The next time ET awoke it was two months later. Blasting waves of heat and light as the nurses opened the curtains in his hospital room. An old man was in the next bed whimpering behind the dividing sheet. He was making a low sound between a hiss and a laugh followed by the sounds “snip,” “snip.” ET feels agony in his calves and stomach muscles twisting and knots. Waking startled he paws at his nose and mouth to be sure the breathing tube that has been torturing him in panic dreams is gone… it is. Reaching down to his groin, ET checks if he has catheter still, he didn’t. Making his way to sit up was a chore. Feeling white hot pain under the sedatives of druggy sleep made him partially aware of a dry tortured throat, raw and bloody from tubes forced into his collapsed lung and stomach. In the absence of intravenous clamps, he feels phantom blazing… throbbing… medical… hostility in his bladder and colon from sharp plastic tubing leaving interior wounds language has no voice for. He feels like the nurses ran caustic acid through his internal organs.
ET noted that this time his arms, legs and jaw were free from the metal brackets and pins bolted into his skin. Keeping him immobile and uncomfortable in months of endless bad dreams. Careful to keep all his IV tubes like he had seen in movies. He couldn’t figure out how to lower the metal arm guard so he scooted to the edge of the bed and with out any grace at all fell directly on his face with the back of the gown open to greet the hot female nurses who just walked in with his bare ass. They didn’t make a fuss or laugh, they ushered him into the bathroom and went back to attend to the old man. Sleeping through bones resetting is an odd thing. Those kind of growing pains in reverse. The devil has strange tricks for the paralyzed and the traumatized locked in medically sedated coma. Waking in a world of daylight feels less real than the german expressionist dreamscapes he felt trapped in for centuries. Broken bones and screws feel kind of good when the ache of the void has settled into the tightening of leg braces or wire holding still a glass jaw.
ET trying to stand up straight almost bites it again, catching the hand rail to not fall over when he hears the nurses scream. Rushing out despite the giant piss stain on the front of his gown. He sees the nurses trying to restrain the old man who is digging small surgical scissors under his eye lid and into the back of his eye socket as if scratching an itch. It looks like the old man had been snipping away at his eye lids because they were almost non existent. He hears an alarm sound and ducks back into the bathroom as burly orderlies rush in to restrain the old man. ET sees what look like dragonfly wings protruding from the mans temples and some kind of larva falling from his nose and mouth.
With that ET was moved to his own room where his clothes were folded up on the bed and with in 10 minutes was in the lobby with his grandparents. They looked like they hadn’t slept in days, asking endless questions about what was going on. ET was scared to ask if the Chief made it, and his question was answered when outside on the curb the Chief was smoking a joint with his hand up a nurses skirt. They told him Mad-god had roughed up the guy who beat him up but was stuck in jail until his court date in a couple weeks. At his grandparents they all agreed to watch some horror movies on VHS but ET couldn’t stay awake. Next thing he knew it was time for school. Walking to school he noticed all his graffiti was dissed and craziest of all. Enrique and Max where tagging the rival crew, striking up “Ether” and “Marble” DIE Crew now. That was a real kick in the balls. He has known them since pre school and betrayed him with out hesitation.
Right when he arrived he felt something was off. Other students and teachers were staring, whispering and laughing at him. Nobody said any thing or greeted him. Making his way out to the lunch table dragged away from the others where the stoners and losers hung out. He was aghast to see the asian chick whose boy friend robbed him, sitting with his friends. He can see Enrique and Max sneering at him and when he goes to sit down they stop him. Enrique says, “You got a lot of nerve coming over here. We heard you got marked out and didn’t do shit!” His jaw still likely broken or at the least still causing pain, ET doesn’t respond. He is glaring at the asian chick who jumps up and punches him in the eye. “Who the fuck you staring at bitch?” To ET’s surprise his oldest friends Enrique and Max join in, hitting him with plastic drink cups frozen from the morning frost and a padlock on a blue plastic bike chain.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
ET gets a couple slaps in and kicks the asian chicks knee, jarring it and sending her down into a cold pool of muddy water. She screams in pain and before ET knows it, he was grabbed by his collar and dragged into the Vice Principal’s office. Sitting there alone, waiting for some condemnation and skewed version of what just happened, he walks out while no one is paying attention. Decides to spend the day skateboarding around and planning his revenge.
Catching up with Murphster who started his graffiti crew “CTC,” ET fills him in on Enrique and Max’s treason. Dissing the crew and paling around with the enemy. Murph is beyond the high school drama of the toys. Showing his scar from being stabbed by the asian chick, he tells ET what went down with Mad-god and the blonde tweaker. Murphster has a date with an older chick who feeds him down at the diner and checks on his stomach wound, so he fades off into the rare noon sun.
Coming to the abandoned paint store they looted all their vandalism materials, his heart dropped as he sees the Blonde Tweeker in there, eyes hostile from the darkness beyond the smashed front window. Feeling the serrated kitchen knife in his pocket, ET decides today will be the day and openly brandishes it as he steps through the broken window frame onto the crunchy safety glass covering the floor. Seeing a lighter spark, illuminating the Tweekers face.
He can see this dude is at least in his 30s. Looks like some kind of homeless wizard or meth cook, maybe both. Hearing the unmistakable click of a revolver. “Lets get this sorted out before it gets out of hand. You want to smoke?” ET listens to this clown introduce him self. “I write F-L-Y, but you can call me Aqualung. My girlfriend writes EYE BALL… DIE CREW.” ET doesn’t shake his hand. Picturing puncturing it with his blade honestly. “You must be Zygote?” ET takes the extended joint, ignoring the introduction. Taking a big hit and immediately starts coughing his lungs out. The Blonde Tweeker Aqualung has a raspy laugh like a chain smoker used to yelling over the noise of freight trains.
Walking through the store ET sees this asshole has cleaned out as much spray paint in one week as his friends have in years. Leaving the place nearly empty. The Blonde Tweeker tells him to pick up some paint rollers and cans of paint. The Blonde Tweaker leads ET out the backdoor still at gunpoint, but making jokes and acting civil. ET hasn’t forgotten the disrespect but has a cautious curiosity who this clown was and why he is in his town. Silently they walk through the woods to a place ET has never been before. A giant future site of a Dam with dozens of round tunnels dividing spillways into endless unpainted walls, newly poured cement in miles of tunnels, culverts and spillways. ET feels a mix of excitement of finding a new spot. In the back of his mind still thinking he is being led to a lonely place to be shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave in a soon to be flooded valley.
The Tweeker asks if ET wants to help to a roller shot up the top of the dam. ET feels all kinds of hostile things he wants to say but in the end, ends up helping his rival do a big walk up blockbuster shot with 10 foot letters upside down from ropes tied to rebar on the Dam. Finishing up the piece, rain starts coming down, making all the letters bleed drips down the entire dam. They walk through the planned site for the dam to inundate with water and come to a little abandoned village. Totem poles as old as time sit sunbaked, bleached grey. Monoliths to the sea faring power and intellect these precontact marvels of the tribal people. The village didn’t have a name, but due to the endless DIE graffiti he can tell this is their lair. Wind ravaged green tarps sweep off the village thats survived wild fires and tidal waves but about to die under the crushing onslaught of progress.
ET can hear a screeching of fighter jets over head. Looking up he can see long chemtrails fading off the end of the planes. As the trails disperse into the air ET sees strange things in the puddles. Something almost invisible but squirming around, like something you see on an educational show about micro organisms. Feeling something sinister about where he is being led, his instinct is to head back towards town. Away from this stinging rain and the strange life in the pools where rain has collected. He sees the Blonde Tweeker disappear into one of the huts. Turning to run, ET trips over a girls lifeless body wrapped in a clear plastic bag. He doesn’t know much about death, but its a girl with milky blue eyes and stench of rot is unmistakable. The Blonde Tweeker comes running out of the hut snarling and attempts to shoot ET in the back of the head. Pulling the trigger, the gun malfunctions, blows up in his hand. Turning his fingers into a garbled mess of exposed bone and missing digits. ET takes this as a chance to run, dashes back into town while the wild eyed Tweeker Aqualung hurls curses.