bats and worms

The instant I awoke a bat fell from the rafters. I saw it from the periphery – “oh?!” I exclaimed. I do that, exclaim in random grunts. It fills the boredom of the dark – a madness born from the darkroom years. The form that fell could have been the dust but this time it wasn’t. It was a bat, either rabid, dead, confused or stupid. I got up to investigate nudging him with a nearby coat hanger. “Oh, he’s dying. Put him out of his misery.” “I’m not going to kill it. He could be rabid.” I stood over him now, fully naked watching his tiny paws grasp the air. “Lemme find something to pick him up with.” I looked for anything to do the job. The girl went to piss. In the minutes between the bat came to, flew past my exposed body and slammed into the door, dropping to the floor. I watched him again, this time he curled up in a fright. I grabbed a mop and used it like the hair of a seahag until it clung on in a hail of tiny screams. I thought of it dropping on the girl’s head, clutching fiercely as she swatted in hysterics. “Maybe bats do like hair,” I thought. I thrust the mop into the hall and the creature took off.

The following morning these worms had crawled from the soil up and onto the concrete. I took pains to avoid them as I walked. Strangely they were only present on the bridge and pathway leading up the hill to the bridge that crossed over the railroad tracks below. Back in the kennel days we used a yellow substance to attract and kill flies. We’d sprinkle the toxic jimmies onto a bait bucket of shit and kill thousands of those fuckers. The problem was, other creatures would die too. Like the worms - if the toxins hit the soil, the following day worms would be dead near the site having been lured by the poison. What poison drew these out? I wondered. I looked to the trains and the stacks in the distance spewing soot. I thought of my lungs and the south facing tenants. No birds seemed interested. I made note of it and looked the landscape over to determine if the soil that supported the bridge was fill or natural. Then I was past the worms and hardened my thoughts on survival and the dangers through the back streets to work. Past the abandoned lot, past the strip joint and the razor wire factory lot, past my old apartment where my old curtains still hang, past the neighborhood crack house onto the lawns of posterity and the quiet reality that forward contains such convoluted paths.