hansel

Maps. Nobody appreciates maps anymore. Not in the true sense of what they actually are. In this city, no one really feels lost in a physical sense. If you walk far enough in any direction you'll stumble across a 7-11. Act belligerent enough, drugged enough, and any 7-11 clerk will be happy to call you a taxi cab. In a good apartment, on a good day, there are maps decorating the walls. No one appreciates artifacts without an x to mark the spot. If you throw a dart, you'll find a destination. There's always something new just off the horizon.

20 miles, West, there's a modern mega-church. Tiny palaces of the American Saved. These evangelicals are a factory for producing the saved, just as their rural cousins still bleed their snake kisses out. August 23rd. I tossed a dart and landed in a wake. Do not pass go, do not give to the collection plate. In true factory sense, an unfinished unit of a church-factory is the new comer, the not-yet-saved. Listless, suburbia has a way of steering a soul off course. You've seen these theatrics on television. An unfinished unit, her eyes will roll back. She will be saved, finished, her label will become an abortive bumper sticker.

Everything is different in the parking lot. After stale cookies and what once could have been juice (we're all failures here), the tone is different. They're ready to be saved again, and again. They have a whole week to get ready, to sin like humans do. The church is a factory for producing apologists and hubris.

Update July 11th, 6:28 p.m

There's yelling, frantic and Mangled through my walls; spilling and penetrating from different angles. There is nothing else in the world except this moment, this voice on the other end of wood and fiber glass, butterscotch paint. I try to ignore what I hear.

I am quiet. I am serene. I am transported.

"Help, somebody, help." Again, yelling, caustic, derisive, and continual.

This is somebody elses world. It's not mine and its falling apart, one piece at a time. Its coming in at odd, tyrannical angles, a stranger, an ex-boyfriend, abuse, a trauma. I ignore what I hear.

I'm very good. I didn't do anything wrong. The neighbors are coming. They hear too.

"Help, I'm on fire," the voice is just outside my door. The sound is harder now, clawing, scraping and desperate.

There is a quick kick of glass, deliberate and definite, shards of glass snapping into walls, spilling across the floor. This is not the same sound as before, its too rational. It could be a hero, an opportunist, or relief. Theres more yelling.

It's over. Theres nothing left but a sound of a broom, dense glass scraping across the floor and a very embarrassed young girl.