EAST TEXAS & WEST TEXAS

Notes, man. Notes notes notes. I am compiling notes. I am a student of existence. We all are. Sure, I want to get laid. But I also want answers to the biggest questions. You cannot stop a hungry mind. 

The StB is everywhere & nowhere. The sky machines circle the Žížkov TV tower. Prague is a disaster. A graveyard for the mind. 

President Jennifer Washingmachine is playing jarts on the White House lawn. 

A poodle gets injured. 

Detective Zig gets a telephone call. It is his best friend Igor, a dissident poet: “1st of August, motherfucker! Are you ready? How can you be? We don’t even know what it means. Not yet. Not until we know. You feel your nervous system throbbing? Are you alive?”  

Names names names. I am collecting names. If you get enough names, you get to the bottom of things. 

Detective Zig is working a case. A hard case. An impossible case. A double murder. A triple murder. How deep does a rabbit dig a hole? Detective Zig figures pretty deep. 

Challenging behavior. That is what Zig’s wife calls it. His youngest son Carlito is having technology temper tantrums. Raging. Destroying the house. Neither parent knows what to do about it. Nothing seems to work. Spankings make it worse. Ride out the storm.  

Texas is threatening to separate again. A state the size of Ukraine. 

An oil rig in the arctic drills into a metallic extraterrestrial object. Intelligence officials say it might be a spaceship. 

Tremors in spacetime are wreaking havoc on telepathic minds. Leaks from the future & the past are especially dangerous. Thoughts from centuries ago. Thoughts from beings on other planets. Colony planets. Alien planets. 

Detective Zig has enough paperwork for a paper plane. A squadron of paper planes. His partner Detective Ivanka is disturbingly attractive. Sometimes Zig throws paper planes at Ivanka to annoy her. She often retaliates. The office is a perpetual air war. 

She drops hints.  

Zig is shy about sex.  

Forgets what it is like. Detective Ivanka licks her lips. 

The Texas thing is interesting. Everybody is watching. Everybody on the planet. President Jennifer Washingmachine masses infantry troops on the border. Texans eat burgers at Whataburger. 

“What do you think?” Ivanka says. 

“About what… Texas?” Zig says, watching the TV. 

“No, silly.” 

Sergeant Pepper barges into the office. Looks around at all the paper planes. At the empty cups of coffee. At the TV. Raises his arms and yells, “We need results! Where are the results?” 

“Forthcoming, Sarge,” Detective Ivanka says, “forthcoming.” 

The metropolis is blooming. Detective Zig & Detective Ivanka walk up & down the Vltava River in search of clues. “You see anything?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Me, either.” 

An empty rubber boot. 

A duck. 

A swan. 

A few tourists snap photographs of the stone bridge. Egg-yolk mortar. Giant stones only a golem could lift. Statues of soot-blackened saints lurk with scoliosis. A raven perches itself on a crown. 

“It’s pretty much inevitable, isn’t it?” Ivanka says. 

“What is?” 

“Us going to bed.” 

“Please stop, Ivanka. We need to solve this case.” 

“Do you really mean that?” 

Zig lowers his sunglasses. “Probably not.” 

A few thoughts here & there. That is what life is. Somewhere in Prague a murderer prepares to murder. There is murder everywhere, really. Wars. 

Detective Zig says he wants a simpler life. 

Why the homicide squad? 

Why not secret police? 

Or traffic patrol. 

“You like your job,” Detective Ivanka says. “I can tell. The power to walk onto a bloody crime scene. You can’t fool me.” 

Zig smirks, “And you’re the same.” 

The human traces of existence in Prague or anywhere else for that matter… we are detectives… we hunt for clues… we are seekers… we are meaning-makers… please, do not jump to conclusions… 

My eyes fixed on a forever highway… we drive towards Marfa, Texas… certain of never arriving. She leans over and whispers into my ear: Are you satisfied with your ersatz reality? 

Prague is a city of contours. Prague is a topology.  

The contour of a body against the contour of a body… she inhabits a body inhabiting a body that is being inhabited… our bodies are machines for living in. 

Ivanka’s boyfriend is a derelict. He no longer works. He sits in taverns & gets annihilated. They no longer sleep together. Not really. If she can squeeze sperm out with a blowjob, she obliges. 

The apartment is too small. 

Things need to change. 

Soon. 

“A dead body is a dead body,” Zig says. 

It is terrible & true. And yet there is always a story behind the story. 

Detective Ivanka is looking at the fingernails. 

The girl fought.  

The electric trams are lonely at night. Zig is no longer able to sleep. The Texas wars have begun in earnest. East Texas against West Texas. It is a bloodbath. The TV doesn’t really show the meat grinder. The missing limbs. The torsos. The heads. 

Prague is a sanctuary. 

Refugees from Texas arrive. Big hats. Thirst for a proper beer. 

I see you seeing. Can you see me seeing? Can we redouble our efforts? Binocular vision. Quadocular vison. Quadratic vision. Octocular vision. Quantum vision? 

The spy is the first to see. 

The spider. 

The web. 

Czechs are more Texas than anything else. Texas Czechs. Kolache festivals. Klobase festivals. Hold on a sec… lemme muster up some sauerkraut & mustard. Are you East Texas or West Texas?  

A war like this can go on forever. A forever war. 

Under the RFK Bridge you find what you are looking for. A football pitch of artificial turf. Long Island is never the same after a Soviet missile hits Ronkonkoma. Only a few people survive at the eastern tip. Zig & his family live in a lighthouse at Montauk. 

Keep the light on. 

There are ships in the Atlantic. 

by R.G. Vasicek

R.G. Vasicek is a lo-fi novelist in NYC. Vasicek's latest thingamajig is 404 ERROR from Equus Press in Prague.