Lust Demented

{IX}

THE BENCH DIDN’T FLOAT AND neither did I. Rain arpeggiates the river’s surface helping along the three foot swells. Above the water the city is a shimmering miracle. A rough menstrual drain pouring from Gotham’s luscious lips. The entire planet was spotted with blood to drown in. I was more a part of it than it wanted me to be. The bench was sinking somewhere below me. I could no longer see her, but I knew she… I mean it…was still there.

“What do you want me to say?… um let me see Farrow… how about… I just give you more material for your book.”

“My book?”

“A Greater Truth… if it even exists! Not everything in life is material for your book. Please don’t make me material for my book.”

“Your book? What the fuck are you talking about?”

She called it her book. I was taking her serious up until that point. I should’ve taken her even more mysterious when she let that claim slip. If the night carried out in the direction it was heading, my last book would forever be credited to someone else. Motherfuck memories. Thoughts of the woman were electrocution. Unfortunately, the river made certain things far and others close. How strange to be alone anywhere in this city. Fighting the current would only tire me. Bobbing between silence and droning echoes… between the townhouse Percy’s life was taken and Gloom’s death-stained cave.

After the Williamsburg, there were two more bridges for me to pass under before I was out to sea. I too wanted to join in the killing, but I set my goals higher than one of my own. I wanted God dead by sunrise. The fantastical concept reflected itself illuminated. It would be a traditional crime of revenge, jealousy, and awe all in one. Such an overweight sacrilege bordered on immortal innocence. Somebody already discovered the nuclear bomb more than a half-century ago, but took their finger off the button too soon. Fuck it… maybe that’s how civilization began in the first place. Either way the almighty appeared to be immune from any technology our tumored brains could design in self-hate.

Enough deprecation. Save philosophy for the silhouette of a man ready to leap into the waters. I could just make him out in the downpour. Though I couldn’t see him clearly, I sensed where the figure would land before he even leapt. I wasn’t sure if it was a giant raindrop falling from a cold steel cloud or a human tear straight from the creator. Instinct on my shoulders, I took deep breaths preparing for the dive to make things right. Occasionally there are times in life when you know you’re standing or in this case floating in the right place. When life collides in order.

A brief flash of light, the body torpedoed past me. I followed the human form into oblivion. We were raindrops racing down a window. I shot through the glassy rain and slowly became the drop of water caught up in the race. A rare occasion of peace. I’m not sure he even knew I was there. He thought he was alone. That he found the only place among the eight million that he could die in silence.