Walkin Killings Pt 8 Man In The Tomb

Odd Soul, by Mutemath.

“A man does not weave this web of Life.  He is merely a strand of it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”   --- Quote from the Mighty Chief Seattle, from the early 1800's.

The unforgiving sun rose over the Sans Joking Mountain Range to the east.  The rain left behind a washed city, but it was not clean.

Yet.

The Man In The Tomb

She had whispered this, “There is something you should know.”

He’d shivered under his wool blanket.

She went on, in her silky sibilance.  “Sven is deceased.  Someone is next to come over to this side.”

Bryan whipped the wool blanket away.  He had enough of this.

“Leave me alone!”  He stood up and swung around, ready to fight.  He had always been ready to fight at a moment's notice.  His past had cemented such anger into his DNA.

But there was nothing to fight.  

From the back of his mind, like the echo of a memory of a dream that dissipates upon awakening, he heard, “You and I are tied together.”

He shivered.

It cut to the bone.

He grabbed the wool blanket up off the cement floor and pulled it over his shoulders.

The light from the streetlamp outside, down below the barred window, cast long lines upon the ceiling above him, in his cell.   Everything reminded him of his incarceration, his loss of freedom, his life on hold.

He had become addicted to pain killers while in the prison infirmary.

But he had kicked his addiction, and that was an ugly, painful thing to go through.

Alone.

He had promised himself that he would never be addicted to drugs again.

Yet, there are other addictions besides drugs, isn’t that right?

Huh.

There are, indeed, other things.

He saw his breath as he sat back down on the iron bed, and he shivered beneath his wool blanket.


The air was thin, but heavy with ice cold anger.  It was anger from a grave not yet dug.

“Listen.”

There she was again.

Damn.

He nodded.

He said, “Okay, say what you will and then get the fuck out.”

Silence greeted his response, and the air about him became so cold that the window frosted up.  The glass tinkled.


Bryan pulled his bare feet from the floor just as a skin of ice crept across it from the area right in front of him.

The air became a vacuum, and he could not catch his breath.  He could not breathe.

Into this void, a voice as sharp and clear as the clang of a hundred church bells screeched,

“ SEAN   IS   GONE ! ”

The force of her scream slammed Bryan back against the wall.  His head hit the cement and he went to sleep.  Gone.

Sleep, finally, sleep.

The window beyond the bars busted into shards like crystal goblets, and these shards dangled in place by the safety wires between the panes.  The light from the streetlamp below now cast its light through these fractured prisms in odd shapes upon the ceiling. 

The stainless steel mirror above the commode/sink fractured into metallic diagrams of fury.

The walls of the hardened concrete criss-crossed with spidery cracks that looked like maps of travel.

The pipes burst with ice.

The air became so cold that snow fell from it and powdered the floor.

And then,


She was gone.

You know, all of this happened in the prison cells over and beneath his own, and to the left and right, in many cells each way.

Such anger.

The Man Outside Of His Tomb

The air outside had never smelled so sweet, in this high desert river valley.  He had no recollection of what had transpired in the night, and his head throbbed at the back.  He was stunned, but that would not last for very long.

The sunlight gleamed in his eyes, and it felt good.  It felt pretty fucking good to be outside.

Outside.

Free.

Away from the fear and the boredom of prison.

Away.

It was a perfect day.

Perfect Day, by The Constellations.  NSFW

Bryan craved something good to eat.   He wanted a fucking hamburger with bacon strips, grilled onions and hot cheese sauce oozing out from under the bun.  He knew where he would get it.  It was a place called Fucky Chucky’s, up on the edge of the pretty little desert town of Clovis.

The name of the town sounds like clovers, but with hidden cloven hooves beneath, inside, insidious.

His friend worked there, but he had not seen his friend in a couple of weeks.  Any other new release would have been disappointed by not being met upon his release from prison.

But this young man considered two things.

One was this:   His friends were otherwise occupied, and he accepted this fact. Perhaps they needed his help?

The second was this:  A man must fortify himself with solid food before engaging in a war.

A war was about to erupt in Fuckno, and he knew this on a subconscious level below his current state.


He was simply stunned from the blow to his head.

So, he would go and have himself that fucking bacon cheeseburger he had seen on the television in the day-room.  It would make him feel like he was one of the public again.

Small things like that matter, don’t they?

He left the front of the prison with his hand inside his pants pocket over the small wad of cash he’d reclaimed from the check out clerk.  He was leaving the concrete hotel and doing whatever the fuck he wanted to do.

He would die before ever going back inside again.

He would die.

He didn't have change for the bus, and he was thirsty for something good to drink, something he remembered from the days of his youth.  The sunlight called for it.   He wanted to drink a fucking Moxie.  Change and soda.  He could get both across the street; one from the purchase of the other.

When you leave jail, it takes a while to stop covering your money with your hand in your pocket, and just let the valuables stay there.

Enjoyment of your personal Freedom can be re-learned, but it never becomes any less precious in the process.

We must never take our Freedom for granted, my friend.

Bryan was about to discover this noble truth.

God Help You. 

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

.