Gunshot Stigmata , a novella
Scott C Rogers
Copyright © 2011 Scott C. Rogers
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
LIMITED EDITION
Black Coffee Press LLC
www.blackcoffeepress.net
Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BOB ROGERS 1957 -2000
Noise
1
I finish the last of my beer and then kill the engine. I dust off the cigarette ash from my apron. My name tag reads BETTY. I get out of my car, adjust my balls, check to see if my fly is zipped and head towards the automatic doors of Best-Mart Supermarket. This is where I work. I still have the scent of her pussy deep within my nose.
2
I’m stuck in the flower section again. The counter top is sticky. I have an open bag of Skittles. The cooler housing all the roses, tulips, and daisies is humming and hiccupping. There is a small puddle of water just to the rear – it looks like it took a piss. I am cutting and arranging Baby’s Breath in a blue vase. Its botanical name means “lover of chalk.” A woman with giant boobs and brown teeth bought it and is now shopping while I finish the arrangement. The card reads, “Sam, I hope your tonsils are the only balls they took. Love Becky” Sometimes I like to unzip and let my dick hang out behind my apron.
3
Carmella stacks bananas on the front display table. Her ass is the perfect shape in her tight black Dickies pants and dirty Converses. Every time she reaches to place a bunch at the back her leg lifts and I can see her thin caramel belly. Carmella tells me I look like Elliot Smith. She tells me he killed himself by stabbing a knife into his heart. I tell her I’ve never done that but I have been stabbed. I want to fuck Carmella. I want to stick my banana between her thick crimson lips. I think she wants to fuck me too.
Later I am standing behind the dumpster smoking a joint with Maurice. Maurice has one eye and wears a patch over the missing one. He is Puerto Rican and my roommate. When I told Carmella that I was stabbed once, it was Maurice who did it. I ate the last of the Fruity Pebbles and he got mad. Maurice wants to fuck Carmella too but she never talks to him.
4
I wear a brown leather bracelet on my right wrist. Everyone always tells me it looks like the one Johnny Depp wears but it’s not. Mine has scratches, paint and blood splatters on it. My hair is getting long. And it’s dirty and stringy. I stand in the restroom and stare at myself. The scent of piss is overwhelming. The sink is dirty with what looks to be green phlegm. I let the water run and it floats around like a sick jelly fish. I haven’t jerked off in days. I am wearing mail man pants I bought at the Salvation Army. I like the big blue stripe that runs straight down the side of the legs. My t-shirt is black and has two holes just under the left arm pit.
Taylor opens the door and yells for me.
I walk out. Taylor is a big girl. She is out of breath. She must have been running. Jones has been fired. Jones is our dick head manager for the last year and a half. They just walked him out to his car. On his way out he kicked over a display of Better Made potato chips. He jumped up and down on a few bags and they popped and went everywhere. He called Morris, our District Manager, a fucking homo. Cool. I’m sorry I missed that. She then tells me that Morris wants me to clean up the mess. Fuck me. Sure. I head for the back room to get the big shop broom.
5
I’m sweeping yellow golden flakes of hell into a pile by the automatic door. I have arranged it just so that anyone walking in will either step directly in the slush or will need to make a sudden adjustment in their stride in order to miss it. I push the broom here and there. I have a tourniquet around my heart as my thoughts weave and loop towards her. I miss her Lisa Loeb glasses and soft brown hair. The mole that hid just on the inside of her right thigh. Whenever I ate her out I always kissed it good bye afterwards, pulling up with a chin wet like a lion fresh from a kill.
Johnny walks in wearing his pink bunny suit. The head is resting gently in his arm as he talks with me. His shift starts in twenty minutes next door at the pizza shop. He’s looking to score. I tell him I’m not holding. That I gave it up for Lent. He tells me how he’s mastered this trip where he falls towards a hot mom and grabs her tits and ass. Johnny is a sick bastard. He says that when he farts in the suit it never goes away and he can smell it all night. He likes to roam my store just to fuck with people. He’ll just step right up to someone and say nothing or buy a case of beer and go stand in line.
I think my heart is going to explode and melt. I want to scream but all I do is just smile.
6
When I die the world will not end. Cars will not halt on the freeways. People will not disintegrate into sand and ash and float away. Clocks will continue past the moment I take my last breath. There will be no fire. I still have track marks my arm. People stare, sometimes. They look like the big sores someone with AIDS gets. I am not ashamed. I carry them out in the open like a Born Again does a crucifix or like a whore struts around in white pleather knee-high boots.
Outside. The hood of my car makes my balls warm. Shift over. I’m talking with Dmitri as he wrangles loose carts. He’s Romanian and trying to become a truck driver to earn money to send home to his sick father. Smell of warm asphalt. Dmitri’s hair looks just like Elvis’ back in ’57. He has a chain that leads to his wallet that shines in the sunlight. That shines like my fucked heart. He tells me there’s a party tonight. That I should go.
7
Brown scuffed wingtip shoes. White suit pants and white jacket. Belt buckle with the words BAD MOTHER FUCKER on it. Black t-shirt. The evening sky slides open like a pair of soft pink thighs. I stop at the gas station. The door sticks as you open. Bells ding. Camels. 16 oz. Coffee. Black no sugar. Sweaty, crumbled dollar bills exchanging dirty hands. Exit. More bells. I stop and light. The snap of the wrist. A Zippo opening and closing. Flickering in the dying sun. Sound of a coin hitting the concrete. The hearse whines before finally starting and coughing a congested roar of life. Big, black wings from a scorched angel sit in the rearview mirror. “God is Dead –Nietzsche/ Nietzsche is dead –God.” bumper sticker. I gun her into traffic and head towards oblivion.
8
Mutt plays stand up bass in a Rockabilly band called Satan’s Nutsack. He also has this old farmhouse and barn just outside of town. I pull up and kill the engine. There’s Jagermeister in the console. I twist the top off slowly. Green bottle to my lips. I check the cars around me. Fins and flames. I’ve been gone a long time. No more shit in these veins. I watch the asses of a few Betty Page wannabes sway past and head towards the bonfire. I have fucked half the girls in this town and lost my soul to the rest. I have eight rings for eight fingers. But I’m a pacifist now. No more fighting. I leave them in the El Producto cigar box under my seat.
The passenger door opens and in comes a raven haired beauty.
Small talk and a push up bra. Thick eyeliner and lip rings. A studded dog collar and black nail polish. The pull of my belt and soft words in my ear. The downward climb of a zipper.
I’m standing on the edge of reason. My life can be collected and measured out in summers. Broken suns.
9
Hands gripped tight around the steering wheel. Knuckles white. White like the sheets hanging on the clothes line stretched across the memories of my youth. When I say love, love is a sun blister on the bloated remains of my heart. When I say love.
10
Words jagged at the end like broken beer bottles stab my brain. She is talking. I catch a word here and there. Guitar. She said guitar. No
. I shake my head, stuttering down her throat. Is this a bible? she asks, holding the damn thing up in the dying sunlight. No. It is so. Her phone goes off. I toss the bible under her seat, next to the sawed-off shotgun, next to her black Mary Jane shoes attached to her long, brown legs.
I take another swig of Jagermeister. The moon is already out. She is babbling. I motion for her to get out. She sneers at me, making a wrinkled face. I give her the finger. She gives me one back. Her arm is lined with fat, pink lines crosshatching their way around to her elbow. Cutter. She mouths the words FUCK YOU. I reach over and snag one of her tits and pinch a nipple. She jumps and squeals and starts laughing.
I have flames tattooed on each forearm. I have dipped my hands down into hell too many times. The devil knows my scent.
11
Exit the hearse. Her slender brown fingers bend around mine like the stars around the moon. As we walk up the gravel driveway my steps are awkward like I have pillows on my feet. Inside my skull there is no gravity. Thoughts float, bump into memories and spin out of control. Loose change sliding from the pockets of an upturned pair of pants.
Emma. Her name was. Her name was Emma.
Stillborn.
Daughter.
The final punch line from God.
12
I move among them, slowly meandering through a thick fog of human bodies with dark sculptured hair, tattoos, piercings, and blue jeans with rolled cuffs and dresses with patterns of skulls and cross bones. Time begins to fade and burn like a piece of film. I’m the living dead.
I back myself up to the kitchen sink. Drink their beer. Talk bullshit. Shake hands. Get hugs. It’s all choreographed. Human tragedy. We dance around it. Eyes dart to my hands to catch a glimpse of my gunshot stigmata. The skin sits rubbery on top of the wounds. I held my hands up to Jesus and pulled the trigger.
My career as a musician finally over. No more guitar. I tried to hang myself with the strings. Another failure.
13
My left hand starts to tingle, I remember. I awoke one year ago, in a hospital and I spent those first waking hours staring into a bathroom mirror, seeing nothing but the graying grievances between recovery and holding memories, the sole remaining witnesses to my life. Whispers of speculation. Wanting. Those long nights. The doctors said you might never awaken. I left your bedside knowing you were alive. They say time heals all wounds. That’s a lie.
They moved me to another hospital.
Are you depressed?
Why did you shoot your hand?
Were you high?
Did you mean to crash the car?
Were you trying to kill yourself or her?
You are aware that she is no longer ...
The creeping grip of this void. The rotting walls in my head give way and the floors of the labyrinth buckle. Know that you are always in my thoughts, however dilapidated my thoughts might be.
14
Logic and reason took their leave and I began to see patterns through my chest. An elaborate labyrinth of memory and sanity strained against the unceasing flood amidst all the damage. I closed my eyes and waited out the daylight. Disembodied voices. Patronized with words borne out of consequence, failure, heartache. When they discharged me I spent many nights hidden, wandering the halls of myself. Each day unleashed a new assault. The draining of life. Eventually the noise and spectacle would stop the light for a moment, but it always returned. I saw legions of faithful fade unable to distinguish colors from shadows. The wreckage of my memory muted, dulled in its contours. I had stretches of digging through the remnants of unscathed mementos, sorting through the confusion and rubble, piecing together my head with regret and eclipsing wrongs.
15
I awake the next morning to her quivering skeletal grin. We are naked. Her left leg is draped over my upper thighs. I can feel the soft cushion of her pubic hair on my left thigh. The hug of her breasts along my ribcage. She slowly lays her head back down upon my chest. Her fingers begin swirling across my belly and hipbone. This is not my bed. She moves on top of me. Her lips full of grace. I grab the base of my cock as she slowly impales herself and grips me like a warm hand. My hands move to her breasts and then back to her hips. There is a trail of red. Bloody fingerprints. She says her period. We fuck like we invented it.
Later. She is in the bathroom. I am standing naked in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and watching a squirrel tightrope across a power line. I am caked in menstrual blood. I feel like I was just born. I turn and see a man with no face staring at me. We both scream. A scream begat all of creation. He goes trailing off down the hall yelling her name. I am moving slowly into the living room as if I just caught the boogey-man. My coffee cup raised.
He pounds on the bathroom door and then runs into a bedroom. I can hear the movement of heavy furniture against the door. She comes out.
What the fuck?
I grab my shit. I gotta go to work, I tell her.
16
My reflection shimmers in blackened glass. Storefront window. The image is singularly ugly, wavering, untrue. An automated voice instructs me to hang up. I let the receiver swing on its cord grimily.
I dialed our old number.
She is dressed in black, as before. Short skirt and tight little Dead Kennedys shirt, stockings and Doc Martin boots. Long brown hair. Lisa Loeb glasses. Lips electric to the touch. Perfect little belly button. This is how I remember her.
I back away and go to find another phone booth.
17
A lance of florescent lighting stabs me as I slice open a box of Del Monte green beans. I have a headache. Migraines. Six weeks after the car crash a doctor was talking to me when the left side of my skull just gave way like a giant sink hole in the middle of our conversation. They have been a common event since.
A man in a tropical print shirt is standing next to me and cannot decide between a generic or a name brand can of peas. Inside his cart is a case of Miller Lite, a loaf of bread, bananas and some lunch meat. His hands move in stuttered movements. Flashes of turquoise jewelry.
I look at his face. He looks into mine.
I can hear muffled hallway voices spidering out of his mouth.
18
They called him the Muffin Man. His real name is Stacy. The last time I saw him I was leaving his apartment with a pocket full of shit. The very shit I used when I got behind the wheel that night. He looks so much older than I remember. He has a bald mullet and mountain man beard. A gold chain with a crucifix hangs in a forest of silver and black chest hair. He wobbles over to me and raises his hand. I spot the fake leg. He tells me he owed some money to some people and they came to collect. He starts yapping about how he’s changed. How he owns a Subway now. How things are different. He’s a God-fearing-man now.
I want to cut off his fat fingers and shove them down his throat.
Blackness begins to pour in the sides of my vision. I stumble and go down on one knee. He reaches for me and I swipe at him with the box cutter. He grabs his forearm and begins to paint the tiled floor like a Jackson Pollack painting.
He calls me a fucker. I stab at his hollow leg and roll onto my back and watch the lights flutter. Maybe this time I won’t wake up.
19
Ron, the assistant manager of Best-Mart Supermarket, has rotting teeth. He is worthless and depraved of any humanity. The corners of his shirt are coming untucked. Buttons are straining to hold back his massive belly. His forehead is moist and he gives off a certain stench of filth and booze.
He pulls his pants up and folds his arms across his chest.
You stabbed him, didn’t you? He says you just fell into him, but I know. I know. I have video I can watch. I should fire you.
Radar detectors and grenades are going off in my skull. Seated at the break table, I glance over and see a Radio Shack brochure. I crumble it up and toss it at him. He tries to defend himself, but it pings off his massive brow.
That’s it, you’re gone! Get. You’re fired!
20
On the wrong side of midnight.
From my perch on the apartment balcony, I watch the raccoons come and go under the cover of darkness. I take a hit off my joint. I’ve been on this planet now for three, almost four decades and it never seems to get any better. The years just choke themselves out.
Gunshot Stigmata Page 1
