SHEOL

5

A few years had gone by, here and there in the barren deserts of Southern California. The Slabs were ever changing, new people would move in, the old would move out. Some would like the lifestyle and stay while others would think it vulgar and head to a big city with culture to spare. Sometimes, tourists would show up, as well as news crews or people wanting to film a documentary.

I was 16 now, and still hadn't had a lick of school. I was however, able to speak two languages, read, write, and remember anything. I was born with a photographic memory and was able to recall everything I'd ever heard to the slightest detail.

I couldn't tell you the Pythagorean Theorem, but I could name off eight ways to cook a snake and make it taste good. I wasn't able to tell you anything more about Shakespeare than Romeo and Juliet, but I knew all about illegal drugs and how to make them, though I strongly refused to do them. I was never interested in any of those things, seeing what they had done to my mother.

We still lived in the trailer that we had bought shortly after moving to the Slabs. The culture was still the same, a bunch of hippies and nomads were sprinkled throughout the place. Christianity was a hot topic, with church services held at a trailer on the far side of the site every Sunday. My mother always went to it, but it never really spiked my interest. I always thought of religion as a kind of 'security blanket'. People relied on it to keep them safe from the troubles of the world. I guess I just seemed to have grown out of it.

One of my favorite things to do around the Slabs was to write about people. I guess you could say that writing was my passion, one that I'd never grow out of.

I kept a worn out notebook full of the stories about peoples lives. They were all fascinating in their own special way. For example, there was a man in our local group that I had spoken with a number of times. His name was his most prized possession, he'd tell me. It was unique and what distinguished him from the rest of the world. When he first told me this, I became intrigued. I pleaded and begged for him to tell me it. His response was the same every time: "If I told you my name, it wouldn't be unique anymore. It wouldn't be of value, because if I told you so easily," He would always sigh at this part, in an almost melancholy fashion. "What would be of our little game?"

I visited him every day and talked to him, filling up pages and pages of my little notebook with tales of city life and stock brokers and mafia wars. The man was from the eastward city of Chicago, in the time of mobsters like Al Capone.

"I actually ran into the likes of Mr. Capone, once." He'd tell me as he'd take a sip of alcohol from a dusty bottle. He'd go everyday to Mr. Moonshines camper to fill it up, in exchange for a quarter. That stuff was said to keep you buzzed all day. "It was a dark and rainy night. I had just come out of a diner that I used to go to every Friday for supper. Mr. Capone was trottin' down the street, surrounded by a bunch of other thugs. I recognized him, everybody did. He shot an evil glare as I scurried past." He took another drink. "It seemed like the man had a beef with me before he even met me."

The old mans stories made me fascinated with urban life. I wanted to move to a city that swarmed with people, busy and bustling through the streets. Humans were so fascinating to me. I wanted to learn all about them.

I couldn't very well do that here. Slab City had no more than two thousand people on a good day. I guess that it might have been some sort of a twisted blessing that my mother was finally caught.

The police were tipped of her whereabouts by none other than a guy by the name of Crab, or in other words: my mothers' ex drug dealer who knocked her over the head with a vodka bottle and left her in the middle of the Colorado Dessert.

The guy must not have been able to sleep at night, knowing that she was still out there, lurking. I had only seen the man a couple of times, because he lived on the far side of "town". He was bald, but only on the top of his head. The rest of him looked like his mother procreated with a Sasquatch. He had ocean blue eyes and a large tribal tattoo up his arm. Nobody ever knew the origin of his name, but everyone just assumed it was because he probably had crabs. The mans' pubes were probably thicker than a forest, but I doubt he was smart enough to put two and two together.

Shortly after he moved from the Slabs, he cut contact with everyone there, even his 'girlfriend'. Since then, she'd had a beef with my mother. Even while he was still living there, she didn't like her. She didn't like the fact that one of his clients had the same genitalia as her. If she thought he was going to cheat, she should have left him before things got out of hand.

It was a big scandal when Crab left town and didn't take his girlfriend with him. Everyone accused both my mother and her of being promiscuous. My mother, however, was quickly dismissed from it all, seeing how her brains may have been scrambled after the blunt force trauma to the head.

I felt a bit sorry for his ex, seeing how she couldn't even go outside during the day without being taunted and teased for a crime that she didn't commit. I wanted to talk to her, but she didn't care for me by default. She did get back at my mother, however, by spreading vicious rumors about her. It kind of backfired because no one ever believed them. It was like elementary school, or so I've been told.

Eventually, she got sick of it all and up and left the damn place, taking her new 'boyfriend' with her. I guess dating her new boyfriend was her so called "revenge" directed towards my mother because the guy just happened to be my mothers new drug dealer. Oh, the irony.

Once they left, the Slabs were much less dramatic. I could go around and talk to people in peace, without having to fear that I was going to get shot by a vengeful bitch. Crab left about six months before my mother was caught, and his ex left about three months prior as well. They never made contact with anybody there ever again.