Bennie

He does not answer when I speak, the severed head in the picnic basket, nor do the swarming flies on the muslin sack, buzzing on the dried blood, concern him overmuch. I still speak to him as ice chunks melt about his rotting skull, and he rolls with a soft bump on the passenger seat. “Al, baby, we’re gonna find out what this is all about. You and me, Al, we’re gonna find out.” Mexico shimmers and burns through dust and dirt, gunfire, filth and murder, and we drive the backroads in the hammered paint scarred red car, backfiring clouds of exhaust, pollutant patches of hell. Gunshots echo through my mind, bodies pirouette in slow motion, tissue quake ensues, jetting blood through ripped cloth: “Why? Because it feels so damn good, that’s why.” I never had much to speak of, dreams, a girl and a piano, now my girl is dead and all I have left is a car, a gun and a severed head in a picnic basket. And in place of dreams, a heart of darkness and this impregnable death wish…