A stadium reassembles itself from a pile of rubble.
A massive luxury jetliner, outfitted with a 30-foot-long couch and a working fireplace, takes off in reverse and hurtles backwards across the Atlantic, gobbling contrails the whole way.
Three middle-aged men moonwalk across a stage, disappearing into the wings. In separate green rooms, the men sit under dryers that wilt their permed hair.
Lawsuits are withdrawn. Baptist preachers swallow complaints. A coroner erases “death by misadventure” from an autopsy report.
A bile-soaked bolus of vodka, orange juice, and ham sandwiches dislodges from a man’s throat, travels down his narrow esophagus, and splashes into the pit of his ravaged stomach. The man’s wilted lungs grow fat with air.
Fire hoses drag an unruly mob towards a ticketing outlet. Concertgoers carrying guns and knives are welcomed back into an arena. A firecracker un-explodes, skitters offstage and flings itself into a crowd of people, its fuse lit.
A Laurel Canyon pool expels a dozen naked bodies. Noses arrange neat lines of white powder onto antique mirrors. Blood stains leech from a white suit.
A child’s grave is dug up and his body is restored to the same foreshortened life, only this time the child will be cursed to shrink smaller and smaller in size, until the day he finally dives, tiny and purple and screaming, back into his mother.
First responders arrive at a charred New Orleans hotel room and methodically set about building a series of small fires. Seven stories below, a street sweeper spreads a patina of urine, gasoline, and horseshit onto the asphalt-paved streets of Jackson Square.
Four young men pass cocktail napkins back to Elvis Presley so that Elvis can erase his autograph from each of them.
Jagged shards of broken glass arrange themselves into champagne bottles, and then those bottles rocket upwards into open hands stretching out of high windows. Samurai swords stuff feathers back into couch cushions. A pile of splintered wood, snapped wire strings, and chipped ivory becomes a grand piano.
A nineteen-year-old becomes a fourteen-year-old. Her boyfriend bumps into her at a party and tells her hello, never to see her again.
A priest restores the spirit of Satan to a house in the countryside, as the house’s chimney inhales heavy black smoke.
Heavy statues of Krishna, Buddha, and Odin pass back through customs and return to their countries of origin. Keys to the city are presented to mayors. Wads of damp bills representing every European currency are stuffed back into a paper sack.
A nude man walks toe-to-heel down the aisle of an airplane. A woman gives birth to a shark.
Amps are unplugged. Expensive lighting rigs vanish from a warehouse. Recording tape winds back into spools. Parents receive refunds for music lessons. A Spanish guitar vanishes into thin air. The racket coming from a basement suddenly ceases.
A carpenter’s son sucks nails from a block of wood with his hammer.
One by one, four teenage boys forget about Elvis Presley.
