Bacon Sundaez 

I sat down at the booth and rubbed my temples with the palms of my hands. We’d been traveling up to the border for a week now. My clothes were tattered. My black jeans were frayed at the edges and my zip was broken. The blue button-up shirt I yanked from a clothes line in Gata Yuarez had spots of dried and wet blood all over it. 

Little Brown Girl in contrast looked fine. She actually was starting to look older too. Maybe she looked five or six when we first met, now she looked eleven or twelve. That was weird. She wasn’t supposed to age, she didn’t even need reversals. 

It was likely me more than her. It usually is. I’m usually the one with the fucking problem. 

I was looking forward to eggs and bacon, some real old time AMERICAN food. We were close to the border, should be something decent. 

“Why did Canada become a part of the US?” 

I knew she knew the answer. But I appreciated the attempt at casual conversation. 

Ever since The FUNK Circle there had been an awkwardness, and other feelings, none positive. A distance had developed. We had been speaking in one, two, three, four word sentences. 

I played along. 

“That was back in FOUR, F9, Year 42.” 

“So what happened?” 

“The president at the time was caught by the First Lady and his security detail raping a bed full of babies.” 

“So how did that cause an American Canada?” 

“President Billy L. Johnson. He killed the agents with his own gun and then immediately launched the war. Walked straight to the Oval, picked up the phone and gave the orders. North America was on fire within the hour.” 

“What happened when the public found out about the babies?” 

“They didn’t find out for a few weeks, by that time the war was over. You know all of this don’t you.” 

Little Brown Girl smiled. 

“Yeah. Hard to forget the baby rapist president who stole Canada and then shot himself in the shower.” 

“Kind of weird he didn’t kill his wife too. He must have loved her.” 

“What do you think about that?” she asked. 

“About what?” 

“Betrayal. Even if the thing someone you love does is absolutely horrible and sick and so wrong, and they deserve to die in the worst way possible. Would you go to the country and betray them, like she did?” 

I took a bottle of ketchup and spun it around fast. 

The sun was coming up. That old sun. Blasting a picture through the giant glass window. The glass was smeared with smudges, much like me. 

The ketchup stopped. It looking at me, me looking at it. 

“To be honest, I wouldn’t. If I actually did love them. It wouldn’t matter what they did. I’d never betray them.” 

Little Brown Girl contemplated my answer and then ordered another plate of eggs. 

I really wouldn’t. I never would. I never did. I have a dumb sense of loyalty to myself and my kind. If I had to deal with them, I’d deal with them myself, but never throw them to the dogs. 

I still feel this way, even after everything that happened. 

I scratched my ears, picked up the menu and then ordered us some Bacon Sundaez. 

A lot more eggs

Two glass cups with three thick scoops of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream. Topped with sprinkles and rainbow sauces. There were cherries and chocolate bits and fistfuls of heart-clogging bacon. Worth the price. 

Something smelt of mint. 

“Can we talk about some more fucked up politicians?” Little Brown Girl asked, she sounded eager. 

“Okay. From Earth? They’re usually the most rotten.” 

“Yes! America! The most fucking rotten.” 

“Melissa Savage!” 

“Savage.” 

“The Vampire.” 

“President Melissa P. Savage, The Vampire.” 

The Neck Chewer. 

Oh America. I love America. 

“What drug was she on?” 

“You know it.” 

“I do.” 

Little Brown Girl made a first with her hand and slammed it down on the table. The salt, pepper and ketchup made a trampoline jump. 

She glared into me. 

Opened her mouth and spelt it out slowly. 

“C A B B Y.” 

“Cabby. Addicted to the Purple Grass.” 

“Poor guy.” 

“Poor girl.” 

“Girl?” 

“She was a girl once.” 

Little White Girl. 

A retard in the booth behind me kept saying the name Tim. He had been doing it for ten minutes quietly. Utterings. Mutterings. Now though. 

He was screaming his heart out. 

“Tim!!” 

“Tim!!” 

I didn’t know if he was Tim or he loved Tim, if Tim was stuck in his throat trying to escape. 

Tim.

I wasn’t Tim. 

Tim was a good guy. Tim helped people. 

It got so loud and fucking annoying at one point I got up to smash his face in. But Little Brown Girl grabbed me back to a seated position. 

“Leave him.” 

Her eyes were beautiful. Somehow they reminded me of snowglobes. Brown snowglobes. 

The apocalypse. Another apocalypse. 

How many of them had I lived through now? 

“Imagine being a retarded retard, screaming Tim in a border diner. Drinking pea soup with a plastic straw. Let him be.” 

Tim. 

That last phrase pissed me off slightly. Let him be. I don’t know why. But she was right. That sun had come in and lit her eyes so well. I could see all the secrets. 

All the teeny tiny details, manufactured brilliance. 

“Why you looking so serious?” she asked. 

“Can I?” 

“Can you what? Look serious? Sure, okay.” 

“Look into your eyes like this.” 

She broke a smile. 

“I’ve never seen them this way.” 

“Creepy. You’re gonna turn on me. Become one of those RoboPeads, or worse.” 

What was worse than a RoboPead? 

All the things worse than a RoboPead hit me. Not a long list. After a full minute of thought I had six, there were exactly six things worse than a RoboPead. 

I wanted to keep her safe forever. 

A bucket for the road

I asked the waitress for a bucket for the road. 

Wouldn’t hurt. I ordered one more round of bacon, 24 strips. The platter came and I transferred all the sizzling red, crispy dead pig from the silver platter to the blue bucket. 

I picked up a strip and crunched it between my teeth. The crumbled pieces filling my mouth with undeniable joy. 

“This is real pig, you know.” 

The waitress tapped the platter with her hands. 

“Imported from the moon.” 

I thought of the moon. And the hubris of humanity to still call it The Moon. The one and only. 

It wasn’t like I was any different. 

The Earth-centric world ended so long ago and yet there was still that fucking magnetising fucky thing. Always pulling on you. 

Back to Earth. Always. 

Away we go. 

I pushed my body into the glass door and swung us through to the parking lot. A dusty empty concrete field with weeds and wildflowers breaking through. 

Off before the horizon was the border. I felt like sticking some drugs in my arm, up my nose, in my eyes. A spring-loaded shotgun shell of depression hit me in the fucking face. 

I was blue as blue could ever be. 

Out of fucking nowhere too. 

Little Brown Girl noticed it immediately. 

“That’s not good. That’s bad.” 

It wasn’t good. It was bad. 

I rested my body on the yellow-painted curb. I looked up at the sky and there was the moon. The Moon. I thought of all the pigs up there, in line to die. 

I turned to look back at the diner. Back through the window at that retard. He had mashed potato all over himself now. Why? 

He didn’t even need to be retarded. He could have just fixed it. A five minute appointment. 

Weird shit, whatta choice. 

The Sadness lasted about five minutes. It was the absolute worst. The Sadness. I’ve never felt that sad before or since. It has no connection to anything else. But then again a lot of these memories don’t. Singular electricity. Conscious atomic zips. Built up. Accumulation. 

Sometimes I wonder what all the other me’s are doing in all the other timelines. 

Truth has a way of digging itself up and making its way out of the grave. 

I’m certain the vast majority of it is true. 

I have complete and utter fucking conviction. 

I think I do. 

No. I do. 

The Vast Majority of it IS True. 

How old were you when the secret was found? 

Where were you when we discovered the truth? 

I wanted to fuck. I needed to fuck. Or maybe kill. 

Little Brown Girl held my hand and we went for a walk around the lot. 

We didn’t speak. 

Her little hand in mine. 

She felt more human than ever. 

Burnt Out Heart 

It was noon when the first signs of trouble with Little Brown Girl began to show. 

Noon? Was it noon? It must have been noon. 

We spent all morning in the diner and the sun was humming high above my head. 

We were making our way to the hardware store to buy supplies for the final push when she hit the ground. 

The worry creeped up on me. At first it was just a word placed where it didn’t belong. Then it was the constant exaggerated blinking. After that the spitting. And then things all started to fall apart. 

Up until this point I had just been watching her, trying not to show the fear building inside me. 

She kept repeating the same words under her breath as we walked. So quiet I could barely recognise them as words. 

There was an unreality to it. 

I watched her little black boots move across the pavement. Her body was strong and working just as well as ever. Somewhere inside that miracle of machinery something was going wrong. 

She didn’t wobble. She didn’t spin. 

She went face first. I jumped down and turned her face-up. Her nose was smashed and ruined. I could see the same intricate beauty I saw through her eyes earlier. But now everything was loose and twisted. It was all broken and going haywire. 

I was scared. 

I scanned the streets. Desolate. Barren. Two story terracotta houses with patches of dust and dying trees. 

I scooped up her lifeless body and placed it in the back of a pickup truck. A volcano of panic existed in my chest. After everything. After it all. Here we were. She was dead. 

How could a superhero die so easy? 

I squeezed her ankles lost. 

My eyes fixed on her face, I saw her little mouth moving. 

I put my ear to her lips and squeezed my hearing up. 

“Black Star Death Tune.” 

The sound of pure fury. The sound of absolute authority hit me like lightning. 

The bolt went through my brain and out my toes. 

It hurt. 

I was gone. 

I went back through The Hollow Hole. 

Whatever the fuck was happening. I couldn’t explain it. The how, or the why. Just the what and the where. 

This time the tube was death black. 

Comic Sans question marks were coming at me at great speed. I was flying towards them even faster. 

I closed my eyes and tried to leave. But I was stuck. I thought about the possibility that I had died too. Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was The Transfer that had been whispered of. 

From one to another. 

But I wasn’t dead. I came to know that before long. 

Silence broke through and I came to a stop. 

I opened my eyes to a field of old stars. 

Maybe the first. Cosmic dust overcame my small human body. No drug could replicate the feeling. 

After a long time. I couldn’t tell you how long. Just a really long fucking time. I woke up, still in the tube, everything black again. 

I touched my face with both hands. I grabbed my sticky hair and I held my solid skull. 

I was really me. I was whoever I was. 

What fucking level of reality was I even in !!!!

I heard those words. 

From the beginning of time to the end. 

Over and over again. I heard those words. 

Black Star Death Tune