Downward Ears to Come

‘Kick? Whats with all this “kick” talk? I should call you Jiminy Kickit, you’re always chirping on my ass” said the Marshall.

“10 days with some liberium and you’ll be able to find the guy without that #### in your veins. Add some keta-taurine and you’ll cut it to 3 days. When the worst is over we can resume the hunt” replied The Earl.

“They got my boy….” said the Marshall. He loaded another rig. The Earl grimaced as old memories spilled into his mind: Scoring in the park under the hovercraft line, where the smog would roll in and erase the definition between objects, so the whole world was an oil painting in shades of grey, punctured only by fire from massive refinery towers. Hiding dope in a broken make up kit in the dumpster next to the tentacle ambi-sexual club Depot, watching the case get stomped by ambling drunks….”Never is the same pressed, you need that moisture…” He caught the thought before its termination and banished it as the cast off clothes of a long rotten evening.

The Marshall dropped his rig. He fumbled as a thin trail of saliva drained from the corner of his broken jaw. Outside, the red neon of a passing ad craft cast an infernal glow over the proceedings. Derelict rigs littered the floor like the carcasses of vermin after fumigation. Empty liquor bottles posed a hazardous terrain to those who would never pass through this rent free rooming house built on the blasted overhang of a vast genetics fac-lab on the wasted outskirts of the City.

Only the Earl was versed in the vicissitudes of this Sahara, as the dunes of mounting glass and needle points were constantly shifting as the Marshal waved his form towards the bathroom every late morning. “Say what you will, but I can slam and stay regular” the Marshall would chuckle. The Earl gouched on the couch as the Marshall hummed stray jazz tunes like a broken radio. This routine would last for hours; even though the Earl imposed a thorough frisk before the Marshall entered the lavatory (no guns, inject-able drugs, or sandwiches allowed), he still waited with anxiety for the soft slump of the Marshall’s body next to the toilet and the eclipse of the slit of soft amber strobing under the heavy wooden door.

“Only got three Adreno-Pulses left for this bastard’ he muttered as he palmed a syringe of keta-taurine. The clear liquid sliced the red beams emanating from the window into slivers that reflected off the mounds choking the room on the overhang of the vast genetic fac-lab on the outskirts of town. “Almost as pretty as a Miles ditty” came the voice at the back of his head. He slid the needle into the soft tissue under his thigh. The imposing sensory clamor of evening hover-traffic was curtailed by a fizzy lifting sensation that permeated his skin surface, as if a roaring tide of champagne had burst its dam and displaced the blood that had worn black after 30 years on the junk trail. The noises outside were both muted and bent, wavering slightly in and out of pitch, like a pre Deconstruction tape that had warped.

Most importantly, the lusty drive for junk that had arisen at the sight of the Marshall’s dropped rig dissipated, entirely. The bathroom door creaked open. Amber light illumned the stench, which defective air tubes hadn’t pumped away. The Marshall wore a fiendish grin as he checked his watch. “15 minutes” he croaked. “Cast your peepers wide, its a bar stool”.