blown up to humongous proportions. oiled up real good. slipped past all the sentries on the way out the back door. into the alleyway. they were looking for me, but wouldn’t be finding me. since i had been painted silver. the skin was reacting a little, but it was alright. spotlights splitting crevices between buildings. solar gods turned loose on an angry unsuspecting night. it was the greatest forgery ever recorded. the day they turned the volume down. and there was my signal. spiking away furiously. an ice pick to the teeth. a tumble down a staircase. and there they are with their blowtorches and crowbars. prying open the seam they thought they’d created. how clever. scenes from a movie. scenes noone else saw. all of them unfolding all around each of us in the game. it’d be so easy for me to slip into one. wearing it like a jumpsuit. escape right back out to the day i was born. out a tiny threaded hole in the newspaper. headlines. bread lines. heads on spears on bridges at city limits. slain enemies of scylla. she was really something.

locations giving birth to vast fields of flowers. poppies and marigolds. little microphones planted carefully among them. they were waiting. even the bees were being interviewed. they liked it very much. felt like they were going to become someone important. like their careers would really take off from the exposure. wriggling back and forth for the cameras. fencing one another with their stingers. tracing out rays and patterns and lines of best fit based on the way the sun curves over the surface of the earth. telling stories about stealing. watering down the drinks of all the visitors. including yours (i know, and i’m sorry). located right between the eyes. about a foot back. i’m impressed with the way you’ve gotten away. following all these infra-red bee-lines. it’s really some kind of masterpiece. you should show it to the public relations people.

dodging bullets, fired at us like fortune cookies. each one with a particularly useless aphorism and a series of unlucky numbers. and… no wait, this didn’t start here. this started much further back.

i’m embellishing a bit, i know. underwater tends to do that to me. demon toes splayed out on muddy riverbanks. fishes jumped up, grew wings, flew off to the moon. in a great orgy of escape. we stood helplessly at the edge of the rising tide. watched the unions growing. glowing. insidious thoughts spoken to me over my left shoulder. no, we can’t, i started. but she insisted. she always insisted.

i’m a rabbit. chasing myself down some long and winding series of passageways. passing by all kinds of mis-labeled doors. a warren. a warm blanket of dirt falling over me. a burrow. a groundhog to predict the future. a warden in an empty prison. looking through all the bars, wondering what happened to all my prisoners? he came to us in a bright flashing light, they said. he was so beautiful. he came to rescue us all. from the righteous pagans, to the son-slayers and mother-lovers. and now, we’ve all been brought to task. armed with slitted mouths and coins to insert in them. we line up like crooks in a graveyard. filling up at the buffet line. just happy to be alive. feeling warm and neat and magic. i’m a fire started on the beach. a way down past the snarled roots. missiles pointed at the heart of an empire. electronic routes out of the city. through great big movie screens. which you can step into. i mean, sort of. drive straight through, actually. something like that. it’s really quite impressive. i’m going to start writing them all down. and seeing which ones stick. and which ones just get you stuck. or just plain fucked. i’m a sucker for that sort of thing. it’s kind of the way that i express myself. rolling down a hill. four wheels and going nowhere. straight, no lines going back in the distance. around the corner. i’m a tad less comfortable than that. i’m expanding at a rate of fifteen a minute. i know. i know. that’s what they told me at the hospital. let’s go there now. i’ll drive. no, i’m a good driver. don’t worry. i’m flinging notes into the wind. they are folding themselves up into little planes and going off into the distance. it’s probably for the best. the notes contained the secrets of the universe. my name. the place i was born. my family. a finger pointing at the moon. it’s not the moon. it’s just a finger. a finger with which you probably picked your nose. a nose which blood has flown out of. onto shirts. and countless bar napkins. a bar where everyone cheers and stands up when you walk in. to shake your hand. to shake you down for cigarettes and cash and announcements that the next round’s on you.

walking back to my car, i felt somebody slap me on the back. oh, it’s you, i told her. whistling softly. what do you want? enormous breasts jiggling. hundreds of arms reaching around from somewhere. pulled down to the dirt together. it could have been a gauntlet thrown down, but instead it was me. squirming. i’m tired of trying to fight you. or is it that i’m tired of you? or am i just at the bottom of a well, with a knife strapped to my leg. and a big fucking crocodile smiling at me. or something more sinister. waiting for me inside the backseat of my car. it quenched my thirst, but that was all. it was a good way to stay quiet. i could have held out a lot longer. breathing, steady. heartbeat, normal. names, without faces. addresses without residents. residence at nowhere in particular. we could have been ukrainian angels in the snow. we could have been lobsters pinching each other in the bedroom. instead we were rockets running down alleyways, hiding from cops, trying to make our great escape. our greatest mistake, perhaps, to date.