6. The Mirror on The Playroom Wall
Yes if I'd been packaged differently I could hide the memory beneath
a
beard. As it is, I select my lipstick to match a long ragged slice
from ear to chin.
Once I wanted to see perfection, and so I spied on him. Do monsters
preen? Gestures he threw off like sparks, as he stood before his
mirror, to smooth hair so oiled by smoke and rain that I can taste
it even now. There's no imagining what he saw reflected -- did
clotted stains whet his dreams? Would matte lapels blend with
the shadows where his next meal stumbled and fell?
From my hiding place I witnessed only bruised nails pulling tattered
cuffs. Do monsters preen? The mirror was too short to reveal to
him the gore he tracked across the tile, yet it was wide enough
to flicker with candlelight from the damned keyhole. Do monsters
preen? The price of knowing has healed over and daily ropes the
tendons of my smile.
Who said scars make a face more interesting.
7. Coming Home
I love puking on the sidewalk, I really do. Oh sure. Yep, nothing
compares with dragging a shaking leg up and under myself just
long enough to get my damp face into position to spew reminders
of broken promises. Hurling every buggered intention to the sound
of rending some deep, deep tissue; gagging punctuated by regret
over what else might be happening inside.
Maybe if the crimson goo pooling around my knees doesn't come
out in the wash, well then maybe the next night I'll remember
and know better.
It does, I don't.
Cry cry cry, repent repent repent, do it all again again again.
That vascular soup, mixed from his playthings' heartwine with
the bile he calls his own -- what happens when I finally keep
it down? Does a monster watch unseen tonight, while I crawl through
red smears on my way toward the pavement's end?
...Only if I'm lucky. After all, I'd hate to have to call a cab.
8. Chez Playroom
It caught up with me caught up with me caught up and my lips only
mumbled with the drink 
bubbling up, back
up, never going down down for good, down forever, for all time
and time and --
And then the dream is over.
---
When I stood up I saw a glove forgotten among the overturned furniture,
so pale it was. Mmmm, a long white glove, elbow length -- oh my,
but there was an elbow, too. The glove, a glove of skin for bones
bent in subtle ways. In the air above the body floated plinking
noises from a near room, as if someone played the wires of a broken
piano. Seemed likely, judging from the torn upholstery and strewn
pillows I waded through.
The dining room was nearly intact by comparison. Plenty of soiled
linen to stuff into my collar to check the bleeding there. "Don't
be shy, pull up a chair" -- his invitation delivered from
a shadowy seat at the end of a table, where darker and contorted
shapes lay heaped upon the floor nearby. "Better yet, have
mine. Good night."
No harm done in admitting I was thankful to see him go, leaving
me to spend the rest of the night alone, no harm, right?
That's when I noticed the table's scattered china... a setting
for eight. The tortured piano-string playing in the background
was joined by laughter and the crunching of glass.
I wish they'd dine out more often.
9. The View from The Playroom
"Black hearts among the young are so charming. The energy
invested -- such sincerity, such creativity! But evil doesn't
really get ugly until it gets older." More nonsense, another
damn sermon, delivered this time from the edge of a pier that
he rhythmically chipped away with a small knife. Thock. Thock.
Thock. Each uncurling of his lazy wrist advanced the damage. As
he lifted his arm I could see his shirt cuff. Gawd it was filthy.
"And the older one gets -- you'll find this out for yourself
someday, I'll ssssssee to that -- the older one gets, the less
like a pose evil becomes. Once I thought that was simply because
perfidy is habit forming." Thock, thock. "But I know
now that a junkie rush isn't what the Old Things feel." Thock.
"They feel -- nothing. Perversion is as humdrum as rain,
as decay, as insects crushed underfoot. Life ends without contemplation.
The daily ordinariness of it all is what makes our satiations
evil... and easy."
Easy? Me: "Really. Well I'll tell you what I think. I think
you old shits are just getting lazy."
His reply was a wink in ghastly parody of intimacy against the
background of grey-green river water. I turned to look up instead
at the Cascade mountains to the east, illuminated as if from within
by the sunset's failing light. Lights-out here in Rain City, lights-out
for the flannel brats, and the suicides, and the caffeinated habitues.
Good night sleep tight better pray that only bed bugs bite.
Thock, thock. Him: "Lazy... ah then, let's go somewhere...
different. Take me to a street that's fresh. Your choice."
Thock. "Surprise me."
Ha.
Sure, I'll drive. But I won't pimp.
10. Equal employment 
-----
Good work out here on the perimeter, on the outside looking
in.
As a pornographer.
That is, one who looks at love from both sides now. Like the
song says.
And so can best describe in greasy prose the cascade of fleshy
imaginings that bind us all all all every one night and day work
and play. Whether inspired by the genuine weariness of saity,
or the stupid clarity of longing, who really cares?
Not monsters, certainly. A fine subject for any pornographer,
for sure. An egotistical bunch reveling in display of excess and
vanity, the arteries of their milked victims as spent and ravished
as the skin of any spread eagled performer witnessed thru gauzy
words, a gloss of sweat and warm red splatter.
Good work if you can get it.
© leslie h.
Rain City continues...
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