Shiny Red Nothing is proud to present Ship Of Theseus, a genre-nuking novel that pits a troubled young writer named Wayne Bird against his own demons before rocketing him 150 years into the future to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was a little boy. Ghosts, vampires, skin-shedding monsters, hive-minded street gangs, alien viruses, math obsessed cultists, drugs that induce nirvana, and an adventure like none other awaits you!
Now through Halloween 2021, Ship Of Theseus: A Novel by Jeremiah Strickland will be available to listen to in a serialized audiobook format wherever you get your favorite podcasts! A new episode releases every Monday on the Shiny Red Nothing Podcast until the full book becomes available in August.
1. Part 1: When We Are Inhuman, Chapter 1 – SYNOPSIS: Reeling after his girlfriend’s death by heroin overdose, Wayne Bird mourns and gets drunk with his well-wishing visitors while house-sitting for Dorothy. – RELEASES: Monday, June 14, 2021
2. Part 1, Chapter 2 – SYNOPSIS: Lonely and spiraling out of control, Wayne hits on the “vampire” downstairs while dealing with the ghosts in Dorothy’s apartment. – RELEASES: Monday, June 21, 2021
3. Part 1, Chapter 3 – SYNOPSIS: Unable to allow himself to grieve, connect with Jasmine, or defeat the video game he’s obsessed with, Wayne falls apart. – RELEASES: Monday, June 28, 2020
Shiny Red Nothing is proud to present Ship Of Theseus, a genre-nuking novel that pits a troubled young writer named Wayne Bird against his own demons before rocketing him 150 years into the future to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was a little boy. Ghosts, vampires, skin-shedding monsters, hive-minded street gangs, alien viruses, math obsessed cultists, drugs that induce nirvana, and an adventure like none other awaits you!
4. Part 2: Gangs Of Green City, Episode 1: The Lost Encampment – SYNOPSIS: Scott and his mother Callie make an important medical supply delivery to the Evil East, where they face off against a Tony Triad. – RELEASES: Monday, July 5, 2021
5. Part 2, Episode 2: Go Berserk – SYNOPSIS: Skyrat attempts a rescue. Berserker makes an entrance. Mr Bird reveals a secret. – RELEASES: Monday, July 12, 2021
6. Part 2, Episode 3: We Gotta Go Now – SYNOPSIS: Skyrat accepts a mission from Mr Bird, putting him in the middle of Bog and Laser’s intelligence operation. – RELEASES: Monday, July 19, 2021
7. Part 2, Episode 4: Showdown At Louie’s Pawn – SYNOPSIS: Bog and Laser get the upper hand on Skyrat. Espie and Scott run into trouble with xenophobic Louies on their way to the Temple Of Divine Geometry. Compelled by a dream, Skyrat confronts Louie Louie on her home turf. – RELEASES: Monday, July 26, 2021
8. Part 2, Episode 5: The Skyrat – SYNOPSIS: Mr Bird dreams of the day he crossed over. Espie and Scott have a blow up. Bog and Laser reveal a police investigation into Scott’s mom. The Left Hand attacks the Louies. Berserker runs defense against our hero. – RELEASES: Monday, August 2, 2021
9. Part 2, Episode 6: Ship Of Theseus – SYNOPSIS: Some time after the events of episode 5, we look in our cast, where they are, and where they’re going. Mr Bird bird gets philosophical. – RELEASES: Monday, August 9, 2021
Shiny Red Nothing is proud to present Ship Of Theseus, a genre-nuking novel that pits a troubled young writer named Wayne Bird against his own demons before rocketing him 150 years into the future to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was a little boy. Ghosts, vampires, skin-shedding monsters, hive-minded street gangs, alien viruses, math obsessed cultists, drugs that induce nirvana, and an adventure like none other awaits you!
AVAILABLE WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO YOUR FAVORITE PODCASTS!
Soundtrack to the mind-bending, sci-fi superhero novel, “Ship Of Theseus” by Jeremiah Strickland, featuring tracks by For Algernon, Meat Curtain, & Shiny Red Nothing!
This Christmas, Shiny Red Nothing is proud to present Ship Of Theseus, a genre-bending novel that pits a troubled young writer named Wayne Bird against his own demons before rocketing him 150 years into the future to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was a little boy.
Ghosts, vampires, skin-shedding monsters, hive-minded street gangs, alien viruses, math obsessed cultists, drugs that induce nirvana, and an adventure like none other awaits you in these pages…
Ship Of Theseus is the genre-smashing new book by Jeremiah Strickland from Shiny Red Nothing Press. It’s available on December 21, 2020. Before pre-ordering yours today, check out this exciting sample chapter!
Episode 2: Go Berserk
From the rooftop of the abandoned brewery building next to the JC Maxwell Plant, Skyrat watched Henry creep down the alley to the beat of an approaching lady’s footsteps. It was oddly quiet for the Industrial District, even for three in the morning. This was Tony territory, but there wasn’t a Tony to be seen.
The Rat dropped from the roof just as Henry reached from the shadows for the lady’s purse. Our hero landed on him, breaking the poor guy’s thumb. This was an accident. What Skyrat meant to do was to land right in between Henry and the woman in a crouch, with one hand touching the pavement in front of him for balance, and the other drawn back into a fist. You know, like superheroes do in comic books. The thing is, jumping from a four story building and directing your landing in such a precise way is tough. It was pure luck that he didn’t land on the woman instead of Henry.
The two of them scrambled back to their feet, Henry holding his hand, Skyrat pulling his hood up over his head, trying to exude confidence and menace in the face of this villain and the pretty lady he was protecting. The lady stood there watching, her hands on her head. She had dropped the purse.
“I told you to stay out of this neighborhood, Henry!” said Skyrat, stern as he could manage. His mask was the severed sleeve of a red t-shirt. Triangular eye holes and a large opening for his nose and mouth had been cut out of it, and it was tied off under his chin to keep it tight. The rest of his costume consisted of a black t-shirt, a maroon zip-up hoodie, blue jeans, and a pair of old red canvas basketball shoes.
Henry didn’t say anything. He just stood there, hunched over at the entrance to the alley, clutching his injured digit to his belly, swaying like a canoe in a lake. He was drunk.
Without warning, the Rat lunged at him, grabbed him by his army coat, dragged him down the alley, scooped him up, and tossed him into an open dumpster with a thud that brought the lid down. “Don’t you dare come out of there until I’m gone,” Skyrat warned. “And if I catch you purse snatching again, I’ll sell you to the Surgeons of the Evil East!”
Henry kicked the inside of the dumpster in response.
Skyrat strutted back up the alley toward the pretty lady with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, saying, “Sorry if I scared you, jumping out of nowhere like that, Miss. In situations like this, I have to act quick.”
She plucked her purse off of the sidewalk and struck a pose under the streetlight, arms crossed, quite reminiscent of the billboard behind her on the building across the street.
Our hero was oblivious to the similarity. “Are you okay?”
She looked him over as he stepped into the light. The hood cast his face in shadow.
She responded, “What are you, a jerk?”
“I’m the Skyrat!” he said, lowering his hood. He was a young African American man of sixteen. His mask was soaked in sweat and had some food stains on it. His hair, which had grown out since it was closely cropped at the beginning of the summer, was gross from all the rooftop patrolling he’d been doing that night. His smile was ear to ear. His eyes twinkled. An acute observer might have accused him of being smitten by the dark haired beauty in front of him.
“You’re a bully,” she said.
“But…” He straightened up, looking around for an observer to back him up. “He was going to mug you.” There was no one around to corroborate this story. Actually, besides a few random third shifters, drunks, and a couple of Brot cultists, there were very few people here. Skyrat had found himself in Tony territory that was completely devoid of Tony Triads.
“I wasn’t!” Henry’s voice echoed from inside the dumpster as he kicked it again.
Skyrat was flustered. He shifted his weight to one foot and then the other. Rain had begun falling lightly. “Henry takes purses all the time,” he assured her. “I’ve seen him do it. Twice.”
“I wouldn’t have let him take my purse, Skyman.” She glared at him. “I can take care of myself. I certainly don’t need some little boy to save me.” She wasn’t much older than him, a few years at most. She wore jeans and a black pea coat. Her face was kind of sparkly.
Lightning struck in Skyrat’s brain. “You look like Samantha Cyber!” he proclaimed, his smile returning.
He was a dumb kid, but she kind of liked him. “You think?” She looked up at the billboard behind her, then back to the Skyrat. On the billboard, the model sold diamonds with a look of mild disdain on her face. It was the same mask she was wearing now.
“Oh, my god,” he gasped. “You are Samantha Cyber!” She had cybernetic enhancements, sleek ribbons of complex metallic hardware slithering down her right arm. It was a medical necessity to mitigate nerve damage, but it gave her a unique, striking, commercially viable look.
Samantha sighed, turned, and walked away from the boy, knowing he would follow.
He did. “I just saved Samantha Cyber from a purse snatching!” His voice was pitched about an octave above normal. “So weird to see you human sized. I mean, because you’re so big on the billboard. Not that you’re big. You’re small. You’re a teeny tiny little girl. Lady. Woman. I mean…”
“Stop following me.”
He didn’t. “I’ll walk you home. The Industrial District isn’t safe at night.”
“This is Green City. No place is safe at night in this toilet.”
“Yeah, but… You’re famous.” He stopped. “Why are you out here all by yourself so late?”
She stopped, calculating her response. “You’re famous too.” Somewhere, a cat in heat began screaming like a baby. Samantha could smell urine. “Why are you out here all by yourself?”
“I’m, uh, I’m not famous.” Skyrat blushed. “I’m infamous. There’s a difference.”
His smile was one of those contagious types. She fought the urge to show that she’d been infected by it. “No difference. Infamous sounds bad, but it can work out pretty well for you if you know how to use it.”
“Well, I mean, this is my, uh, this is my job. Being here is what I do.”
Something popped and echoed in the distance; maybe a gunshot, maybe a vehicle backfire. A Brot jaywalked just east of them. There was no one else around but the yelping cat and a vagrant, vomiting in a gutter. The rain was coming down harder now. “Let me walk you home. I don’t mind.” He put his hood back up.
She thought the boy was sweet and allowed him a smile. “I mind, Skyman.”
“Skyrat.”
“Whatever. You can’t walk me home. I don’t like the idea of some kid knowing where my apartment is. You might tell your buddies, and then I’m gonna have a bunch of little boys swarming my apartment building, hounding the attendant for autographs and trying to peek at me in my underwear.”
He looked around again. Still no one helpful to be seen. “I would never…!”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
In the distance, car tires squealed, stealing their attention from each other. Back to Samantha, Skyrat said, “Really. You can trust me. I’m a superhero.”
“I’ll tell you what.” She dug his sincerity. “Give me your phone number, and I’ll text you if I ever need a superhero.”
His eyes lit up. “Okay!” He started going through his pockets, pulling out mobile phones. She counted seven of them. “Here,” he said when he found the one he wanted. A vehicle was approaching; a poorly running gas-powered vehicle, coming fast by the sound of it. “Take this number.”
“You’re sure?” She took her own phone from her purse. “That’s the one?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I’ll put some music on it. You like For Algernon? Oh, and Star Biker has to go on here too. You ever play that?”
“What’s the number, Ratboy?”
“Skyrat.” He told her the number. She called it. “I can’t believe I have Samantha Cyber’s kwothing phone number!”
Her phone was returned to her purse. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
Headlights illuminated them as an old black full-sized van screeched around the corner and barreled past them, roaring like an injured brachiosaurus with a diesel engine. Swerving out of control, it became suddenly acquainted with the unyielding metal pole of a streetlight. The pole leaned in on the van in disapproval. Sparks spat from a busted light fixture. A hubcap went rolling off down the street. The cat made a demon noise. Samantha and Skyrat watched in disbelief as the truck backed up, beeping in warning.
Thudding, running footsteps like a kick drum drew their attention back to the corner from whence the van had appeared. The perpetrator of the drumming was impossibly big, nearly as big as the van. He wore a tight fitting muscle shirt, jeans, and a green luchador mask with two intertwining snakes on it. Bulging veins pulsed in his biceps and shoulders, and he was snarling like an animal.
Samantha stepped behind the Rat to hide, terrified, clutching onto the back of his hoodie. “What the kwot is that?”
Skyrat whispered, “Berserker.” He was terrified too.
Berserker slowed as he approached the van. It stopped backing up, and the transmission clunked as it was thrown in drive. Bullets pinged through the back windows. The brute just swatted at them like annoying flies. He kicked the back driver’s side tire, and it popped. Sparks flew as the wheels spun for a getaway but to no avail. Berserker smacked the side of the van and it toppled over.
Samantha jumped.
Skyrat said, “I hate this guy.”
“Go get him!” she urged, pushing him toward the scene.
“Huh?”
Berserker climbed on top of the van, ripping the driver’s side door off as if it were a page from a magazine.
“Go be a superhero!”
“I will, don’t rush me!” Skyrat took a deep breath and then a step toward the van.
The masked giant stood on the side of the overturned van, holding the driver above him by the lapels. He was saying, “Tell Geronimo that if he wants him back, he can buy him back from Berserker.” His accent was more European than Mexican, as far as Skyrat could tell. The driver’s head was bleeding. He threw up on Berserker’s shoulder. The monster just laughed.
Skyrat drew one more deep breath into his lungs and said to Samantha, “You should probably run,” then ran full force in the van’s direction, jumped, and launched himself at Berserker. He bounced off the villain’s back as a tennis ball would from a wall, falling onto the upturned side of the van and then rolling off onto the street.
Berserker dropped the driver and stepped off of the vehicle. “Skyrat,” he said. “The Theseus to my Minotaur. I have been missing you.”
Rat scurried back to his feet. “How’s your head?”
Berserker took a casual swat at Skyrat. The blow connected and sent the boy through the air and into the burned-out warehouse across the street. He smacked against it and plopped down onto the sidewalk.
“Last time we met, you hit me from behind with a street sign,” he growled at the boy. “That was cowardly.”
“Call it what you want, tiny.” Our hero took to his unsteady feet, shaking. “I stopped you from killing that poor bank manager’s shih tzu, though, didn’t I.”
“For now.” Berserker swung his fist, but the Rat dodged it. The punch exploded the bricks of the building and buried the brute’s arm in the wall up to his shoulder. Skyrat grabbed onto his opponent’s belt, braced his foot against the wall, and flung the villain with everything he had. Berserker flew without grace back across the street, crashing into the underside of the toppled van. The impact rolled it backwards onto its roof. Berserker rolled off onto the street behind it.
Skyrat smiled amidst the cloud of mortar dust, proud of himself. Still, he didn’t dare take on Berserker directly. “Whatever you’re after, I won’t let you take it!” He really needed to escape, preferably with his skull intact. A plan began to formulate.
Berserker came around the upturned vehicle. “Like a mouse braving the kitchen while the cat prowls the house…” His footsteps echoed off of the buildings as he marched forward. “I will play with your helpless form until I am ready to eat you alive, little pigeon.”
Sirens blared in the distance. Samantha had called the police. They would be equipped with weapons designed to take down the likes of Berserker. Skyrat too, for that matter. The monster stopped in his tracks. “The corrupt master of the house awakes as well.” He shifted his attention back to the van. “Fly back to your nest, little pigeon. We will have to continue our game another time.”
Another vehicle turned a corner onto the scene, not the police but a white television news van. Skyrat figured that the driver must have been nearby listening to his police scanner and was now determined to catch the story before the police arrived.
Berserker tipped the black van from its roof back to its side.
Skyrat raced to the news van, waving his hands at it, yelling, “Stop!” It screeched to a halt in front of him, and the driver opened the door. The headlights nearly blinded the Rat.
“What do you think you’re doing, kid?” I yelled at him. You should know that it was me driving the van. My wife and I owned a local independent news station, WGCN, Channel 4, where she was the director and had a morning show called “Early Bird.” Lucretia had had me pick the van up from the shop before going to work. She wasn’t going to be happy about this.
“I need to borrow your van, please and thank you.” To exhibit that this was not a request but a commandeering, he took a cue from Berserker, and ripped the driver’s side door off the news van like a coupon, flipping it off into the air behind him, letting me know he meant business.
Our eyes met. He recognized me. The door crashed down onto the street a half a block behind him. The sirens grew louder.
After a split second of hesitation, he yanked me out of the van and onto the street, careful not to injure my fragile old frame. He climbed into the driver’s seat and put the vehicle in gear, took one more worried glance in my direction, said, “Smells like skunk in here,” and put the pedal to the metal.
Berserker went around to the rear of the black van, opening the doors. Before he could peak at the cargo inside, Skyrat hit him with my news van at about sixty five miles per hour. Glass and metal sprayed the air. The back end of the news van lurched up off of the street and smacked into the black van while the front end wrapped itself around the big guy, who just kind of stood there and took it even better than the streetlight had. Skyrat had not buckled his seatbelt. He was thrown through the windshield by the impact, and I kid you not, he soared over Berserker, did a flip and landed in a perfect superhero pose thirty feet ahead of the collision. He crouched there for a moment, one hand in front for balance, the other drawn back behind him in a fist.
Berserker stumbled at the boy hero, stunned. He reached up to his sternum and took a handful of flesh. It tore with an awful sound. He pulled and ripped, squirming like a snake shedding it’s skin, his flesh wet and red on the inside, making sucking sounds as he stepped free from it, fully dressed, looking clean and bright in his fresh new clothes and mask.
Skyrat stumbled back in disgust and horror, then stood straight to face his enemy, ready for what might be next…
This Christmas, Shiny Red Nothing is proud to present Ship Of Theseus, a genre-bending novel that pits a troubled young writer named Wayne Bird against his own demons before rocketing him 150 years into the future to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was a little boy.
Ghosts, vampires, skin-shedding monsters, hive-minded street gangs, alien viruses, math obsessed cultists, drugs that induce nirvana, and an adventure like none other awaits you in these pages…
In 2018, Jeremiah Strickland had the privilege of participating in ArtPrize 10 in Grand Rapids, MI, turning Harmony Hall (an excellent independent brewery and pizzeria) into a living coloring book. The contents of this book comprise of the drawings made to hang on Harmony’s walls. The following pretentious statement hung alongside them:“I built a ship. It’s sailing a sea called Harmony Hall. My ship’s hull is the black and white illustrations on the walls. The sails are crayons, markers, and colored pencils. You are the wind. Art can be humanity’s vehicle for exploring feelings and ideas that can’t be expressed in words. Art democratizes the intangible, as every observer sails away with their own unique perspective on the meaning of a piece of art, regardless of the artist’s original intent. Art is a cooperative experience.“Color Your Own Shiny Red Nothing” removes the barrier between art and observer by removing the glass from the frames. Don’t just look… Touch! This ship was mine, but now it’s yours too. To steer. To color. To have fun with. To add meaning to. To individualize. To share.I’m Jeremy. I’ll be your captain if you’ll be my wind. Enjoy the ride.Where do you want to go?”
There’s no release information to share for the novel yet, but in the meantime, you can enjoy the soundtrack for free! Featuring songs by For Algernon and a symphonic score by Shiny Red Nothing, Ship of Theseus is the perfect soundtrack for your adventure.
TRACKS:
1. You Might Be the First One – For Algernon
2. The Lost Encampment – Shiny Red Nothing
3. An Army of You and Me – For Algernon
4. Go Berserk – Shiny Red Nothing
5. Jill, Believe In Me – For Algernon
6. Escape Through the Cultist Wormhole – Shiny Red Nothing
7. Attack of the Left Hand / Skyrat’s Theme – Shiny Red Nothing
8. Baited Breath (live on WGCU) – Meat Curtain
Get the soundtrack from Archive Dot Org for free right here!
(I signed up for a 100 word micro-fiction writing contest. As a prompt, I was assigned a word, an action, and a genre. I got “million,” “changing a diaper,” and “sci-fi.” I wrote three stories for the challenge, and after much deliberation with family and friends, turned in what I believed to be the best of the three. It was a hard choice. Here are the rejected stories. I’ll share the story I turned in when I can, and I’ll definitely let y’all know when I win. 😜)
Sibs
My brother Michael swept up, then attended to the baby. At the changing table, her soiled diaper was trashed, like the old days, then they went downstairs so he could wash dishes. He had nearly earned a million experience points.
Later, when Mom interrupted his game to change our analogue sister, he wasn’t as motivated. Still, he took Jenny to the Baepod and continued his game on the nearby smartwall while her befouled diaper was vaporized and a fresh one was printed on.
Mike sighed. With luck, he’d get bonus points for doing laundry before Mom assigned another chore.
End.
Luz, Reformed
“That bitch sentenced me to change a literal million diapers,” Luz continued. She taped the shit-mitt closed and tickled her charge. Its volcanic eyes sparked, raising hairs on Luz’s arms. “Took years.”
Bill primed the incubator’s busted fission igniter. “Mind diapers now?”
“These? No. Earth gravity… No worker-babies or soldier-babies…”
“What’d you do, anyway?”
Luz wiped away tentacle snot. “Shoplift,” she lied.
“Young or desperate?”
“Both.” It was true of her crime. “Vamanos. If they’re going to eat this monster tonight, we’ve got to get it in the incubator by four.”
She rode the crowded escalator up to the movie theater, talking to herself in Spanish, giggling. Her nose and mouth were covered by a surgical mask. Dark brown sunglasses covered her eyes. Latex gloves, yellowed and pock marked by countless uses, were the second skin of her hands. She looked as if she were headed to an operating table where she’d sew a duck to cat.
In tow were her massive purse and two canvas grocery bags, all filled to overflowing with cleaning supplies, envelopes full of cash, and stolen pictures of her clients’ children.
I rode three or four steps behind her. “іQue lindo!” she exclaimed at a mother with child, passing us on the escalator going down. “So cute,” she said to me.
At the top, I put my hand on the small of her back and led her to the bowtied ticket taker. We were seeing a sneak preview of a new film that opened the following day, so instead of tickets, we had a promotional pass printed on glossy cardstock, admitting two. “How’s it going, man?” I asked the bowtied kid. He wasn’t one for eye contact or small talk. He ripped the pass in half and gave the ass end back to me.
“Ah, I see,” she said to no one in particular. “I see.”
This was a rare movie night for my wife and I. The movie was about southern black women working as maids for rich white folks in the early sixties, and because she was a minority and a maid, it seemed to me that she might empathize with the characters, and it might open conversation for us. I missed talking to her.
I led her to the concessions line. “¿Como se dice ‘popcorn’ en espanol?” I asked her.
She groaned. “Speak English.”
“Can’t learn unless I ask, right?”
“іQue lindo!” she exclaimed, distracted this time by a couple of toddlers. Some kids’ movie must have been letting out.
I stroked her hair, vying for her attention. “Popcorn?”
“Hrmph,” she guffawed. “We don’t have money.”
“Sure we do. I get paid tomorrow. Come on, popcorn completes the cinema experience.”
“Ah, I see.”
“You don’t want popcorn?”
“I want to pay rent.”
I sighed. I was exhausted.
In line for the movie with a hundred strangers, I said to her, “You know, before this mall was here on the levee, you could see the city skyline from that big house on the hill across the street. It’s a bar, you should know. I used to have drinks on the porch and enjoy the view with my friends.” I motioned at the art deco halls around me. “This monstrosity blocks that view now. I watched all the construction happen while I got drunk on the porch over there. Cool to have a movie theater and a bookstore in town now, though.”
She looked around like it was her first time indoors with artificial lighting. Every movie poster was worth a giggle or an admonishment in strict Catholic Spanish. “Que zorra,” she said, watching a laughing couple enter another movie.
I touched her elbow. “I’m talking to you, honey.”
“Ah, I see,” she said. “Tell me a story. Me debe pagar. Págame,” she giggled.
“Anyways,” I continued, “You know, Newport was Sin City before Las Vegas.”
“You lost all your money?” Security had begun letting folks into the theater, and the line inched forward. Other people in the line were noticing her and whispering. She was particularly bad that night.
“No, no, this was like, in the fifties.”
“Ah, I see.”
The line inched forward. “Yeah, because before the Civil War, this wasn’t an easy piece of land to get to, here in the valley, so it was a good place to hide from the law.”
She pretended that her pointer fingers were a couple of six shooters and made gun blast sounds, giggling, her bags swinging into the people in line next to her. The line inched forward. In her surgeon’s mask and sunglasses, she looked like a deranged villain from some zombie western. The line inched.
“Take it easy,” I said. “Sorry,” I said to the teenager behind her. She just looked at me.
Inch.
To her, I said, “So, yeah, all these bad guys came here to hide. There was no bridge across the Ohio until the war, and by then, there was an outlaw civilization here. Vice, prostitution, gambling…” Inch. “This was the place to be.”
“Mirra!” she said, grabbing my arm. She pulled her mask down and pointed out a kid’s movie poster to me, something with colorful cartoon animals on it. “Aw, que lindo,” she said and then kissed me, soft, with love. “Te quiero. Te amo, mi amor.”
We were at the security table now. Three teenagers in ill-fitting navy blue suits were working security, taking cell phones from all of the potential pirates in line, tagging them, and putting them into a plastic bin. One of the teens, a blonde girl with acne, politely asked for her phone. “No, no. Tienes que pagar. It’s my phone.”
“Ma’am,” said the girl, “I… We’ll give it back to you after the movie.”
“It’s fine, it’s no big deal,” I said, handing over my own phone. The kid in line behind us, the one she had swung her bag into, sighed.
“¿Lo perra, no?” she asked me. To the blonde kid, she said, “You have to,” handing over her flip phone. “I’ll sue you for a million dollars.” She giggled and went through the theater doors ahead of me.
Inside, we climbed the stairs amidst the crowd, taking our seats by the aisle, about halfway up to the top. I started to sit, but she stopped me. “My love!” she exclaimed, digging in one of her bags. Her hand came out clutching a can of bugspray. “Bedbugs. Infestada.”
“For Christs sake,” I said, my hand going to my eyes.
She sprayed my seat down and then moved on to hers, an over-compensating crop-duster taking flight. Behind us, an old lady coughed. Some young guy shouted, “What the fuck, man!”
I took her elbow. “Stop it.”
“You want bedbugs?”
“Stop it, honey. Sit down.” I sat.
She pulled up her surgeon’s mask over her mouth and nose again, giggling. “Ah, I see.” Looking around, noticing the crowd for the first time, she exclaimed, “My love, there are so many niggers here!”
My heart dropped.
An older man in front of us stopped in the process of sitting down and stared.
I reached out for hand, took it firmly, and said, “If you don’t sit down and shut up, I’m walking out, with or without you.”
She giggled and sat. The old man gave me a stern and knowing look and took his own seat.
***
At home, we climbed into our mattress on the floor of our bedroom as a storm sieged the city outside our apartment. She began to cry softly. I pulled the covers up over my shoulders and put my arm around her.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried, throwing my arm away.
It was the last straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. All of the measured restraint I had been practicing collapsed. “Fuck it!” I threw the blankets aside and said, “Fine then! Fuck it! Fuck you too!” and clambered up to my feet to go sleep on the couch.
“No!” she called after me. “Don’t leave me, Wayne!”
I stood between the mattress and the bedroom door, seething. Outside, the storm raged.
“I don’t know what to do for you.”
“Come back to bed, mi amore,” she whined.
I did. I left some space between us as I made myself comfortable. She cried softly to herself. I said, “Everything’s okay. It’s alright. What’s wrong? What’s got you so worked up?”
“The construction workers.”
“What construction workers?”
“You don’t hear them trying to get in the window?”
“Honey, we’re on the second floor, and it’s storming outside. No one is trying to get in our window.”
“You don’t see the ghosts?”
I tried to put my arm around her again.
“No,” she said, but she didn’t fight it.
“Honey,” I pleaded, “Take your medicine. Just swallow your pill and this will all go away.”
“No, it won’t,” she said. “Mirra!” she wailed, pointing at the ceiling. “Mirra, Wayne!”
“There’s nothing there, my love.”
“La fantasmas,” she insisted. “Están en nuestra habitación.”
I held her close to me. “Take the medicine, my love.”
It went on like that for the better part of another year, if you can believe it. There was to be no bridge built to cross that River. I had to escape the valley on foot.
Cover #. A new cover every day until the “Today, Satan!” EP is released on Halloween 2019. Visit http://www.shinyrednothing.com for more details. #shinyrednothing
Shiny Red Nothing 