I could eat cornflakes out of his skull.
I ate cornflakes out of his skull.
I love cornflakes. I hate people. Animals converse with me. Yell and whisper. Prophecies.
I roam the filth and decay of the ghetto gardens heaped with busted bicycle wheels, rotted sofas, withering weeds, sloppy refrigerators tilted on their sides. I watched a mutt shit in one. Curling shit where mayo and bologna were kept cool. The mutt whispered. Seething, festering sore. I spat on the pesticide-soaked soil. A man fell from a window. Maybe he was pushed. It rained glass and splinters. His skull cracked and his brains squished out. A bum across the way blinked. He smoked his marijuana. His eyes dazed. Death in the piss hole. Just another Monday.
I found a rusty hacksaw and severed the skull from the broken neck. I carried his skull through the dirty streets to my fifth-floor walkup. I clean the skull. Filled it with milk and cornflakes.
My black cat screeched. “Cornflake man. Kill, kill, kill.”
“I didn’t kill. The skull fell from heaven.” The cat was a bitch.
The cat disagreed. “The man was pushed. Murder, murder, murder.”
I ignored the cat, finished my cornflakes, and set the skull on the shelf with twelve other skulls. Number thirteen. I turned in a circle fifteen times. It makes the bad stay in corners.
In the morning I woke from sunlight jabbing my eyes. The skulls dazzled and winked. There was a black dog next to my bed.
“Cornflake man,” whispered the dog.
I got out of bed. All the cornflakes were gone.
“I have to go shopping.”
Outside. The world hurt. Things spoke that shouldn’t. I wanted to cry. A hot ocean of tears but I had a destiny. I was the cornflake man.