A Rain of Frogs

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In a dirty and run down part of town, down a barely-lit side street once named after a tree but now simply called Peelers Alley, is a flickering lamp high on a post that barely lights a dented, scratched door. Welcome to Jethro’s

Those of a philosophical or spiritual nature might find meaning in Jethro’s, in its poetically tragic nature. But Jethro’s is a simple place, and any insight into the nature of the universe here would be as meaningless as a Rock Hudson love scene.

Inside, the air is dank and close, a heady mix of cheap sex, cheap booze and expensive decay. A naked dancer lazily sways on stage set in the middle of the dark room. Close inspection would reveal her scars and tracks, would reveal the deep desperation and desolation inside her, but from a distance none of that is apparent.

Time stands still inside Jethro’s, an eternity passes as one woman on stage supplants another, as one song runs into another. Nothing changes, everything stays the same. This is the nature of Jethro’s. It has no meaning, it just is.

Everything stay’s the same, one empty girl after another up on stage for the entertainment of low men, until one girl, mid-way through a song and half dressed, suddenly heaves and coughs. With blood still running from her nose, she leaves the stage. Each platform stiletto step heard pulling away from the sticky floor beneath her, the sound of pieces being torn from the fabric of her soul.

Catcalls and jeers fill the smoky, fetid air The lights on stage dim, and the music fades. A pregnant, terrible silence grips the room, and time fails to move on as it always has at Jethro’s. It stands still. The air is heavy, as if the weight of world’s hangs in the balance. Nobody breaths, nothing moves.

Then the spell is broken. A voice comes over the sound system, announcing that Candy isn’t feeling well. More jeers, a beer bottle is hurled on stage and smashes against the black velvet backdrop behind. The universe spins on as it always has.

Two girls are rushed out on stage, unprepared, to placate the spectators. They writhe and grind against each other’s naked bodies. The cat calls subside.

From a distance, their scars and tracks, their desperation and their tears, are hidden. One low girl after another sells her soul to empty men, one song runs into another, and slowly, surely, Jethro’s settles down into its eternal rhythm.

In a dirty and run down part of town, down a barely-lit side street once named after a tree but now simply called Peelers Alley, is a flickering lamp high on a post that barely lights the crushed remains of hopes and dreams.

Welcome to Jethro’s

She whizzed around the corner fast enough for the tires to squeal. The car, a candy-apple red convertible, drifted sideways through the intersection. Far behind, the wail of a police siren split the dusty air.

She laughed as the car regained its traction and shot off on its new course. She looked in the rear-view mirror just in time to see the cop car miss the turn and roll over as it smashed through a fruit stand. She waited for it, with only an occasional glance at the road in front of her. Eventually she saw what she was looking for, and laughed again.

It was a universal constant that a car smashing into a fruit stand would inevitably result in a single wheel being ejected from the crash site.

She adjusted her aviator sunglasses in the mirror, puckered her lips, and blew herself a kiss before returning her attention to the road in front of her. It was empty, and straight as an arrow for as far as she could see. It ran directly east into the mountains and the sunrise.

The air whipped around the 1965 Mustang and blew her hair back. Were it a hollywood extravaganza, there’d be an appropriate soundtrack, and of course, license plate with her name on it. As it was, the only sound was the wind blowing past her ears and the whine of the engine as it thrust the car into the future a second at a time.

The speedometer was locked at 120 miles per hour. Life fell away behind her, every mile taking her further from her broken heart.

Her cell phone rang, startling her out of her reverie. She glanced at it, rolled her eyes, and flipped it’s sleekness open.

“What.” she stated flatly into the mouthpiece.

She listened

“No, I’m not coming home.”

She looked at the phone, then tossed it up into the slipstream.

She pushed the pedal to the floor, and the car managed one more burst of acceleration. The car pulled her away from her past and into the desert.

It was such a small thing he did.

He had picked up the sketch and tore it in two. It wasn’t the first time he had done it. Jay had ripped dozens of my sketches. Torn my sketchbooks apart. Spit on them. Mocked me for being a sissy art homo.

The slow, painful tear snaked across the page and across my mind. The tearing sound of the paper was the sound of my mind being rent in two. As the rip crossed Amy’s face, I felt it slash through my brain, a blinding, searing white pain pulling back curtains of thought, revealing the empty blackness behind.

I felt my my mind tear apart. As the last the few fibers holding the two halves of the paper together released their grip, I felt the edges of my thoughts release from each other. Feelings and thoughts spilled into the empty blackness, streaming off the ragged edges of my broken mind.

Jay laughed and tossed the remains of the sketch aside. As they fluttered to the floor I felt as if I were falling, spinning into that black emptiness behind my thoughts. I felt the remnants of my mind as they lost themselves in nothingness.

I heard her in my broken mind. As I watched Jay walk away laughing, I heard Amy whisper. I had a vision of that cardinal, laying on the road. It’s glazed eye stared into me and I heard Amy whisper.

It’s almost too late, Adrian.

Were my life a Hollywood film or a book, it would have been different. I would have flown at him, hit him and finally regained my life and soul from his cruelty. The protagonist, pushed to the brink, would spin round and vanquish the antagonist.

My life wasn’t a film, or a book, but it was the last time Jay would ever hurt me.

Long before the shadows cast their cold umbra on the landscape, the ground reverberated with the slow thump-thump of the distant engines beating their death-march into the air. As far-away propellors cut the air to ribbons, birds fled, horses and goats grew uneasy, and dogs hid beneath porches.

The shadow of the fleet blanketed the countryside, darkening rye fields and ponds. The shadows leaped and swam across farm houses and towns like playful dolphins in the bow wave of a tea clipper. Farmers looked up, startled by the slow, almost stately procession of airships in the daytime sky above them.

They were headed for the city.

Gripped by the awe-inspiring sight of the massive, graceful silver angels above, frozen by a lack of understanding, nobody raised the alarm, nobody alerted those in the city. Simple people stood, watching the parade of airships make its slow, steady way toward the bustling metropolis.

Later, as pillars of black smoke taller than Babel rose above the remains of the once vibrant city, the airships returned, a host of beautiful silver angels of death, their work done, returning home.

The cold shadow of death raced across the plains, across rye fields and ponds. Across farm houses and towns. Overhead, propellors cut the air to ribbons, and engines thumped a war-drum beat into the air.

And then the shadow passed. The sound of the engines and the propellers faded to silence. The sun shone again, and birds filled the air with song again. Horses and goats went about the business of horses and goats, and dogs came out from beneath porches.