I had a dream about my brother's jet engines.

Captivity

It was a week before I realized I wasn’t alone.

I was dragged from the cell late one night and strapped to a cool steel table. The attendants all had tattoos on their arms--black glyphs of some nature.

Across from me in a dentist chair was the man I’d seen yelling at his baby on the train. How long ago had I seen him? It hasn’t been long now? Or has it?

The man was gagged. Some intravenous prink drip was trailing out of his left arm. One of the man’s eyes had been removed. He was slouched over. He had to be unconscious, but I thought I saw his still live eye flash towards me once.  

One of the tattooed men stuck me with a needle. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d been drugged since capture. No point in panicking now. 

Captivity

I cried myself to sleep. Koenma is watching. The river is listening.

When I woke up again there was light coming from the steel doggy door.

I scuttled over to it.  Ate what they’d left. My head still hurt.

The circumstances of my kidnapping don’t make sense. I'd been on the train. I’d been watching a family and crying baby. I must have fallen asleep.

There are strange markings on my skin. I can’t tell what color they are in the dark. My fingernails are so long.

I want to bite them but there’s something wrong with my teeth. I think I have something pointy growing behind my teeth. I’m panicking. What’s happening to me?  

Captivity

I woke up in the dark. I’d forgotten what happened.

I was captive. I’d been on the train--every day on the train--back and forth. I could trace the route with my finger. The bends, the bridges, the tunnels, the nauseating closeness to the other cell mates.

Hermetically sealed uniforms filling the factory conduits: pink-red to packing, light blue to redistribution, cream to assembly, and us whites to the labs.

Little white light bulbs with disposable plastic gloves and carcinogenic chemicals. 

Mugger Blues

You spend your life in clouds. Days pass by. 

And one night,

You fall asleep on the train home from work.

And it's a new dream. 

A waking dream--an awake dream--a dream that makes life 


seem little more than a blurry 

two hour nap.

And they'll ask you.

Was there, 

brown-green metallic light irradiating the wood beyond the 


factory fences?

And now,

is there an odd cough or the unexplained bruise?

Think nothing of it I say.

You look fine to me.