Rollie Bollocks

Rainwater dripped from the gutter in a dwindling rhythm. his heart matched the pace. he hugged the bottle of magnum between his arm and the skin of his chest, eying the punctured tips of his fingers still oozing with gooey pus. he removed the magnum from his sweater and poured a bit of it on the tips of his fingers, which bubbled with a frothy sting. a complete numbness came over him. his mind escaped his body. he fell asleep in his wheelchair.

& awoke.

to the chill of dawn. the snot dripping out of his nose had frozen to his face. a bitter wind cut through him. he pulled the forty bottle off his chest and it shattered, cracking and leaving shards of frozen glass to his frosty chest. he dropped the broken bottleneck on the ground and shoveled the extra glass off of him. but some of it stuck there, frozen to his numb skin. a rat screeched from across the alleyway. he tried to kick his way backwards but his foot slipped on the ice beneath him. he swung his leg around his body and the wheelchair skidded a bit and he jostled himself free of the ice beneath his feet. he pushed himself out of the alleyway. but when he got to the streets, he found it difficult to maneuver his way along the snowy pavement. the rat chuckled at him from the corner, as he struggled. and business persons bustled by. he reached behind him, over his
shoulder, and grabbed an empty magnum bottle from the bag attached to the back of his wheelchair and in one motion, chucked it at the rat which dodged it and scuttled off. the business persons all stopped and stared at him. and then at the shattered bottle cracked to pieces against the brick building. the shop keeper rolled out of the store on his electric wheelchair. his yellow eyes quivering in their sockets.

“SOTZ!” the shopkeeper screeched clenching his fingernails into the center of his own fist.
the shopkeeper reached into the pocket of his gray pleated pants and pulled out his cell phone, his pale green skin rippling with rage. he opened it and brought it to his ear.

No. Please, sir. Have mercy. Lord loves you.

the shopkeeper closed the cell phone, and exhaled. in a moment an officer of the law was there. the man in the chair neither pleaded nor begged. he closed his eyes and went limp. he merely believed that the officer would put him somewhere safely. maybe some place that was not lockup. the man in the chair could hear the officer speaking, yelling maybe, it didn't matter. he wasn't listening, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

fast asleep, he found himself standing before the business person whose yellow eyes were sunken well into their sockets and whose hands were pointed straight up into the air. he held a gun on him, smiled and then ran out the front door. he merely believed he would make it. but both of his legs seemed to give out at once, and he found himself, incredulously, lying flat on his face, with a gun in one hand, and a bag of money in the other. when he tried to get up, he realized that only one of his legs was moving, and though he felt no pain, he recognized, when he saw the man running out of the Shoppe
with a gun, that he'd been shot. he fired back and hit the shopkeeper with a gut shot that instantly dropped him. a man ran out of the car that had waited for him, grabbed the bag of money, and ran back to the car, which sped away.

-*-

he awoke to pitch black. the opening of his eyes merely darkened the external world. he felt around recollecting himself, his chair. the empty space where once there was a leg.
“Hot damn,” said a voice coming from behind him. “You look like shit, foofoo. What the fuck you think your doing chucking forty bottles at a business?”

the voice had crept up on him from behind. it was now hovering near the soft spot, where the nape of the neck met the back of his skull.

Goddamn rat bit my finger.

'man, fuck that, you got punked by some motherfucking rat?'

I was given it food, man. Bit my goddamn hand.

'lookie here, foofoo. every rat despises what sustains it. that's the nature of the beast. you kill one, another pops up in its place. that's the nature of nature. so you can go around boppin them on the head if you please, but in the end its not going to make a difference.'

the last word he spoke settled in the back of his head like a bullet. Who are you? foofoo asked.

'it's sleek, bitch. i run this whole motherfucking gig. from the pigs on down to you. everything in between. and i need a favor from you.”

Anything, Sleek.

from behind his periphery came a soft light shining upon a blank, unsealed envelope. he could make out the shadow of a hand adorned in twinkling rings.

“this envelope you will bring to saint christopher's playground at 11:15 tomorrow morning. for doing this, the contents of this envelope;” - he held up another envelope; “are yours. go ahead. open it.”

inside the unmarked envelope was a 1000 unit bill. Aw Sleek, man. God bless you.

“i bless myself, and that's enough,” said Sleek, whose voice seemed to retreat from the back of foofoo's skull, as the light that shone on the envelopes faded, and Sleek's “enough” seemed to echo and dissolve into everywhere.



he awoke in his alleyway. the rain water dripping from the gutter. he had an envelope in either hand. he opened one and looked inside. the shock of recognition struck him at once, his eyes sustaining the sight of a spheroid ball of Love. he closed and reopened his eyes as if to reboot his mind and reprocess what he had just seen. in the other envelope, was a bill with three zeros.

and though his leg felt arthritic and sore. and there was a piercing pain in the flesh of his chest. he pushed himself backward out of the alleyway. between every step was a stop and a start, and one thousand steps separated him from the gas station. and his body felt heavier and his steps became slower and measured. and his knee made a popping sound between every bend, and from the popping came a dense burning, somewhat
numbed in the cold. and finally he pushed his way up the handicap ramp, and pulled the heavy door open.

-*-

he struggled to make his way through the door, but someone kind enough to be leaving held it open for him with one arm while he checked his watch with the other. he pushed his way through the door. and the business person walked out into the cold. and the door closed behind the man in the chair.

Magnum, he wheezed, coughing. two clerks stood behind the register.

'ih?'

Magnum. he spoke louder and looked him in the eyes as he spoke. the clerk's black eyes seemed to settle into his skull. he nodded, and walked toward the back of the store. the other clerk stood there and said:

'dzeven dzeventy dzeven.'

he handed him the bill. the clerk looked at it and said:

'SZOT! nigh cant bray chthys.'

What do you mean?

when clerk two had arrived with the magnum, clerk one held up the bill so he could see it, and said:

'szot. no change.'

Aw. C'mon man. Have a heart now, God bless you.

NO CHANGE, said the clerk, waving the bill in foofoo's face.

Then keep it, he hissed. Keep the f-ing change.

the clerk's black eyes seemed to settle back into his skull. he seemed shocked and hurt by the lame beggar in the chair, and he set the magnum on the countertop, and pulled a bill out of his pocket, ringing out the sale, handing the man his one thousand money unit, and the bottle of magnum along with it. he walked around to the other side of the counter, opened the door to the store, and held it open for the man in the chair, and as he pushed his way out into the cold, foofoo said:

And a straw please. God bless you.

the bitter cold kept consumers indoors, and the gasclerks were adamant about not panhandling in front of their store. so he kicked his way down the empty streets, sipping the magnum tucked beneath his sweater from a straw. and an absolute warmth settled into him. like the deep warmth of a hot bath. a medicated transcendence that severed his mind from his broken body, which left him free of it, by allowing, for the time being, himself to be unaware of it.

-*-

he sipped his magnum and watched as the broken shards of glass melted like ice off of his chest. nature's bitter wind felt like a fan's on his skin in the midsummer heat. he wheeled his way outside of a bar, where he could see heads floating through the window glass. it was only a matter of time, he knew, before one of them entered or left. and no sooner had he thought this, than the the door swung open, and a small blond female, wearing powder blue earmuffs and holding a powder blue cell phone to her ear, stumbled out of the bar, and lit a cigarette.

Excuse me miss. Do you happen to have an extra cigarette?

she shook her head and reached into her purse, her long nails fumbling through the bag. and she chattered into her phone ... “yeah. they took his leg off. mikey said they needed meat. i don't. no. what are you up to. i'm here with glimmer, tambis, rondold, and phikist. niner's” ... as she handed him the cigarette, a large rat scuttled out of the brush.

phiker! she screeched, clenching her entire body in an immediate spasm. her phone flew backward over her shoulder, and her leg bent out from underneath her. the cigarette fell from her hand as she keeled over, hit the ground, and screeched in pleasure/pain.

“phikist!” she yelped. “phikist!”

a small male waddled out of the bar, while the rat snatched the cigarette as fufu bent over to reach it.

“taudrea!” the male yelped. “who hurt you?” “nobody, that rat!” she pointed at the rat, who was standing in front of the man in the chair, who was already reaching for his spare empty magnum bottle in the back of his chair. as he bore the bottle down on the rat, he noticed phikist waddling toward him with his fists clenched and snot bubbling out of his snout.

“phocket skimfick,” he snorted. fufu's attention raised from the cigarette, which was now out of his reach, to phikist, who'd misinterpreted taudrea, and was dark with rage. smoke billowed out of his nostrils. the spaces between his knuckles ran red with blood. fufu kicked his chair backward. “fikist, no!” shouted taudrea. “i meant that literally. there was this disgusting rat...”

Yeah man. The Lord loves you. So back off, he said brandishing the magnum.

fikist thought about this for a moment and calmed down, looking deep into taudrea's sunken eyes. “i hurt my ass,” she said. “kiss it and make me mommy.” and fikist's tongue unrolled from his mouth, and slapped down on taudrea's back and to foofoo she said: “scram wacko.”

“oh fikist,” she said. “make me mommy. make me mommy.”

he bitched silently to himself about that f-ing rat, and went about fumbling through his pockets, and sipping the magnum which was resting inside of his sweater. the straw he kept between his teeth, which lifted the burden of raising the bottle to his face. he pulled the flat envelope out of his pocket, and opened it again, he promised himself, for the last time. he found a spheroid ball glowing white, like a light bulb. he remembered: 11:45 Sleek said. st christopher's playground. sleek said. sleek he realized, had played him like a pawn. and foofoo rested the Love on his lap. Saint Christopher's Playground. he
shook his head. I ain't slinging Love to no kids. and then he fumbled around in the bag attached to the back of his chair, pulling out a tire gage and a wire cleaning pad. he jammed a pinch of the wire pad into the tire gage, and carefully placed the Love atop it. with his lighter, he lit the Love and sucked on the tire gage, and then everything changed.

-*-

he remembered the future he'd imagined long ago as he held that bag of money in his hands. that bag was the beginning of an enterprise, he had it all figured out. your average cash register has about two hundred dollars in it. with two hundred dollars, you could buy a quarter pound, split it into ten sacks, and triple your money. he could either do that, or buy some new clothes and go down to the temp agency. work third shift on an assembly line, which a couple of his brothers did, and get laid off just in time for christmas. collect unemployment for a couple months, and then repeat the cycle again. meanwhile, they judged fufu, and secretly envied the large wads of cash they never saw him earning.
he didn't judge them, they condemned themselves, with every day the same, every day the same, every day the same. and hustling was easier. not that hustling would have been any easier for his brothers than factory work was for fufu. hustling was just easier for fufu. he wasn't going to hustle forever. he was going straight once he claimed his stake and all this he dreamed up as he found himself standing before the business person whose yellow eyes were sunken well into their sockets. his hands were
pointed at the rain. fufu had a gun pointed at him. fufu smiled and then ran out the front door. he believed devoutly in his heart that he would make it.

he panted to himself in the humid night air. the rain from the gutter trickled quickly and the sweat from his chest matted the hair to his sweater. his magnum lay half spilled on the ground, but half full as well, and he picked it up and took a deep hearty pull that drained the bottle another half. his entire body was alight with a tingle, and his chest puffed out, and his eyes bulged and rippled like a water balloon. and he could see silhouettes of the ripples on the sides of walls in his alleyway, which gave way to smoke
coming from the shadows. a glowing red dot lit up in a sphere of dim light that shown the on gray/orange face of a smoking rat. the rat held the cigarette in his mouth and hand, and exhaled the smoke out of his mouth. SzoT cackled the rat. SZOTZY!SZOTZY!SZOTZ! the rat mocked, pulling drag after drag, with each breath exhaled through his nose.

foofoo could see the cigarette burning down to ash. and soon, it was gone. and the rat spit the filter out, and cackled: SZOTZ

fufu felt rage. the blood vessels in his eyes flooded and red tears ran down his cheeks. he reached his arm over his shoulder and grabbed his empty magnum, in one swift motion chucking the bottle at the rat. the bottle struck just above its head against the wall and shattered stunning the fat rat for a moment.

fufu kicked his leg beneath him, and moved himself a foot closer to rat. with his only only weapon shattered, he inhaled the remainder of the magnum and bore it down on the rat as he kicked himself forward in a spasmodic jerk of the lower limb. the rat scuttled away quickly but could not escape. fufu bore the forty bottle down upon the rat, and smeared its hind legs across the filthy cement. it grasped helplessly at the ground, and dragged itself an inch, and then another, and another, its limp legs dragging on the ground.
foofoo doubled over and a sharp tingling numbness extended from his chest into his hand. the numbness in his hand became a burning sensation where his neck met his shoulder. the burning pain dropped into his chest. his mind escaped his body in a quick shock, and he fell asleep in the wet alleyway.

-*-

COMING ATTRACTIONS

In part 3, foofoo sells "Love" at St. Christopher's playground, and the rat which is now mortally wounded as foo foo himself is, becomes an even more powerful enemy!

JeffMeyer

Rollie:

Hmm. This is hard. I get bits of story, but overall, the diconnection woven throughout is not telling me anything I don't already know. It's just distracting. I'm going to follow the story through to the end, but I admit to having lost interest about 4/5 of the way through this one. Sorry.

--Jeff Meyer