INTERNAL DIALOG

Ken Baumann

It's freezing cold outside and I walk through my backyard naked. Soccer ball, kicked over into the neighbor's yard. Grass is sharp. It tickles my ass. I stand up. The sleet hurts. I'm here because someone drugged me, I think. Things are fuzzy. I have no control of my tongue. I feel like *

* fucked and numb, like gumby, scared, poisoned, exhausted, eager, spasm, lip movement, crying girl, broken florescent, mercury, lead poisoning, marijuana, chives, muddy white things, broken fence eager pit bull on other side, empty shopping mall, gas leak, wonderbread, covered in honey, white, scared

Wake up. Check testicles and penis. Unharmed. Feeling better, not drugged, maybe on the verge of hypothermia. Sleet has stopped, still cold. My toes hurt more than anything has ever hurt before. Was it Christine? Did she poison me? I am surely poisoned.

Standing. Walking to door in garage. There is an electric light somewhere high above that's too dim. I look up at the sky. There are clouds, bubbling pieces of shit that are colder than my toes. The clouds must hurt.

The door doesn't open. Locked. Christine must've. I am poisoned, and need to submerge myself in hot water in order to bring my core temperature back to normal so I don't die. I know this somehow. I can't crawl through the doggy door.

Easter eggs, giant ones, rolling around in my empty one-car garage. Suddenly, faces. This is poisoned hallucination worthy of an acid trip. Euphoria is coming, rolling like the base of the smiling easter eggs against the garage floor, I have to fight it. It's this cold in Southern California because the weather is poisoned by us, we did it and now I'm dying in my empty garage from hypothermia. Christine must want this. Maybe I deserve it.

Easter eggs disappear and euphoria is liquid, my core temperature is like naked sunshine. Here it is. Here it is. The light. I have to fight it. It fades, sucked back into a whole that scares me when it's dark, but don't ask for the light back because you'll pass away (die). Break through a window is a good idea.

Walk through backyard, maybe shout at neighbor's, but everyone is inside on such a cold day, bleaching their clothes over and over and counting their bottled water supply.

Window, I flail my arms at it and it sort of breaks, I cut myself and the blood pours out and wakes me up, marble and blood, skin goosebumps, is the blood too hot for outside, does it break the poison? Christine wouldn't have planned for that. I crawl through and avoid cutting my stomach open. I move to the space heater and turn it on and point it at my face. I will wake up and call 911 and they will rescue me with white gloves and pumps of sack, gel liquid that will core temperature back to normal and fighting off light, here it is, poisoned white light bubbling back from hole, maybe it's better, Christine, wanted it, maybe here it is.