By Evil-floaty

It's five past four in the morning and the door tries to tackle me as I come in. I stomp the gutter muck off my shoes to announce my arrival…and it looks like I’m passing out wolf tickets from the gazes I get from the staff.

“Sorry I gotta make you folks work.” I said under my drunken breath.

I yanked a crooked chesterfield from behind my ear. Cracked a match off on the Naugahyde seat next to the doorway and fired one up. I pushed up my old Dobbs from my eyes and scanned the “interior” if you will.

I plopped down at a window booth and got cozy, actually kind of wishing that sleep would come to me soon.

No such luck here.

I got the nighthawk disease in spades and it’s wrecking all sorts of havoc in my RNA, DNA, and Genome.

Runs in the family…. My Pa was one too, just can’t fight what you are.

The waitress breaks up my monologue with myself. “You know what you want?”

“Yeah, chicken fried steak, dark gravy, mashed potatoes white gravy and coffee.”

“What you need is patty wagon and a drunk tank, next time you drink that swill that you think might pass as alcohol, why don’t you make sure it hits your mouth and not down the front of your shirt.”

“Touché “I said with a wink. Boy, the tip I’m gonna leave for her.

I know the routine in places like this; you might as well prepare yourself a wooden kimono cause the dinner’ll get her just as you give up the ghost.

The waitress, apply named Riki comes back with my coffee. Peering into the cup I see the coffee bifurcated with some soap residue, I throw in the sugar and half and half any ways. I’ve drunk worse.

Riki floats off to behind the counter where she turns in my order and to have her blood replaced with ice water.

I catch a glimpse of a Wurlitzer in the corner of café. “This thing plugged in?” I grumbled.

“Yeah” The cook says. “But it only takes dimes.”

I looked over the list of songs for one that screamed for me to play it.

Running my finger up and down the songs absently, I ran upon an old Rock-a-Billy song called “Do the Ray Leota” by Ned Puma and his Pomade Panthers. I knew this song was sure to cause trouble. I coughed out a snicker that blew the ash off my chesterfield that was hanging from my bottom lip. The song blasted out with a surf riff, and a throbbing stand up bass. “Do the Ray Leota!” I screamed along with it, in my worst Sid Vicious imitation, I duck walked a couple steps stood up with a spin, did a little jig with some hard boxing punches and ended my little dance with a disco pose.

Wahoo! The booze came back in full effect.

I walked carefully back to my booth breathing hard. It’s funny how when you do a little calisthenics this fading buzz comes back with a vengeance. I sat back down and stubbed out my cigarette, wishing I had some more. I looked over to the kitchen wondering how much longer it was on my grub. I sipped my coffee, which was better than expected. Just six hours old, I thought to myself. The dish pig came out from behind the counter and pulled out a smoke from his rolled up sleeve. “Could you spare one of those?” I said with a sideways grin.

The dish pig tossed me the pack. “Here, you look like your night’s just started.”

“You know it brother.” I toasted him with my cup o’ mud.

“You a big Ned Puma fan?”

“Back in my youth” I said lighting up a cigarette.

“Wasn’t he from Arkansas?”

“From the hills of Luxorah.”

“Too bad he died in that wreck eh?” He said leaning back against a barstool.

“Ran straight into that concrete embankment. I heard his daughter’s heading the band now.”

“No kidding? I wouldn’t mind hearing that.”

I guess that was the end of our conversation after that. He stubbed out his smoke and went back to his dishes.

Not long after, the waitress came back with my meal, the moment the smell of food hit my nostrils I felt like I might heave.

The food should provide ballast to the sea of scotch in my stomach.

“Everything in order?” Riki ask from over her shoulder.

I guess she could feel me nodding from behind her.

She padded off to wherever she disappeared to in the first place, and left me with my culinary dilemma. I swallowed hard and took a bite of the chicken fried steak…

Hold that thought for now. Right now. We are frozen in time. Right now, I have a big piece of chicken fried steak in my mouth, and I am chewing it, or was chewing it. I am also looking down into the meat. Hold, right there.

It was a late night at the hotel that I live in. And I was looking out the window wishing for something interesting to happen, working on my second bottle of scotch. I opened my window to let in a cool autumn breeze come in and cut through the nicotine high-pressure zone in the surrounding areas of my table and portable radio. I was looking down in the neighboring alleyway when a garbage truck came slowly down it. Lurching toward the dumpster at it’s end.

As it pushed through, it knocked over a can causing crap to slip out onto the ground, which brought out all kinds of vermin.

Cats, rats… the usual that comes out to find a quick meal.

Most of the animals had the art of “snatch and grab” down to an art form, all but one old calico, who was so old he didn’t seem to care that everything around him got what it wanted then scurried back into the shadows when they heard the shrill chirping of the truck as it back up.

The rear wheel caught the hindquarters of the feline and slowly began to back up. The calico let out a shriek as it clawed at the ground to pull itself free. No such luck. The shrieking continued that is until the tire inched its way up to the cat’s stomach.

Now how can I explain what happened next? It was as if the cat was a tube of toothpaste, and the tire of the garbage truck was slowly pushing all the toothpaste out the little opening in front.

All of the viscera of the cat came out of its mouth, in a slow arch. First it was just blood. Then what looked like the esophagus turned inside out, then the pinkish stomach that bubbled and hissed as it made it’s exit from the cat’s mouth, and then more blood and what seemed to be the liver and the large intestines that hung on one of the cats teeth, causing a split to open up and bile to pour forth. Then more blood, darker this time.

When the tire came to the cats head, the eyes launched from their sockets as if propelled, like the cork from an old toy rifle, complete with the string tether to keep the cork from flying to far away. The truck left just a carcass, empty of all its entrails and fluids on the asphalt. A literal buffet, for the rest of the creatures that make that alley their home.

Now let’s come back to the present, where I have a bite of chicken fried steak in my mouth, but all I see on my plate is the cat in the alley.

Then I puke.

The noise that happens next scares me into swallowing down the vomit working its way up my throat. Nothing but razor hot scotch and stomach acid. The dish pig baseball slides up to my booth with a bust tub. I cough a little and dry heave just a bit, but I manage to down the rest of my coffee to act as a bouncer to anything trying to get past my mouth. You check in but you don’t check out.

“Man the colors your faced changed, I aint ever seen!” The dish pig said with a sigh.

“Thanks.” I coughed. “You scared it back down. Maybe you just wanna take this meal away from me, and freshen me up with another cup.”

The dish pig busted my table faster than a pit crew at a NASCAR race. I was too busy making a mental check to see if I got any on me to say thanks. I took off my hat, and wiped my brow, all that heaving got me sweaty.

Riki came back with my refill of joe. I ignored the temperature of the liquid and downed it like was a whiskey shot.

“You in a hurry pal?” She said leaning against my table, her thick meaty hip cut into by the Formica. I wonder just how long she’s been wearing that uniform.

“Just trying to sign a peace treaty with my stomach.” I said looking into my empty cup.

I noticed she was absent-mindedly thumbing a phantom ring on her left hand. Ah…. Divorced.

“Open for suggestions?” I said trying to round up my greasy hair to resemble something normal.

I pushed the pack of smokes toward her in an offering. She looked down, took out the lucky and lit one up. “You smoke the same type as Andrew”.

I guess that’s the dish pig.

“He gave ‘em to me.” I said trying to keep eye contact with her. Working my subliminal charm, or at least trying to. Squeezing everything I had out of it. Then I have a flash back of cat guts.

My stomach winced.

“Can I get a glass of water too?” I asked, clutching my chest trying to psychically hold down the heartburn that I knew would be coming soon. I wanted to try and break up all the alcohol drifting around in my guts with water to dilute and caffeine to sober me up a little.

Riki spun slowly on the heels of her ugly black shoes that looked like she got them from her father’s closet. The squeak of her shoes was canceled out by the soothing sound of her nylons, rubbing against each other as she walked back to the wait station for my water.

What a wonderful sound that is.

I closed my eyes and drifted into a daydream about the sound that I focused on. Riki was good looking, not by magazine status, but she did have a freshness about her that didn’t make her look road hard and put away wet. She has that Marg Helgenberger kind of roughness about her. The

lines around her eyes made you think of someone, who has never needed makeup to be beautiful. They say that everyone looks better when you got a stomach full of sauce, but that crap wore off of me a long time ago. I know beauty when I see it, even if she doesn’t.

I tried playing the “Who me?” angle with her. I knew that being confident in myself and strutting around this greasy spoon wouldn’t help me on bit so I figured that I would act like I had no charm and that, would be my charm. She came back to my table with a bigger glass of ice water

for me, and stood next to the table while I drank it down in big gulps.

“Listen, I’m sorry for talking smack to you when you first came in.”

“Oh that’s-“

“No, its not…It’s just really late.”

“Or really early” I said trying to interject humor into her aura.

“So this ice water come straight outa you?”

She giggled and loosened up her scowl just enough to let her eyebrows arch.

“Yeah, I had Merle take it out of me and fix me up with a coffee transfusion.”

“Merle, your man?” I said sheepishly while she refilled my water.

“No,no…He’s my boss.”

“Merle mind if you took a break and fraternized with a customer?”

“Merle! I’m taking a break!” She yelled back into kitchen area.

Merle just made a loud grunting noise back.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She said as she scooted into my booth and sat in front of me.

Her feet slid up next to me in my seat, those ugly grandfather shoes starring up at me.

“You like em?”

“Well, they got personality.”

“They got personality?” She said lighting up a smoke.

“Yep.” Was all I said, trying to steer clear of an argument but then I thought that I was just prolonging a fecal hurricane.

“They look like something out of Czechoslovakian art film, all you need to complete the ensemble is a gray wool dress suit and black rimed clunky glasses.

“Actually, I left my glasses in my purse.” She said in mid exhale taking the wind out of my sails.

“I’m sorry…Look I-“

“It’s ok. I take it as a compliment.”

“Really?”

“I always thought they looked more like they were from Prague.” She said tapping them together. “Have you ever been to Prague?”

“Yes I have.” Watching her eyes light up.

“A man of the world, hmm? You lying to me?” She said, pointing her cigarette in my direction.

“If I’m lying then you would know.”

“How’s that?”

“Cause I am terrible at it. I can’t even lie to call in sick at a job. I end up telling them why I don’t want to come in.”

“And then you get a raise for being honest?”

“No, then I get the ax.” I said, making a chopping motion in the air.

“But you have been to Prague?”

“Yeah I’ve been to Prague. It was nice there, once you got used to all the pickpockets. The buildings were beautiful remnants of a forgotten time, it’s almost as if someone squished several time lines together and put it all into one town.”

“So how did you get there?” She asked, now very curious about my story.

“I was in a band called A little bit a Jim Jones. We didn’t do to well here in the states cause of our name and we started up about a year before the whole Jonestown incident. And our label dropped us cause we refused to change our name. So we went to Europe and played all over there. Everyplace we could think of.”

“So they liked you in Prague?”

“Yeah, they really liked us there. So we stayed around for a while…. then a while ended up a little longer than what we imagined. We broke up and most of the members found women there and they settled down. I just drifted around for a while.”

“Did you ever see the Astronomical Clock?” She said in wonder.

“It was the reason why I left Prague. It became the reason for a lot of things in my life.” I said looking down at my empty glass of water. All these cold flashes of memories were sobering me up too quickly.

She noticed me looking down at the glass and went to get me a refill then returned at once. I lit another cigarette while she was gone. I cracked off a wooden match, then blew out the flame after I lit my smoke, then I held the spent match up to my nose and inhaled the fumes.

When Riki came back with my water, I didn’t wait for her to set down. I started right in.

“That clock is over 700 years old. When it strikes the hour, a skeleton comes out holding an hourglass and rings a bell, then a Turk comes out and draws his scimitar. A door opens and figures come out and move across the top of the clock.”

I took a sip of the water she placed in front of me and took a slow pull off my cigarette.

“The man that made that clock was brilliant beyond his years. His mind was something that maybe none of us will ever come close to understanding. I mean history has literally blurred away his name and he’s become just a morality lesson to people, an urban legend. The stupid towns people thought that the clock was magical. They thought that the clockmaker was some sort of sorcerer. So instead of respecting him for his talent the townsfolk were greedy and didn’t want him to go out in the world and make another one for another town. They blinded him so he could never make another “magic” clock ever again. Then irony struck and clock became still and didn’t move for 300 years. Nobody knew how to fix it.”

“That’s a sad story.”

“So that’s the reason why I left Prague. I gave up on humanity that would cripple you for making

something special so no one else could have it. That be like shooting Johnny Cash right after he sold an album that went platinum. What’s the use of it?” I said stubbing out my smoke and gulping the last of my water.

I looked past the condensation on the diner windows and out into the morning now. You could see the hint of color change in the sky.

Dawn has broken and it has left me depressed and sober.

Riki stood up from my booth and looked down at me like she was waiting for me to ask her something.

“Listen do you need a ride home? My shift is about to end.”

“Nah, why would you wanna do that?” I said playing with a butt in the ashtray.

“Because I want to…uh… You know I never got your name.”

“It’s Tom.” I said giving her my hand.

“I’m sure that Merle would let me leave a little early. Let’s get out of here.”

“Why?” I said look up at her. Her eyes held my face softly like cool morning breeze.

“Cause I’m a glutton for punishment.” She said with a smile.

“Then go get your coat.” I said leaving a twenty down for a tip.

I picked my old dobbs hat, brushed the ashes off of it and waited for her at the door.

The end