Stepping Into The Twilight Zone With Dr. Richard Kimble

Back in 1989, the sign in the first photo read GAGE PARK FINER FOODS, and I marveled as I read the words from impossible angles. The break in the traffic in the second photo shows where I was standing, on the yellow line. It was 11:11 AM. When I hit the ground, everything in my mind split open and outward; the best that I can explain this is by thinking of a wet handful of sand hitting cement. I was unconscious for 20 minutes, and when I woke up, the first thing I heard was the Pakistani grocer calling out "Not to touch! Not to touch!" I could not see my arm, my head was bleeding, and in some only-Wayne-could-do-that way, after my arm broke, my own fist knocked four teeth out from behind my left jaw. While I was gone, because I to this day KNOW I was no longer part of this life, I was in a grey fog, like the false dawn an hour before the sun rises. I recall looking around, shrugging, and walking forward. There was no light, no flashing neon, no wisps of blackness swirling around my ankles. I walked for awhile before he came into view. I swear on the Polish Bible on my shelf, I came face to face with David Janssen, Dr. Richard Kimble, THE FUGITIVE himself. Dead at the age of 49, on Valentines Day, 1980. Kimble was always on the run, looking for the one-armed man who killed his wife. My subconscious was still functioning, trying to tell me I had one arm now, at least for the next 68 days. Kimble had this quirky smile, he'd use it when someone like Ed Asner or Terry Savalas said that he looked familiar. He stood before me and I could not pass him. He gave me that smile, somewhere between Elvis's sneer and Etain's smirk, and said that it wasn't time yet. Nothing about my Creator, my Higher Power. There was nothing around us, no deserted streets, maybe it was false dawn because The Fugitive was filmed in glorious black & white. I am sitting here, my chin in my palm, recalling the image. He put his hand on my shoulder and patted it, as if he knew I was going to make it. The television doctor, my emissary. And then he was gone, I was staring at gravel in my eye and listening to the Pakistani man. Not to touch. Not to touch.

The Clues Were There

March 18th 1989, the anniversary coming soon enough, I already have the heebie-jeebies, the restlessness of recalling being very close to my Creator. The night before, I had watched DOA, that Saturday morning, a rainy, icy, pitiless day, I left home for my doctor's appointment with page 243 of my novel in my Smith-Corona. I saw the dust on that page 68 days later. Another clue, besides the Edmund O'Brien movie, was that I had been rereading Nelson Algren's NEVER COME MORNING. I left the office and 30 seconds later the nurse at the front desk saw me flip up into the air. My first real memory of that day, I recalled earlier moments later during my recovery, was of the EMT cutting open the sleeve of my new and expensive suede jacket sleeve. I asked him not to and he told me, quite matter-of-factly, that it really didn't matter because both bones in my left forearm were sticking through the other sleeve. Above are the photo of me on Day 2, my hand like a sausage, useless as my right hand because the bones took on lives of their own just below my elbow. The other photo, again forgive my glasses and overall scary face look as my hairline receded, shows the torn jacket. I kept it until the tenth anniversary and then I burnt it.

Strangers On A Blog

Most of you are aware of the Hitchcock film STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, where two killers swap victims so that they both have the perfect alibis. A friend of mine, let's call him Thibedoux, is giving some thought to change some of his intend blog entries with another friend, let's call that guy Boudreaux. This way, either can write entries about their specific jobs at, oh, say NASA and the hidden military base near Dulce, New Mexico, and no one could find entries on Google; say someone typed in Tyler Thibedoux NASA and found a blog entry where the guy wrote about a secret project where chihuahuas were being raised from birth in zero gravity. Well, he'd likely be fired. Or disappeared, as they say in novels. But if that same Google entry was for Stashu Boudreaux NASA, either nothing would come up, or if by some bizarre circumstance, that same secret project info came up, well, NASA wouldn't find anybody with Stashu's name. (If you need to know, Stashu is Stanley in Polish, and he is the guy Who Stole The Kishka? in the famous polka.) Well, everyone by now knows how convoluted my stories and ideas are. Mother Mary save us if I ever try to do something with Stewart Sternberg's flash fiction assignments. I suppose everyone is concerned with the graphics posted above my babblings. I work a crappy little Xerox machine at, uh, the hidden military base near Dulce, NM, yea, that's right, and this is what I get to print all freaking day. 196 page booklets on some freakish cult in Philadelphia that are an off-shoot of Freemasons. That job took almost 20 hours, yesterday and today. The root canal procedure was rather fast, but Elvis, Gladys and Vernon, is it too much to ask that I get to run the ten-color press when they are printed 32,000 copies of a blonde eating a vanilla ice cream cone? (Myself, I'd have chosen a redhead as a model, but I suppose the decision for a blonde was decided by some ad agency guy with a fixation on Kathryn Heigl or Lassie.) OK, "Thibedoux," the balls in your court.

Murder Is My Beat, The Miami Motel Is Just Plain Creepy

Wish I had gotten around to typing this up on Friday, as the walk home and my thoughts are under the surface now, but I had to write a story with a three-hour deadline that evening, send it on to Maurice Broaddus, then go to the post office early the next morning to mail a huge box full of stuff to Johannesburg and buy some DC superhero stamps, then promptly leave for an Ice Cream Social at the 57th Street Bookstore near the University of Chicago, to hear Larry Santoro and Marty Mundt read from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. You can find each of the people mentioned above in the blog links to the left. Well, not Lovecraft's, but you can always Google the crazy old sock if you might be inclined to do such a thing. (By the way, I missed the readings because I got off the bus on West 57th, not East 57th, amost immediately realizing my mistake when faced with an intersection bordered by four vacant lots.) Here's what I would have typed Friday night, as I walked in spring-like rain for the two miles from the place that gave me my tax refund to my home. I love walking in rain, preferably when it is not freezing rain, because I had Lasik corrective surgery done back in the year of double-ought, and whereas I can never know the convenience of driving a car, I can revel in looking into a sky the color of torn plums and watching droplets of water hit my open eyes. To get home, I walked though the suburbs of Oak Lawn, Hometown, then a slight wedge of Chicago, before turning towards my home in Burbank. I passed in always creepy Miami Motel, which has somehow found the need to trademark their claims of offering "Four Hour Naps," uh-huh, right. My highlight of any walk in the vicinity of Cicero Avenue and the train crossing at 88th Place is to see the amount of cars parked in the lot; once I actually counted five. The joint was jumping. While I typed that story, one-fingered as usual, later that night, I listened to the CD pictured above, which has songs from films such as KEY LARGO, LAURA, DARK PASSAGE, and MURDER, MY SWEET. The kind of music I will hear in my head as I walk the dark streets in the rain, having my long thoughts about both the days ahead and of the days already behind me.

Six Feet Somewhere

No more scribbling the loops in my name on yellowed ghosts decades gone, a half-dozen paper cuts will never heal. No more dreams encased in nightmares, copper in my ears, magnesium scalpels my scalp. No more half-written tales, one town over and 15 years later, suicide windows, when its said and done, and that sad, sad city with no second chances where a cop named St. Cyr drinks in a tavern called Uptown Jo's, served soda water over his shakes by a woman more defined than parts of his own daily existence. No more more. Is there Heaven? Is there a God in man's image and if so, will St. Peter punch me in my balls as I stand in front of graffiti-covered gates? Is this life a continuation of the Hell I lived until I died in 1959 along with George Reeves, Lou Costello, and the 99th victim of the Our Lady of Angels fire, serial killers Harvey Glatman and Charles Starkweather leaving just before that. I just want to keep my memories, is that so selfish and bad? I want to remember the bartender, the cop whose name means sincere, my hatred of snow, the glass in my bones. And my paper cuts will never heal, ever again.

WTF?

here i am working another 14 hour shift and just now i find out it is farken snowing out all over everything, what the bloody hell?! kate, you would know more than i do at this point, if sternberg's blasted omega beams weren't on the fritz, maybe he could help us out. elvis, gladys and vernon, when will this winter end? we do the daylight savings time thing in four farken days!!! everyone reading this, call your congressman or state ambassador, harley-driving gramlich or gauteng bossman or even the tallest guy on the detroit pistons and just say to them...WTF, dude?

Contents of A Dead Man's Briefcase

Thanks for all the comments regarding the posts since I've come back online. I'm glad everyone got to see what the Faceless One will find in my wallet before the morgue attendant, and Sid has given some thought towards a similar post. Well, this post is one I should have made months ago, but I need to do it now before the briefcase is given back to the Salvation Army. I had purchased this now somewhat beaten up satchel for a buck forty at the local SA when I had a temp job on the far northside. It was in pristine condition, the kind of thing you find at apartment sales or even estate sales. One day, I noticed a lower pocket below the one I kept my bus schedules in, and I unzipped it, expecting to find nothing. Rather, there was one folded piece of paper, still crisp. I am only assuming it belonged to the owner of the briefcase. It was a letter with lab results stating that the 29 year old man had an inoperable brain tumor. It made me wonder if this is why the briefcase was in such excellent condition; of course, now it is ragged, after two winters and being dragged along almost each of the last 700 days. I bought a backpack, because I really don't need a briefcase when I no longer wear a suit and tie to work, and a backpack allows me to run for the bus (or from zombies) (or Sternberg) without getting out of breath. And so the briefcase gets recycled, yet still I wonder if the original owner ever made it to the age of 30. There are always things I end up thinking way too much about.