Munmun(22)

So Usher and I huddled in the dumpster and watched the cop flash his jumpy lightbeam, roaming, yelling, not wanting to deal with Ken and his bulletholed apartment. But eventually he stomped up there and knocked on the door, door opened, tramps raced out, the cop didn’t even try to chase them, instead he went in there and walked back out after a minute or two with Prayer in one hand, to take her to the station.

I got a look as he carried her out, and I didn’t see her face, but she didn’t seem injured. Just wet headtotoe. But not from water. Slick wet like with oil, the robe all greasy and clinging to her skin, the coal around her eyes smeared everywhere, pandafaced again.

“Usher,” I wheezed. “Go back to the cleaningcar. I have to chill in this dumpster for atleast tonight because of my stupid ribs.”

Usher shook his head, but he knew I was right.

“Go back to the Quickstand and wait for Prayer,” I told him. “That’s what’s important. She needs you. I’ll be okay. I’ll see you in Dreamworld. Make gray fireworks, I’ll find you.”

Usher, the most loyal and good friend in the world, squeezed a knot of my hair in his fist, bumped my skull, and left.

A dumpster is not the worst place to sleep, but not great either because of rats, rackoons, squads of littlepoors who might bust your teeth. Best is if you find a cleanedout can and wedge yourself inside.

It’s a little impossible to get to Dreamworld if everytime you breathe, it blows on your ribfire, flaring up all huge and bad in the darkness.

So that night all I could do was doze, every few minutes yelping myself awake.

The pain was worse in the morning but cops were sniffing around the whole apartment complex, so I crept out and snuck down the alley, licking foggy dew from the grass, stopping, crouching, mashing my teeth to keep from shrieking.

After a blockandahalf I was behind a foodmall and crying from the pain so I snuck into the garbage of a cowsoy stand and nibbled the thrownaway food in there.

Might have been the soup from Sand Dreamough Neighborhood Souptime, noodles, leaves, bonemeat, sprouts, everything salty limey slippery from birdfat.

The day came and went and I stayed in the cowsoy garbage, no one found me, no one bothered me, just randomly crapped showers of unfinished soups.

That night it took some work but I slept deep enough for Dreamworld, and wandered around broken for a while before Usher’s dreamstuff found me.

It was a single gray firework like a dusky palmtree crackling overandover above a little doorless stripmall cube. I climbed to the top, panels under me gently opened. I floated down into a room of carpets and lamps and too many chairs and in one of them sat sad mooneyed Prayer.

“Sis, ohmygod,” I said.

“Hey bro,” she said, not wanting to hug.

“Are you okay,” I said.

“Yup,” she said, not okay.

“Right now are you sleeping in the car at Paddy’s?” I asked. “Is Usher with you?”

“Yup, yup,” she said.

“Well,” I said. “What happened.”

She didn’t want to talk about it, and being honest with you, I didn’t want to hear about it. Did I need to, yes, did I want to, no.

But I kept asking quietly and eventually she told me a little.

As soon as she got to the party the lawstudents were weird to her. Not their jokey mean lifeanddeathselves but not their respectfull dreamselves either.

Instead they were just weirdly asking weird questions, like Prayer, how fast do you think you can you climb this pole, how long can you hold your breath, how hard can you squeeze these cucumbers and other vegetables with your arms and legs, could you crush them even, well why don’t you show us.

In her head Prayer was like, this is a little strange and I have to say not totally what I expected from a lawstudent party, I expected a little more classy conversation and witty backandforth, not feats of strength and endurance, but hey, it’s my first party, I’m open to new things and experiences.

Then as she was doing some vegetable squeezing and climbing through tubes, the tramps showed up, and the lawstudents said, tramps, hello, great to see you, this is Prayer and maybe you could show her the ropes a little bit.

In a washroom was a bowl of oil and the tramps took a bath in it and invited Prayer to join the bath with them, comeon, it’s so nice in here, so Prayer got in.

“Wait, naked,” I asked.

“What do you think,” said Prayer.

The oil had the choky smell of fake flowers like soaps and candles from Prettyshop and the tramps began to wash each other in it and tried to wash Prayer too.

The washroomdoor opened, Prayer screamed and tried to cover herself, but the tramps didn’t, they stretched like cats and arched their backs, and they said, Prayer, relax, and they put their hands on her, Glen and Ken picked up the oilbasin with Prayer and tramps in it and placed it in the middle of the bed and unbuckled their belts and Warner, do you really want me to tell you the rest of this story.

No, I don’t.

Okay. Well. There you go.

I guess I just need to know, did they hurt you at all.

I mean they didn’t snap my arms off but there’s a lot of ways someone can hurt you.

I asked her did she ask to leave.

“No,” she said.

“Sis, why not,” I said.

It’s hard to cry in Dreamworld, even harder to cry from rage.