Milk of Amnesia

by Dennis Mahagin

He was waiting for me, in a too-tight, bone-white jumpsuit, wearing Beatle boots, and glops of mascara that ran down his alabaster cheeks. He was young Malcolm McDowell, holding a silver paint can by a rusty wire handle, latte foam cascading from the crusted brim like cotton candy. "You will be having some of THIS?" Malcolm hissed. Lately I'd so longed, to be put under - a miscreant in welder's hood shooting steam from a window like every espresso machine, with no idea how the Freddie Mercury lyrics had barnacled to my buck-toothed palette, as so many angry Alka Seltzer pellets. Yet still, who could blame me for balking a bit, there in the archway as if to ward off a corporeal Mormon with beanie and Rapture in the backpack, who'd already wiped my slate three-quarters clean for Judgment Day? "It may taste a tad sour, laddie, at first, when you know there's no going back," whispered Mal, tipping the can straight into my face as I gulped and gulped and gulped and gulped and gulped - could not reckon with my thirst.

6S

Dennis Mahagin is a poet from the Pacific Northwest. He edits fiction and poetry for FRiGG magazine, and blogs here.