“Come for the views and stay for the American Dream”.

Sunlight went and died across the mountains at dusk but, monotony lives on; redundant, repetitive, and recessive like so many retarded genes in tight jeans. So much wasted potential. So many pissed soaked flip flops mingling with toe nail polished cowgirl boots. How romantic. “Looking at your bitch through her dirty fake eyelashes”, I sees yous. A match made in a QuikTrip bathroom. This is that kind of town that likes to pick its own boogers before farting onto a homemade cake. And why wouldn’t it? Happy Birthday, Tucson.

It’s the kind of place that hides its deficiencies and takes pride in its fallacies. Stockpiling ammunition but, rattling at the knees over a wall. So much guns but the predators roam freely in town and I’m not talking about the coyotes. The type of place that’s bothered and fingers get triggered when you wish them, “Assalamualaikum”.  A place where you can buy menthol cigarettes, a 2 liter of soda and methamphetamine’s; while dodging the attacks of a javelin as a homeless couple two-steps with Circle K feet at 2am. This place.
Where the roads are crumbling, the schools are short staffed. Pop Culture has a late pass and the collective consciousness is more behind the times than public transportation; you don’t have to believe it to see it – you can feel it, like wet shit under your heel.
You make some friends and you like some of them. Some fade out and sometimes some of them die. People die, some too soon and some not soon enough. Some people shed tears and it is all theater, living their own delusions.

I need a Xanax for this heat, a bag of coke for the boredom and a muscle relaxer to suppress the constant stimulations to beat someone over the head with their dead grandmother’s dildo…  
I apologize, that was too much; No one here has a grandmother that interesting.
I need one of those Hannibal Lecter muzzles before I start eating faces to and fro work.

You get what you pay for. No, that’s not an air mattress, that’s the inevitable housing bubble. It’s the drivel and dreck, the cook that asks the new trainee if he’s “Pussy or not” cuz, “This is a man’s kitchen and men talk shit”. When what he really means is – Translation: “Are you going to hit me? Please don’t hit me”.

Did you know they river dance on the drugs, here? Fentanyl and all that government shit. Poisonous shit. A red white & blue kind of safe space, innit? Living free and dying for that American Dream. The American Dream? You can see it in the food and down the aisle at Walmart. The same people that reject free Health Care are visibly the ones that need it most. I hope the guy with the “let’s go brandon” decal on his truck falls off a razor and guillotines himself on thin piano wire. Let us pray, that politicians start forgetting to turn on their pilot lights too. Truly.
I need a Quaalude just to leave my house.

I miss the duffel bag mobility. I miss the hiss of steam and the ambient police sirens. I miss the decency of delinquency. I miss those Hainesville good times. I can still smell the fresh paint on the walls. I can still hear the racket from the Oasis bar, the Funkadelic, the possibilities. The hallucinations are becoming more frequent. Morning is here and for a few seconds I don’t recognize where I am. Like for a few breathes I’m somewhere else. Then I remember as I watch caterpillars of light crawling up the walls. My wife’s kiss is morphine. She sedates me most of the time. Fresh bowl of oatmeal on the table, bathrobe is warm and the OJ is cold. I need a pick me up to keep going. She gives me a kiss and I can repeat the day one more time.

Saturday August the 20th, 2022. Happy Birthday, Tucson. Keep your cake and choke on it, boo. Your wrinkles are showing and your Gucci bags are bootleg. Even your panties are secondhand, too. 

• SamHaiNe

Read more of the FISHSCALE entries:
https://newretrowave.com/tag/fishscale/

Previous FISHSCALES:
Fishscale Prt. 1 – https://newretrowave.com/2018/11/20/fishscale-a-retro-flash-of-fiction-part-1/

Fishscale Prt. 2 – https://newretrowave.com/2021/08/30/fish-scale-part-2-a-nostalgic-flash-fiction/

“Late night coming home from a temp job for some automotive corporation.

I was expecting the usual greeting and shaking of the hands with every graveyard shift hustler and loiterer that happened to be outside earning cash or just hanging out into the weekend. But, it was oddly quiet for mid August. Probably because there were three black & white patrol cars parked in front of my building. 

“Great, what now?”

The lobby of building 545 had smelled foul for almost a week. A really shitty smell; like dead rats behind a bodega wall. That stench reached a new level when I left for work, this morning. A Rancid, sweet, wet scent, almost inedible. A dozen pussy plugs in a sweaty soiled toilet kind of smell. And the summer humidity only exasperated that aroma. But, that was this morning?  It’s after midnight. What’s going on?

My cross-eyed superintendent had the front door and the side entrance to the dumpsters open.  The smell was so bad you could smell it from the lobby entrance.

I walked in and was like, “Shit?!?”. The Super told me that someone subletting apartment 1B couldn’t take the odor any longer and knocked on a roommates bedroom door to confront them about the smell. Knocking and knocking before opening the door to find the corpse of said roommate.

The people on the lease never bothered to complain bout the smell beforehand because, they were illegally renting out rooms for a profit. So discreet, they were about things, that even the people renting in the apartment barely knew anything about or bothered each other. 

Shit tends to break the fan when you find the naked bloated body of your housemate in bed still watching infomercials; slowly decomposing on his sheets during a hot August heatwave with high humidity in the nineties. 

I’m not sure if I knew the deceased but my hunch is – it was this forty year old guy that rented there for years. If it was, he was a pervert. I knew this because he at one time offered a kid I once knew a few dollars for “Favors” once. …The kid said No. However, the youngbol and his older brother did grift the guy by luring him to our rooftop promising some “handoverfist” with “happy-endings”, and robbed the vic for whatever money they could shake from him. Then extorted him for a few weeks after that with threats of bodily harm and criminal charges.

If it was him rotting in the building, Good Riddance. 

I sat on the staircase listening to Gang Starr’s Mass Appeal album, smoking a few cigarettes, and watching the PIGS and EMT’s rub ointment under their noses and burn some incense to weaken the stench of rot in the air. I even watched our simpleminded super almost kill us all by mopping our hallway with a strong mixture of bleach n water. The chemicals were the worst. I could stomach dead body odor. After all it wasn’t my first time being near a dead body before tonight. 

I stayed there and just watched. I watched neighbors walk into the building and cover their noses in repulsion. I watched a few of them almost vomit where they stood. I listened in on the police taking statements from the roommates and the Super. I always liked recording witness statements when I worked for a private investigator a few years ago. So, I was kind of imagining myself interview all of them. 

The whole thing went on for a few hours. I saw the crime scene detectives arrive on the scene and the meat wagon pickup the body. But, all I kept thinking was –
What was he watching on television.?”

FISH SCALE PART 1 : https://newretrowave.com/2018/11/20/fishscale-a-retro-flash-of-fiction-part-1/

Natural City, the album is still available only at www.samhaine.bandcamp.com
A collection of short monologues and flash fictions highlighting some of the individuals that call Hainesville “Home”. These are stories about people who live outside the margins that define civility and exist in the moment on the edge of a razor-blade. This is a pulp future-present inspired by neo-noir, retro nostalgia and some cyberpunk aesthetics. 

The basic formula for cheesy 90’s cinema; if you didn’t see it in a matinee then you probably rented it from the local video store. Schlocky leftover clichés from the previous decade: firearms that sound like explosions, urban cowboy boots, duster jackets, and of course another film that warns you not to electrocute serial killers or else they’ll come back from the dead and keep killing.

Yes, just like House 3: the Horror Show, Shocker and Ghost in the Machine (1993), a homicidal maniac is resurrected into the world to reap havoc and kill, kill, kill.

The First Power is a 1990 American neo-noir horror film written and directed by Robert Resnikoff, and starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Tracy Griffith, Jeff Kober and Mykelti Williamson. The film received mostly negative reviews, but was a financial success just like a lot of horror movies of the era.

The film begins with LAPD on the manhunt for a serial killer (Jeff Kober). Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump, HEAT) and badass Filipino Detective (Lou Diamond Phillips) go to the borderline of law & order to catch the killer. After a near death confrontation with the “Pentagram killer” Lou Diamond Phillips character, Detective Russell Logan, manages to apprehend the killer with the help of an anonymous tip. But, that anonymous tip came with a price – “No death penalty”, a promise that Det. Logan breaks when the Pentagram Killer is sentenced in court. “Shaklack, klack” and the verdict is given. The killer enters the chamber and he is gassed to death in the presence of the arresting officers and officials. Tormented by a feverish nightmare of the killer breaking his restraints and stabbing him, Detective Logan awakens and is relieved that the nightmare is over. However, after a few more daymares he suspects something is wrong.

Tracking down his anonymous informant to a lavish house in the hills; home to a popular online psychic played by Tracy Griffith. How that works in 1990? I have no idea. Is she using search tools, such as ARCHIE, Gopher, or WAIS? I don’t know.  Her site looks like DOS. Regardless, another body is found. One of the officers involved in the arrest of the Pentagram killer is found murdered in one of the gang hideouts from Police Academy 2: the first assignment. Looks like another Pentagram murder or possibly a copycat.

When confronting Tracy Griffith about the copycat. She is angered by the Detectives ignorance and chastises him about breaking his promise.

What follows is an absurd, neo-noir horror thriller that is entertaining to say the most. On the surface, this very similar to the film Fallen starring Denzel Washington. The killer jumps from body to body and rooftop to street level, with the grace of Spider-Man in some parts.
Other parts are pretty cool: such as using the ceiling fan as a blender gimmick.

• “Psychic and a Cop walk into a bar… the partner died.”
• “Oh shit! It’s the flying bum. Cock Blocked by the homeless”.
• “Downtown LA was just as filthy as it is now.”
• Hocus Pocus and sexy nuns. It’s a film that will be forgotten but, not this day.

I present to you – THE FIRST POWER (1990). Stay safe. Stay sanctified. Get smart. Get lost and Get Free. The writings on the wall. Keep your finger on that REWIND button.

Movie Link – https://youtu.be/F3s0PlxWavE

Chauncey had just stumbled his way out of the VIP lounge and down the alley connecting Spruce to Locust as he was casually strolling to his own beat. His arms moving in rhythm and his stride wide. Back and forth as he somehow maintained his equilibrium after three shots of pure absinthe and a few crumbs of mushrooms. He was baked, tossed, hammered, grinded up, lit and totally wild as he whistled during his march down the street.

The earphones on his head were pulsing and pushed to their auditory limits with sounds from a personalized mixtape of his own making. Songs by Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Bolshoi, The Alarm, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Dramarama, Death in June and he even threw in some Depeche Mode and, dare I say it, some Lauren Brannigan.

The music was the soundtrack to his pilgrimage for a good time and some good ole’ cheer. A sincere remedy for the condition of being alive and in the moment. Every second was an elixir to a higher plateau of being. A true objective pessimist, he embraced his stain in the universe and chose to burn his signature into existence like a Turkish filtered cigarette in the ashtray of life.

He was a man of his own making. Too good for Members Only and the only shoes worthy of his feet were some ADIDAS sambas. If it wasn’t two-tone, then he didn’t wear it. His suits were pressed, tailored and smart. The Fred Perry on his pullover never looked crisper. He was a bubble gum chewing aggro; too cool for any school. Maybe that’s why he never finished after Junior year.

The supplier at the warehouse party was dry and he knew it was After Hours at the Shade on 22nd Street.

Past three intersections and well on his way to his destination and soon “Liftoff”. He was well into the guitar solo of “A Strange Day” by The Cure from the Pornography album, when out of his peripheral a white Monte Carlo SS rips a wicked right turn and nearly smears him against the Volkswagen parked at the hydrant.

He felt his soul shift a few inches into his stomach and his testicles shrink.

The white muscle car spun out but the driver regained his control of the car like a professional drunk driver and not some weekend enthusiast. Chauncey was pissed but anger soon became horror  when the pan handler, jay walking, down the street gets hit and lays there broken and in extreme pain on the asphalt.

Just when the night was getting started.

“What am I supposed to do, now?”
– SamHaiNe …
samhaine.bandcamp.com

To be continued in part 2 –   https://newretrowave.com/2021/08/30/fish-scale-part-2-a-nostalgic-flash-fiction/