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AT 19, THEY GAVE HIM THE STREETS. TONIGHT, THEY’RE GOING TO TAKE
THEM BACK…

…BUT NOT WITHOUT LOSING A FEW LIMBS.

+

Johnny drove his 1983 Pontiac Trans Am, painted white with spattered streaks of blood cascading in all directions, as he cruised down the neon-saturated, post-midnight streets of Alphabet City. The digital speedometer displayed 70 mph in luminescent red.

Johnny be good. Johnny be good.

Injected with an overdose of paroxysmal exploitation, god-have-mercy on their body parts, exiting a grindhouse machination ground down to defiled filaments of meat, all while under the influence of drifting love and pearlescent eyes. Johnny forgot to kiss his girlfriend goodbye before he left in the late evening. He didn’t feel like it, wasn’t in the mood. He left her and his infant daughter a little past midnight.

***

“Johnny … … … … … … …my boy… … … … … … … …”

“… … … … … … … … …”

“You know what you have to fuckin’ do.”

“… … … … … … … … … …yeah.”

“… … … … … … …Ack! Ack! Ack! Brrrr!… …*sniff *sniff… … …ok then, Johnny. In that case… … …I suggest you get goin’.”

I thought I was Vincent. I thought that was my name. But I have no fucking clue who Vincent is either.

On the other side of the line, the Mob Boss hung up his phone and lit a cigar. Johnny also disconnected, put down his DynaTAC cell phone, and continued driving to complete his assigned task.

Shifting into fallen octane—you can’t kick Alphabet City. Discussing souls, heat on request, chasing time on the marauder’s wolves. Clutches of time/space in the neon-bleeding skyline and midnight heart in which a city masticates raw meat. Newborn rain of burning rackets and impoverished screens loading/crashing. The synthetic night runs the neighborhood.

The coke dealer stood on the corner as the rain continued to fall. Neon shimmers off the wet pavement, reflecting kaleidoscopic blurs of entanglement. Johnny parked next to the curb to greet the coke dealer, named Lippy, as prostitutes walked by, giggling, their decorated hands
stroking the hood of Johnny’s Trans Am.

Johnny was left in control by the Mob of various criminal operations in Alphabet City, and Lippy was one of the dealers he was in charge of.

“Hey, man you got blood all over your car, … brother,” said Lippy. Johnny remained in car with window rolled down.

“I do?”

Johnny, somehow, had just noticed the splatters of blood that were scattered about on the white paint of his Trans Am. “Huh… … … … …I guess I do.”

“Look, forget it.” Lippy leaned in closer to Johnny and placed his right arm on the roof of car. He wanted to be discreet about something—that much Johnny could tell. Johnny didn’t care as long as Lippy pushed his weight tonight. “It’s that motherfuckin’ director. I swear I’m gonna kill that motherfucker if I catch him alone.”

“Michael!” shouted an approaching junkie, slouched and dazed.

Michael? Who the fuck is Michael? That’s Lippy…

“Man, don’t be comin’ up to me if you don’t got the motherfuckin’ money, EARL! You already owe me from last week. Just get the fuck oughta here, man!” replied Lippy to Earl the Junkie.

Johnny, with time ticking and having no time for bullshit, pulled out his revolver, pointed it out the window towards Earl, and said, “You heard him… … …move on.” Earl the Junkie slithered back from the direction he came from.

Lippy turned his attention back to Johnny, looked in his eyes and said, “Just keep an out for ‘em.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

All Johnny does is chase yesterday.

The high is clear. Pushing chronologically all mothers who are alone and the burning sister. Do you overdose or overdrive on the drug? Return to her love and show her the swimwear at the end of our origin. And Fuck. All night.

The television analogs a flashback:
Deep lacerations but couldn’t stop cutting and hacking and hacking and cutting. The spurts of technicolor red form puddles on the concrete from the fresh wound. Why Vincent—why? And if you do it all the time why not all the time? Why not? Why not?

But there is no yesterday. Not anymore. Johnny killed that and– “FUCKER HAD IT COMIN’! HE HAD. IT. COMIN.”—once he knew it was gone forever, he knew there was no coming back. Angie and Renee will be waiting for him, forever in vain, and little baby Renee will grow up without a daddy.

There was a burning voice inside Johnny’s head. But instead of calling the fire department, he felt an insatiable urge to scalp himself, saw off the top of his skull, and pour gasoline on his neon-bleached encephalon. He had never wanted to prevent the burning. He wanted to become the fire.

Unrequited flares of neon constellations dominate the skies of Alphabet City. Textures of pastel colored grain, dilapidated but not forgotten, echo each frame as it displaces the celluloid. A dead rose inside motionless visions behind the memory of sunglasses and skylines mistaken for dreams replacing the night. A paradise enriched with incandescent indigo flames.

The digital speedometer’s number increased as Johnny sped down the street to reach the apartment complex in which his mother and sister were tenants. In a disoriented, hazed rage, with a motionless stoic face, Johnny ran over junkies, cops, prostitutes, drug dealers, and—quite possibly—a dog. The all white, 1983 Pontiac Trans Am was so drenched in the blood of Alphabet City that it looked like a rare limited variant. Time was of the essence, and he had
to reach his mother and sister before he did.

***

After climbing eight flights of stairs and tossing aside any stupefied tenants who might have stood in his path, Johnny drew out his revolver and kicked down the door of his mother’s apartment. It was quiet. A trail of blood was spotted. Johnny followed. With revolver raised, he slowly followed the blood trail, which led into the bathroom across the kitchen, but he needed to approach the corner to see inside. He wished he hadn’t.

“Hello Johnny, or are you Vincent? … … … … … … … … … … … if I’m being honest… … …I don’t even know who I am anymore, haha.”

A man who was a splitting image of Johnny sat at the edge of the cyan colored bathtub in the already cramped bathroom. Streaks of blood covered the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. Inside the tub, throats slashed, bodies mutilated beyond belief, with limbs missing, were the dismembered corpses of his mother and sister. Johnny remained catatonic at the doorway.

“What… … … … … … …did you do… … … …” Johnny, so in god-fearing shock he softly lowered his revolver to his hip.

“Me?” replied the doppelgänger. “I didn’t do anything… … … … …this is your doing, Johnny… … …not mine… … … …you know, Johnny… … … … … … …ab-sooo-lute-leee none of this would have happened if you would have just played… …your fuckin’… … ROLE.” The doppelgänger soullessly turned his head at an angle to eye the faces of his victims. He laughed a little
under his breath. “Imagine it Johnny… …the look on their faces when they saw it was you who was murdering them in cold blood… … …slaughtering them like the pig sluts that they are… … … …I mean… … …were.” The doppelgänger reached down into the tub to reveal a mini-chain saw. “And now Johnny… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …since I didn’t get the part… …,” doppelgänger revs up chainsaw and the scent of gasoline fills the air, “I’m going to make you into several parts—“

In slow-motion, Johnny raised his revolver. But his lookalike didn’t suffer this unfortunate effect as he leaped off the tub, chainsaw screaming, and jumped on top of Johnny. On the kitchen floor, Johnny’s forearm was capable of preventing the arms of his enemy from coming down. How long this would sustain wouldn’t be very long.

Johnny still had a tight grip on his revolver, but the doppelgänger had it contorted back in such a way that the barrel was pointed right at Johnny’s temple. He had more strength than Johnny, and the chainsaw was inching closer and closer. The smoke filled the room. It was unavailing. No matter what, Johnny was going to die. But after everything, did it matter? What about vengeance? Yeah. What about that? Would that make you smile at least a little bit in the afterlife, whether it be heaven or hell?

The doppelgänger, spit shooting out of his mouth and eyes bulging out of their sockets, said, “Johnny… …don’t you ever wish to end things the director would just yell… …CUT?”

Barrel now pressed up against the flesh of Johnny’s head, replied, “Yeah… …I do.” Johnny took his final breath and pulled the trigger, killing himself. His Other, choking and tensed up, began to cough an abundant amount of blood from his mouth as he, too, took his final breath and collapsed on Johnny, their bodies entwined.

Police sirens could be heard in the approaching background of Alphabet City.

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▶• ılıılıılıılıılıılı.: Hey Vincent… it’s me. I wish I would had stopped you that day. Me and Renee are calling from a motel. God I hope you get this message… … …I found someone. He is a sweet guy. He actually reminds me of you. Please don’t try looking for us. We love you, and always will… but
being with you just felt like being trapped in an elevator and then someone bad, some evil phantom cutting the cable… forever free falling with Renee, crying in my arms, dropping to a certain doom.

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Heath Ison lives. Cinema of Cruelty is forthcoming.