I stepped through the arch, hugging the wall. Quietly peering to my left and right to see if there were any sneakies out there waiting to snare me, I soaked up my surroundings, noticing another door on my right. Following the light and shadows cast by the chandeliers, I spit on my hand to lube it up a bit, put my index and middle finger in the hole where the handle should have been, and placed my thumb above the hole, pressing with a moderate amount of force, twisting and turning, jiggling my fingers around, pressing the weight of what was left of my body against the wood to open the heavy door.

I finally started to get some of the answers to the questions I’d asked myself about that odd fermenting smell. In my cell I’d kinda gotten used to it, but coming in here was much too much.  The scent of rot was taking over and making it more and more difficult to breathe.  When I pushed open the door, it sucked the air from my lungs and I started dry heaving violently. I gasped as I felt the room inhaling me. I had no choice but to inhale it back. We volleyed our breaths back and forth before I submitted and crawled towards it.

Hundreds and hundreds of salami hanging from the ceiling covered in mold and cobwebs. The rest of the room didn’t seem to have much order.  Aside from the meticulous hanging of the curing meat, it was chaos. Pure chaos. Disorganized junk. Detritus. Skin.

Several objects that resembled human bodies, but made from random odds and ends. A patchwork of warped wood, rusty metal, and faded leather.  They looked like mannequins. All female. None finished. Like they were trying to remake someone… and then stopped.

Coils of rope as tall as me, wound like cobras. Lampshades and shackles and chains.

A few headless wonders, chained together.  They looked like waxxies.  How long had they been here like this? Why were they here to begin with?

I made an attempt to crawl my way through all the salami and look out the window, only to realize there was nothing on the other side of it. A roof to a barn maybe. Or a stable. I couldn’t see through the window very well, but the way the sun was deafened by a large dark space near the ground covered in tiles, it was my only guess.

There was a crate of dried-up grape skins, covered in fruit flies and starting to get moldy and fuzzy around the edges.  They were still a bit damp though…

An old fashioned grape smoosher thing was in the corner covered in stains and collecting dust. Filthy. It looked like it hadn’t been used for a while.

A few machines were the only things that seemed to be clean.  Machines for bottling wine.  What was happening here and what were they doing with the machines…?

“Eat. Drink. Write if you’d like.”

I wasn’t that hungry and not very thirsty. I didn’t really wanna write anything either.  I sucked up the scent of the tangerines while I peeled them, blankly staring at my reflection in the coffee.  Putting this much acid in my tummy when it was this empty was probably not the best idea, but I was thin.  My eyes were sunken in and my cheekbones were sunken out. My face had grown scratchy too.

When he turned and walked away, the door squeaked shut behind him. I didn’t hear the click of the latch though, and my curiosity got the best of me. With the door ajar, I tip-toed over to the crack where the light came through, making sure tweedle-dee and tweedle-dummer didn’t hear me…

Some guy sporting a lab coat or a butchers smock was hunched over in the corner, fiddling around with a strange device that looked like some kind of Naziesque type shit, and had a bombola attached to it, mixing or churning something. Speaking of mixing and churning, my guts were doing somersaults and cartwheels, and even threw in a couple pirouettes. I mean, obviously I couldn’t see the inside of my own thorax, but it tended to have a mind of it’s own, and if I knew it, I was pretty sure it was just trying to show off.

I couldn’t really tell what was going on from where I was on the floor, tucked in the corner leaning up against the cold stone, but I heard squishing and squashing followed by metal on metal, and then a chuckle.

“Open your mouth. Drink.” My fingers were wrapped around a glass test tube and forced to make a fist. The tubby one put a damp cloth on my forehead while the beanpole watched. I didn’t get the impression these two wonkies had malicious intentions, so without putting up a fight and little hesitation, down the hatch it went. It was kinda thick and tasted like glue, grappa, and tonka beans, but easily slid down my throat, leaving a weird film coating the inside of my mouth… It wasn’t exactly what I would have described as “drinkable”…

I got on my elbows army-style and started dragging my broken body and pretzely legs behind me. I crawled over to what looked like a window, using the stones in the wall to hold me. Pulling myself onto the ledge, and resting my chin halfway up, I could see nothing but a light on the other side. The window was covered in filth and cobwebs, and the large iron bars made it almost impossible to get my head in there to really get a good look. Maybe if I tried to tug, budge, and move some shit around I’d have some luck, but I didn’t really want to get my hands too icky, so luckless I was. Not to mention I had no idea what I’d do once I was able to displace a thing or two anyhow.

I was weak. Holding myself up against the wall and shimmying around, when I found another opening that gave me a view of what looked like a river… or the sea. There was no glass, but the iron wasn’t going anywhere either. There was a freight liner in the distance. And land. With a flag.

A couple of meters to the left and I located another opening that gave me a view to some sort of a courtyard with what appeared to be a scattering of headstones and a cat that reminded me of a maneki neko or… bakeneko. It sat there so still, fluttering it’s eyelashes, half-asleep, basking in the reddish light that lit up the garden the way little kitties like to do…

One of the other walls inside this… cell, had some Italian scribbled on it in what looked like it might have been written with blood or chocolate. ‘Twas starting to look like I wasn’t the only one. Someone was here before, but the two lumpy guys that were here now, and whoever it was that wrote this on the wall, didn’t seem to be too disturbed by this prison.

From where I was, I could look down and see another chamber sort of thing that appeared to be open, with high ceilings and hieroglyphic looking shit on the walls. I didn’t know what any of it meant. So big and so empty. Dust everywhere.

In the other direction, there was a small staircase leading up to a passageway, that again, was behind more iron bars. This place was old. This place was really fucking old.

Was I in a cellar. An attic maybe. It was dark and damp and smelled like grape must or cognac, sea water, and salumi. Something nearby was fermenting. A lot of it.

An ornate, metal door blocked my path in the opposite direction. With almost no strength, and the warrior inside of me on hiatus, I thought it best to play possum until I could build myself up a bit more. Get a bit more of an idea of exactly where I was and how I was going to get myself out… I was gonna have to do everything I could to prevent myself from going completely ba-noodly in here…

…but from way down below, there was no way in hell anybody could hear me way up there anyway. Nodding back off was probably the best option for now. I could probably take the skinny guy. The fucker wasn’t much bigger than a pile of dope, and the chubster was probably slow enough to give me a head start once I snorted the shoelace. Fuck it. Where the fuck would I go. I thought I’d lay up here for a bit and see what these cats wanted to do with a useless old dish rag like me.

At least I might be able to have a sweet little dream of milk and honey flowing all over her little titties and on the insides of her thighs, lapping it up and sucking up the sweat that gathered in the dimples on her lower back and in her belly button like the naughty little hummingbird I fancied myself to be. Either that or nightmares about vultures picking my eyes out of my skull with their beaks and those squawky noises they always make when they hang out together in the desert.

And in a low grumble and growl, the goblin inside of me told me to kill myself. Again. If the goblin got out again, well, let’s just say it was gonna git really ugly ’round here… I was getting tired of trying to keep the miscreant in me all bottled up and didn’t have enough fingers to count all the reasons why it’d be a good thing to open the cage. In fact I kinda even felt sorry for the hood. So. Fuck him. Fuck her. Fuck them. There would only be us. Us three. No lying sluts. No jealous dabblers. No overachieving entrepreneurs. No ungrateful mother fuckers with their hands in my pockets. Nobody thought I had it all upstairs anyhow, so what did I really have to lose.

I expected to wake-up dead in a box. Maybe some slow singing and flower bringing. I didn’t expect anyone to cry or lose sleep over it, but… Wait. I couldn’t be dead. It was always other people that died. I wasn’t going out like that. If I wasn’t dead though, then where the fuck was I. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t understand what was going on. It was snowing now. It wasn’t before. This wasn’t Paris. This wasn’t even France. I was laying in the street. Not really the middle, but off to the side a bit. Kind of on the sidewalk and kind of not, but still run-overable. Freezing. Numb. Rubbing my eyes with hands that felt like boxing gloves, trying to make something out of my surroundings.

Someone was standing above me. A woman, I think. I couldn’t turn my neck to look up and get a peek, but only sideways at the leather boots and snow packed cobblestones. I wasn’t sure who it was. They said nothing. I smelled her though. It was definitely a her.

She grabbed me by the arm, yanked me on my feet and braced my body with her shoulder. God, she smelled good. She smelled like new skin. Like a baby. I felt her hair brush against my cheek and her tender fingers against my ribs as she wrestled with my limp body. I felt like she was an angel, saving me from all of the pain and broken hearts I felt recently. I had no idea what she intended on doing with me, but I was enjoying the thought that she wanted to comfort me and nurse me back to health. Maybe even breastfeed me. Or not. That was a memory from the past that I would rather forget.

Apparently Marseilles wasn’t in the cards for me this time around. She struggled to drag me to the back of a wagon she set near the road, and then lift me in the back. The final push knocked my head against the rusty, frozen metal and I started throwing up. I heard a radio in the background. It was that damn pocket radio I decided to snag before I…

Knocking me around must have turned it on in my pocket, but it was in Italian. Was I back in Italy? While she rolled me across the snow and ice covering the road, towards the back of a parked car, I was trying to gather bits and pieces about things to try to figure out where I was.

Then I was picked-up, dropped, scooped back up, and heaved-up into a car. I was in the passenger seat, barely sitting up. I could feel my hair growing and every pore had a single droplet of sweat attached to it. I felt like a sack o’ taters. I couldn’t make out the license plate, as she hushed my moaning with a finger on my lips, never saying a word. Clutching my torso with what little control and strength I had over my own limbs.

The door got slammed on my knee, but I only saw it out of the corner of my eye. I felt nothing. My tingers and foes were all fingly. I smelled blood and an infection. Something was definitely infected. I knew that smell. I also smelled the vanilla and cardamom in my pocket. If Marseilles wasn’t happening, then I suppose there was no need for those things anymore. I guess for now, it helped to cover the overwhelming scent of rot, but it also masked the amazing scent of my new friend or companion or whoever she was. I inhaled every breath of her inside of that unheated car as if it were my last. She lit a cigarette and put it to my lips. I inhaled and she gently drew it back to her mouth. A few rough pulls and it was back against my mouth. I couldn’t tell what was my breath and what was smoke I was so cold. The smell was making me sick. It touched her mouth though. That was all I needed right now. Whoever the fuck she was.

I couldn’t speak. I tried to scream. Nothing but blood and drool came out of my mouth. I was nauseous and spinny. My head was like a pendulum, swinging back and forth on the little stringy, gunky stuff inside my neck. I wanted to go. I wanted to go home with her and take a hot bath and cuddle up next to a candle and shoot cocaine until we ground our own teeth out of our skulls.

I saw what I thought was a phone booth on the side of the road. It was there. Then it was gone. I thought it was my only possibility for being saved. Or was I already saved. Did I even need to be saved. All I could do was groan and sweat. Shivering.

I was starting to nod off again. I was drifting. It was bright, and white, and she was naked. Standing above me, smiling, naked, with her breasts in her hands. She laid next to me on the pile of feathers, with her fingers walking and touching her body everywhere, and I rested my head on her stomach, listening to the heartbeat of our baby. Her breath was like honey and her skin like milk. Rubbing her raisin fingers across my lips to taste her.

She never spoke, but when she blinked her eyes, it was so slow and meaningful. Like she didn’t want to stop staring at me. Her hand in mine. Whispering lullabies to me in Italian. She was guiding me off to sleep. She wasn’t going to let me die just yet. She kissed me on the forehead with her cracked lips, as if to say, “Go to sleep. I will be here when you wake, today and everyday, for the rest of your life.” I was naked. On all fours, strutting around the room playing, like I was a child. She didn’t want me to fall, and held my dishrag body like a marionette as I melted into the scenery.

The last thing I remember seeing before I drifted back out, was a sign. It was a sign near Slovenia. I’d been here before, I thought. How was I here now? Why was I in so much pain? Why was I like this? Where in the fuck was she taking me and what was she going to do with me? If I woke the way I fell asleep, I would never need to think of Marseilles and it’s horrible memories again. I secretly hoped that my reason for finding Marseilles would somehow find me, but it didn’t seem very likely. She wasn’t good for anything but excuses and broken promises anyway.

The plan was to spend a day or so gathering my wits.  You know.  Stay alert.  Calm down.  Act normal.  Eat some meat.  Sleep.  Shit.  Wake-up.  Go outside.  Go back inside.  Fuck.  Shit.  Snort.  Snort while fucking.  Fuck while snorting.  Smoke.  Shit.  Eat more meat.  Sleep.  Snort.  Fuck.  Shit.  Eat.  Sleep.  Eat.  Sleep.  Dig.  Smoke.  Fuck.  Smoke.  Cry.  Fuck.  Eat more meat.  Drink.  Shit.  Slurp.  Chomp.  Grind.  Swallow.  Guzzle.  Fuck.  Eat more meat.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Mingle.  Mangle.  Shit.  Search.  Search for the bitch that told me Jesus gave her AIDS.

I was gonna need to get my shit together to pull this off cleanly.  I needed to be ruthless and heartless.  For real though.  My conscience always tried to get the best of me, so I reasoned with myself and thought that maybe if we shared the chores and guilt involved with “the clean-up”, I might not be so overwhelmed by the remorse.  Even with Cagnes and his fucking brainwashing techniques, he couldn’t get through to all of us. I mean, fuck.  I had a heart.  Less now than I did before, but I did.  I kinda didn’t realize it until she left I guess, but still, I wasn’t an animal like everyone thought I was.  This would be exceptionally difficult for me, considering there would be a lot of love and other tangly, wretched emotions involved.

And that mental note I made about getting my shit together wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been either.  Trying to figure out the best place to put an old knife I had layin’ around the house was starting to feel like work, since the revolver Cagnes gave me had to go somewhere too.  I suppose I didn’t really need the knife since I had the gun, but I felt like the knife might be a bit more… romantic.  Intimate maybe.  Maybe I didn’t need it.  I was panicky though.  Maybe over-prepared even.  I did a quick inventory of my pockets to see if I was missing anything I may need.  Bullets, heroin, Metro tickets, pocket change, a vanilla bean, some cardamom pods, tobacco, Valium, fleur de sel, a half-empty bottle of resentment, torn wallet, random keys, a radio I found, and my journal.  I tried to put everything in place and remember where it was, but once I slid the knife in my pants near my kidneys, I got twichety again and forgot everything I just did.

I thought I’d get some rest and lay low for a few days, do some shopping, some eating, and of course some heavy stalking.  It felt like the only things I could trust anymore where the stray cats, random detritus and anything else that temporarily took up residence here.  I didn’t even trust myself to do what I needed to do.  Creeping myself out.  Even with the buggies and all the other stuff that came out at night, I was still the most verminous creature of them all, but a cold-blooded killer I was not.  Tucking myself in, surrounded by graffiti and barf – it was gonna be a chilly night.  Startin’ to get back into my greasy mind to help conjure up the courage to execute a perfect… execution.

I drunkenly made a timid call from a run down telephone booth over on Rue Denfert Rochereau.  I was sitting down by the river next to a busker, skipping stones, stirring my guts up drinking Dubonnet and telling a park bench how much I didn’t wanna deal with this shit.  She acted surprised, but wasn’t, and agreed to meet me for lunch at a little joint I heard about from an old friend.  I always kept the name of it scribbled on the inside of the pocket journal I carried everywhere, and when I excitedly mentioned it, she sounded about as interested in going there as she did in having me shoot a hole in the side of her head.  I was gonna be gonna be 2-0 within the hour.

As I approached the joint we decided on for coffee or wine or whatever it was I dribbled out over the scratchy payphone, I gathered my nerves, and misplaced them all again when I was walking up to the place and saw her on the stairs outside of the cafe.  I remembered why it was so difficult to let her go.  I also forgot why I was going to Marseilles.  I was here.  Now.  I was distracted.  Marseilles could wait.  I actually thought about never going.  Why would I, when I had everything I needed and wanted here in front of my eyes?

Besides, my reason for going to Marseilles was to convince a wacked out bitch that hated my guts to come back home to Italy with me.  Chances of that happening were slim to none without one of us waking up in a box.  On the other hand, Cagnes daughter would be more than willing if she knew it would save her life.  If I could only get around the fact that I had to put a stake in her heart, I’d be in good shape.  Might be kind of hard draggin’ a dead girl all over the place with me.  But easier to give her butterfly kisses, I guess.  Her, me, and the devil would makes three.   I had fantasies of a shoot-’em up Bonnie and Clyde life.  Well.  Maybe not ending so bad like that, but the glamorous part about robbing people and stuff and being outlaws, madly in love, making our own rules, gettin’ rich and makin’ a name for ourselves.  Living like we were the only ones that mattered.  I pictured her being more like that crazy, suicidal chick from The Plasmatics than Bonnie, but I could dream couldn’t I?

I insisted on the window table against the wall.  I needed to see who and what was coming and where they and it were coming from.  I casually left my journal sitting on the edge of the bar, hoping that if someone found my notes, they’d know that I wasn’t a heartless killer.  All they’d have to do was read a few pages and they’d see I was torn to pieces.  I didn’t want to do this.  I didn’t want to be a bad person.  I wanted to rekindle something.  I wanted to find a reason not to go to Marseilles.  As much as I felt like Marseilles was were my heart was, it would take a lot of convincing to get that.  Maybe all I needed was already here in my arms.  maybe we could both escape Cagnes.  Maybe she would fall back in love with me when I rescued her and we rode off into the sunset, arm-in-arm…

As we finished lunch, I sipped my tea and she smoked.  I considered all of my options.  Shoot her.  Stab her.  Maybe cripple her with a stab to the knee, then make her beg me.  Maybe neither.  Maybe just tell her that I couldn’t help.  Except, knowing Cagnes, he always wanted to make sure things were done properly, so no doubt some of the people circling were his people.  Watching to make sure I didn’t fuck up.  Everyone was suspect.  Space and time had no place in my mind and my perception became increasingly blurry.  it was hard to focus and differentiate the people from the animals.  Struggling to hide my fear and subdue my hallucinations.  I needed time to think.  I didn’t wanna do it like this.

I thought I’d wander the streets I frequented when I was here before.  Kill some time and clear my mind.  Turns out nothing changed except for me.  Sadly, I changed dramatically.  I was heartless now.  I was burned out.  I was tired of living.  I even contemplated hurling myself against the metal hedgehogs that lined the bridge leading to the heavenly little necropolis that I stayed in the night before.

I staggered and stumbled through the vacant streets, intoxicated by guilt and hate, realizing that my miserable little life was not as miserable as some of the others I was sharing air with in this city of lights and lost dreams.  A city that wears a mask of beauty and romance had nothing to offer me.

And with a rickety knife, a pocket full of bullets, a heart full of opiates, and a pistol on my hip, I was off.  I clumsily attempted to pull the pistol from my pocket to put the clutch on ‘em first, one of ‘em, I accidentally started some music on a rinky-dink hand held radio.

After this little episode, my nerves were completely out of control, grinding my teeth, and chewing on the insides of my cheeks again.  My eyes were moving so fast, they felt like they were vibrating.  Sounds and voices echoing like I was inside of an underwater tunnel.  The train screeching to a stop every few minutes.  I couldn’t keep track of everyone getting on and off anymore.  I was breathing funny now too.  Trying to make mental notes of who was coming and going.  People brushing up against me and kids circling, causing me to shuffle my feet to shift my position frantically.

I was now completely driven by paranoia.  I thought everyone was wearing a disguise.  Old women hobblin’ around.  They knew.  They whispered.  Drunk guy sleeping against the wall.  A decoy.  Pointing and staring.  He was part of it too.  I could feel it.

I ducked onto a little half-street, whipped around the corner, and heard a pop.  The recoil of my neck flung my head back in the other direction in time to see the metal structure behind me checkered with bullet holes.

The sound echoed, and when I turned back again, the chamber was on me.  I heard a click-click-clack, and then lost count of how many shots I heard behind it.  I remember the boy.  Staring into his eyes while he laughed.  Pulling the trigger over and over again.

I was laying in the middle of the street dying now.  Falling in and out of consciousness with the brisk spring air caressing my body, making me shudder and quiver with goosebumps and tooth grinding.  Biting my tongue and making all sorts of grunts and groans that probably looked something like a macabre orgasm.  My mouth tasted like metal.  My hands were making fists.    I must have skinned my elbow on the way down, ’cause it was the only thing that actually hurt.  It was hot.  I listened.  Kicking and lashing.  So this was what it felt like to be a fish out of water.  Fighting myself for every precious gasp of air.  Fighting a losing battle.  Then… I stopped fighting and I felt something strange.  I felt the calming warmth of my blood spilling from the bullet holes.  The scent of the carnation mixing with the smell of gun powder, cigarette smoke, and my burned skin.  And as I was pushing my fingers in the holes to try to stop the bleeding, I realized I didn’t have enough to fill them all… Lifting my head to try to get a glimpse at what was left of my body, too weak, it fell back against the concrete with a thud…

My mind and soul floated ever higher, and as I laid there among myselves, filled up with dum-dums, I looked down upon this so called paradise and dreamed of being back home in my sleepy little town of nobodies…

Over the past few years it fell apart a bit, and now it was just a run down flat I shared with a couple other people.  One of ‘em I knew from an armpit town in Northern Italy; we spoke on the horn once I think, and the other was a chick from Cambodia who had an estranged, dope-dealing dad over in Colorado or Nebraska, or some other equally stimulating place.  She only stayed in the flat like two or three times a year when shit got too heavy back home and she needed to escape a bit.  Besides that I didn’t really know shit about either one of ‘em.  They both seemed mellow enough I guess.  I wasn’t much of a people person though, so who the fuck knows.  The Cambodian chick always left the place clean and tidy, except for all the Edith Piaf lyrics she’d scribble on the bathroom mirror with her Cabernet lipstick.

Blurry vision and a foggy mind made it hard to stumble and crawl across the room.  It was only lit by the light from my ringing telephone that was reflecting off of the ceiling.  I tripped over the lamp cord, and got tangled up in dirty clothes that were scattered across the floor, gagging on the fumes of stale red wine and cigarettes on my breath.  When I finally got to the phone and answered it, my ears were assaulted by heavy panting, uncontrollable crying and excessive static on the other end of the line, making it extremely difficult to understand what was going on.  Something wasn’t right.  The sound of trains and muffled, flickering voices in what sounded like French, over a barely functioning intercom in the background, made it even harder.

Disheveled and disoriented, I stuffed my arms in the sleeves of my ragged jacket, grabbed my tobacco, and dribbled myself down along the handrail that was lining the staircase to find my way to the street.  Hiding my face, wincing at the sun.  Clammy and sweaty.  I was nibbling on my nails, wiping the sweat from my forehead on my sleeves and the blood from my fingers on the insides of my jean pockets so nobody could see them, then getting too self conscious about it all, thinking people were watching, knowing what I was thinking and why I was so nervous, making me dramatically over-correct my actions, causing me to fumble even more clumsily and recklessly than I normally would.

When I opened the door, stepped outside and started to hit the bricks, I was waved down by an old guy leaning against some fancy-schmancy old car, smoking and fidgeting with his hands.  He was missing a few teeth, so when he spoke he whistled, and anyone within a few feet of his mouth got showered in spit and whatever it was he last ate that was still wedged between his few remaining teeth and dislodged by his violent, French pronunciation.

I didn’t speak much French, but knew a few words, so when he mumbled, “Montez dans la voiture.  Ils nous attendent.”  I snipped back, “Who…?” He stuttered and stammered, trying to tell me about a dinner appointment I had.  A dinner that I was apparently late for.  He mentioned the name of the place and the man I’d be meeting.  My knees got weak and buckled beneath me.

He was a man that went only by “Cagnes”.  We went way back, Cagnes and me.  He was kind of a father figure to me a long time ago, offering me advice and guidance through a not so rose colored lens.  He tweaked my thoughts and ideas about the world at a very young age, so I knew how to achieve a level of successful corruption while simultaneously ridding my conscious of any burden, guilt, or remorse.

As we zig-zagged our way through the city, I found myself remembering things about this place.  Somewhere between the 1st and the 3rd, it all started coming back.  I hadn’t seen Cagnes in years and the guy always looked like he was about to die, so I was having an amusingly difficult time imagining him now, fifteen, maybe eighteen years later.  Even back then his skin looked like a third-degree burn, barely clinging to his bones.

A bald head with skin that looked like a fucking road map.  Tight, dry lips, and hands like a plumber.  He spoke in a snippy tone with a weird accent, and if taken the wrong way, he’d come across as condescending.  His conversations often consisted of making judgments, comments, suggestions, accusations, and inquiries about everyone around him.  He very rarely spoke of himself, which people took as a lack of ego, but I knew otherwise.  He was an observer, constantly gathering information about the people around him in case he needed it some day.  Despite his repulsive exterior, he always knew how to get people to do what he wanted by giving them the things he knew they wanted.  But man, birthdays was the worst days.  He always had a way of making people feel like they owed him somethin’.

Stomping out my cigarette, and immediately lighting another as I walked up to this all too familiar place where I’d eaten several meals with him in the past, I knew he didn’t want to talk about the weather.

Ever since I was in my early teens, I developed a stress management technique that consisted of walking into an uncomfortable situation with a lit cigarette as a way to calm my nerves and ease the tension of an awkward meeting.  I dunno.  Something about moving my hands around instead of just stuffin’ ‘em in my pockets and standing there looking stupid.  This was especially effective when I was intoxicated by the effects of a recurring Borderline Personality Disorder thingy.  I was never really diagnosed by anyone except an old girlfriend that was always trying to find an excuse or reason to justify my poor decisions and reckless behavior.  So, after she mentioned it, I filled out one of those diagnosis tests, took it all to heart, and I’m now convinced I created my own reality by watering the seeds that the bitch sowed in my mind.

I couldn’t help but wonder what his motive was.  Cagnes.  What was the old fucker buttering me up for?  After all these years, what the fuck did he want from me now?  Cagnes always wanted something.  As we continued to eat and reminisce, he casually poked and prodded, asking if I spoke to his daughter any time recently.  I knew it was something.  It’s never nothing with him.  I suppose this was the something.

When I was younger, we got mixed up together.  His daughter and me.  We had a ten year thing that eventually ended on good, yet sad terms.  Realizing that we were a toxic couple, although madly in love, it was best we went our separate ways before one of us killed the other.  Although I thought of her everyday since, I resisted contact with her for the last however many years, and as far as I could tell, so did she.  I thought that if there was contact, her being poisonous and everything, her venom would run through my veins again, so I rationalized that nothing was better than something.  Until the phone call.  We successfully resisted each other for so long… until she called.

After dinner, we exchanged handshakes and some obligatory good-byes and nice-to-see-yous with the tag-alongs, and Cagnes and I quietly and sneakily separated ourselves from the rest of the pack, walked around the corner, and stumbled into a rundown storefront.  His cold hands dropped the keys a few times before he finally threaded the needle with no help from me, the dark, or the cigarette he insisted on lighting.

A few squeaky, old, rusty doors, a crumbling stairwell, and a hanging light bulb was all there was.  A bit tipsy, and full of foie gras, entrecôte, and bone marrow, we stumbled into an empty, dimly lit, concrete room.  Dodging exposed wires, and broken beams, halfway in the dark the whole time, he pawed at the shadows and dust-covered everything to find whatever it was he was looking for.

It was musty and damp, and the mold and mildew instantly burned my sinuses, making me cough and sneeze.  Cagnes shushing me the whole time, explaining to me that the neighbour lady was notorious for not minding her own business.  The place reminded me of a weird little cellar my parents had when I was a kid.  It was an unfinished, patchy brick hole, with an uneven dirt floor, and some make-shift shelves that were randomly stuck to the walls with a mismatched collection of nails, screws, rivets, tape, and string.

It was a dark, stagnant hole where we kept the Mason jars of homemade preserves and chutneys and relishes and such that we made from the peaches and plums that grew in the backyard.  Littered with bottles of wine my brother and I stomped the grapes for.  It made me sad, thinking of where I was, where I came from, and what I was about to do.  Not speaking to my brother in years and now about to spend the next couple of days knowing that I may never speak to him again, only left with the memories of our childhood.

Once Cagnes explained my trip and my visit, I didn’t know what to do.  I either take care of his problem, or he takes care of me… And he was very good at plucking wings from butterflies.  I once saw him kill a man after giving him a warning shot in a drug deal gone bad.  The guy was tryin’ to lowball him, and Cagnes wanted to send him a message, so he shot him in the knee.  The guy started bleeding all over the dope, Cagnes got pissed, and couldn’t resist finishing him off.  I learned that if he ever shot me and I wanted to live, I better not bleed on the drugs.  He always said that if they actually sent an embassy, they would also expose the rest of his conduct as governor by stating in full the bribes, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty.  He had a reputation.

An awkward, one-armed hug at an old cab stand, and we were off in separate directions.  I hopped back in the first cab I saw and barked a few street names to the Moroccan cabbie that actually spoke a bit of English.  He apparently had a brother back in Montana, working room service in a Best Western or some shit and thought I might know him.  You know.  We all look the same, so we must all know each other.

I had a lot of thinking to do and some serious decisions to make.  Decisions of life and death.  When a close friend like Cagnes asks me to kill his daughter, there aren’t many options.  She goes.  Or I go.  I chose her.  That was the crying I heard the day before.  She was trying to get to me before he did.  That obviously didn’t happen.  She knew what was going to happen.  She knew I was going to have to make a choice.  All I could think was that the eloquent silence is that of two mouths meeting in a kiss.  And how much I wanted to kiss her.

To avoid questions, and slip into the crowd unnoticed, Cagnes insisted I blend in and ride the Metro with the rest of the miserables…

I guess I’d rather just turn the other cheek… but I can’t ignore the fact that this all started with me.  A touch of a knee.  A moment of drowning in her eyes, and exchanging life stories in a matter of seconds.  The next second gasping for air, imagining a life together.  We shared the same blood.  We were chosen from birth to be together. Before birth even.  Since the creation of man it had been decided that we were one.  We had no control, and she fought to get away from me, but she also knew that it would only be a matter of time.  Nobody escaped me.  Ever.

The way it made everyone’s mouth taste like bloody shit when they uttered my name.  I say “name” like I have one.  I guess I did this myself.  It’s a sick cry for help with this whole mess I’ve made by putting my life on parade.  Like that one time in Tribeca.  Every city is the same city…

Wandering aimlessly I was.  Remembering scents and times.  Arm and arm in the park.  Spring in Paris and how we once dragged each other through the rubbish that littered the city.  Me skinning my elbows, and her scraping her knees, bruising her ankles for my love.  Trying to make a romantic time from nothing.  Reminding me of Camille Pissarro.  Picking flowers to put in her hair.  Tricking ourselves into a cloudy haze of love and hate. Carving a list in my forearm.  A list of all the things I was willing to give up for her.  Crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s over my heart with a pocket knife that was attached to a small chain on a broken belt loop I kept fastened with a safety pin. Building a fortune for us by playing a lil’ game of “stab man and rob him”.

Living ‘Le Baiser’, we could have stayed that way forever.  I could have.  She obviously wanted to have her cake and eat it too.  Selfish.  I would have euthanized my own disgusting mother for her and drowned a thousand kittens.  She would always say, “you can’t expect me to put all my eggs in one basket.” I didn’t want them all.  Just one.  My biological clock was ticking…

My precious angel was afraid of me and couldn’t give up a life of potential wealth and comfort.  I was wealthier though.  I was rich with love and flesh.  Love and flesh don’t buy things though, I suppose.  She was always so concerned with what people thought of her, even though she claimed to only want love, yet when she was faced with a decision, she chose objects and status.

I was hypnotized.  It was all a memory.  I was still alone.  Left to be the part you throw away when you’re done.  A nothing.  A nobody.  A rotten demon.  A heartbroken animal left to lick my infected wounds and chew my scrawny legs free of the shackles that bound them.

Well, at least that evil doesn’t quiver here anymore.  Yet, I think I was just trying to avoid war out of sheer laziness.  I mean, I can still shoot a gun like nobodies business, but that’s just ’cause I’ve never been known for loving anything too much.  Writing my initials in the wet concrete that was used to patch the cracks in the sidewalk whenever I passed by.  There are still a few here and there if you look hard enough…

People, I mean.  People that still think I’m not very nice, but I always thought jealousy was a female sport anyway.  Quite a puzzling riddle.  I’ve got the heart of a lion, but the courage of a mouse.  That’s a hint to all the blonde haired David’s throwing shots at Goliath.  This is the New Testament.  This is where the victor is the giant, and that’s me motherfucker.  All you little, crumbling biscuit crumbs are gonna get washed away in the rain anyway.  Then who’ll be the black swan?

Stopping and watching the ghostly children play on the merry-go-round.  Remembering my youth.  Imagining myself laughing there.  Chasing my brother.  Punching him in the stomach and kicking the shit out of him when I finally caught his skinny little ass.  Time never passing.  The air filled echoes and tears.  Only life ahead of us and innocence behind us.  Before I started pumping chemicals into my body to self-medicate, that is.  Before the other two showed up.  Then it all changed.  Every fucking little bit of it changed.

In a fog of memories I drifted up to a stool, sitting at one of my favorite restaurants in France.  I wasn’t even hungry, but the sun was destroying my perfect complexion, so I lugged myself up on the lone stool at the end of the bar, and as I usually did, I drank alone.  I tried to quench my pain with wine.

The shadows on the table by the window reminded me of her.  I heard her laughing and saw the sun in her hair.  The smell of flowers in the street. Mustard drying in the corners of my mouth and under my fingernails.  Only watching the shadows change with the moving sun on the table we fancied when we came here.  I never cared much for food, but she always insisted on being seen in public.  I was perfectly content being her vampire in privacy.  Away from the sight of all of these people that couldn’t understand if they tried. Fucking day walkers would never feel a love like this, and had no idea what it was like.

I sat, drinking more, imagining her alone for Christmas.  Without me.  Secretly begging me to come home to smother her.  Hoping that she prayed for me to cover the stench of her rotting body with the bruised pine needles and lay her to rest on the broken ornaments that littered the floor.  Trying to bring her back to life by forcing my tongue in her mouth, prying her lips open, and breathing toxic fumes into her lungs.

I had only another day in this city that tore me to pieces.  I had one more day of having a dull knife driven through my heart before I had the opportunity to find the salvation I so desperately wanted to find in Marseilles…

Who knows though… maybe I’ll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris… without her.  If I ended up in Marseilles with my white box and shiny new chains she wouldn’t be going very far without me.  From the looks of it she was hoping to make my flesh a tomb… silly girl.

By the time I finally landed, the other two were starting to kick around in their pens a bit, and the stinky little shits were really starting to creep me out.  Well, not really, but I think that’s what I was supposed to tell my psychiatrist.  I rehearsed a bunch of junk to tell her so she thought I was all good.  If she took note of any signs of a relapse, then crash-bang-boom… I’d be locked up for sure… luckily someone always forgets to lock the gates of hell… and it was quite simple to pull the wool over her eyes.  More like Coke bottle glasses.  The bitch couldn’t see two inches in front of her disgusting face, yet I was obligated by the state to see her once a week ever since everything got ugly… or pretty.  It depends on how you look at things I suppose.

They were getting hungry and restless and wanted out.  Bad.  Throwing each other around like teenage girls throwing teddy bears.  Sure as shit, stress and heartache would make them show their faces, just like mum warned.  Well, they were gonna have to stay put for a little while longer.  At least until we got to Marseilles.  Then…

It had been a few years since I was in France, and nothing seemed to have changed.  Lots of girls in shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather.  Mistresses and other curers of the heart and it’s conditions.  The over-powering scent of burning fuel.

Every woman I saw was her, and none of them happy to see me.  It didn’t matter to any of them that I laid every night clutching the edge of the bed as though she were still by my side.  They wanted to show me what I had done to their hearts.  Every little filthy one of ‘em flaunting their so called love and gallivanting about as though I never even existed.  Soon they would all remember. Most of them looked like they were ready to unleash their fury upon my neck with rusted edges and dull blades.  It would hurt more that way must have been their logic.  Not the blades.  The gallivanting.  More proof I never existed.

Although I was tired and weary, and probably could have slept for a thousand years, these streets and their sins sucked me in.  Scared out of my crooked soul for what would happen in the days to come, I chose to live like every minute was the last with not a consequence to be had.  Sucking my life through a straw and swallowing what tasted like a million crushed aspirin running down the back of my throat.

Once I pumped my head full of euphoria and crossed the proverbial bridge, the phantoms came to meet me.  They held my hand and sopped up my sweat as I wandered through the streets, blowing kisses and throwing my clammy hands at anything that excreted even the slightest hint of estrogen.  I was now the darkest, evilest cloud raining the most acidic storm this city would ever see.  It made me smile a bit, wiping the snot from my face.  With numb lips and a face that I couldn’t feel if I wanted, I chuckled and giggled to myself.  I was always my only audience, but at least I entertained myself, I rationalized.

I would have done anything to be able to tell her why I was so late to fix up my head and tie off my limbs waiting for the skin to pop.  Unfortunately, the previous noose was a bit too short to hang all of my excuses, so drowning would probably not suffice either.

It was time to kill some of these miserably itchy thoughts and memories, if nothing else, and suffocate my sorrows with those pretty girls that looked like mannequins and danced like marionettes.  They were different than the rest.  Always happy to see me, never snarling or showing their teeth.  In fact never even speaking, only smiling at me and luring me in with their cheap perfume and spackled make-up.  Perfect porcelain skin and coiffed heads. So yummy and deliciously edible they were.

Full of cocaine and champagne, the night was only just getting started.  I needed to gain a sliver of composure though because I wanted to start making myself prettier for her.  What was happening today, would not be attractive tomorrow if I snared her.

Going back to my temporary residence in an old flat near Pigalle was a few quick steps from my sanctuary of silent dolls, and once I arrived I began to clean my body and get organized.  Minutes turned to hours and grams turned to ettos in front of the mirror as I picked and scratched at all of the blemishes I noticed on my skin.  My reflection was disgusting even to me as I relived every yesterday.

I didn’t see sleep in my near future and with Christmas approaching I couldn’t show up in Marseilles empty-handed now could I?  What had I done to myself?  I needed to find her something special in case I was lucky, or unlucky enough to cross paths with her.  Something special.  Something unique.  Something only for her.  Something besides setting her body on fire with kisses.  Something besides putting my black fingers in her mouth.

Already dizzy from being malnourished and dehydrated made it even harder to focus.  The poking and prodding made me want to eat people.  Being rubbed up against and unintentionally spat upon by all of the day walkers made me even more hungry for their throats.  Unfortunately my choices for eating would be fairly limited on this flight to hell.

Stuck with a bunch of assholes that didn’t eat pigs or a bunch of other dietary falsified made up crap to supposedly preserve their purity and save a special seat for them in heaven next to you-know-who.  These fucking people couldn’t stand the thought of dying, stuck under dirt, and having their eyeballs eaten out by earwigs and scarabs.  Like he really gives a fuck what you eat or don’t eat… and if he does, do you really want to live a life like that for him?  Oh, you humans and your cosmic consciousness.  How.  Fucking.  Adorable. Thinking that you’re so important that a celestial being is actually sitting around judging your petty life.  Chasing symbols and idols.  Try a life of iconoclasm for once.  Try to swallow that pill you keep avoiding.  You know, the one that goes down like a razor blade.  Nope.  The other one.  Yeah.  That one.   Hoping to gain acceptance or forgiveness for your fucked up thoughts and ideas.  Praying that someone or something will forgive you for your perception of sin that your brethren have been forcing down your slimy throats for your entire fucking life.

I didn’t wanna eat any of the garbage they were serving anyway, so thank God or whomever, I was prepared and packed a pocket full of powdered milk and cat food.

As we climbed ever higher, I felt the pressure of life and its despair crushing its way into my ears.  Looking around at all of the sheep, inhaling their stench, wondering where they were going and for what.  I had a mission.  I had a reason to go to France.  Was every one of the other miserable bloated watermelons and bruised strawberries I had the displeasure of breathing air with for no less than 3 hours also chasing lost love?  Could everyone else on this phoenix have the same idea as me?  Doubtful.

From above, I looked down on this place.  Thinking that if only I prayed hard enough, I would be thrown from the sky by the hand of God.  Forced back down with hatred and anger, like when Michael cast down the devil.  I loved the idea of God losing his patience with me and not being able to control his temper any longer with my antics and shenanigans.  Hardy-har-har.  I got you fucker.  Pushing our evil below.  Back into the bowels of hell.  Everything would go black and silent.  It would finally be over.

I leaned over the so called armrest which acted more like a fat barrier to contain the obesity that was spilling over into everyone’s lap from their neighbor. I looked to the girl next to me and mouthed the words, “Come. Fly the teeth of the wind… share my wings.” I lowered my voice, squinted my eyes, closed my teeth, and repeated it, staring into her eyes.  It made me laugh to see the fear in her eyes.  She cried.  I thought about how rich I was and then thought about choking her and then thought about how much of a pity it would be to waste it on her.

I landed intact near Paris.  I had a bit of a crawl down to Marseilles and too much time to kill, so off I went, disappearing into the shadows of the “city of lights” for a few days.  I was ready to throw my arms around France… More like my hands around her throat, digging my claws into her milky neck until blood started flowing and her breathing stopped.  Spitting in her face and smacking her in the side of the head.  Making her apologize to me for everything she had done.  Clutching her face, and squeezing with all of my power until tears once again ran down her face.  Begging me to accept her apology.

I stood tall, alive with energy.  There was no stopping me now… or her.