I’ll be back with illustrations later. You can read it anyway. Its part 21, where we relax in bed.

    I had slept. For how long?
    My eyes opened of their own accord, and I found myself staring at the slope of my bedroom ceiling as it rose to meet the single row of ceiling tiles above me. Afternoon daylight poured through the small window at the end of the room and gave stark relief to the rough grain of the plywood.
    Pinholes in the wood served as the only reminder of the previous owners of this, my tiny Warren bungalow. This had been their son’s room; and when I moved in I carefully removed the boy’s posters of Megadeth, Hello Kitty, the Glenn Miller orchestra and Rolf Harris from the ceiling and walls. Rolling the bizarre paper iconography up, I tied them with bits of twine and placed them in a bag which still sat in the back of my closet awaiting a time when the boy might return to reclaim them–they’re still there, for all I know.
    Where in the world does a teenage boy get a poster of Glenn Miller in this day and age, and who the hell was Rolf Harris, anyway? Whatever. That had been nearly ten years ago and I hoped that the boy was at peace with his warring interests by now. Alone amongst my twisted sheets, I held the same eventual hope for myself.
    I reached across my chest with my right hand and gingerly probed the pink skin where scalding hot coffee had been intentionally dribbled across my chest. I moved my hand lower and felt the round outline left by one of many tiny, circular cigarette burns. Wincing at the sensation, I felt thankful for the momentary distraction from my thoughts and memories. I rubbed my eyes, and while the headache was finally gone I couldn’t say that I felt rested, really.
    I remembered the kitchen, the coffee pot rustling and chatting quietly to itself as Gail had forced me to… drink coffee with her. Dazed by the intensity of the headache assaulting my cranium and confused by my physical reaction to her aggressive, dusty advances, I had allowed myself to be led upstairs to my bedroom while carrying two large mugs of hot, black coffee.
    In the hour or so which ensued there was some pleading, some tears, and at least a small portion of the coffee was drunk by one or both of us. The deliciously illicit nature of the coffee seemed to add gasoline to the fire that consumed Gail Sayer, 38 year old factory worker and nicotine enthusiast. The fire was quite literal at times, as burning cigarettes passed in and out of existence before my wobbling eyes. At one point she sat atop me, and her droopy, teacup sized breasts hung suspended over my body, quivering with laughter as thin streams of hot java traced lines across my chest. At least one of her eyes stared into my face at all times, and after a while I stopped trying to hide my distress. Her cracked, leathery grin was unphased by my evident revulsion.
    From downstairs my cell phone periodically serenaded us with its lusty digital rendition of the 90′s dance hit, the Macarena. I quit asking Gail to let me see who was calling after awhile. It didn’t seem to matter what I said, she’d simply ignore me or lie to me saying, “it’s OK, weasel, you’re doing fine.” Impossibly, one such statement was made immediately after burning a hole in my abdomen with her lit Marlboro. It was probably just that damn Bananas anyway.
    The cigarette burns, I think, were accidental. After all, she had to brace herself sometimes, and setting the cigarette down was not really part of her philosophy. She apologized often when this happened, and insisted on “kissing” the “boo-boo.” Perhaps I’m not as familiar with this practice as I thought I was, but I don’t think tongue is necessary for therapeutic macking.
    Finally I lay, exhausted, caffeinated, scalded and spent, and I listened to the rustle of the sheets and creak of my mattress as Gail moved around me, apparently done for the moment. My eyes were heavy despite my desperation and my forehead was beaded with sweat from the intensity of my headache. I turned my head to look at Gail and found that she sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on her tank-top and puffing out smoke. The room reeked of tobacco smog and coffee. My mattress was damp and brown from the spilled beverage, and I gripped the fitted sheets in tight wads at my sides. Presently, she tapped ashes onto my stomach. I didn’t have the energy to react, so I just lay there and breathed that stink in long, slow breaths.
    Flashing a snaggly, yellow-toothed grin at me, she said, “pretty good, eh, weasel?” I didn’t bother answering. Her smile faded a bit as she held her current cancer stick in front of her face, and I absently noted that one of the happier teddy bear tattoos lost its head inside her elbow every time she bent her arm. This lent the sinister little creature a modicum of tragedy, and I found myself identifying with it. According to her illustrated limb, the teddy bears were all climbing to the top so as to fight the little helmet men on their ATVs. That the little ursine cuties were clambering up past Gail’s long row of nicotine patches seemed beside the point, although the tattoo vines were clearly intended to serve as a guide for applying each patch, lining them up and spacing them out properly.
     “I gotta go get some more cigarettes,” she said as she stood in her recently recovered bikini briefs.
    As she walked around my bed to find her jeans, I saw that the butt of her pink panties had been printed with white block letters. Bending over like a switchblade to pick up her pants, the bones of her pelvis stuck out, wing-like; it was as if an angry bat had just awoken to realize that he’d fallen asleep in entirely the wrong sort of cave. I studied the letters and, against all evidence to the contrary, they read, “JUICY.”
    That was when I gave up on this current batch of experiences and closed my eyes, willing it all to… go… away.
     “Aw… I wore you out,” I heard her whisper like sandpaper, “I’ll be back later, OK?” I smelled her wretched breath a full second before I felt her dry, firm lips kiss me on the mouth. I will not talk in detail about her ashy tongue at this time, and I did not open my eyes as she left me, and sleep soon wiped it all away.
    I can only assume hours had passed since then. The Sun streamed from out of the West into the window, serving as proof that it was now sometime in the mid-afternoon. I decided it was time to move; I needed another shower, I wanted to check on Chuck’s twisted, pitiful corpse…and I couldn’t forget about Boba Fett.
    I rolled over to get up, and planted my cheek directly into a small pile of ash that had been left on the pillow beside me. Staggering upright I brushed some of it off, but the coffee residue on my face held fast to a layer of the gray dust. It’d come off in the shower, I supposed.
    Standing, head bent to clear the sloped ceiling, I surveyed the wreckage and looked for the remains of my bathrobe. Ah, there it was, on the floor. I shrugged it on over my shoulders, ignoring the gaping, crispy-edged hole which saucily revealed my right shoulder. The collar was still quite damp, which felt good on my various little burns. I trudged toward the steps leading downstairs, pulling the sheets from the bed in passing. Riddled with cigarette burns and coffee stains, they had no place in my life anymore. I dragged them behind me, a train for my incontinent wedding.
    As I shoved the sheets into my kitchen garbage, trying hard not to look at the towering coffee pot. For its part, that damn coffee obelisk lasciviously menaced the room in general and the kitchen table specifically.
    The doorbell rang. Frozen for a moment, mid-shove with a handful of bed-sheets, I looked to Boba Fett’s head under the table quizzically. Bruce? It rang again. Boba offered no reassurance, so I tore a drawer open and grabbed the first sharp object I could find before heading to the door. I cursed under my breath at my own impatience as I turned the doorknob; I should have taken more time in selecting my impromptu weapon. I would have to make do, I thought as I opened the door.
    So it was that the shocked UPS man found himself confronted by a tired, literally ashen man in a fire damaged bathrobe brandishing what appeared to be an old steel melon baller.
     “Uh, I have an, um,” he began, clearing his throat, “a delivery for Joe Minnetola. Can you sign for it?”
    Still clutching my melon baller, I looked down at the clipboard he was proferring and only then noticed that there stood beside him a 7 foot tall box resting on a UPS standard issue hand-truck.
     “What is this?” I said, gesturing toward the huge box with my baller.
     He turned the clipboard around and concentrated. “Says here it comes from the Franklin Mint.