chapter 3: COEXIST BUMPER STICKERS LINE THE WALLS OF MY CELL
Peering down from behind the blinds, Dang spied the twentysomething with the raggedy baseball cap and a posse of other young adults surrounding him as they all laughed and passed around cylinders of paper and metallic varieties. Some of the younger ones had the bleached hair, others were just blonde, and some had other varieties of dye to mark their hair and skin. All the classical signs of Migrant Temples members. Dang grimaced; they were moving further and further south every year. Like they were following him.
Past the circle of youths was the same black electric that he spied the other day. Whoever was in it probably wasn’t associated with the kids, at least not directly. If they were they’d have parked farther away. Dang drew in breath through his cigarette before moving from the window and digging through his closet. He pulled off his gold chain and threw a long overcoat on. He then made his way to the kitchen, opening the cabinet under the sink and picking up a broken off piece of pipe with its ends leveled off. Stuffing the pipe into his deep jacket pocket, Dang spit out the cig into the sink and grabbed his sunglasses on his way out the door. He stopped on the way out before marching back into the bathroom and wrapping his abdomen with torn-up rags of cloth and zipping his jacket up.
-
The way the weather of the world was jackets hadn’t been used at this latitude in decades, so Dang hoped to make this as quick as possible. Stepping into the parking lot, he made his way towards the circle of teens. The black car was gone once again. Dang let out a sigh of relief; if blood was spilled and his intuition was wrong then at least the kids wouldn’t have backup. As he got closer he heard the current sounds of pop culture coming from a speaker. The newest phase of economically viable music were songs that exclusively consisted of delicately crafted choruses and hooks, thirty second melodies that were stitched together end on end and played on loop for subduing the mind’s more irritable elements. Totally plastic, monorhythmic nonsense, he thought to himself.
When one of the teens stopped laughing and nudged at the elder with the baseball cap Dang relaxed his shoulders and wore a cool smile, and the elder boy smiled back. He was sitting inside the open door of the yellow van, and upon closer inspection Dang noticed a spiteful parrot on his shoulder and a tattoo of an old chain restaurant on the right side of his neck. The conversation in the circle slowly pittered out as Dang began to invade their space, and he reached into his pants and pulled out a fresh pack of smokes.
A wiry haired girl stepped forward and snatched the pack and studied it scornfully. “Chinese? Chink shit’ll kill you.”
Dang took the pack back and tore off the paper on the top, pulling out a single smoke. “You scared?” The child’s eyes narrowed and she snatched the cigarette, and soon everyone either held a stick by their lips or kept it for later behind their ears. The teenager in the cap gently took the parrot and handed them to a young girl in a dirty bridal dress and stood up.
“That’s an awfully generous gesture of you, stranger.” He stuck his hand towards Dang who stared at it for a moment too long before smiling and shaking hands. “You from Meadows? I saw you coming outta that complex.”
Shit, Dang thought. “Wouldn’t say I’m local if that’s what you mean.” The teen put the cigarette to his lips and Dang held up his wrist which automatically activated a flame that originated from the heat in his blood. “Name’s Dominic.”
The teen let a few puffs go before stifling back a cough. “Richie. Mind me asking what’s brought this gift from God here?”
Dang looked over Richie’s shoulder at the kids still eyeing him suspiciously. Dang smiled and put an arm around Richie and laughed. “Just a gesture, perhaps a preposition of sorts.”
“Oh yeah?” Richie nodded as Dang led them away from the circle. Looking over his shoulder Richie waved away at his posse and then resumed their games and conversation.
“Yeah yeah, I got some info from a friend who pointed me in your direction.” Dang spied out the cameras posted on the streetlights and buildings before leading them towards the door of the apartment complex.
“You ain’t no narc is you?”
“Hahaha!” He met Richie’s gaze and saw that he was serious. “C’mon man. I’m on the level.”
“You a cop?”
“Fuck no, man, I hate pigs.”
“Alright, chico.” Richie laughed and Dang forced a smile. “So what’ll it be man, you want grass? Good shit, not that skunk they sell at the dispensary. What about tabs? No, I can tell by your walk, you a capsules guy ain’t you? Straight outta Akira huh? Haha!”
“My friend Dante says you threw him in the river.”
“Dante? Dante, eh? Hmm…” Richie scratched at the back of his neck. “Never heard of no Dante.”
Dang stared, observing. “I’d bet he ain’t the first kid you n your chimps done that to.”
“Dante… Man, why you all serious all a sudden? Shit’s so funny, they come out all dizzy and their hair all fucked up, man! Besides, them new age motherfuckers give money to those blonde heads. I’m just helping out my community man.”
Dang looked out towards the parking lot and laughed halfheartedly. Then he took a step forward and gently stuck the pipe in his pocket into Richie’s stomach. “You fuck with anymore kids and you’ll swim in that lake.”
Richie’s face grew cold, but his smile remained. “That piece supposed to scare me? You know how easy it is to get heat around here bro? This is America!”
The crooked smile dropped from Dang’s face. “You’re not my brother, you fucking cac.”
“Heh.” Richie spit at Dang’s feet. “You fuck with me, you fuckin with a lot more than you can handle. I got gunnas and assassin motherfuckers in my personals, you won’t even see ‘em coming bitch.”
A younger Dang would’ve had to hold back the urge to cry (the younger Dang could barely handle a verbal beatdown from the orderlies). The only thing keeping his composure was his familiarity with people like Richie and his assassins. Dang leaned in closer, jamming the pipe deeper into Richie’s chest. He saw sweat begin to fall from Richie’s forehead. “You swim with me, you won’t float.”
Richie scowled, only for a second before laughing. “You’re slick, Dominic. Got a way with words, anyone ever tell you that?” He shoved Dang away and lifted his cap, brushing the hair underneath it. “I’ll forgive you for this shit. Really, I will. I won’t have my boys cut your dick off in your sleep. Hell, I’ll still sell you some capsules if you got money. I ain’t a new ager, but I do go in peace man…” He laughed as he slowly began walking towards his circle. “Oh, and paper money only man. Credits is too easy to trace.”
Dang just stared as Richie casually smacked a shaved girl’s head, creating a rippling laugh amongst the children. Dang stared longer still and counted the number of kids he saw, and as he climbed the stairs back to his room he thought about how many more would join his ranks. He made sure not to be noticed by any strange looking teens on his way to his apartment.
-
When he closed the apartment door he sifted through the jacket closet and produced a used piece of wood with a hammer and nails from it. Nailing the wood to the doorway, he tried to stop his hands from shaking before eventually lighting a cigarette and sitting with his back to the door.
“Fucking chi-mos.” He spat, thumbing the ashes onto the linoleum floor. “Fucking cacs these days, goddamn.” He pulled himself up, dropping the jacket on the floor by the door and slinking out of his pants before sitting down in a swivel chair in front of a laptop. Dang stared at the blank screen, its mirror cracked around the corners and reflecting the furrowed brow and scowling mouth of a twenty-four year old wannabe tough guy. He could feel the sweltering heat of the apartment begin to boil his brain, and thoughts of uselessness began to creep into his psyche. Leaning over with his hands on his face, in a sudden motion he cleared his desk with the strike of an arm. Cups of tap water crashed against the wall and his microphone made a clattering sound as it fell behind the desk and into the trap of wires that lay back there. Fishing the mic out with its source connected to his computer, he held the device tightly in his fist with his left hand as his right hand began setting up a livestream from his personal website. Before counting down to begin his broadcast, Dang looked up at his wall where a taped photo of the late Dara Nguyen, smiling sadly in her mugshot knowing she was to be exiled home. He hit play.
-
Welcome, welcome, welcome! All you fish of the boiling seas, big and little, mean and kind, large and small… Welcome to Free Radio Meadows, banned from the psych waves, banned from YouTube, banned from all decent and respectable network channels. They can toss around their copyright claims, their accusations of spreading terrorist material, man the only crime we’re guilty of is paintin the town brown in the year of 2084.
I’d like to take a minute to uh address some of the complaints that we’ve been receiving regarding our show, and yes I say we for this show represents all oppressed peoples on all corners of the earth and is nothing, absolutely meaningless, without you lovely listeners around to carry the word on the streets… Complaints regarding our music selection, whether or not our reading list contains authors who are ableist, misogynist… Well, uh, those are actually some valid complaints, but bar those, complaints about like how last month I sort of advocated for burning books by Jordan Peterson. I just wanna say to those who might be rubbed the wrong way about uh, this show or what it is we represent, well, uh… Fuck yourselves. Seriously? You think I really give a fuck about your dumbass opinions designed by people who fuckin infect your mind with daytime television and video games and bullshit? You fucking insects can’t think for your fucking selves and you blame it on the ostracized because that’s what they want of you. Goddamn, you motherfuckers would make good slaves, you already are slaves. I already can see you, in the revolution you’d lay down your fucking children on the streets for the riot squad to stomp on. Wouldn’t want their fucking boots to get dirty.
Don’t like what I’m saying on my show? Go make your own show, simple as that. That’s all we ever advocate here: independence, self-advocacy, and the liberation of the airwaves. You wanna listen to capitalist hardcore? Get the fuck outta here. Slam energy drinks the next time one of those big hipster music fests come to town, you’ll get what you want at those shitshows. You wanna be tucked into bed at night with white little lies? You know the major news networks, go watch that shit. Go watch whatever redneck comedy show from fucking canada is streaming these days. Here, at Free Radio Meadows, we paint the town brown. Bringing you the brown sounds from people all shades of brown while you eat brown takeout food from the brown side of the street you don’t like your children playing on and you take a snort of that stimulant that brown hands were bloodied to get to your fancy condo on land brown people were evicted on for like the third or fourth time in the past two hundred years. And with that, let’s get onto the our band of the week that if you don’t listen to i’ll fucking burn your house down…
-
Sweat began to form along Dang’s pulled back hairline and his eyes begged for relief from plasma screen light and yet he plundered on. The A/C wasn’t broken, otherwise Dang wouldn't be able to make it through the night, but it never worked that well for the months he’d spent sedentary. Similar in its questionability was the architecture of the building; Dang knew little of physics and aerodynamics but he did remember the lower floors being priced higher. It mattered little now, he was already lost in the new ways of this world.
Subconsciously chewing on the thick sugars from a bamboo shoot, he sifted through tabs on the screen that controlled things like visual feed, audio levels, and filtered comments. He could remember the first time he attempted to get his program off the ground, he was like a monkey suddenly put in the driver’s seat of the latest jet car model. He remembered that he’d never felt such agency in his life until that moment.
Three knocks and a loud thud came from the front door. Looking over his shoulder towards the hallway Dang saw nothing but dust and debris. He pushed himself from his computer and quickly pulled his jeans on before instinctively lifting the microphone over his head, his muscles tense with anticipation. A cloud of dust premiered a short and round figure, like the fog before the wizard. From that cloud came Dante, his blonde stubble grown out into a tasteful set of spikes and his jersey bearing the proud, shadowy face of a spartan warrior. It looked to Dang like it was some school mascot and it wouldn’t surprise him were it true. With a sigh Dang dropped the mic and Dante gave a humorous look towards the door.
“How the fuck did you get in?” Dang asked irritably. Internally, however, he was almost delighted to see the boy. He was certainly better company than a hit squad at least.
“I tried to open it and…” Dang leaned past the wall to see his front door lying flat in his hallway, still connected to its hinges and locks which had taken a significant part of the wall with them when they fell. The wood showed several signs of rot and termite infestation, and Dang groaned into his hand.
“Man, those locks cost me more than any termite contract would’ve.” He said to himself while Dante began to laugh at him.
“Hey it’s not like you, of all people, have to worry about money.” Dante said callously, still laughing.
“What’s that supposed to mean huh?”
“Oh uh…” Dante looked down in an embarrassed fashion. “Well people all over my floor know you have enough credits to stay in your room all day and night. The owner thinks you deal flower, but my grandma knows better.”
Dang scoffed as he lifted his door and fit it back onto the frame, struggling to speak as he lifted the door with pounds of wood attached to it. “I’m… really flattered that… your senile grandmother thinks higher of me than our landlord.” He pulled some more pieces of wood from his closet along with the hammer and nails. “But frankly kid I’d rather you and the old maids kept ya noses outta my life. Like goddamn neighborhood watch.” Dang tried to ignore Dante’s curious eyes burning a hole in his back as he pounded at the door in a neanderthal rhythm.
Once the last nail was pounded into a new hole in the frame, a few centimeters from where the previous holes where, Dang dropped the hammer with a sigh and reached into his back pocket for his pack only to find an empty space. When he turned towards Dante, the child was holding a cigarette between his fingers with a knowing smile. Dang took the smoke and studied it. Chinese.
“Huh.” Dang uttered as he lit the cigarette and leaned against the wall.
“How am I gonna get out?” Dante asked once Dang closed his eyes. They slowly reopened and revealed bloodshot whites that looked only towards God.
-
Dang was led through an underlit doorway into a candle-lit apartment flooded with the aromas of incense, cannabis tea, and natural sweat. It was much cooler than his own but it was still dank enough to form beads of sweat along the bridge of his nose. Wiping his face, he looked down towards Dante who’d already slipped his shoes off and was pouring out cockroach milk from the kitchen. The boy came back with two filled cups and nodded towards the living room, inviting Dang to sit with his grandmother in front of the screen embedded in the wall. The old fashioned couch, complete with a flowing quilt and embroidered pillows depicting Internet-based images of kittens. The elder woman lay in the floating recliner, the static hum coming from its engines giving the room the atmosphere of a soft lullaby. Her hair had gently aged from jet black to a decayed grey, and she appeared like any other Filipina Dang saw walking around Meadows except significantly shorter. He remembered reading something about elderly shrinkage amongst Asians in a textbook years ago, but it also could’ve been a falsehood spread by American intuition.
Taking a slouched seat on the sofa, Dang found he could very easily fall asleep on this bed of cushions if he wasn’t careful; a year spent hunched over or sprawled on the floor left his body in desperate need of delicate wants such as a sofa to lie on. Still, even in his exhausted state, Dang knew better than to get too comfortable too quickly. He kept his feet on the floor and his hands on his knees for an appearance of casual formality. Unfortunately the sleeveless tank top he wore left the significant parts of his deltoids and trapezius muscles stuck to the leather of the couch. It was clearly noticeable but a casual look at the elder woman indicated a lack of concern coming from the strangely organic sounds of peeling coming from the couch.
“Ever had roach milk? Fills you up pretty good I say.” The older man stared at the cup with a resigned look in his eyes before taking a sip from the glass. Dante flopped on the couch next to him and the three of them sat in silence as the screen displayed snippets of films, miniseries, and independent footage, automatically changing channels at set amounts of time to maintain maximum attention to the content being viewed. Of course one could search and download a full movie for viewing, but it was a practice reserved for academics and youth subcultures.
“What you think?” Dante nudged at Dang when the screen cut to a superhero movie that was all the rage fifty or so years ago.
Dang took a deeper sip of the drink and rolled its flavor on his tongue as he watched a charming nymph of an Anglo woman dive through a church window as an explosion followed her. “Mmm. It’s sticky.” The woman wore a belt of bullets and had her luscious black hair dyed a deep shade of red. She produced two classic firearms, their model etched into the brains of anyone who obsessed over fight cinematography and Hollywood ballistics. “Kinda leaves a fucked up aftertaste though.”
“Think so?” Dante asked before the grandmother in the corner sat up with her eyes shut and mouth agape in a calm trance. She turned to the two on the couch who looked back at her with a distant amusement and she spoke.
“Mushi mushi virgins.” She cackled to herself as she leaned back in her chair and returned to her internal state of meditation.
“I’m guessing it’s pretty weird living with your grandma huh.”
“Yeah… Most people don’t know their grandparents. I think it’s making me weird living with her.”
Dang stared at the boy as the screen cut to an international podcast between four whites discussing potential solutions to domestic abuse cases in New Burma. “It’s good to be weird. Normal people don’t get shit, you should feel sorry for them.” He hoped Dante would affirm this ideology but the boy just watched the screen.
“Is Richie normal?” Dang felt a cold sweat crawl down his neck and he slapped at it a little too loudly.
“Richie’s as normal as they get. Use people who don’t know better for your own gain, a tradition as old as time. Manipulators and pimps, not real men.” Dang found himself speaking a little too loud but he was losing the necessary finesse to control his voice. “Cacs like him have had everything handed to them. Money, resources, sex, always come easy to guys like that. You and me, we have to work for our shit. We gotta stick together like that, against guys like him.”
Dante’s face grew more furrowed as the great debaters on the screen laughed over castration techniques that were developing amongst anti-rape movements across Southern Asia. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Dang’s eyes narrowed. “I know if you was normal you’da never jumped into that lake when they told you to.”
“Plenty of kids do it, they all get to live a little like Richie. We’re the ones who’re shut off from the world, not the other way around. Normal people don’t do what we do.”
“Yeah plenty of little shits turned albino cuz they were told to, but I know you different. I know you ain’t normal.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, a hunned percent.”
“Well how’s that? Jackass.”
“You did it cuz you wouldn’t think that someone’d lie to you like that and that’s why you not normal.. You prolly came up from that lake with your hands pale as a sheet wondering why, why make you do something like that? The answer still hasn’t come to you, and it’s cause you ain’t like them.”
Dante finished his glass of milk and set it down on the floor next to the couch. The two sat in a silence, almost like a pause had been set on the conversation for the boy to think. “You smoke too much flower, fool.”
The grandma sat up once again in her chair, this time more in a gentler fashion and with grace. Her leathery smile pulled back and revealed a set of aged dentures. “Flower, Dante?”
Dante let out a quiet groan before quickly pushing himself from the couch. “It’s coming, grandma.” He moved with an impatience exclusive to young men in the employ of older women, digging through the fridge and coolers to mix an herbal cocktail for his lola. Dang wondered if the two spoke any Tagalog between each other, and then he wondered if Tagalog was even their ancestral tongue. Regardless it would’ve been a rarity, a multilingual family unit. Not that a family unit consisting of a bratty cult member and an elderly THC enthusiast wasn’t already rare. Dang scratched as his neck as the screen cut to an animated show consisting of a drug dealing advertising mascot managing his prostitution empire. Maybe this kid was weirder than he thought. He was nice enough, making tea for his grandmother and inviting Dang in to stay, but Richie or any other Migrant Temple member still could’ve set this up. Dang shook his head and finished his glass of milk. If Richie or anyone else did recognize him they wouldn’t have sent a little kid, and they wouldn’t have sent someone to simply kill him.
“What’s wrong mane?” Dante’s voice snapped Dang back to reality. The boy was holding a bowl of boiled peanuts and sat on the floor next to Dang, passing the bowl back to him after taking a handful of nuts and setting them in his lap.
“Why would you think something’s wrong?” Dang threw a few peanuts in his mouth and sifted the nut from the shell with his teeth, spitting out the remnants into his cupped hand.
“You had that look on you is all. Like something ain’t sittin right.”
This time it was Dang’s turn to pause and think over his words. “This show sucks.”
Dante let out an unexpected laugh and began whispering into his wrist. The screen suddenly changed to a new game show that put children against adults in games ranging from swimming through freezing water to justifying theological lines of reasoning. Dang thought this show sucked too but for once he had reason not to say so.
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