I grabbed my evening onion; rotting and yellow and rank and bleeding a sour, greasy liquid onto my shirt cuffs that burned like acid. I didn’t see the dispensary worker anymore and a huge chunk of the ceiling was missing from where she once stood, sitting in a dried layer of metallic looking blood.
The day was grey and dreary; true misery draped over the sullen bland sky while a shroud of confusion blurred my mind. I had forgotten where I was and what I was doing. Why was I holding this horrible onion? Why was I walking in this particular direction? What was my name? Good things to remember.
I had been doing it more and more of late but I was shrugging it off as stress. It’s what my doctorate friends tell me it is.
“You’ll kill yourself more with stress than with smoking…” They would say, then it hit me, I wanted to smoke!
“Hey dumb shit.” I looked down to my right and there on the ground was a young looking girl, or at least one younger than me, maybe 25, 26? I never studied “The Art of Assumptions and Estimations” which would have helped me in the theoretical detection of certain people’s ages, under perfect conditions with a control group to compare it to.
“What?” It was all I could muster in my haze and pathetic confusion
“Why the fuck are you standing there staring into space holding a rotten turnip? You look gay as shit” She laughed, her short cut hair was dirty blonde and oily, she wore rags for clothes but they seemed to be purposefully laid on her, like she meant to look hoboish. I could tell she was short and was a fuller girl but far from what someone would call fat, just healthy. Which was strange for anyone he ever met, especially someone who looked like a bum.
“Eh, it’s an onion.” I held it out towards her to see, it dripped it’s stank goo downwind from her, causing her to fan her nose in exaggeration.
“Oh my god it smells like fucking ass dude, put it away.” She coughed and spit, then to the delight of my eyes she reached in her pocket and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke towards the juicy vegetable.
“You smoke?” I was excited and spit on myself, sucking the saliva quickly back into my mouth.
“Oh my god you’re stupid.” She looked away and laughed to herself. I found her a bit cute, despite her sarcastic body language and strident tone.
“May I have one?”
“Really?” She sighed and reached in her pocket after I gave an enthusiastic and rapid head nod. “Here stupid ass, just be fucking careful.” She handed it to me and lit it for me. I inhaled deeply and sputtered and hacked it up.
“First time?” She looked at me and winked.
“What?”
“Oh…my…god, stop saying ‘what’ dipshit. You keep asking what and it’s going to get you killed. Heed the warning dude.” I nodded confused and took another drag, coughing it right back up. These things were awful. “You ever smoke before?”
“I really don’t know.” I looked beside her and pointed at the vacant ground, “Can I sit down for a second?”
She looked me up and down and then at my hand. “Fine, just get rid of that foul piece of shit first.”
I chucked the onion, it bounced lightly and thudded to a stop. A dog came up to it, gave it a sniff and took a massive dump on it. I squatted down next to her, quickly realizing why I had the dog toilet food it in the first place. “Shit my wife.”
“Excuse me?” She pulled hard on her butt, causing her milky cheeks to pull in, kind of like a skeleton, though a sexy one.
“I needed that for my wife, she makes this onion soup every night. Now I don’t know what to do.”
“And she was going to make it with that disgusting thing?” She squinted her eyes at the turd fruit and then widened them, revealing wildly emerald globes that shone life among the depressing environment.
“Yeah I think it tastes awful, but I’m not sure, but you know.”
“Yeah that makes no sense, I live on the street and I wouldn’t eat that bull shit. In fact I may eat actual feces before I put that in my mouth. Eh eh that’s what she said! I can only assume your wife is a hoe anyway.” She shakes her head at me and blows a plume of smoke right in my face. “Means I want to fuck you.”
“What?” Her jack rabbit and fragmented speech, along with the being lightheaded from the cigarette was too much for my brain.
“Seriously?”
“I’m sorry.”
She appeared bored, clicking her tongue and grinding her teeth and I felt that if I were to start saying something I’ll lose her. She’ll get up and find another alley that didn’t have a bothersome moron such as myself in it. She did look very good for someone homeless, very strange how she keeps up appearances.
“So how long have you been…”
“So what’s your gay broad’s name?” She interrupts me, looking me straight in the eyes, those emerald jewels putting me in an unexpected excited trance.
“Oh my wife, her name is…” and then I drew a blank, I had no idea what her name was, or what she looked like. She made the soup it’s all I knew, we met…again, blanks. ‘Wait did I make the soup? What the fuck?’
The girl stood up huffing and sighing, “No, fucking no I’m not doing this. No fucking games.” I got up too, giving her my best pleading eyes, which were apparently useless. “Look dude I’m not into drama, so if you can’t even answer a simple question you can fuck off.
“No really I don’t know, maybe it’s the smoking.” I don’t know why but I didn’t want her to leave. “You don’t seem to like her anyway, with the name calling. So what do you even care?”
“Don’t be a smart ass, dude. Just go back to your nice little home, in your nice little clothes, after you come back from you’re gay shitty school and haul your stank dripping onion up to your supposed nameless wife and have her make you some of that wonderful toilet water soup that you told me about. Maybe after you can tell her about the girl you looked up and down in the street and wanted to fuck while Madame No Name is blowing you.” She stomped out her cigarette and crossed her arms. “You know how to excite a girl by the way.”
I was about to reach out to explain myself when a strong large hand grabbed my shoulder and whipped me 180 degrees and a robotic voice boomed towards me.
“Citizen you are smoking on public streets, prepare for god damn penalty.” My eyes widened as the butt of the police rifle smacked me in the eye and I fell down backwards. The officer kicked my side three times and then nerve sprayed me. He then grabbed me by the hair and punched me square in the face, dropping me hard on the ground and giving me another kick. As I writhed in pain he let a ticket for 1,278 dollars fall to the ground next to me and walked away in silence.
I spat up, trying to see and grabbed my face, now spewing blood and the nerve spray was making me vomit bile and caused my hands to shake uncontrollably. I was grabbed and held again, this time softy, by my former tormentor.
“Take these you fucking retard,” She popped a few pills in my mouth, her tone was a bit more caring, even with the barbs and childish name calling. When I calmed I looked at her, vomit and blood quickly caking on my skin.
“Retard is not a politically correct…word…to…I mean that’s not nice.” I coughed out, smiling, trying to let her know that I was keeping some sort of sense of humor.
“Seriously, I’m gonna stab you.” She stroked my hair and smirked. “If you’re going to smoke on the streets you better know when to sense a cop dude. Stop being so fucking lame.”
She laughed and kissed my forehead and lost myself quickly in her stare when I realized it. There in my own bile and puke and blood and rank onions topped with poop, I had the overwhelming feeling of hope and ecstasy. I rested my head on her chest and felt at home, looking at the sky and seeing for the first time some sort of life.
“Dumb fuck you’re staring into space again.” She snapped her fingers in front of my eyes.
She was ever poetic…
Nova Romae 