Innocence

I slide off the left side of my plus size queen mattress and my feet settle into the eighteen year old toe-prints left in the shag green carpet

Knock! Knock!--

He's growing impatient, but I'm not concerned.
My best friend Teddy Roethke plants a little seed in my skull, but then Mr. O'Brien's best friend Rat comes by and puts a boot on it. But the boots just carrying fertilizer and an old bent up picture of Sylvia in a skimpy little bathing suit sitting on her daddy's lap.

And so it just happens that the picture keeps ole Rat hanging around long enough for the seed to grow, and when Rat's friend Cacciato wanders by on his way towards somewhere, he picks up the picture and wipes the smudge off Sylvia's left breast to get a better view before he notices that Rat took it a little to much in heart when Daddy's head got blown off.

So that gets Cacciato to thinking, and he realizes that Rat was probably out looking for him when the shit happened and feels a certan responsibility, so he decides to do the right thing and throws Rat in the river to keep the VC from messing with the body.

so when he rolls over the body, he sees this little vine working its way up into Rats heart from behind. Now he kinda takes this as an omen so he digs out the weed and cleans off the leaves and decides to take the vine with him.

He's off on his way then, but the weed starts to get into his mind, and he gets to thinking about Rat and how maybe he should go back, but whenever hi looks behind him he hears this little bug ticking in the distance and realizes there's no way back.

So this gets him worried and wandering through the forest, he finds it all starting to look the same, and he realizes that wandering through the forest he's happened upon a path travelled by thousands before him.

So this gets to messing with him because he's not really sure if all those people really knew where they were headed or if they just happened to follow the first one-eyed thing that worked its way through the spread of the place way back when.

so he's thinking about this when he comes to this lake in the woods and since he can see to the other side he decides to test his theories and take the left way around when all the other little prints head off to the right.

at first he feels pretty good about himself, and pretty smart, but then he gets cold cause the ground is covered by frost, and he gets lonely cause even though he's on the right path nobody else is around for company so he pulls out Sylvia and gets to thinking about how lucky that boy is whose lap she's sitting on even though you can't see who he is anymore, and he gets to wishing he could be that guy, and have Sylvia on his lap.

That gets him thinking a lot, and he's thinking about settling down to love sylvia when an old Betty he knew about way back when jumps up and goes off right in his face.

Now the last thing that goes through his head is this ticking that reminds him he's late to pick up his girl for the wedding.

So back at the house Evelyn turns and rolls outta bed to get the door, slips her VS panties back on, throws the cuffs, cash and toothpaste into her bag, and shoots up quick before making it to the door.

She slips out this key she's been carrying around her neck for the last eighteen years that her mom told her would be the only way outta this hell-hole right before she got screwed for good by that business type, and she opens that last door.

Now what she sees is Jesus Christ standing there in green khakis with a rose of thorns on his head holding in one hand a full frontal of Mary such-and-such miss December and in the other this Golden apple on a shiny green vine that wraps around his whole body here and there until it finally vanishes down into this star shaped hole where his face must have been blown off and has its roots somewhere deep inside the heart of the guy.

So she steps back, a little surprised at the absolute beauty of the whole scene, then she takes the fruit out of his hand and before she remembers that she's allergic to this sort of thing takes a bite and fucks herself up for life.