“I wait in front of the motel for Shelley to come back with some ice. ‘I’m staying put,’ I said before she disappeared around the corner. ‘I’m expecting the shipment of The Hitcher aan-y time and don’t want to miss it. Can’t get distracted.’ ‘Suit yourself, lover,’ and (she) was gone from me in more ways than one but I didn’t realize it at the time.
“So I waited. And I waited. The text I received along with placing the order said it may take up to 15 minutes for delivery but 25 and still nada. And Shelley hadn’t returned either. Slowly it dawned on me like a peeled banana glistening in the morning dew after 30, 50 and especially 70, the Platinum phase of it all. The Hitcher hadn’t shown up because there is nothing to hitch, I say to myself, idiom mode switched on again. The marriage to Shelley, the name change to Silver for first me and then her through me, never happened, pheh. And here I sit all lonely and worn out on a worn out bench in front of a lonely motel in seedy town perhaps named for banana called Bandana with one in my pocket instead of change — money. Absentmindedly I fish around in it, even pulling it inside out to empty the potential contents. Nada once more. Shelley had gone back to a very much alive Okama not as a lover but a partner still with a shared love of music, vocals and keyboards respectively. Okama’s bro Olaka never peeled off into his own reality to create a (Burger) King, (Dairy) Queen east to west line of eating establishments ending with Jack which stands for Jack shite now I suppose. He remained at the hospital, staring down at a bed containing not the corpse of Okama about to be covered up with a sheet by assistant Luther but an empty one which Okama stood up from 12 hours ago to exit the place and return to the Land of the Fully Living. Where he went just afterwards also makes for an interesting story — but I have to shift to omniscient author to tell it.”
“Well go ahead,” Hucka D. urged, still beside me, still my personal AI of sorts. Until we can sort out the other.
“He returned to the location where he theorized he contracted the highly contagious disease called Pill that almost did him in in the first place. The *Head*.”
“The Head of Bandanaboro,” clarified Hucka. “The sand colored one directly connected to a same colored Body with a total length of around 100 feet.”
“The same,” I say. “He recalls giving Shelley a tour of the town before their 5 night gig had started, starting with this Head which he said was a place in town you could hang your hat on.”
“Idiom mode again,” said Hucka D. to this. “Now change it to idiot, as in the stupidity of heading from the Head down into the Body through the esophagus, also known as the gullet also known as the food pipe in some circles if not doctor’s circles. Olaka would never have called it that. He would always say esophagus and also steer away from gullet.”
“Okay that’s good,” I say to Hucka’s speech, remembering why I placed her here in the first place. To hear, to speak, to breathe, to live. I had to hear this out.
“But — here’s the thing he recalled,” I continued. “Due to warped perspective caused by that picture we already looked at…
…Shelley went both up and down the stairs into the meat of the Body. Like this. Can you see?” tbc?
Sunklands 