delirium

Posted on | January 19, 2009 | Comments Off

walking in the sun,ulysses felt a headache coming.it was a bad day for being walking.but then it did not really matter.in that noisy hot and crowded street,nothing else ever moved faster than a walk.not that he had any reason to hurry.after all,he was going no place.the heat did not bother him,but somehow the headache was related to it.he knew it in his guts,he felt it in the way the sun striked his hatless head and the way he could feel each hair getting hotter and hotter and the heat seeping down from his scalp and travelling with the sweat down his neck and under his collar and under his shirt and down his back like the warm fingers of a reluctant lover.he could feel it knotting up in his gut like a fireball,waiting to explode.he did not mind the heat,but it was doing something to him he could not explain.the noise of the honking cars pierced his consciousness with the emphasis of a rivet gun firing,shrill and blunt at the same time, and relentlessly repetitive.he saw a cop at the end of the street,a fat old man with a gun at his hip,wearing a peaked cap and a salt and pepper handlebar moustache,stuck in his clothes like an overstuffed pillow.the guy was frantically waving one arm in the air and speaking animatedly into a walkie-talkie set which he held with a pudgy hand.ulysses ducked into the bar he was walking in front of.

soon as he entered the bar,he was regretting his decision.the place was full of smoke and dull lighting and people noisily getting sloshed even that time of the day.but then time was unimportant.the economy was crashing worse than a house of cards and most people were trying to forget their worries…lost jobs,lost money…he had read somewhere that divorce lawyers always made money in depressions…he wondered what was the confidence interval of that statement…and whether it said a lot about mankind in general…and if his decision to not marry was vindicated by that fact.he wondered why he had entered the bar in the first place,he could not be certain it was because of seeing the cop,but then,the sight of the pudgy cop had made him duck into the bar…something had cracked inside…dammit,he was not sure of anything now.and that headache.

he ordered a beer for himself,wishin it would chase away his headache and chose a corner table that was fortuitously empty.the place was hot even though the airconditioning was working full blast,and it was full of people.and that suffocating smoke…a blend of god only knew how many different kinds of cigarettes.in a corner,there was a small walk on stage bathed in bloodred lighting where a two piece band was playing-a capri wearing girl who looked barely out of her teens was beating the drums like she meant to crush them,and a tall,painfully thin boy with unruly,long curly hair which came down to his shoulders was playing a guitar and singing some weepy number which no one seemed to be listening to.a surly waiter came over and banged his mug of beer in front of him and left.it looked like piss.ulysses did not want to touch the glass,but since he was paying for it,he might as well drink it.an anonymous drink in an anonymous bar in an anonymous city.and he was an anonymous man.

the beer did not taste as bad as it looked.and hardly had he taken his first sip when the guitar player slipped into a very loud riff which sounded to ulysses like a tortured rendition of november rain.he winced and tried to concentrate on his beer.

“can i sit here,or are you expecting someone?”

he looked up.tall,dyed red hair,fair skin which looked too much used and stretched,a face made up to look beautiful but succeeding in only accentuating the dark circles under the eyes,a long red dress and a brown leather handbag.whore,probably.it didn’t really matter.he shook his head and she sat down.next thing he knew she was reacking over to his pack of cigarettes and lighter.she lit a cigarette,exhaled,crossed her legs under the table,laid an elbow on the table,and gave him a down from sideways glance.how many times had he seen that in the movies…bitch.

“i did not think so either,” she said, waving her hand in the general direction of the room.”you are a stranger here”

he nodded.his hatred of the woman was rising up inside him like the bile…and he did not want to be rude.

“you are ulysses”

something was strange here.he was an anynymous man in an anonymous bar in an anonymous town talking to an anonymous woman and she knew him.and yet he felt a strange calm.all of a sudden,the heat was gone from the atmosphere,the smoke disappeared,and the room was suddenly quiet.

he nodded.

“and you are the whore”

she smiled quizzically,indulgently almost,as if she was humoring a petulant child.

the kid with the guitar was rocking with his song now, a strand of his long,oily air hung across his face,looking in the red light of the stage like a streak of blood flowing across his eyes,and down his cheeks,with a glistening life of its own.ulysses could see individual droplets of sweat glistening on his brow, could follow each movement of his fingers…it was like time had come to a slowdown.but then time did not matter.she was speaking.

“what you are looking for is not in this town.you will have to move on”

he looked at her face carefully.there were no dark circles really.and the skin was not stretched,but smooth and taut over her face.she was looking beautiful.she leant across to him and he got a whiff of her perfume…it was so intimately feminine,as she began whispering. “dont you remember me,ulysses?in your last town?and the town before that…in that seedy seaside bar you were in for days on end,and the other one in the redlight district-with the faceless girl whom you would not go…they were no places for you…this is no place for you…your search does not end.not here.not now.but i was there.”

the place was too loud again.he looked around,feeling stifled by all the smoke-it was insane.he looked at the bartender-he was cleaning his shotgun.the guitar playing kid had broken the strings,and thrown away the guitar, and the girl with the drums had taken out a submachinegun from somewhere and was waving it in the general direction of the kid.he wanted to shout-to warn him…but she was  growing in him like an insidious presence,still whispering-her words caressing his body,rolling off her tongue and wrapping themselves around his existence…get out of here,ulysses,go somewhere new…your search is essential…get out of here before it is too late…look at them they are going to kill you look at the barman he has swept all the glasses and bottles and cocktails and whiskey and vodka and rum and martinis and bloody marys off the bar and he is preparing to shoot and see he has shot the first customer look at the blood and his brains lying mized with the cocktails released from the life and look at the girl she has begun firing too the kid is dead fallen on his guitar and the people on those tables the smoke from the gun mixed with the smoke of cigarettes cordite and nicotine get out of here ulysses look at the blood and pain and tomato juice and alcohol mixed into each other starters and brains and muscle and tissue and ash flying in the air get out of here ulysses…..NOOOOOOOOOOO……and he was lifting his heavy beer mug and crushing her head with it and more blood mixed with alcohol and she was falling down the red of her blood mixing with the white of her brains and splattered on her dress mingled with the red of it and she was lying at his feet dead and beautiful and tender and he was overturning the table and the chair with it too and kicking her and shouting incoherently,madly words he did not know what they meant and all of a sudden the madness had stopped and two people were holding him and everything was silent and a voice was speaking to him.

“that will be two thousand bucks mister and you better pay up”

numbly he puts his hand into his pocket and takes out his wallet and pays uo.two thousand bucks!he had just killed her!could they not see that?and all those dead bodies?and what about that bartender,he wanted to shout?all those people he killed and now the bastard is pretending to be cleaning glasses behind the counter again.and where did they hide all those bodies anyway?what did they do with them-the kid,and those splattered brains at the front table and the girl who was lying at his feet?

“now get out and dont come back!”

and he was pushed out of the bar.squinting as the sunshine hit his eyes, he turned back to have a look at the name of the place.the monkey’s delirium,it was called.

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