The Agoraphobic Suede: #6 - Without You I'm Nothing

Silver: 'It's a matter of choices.'

Silver washed his hands under the sink and rolled his knuckles with his apron. Barbecue squatted firmly on a table by the wall, watching her visitors with her glassy eyes.

Silver: 'Some point of your lives, you had made a choice to come to this place. Whether you like it or not, or even know it at all.'

Silver examined his drinking glasses and mugs in the kaleidoscopic lights of the ceiling.

Silver: 'There is never a safe bet to a choice, but whatever it turns out to be, you have no one to blame.'

Silver peered at one glass cup and decided that was the right one. He fished out a bottle of persevered urchins and filled the tiny glass with a quarter pint.

Silver: 'Judging from you two poor fellowings, I guess you people had learnt a valuable lesson that choices can be irreversible.'

Silver shook some drops of lemon fruit into the brew and brought out a packet of powder. It smelt of rough spices of an exotic taste. He sprinkled some into the drink and the color immediately turned purple.

Silver: 'Like I said, whatever it turn out to be, good or bad. Just be glad that it's your choice.'

Silver placed a metal shaker canister on the table and doused the bottom with six different alcohols that Benny had never known. Silver shook the canister with might and zeal.

Silver: 'I hope at this stage you guys still possess the ability to choose.'

Silver poured out a snake of mixed genres into the glass of purple beverage.

Silver: 'If so, choose wisely.'

Silver struck a match and set the drink on fire. The Ultimate Shot was completed.

Silver: 'Now you all come so far for this crap. Is it worth it? Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.'

Liz: 'There is only one shot?'

Silver smiled and grabbed his shotgun. His smile was dry and humorless. Barbecue mewed softly, enjoying herself.

Silver: 'Yes. Just one drink. You people have to choose whom to drink then.'

Benny: 'Liz. I won't beg. I know we want it badly. I will fight you for it.'

Liz: 'Even if it won't perch us anymore than the red rain. Okay. I want it too. Just to feel a dream running down my throat. Just to see if a dream is really worth the shitrun.'

Benny gave a muffed cry and slammed his shoulder into Liz. Liz obviously was much more apt in combat, gave away and swirled Benny's arm around his back, making him yelped.

Liz: 'I will break it if I have to.'

In tears and sweat, Benny arched his head and smiled nervously: 'Then you better kill me, because I am really kill you for the drink, hell I will kill everybody here for that lousy drink!'

Crack! Benny's left arm broke like a twig.

Liz dragged Benny by the hair across the floor to a corner of the wall. She felt for a sword at the altar and slipped it out in glory.

Liz: 'I don't want to kill you. Back off.'

Benny: 'You are a man-eater. Get me before I get you. I can pretty much finish you off even without this arm. Look straight in my eyes, you know it.'

Benny's eyes were bloodshot with insane motivation and hunger.

Liz punched Benny's face, drawing blood and a few teeth. She swung her fist again and again, hammering Benny into a whimpering dead.

Benny: 'Kill me! You have to kill me! Or I will haunt you like the walrus!'

Liz shouted a war-cry and drove the sword into Benny's stomach.

The floor was stained with Benny's blood.

Liz could only think about The Ultimate Shot. Nothing else mattered.

Benny croaked in his murky blood and began to howl in humor. He laughed like the first time he knew Liz was not a human. He wailed like the babies in the dark of the forest. Benny screamed and spat happily.

The front door flew opened and a vacuum of snow drifted and came flying indoors.

The abominated walrus roared at them.

Barbecue snarled at the monster with her furry back arching to a slope and her tail spiking.

Silver: 'Relax, Barbecue. It is not here for us.'

The walrus stormed through it's entry like a meteoroid train, crashing everything its path and cried at Liz.

Liz pulled out her sword. She saw shadows falling. She saw the crater hole of wound where the eye of the walrus should be. She saw the walrus' wrath. She witnessed the darkness.

The walrus' tusks ran through her like a voodoo doll, killing her in an instant.

The snow in the room trembled as the walrus screamed deafeningly.

Glasses shattered at the bar.

Benny pulled himself up with the edge of the wall. He tried to hold his spilling guts with another hand, but it was pretty wasted by Liz's dislocation. His blood smeared his lower body thick.

Benny: 'I... knew you.'

The walrus peered intensively at Benny.

Benny: 'We were at the highway of signs. Right? It was pointing to The Ultimate Shot. You... didn't want me to proceed onwards. You tried to caution me, correct?'

The walrus sniffed the air strongly and barked at Benny.

Benny: 'You stand in my way, I will kill you. Get it?'

The walrus flapped its flippers and started fuming.

Benny took the sword from the bloody floor and walked to the bar.

The walrus bellowed disapprovingly and tried to block Benny's way.

Benny grind his teeth and charged with the sword. He threw himself into the mess of walrus.

They whirled into this beautiful pain of massacre. Liz laid like a mannequin by the wall among the companionship of the turned chairs. The snow settled like dust on her, dyeing her carcass pink. Something bleed. The walrus hawked in agony. It chewed the dead arm of Benny. The walrus blind in one eye, rolled the fight with imbalance and uncertainties. But it's massive weight was the beast's armor, with the side squashing Benny's leg into parts. Benny no longer responded to his pain. He was focused so much on his thirst that he was no longer Benny. For Benny had died back then when he walked into the discotheque with the desire to drink himself to death.

As the killer tusks clambered down, Benny hurled his sword into the jaws anchoring it. The left tusk drove into Benny's chest, but an assault shallow to kill, due to the blade of the sword in its mouth. They pushed haughtily towards one another, driving stakes into each other's vampiring hearts.

Benny: 'DO IT! DO IT! COME ON! KILL ME IF YOU CAN!'

Benny slashed the long blade through the lips of the elephantine walrus and pushed it all the way into the flesh until his entire arm was inside the mouth of the bleeding fiend.

The walrus fell over to its grey side and remained there. Snow as if talented at identifying death, like flies they hurried over to the walrus. With butterflies smooches and restless youth.

Benny crawled to the bar, inching leaving a trail of his blood and bowels. He settled moistly on the seat and smiled his toothless at the old pirate. He wanted his prize.

Liz was buried in the snow, she was a distance memory.

The walrus wheezed on breathlessly and saw death with filthy wings.

Silver: 'I will persuade you no further. This is your choice. However, I will advise like I would to everyone whom I had served this drink. All you will ever feel is regret once you take this shot.'

Benny: 'No one will be unscathed after seeking destruction.'

Benny drown the burning shot, feeling better than before. It was tasteless, but his thirst was finally quenched.

Benny heard a buzz in his ears and he found himself walking out of the tavern. He left prints in the snow. The cat and her owner followed him to the porch.

Benny coughed and huddled in the comfort of the dusty snow. His blood milked upon the white intenseness of the climate. He felt himself changing. He couldn't tell. Benny would never know.

It's all about choices.

Benny metamorphosed into a grey gargantuan with ivory for weapon and fat webbing for limbs. He couldn't no longer felt pain. He couldn't no longer felt himself.

Long John Silver fired a warning shot in the freezing air, echoing for hundreds of yards. The new gigantic walrus trembled lightly as if aroused from sleep, peered insipidly at the pirate.

Silver: 'Now go away. If I ever see you again near this part of the land, I will fucking shoot you myself! You heard me!'

Barbecue gnarled in aid.

The walrus barked in acknowledgement and made its way to the frozen iron sea. It slided it's body into the icy waters and was never seen again.

The snowstorm shrieked loudly and their prints were covered.

Silver: 'Come Barbecue. Let's grab some warm clothing and seek accommodation in the bomb shelter. We will clear this mess up once the storm lightens.'

Barbecue mewed in response and trotted gently behind the pirate. She looked at the the snow drifting happily into the huge crack of entry at the tavern which sucked away the skies like a black hole, the lizard-woman in the dirt hill of snow, the original walrus in its blood and goo. Barbecue remembered the true form of that walrus. It used to be a lady. But nobody tried to warn her the way she warned Benny. Nobody. Barbecue remembered something else too, it's about herself. Once, many hundred years ago, like Benny and that nameless lady, she too drank that infamous shot. She was never thirsty again. Barbecue mewed yearningly at her memory. These days, memories were luxury at her age.


The owner and the cat disappeared under the bomb shelter and waited out for spring.




End.

The Agoraphobic Suede: #5 - Maimed Sea Crook

White hot warmth burned the tar. Two fatigue characters dragged themselves out into the open range. They traveled as fast as their feet could be persuaded, and as slowly as their wasted hemodyamnics could be tortured under the ordeals.

They put behind the junction of darken woods, of wailing infants and the red climate of tidings.

They were very thirsty.

Liz fell over and wrung on the road. Benny followed her down, unable to lift himself up any longer.

He looked at the rows of signposts.

His skin fried with contact on the parched concrete.

The signs said:

Pilot Dreams

Fallenmaples

The Ultimate Shot

Funland

He took in another deep breath beneath his bony chest plate and wheezing lungs.

He looked at Liz on the floor. She was shrivelling like a child having terrible nightmares, with eyes wide opened.

He closed his eyes and slept under the phoenix sun.

For a long while, they just laid there.

If they were lucky enough, maybe they would finally die.

Benny: 'Liz.'

Liz: 'Um.'

Benny: 'Get up, we have to keep moving.'

Liz: 'Okay.'

Benny: 'We were wrong. We were wrong from the beginning.'

Liz: 'About?'

Benny: 'These signposts are not really giving the right directions.'

Liz: 'I don't get you.'

Benny: 'The Ultimate Shot is not a location.'

Liz: 'It isn't?'

Benny: 'Give me the map.'

Liz unfolded the map. The context of their world shifted again, into a spiderwebs of roads spreading outward.

Benny: 'We need to find a pub.'

Liz: 'There are no pubs in such places. No wait, there is a tavern.'

Benny: 'Fair enough. Where is it?'

Liz: 'It's near the location where we woke up in the beginning. It is by the sea of blood.'

___________________________________________________________________________

Barbecue yawned widely, revealing her sharp fangs, contouring her facial features. She jumped from the ceiling beam and landed gracefully paws down on the wooden platform of the bar. She sniffed around for food and trotted lightly into the kitchen. It was five in the morning and her owner was already up and running the show. She chewed on her chow in the bowl with her name. Her owner whom she inherited her name was making breakfast for himself. It smelled of bacon and eggs.

Her owner turned with his apron and greeted Barbecue.

'Good morning. Do you know what day is today? Well, go and see her later, will ya? Try to find her a flower, pink ones with yellow tips. I'm sure she would be pleased.'

Barbecue mewed in return and stroked herself around her owner's wooden prosthetic leg.

Barbecue leaped to the garden.

In the bushes, she found a mouse hiding. For a while she chased the mouse around, gnawed it a little bit, kicked it around and allowed the chase to begin again. She ran past a patch of withering autumn flowers, she remembered her task and swiped the mouse's throat and left it dying with lingering breaths. Barbecue bit the stem of a pink flower off and trotted to the back of the house.


Their house of bricks and sticks were built over the iron sea. Sunsets were brilliant over here. Barbecue stopped her tracks and laid her offering on a little tomb. The tomb of the previous pet. She was called Captain Flint of which was the name of her owner's former captain on the deck. In jest and mockery.

Barbecue sat there for a while, feeling the sea breeze slurred her fur. She then heard something far away. She was sure that her owner must have heard them too. She sprung around the house to the front lawn where her owner was already at.

Two strangers sprawled lifelessly on the porch. They looked severely dehydrated and burnt.

A human and a giant lizard.

________________________________________________________________________

The autumn ended and displaced by its sister of the season. Snow began to fall on the red sea, the dark woods, the highway and on the tavern.

The crippled owner with burly arms and an apron tried to fed his refugees warm tea. The tea soured upon contact with their tongues and they spat them out instantly.

'Not very thank-giving huh?'

Benny: 'Is this a pub?'

'Not really, well, almost. We have beer and soccer channels if that's what you referring.'

Benny: 'Do you have The Ultimate Shot?'

'Who are you people?'

Liz: 'Who are you?'

The ruddy owner fished out a shotgun and said: 'I get to ask the questions around here. Who are you people? Again.'

Liz: 'We have no idea how we got here either. We woke up by the sea made of blood. Then we were chased away by a walrus. Someone got killed. I could no longer recall the name of the poor chap. We saw the signposts of The Ultimate Shot everywhere. Everything tasted so bad. We thought this place could be the solution.'

Benny: 'Do you or not have The Ultimate Shot?'

The owner ignored him and walked to the behind of the bar. He put away the gun and started polishing the glasses with a cloth.

'You can call me Silver. I was a sea cook, a quartermaster, a treasure hunter and now a bartender. I was Long John Silver, I was a wicked pirate. So question me again, young lad, I will have your tongue cut out for my cat's ribbon.'




to be continued...

The Agoraphobic Suede: #4 - Forests Of Wailing Babies

Liz thought about a lot of things. For one, she thought that if she had a mirror now, she knew she would see Levey Rosenberg's eyes on hers. The bloodshot trembling eyes of a prey.

She had been hiding into the dark woods ever since. Dead and rotten trees spanned thickly across and hid away any suggestion of light.

She had been running. She fell over overgrown roots and bushes. She hid inside the bowel of oaks when she heard something flashing in the murky canopy. Liz was petrified.

At first there was rumbling of the skies. Hunger clearing its throat. Then loudly they came.

Babies wailing and crying at every direction possible.

Liz ran fast.

The invisible babies mewled, bewailed and howled at the ominous woods, the deceased roots and the coming of a great storm.

The lizard-woman wished she was dead.

They shrieked like bloodcurdling demon babies.

The rain came down pouring in buckets. The heavens were raining red tears made of blood. Everything was drenched comfortably with the turn of climate.

Liz shivered and choked on the bloody rain. She hurriedly pushed her way into hole beneath a big tree. It offered a fragile shelter the size of vile wardrobe.

The blood flooded in fast.

In the dastardly grim of the cave-like hole, she heard the angry infantile prerogative and the sizzling of the rain in freezing comfort.

She heard a queasy cough in the background.

Benny was sitting up against a corner. He was badly sunburned and meaty crust formed his lips and eyes. He was half-naked and he looked dead.

Liz moved over and woke him.

Liz: 'What are you doing here? You alright?'

Benny: 'Am I there yet?'

Liz: 'Okay, I get it. Rest now, I will wake you up when the hell freezes over.'

Benny: 'Get what? You get nothing here.'

Liz: 'Just sleep, will ya?'

Benny: 'Do you know where are we?'

Liz: 'I've got the rough idea. Someone told me we are in a limbo called the Suede.'

Benny: 'The Suede?'

Liz: 'I have the book.'

Liz fished out the encyclopedia and unfolded the map. Babies continued to moan in the storm, in long breaths and sharp pitches.

It was a different map.

Instead of expecting contours of highways over the iron sea, it was now fan of forests and lines of streams making up the Suede.

Liz: 'It change.'

Benny: 'Everything changes.'

Liz: 'No, I mean... It can't be. This is the wrong map.'

Benny: 'Everything changes.'

Liz: 'This place is alive and shape-shifting. What exactly is this place?'

Benny: 'See. You don't get anything here. Everything changes.'

Liz: 'Are you alright?'

Benny: 'I need a drink.'

Liz held out for the rain and cupped the blood back to Benny.

Benny: 'You try them first.'

Liz: 'What are you suggesting?'

Benny: 'Drink.'

Liz tasted the blood with the fetch of her tongue. It tasted sour and she immediately grew thirstier.

Benny: 'You can't drink that shit. You can't drink anything here. I tried my own pee. They just make you even more thirstier.'

Liz: 'You mean...'

Benny: 'We must go to that place.'

Liz: 'The Ultimate Shot?'

Benny managed a weak smile and passed out in the dark.

Liz laid herself down beside Benny and proceed to sleep too.

The cries raged menacingly outside, but they were too threadbare to care.

__________________________________________________________________________

The lizard-woman woke up finding Benny's arms locked around her from the behind. She could felt Benny's heart battered against her back. She was warm from the embrace.

Liz: 'Benny?'

Benny: 'Keep it down.'

Liz: 'Why? Something wrong?'

Benny: 'Something is looking for us.'

Liz: 'What did you see?'

Benny: 'Nothing. But it's not good. Something huge is looking for us.'

Liz: 'It's the walrus, an gargantuan motherfucking killer walrus.'

Benny: 'You saw a walrus too? I saw a grey one on the highway days ago, thing bigger than an SUV.'

Liz: 'And then?

Benny: 'Nothing happened. It just shouted at me. I thought it was trying to tell me something. Why?'

Liz: 'Mine was trying to eat me.'

Benny: 'Well, that's ironic. But whatever it was just now, it was gone.'

Liz: 'Then why are you still holding me?'

Benny: 'I didn't have my shirt on. It was cold.'

Liz: 'Only until the rain stops.'

Benny: 'Only until the rain stops.'






to be continued...

Superman Returns (2006)

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Action & Adventure

I had never fell asleep inside a cinema before. Not especially when I had forked out the money for three tickets. (I caught it with my two brothers.)

I fell asleep in this latest big blue scout's blockbuster.

Blockbusters are over-rated.

Comic-movies are over-rated.

The two-stars are for Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor and Bryan Singer's appetite for flight and refreshing cinematography.

Yawn.

The Agoraphobic Suede: #3 - Goo Goo G' Joob

The highway was constructed from the mainland, hugging ridges of mountains and hovered over the sea of blood, with pillar beams as hooves running into the quake of the seabed. The course was not straight on, but magnitudes of roads sprawling in and orbiting out across above dark haemoglobin ocean.

Liz's visionary of her front moisten and flared outrageously that the road ahead would appear contour and misshapen from time to time. White heat sizzled like a desert out there. Her veined forked tongue spasmed lightly at the thought of thirst. Her senses also went into overdrive mode, she felt hibernation and blood-lust in a twisted intercourse at the back of her head. It was like walking in space; without the suit, she was waiting to explode from inside.

It was a car.

Someone crashed a car to a signpost and the hood of the vehicle was spewing black flume.

Liz straggled near the car for closer inspection. She felt her instinct boiling. She sensed fear.

Levey Rosenberg rolled a firm grip on the fireman's axe he had hide in his driver seat to fend road bullies and muggers pretending to be hitchhikers. He had been chasing his own shadow for days, Levey had reached his breaking point.

He took a forceful swing at the dragon's head.

He had to kill something.

Liz turned and clawed towards Levey, evading his axe. She pressed her palm against Levey's shoulder and with another hand pushing Levey's wielding arm to the opposite direction. Crack, and his arm was broken, sending the axe spattering to the ground. They were too close for comfort, Liz could smell her assailant's warm blood pumping, his heart flashing all the wrong impulses and signals of a trapped prey.

She could eat him on the spot.

Levey let out a muff and began to sob in tears and spit. He moaned about his broken arm, his car and his enemy. Liz dropped him onto the gravel and took his axe.

She could so eat him on the spot.

Her tongue flickered wildly.

________________________________________________________________________

Benny loosen his buttons and started snatching his throat, leaving fingernail redness over the torn skin. He could felt his thirst throbbing like a baleful tumor. The wideness of the road grew beneath his bloodshot eyes. Benny look at the full rows of signposts.

THE ULTIMATE SHOT

THE ULTIMATE SHOT

THE ULTIMATE SHOT

THE ULTIMATE SHOT

He smiled.

Soon.

Benny walked until his legs gave way and then he would started crawling on his belly. Sometimes he would sleep on the shiny cement, other times he would just dream. One day, it showered a bit. Benny licked the rain and spat them out fast. It made him thirstier. There were never nights, just a view of the afternoons.

It became fogy after the drizzle. He was half naked and didn't realised where his shirt went to. The haze became so real that Benny couldn't see anything at all. He would need to see. This highway was cunning, he would need his signposts for directions.

Something stirred in the fog.

An eye was staring at Benny.

Benny huffed and coughed. His hamstrings gave way and he fell on his buttocks. A sharp pain jetted straight up to the roof of the spine. For many days, he felt something else than thirst.

Benny could spot its killer tusks.

The creature emerged from the mist slowly. It was as huge as a bus.

An enormous walrus.

It barked a while, sniffed the air and roared mightily.

The ground shook and Benny peed his pants.

Refused to be intimated, Benny gotten up and walked on. The elephantine walrus snared again, fan-like whiskers vibrated and flippers quaking the ground. Benny bleed from both ears.

Benny: 'You called this your best?'

Benny walked past the monstrosity and continued his journey without another glance.

The haze cleared away and the beast was gone.

________________________________________________________________________

The car groaned with each mile spent. The tires rolled on unnaturally stiffly while some white smoke continued to puff out of the hood.

The passenger, Liz the lizard-woman: 'It's called the Suede?'

Levey Rosenberg, the driving encyclopedia salesman: 'Or so I've figured.'

He reached behind for a book.

Levey: 'I sell encyclopedias. These days, all my books are gone, for only God knows how. This is the only one I have. Or rather found. Because I don't remember possessing it.'

Liz took the book: 'The Suede Encyclopedia?'

Levey: 'The book has maps, latitudes and history of a world I have never heard before in my life.'

Liz: 'And you sure we are here in this world called the Suede?'

Levey: 'Just look at the map.'

Liz unfolded the map and see a gigantic highway of roller-coasting avenues above the bloody sea.

Liz: 'What the fuck is this place?'

Levey: 'You tell me. I had been driving for days in this God-forsaken hellhole, my car busted, my books gone, something is hunting me and here a Komodo dragon is at my passenger seat, talking.'

Liz: 'What do you mean hunting? What's chasing you?'

Levey Rosenberg stared blankly at the empty highway ahead. Signposts flashing by, the car rumbled gently.

Levey: 'Do you watch movies?'

Liz: 'No.'

Levey: 'Well. You know there are movies about revenge and shit like that. Someone took something away from another person. The next minute, goons are killed, everyone in his path dies and he is armed to the teeth.'

Liz: 'What the hell are you talking about?'

Levey: 'Vengeance. I could feel vengeance closing in on me. I am the goon, that someone who now has to run because he is guilty. I think my number is up.'

Liz: 'What's that sound?'

Thump. Thump.

Levey: 'It's coming. Hold on tight.'

Levey cranked up the manual gear and slammed the accelerator with his foot. His ragged car roared to life. They zoomed into a dirty blur.

Thump.

Thump. Thump.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Liz turned her scout out of the car window and tried to see what is chasing them. Powerful wind crashed onto her face.

Liz: 'What the fuck is that?'

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The black speck that was chasing them grew larger, diminishing their distance.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Liz: 'What is chasing us!'

Levey: 'Vengeance.'

Liz: 'Wait. It's gone.'

Levey: 'No way! This can't be just it!'

Levey swirled the car to a halt. He needed to see for himself. The skies remained wispy yellow and the gravel shone reflections.

Their heartbeats echoing.

Liz: 'You know something, don't you?'

Levey: 'Listen.'

Liz: 'What? You heard something?'

Levey: 'I'm not sure.'

Something big and bloody threw itself onto their windshield. The weight of it smashed the glass with spiderwebs of damage. Its blood seeped through those cracks into the car.

Liz: 'Fuck! Shit that shit!'

Levey breathed like an asthmatic at the sight. He recognized what hit them. He knew it all along.

Liz: 'Move! Move out!'

The thing Levey Rosenberg hit and ran days ago. Vengeance is true.

A pony-sized walrus calf laid lifelessly on his windshield.

The highway ground quaked open. The car swung and squeaked like a mangled toy.

Liz: 'Move your ass!'

They bailed and jumped from the car.

The metal of the car bent and snapped into the air, tossed. And returned to kiss the shiny gravel with a loud thrash.

Glass splattered everywhere.

The crack on the ground where the highway quaked, had a huge creature surfacing. It reared it's head from the rubbles as if it was water.

Two head-lighted eyes fueling.

Liz looked around and saw there would be a side junction leading into the woods a distance away.

Liz: 'There. Run!'

Levey remained still on the floor. He was mumbling his prayers.

The huge as the bus walrus bit more ground with its gigantic tusks to lift it's shiny grey body to leverage. The ground shook the day.

Liz: 'What the hell? Start running!'

Levey closed his eyes in tears and fears.

The monstrous walrus screamed angrily at Liz, sending her spilling on her side on the floor.

It moved closer to Levey.

It would be considered a slap on human conditions. An angry slap of betrayal and hot tears. A heartbroken slap of jilted faith and sorrowful hate. Which could be easily resolved with time and absolution, but on this day, the slap was not.

The monster slapped Levey with it's flipper, crushing his body into a twisted agony, popping Levey Rosenberg's head into the air attached with only a botch of jugular blood. His entails ran ways like spilled milk on the shiny gravel of the highway.

The walrus roared woefully.

Liz tried hard to contain her tears. She inched slowly for escape.

The walrus moved towards the lizard-woman.

They were too close for comfort. The overturned car started to burn, as if mourning for it's owner. Smoke, fear and blood were in the humid air. Liz was now the prey.

She had to do something fast.

And so she did.

The lizard-woman stabbed the walrus' eye with the cleaver of the fireman axe, drawing blood and deafeningly screams. Liz rolled away, coughing blood from the sonic blast. The walrus roared in pain and assaulted blindly, breaking more earth.

Liz picked herself up and bolted into the junction of woods.





to be continued...

The Agoraphobic Suede: #2 - We Are The Highway Stars

Levey Rosenberg was a travelling salesman who sold encyclopedias.

Levey hated his job, hated the long hours, hated being on road all the time and hated selling stuff to strangers.

Levey Rosenberg had been an encyclopedia salesman for twelve years now.

There were countless nights Levey spent on the road under the starless skies, eating from the gas stations and sleeping on passionless motel beds.

Levey had been jumpy lately. He had this dreadful crawl of space on his scrawny posture which made him perspired cold sweat and knotted his guts, hurting him. He was certain something bad was going to happen to him.

He had been driving on this bizarre highway for days and it seemed to stretched away forever. Levey pushed on nervously and was further bewildered by the multiple roadsigns which was sprung upon everywhere by the roadsides. He stopped only to sleep in the car.

He would not admit that he was lost.

How could one ever hope to get lost on a highway?

Then there was a loud thud and Levey found himself struggling to steer his spinning car. The day was foggy with cloudy mist and all he could hear was him grinding his teeth and biceps burning to roll his car back to it's stance.

He had hit something.

As his car braked and had smoked wicked tire marks on the gravel, his wide frighten eyes stared at his rear mirror for examination. He didn't want to get out of his car. He didn't want to see what he had hit.

It was an animal the size of a pony.

It can't be. He thought to himself.

It wasn't a pony or anything like it. It was something that Levey had learned since childhood that it couldn't exist here on the road.

Not like this.

He doesn't believe his eyes anymore.

Levey licked his lips and decided he was finally going crazy. It was his delusion, he told himself whole-heartedly and managed an uneasy grin.

He was right, something bad was happening after all.

Levey Rosenberg depressed his accelerator and sped off into the twilight blur.

____________________________________________________________________________

Benny and Liz had been walking on the gravel road for hours now. With the sun out, the skies were raspy gray and melancholy. The cement was hot and hurt their legs. What seemed like a highway of infinite paths were christened with ample roadsigns in sight.

The signposts erected like trees along the roadsides. They announced illegible locations and strange titles.

They came to a junction and saw smoke brewing in a distance far away ahead.

Benny: 'I'm going for that.'

He pointed to an arrow lettered 'THE ULTIMATE SHOT' on a signpost, a direction perpendicular to the smoke.

Benny: 'Sounds like a good drink, and only God knows I need that right here, right now.'

Liz: 'Shouldn't we go towards the smoke? When there is fire, there is likely to be people.'

Benny: 'You might be right. But I'm too thirsty to listen. I'm going for The Ultimate Shot.'

Liz: 'You are fucked in the head, you know that?'

Benny began his walk down the indicated direction.

Liz flickered her tongue, her scales felt uneasy with the suffocating air.

Without turning back, Benny said almost to himself.

'You would think by now, there ain't any salvation or whatsoever.'

Liz the lizard-woman struck to her logic and travelled towards the smoking front.

Sometime later when the two would reunite when the heaven began to cry, they would compare notes and realised that on this ironic day just after they parted, they had ran into a parallax of the same abominated misfortune.

Benny and Liz will witness much more than Levey Rosenberg had saw.




to be continued...

The Agoraphobic Suede: #1 - The Iron Sea

She said her name was Liz.

She was a very fine specimen of the female embodiment, endless legs stridden in high heels, prompting her tight ass sashaying with the swirl of her mini dress pouring cleavages in the dirty rainbow of the laser fireworks.

The party was dark as a cave, with its population swarming into the heat of the night and deafening music. They put millions of miles away under their dancing feet and surrendered themselves to the alcohol and drugs in their systems. Ghouls of the night, they lost in foetal hurricanes of spiritual transformation and chemical impurity. Where momentary is a lifetime here, they were the modern Cinderellas.

And they met whilst the heavy bass thumped away, pounding on the stairs of their encounter.

Liz: 'Hi gorgeous, what are you seeking tonight?'

Benny: 'I'm going to drink myself to death.'

Liz: 'That sound real neat. You wanna fuck me before you die?'

Then
they melt away in a hole of a corner. Shadows splashed on the walls
while the world caught fire with the dancing. His hands felt their way
up her tight skirt, tearing away what's left of the little mysteries.
Their lips locked in the fiercest embrace as if they were eating each
other up. She quivered with each suckle, upon each sigh.

_________________________________________________________________________

Swoosh.

The wave seeped in the beach, and rolled shyly back upon touch.

Swoosh.

It was mid-day, but the sun was absent. The ocean was dark with patience.

Swoosh.

Benny woke with blinding pain. His shirt and chin were covered with array of vomits, tears and mucus membrane. He breathe in tiredly.

Benny: 'What the hell?'

He was on a beach with bottles for sand. Voluminous champagne, vodka and beer bottles stretched and filled up everywhere. Dog-eared labels peeling and flapping in the warm breeze, they shone with green glass and murky reflections. Benny was almost buried in them. With his knees and hands, he crawled through the bottles to the sea.

It was an ocean of vicarious red liquid.

It smelt roughly familiar. A sickly bird cawed nearby, it was bald, ebony and ugly. It looked as if it was roasted and brought back to life.

'The sea is made of blood.'

Benny turned and saw a reptilian humanoid standing behind him. It wore Liz's tight black skirt and peered Benny with it's side of the head, yellow pupils eclipsing into blackened slits. It's fork tongue flickered as it's scout spoke.

Benny: 'Liz? Liz. Lizard. It's right in front of my eyes all along. This is classic!'

Benny laughed and laughed as if it was the greatest humor ever. The bald bird cawed in fright and took flight. Benny howled until he was half crying.

Benny: 'What you going to do with me?'

Liz: 'I was going to eat you.' Her tongue flickered again as her scales shone with sharpness.

Benny: 'Did you brought us here?'

The lizard woman felt for her scout: 'No. I woke up just before you. This land is a place of it's own, unlike any I have ever seen.'

Another wave of blood splashed quietly on the bedrock of bottles, rattling them.

Benny gotten himself up and wadded in the bottles.

Benny: 'Looks like we drank ourselves to oblivion.'

Liz: 'I thought this is what you wanted?'

Benny: 'You don't know me. You don't know what I want. But this, this will do. Say, you still going to eat me?'

Liz: 'Not now, I'm having a huge hangover.'

Benny: 'Then let's get some water. I'm dehydrated.'

They wadded in the thick of the bottles to the direction away from the maroon ocean.

Swoosh.




to be continued...

The Female Of The Species Is More Deadlier Than The Male

You people are too kind.

For a long while, I was actually anticipating someone to comment on how freaking gay I was to consistently harp on unmanly issue like love.

Something like:

'SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU SISSY NUNCLE FUCKER! QUIT WHINING
LIKE A FAG!'

Yeah, somewhat like that. But you people are too kind.

I too have zero idea as to why I kept writing about love these days.

I have this idea after realising that a lot of ladies out there like to reminisce or recount how they would miss their men.

Guys do that about their missus too, though not always, not really comprehensive with the details and never in front of their frat buddies (it makes us sound gay).

Despite sometimes our kiss and tell may be a tad prudish, like 'Man! I bang moi bitch outta her fuckin' brains!', or 'Oh Gawd, guess what we did in her parents' room last night?'

Yeah. Gloating is an old culture shared by the XY chromosomes worldwide.

Nevertheless, guys miss stuff about their women all the time. It's just that we don't talk about it much.

Like we never tell you how we like to sniff your hair, the area just behind the ears. Or how delicate your neck is. Guys have this weird thing about a woman's neck. The smooth streamline that holds your pretty face drive us crazy at killing distance. The way how female necks appear when you tie your hair up, an feminine gesture always appreciated by us since we had mothers.

We may never spoke of it, but we adore your fluttering eyes, your cheekbones, your freckles, your pencil-like collarbone and your lips. We may not actually be listening to your lectures when your lips moved, but we stare at them for a good reason. We really like your lips.

I'm sure most of us look at you when you were sleeping. Like an angel, and then you will spoil the moment with a short snore and roll over, pulling all the blankets. I think most of us laugh gently at that, like a private joke.

We like to see you naked, that's for sure. You in the light, back facing us. The probe of the scapulae to the curves of your waist and your round hips. Your glowing hair navigating away. That instant, you are the goddess. We will do anything for you.

We like the warmth of your fingers around our faces, reaching for our waists on our dates, and in the nights when you need to hug us.

We love how you always acted stupid and naive with us, when we both know perfectly how much you are actually capable of.

We are a bunch of horrible sadists. We enjoy watching you cry in the movies or how our actions move you to tears. We cannot really cry, so when you cry, you cry for the both of us.

We are capable of worshipping you in such ways, but it is not our practice to declare them.

For those guys who never had the opportunities to give such testimonials to their beloved, I hope my little bit helps.

Aye man.

Bambi in the headlight.

I miss her.

God damn it.

What Have We Found? The Same Old Fears. Wish You Were Here.

I can't cry.

I just couldn't.

Many years ago, I had unknowingly shed away this utmost human feature with the eventual transition.

What was used to be words that gotten in my juvenile head and drove me to tears with a blink. Now I could just sit there in the dark, eyes clutching, and no aqueous humor will come.

I think crying helps to relieve pressure and tension.

Just like screaming at the ocean.

Crying bleed your overwhelming emotions to a healthy brake.

Crying makes you feel.

Human.

I could not remember when is the last time I had a good cry.

The chest tighten and voices squirming for a jailbreak. I thought about King Lear. How sorrow killed him.

In Terminator 2, T-800 had said:

'I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do.'

Sadness is intoxicating. It will break your heart if the buildup is excessive.

They are going to cut me up like a cattle, my girl is out of the country, it is dawning, I had suspended all my daily activities and prepare for that fateful day, I couldn't stop thinking about future, Radiohead's 'Wish You Were Here' was looping for an hour now and I felt tired all the bloody time.

I had all the reasons to cry.

But all I could do is to sit there against the shadows, the morning birth and Thom York.

I just couldn't cry no matter how hard I tried.

I have forgotten how to cry.

I can't cry.

I just couldn't.

I'm a robot.

What Should I Do If You Are Real?

Five in the morning, with Red Hot Chili Peppers blasting away in my headset while I start typing my fingers away here. I had finish two movies today and a documentary about Dogtown. With a fresh cup of milo and the wee morning breeze, I'm good to roll out another two three hundred words.

I like it this way.

The part about me just sitting there all day long writing, staring at the screen, staring for an answer.

That's all I do when I was sixteen. Movies after one another. Fingertips raining on the keyboard until they gone all yellow and craggy.

Oh no, I didn't blog back then in 1999.

I think I used to have a diary then. But then it was full of sexual innuendos and whiny horseshit.

I'm sixteen, fresh baked from O' levels, waiting for results, and no doubt waiting to lose my virginity.

I had shitload of free time on my hands. I worked in a packaging factory, I hang out in malls. My hair was bad, my scoliosis have gotten worse, I was that dork with the bigass glasses and that shit-eating grin on my face.

I was so in love in Jodie Foster ever since watching 'Nell'. I hunted down all her movies, read all her interviews, bought her biographies and joined her online fan club.

Bloody geek.

And that's where I got to know Amber Lynn March.

She was from Florida, sun setting beach with surfer waves crashing to the shores. Amber liked Jodie Foster equally and we knew each other through Yahoo fan club.

It was after a month of intense corresponding, we decided to have a relationship. Yeah, an online romance.

No shit.

Stupid but amazing.

Everyday we corresponded rabidly through Emails. She was heavily into marine biology, mingled all day long with orcas, dolphins and turtles. She liked ballads and emotionally invested in romantic comedies. She would laughed and cried along.

Most of the time we updated each other about our day and fantasized about meeting one another eventually. We planned the time-line, the flight plans, the budget, the accommodation and our reaction on that fateful day.

We even wrote each other short stories of the fantasized scenarios on the day when we will finally meet. I would start one, then she would complete the other part and we went on, as if we were very certain we would eventually meet.

Sometimes, we wrote about her coming over to Singapore, probably touring. Other times, I would finally save enough to fly over, our teary emotions at the airport and our candle lighted cuddle in her dormitory, safe in her arms.

(I will always pause and lost in that thought whenever I took a jolt down that memory lane.)

She would scanned her palm and attached to her mail, quoting something from Disney's Tarzan:

'Remember how I said I would hold your hand? Well, whenever you want to feel me close to you, you can place your hands on mine. Tarzan and Jane did that when they fell in love, and it signified a unity between them. If I could scan in my whole self, I would! :)'

Then we gotten serious and started launching our affection off ground. We started sending postage mails from one land to another.

She would send a huge stacked of her pictures, sea animal dolls, stuff she collected (beautiful pebbles and awfully bright stickers) and many many letters written by hand.

On one card she had pasted a key on it and said,

'The key to my heart, keep it. It's yours.'

Man, that's really sweet.

I would reciprocate with mix tapes of songs, my baby photos and shitload of cards. One for each day I missed her.

Once, she sent over a dog-eared Spiderman collectible comic book published in 1983. The year that I was born.

It ended six months later when she was so upset that her roomie gotten into an accident and I tried to call her. I guess she got freaked out by the reality of such liaison. We stopped contacting since.

I don't blame her, it was doomed to fail from the start.

I guess this is how I could keep pounding on the keyboard and face that computer screen for days, ever so religiously.

Just pouring it out.

Sometimes, in the tinkle hours of the morning dusk. In front of a computer typing away, I would think of Amber Lynn March.

I hope she is doing okay.

Lords of Dogtown (2005)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Sports

In teenage angst and free-spirited rebellion, three friends bring a brand new definition to skateboarding. As fame and success throws wide open for them when the country embraces the sport with shameless madness, their friendship diluted with different ambitions and values bound for fork-paths of candy coated stars and decline.

Stacy is the goody good shoes of them, exemplary and kind which pretty much makes him a bloody two dimensional character with nothing interesting to offer.

Tony loves and adores the limelight, he loves the complimentary ladies and the rolling money, of most he likes being on the top of the world. He wants fame.

Jay. Now that's my favorite one. Jay is supposed to be the most talented of them all - they called him 'The Original Seed' whom devises fresh stunts and skateboard tricks. Aloof to money and disinterested to be the media clown, nobody can ever hope control that rebel. Jay is the decline, the self-destructive arrogant bastard. Jay is freedom.

It's quite astonishing to know that this testosterone filled film is helm by a girl! Director Catherine Hardwicke shot the picture capturing the details of their adolescence, the devilish speed and their friendship very well. She attempts to sneak in Sparklehorse version of 'Wish you were here', strumming the first few notes here and there in the show. With the Z-Boys returning when a close friend is dying, Hardwicke closes their biography running the full delight of the song.

Absolute freedom ironically served best in declines and teenage angst.

Clean (2004)

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

Written and directed by Maggie Cheung's ex-hubby, Olivier Assayas. It is about a woman's struggle with drugs and her redemption.

I didn't like this film much; short, predictable and yeah, very short. Maggie Cheung sure knows how to juggle multi languages, but acted quite blandly this French stint.

That's that.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

I think I've watched this film for at least three times. Still I couldn't resist slapping this brilliant movie into my hefty stack in the rental store.

I watched this show for Russell Crowe just you would watch 'Pirates of the Caribbean' for Johnny Depp. One of the most talented actors shaped the insight of a mentally ill protagonist struggling to separate reality from delusions. Jennifer Connelly is wonderful as John Nash's wife whom shines as she tries to help her husband in every maternal way possible to come around.

The pace is fitting, the acting is powerful and the story-telling is compelling. With over thirty wins in international film awards and 47 nominations, this is a masterfully beautiful movie.

Garden State (2004)

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Romantic Comedy

Dorky lead from TV comedy 'Scrubs', Zach Braff (also the voice of Chicken Little) writes and directs this light-hearted film about experiencing absolution when a numb delinquent returns to his small town home in Jersey when his mother passed away.

I like Natalie Portman here than 'V for Vendetta'. Though the movie is somewhat of a mediocre pace, it was the invention of quirky characters that Zach Braff created in contrast to his numb protagonist are both striking and uplifting.

I find this movie a slow lukewarm of the early sun; oblivious and unappreciated by most, but nonetheless is just the right warmth for me.

Toxic. Yeah. Eh ~

I'm just going to run this straight without anything stratagisting, nor preview & spell check. Straight thru.

Because I'm drunk.

It would be fun to see how it turn out.

I know, I plan to write something about love. But then again it's not everyday I allowed myself to get drunk.

It would bve still fun to see how it turn out.

Ah shit, I have a lot to write just now on the bus, then now everythingthing 's gone. Shit, piss, fuck , cunt.

let's see.

ah, i was meeting Marx. We were walking down raffles towards Fullerton Hotel.

Me: 'Careful, there's a snail.'

Marx kick the tiny thing away.

Marx: 'How would you feel like if ytou have to carry the world on your shoulders?'

Me: 'I...dhit, I don't know.'

Marx: 'That's ghow thopse little fellows do, carry the world on their shoulders.'

Me: 'They are just carrying houses around, Marx.'

Marx: 'But it meant the world to them. If we crashed their shjells, then they wil consequently die too, along with it.'

Me: 'Those snails are materialistic bastrads...'

Soemwhere along the night of fireworkds by the marina bay, we drown a bottle of champane. all i could remember is the bloody busty waitress that pour us our poision.

fucking busty china girl.

Me: (in mandrain) 'are you a studebnt?'

busty chian girl: 'yes, i studied in nyp, while the other two studied in tp.'

Marx: 'What course?'

busty China gir: 'elctrical something something (not hetr fault, i couldn't rem what she was saying, cos i was fixated at her something soething...)

Me: 'ah...'

I like how the way champane kicks in, gruadually, not shiity and stroing like volka or berbon.

A week ago, while watching movuie with Huiling, i tried to sneak in a beer halfway and was repremainded by her for drinking alchol before my operation.

She flew back on Tuedays.

I missed her.

But I'm happy today. Something I missed for a long time.

My parenst were hardcore alcholics, not that they drink and beat us up, but they drink to sleep easier. Often they had to drink a bottle of champane, or a thrree beers, tigether with the effect of sedatives, they can sleep till day breaks. other wise i would found my mother four in da morning praying with bible, bloodshot eyesa dn stuff.

alchol is in my blood.

I'm the most happy whle drunk.

Me: 'know waht? I had been drifting bewteen normality and unhappiness these days, that it's hard to grasp ablsoute happiness.'

Marx: I know how that feels. I'm way overrated.'

Me: 'But shit, when i' high on this shit. I am so on with the world. smiling all around and heart feelings a gradly. damn!'

' How many special people change
How many lives are living strange
Where were you when we were getting high?'

This high.

I am so happy and lazy and sluggish and smiley.

You know, all that shit.