Get With The Program (Pt. IV)

Funny how the way a provocative girl could say your name, or she'd look at you hungrily, and your whole game would be on tilt for hours. More prescriptions of unhinged thoughts like her was not what Mick should have been ingesting right now, but nevertheless he was lit, and beside himself with how Emma had sexily bit into her lower lip. Both of which looked like some exotic fruits or something, but no! They were attached to a gorgeous face, and gorgeous soul, and gorgeous ass. She gazed deep into his eyes, unlocking some door buried deep inside of him before vanishing. Josh passed Mick the joint, and leaned back further on the patch of grass at the top of the hill at Granite Park. Josh disappeared from the periphery of Mick's view when he dropped down on the earth. Mick didn't give a shit; he was at one with the sky and Emma, and the clouds swimming 'round like aroused fish in a lake of endless ink. Granite Park was Josh and Mick's favorite jumping off point when they needed to blow off steam. Mick took a long inhale of the pot, and exhaled with glazed wonder up at the sky, while watching ghostly clouds pick up speed in their lazy crawl of a race. His lively heart blushed wildly like a roaring fireplace for this park and world in general that embraced him, as he continued to gaze up through squinted eyes of bliss.

The acid was starting to kick in now, and a low rustling in a bush nearby started to become so powerful that Josh couldn't help but drag himself up from his spot(such a sweet fucking spot it was!), and drift towards the direction of the weird insect-like sound. Mick barely noticed Josh(the guy looked catatonic!), as he blankly stared off at the active cloud formations that continued to contort above them. Mick was always fucking obsessed with clouds when they where at the park, and he would babble on to Josh about how they all looked like Mickey Mouse, and then before they both knew it, Mick was describing dozens of blue Mickey Mouse's spread out like a peacock's tailfeathers, and Josh just didn't have time for Mick's one sided shit. It made him devalue his own psychedelic experience, and he wanted to be his own man. He was concerned that his desire to make people like him was significantly stifling his own personality. He pushed away those dizzy thoughts now, writing them off as over-analyzing again, and started poking through the branches of the offending bush. He was certain that this was the source of the rustling, but the more he searched half-heartedly, the more he wanted to lose himself in Mick's over-active imagination...

..."So, the rat's wearing a dirty brown overcoat, and looks like that Mcgruff Crime Dog guy! He has an old fucking Fedora on, you know, like one of those old detective hats, tilted downward, and it's casting a long shadow over his eyes. Only just one of his eyes is really visible, and it's as red as a fucking stop sign. He's got like a sleeve disguising his mouth, and he's pointing towards some weird as shit purplish door floating open in a spot in the sky right there above your head..."

Mick pointed towards the direction of the little Dipper. Josh was stationed back by his side. Suddenly he remembered something to say to change the abstract weight of their futility.

"Hey, Mick! You ever hear about how the C.I.A. did uncontrolled tests of LSD on Americans in order to beat the Russians at using LSD as a weapon? I guess they were slipping it in people's drinks for years, and their last test victim was this U.S. Marshall that went nuts, and tried to rob a bar at gunpoint! I think his name was Wayne Ritchie..."

Josh had shook Mick from his illusively endless psychedelic wet-dream. Mad images were still seeping in at a steady stream, but Mick had slowly dropped his gaze onto Josh now, preferring a living object to test his boundless ability to listen. Josh's milk white skin was so pale that Mick imagined him as a chipper looking skeleton while he buckled in to listen to him ramble on about something that could very well put a damper on his high. He was slightly uncomfortable for a moment, and then put his shoulder down so he could cup his head more effectively while he listened. Mick was intrigued by Josh's discussing of government 'mind control' experiments, but he wondered if Josh wasn't getting too carried away. Josh could get like this sometimes. It was almost like he'd become possessed with some incredible easter egg of an idea, and was forced to suss it out of his system or else he'd act like nothing else was of any substance for the rest of the unknown night.

*

Joseph Pinkman awoke from what seemed like a faraway nightmare. As he slowly began to come to, he realized that he was standing upright. He thought it strange how can a person be standing and asleep at the same time. There was an incredible sensation coming from his left temple, and he heard miniaturized voices talking in hushed tones, as if there was a radio station being hosted in the back room of his skull. It felt somewhat like the warning of a migraine, but he hadn't had a headache in months, headaches hadn't ever been a thing for him. He had awoken slowly, and become aware that he was standing at the center of a huge pentagram, which had been burned into some lonely field where the grass went on forever in every conceivable direction. It was an overcast day, but otherwise warm with very little wind pushing anything around. There was a fence to the west of him that seemed to enclose a bit of land that disappeared into a dark patch of trees. A crow stood on the barbed wire fence, expertly avoiding the barbs with a proud, wide stance. At each point of the pentagram star there stood a man. Each man stared down at the ground, dressed in a long black robe. One was making the symbol of a triangle in front of his chest, and suddenly Pinkman's distant headache became piercing as he realized they were chanting strange words while they continued to stare at grass that flowed out from under his bare feet. The grass seemed alive, and moving magically as if to some undisclosed rhythm. Why did he keep waking up like this, without an inkling of what had occurred to him before? Why were things always so unfamiliar lately? He remembered being kidnapped, and realizing that Lise was definitely not Lise. How did these strange people know so much about him, and why did he feel like the tackle on a fishing line? These people were using him, but for what end?

The next thing Pinkman knew, he was in a blue tinted public bathroom, and inspecting his whiskered chin through a sullied mirror. He felt an agonizing, sharp pain on his neck, and turned it towards the glass so he could more properly inspect it the small, red bump. Pinkman's new mystery wound on his neck that he couldn't recall in the slightest was a puzzler. It looked just like a red upside down tree, or maybe an arrow. He gripped chunks of his hair on both sides of his head, and scowled deep into the mirror. His mind was his own and nobody elses! Yea right, just keep telling yourself that, he thought.

*

"Where the fuck is my son, Mr. Quinn?!!?"

Quinn tried not to look bored, and nervously continued to spin around the gold plated ring on his finger with the square and compasses joined together around the gilded, and almost intimidating letter 'G' that was nestled in between them. The seething mother behind his desk continued to try to ineffectively intimidate him with lawsuit threats, and accusations. The ring on his finger was precious to him, much like his time, and this woman was keeping him from his lodge meeting which was scheduled every Wednesday at six pm. He said he understood her grief, and that the cops had assured him that they had this handled, and he reiterated that they were probably combing the streets as they spoke. It was all bullshit, but he used it dozens of times to get what he wanted, and the fact that she wasn't responding the way he wanted her to respond was really chapping his ass. Quinn had only been a principal for a few months for this free charter school close to the local airport, and it already seemed like a sick joke. Far too much drama, and far too much hostile contention. He also didn't think he cared enough about the people in this area to do the job, but the company valued him for whatever dumbshit reason. They gave him a fat salary, which he in turn put back into the lodge, and that kept him hooked, at least for now, in the sinister fabric of the school's good graces. Sure, the company that employed him did seem slightly irregular at times, but when they told him that he could get a signficant raise for allowing them to experiment on the one black boy in the school, Quinn didn't hesitate. The boy seemed to suffer from psychological issues anyway. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to be exploited. After Quinn had used him as much as he could to pad out the pamphlet of the school's 'diverse' student body.

"My son! Where in the Hell is my Son!!!!??!!"

"Ms. Jefferson, I suggest you go home, and wait for the police to contact you. If we hear anything we'll let you know the minute we find out a thing, I promise. It's terrible for a child to run off, and we here at South Central Aviation think the world of your boy Isiah, and want him home with you more then anything."

"He could be wandering around, alone in a busy street right now! I'm out of my mind frantic. Listen, I know this here school is run by a mostly Masonic staff, and you people know more about the secret underbelly hook-up with what's what about sex trafficking, and who be killing all our celebrities lately so tell me what I gotta do to make my little boy return to me. I can't think of anything else that I want in this whole shitty world Please help me."

Quinn whipped his hand across her face, raking her cheek with his gold plated ring.

"Don't ever fucking talk about our affiliations, bitch. You don't know shit. You don't want to know shit. There's people that tried to get too deep with us. They're homeless now, eating out of a fucking garbage can."

Leanette pulled herself off the floor, never dropping her gaze from Quinn. This evil man had something to do with Isiah's disappearance. There was no questioning that now in the slightest. She slipped out the office door, and felt the school closing in on her. Why had she brought Isiah here? Because it was free? She remembered what her Mama had told her when she was applying for Foodstamps shortly after Isiah was born:

"Nothing's free, child."

(To be continued...)

©

2017

Bunny Villaire