Tomorrow is September, which makes it more or less the end of summer today. I finished gutting the building I've worked at for over a year and there's nothing left but the trash. And this is the second to last installment of our online serial Acid Fizz. End times.
Here's what's happened so far:
Acid Fizz - 1
Here's what's happened so far:
Acid Fizz - 1
click picture & open link in a new tab for a song while you read
PAULO QUIRINO
You travel the whole world just to get to one place. It doesn’t seem like the world should be that big, like everyplace I want to go could just as easily be around the corner. I walk through Tulio’s backyard and through the bonfire’s smoke I can see Verona in the grass, breaking from her seizure while they dance and chant around her. She opens her eyes and she’s not Verona, she’s Pomba Gira. She stands and drinks the Earth in, eager. It’s a wonderful feeling to wake into the world in a new body.
She catches the chant and puffs off the cigar of the man next to her. The thick smoke buries her but then it clears and she exhales the tobacco at Rodrigo. The smoke hits him and he drops and she cackles as he seizures into trance. One of his two heads of saint, Sete Facadas or Zé-Pelintra, has descended from the village to hatch inside him.
I lose myself in the charry smoke . A light glints through, it is Oxalá’s face. The young initiate has finished his walking rite and put on Oxalá’s mirror mask. Oxalá will ride in his body for rest of the night.
I find him on a bench, his back against the wall of Tulio’s house. We’re the only ones here not dancing or chanting. “Hello, Oxalá,” I say. His face is Marcos’, reversed. “I humbly thank you for allowing me to follow the path here.” Travel the whole world until your feet bleed to find a reflection. The path behind you doesn’t even look that long.
Oxalá says nothing. Orixás like him, they never speak. They’re as inscrutable as an Alzheimer’s patient. You never know if anything gets past the mirror. I shake his hand, limp as a fresh corpse. All I get from Oxalá is the heavy breathing from whoever he’s riding. I nod like it means something and walk away. The next time I see him, it will be in his house before his true and awesome form, not like this.
I check my watch. It’s five till one. On the other side of the universe, in Milwaukee, Heast should be on his way down to the medical ward, the snores of my wax-skinned, comatose body echoing through the room, moments from being silenced.
There’s nothing left to do but go meet Joana. Back through the smoke cloud, toward the back of the yard. I climb a woodpile and don’t bother to look back at the ceremony as I jump the fence. I land on my left foot in a bad way, fall, and crush one of the dead doves in Joana’s yard. Joana puts two pieces of melon on the altar, sighs, and walks over to help me up, but I’m already back on my feet before she gets to me.
She nods and then goes back to building the altar. Everything is caught up now, this is the mountain peak and there’s nowhere else to go. I guess there are these few steps to the altar. I try not to step on any birds.
I brush the dove guts off my shirt and wipe my hand on my pants. I trace the outline of Joana’s ass in her skirt. She’s too hard to make love to, the lines in her face too deep. Not that she’s ugly, not that she’s beautiful, but if I didn’t know her, I might want to. Her sister, I should have really tried harder to sleep with her. It’s a shame I never will. It’s a shame to think of all the people I’ll never fuck, but it won’t matter much soon.
I hear orchestrated brass and strings, something cracking and crumbling. I turn and see a TV through a neighbor’s window. There’s a movie, a little girl stands alone on a city street with a stuffed dinosaur in her hand. A skyscraper collapses, its torso exploding while the head and shoulders sink intact. It’s a disaster movie I’ve seen before. The girl stares up at the plummeting cloud of CGI debris. It’s a callback to a game of Jenga she played with her half-brother earlier in the movie.
In prison I heard a rumor that I have a daughter down here. I don’t know if it’s true. The cloud is just about to close in on the girl when a whining comes from her left. A Yamaha bike zooms past and the rider, whose identity is concealed by a helmet, whisks the girl into their arms. I turn back to Joana, who comes to me with a live dove in one hand and a long skinny knife in the other.
I wonder where Ginny ended up? Will I see her again one day? I was going to send her a care package a minute before. Weird how things turn out.
I remember they outrun the cloud on the motorcycle and they pull into a park and the rider takes off his helmet and it’s her half-brother, Greg or something. It seems obvious now, but they make you think he’d already died in a capsized oilrig.
I lie down in the clearing by the altar. Joana stands over me and cuts the dove’s neck, its wings burst open and closed and the feathers drift down to me and then she drizzles the blood over the feathers. I smell barbecue from another backyard. It reminds me of when I first came here eleven years ago, of hot nights and being full of meat and bubbly beer. I remember them being happy, but maybe I’m wrong. It’s hard for me to keep my mind on tasks at hand today. I don’t know what that’s about.
She tips the dove above my head and I drink the blood from its throat. You travel the whole world, from up in the clouds to lying in the ground with the dirt in your back.
Joana picks the gun up off of the ground next to me. This is it, really, really it. She chants with me: “Oxalá, my head is yours, now and forever. Oxalá, these offerings are yours.” I add: “This body is a sacrifice, a trade for my place in the exu village. Thank you.”
The Yamaha zooms, the little girl screams. I remember them being safe already. Where are they? I can’t see the screen but I picture a chunk of granite smashing in their path, the bike flattening against it, a simple thunk of his helmet on the pavement, the girl sailing through the air with her dinosaur next to her, while right above them is an even bigger chunk of falling granite. Joana points the gun at my forehead. She closes one eye and centers the other over the barrel’s center. This is really it now. Really, really, really, really, really, really, uh, really
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