Interim (from Traffic)

Part of the Traffic short prose series I wrote a while back.  I've been bogged down with reviewing footage and school so I haven't really had the time to write much of anything. This piece is from a while back, about angry grasshoppers.

"Shut the fuck up, you fucking hippie." Jayma growled at Big 900 and twitched her antennae. "You fuck."

"I guess we really don't understand each other." Big 900 placed his beer on the dresser and pulled a goat head from the back of his paw.

"Shut up, you fucking earth rabbit weakling. You're not hearing me. Listen. I'm tired of you talking about your 'wonderful' mother and how much you admire her. I'm sick of listening to the details of your past two relationships and how you 'learned from them'! I'm always comparing myself. Why is it every time we talk about us...you have to talk about PAST relationships? Hey...look...just go roll your penis blunt, smoke it, and get the fuck out of my apartment before I slash my wrists over your bag of Kind. You heard me?"

Big 900 closed his mouth over his large incisors and nodded his head. Jayma could never get him angry. No matter how hard she tried, how much fowl language she'd use, Big 900 never ever got angry.

"Yo, Big." Jayma lit a cigarette and opened a can of spicy V-8. She really wanted to get him pissed. "Your mama used to stick candy canes up her bunny cunt. It's how your sorry ass was conceived, huh?"

Big 900 laughed and Jayma heard Big's friend, Jeremy, giggle from the hallway as a toilet finished flushing. Jeremy walked into the bedroom, his antennae moving like sugar cane.

"You have a nice bowel movement, Jeremy?" Big 900 cut the side of a cigar open.

"Yeah, I had a great B.M. You rollin' one now, Big? You haven't even waited for me to start on mine."

"Well, sit down and start already. I'll teach you a thing or two-"

Jayma cut in. "Yeah, how to be a soft-hearted faggot rabbit!" She sucked on her cigarette like an Orek vacum, her boggy black eyes tried to pierce Big's skull.

Big 900 and Jeremy stared at her. Jeremy laughed softly, sounding like a slipper stuck in mud. She shot him a strong look. Jeremy was a yellow grasshopper. Jayma was bright green. She didn't trust the Yellows. They were too common.

"Oh, she's got you good on that one," Jeremy whispered.

Jayma stared back at Big 900. He just continued to empty the tobacco that was within the leaves of the cigar.

"Had a rough day at work, dear?" Jeremy called to her.

"Hey, fuck you." Jayma sat on her bed. "I don't know why I even invited you assholes over. I don't smoke weed and I have to work tomorrow. A double shift on a Sunday full of Churchies."

"It's 'cause Big is trying to steer clear of those Night Hawks. They're out. They're hungry. It's a full moon. They can see anything from those Trans Ams of theirs."

Jayma pictured Big 900 getting picked up by a Night Hawk. She visualized him getting his spine smashed with a pair of mighty talons on a vinyl back seat and, like the Greek Prometheus, his liver picked apart by a gold-studded beak to the tunes of Judas Priest. The thought made her feel strangely empty and sad. Big 900's bunny blood all over the back of some Trans Am, puddles of thin red liquid splashed over old McDonalds French fry boxes. She shook her scaly head and puffed on her cigarette, those emotions were too strong for her to deal with. She had to turn the soap opera off. Why did she hate him and care for him at the same time?

"Bottom-of-the-Food-Chain, come here." Jayma sat on her bed next to Big 900 and called to her cat, the fat white ball of five year-old kitty flesh. He rolled over passively to her and sat at the foot of her legs. He purred thickly like milkshakes and mud and Jayma pet his tail. "This is the only love I need. The only man I need is this cat."

Big 900 laughed as he licked the shaft of his blunt. "You could broadcast that on the internet."

"Yeah, giggle away, rabbit fag. Lick your dick, funny bunny. You were shitty to me. Always shitty."

"What harm did I ever do to you? I never wanted to hurt you. I never want to hurt anybody," Big 900 said.

"Fuckin' Peace Core slogan writer here." Jayma grunted.

Jeremy laughed and began to run his fresh blunt through his mouth feelers.

"You want to know what you did, cotton tail? I don't know why I have to repeat this to you, you lame brain." Jayma pushed her pink Care Bear off of her bed and stood up on her back legs. "You fucking played me like a die. Rolled me over and tossed me in your paws for a while, threw the die, and then walked away. What...got a bad number...huh?" Jayma extinguished her cigarette in her empty can of V-8.

"I didn't get a bad number," Big 900 retorted. "I just wanted us to be friends. That's all. You are a wonderful grasshopper, Jayma. I want you to be part of my life. Okay? But not if you are hurting all the time...I don't want to hurt you. Gotta fire, Jerms?" Big 900 held his paw out to Jeremy. Jeremy emptied a pink lighter in it.

Jayma's feelers were shaking. Brown juice was starting to ooze from her mouth. She stood herself up taller. "And then you go off and get nasty with some fucking newly hatched chicken. Right after me...what's up with that?"

"Look, I'm all about showing love. She was just this wonderful wonderful chick and all we did was kiss, exchange some words, drew a little. She's going off to Rhode Island to study art this fall after she leaves the nest. And then that is it...no big deal alright. I felt guilty about it..but didn't think I should have. Look, I care about you, but I don't think you are understanding that situation."

"Yeah. I don't understand how someone can be all excited about someone, like me, and then NOT be excited about me, and then go off and get all close to someone else after telling the OTHER person, me, that they didn't want to be sexual, be close to anyone, blah, blah. How fucking two-faced is that. You surprise me all the time. You know what..." The brown juice was flowing steadily from Jayma's mouth and began to drip to the floor. Jeremy looked at her, feeling like he shouldn't be listening to the conversation.

"Hold it there, girly!" Jeremy grabbed a mug of pencils, emptied them out, and put the cup under Jayma's dripping mouth on the floor. "You gotta catch that stuff. It's good to smoke when you soak hash in it. You trip out like DMT, but it ain't no three minutes. More like mushroom length."

Jayma ignored him and let the brown grasshopper juices flow.

"You know what, Big,” she was shaking. "I think you are a confused little rabbit with latent homosexual tendencies. In fact, I cannot tell you how many people have thought you to be gay. Yeah, sure. I gave you a hard on. I got you off. You spewed so much stuff, I could have shaved my legs with it. But I think you don't know WHAT you want...ever. You're just some fucking pathetic rabbit dude who has more hormones than there has been lava on planet earth. You will grow up and be ugly and wrinkly like your loser dad and have some wife and then leave her because you found some good-looking jackrabbit or some rooster or donkey ass to penetrate. You'll find a nice ass...out grazing in the meadows...waiting for your patient princely penis to find it's rectal palace. When you get there, when you make entry and sodomize, you'll know what your true calling is. Your search will be over. Until then, you try to deceive yourself by fucking members of the female species."

Big 900 started to light his blunt. "Sex is not part of that," he mentioned calmly. "I'm not about free sex. Just showing people love." He lit his blunt and inhaled deeply, then passed it to Jeremy who'd been running his blunt over with the flame from a pink lighter.

"It makes you no different from some player in a cocktail lounge. You are intimate with the ladies. That is worse than casual sex. You teased with no prolonged consequences of a serious relationship."

"Well, Jayma, looks like we aren't understanding each other." Big 900 exhaled.

He doesn't even have the audacity to aim the smoke at me, she thought. She could never piss him off. Meant he didn't care. Or that he had smoked too much weed to care about anything but weed.

"How you like my blunt?" Big 900 rolled his tiny black eyes to Jeremy.

Jeremy exhaled.

"Fuck, yeah. Nice job, Big. Try mine." He passed the blunt to Big 900.

"Just like little faggot boys...exchanging their phallic toys." Jayma glanced down at the mug under her mouth. It was full of brown juice. "Jeremy...you want this shit from my mouth? I don't want it. I'm about to trash it. I need my mug back for my pencils." She picked it up and started for the kitchen.

Jeremy exhaled quickly and reached out for the mug, almost tripping on his antennae. "No! No! Don't trash it! It makes great smokes! Let me have it if you don't want it."

"Well, get me a different cup for it."

Jeremy looked around him as Big 900 eased back on the bed, oblivious to his environment.

"Someone put on some Marley...please. Or some Burning Spear...please,” Big 900 called from the bed. His eyes were glassy and small like the abdomens of ants.

Jeremy came up to Jayma with an old McDonalds styrofoam coffee cup he had found on the floor.

"You need this for any pencils or anything?" He asked her.

"No, you can have it." She passed the mug to him and he poured the substance into the foam cup and handed the mug back to her. She walked to the kitchen to wash it off, the wood floor creaking under her numerous legs.

"I don't hear Marley. Anyone?" Big 900 called softly from the bed.

"You're not disabled...put your own fucking CD on, fag." Jayma called from the kitchen sink where she turned the faucet on.

I have to get out of this relationship...but I've been saying that for months now, she thought and grabbed the soap from under the sink. He hurts me with his freedom. He has no remorse about what he did to me. I was just some girl grasshopper, a card to shuffle with all the others he did the same thing to. He doesn't think about me anymore. I used to be attractive and now I am not. I used to think that I was so strong and good and wonderful and that once some dude got to know me that he would have a hard time NOT wanting to be in a relationship. Then this fucker goes and rejects me and suddenly I feel like I'm not good enough anymore...for anything. What did I ever do wrong? I have to get out of this relationship with him...even if it is 'just a friendship.' I give too much of myself so now I am empty. I always have to play these control games, these head games to make him say he cares and that he wants me to be part of his life. I feel like some insecure little girl hopper. I am not that...or am I?

Jayma put her mug away and looked at the big bottle of aspirin and half a prescription of Paxil on her shelf. 

Maybe both would be enough...mixed together with Jim Beam. Those and the rest of the St. John's Wort.

She twitched her feelers and flapped her wings to stretch them. Walking back into her bedroom, she put the pencils back in the mug and placed it on her drafting table.

"You fuckers done smoking? You ready to leave so I can shower and go to bed?"

"I didn't get my Marley..." Big 900 had not moved from the couch. He had a stupid look on his furry face.

"Dumb rabbit." Jayma said quietly and twitched a feeler.

"I say we go find some smashed toad carcasses on the road and make a bonfire. Whassup with that everyone? We do it? You heard me?" Jeremy's black eyes were moving within themselves, black holes over the dry desert of his crustaceous body.

"I'm hungry. I just want some chocolate. Let's drive to Rite Aid and find some chocolate." Big 900 sat up, his ears lopsided. Bottom-of-the-Food-Chain meowed. He was licking the floor for some reason.