He dreamt of the eternal ocean. Drowning inside the doors of another home. Dreamt of land of food, and starved as he reached for them all. He saw a castle, the tapestry depicting still life, and crumbling bricks. A graveyard filled with rotting bodies, and people danced around a fire. Squirrels chittered, a rotting stump split in two and revealed an ornate golden heart.
He woke from his lifeless sleep, curled underneath a car, still holding his fork. Night covered the world, as he groggily stood up. He yawned, and then grew hungry for the pancakes at Buddy’s. The church bells rang twice, and he remembered that today was Sunday. He stood up from the ground, confused as to why he had a fork in his hand, and dazed and tired. He stumbled forward, out of the horrible, rough concrete. Out of the road, and collapsed onto a fire hydrant.
He didn’t want to go home alone, empty-handed. He had no money in his pockets, no food, no water. Nothing… Hadn’t caught the man who’ d robbed the bank, hadn’t done anything… Hadn’t done anything… Hadn’t done anything!... No money, nothing….
So, he walked back to the clearing where he’d slept, found the bench and his radio. He spent the day finding crime. But the radio continued in its silent static, buzzing randomly about the news, the world, jobs, the economy…. And more…
At near lunchtime, the thought of food crept into his mind. Although, he had no money… He had only a fork… With nothing to eat, with nothing to drink. The only thing he could do was sit on the bench, chewing at his fork, nibbling on it.
When he stopped, he would hold it tightly in his hand, imagining something, thinking, dreaming about Forkman, about flying, about an adventure… Something… Something to distract him… But when the evening came, he collapsed onto the bench, exhausted, tired, the fork numb in his hands. His teeth aching…
He slept all he could, dreamt about an alien thing with a tentacle and a great eye, and then food, a great feast, a fork stabbing him, and a man trapped inside a suitcase. When he woke in fright, he would frantically look around for something to eat. Then he would collapse into his dull, listless sleep, waking again and again, looking around, again and again, collapsing again and again.
The radio near him continued to buzz on and on. But no crime yet…
He woke, thinking about a homeless shelter, free food, free water, begging for things that he would not have to work for. It was, again, another strange dream-thought, out of several from the twisting, writhing, night. The radio besides him buzzed and bubbled, frothed about news. News! News! News!
Absurd, stupid, horribly stuffy news. A dream inside a dream, his thoughts were a writhing, strange mess inside him, horrible, horrible, unclear, muddy. He needed a drink… He needed some chips, a bagel, something frothing, bubbly, a barbecue chicken leg, something to mash together inside his mouth, chew and chew until he spat out the bones.
His crazed, hallucinating eyes searched the skyline for a place like the homeless shelter, but a tinge of stupidity told him not to go, to save his honor, to stay their, rest again, or go back to his home, in the forest, where their were flies eating everything.
Pinpricks of pain stabbed his mouth, tightening, crushing his jaw. His teeth chewed, gnawed against each other, grinding like some great cogs that meshed again and again.
He ran onto the streets, holding the fork.
But his eyes dimmed, he fell into a deep sleep, collapsed onto the concrete. His thin body draped across the sidewalk. Children hopped around him, while a man with his briefcase shook his head and then continued.
Randy and George sat in the warehouse they had rented out with some new money from an ATM. Cold concrete covered the walls, and an arching ceiling blocked out the sun and the moon. The snow melted and made the floor wet.
“Alright… Alright… Alright”, Randy shivered, tensed up, then pointed at a random point on the blueprint in front of them. A blueprint of the grand, great National Union’s Bank. The hyper-security locking in all the doors. At watch, were hundreds of Union guards, hired from the Police Academy.
George nodded.
“Tomorrow, you’ll be in a car, George”
George nodded again.
“I’ll be with my mask, you’ll be with yours. Now, do you remember the plan?”
George nodded again.
Randy sighed, “Right, right, and when you get into the car, and you drive, and so on and so on.”
George nodded again.
Randy stopped. Exhausted, tired.
George stopped nodding.
Randy sighed again, putting his hand to his forehead.
“I didn’t kill him. Did I George?”
“No”, the soft word silently echoed throughout the steel chambers of the warehouse.
“No… No…. No... Maybe- I-... But you keep saying that, and I did! George! I did! God, what are we going to do?! I don’t want to rob banks, I don’t want to murder people. I-I- I’m not that kinda guy. I want to go fishing out on Michigan Lake, get a nosebleed from eating too many potato chips, watch some TV! What are we going to do?! Hell, oh god. Hell, oh god! Goddammit, goddammit!”
“It’s alright”, George whispered, “It’ll be fine… Fine… Fine...”
He sat quietly, watching Randy mutter and rant and ramble…
“I don’t want it on my mind. I don’t want that burden. I didn’t kill though, I didn’t, I didn’t, I told you that, you told me that. No! No! I didn’t! No!”
The words echoed throughout and throughout, again and again. Their was a cough, and then the mutter of fluttering white sheets and the shuddering of a steel beam.
“Let’s focus on the robbery”, George unrolled the blueprint out onto the table again.
“Alright”, Randy whispered.
“Dehydration and malnutrition...”, said a familiar voice. He heard it once, then quieted again.
He fell into a whirling darkness, into a strange dream about a man in a world of water. He would fall and drown, wake and dream, eat and chew and drink at the eternal ocean
At 12:00 PM, Bob woke up. A doctor wearing a mask and a nurse laughing. Soft jazz played in the background. Both of them turned around, and saw his open eyes. One with a pale face and another nodding at him, both seemed angry with him, furrowing their brows, coughing, awkwardly shifting, silent.... Then, they walked out of the room.
“Good morning”, said a man wearing glasses. His teeth bared at him, and his greasy mop of hair dangled over his shoulders.
“Good morning”, Bob nodded.
“I’m here from the government”, he extended a hand. Bob tried to shake it, but found that he couldn’t reach it. He struggled and strained. After a few seconds of strange dejected tension, the man pulled it away.
Then, the man pulled out a small, leather notebook.
“As part of the 1998 Stantler Decree, all men or women afflicted by the Strontium Process must hereby obtain a license, starting at a thousand dollars”, he recited. He closed it, and stared at him directly, piercing through him with his pretty purple eyes, “Do you understand what you’ve done?”
“No, I haven’t”
“A license! The significance, the sheer stupidity, and the strutting arrogance! Imagine… A world where anyone can run around, shooting around those devilish lightning bolts! Flying around, killing people!”, the man huffed, breathed, sighed, and then quieted. “We understand about your… current financial situation, but you understand this is one, very, big deal.”
“But I have no money left, I can’t pay.”
“That’s your problem, not the world’s problem!”, he shouted, “And, your sheer ignorance has led to this! So, what will you do?”
“But I can’t pay the fine, I can’t! I have no money, I have nothing to eat or drink! Is their interest, or monthly payments?”
“Do you understand that this is a serious matter? If I had the State Bureau with me, you would be sent to the deepest parts of Canada, mining away at coal or some other strange thing! You’d be getting at least 10 years state pententiary max for not paying or getting the license!”
“I understand”, Bob nodded again.
“Can we be serious here?”, the man said again, “Because I don’t like your humor, I don’t like your jokes, I don’t like you! Focus! Listen to me! Pay the license, or their’ll be more trouble.”
The man stormed out of there, slamming the hospital door behind him until the tables shook and Bob’s knee’s quivered.
“I understand”, Bob said quietly.
He lay back with a sad smile. A quiet one. A horribly morbid, somber one. One that spread like a horrible disease across his wrinkled face.
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