Weary Traveler

Mitch dunked his grimy fingers into the baggie, colorful globs of jellies sticking to the thin plastic, plucking, licking them off of his fingers. They were coated with a thin veneer of slime that seeped into his dirt-darkened skin, soaked the hair on his knuckles with the mind-bending, face-melting, bonzos.

He traced his teeth with the tip of his tongue, picked at the goo that stuck between each tooth like his mouth had drowned in a puddle of psychedelic syrup. A sweet, sticky, synthetic concoction cooked up by the Crawlers down in CorpoMax, several stories underneath Rosenfell. Isolated from the nomads, bums, and corpos of Rotech dwelling at their headquarters on the other side of the murky river that split the western and eastern parts of the megacity.

An icy wind streamed through Mitch’s porous tent, pushed and pulled the tattered garments hanging from his starved body. Awakening a stomach-rumbling gurgle that exploded through his concave navel. He closed his eyes, rubbed his belly in slow circles with an open palm, and inhaled a deep breath through his nostrils, filled his lungs, and then slowly blew a stream of warm carbon dioxide into the frigid winter sky.

The world began to swirl on its axis, slowly picking up speed as the bonzos dissolved in Mitch’s stomach acid, shot through his blood stream. A tingling sensation crawled across his skin, raised the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck like they had been zapped with electricity. He lifted his arms, turned them over, and squeezed his squishy flesh. His philosophical mind wondered at their strange shape and color… abstract texture… their purpose for existence… his purpose…

He tilted his head back, opened his sparkling eyes, and gazed at the neon lights swirling above his head. Reality warped by ghastly dust and suffocating smog. Black soot shot out of rusted pipes. Toxic fumes and radioactive decay slithered up from the steel grates covering the ground. Each asphyxiating variable strangling Rosenfell in a cast-iron shell.

His pupils constricted, eyelids lowered into tiny slits like boarded-up windows masking the entrance to his soul. Blood vessels whipped like fiery cobwebs caught in the wind causing his eyeballs to vibrate and wriggle his vision.

Electrical signals raced through his hyperaware nervous system. His heart thumped at rapid speed, pumping blood through his aching body, stretching deep into his mind that opened up like it had lungs of its own, inhaling, exhaling, sucking up every last bit of oxygen that surrounded his warping, breathing, hallucinatory reality.

The jellies’ swirling-psychedelic-rainbow-vortex picked up speed with every fresh breath. Inhaling, exhaling. Mind focusing inward, outward. Inhaling, exhaling, until the two separate worlds became one. The internal mind and external world. Reality melted and twisted by the ten doses of jellies coursing through his bloodstream. Synthetic chemicals, dissolving the world around him into a sacred geometric mystery that stretched beyond time. Through different dimensions and alternate realities. Parallel universes that surpassed the realm of admitted physics, stretching deeper into the unknown. Sucked into blackholes. Shot from wormholes, out through different levels of the cosmos like whimsical star dust mixed in a rainbow swirl of light and color.

Mitch raised his hands to his face at a synthetic snail’s pace, then froze to allow time dilation to unite the fractal pattern. He gazed into the budding flower of psychedelic light that swirled in his hands like his palms transformed into a spectrum of neon, exploding outwards with beams of mystical energy. A swirling haze of spectral mist flung across his vision, spread wider, further, until his entire reality dissolved into a trippy jello. Engulfing him in a stellar nursery of luminous color and earth-shattering thoughts about the nature of reality... about the meaning of human existence... the purpose of bums…

His jaw dangled and his head rolled back, rested on the feeble strength of his slender neck.

Who was he? This world? This life?

Where was he? This place?

How did he end up here? This time? This present moment?

Why?

He coughed, smacked his chest three times. A symphony of colorful sound waves rippled out from his body like some kind of sonorous synesthesia. Interrupting the natural flow of his visual perception like a sensory grenade burst within a pool of polychromatic goo.

He peered down at his crisscrossed legs sitting atop his sleeping pad, a few slim pieces of mud-soaked cardboard and patchy synthetic grass. He brushed his palms across the prickly green coated with slimy muck, ran his hands down his legs, fingered the holes in his pants, massaged the gashes and bruises spread over his tender flesh.

The Universe dropped a thought into Mitch’s brain that echoed through his skull like a shout in an abandoned cave. He posted his fingers against the ground, shifted his body, and braced his left knee beneath him, then right, crept onto his quivering legs. Resurrected from the cold, wet, tent coffin.

His breath quickened, heart pounded from the extra exertion brought forth by the sudden movement. Body growing out of the ground, puncturing the time-space continuum. Pumping warm blood from his chest into his spindly limbs. Wobbling, torso swaying in the frosty gusts flowing through the alley.

He turned left, shuffled away from his tent without conscious thought. An automatic response. Programmed into his DNA by way of a mysterious spiritual force. A message... sent from beyond by some powerful entity.

His heavy legs lifted, kicked… lifted, kicked, gathered uncontrollable momentum. They stumbled into an awkward trot that brought him into the bustling streets of Rosenfell, entering into the chaos and commotion of nomads marching through the Twilight, severing the tether that tied him to the safety and comfort of his own tent. Arriving within the dense fog of pungent smells wafting up from the vents of synthetic food carts cooking atop crackling fires.

Strong aromas crawled through Mitch’s nostrils, tickled his hairs, gripped his mind, shook the colorful illusion that wrapped around his warped, bonzo reality. Elevated his consciousness above sense perception. Twisted his concept of life, of pure being and existence, beyond the three dimensions of space and the dimension of time. Placed him at the center of the Universe. Conductor of his destiny. Controller of his fate. Master of his future.

He inhaled a deep breath, filled his lungs with foul taste of the city until his chest puffed out like an alpha male predator preparing to defend his territory from an invader. Then, he exhaled, stumbled further into the madness. He wandered through the strange tide of nomads pushing against him. Their bodies, augmented. Limbs, upgraded with advanced tech. Electric eyes like phosphorescent pebbles. Squishy flesh peeled off and replaced by synth-skin that covered reinforced titanium, nuts and bolts, and grinding gears, greasy cogs, and corded wires, cables and flashing lights. Torsos chiseled with muscular breast plates to protect their metallic lungs, kidneys, liver. Constructed to guard their alloy hearts, beating, beating… thumping, thumping…

Their weird faces melted into one another. Augmented eyes scanning each other for potential threats. Their bodies combined into a single organism flowing within the neon ether, Mitch at the center, directing him to the mouth of a narrow alley. He turned and peered into the shadows. The stone walls seemed to stretch and bend, twist and turn like they breathed with their own artificial lungs.

A white luminescence flickered at the opposite end. It rotated, opened and closed like the jaws of a stone giant, biting a broken building constructed with snapped and splintered wooden beams and a yellow sign drooping from its low-hanging roof.

Mitch squinted, leaned forward onto his toes, forcing his legs to take a step forward to maintain his balance. The building pinged a familiar memory lodged deep within his mind. Implanted from a different life, now within reach. Ignored many times before on his aimless sojourns through the desecrated tech-jungle.

He took another step with his right foot, then left, stretched his right hand towards the distant building. The light at the end burned brighter as the brick walls and black smoke encircled him within a tight tunnel. His narrow eyes focused on the neon sign’s blinking letters like they possessed eyelids of their own. Appearing and disappearing. Silent words sounded out in the deepest caverns of his unconscious... REHAB CLINIC.

For a fleeting moment, the words swallowed his consciousness. Just enough time for his mind to enter into a state of clarity. A brief second of understanding that consumed his reality up until the moment he face planted against the muddy ground, spraying brown sludge into the air.

Mitch lay motionless. Arms and legs spread out like a reverse mud angel. His head tilted towards the left, inhaling and exhaling the rotten stench emanating from the vile gunk.

“Thought you got away, bum?” a voice echoed, acoustics warped by the jellies. The sound reverberated through the air like it rippled across a faceted bubble. “Hope you enjoyed your fucking joy ride. You won’t be alive to enjoy it much longer.”

There was a booming chuckle as a pair of strong hands wrapped all the way around Mitch’s neck and left bicep, squeezed, and yanked him back onto his sore, malfunctioning legs. The entire front side of his body dripped cold pellets of mud back to the earth.

Mitch’s eyes wandered around their sockets like they searched for a satellite signal from deep underground. Each pupil tried to focus on the blobs of color spiraling around him while his ear drums tried to make out the strange noises that crawled into his head and burst like an underwater explosion, blasting old memories and dark thoughts high into the sky to disperse over Rosenfell and contaminate the minds of every bum, nomad, and corpo seeking their next bonzo fix.

“This ain’t him,” the ball of hazy, neon dust said. “This chump can’t even stand.”

“Don’t matter if he is or ain’t,” the blob on the right said. “We just need someone to blame so Jefe don’t kill us.”

The viselike pressure that had squeezed Mitch’s left bicep eased, then vanished, causing his body to tip forwards and collide with the colorful blob on the right.

“Off!” the thing said, shoving Mitch backwards so hard that his feet tangled beneath him and sent him onto his butt and into a slick slide across the mud.

The sudden movements caused the wind to blow the rainbow of mist into a chaotic frenzy. Swirling, swirling, swirling like Mitch sat at the center of a multidimensional tornado.

His neck drooped, head hung low as his eyes gazed at his incomprehensible reflection rippling in the puddle between his bent legs.

There was a long, lingering silence. Soundless, except for the faint drip, drip of water falling off of Mitch’s face and the pop, pop of bubbles of waxy liquid that gurgled in his ears.

“Alright,” the voice on the left said. “I’ll get his arms. You grab his legs.”

Four heavy hands clasped around Mitch’s limbs, hoisted him from the goop like a dead swamp creature.

Mitch’s ultraviolet vision fluttered, mind dipped in and out of consciousness with each of the colorful blobs’ lumbering steps. He wriggled his fingers and toes to remind his body of the feeling. Opened and closed his jaw to clear out the rest of the fluid that clogged his ear cavity.

His eyelids fluttered, gathered light that flowed into the deep cavern of darkness encased within his skull. A void where his thoughts dwelled and dreams hid from the light of consciousness. Buried. Beyond the external realm of reality. Crawling… appearing, disappearing, around the edges of his peripheral vision. Fading in and out. Searching for a signal that wasn’t there. Seeking a heavenly sign beyond the plumes of smoke and smog. Past the pungent odors spewing from sewer grates and rising from dumpsters steaming with rotten garbage.

God and Angels… That long lost destination of Heaven above. Forgotten beneath the cold blanket of forever darkness. Of dreary night and neon light. Trapped underneath the shifting slate sky like melting enamel, smothering him with endless misery in the pits of poverty and dregs of despair. A lost and lonely land of sorrow. Empty of meaning. Absent of sentient awareness. Missing the color of human consciousness to populate the shadows with beautiful ideas and feelings. Pure emotions and beliefs.

Every living being, both biological and artificial, shoved into the cesspool of rot and filth, the rust and decay of Rosenfell. Bums scrounging for the scraps in the alleys and the gutters, stomping past nomads that swarmed through the electrified streets.

Nomads. Prisoners of tech and consumption. Maidens of materialism. A modern tribe of augmented bodies and artificial intelligence acting as the buffer between the bums and the corpo elite.

Those creepy, Crawler creatures of CorpoMax, tucked away in their underground compounds. And the false prophets of Rotech, surrounded by a depleted ocean of their own credit and material wealth. Self-proclaimed demigods seeking to rule over the powerless, thoughtless masses. To control the weak and disheartened, wandering through one of the scorched earth’s final specks of neon.

Mitch at the center. His feeble body, his wasted mind, searching for that universal connection amongst the infinite galaxies. With the psychedelic power of the jellies coursing though his veins. Wrapping their sticky tendrils around his brain. Pulling him deeper, deeper into the den of his unconscious. Away from the dizzying breath of the city. The rotten fumes and toxic people. Eager to gobble his scrawny body up for their own primal urge towards self-preservation. The will to live. To survive.

Mitch cleared his throat.

“Got bonzos?” he muttered.

“Shut the fuck up,” said the creature that held onto Mitch’s ankles.

“Drop him here,” the other one said.

Mitch’s flimsy body flopped onto a patch of cobbled stone, dug into his skull and tailbone. He blinked the lingering layer of mandalic fog from his mind, focused his vision, and stared up at the two mercenaries from the Tech Armory.

“You knock this time,” the one on the right said.

“Nope. I did it last time. Your turn,” the one on the left said, jabbing his index finger at the other.

“How about this… we trade punches until one of us goes down. Loser knocks.”

The guard on the left pursed his lips and scratched his chin.

“That might wo-” he shook his head. “No! Fuck that. It’s your turn.”

Mitch chuckled.

The guards’ heads whipped around, eyes beamed down at Mitch. His body gyrated with each belly wobbling snort that squeezed from his mouth.

“Got something to say, bum?”

“You guys are pussies,” Mitch said.

Their bodies lengthened, levitated on a cloud of anger. Pale faces burned a bright red as their muscled hands balled up into swollen fists.

“What did you just say?” the one on the right said, placing his hand over the handgun holster on his hip.

“Pussies! The both of you,” Mitch muttered, laughing and pointing a shaky finger up at them.

“The bum knocks.”

The mercenaries threw their hands like bricks at Mitch, hefted him onto his feet as if he was a bag of feathers. The sudden ascension sucked blood from his head, caused his vision to waver, and knees to clap against each other. His throbbing head drooped below his bony shoulders, left hand posted against the corroded brick wall.

“This’ll be good,” the guard on the left said.

Mitch peeked over his left shoulder, glanced at the guards as they backed away, stepping out of sight of the sliding window panel at the center of the steel door. He shook his head, turned around, leaned closer to the word etched at the top of the door. A name, painted in gold ink that dripped from each letter like they oozed tears. He sounded the name out in his mind, repeated it to himself. Each time adding an extra douse of ethnic spice and accent.

Rodriguez… Rodriguez… Rodriguez….

He balled his right hand into a fist, pounded the fleshy part against the door. A muffled vibration shot into the room beyond, echoed off of the walls.

Silence.

He pounded again.

Silence.

And then, a thundering clash clattered within the depths of the room like a titanium chair had been drop kicked.

The mercenaries snickered like mischievous children.

“Quién es?” a voice boomed from out of a tiny, black speaker box tucked into the wall on the right side of the door.

Mitch stepped to the right, leaned closer to the speaker.

“It’s Mitch,” he said, “Mitch Henderson.”

“Quién?” the voice yelled, louder than the first.

“Mitch Henderson. I brought your guards back. They lost your railgun.”

A backhand smacked Mitch over his left temple, sprayed sparks across his vision that transformed into a swirling cloud of streaking rainbow from the psychedelic compounds still trickling through his blood.

Mitch flexed his jaw, blinked the spectrum of color away, and rubbed the bump that throbbed on the side of his head.

A chorus of stomping steps across wooden floorboards squeezed through the cracks of the door, followed by a series of latches, bolts, and locks that slid and rattled against the metal frame.

The door swung open, unveiling a silhouette of chiseled, bulging muscle outlined by the glow of orange candlelight that paired with a soft melody of classical-electro.

The gigantic shadow towered over Mitch like a monster of darkness within a dense cloud of smoke.

“Jefe, sir, this is the bum that stole your-”

“Did I ask you to speak? Cállate,” Jefe said, flicking his hand towards the guard. “Mitch Henderson, eh? Join me in my office. We have much to discuss.”

Mitch lifted his chin, straightened his spine, and strolled through the doorframe.

“Jefe, should we-”

The door slammed, spread a shockwave that popped Mitch’s eardrums. He dug his a pinky finger into each ear canal, tried to scratch away the ringing, but all he pulled out was rust-colored ear wax that he swiped onto his cargo pants.

“Vamos, cabrón,” Jefe said.

Mitch stumbled across the jagged floorboards, stepping left and right to dodge the splintered planks that looked like shotgun blasts tore the wood to shreds.

“Siéntate,” Jefe said, climbing behind an antique desk formed from red mahogany.

Mitch shuffled up to a brown, leather chair, placed his hands on the cracked material, cold beneath his sweaty palms.

Jefe plopped onto an enormous, golden throne. He placed his thick, veiny forearms on the padded arm rests, leaned against the backrest. His muscles grew muscles, like he was some kind of sick, Crawler experiment that escaped from their laboratory. Now haunting the streets of Rosenfell. His face looked like a block of stone. Brown skin and a thick white scar that stretched from the top of his left ear, sliced across his neck, stopping beneath his right ear.

“Siéntate means sit, vato,” Jefe said.

Mitch jolted, tried to shake the image of the scar from his head. He stepped around to the front of the chair, dropped his butt onto the cushion. A gust of air hissed, spewed from the padding like poisonous gas. He coughed, bundled up his collar and lifted it over his nose and mouth.

“What’s this?” Jefe spat.

“Might be poison,” Mitch muttered in a muffled voice.

Jefe scowled, leaned closer.

“You think I would poison you while I’m sitting right fucking here?” he asked, jabbing a thick index finger at the desk.

Mitch shrugged.

“You think that filthy coat with all of those holes can stop poison gas?”

“I’m still here, ain’t I?”

Jefe opened his mouth like he was about to say something, closed it. His plucked eyebrows tilted towards his nose, head shook slowly, just enough to notice that it moved at all.

Mitch released his smelly garment, wriggled his nose, then leaned back in the chair, and gazed around the candlelit room. The brick walls were covered by an assortment of acrylic paintings encased in antique, gold frames. Along the length of the right wall, was a copper cabinet filled with a variety of vintage weapons on top of shelves and hanging from rusted chains: gunpowder assault rifles and frag grenades; atomic nunchucks and sonic slinkies; sub-machine guns and shotguns; rocket launchers and fifty caliber snipers. As well as an assortment of tech weapons: plasma blasters and quantum pistols; a few sensory overload grenades and miniature stealth drones; stun darts and a couple of railguns similar to the one at the Tech Armory.

“Go ahead, amigo,” Jefe said, peering over his shoulder at the cabinet, “take one and see what happens.”

Mitch glanced at Jefe from the corner of his eye and then back to the gun case. He leaned back in his chair and threw his hands to plead his innocence.

“Hey, no hard feelings. A bum’s gotta eat.”

“Is that what you did with my railgun?”

Mitch shrugged.

“You know, hermano, I could blow your face off right here and now,” Jefe said, pulling a plasma pistol from his lap, placing the handle on the desk, muzzle aimed at Mitch’s face. Its golden-chrome shell coursed with blue-white energy. “Nobody would even know you were dead.”

Mitch glared down the black hole barrel into an abyss that reflected his soul.

“Fucking do it, then.”

Jefe pulled the hammer back and raised his arm so that the muzzle of the gun touched Mitch’s forehead.

The bum remained in a motionless, stoic posture. Heart pumping at a leisure pace like he gazed upon a synthetic turtle race.

“But then how would you pay off your debt to me?” Jefe asked, lowering the gun back below the desk. He raised his chin, looked down his nose at Mitch, studying him. “Do you fear death?”

Mitch shook his head.

“Ain’t nothing to fear. I’ve been dead for a long time.”

“Sí, I can see that. Those two maricóns standing outside,” Jefe said, motioning with his eyes, “fear death and they fear life. You fear neither because you have neither. I respect that in my line of work.”

“What’s your work?” Mitch asked.

“My business is crime. My currency is guns, credits, booze, bonzos. If it dwells in the darkness of Rosenfell, then it is mine.”

“Like the rest of the crime bosses in this city.”

“No, hermano, not like the rest. There is only one Jefe that rules over all others. They survive because I let them. And I take from them to keep pinche Patrón out of my fucking business.”

“Never heard of you before.”

“You’ve heard of me now, sí?” Jefe asked, hands shifting beneath the desk.

“Sí.”

“Bueno,” Jefe said, leaning back in his throne so that the dense wood croaked. “Now, you are a thief. But so am I. Thieves recognize thieves. Your problem is that you stole from me. And I do not allow bums to get away from stealing from Jefe without proper punishment.”

“Fine.”

“That railgun you stole, you may keep. As you can see I have many weapons in my inventory.”

“That’s a relief,” Mitch said, tracing his teeth with his tongue for any remaining jelly goop.

“What I do not have, is bonzos. The pinche suppliers down at CorpoMax keep shorting the supply and raising the prices on the small amount in circulation up here.”

“I know,” Mitch said. “Bonzos are hard to find these days.”

“What kind of bonzos you like?” Jefe asked.

“Don’t matter to me,” Mitch said. “Jellies, blasters, snappers, jawbreakers, gumballs. I take what I find.”

“Muy bueno, cabrón,” Jefe said, nodding with a puffed lower lip. “There is a warehouse on the outskirts of Rosenfell where they ship out all types of bonzos. They’re produced underground and come to the surface on enormous elevators the size of this building.”

“I’ve heard about it.”

“I need you to break into that warehouse and steal a truckload of bonzos for me.”

“Don’t got no truck.”

“You will use one of mine.”

Mitch’s optical nerve flashed at the prospect of boosting a truck.

“One with a tracking device hidden inside of it,” Jefe added.

Mitch shouted a silent curse in his skull.

“What kind of bonzos you need?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just fill up the truck and bring it straight back here.”

“I do this and my debt from the railgun is paid?” Mitch asked.

“Sí, hermano. The debt will be paid.”

Mitch nodded. His eyes wandered around their sockets as his mind pondered the ramifications.

“Alright, deal,” he said, reaching out his right hand.

Jefe stretched out his gigantic mitten, pulled it back, pointed his overgrown finger at Mitch.

“You fuck with me, you’re a dead man. Comprende?”

“Umm… sí,” Mitch mumbled. “Comprende.”

“Perfecto,” Jefe said. He thrust his right hand across the table and shook Mitch’s weak grip. “You have weapons?”

“No,” Mitch said, releasing Jefe’s silky soft hand.

“Of course not,” Jefe said. “You can borrow one from my collection and return it when you bring me my bonzos. Follow me.”

Mitch rose from the chair, strolled over to the gun case. His eyes zipped left, right. Up and down. Scanning the weapons resting atop pedestals, illuminated by thin strips of blue light that outlined the perimeter of the cabinet.

His eyes homed in on a weapon in the top right corner. He grinned, stepped forward and reached for the carbon fiber, graphite weapon glimmering in the light.

“A crossbow?” Jefe asked.

“Yeah?”

“No, no, no. You need más firepower. Más firepower!” Jefe boomed, marching across the floorboards to the right corner of the cabinet. He grabbed a submachine gun with a foggy steel body and barrel and a red walnut stock. “Aquí. A tommy gun. This is what the gangsters in the old days used when they went on heists.”

Jefe opened a drawer beneath the cabinet, pulled an extra magazine from inside, and handed both over to Mitch.

“Good to go, vato,” Jefe said. He smacked Mitch on his right shoulder so hard that he had to take two stuttering skips to the left to keep his balance.

“Un momento,” Jefe said, patting his pant and coat pockets. He found what he was looking for inside one of the pockets on his chest, grabbed Mitch’s hand, turned it over, and smacked a single bronze key into his open palm. “The truck is out back. Bring it straight back here after you load it up. I’ll be watching, cabrón.”