the tower of brahma - chapter 40 - anti-matter jazz (edit)

08/22/05

Lunar dust blew through my hair as I gazed longingly at the shapely curves of Mother Earth. She seemed impossibly far and distantly shy; too pristine and intimidating in her modest innocence.

I needed to see her again. Stepping from the sleepless, somber side of the moon, I free form floated over to get a better look. I stared long and hard and forced my mind into submission, forging forgetfulness for myself. This was the road back to the real.

I was born on the side of the open day, in a most certainly, decidedly, ordinary way. Simply coming back as if I had never been gone at all. Fear fanatically clawed away as I clenched my fists, ready for battle. My senses were scattered, in total disarray. What was it I was doing?

Living in the moment felt more like living around the moment, constantly bent, dodged and separated from wholeness. Laughing, I feel ridiculous at the apprehension. This wasn't the challenge he imagined it would be. Not once he remembered it was all a game. A constantly evolving game of chess, a distant relation to the didadic sport of checkers. A flipping of chips about the boardgame.

He just couldn't help but smile into that yawning chaotic pool of absurdity and the false center of the mind. That selfish satisfaction that transforms into self-love then mutates into divine immolation. Wavelengths? Is that all we are?

Brain stems grabbing and skidding along the ethereal. Sparks shooting out into the embers of our minds. Mass transit madmen sliding into entropic hellish nightmares of our own creation.

Fuck that.

I tried on the voice over monologue and whaddayaknow? It fit like a noir trenchcoat on a rain-slicked city street corner. I ran my hands through my soaked hair, brushing it back from my face. Collar snapped up, I walked into the bar. You see, I had a list.

As I had turned the corner earlier, a phone began to ring. Against my usual instincts to run far away from any randomly beckoning phone booth, instead I approached and absently answered. A disembodied female voice read me a list of names in a startling British accent. She had a drunken swagger to her tone as she read aloud 17 names to me, which I scribbled down upon my forearm with a black bic pen.

My voice was hoarse and rough as I replied, "What does this have to do with me?"

I could hear her smile as it whispered through the receiver. "Find out."

So I hit the streets; hit them hard and fast. The rain poured down, oppressive and unrelenting as I tracked down the names.

I hit the jackpot as I found five of the names in the same bar. Rowdy and surly with concealed weapons abound, here were five drunken bastards all ready to rumble.

I took two steps forward and raised my eyes, staring up at the bartender. The five moved gently in my peripheral, shuffling their weapons from their hiding places. Spider, baseball cap pulled down low obscuring his eyes from theirs, silently stepped out from my shadow.

"Who is Fenris?", I ask.

The Rockstar answered first, a hotshot born and bred. His jagged blade slipped across the room, thrusting towards my gut. The tip of Spider's black converse twirled around the rockstar's wrist and whipped the knife out of his hands, driving it deep into the bullseye of the dartboard.

"Who does Fenris work for?"

A baseball bat came swinging from behind Spider. The Artiste had been surprisingly spry, but a backwards kick from Spider sent the bat right back at the artist's skull.

"Where can I find Fenris?"

The scabbard fell to the floor as the samurai sword sliced upwards along at a firm angle. The Warrior, refusing to fight as a coward, growled as he drove the razor sharp steel at me face on. I was spared a gaping face wound by Spider's stone grip catching hold of the blade. The Assassin used that exact moment to launch his pistols from his sleeves into his killing hands. Gently tugging the triggers back with his itchy trigger fingers, the bullets roared towards us.

"Tell me what you know about the Tower of Brahma!"

Spider spun around my shoulders, rotating into a crescent kick, cracking the Warrior twice before landing and whipping the sword up along his side. The Assassin's bullets ricochet off the steel moments before it slides through the third vertebrate of the assassin, removing his head completely.

The Warrior bowed before the Shinobi skills of Spider, and paid tribute to their superiority by driving his own sacrificial wakazashi deep into his stomach. Slowly the Warrior dragged upwards and sharply twisted the sword, spilling his intestines across the floor, and way too close to my Adidas.

This left me to deal with the Writer. A shifty bastard if I've ever seen one. Amidst the carnage he had stumbled backwards and passed out, buried beneath a hefty bar tab and reeking of pity. I dropped a Jackson down on the bar and signaled over to Spider, who promptly grabbed the Writer around his chest and yanked him from the stool.

"Say hey, barkeep. Look alive." I open-palm slapped his eyes from the grisly scene seeping across his hardwood floors.

"We were never here...", I whispered as I backhand smacked our visit from his memory.