The Path of Distraction

Massive amounts of nightmarish steel dripping from my arms with no conviction to shake them off.  I like this inertia, the way the winters wrapped its weight around me and turned me plump.  I don’t want to stretch my legs or limbs or lungs, they’ve settled in to comfy shapes.  instead, the pollen irritates my skull, kicks at the roots of my teeth and runs amok in the attic, banging boxes of old mementos and stirring up dust.  How am I supposed to sit around and do nothing with all the racket up there?

I sat in a tiny basement in a public library watching an original 16mm print film of the original “Night of The Living Dead”.  It was snowing and raining out, and most of us still arrived early

I then sat at a traffic light, letting it turn green twice and staying in place, so I could watch an endless parade of Johnson & Wales students parade by in Halloween costumes.  Half were in store bought slut costumes, the other half were dressed as Ronald McDonald.  I did not make that up.

So you know what?  This holyday isn’t dead.  I was worried it was.  It may look like it, it may feel like it, but the ID will always win, at least for one day of the year.

Die another day, fuckers.

There were five of us that evening, five at the red, round table.  It was large and lost in a sea of similar tables in a side room of the chinese restaurant.  The room couldn’t help but be suspicious.  The walls were a deep green that coloured the air, the sickly red table glowed with the hidden lights.  The windows held back a cold blue night, and the chinese wedding in the ballroom next door hoarded all the other colors.  It used to be a porn theater, now it was a second floor oriental fried food pit in Boston’s Chinatown.  Maybe Mandarin, maybe panda bear, who knows?  It wasn’t important.  What was important was the cheap drinks, the strong drinks, the way they combined the same alcohol into something more potent than it could ever be straight up.

At the table cameras were flashing at each other, giggles here and there.  It was it’s own little orbit of amusement.  Dim sum arrived, followed by a pile of candy red pork, followed by more drinks and a long wait for a small platter of fried shit.  That still wasn’t important.  What was important was the discovery that a pattern was laid out in every glass of Zombie.  Every one started with a pattern, but the five were drinking faster than the pattern could be revealed.  They guessed at stages and came up with names, and in the end, only an oath could be found.

“We shall return, and we shall drink three of these concoctions each, letting them kick our asses under the table.  And it shall be the birth of the Army of the Three Zombies, and when all is complete, we shall have a truth that no others shall know, or care, about.  God, Melissa has a huge dick.  It gets bigger with every sip of this.  Beyonce?”

And then there was a panty shot I caught from another patron getting up from her drunken table, probably very similar to ours.

The Three Zombies await, and their truth shall be ours.

Not true, actually.  I did it for the legion of Halloween cats in my wake, eyes lit from starlight fueled skulls and blood-filled breath, following in my footsteps as we follow the tubby man and his dog down an autumn path into the sunset.  The last arc of that sun will fall beneath the earth and we will own his ass then, yes we will, and descend upon him and his dog, a frenzy of shadow and screams.

Or maybe we’ll just see him on Saturday and visit the aquarium.  Either or.