The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
Billy
2-17-2001

Riding a bus through the snow. The driver swerves over to one stop. I complain how I hate this stop, and the driver does too. He tells me how the bus that goes through the subdivision on ThistleWood (some T-name) goes through the entire place instead of just stopping at the entrance like it's supposed to, and that's why he has to pick up the slack. I head toward that subdivision, because that's where my sister is with her boyfriend's family. They have an 18-year old daughter who takes a liking to me. I want to get her alone and explain that I'm engaged before she gets any ideas and makes a fool of herself in front of her family. But it never happens, and she publicly asks if I want to take a walk with her, like a date. I tell her I can't. She gets hurt and mad, and I try to show her my ring, but she just can't see it. Nonetheless, it's snowing really badly and supplies are low. Driving isn't feasible. She and I are sent off for supplies. We pack up and trek out across the land.

We stop at a townhouse on the way, which a middle-aged guy answers. He invites us in. She slips, as the floor is made of ice. He never uses his heat, and apologizes for the floor (but not the cold). We start to cook a meal, and seem to stay there for days. All I had intended to do was exit through his back entrance to save time.

I was driving on the snowy streets, trying to take them fast. My car started spinning in circles, but I felt in control. (A lot here I missed.)

Saw some kind of bill while talking to dad on the phone. He said he was in debt. I was at the supermarket with him, and he was returning a bunch of food...so much that it had to be restocked on the spot...to pay some bills. I saw a dollar lying in the chicken section, and a 20 dollar bill wrapped around a can. I picked it up, but it was fake, for on the back was a blurb about "The King" (Elvis) being finally dead. It was actually a book about Billy the Kid, claiming he died only recently. How he traveled cross country in a car with his friend, and famous carpenter, John Carpenter. Leslie showed me a book and said it's the same one shetold me about that they got me. I said then why are you showing it to me then if you already told me about it. My dad was talking how Billy was mentally ill, that a person like that could never survive. "He ain't all there is he." He said some people belived he took care of a cow for 4 years, and so on. I wondered how he and a guy like John may have met.

A old, stretched convertible car pulled up at a gas station in the middle of the desert. I appeared to greet them. John and Billy. Billy was really old, with gray hair and a mustache, dressed up like some old English colonel, only in brown. John came around to help him out of the back seat, calling him "sweetie". I thought it just a mistake, refusing to believe that all the great best buddies from history were gay. Billy had a magnificent pocketwatch. I pulled out mine and asked to see his. His came unclipped and he fumbled for it in the backseat.

Some bandit (me) on a horse rode into his hideout by the gas station, except it wasn't yet a gas station, but just a halfway house of some kind. His drunken pal was there. He had a drink of water and went over to the creek to take a piss. His pal got excited that he would humor him in a common pleasure, and they both pissed together, seeing who could piss the farthest. The drunken guy couldn't piss at all. He jumped in the water next to where the piss was falling to measure the distance or something. He turned and saw young Billy, very dirty and almost naked, watching, and started yelling and blaming his poor piss on stagefright. Billy just stood there like a retard. He had been imprisoned and forced to take care of the cow next door for the past 4 years. A woman wrapped in a blanket also arrived, and the drunk guy went into an uproar about stagefright while the other guy kept pissing. The drunk tried pissing again, but it went up like a little fountain spurt then got all over his hands. Everyone laughed.

There were three bandits and a woman, who belonged to the biggest bandit. The stole the blanket from the woman. I wanted to take it over to Billy, so I went over to his room at the rickety wooden hotel and stepped in his door. I saw a blur of something and stepped back, afraid he was going to attack me. The next thing I remember, I had acquired a better blanket and given it to the woman, saying, "There, now isn't that a better blanket?" as she snuggled into it and fell asleep. Billy came in, and he and I teamed up against the big bandit. Billy just taunted him while I threw all the punches and kicks. I had a hard time, getting blocked most of the time, but I got a lot of good shots in. Somehow he ended up rolling on the ground. I jumped up high and came down on his head with my foot. Hard. I was surprised there was no crunching sound, but then figured you never heard that stuff in cartoons, either. He now looked like a bald Asian monk.

We grappled on the ground. I hand-chopped his stomach over and over with minimal resistance. Finally a female voice cried for me to stop. I looked and it was a delicate Asian woman, almost crying. I tapped her lightly on the stomach again as a test, and she said it really hurt. She offered to nibble on my ear. I tried to draw away, but she grappled me. She was suddenly black, naked, and really buff, leaning on top of me, pinning me down. She apologized for fighting, but that was how she was used to it in her culture. I got away from her and took in my new surroundings.

It was a huge gym. Men and women, but only the women were working out, and they were really hardcore. I saw the black woman a few times, either lifting weights or getting fucked on the floor. Everyone else was clothed. All the men were sitting at a cafeteria-like area, eating. Someone came up to me and told me that Billy was going to get into another fight. I saw a scrawny kid stand up across a table, saying mean things to a retarded, pudgy, skinhead kid with fat glasses. The retard said something that made Billy laugh, and he said to join him outside. Some other dork said that that included us, and this dork led me out. It was dark out, and the place by the garages that was normally private had cops around it. We stood by a tree. I was fondling my pocket watch or some piece of metal. He asked if I had any LSD or marijuana. I said no. He seemed astounded that I spent all that time in Planetjam and not been involved in that lifestyle of drugs and women.

We started walking back. A cop looked at us and said that we should at least say hello, and the fact that we didn't say hello was enough to suspect us of illegal activity. We ended up chained together in the back of his golf cart.

In the morning, the three of us that were chained escaped thanks to our other dork friends. Some charges were laid on our chains, but only one went off, leaving two of us. we were connected by a metal box. The kid plugged a wire into two places on it. It looked like a tape player. We waited impatiently for the fuse to go off, and he was free. The cops were running toward us now. We didn't have time for another charge, so I picked up the case and stuffed it in my shirt and ran. I ran into a building and immediately saw an open maintenance door, the kind that lead into hallways between all the rooms inside. It had those metal grating floors and lots of pipes. There were men with blowtorhces working on my right, so I ducked left, jumping down a ledge and around a corner. I heard someone call out. I ran down some stairs, hoping to put more distance between me and whoever. They leveled out and then headed back up. A woman in a lab coat a passed me in the other direction. I reached the top to another hallway. I was about to follow it when i noticed plastic blinds in front of me, and some sort of office. I turned, and the other wall was like that, too. I tentatively poked them and they gave. I walked through. The floor was grey, but then became sea-blue marble. It smelled like paint thinner. It was like a big, under-construction school hall. There was a woman on her knees opposite me on the far wall, back turned, painting or something. I saw a really big red couch, except it had no back to it. I rushed over to it and pulled out my Billy the Kid book to read. As I sat, some oldish balding guy in a white coat approached with an entourage of a couple random people and said I had to come with him.

I entered a small classroom with little children sitting in small chairs at small tables. It looked like they had been coloring. The man said something to the effect that it was about time for them to leave. I saw someone I recognized from before as having disappeared. These people weren't coloring...these were cartoon likenesses of themselves, a mere mark of their existence. I saw tags for Harold, even Kateman. People who had vanished earlier. I tooked down at the little girl below me and touched her head. I started to cry. A picture was thrust in front me me, labeled "Hog." That was my name. After all this running, I'd finally found the secret place. I would finally be reuinted with all my friends. I cried. But where were they taking us? I wasn't sure I trusted this man.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003