Dawn in the Valley

by Luis Rivas



(page 3 of 3)


And everything goes back to normal.

Dawn is in front of the TV in her apartment again, her brain’s madness slowly subsiding, then she suddenly starts to feel the drowsy grab of the Thorazine. Her brain tells her to fight it, pick up the pipe, smoke it, more, quick, more! But everything is getting calmer with the drowsiness: Frank, the cartoons, the gang fuck, the bathtub faucets, the bathroom steam, the blackness, the coke, the speed, the ecstasy, the Thorazine, the screaming, the screaming, the constant fucking screaming for everything to fucking shut up and die and go the fuck away and just stop fucking touching me you fat, hairy, stinking, goddamn fucking cocksucker, stop it, stop it, stop it, please stop it, please, mommy, please, stop it, please fucking stop it, tell him to stop it, why aren’t you helping, stop it, stop it, make it stop.

– and Dawn passes out on the couch, the cartoons still killing themselves on the screen, her Sidekick still beeping and everything else finally having stopped.


About Luis Rivas


Luis Rivas lives in Los Angeles, California. He was a telemarketer, construction worker, flower delivery driver, fast food cashier, sales clerk, non-profit canvasser, adult store and strip club manager and package handler/zip code sorter. His work has appeared in the following publications, some of which he contributes to regularly: Zygote in My Coffee, Unlikely Stories, My Favorite Bullet, The Hold, Cherry Bleeds, Corium, Rural Messenger Press, Thieves Jargon, Origami Condom, Outsider Writers, Full of Crow, Counter Punch, Gloom Cupboard, where his is Poetry Editor and Red Fez, where he is author of the Last Days of Los Angeles column. He dropped out of Los Angeles Valley College where he was studying journalism to work full-time at a porn shop. Then he got fired. Now he has gone back to school, continuing his studies in journalism and Chicana/o Studies at California State University of Northridge and Los Angeles City College. He is currently building up his own literary website, peaceisillegal.com and plans on publishing a book on his youth. Once upon a time, he grew a beard. (There is evidence on the Internet.)