roachboy

Lobos

D said that I had disappeared for nearly a month.

I was working on my motorcycle. I've gone outside alot: for food, for cigarettes. Being disappeared would feel different. I don't feel like I disappeared. "Your phone's been turned off." he said. I hadn't really thought about that. I go through periods of not talking. "You should pay your phone bill." I was distracted.

D said it didn't matter. That was not the problem. The problem was that B had disappeared.

I hadn't seen him for a couple weeks.

D said that B had been found in the city. In a basement. He was tied to a chair with wire. He had been tortured. His throat had been cut and his tongue pulled out through it. It was in a newspaper.

"I don't read newspapers," I said. "You don't either."
"Word travels somehow." he said.

All we had to do is not go back to the city.

"I couldn't locate C or E." he said.

I looked at the neat rows of metal parts on the floor.

All we had to do is not go back.

That was the plan.

"Yesterday, they found C tied to a chair with wire in a basement outside of town. He had been tortured, they say. His throat was cut and his tongue was pulled out through it."

My head went quiet.

"He had been there a few days."

A ringing sound started in my ears.

What about E? I thought. "I don't know where E is" D talking like he is inside my brain.

"They're coming" he said. "They're coming and they want us to know they're coming."

The ringing was getting louder. It was hard to think over it.

"What did B do?"

"He went back."

"Why? The plan was..."

"I know what the fucking plan was. He didn't stick to it. They found C, so B must have talked about him at least. Maybe they get one point, find the next point from him, get that one, do it again, find another."

The sound of something metal falling over, hitting the floor.
A series of clicks.
Twenty seconds of silence.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite