- Benjamin Ervin
They were at the bar clinging to the dead fibers of wood as their hair fell from their skulls with rubbing motions of worried hands. Two figures stood out like hawks. One was a boy, who looked freshly wed, the tan line faint on his finger where the ring was supposed to be. The other was a simpler being, held by a trench coat and some collective will. Its face was covered in sea-foam cilia and it could speak some Spanish.
"Another?" The bartender asked. The process of mopping the ichor had nullified their warrior spirit, and he learned to accept night crowds as an aspect of society. Watering louses with alcohol in acts of peace and zen.
“No, I better get going.”
“Misses waiting?" The bartender's eye went to the tan line like an injection.
“For the whole bunch of them,” the boy balanced himself on the wall of the bar and stood up. The liquor was strong, and he found it hard to move. Outside the door was the cool night, bleeding in over the door-less frame along with the heavy neon sign of a brothel, where people stumbled in and out of like lost cattle. The hot pink sign was burning his eyes to a point black sunspot drifted about his iris-like rogue planets. “Any place a man can eat before he sets off?”
“None that I would recommend to a man of your demeanor.” The boy waved the bartender off as a simple apparition.
Then, the amoeba in trench coat spoke up, “I know a food cart, across town. Fry protozoa and potatoes alike.” He had been in the bar all night and no one had bothered to speak to him or acknowledge him. His words were like chimes in green Jello.
“Keen to drive?”
“No.”
“Me nay-there. Let’s hit bricks Pink Eye.”
They moved like ronin. Glass breaking under heavy footfalls, filling cracks of cobblestone with crystalline bits no sun could melt. Shadows were being played upon their faces as they moved past storefronts in a uniform pair, light passing through the Amoeba to cast a brilliant turquoise across Joe’s face. Occasional shadows crossed the space of the two men, as the freestanding simple organs of Pink Eye floated within the protoplasmic mold. A black cat darted across the street, only stopping once, midway, to look in both directions, before rushing up a stoop, along a windowsill and into a window. It meowed a deep velvet pull, and the window
eased shut by the will of an unknown individual. With a gentle throat clearing that sounded like rakes, Joe felt it was apt he talked.
“What is it that brings you to this small pueblo?”
“Memories. You, amigo?”
“Honeymoon,” Joe was loose and languid compared to Pink Eye who was mostly liquid.
"Don't have a ring on."
Joe stopped and undid a few buttons on his flannel to show a ring on a chain. It was trapped inside of a transparent plastic bag that captured the brown of Joe’s unblinking eye. “Allergic to gold is all. Found out when my hand wouldn’t stop breaking out in hives. Went through six different soaps. My finger just kept swelling.” Joe was impartial to talking too much.
Pink Eye couldn’t interject the point since he had no background in digit/ring care, “Alright, so why are you out drinking and not with the bride.”
“She’s watching the kids. We are taking our honeymoon in shifts as her parents come over on the cruise to take over for us.” For a moment, Pink Eye saw a tinge of red in the man’s eyes. Now his age bled from his collar: life of a parent weighing on body in draughts of green paint, as the anxiety of child-rearing turned his stomach.
Pink Eye raised a pseudo-foot, "I should give my name."
“Leave it for sober Joe to learn. When I’m drunk, I’m a new man, coming out of the Old Joe’s useless husk to dance and die in the night, before returning to my body” Joe’s swift hand movements pushed his weak body to a dizzy resolution. He leaned on a wall and allowed his eyes to gaze up towards the electrical lines, before drifting down again to a shifting, tan trench-coat, holding Pink Eye. "Hol’ up mi amigo, I…I am dizzy. Damn alcohol. How, how are you not drunk?”
Pink Eye stopped under a streetlight. His pseudo feet in his pockets, tie loose, coat wrinkled, body glowing aloe green. A vestige organ was drifting like lava-lamp wax in the light and Joe had a brief thought that it was groovy as a slight shudder inside the body of Pink Eye in a slow orbit, “I get the drinks for the sugars, the company is an added bonus. I excrete the wastewater after. Alcohol, in this instance.”
Joe grinned the same childish grin he always had, “How’s that?”
“What?”
“That you pull out alcohol. You use a swab?”
“I take both of my pseudo feet here, and well, I grip my head like a wet rag, and wring out the alcohol, like so,” Pink Eye leaned forward, into a slight bow, and gripped the top of his head, gel on gel touching intimately, cilia winding close, before he crushed, then twisted it several turns tight. Clear liquid seeped out of the body and cleaned the gray pavement under foot. It sounded like someone pissing and it prompted Joe to back away from the wall and towards an intersecting alley.
“Hold that thought, I gotta piss too.”
"Alright, the bar's just ba—”
“No, I’ll go in the alley, be my eyes. My big pink eyes,” Joe laughed gently to himself as he held both hands over his face. Pink Eye shook his head. He liked the nickname Joe gave him. He didn’t have pink eyes, but to say otherwise would have broken Joe’s heart.
Joe did a cowboy waltz into a back alley and relieved himself behind a dumpster. Overhead a kid was reading on the fire escape by dollar store light. He was trying to focus on the French comic, the low, yellow light wasn’t helping, and neither was Joe’s grumbling.
“That’s better. You ever pee Pink Eye, I mean that head twist trick was pretty close, but you don’t get drunk neither.”
“Odd, so many piss-related questions, but what can you say when dealing with drunks. What I just did was the closest thing to peeing we do.”
Joe gave a quick pull of a fly and proceeded to clean his hands with a small bottle of pink strawberry sanitizer. "Damn stuff never makes you feel clean. I’d offer some, but it’s not real strawberry." His gaze went up to Pink Eye, he was still glowing. “See, if I was a good student, I’d know something about something with amoeba family.”
“You are fine.”
"Alcohol doesn't kill you neither, like most bacteria?"
"No, I am not a traditional single-celled organism. If you can't tell from my sense of fashion." He gave the first inclination of a sound that Joe recognized as a laugh, so he joined in.
“I am enjoying your company Pink Eye.”
“Igualmente.”
By the time they were at the bodega, Joe’s stomach began to growl, and his eyes grew deep with a certain lust for food. Pink Eye didn’t want to stop in the little shop, but Joe promised to be in and out. While Joe talked prices figures without color walked down a side alley. The
invisible punks were looking for trouble in the dark streets of a Small Spanish Town. They could see the man and his green-fluid friend talking sandwiches with a clerk who was uninterested. They stood on one side of the entrance, red neon passing through their bodies and onto the cobblestone. They made themselves known by a simple throat clearing and a flick of steel in street-tough fashion, the metal glowing in the red light of the bodega, dancing gently of its own free will. "Money,” was all the body said over the knife, the voice came from everywhere at once. Behind the knife was a set of brass knuckles, and a tonfa.
Joe went for his wallet and Pink Eye put a solid pseudo foot punch in the place he thought was a throat. The gagging followed as tonfa fell, and the brass knuckles came down hard on the gentle fluid body.
Joe reacted to the knife by attempting to mimic the drunken slapstick martial arts he practiced as a kid but soon found himself rolling on the ridged stone outside the bodega, holding a red knife just inches from his chest. As they rolled about, dirt collected on the invisible man, and he began to take a shape. Somewhere a phone was being dialed, and through brief glimpses, Joe could see a young girl on the phone and Pink Eye breaking one of the thief’s arms against a light pole, bone, and blood coming through the skin, and outwards into the alley in fluorescent crimson.
Joe wrenched the knife hand around as the thief slowly eased his weight into the blade. All Joe saw was bright metal sinking deep in the air, fading with every fifth of an inch, before spurting blood on his good shirt like a Jackson Pollock.
Joe eased the boy off, and the slight rustle of feet marked the departure of invisible punks. Joe moved to the side and puked, and Pink Eye rubbed the back of his head. He looked over the now bleeding invisible man. Blood was bleeding on the sidewalk. Pink Eye spoke, “¿Tú hablas íngles? ¿Ayudas?”
A voice came out of the pooling vermilion puddle that had distinct back and arm print, “I speak English, and I don’t need help, Mister please…set with me.” Pink Eye looked at Joe who had wiped his mouth along his sleeve. He gave a distressed glance to Pink Eye before speaking.
“I’m sorry I stabbed you son.”
“I’m 20.”
“Well, we are all children. Especially you, you know, mugging tourists and all.”
“Fuck you, I want to talk to the amoeba fellow. ¿Hábleme, por favor?”
Joe pulled out a handkerchief, “Son, it’s my mistake you ever got stabbed. Allow me to be the one to help you, maybe we can get out that knife.” Joe was wiping the blood from what he imagined was a young man’s face.
There was a slight pull, possibly the body shifting or his head-turning, “I ain’t going to live. You severed something good; you see the same blood as me. It’s…well, I am getting dizzy.”
Pink Eye chimed in for a moment, “I’ve seen a wound like this once before Joe. There is no coming back from that.”
“How can you tell, he’s invisible?”
"The amount of blood," Pink Eye said, kneeling and pointing out the ever-growing circle. "It was a 50/50 shot; you turned the blade just in time to hit him where he was aiming to stab you.”
There was a chortle, and blood was coughed up out of thin air in a volcanic burst. “Joe — I need…I need you to tell my mom what happened to me.” There was another cough, and the blade slowly shifted in its invisible sheath. “God, it’s kind of getting cold.”
“Do you need my coat?” Pink Eye asked.
“No, we got clothes on…we aren’t lecherous freaks, our body excretes a chemical that displaces phot—wait — just look it up. While you are at it, just, just find my mom.”
Joe responded now, “Sure son, what’s she looks like?”
“Hell, if I know. She’s invisible,” the boy coughed his last breath, “Her name is Debora Smalls. Tell her…tell her son Ted, make sure you don’t say Fred, or Dred or…tell her I drowned.”
“You want us to lie?”
“She never saw me do anything, so how could she argue it.”
"She lives near here?"
“Yeah. She’s also got a blog… ‘My Invisible Life.’”
“Okay son. I can look for it.”
The boy grinned the blood giving figure to his teeth, "I’m…,” then he was gone. Joe looked at Pink Eye who had his hands in his pockets. The organs had slowed their orbits, the red light making him a deep purple.
“Where you learn to fight Pink eye?”
There was a sudden movement inside of his body, “Oh, boxing lessons. I can’t do it too hard; it’s about like a wet rag. But my grip,” he shook his hands, “Is impeccable.” He went on to grip his cilia and let go in a manner like digging his toe in the dirt. “I’m…I’m sorry Joe.”
“Don’t cry for me, cry for the mother who lost a child and the father who lost a son.” Joe felt he was sobering up with each word, adrenaline-substituting alcohol which soon left his mouth dry.
Pink Eye said nothing as Joe began to cry, instead, he laid a single hand on his back. Joe cried until the blue flashing lights came around the corner. The two piercing pillars came down the street, bathing the nightlife in its godly gaze and casting the long shadow of the invisible corpse up the road to the former armory. The officer stepped out of the vehicle, and lifted off their hat, the blue light catching shark-like eyes.
The day before Joe’s kids had asked him to use Tantalizing in a sentence, he couldn’t think of a good example, but as he eyed the white sugared fried bread just out of reach, he could feel his stomach lurch, and growl. Pink Eye laughed from the bench. The officer was in the other room on the phone, the door opened, her back to them. Joe walked about the small toilet and looked up at the ceiling where a cheap, porcelain-white light flickered and sputtered in a grimy dome. There was one window, barred, that looked out on a house that was painted a pistachio green. “Always greener on the other side,” Joe remarked as he tugged at the bars. He turned back to the donuts and saw the officer chatting on the phone in a regional dialect. Joe noticed the phone cord ran off the table and up into an outlet like a tan vine.
“Who has landlines anymore?” Joe asked as he turned to look back at Pink Eye. He was stripping down. His coat was off, and he was now working his shirt off.
“Don’t fix what’s not broken. Watch my stuff,” As Pink eye said this, he pulled himself up on the windowsill and slid out through the cracks into the alley to hit the filthy street outside with a sickening, green splat. Joe watched, as the being forced himself ever outwards like neon gel toothpaste, leaving a pile of clothes. Then the receiver clicked.
“What was that noise?” The officer came into the small lobby in front of the cell. Her clothes were pure black and clashed with her alabaster skin that years of night shift had afforded.
“Nothing sir.”
“Don’t sir me, where is the amoeba?” She pressed a switch on a stun rod, blue arcs lighting up her face. It was then that Joe noticed the officer was only a facsimile of a person.
“I can’t say that I know.”
The being pointed at him through the bars with the rod, the end buffed from constant use against the bodies of people, “I am cook you right, tourist.”
Behind the officer, the door slowly opened with a near gothic design. Pink eyes eased the door open, back lit by the bright yellow of a streetlight. His organs cast in silhouette.
The officer continued, “You are scum. You come here with your money and choose to say and do as you like. I’ll tell you something,” the woman pressed a switch, as the amoeba slowly moved into the room, “I do my job like any person. I watch you scum, and you come here to get your kicks—.”
“It was defense.”
“You shut up, this is up to a court,” Pink Eye was taking some crude shape behind her, his body writhing into a semi-humanoid shape, “You a father?”
“Yes. I am.”
“How would you feel if your boy was out there, dead to the world that never saw him the way his mother did? For the man he was?”
“I…I can imagine the pain is the same as I am feeling now.”
Pink Eye formed a pseudo foot where his right hand would be and formed a single leg to stretch across the room, the Officer continued, “I don’t think you could. I don’t think you have a heart, or that you could care for anything except yourself, your pleasure.” Pink Eye didn’t let her finish. He gripped the back of the officer's head in a cilia grip before smashing her face into the iron bars, splitting the plaster cranium like an egg. As Pink Eye pulled back her head, their nose was crushed, eyes hollow and bloodless. Pink eye smashed it again busting the head clean open. It was empty except for a single candle, which slowly dripped hot wax on the floor before snuffing itself out.
“Don’t touch the candle,” Pink Eye warned Joe as he reached down to the officer's belt and unlatched the keys and unlocked the cell.
Joe lingered a moment looking over the broken head, the body slowly losing all dimensions with a slight of gas. Pink Eye stepped over the officer and into the cell, lifting his coat.
Joe watched the body wilt, “What was that?”
“Hell, if I know,” Pink Eye said, “I was looking to just knock them out.” Their head tilted, catching the white light of the cell’s bulb, “Nothing good, that’s for sure.” Pink Eye stepped over the corpse, he checked pockets for a badge or ID. Nothing. The spare room was
empty except for the phone, chair, desk, and a spare yellow lamp. The line had been cut from the wall and sat frayed in the shadows. Pink Eye moved slowly between it all, the gold eye catching in the liquid of his body light an epiphany. “Come on Joe, let’s get you something to eat,” then Pink Eye dripped a drop from a pseudo foot, smothering the lamp light in turquoise before it extinguished, leaving the room dark.
The food court outside of the food truck was a series of white plastic lawn chairs and a tarp canopy with red-green Christmas lights along the support beams held by zip ties and jute string. Joe took a seat and Pink Eye ordered. Fries with gravy and a funnel cake. “I’ve always had a sweet tooth.”
"You mentioned it at the bar."
“Yeah." Pink Eye took a bite of funnel cake by smothering it in the barber gel pseudo foot.
They soaked through the porous surface before slowly moving the food throughout its body, dissolving the blue tinted sugar powdered dough into drifting continents within the calm ocean of his body. “Do you like it?” Pink Eye pointed to the fries.
“Yes.” Joe sat eating his fries, his hunger slowly coming back to him. The image of the rogue candle cop fading from memory. “When did you find this little place?”
“When I was on a drinking tour last summer, a young man showed me the place?"
“Young amoeba?”
“Far from it, he was more akin to a moth. You know the type. Gray, sullen.”
“Big eyes, an odd attraction to soft, white light,” Joe, stopped for a moment and gently opened his eyes wide with the protraction of his fingers.
Pink Eye let out a deep laugh, “No, he was quite restrained. Goggles, you see,” He held up two beer coasters from the table and held each over his face like a pair of brown eyes. Joe laughed now. Joe ordered two drinks and the men shared them over their oily food. Gold oil and beer mixing in their bodies. Their palettes became beachfront of balanced chemicals, assaulted by waves of sugar, salt, grease, alcohol, etc. Joe blew across the top of his bottle, making a slight whistle. Pink Eye was at a loss until he formed suction on his and let go with a loud pop. The music they made was like the serenade of an annoying breeze, soon after they were asked to leave as new and less boisterous customers filled their place.
Pink Eye walked Joe to his hotel, retelling stories of his youth. As Joe slowly scaled the large steps to the hotel, he turned and gave Pink Eye a long handshake goodbye.
“Goodnight Joe.”
As the two walked separate, Joe turned around, “Pink Eye.” The amoeba looked back, its head lighting up green in the neon sign of the hotel. “I never got to hear your name.”
There was stillness to his face, the organ slowly moved in the body, as though he was thinking up a lie, “It’s Joe.” They shared the moment as a quiet secret, and then took their separate paths. Joe, the amoeba walked along the dim streets to the next bar, and Joe the man found a space among the purple silk of this bed. His clothes sat in the hamper, stained in a now visible vermilion. Sun broke through the blinds and painted a long yellow stripe across Joe. In another room, little voices stirred.
Becky woke up and found Joe beside her. She took her right thumb and ran it along the yellow strips of light before laying her palm against his forehead. "Who let this dog in, it reeks?"
"Sorry, I should bathe," he took her hand and kissed the palm.
"No, stay a moment. I missed you." She moved in close, her eyes glowing in the crescent shadow of her body. "Make any friends last night?"
"I did. His name was Joe."
She smiled, "What are the odds of that?"
"Very likely."
The next day Joe bought post card and wrote a note in invisible ink to Debora Smalls. He looked for the address in the local directory, and there was no one in the town with that name. Joe took it to the bodega from the night before, the red neon absent in the early morning light, and sat the note in the window. The white letters read something like this:
Joe didn’t know how to feel about his night, he didn’t see Joe again and when he asked the employee at the bodega he said, “That’s a different shift, come back tonight and ask them.”
Joe nodded. The bartender said the same thing. There was no sign of an invisible body and the police station was an abandoned building, the door swinging in an empty room.
Joe took it all in before heading back to the hotel where his wife sat waiting in a pink patterned sweater with a wide sun hat. She was waiting for their trip to a vineyard. She saw Joe walking up the road, slouched, “Couldn’t find your friend?” Joe shook his head and she rubbed the nape of his neck. “Maybe next time.”
It was late in a blue night when a young woman drifted into a bar. A study abroad student soaking in the nightlife of Spain, when she encountered a surprising face in the dark corners of a bar. The light catching in the fluid state of the being, bringing out the blue of the single cell being. They held out a pseudo foot, speaking in a calm voice, “Good evening, the name’s Joe.”