Usher, Laughing, Spreads His Wings
Jared Radke’s latest fiction takes us on one final, wild, cocooned ride
The old man is bleeding profusely and I feel profoundly sad and guilty for a split second, but the pharmaceuticals will soon lull the conscience to sleep. I almost caved this old dude’s forehead in with a novelty desktop lighter; the dent in his dome filled up with dark, dark blood like a sinkhole to the underworld. The girl at the register was screaming, and then she was not. The lighter was shaped like an aircraft carrier and weighed approximately three pounds.
I sprint out of the pharmacy without waiting to see if any souls left the bodies I created. As much as I like to revel in chaos, Judge Judy comes on in less than 15 minutes. I’m already daydreaming about commingling the flavors of a breakfast sandwich with a hefty painkiller drip, maybe some Gatorade. Arctic Splash Gatorade is the current front runner, but for some reason I’m thinking of stopping at Wawa to shoplift a flavor I don’t usually go for. Regular blue Gatorade used to give me the sensation that I was consuming lava lamp liquid, and I would almost expect to start hallucinating Bosch frescoes as I sat around waiting for meteors to decimate this world’s population of sugar-water drinkers, mouth breathers, crumb eaters.
My car is still running, waiting for me with an open driver’s side door I don’t remember leaving open. If this ’95 Ford Explorer was Kitt, it would say, “Welcome, Marty, I’ve missed you. Let’s take a ride.”
I’m just so sentimental sometimes, but at all the wrong times, in ways that betray my tenuous grasp on sanity. I drive a few miles and park at the entrance to my favorite nature trail. The pharmacy seems so far away, like a dream remembered from childhood. Devil’s fever, the laughter of the planets, sweet January burning away in a madman’s campfire.
These pills aren’t supposed to be crushable, but I have the skills of MacGuyver, and the determination of a hopeless, hopeless fiend. The sunlight is my friend, the sunlight is my enemy. As I sniff away the pain in my heart, the kitchen noise in my brain subsides. Usher plays on the radio. She reminds him of a girl that he once knew, apparently. This girl used to play him out by fucking all of his friends, but giving no pussy to Usher, himself. This tormented Usher. This girl, the object of his sincerest longings and affections, she would have to be forgotten. It was painful, but Usher moved on with his life. But now, oh my God, a new female has appeared in Usher’s life, and she reminds him of the filthy ho from his past, and this is why he just can’t get with her. Because she reminds him of a ho.
The lyrics should be changed to “You remind me of a ho that I once knew.” I ponder this while looking in my rearview mirror, trying to locate my pupils as they float around like houseflies in blue Gatorade. I look at the time on my car radio and I see that Judge Judy starts in two minutes. My clock is set a few minutes fast, because I used to think it would help motivate me to move faster and not be so late all the time. My life is now empty and there’s nothing to be late for, or early. No reason to show up at all.
Returning to the pills was the best decision I ever made, since the heroin has been little more than handmade mud potions, lately. I don’t want to do anything, I just want to consume.
I hear sirens and look up in my rearview again. I see them all pulling into the nature trail’s parking lot, and I know that I will soon be surrounded and taken from my cocoon. I want to incubate like an embryo, forever, here in my Ford Explorer. Until I’m dragged from my vehicle and sent to answer for the people I’ve hurt, for the precious epidemic fuel I’ve stolen, I will close my eyes and listen to Judge Judy reruns on Youtube, using data on my phone that I will never pay for. I will search the backseat and find an unopened bag of jalapeño cheese curls. I will savor this as my last meal as a free animal. The sun blades through the treetops and awakens life, everywhere. Something stirs in me and I’m suddenly and profoundly sad, again. I will never feel the warmth of the tropics, never see the ancient castles of my ancestors’ homelands, never dine on the boiled flesh of exotic sea creatures indigenous to Asia.
I consume a handful of night-night pharmaceuticals, to numb the pain, to smash the lone light bulb burning in the basement of my soul’s void. I wait for the police, for death, for Judge Judy’s verdict. My window gets smashed out by a police baton while a Ginuwine song comes on the radio. As hands grab for me, I sing loudly.