massive thunderstorm, but they had no care, since lightning would probably hit metal because there was an excessively long row of boxcars, and it took three engines to pull that juggernaut. The train seemed to be an endless, repetitive, movable building.
So now Kiki smelled of nothing but wet hair . . . strobe flashes exposed exotic and supernatural creatures in the shadows . . . lightning framed the clouds with an electric lining . . . clouds that seemed to be insulators for the torrent of electricity . . . "Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining" (Owl City) . . . so it became appearant that being soaking wet was a good thing . . . rain helped in lubricating the conversation.
A splash of lightning opened up the pathway to an ancient footbridge that was hung over the railway, it was mostly wrought iron, built to last like most railroad structures; it was built soundly like most constructs along the line, with simplicity and solidity, constructed like a testament to the ages. It was, in fact, a testament to an immeasurable payload it supported, being rolled over or shaking of a nearby behemoth crawling across the land. A basic block structure usually.
That footbridge spanning over the tracks was a little more Gothic than most railroad designs, the main posts were topped with large metal spheres, in between which were spines tapering to points, like a rib-cage made of spears. Underneath, the primary girders holding the legs together were low enough to sit on, that spot was also a good shelter from the pouring rain. Valentine was waiting for us there.
Dean had a lot of questions for Valentine and Kiki Lee, but he listened intently instead. listened and looked, thinking, with just a nudge of desire "Of course. Kiki all fine and hot, and the stuff. . . but unlikely . . ." Kiki Lee is a former porn star whose ghetto booty rivaled those sported by women of color, built like a brick shithouse as it were. Beyond her voluptuous body, Kiki had it all, right down to her slightly less than oval face; she had thick, pouted lips and huge eyes that fluttered when she flirted, which was anytime she spoke.
Valentine is a mysterious, petite Spanish woman, cute to the point that she was almost unbearable to look at; but it could be seen in her brown eyes that that she is an agent of evil when it comes to sex, drugs, and whatsoever else she has her mind set on; Valentine was very down to business when she spoke, she rarely flirted, at least not obviously. She speaks in a precise, Midwestern dialect, and has a surprisingly low voice, she retained only a hint of her native accent. She was generally a neat dresser, and carried the mannerisms of a charm school graduate.
Valentine's hair was jet black, kept excessively neat in a brisk pixie cut, and hazel-eyed Kiki had a blonde, frizzy and unkempt shag plastered with a full can of hairspray and teased to a point that it would make every 80s television actress jealous. Kiki was dressed "to kill", often wearing a short cut and tight classic motorcycle jacket, a low cut V neck shirt (bra straps visible), tight jeans, shorts or miniskirt. Val, on the other hand, was smartly sharp, almost as a Catholic Schoolgirl, minus the plaid. they were so different on the outside, but almost as identical as twins in their mysterious ways. Dean was not unlike most men, the way women thought was both mysterious and mystical to his meager perception.
Valentine was sitting , jovial, like a sprite on a giant toadstool; I turned to Kiki, wet as she was she reminded me of a naiad (Kiki was a type of nymph, a water one at that time). Her jeans, wet, looked even more painted- on if that was possible
Reasonably protected from the rain, they huddled under the wrought iron skeleton that was ribbed with painted metal spikes . . . grey battleship paint chipping . . . pock-marks of rust as large as moon craters . . . metallic paint cracking like blood veins . . . former evil but no longer scary like a broken Imperial walker . . . long dead but still standing on four legs . .
Under that cover we touched a small piece of perforated paper to our tongues simultaneously . . . shortly thereafter, all bets were off . . . in less than an hour, eye flashes alternated in time with the halo of lightning . . . from the darkness, indescribable things were reaching out at me and vibrating . . . they were just weeds growing up from the edge of the crushed rock supporting the rails . . . laughter exploded my head apart when Dean realized what he was seeing . . . Kiki interjected into his face chortling very hard as well . . . pretty much just Kiki's face, Dean wanted to see more . . . to touch . . . that entire desire beam disintegrated when he heard Valentine's weird laugh . . . Val did have a Spanish accent, but only when she laughed . . . when she laughed, she laughed in Spanish . . . that understanding became the most important thing ever.
Hours of reality warp ensued . . . their minds melded together, and simply melted . . . everything was breathing and everything made sense . . . the word "oinche" made sense . . . life was such repetition . . . everything was new and different. Later, after Dean went home, lying in bed, and shaking his foot, he could see Russian minurates behind the trees. Domed towers stood brightly before he fell asleep. Shining in the colors of Prussian blue, bright red and subdued yellow.
". . . It's about being dead inside," Kiki Lee said, "about refusal to enjoy life on life's terms . . . "396Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE5YuQRm1Nw
Dean had met Kiki just short of a year earlier, and that summit happened the night Dean walked into a graveyard with Valentine. That was when he fell into a sudden, deep and violent lusting for Kiki.
The internal differences between Dean's friends were few. Even though Kiki Lee was built the quite the opposite of Valentine, both in proportions and physical strength, but Kiki seemed almost sickly most of the time because she was surrounded by an aura of self-doubt, unsure of herself in a very general way, when she found her resolve, though, she held fast, but said resolve hid from Kiki in the shadows and was hard to muster. Valentine was calculatingly confident but did not appear overly so. 396Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk8PXKLCNWZ
Also "Kiki Lee" was not even her given name, she had stolen Kiki from the writing of William S. Burroughs, and made her last name that of his pseudonym, William Lee.
This is the way the way the night broke into a fallen arch of despair, full of the empty Zen whispers of a thousand buddhas hiding behind trees ready to slip out from under parked cars. Dean could not tear his eyes away from Kiki Lee's approach and his pulse rate spiked at the thought of her from behind. Her body was chunky in a good way, and she was even more attractive with sweat clinging to he skin under her heavy leather motorcycle jacket, despite the cold November air. It was the kind of weather she hated but she could not stand the idea of going to her home in the desert. Las Vegas would put out no welcome mats, to her that town was an empty wasteland, like the grave yard she was plodding through.
Kiki was comfortable around the dead, she was satisfied to be surrounded by decaying stones and the smell of freshly shoveled earth; as if it were to welcome her with the process and inevitability of sweet Death, to which she would succumb fearlessly. To rest at last. The only sounds available in the ears of Kiki's world were the the sound of possible, broken footsteps in the fallen leaves, they were rustling in time to the sound of her own breathing and the squeaks from her antique jacket. She felt as if she was in a horror movie as the cold full moon cast a predawn blue-grey light that was spreading shadows of empty hate behind tombstones and trees that looked like Death's hands fingers, devoid of leaves. A place where Buddha would fear to tread.
There was no point about caring about the past, or anything anymore, caring was a thing of Kiki's lost past . . . her attitude said much, as Dean stared like a fool at her well endowed cleavage, like a crazy fool. Her attitude would have said "My eyes are up here", if she actually cared. No mind, a sudden joint lit in her hand, floating in focus as if pushed by a magical current. At least Dean did not see Val hand it to her. The green smell encompassed Kiki's burgeoning head buzz warmth, enlarging the soul cage sentiment Kiki had come to meet her newest friend Dean, and Valentine in the green pastures of unturned grave plots, where they exchanged joke, tokes, and hugs . . . and bitter cold. This was the first time Dean was experiencing the "graveyard ritual" with them, as far as Valentine was concerned, though, he had a long history with her, friends from back in the day. Even under the most sacred of times Kiki Lee was willing to meet Dean for the first time.
Kiki was not such the heavy thinker. She was unable to converse for very long without using cliches, "Let's sit in the graveyard again," So they put on our coats and walked out the back door. Val and Kiki bundled up in leather, cotton, denim, and Dean sported his heavy trench coat . . . dabbed in a little polyester and polyvinyl . . . The cemetery was close, the trip only took two paved streets, a cut between to ranch houses where the fence was broken, and a short overgrown path to get there. It was a vast, country boneyard filled with many secluded areas. "Why is there a fence for dead people?" Kiki mused out loud. They slipped into one such spot, that was overgrown with dead weeds and there was a fat, bench-like oak root jutting out of the ground, washed out of short steep slope. The tombstones nearby had been sandblasted by time, and lack of any survivors to take care of them, until names and dates had been bleached and washed away. The true eternity of impermanence won over the dream of eternal life in in a war against monument stones. Even granite will pass away.
Valentine, Kiki, and Dean could hear the echoing whine and clatter of a freight train across the valley in which our town sits. It seemed a lonely, but also lively in contrast to the granite monuments amongst which they sat. by not using a looped phrase, listening to the train lulled them into meditative state, and Valentine likened meditation to a freight train, some of the boxcars are full, some are empty. The goal of meditation, she reflected is not to stop thinking, but to extend the number of empty cars between those that are full. Listening to a train in intently makes it sound like a sad, Blues based song. The grass was green in that cemetery, and most of it cleanly mowed, and the ground where they sat felt warm despite the late November chill in the air. "What d'ya wanna drink?" Valentine suddenly asked Kiki and Dean, "I'm buy'n" So we took another brief walk to an all-night gas station.
. . . Nothing but dust . . . dust that swirled in attics and basements, cosmic dust that coalesced into nebulae, eventually becoming stars that collapsed, sucking everything into itself, even light.
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