Photo by Paul Bulai on Unsplash
Take a flashlight and put a spotlight on Louisville on a map. We can go there. Kentucky. If we’re lucky. To Cameroon. Whistle a tune. Hold the light from a place the sun should be. The trees beyond you seem capillaries, veins, arteries. I have taken a sundry group on a sunset field trip. We stayed at the old house. I saw someone I knew now old but with a new body. I wanted that body. Some slept. Some lost track of time in other ways. I collected laundry from a dryer and brought it to a kid, said time to go. A kettle was whistling on the range. I killed the flame. A flame was burning with nothing above it. I killed that too. I made a homophobic remark and paid for it. I got nervous and lit a cigarette. A guy I was talking to said he wanted to hear some old tape that I had when I wanted nothing to do with it. I smoked another cigarette and then the kids came in and saw me French inhale and knew what that was and meant. Time to go. Leave in a car parked on a rickety wooden platform. Pile in everyone. Don’t mind the clutter. Reverse. Drive. Pushed by people back upon the platform. Reverse. Drive. Crash into a host of objects. This one looks like it might stop us. No. Flatten it. Asked if I could drive very fast down one last side street. Drive very fast down one last side street. Asked if I should go back to the scene of the crime. Go back to. The scene of. The Crime. Find the examples of vandalism. Look at a flag hang upside down. Find a man so distraught he cannot get out of bed and is relegated to spending the remainder of his days drunk in bed. Leave him be. I’ve got to get these kids home.
Richard George is a Tulane graduate whose work has appeared in Mystery Itch, HASH, Toho Journal and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. When not writing, he works as a probation officer. He lives in an apartment in Toms River, New Jersey.