Imagination #9

Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9.

Cue the music, something metallic, rising in volume, with a piercing scream. Skidrow's national anthem pipes in with a police call and sirens. It's another case for the fly by night lawyer, Amestic D'Buse, to get his greedy little paws on. She pulled a knife on him. Both ran out just as everything started crumbling and dissolving.

In a bed on the upper floor, our lady of the night stuffs towels in bed holes to soften the springs. They make an impact. She has a masked man who says strictly, "Do not look upon me in my heat." That's getting technical. What's he got to hide? He likes it blue.

Respectable citizens cruise the entrance to this foul district, peeking down, wondering what there might be to see. Give me one good case of staggering and something reprehensible and I'll be happy. Maybe a mad drunk throwing a chair through a window. How about that pizza place?

I've imagined myself in that one dive, the last one out. Even the lowlifes knew enough to get out. I'd be bellying up to the bar just in time to get the call. "It's for you," and I'm like, Who Knows I'm Here? Then I hear his accusing voice from before, "I know where you go, and I know what you do there." No, no, no, it's my first time!

The neon sign at the fly by night carpet store flickers. Get that sucker fixed! It's pollution. It's mental anguish. It'll give me a seizure if I look at it twice. I wouldn't buy carpet from you. I'd be afraid to sign the papers. I won't sign anything.

What about the pizza from down the street? He kneads the dough like a strangler. With persistence. He's angry. It's rotty. It's scuzzy. He laughs with mania -- that's M-A-N-I-A, so sexy. The oven is open and shut, open and shut, fanning the flames.