Last Cab -- from the itexi tu context

"'There's no use scraping at these walls no more' said the writer to the wall"

_{Last Cab}

23:57 two uneven circles of lights approach the drunk steadily. He heaves his heavy head upright on his slouching shoulders. There’s crackling of gravel, on a sloping bend along Noordgesig’s main road. A whirling dervish encircles him and his coat flaps like a raven – alive. Brushing dust from his eyes he steps inside instinctually finding a place to sit, beside a man with a gun in his lap, blood on his hands and a tear in his eye. The drunk ransacks his inner pockets and pulls out a bottle wrapped in a crossword puzzle - drinks.

22:48 bending to brush a streak of dust from her navy blue nurses uniform, Sweety-Pie pauses to listen a little more intently to the night sounds that eerily sound the same in their menace. A swirling howl of a siren greets the night sounds and dances off the sleeping walls of the houses around her. Two shadows in the near distance draw closer. She presses her purse to her breast and turns her head to see if a texi is anywhere in sight. She looks longingly and hard. There’s no answer to the question her eyes ask - quiet.

00:16 the man in black with a gun in his lap remembers it all. She wasn’t supposed to fight, she was just supposed to hand over her bag and that would be that. It was supposed to be that simple. Yesterday his friend and he had beers together and rejoiced in the terror they were – wolves.

22:51 bending down, pretending to fidget, she picks up a nearby stone and waits. Something didn’t feel right to Sweety-Pie, sweet little lamb. The moon is full rising high and the air is still. She could hear their conspiring laughter wash over her like a warning tide. Her mouth spells out a prayer, strong and quiet – honest.

00:21 the drunk, thrown about in a rickety seat with a gun-man to his side, thinks about nothing. Missing the camaraderie of the tavern he extends a smile to the man in black. The man grips the handle of the gun tighter. The drunk unshakeably inebriated passes his bottle just as a severe pothole is ridden over. Not a drop is spilt. He smiles with gaping holes at his own talents. The man in black looks at him and the bottle and looks away – sniffles.

22:53 bending her knees in struggle. She clutches the straps of her bag and grits her teeth. The man with a gash across his forehead, with an eager grip pulling at the leather purse, digs his heels into the ground and shouts that his friend should take care of the wench. She leaps forward knocking him of balance, he staggers backwards. She goes for his eyes. He howls blindly at an ominous red moon high above his head. The gash bleeds, furiously. He falls to the ground. She grabs her purse and sprints away. The man in black hesitates seeing his friend squirm about on the floor, his blood caking the dust. She runs for her life. The man with the gash across the face leaps to his feet, just in front of the man in black as he squeezes the trigger of his gun. The man with the gash across his forehead falls to the ground once again. Sweety-Pie runs in the distance with flailing arms and turns the corner and disappears – Saved.

00:27 the drunk, obviously ignored, makes conversation with himself. The man in black sighs and blows his head off.

23:10 the man in black, tears streaking his cheeks, saddles his gun on the small of his back. And pushes his dead-friend into a small thicket in the shadows, he’s been crouching in, where the invisible eyes behind the windows of the houses couldn’t see him. He crosses himself as taught by the nuns at the catholic primary school he attended as a child. And stands and waits. The sirens were far off. The texi got there first. Not an eye was raised to him as he entered he slouched into a seat and was driven away – noisily.

23:50 the man in black, wakens to a road that doesn’t seem to end. Uncomfortable, he pulls his gun out. Other passengers pay him no mind still. Just how he likes it. A screeching patrol car passes the taxi going back where they come from. One cannot help but wonder. He sits there not knowing what to do – blank.

23:57…

A Future Pasture

I woke up fifty years into a near-begotten future. <God what did I drink!!!>
I know this much: The city still kind of looks the same… kind of looks like it has aged… kind of like what Maputo looked like, Christmas that 2009… Jesus Chriiist  what does Maputo look like. …nooow

This is what I know __This place is dead. The people are dead. There is no soul. It’s like watching countless hours of home video of a 50 click trek across the karoo with only the grainy/granny texture keeping you glued. Empty stares, empty store fronts, empty stair cases… empty gestures all mechanical … accepted with grace… going through the motion… one flew through the cuckoo clock

At the Old Bar… where I had shared drink (at least twelve hours or 50 years ago) with old shifty men, uneasy in their skins, sweaty and refilling their drinks <every Tuesday two for the price of one>  Then: They were human; going about their business, with a decent hesitancy in their vibration. They’d go to the common girls every 45 minutes (at the most) in 5-6-7 slots and some would even come down afterwards to stare at themselves in the mirror, down a few drinks, ignore their cellphone…
But Now: it’s the same men but they’ve lost their edge somehow, they got a touched up aura. It’s a great facsimile, but just doesn’t read the same. And that mirror is cracked and ignored, and things are warped; all out of place. The beer tastes different somehow too… Man, this world has gone mad. Now when they come down from upstairs (after 10 at the most)  they look all processed, hardly shifting out of line, waiting their turn at some vending machine that gives them cigarettes and a free AIDS test. High fives and mumbles of congrats if you pass and condolences and grunts of sympathy if you don’t (and sad talk about ARV treatments, behind newspaper beards) <this happens more often than not>

“At least you are not a politician” I hear this everywhere. I don’t know if it’s resignation or irony. This city is numb, the people are numb. There’s no feeling it’s like watching a constant looping reel of static, with no way to tear your eyes away, till you’re all teary and overwhelmed by the inability to comprehend.
I know what’s wrong with this town. They’ve taken away all the madness. And by madness I don’t mean the hawkers; their still everywhere, the louses; on every corner, the holes in the pavement; at everystep… I’m talking about the colour. Everything concrete is beige, everything else is one unwavering frequency of the spectrum somewhere between tan and rawhide. They can’t blame it on the dust in the air. The dust from the industrial grade residential complexes that they’re building, just out of town, just out of mind, on what used to be a city of tombstone high rises and crucifix-shaped antennas; a place called Avalon. NO. This colourlessness runs deep… it’s all in how everything is automated, mechanical just going through the motions…

At the mobile public phones: there’s no more bootleg foreign music DVD, with gogo girls suffering from severe cases of hip displacementia - playing on the tube. No here! All the portable TV’s are tuned to the same twenty-four hour telethon channel, because every hour somewhere in the world a natural disaster was fucking up some tourist’s holiday. Earthquake, Flood, Runaway fire, Atomic Dust storm, Eiffel tower syndrome. After calling a number that I didn’t expect to ring, but rang, and got a voice that wasn’t the person I wanted it to be, I hung up. The Vendor tries to peddle me some donation voucher to save the orphans of those killed by Somali pirates, instead of giving me the credit I still have on the meter. Some people never change. The voucher will make for a nice souvenir…

…Walked into a cinema. It played strange foreign films that were modern touch ups of European movies from the silent era. They’d been re-coloured, with vocal dialogue, re-shot in the latest 4D technology, projected onto three storey high walls. I must have been there 5 minutes but I got to know the whole history of how this came about… it was terrifying how there was no way to stop what is happening from happening.
[--Looked at the time--]. Headed back to the landing strip. Must lie down… all… hope… is fading…

“S h i t  m a n ! !  Y o u  a r e  b a c k !” <What the fuck where am I> “Ha, ha, ha that’s what chasing a Warrrp with mescaline gets you my man; a real barefoot spacewalk” “we recorded some of your subliminal broadcasts whilst you were in transition, exit and entry” “What heavy static you got man” <oh shit yeah, where… where… are we> “oh we are… should be… uhm…” “Page: 23-04. Section: 20. Point 11.” “Ah, yes thank you… In your article: In the Defence of the Perpetually Evolving Struggle...” <alright, alright, I know where we are – Roll Camera-->

“In your article: in the Defence of the Perpetaully Evolving Struggle, could you explain what is it you meant by we should rue the day we here the words the struggle is over…?”

<
< - - cigarette - - >
< - - cigarette - - >

<well you are still following me from the whole human fault being the mechanism that makes us the perfect being, right… nice… nice… and the idea of the limit of questions… cool… Now the day you hear the words “the struggle is over”, know that then we would’ve stretched the very limits of our dimension and it either shatters or we’re trapped with little room to manoeuvre… how I can best explain this is…
…just now


I woke up fifty years into a near-forgotten future. <<God what did I drink!!!>>
>