ROSE WINE

Where did that sudden sensation come from; the one that burst through the wall of your bedroom last night with a sudden tearing flurry sound like bat wings, that jerked you out of bed by your feet and shoved you into the night with just enough time to grab your coat? Where did it come from? And why did it drive you of your house and down the street, always lingering a few paces behind, holding your eye to the grindstone and swatting at your feet with a cracked concrete club like a cop on the beat? \"Keep moving,\" it said, \"keep moving.\"
Why did it bother marching you into the corner liquor store for a bottle of Dr. Ordinaire’s Rose Wine, and how did it know you had just enough money in your coat pocket? How did it know you’d hand over the money without a word, and wander the streets with your collar turned up and your eyes staring ahead at the buildings full of sleeping, vulnerable people, with just a cracked brick wall and a pane of dirty glass to keep the world at bay?
There were lights on in some of these boxes, and as you passed the open windows you could see people watching television. You imagined the sensation having eyes to watch you with, while you were watching someone else watching someone else. It was at that moment you felt yourself sliding out of your skin, like a full glass on a long table in a big boat at sea, and you didn’t know how to stop yourself from spilling.
The sound of sporadic gunfire popped in your ear like God’s bubble wrap from somewhere in the distance, and your blood ran cold. As if on cue, the sensation tapped you on the shoulder and handed you The Fear. You accepted it, and chills ran up your spine. Those bullets missed you by a mile, but the sound killed something inside you. It pinched off your soul like wet fingers to a flame.
Passing a dumpster, your nostrils cringed from the reek of rotting convenience; the legs of a scarecrow bundled up in fresh rags and old dirt stuck out from behind it, forming a bridge over the spreading lake of piss. It sang something you didn’t recognize. Suddenly, the thing stopped your momentum with a cold finger square in the chest, and for the first time you thought you caught a glimpse of it, only your brain refused to accept such a thing could really exist, so you quickly looked away.
Nonetheless, the gap in your perception spoke to you. It said, \"When you are dead and gone, you will be buried in your trash. You aren’t like the Egyptians; you have no use for pottery. You aren’t like the French; you don’t understand beauty. You don’t have use for old magazines, empty bottles, stained mattresses, spent cigarette butts, or dirty diapers, either, but you’ll be buried under a giant mound of them. You create things to destroy,\" said the hole in you perception, jabbing you in the chest with each word.
\"When you are dead and gone, you’ll have a big-screen grave marker, and an obsolete computer to tally up your soul. You’ll leave behind a complete transcription of your boring life so detailed and complex that it will almost be possible to hear your thoughts, and no one who lives after you will get any rest.
\"Archeologists of the distant future will find you under whatever toppled achievements your shitty children decide to discard; your bones will be fused with plastic and you’ll have metal in your hip and pins in your limbs and plastic in your chest and gold in your teeth and all the other shit from the drawing boards of early science fiction writers who thought of it first.
\"Your remains will not be perfect and preserved and shiny. Your rotting corpse will not smell as good as your new car. Your bloated rot will not be polished or scientific. Your drying intestines will glow green, and your home memories will be grainy and analog and mono and distressed and boring, and when you are gone they will be taken off the reel and thrown carelessly into the trash.\"
When it stopped talking, you stood there for a while, unsure of what to do, hoping it would leave, hoping it would take your silence the right way. Your brain spun like small tires in deep mud, and there was a pain in your hand. You looked down; the bottle lip of Dr. Ordinaire’s now half-empty Rose Wine had pressed against a finger and formed a nasty little bruise; your hands were sticky and your mouth was bone dry. The sky was getting lighter, and soon people would be turning on the lights, waking up, logging on, tuning in, punching in, perking up, stopping by, moving out, freshening up, filling up. The machine will hum to life.
They’ll be getting into their new cars, and driving to the mega-supermarket conveniently located on the edge of town, past the rows of boarded-up, dead-ass shops that found themselves pissed out of business by the mega-supermarket.
They’ll be parking on a gigantic fucking platform of hot-ass concrete that used to be the field they played in as a child, and before that, the woods where their parents first fucked.
They’ll be walking the same distance to the now-dead corner shop, and assuming command of the Mighty Freedom Ship of Shopping Carts, feeling strangely compelled to fill it with shit they don\'t really want, don\'t really need, and really can\'t afford. Long ago, they were hunters and gatherers.
They’ll be getting into line behind an overweight, over-aged, like-damaged couple in tight sweatpants, someone they can roll their eyes and make snide remarks about to the cashier while telling themselves they\'ve \"connected\" with their youth; the kid’s probably worked this shitty job so goddamned long he dreams in bleeps and bar codes, and doesn\'t want to hear the first fucking thing out of their mouth, but he’s obliged to ask them for their Preferred Shopper Card. Preferred somehow over the couple in the tight sweats with the sweat marks under their arms who bought the exact same shit.
They’ll be carting it back to their car and feeling personally violated that someone parked too fucking close to the driver\'s side. They’ll be loading their crap in through the cargo hatch and navigating their personal fucking battle cruiser through the gargantu-motherfucker of a parking lot, making jokes about people in this town who can’t drive.
They’ll be making remarks about the kind of people who live in \"that neighborhood\" as they pass the derelict remains of the boarded-up shop. Your neighborhood. They would be talking about you.
As you stood there, your mind swam with it. Where did the sensation come from? And what were you supposed to do now? Why did it have to drop this steaming nightmare in your lap? You looked down at the bottle again, made a face, chucked it into the weeds, and tried not to think about how long it takes glass to break down.
A lot longer than a human body, that’s for damn sure.