Untitled Project A

27 MARCH 2020

I should have seen it coming. I mean, I knew it was coming, but I didn't know, you know? It's that moment before you slip and fall down stairs. You know you're falling, but you don't really know until you feel that first stair hit you in the head, bruise your ribs or God forbid, break your neck. It's like that plunge from the high dive. You know you're going down, you know you're going into the water but you're not wet until you're really wet. 

It's conscious thought versus physical knowledge. It's book smarts versus street smarts, you know?

Maybe you don't. 

You probably don't.

I'm not you. I'm not them. Your laws - and how I do abide by them of course - are laughable. That illusion of control until someone out there, the cops, some politician, some judge or governor screws the pooch. Then it's all hell breaks loose and those laws - your laws - don't really count for s**t, do they?

It's coming and this, all of this, it's the start of something different. Something else.

You don't know it yet, not physically, not consciously but you will. You'll get the call or maybe you've already gotten that call. You're out of work and its 'temporary' due to some unseen enemy that kills without discrimination. A virus they're saying is out of Wuhan.

You only heard about this thing recently, so I get it. It's unreal. It started so small and exploded. I don't know where you were when the news hit, but I was at a local dive in South Lake Tahoe. Best burger you'll ever eat in your life, you'll eat at the Lucky Beaver. If you're ever on the casino strip, I mean it and you can thank me later, just past Dottie's. The Lucky Beaver. 

...so, there I am at the Beaver, and it's packed. We're a bunch of morons in there, especially me, especially because I know better, not for anything that I do not do, but for everything that I do, I should know better. We're laughing, we're drinking and this gorgeous - too gorgeous for real life - bartender, she says to me that we've all got to die sometime. She buys me a drink and for a moment, only the smallest, I feel a little guilty. You see, she's my mark. She doesn't know that I know, and no one else there does either.

She presumes that I see the faceted black crystal hanging from a hemp cord on her neck, and like everyone else I think it's just some pretty little bauble. Onyx maybe, jet, or obsidian. She doesn't know that I know that little black crystal with the red oily sheen is black glass. She doesn't know that I know where she got it. She doesn't know that I know she's a witch.

No, not one of those bookstore-teenaged-witch-section-coven-in-their-momma's-basement witches. I'm talking about the real thing. The real ones, there's no 'blessed be' , 'merry meets', so mote it be' or what the f**k ever those neo-pagan wannabes say while they sit at their false alters. There's none of that stupid 'my other car is a broomstick' bumpersticker bullshit going on.

This hot mamacita's lookin' so fine, and she's a nice girl. It sucks that she has to die for the s**t she's done. If she even really knows what she's done...