Act one: The pantheon of disaster
I crawl upstairs to the snack machine. I am out of energy, worked half to death, just trying to keep up rent on the parking space of my broken down van that I live in. That and keeping myself feed. I push a plastic chair against the vending machine and I crawl up the chair, blackness swirling in my head, speckled with shafts of white light, dizziness spins around me. I push in the change and push the proper buttons. A Cherry gingerbread meth cookie falls out, along with a free pack of ephedrine gum! Sometimes the machine spits out bonus stuff as part of a contest. The top prize a envelope containing one million dollars and a season ticket to the broadway show of your choice. I nibble weekly at my stale hardened vendo-goodies, washing em down with a cold meth cola from the new machine the vendies have installed here just a couple of weeks ago.
It's so God damn hot in this place, My clothes feel like I've been walking through a tropical downpour. They keep it eight degrees hotter in the breakroom to discourage people taking over long breaks. Break is over as soon as it began, President Geb Bush having legally lowered it down to ten minutes, cutting one crucial third off. This was supposed to protect us from terrorism and make the economy boom into record windfalls for all. Well it started six months ago and there is no sign of change yet. I began hauling the seventy five pound bags of cement up the dented up ladder. I could only handle one at a time, three guys on the crew could two two at a time, and that big snarling asshole Keven Brooks, could carry three of em. My feet ache from this, they are bruised purple from going up this ladder with the heavy sacks. My only ace in the hole, I have seventeen pokosets. These are powerful narcotic pain killers that I won in a gambling session where we played with tarot cards. I will pop one on the one bathroom trip allowed during non-break time. I will take that leave in about twenty minutes, and hope that I'm not being watched on camera when I pop that happy pill. Without the meth in my system I would fall asleep on one of these pills. So I slip a pill in my mouth, I sell another one to Marcus, a illegal immigrant from Peru. He gives me some cactus powder for the weekend fishing trip I plan to take with my cousin Earl Stiskins. I plan to sleep threw much of the fishing trip, or drift in peaceful mescaline contentment, whichever happens. But there is two more days of work after today, ah the hell of it all. Four more draining hours and I clock out and drive my sputtering car bake to my single wide trailer that has it's last room crushed by a fallin tree. Good to be home, I fish out the keys and hold them in my fist as I strip off my shirt, my pants are half way off before I get inside the door. The underwear flys off and lands behind the easy chair as I naked stagger to my couch and fall asleep instantly, using the small pillow to cover my penis. I sleep for forty five blissful minutes, than my phone rings, I wake up from a instantly forgotten dream, that fizzles away as I try to hold onto some memory of it. I check the caller i d, one of those luxury s I cannot do without. Sure enough it's a bill collector, one of the twenty eight calls from bill collectors that I receive daily, sometimes as late as two a m , even though that's illegal. Sometimes those assfuckmunchers even knock on my goddamn door, I sware if that happens again I just may kill a man.
I make a couple slices of fifty percent week old bread from the local bakery. Still in business merely as a drug money laundering operation. Nice and golden brown now, I pour me a glass of water to wash down this meager supper. I get tired of drinking only water actually, so I have been making teas with various types of local flowers and weeds. I have discovered something, when I make a tea out of two different kinds of flowers, I don't know their names, one is brown with white spots and it has seven blocky petals, the other a small solid pink one that blooms only at night, usually around two a m. , it makes a buzz rendering drink. Kinda feels dreamy, a pleasant sleepy feeling, and when I close my eyes, a swirl of enhanced images dance behind my lids. I like it, I have two or three cups a night. If I drink one just before bed, I have crazy visuals as I drift off to sleep. I have been walking around the countryside, looking for more of these special flowers. I have a few at my place, not not a unlimited supply, besides I don't want to kill of all the ones in my back yard.
Today I found a whole bunch of the brown ones with white spots. I snipped them from some old lady's flower garden, leaving five out of eighteen plants. These new plants are drying out now. Besides searching tending and curing these plants I spend most of my free time laying down, just laying there thinking, or in a deep sleep. Now that my phone has been shut off I get no bill collector calls to awaken me. Now it is time again for a long long nap, goodnight dear reader. I got to be at work in three and a half hours, maybe I'll dream a little before that. I remember only a fragment of my dream, something about me being in danger and deciding to go get my shotgun from my bedroom. Now I hit the snooze button three times, leaving myself with only enough time to take a shot of vodka, throw on some dirty clothes I wore to work yesterday, and take a piss before I must drive to work, and I get there three minutes late.
Again begins my cycle of agony.