RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

Pjornipol (pure-nip-ole) Kid: part I

Not too long ago, a boy named Michael Pjornipol looked puzzlingly into his bathroom mirror and wondered why anyone was looking back at him. He was vaguely high off the lingering effects of dirt-cheap weed spiced with rock cocaine. His nerves weren’t healthy and his hands shook like young maple branches in a spring breeze. He was afraid, but not of anything in particular.

He turned on the sink – cold only – and put water on a face that didn’t feel like his own. He looked again at the mirror and couldn’t quite believe that was him either.

Michael took three deep breaths and felt a little better. He squeezed his hands and pulled on his fingers one at a time. The tremors that shook his body before had faded into that slight twitching in his fingers. His stomach felt empty, but he didn’t feel like eating. Michael used the familiar hand towel draped over a small bar above the sink to dry his face. The towel felt nice, almost transformative.

He looked out the window and watched traffic pass by. He lived on a quiet suburban road, but could see the highway in the distance. He pushed the window up on silent felt tracks and pulled out the screen set behind it. Leaning out into the warm night air he listened for the highway. With his head beyond the walls of the house, he could hear the steady stream of traffic, punctuated by a truck downshifting or a car with bad exhaust system.

The sound relaxed him. The idea of the motion, its energy, the order of the traffic and the miracle of its liquid functionality made him feel better. He listened until his hands stopped shaking and he was too tired to care who or what stared back at him through the bathroom mirror.