Flash Friday 5-23-14 chalk drawings, cast iron, japing in Flash Friday

“Urban Voodoo.”

It’s the little things that turn the screw, strip the threads of romance until it becomes that ugly R word; relationship. Relationship has fifty pounds all around the hips and ass. He said ‘Urban Voodoo’ the second I bit into my walking chili cheese dog. Out of context, a non sequitor, a statement that begged a ‘What?’ just as I had a mouthful. Hot dogs kill more people than serial killers. I chewed slowly, methodically, wiped the corners of my mouth, swallowed.

“What does that even mean?” I said and took a messy bite.

“The chalk drawings. Sure, it looks like street art ‘Hey lady five bucks for a caricature?’ I bet they even have an existential script up their sleeves about the transient nature of art, one brief downpour and the ‘art’ goes the way of all things …”

I chewed slowly, took another bite, I wasn’t about to take the pregnant pause bait.

“… but that’s all smoke screen, like the five bucks. You know what they’re doing right?”

I looked him dead square in the eyes, snarling a bit around the edge of the chili dog.

“Imprinting your soul on the city. It’s undirected voodoo; not to endanger your body or possess it, but …”

He smiled a bit. I wiped my finger around the greasy dog paper. How many times have I obessed over the honeymoon and written off the anatonmy of --- the sourmoon.

“Knifing your soul on the altar of the city. A bloody spiritual sacrifice in colored chalk and exaggerated flaws; big nose, wide eyes. The five bucks is complicity, the devils wages.”

I wadded up the paper and held it out to him. When you hold something out to someone they automatically take it. I don’t know why, but they do.

“Shut the hell up you pretentious fuck.”

“See? Your soul.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

The dog grumbled a bit in my tummy.