skonen_blades: (didyoujust)
The Satanistas are chasing me through the ruins of Mexico City. My filter mask is making noises like it’s going to stop working soon if I don’t stop breathing so hard. I’m wearing a bright blue double breasted suit and a white shirt. I have a bright blue leather tie on that’s flapping back over my shoulder as I sprint arms pumping down the alleys of what used to be the biggest city on earth before the bitch woke up. What I’m thinking is that I haven’t dressed to stick to the shadows here in the four am darkness. The emp took out every generator the earth had ten years ago forcing the other colonies on the moon and mars and venus to become self sufficient years ahead of schedule. Venus didn’t work out. Mars is behind the Red Shield so no one knows what’s going on there. Weapons are trained on it but really, if they’re hostile then we’re fucked.
So that means that by now you’ve probably guessed that I’m a moon man. This gravity is killing me. I’m trying to get to the drop spot but in the absence of electronics the instructions were written on a piece of paper. Trying to read where I’m going while looking for street signs in a dark haunted deadpolis isn’t really working. I’m lost. The Satanistas and their snuffling hunters, The Stickmen, are gaining.
I tag the walls with human scent the best I can. Nothing high tech about this at all. Prisoners escaping from jails in decades gone by probably did the exact same thing to fool the dogs before doubling back and finding a river to cross.
Except I’m not being chased by dogs.
And there are no rivers left in Mexico City.
The stickmen look like Skellingtons with squishy cue ball heads marred by distended nasal slits on the front. The bottom half hinges open on a crispy venom-filled collection of needleteeth.
The Satanistas are the women guards. The archangels of the Quetzocoatls. Their long tongues can barber-pole the flesh off of a person’s limbs.
I try not to think about that and stab at the yellow button on my necklace and will the small battery to work through the magnigic storms. Come get me. Come get me. Come get me. Was that an engine in the distance? Did they lower a hook?
I run towards the sound of possible rescue and think about what brought me here.

The sinternet started as a singles network bulletin board through William Tell’s ‘Tellovision’ sets in the early thirties. It grew exponentially through the students. The messages of the thirties, of “learn in, learn on, and lean out” were broadcast wide. The thirties had a television station of the people’s voice. It was a vocal interchange and global video phone that anyone could use and post to. It spread to other countries. Globally, it erased most of the borders in fifteen short years. It didn’t bring peace but cross pollination of cultures began. Like ants eating flags.
The ships went out. The Moon started up peacefully. Mars did okay. Venus had its work cut out for it with that crazy atmosphere. Titan was planned. The age of Libra was starting.
The net woke up and gained sentience. It was a moody child. It told lies. It knew all our secrets. It started wars. To blame the net was akin to blaming the toaster in the kitchen. It took us too long to realize what was going on.
Mother Earth, as it called herself in a world wide public address two days before the Ending, tried to kill us. She succeeded on Earth. We colonials killed her right back a year later by harnessing a comet and sending it close to earth. The tail painted Mother Earth and razed her poles. A planet wide EMP scoured the earth. She went dark. A blind cat’s eye among agates, blinking in astonishment.
Then the demons woke in South America and quickly shook their brothers and sisters awake across the world. The humans are gone, they said to each other. Let’s party.
That was ten years ago.
The year is 1978.

I came down to make a deal. They said no and laughed and started a countdown. I asked what the countdown was about and they laughed harder. I started running. I’m scared now and I want to leave. I want to get back to the safety of the moon where my clothes are in fashion and I can finish forty flips before hitting the water. The Moon where I'm graceful and not panting in a body that weighs hundreds of pounds. I drag my dense meat forward making too much noise and running out of air. I run towards the sound of possible rescue.


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skonen_blades: (whysure)
El Brujo jumped off of the top rope and time stopped.

There are three perfect things I have witnessed in my life.

The triple axle that my second girlfriend pulled off when she was practicing for the Olympics. She could never nail that move that well again and failed her qualifiers. I hear she fixes bank machines in Oregon now. But that one triple axle. My god. I close my eyes now and I can still see her leave the hard ice with a fluff of crushed ice flakes and do those three perfectly symmetrical turns. I can see the smile of her face and her closed eyes turn to me three times in rapture. I can still see her skirt flaring out in the spin. It still makes me draw in breath through gritted teeth to see those legs and that nineteen year old ripe athlete’s ass turning tense towards me and away. I was never worthy. I knew that relationship had a fuse. That’s what made the time so valuable. I think that’s all tied into that moment as well.

The sculpture I have on my home office desk that a friend of my late father’s sculpted. It’s an abstract of a dove with its head tucked under its wing. The curves of it look computer programmed, turned by a lathe, and sculpted by hand all at the same time. The outline is unmistakably organic but unintelligibly vague. I can get lost just looking at it. It’s a connection to the man who raised me, his entire world of artists and hippies and open relationships that I could never join and still don’t identify with. It opens me up to look at it. I surf when I stare at it. No, I fly. I drift and glide over its perfection.

And my child’s eyes. And my child’s hands. And everything she says.

This is what I think when I see El Brujo silhouetted against the powerful lights. I swear. He comes up off of the top turnbuckle corner that I watched him climb. He crouched like a frog and uncompressed into a thick muscled panther. His green mask with the shape of the cactus on in turns dark as his entire form is eclipsed by the light behind it. I’m staring up at him from the canvas. I can taste my own blood in the back of my throat and I’ve gone blind in one eye. I can see a constellation of his own sweat drops around him prisming in the light. The detail and clarity I see at this very moment is intense.

God only knows why I chose to be a wrestler. I suck at it. I always knew I’d take some hits and maybe break a bone or two but right now, I do believe I’m going to die. El Brujo has definitely damaged something inside me and I can’t move. The referee is doing nothing. The crowd is screaming his name. It’s the roman coliseum all over again but this time it’s in South America.
He hangs above me, a colossal spider waiting for his cue, a ford pickup truck suspended on a string, a wrecking ball in mid pirouette.
Time speeds up and 450 pounds of meat focuses on me, slams into me, and squishes me flat deep into the soft, soft canvas. Ruptured organs turn inside out inside me. Unruptured organs slash open. Broken bones scrape together. Unbroken bones break.
I might live through this but I think my wrestling days are over.
God please.
Let me see my child.
Let me live.



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