TEMPLE HQ
THIS DREAM AGAIN, DEJA VU!
11-21-2021
3pm
Sick with the leering smiles of the dragon carved in junglewood dangling off a nail. God Blessed Girl hung around the fake-gilding of the entrance, where the waiter was waiting on his phone, carrying herself bummed cigarettes in her stained fingers, dirty hair sticking out of the underside of a baseball hat, looking eyes dangerous around the parking lot, over the sunlight hot across the reflected steel of the girdered powerlines, railroads down the overgrown trees and high grasses. She smelled like rust and TV static, catching us as we tried to leave.
“The fuck are you two doing here?” She caught us as we tried to leave. My brother and I halted, unable to continue past her words.
“Afternoon date. In the mood for chinese.” My brother said.
“That’s fake. You and I know both know that’s fake. Which one of you is even the real twin? I see you around so often - you’re never apart. You never talk to anyone. I don’t think you’re real. But which one of you is the real one? I can’t tell. It makes me fucking sick.” She stubbed a cigarette out in the potted plant. The smell of oil and spices searing something crisped in a wok, the summer humidity dripping condensation into the metal, searing gasps everytime a droplet hits the cauldron.
6pm
“I, I, I hate everything about you. Everything about you.” the radio blathered on as the sky settled down in streaks of grey and white over the summers-end late-August orange.
God Blessed Girl was leaning against the chainlink fence, a pistol in her hoodie, ready to stare down the barrel towards the students screaming onto the front page, immersed in old fantasies on her lonesome.
My brother and I walked past her, unacknowledged except for her gaze tracking like the sphinx before Upper Egypt, our shoes cracking into the gravelsand of the underbridge, that mess of chainlink walled warehouses, wind blowing through the cracked windows, water lapping the wavebreak rocks piled up on the edges of the road.
9pm
It was thunderstorm dark above the burning grill flame while we hid alone in the bedroom with stolen beer and music struggling over the revolving CD and plastic speakers.
“Where the fuck were you two?” God Blessed Girl handed us a glass bottle of unknown contents. The storm was brewing, portending a tomorrow sick with the turbidity of sleep, dark rain cascading in fog and lightning, the blackness-color of a night that goes on long past its welcome. “Why are you two so silent? Fucking party, it’s the weekend.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My brother said. The girl reared up, knowing his challenge, I held him back, a few minutes of tension dissipated dismal between them. When we parted, our altercation left a dark shadow that welcomed the storm and the night.