They say the average man thinks about sex every seven seconds. Death perverts my thoughts.

The women float in. Into the chamber with blacked-out walls, floor and ceiling, which renders the illusion of an expanse as infinite in all directions as space/time itself. The floorless room makes the girls’s movements seem as though they swim through space. One of them, a redhead, carries a cat o’ nine tails. It’s Lana Pierce.

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A dot of red light slices through the darkness and dances on the wall next to my head; the abruptness its existence from the previous nothingness skips my heart, causing me to sit up in bed with a start. The laser finds my face, and sparkles and stars of crimson light burst inside my eye; I turn to follow the beam to its source–a charred and hollow building across the street with dark, gaping windows–but the light dies with the same curtness as it started before I can determine its exact origin.

My stomach protests its emptiness so I dig into the box of Graham crackers sitting on my lap. They do the job at filling the void in my belly but aren’t very satisfying so I snatch my pants off the floor and extract my wallet from it. While counting my money for a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake run, I realize ID is gone. I left it at the library with the clerk when I singed up for Internet time on the public PC. I eat a cracker while I slip on my sneakers, pull a hoodie over my head, then head out the door and back to the library before it closes.

A half-veiled moon casts its glow upon Hollywood Boulevard. The street teems with partiers, street performers, booths, and tourists dressed in costumes. Pinocchio makes out with a naughty nurse in a doorstep. A different song blares on sound systems set up every other block. Sparkle sticks flash and fizzle. I jostle past an overweight family (dressed in normal clothes) as the father buys sweet smelling street meats and sausages that sizzle and pop on a vendor’s gas powered push cart. Popcorn, tickets, and confetti litter the street. Three kids dressed in glow-in-the-dark skeleton costumes skateboard tandem up and down a halfpipe; two loft back-to-back McTwist on the near face and the other skater floats a stale fish on the other; the crowd erupts in cheers. They knee slide down the walls I recognize Steve Caballero, Mark Gonzales, and Tommy Guerrero. I turn down Ivar street and walk the two blocks to the library.

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