Untited -Chapter One-

Chapter One

The first thing I noticed when I stepped off the bus and my shoe-trapped feet hit the freshly air-born dirt of this nowhere town was you.  I witnessed you candidly discussing the state of the world today with the beasts and the air.

"Today," your eyes spun wildly, discovering the back of your skull,
"Today I read the newspaper and I felt that I had been warned."

You looked earnestly into the seraphic eyes of the ginger cat rubbing itself against your calves.

"Today I read the newspaper and I felt that I had been warned. But today I also chose to live and I will continue to witness the slow demise of the only world I will ever know."

After this I was only privy to a few erratic sentences that wafted thickly on the fat air of the most recent pit-stop on my journey across the country, but, in my current state of intrigue, I didn't move.

"...and the fire never did go out."

I heard you mutter distractedly as you turned your heels and got lost in your own dust trail. Behind me I noticed that the sun had begun to set.

Lifting the heavy blue suitcase that contained the dying remnants of a life I once treasured, I set my sights on a glowing service station that promised an all night diner in chirpy blue florescent lettering.   Dumping my suitcase next to the first red plastic table I saw, I folded my body around the thinly padded stool and looked up at the ten commandments of food menus stuck to the walls.  A burnt-out woman with red-rinsed hair to match her red-rinsed servo dragged her life-weary body towards me and slipped a few familiar words out of her red-rinsed mouth, her lips folding back towards her smoke-stained teeth.

"What'll it be?"

Her voice was caked with dirt and dying organs, a sound that had festered like a disease in my body the first time I had heard it, making me ponder underworld philosophies that kept me locked in my motel room for days at a time, but after so long hearing only the voices of strangers, I no longer noticed how they sounded.

"I'll take the chicken risotto and a cup of tea."

No matter where I found myself, even in the most backwards, time-forgotten hell-holes that this country has to offer, I always choose the meal that sounded like it would be served in the yuppie-ridden cafes of my home-town.

"You'll want napkins?"

Napkins...the disposable shower. The midnight towel. One part paper, 2 parts plastic.

"Yes thanks."

She lurched her epic body, piled on top of strained red heels, back to the kitchen and I let the slow-flowing 70's jazz squirming out of the speakers affect my impressions of the desperate landscape outside the windows of the service station, its dusty tendrils leaking in through the building's expanding orifices.   Dinner came with the same grey tinge to it that I was sure had found its way into my skin tone. I finished it nonetheless and tried not to let the thoughts of home-cooking enter my brain, as they invariably do when I’m eating meals this devoid of passion.   Tipping generously, I wandered into the hazy twilight outside the doors of the service station and, through a gap between two buildings, noticed that there was no defining line between the horizon and the sky. The two merely blended together.

The neon blush of the motel a few deserted streets away whispered husky promises of rest to the night air, and I let my weary feet take me into her flickering, soothing glow. I paid the sunken night manager a week’s rent, slipped quietly into my room, Number 6, and got undressed.   I slid gently under the sheets that smelt freshly washed but still carried the essence of every body that had ever touched them in their fibers. Memory, I’ve found, is the hardest stain to get out. A sullen desert breeze crept in through the white lace curtains and I greeted sleep like an old friend.