Grace Krilanovich - The Orange Eats Creeps

Here, patches in the linoleum have been worn through by decades of shoppers smashing grains of sand into the tiny pores. Prehistoric gas seeped up through the floor. Looking through foggy, frozen glass doors for something to drink, flicking at beads of perspiration rising on dented cans on the shelf behind me. Made note of tiny tears on frozen bags of corn. Plastic urns of flour. Syrup covers the floor, hemmed in by aisles of aluminum shelving. The lettuce is already rotting on the bottom of its designated trough. No one wants to touch the expired milk, stashed behind some bags of grain elsewhere in the store. I pick up the new Us magazine, flipping through it, scanning for pictures of famous people in their own supermarkets; I’m taken by the blurred stares and frozen gaits, but always disappointed by what they have in their shopping cart. Out in the back alley a gutted stove sits under a pile of newspaper; the wreckage seemed to have been wrenched out from under a Mack truck. I ran across the parking lot to Walgreens, bursting through the door, “This?” I said, pointing to my sullied forearm, “you should see the layers of shit coating my inside!” The lady working at the register had a big bow in her hair. Outside a gang of vagrants sat perched like shadows of people, swollen and moist — charred effigies of benevolent clerics. The Administrator unfurled a rolled up flyer and read his own didactic signage. His mouth was moving but all I could hear was a flap flapping. He stuffed a soggy brochure in my hand, proclaiming all the while, his pupils constricted eyeballs of stone. Street people seemed to have all day to perfect their speeches. One crawled out of his spot on the sidewalk, draping himself over a bronze public sculpture. He unfurled his large cumbersome beard. It was Oratory Time. A glint of orthodoxy crept into his eyes. He seemed on the verge of pouncing on the nearest woman, tearing at her clothes with his teeth. Paring her skin from bone. I got trapped in a quasi-religious discussion with him and became more and more nerve-wracked. He moved through life as if there was sand in his pants, left a trail wherever he went. Being in this part of town always reminded me of why I left. Everywhere I went slogans bit me in the face. Missionaries shoved free samples in my hands all day long. I itched a raised sore, a pink rash the shape of a mask, on my forearm. Not equipped to deal with this life . Smells of chocolate and blackberry stained my face. A wash of stained memory hit me like a foghorn.

We heaved open the glass doors of the liquor store and spread out in five directions. A young man sat hunched behind the counter making precise drawings, slashing at the paper while his leg jiggled. Pieces of a man’s voice filtered through a radio in the corner — Straighten up and fly right he sang. The young man stopped and looked at us sideways for a long time, for minutes, like an animal disturbed at the stream. The radio itched and sputtered behind him. The words coming out of it seemed to prod at our souls, just so —

I get so wound up the radio yowled —

Our purpose is to annihilate, not to disseminate Josh said —

We aim to prevent psychic death Murph said —

We don’t exist Knowles said —

Whispers and screams in the basement rock show popped out of the crowd; I only caught pieces — Smash the State, go to sleep they said — Why go into the outside world anymore? Seth asked.

Never pay for sex —

Revolution girl-style now —

All of a sudden our eyes were opened to all of the screams that had always lay around us, surrounding us everywhere we went. Stopping and listening only made it that much more relentless. We went to the diner and realized we were surrounded by people screaming everywhere —

“It’s getting harder to move around!” someone shouted.

Another: “Dreams of death are all we’ve got!”

“Oh yeah? Not if I walk all night!”

“I need adventure!” some kids whined.

An accuser: “You think you’re evil but you’re not!”

“If you’re cold, you’re dead, but if you’re cool, you’re only halfway there.”

“ — why did I ever think I could keep you?” she sobbed.

I love her; I hate her

You threw it all away

Love me like a reptile

The wind ground down on exposed, unvarnished porches and carports in the large ’70s neighborhoods bordering Salem to the south. A particular smell, like wax or caulking, followed us all over town and then when we found a large paper mill churning at full tilt next to a slough it all made sense. I chipped away grout with a screwdriver at a bus stop. I wanted to be home; I wanted to crawl into bed with my baby. We went to meet Seth at some presidio-style barracks made of white painted bricks. I walked around inside. The buildings had been converted to small rooms and sub-apartments, one stacked inside another. It was there I realized the land surrounding it had been one huge cemetery. I looked outside and saw the grounds sloping up in graduated terraces with acre after acre of grave markers. People came from all over to live here. I sat with him on a small set of painted wooden steps leading down from a service entrance. “Did you know Kirk Cameron became a crusader for Jesus Christ?” Seth asked, apropos of nothing. “He let Jesus into his life and the LORD took hold of the controls and never let go.”

The earth darkened below us, a settling wetness that spread out under our feet and with it, a realization of the shattering compassion, a brimming sadness — sickness, really — of Jesus Christ. Of marks made on the body, a desecrated, destroyed thing, a tattered set of remains; dragged through the dirt. Can you feel it too? A suspension of disbelief; a leap that allows for an entry, an absorption. A lapse that strings along a line of tension both fraught and tenuous, crackling and frayed. But we can cross it because we are weightless and expansive. Of a way of seeing and drawing, where we trace our eyes over a distant object, the pencil moving underneath; a transmutation of the substance that enters through our eyes and spills out over the page, through our hands and its scrap of charcoal. Suspension of disbelief? God is everywhere, can’t you feel it?… The sunset was a huge eye closing, sealing off the world on the other side of the carpeted hills. The sky hung as a dappled membrane that clung to my eyes. I looked down to the grave in front of me. It was a small suitcase containing a still-breathing organ. The case perched like a miniature torso, a limbless little self puttering away in the dark. This suitcase throbbed with sorrow; tears stained the inside. Again, darkness. Silence. This is the way of most things that are true. This is the way of most of the sealed objects.

Tap the fly nest. Tap. Tap. Bushels of shiny brass beads fall out.

Cockroaches drink tiny dribbles and climb the trees; they look like nameplates made out of wood. Intricately carved seals vibrating up the tree.

I see a gas station and a smokestack off in the distance. Smoke has to go somewhere. There’s no use pretending it doesn’t go into the sky… As I walk there’s a piece, a part that’s dangerous, getting more and more loose on my body and it rattles when I walk. Got to get that replaced… We may be aliens who just landed here, but having taken a real good look around it seems like the signs all point to our ancestors having lived in this same exact spot. In fact, just the other day I went up to the graveyard and found a grave with my name on it. It was full though, and had been for 140 years. If all the people who came before us — way before any of this shit was even here — didn’t have such a “thing” about speaking of the dead, of their relatives, and if all of their props and creations weren’t so biodegradable then maybe we’d know their names too. But they’re gone and this place will never be the same.