43. Jimmy
Do you believe in reincarnation? Jimmy says death is the most beautiful thing. He’s an expert. Been there, done that. Jimmy says, when you die, you don’t die. Yer still aware of your surroundings. You just can’t respond.
Dead with your eyes wide open, you see everything till they rot away. And since you can’t close your ears, well too bad, all the awful things people say behind your dead body after those same mouths word the most eloquent eulogies, makes you wish maggots would just quickly eat through the eardrums so that your world can be a silent movie.
Oh, and don’t mention about smelling your own decay. Or how uncontrolled bowels stream to the delight of famished flies.
According to Jimmy, the cadaver feels, that’s why that pervert, my father, suffered from premature rigor of the genitalia during the administration of fellatio. Necrofellatio. I know, my bad. Habit that bastard cock had imprinted onto my mouth a thousand lives. Now I always give willingly, just ask Jimmy. He gets a lot of it. It’s like it’s my duty, boyfriends don’t have to ask, I feel if I love him, I gotta blow him.
Sorry, I’m young and I get distracted easily. Jimmy’s talking death and I’m not really listening. We’re on the run. Wanted for murder. Jimmy says it sucks no one appreciates the art part. He was so beautiful, sitting serene on a toilet bowl with trousers round the ankles. Uncoordinated socks, the only tiny detail out of place in the symmetry. Behind, on the wall, a Rorschach inkblot made of gunshot residue, caked blood, brain pulp, flesh matter and bone shrapnel.
Jimmy says red is such a bore. He doesn’t comprehend the morbid fascination with serial killers. Blood spatter, the insides of man, or beast, all one colour. How dull is that? What if, instead of just uninteresting red, creatures are composed of other hues as well? Even if it’s just adding in cyan, yellow or magenta, based colours to the natural key of blood, this would already provide a pantone of fun.
Elementary murderers could do like kindergarten art. Hand prints and incomprehensible montages of messy shapes. I mean, most crime scenes are plain muddy anyway. And all in that same bloody red! More colours would brighten up any detective’s day. Police can’t wait to arrive at another homicide. Especially the artistic ones.
Jimmy, his art is black belt. He can put a gun in the mouth, and what comes out at the other end when he pulls the trigger is a masterpiece; more captivating than Mona Lisa’s smile, more abstract than Picasso, more mind-bending than Dali.
Bang! And you get farm scenery. Bang! Or modern art, those you can read anything in to. Of course Jimmy can also do one shade. Red, if must. Bang! Sketch of a nude replacing what used to be a head.
But Jimmy, he prefers pictures. He’s old school. Says, these blobs of random patterns, neo-art, supposedly possessing deep insightful meanings behind, bullshit! All bullshit. Any novice can do that, any monkey. Try doing a sunflower field, or the Eiffel tower. Try doing it with one shot. Only one shot. Now that’s what I call art, he says, recoiling to get some sleep in a dingy motel we’re hiding in.
Jimmy, he snores like a rattlesnake. He says you’re god. He’s talking in my dreams.
Every artist is god. In his hand, it’s just paint. Till he decides what to do, it’s all the same thing. Bought from the same shop, made by the same manufacturer. Twelve colours or more in a pack. Blue can be the sea or the sky, or even a teapot, but till then, it’s just blue.
Same then, till he pulls the trigger. Before that, the same pulp, the same blood, the same brain. After that, after Jimmy’s decided, after the bullet’s done its job...wild horses running in the wind! In the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. Before that... Before that he was deciding. Contemplating. Before that, it was all the same matter. In the beginning god could have created just a metal block with nothing inside. He could have made robots instead of man. Circuitry instead of artery. Male, female and, or, something else. Something else altogether. You imagine. You can. You’re god.