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Ghoul Galactic, elliptical, dust drifts through light across time behind minutes over stale smoke and spilt beer. Wood. All wood: deterioration, collapse, dilapidation. Chaotic buzzing flight, the fly flies across dim rays, hanging in the seconds between a hyperbolic ellipse and an orbital twist of stagnant particles. Filth clings to rotted planks infested by plantations of microbes harvesting atomic weight and energy. A rectangle of light. Past grim glass onto grimed floor. Light lights long blighted lumber lifted from boughs. The rotting rocking chair rocks. Orange and black. A cat. Grey speckled gnarled fur patched bald from age. One eye virulent violet cerulean. One eye blotted milk. Blind. Pounce pounce pounce on three legs after particles prancing through ringed rounds to where the fly flies ever unconsciously. Floor sticks. Ancient ash crawls after. The color of Halloween, a feline flash. One paw two paw three paw. Steps. Tail waves, a transmitter trolling like the tide. Side to side, a flag felined in the stale rank atmosphere between four forgotten forested log walls. Steps. Crackled glass, shattered days, months, hours before. Heavy boots. The door opens. The cat stills. —Hey Ghoul. Heavy boots echo the crying creaks of decomposing floorboards. A pack of beer in hand. A dufflebag drops. A sigh. A bed of ash, cardboard, regrets, sleeping bags, and photographs. He kicks through the sleep pile. A photograph, folded. Unfolds: a girl, young. Seventeen, forever. —Nothing’s serious when you’re seventeen. He sits, rocks, remembers. A crack, fizz. Carbonation. Cool, liquid, the taste of aluminum and beer. Eyes trace the ceiling, follow the crack, the cracks, the roof falling in. Inadvertent sunroof. Leak. Run from the rain. Prayers for none. Dreams. Past. A Ghoul in the lap. A sound. A feline voice: grumbling thunder. The hand runs through the Halloween fur. Strands loosen and stick to the grime of his palm. The cream eye closes. The jaws yawn open. A purr like gravel. —Where does it go, Ghoul? Ghoul stretches further on his legs, exposing his stomach. Fingers like steel, rusted and polluted, trace the jaw to the ribcage. The gravel noise reverberates. Ghoul smiles. Winks with his good eye. The finger stops. The one forepaw gropes for attention. —I miss her, too. His hands. Rough through his hair. Grimed over his face. Swallow, the weight of aluminum falls to the ground. The light loosens. The window: dark. A crack, fizz. Beer down his throat. Photograph in hand, tattered and folded, dusted, sooted, burned: ancient. Seventeen. Years gone by. The clocks all stopped and time drifted without him. Past the past. Passed over hours. Years. Sandpaper tongue wets his hand. Crushed aluminum. The echo of soft metal and wood. More beer. Soft cans. Cigarette fired, smoke lingers: time crawls through the light, hazed carcinogen rivers spread. The light lights no more. The room hidden. Soft metal and ash cover the blinded ground. Ghoul watches from the sill. A cyclops reflecting the moon from the living tapetum. The photograph. Forever seventeen passed to the present from memories. Tattered and worn. Fingers caress. It withers from time. The beer gone. The light, no more. Ghoul stares. Yawns: glass underfoot. He lies down to bed. The clothes all the same. The ash: piled. The beer: spilt. The memories spread before his eyes on the nighttime skies through the holes in the ceiling: the collapsed present, the crumbled past. A projection reel. She smiles. Ghoul crawls in. Sidles beside him. —I love you, my little tripod kitten. Gravelled purrs. —I know you do.
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