This story appears courtesy of “the Mambo Academy of Kitty Wang”

Analogue Cameo

I still have that picture. The one of you from that summer, from the five minutes before you were famous.
That summer you wore your hair near vertical with a trailer-park twist and I was still in my arsonist phase. You said “The sky is all torn”, and I though that was a cliché, something those hooligan Crows caw out when they tumble through the sky and a make such a racket.
You were right and not many people knew since we were living day side to save money (and stay away from trouble). Most people, or people mostly people lived dark side, but not us. Not back then. You’d look up and there was this was a big ragged tear and behind it no Heaven, no Hell, no guts of some great beast,  no huge soaring girders, just a big tear and like an old warehouse, or maybe back-stage someplace, with stuff under tarps, some work lights, the sound of water dripping.
Surprised? No, it’s just a McWorld so it’s made out of crap, and things just break, or fall apart. But there was that song. That old gris-gris song about a guy who can’t remember if he killed someone or not. It goes like that with like a chant and you’d know it, and then you told people you were a chef. A  famous chef from Barcelona, which was crazy since you were so skinny from drugs and all and had started to model so nobody believed you were a chef. I got worse, and quit the treatments so all I could think of was getting off and you. Getting off with you. Getting off on you. I couldn’t work and got over my head and you said you were okay, but you weren’t. You were sad and getting sick so it was best we left, and fuck them anyways. Robots or some shit in the restaurant you imagined you’d have if you were a famous chef, were watching us. Whispering all these pretend lies and shit (they don’t know). Things about you and me and how long we’d last with things changing fast like they were. 
But it’s better now, the way we live on trains. You rigged it so our tickets are always paid, and we have permanent credit with the conductors. We dress fancy now, I like that. You in long dresses, veils, and velvet opera gloves. Me in hound’s-tooth and bowler, gold lion-head cane.
Time runs both ways. “Time slides,” you said. New memories (better ones) replace the old. The train has compartments. Our compartment is a large suite. One room of just cut flowers, another of plague masks, and a room of noise. The biggest room with movie screens, all showing you doing different impossible things. Living your impossible life…. being impossible. One screen of me watching. Watching, Watching you (watching me) while we do the impossible.

douglas mathewson