Lost Highway 2

It doesn’t matter that the witch is dead. I put things on hold for this, used up all my laughter on car crashes. It’s why I never married. And why the videotape on my doorstep shows me watching the videotape of the film before it arrived. I must have fallen asleep in the hope of a good book. So that when I woke I was lying in my bed dreaming I was alright. It was still me though watching this film, asking whether I should, and filming myself doing it. This time there is no barking dog, and the wife wakes early on the front step, with the tape already playing in her head. The police arrive without being called and rape the husband to the sounds of jazz. They hold cameras in the air at various angles. They soundproof an axe. At the mention of an alarm system they eat the limbs off the maid. I don’t know what the hell is going on outside of feeling safe. The idea of a hotel only increases my paranoia. The film asks me to remember it, says we’ve watched each other before, at my house, where there’s a film being made using prerecorded voices. A list of names appears on the screen of all the actors who have since died: the list includes the name of every single cast member. On reading my own name I still remain credulous. From outside I hear someone scream to someone else to stay in the car. This has happened before. Just like when the dead person who killed me told me to stay put. Said, easy girl, called me lover, put me to death in an electric chair, chopped the wife I never had into a million pieces. And the screen goes black, as if my neck had snapped. Just the ache now and no head. A wife-killer and no wife. Someone I’ve never seen before comes to me in my insomnia. He can’t talk and his fingerprints have been removed. Claims he was born in a daydream. When he isn’t vanishing he’s leaking forehead. My physical condition is having escaped from death row. The voices in the film do not sound like voices. They come in and out like particles of swan. I find out what happened. I remember there was a night. Outside of that the rest’s a cyst I keep in my pants for fear of embarrassment. In company I’m acting strange, like the film is still running, and I’m a different person. What else is there to see? Most of it only happens when I’m accelerating. I need a manual. How long till it stops? The women all look the same like in pornos. I want more. I have to go somewhere. I return okay. I sit back down. There’s a man with me doing things in the room. He makes films and appointments to see girls he pays to party. I want it to go away, tomorrow night, somewhere else. What is it before it’s anything? I’m sorry, it’s late and I just killed a couple of people. The torture of not knowing is a bloodless wow. You want to ask me, why the desert, when my name is no such thing? And a scream, because a scream is the gift for getting lost.