A few days ago the little toe on my left foot got randy and tried to proposition a belt sander. An abusive brute of a machine that has left the little toe bloated and looking like an appendage of that dim-wit Grimmace. As far as the rest of the toes go, I have no excuse for their mangled state.
I’ve never paid much mind to my littlest toe until now. But after about half a block of walking, my foot cramps and threatens to spasm forcing me to flex the toe or put pressure on it. I move slowly, old woman with canes fly by me. Those tramps. Crossing the street is the worst. Especially large intersections. Whenever the red right hand changes to the green man walking I picture him taunting me, laughing, daring me to cross. ”Come on you mother fucking gimp, I’m gonna turn this light red on your monkey ass so fast, your going to have to run….and I cant wait.” That bastard. I have nightmares about that green faceless man right there in the middle of the intersection. That green devil, frozen so happily mid stroll. When his lights are not on he is darting into my room, behind my back, playing tricks on me, pissing in my soup like the heathen he is. Always to return to the light fixture upon the corner, an innocent, the perfect alibi. There’s millions of them, hiding out on every street corner and their all after me. Those fucks think I don’t know? Because I walk slowly I think slowly? Impossible!
Finally I make it across the street and look out at the next block ahead, stretching out like a strip of hell. I would have better luck walking barefoot on a high speed treadmill full of broken glass and rotting wieners, squishing my way into oblivion then with this horrid path that lies ahead.
I take a break, leaning on a drying flower bed. Of course there is something positive to being reduced to a slower pace. You have more time to evaluate the common shit that each pedestrian represents, time to think of the death chant that is the birds song, to take in the stink of the sewer and contemplate the rats beneath. Time slows so that you can almost see the disease floating in the air. But most of all it gives you time, time to think all those paranoid thoughts.
