Collecting All the Pieces of the Fog

My head is like the fog in a London alley in a black and white horror movie I’m only watching to prove my one openable eye still works.

I don’t think I need a horror movie to scare me.

I am terrified of myself.

Disgusted with myself that I would walk into a bar called The Blue Iguana, amazed at myself that I remember the name of the place.

Maybe the neon burned it into what’s left of my brain.

The Blue Iguana? I’m a Frank’s Place guy. The Lamplighter. Corner bars. Fuck the no smoking law bars.

Gray matter?

I’m no doctor, but mine has to be olive green by now.

I remember standing next to a hardware store, leaning on a hardware store. On the wall, inside the glass was a thermometer, and I wondered if it was working, for sale, a display model, what?

You can’t turn off mercury, right?

A thermometer inside a store wouldn’t accurately tell me the temperature outside the store anyway. I didn’t want to be hot, I knew that, though hot doesn’t make me as angry as cold.

It was too August to be cold, too south to be cold.

The woman at the desk of this motel was kind, maybe felt sorry for me.

She’s probably seen a thousand mes.

I flirted with her, I know I did. I handed her cash through the little slot and tried to touch her hand.

Was my eye swollen shut then?

I don’t remember a fight, or a fall.

There are parts of the night that are just gone, I know that, I’m accustomed to that, I’ve learned to accept that. I am drawing a picture to be turned into a puzzle and I won’t ever put all the pieces of that puzzle in the box.

The purchaser of the puzzle can live with it.

They can connect all the pieces that have been placed in the box and call it done.

Or maybe that’s what I’m doing.

The creature on the screen in the London alley reveals himself, or should I say the camera reveals him, through the fog, hiding, his cloak falling away from his face, a face, a cranium with an unnatural pallor, an undead look, but very much…real, corporeal, not a ghost. Flesh.

I poke at my swollen face.

The pressure hurts.

Somehow I like it.

The pain is comfort.

I open my wallet.

My hand is shaking.

A brown piece of leather is looking at me.

I left my credit card at The Blue Iguana.

I have an excuse to go back.

And no excuse at all.

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