#SixSentenceSunday Overload: "I Want To Take You Higher."

Rules, who needs them?  Okay, for the sake of being thorough as a writer, I want and need to know all of the rules so I can have something to bounce the red rubber ball in my imagination, the one thumping at the back of the cranial wall, off of it, meaning, yeah, know the rules so you can break them.  Of course, that's no biggie here, my rule breaking has more to do with the Six Sentence Sunday deal.  As in, I think I'll give you more than that, much more, just like what any junkie wants.  What? Yeah, this is the drug story, one of two in the collection, so let's roll with it, give you not just one fix, but enough to entice or confound you to the limits.


"I Want To Take You Higher," title pilfered from Sly and the Family Stone, a fave band from my youth, a good friend introducing me to their ultra-funkified Soul...and somehow, years later, it infiltrates my head, my enjoyment of their music as woven into my enjoyment of drug fiction, which I mention in my previous take on this story here.  I'm going to re-hash the same sample as that one, but then expand on it, just let it pour out.  Six Sentences?  Heck, we get through a whole mess of sentences, of sheer nuttiness, of drug-infused lunacy, though, no, I do not take drugs.  Why would I?  I've got an overabundance of warped imagination to deal with, I'm not sure if the drugs could handle ME!

So...

[pause for a brief moment: This Six Sentence Sunday addition of the blog comes courtesy of my collection, The Dark Is Light Enough For Me, available via Amazon USA, UK, Germany, France, B&N, OmniLit, Kobo and...Somewhere, Anywhere, Elsewhere & Nowhere.  Now back to our irregularly scheduled blog post] 

The first Six Sentences...

***

     The knock at the door could only mean one thing: Desi was here, with the drugs no less, not that I could really deal with any more right now, but why stop anything of such mind-numbing, reality altering magnitude when it’s got the pedal jammed to the floor?
     I can stop tomorrow.  There’s always tomorrow.
     I unlatch the lock, swinging open the door with much flourish, eyes skittish, wanting to grab him and drag him in and—
     “Hello!  I won’t mean to take up much of your time.”  A Jehovah’s Witness or some like-minded Messenger of God, fercrissakes, and his silent, strap-on buddy.

***
AND... a whole bunch more.
***

     Options align as bowling pins awaiting the kiss of the rapidly spinning ball.  Do I torture him for my own amusement with snippets of my thespian talents and portray a Satanic serial killer, complete with a drooling, halitosis smitten smile and a black marker upside-down cross on my forehead ala Manson’s swastika etchings?  Do I resort to politeness? After all, I was voted Mr. Politeness in kindergarten, given a red ribbon, like one does for a prize pig at the county fair—“My, he sure is plump!”—in a quest to expedite his removal posthaste, without eliciting anything more than a furrowed brow or a plea caught in his throat, God’s Messenger gagging on the message? 
     He interrupts the squirming, beached marlin madness in my head.
     “But we're visiting folks in your neighborhood”—no way, I think, if they’d made it to Harold’s they’d be in the sausage grinder by now, live cams filming it all for Internet prosperity—“and were wondering if you read the bible.”

     I pause, options hazy, and choose the prize pig route. I snort at him.
     “Excuse me?”  He looks genuinely perturbed, his bright yellow shirt staining my eyes like liquid sunlight.  My head starts to throb; my thoughts are squiggly, illegible graffiti, gray matter bruises that never heal.

“Yes,” I say, “I’ve heard of the book.”  I snarl as I open the screen—just gimme the free magazines and leave the premises now, before the hounds infect your pure, religiously demented soul with slathering rabies infused nibbles to your shiny white, never spanked ass; pit bulls Roscoe and Alvin prowl the perimeter behind me, anxious for some meat, agitated because they are not sure if there is anything truly worthy at the door.  I’m still mortified by the too bright sun and his lack of appropriate fashion sense—dear man, you should style yourself with a less gleeful shirt. Here, I’ve got something in black, don’t worry about the Incest Rodeo: My Daughter Can Roll Over and Play Dead, Can Yours? blurb, they’re a band, y’know, noisy stuff, just tell your cohorts you’re only wearing it to better know your enemy.

     “Do you read it…often?”  He comprehends the preposterousness of his question, realizing his best mode of action is to giddy-up and outta here ASAP and says, “Well, let me leave a couple of these with you and—”

     I snatch the magazines—gotta start the barbecues somehow—grunt a “Thank you” in his direction, hoping he doesn’t see anything salvageable here and leaves permanently, never to cross paths with yours truly again. 

     “Thank you for your time—”

     “Yeah, time is money, get on with your trek, God Boy, we got no recruits here,” and angry at myself for my dismissive manner, not trying to raise anything with this God Boy.  He’s on a mission, we should all have goals, but Jeezus, how about something with resonance in this life, not some iffy next one around the bend and smelling of desperation. 

     Feast or Famine?  No title besides those three words.  Is that the title?  What is this God Boy’s true mission, feeding the poor or is this a spiritual question, one of allegiance, picking sides: pearly white or blood red?

     I was expecting In God’s Eyes or—what’s that other one?—The Watchtower.  Sounds like a horror novel, where the victim is dragged upstairs and locked in a room full of watches—Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants and oodles of other animated variations—and a ticking procession hammers said victim with the torturous veracity of existence, to the point where the victim wishes for THE END this minute, and not a second later.  A Watchtower, The Watchtower, a skyscraper with the dimensions and modus operandi stated above, a Stephen King blockbuster, movie to follow, script in pig Latin—I could star, me and my Mr. Politeness red ribbon—an obvious Mel Gibson directorial vehicle, what with the rarely used language, utilized for the sake of artistic integrity and—

     Another knock.  More questions, more attempts at persuading yours truly that the road to heaven is paved with bright yellow shirts and yellow brick roads and God likes to be called the Wizard, yes, the Wizard of Odd, Master of the Universe, King of New York, scoundrel, cad, sock stuffing rock star, argh—

     “Open the friggin’ door, gringo.”

     Desi.  Thank God!

     I unlatch the lock, swinging open the door with much flourish, eyes skittish, wanting to grab him and drag him in.  He’s got Regina with him.  She’s adorned in dirty gray sweats, a pink bra, and goggles.  She looks thinner now than the last time I almost missed her, as if she’s dwindling away—gotta eat something, I tell her—but she tells me it’s part of her appeal, skinny girl into blow jobs, excuse me, SkinnyTeenBitchIntoBlowJobs.com.  She’s twenty-six, could pass for half that in pig tails—oink, oink!  She gets filmed by Harold and his stiffs, they download the shit to a porn site they have, one of many, and I’ll be damned if I ever see Harold anymore as he’s got a life playing out on the Internet, mucho money to the PO Box. One of his scummy hangers-on entourage collects the money and the party never stops. 

     Prosperity indeed.

     “What’s with the goggles, Regina?” 

     She’s cute anyway, even for a twig, leans in to kiss me on the lips but I turn to the left, give her my cheek—I know where those lips have been!—and she licks me instead, like I’m one big dick and I feel like one under her salacious tomfoolery. 

     “It was for the money shot scene.  We went more arty.  Whatever Harold wants, Harold gets.  He thought the goggles would attract the fetish crowd.” 

     I wonder if the goggles have been cleaned with anything besides some jerk off’s spunk, but decide to turn to Desi to see if he has what I need.

     “We gotta make a run to Hayward.  I got nothing—”

     “Fuck!  I need it now, not an hour from now, not five minutes from this second, what with God Boy and Goggle Girl and—”

     “Calm down, spazz.  Leonard’s got prime shit.  That’s our destination.”

     I groan and turn away.  Leonard’s usually got prime shit, but in order to get to the prime shit, we gotta deal with Leonard, and that’s no piece of cake, unless it’s frosted with shit and stinking of attitude.  Leonard is bad news no matter how one looks at it.  Desi has no clue.  Desi has a Leonard wannabe obsession, and since Leonard’s obsession veers into the old school funkism of Sly Stone—excuse me, Sylvester Stewart, as he would so astutely remind me—of Sly and the Family Stone, what with the miles high fro and always playin’ that shit—hell, I know all of the lyrics and I can’t stand it—I’m left with Desi’s tired copycat routine.  Like a little brother trying to emulate his big brother.  But where Desi is all face value, Leonard has some kind of freakish transformation happening, so deep in the guise I’d almost be convinced he was Sly, except he was six feet, ten inches tall, and white.

***

Okay, you get the gist, perhaps: yes, this one is off the rails, then turns really Messed Up in a horrific way. 

Funny, as always when I write a story with a Very Black Humor side to it, such as this one, I often feel like I have to chime in, but...but...most of what I write is Serious Horror.  But, I've also learned over the years not to argue with the muse if the muse wants to run around naked and flashing everybody its junk while wearing Devil's Horns and singing the National Anthem and...er...you know what I mean.  Actually, do you?  O.o

Onward I say.

Here's a picture of what it must feel like for some people to battle their drug demons which sounds like a good idea for another story of this nature, literally drug Demons, eh? though more serious, I tell you! More Serious!  [actually, this is of a more political nature, the USA's battle against drugs, I believe...]
Either way...Enjoy!