Vae Victis

It was not yet three o’clock in the afternoon, but the cloud cover made any indication of time very difficult to discern. I stood on a post made of cement and took a deep pull from my cigarette. Every so often I would crane my neck and tilt it a bit to see over the crowd. Someone stood in the center of this mob waving a giant plywood cross from side to side in front of him.
“Justice comes to those who choose to find it—Find it in him Jesus Christ the Lord, may he be by your side at all times to help you give up the drugs of death and the Devil’s broth—You prostitutes, you whores, cover yourselves in public and quit using the gifts God gave you to fornicate and spread your evil disease. This is the fault of the whores, gentlemen. The fault of those who tempt us, keep them in their place and away from the temptation of sin.”
Rhetoric; the crowd had morphed around him in a spirited way, people pushing through the swell to get close enough to take a swing. The preacher kept his cross swaying in front of him, as to fend off the evil spirits, or perhaps employ as a weapon. He began to speak direly of homosexuality. I hopped off of my perch and strolled away. I let my cigarette fall to the ground.
Crossing the mall near the library, the grass felt good beneath the soles of my shoes, so I took them off and pressed my toes into the ground. Late spring gave the impression that weather was a strong point of the city, but not today. I placed my bag next to me and stared into the distance at the group surrounding the preacher, I could hear his voice soft in the background. I lay next to my bag and fell asleep.
“Are you alone?”
I awoke slightly to see two women standing above me clutching handbags close to their chests.
“I suppose so.”
Pulling my hat over my eyes, I felt a wayward slice of sun warm the calf on my right leg.
I awoke again when dripping bits of pain stabbed me in several places on my body. My dreams reflected the pain, issuing images of small creatures covered in thick black hair matted to their entire bodies. These beings were no larger than cats, though very rotund. They attacked endlessly gnawing at my chest and body, pulling the skin from my fingers and the cartilage from my ears. Attempts to bat them away were futile. A burning mountain rose from the ground growing enormous in the middle of a continual field of gravel, spitting hot flame to the sky. The creatures now ripping at muscle tissue, I ran with full force swinging the remains of my arms in every direction hoping to curb the dark army close at my heels, and I flung my body to the flame. I accepted this death and with the fire I was purged.
I awoke in the rain.

I gathered my small bag and rushed to a covered area nearest, the overhang of an old building. The crowd was gone, and I was alone in all directions. I crouched my body, cradling my belongings and made my way to the bar.
While it was raining there were few crowded around the square. The bar itself was mostly outside. There were tables and chairs incongruent drowning on two decks adjacent to the bar, which stood as an island in the center of the place. Large eaves raised from its sides to form makeshift coverings for those gathered around it on wooden benches. I joined.
In moments there was a change, my empty hand was filled, but the object in it felt foreign. It was the same bottle afforded to me many times before, perhaps there was something changed about my hand, or perhaps it was something about the bottle changing the way it wished to be felt. I took the bottle and retrieved a long pull from the neck. Two police officers trotted by on their horses patrolling the street. The air from the animals’ nostrils smoked, and reminded me of the flames from my dream. Looking in, they gave me bad eyes; I looked back to the bottle.
“So where you been man?”
A fat man with cheeks of blubber slobbed slightly out of the corners of his mouth, gathering spit in the creases of his flesh. He wiped it then offered me his hand. I nodded to him leaving my own palm in its rightful place.
“I think I’ve been here.”
“Well Hell man, don’t you know?”
He lowered his hand. I noticed his fat breasts were collecting rain while his underbelly remained dry.
“Yeah, I’ve been here.”
“Well, shit.”
He smiled at me.
Behind my sunglasses I shut my eyes and struggled to smile back. When I opened them again, the man was gone, over to the other side of the bar, and I could hear him speak, “So where you been man?”
I finished the bottle and left.

When I finally arrived home, the air was damp in my small apartment. I should clean, I thought. The fridge had a half empty bottle of port wine; I filled a glass and stared at the counter tops in my kitchen. Ants were in a frenzy over a plate crusted with red sauce. There next to them sat the cleaning fluid with a nozzle attached. I began to spray the ants, then I sprayed more—I kept spraying and spraying until the plate was covered in a thick sludge. The ants squirmed their last. “Væ Victis,” I spouted, “Sleep well my comrades.” The floor beneath me stuck to my right shoe. I untied it and left it there, abandoning it for the comfort of my mattress lying on the floor next to the stack of luggage and torn books. The luggage was for a trip I planned to take, perhaps. The books were shit. They frustrated me with their uselessness and deserved to be desecrated in a disgusting manner. This is not to say that I do not have equally good books atop a table across from my bed, kept in stable condition, ready for repeated consumption. But at times when reading, it would take two pages, or sometimes thirty for my brain to realize their worth and then I would discard them.
The radio was droning, repeating the same tape front to back, back to front; I had left it on since this morning; it played a good noise though, so I left it looping. The entirety of this room is pasted with paper; clippings and such I found important at the time, it is my nesting instinct. I felt safe and warm as I lay into bed, and I fell into the abandoned thoughts of self-gratification. The preacher swims through my mind, the fat man, the two women, and I realize that it has been a good day, one full of tranquility and little foresight.
I took two pills and retreated from life; the frenzied ants seemed so much calmer now

~ by unhealthymusings on November 1, 2007.