12

It's been too long.

In fact, I had long burned my calendar due to the fact that I couldn't stand the notion of the same days on it. It was always the first of the month. It was always the same year. I loved it at first, because I fucking hate shit that changes constantly, which is why I don't chew bubble gum. Of course, this same logic doesn't apply for food or cigarettes, because I wrote the rules, and you can kindly take a royal fuck off a building and land on a genetically deformed puppy dog.

Getting up is the hardest thing to do. I must've been hit from behind or some shit, because as it stands I have a knot in my head the size of a oak tree. I looked around at my surroundings and frowned. This is no place to sleep, I though. Not in this alley. Then I recognized that it was in fact my alley that I had bought from a group of Native Americans when I was born, which pissed me off even more because I could have sworn I had bought the protection clause that came with this motherfucker.

I didn't have time to point fingers I had to get my bearings. I figure that if I could stand for more than 5 minutes, I'd be set to continue on where ever the fuck I was headed, which was back to whatever I owned, had bartered for food, had traded for a box of telephone wire, had put in the paper for someone to haul away no charge, had hoped for the best when Christ died.

Someone needs to clean this alley up. Strewn along the walls was the usual assortment of trash that you'd find in an alley, but for some fucked up reason, the alley continue in an infinite direction either way.

I figure I could either get walking, or maybe by some strange miracle I could construct an airplane or helicopter or shotgun from the strewn trash and take a shortcut.

Who was I kidding. I hate airplanes and helicopters. That, and I had other things to do, like wait for the bastard to hit me over the head again so I could awaken as a hummingbird.

11

I decided to stop by my old friend's house, Ms. Lily Early. She hadn't been in the scene for a while since her husband died, and I figured I would pay my respects to someone I had admired for a long time. I walked onto the porch of her house and looked around. All I could think about is when the last time this was painted or taken care of, since it was so unlike her. One of the neighbors was walking by when they noticed me.

"You just missed her. She just went home."

I turned around to see who was speaking to me by they had already walked on. At times like this there are way too many things to describe and one of the things that sucks is that even I can't describe it half the time.

Take this porch, for example. I mentioned it needed painted, right? Well, it is a white porch with chunks of missing paint and the goddamn wood underneath it is grey. Were there any chairs or hanging plants? Yes. The chairs were those plastic molded things you buy in a dollar store and the ferns were half fucking dead.

I couldn't take it anymore. I immediately went out and found the nearest drug dealer and offered to buy his stock. He produced a tiny bag of substance and when I grabbed his collar I told him I wanted more. So, he gave me the name of his boss, and his boss gave me the name of his boss, and his boss, and his boss, and soon I was at a beachside resort sitting across from the top level man.

"I'll buy it," I said.

With that, he stood and handed me the keys. As soon as I stood up, the dream ended, and the secret was revealed.

And yes, I forgot to write it down.

10

When the king finally realized that yes, the sky was indeed falling, Sam leaned his back up against a rock and wiped the sweat from his brow. Hardly anyone within miles hadn't heard the news, and were making preperations.

I came upon Sam late in the day. He casually glanced at me and spoke.

"You're in the wrong mind, son. Close, though."

I'll try again another day.

9

And where did the time go coming down from Eagle Edison Avenue? Getting thrown out of a taxi headfirst into a speed limit sign (15) was embarrassing enough, but to have the inhabitants pretend to throw garbage on me?

Somewhere in the distance, the last of the UHaul trucks broke the horizon, and everyone I ever knew were moving along to the next town, to set up the county fair, to establish a religion, to camp under the stars, to fix the thing, or to find another race of morons to think of names for. Obviously they had ran out of paper for the morning news and all that was left was yesterday's news which forecasted today's news later on the evening with showers tonight, low integer.

I hated the replacement neighborhood folk. The street was cleaner than the day it was dedicated, and I knew it wouldn't be long until some asshole barfed on it coming out of the pristine bar while pristine liquor was swishing around in their pristine stomachs, never once intoxicating the pristine liver. What do I know? I only stood there and watched the fucking thing unfold, so don't you even think of telling me that what I saw was the same as what you saw on a botched up bittorrent.

Snow from the week before. The problem was that the sun only shined on things brighter than themselves, which was great, because every celebrity that lived on this block had 1st and 2nd degree burns in their mouths.

I figured it was time to leave, so I took the first train out of town into the wilderness to start a new life among the trees and nature. This would have been a great idea if it wasn't for the fact that every elder animal met with me at the entrance to the forest and told me under no certain terms that I was a dickhead, and they didn't need any more dickheads in the forest, because there WASN'T any dickheads in the forest, and son of a bitch if I wasn't wondering that if the dickheads weren't here, where were they on the rest of the planet, and how in the fuck was I going to find them?

I didn't have time for any of that shit, seeing is how I'm standing there in the hot sun with all of my shit curious as to how the fuck I was going to sleep tonight. That's all it is ever about, folks. Sleeping. If I sleep, you continue to exist. If you sleep, I sorta do, but not without help from the ghost of Janis Joplin or someone that looks like her.

8

Then the world's shortest sentence meant nothing to the author or the fact that it could have been typed by a small child in the future in Arizona somewhere.