Half/hour

It's a wedding_i work as a caterer.

-hey,Ayoub, how much longer to the end of this bullshit ? i ask a piss-ugly, hyperactive, mentally screwed-up Arab.

he dosenT say anything_he gapes at me_he grins like a cheshire cat_his face twitches_he blinks his bung eyes_he jerks his head forward_he shoots up the whites_claps his hands_jumps_spins around_stops.

-half/hour, he spits it out_salivates_long spittle he flings around his neck like a scarf and darts away into dense crowd of drunken guests swaying,trembling,rocking,shaking on the dance floor sunk in a carpet which like a lawn has been fertilized with stinking feet, gobs of spit, dipterous insects, sweat and puke.

-half/hour, i repeat to myself as i limp back like a beaten dog to a dark corner where by a tall, arched window painted black by the night outside, my disgust and despair has built a doghouse draped in futility, misery, and slavery.

i have been slaving away another day_12 hours_for a fucking pittance_720 minutes of exhausting,debilitating, life-annihilating drudgery_3700 seconds of lying, acting, and pretending.

during the cocktail hour i couldnT bear the sight of a roasted pig with distended stomach_the pig gaped with black, burnt, incrusted with yellow lard holes for eyes at the fat, smeared with blood and spittle faces of guests_the pig held between its black stumps a lemon_there was also a prosciutto tree about 2 feet tall with transparent slices of meat which were like pages torn out from some book written by manS gross gulosity_plates piled up high with meat poisoned with fear_animals slaughtered to be shitted out.

that was before_now, iAM in the ballroom_a humongous interior lighted up with 12 huge crystal chandeliers made out of thousand of frozen beads of sweat_walls dappled with shadows of a faceless multitude_silhouettes of lives irrevocably wasted in alcoholism gluttony greed avarice stupidity_the guests fumble among slim-legged tray stances with silver dumping balls which like open skulls shamelessly exposed the content of their brimful with unbearable waste minds.

iVE been serving 12 monsters without eyes_without mouths_without ears_with dilated toothless hairy assholes impaled on stiff spines with hemorrhoids for tongues they reach for and lick and suck in raw meat.

iAM bleeding with sticky stinking sweat.

my face is whipped/slashed/cut with rank breaths_daubed with orders and complaints.

my black tux is soaked in sweat gushing out form pores into shallow ponds fringed with salty satins under my armpits.

my feet stink_they reek with pain_a pair of black sneakers nests corns wrapped in foul smelling socks.

grotty, obese, slouching motherfucker waves me over to come to his table_i jerk my body forward_i hobble_i take out a note pad covered with caricatures i have drawn before.

-yes, sir, what can i get for you, i ask him with polite impatience.

-YEAH!, he belches out_Johnny Walker on the rocks

-yes,sir.

i turn around and slowly wobble to the bar which like turd is mobbed by a buzzing swarm of boozers.

i bring the drink back to his table and stagger back to the doghouse_invisible and yet so ominously present inside which half/hour is undressing herself painful seconds.

you may wonder, and rightly so, how come despite my being so tired and disgusted with this place_this job_these monsters i serve, i stand still in the corner looking down at the black carpet.

itS because i must pay the fucking rent_$900 to a couple of appallingly ugly and dismayingly stupid yokels only god knows from where since he has always been blamed for creating this world and its hellish populace_only god knows what scummy womb my landdeadlords were shitted out, wrapped up in slime and excrement stinking up my life.

i must pay for a place where i can wash and lay down my exhausted, aching with futility and slavery flesh_to rest only to bring it back to work to serve fake, disgust-disguising smiles to a horde of faceless, heartless, souless, mindless, lifeless puppets_to punch in and out the enslaving certitude of a morrow_

iAM tired_so unspeakably beaten_i start hallucinating.

i can see my disgust clothed in baudlerian red velvet jacket, strolling among a hundred or so cloned from hypocrisy lives that drag behind them drunken with guilt regrets_stoned with fixation neurosis_obese with sinful past sins_pale and famished with illusions experiences_i can see my disgust now caressing regretS_bleeding wounds with salty insults_shlunking in neurosis' convulsed face viscous aversion_patting sin' celluloid ass with holy perversity_spitting in experience wide open eyes cataractal curses.

SUDDENLY!! loud piercing crushing noise CRUSHBRAAMBOOMBINGCLANKBANG!!!!rents the thick with boredom and misery membrane of space. some caterer has dropped the tray: broken glass, chewedup/spatout oddments, bones, napkins dirtied with expression they wiped off painful to look faces_

the bosses are running_with vindictive looks peeling off their red with anger faces. they are whipping/lashing/flailing with commands the horde of shitless scared caterers who have flocked to clean this beautiful mess.

-YOU! YES YOU! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU STARING AT ! GET A MOP! CLEAN THIS FUCKING MESS UP!

-AND YOU! BRING ME A NAPKIN,RIGHT AWAY!

The caterers; fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, girlfriends and boyfriends_every and each one of them like a cheap, toothless whore afraid of her pimp-master runs to get mops, brooms, napkins and_one shit-faced brown-nose asks_and what else?_anxious and fearfull to fulfill the order which like a ziplles fuck was rammed into her frazzled asshole.

The caterers come to work every day_punctual and obedient as slaves can only be_some, though they may have a day off will still call in to make sure that the boss doesnT want to whip their faces with his limp-whim dick. others, after having their cold, listless, lifeless carcasses revived in front of flat like their lives tv screens_illusion spinning dvdS_come to work!

how repulsive!_appalling!_they are at work when they steal 10 seconds to puff a smoke_their lips always dry and cracked with silent curses_they keep throwing over their slopping shoulders fearfull glances_shitlessscared puppets_always and forever on the look out for their "masters".

But, now and here iAM one of them_but not like them !_NEVER_I put on the show, let all and sundry use me and abuse me_then,at "home"when i hatch myself out of this cocoon of stinking,dirty tux, i pick up a pen and mock and desecrate the slaves and their masters.

iAm tired_unspeakably so_begin hallucinating.

I see belches flying up like bats, bouncing off my numbed senses_halitosis swarming like hornets, stinging my face with stinking stings_jackals_reptiles_huge fat spineless crocodiles whriting_blind elephants with long fat trunks pierced with eyes_cross-eyed vultures_skinned cows pigs sheeps_headless owls and eyeless pigs_

SUDDENLY! the 12 huge crystal chandeliers are ablaze with jarring light that rips apart the cloth of imagination_the end of the bullshit party_the drunken crowd of guests like mud slowly flows back into shallow cracks of their wasted but satieted lives_they are gone!