David Alexander

In Disguise With Diamonds

Daniel recited the specials of the night. Trout almondine with bechamel sauce. Delicious. Chicken Sorrentino brazed in mesquite on a bed of black bean curd. Delicious. Soy protein cooked on a slow grill and served with minced avocado. Pasta al forno. California roll. Delicious delicious also delicious.

His pencil poised above his order pad he looked into their faces there was blankness in their faces. I'll give you guys some more time, he said and went away. Watched him from the fire. Their faces glistened with sweat streaked with dark pigments and dust. Is my nose like theirs he wondered. Brown secretions dripping down from the powder shot in through a tube.

Daniel was a mirror he stood by and watched myself in his outfit. Smoked heard pigeon feet scratch the air conditioner airplane in the sky car horn. Everything just back from the cleaners. Jacket and pants pressed shirt white and clean.

On the cuffs embroidery in black and gold the serekh, sign of the pure. The lapels inscribed with warnings to the wicked. He who shall transgress shall be devoured by crocodiles and wolves. Shoes shined to a blinding patina. Cigaret smoked eighteen days. From the nose where the brains emerge. Waves monitored for spikes indicating psychomotor seizures.

Your mongoloid son is autistic the doctor told me after weeks of tests. Daniel will probably never act normally he will live in his own world from which he will never escape. What about therapies? Treatments? There's gotta be something we can do. The guy was the best, there wasn't any better. I looked at Jackie and she looked at me. What was the point of a second opinion. They all deferred to him.

Okay, there is some new cognitive awareness therapy that has proven effective in some cases. Drugs. But Daniel is so far withdrawn that I don't know if anything will be able to help him. Plus there's cost. Insurance won't cover. We're willing to try anything I told the doctor. I'll bring the coffee right away.

Daniel went back to the office that day thinking about Daniel and how I would deal with the situation. It would be expensive it would be. We wanted to move into the new house and that was going to cost us a bundle. I was counting on getting a raise without it I was fucked.

This was before the merger, which I knew about then but I wasn't concerned because I produced I produced. It was no secret the bank would be downsizing but that was everywhere. I got nervous anyway so I went to Hoth's office he of the jackal head.

Should I go ahead and buy the house I asked Hoth he looked at me and I should have seen in his eyes the fucking liar.

A couple of months went by this time I was mortgaged up to my eyebrows and my son was in therapy to induce seizures eating of the brains warm from the fires. Cocksuckers wait to lower the boom when it hurts the most. Hoth lied to me the fucker I knew when I came in that morning I can still remember the faces. Right off getting out of the elevator into the hut through the smoke their eyes averted. Everybody knew I was out but me.

I went into Hoth's office and the shock the shock. I went in. The shock. Shock Daniel the brain. Shock the shock. Shock. Daniel I became what Hoth had made me. I said to him why, why the fuck you didn't tell me when you knew what kind of shit I'd be in Hoth. The prick just looked at me I knew he didn't give a damn if I lived or died to this cocksucker I was just a thing he could use and throw away. Downsized into Daniel by the jackal the waiter I brought the menu over.

Daniel my mongoloid I took him into the mirror where I dressed him for work. Between now and then a lot had happened. Hallucinating a lot from the therapies psychomotor seizures manifesting as distortions of it self it time it space it it it. Smoked my cigaret and brushed off a piece of lint under the coat nobody saw what I was wearing. A lot had happened. Turned out she was a bitch after the money went.

Thursday night I got off the bus a block from the diner. I was in through the spinal cord he looked me over but didn't recognize me. Like I said, a lot had happened. It had been years and I wasn't even Daniel anymore. He was Daniel. Told him Daniel couldn't show up tonight so they sent me over here to fill in don't worry I know the drill. The owner liked my looks and put me right to work.

Coffee Daniel. Shock in their cups I'll give you a fresh one just a minute. Parasites in the bread they didn't know about. In their faces I could see it all because of what Hoth had made me. No distortions anymore. Each like a clear silvered glass to my changed eyes after Daniel's therapies made him see. No more bullshit on the radio, this time it was saw it like it is. A form of Creuzfeldt-Jakob going around like hands under a blower. They were always full of hot air I just didn't see it.

The worst kick in the nuts was that they hadn't even done away with the job just Daniel. Most of it was now being handled by some young punk they'd hired at a fraction of his pay. During the sessions Daniel tried to tell Jackie how much he needed her support right now he felt like he'd been castrated. She wasn't listening to any of it. Shock shock Daniel shock. Pour more coffee in the cup you fucked up you're out of the house you're a waiter now.

Kept washing my hands. Certain songs would start me going sometimes. Larval grand mal discharges he told me they called them. Very short duration telltale.

Daniel had nothing to lose anymore I figured the therapy wasn't doing much good so I put him on the brain to Thailand don't ask me why exactly. Always wanted to go somewhere cold like a car alarm went off in my head. Daniel was missing for weeks but nobody gave a damn so why should I care? Meanwhile I think it did me some good.

Entered the doors again through lymph tissue in the digestive tract a teaspoonful enough to cause disease. This was Monday of the following week and I walked right in. Direct go right to the office and tell the manager I was sent over a year from onset of symptoms. When you kill enough neurons infinity is a closed loop.

Or was it Tuesday. Best thing to work Daniel's way to the center, door by door. Closing the loop of episodic symptoms pain blackouts localized twitching in a basket of bread I wrote my name on the tablecloth. Daniel. Shock shock Daniel Daniel. I am your waiter. Eat my bread full of grubs. It was definitely Wednesday.

Daniel waited on the well-dressed couple he explained it all to them when the nurse brought them in sitting in the dirt outside the bamboo hut Wednesday or Wednesday or Monday. Tuesday? Among children complications include behavioral disorders intellectual defects. They did not recognize Daniel my son.

Spat in my face as Daniel spat in his when just a pinch on the fingers would do. Felt it right away the shit was that powerful. He explained it all over coffee at the next table.

Many cases begin with toxemia in the first trimester. Something like that happened to my son Daniel.

There are four parallel layers one atop the other. Duku ka misi, now void, empty, like an old woman. Hedu is where the souls go remember that he told me hedu go the souls after the symptoms begin. Hei ka misi, the vast jungle with villages where man dwells. Which is where I found him.

Bread the children as sacrifice brain damage in utero he told me as he squatted in the dirt painting my face for the dinner crowd. I forget his name now but there was much fragrant smoke from the fires. Nobody's fault your mongoloid son so fucked up you can't even hold a job get out and handed the woman another bred bowl in front of everybody and took away the plates.

This was a fancy place no habado what lay beneath and it was one of the few times the woman asked about the signs pointing to my lapel. You will awake after four days in a sealed room these are the spikes of my son's brain these are the shocks the shocks the shocks.

Some more neurons died I heard it later when the party returned from the raid. Tracing patterns in the dirt to show me a special task force had been set up to deal with the crisis. Shit, this was just the beginning. If the fuckers only knew. The second morning I picked out a place for the hut and hired a couple of them to chop down trees and build it the axes I brought part of the bargain. Tracings. From the depths. Where it all begins.

I never figured I'd spend that long in the dead tree throwing Daniel into the fire to spike the brain in hedu where souls convulse. Hoth knew it a diagnostic sign across the bridge of the nose only later did I find out he was fucking her.

Shock shock put in hedu poured into the cup postseizure stupor. It all fit into place the closed loop one log lashed to the other then the thatching of palm fronds, green now but later brown like the rest of them. Nothing came together right but everything fit.

After the promotion came with a secretary named her Jackie to cook and answer the phone same as a wife fucking her after three months showed a slowing of voltage production I had finally taken on their smell. Inside her convulsive Daniel went back so I could eat the things they did in hedu which is why they had the menu.

The therapy was healing. I explained the signs to her and read off the specials. This was actually Tuesday.

Head of ant larva. Hedu. Crunchy has nutty taste. Be careful because equipped with large pincers can inflict wounds on tongue or lip. Large fat white grubs brazed over palm leaves swimming in blood and fat. No habado. Head and intestines removed by pulling body away with teeth. Honeycombs torn from dead brain log poured into kettle with dead adult bees twigs dirt larvae in the fluid. Duku.

Mostly blunt head trauma other times we used my axe. Weak spot in the brain prone to discharge wild energies. At this stage of my life I had not expected to be here. Like this. Wiring Daniel up long before that measuring the spikes awake and asleep to make his diagnosis. Be careful be quiet my son is sleeping where the head is buried. Only the spikes were allowed to speak the protein loop waiting to be joined.

The object was the same amazingly enough to get what was in the neurons wiping the inside with a piece of leaf to sop the honey and rip out the combs. Different means to similar ends, that's all it was.

Using shock to induce seizure clubs axes whatever it took because it was inside the head what mattered most. When we got back the women had the fires going the entire village feasted for three days after the first convulsions we danced around the scar tissue at the rim of a bone log ripping out the grubs through the nose then writing symbols on the walls.

Daniel saw Daniel awoke and pulled the wires off Daniel saw Daniel saw Daniel amid the spikes Daniel put his brain back on the plane and pulled out the body with his teeth. When they asked him what was good he always gave them the specials.

In and out of the kitchen through a revolving door to close the protein loop before another seizure came on to shock shock to shock Daniel shock. Repetitive and generalized. Hedu. Duku. No habado.

As they judged Daniel so Daniel judged them recording the brainwaves and making a diagnosis based on spikes. Spikes age wealth eyes face voice laugh all giveaways to the trained eye. Before they came inside his wife to get him for what he had come. Not that it really mattered, they'd all get it eventually. They all would.

The Friday night menu. Pains in various body parts. Confusion. Psychotic behavior and convulsions can result. Port wine colored urine a diagnostic indicator. Getting through customs easier than he thought because son was no longer wearing the wires in his scalp so they could not read the spikes anymore.

No to every question on their fucking list. No no no no no. Except for one moment there when he sweated they had this machine set up that wasn't there on the trip out.

The guy searched the suitcase peeling back the shell to the thin bitter layer of white flesh inside he held the shampoo bottle full of shock shock Daniel shock was pulling the body away with the teeth when he put it all back and passed me through.

Fucking asshole if he only realized what he'd just done. I gave my stamped card to Daniel at the gate and caught a cab and that was it.

Closing the loop made of proteins positive spikes danced around the tumor made of earth sky jungle. Reflected in a mirror each day putting on the uniform and going out to wait on tables getting better at it by the time they found out it would be too late like Daniel found out that all things come to those who wait. Months as more and more neurons were killed and the voltage levels dropped my doing I had eaten it myself in hedu it was no big deal all it did was change things a little Daniel Daniel my son I was still to be.

One of these days it would be a Friday like the day I became Daniel in a shock of protein I knew this I lived for this now I was back writing my signs on the tablecloth warnings they would never interpret. One of these days the protein loop would spurt shampoo and left my teeth marks on the hard pit inside. I lived for that moment I would awake when it happened in a room with screaming stone walls.

Friday came this time again but I was no longer wired I waited in Hoth's office asked him what about my house my job and drew the sign in the air with my finger. I put the bread on the table and told them about the specials. It was a nice place, better than all the others but that just figured. I was getting better and better all the time. Right at the center Hoth and my wife sitting in the booth shock Daniel shock I recited the specials of the night as they ate the bread blunt trauma to the lobes.

Trout almondine with house sauce and garden greens. Chicken Marsala brazed in roast tofu on a bed of thick rice noodles. Veal goulash cooked in chili sauce and wrapped with seaweed crepes. Pasta Puttanesca. Super Quesadilla. Delicious delicious everything so fucking delicious. Duku. Blackouts. Localized twitching. With controls off. Fuck it forever.

My pencil poised above his order pad Daniel looked into their faces there was blankness in their faces. I'll give you guys some more time, he said and went away into the mirror they finally read the tracings to the center and made the diagnosis.

They were police I could tell but I had already given them the bread and they were in no habado what lay beneath like all the others I had closed the protein loop locked it tight.

Shock shock Daniel. Nobody would ever come back from where I put them. Shock Daniel shock. I drew my gun. Daniel shock shock. I put it to my face. Shock. I was beyond them all now. Shock shock shock.