Water
Revisit Death Prompt 9: Neo Noir
[Found somewhere on Google images, B/W Photography, could not find the photographer for this excellent picture. If someone finds it let me know so, I can give the credit where it is due. Distorted by yours truly.]
Moving is bitch. What do I say about this prompt? Well, I am not giving it away. This is the return to the revisit death series with 3 more as the finale.
JLG Noga. First. Fuck you. Second. Thank you. This was incredibly challenging. It is exactly what I needed. This prompt forced me into narrative control, constant analysis, and brainstorming inside my brain. I had to sit the fuck down in my movie, stream of consciousness. Line by line writing. I did my best to make sure I didn’t contradict any of the concepts given, and had to write a man.
There was not a day that went by that I wasn’t thinking about THIS story. This is not a traditional neo noir which is typically plot driven, one could say this is process driven. At best it might be neo noir adjacent. Everything about this piece was a whole ass learning experience.
When I run my SOC workshops again this year, I will be sure to have JLG Noga giving away fuck you prompts to challenge us all. JLG Noga is a highly underrated excellent writer in the craft. When I read JLG Noga I feel like I have been slapped in the face with prose. Visual and cinematic. Appetizing. Yes, I know I need to catch the fuck up on his writing. It’s damn good. You get a meal in your mouth after reading it and he’s a writer I would call rising in fiction, because I know he’s going places.
Do read anything he writes. It will probably be in a comic or a film someday.
I would watch this on film. 10/10.
Overhead lights complete the stillness. Our world carves itself into shapes. CEOs. Tech giants. Six. Seven thousand suits. Soles drag the ground. It’s made unclean. Success. Mop dug deep in its bucket. Failure. Footprints are dust collected. Leftovers of the future. Its hunger lives on the trough of my tongue. Shared existence by shadows on the wall. My name is Ken Suba tonight. Ken cleanses the ground, where water doesn’t judge. Our ritual from corner to corner. The mop sheds the filth. Skin peeled back. Under the table. Cold cash. Survival. Water moves because it must, it matters not what it can’t. CEOs paint their faces bleach. White. Bone China. They turn, and see the windows before they recognize their own shadow.
I am the overhead light. A buzz in the ear. It burrows. A worm underneath the epidermis. It absorbs. A stranger living inside my skin. On the dot. Nine to three. Night shift. The first is not the last. Marble belongs to any place I touch. When the floor is dry, Ken will cease to exist.
The city carries its own poison, names slip through the cracks. Bottom feeders. Oceanic unseen. They own the janitor polycotton coveralls. Ken’s soul becomes the walls and the grain. The wig sweats into the back of my head, pomade bergamot and rosemary. Smells fight each other, a funeral bouquet of chemical fragrance. Its slime sticks the hair past the cap. It itches against the skin. Patched red abrasions, along the neck. Eczema for inhumanity. Its prison, a helmet pressed down. Degen beneath the top. My synthetic ruin. The job isn’t over. Every layer has a story. Its armor. A rage that’s become its own silent servant. Days pass. Rituals die in a millennium. Death and rebirth of each stroke, dissolves into synchronicity of my mop.
In the elevator of mirrors, I see my cosplay. Pockets of scars from cutting facial hair close. Ken’s glassy marbles show color, where our murk attempts to intertwine. Bodies walk through fire. Upside down, our parallels lift to the clouds. Growing bright, obsidian. My calloused hands, dry skin with craters to make room for the new. Is it me? Ken blinks. His breaths wheeze in and out until the air shuffles out the tightness in my chest.
Water. Its brine lives in my mouth. Ken pulls up his notepad.
We’re the unnamed water, we stay in places others despise.
The locker slams. A metal gunshot in the building’s ribs. Hollowed out. Ken sheds the polycotton skin of the janitor. Its damp weight of the mop bucket lingered on his rotator cuff. He rips off the wig with a sharp letter opener. Cigarette hung from his lips, ashes taste like butter on Sunday mornings. The grime pulls free from his hair. Head bent over the work sink. He lets his fractured mind dissolve. It doesn’t keep shape.
A NO SMOKING sign glares in red ink back at his face. Smoke curls up through his nose, burns his hair. Leaves it there. Acidic and earthy stale tobacco flavor. Stays unfiltered. Its pieces stick between the gaps of his teeth. Fine tooth comb. Slicks his hair back. Ken throws the wig in the trash. He has a replacement for every shift. Trash is covered with fast food bags, watered down French fries. It sticks to the bottom. Cheap vegetable oil.
Ken is convinced it has cancer in it. Keeps big pharma in business. CEOs considered humans expendable, their audacity was their privilege to exist. Water pools at his feet. It doesn’t stay.
Leather jacket on. The rest of the night until late morning, he’ll be Tommy Pham. The city tastes of old copper and the ozone dying in an air conditioner. He doesn’t look at the faces of who passes him by on either end. Vessels that belong to the city pour themselves into the dark. He’ll find his plug on the street. Same place. It’s clockwork. First initials only.
Without movement, Mr. C’s back hung forward. Spine curved scoliosis to replicate the city’s decay. Boots rooted in concrete. Our eyes meet once, before it returns to the floor. Mr. C has the medicine. Syringes covered in the rainbow beads. He calls it a self soothing prophecy, a sensory experience for the ages. Shame exists between us for the wrong reasons. Wrong owner. I am the empty, he is the fox.
“One coin for a traveler.” Mr. C speaks through his light blue eyes. Inside my coat jacket, I give him a coin. A different shape. Its words are lost to the art of men. Our fingers touch for brief comfort, a syringe slips into my pocket.
“Mr. T. Same place. Same time. Our ritual.”
“This is strictly business, Mr. C.”
“Business requires a transaction. A loss. A gain.”
Tommy sees himself in Mr. C if his body decided to fail him. Underneath cardboard boxes. A home. Its landing. He smells of wood pulp and old rain. His body is a doorway into the city. Where one day, he’ll return to the uncarved block.
Mr. C begins to nod off, and Tommy slips away from him. His words leave a bite on the tongue. For a moment in time, their words connect. No longer fleeting by the rhythm of the world. Mr. C’s lungs rattle with his breathing. His machine matches with sirens raging in the after hours. The sidewalk beneath his body begins to swallow Mr. C’s missing feet. Distant vibrations of the city ache in my ears. Its uncontrolled vacuum hisses into my veins.
The brothel stands alone in the alley like a chemical sunrise brushed with bright neon lighting. A needle thin promise, a plump lip, a fake orgasm. Echoes of voices demand allegiance, Tommy fills the rooms with his blood. Red welts at the nape of his neck, mapping his agitation. He hopes it’ll be released into exhaustion. Its braille is a fixture of suffering. Itching into my hair beds. A language no one touches. It fades by day and returns by night.
Belt loops disheveled, patrons stumble out into the neon smear of the alley. They carry the smell of four loko and sweat like a second skin. Our eyes never meet. I watch them from the shadow of the doorframe, a ghost in my own lobby. Tommy stares past them at the golden door handle. Its grooves are stabilized. Cold to touch. Weathered. Tommy’s fingernails scrape the golden sheen. Potato peels of color underneath the nails. The gold is a lie. Its thin skin of status flaking to the sheer of my boot.
Skin. Sudor glows on the dim lit stage. Roots drift, anchored in sweltering humidity. Midnight dancers. Incandescent. Mouths spread, spit gourmand falls to fingers in their seats. Men and women squander a glance for the service. A price paid. Expended. Tommy steps further into the room, scans the plasticity of their faces. Aperol cuts through champagne. Paraffin wax softening under heat. Men unable to walk leave their trace behind. Alone.
Flowers bent at the knee. Turned to stone. Full moons glide on the edge of dead air. I let my legs weaken, my head packed with cotton, stitched behind broken vows. Tommy’s fingers touch his lips, sucking in the saltwater. A brown haired buck. Three of Hearts carousels through the room. Lifts glasses from trays. Her hips seesaw, towers leaning, ready to fall. She clips a corner, skin splits. Red an entry, red an ending.
Three of Hearts’ eyes are windows. Her mouth, an invasion.
“Tommy. I need you in Room 103, tonight.”
“Same price.”
“As always. My favorite little cuck.”
Tongue at the edge of a blade, splits sideways when Three of Hearts speaks. Her words mold over my body, depleting across my skin. No patron follows my expression, just the cup of her ass. Dogs climb on their hands to lap at her air.
Stage set in breakfast pastel, Valentine’s candied hearts at the bottom of a drain. Colors sever. Shadow twins reflect their dogma. Mouths stretch wide, underwater between half choked moans.
Tommy’s finger slides across dusted tables. Cheap beer. Red color 40. Bodies without a name, without a place. They beg for a reality, a fantasy apart. Tyranny in lizard brain. Scales cover Benjamin’s. I step deeper toward the hallway, their faint expressions lost to the matrix. No one endures. Not me. Them.
No fixed self. Tommy pulls out his notepad, we take the shape of what surrounds us.
Room 103. The go sign is green. Metal ringlit cords twist, octopus limbs casting spotlights on inanimate objects. Heat burns through leather. The shadow won’t hold. Unstable. It shapeshifts. There is no choice. It waits for the body.
A spiral, how it descends. Destroys. One who steps into the shade becomes it.
Three of Hearts tilts her head back, her legs locked around a naked man. Black socks. Shoes still on. His face disappears beneath the Oni mask. Tattoos shift, mercurial in lamp light. He doesn’t speak. His body is weightless beneath her.
She points to the chair. Its position carries a burden, a gong ringing in my ear.
My feet plant down, rigid, stubborn. Noise of their gooseflesh. Squish where surfaces meet. Flesh losing its feathers. The shades around my body begin to blur. Buttons on my sleeve come undone. Careful. Lovers in periphery, pig mouths poetry.
My veins swell. I slap my forearm until I feel the sting. A rubber tourniquet tightens. Rainbow beads caress where others cannot penetrate. I succumb to nothing. On my way to oblivion to shut the door. Needles of meadow grass graze my open skin. Here, time is unbroken. A ventilation of cold rain.
Shades move where light doesn’t touch. There’s more bodies than I can count. My body drags inches behind itself. Tommy hangs his head over the headrest. Crown to the wall. Paper mouth. Bone dry. Jaw unhinged.
Warmth rushes to the skull. Something blooms. Invisible beetles crawl the crevices of my skin. Chicken feet—thin, hooked—burrow at my chest. Pull. Separate. Vein clusters split under their pressure. Tommy can’t fight it. It’s their home, they stay.
Chainsaw metal grinds in my ears. Louder. Breaths trapped undertow. No one hears me. Palms sweat above the armrests. Stuck here. Fixed.
The nothing sleeps in my head. It has a chokehold around my throat. Dysphagia. Esophageal obstruction. Tommy grabs his throat, strokes the Adam’s apple. Up and down its groove. Tender. Seamless. The swallow won’t come. A puppet twisted at the knees.
Three of Hearts laughs somewhere in a distant tunnel. Her voice, a sharp razor.
By the scuff of my neck, I pull myself to the floor. Viridescent motel moss in the swamp. Colors stamp my eyes. Faded viridian. Door hinges with peeled wood chips scrape my fingers as I pass.
Her voice howls, a wind advisory is a storm. My body sways. I grasp the sink. Fingers curled over cheap porcelain. Its station revealed its truth. Faucet runs cold. Bites my hands. Tommy slaps his face into the mirror. Cracks spread eagle eyed. Nothing left to hide. Nowhere to show what’s inside. Blood mixes with the water. Submerged. Stale sulfur coats my tongue.
Three of Hearts comes behind me, a wad of cash between her claws. She shoves Benjamin’s down my front pants. Tommy grunts and pulls out the soggy wad of cash.
Breadcrumbs feed its fledglings. Tommy shakily shoves the wad behind his coat pocket. No one’s face can be seen.
Nothing remains. Tommy scribbles in the notepad. Return to the root.
Black dye throbbed into my skin. Bandages cover my Eczema. Roasted under sunlight. Gray coveralls. Large pockets filled with tools. Sheltered from tomorrow. Gauze wrapped around my forearms, dusted with fresh soil. Leo Chan Chi-Yung takes his work gloves, wipes his forehead. Sweating blood. Nose to the grindstone, teeth clenched. His own canines have become animals.
Leo feels the gauze lift open. Wounded holes, inflamed. He digs his arms deeper. Covers them from prying eyes. Worms massage the drug induced cavities from last night. They move without asking. A language of flimsy mouths. No refusal. No correction.
This year is tulip season. A white sepulcher for this castle’s paper shield. Petals arranged like silence pressed into the ground. Measured beds. Obedient. Rows that pretend to be natural. Leo washes his hands with its flora.
The fool smiles on the grounds he earned by heritage. Shoes clean. Hands unmarked. He gestures as wars end from within. Ownership’s blooming rose. A black bird’s body politic. Its blue blood untainted.
Us keepers of his acreage are the midnight without stars.
Soil enters the bandage, settles where skin fails. Nothing rejects it. Lives in limbo. Leo presses his thumb into the dirt. His imprint, a map for the concealed. Leo yields to its moisture. The terrain incinerates beneath my name. The native boy, my own chestnut tree. Citrus zest on the tongue expands before it compresses. Leo feels the roots give before they should. He nods to its answer. The worms continue their work.
He presses his thumbs into the soil again. The dirt does not remember him.
Two pairs of bespoke boots. Four clean. Unblemished surfaces. One man twists his heel into the turf, a casual desecration of the work. Trousers pressed to the razor’s edge. Born with a golden spoon. He clicks his teeth with the hunger of a man who has never been full.
“The boy’s a mute.” Words casual against the toffee-nosed grain. “A real architectural landscaper. Strictly under the table. Wouldn’t know his worth if it bit him.”
“What do you call him? I could use a change of scenery at my place.”
“We don’t share over here. This one’s been mine. Dog loyal.”
Leo doesn’t flinch. His mind is an empty vessel. The garden’s uncrowded, without ego. My employer’s hollow excess is a bloated stronghold, a rigid thing making a rod for his own back. Stuffed shirt in a transparent cage. High-strung bow missing its strings, incapable of the music he demands. Songs feed the appetites for those who do not hunger. Burns the candle at both ends just to light a room that’s already barren. American made degeneracy. Rots without preservatives to keep it intact. Maims harmony. The wars he’s claimed to win.
The two pairs turn toward the path away from the tulips. Leo closes his eyes and finds himself in a row of workers. Faces distort under sunlight and sheen. He is a single pulse in a collective rhythm. Hot iron. Saline. Dripping into the groundwater. He breathes in. Holds it. The line doesn’t break. Hands move. No one speaks. Shoulders set. Jaw tight. Teeth grind against the shadow. Leo grasps the roots in his fingers. He sits where he’s placed. The rhythm does not change. Leo does not leave it.
He holds the root. He does not let go.
Leo stands in the break room. Converted barn. Cement floors. Its lukewarm colosseum. A public spectacle. Rustic. Pressed collars. They gather where the dirt doesn’t reach. Without growth. Behind glass. Claustrophobic. Tractor parts are fixed on the wall. Fluorescent buzz replaces wind. Labeled. Untouched. A never ending museum of unpaid labor.
He smokes a cigarette, looking through three rivets of a cut-rate locker.
Bodies speak in unison. Hearts dangled half-heartedly from their teeth. Sit. Stand. Incomplete. Whole wheat bread. Plant-based meat. Bell pepper on a stick. Call it art. Green energy. Save the planet. Placards in red, blue, yellow. Words about care. Bright signs. Community ribbons. Fixed pledges. They say it’s better now.
Ripples on a blank shore. Bittersweet distraction.
Leo doesn’t stir. The metal scuffs on the locker are his only friend. Faces muddle into a haze. The feeling of being caught on a train. Waiting on a platform. Sardines lined up in coffins. It dries out their skin. Metamorphosis under morgue blue light. Spinning plates from the highest peak, shatter. Unresolved. Taped together.
My employer approaches. No partner. Cash in an envelope. Red stamp.
Leo smokes at him. His body a metal colander. Smoke breathes through the holes. The man’s face glows red. Fumes cling to clothes. Residual ash takes form. Returns without asking.
Unbothered, Leo grabs the envelope.
Language is spoken. It doesn’t register. Words are noise. Eyes without a face. What was held. Left. Unable to look back.
The envelope slips into the pocket. Half in. Out. Hands reach for the notepad.
What is taken is never kept.
Michael Turner climbed the last step to the top. The notice was signed before he got there. Ink dried. Date stamped. Routine. He doesn’t like wasting his time for the walkthrough. Busy. One place to the next. Old paint smell in the hallway. Incense burns like campfire logs. The old building breathes with his legs. Heat trapped inside the walls.
The door loosens on the first turn. No resistance. Money for old rope.
Michael steps inside and stops when the door stops creaking like Mrs. Halloway’s back. Old bird. His feet felt wrong. Stopped past the threshold. Studio’s not sullied. Its stillness settles around his head. The place is waiting for him. An exhibit where he’s the only buyer.
Bed military tight. No ident on the mattress. Without drag marks. Without clothes to be sold.
He shuts the door behind him. Michael scratches his head. The name was there. It was on the notice. On the file with his secretary. He had it on his mouth climbing the stairs. The guy didn’t leave an impression.
When he speaks, he trips over his tongue. The name doesn’t find him. Silence meets him.
At the corner of his eye are three passports stacked. Dead center. Yellow. Dark green. Purple. He doesn’t touch them right away. When men leave a place, they take what matters. Papers first. Identity where it belongs.
Michael steps closer. Opens the yellow. Wrong guy. Early twenties. Not blurred. Not damaged. The face holds steady. Deer in headlights. Picture feels older than it should be. The pixel definition doesn’t match the age. Recognition flickers, then slips.
He flips to purple. Different face. Years further along. Time got ahead of itself without being bothered. The man appears ninety. Barely able to stand. Back slouched. A crime to live in the golden age. A body outliving its place.
Michael hesitates at the dark green. Stares longer this time. Jaw misaligned. Mouth set tight. A person you pass in the streets, twice. Strangers tear themselves apart in packs. Close enough to connect. Not enough to confirm.
He shuts it. Cursing underneath his breath. Ears feel clogged with water. Heart pounds in his chest. Old pops died this way. Heart attack. Freak accident. No warning.
All three passports sit there like they answer a question he didn’t ask. He presses his tongue against the back of his teeth. They’ll shake loose if he’s not careful. Three baptisms have made Michael strong. He braces himself on the corner. Not his desk. Never seen it.
There’s a notepad beside the passports. Creased spine. Water damage. Ink bled at the edges. Used.
Tosses it open. Pages of the same hand. Tight. Controlled. Broken English. Increasing how fast it writes by page. Disconnected. Unshackled loose. It slips away mid-line. Half thoughts trail off. Unwhole. A painted alibi.
One line is married to his mind. Michael closes it. Spooked himself.
Movement drifts at the corner of his eye. Chair near the wall. Someone’s there with him. Watches. Doesn’t speak. The shape in his peripheral matches a face. Shadows with weight. Michael prays to his higher power.
He turns. The chair is bare. Flat. No impression that he could see. Ain’t nothing in this place. Not a critter. Michael’s getting old. Fiddling with someone’s trash.
No sign of move-out. No sign of life.
Michael leaves behind the apartment. Door clicks shut behind him. Rips off the notice, expecting to see a name. The line is vacant.
He stands in the hallway. Michael forms a migraine. Forgets why he was there. The studio door feels foreign. His hand drops the notice to the floor.
Michael uses his mind like a mirror.
Nothing holds. It doesn’t stay.
This piece captures modern alienation quite well. I'm quite impressed by it.
beauty