Mr.Pressure Loses His Mantra

A crossbar in time lets them know he's listening. Steps bounce quickly and leashed men cry havoc on his night ears. "Let me know sweet riders, let me feel it too." There are few people that tune to the AM station, but Pressure is one, scouring for the obscure waveforms coming in through the airs above. On special occasions only, he switches to shortwave, but the idea of those harsh tones and apocalypse flowing through his body just makes him paranoid and that's someone else's job.

A squeak comes from within, the cog turns its face sideways, allowing ample time to respond to callous memories of a red era, of real paranoia, or secret agents and double agents and free-form men wearing skirts rather than black over coats to throw others off their trail. They always, always ask where the ice cream cones are. "What do they do with all those cones?" screams the radio. Carts and buggies careening carelessly down long aisles, bouncing to, fro, an animate intelligence to metal, rubber and cardboard colored rainbows for the sweet, breastless agents.

Again the tap of electronic tones, he counts in measures. Pressure consults various cryptography textbooks. The spirit has left with the passing of the red era, however. Where is Berlin Bettie, he dials? Letting that infinite stream of digits drip from her dry lips. She upheld the fate of so many men lifting skirts in bathroom stalls to secret away waffle cones.

Pressure begins to sneeze, switches off the filter and removes the grate. Reluctantly climbing into the chasm, it slips down below his house, and produces light not by the usual means, but some foreign monstrosity leaking gasoline and shards of glass through pores and tubes that he rides down. Here, he repeats his mantra, "Copy thus, for sake alone." Waving hands about, he cannot account for the temperament of a forehead, nor of philosophers finding it out, finding it all out and offing themselves. And there his mantra, the brown paper bag scribble form of a dead hand, it was stained, and cut, and torn, recalls to him the profound effect of such a thing as his generally sturdy constitution. What would the effects be on someone of ill repute?

A decision made, Pressure crawls from the ventilation shaft and scribbles his tender mantra onto a bit of paper, paper left from the earlier meat wrapping, as he does once a month to keep cost down and sharpen unused skills. The door off the hinges, and passing over mighty holes, whole holes, punched through by stilettos, ten inches tall, three inches deep and a pair of thread-bare suspenders. Existing only from lamps, hung together like the trapeze, his thoughts can't be seen, he exists as a thing for light particles to bounce from and leaves no true impression on matters. But his intentions are clear. Rooftop walkers easily observe his movement. Left for dead, he picks the poor, worn whore from the asphalt and palm-shoves the paper 'tween her lips. "Let it not pass."

Rightfully so, bound so tightly together, the information consumes the body, facilitating growth and regrowth, health and rehealth. "Save your fingers," it speaks. Yes, he thinks, out of the lamp-light. Yes, it would be concerned with the digits, they perform the holy task, as well as rapping beats on tin cans rigged with wafer-microphones. Pressure watches the fingers of the now young mantra-embodied and they dance across the pavement, pulling both bodies along the lines.

In intervals, the subject in transit presents his secret. Mr.Pressure, who is usually hailed as Pressure simply, is intimately connected to everyone. Everyone being the individuals he comes into contact with, it is his only true burden in life.

Bump, gravel, gravel, bump, gravel - over the urban veins they go. Notorious lighting obscuring, and out again. Piss ridden mantra resurrecting miss flesh-body and rampaging West, parallel the interstate. Or now, as I should say, Mantra.

"This stuff again?" Mantra rears its whore's head at Pressure, mocking, "Really Mantra, I thought you were a homebody," chuckling and carrying on. The group moves; for now, besides the two minus one plus one, another, rather unsavory texture has accumulated on the fresh thigh tissue. Brother Ben foresaw nothing of the sort, which, being one to sense his future, surprised him very much, which in turn, alarmed him altogether. "I know this road, fatty. We've arrived where those that make you paranoid stay, eh?" "Yes, yes, okay," and so on.

The fingers, free from their travel dance, bleed and creep in cracks and pores. Someone inside cries out, desperation, fleeing from the entanglement. The force collapses the walls of the warehouse and out comes cardboard containers holding folding pieces of paper that do things. Far from concern, Brother picks one up and places it atop his head. "Now, Mr.Pressure, it is my duty to distill in your soul a sense of the paranoid," his voice raspy from the ride through the harsh air and headphone weather. He rushes up and strikes Mantra, knocking him back so hard that the long fingers shrivel and pucker inside of the hands, he howls.