Sunset Vertigo: A Tale of Petrina City

Claire looked out at the desolate body of water. She liked the sunrise and varied colors of sky hanging out the water in the vast distance. A shroud of mist covered the other side of the world. She liked it out here, away from the city that swallowed people whole. She was alone now, where anything could happen but never did. Petrina City would soon become the far off world that may never have existed.
"Claire Mulligan?" came a grated voice.
She whipped around, feeling her privacy violated. The old man was shriveled like a paper bag, puffing on a corncob pipe. He seemed harmless enough, looking like a water damaged woold carving of a child in an over-sized pea-coat.
Course you are, I been watchin' you a long time."
She balked, stepping into the chilled water. Shots of invisible switchblade ice stabbed at her legs and ran up her spine.
"Don't  be afraid sweetheart... it was only inevitable. Consider this one of those full circle types of things, where karma don't exactly take any holidays."
"Have I.... have, I wronged you mister? I'm only out to make amends"
The old man sighed. He took a long puff off his pipe, exhaling smoke akin to a roasted battlefield dancing over a spastic display of corpses.
"Being alone is hell enough."
The old man sighed again "No, it really isn't. 'Specially, when you got a whole slew of people involved."
Almost as an assurance, the old man pocketed his pipe and reached a trembling hand into his moth eaten coat.
Claire emulated the hand with her ragged figure, shuddering  and barely able to stand, clutching a chunk of rotted tree on an abandoned work bench.
"What do I, need to do?" It was a plead for  her world torn asunder.
"How many people have to die? I left everything behind. Everyone believed Claire Mulligan was lost in the fire and they were happy... but someone just wouldn't let go, would they?"
The sunrise was supposed to be a time of rejuvenation for Claire. Today, she experienced the vertigo felt at sunset. The end of day signified curses of shadows and pain. Her mind unwinding a horrific tapestry of misery until darkness lightly flew toward her and stroked her cheek bones in delicate grace.
The touch aroused her senses back to the present. She was now miles away from the calm she felt in nature.
The grim old man had thrown a velvet black glove down at her feet.
There was the eerie quietness in the moment. Any sensations that could have been felt, went numb. This was the ultimate reckoning.
Claire gulped, wide eyed yet still standing tall. She awaited her judgement
The old man gritted his teeth and spat. There was a tired desperation about him. He stared at both of his gnarled hands. They had been mangled in sickening ways over the decades walked.
"I've done a lot and had a lot done to me. Don't  want to waste time anymore, doing what I do and pitying ,what I could've done" The old man raised his head.
He looked tenderly upon Claire "You shouldn't either, but... ques es lavida. It means, 'what is life?' The only lick of Mexican, I know. That's right, Mexican, not Spanish. You understand? This is the way of the world. The will of forces, we can't suppress."
Claire nodded. She knelt down to pick up the black glove. She caressed and softly smiled.
The old man gnashed his teeth and barked "Now, where is it?"
Claire reached inside her and revealed a pearl bracelet.
"Put them on." He growled.
Claire removed her coat. She slowly slipped the glove on her right hand and clasped the bracelet on her wrist. She stood artificially seductive,displaying the hand without expression or movement.
The old man nodded approvingly. His eyes ran up and down her form. A malicious smile further creased his weather beaten features, as he shamelessly licked his lips.
"I'd order you to strip, and you would... wouldn't you, whore? Instincts never die." He crept closer to Claire.
Claire saw that she and I the old man had the same shade of blue of eyes. Her expression softened.
The old man knew what meant and nervously fiddled in his pocket.
"I have two choices." He lamented, holding a pistol in one hand and his pipe in the other.
"I can shoot first, and then take a smoke, or I can smoke... while you shoot yourself."
Claire slyly smile "No, old man... there is another option without letting me go."
The old man return gesture with a grin and respectfully nodded.
"Sometimes a Hell is of your own choosing and not where people want you to be." He chomped down on his tooth marked pipe.
"Hell is being unable to choose. Maybe, both of us should have realized this long ago." Claire said.
"Young lady, after I leave these woods... it's only me and me. You, however can take as many chances as you need."
The old man mechanically opened the gun's chamber: emptying it out except for one bullet, spinning, snapping and shutting it, in a blur. He ran the gun down Claire's neckline and fondled her breasts with the barrel; he noticed scars and put the gun in her hand.
"Who were you?" She asked.
"A man like any other, only more so... I fell, but never hid my didn't how to or what to do. Who are you, girl?"
She brushed the unloved man's face "Black glove and pearl bracelet."
The old man snickered to stifle a sob. He looked more the child than ever, kicking a pebble in which a ladybug clung upon.
"Be seeing you, on the other side of eternity." He lit his pipe and casually strolled off.
"Isn't that the way, everyone's history ends?" Claire whispered to herself.
The gun felt like a feather. The glove and bracelet weighed as heavy as armored car in a not so distant past: filled with conjured promises and a toxic mirror romance in an imaginary shack in the Garden of Eden and that ended on a dirty patch of street, where her father once laid twitching and bleeding.
She remembered, how his eyes darted "why?'
That was the first time her world, would tilt and spin.
Claire opened the chamber. She spun and closed the chamber , several times but not as fast as the old man.
The day had begun to wane.
Soon would be the sunset and then the vertigo.

Man Against Time: CM -EP 4

 It can't rain all the time, but it does... it rains blood, blood that needs to be shed or blood needing to be avenged. My name's Milo Denton. I'm a disgraced cop turned an even more disgraced P.I. and I'm wearing someone else's face. My job is supposed to consist of investigating: cheating spouses and crooked business with made up problems. Truth of the matter is, I'm not much of a detective, for me detective work is made up of bribery and beatings to get the info you need or get someone to manufacture what needs to be done or said. Sometimes there are people who aren't totally agreement with the way things tend to get done.
That's when I talk hard, sometimes harder.
I tighten the bandages on my face, as I don't want to risk going out looking like some snitch who snitched out the wrong person and now has a hit on him. I put on the dark blue suit, my best suit I've always wanted to die in; I put it together with a linen white shirt and cheap polyester grey and black striped necktie because that's what I want to wear on this hard-boiled night to say my long hard goodbye in.
I take one gun. My police issued firearm. It has memories because it's not mine, mine got stolen from some crook who went around committing various armed robberies, this I took from another guy while on a wild FG-5 binge. I remember fighting the perp a mud-hole and as we struggled nobody dared to fire a shot because nobody could tell who was who.
Still don't remember the outcome of that night or what was done to shelter the events.
I leave my father's watch.
I think of the cracked face and the cracked mirror in the bathroom and what was reflected underneath my coverings. I don't think about the dead guys in the office. I won't be coming back.
I've got a new face. I don't know what it means or who did it but once I find out, I definitely plan on not being me anymore.
I put on my gray trench coat and before I do, I check the pockets and find a small silver egg-shaped thing. It's unblemished. This is FG-G in its most concentrated form. Inside is a blue glowing liquid that turns into a faded pink smoke as it hits the air and to place it underneath your nostrils at that the moment gives you the  most paradise enhancement of reality you'll need.
I crack the seal. Do what's right. Getting high on FG-5 before going out into the night.
 A man against time.
On the way to suicide.
My pores are on fire, feeling the shock of the atmosphere parting ways for  razor-blade structure. I smell strawberry fields. Walking down  Penny Lane toward the Blue Angel Bar.
I'm not a horror-show  mummy in some dorky suit and tie. I'm a stone-age brute on a quest for fire.
The temperature drops. My chest is still heaving  like a blast furnace but the drops of rain that look like liquid prisms become shards of crystal.
It's a freezing rain.
Got a volcano inside my heart  pumping lava in my veins to prevent my blood from going arctic.
A neon blue angel looks down upon me and winks with golden lashes. She can't get back up to heaven caught in the wire of sculpture holding her form, so she curses us down all below in hopes we poison ourselves enough thanks to her allure, in the desperation that the lord of the damned will consider her captivity long enough and let her go where she may not be welcomed anymore.
Time's running out... for all of us.
I walk in, the doorman can't even look at me. He turns away and lights a cigarette knowing who I am even without a trace of what used to be my face.
There are bruisers, pimps, addicts, and femme fatales who suddenly separate themselves from an orgy of carnal and destructive intent. They know but pretend not to know. All of a sudden their drinks or bottom of the glass or even the game on the set is more interesting  than what was going on in the nasty spiderweb they were all weaving together before I entered the room.
I don't put my exterminator bag on the table but I sit down at the center of the bar. The waitresses retreat. Sam the man of granite with the off-center nose, who forever cannot taste the flavor of his favorite candy bar asks "What's the good word, Milo?"
"Not in jail. Yourself?"
"Pouring drinks for boozers, whores and dirtbags. Speaking of..." he takes down a bottle of Irish whiskey and raises an eyebrow, a glass already in the other hand wanting a pour.
A piano plays softly. Ivory tickles copper wire. The player, besides Sam is the only one who makes eye contact with me.
 He smiles at me and nods, like he knows everything. He's wearing a cream suit with a white shirt and red scarf. His skin is like the color of salmon. His hair so blonde, it's almost white. Can't tell the color of his eyes from the smoke in the room. There's an intense feeling between us.
He's no fairy. I can tell. He's good with the world but in a shameful way. I'm comfortably in a nervous manner.
I point at the glass and nod approvingly to Sam "What's with the fairy?"
Sam snorts and grimaces a broken smile "He's owns the place. Owned it for quite sometime."
"Awfully, young isn't he?" I take a swig and point at the air in my glass.
Everyone goes back to business. Taking no notice of us, like we're in a vacuum. Silence all around us and at a great distant from the rest of bar. All I can hear is Sam, myself and the piano playing something from another time and place I never heard of. It's a sad melody but sounds like there used to be a hint of joy to it thousands of years ago.
"He's a bit older than any of us realize. Someone, told me... mind you this was a superstitious individual but not of a cowardly lot..." he smirks then continues "that the owner here was the Devil himself, exiled from his own inferno by the good lord for not being wicked enough. For offering a chance at redemption."
A moment passes.
The man at the piano waves. I get a cold and unusual feeling of vertigo.
"Pour me another."
Sam hesitates and as he fills the glass to the brim "Or it could all be the talk of drink mixed with desperation of loneliness."
I can feel the owner at his piano absently shrug.
I slowly sip as Sam stands over me, looking at the others in the hopes that they beg for his attention.
I push the glass aside.
"Sam, I want my fortune told."
He looks off to the side with his head down and eyes closed. "Milo..."
"Sam, I feel time slipping away. Don't f---around."
There are two doors. The one to the right leads to the kitchen, the other is a red beaded doorway.
The lady or the tiger.
I want the lady who rides the tiger.

The Blue Angel Departure: CM-EP 3

It’s not death , if you accept it and the other side of eternity nowhere near you expect it to be… right here! Sometimes though, you're not even in your body and time out of mind is only way to describe what happens when FG-5 fever hits. 

Everything happens in a crimson blur and razor blade slashes of obsidian. The only thing that matters are the frozen moments in time preventing you from experiencing the here and now. 

My name is Milo Denton, I tried to kill myself after being disfigured, only to realize the face in the mirror didn't belong to me and now someone is sent Smiley Face kids to kill me and an FG-5 fever has hit and a landslide of ultra-violence and horrific family movies is going to bombard my pulsating brain. 

I have been outside myself realizing, my mind cannot prevent nor momentarily block the withdrawal from FG-5 anymore.

Streak of silver wind across my chest, severed tie, force  my knee into something plastic and the gorilla goes down with a slimy piece of meat shoved out of place.

The room goes crooked. Television set on the desk stretches out into an obelisk with the screen sporting the figure with a goblin nose and fangs hanging over the blonde virgin innocence...No. No. Not that movie. Not that image.

Cut to: Movie Theater. There were velvet chocolate chairs. (so I remember). Something hot and wet started happening, as the gaunt ivory hands stroked the neck of damsel in all her purity in deep slumber. I wanted to go to the movies. Mother held my hand, wearing fake pearls. Dad didn't care just did his duty watching but vacant without a soul. 

Mother "Really the pearls, Milo? They should be saved for special nights."

Milo (stupid seven year old me) "Couldn't be going to the movies be a special night?"

She kisses me tenderly on the forehead "Alright, for you. Tonight, we'll make it a special night."

The clicking of the projector sets a tense tempo for unknown motive swelling in the loins.

THE MONKEY LAUGHS AND PULLS DOWN THE MAN IN THE BANDAGED FACE.

The little boy's face is flushed. Father is distracted watching the teenage girl, ignore the teenage boy with the pizza face staring for a kiss and Mother's eyes widen at the seductive giant sized horror played about on the screen. The little boy grips harder as the vampire hunches over the girl. He wonders what it's like to be a painted soft-machine being touched by a supernatural being or to be the supernatural being doing the touching of the painted soft-machine. 

TWO FISTS SMACK THE MASK OVER AND OVER, UNTIL SOMETHING SLIDES BETWEEN THE RIBS OF THE BANDAGED MAN.

Harder. The wetness is rising. Over and over enter the pocket, pulling down the zipper as fangs drip spittle and begin puncturing the soft-machine's shell of silk. Her eyes flash open! The creatures eyes widen!

SWITCHBLADE EQUALS SLASHING RED RIBBONS ACROSS THE VISION. FISTS FROM ABOVE GENERATE BLACK-HOLES. THE ROOM BECOMES A MELTING REALM OF SWISS CHEESE DRAPED OVER BY A SHARDS BLOODY RIBBON ALL SEEN THROUGH SOMEONE'S BLUE EYE THROWN INTO AN OUT SPACE OF BURNING STARS.

The little boy doesn't care about any of that. He knows that could be his eye but instead watches the  movie gripping his mother's firmer, in an effort to feel what is going in front of him with the other hand working something he doesn't quite understand quite yet but something is about to erupt and as the vampire grins miniature red eyes erupts and something unholy ejects from the boy. 

Shame. Joy. Lust. Relief. 

She looks around straightening her blonde hair. It's not wavy like the girl on the screen. The wetness disgusts her. 

Mother "Milo! How dare you?!"

He's torn from his seat and his father barely follows, feeling quite like the shadow of two people he rather not know. 

Then the voice of crushed glass set amid sizzling smoke spoke "Nice pearls."

Piano wire wrapped around her neck. 

Father hands in pocket, slouching with hands in pocket. "Hey, don't do that." he quietly protested.

Little Milo screaming and jumping. Father slugs him across the face without a sound. Metal clinks. Thunder and lightning father falls giving Milo a final rueful look signifying an ultimate fall from grace.

Boy is cold and wet in a place that doesn't feel right. Mother's leg spread in a van more than one shadow hunched over her. A door slides closed as rubber peels against wet street. 

He never saw the man fully nor the face but something wasn't quite right with the jagged grin.

I AM MILO DENTON THE BOY WHO BECAME THE MAN. THE MAN AGAINST TIME WHO BURIED THE BOY SITTING AGAINST THE LAMP POST IN A TIN BOX CHAINED ACROSS THE HEART UNTIL THE POLICE COULD GET THERE AND NOT REALLY LISTEN BUT SHUFFLE HIM ACROSS GUARDIAN TO GUARDIAN UNTIL DEAR BONNIE COULD FINALLY GET CUSTODY, WHORING HERSELF OUT TO GET MONEY TO BRIBE THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

SPREAD THE GORILLA'S ARMS LIKE CHRIST ON CONCRETE. BOTH OF THEM BROKEN.

Her curves were like the grooves of a cabbage. Age sixteen. The taste of peaches in sugar and something sour almost corrupt. Milo exploded inside. She held him and caressed auburn hair as he cried "Momma" over and over.

Bonnie "Shhh, baby, it will be alright." then she hummed a lullaby not just for him but for the dead stillborn son and husband dead of exposure on railroad tracks who first drowned himself in a dead sea of gin and gambling in the sport of black market organ theft. 

KNEES INTO THE SPINE. A DEVIL'S TWIST. THE GORILLA GROANS. DON'T CARE WHO SENT WHO. AN OUNCE OR MORE AND HE'S CRIPPLED, ADD ANOTHER TWO AND HE'S DEAD. THE CRYSTAL ANGEL APPEARS, LOWERING HERSELF TO THE GROUND, TRANSPARENT WINGS WRAPPING AROUND WHIRLING RED AND BLACK ROOM. BLUE LIQUID SWISHES INSIDE AND ALL AROUND HER.

BLUE ANGEL "YOU LOOK THIRSTY, MILO. HOW ABOUT A DRINK?"

MILO "THEN MAYBE A VISIT TO THE GYPSY LADY?"

BLUE ANGEL "WHATEVER YOU NEED. JUST FINISH THIS FIRST... THEN PAY ME A VISIT."

IT'S MOURNFUL SMILE AND EVERYTHING REVERTS TO NORMAL EXCEPT THE HAZE...

Grown-up Milo approaches Little Milo. Little Milo looks up.

Grown-up Milo "No one will ever love you." The gun goes off.

Grown-up Milo enters the bedroom with Teenage Milo wiping away something that is cross between joy and shame. A pure dirty feeling. Teenage Milo looks up with a nervous grin in all his moist naked glory.

Grown-up Milo " It's sick what we do for lack of love, isn't it?" The gun goes off. 

Grown-up Milo in the land of fog and darkness,  a full length mirror in front of him. The reflection isn't quite the reflection he thought it to be... Bandaged Milo reaches out and strangles him.

Bandaged Milo "Here's a glimpse of the future, now the lights going out." Two fingers enter the eye sockets.

THE APE SCREAMS. FALSE PRIMATE FACE THROWN ACROSS THE ROOM. 

Images of Milo killing Milo killing Milo fading as everything returns in a technicolor swirl amid white noise.

No one, I recognize. Find my stash of FG-5, take a hit and go down to the Blue Angel Bar and see that gypsy lady. 

Maybe find out everything that's happening in the deciphering of a devil's riddle.