3.23.2026 - Pedestrian Scum [3]

[9]
He didn’t believe the stories about asylum ghosts but he knew a lot of creepy shit had gone on in there. He liked the woman who gave the tours, she’d grown up in that place, her dad had been a psychiatrist there, and he liked that she wasn't haunted by it. He was out trailing the flashlight tour like he was some kind of stalker creature himself when he stepped in something and looked down and whatever it was snagged him by the ankle out there by the hippie tree and he didn’t know what ran him down but it had wheels and was unnaturally quiet. 

[10]
In the aisle of the Costco Warehouse, frozen goods like novelty ice creams on one side and specialty meat patties on the other, a woman pushed a giant cart. Behind her a man followed all in white and American flag decor. He walked like a wind-up toy. Only the legs moved. Arms straight down at his sides as they were molded to be. The man was muttering but whatever he said was lost under the glare of his appearance. Reverse synesthesia, Jamestown thought, was an interesting idea and on the way home he rode a bicycle he’d borrowed with a pallet of canned black beans strapped to his back. The shoulder of Airport Road was a perilous place and he was thinking about language when he veered off and found himself on a tarmac and got t-boned by a DC-10.

[11]
When he talked before he spat. His lips stuck together. It was like in a horror movie where someone’s mouth was stitched shut. Sounds got out, sometimes whole words, but if he managed expel a full sentence it was usually something no one wanted to hear anyway. It had been like that his whole life, since before Mars found him and fixed him up the way he fixed up air conditioners and furniture folks left in the alley. He was Mars' proudest project, and Mars told him that often enough he tried to believe it was true.

[12]
Lavender twilight. The bay in molten gold. The growl of trucks chugged up from the blockade to the peninsula's base in surround sound. Buoys floating like obvious symbols of loneliness. The light faded and the curtain dropped, and the eruption of the coast guard helicopter spotlighted drowners. Cassiopeia won the night. A faint track of satellites lingered. Summer was a nasty girl at a music festival. When she finally fell asleep, her hair was brown leaves. The motion of the waves was a kinetic constant. The colors changed, refracted from the setting sun. Platinum to white, blue to navy. Late-season loiterer party boats or two. He leaned over to watch a pair of ducks and a kayak shot out of the shallows and into his forehead.