Guide

« Robert was maybe just maybe one-quarter alive but... Tracy was definitely dead. No fucking doubt a-fucking-bout it. Because she was... upside down ?

Guided By Voices : The hole I dig is bottomless / But nothing else can set me free. »

« Scott reentered the living room, sat.

« Déjà vu, » Luke muttered. He'd seen Scott reenter the room in that exact way before. Time was he'd have figured such thoughts were just fallout from LSD, DMT, Ecstasy... Now he knew they were magical.

Guided By Voices : Oh, I... / wouldn't dare to... / bring out this... / awful bliss. »

« Tracy dipped the pointy tip of her shoe into Chri's black jeans and gave a very slight push.

Guided by Voices : When you motor away / beyond the once-red lips...

« Oh, shit. » Robert stuck out his shoe, kicked. Chris slid a half foot toward the door. His hands did little flip-flops. The palms bloomed. His face sort of... slackened, is one way to put it.

Guided by Voices : When you free yourself / from the chance of a lifetime... »

« Pam's sculpting two teeny clown hats out of Goof's giant nipples. From the look on his face, he seems very, very into it.

Guided by Voices : I'm too tired to run from the tiger / I'm too dumb to hide in the bushes.

Suddenly there's this, like, unbelievable pain. Upper chest. « Oh, fuck. » Goof gasps, gasps, gasps balls his fist. « Please... stop. » »

« It was minutes to closing. A loud, repetitive, dense guitar riff made the store feel unreal and sort of sinister. It could have been old Spacemen 3. Maybe « O.D. Catastrophe », weirdly enough. Chris was learning on one of the cash registers. He had a pale, impish face, blond, disorganized hair, and a slim, lanky body that drove me insane. When our eyes met he shone, period, for a few seconds there. »

« This works fast, » I say, turning to Mason. « If I space too far out, stick around, keep an eye on me, yeah ? » And even as I say this, I'm spacing out.

« Will do, » Mason said. He was over by my VCR, crouched, doing something.

Donovan : Looking through crystal spectacles / I can see I had your fun.

(...)

Scott stared into something beyond the constraints of human language.

Luke's eyes are so mesmerizing they're practically... what ? I study their swirly, multiplicitous color for what seems like days, thinking, Wow.

Donovan: Dow dow dow dow... dow dow... dow... dow dow. »

« « Later, guys. » Chris, hugging himself to keep warm, trotted into a typical, faintly lit mini-mall. When he turned to wave bye, his friend's truck was a dot.

On the truck's staticky radio, Pavement's « Cut Your Hair » cross-faded into... uh, Guided by Voices?

« Let's fucking end it, » said Robert.

(...) Tracy's eyes watered. « Okay, » she said. And she covered her face. »