CHAPTER III: Charlie Everywhere

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I ain’t no hippy.
— vera

        It was ever when I said the same thing again.
Thence, a third time—summoning the woman from beyond the sky—did he materialize before my very eyes. Not a dream.
        ; upon from the distant land I know.
        It’s too bright to be kitten in the corner now.
        So where did we go? Down into the deep, then up and up and up. Beyond the bottom of everything lies a Void where there are vampires who eat our words to make their blood. Across the way to the top is not a long shot. The moat is treacherous, the castle wide, but the dragon knows it like the back of his eyes.  
        You can jump it
        if you move your legs.
—When was the last time we spoke?
—Oh I don’t know. I know Charles Manson is dead though.

        Focusing isn’t the task when something straight in front of you is looking to the back. That’s the main reason. It has something also to do with believing in what your mind is naturally inclined to perceive.
        I often hear the Earth playing Doom & Quake; shattering its own bones in the cobweb of my brain. There’s a Linq, shall we say. It opens in the passage cleft horizontal in the rocky dead corridor of Norwegian metal. I don’t know why, but I know well the way. There are many going in, but none going out. From there the elevator sends you up;

or down.
—When traveling with others, it’s a good idea to go the same way.
        I stole that from a book of philosophy.
Obviously.
—In some strange sense, that may mean there’s a memory. 
        Of course there is, though you’ll have to go digging. Didn’t I mention that before the beginning?
        The level is listed, but it doesn’t exist.
        We each know the feeling of falling in darkness; scream, but no scream.
        WAKE UP!!
        The oceanic vacuum of black sweeping wraiths becomes your family, friends, and lovers in the thing. The faces are all wrong sometimes, but sometimes not. We go and do nonsensical things and say the next day, I saw you yesterday.
—In a dream?
 
—It was ever when I said the same thing again.
        BOOM it sets in, weighing anchor with heavy chains, you know it. The See. You know who you are—that is, in a dream—and you recognize all of the others.
—If you know yourself the way I know you...
—then whether you are here or not is irrelevant, I know. 
 
        You don’t need crystals to see into the past, but it helps. They’re called telescopes. Going forward is what seems to be the problem. 
—What are you thinking about?
        Right now it’s Stage Right, Mandalay Bay—second story balcony—the robots revving chainsaws in pursuit of the second Marilyn.
—Bring out the pussy licker!
—Hail to the Zombie!

        Hook. Them. Horns. We spell it sVtVn. Then pounding and thrashing, fists to the sky, the Magic Show reads: Watch the Devil Poke a Needle Through His Eye!
        It was Guh-Tars and bleeding; a knife got trashed.
        Way too drunk, but not too drunk. Different kind of buzz going on that time.
—I like to make us portal dive into Crystal Valentine’s. 
        That place where the music don’t stop. I took us there many times, on the road once, no less.
It was the way the sun had set, we knew the moon would be burnt up; 
—And it was. 
        The silent bubble wrapped around for a little bit of time, and there—to be alone—was all we knew to do. It worked, the spell cast:. 
        The memory we summoned from beyond the below was bought with the blood of vampires we’d fed into before. Viva Las Vegas, believe me.
—There’s no I in Hollywood.
—But if it wasn’t for them it would be never when we did the same thing again.

        That’s true.
        Robert sounds much older than he used to.

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