Free Las Vegas for Vegans by A. S. Patric Page B

that a man could go to his death more than half asleep. That he need not ever be fully awake before he is utterly and permanently asleep.
    He finds Julia lolling on her back in a yellow floatation jacket of her own, which someone else must have strapped onto her while he was in the cubicle with the flight attendant. Julia looks as if she’s still asleep because of the three sleeping pills, yet she can’t be. Keith swims towards her, feeling heavier and heavier. He can barely move his arms.
    Julia is well beyond the rest of the debris—drifting away. Nearby, he sees an inflatable raft that was automatically released from the crashing plane. There’s no-one sitting within it. The bodies around Keith loll and list as they get caught on Pacific tides with Julia.
    Keith struggles to get into the raft. It takes repeated efforts to swing a heavy leg over the side and to haul his wet body across. He lies there gasping when he manages to tumble inside. He rows towards his dead girlfriend. Every pull on the paddle draws a gasp of agony. Shifting from one side of the boat is even more painful so he heads towards Julia in an arc. Keith pulls her into the boat with a long groan as his side tears even further within him. There are painkillers in the raft’s medical box and he takes a handful of them like M&Ms.
    There’s a transmitter that will send their coordinates to those who will come searching for the submerged plane. Keith activates it but he’s getting so weak and dizzy he can’t be sure that he’s managed to press the button. The red flashing light is telling him something is wrong or perhaps it’s telling him the message is being sent already. He can’t keep his eyes open any longer. He pulls Julia to him.
    Keith kisses her face and imagines that it is warm. Julia mumbles as he begins to float off into the darkness of the midday sky, ‘You really are such a lovely little dog.’ Keith coughs. Even to his ears, it sounds like barking.

ELYSIUM ZEN
    â€˜The world’s going to change now. You can feel it in your arsehole.’
    That famous voice had once carried to the back rows of the Opera House. In the empty fifty-seat theatrette we were standing in, the voice of the Patriarch filled our heads with the imminent roar of thousands—thunderstorms of applause about to break over our flashing souls.
    â€˜Look to the skies, my brethren of the boards. Flap your arms and know you can fly. Yes you can, if you learn how to (and this has to be exact, so practise): tweet, tweet, tweet. Those precise sounds will unlock the heavens for you, dear friends of the lights. Tweet, tweet, tweet. I feel liberated just making those sounds of freedom. I wake up and blink my sky-blue eyes three times every morning as I say it— tweet, tweet, tweet. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that all of you dream like birds. Your heads full of feathers. I’m not talking goose down, comrades of the hyperbole. I’m talking eagle and falcon feathers. Ostrich and emu feathers. Peacock and partridge and pigeon, my allies of alliteration. Well, maybe not pigeon. You get the idea though. Heads full of feathers like a battery cage is full of chickens coming into Christmas. And the idea is freedom. We’ll soar when we can put the birdsong back into the magpie. What I’m saying is this: change is coming, change is here, change has already passed us, and we’re going to have to run. Will all of you go on standing there, letting the dust settle on your faces? I refuse the evidence of my eyes. Today we’re going to open the cages and fly after freedom. Don’t just look at me. Open those cages, you freedom-loving fucks.’
    Everyone on the stage of that theatrette knew he was fucking crazy. His world-famous wife, GiGi Tickle, walked in from the wings clapping as though it was a madness to be applauded. We all understood the Patriarch meant that we were supposed to