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Someone on the street said, “The disco is burning!” When someone says, “The disco is burning!” you need to take it seriously. Worried residents began gathering clothes, cash, jewelry, medicines in case they had to flee. A man strapped for money even offered to sell me his virgin daughter. It was luck that I had just downed a Tramadol, a couple of cannabis gummies, and a pint of Guinness in quick succession. Today, walking on the sand, I thought I heard heavy bombers. I stared up. White swirls of smoke hung suspended in the crystal ball of a daytime moon.
I had abruptly stopped taking my mood stabilizer — with somewhat predictable results. The police were called. Fire department, too. A man in whiteface was miming that I had taken something belonging to him, the lower half of his left ear. Passing motorists momentarily slowed down to gawk or shout abuse. Years from now, when butterflies are extinct, our children’s children’s children’s children will experience at a picture of one a nameless feeling somewhere between disbelief and grief.
The warning cry from a seagull, a series of short, sharp squawks, goes unheard. You enter dreams and museums, a thousand miles of history. On the back of your T-shirt is a list of the venues that were on God’s farewell tour. It takes junkies rustling in the shadows of archways to alert you to the lingering taint. You are seized then and tied to a chair. An electronic sign, “Radiation in Use,” glows red. When you get home, if you do, there is a package waiting with your only sibling’s ashes.
