Munmun(92)

“IF WE ALL TEAM UP WE CAN TAKE HIM,” said the first.

“IF YOU WANT TO GET YOUR ASS KICKED, GOFORIT,” said the second.

“WE’RE GETTING OUR ASSES KICKED ANYWAY,” pleaded the first, as I reached him and softly palmed his head in my hand and bounced it off the cliffside.

I gloried through the night, sank more barges and houses, kicked more soft butts.

Assembled my own staff from other people’s staffs, armed them with other people’s guns and bombs, put them on other people’s boats and copters, promised my lawyer would have paperwork ready for everyone in the morning.

No one stopped me, no one fought me, instead people fought each other to escape, squabbled over each other’s stuff to replace what I had smashed, shoved each other into my path, I was a desertspider in a pen of cowards.

I was maybe a third of the way through Balustrade when the sun came up and I began to weep.

I was cramming golfcourse sand into the mouth of some typical big, a plump thickhaired puffyeyed rando named Biff and putting up a pointless fight, snarling spitting sputtering while I pressed a knee into his ribs and poured the sand into his face, and I was telling him, JUST SWALLOW THE FREAKING SAND SO IT’LL BE OVER FASTER, I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, but Biff wouldn’t swallow, kept angling his face away and squirming, so I grabbed the flabby giant’s hair and just thumped his head into the sand, thump, thump, thump,

but I knew it didn’t hurt as much as it could, so I pulled up his head and slugged him, blacked one eye, then the other, pulled him up and knocked him down, saying, I TOLD YOU JUST EAT THE STUPID SAND, WHY WOULDN’T YOU JUST EAT IT, but the words were getting stuck in my thicking throat, strangled from weepiness, Warner you loonybin, stop crying and moveon.

I dropped him in a heap and breathed.

“Boss, are you allright, need a break or something,” yelled Puppyneck, still chilling in my hair, he ofcourse had become my chief of staff.

I NEED SLEEP, I told him.

“Yeah, you should get some sleep,” he agreed, “noproblem, we got lookout armies on the sand.”

I’LL SLEEP IN THE OCEAN, I told him.

He barked orders into his stolen headset, I stepped into the sea.

Floated out into international waters like a peacefull barge, lay on my back and dreamed.





DREAMWORLD


And for the first time in years, just let myself be in Dreamworld, not terrorize or haunt.

Just tumble, drift, hush myself, and watch.

I was only Warner, not the angry druggy angel, just my raggy ratty sober self.

It was ofcourse the dreamzone of a lonely city, trashed and fearfull.

Obviously the timeofday made it pretty quiet, most people were awake in Lifeanddeathworld, most people weren’t dreaming. Just me and nightworker poors, a few sick in hospitalbeds, a few lazy hipsters and scumbags.

And everywhere people avoided each other, glanced suspiciously, shrank into their own shadows and muttered dismissals, I’m Not Intrested,

Heck You Want,

Leave Me Alone,

What You Think I’m Stupid Or Something,

everyone was me when I was prisoned in the kidjail.

? ? ?

My heart felt dry and dead, I wanted to talk to dreamers, show you something nice. Take one person, swim a flowerfish in front of your eyes.

But every stranger shunned me, no one trusted me to make them happy. Someone froze the flowerfish, another grayed and shriveled it.

I made a little rivertree, fishflocks wheeling in the wind like leaves.

One stranger tried to dry it up,

another turned it into ugly veins,

a third one took the fishleaves and thinned them into needles, eels, snakes of bleeding ink.

Ohwell, I thought, ohwell, tried to just let it be an ohwell kind of thing, my heart tried not to grieve, itiswhatitis.

I tumbled, drifted further.

Someone I knew was asleep, I realized.

The operahouse sat in a yard in a yard in a yard, everyone was suspicious of it too, no one went in.

I stepped inside, expected the old rich song, instead she was just singing one plain note, hair unbraided, pretty walleye closed.

Hummmmmmm, went the note.

“Kitty, what happened to the song,” I asked.

She opened her eyes and gazed widely, a little unfocus, not sure what she saw.

“Who is this though, are you a ghost,” she whispered finally.

“Kitty, what are you doing asleep right now,” I said. “Don’t you have school or work or something.”

“No school, no work,” she said. “I just wait dayandnight for the kingcon to come and fight me.”

“What do you mean,” I said.

“Everyone knows the kingcon,” she said flat and dull. “The angry angel who tortures Dreamworld. He fought me once, now I wait for him to come fight me again, the waiting is how he tortures me I guess.”

“He’s out of Dreamworld, Kitty,” I said. “It’s just me now, just Warner. The kingkong is gone, he left dreams forever.”

She just frowned and thumbed her hair.

“Kitty can you sing me the song,” I asked.

“I don’t remember how it goes,” she shrugged.

She said it and my heart began to moan.

“How about you just sing any song, let’s just hear what notes come out,” I asked, fighting panic.