An Excerpt...

From Just Another Mook Singing and Burning:

2.

It's another one of those Sunday mornings. I'm walking along Central Avenue, wobbling off another mean knot tied on in the after-hours underneath the M-station. It's always weird, and somewhat jolting, the way you walk out of the bar, shrouded and sealed off the way it is, and get whacked in the face by a sunlight you can only describe as accusatory. After all, it's Sunday morning, and staggering about with a gut-full of bottom-shelf scotch shouldn't really be standard operating procedure.

Anyway.

Despite the warm temperatures, the streets are pretty barren. I figure it's about 7 AM, just going by my internal clock and the unadorned naked quality you get in all the birds chirping in branches overhead. I get to the old Episcapalean church, when a van - the only car in eye-shot - pulls up next to me.

It's a big powder blue Ford - illegal tint job peeling at the corners and what looks to be a skeleton in Mormon duds with a Bible in one hand and a firing pistol in the other. I kind of like it truth be told.

The light goes green and it pulls off, only to stop in the middle of the next block. I'm a little curious , a little thrown, but I don't change my gait. I finally get up next to it, shoot it a quick glance, only for it to pull off again and stop in roughly the same spot in relation to the next block. I feel my pulse quicken the tiniest bit.

"I know you fellas?" I ask, not expecting much in the way of an answer.

Seconds pass, no reply - then I hear the faintest whisper of a latch giving behind the side door.

A heartbeat before it blasts open. What I hear and see, I don't want to believe, and sure as shit don't like.

When I was a kid, I joined the track team just to be around my friends. I hated the running, hated the jagged way your breath ripped in and out of you, hated the stabbing and crushing sensations of a taxed writhing spleen. Hated the coach screaming "Up on your toes, up on your toes!" there on the unforgiving Van Cortland hills.

After a point, I never ran for anything. Punctuality meant nothing to me, and if a bus looked to be pulling off without me, well . . . there'd always be another one.

Anyway.

The door blasts open, and standing in its wake, ready to pounce is a stocky guy encased in a silver HAZMAT suit and wearing a Jerry Lewis mask. Visible behind him are two more just like him - two more identical portions of wayeward nightmare. I notice him coiling back on his legs, ready to leap.

"We're your conscience, asshole!" I hear him roar from somewhere deep in his housing. He takes flight. I break into a dead run, and sliver of a second later, I can hear boots start hitting ground. I don't know what these fuckers want, but I don't reckon they're dressed like that to sell me a set of Ginsu knives. Nope, I'd wager they are looking to do me some more-than-garden variety harm, and possibly plumb and stretch a few bodily apertures that I personally feel are doing just fine as they are, thank you.

I peel down 67th Street, heading in the direction of the old sugarplant. Somehow, even in those bulky suits, they're managing to keep up alright.

But my brain's working feverishly - for once, in a good way.

It occurs to me, hits me like a cinderblock through the bedroom window.

I reach Otto Road right by the plant, then peel a right. Another block over, there's an entrance way to the tracks - I take it. They're within eyeshot, probably only about a hundred feet behind. Taking a gamble here, I figure. I'm on the far side of the tracks by the time they hit the entrance.

Up ahead is the gamble - the back fence to the old abandoned mall - namely the little hole towards the bottom I'd hacked into it myself ten years ago. Hmmm, not much bigger nowadays. Little softer and rounder in the middle perhaps, but nothing of consequence.

I reckon I can get through it.

I reckon, in those outfits of theirs, they can't.

I reach the fence, my heart grinding. Moment of truth: the hole is still there. I pause by it. I want them to see this, and luckily enough, they're gaining ground pretty good.

I take the sight in and wonder if my grip on the firmament of reality has weakened at all. Three giant Jerry Lewises in tin cans running towards me with perdition in their eyes. Oh well, fuck 'em, I figure. I raise up one middle finger as they get within about 20 feet, then slip through the hole .

Making a break for the old rampway, I look back to see the lead guy trying to shoe-horn himself and his HAZMAT tuxedo through. All he's doing is tearing that shit up.

I can't think of much in the way of witticisms.

"Whattsamatta?" I scream. "You don't like that?"

Then I hit the ramp and head up to Metropolitan Avenue. Time to head home and make sense of this, or at least bang down some real scotch while trying.