Chapter 23 "Jazzy Rides a Cock Horse"

At first I thought that I'd go and find Jaime, but after steaming and cursing in the direction of her house I decided to go get my car, Guido. His hulking v-8, velvet embrace was probably just waiting for me up past Colorado Blvd. Honestly, I thought that this was it. I'm moving. I'm taking my ass as far away from this high prairie that was doing me no good. Its nasty, shifting weather and arid climate made me long for the sea. I needed breaking waves and hippie surfers, women in shorts and bikini tops. I thought about San Diego. Tara and I had gone there on a road trip once, just to see where the corner of this great country ended, next to a third world country, bordering an unstable tectonic plate and beaches upon beaches.

When I first drove the streets of southern California, I was struck by the palm trees. They looked like these amazing testaments to time. Sometimes they were trimmed and pretty with a few palms sticking out of their tops. Often they were untrimmed, showing years worth of dead and grey palms, flattened against its long and thin trunk. They sprung up so dignified and strong against the encroachment of humanity. They broke and shattered sidewalks, growing out at odd angles out of freeway underpasses or rocky cliffs that gave way to the sea. I marveled at their tenacity and the fact that Californian workers had not just mowed over so many of them in their progress to build.

Yet, there was an old and weathered quality to California. There was this over abundance of small roads everywhere and tiny parking lots. All the roads were called the 5 or the 405 or the 190 and consisted, in many places, of far too few lanes for the bustling population. It was if everything that stood was built in a precise manner, to serve a smaller populace a long time ago.

Many buildings had gone through major renovations, instead of being scraped from the earth and rebuilt. There seemed to be a respect for what was already there, or maybe there was a lack of money making everything look like a slower and older time. Everything seemed to reflect the growth and architectural genre of the 50s and 60s instead of looking scrubbed and shiny and new and constructed for growth like the majority of buildings in Colorado were built. If you drive around Denver, everything is built for convenience and every parking lot is built for overflow. The lots are designed for the biggest day of shopping mayhem and are mostly empty every other day of the week.

I wanted to go to California and disappear on some beach somewhere.

California seemed overwhelmed with humanity, yet it was stylish and beautiful to me. California seemed like a place where I could disappear into a life was much more relaxed and had less infrastructure to notice my crime-ridden life. It also had, to my knowledge, an amazing identity theft underworld as people clamored for fake IDs...I could truly disappear.

By the time I got to Guido, a little less than an hour walking in a huff had elapsed and I had become a little more docile. I resumed my earlier holier-than-thou attitude. I would survive like a feral cat with 9 lives. I believed this based on my intelligence, cunning and overall lack of concern for most people on this planet. Plus, I was mostly Irish. Lucky. Screw King Soopers.

Guido started right up on this fine day, and I accelerated down the street turning around and screeching the tires as I goosed it towards Jaime's house. I decided I should definitely appraise her of my decision. Think about it. I had just left my fingerprints at the scene of a murder where a dog who mauled a co-worker and good friend, had lived. Not only that, I filled out a police report and an inter-office incident report that ended up putting me on suspension/termination...This was beginning to look like Karma's sweet revenge. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to ask her to come with me. I wanted her so badly. I needed a partner in crime, and although Wyatt was a pretty man, I needed someone a little more feminine to disperse my, um, me-ness. I wanted a Bonnie to my Clyde. Jaime seemed perfect.

I pulled up and parked right in front of her 4-plex and strolled right up the stairs to find her door cracked. I didn't leave it this way, so the back of neck prickled and went cold. I put a fingertip on the door and nudged it open and listened through the crack. I heard nothing at first, then a little bit of music coming from inside. It was muffled; it sounded like some kind of punk music. Nudging my way through the door, I glanced down the living room/kitchen combo at her bedroom. The door was shut. I didn't leave it like that either.

"Jaime," I called out.

All I heard was the punk music coming from her room. Thinking to myself that I may have caught her unaware, I started to tiptoe through the room. All of a sudden she screamed out from her room, "AAAAAGH! YOU FUCKER! AAAAGH!"

My feet graced lightly across the rest of the room in three strides and I placed the tips of my fingers on the doorknob of her room and slowly leaned against it to hear anything Then I heard a man laugh and then I heard Jaime yell, "OH GOD! YOU FUCK! AHHHHHHGH!!!"

Shit. I'm not sure what I expected. I wondered if the killers that slaughtered the Gruesome Buddha had found us somehow. I wondered if she was being collared by the police. I thought I could hear her fighting.

The truth was much worse.

I slammed through the door, looked to the right to her bed where I had heard most of the noise and commotion coming from, and I saw her on all fours with the same shirt she was wearing from last night. Presently, she was being fucked by a somewhat chubby and tall boy. Doggy style.

"Oh, Jazzy!" She moaned.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" Is what I said.

I'm not sure exactly what happened first. Jaime's eyes got real big. I imagine my expression looked something like terror, anger and enlightenment. (Go ahead and try looking like that when you look at yourself in the mirror. If you can perfect it, you can win an Oscar.) Jazzy was completely confused, stopped his furious humping and grabbed on to her ass for a second, and looked at me with a very confused expression. Her snake tattoo, I think, was mocking me. Smiling snakes.

Even if my eyes showed terror and what not, my heart had just exploded like the Death Star and was trickling in chunks and pieces through my veins and arteries to my abdominal cavity, settling somewhere near my balls. Speaking of my testicles, they instantly shrank up into me for a few very important reasons.

One, naked Jazzy was disconnecting himself from Jaime and moving to kill me.

Two, his dick was the size of a fucking Dust buster! It was at least 12 inches long and as thick as a novelty candle that would have been labeled, Vanilla, or Pumpkin Spice, or Dong of Destruction.

Three, I was so transfixed by the dick as it was removed from Jaime that I didn't really have any time to defend myself against the coming onslaught. I wish I could have taken a picture of my face as I watched this giant mule sized penis come at me. It must have been really funny.

I said something to the effect of, "G...G...Guhhhh."

I just ogled it While he got up lazily and wound up for a haymaker that bashed against my forehead. I saw stars but remained completely upright. My head rebounded and I was still looking at Jazzy's gigantic cock as he tried to throw another straight punch, to my head. This one, I just tilted my head to the side and his fist went dangerously too far past my face and over my shoulder. I took advantage and grabbed his arm and locked it against his elbow. I had an inkling to pull his shoulder over and he had pressed his body close to me and tried to throw close punches with his left hand. Oh God, his cock was pressed up against my family jewels. We were face to face in some kind of strange manly embrace, and he was smirking. It was like he was saying, "Yep. That's my cock."The blow to the head had done me no good, and I was slightly punchy. His cock was pressing up against my own and along with his cocky (no pun intended) expression, I was thrown into a rage. My would-be girlfriend? You fucking chubby, donkey dick, pasty, hairy, knuckle dragger! I may have said this thought out loud, but the details to me now are a little hazy. Ok. I said it out loud, more like...grunted it.

With my shoulder lock, I spun and slammed my other arm under his armpit and made nearly a full turn as I gained the leverage to throw the Donkey Dick. Time started to ice down. The slowing of time feels like a full breath of oxygen. The room chills. It feels like a great relief.

When I remember to do it, it can be very useful. When it happens due to emotional explosions, it may be even more useful.

To wit: His face and my face were together as I spun him around by his arm. I could watch tiny pieces of spittle jump out of his mouth in slow motion as he fought against me, as I ducked and tossed him with masterful control of every twitch of every muscle in my body. Jaime yelped, "You guys!"

In slow time, you have very minute and pinpoint control over the things you do. Even though you are moving as fast as anything else, your reaction time is amazing, you can change intent of direction in a seeming instant or pull every muscle tight that exhibits enough force and leverage to whip snap and throw a full size man (no pun intended) over your shoulder and into Jaime's closet.

In this emotionally initiated example of slow time, the problem is you often don't have the greatest control over it and you don't know when it will end. There have been a couple of times where it lasted long enough after an "event," I thought slow time would never end, and I would be living a true Twilight Zone episode for the rest of my existence. It always seemed more dangerous when slow time was experienced by pure adrenaline burst. It was always better to initiate it by concentration.

This was one of those moments where adrenalin and passion mixed in such a way...needless to say I wish I could have shut it off at some point during this confrontation.

Oh god, do I have to tell you that Jazzy's giant cock missed my face by several inches in slow motion and Jaime's horrified face mimicked the strain of her seizure the other night?

Every goddamned detail was etched into my brain.

Jazzy crashed, upside down, into the sliding closet doors. The big, flat, square doors crunched inwards off of their flimsy tracks, spun, and kind of made a tee-pee over his body. Real Time had resumed. I was still wearing a horrified expression as I turned towards Jaime rubbing my forehead where I had caught the full brunt of Jazzy's haymaker right hook.

I eloquently intoned, "What the fuck, bitch?"

"Oh, fuck. Joe. I...." She had crunched up the covers around her.

"So. What? You're like a total slut or something?"

"Jazzy's my ex-boyfriend!"

Jazzy implored from the floor as he began to get up. "Ex-Boyfriend!? What the fuck, Jaime?"

I grabbed a shoe from the floor and furiously flung it at him. It smacked him right in the face and I screamed, "IF YOU GET UP, I'LL STOMP YOUR SKULL INTO THE DOWNSTAIRS APARTMENT!" He leaned back on his elbow and relented, his member now resembling a big floppy sausage of sorts.

I looked at Jaime again with disgust. I was wondering if she remembered anything that had happened during the previous night. Perhaps her seizure had wiped out all the memories. She knew in the morning about me, though. She had written a note. I chewed on the side of my cheek, and did not know how to proceed. She called me Jazzy last night. What the fuck?

Even though we had a lot to talk about and figure out, namely, a murder and my untimely termination, or rather, suspension, I was disgusted and hurt. Jaime's right hand was up to her mouth, her eyes showed fear and were rimmed with tears.

"Enjoy my sloppy seconds, Donkey," I said to Jazzy and curled my lip at Jaime and strode from the room.

I could hear Jazzy say, "What the fuck, bitch?" I heard him getting up again. "What the fuck, motherfucker!? I love that girl!"

On a whim, I picked up a small glass vase full of marbles off an end table and hurled it through the open door into the room. The vase exploded next to Jazzy's head and spun one of the closet doors around so that it had started to fall on him. He stumbled and ducked and sat hard on his ass again as glass and marbles flew everywhere."GODDAMN IT, RED!" I heard Jaime yell.

I blew a breath out and flung open the door, it smacked against the wall and I mumbled, "My name is Joe."

I exited the apartment with my mouth dry and my heart racing. My mind throbbed with every heartbeat, my vision clouded on the fringes, a white cloud. Worse still, I felt betrayed, my heart thumped and ached and bled into my body cavity. From there my blood was separated from the racing tunnels that made up my veins. It instantly turned cold inside the crevasses of my body and began to rot and turn blue like a bruise. Or at least, that's how it felt.