I went on a month-long train trip one summer, and the first person I met was Melody. She had brown spectacles, a tucked-in flannel shirt, and wiry hair. When I was trying to sleep, I could hear her mutter something repeatedly. When I opened my eyes, I saw that she was completely asleep, but insisting out loud, repeatedly, "You're fired, mister!" She'd croak it out with increasing volume until, nearly yelling, she woke herself up. In the morning I ended up talking with her. She was moving from Portland to Chicago because her ex-boyfriend's friends allegedly consistently steal all of her money and furniture, and her identity, besides. She's convinced that this same ex-boyfriend was responsible for local power outages, because she saw him steal several chain saws from a Home Depot. And she suspects that he had something to do with 9/11 because of some suspicious conversations he had on his walkie-talkie. As for herself, Melody was once a prostitute, a marine, a crack addict, a sailor, and a poet. She was saving up for a .33 that she could conceal and use to defend herself. She asked if I wanted to hear one of her poems; I agreed, and off she went.
The poem was the most beautiful I'd ever heard.
About Me
- Carl Duzett
- Carl Duzett was sent from the future to assassinate the mother of an eventual resistance leader. He married her instead, and now designs games and writes speculative fiction with an unfair advantage.