Previous spread: Peter Hewitt banks an eight
ball into the corner pocket at the new pool in
Ontario, CA.
Left to right: Jackson Taylor is trouble; take him
to a bar in the Avenues and he'll start poppin' shit.
One of the sharpest knives in the Butcher's drawer is
his backside flip. Here Diego Bucchieri slices up a
street gap. Chop, chop.
gain his bearings. Knowing he was
dead was as good a place to start
as any.
Having easily resigned to his fate,
Miguel now sought answers. The
one all-encompassing question was
the one that lay before him. The
question was now his world. What
in the name of God was he? Why
was he this... beast? Or is it a bug?
Snake?
It was not a spiritual apparition,
a symbolic representation of self,
or any other bullshit along those
lines. He was a living, breathing
monster. A strange state to be in
for a dead man.
Miguel could feel the hard, heavy
weight of its body, his body, pressed
against the metal floor. Although his
breathing wasn't labored, he could
feel his elongated midsection
greatly rising and falling, with a
growing strength each time. The
five senses in which he had per-
ceived life as a human were still in
working, even heightened, order.
But now there were many, many
other outlets of perception.
As Miguel stared at the wall of
finely polished metal that served as
a mirror, gazing upon his new self
(is it a serpent? rodent?), he had his
first inclination of having perhaps
been improved.
His first assumption was that he
had died and gone straight to hell.
Hell and monsters seemed a likely
pairing. But this theory did not ring
true. Hell would've felt more like an
irreversible ending. This felt like
only the beginning of something.
Something big.
On cue, it was his image
alone, not the room that grew
suddenly brighter.
Even with hell discounted, heaven
wasn't even a consideration. My
God, Miguel thought, to have this be
the great reward every religion
strived for. He couldn't fathom a
universe ordered as such. Fuel to
the confusion was the fact that
Miguel simply knew this was not
some sort of purgatory, either. His
soul was not adrift in his current
state, it was non-existent. There was
not a stillness of time and space,
there was a momentum building.
86 THRASHER
87