Status Updates From Por los aires

An old man rips out his hearing aid in the world fall silent the mantle clock stops ticking, the outside world goes away, the creek sound settling lumber of his home, cease their punctuation of the night, and he is left alone with the sound of the warbird. He finishes his bourbon, snubs his lucky and pull the trigger with closed and tearless eyes, hoping his sister will understand and forgive him….

Ryan smiled at them, forgetting he was wearing a mask and threw up the door. He tried to explain, but they didn’t see him at all. They fell to their knees, choking on red phlegm. He pushed past them and skipped down the stairs to kneel and kiss the tarmac with a forked black tongue. It was so good, after all his wandering, to be home…

They climbed each other to reach his lips. The narrow fanged mouth only allowed one at a time, and they were beyond counting. They cuddled up his shivering body and into the gate of Teeth, but he could fill them piling up inside his belly, restless, hungry for trouble, and he could feel a whole New World, cold, black, and infinite, inside. Before the last one disappeared into his mouth, the 727 touchdown.

Numbly, he picked up the mask, seeing too late with new eyes. It was not a trinket or a treasure, or a mask. It was a door. The blood he had spilled had opened it. To let them leave this place, the door only had to open again. It was simple, when there was no other choice, but to accept. Ryan put the mask on his face. The hard, rough inner surface, caressed him with splinters that grew in intertwined under his skin.

It was a hideously malignant face, a face not human. Its skin was grimy, of a wide poured coarseness, its nose, a squat, discolored lump, its lips misshapen, and cracked, forced apart by teeth of a grotesque size and crookedness, it’s eyes recessed and small, unblinking. All framed by shaggy, tangled hair, which sprouted, too, in furry toughs from the man’s ears and nose, bird like, down across his cheeks.

Commercial air travel has all the charm and excitement of a colorectal exam. Modern airports tend to be overcrowded zoos, where patience and ordinary courtesy are tested to the breaking point. Flights are delayed, flights are canceled, luggage is tossed around like beanbags, and on many occasions does not arrive with passengers who desperately desire, clean shirts or even just one fresh set of underwear.