They teach them in school about plaque. Plaque forms on your teeth at night as a byproduct of sleep (the times you have nightmares). Dream excretions. The stuff is saturated in the source poisons of nightmares. So by cover of night the kids fall out of bedroom windows and slip out of back doors and sneak bare footed across cool lawns of fresh sod that is soaked from the blessings of the automatic sprinkler systems. They scramble into slowed down backseats of sinister black cars rebuilt on fantasies of muscles and speed. Their mouths are filling themselves with sugary treats. They chew in silence. The only thing they are tuned into are the vibrations of their collectively rotting teeth. Silent and dripping with sugary goo they consume non-stop, candy and cookies and soda and coffee. Then the driver turns the radio on and dials in to the faint signal of the broadcasts of the Bad Pioneer from beyond the edge of town. Their ears strain to make sense of his garbled high frequency nonsense that is only barely coming through huge static washes that sound like dirty old fingernails scratching slowly across the fabric covering the speakers. For a second the kid in the front passenger seat sees this happening and smiles.
It is nights like this when there are so many bats out that they block out the moonlight and diffuse the vision of Manana Overdrives curfew function making it safe for the kids to go on this mission. They pull into the back of the dentists office and don't forget to leave the engine running. Car doors open and without thinking a quick rock into any light that exposes them. They pour sugar on the doorknob and it melts away in smokey corrosion. Entering the darkened office they know where they are going. A secret wall that has no vision appears to them and they find the door. Inside there are black shiny boxes with mysterious symbols of teeth skull and bones. Inside is the collected plaque of the scrapings of the dentists from the last week. Quick as they can and with highest efficiency they hustle every box into the trunk of the car. They are all sugar high giggles as they tumble and fall all over each other back into the car and roar off towards the edge of town. The faster they go the closer they get to a clear signal of The Bad Pioneers weird prophetic ramblings. Their widened eyes bleed as the sugar takes complete control and suddenly they are in the wilderness. They blast down the highway following the signal of the station. They exit on an unmarked road and drive deeper down empty two lane roads and then off onto the dirt and up a hill that is bathed is starlight. Here is where the signal comes in the best. They stop the car and leave the radio on. The Bad Pioneer is on a rant tonight about getting lost in the third sector of Plainsville and how everyone got killed...indians with nitrous oxide tanks on their horses and gas mask headress...burning stagecoaches and brains spilling everywhere...everything smelled like toast... the kids are beyond listening now. They simply absorb the information as they prepare their makeshift lab. With the gear they stole from Chemistry class they get ready. Setting bunsen burners and test tubes and other equipment up on the trunk of the car. They spoon the plaque, so rich in the stuff of nightmares, into tubes and add strange glowing and smoking liquids. They appear to know what they are doing. Everything is drenched is a relaxed teenage causality. The radio continues its barrage of the Bad Pioneers verbal assaults on reality as he seems to be picking up pieces of old broken records and playing them on top of each other.
When they are done they pour the weird mixtures into a black cauldron over a fire and stir it while they pass around some gumdrops. When the mixture is good and thick and gooey they take it off the fire to cool and lay their bodies all over the car. They blankly watch the stars grind slow traceable paths across the night. The sounds from the radio have tapered off into strange emptiness, clicks, scratches and drones...the occasional screaming of The Bad Pioneer from somewhere deep in the radio station. Relaxing sounds. When the potion has cooled they rise and stick their hands in the mix and run them through each others hair. They can see their reflections in infinity as the nightmare poisons sink into their scalps. This reflection is the clearest they have ever seen themselves and they begin to hairstyle. As they brush and comb their nightmare product through their innocent locks a parallel function emerges. No longer are they just making themselves more terrifyingly beautiful to look at. They are also using their extended proteins and navigational tools to travel within the nightmares of their parents with with they have now crossed into. In hilltop starlight they stumble around with their eyes in the back of their heads, drooling black syrups, combing their hair from one side to the other, forwards and backwards. Twists and turns. curling.
Back at home their parents are paralyzed by their deep sleeps. Their minds are filled with visions of paperwork and overhead lighting. Peaceful. The bedroom door opens and their child approaches. His body floats and his mouth full of golden razors. With waking up his parents foreheads crease in disturbance and they shift uncomfortably. The child rises over the bed in gentle flotation. His mouth opens and a strobing light source comes out everything is perfectly still. The child then begins to drool his black sugars all over their faces and descends upon them and bites through their skulls and takes their mindlessness back to nothing.
0 comments:
Post a Comment