COOL & STRESSING (AVENGER: THE WATERTOWER)

PART 2 of 2

I’m crying. The only reason I know is the dust is sticking to my face along the tear tracks and it cracks when I scream. At least I think I’m screaming. There is no sound, or I’m deaf or there is too much sound for my ears to pick up the tiny vibration my vocal cords are making, or something. I guess I should head for the water. I know that we said we should meet in Lake Geneva, but I have no idea how to get there on foot. I haven’t seen a car heading north since I woke up. Something important is happening in my home town and I know I’m just debris getting swirled around. I’m on the beach now, and heading east along the shore, going into the water when the fire is too close. I know that I will eventually get to the cottage in Michigan. It has a wood burning stove and guns, I think. As I relax a bit and start to get cold, my thoughts turn to my family. Mom, dad, Michelle.

Without any undue hyperbole…holy crap. I have to revise my statement about the largest thing I’ve ever seen. For now the largest thing I’ve ever seen is fighting with something larger still. The only sense of scale I have is the broken skyscrapers against the skyline. I have to keep moving, I think, so I walk backwards away from the city as the two colossi attend to the matters set before them. The avenger is here to remove the destroyer. I’ve been walking for along time and I can still see them. Past the steel mills, past the beach homes, and everyone along the way seems to be ok. I stop when I get to the Michigan border and sit with a cute hippy girl and I realize that I am really deaf. She produces a can of corn and a can of beans from her shoulder bag. In the moist sand she writes that the same thing happened in Detroit where her parents lived. She thinks they’re dead by now. I tell her where I’m going and ask her to come with. She writes: “No. Friends in Milwaukee. Walking there.” I tell her to be careful as she passes Chicago, there was a giant elephant fighting a giant woman last time I checked. She nods to let me know she can hear them. She smiles and sticks out her tongue and draws her name in the sand before packing up her cans and walking away. I walk to the cottage on the shore, build a fire, load the guns and fire them both into my skull.

Acrylic on Plywood

2/2006