Unexpected Party

The decapitated cadaver shot fireworks out of the orifice in his neck.  

We hook El Poderoso up to Manuel the housekeeper's car with jumper cables.  He sat in his blue Honda and revved the engine while Memo held the cables to the screws on Camelo's wobbly battery.  As the sparks flew, this profound little story (above fireworks) flashed into my head.  El Poderoso sputtered and quit.  Memo disconnected the circuit and connected it again.  Sparks. Another piece of the future flashed into my mind: "Cornelius Dark is totally immersed into those fantastic voyages," and his pencil sketched body decomposes.  With this bit of electrically stimulated prophecy, El Camelo woke from dormancy.  Memo pulled the e-brake, put it in neutral and stepped out of the car, smiling and gesturing to the puttering piece of junk like a valet returning a checked Mercedes to it's owner at the Hilton.  Angelina returned his sarcastic smile lovingly.  I got in the passenger seat and we began our day of errands, triumphantly rolling down the tunnel towards the streets of Querétaro.  But, when Mamá stopped the car so that I could hop out and open the huge wooden doors that give passage to the street, I was distracted by more time travel.  This was the last destination El Poderoso would take me to.  Soon I'd be in Oaxaca and I'd have to find another vessel if I wanted to return metaphysically to mi querido Querétaro and my family here.  The last stop on the relative future of the driveway timeline (instead of toot tooting like a train to tell my memories that it's their stop, El Camelo putt putts): It's two memories, trapped in the same part of my memory, opaque and overlaid like underdeveloped photos with dual images.  

I'm in the kitchen with Mamá and Alejandro Jodorowsky and I'm in the living room with Diego and Cornelius Dark.  Alejandro draws a corpse with blood from his own veins and our laughter shoots fireworks from it's open wound of a neck.  As the laughter dies down, Alejandro brings up a more serious point.  This contemplation is blended with the look of disdain on Diego's face as he lays on the couch for three days eating ice cream to sooth the pain left in the place of his molar.  

"I know a trick to get your mind of that pain," I tell him.  I punch him in the shoulder and fill my right cheek with air to mock his puffed up face.  Rebe runs by me and I pick the little kitten up and throw him at Diego.  He chuckles a bit.  Cornelius Dark looms up through Diego's jaw and grimaces in a painful laugh.  He is Diego's dead body.  He is in the room with us.  I think about what else I can do to cheer Diego up.  Cornelius Dark scoffs at me.  Alejandro Jodorowsky says that God was replaced by his own creation: the first cause after creating nothing but effects for eternities.  I ask my mamá what that means.  Her eyes open so wide I wonder if they're going to pop out and expose her brain.  She starts to talk in a tone that puts me in a trance.  The words she says are instantly encoded in my amygdala and bypass the hippocampus altogether.   I'm unable to write them on my mental sketch pad.  I'm left with just an odd, (imaginary?) image.  Both haunting and mysterious.  She reaches across the table and flips open the top of my head exposing a ball of white wax with a new white wick sticking out of the top.  She lays a flat palm on the smooth shiny surface.  When she moves her skinny fingers past the wick, it ignites, like a gas burner.  I sit there with my head burning for an indeterminable amount of time.  Cornelius Dark's opaque image rises out of Diego as he falls asleep on the couch and the TV babbles on about Hollywood's richest wives.  He's wearing an enormous backpack and an open wound in his chest exposes his heart.  He's rapidly decomposing.  I'll meet him again, I know it.  I think of my own dead body and wish I could meet it like Felipe Delgado.  Even if I never see him face to face, I love this old man and I'll follow him forever.  

The Querétaro streets move past the window slowly and efficiently as El Camelo pulls us across the city.  He's been a good car, a good metaphorical time machine.  Mamá looks at me and asks where my mind is.  She rubs my fuzzy hair that will soon be an burning flame.  

"In Oaxaca."  I say.  And a giant concrete bird full of jazz swoops down from the sky, devours El Camelo, and begins it's migration south.