flash fiction: judgment day

Buster creamed his coffee; his disarray straddled table, on and around, teeming room with conga lines of turbulent creases, thundersnow, vagrant absence. Where in hell's name was solace for the passing jello-minds, frivolous ubiquiters of this brave blue Sunday morn? No chance up against Buster's hirsute avalanche, fire-breathing postmodern daddy in the throes of peace-bondage and mommy-come-lately revenge.

"Space in the next room," said the cup at my elbow. "Beats hell out of this opera."

Next room is the chin-level window-slab: ogle the street traffic, wonder the whys you always wonder. Buildings across the way stripped of logos, mirroring Buster's rumblings in the back room. I'm feeling stripped today, too, John Lee Cadillac-stripped, naked before the judge. I'm guessing Buster's done his own cough-and-turn in front of Judge Judy in recent days. Sagging jockeys in they own shoddy grey disarray.

"Spare me the change, Buster." Judge J always was a charmer.

Just exactly who is the grey lizard back in Buster's rumpus room, scaring off all the Sunday Times debutantes? Sabbath day therapist? Nose-cone attorney? Baker's dozen-stepping sponsor? Innocent slob strangled by Buster's albatross? That lemon yellow v-neck was enough to scare me off, why not Buster?

My Michelin eardrums pop to the sound of "And how does that make you feel?"

Buster seems wrapped up in a soliloquy that signals danger up ahead; he seems hellbent on meting out justice to one and all, when in truth his soul covets nothing more than time on the grey beaches of Port Angeles, if only his spinal fluids could ooze him to another land. God hasn't the rosaries to hand out for this chapel of disquiet.

"Sizzled," says Buster, an adjective I can applaud: his cranium does, if nothing else, resemble a foggy marshmallow. Or blackened pompano, if you squint your eyes enough. I tried both, settled for the fish, all yummy in its uncertainty.

Lemon pledge seems befuddled by the less-than-standard, closed question response. Beyond the ejaculatory color of his own togs, he is bereft of a conversational palette up to the turbulence in Buster's grey breast.

I toddle on: my day is calling, lemoning and sizzling in its own pas de deux. I've prayed between sheets, opened tonsils to night sky, evangelized in poorer straits. There ain't mirror enough in those around me can't make me shiver.