Gretchen woke up hungover, wrapped in a large quilt. She scratched her head, trying as hard as she could to recall what had happened the night before, but the last thing she remembered was stumbling out of the apartment of the black guy she let fuck her in the ass because she's menstruating and let's face it, pregnancy sucks.
She wanted to score some pills, but where to get pills at this time of day? What time of day is it? She wondered. There was no clock in the room she awoke in. Whose room even is this? “Oh! You're awake! I brought you some tea!” A voice called from outside the room. “Are you decent, can I come in?”
Gretchen mumbled a bit, enough to indicate a yes apparently because the door swung open. In walked some little old lady with dark sunglasses, holding a cane in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.
“Golly, it smells in here. Is everything alright? My stars, you were a real mess last night.”
Gretchen mumbled again, trying to figure out an escape plan. The lethargy from the hangover coupled with her lack of sleep made that difficult.
Sniffing around, she found the source of the odor the old bag noticed, Gretchen had shit the bed. Menstrual blood and shit were all over what had to be 600-thread count Egyptian cotton bedsheets. Sucked for grandma, but it wasn't like she killed anybody.
“Here's your tea darling.” She reached her hand out and let go of the cup, it crashed to the bed without a sound and spilled everywhere.
“Now would you mind telling me what the problem was, dear? You were banging on my door all noisy-like.”
Gretchen couldn't remember at all why that would be the case. She simply assumed this old lady found her passed out on some park bench vomiting on herself and decided to save the female sex from further public humiliation by sheltering, bathing, feeding and clothing another woman in distress.
Ignoring the question she stood up and looked around for her clothes. They were crumpled up in the corner. She pulled the pants on, no underwear – she must have left them at the black guy's house – and then finished. She could smell her shirt as she put it over her head, it was much worse than the room currently smelled.
“Is there anybody who I can call for you, sweetheart? A family member?”
Gretchen shoved the woman over, toppling her to the ground with a meek shriek and ran out of the room stopping only by the dining room table to check out the contents of the woman's purse, removing anything and everything green and money-shaped.
Outside, the sun was about halfway up the sky, or halfway down. Not knowing east or west made it difficult to tell.
She continued to stare at the sun. The heat made her eyes comfortable. Even she didn't know what that meant, so she walked off to find her pills dealer, crossing the street she continued to make her eyes comfortable.
Midway across the road, staring at the sun made it impossible to notice the oncoming car she did not look both ways to see and it plowed into her, sending her flying forwards a good few feet. A man got out of the car screaming.
He asked her if she was ok.
She asked him if he was Jerry Seinfeld.
He said no.
She told him to fuck off.
She got up and continued to look for Steiner Street.
Along the way she was stopped by many a salesman trying to peddle their wares. She turned down berries, jump ropes, flightless birds, illegal spaceship licenses, potions of invisibility, super lube. Nobody offered her pills and that made her angry.
Not even the tyrannosaurus stamping around the neighborhood tried to give her drugs, and he was always packing.
Tyrannosaurus!! She exclaimed! She asked him where Paco, her dealer, was.
He roared very loudly and the took that to mean east. So she walked eastwards.
Along the way she read the street signs, billboards, storefront advertisements and fluorescent beer-logo signs. They told her a story about an orphan girl who murdered her parents so that she could sneak into the queens vagina and be born a princess. It was a sad story about social mobility and Gretchen didn't like it. She adamantly informed every shop owner that their sign was culturally unacceptable, and their kind of malevolence wouldn't be accepted in this town.
When she finally met up with Paco, she couldn't tell what head to speak to, so she addressed both of them. She asked for her daily dose of pills and Paco said he would not have them until Tuesday, and to go around the corner – make four lefts – and ask the gentleman around there, he might have some.
Gretchen made for lefts, it took her about an hour to walk those turns. In which time the sun barely moved. She could tell because she still looked at it.
Along the way she tripped over many dead bodies who had begun to stink. That must have been what made the old lady's room smell so badly. A hundred police cars drove past her playing loud Jazz music. Gretchen gave each and every car the finger because she did not like Jazz music, she preferred Honky-Tonk.
The man at this corner was different than Paco, except his name was also Paco. He gave Gretchen a hand-full of pills because he gave her a hand of his penis. Gretchen always knew how to get the pills.
Proud of herself, Gretchen decided she needed to find out what happened to her the night before. She worried about the old-woman's well-being after being shoved so badly. She called up the black man she slept with last night, and a Portuguese man answered the phone and screamed Portuguese expletives at her. This infuriated her!
She told him to go die.
He made choking noises on the other end and may or may not have died.
Tyrannosaurus!! She yelled. She asked him to give her a ride to the bank.
He told her that he had already crushed the bank, but that she was welcome to all the money under his foot.
She informed him that she was going to make a deposit, and that she was sorry to disappoint him during his generous offering.
He told her that was completely and utterly acceptable and disappointing and proceeded to hang himself from the tallest building.
She told him no. But he wouldn't listen.
Gretchen cried over the loss of her friend, but her tears were dried out by the sun. They formed little tear-shaped tan lines down her face and she looked almost like a circus clown. Laughing she juggled things and walked to the closest non-smashed bank!
Along the way Gretchen found fun things to juggle: babies, chainsaws, more babies, alphabet soup, even a car or two. Except the Bank had a strict no-juggling policy. This also upset Gretchen. She thought she was a little hormonal.
Approaching the ATM, she typed in her pin number and inserted Paco's semen into the machine. It spit out all sorts of colorful pills in return, and she bathed in them like a bath of pills.
Inserting each one of them into her mouth, she began to calm down and cool off. Each of the insane moments of the day washed away and logic took over.
She didn't juggle babies or cars.
She didn't force her friend tyrannosaurus to kill himself.
She hadn't called a Portuguese man about the sex she had with a black man the night before.
There was no second Paco.
There were no dead bodies or Police blasting Jazz Music.
She didn't like Honky-Tonk.
There was no first Paco.
There was no billboard story.
There was no tyrannosaurus.
There was no Steiner Street.
There was no man that looked like Jerry Seinfeld.
There was no sun.
There was no old lady.
She hadn't had anal sex with a black man the night before.
Gretchen was in the royal court, wearing a flowing dress that covered all but her cleavage pressed up to her chin to make the men-folk crazy.
She was still menstruating, but there was only some sort of medieval tampon driven inside her. Sheepskin or something absorbing her womanhood and keeping her fresh and dry.
The trumpets blared and played a song so familiar she doesn't know how she hadn't been humming it in those crazy dreams as she walked down the imaginary street trying to find imaginary pills she wasn't addicted to.
She asked herself what pills even were.
The king and queen, seated behind her, screamed at the top of their lungs at the cadre of knights standing in front of them.
They yelled how useless they were, how the peasants weren't paying taxes and that taxes needed to be collected, and that taxes were mandatory and that taxes were important to their jobs and the well-being of the commonwealth.
Gretchen tried to agree with her parents, but she found that she was unable to speak. A mute. She had a sign wrapped around her neck that hung down on her stomach.
The sign said that she was dumb and there was no point in communicating with her, that it would be a waste of time to attempt such an endeavor.
The sign actually just said Dumb Wench.
Some of the knights burst into tears. They did not feel proud of the job they were doing.
Tyrannosaurus lifted up his knight helmet and revealed his identity to Gretchen. He winked at her and she winked back.
She said to him that if he were real then Paco was also real, and that she must actually be addicted to pills!
She asked him where the pills were.
She asked him where Paco lived.
She asked him to take her to Paco, to take her to the bank.
She yelled for him to do as she says.
She started to get angry and fuming and called him improper names.
She threatened his life and his genitals.
He winked at her again, not hearing a word.
She forgot she was a dumb wench.
Paco lifted up his knight helmet and winked at her as well.
She smiled brightly, hoping pills would come next. But they never did.
That was first Paco that lifted his knight helmed.
Second Paco didn't exist, even though first Paco and Tyrannosaurus did.
She had nobody to give a hand job to in exchange for pills.
She forgot she was a dumb wench.
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