Between Sharp Toots

"Wait, what were we talking about?"

Fixing the old choo-choos with the bones of the workers who laid the tracks. Yellow eyes squint at flickering monitors, they're laughing from behind their mossy curtains. Keep up with the next man as he does for the one following him. The sun hangs lazy forever, cursing at us, casting shadows of giant robots with their zappy whips. Building up the fire until the whistle does the sharp toot. Now it's back to our asylum, where we suck water off of the floor and sing songs nobody ever wrote. Starring at the mad moon, we talk about manners and swallow our pills.

Fhwham and Spoon and Bug Thumbs are doing the crazy-face dance, holding their breath with fat veins pulsing out of their necks. Spoon always wins. Fhwham hits the ground hard, blacking out for the moment. Spoon and Bug Thumbs are red faced and glaring into each other's eyes. The warble noise! They freeze and then swiftly lay on the ground closing their lids. So do I. I can hear Bug Thumbs whimpering as the horrible beast floats by our bars, beeping and scanning. Beeping and scanning. My head is spinning. I can feel it checking my brain. It's gone now and Fhwham is coming back to life with red all over his head.

I can't stop clenching my fists. A rubbery vibration is rushing through me. Shadows are thrusting in threatening motions from their walls. Strange music is coming through the vents. It sounds like insect music. Something is shining from the corner, catching the moonlight. It scuttles towards me causing paralysis. Squeaking. This old mouse with a white beard and long white whiskers, I've seen him. But where? He knows me.

A red plastic gun. With some black. A red and black plastic revolver. And bushes, hedges. I remember, next to a gravel lot. Black dirt. I was wearing strange clothes, with straps. And stripes, the straps were stripped. A dog. How do I know that? Dog. Dog. Funny little creature dancing around me. Toby. His name was Toby and I found him on the road. He was brown and black. He was with me when I buried the gun. In between the hedges with my knees in the dirt I dug a hole with my hands. I was hiding it. The mouse, only he was younger, with short black whiskers. He was hiding in the hedges too. Hiding from my hungry cat Tigger. Cat.

"Cat."

"Cat, why'd you say cat?"

"Cat, what's cat, what's a cat."

"Cat, who? You said cat? Who's a cat?"

"I don't know I was just thinking about somewhere else."

"Somewhere else?"

"There is no where else."

"Where else is there, the tracks?"

"I saw something else. Just now. A blue sky. A big open sky. Tigger and Toby. I remember them. There is more than this place and the tracks, they've been lying to us. We gotta get out of here. We must escape right now!"

The voice, "HOURLY CLEANSING TO COMMENCE IN THREE, TWO, ONE....."

The gas.

"What was I saying again? Was I saying something?"

"When?"

"What?"

"What, what?"

"What were we just talking about?”