The Chili Man, by xTx
Post-Dated Hangover, by David E. Oprava
I and II, by Jason Neese
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The Chili Man
xTx
We were practically in each other’s laps.
No…we were.
But it was Central Park and it was July. It was the seductive sway of a city summer.
The crowds covered the grass; an undulating patchwork.
“Do you always play with each other’s hair?” he asked, staring.
I glanced at the bowl of chili in his lap…dotted with jalapenos. Absentmindedly, I thought about the shit he would take in the morning.
Debbie kept her hands busy with my hair and I continued playing with hers. Her beautiful blonde hair. So shimmery…so unlike mine. I had it by the ends…running it through my fingers, the sun making it flash impossible. My manicure threaded through it…soft.
She put a piece of mine to her lips. I tried that also. Shampoo fruity feathers.
He watched. From the corner of my eye I could see him raise the bowl of chili under his chin and scoop it into his mouth in a thoughtful manner, his eyes never leaving us. I hadn’t answered him yet. I was debating. Debbie had her eyes closed.
So golden, I thought, stroking the ends…laying the tresses against the black of her shirt…the white of her skin. Why hadn’t I seen it like this before?
The mushrooms, I thought…
Breath heavy with chili…creeping and expanding like a virus against my bare arm, bare shoulder, my vulnerable cheek…he asked again….like we hadn’t heard the first time.
“Do you always play with each other’s hair?”
I didn’t stop my fingers when I answered him with something that seemed to make sense.
“Only when you’re watching...”
I heard a seabird then, and Debbie whispered, “Good…”
Post-Dated Hangover
David E. Oprava
digging through the ashtray for fag-ends of last night waiting to happen
I.
Jason Neese
i'm falling apart
enjoy your time in the city.
II.
Jason Neese
The night turned from frenzy gathering to slow tramping through deserted woods. The woods of Wyoming were different than other woods. These woods were colored and quiet. Sound almost seemed out of place when it occurred. Jacob had taken his clothes off half way back to their campground. Amy was riding his back. She had her clothes on. They were a unit under the moon glow. Both remembered his words from earlier.
“It is Pantheism, it’s the pagan philosopher Cicero’s inner testicle bleeding out with the innate truth that the original Spark is infinite. It is my contention that this only answers a portion of the question. For all honest explorers it comes to a place that we must personalize the Divinity to a point that is accommodating to our limited knowledge of things through the scope of Beginning, of End. Just like the statement of faith made when one accepts the innate modes of functionality found in cells and beyond, we must also find Faith in the notion that a Divine Spark that has always existed can possess the power of pinpricking time and space to create the machinery needed to set us off running.
Jacob and Amy both smile in the darkness as they move.
“It’s more quiet out here than in dreams.”
“I think we should leave tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t feel anything here except other people’s nightmares.”
“Me too.”:
Jacob stops walks. His penis is full erect. He is not aroused. Something is with them.
“Say nothing.”
A movement in the pure darkness. It could be feet, it could be flapping wind. The soft snatch of the forest alive.
“We have known that you are following us. We don’t know who you are but know you are there.”
Amy’s hands dig into Jacob’s back. The Zin pain from each burst of fingernail calms Jacob.
“Tomorrow we will travel to the west. And you will follow us. You are not God we are not pilgrims. This will end.”
Jacob continues walking blindly through the woods. The indented soil enough trail to get them back to a modest campsite. The two share the air that night, not using their tarp but instead counting stars.
“That glint right there is 2 billion years old. I feel so shallow with cosmic feet stepping through me like a puddle.”
They spilled into morning.
He was shrodinger’s cat. Splattered alive against the precipice of eternity. Squirming the in between, banging his head against the creaky stairs of horror and illuminated room of grace. Alternately, demonizing his sense of optimism at the delightful ether of organization behind the universe and its shadowy architect while reveling in the dark long robe of hopelessness most his nights become after Amy fell asleep. Only their book kept him glued together and this vague awareness of being followed by something that could potentially harm Amy. Attached like amoeba right before mitosis, the two of them had searched desperately for the narrative but only instead found adventure. Vonn stood knee high in a stream and masturbated quietly as the sun slipped him a wink while swimming on its back through the cosmos. Jacob's back arched against the rush of orgasm. He blanked beautifully, rainbow noise staining his eyelids.
“Vonn.”
He whipped around. Nothing. Just the ghostly pant of woods. Their early morning steam dancing around trunks slowly sizzling away.
Jacob walked back to their campsite. Amy had packed up. They were both dizzy with Wyoming and ready to dematerialize back out west. Vague intonations of peace seemed seamed into the fringe fabric of the desert. Like arid wind sliding through loose sand providing the starched canvas needed to fill in with colors. The imagination only squeezed out full after an extermination of civilization. Amy and Jacob both secretly knew this to be true. They staged an escape, putting thumbs out like meerkat heads popping from the ground looking for food. Soon, a very new looking RV home stopped for them and they disappeared through the next four days.
Finagled in a rut of decaying branches. High in the canopy where green starts going yellow. A red cooler with a white lid lurched with each pitching shard of hot wind drowning out the whistling birds hovering in lower enclaves. Jacob stared at it for 11 minutes before allowing any thoughts on what it was to penetrate the fantasy. What could be inside? A bird’s nest? The slimy grease and pickled bones of some unlucky squirrel? Jacob didn’t know. He wandered through the sticks for two days wishing the cooler to be a lot. Finally, he made it back to the camp site. Drizzling syrup on three pregnant pancakes stoved over open flames, greasy and slick as they licked at the bottom of the stone pan, Amy chuckled to herself over a private joke as Jacob wandered slowly to his place next to her.
“There’s a cooler up in the woods about a half mile from here.”
“There is?”
“Yes.”
“No bodies associated with said cooler I hope.
“Not at this point. But, who knows, the decaying corpse could have gone back to nature long before we ever got here.”
“That’s a pleasant thought Vonn.”
"Why do you keep calling me Vonn?"
"I don't know."
A beat of silence chews on the air between them.
“Do you think it’s him?”
“I don’t even know who, him, is yet.”
Amy stuffs a whole pancake in her mouth and crooks her head sideways.
“Do you love me anymore?”
“Not really.”
But Jacob can’t contain a smile that creeps all over his lips. Amy jumps on him.
They have been on Lake Isabella for 15 days. They will find the narrative for the story here. Jacob has latched his belt onto the cosmic click of a vehicle that sat resting for him out here. The sliding panes of glass, murky and clear, all at once, will finally shatter apart.
This will not be for days.
