"the fracturing of conscious thought, further buried and often forgotten..."

eva dreamed of a terrible crash. middle of the freeway, 90 miles an hour type shit. the kind that you feel in your nerves under miles of sleep. the car in front of her just smashed into a motorcycle. the young man, an asian fellow, was sprayed across the center divider. she watched from the front seat as the driver came up to her side window. oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. calm down darling. oh shit. calm down. just give me the i.d. cards. the picture of an old high school professor. the asian guy is getting up, dripping all over the pavement. some kind of fucked up dream. she's freaking out. can't move. stumbling for the bedroom door. can't speak. i tell her it's just the paralysis that takes over your mind. but it's so real. yeah, it's real. not moving. not speaking. it's all real, baby. ever got that feeling? sure i have, i say, many times.


when i was seven the master of fiction came to my school to give a speech on the importance of education and self-improvement. i don't remember all he said. i do remember the bartering of fruit roll-ups and gushers and maggie mendoza passing love notes in the back of the classroom. she eventually grew up to have two bastard children. the father spends his nights in a county cell.


the morning we found robbie tankarsky lying face down behind behind the baseball diamond at fallbrook park i remember thinking to myself, "well shit, i guess the kid got what he had coming." i mean, i would have never expected something like this to happen, or even wished it to happen. none of us would have. but i'd have found it hard to believe that none of us weren't thinking that exact thing once we saw him. ziff had flipped him over with his louisville and we all immediately took a step back, covering our faces. the was a hole the size of a softball where his right eye would have been and several deep gashes along the left side of his face, all the way down to his thigh. pieces of clothing were missing and the rest were dyed a deep red. marty was ghost white. we all were. i couldn't believe what i was seeing.