(Quite honestly, I haven't got the slightest fucking idea what Davey's up to. The little fucker's losing his shit, I believe. As always, enjoy!)

Twentyfour

Me and the Sheik, we’ve got guns and grenades, clips full greasy 9mm bullets tucked into our belts. We’ve got three-foot long combat knives, matte black, serrated, sharp enough castrate gnats. We’ve got body armor that’ll shrug off howitzer shells, helmets with built-in infrared, ultraviolet and echolocation. We’ve got portable fire, plastic ball bearings filled with napalm & plastique. We’ve got atv’s with .50 machine guns mounted on the fenders and engines that’ll drive us to 120 mph in the dirt.

Me and the Sheik, we’ve got manic grins on our faces, white teeth flashing in the dark. We’ve got twitchy fingers on hair triggers. The Sheik’s got his shades and I’ve got an eyelid that just won’t stop twitching. We’ve both got that crazy eyeball music. We’ve got flexed muscles, compressed tendons, adrenal glands stuck wide open. I’m sweating pure cold. The Sheik is jumping ten feet in the air, firing rounds into the clouds. We mount up, twist our throttles, bounce off into the dunes, smashing cacti flat and slamming the skidplates against half-buried rocks.

The demons are playing tonight. Torturing lost souls. They’ve got catapults and trebuchets and giant air cannons and they’re stuffing screaming old grandmas and cursing heroin addicts and priests hollering out The Lord’s Prayer into the breeches and the slings. Giggling, the demons throw levers and pull the pins on counterweights and those poor bastard souls go screeching across the night, flailing, screaming, their arms flapping like they think they can just take off, perfect arcs of absolute fear and misery and pain that end with a flat thud against a cliff face a thousand feet high that’s stained black with the impacted blood and bone and skin of a million miserable wretches.

Me and the Sheik, we pull up on a butte behind them, action movie shit, tumbling off the atv’s before they’ve stopped, unship our rifles, flick the safeties, take our aim. The Sheik hits the first, an incendiary shell catching a weeping girl in her stomach. A plume of smoke, a gout of flame and she becomes a comet, nothing left to hit the cliff but a crumbling ball of ash and boiling fat. I’m right behind him, an old man, paunchy & white & hairy, get him in the chest with an RPG and he explodes into a thousand bits of gristle and bone ten stories over the desert.

The demons keep going, loading up, firing off, talons stifling the screams and the prayers and the curses, laughing like kids at Disneyland. They dump oil on the sand and light bonfires and dance in the flick of shadows and orange smoke. The damned souls struggle on their traplines, stuck fast with spider silk and ancient curses, gnawing at their hands and feet trying to get free. They never make it. Teeth breaks on bones, open wounds flowing, the demons sliding all over them, licking, biting, tearing loose chunks of dirty flesh, ripping open stomachs and sucking down intestines and the screams, man, the screams are getting to me. It’s too, too fucking much and I drop my sights and flick over to the particle beam and center in on a pair of demon jaws wrapped around the liver of some puking kid and I squeeze and that sinewy red head explodes like pumpkin loaded with an M-80 and, shit, every demon head is suddenly pointed our way.

“Jeez, Davey.” The Sheik swings his grin at me. “You’re really itching for it tonight, aren’t you?”

And there’s this swell of oily red skin careening across the desert, arrowing in on us like heatseeking missiles. The Sheik tosses his rifle over his shoulder, gets out a pistol the size of a hair dryer, pulls out his knife and they’re on us. Like being at the bottom of the pigpile when you’re playing Kill the Carrier. I’m flat on my back, nothing but black through my faceplate, demons punching me with all their might, demons trying to slide their talons between the plates of my armor, demons hissing and spitting acid and ripping each other to shreds trying to get to me.

But the armor, it’s strong, makes me strong. I’m punching and kicking, my boots are sinking into their bodies, my fists are going right through them. I lash out, my fingers sinking into skulls, burrowing into chests. The demons, they scream like animals, scream like pigs getting hung up to be bled. They scream and claw and hiss and I break open the napalm and they blaze alight, their oily skin catching fire like seasoned hardwood. And they’re still trying to get to me, but they’re dying as they screech at me, legs burned off, arms melted to stumps, eyes boiled away. Nothing but torsos with teeth coming at me and I’m back on my feet, whipping my knife through throats, plunging it into hearts. The demons are collapsing as fast as I can get to them, faster, the fire spreading through them, a stumbling, screaming mobile funeral pyre, they die as they try to leap through the flames at me. I kneel and clean my knife on the sand as the last of them crawl towards me, melting, screaming, jaws wide, rows and rows of fangs cracking and shattering as flames run over their bodies.

And that’s it. The ones touched by flame are dead, the rest running across the desert, as fast as water down the drain, screaming and kicking up sand and heading back to the hideyholes in the caverns outside of town. The bodies of the left behind are dwindling to nothing but smears of grease and the occasional bit of stolen jewelry. I get my knife as clean as I can on the sand and get to my feet and the Sheik’s standing there, grinning. I sheath my knife.

“Fucking beautiful, man.” He walks over and claps me on the back. “Killing demons with fire? That’s just fucking awesome. The irony is just…fuck, I dunno. That’s total Oscar, man.”

I flip my helmet open and unbuckle the straps and toss it to the ground. The air smells like rotten eggs and burned meat. I fuck with the buckle on my holsters and get it off, my guns thumping into the sand. I start flipping the catches on my armor. I’m nothing but one big itch. I want to get naked and throw myself into a tub of icewater. Sweat’s dripping from the stubble on my head. I don’t want to puke, don’t want to cry or scream or punch the Sheik in his smile. I’m dried out inside. Husked and empty and dead behind the eyes.

The Sheik’s got his arm around my shoulder, he’s laughing and talking and pulling me along the sand. There’s a tent on the desert now, something the Sheik put together for me, a portable party, and I can hear heavy metal and the pop of corks and clinking beer bottles. A couple of titty girls are striding towards us, all long legs and microscopic bikinis, holding bottles of Dom Perignon.

The Sheik’s whispering in my ear, “Party time, man. That was just fucking AWESOME…” and I’m shaking him off, walking away, can picture him behind me, just standing there as the titty girls descend on him with wet kisses and cold champagne and I’m flinging pieces of my armor off, dropping them in the sand. My atv’s where it rolled to a stop, the engine idling. I mount up, swing around, twist up the throttle and hang on, straight across the desert, heading for Mags.

(Hey there, y'all. More of the same shit as before. Just the crap that was zipping across my head tonight. You CopyFighters out there should like this one. Dunno if the rest of you'll get it. Dunno. I've got booze in me, so it's all going up tonight. Enjoy!)

Okay, straight point of order, I admit, completely, that I didn’t have my licenses current to be wearing my blue FUBU spacesuit-inspired jumpsuit on the streets. Now, I could make the point right now that my PA was supposed to have been on top of filing the paperwork and that my yearly membership should have been renewed, but I’m not going to go that route. Renaldo does a fantastic job of making my daily life possible, and I’m not about to go casting blame on him for this screw up. Besides, my lawyers have informed me that since Renaldo is in my employ, anything he does, or fails to do, is my responsibility, legally speaking. So, yes, I was wearing an illegal outfit at the time of my arrest. That’s unequivocal, and I’m not going to argue it. So I hereby authorize the court to Court to debit my account for the Illegal Occupancy charge.

However, and my lawyers are backing me up on this one and say they’ve got citeable precedent if it comes to that, there is no way I can be held accountable for trespassing on the grounds of Club Boomba because of my FUBU outfit. Yes, I was perfectly aware that the club is sponsored by Tommy Hilfiger, but it was only that morning that Congress passed the Manufacturer’s Safety Zone Act, and I must have missed the newscast. Excuse me? No, actually, I didn’t receive email. My spam filters automatically block legislative status notices from Congress. I was getting fifteen or twenty messages a day, and, honestly, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have those guys on their Block list. What? No, I didn’t know that it was illegal to not read government notices. When was that passed? Really? Wow. Well, okay, yes, two weeks is, arguably, enough to time to have become aware of that, but my therapist suggested a media fast about a month ago and I’ve been trying to follow her advice. Although, really, Renaldo should have filled me in, or at least emailed me a synopsis or something. I’ll have a talk with him about that. Hang on…okay, my lawyers are telling me to plead the fifth on the Ignoring A Government Issuance thing, retroactively. Can I do that?

Damn.

Okay, well…oh, okay the summons for that one just showed up in my In box, so maybe we can deal with it after this FUBU/Hilfiger thing. Okay? Great, thanks.

Okay, so, like I was saying, the trespassing charge really should be dropped because I wasn’t aware that Congress had passed the Manufacturer’s Safety Zone Act legislation, and even if I had been, I don’t think I could expect that the President would have signed it into law so quickly. Isn’t there a grace period on this stuff?

No, I guess I can’t think of reason there would be.

Right, okay. So, in addition to my complete ignorance of legislation that had been passed less that ten hours earlier, the doorstaff at Club Boomba were more than happy to accept my payment of the temporary-user fee and let me through the front door, despite the fact that I was wearing a FUBU jumpsuit when I went in. Have you seen these, your Honor? Okay, well, first of all, it’s FUBUBlue, which, I understand, is a distinct shade licensed from Pantone to FUBU, and is quite unique, designed not to be confused with any other shade of blue you might happen to find on the street. Additionally, there is a ring of light-emitting bacteria circling the chest, back and shoulders that spells out FUBU™ in no fewer than three dozen eye-catching, dayglo colors. Seriously, you can see this thing coming ten blocks away. You can use it as a reading lamp. I’m not kidding; I’ve done it. So even if the doorstaff didn’t happen to notice that distinct FUBUBlue, there’s really no way they could have failed to notice the retina-scorching trademarks emblazoned front, back and side. So that’s point one.

Wait…sorry, my lawyers are telling me to lay off that one. Apparently the doorstaff…hang on…oh, okay, the doorstaff are actually off-duty NYPD officers and are therefore immune from being implicated in wrongdoing in trademark-infringement charges. Something to do with allowing CBS logos on screen during a filming of COPS, they’re telling me. Okay, so, yeah, okay, scratch the whole doorstaff thing. They’ve got nothing to do with any of this. Can I get that stricken from the record?

Damn…and there’s the Slander summons. Great.

Okay, then moving on. Well, once inside Club Boomba I feel that the staff should have informed me that I wasn’t in compliance with the new legislation and asked me to leave the premises, post haste. Which I would have been more than happy to do, your Honor. Or to have gone home and put on a Hilfiger outfit. I’ve got a closet full of them and I know that I’m paid up on that one. I’m as law-abiding as possible. Just apparently stuck with a paralegal assistant that isn’t quite up to snuff. Renaldo told me that he was pre-law at Columbia. I should have checked into that.

Anyway, so instead of telling me that I wasn’t in compliance, the floorstaff actually gave me a table and accepted my drink order. I’m sorry? Oh, a public-domain Gin & Tonic. I used to have a Bombay Sapphire subscription, but it got yanked during my New Year’s party last year. Apparently some of the guests were hitting my bar without keying in their PIN numbers and the ATF ran a random check on my dispenser and figured that I couldn’t put away a couple dozen bottles of proprietary booze all by myself. So, yeah, I’m trying to get all that straightened out, but getting license copies and affidavits license copies out of my friends has been a bit of an uphill battle.

So, yeah, Club Boomba’s management is claiming that I was circling the floor, chatting up everybody I could and telling them how great my FUBU gear was, which is a complete lie. I did talk to one woman who complimented my jumpsuit and I thanked her and did, perhaps, go on for a moment or two about how much I liked it, but that’s it. I certainly wasn’t shilling for FUBU. If I was, do you think they’d be charging me with Illegal Occupancy over something as simple as a lapsed subscription? Anyway, I was not, absolutely, unequivocally not dodging floorstaff and screaming “FUBU!” at the top of my lungs, as I’ve been accused of doing. Like I said, I was given a table and I bought a drink.

No, actually, I can’t prove that I bought a drink, your Honor. That’s part of the problem. As I stated earlier, all my Trademark Distilleries privileges were pulled in this flap with the ATF, so I had to order generic alcohol, which means no PIN number, no background check and no paper trail. And no credit card number, because Club Boomba has a strict cash-only policy that they put into place last year, after one of their bartenders allowed someone’s plastic to sit on the bar, unattended, while they were in the bathroom. The club is fighting the Potential For ID Theft lawsuit right now, actually. I think they’re in the next cubicle. I know I saw the club manager going in there after he testified in here. Or maybe they got some other guy on the same thing they’ve got me on.

So, yeah, I can’t prove that I ordered and received my drink, because Club Boomba claims to be in compliance with CDC Directive 10897, which demands that they sterilize all glassware to remove any residual genetic material left by a customer, so any fingerprints or epithelials I might have been left behind were boiled away in an autoclave in the kitchen. My lawyers are telling me that the glass should have been bagged as evidence for this trial, and that I’ve got a lawsuit on my hands if I could prove that I had a drink, but since I can’t, I don’t. I talked to them about doing a DNA test on the change I received, but since that would cost roughly double the trespassing fine, I figured it wasn’t worth it.

So it seems to me that what was really going on was that the Club Boomba staff was allowing me to be on the premises for the fifteen minutes necessary to prove I was trespassing, as clocked by my thumbprint on the Management Held Unaccountable For Damage Or Death screen at the front door, so they could then have me arrested and fined. I had Renaldo check around the web a bit and it seems like a lot of clubs are doing this now, to keep their corporate sponsors happy. The “See, we’re loyal and we’ll protect your brand,” kind of thing. And while I certainly understand that, I can’t help but feel that there’s something akin to Entrapment going on here, and I’d like to request the charges be dropped in exchange for a written, notarized and entirely sincere apology on my part, and a promise to make sure that I’m aware of any and all current legislation regarding trademark & copyright legislation before I step one foot out of my apartment. Heck, I’ll go one better and fire Renaldo and sign up with a Federally Regulated Automatic Update service. If nothing else, this whole experience has taught me that it’s not worth being a cheapskate when it comes to keeping abreast of the latest legalities.

So, what do you say, your Honor? How about giving a law-abiding consumer a second chance?

Damn. Yeah, okay, go ahead and debit my account. How much? Jeez. Looks like I’m not getting my FUBU subscription back any time soon.

Okay, about that cop Slander thing. Is that a felony or just a fine?

(Okay, here's the deal. I've got an artist friend and we started a thing a year or so ago that we'd do rapidfire creative shit back and forth at each other. He'd shoot me a drawing and I'd write a story in one sitting that used it as a reference, and then shoot the story back to him and he'd use it as a reference for another drawing, which he'd send to me, etc, etc. This was all my idea, and I think I figured if we kept this up and had like an exchange a week, we'd both end up with a bunch of new stuff in rapid order.

Yeah. He sent three drawings, and I responded with two stories. That was about a year ago.

Okay, so the dropped ball is all my fault, but, hey, I suddenly, tonight, I had an idea about the last pic he sent. The last pic being a rough sketch of a youngish woman standing in a bathroom, attempting to...well, that's in the story. You should be able to figure it out.

Anyway, I'm posting this tonight 'cause it's been a while since this page got anything fresh and I can't figure out what the fuck Davey and the Sheik are getting up to. So, anyway, it's rough, but it was written in about two and a half hours, listening to endless loops of 'Gigantic' and 'Where is my mind?'

How come I can only write to Pixies?)

David’s Lovely Button

The problem, Annabelle decided, lay not in the thread, which was a silk certainly fine enough to slip easily through iris and lens and strong enough to bind but not break when pulled taut, nor with the button, which had large, even holes through which to do the work, nor, even, with her hand, which was as steady as an old oak on a calm summer day. No, the problem was most decidedly with the needle itself.

The needle, though quite sharp and of the highest quality steel, was one she had plucked from the tomato pincushion in her sewing basket. Her favorite needle, in fact, smooth and shining and still arrow-straight even though she had run it through any number of hems and pleats and, of course, buttonholes, since she’d purchased it at the drugstore on Grove Street. It was that very straightness, however, that was the problem. How to return the stitch once she had passed it through her eye?

She very briefly pictured the mechanics of a scenario in which she might be able to drive the needle not only through her eye, but back through the socket, through the interior of her skull, out through the carefully coifed hair in the back of her head, and then somehow repeat that, reverse it, and return the stitch and catch the back of the button, pull the thread taut and secure. This was impractical, she decided, and there would most likely be blood. Annabelle had no stomach for gore. She pushed the thought away and filled her mind with thoughts of purring kittens.

She lowered the button from her eye and stared into the bathroom mirror. The blood that concerned her so had made an appearance already, it seemed. Tiny flowers of red just to one side of the muddy brown cornea, where her initial probing with the needle had ruptured the membrane. She took a tissue from the ceramic dispenser and dabbed away the watery red that was beginning to pool along the bottom of her eyelid before it could run her mascara. She had no desire to repair the makeup that she had just now so painstakingly applied.

She set the button on the edge of the sink and sighed and leaned closer into the mirror. She puffed her cheeks to examine the line of rouge she had brushed on, wondering if the dark streak was too garish, too obvious. Truly, she had no practical experience with cosmetics, and had been too intimidated by the perfectly made-up and perfumed countergirl at Macy’s to ask for advice. Annabelle’s mother had taught Annabelle how to cook and to sew and to keep a neat house, but she never seen the decoration of one’s face as a skill valuable enough to pass on to her only daughter.

The button sat on the counter, gleaming in the soft white light from the overhead fixture. It was a lovely button, really. Larger than most other buttons Annabelle had come across, large enough, she had soon seen, to fit precisely in the socket of her eye, framed by eyebrow and cheek. White bone, perfectly cut, polished to a glossy finish with not the slightest chip or pit or scratch to mar the surface. The holes were absolutely round, beveled, spaced with an exactness that spoke to her of engineers and craftsmen conspiring in a basement, working in feverish union to contain soulful beauty and precise design within one simple object.

It was not the sort of gift she had been allowing herself to hope that David might give to her tonight. She had thought that he might present her with flowers, a box of chocolates, perhaps even earrings or a pendant necklace from one of the shops downtown. But, she now realized, she had damned him by imagining him capable of such mundane thoughts. Would a man who could think of nothing more unique than dying plants or mass-produced jewelry that might be spotted on a woman at the next table be the one for her?

No, the gift was exactly what she should have been expecting this whole time. Well, not exactly, of course. She should be able count on him to constantly surprise her, but only in ways that absolutely delighted her. Although she very nearly didn’t allow this particular surprise to come to her. When the messenger boy had buzzed the apartment, Annabelle had initially ignored the cawing of the intercom, as was her usual action. The buzzer was always a mistake, a delivery man or infrequent visitor to the building mistaking her apartment for one of the several others occupied by families named Smith, as listed under scratched plexiglass on the listing next to the lobby door. But the cawing continued. Twice, three times, four, five, until she had finally stormed from the bedroom, where she had been agonizing between her mother’s black satin cocktail dress and the pink gown Annabelle had once intended to wear to her junior prom, and punched the button and yelled into the speaker that whoever it was had the wrong apartment.

“Wait, is this, uh…Annabelle Smith?”

Annabelle thought for a moment, attempting to remember if any of the Smith women she’d met in the laundry room or at the mailboxes had shared her first name. She was sure they hadn’t, but couldn’t be sure that she had, in fact, met all of the Smith women who lived in the building.

“I’ve got a package here from a David Hargrove. He said that you’d recognize the name.”

Annabelle hesitated, finger resting on the button that would release the lobby door, wondering if this was a trick. A little voice inside of her insisted that it must be, that whoever was waiting down by the lobby door had nothing from David, but was instead a predator, an urban cheetah, a slavering lunatic who, if Annabelle allowed him entrance, would find her and break through the locks on her door and pin her to floor and devour her whole. But how would such a beast get David’s name? There were possibilities, of course. That David had been kidnapped and tortured by this lunatic, and that he had coughed up Annabelle’s name only at the very edge of death, after the bastard had nipped off his fingers and toes with a pair of bolt cutters, had inserted burning sulfur matches into razored slits in his flesh, that was one way. Or he was rogue telephone repairman who had climbed up the pole that David’s line was hooked to and had tapped it and traced the call he had made to Annabelle’s apartment and was now going to kidnap her to force David to produce a massive ransom or to kill an important celebrity. That was a distinct probability. And, of course, there was a whole slew of scenarios that involved the CIA, the FBI, the KGB, MI5, Skull & Bones, the Masons, the Illuminati. Annabelle’s father had impressed upon her at quite a young age extensive knowledge of the sheer number of cabals and power brokers that existed in the world, who amused themselves by kidnapping and torturing anyone foolish enough to be noticed by them in the first place. But as Annabelle had been keeping her head down and her lips sealed for the last thirty-some-odd years, she was fairly certain that none of the shadow organizations were involved in this.

In the end, it was simple curiosity that won out. She buzzed in the messenger and stood with her back to the wall next to the door with one of her father’s golf clubs held in both hands and called through the door, her voice nothing but tremor and squeak, for him to leave the package on the welcome mat. She stood with her back to the wall, the golf club in sweating palms, until she heard his footsteps clack to the end of the long tiled hallway, and the distant bongbong of the elevator departing. She waited ten minutes, listening carefully for a telltale creaking of floorboards or heavy maniacal breathing, then opened the door and found a small cardboard box on the mat, half-covered by the messenger’s receipt. She brought it inside quickly, barely taking the time to slam the door shut and turn the locks, slitting the tape with a kitchen knife and then stepping back, anxious to see but wanting to savor the moment.

And there it was, perfectly cradled in pale green tissue, that lovely, lovely button shining up at her, and a note, written in David’s distinct, swooping hand, Annabelle, I saw this in an antique store and immediately thought of you. I hope you’ll find a way to wear it this evening. See you soon – David.

She couldn’t remember ever having smiled so widely as she did as she read his note. Such a perfect gift from such a perfect suitor. Perfect because she had told him that she liked to sew, and he had filed that information away and brought it forth at the perfect time. She recalled the conversation perfectly. He had come into the bookstore for the third day in a row and had milled about in the poetry section, randomly picking tomes off the shelf and putting them back, occasionally sneaking glances at her behind the counter. She was watching him do it, pretending to read a novel, a small smile on her lips, knowing that he had come in for no other reason than to see her, to speak with her. He’d settled on a volume of Milton, perhaps to impress her, and had complimented her dress while she rang him up. She had stood back as far as she could behind the cramped register stand and posed for him, and then told him that she had made it herself. He had been suitably impressed and three days after that he came into the shop and asked her to dinner. She had accepted with a small smile and flushed cheeks.

But where to wear the button? It looked horribly out of place on the shimmering black cocktail dress and it practically disappeared against the pale pink of the gown. Neither would do, would it? Such a gift, such a thoughtful, meaningful gift, deserved to be the centerpiece of her outfit, not an accessory that would get lost in the clatter of shiny cloth, to be noticed only by the giver and no one else. She had held it against her throat, thinking that perhaps she could string it on black ribbon, make a choker out of it, or, laughing as she held it against her forehead, build it into a tiara and pretend she was a princess for the evening. And then lowering it down, across her face, seeing, in the mirror. Something about how it so perfectly occluded her eye. Seeing how it just…fit, placed into the socket, how it settled smoothly into the angles of the nose, the cheek. How it looked as though it had been designed to fit her, and to fit perfectly in just that one spot.

And so. It had to be. Once placed properly, there was no doubt at all. And, of course, there was simply only one way to attach a button. Assuming of course, one could figure out how to get around the tricky business of the needle.

Ah.

Her father’s old tackle box in the back of the hall closet, all the gear he had gathered over years of fishing in back country lakes, the lures and bobbers and weights. And the hooks, of course. Razor sharp, designed to pierce and return in one motion. And, she was delighted to find, just the right size to slip through the holes of David’s lovely button.

And later, examining herself in the bathroom mirror, she had to say that it was an excellent job, even though she’d had to knot the silk on the outside. Her stitches were neat and straight and taut, the button nestled snugly against her nose. She smiled at herself and touched up her hair and daubed a tissue at the pinkish liquid seeping out from between the button and her cheek. She hoped that it would stop before David called for her. Wiping at her face throughout dinner was hardly an invitation to romance.

The intercom cawed and Annabelle dashed into the master bedroom to bid her mother and father goodbye. Their shrouds shown pale white in the darkened room, freshly laundered and replaced just that morning. She kissed her mother’s cheek through the thin white silk, and patted her father’s shriveled hand where it peeked out at the edge of the bed. She smiled at them, the button riding up as her cheek rose. She felt fresh drops spill out and she patted them dry. David would understand. He was an understanding sort of man.

“Wish me luck. I love you both.”

And with that, she dashed out of the apartment, eager to show David how delighted she was with his lovely button.

Twentythree

I haven’t been sleeping. I’ve been in bed, my eyes have been closed. I’ve been breathing deep and regular. I’ve been allowing my mind to wander where it will. The shades are drawn and the apartment’s a mine shaft from end to end. The television, the stereo, the computer are in pieces on the carpet. The phone is a heap of broken plastic and dayglo wiring. The door is locked and deadbolted and one of the dining table chairs is wedged under the knob. I removed the Nokia’s battery and threw it out the window, out into the weeds that ring the parking lot and stuffed the phone itself into the sweater drawer of my dresser.

It rings anyway.

First it rings like it always rings, that ring-RING-RING-RING ascending scale thing. And then it’s quiet for a few minutes. Then it rings Beethoven’s Fifth. Then it rings Jingle Bells. Then it rings the Mexican Hat Dance. Buried underneath ten pounds of wool and fleece, it sounds like it’s sitting on the pillow next to me. It rings five times and then goes to voicemail and it’s quiet for a few minutes and then it rings again, scrolling through all the ringtones the people at the wireless company loaded into it when I signed up for my plan. Once it doesn’t ring but I hear it buzzing away, hear the dresser rattling against the wall. The vibrate setting, I figure.

It’s about three in the morning. It’s been doing this since midnight. Before that my computer was sending me instant messages every five seconds or so, windows popping up in the middle of the screen while I tried to compose email, tried to surf for porn. Davey, hey, what’s up man? Davey, yo, you there? Davey, hey, got something to talk to you about…are you Away? I finally just disconnected the thing, but the windows kept coming. I cracked the case, pulled the modem. Endless windows, overlapping each other, the speaker crackling with every New Message beep. I shut it down, the windows kept coming, killed the power, they kept coming. Unplugged it, windows. Pulled the monitor cord, the keyboard cord, yanked out the mouse, picked up the tower and smashed it against the wall. That stopped it.

The tv turned itself on, models selling diet sodas calling my name, rerun sitcom stars beckoning. Laura Petrie in her capri slacks, vacuuming, asking me to come closer. Jerry Seinfeld looking straight at the camera, telling me he’s got something to talk to me about. I tip the set off its stand and yank the cord out of the wall. The stereo clicked on, U2 singing my name, Bono telling me that I can’t ignore him forever. I put my boot through the receiver and both speakers. I tore the phone off the wall before it had a chance to ring. Flipped the breakers and killed all the power. Dismembered my Nokia and brushed my teeth in the dark and went to bed.

And in the dark, listening to The Minuet, to The Star-Spangled Banner, the theme from Rocky, bouncing little monophonic notes drilling into my head. Itching to get out of bed, dig out the Nokia, accept the call. Listen to the Voice on the other end, all that thunder and bass and gravel. Nod and drool and feel my brain melt as it lays down whatever truth it’s got for me tonight. Just give in. Just accept.

Till the sun comes up. And everything stops, and I go to work.

It takes me twenty minutes to find the Nokia’s battery, out in the weeds around the parking lot.