PLUTOPIA By Sidney Grey Project Gutenberg Edition Copyright 2012

PLUTOPIA
By Sidney Grey
Project Gutenberg Edition
Copyright 2012
PLUTOPIA
Dedicated
to
Atlas
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
1
The universe begins with a knock at the door. Time, as it has
rolled, silently, startles electric. The hut which we birth ourselves into
amps up. Panic rattles in the shades. The kitchenware, the rug on the
floor, all things vibrate with imagination. The lone resident quakes
within his world. A hermit, nestled in the swampwoods, is surely
surprised by this delivery. Back to back stages of paranoia rush through
him. Hyper anxiety. Minutes, which revolve through mental eternities.
Courage is built up through skin scratching and whispered mumbling.
The hermit struggles to shake the grip of fear.
A reaching out. A pulling back of the shades, slightly. Furtive
eyes scan for signs of danger. The deliverer has disappeared.
Trees stare back through the bubbling mist. They hiss nasty
cricket chatter back and forth amongst themselves. Belly rumbling
gurgle dances make anxiety messes inside of ulcerated intestines. “How
could someone have found this address?” A thought without words,
noises, audible. “There is not even an address to be found…”
Courage escalates to extend no more than a forearm outside
of agoraphobia. The package is pulled inside. It is placed upon the
coffee table and stared at.
One upon a time the masking tape would have ripped
screaming screeches through the air. Microscopic bits of cardboard
would have gone squirting like scalped blood. But the hermit’s no
child anymore… He no longer favors surprises. He no longer waits
with rabies for the pinstripe blue, skimpy Docker wearing Santa to
sleigh ride scrape his wrinkling balls across the pavement, towards his
neighborhood row of mail post chimney towers. He no longer craves
to hear that tune of a luncheon’s lurching church bells ringing harmony
bass around the watch dogs’ sounding trumpet brigade. It’s been a
long time since he’s watched a mustached postal worker pull a parcel
from his American Eagled mail bag while whistling prickly church
hymns served crispy. That Rolodex clicking of addresses, matching
names to postage labels used to amp him up, waiting for that sudden
stop, and the long, square smile of the mail man’s face, rolling around
its shoulder blades, with box cutter precision aiming a
“joy-to-the-glory-of-my-work” glare upwards, into the boy’s living
room window, directly into his glass partitioned, expectant face, with a
baritone barreling groan announcing, from a white, picket-tooth
mouth, “Son, I got you’s a something’ you’sa gonna like!”
No, the hermit’s no child anymore. He’s an adult. And men
have fearful worries and doubtful revelations regarding unexpected
deliveries. Because Hook’s always on the lookout for a foreign hero.
And bills, problems, and responsibility don’t exist within the realm of
innocence.
He dreads opening the package. The damn passive aggressive
tactics of it anger him. Why’s it resting so softly sweet and silent like
that? No facial features expressing tells of what’s beneath the surface.
Like a gingerbread colored house of possibilities it waits, patiently and
ominously, dressed in a blasé brown, non-expression of corrugation,
and packing stickers, thrice squared, and playing the part of cubical
dimensions so perfectly. So straight and cool. Spartan like. Any anxiety
it may have regarding the possibility of never being opened is
untraceable. It appears as though it could sit there for all of eternity, in
that meditative pose, never betraying itself.
Unknown inside make the mind question endless
possibilities. Dream it, you could have it; sleep it, you may awaken
inside of it; die and there it is. Behind the surface lie death and the
abomination. A bill of grand proportion. A pornography of the cheap
kind. Maybe yur mam’s head wrapped in bubble tape. What’s the
point? Throw it back to the bushes. Pretend it never happened. Let it
rot on the doorstep for all we care…
A bomb? A late birthday gift from an acquaintance who
perhaps truly loved me? Someone tracked me down all the way out
here? Most likely a punishment campaign come to screw holes through
the skulls of all hermits for not participating in the social game…
All this hypothesizing only makes me hungrier. Let’s just get
it over with… Hangnails shiver. The hermit knows that he’s inevitably
going to do it… It’s delivery alone sealed that fate – made it
impossible for him to leave it alone – fixed It on the center of his skull.
What a noisome elephant… There is no choice. Too strong a
competitor… He was defeated at the bell… or the knock… or
whatever… He must give in.
A handful of his shaking knuckles pull the tape. Regret
screeches past the point of no return. A dose of giving in floods his
brain. Each breath rasps like crinkled parchment. Frogs croak murmur
anecdotes of warning around the periphery of his hut. The flaps are
lifted. A pool of packing peanuts spring like released ectoplasm. The
hut’s floor is littered. The hermit dives his fingers deeper to grace upon
something metallic. Warm yet cold. Confetti waterfalls as he lifts the
innards out.
Another box… A smaller, very polished, metallic, white box.
Time shines brighter when you touch your fingerprints on its sides. An
aura of significance engulfs the moment. So slick, so cold, so
otherworldly. Like the ass of a freshly baptized baby alien. Hypnotic.
Contracted surrender is synced. Rolling hills of Mercury madness climb
up the hermit’s fingers. He is driven rapidly insane. But what difference
does it make in a solo world? When the population of a universe is
one, craziness is just reality. Everything is imaginary every day to the
hermit. Thoughts are the only company this side of your life.
Reflections are even hard to come by. Rippled puddles of swamp water,
and memories within dreams. Makes a man forget that he’s not his
surroundings. Makes a man forget that he’s just a man. Not a god.
Not the one true and only holy God of my love.
A shivering hangnail reaches up and flips a switch. Something
carved into the edge of the edge of perfection is triggered. “Phsaw…”
Responds the box. The patient one is speaking… The cubical Ghandi
is stretching to reveal its secret innards. A well concealed lid rises an
all-consuming welcome open.
A blinding shower of disco ball display rains porridge thick
illumination into the room. Hail Marys cross the hermit’s chest. The
future is a sudden fear prompt for next week’s campfire. Brace yourself
because suddenly we know we’ve crossed too far across the line of what
is and what is not ok.
Last minute spectacle driven anxiety: “Why not had I seen
myself possible in Corporate?” “Where now is the woman I should
have married?” “Is this how I die?”
No use resisting. A solitary life of repeating existence is a
second nothing. The contentment gained through placate confinement
is a self-conceived mirage. This hermitage experiment has gone on for
too long, and turned out to be nothing but what everything else is: a
handful of more nothing. No stories are written with pointless pens.
No photographs have been painted here. That’s for sure. Static sitting.
Mumbling with imaginary friends too lazy to be materialized.
Twiddling, plumb thumb fumbling monotony sessions of calendar
riding. The lone dog lonely life of a beard wearing, tinkling escapist,
bored of the righteous, with no remedy pill provided. A wish for
suicide repressed.
So hot is that box. The hermit’s fingerprints can no longer be
traced within the school system. His eyes are swirling hypnotically
around kaleidoscopic emanations. His chin is creeping over the hot slick
edge. His secret fatalism is becoming his possessor. Rationality fades
incomprehensible. His face pivots inside and blindness enters his life.
The bright light cascades across every pore of his clogged face. It pin
pricks his pupils with bleaching extravagance. His retina skin scalds like
fry oil. He laughs as if receiving a massage.
Like a dumb waiter he drops, searching for further purgation.
A birthing breed of angel vision blooms in the ashes of his cataracts.
The secret world within unfolds as his inner light ignites. Aztec pattern
lines shock electric at all sides. Wallpaper trappings of crying cherub
limelight sing organic smile symphonies of tears and Incan stucco into
cluster groupings of Sephiroth Argus eyeballs – staring hallucinating
mind frames into Mozart paradigms of ‘Ode to Joy’ perception
processions, while brain hemispheres synch worldly pleasures around
themselves, colliding emotions into sacred Renaissance sustenance,
tickling thoughts like a chimney sweeping feather duster of
forget-me-nots and lilac pansy posies breaking their bosoms apart with
sacral chakra springtime morning espresso shots. All the Templar
hidden holy grails clink and clack around his head during the last
supper’s engagement party, becoming ritualistic first of the season
dinner motifs, ringing supper bells, pin drop crispy, around Grecian
Olympia ribbon dance twirling songs a’ spire sparkler popping into
peaking discussions filled fat with Romanticized Latin. Fortune spun
blindly by Alyosha driven epilepsy, sightlessly revelating Mahler
compositions of Chopinion Nocturne Moonlit Bachian Sonatas, fills
the Dionysian spaces between Kolob and Celestia with the Polaris
enchanted teeth of Apollo stretching a future kissing eagle feather,
falling mini whirlwinds through a cumulus rain cloud bursting into
cheekfulls of manna gumdrops glistening cane sugar over Aaron’s staff
a’ rapping Exodus dream beats into pied piping fairy tale nursery
rhymes black butterfly kissing the roof bound fiddler, who passes a
raven beak sonnet higher sunwards to Gandalf the Gray, while blowing
wisp o’ the wind hot totties into Edgar Allen’s brain fabric to drip
rainbow juice admirations upwards, and round wards, and back
around again, forever, through an eternal sunrise, grace encrusted and
crowned with diamond blossom sewing needles whipping gospel
pages through satin purple bed sheets of the straight Magdalene’s wish
plateaus – which smile, still virginized, upon God’s holy headrest; as
all around, omnipotent, the true master beams, with an Oxford
written scarlet degree of truth be told tarot readings feeding the creation
map of all that is, supremely and fault free, to the typewriter’s ticking
word worthy surveillance of string theory seppukus – honor bound
with violent roses, hand delivered tightly by the master lodging
masons, who work not as slaves, but as heroes, and saints, together,
forever with hearts beating tapestries, paint bursting with berry oil and
wine, belly laughing into the chorus of love, with crystallized euphoria
delivering the message of a stardust twinkled Palace of Versailles.
Tiny dot pull me forwards! The bliss, ecstacically chanting,
rings the hermit’s ears, organically dropping, passing faster through
paradise tress, with glistening knowledge shining behind white flame
swords and nudity, and unobserved animals defying evolution. Must
be, oh yes, holding me from, till the perfect moment, when the
serpentine suspense has collided into itself, and my form has
disintegrated into fullness – your face, yours, the man, of every hour,
beyond eleventh, the twelfth, and zero: the none and all, Omega to
Alpha, Hello – there you are, my father, my whole, myself in perfection,
the truth, G, everything I ever imagined you to be, I cannot believe my
luck, being alive right now, for this releasing of glory is grand beyond
words!
A stereo shattering voice, thunder clap clear, tears symphony
strings around each rung of the hermit’s vibrato enchanted inner ear.
Harmony mixed smoothie reliefs staccato collage him into the middle
of a bubble bathe excitement pool. The voice pulsates the universe’s
purest electricity into and out of each of his orifices. The energy pours
through like acid, filling him with jazz and math, popping his hair
from its follicle docks, to transfigure it into swarms of squiggling fiber
optic cords. it rings the alarm bells of a successful dosage endeavor
achieved. It snaps release through splintering bone, and unravels his
Christmas sweater into a Hare Krishna cloud of euphoria.
The box becomes larger than the cabin. It becomes his world.
It bursts his smile through his cheeks as his cheeks eviscerate into
sparks. His limbs become Mudra reichs, and his tongue becomes a
rainbow. His brain becomes ocean currents. His mind becomes an
Ohm. he seeps into his surroundings and abandons his name. The lid
closes on his past.
God smiles upon his child. The voice says, “Sleep now into
wakefulness; and never doubt your own imagination.”
2
The box closes upon the hermit. It sucks his soul into its
volume. A shockwave blasts through the swamp woods. The feathers
of birds are ruffled and leaves surf upon the crest of a sonic boom. The
energy wakes a couple of hitchhikers sleeping on the side of the road:
Adam and Musette: two travelers on a quest of escape, looking for
freedom from the confines of the nearby Salt City. They question each
other as to what it was that woke them, but end up shrugging off the
unexplainable. They re-sling their pillows to their backs. They lace up
their shoes. And they get back to walking. Further away from Salt City.
Away from a life they don’t want. Away from responsibilities. With
their thumbs up as high as their stamina will allow. Hoping for a lift.
But cars don’t even hardly notice the sorry, sordid travelers.
They’ve all got their windows rolled up tight as their assholes. Ugly,
judgmental looks of scorn, pass between driver and traveler through
rear view mirror. Everyone’s scared for their safety, and scared of
inconvenience. They’ve all got places to get to. Like the circus. Dense
clouds of billboards advertise it from the roadside. Tag lines read,
“Come one, come all! Witness for yourselves the event critics are calling
a masterpiece, a massacre, a twisted hip-hop shock shop, this year’s
hottest event, a forerunner for tomorrow’s trendiness, the bejeweled
crown of our time, and a
life-like-bloody-pile-of-you-won’t-believe-your-eyes!”
“Three miles away.” “Two miles away.” “One mile away
from the best darn thing you’ve ever experienced in your life!”
The countdown ticks itself off with each leg of the journey.
“Oh Adam can we!? Can we!?” Cries Musette, spotting the large
fumigation tent structure, standing erect in the distance, tugging on
Adam’s sleeve, trying to pull him towards the structure.
“I don’t know sweetheart… We haven’t got much money
left for such things…” Adam responds.
“Oh but please… I ain’t never seen a circus before…”
Adam checks his wallet again. A few fluttering bills
pathetically wave in the desert breeze.
“I guess that we might have enough…” He says.
“Oh yes! Oh yes! Yes!” Cries Musette. “I’m so excited!” She
pulls Adam faster, transitioning their pace into a jog, dragging him off
the highway, assimilating him into a long line of ticket purchasers.
Men and women on stilts zig-zag through the crowd,
handing balloons out to children. Their painted faces clip clop over a
playlist of exaggerated expressions.
Families and neighbors chit chat amongst themselves, inching
closer to the turnstile.
At the box office, Adam gives up a few of his precious dollars
to the ticket master, and he and Musette enter the tent. It’s massive
inside. An optical illusion. Lions rustle about within their cages while
white tigers sharpen their teeth. A kaleidoscopic parfait of red and
orange ribbons flutter from the rafters, garnishing the perimeter with
bohemian color. Adam and Musette take their seats upon a step of
knot dotted plank board bleachers. Cobweb carnival music chinks out
in stereophonic surround sound, bouncing about upon the fluttering
folds of tent fabric. Hidden within a shadow shrouded corner, a trance
masked, parachute pant wearing, balloon head carnival worker rolls his
arm around in Ferris wheel revolutions, feeding a bird beak sewing
needle through tracks of pin-prick indents, rolling it through railway
patrols of slowly spinning, stainless steel, dinnerware disk relics of the
pre-phonographic, post-psychedelic age. The insubstantial man stands
in solitude, shoes two sizes too long, with fabric of thrift drowning his
figure. An archetypal spinster, he is tall and lean as a bean pole. Hidden
from the audience he trills his treble behind a crackling acrylic, fire
engine red smile, which is painted, with detail driven consideration,
upon his plaster mask idee-fixation over the eclectic variations of
sound.
Adam is fascinated by the man and his haunting music. The
notes sputter steamy bursts of magic through the air. People’s faces
grow humid, with sticky moisture, as the hymnal pirouettes slap layers
of tinny polyphonic orchestral movements upon their faces.
Breaths of blue-violet blow the ceiling’s sunburst streamers
around into lazy spirals as gangs of Jiggalette patchwork girls pop sugar
crystal bubbles through their cotton candy flavored chewing gum wads.
Behind the scenes an indiscreet monkey clinks his finger symbols
together. A plank seated boy gasps in sudden shock, awakening from a
daydream. His summer dress wearing mother offers him an improper
“God-bless-you,” mistaking the waking gasp for a sneeze. While
turning her head, a serrated, rusting bobby pin, holding her hair
together, pierces through the stretch stressed skin of an onion top,
scatter scavenging toddler’s pink balloon, erupting a quick and intrusive
“PoP!” into the air, which causes the little sweetheart to cry with shock
and disappointment.
The flaps of the tent close as the last of the tickets are sold,
locking the audience members into their spectacle. The gas lamps dim.
And the audience holds their breath.
The show begins, with four drawbridges dropping, from
four corners of the tent stage’s circumference. Bucket loads of dancing
dust devils sputter to life.
“That sure was startling, was it not?” Asks a nervous
boyfriend to his controlling girlfriend, slap happily wrapping his
trembling fingers around the girl’s youthfully supple,
creamy-under-cover-of-squeaky-denim-dungarees thigh, in a hastily
implemented, albeit long thought out moment of passion seeking
brilliance; seizing the moment for one final attempt at catching a
glimpse of his cold hearted woman’s off guard and rare, unmasked
innocence, before shatter blasting his testicles into coward driven
fatalities later that night at an eternally long, family pressured,
circusumferential engagement/after party/proposal.
The boyfriend’s awkwardly shouted question opens a hole in
the tense silence, reigniting the other audience members’ conversational
wicks, causing them all to say things like, “What were we talking about
again?” and “Oh damnit all if I remember! But how’s that boy of
yours doing?”
From the spaces revealed behind the fallen drawbridges
something stirs. The noise of it grows louder until it can be recognized
as the sound of crashing chains. It rumbles like thunderbolts, clanking
a clatter nihilistic in motive, beating bass bumps into the empty spaces
of the atmospheric music box melody, rattling like symbol syllables in a
sentence straining to exist.
It grows so loud that soon only the deaf can claim ignorance.
It shepherds the attention of even the most chatty of spectators,
dropping sentences midway through completion, leaving sizzling
letters clicking on the tips of tongues. It causes weaker willed audience
members to cover their ears in agony, while mothers dab the sides of
their daughters’ faces with pocket hidden tissues, cleaning up the
messes of bleeding ear canals.
The makers of the racket appear, approaching through their
shadow portals, creeping slowly into the light of day. They are known
as the Cirque du Souffle. The audience is taken aback by their
otherworldliness. They look like Laughy Taffy aliens. They wiggle
about liquidly like bog monster weeds. Gummy strands of fabric
drizzle from their skeletons. Each dons a different façade. Their faces
dangle skywards like floating pendulums. They contort archetypes with
their forms, making pretzel snacks of different memory recognitions,
dripping visual stimuli into the already soaking wet atmosphere of the
lulling auditorium, which sits, sopped spongy with auditory
sustenance.
Mixing with the motions of the revolver swirling streamers
twirling whirlpools before the audience’s eyes, the pastel painted,
diamond pattern plated, Easter color shaded, waist coat bramble berry
bead dripping body suits of the Souffle members decorate the stage
line circumference, fluttering tent fabrics of forgotten fallen nations past
with tufts of bed bunk goose downing puffing out of stitched over
seams.
Throughout their hands, sewn through the plasticine fiber of
their theater style satin gloves, and piercing through their effeminate
skin, weave brassy ringlets of heavy iron chain link. The pain of their
piercings causes the Souffle members to whip the ground with
Pavlovian Tourette spasms, ruffling the lacy cobweb ruffles on their
wrists, shivering threadbare dust to the earth with each gelatinous
whip.
They patrol before the audience. Their transient porcelain
faces, painted with the spectrum of the spirit of emotion, glance into
the pupil wells of various audience members, causing them to ask, “Do
you think he peeped within the confines of my heart? You do oh don’t
you please?”
Guardian angels respond with, “Twas’ mine he did just now
so ravishingly expose!”
“Mommy, that man’s face frightens me…” Cries a young girl
to her mother.
“What did you say honey?” Responds the young girl’s
heavily cottoned Puritan mother, shouting over the sound of the
crashing chains, annoyed by this interruption of her least favorite
daughter.
“Son, aren’t you my son?” Asks black man saxophone to a
Souffle member’s smile, from under the cover of his charcoal apple
topping. His arms reach out, from under their hounds tooth tweed,
seeking to sooth the Souffle member’s pain, exposing a glitter within
his pupils, pricked exposed through the process of this empathic
flutter.
“Don’t chew so loudly Harold! For Christ’s sake…” Sunday
School sluffer scolds detention duty husband, to the reply of
mumbled, “Yes ma’am”s and “uh huh”s muted dumb above nods of
rolling chin fat folds.
The Souffle members tinkle rain drops of coinage tampered
heaven as they suddenly stop upon respective compass positions.
Angel East, Angel West, Angel North, and Angel South, take
places, Halt!
Tears of shattered, technicolor mantle ruffle with electric
singing energy as all Souffle power diverts itself into a forbidden dance
of unholy summoning purposes. Chain rain pounds the straining
carnival music with blood spurts of fallen angel sweat. The dancers
whip the ground more ferociously than ever, making little whelps and
straining whimpers, while leaking ectoplasm from their pinched tear
ducts, which shiver behind porcelain masks.
The lights dim and flicker. Backstage scenery puppeteers tug
on lengths of rope. The sounds of snapping cords can almost be heard
popping above the chain whipping crescendo. Middle of theatre floor
trembles with mechanical movement, resembling, with awe inspiring
similarity, the vibrating upper lip of an overweight, popcorn kernel
grinding carpet muncher, who is seated on the forty third row, staring,
with unobstructed focus, upon the active stage, trying, desperately hard,
with all of her unladylike might, to be the first to partake of this
Eucharistic surprise; completely ignorant, for the first time in her entire,
self-pity fed life, of the cancerous filled poop pocket molehill blemish,
which tarnishes her chin, jiggling as she quivers, christened by a
sparkling bead of sweat, and digging maliciously deeper, with razor
toothed ridges, into her sloppily molded porcelain face fabric, rotting
her away slowly, from the inside out, and growing more and more
poisonous with each fleeting second she lets pass her by without a visit
to a proper specialist for the purpose of removal.
A strain of trumpet blasts erupts from the particles of
everywhere, blowing eardrums out at all angles. People in the audience
are shocked as the tent starts twirling in layers around them. Women
hold tight to their braided hats, watching other unfortunate ladies lose
their to the madness. The shaky dust, fillibusting around center stage,
reveals a hidden trap door, with a lotus petal aperture slowly peeling
itself apart.
The drawbridges at the four corners climb closed, sucking the
Souffle members back into their darkness homes. An oriental symbol
for entertainment blasts up from the trap door’s exposed pit. It is
covered soppily in the tabernacle chorus of everybody’s guardian angel
achieving collective orgasm. A being, illuminated by Hell fire, glows
crimson in the charcoal pit below, rising towards the surface, sending a
malicious looking shadow creepily crawling up the sides of the tent.
The seams burst in rapid blasts of gloom. And the souls of the
audience are sucked from their eye sockets, leaving bleeding E-coli tracks
in their wake.
A scream, clutter filled with a legion of backwardly uttered
bible verses, bursts, like a maggot filled penis, from the trap door’s pit.
It clicks and scratches its way into everybody’s ears, stabbing memories
into nightmares, crushing civility into a powder, fucking the powder
into an abomination, and turning animal nature into an addiction.
Everyone burns in an erotic fire baptism. They bathe in their own
anxieties. They scream within their nightmares, shivering over their
coma lives. Language becomes dyslexic, math becomes Latin, education
screams bullet ridden against the walls. The people are ripping their hair
out. They no longer want answers. They just want to maintain their
excitement levels.
The trumpets cut mid note. The tent stops swirling. And
everyone returns to their accustomed state of civility. They tilt like tops,
struck retarded by the silence, naked in the absence of thought, and
dripping toxic with a need to be entertained. They look to center stage
for relief, and perceive the risen Ringmaster, standing exposed before
them. He is skeletal, and dressed like a resurrected Uncle Sam. His flesh
looks like scar tissue; it is a murder collage of necromancy, imbued with
dead bolt tattoo spells. It melts like cheese fondue from his face and
form, dribbling to the ground, plopping around him, writhing like
moaning worms in the dirt, sizzling character portraits of Don
Quioxtes, Ivanov the Greats, Bardamus, Gatsbys, Christs, and
imaginations unheard of by either man, woman, or child.
These oozing characters drizzle into the fabric of his jacket as
he wipes his forehead with a modge-podge sleeve. The splintered
shards of wonder, these character portraits of flesh, are grinded into a
collective collaboration of empiric chaos. He wears his made to order
hand me down like a map of egotism. The jacket rises, like fascist cherry
frosting, from atop a bell bottom bluesy pair of Passover red streaked
slacks, all patched over raggedly with anarchic mottos, shouting
astrological anomalies from star box dialogue bubbles, ringing
freedom tunes of, “Save the first born you death collectors!” into the
peripheral vision of his fashion statement.
He grabs the tip of his hat, lilting it from his head, bowing.
“Hello my audience.” He says. “You have been promised a
show unlike any other, hmm? Something you have never seen before,
yes? My petite pretty darlings, my puppies, and my children; mi madre,
papishko, proud faces all around – How can I deliver such a thing
when you are already stuffed full of everything imaginable?
“It cannot be said that you’ve never seen flying men. Nor
have you missed out on tigers prancing playfully. Clowns, of course
you’ve had enough of those… They’re all around, everywhere you
look… You’ve seen it all!”
An organ strikes a low, bubbling chord, and a set of sparklers
ignite within the Ringmaster’s pocket.
“Whoops…” he says, flinging the sparklers to safety.
“Goddamn magic…”
The audience laughs. But backstage, the crew is not so
amused. “Oh my god…” Says a muscular trapeze artist. “What does
he think he’s doing? He’s wasting pyrotechnics again! Somebody
should go out there and reel him back in; he’s drunk – the stupid fool
is wasted again!”
The Ringmaster can feel the mutinous tension bubbling. He
wonders if Jupiter’s gone retrograde. He paces back and forth, trying to
remember his lines.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” He screams, pounding himself on
the skull, trying to get back on track, rattling pressure through his palm,
and jittering the trigger of a hidden ace of spades up his sleeve, striking
flint to blast a row of firework rocket fountains above his head.
He cowers to the ground, ducking. The rockets pop colorfully
in the air, reflecting in the eyes of the audience. The crowd cheers
excitedly. Little fat boys, dressed in horizontally striped shirts, roll their
arms around their shoulders, pumping the sky with their fists, whoop
whooping, with Cheetos popping out between the spaces in their
teeth. Emaciated women, bleeding from their pores, with patches of
hairlessness gleaming in the light, lift their blouses to expose their tiny,
veiny breasts. Their blue collar husband flit between jealousy and
homosexuality.
The Ringmaster remembers an old clown college equation:
(Give them what they want) + (Give them what they want) =
(SUCCESS!)
He picks himself up from the dirty floor, and brushes himself
off. His fingers search for another secret trigger switch. Positioning
himself into a pose, he waits for the audience to settle themselves back
down.
“Prepared, anxious, attention deficit audience,” He says. “I
implore you, listen! With this magic spell, brewing vilely in my gut, and
tumbling up my throat, as dry as cunt death, and as hot as mamacita, I
release, for you, a demon!”
He presses, hard and stiff, his middle finger, into the slanted
ace’s eye, dropping the hammer on another pin, igniting another row
of bombast up his arm, out his sleeve, and into the air.
The audience dances rings around their seats.
Riding upon this wave of momentum, the Ringmaster raises
his other arm, droops his head, mimics the motions of a praying
priest, rolls his eyes behind their lids, and says:
“Brothers and sisters, united by the ground upon which we
stand, imprisoned together by the skyscrapers bearing down upon us,
we come together tonight to partake of a sacrament – a meal for the
heart; something more substantial than the glass partitioned reality
presented to us from behind the television screens of our collective
coma.
“I am but a priest – a vessel chosen by the spotlight of
show-business. We are all in this together. This is our show. I shall
play my part. I shall deliver to you the message. My role places me
before you, to act as sage and savior: I shall not disappoint…
“Ignite now my family! Raise those eyelids from your dream!
Awaken and be baptized!”
A dragon vomit stream erupts like flamethrower bullets. The
Ringmaster spins in circles, swirling the crackling stream above him.
“We’re all going to burn brothers and sisters! The great
shark’s a gonna’ rise from his red ocean and swallow us up in the fire
of his iniquity! All of our friends are gonna’ burn! All of our families
are gonna’ burn! The steeples of our churches and sanctuaries are
gonna’ burn! Ain’t nothin’ gonna’ escape the flame! The dragon’s
gonna’ bite the neck of God and snap it between his jowls! BELIEVE
IT!”
Backstage, that muscular trapeze artist has had enough. “Hey
you ruddy drunk bastard!” She yells, stepping out from behind the
curtains, “I’m tired of this shit!”
The Ringmaster curves a scratchy lipstick murder across his
face, turning her direction.
“Get off the floor! The show’s over for you, you lousy,
miserable drunkard!” She shouts.
“But the show must go on my little dear. That’s the first rule
of the circus...” The Ringmaster says.
“You don’t know the first thing about the circus!” The
woman responds. “You’ve wasted all of our pyrotechnics, and
everybody’s time. Let’s go bub; I’m sick of this shit!”
She tries to pull him off stage, but he doesn’t budge.
“Come on!” She yells, “Let’s go!”
The Ringmaster no longer hears her. All of her shouts sound
like they are coming from underwater. He is possessed by his madness
– lost within his burning blood. He grabs the woman by her throat.
“Who’s show do you think this is?” He asks, spitting the
words into her face through clenched teeth.
“Ouch! Stop! You’re hurting me!” She gasps, trying to pry
the hand from her throat.
“This isn’t my show… It isn’t your show… It is beyond us.
It’s time for you to open your eyes and see, my little beloved…”
Tears are streaming down the woman’s face. She tries
punching at the Ringmaster but cannot reach. she can no longer speak.
Her eyes stare up into his – they have grown so large and wet – like the
eyes of a trapped doe.
The Ringmaster places his index finger upon her lips.
“Ssshhhh…” He says. “Stop struggling, my little deer. Don’t you
know that I’m here to save you?”
Hypnotically he rubs his finger around the curvature of her
soft, yet muscular mouth, focusing his senses upon every little ridge.
He giggles at the smears of lipstick being painted on her face. He
positions his hand into the form of a gun, placing the tip of the barrel
against the center of her mouth. He pushes the finger between her lips.
The audience cranes their necks for a better view.
The woman takes the finger in, sucking gentle pressure
around the tip. She prays for mercy in the maniac’s eyes. He pushes
deeper, and then pulls it back out: In and out… in and out, smiling at
the steams of spittle sticking to his glove. She wraps her lips tighter.
The Ringmaster’s smile grows. She begins bobbing her head - up and
down, pushing the finger deeper into her throat, rubbing the ribbed
inner lining of her mouth’s upper plate.
As the Ringmaster’s smile peaks to a hideous ascension, the
woman drops her jaw and snaps. She clenches down into the
Ringmaster’s flesh, and is the only one who to hear the hidden ace’s
trigger flip.
A flaming ball of ‘Black Murphy’s Japanese Chop Suey Bang
Bang’ blasts into the woman’s mouth and out the back of her fair
skull. Bone fragment, blood splatters, and skull flurry blend smoothies
around the flaming ball of death, which pops and hisses in the air. The
trapeze artist slouches limply. Her open eyes roll back into her mind.
the tent is held still in slow motion. The Chop Suey Bang Bang
explodes repeatedly in its deserved atmosphere of silence.
The dead woman slides off the Ringmaster’s finger, and
bounces upon the ground. The audience shivers, letting the moment
sink into their realities.
The Ringmaster closes his eyes and turns his back upon the
death scene.
“Well boys and girls,” He says. “That’s it. The show’s over.”
But this closing statement falls on deaf ears. The tent has lit
up with applause. The entire edifice shakes with the noises of
pounding feet and hollering.
The Ringmaster lets the smile release again upon his face:
(Give them what they want) + (Give them what they want) =
(SUCCESS!)
“Monsieur Paradigm!” He calls towards the back of house,
“Release the tigers! And the lions too Monsieur Misery! And start up
the music again please!”
Doors lift, and a small streak patters to the floor, ecstatic to be
free. The carnival music sputters back to life. The Ringmaster twirls
cartwheels between the lions and tigers, laughing and petting the bristly
hides, wrestling with the beasts, and gnawing upon their fur. Sparkler
wheels spin from every sleeve and cranny, catching fire to the royal
manes of the lions, and further blackening the stripes of the tigers. The
cats’ teeth glow otherworldly as they sink themselves into the
Ringmaster’s flesh, drenching his outfit with his own blood.
“Come on everybody! Get your lazy asses out here! On with
the show! On with the show!”
The performers, with their ambitions to perform warmed
anxious by the uproar and applause of the audience, leap from
backstage, tossing bowling pins into the audience, and lashing their
whips into the flames.
The sides of the tent catch flame; black smoke rises up
through the bleachers; nobody can find an exit; everybody panics.
People are being pelted by laughing circus members. The Souffle
Members are sucking souls left and right. Children’s legs are melting
beneath the faces of their crying parents. Fashionable hats are stomped
flat beneath scampering hordes of frightened families. The sounds of
screaming wail through the desert, but nobody passing by hears the
agony – they all have their car windows rolled up too tightly, and
they’re all driving much too fast.
3
Adam and Musette dodge projectile bowling pins and leap
over burning bodies, searching for a way out of the massacring circus
tent. Following their noses down a smoke trail they climb to safety
through an undisclosed fabric gash, leaving the tent to burn into the
desert sands.
Flames reflect their flickers off of the billboards; smoldering
ash sizzles the ends of hair down like smoked cigarettes; itchy smoke,
and cremated bone, scratch at Adam and Musette’s throats, causing
them to hack their lungs out.
“That circus was a bad idea Musette.” Says Adam.
“Really? You didn’t like it at all?” Musette replies.
“No. And if we keep spending our money like this we’re not
going to have enough to sustain our escape on.”
“Sure we’ll have enough…” Musette replies.
“We only have ten dollars left you know?”
“But we’re almost to the City of Lights! If we make it there
we’ll be swimming in it. It doesn’t take much to gamble with… not
much more than courage.”
“Do you hear that?” Adam asks.
“Hear what?”
“That buzzing... It’s ferociously rampant. All around…”
“You know, I don’t hear it… You can’t expect me to hear all
the little things you do.”
“Sweetheart don’t talk so nastily about yourself... You’re a
genius…”
“But I’m not… I’m just a little trash muffin. You always say
so. I don’t know why you love me like you do…”
Trash muffin or not, Adam does love her. Loves her like that
part of yourself you love that’s not within yourself. Total polarities
with courses of magnetism drawing them together like an astral
collision. You see, she’s what the folks in this here realm call a Jigalette;
and Adam, well he’s a former Magic man. Never thought he’d be the
type to take a Jiggalette lover to the ball; but life’s just crazy like that…
Never can tell what ol’ Jesus the god’s got in store for you this time.
Those ragged smears of fear mongering, underlining her eyes and
emphasizing her lip peaks, had drawn our boy in like a hungry trout.
Those sex advertisements, blasting hip pops, wag a lags, and reeking
come-and-get-its, had immersed the young buck into a heart/groin
whirlpool, the likes of which no gettings away from, and no use
questioning whatsoever, can contend with.
The Jigalettes are a disgusting breed by all accounts and
measures: They’re dumb, diseased, and disgusting: The trichotomy of
D’s, spelling out a giant F upon the face of humanity. They are grimy
rejects of an empty generation drained dry through over indulgence: the
byproducts of couples lost to virtual living; rebels of the lives handed
down to them; opposite lifestyles from their parents, but all the same
fallen from the same tree … Because, while they may have escaped the
boxy prison cells of love butt cigarette mustache Roosevelt game show
hosts, they’re still as far from the vital fruit of evolutionary glory as
ever. That channel surfer mentality keeps on cresting: dopey floaters of
reality; soulless zombies; humans always in need of another fix of
entertainment; pleasure junkies and virus pockets – definitely not
Adam’s type… God! Fate just has a way of slamming two things
together and saying, “Deal with it!” Love is an unexplainable thing…
But Musette’s not so bad… She responds to Adam’s saying,
“I can’t believe you don’t hear that…” with “It’s probably just the
reverb nation of children’s souls encircling the drain of your mind.”
And that reminds Adam of the first time they kissed.
He sits down to meditate. This bit of recollection has
rekindled some of his past life Magic prowess. He’ll find the source of
the buzzing, just you wait and see. He stretches out his ear, and lets the
sounds swirl around his canal. He manipulates his earwax into a filter.
Like a gold panner fishing for that little bit of precious something. He
strains his ear and picks something up. It’s a mixture of high pitched
guttural clicks and nasally wheezes. Like an egg frying in a stove top
pan. Coming in patterns… like Morris Code, prison wall speech, or an
early Ethiopian dialect. It’s definitely a language…
Though Adam has a database of languages stored within his
education, this one is difficult to place. He enlarges his Merkabah
chariot. His aura becomes a blooming, three dimensional Descartian
grid of X’s Y’s and Z’s.
“That’s strange…” He says, swiping his finger through a
puddle of his own mucus. “The sound is coming from here…”
“That is disgusting…” Replies Musette.
“No, you don’t understand. It’s communicating.”
“What’s it saying?”
“It’s beyond my comprehension. But I think that it’s
important…”
This calls for a summoning. Adam once more assumes the
position. Digging deeply he recalls some very high level stuff. Ritual
black magic – not for casual conjurers or the faint of heart…. By
magnetizing his consciousness with the metaphysical parapsychology
of the dust he gathers, from the deep archival pockets of his mind,
seminary sessions’ worth of lyrics, and textbook technicalities. The
graceful, swiping movements of his Lodge Master’s long, pail, bony
fingers once more dance upon their cartoon diagrams. It’s all coming
back to him in torrential bits and pieces. He turns to Musette:
“For my next act, I will most certainly be needing your
assistance.”
He tells her what to do. She bends to the ground, kneeling,
with her palms planted in the dirt. Adam unruffles the edges of her
skirt. He lifts it up above her rump. The tendons in her thighs tighten
as she raises her ass into the air.
“Is this how you want me?” She asks.
The fire in Adam’s duende spot flares. Like a yoga instructor
he raises her rump a tad higher. Her vagina breathes an exhalation into
his face. The smell is putrid: like a sardine cannery. There is a minefield
of whiteheads, pock marks, and bruises surrounding the landing strip,
but the way that pussy glistens in the sunlight would make any straight
man chubby.
“Now I need you to adjust your palms into prayer
formation.” He says.
Musette obeys, and Adam prepares himself for insertion. He
bends his knees a bit, and places his feet a shoulder width apart. He
unbuttons his trousers, letting them tumble down around his argyle
ankles. He places the palm of his right hand upon the small of
Musette’s back, and rolls it down her spine. Her back slopes
downwards like a slide. Adam wraps his fingers tightly into her tie dye
hair, and presses her cheek flat into the dirt. He raises his chin to the
stars and cries with gusto: “May this girl bring about the answers to
our prayers!” With his left hand he crosses his heart in the motion of
an unhalted six pointed star. Lightning bolts shatter thunder from
behind the mountain top littered horizon. He grasps his cock, and
waggles it around until it’s hard.
“Alright ol’ boy, steady now; this is for all the marbles; let’s
make sure we get the right hole; no trust in poops you know…”
The tip of his penis penetrates the foreskin of her vagina. It
breeches the surface dramatically and slow. The man meat docks into its
respective cock slot. Juice dribbles around it like saliva on a strawberry
Saturday morning sprinkler candy pop.
“Oh God…” Adam says to himself. “No premature
explosions today. I can hold it… I need to hold it in…”
“Repeat after me.” He says. “We’re going to chant now.”
Banging brains is Darwin’s law
Fuck your heart out or burn in Hell
I’ll rub your private until its raw
I’ll rub your private, and I’ll ring your bell
Together their voices form a harmonic choir. They resonate in
unison. Their two bodies slide around each other like the workings of
an accelerating steam engine. Precipitation dews moistly around their
idyllic figures. Lightning catches their drops of sweat, imbuing their
poses into Karma Sutra illustrations. The strobe lighting flash prints
their story onto a Grecian Vase. Depictions of Godhood, embracing
acts of holy matrimonial martyrdom, are sold in the Parthenon at
twelve pops a purchase.
Musette becomes Pegasus as Heracles grasps her by the
shoulders. The veiny beast’s wings pump more rapidly; towards Zeus,
alas – Hold tight reign bound rider!
Her eyes stare still the mountain range’s porcelain. The
incantated words slip out between air sucking gasps and pleasure
seeking moans. Shriller they get the faster Adam pushes his pleasure
pumper deeper.
Wails of the Cherokee nation. Bolts crashing every which
place. The desert floor shakes with thunder concussion. The time is
now and the moment is midnight. The tension in Adam’s muscles
causes him incapable of thought. Veins release bruises kinda hickey like
around his neck. And then he cums. Musette’s eyes fill a sudden, lazy,
milky white. She smiles a psychedelic moan. Fish bowl vision swims
bubbles around tracers of bliss. She crumples to shivers.
The syllables of chanted prayer fizzle into tape recorder pixels
as Adam scatters himself into a luminescent stream of sperm. His
consciousness is sharpened to the microscopic degree. He dives a
headfirst blaze into the realm of creation. He spasms through the
insides of his little scum bucket girl. A fuck made multi-boy. The
curves within are so bodacious. Large, lumpy, but not yet cancerous. He
sacrifices a few of himselves for a taste of them rib eye sushis.
Sashimied sperm. The little sparkle horses crash pinball scores down
the salmon tunnel. He feels himself being torn apart. Infinity flashes
before his eyes a thousand fold times in hour long spanning seconds.
“Oh God! Oh God! It’s hard to see in here! We’re being
mutilated! These waters are murky for damned sure!”
Rise and fall to violin choruses raising churchfulls of
symphonic journey music to the crew who continue on.
“Watch it Red Four! Oh Goddammit! No! No! No!”
Red Four explodes into a dislodged kidney stone asteroid.
“There! Look out!”
Crabs and crannies of infection pop up on the radar. Three
hundred are lost to the clutches of a sprawling UTI, which sucks
members in via a series of vomit colored arms. Speed on speed racer.
The Kraken fades into the distance, munching on future livelihood
with its whirlwind mouth of disaster teeth.
Ahead an ultimate challenge: a half-baked abortion reaches
into the crew swarm with one eye blinking. The beast swims doggy
style in crusty placenta, crackling on a dusty umbilical cord. Straggling
sperm scream with their unformed mouths. The team shatters into a
third of itself, as the miscarriage babe feeds its pre-infant stomach.
“Kill the Cyclops!” Shouts the most rational and outgoing
of the sperm. Red Twelve shoves a piece of misplaced vibrator battery
violently into the abomination’s eye, leaving the monster sprawling
around in its own liquid torment.
”Leave it! It’s as good as dead! There’s no time to spare!”
They’ve got to make it to the wonder tunnel before their
lifespans suffocate. The baby throws placenta pieces at them as they
pass. Red Leader is crushed. The boasts of a name not yet given him
are stifled on his formless lips.
“There it is! Hold your butts boys…”
The cervix: a chemically distorted, twisted labyrinth of pain. It
holds a single egg, throbbing beyond.
“Is that thing inhabitable?” Asks a sperm.
“It will have to work…” Responds the new leader. “Just get
in at all costs. It’s been good flying with y’all. Till next time space
cowboys.”
Hope. A new hope. A bead of luminescent prayer light glows
from within the shelter of the egg. Sperms frag themselves against
firewalls trying to reach it. It sounds like popcorn popping in the
microwave. But it ain’t nobody’s fault except society’s that the cervix is
impenetrable. Blame the carelessness of water supply systems. All the
tofu estrogen being pumped into your dinner time glasses… No
goddamned respect for the little guy! You’ve got to commend Adam
here. Really, you’ve just got to… At least he’s trying to make
something of his existence. Trying harder than any of you condom
wearing sissies out there… And don’t even get me started on the butt
munchers… Huh? Don’t you want to win the game? Don’t you want
to make a little savior all your own?
Sperm #472. A number for a name. And lucky even for that.
He’s the little squirt who makes it into the egg. What a daring,
courageous pilot… Got a destiny written on his forehead that one…
No more training than the rest of ‘em. A directionless wanderer; a
curve ball drunken master; a kung fu monkey king – flying by wit
alone, laughing all the way. Vision not quick enough to keep up with
the success of life, 472 skywalks down the cervical causeway, sliding into
the painful birth of development.
Camel through the gate of miraculous. Zodiacal vibratos. Xy
dualities become one z as chromograms alight. A fetal thing. Intense
transformation. Umbilical cord of heavenly messages chocked into the
baby’s belly. Glowing beads of firefly godliness drop down, from the
sky, into the bloodstream.
Musette shoves Hostess cakes into her belly.
“The baby’s going to need everything we can give him…”
Adam says.
Three wisemen approach from the roadside: “We saw the star
above.” They say. “Do we have another special someone entering our
world today?”
“Get out of here, you perverts!” Adam shouts. “And if any
of you have caught a glimpse of my sweethearts hole I swear upon my
newborn babe, I’ll make eunuchs out of your entire families!”
A chorus of angels rip harpsichords into the clouds above as
the wisemen depart, taking their expensive things with them.
“Adam it is time for you to deliver the newest testament
unto the world…” Says a booming voice omnipresently.
“I am ready…” Replies Adam.
Down through the bulging pipes of Musette’s plumbing the
baby begins its descent. Musette bucks upon the ground, drooling
with pleasurable pain as her vagina rips and tears. “Here’s the head…”
Says Adam, surgically grabbing the bulbous, slimy globe with his
fingertips, tugging at the stubborn tot, trying to pop the cork from the
mother’s bottlenecking pussy.
Musette sucks moans and oxygen into her vein bulging
forehead. Milk specimens and life drain from her eyes and drizzle cake
frosting down her prickly white legs. Her tiny rainbow toes are
sprinkled with life substance. She screams blood curdling atmosphere
shatter darts through proximal space. Symphonic crescendo waves soar
into alto key, for all of Heaven and Earth to hear.
It’s becoming a blood bath… Her eyes have gone from milk
cartons to swollen blood bubbles. Her frame wilts like the upturning
of a rose. It writhes into a cripple’s position. From all around the
baby’s head the desert is painted red.
Adam drops the head to the dirt. He grabs Musette’s coke
scarred mouth and kisses it hard. The two lovers lock eyes. “I never
meant for any of this to happen…” He says softly. He damns his
curiosity; he damns the world. Injustice of life; injustice of this reality.
Today is the deepest moment of sleep, the space of slumber wherein
nightmares slip in freely. Tomorrow… The golden tomorrow…
Tomorrow would have been a beautiful day for raising a family. Two
lovers growing sagacious together in decently long life. Musette could
have evolved from princess to queen format. She could have grown
stale, like all middle aged women do. She could have become that dusty
old coin slipping between the cracks in the cushions. A lifetime of
continuous free fucking. Adam would have released fleet after fleet of
space ship pilots into that coin slot, dropping jackpot after jackpot into
that graying urethra.
Damn you Musette… How could she have let Adam do this
to her? Tomorrow he would have kept her safe. He could have cleaned
her up and given her a few more wits in her head. He could have made
a good and proper woman out of her. Turned her into some sort of
moley cheeked Madonna. He wouldn’t have minded a few protruding
hairs. Melanoma pock mark scabwork of a face – that’s just how bad
girls gone righteous turn out. He wouldn’t have minded a fallacy part
splitting a receding hair line in two. He could have dealt with the
mascara Sunday masturbations serving penance to weight gained in
cheek fat bible storage tooth rot containers. If only God would have
given him a chance to smack her over the face with a bible… Hail Mary
beads ticking down the seconds towards the apocalypse. Upside down
crosses spinning circles above a head bleating in the closet. A pure
woman, beaming in the natural light of Christ Mohamed. Wedding
bells ringing to the tune of a J.P. Morgan death rattle. Unholy
matrimony in the air of diamond rings glistening their edges up into
stained glass mirrors. A honey moon ticket being spent promoting a
wondrously purified vagina’s plundering. The bed sheets of a heart
grown only much fonder through abstinence.
But who’s he kidding? This is the way it must be: quick and
tragic. Adam faces the facts and says, “Goodnight my sweetheart. Close
your eyes now. And may the next time they open be Heaven’s
splendors revealed.”
Two pennies he dost place upon her still fluttering eyelashes.
A cry attracts his attention. It’s that baby, squirming around in the
dirt… “You little ragamuffin…” He says, picking up the child from
its slimy blood pool. “Must have just plopped out without my
noticing…”
He polishes the child’s forehead. His eyes scan for signs of
comprehension within its pupils. Where is that purpose shining back?
“Damn; he’s still too weak… This calls for reinforcements.
Here comes the cavalry my child…”
Adam bows his head, crosses his heart, hopes to die, and
unzips his fly. He lowers the baby hip level. One good thrust and the
cum crusty penis penetrates the child’s Messiah navel. Surprised eyes
look up agape in the motion of a silent scream. Adam’s chants rant like
methamphetamine monk madness. Back and forth baby stomach
makes for an interesting masturbation tool… And pop goes the
weasel. The baby’s aura ignites. All the remaining blood and placenta
pieces blast off from his skin. What pristine condition you do look in
my child…
Minimal tufts of hair atop the skull stand erect. It’s like liquid
fire swaying Mount Sinai to sleep. The baby dons a full lotus.
Krishna’s mental chariot carries him to the comprehension of a plucked
Arjuna string, and he says, “Father ask me anything so that I may
answer.”
“Tell me, through your close connection to the all that is,
what is being said through this language which is unrecognizable too
all which men are.” Adam says.
“Tis’ the language of apocalypse we hear around us today,
and it says, ‘Abandon all hope for there is no mercy spared on your
head. Run child, but escape not the universe. Your fate is written and
so shall it be fulfilled. Know that God has no mercy upon your soul.
You are cursed to die. Pray if you choose, but your prayers have already
all been heard. Thou art’ God’s ultimate sadness. And through you
shall come the end of man and life.’”
“Thank you my child.” Adam says. “That is all exactly as I
feared.”
He picks up a rock, and drops it atop the child’s head like the
death of a grapefruit. A bit of Rhubarb pie sprinkles the boot cut jibe
of Adam’s step. “Poor Musette. How could I have let this happen to
you?” He asks. And the tears rise. The sun rolls. And mother and
child mix blood together. Oh Holy Night… Oh Damnable Day. Why
for all the stars in the sky do you continue on like this? Don’t you
know it’s killing me?
4
On a grander, holographic scale, Earth wobbles nauseatingly,
in vertigo fashion. She’s become too weighed down by humanity’s
progress. What started out as an itchy case of something brewing
beneath her panty line has spread and engulfed her entire surface. It has
become an epidemic. It has become cancerous. She has become shaky.
Her remaining teeth are yellow and spongy. Her oceans are bubbling
with cigarette butts and Camel logos. Her terrain is sinking beneath the
weight of skyscrapers, and the skyscrapers are amassing rapidly.
The world we know has become a tumor grid of cities
building atop themselves. Television have become the ultimate
plantation tool. Offices have become apartments. The corporations
have found a way of becoming organic. People are lining up single file
to become a part of the machine. Feelings of stagnant purposelessness
are medicated by the carbon dioxide inhalations of flat screens.
Supervisors all the world over guarantee a splendid sleep.
Channel surfing forever on the clock, means these jobs aren’t going to
remain empty for long. And there’s enough for everybody! When one
floor fills up, another is built atop it. Everybody! Move your families
in! It’s a new movement upon the story line of man! There are people
sleeping in cubicles and eating on the couch. Rectal tubes serve dual
roles of feeding and recycling. Grand Master Time Clock sucks on
humanity’s fat, digesting life into a concoction of corporate sustenance.
Even the old 9-5 goes up a degree in heroism. Anything is
better than submitting to the American Dream World: A world
clinking the coinage of human souls through Ethernet cable sewer
causeways; a world surviving upon the transfer of human energy; a
world hypnotically lit by signal receptions; an inversed atmosphere
glowing purple air particles and neon green clouds up above eyelids;
wireless, radiation transmitting smoke stack cigarettes are being pawned
off as sexy; rabbit ear cameras are taking pictures of people’s brain
waves and implementing artificial faces upon artificial landscapes. Real
life has become a comfortable community of people ingesting
morphine nutrition and feeding others their waste. It is a world of
pixelated love and hollow joy. A world wherein functioning vocal cords
are noisome, and canned laughter is euphoric.
Adam has to escape. Running feels like the only sane thing to
do at this moment. Poor Musette… She’s in a better place… This
world ain’t no world fit for the ragamuffin…
Adam covers his face in his hands and weeps.
5
The sound of Musette, coughing up blood, spunks him out
of his funk. He rushes over to the living corpse and celebrates.
“I’m so happy that you’re alive!” He cries.
She tells him that it will take much more than Saviors coming
out of her vagina to take her out; and together they stuff her umbilical
innards back up inside of her stomach.
She’s looking pretty nasty. Half of her blood supply has been
drained from her body. She has to suck up two doses of blood from
her child’s crushed skull bowl before she can even stand up. But she’s a
strong girl: Jigalettes were made for facing death. And she’s got a
journey to continue. No time for crying. “We’re only a few miles from
the city.” She says. “I’ve had enough rest for one lifetime.”
And so they walk, and The City of Lights rises up to meet
them. Up over the horizon it crawls. The amplification buzz of its
crackling luminescence hums like an urbanized oasis song, pulling
them towards it magnetically.
They are silent as they enter the city limits. Their senses are
overloaded. Towering edifices of glitz and glam swing about
animatronically. Their vision is held. Speaker pumped coinage rainfall
shower their ears in enticements. A liquid herd of people engulfs their
bodies and controls their pace.
There are advertisements everywhere: face painted mimes,
crack addled tatter beings, bards of various musical persuasions, and
hordes of drained drunks hold out exposed palms while performing
their various acts, primed for catching both praise and pity.
Three-Six-Mafias, with baggy jeans and back pocket dew rags, indicate
on treasure maps the locations of all the nearest head shops, strip
clubs, bootie bars, and for an added price, a rated list regarding the city’s
best and worst alleyways to go down in pursuit of purchasing illegal
substances. Carnies, with shepherd canes, lull mothers into Tony award
winning Broadway plays, grandmothers into four star retirement
packages, tycoons into free falling roller coasters, idolaters into wax
museums, and everybody else into a café wherein they can purchase a
serendipitously gold flaked ice cream cone for the mere price of half a
mortgage and a little self-dignity.
Every sidewalk in the city turns into a tunnel of insect people.
They wear home team baseball caps from places like Puerto Rico,
Tijuana, and various locations scattered along the Orient. Their jaws
crack spinning mouthfulls of spoke attached playing card teeth around
clicking tongues, slapping a city wide bulletin upon their thighs,
informing tourists that an erotically good time is just a ten digit phone
call away.
Adam and Musette are syphoned into one of these clicking
tunnels. There is no escape, no breach, no choice in direction – one
must pass tightly through these tunnels to wherever they lead; and
they lead Adam and Musette beneath a series of plaster cast limbs,
Coliseum arcs, and chapel spires, directly into the boot shaped corner of
a casino’s front lobby.
“Welcome to Aphrodite’s Aeneas – the most succulent casino
in all the city. May I check any baggage for you?” Asks a man from
behind the casino’s front counter; a balding man, one of those ostrich
egg incubator types, a friar patch, shrubbery topped gentleman of class,
with a pruned and manicured beard decorating his face, streaming
down the sideburn runoffs of his skull borne nest, framing the
grumpiest looking gorilla mug Adam has ever seen – the face of a
skinny alpha male, with features scowling a superiority complex out
into the world. A golden chain, indicating a pocket watch concealed
beneath the flaps of a dull, concierge’s blazer, in addition to the man’s
tritely bored Austrian accent, tells everybody around him that if
circumstances were different, and people were not mandatorily placated
into positions underqualified to harness them, he would be a count, an
officer, or some other figure of mankind’s hierarchal aristocracy.
“We’re only carrying these backpacks. I think we’ll be ok…
but thank you.” responds Adam.
The man sighs and says, “I see your backpacks… But, what I
mean is: do you not have any buried guilt which you would perhaps
like to bring to the surface before entering our iniquitous den? It is sort
of a traditional ritual within the city; call it a superstition if you like…”
“Oh… Ok… I see… Some kind of luck ritual is that right?”
“Yes. Something like that.”
“Ok. That’s probably a good idea. Give me a moment to dig
something up… it’s not that I have nothing to confess… It’s just
that I don’t know how comfortable I feel about declaring anything out
loud, here… in such a place as this… in front of my girlfriend – my
guilty thoughts; you understand…”
“Take your time…”
“If I have something to confess, do you really think that it
will affect my luck?” Adam asks.
“I make no guarantees.” Responds the bagman.
“Well, it’s worth a shot I guess… Here it goes… But you
have to understand, I’ve never told this to anybody … Only my
journal knows what I’m about to say.”
Adam takes a deep breath, and lets the confession clink out:
“One time, when I was sixteen years old – a young buck was I, sizzling
in the most intense phase of puberty; back when I was what you could
call a boner toting libido; back when my primary equipped weapon was
a slap action jack-off whack speed swift enough to whip the make-up
cakes off even the most celluloid entrenched of Cinemax nudies, my
parents left me alone in their goodly house; the house wherein I was
raised; the place which propagated, upon every wall, and down every
hallway, moral standards; the place which stitched into the clothing of
both sexes primary carols, and masonic symbology for protection
against satanic temptation; the place which promoted a prohibition of
all pleasures, the absence of alcohol in every cupboard, the abolition of
cigarettes, the complete sanctification of curse words from mouths;
wherein sex was a dirty word, and sixteen the most dangerous age.
Home alone. Free as a female deer – a doe I was; able to express myself
and my demons without the weight of intrusive eyes or intrusive
regulations bearing down upon me. I stripped myself nude as a savage.
I ran through the halls whooping barbarian cries, letting my pendulum
penis flop this way and that upon my thighs. But none of that was
enough. I had the beast of puberty pumping hormones by the
gallon-full into my blood stream, and my testes were screaming out for
relief.
“Oh! Lord have mercy! When I saw my sweet pets, t’was then
I fell first deeply into sin! The household pets… Living creatures…
Ones without human tongues capable of declaring my iniquities to my
parents – those sweet pet tongues, so rough, so warm, so furious, so
hungry… I knew what it was my body wanted.
“I rushed to the kitchen. Pulled a container of yogurt from
the fridge. Began shepherding my pets into my bedroom. I closed the
door behind us. Sweet things… Sweet little innocents… Sweet
hungry pets… Locked in my room with me… My teenage room. I
began dabbing my penis with little morsels of yogurt. The pets were
watching curiously, my dog salivating, eyeing my penis as though it was
a chew toy delicacy. It didn’t take much to coax her into tasting my
treaty surprise… she was crazy about the whole procedure… she
couldn’t get enough of it once she’d started licking. It felt nice: that
soft, warm, floppy tongue slapping against my tingling cock like ocean
waves lapping against the side of a sensory stuffed lighthouse… Her
eyes looked up into mine, the whole time confused as to whether or
not what she was doing was ok, stupidly confessing to me that she was
aware of a breech in propriety, telling me that she’d stop at my
command, while her tongue feasted with orgiastic furor.
“My cat though… Cats are different. There truly is some
strange, mysterious knowledge embedded into the souls of cats.
They’re classy. They have self-control. There’s a reason we use the term
‘cool cat’ in our lingo. Let’s just say my cat didn’t want to lick the
yogurt from my penis… She ultimately hesitated. But she was small,
you understand? I was much bigger than her. and the thing about it is
that I knew her tongue would feel so much better than my dog’s. That
rough, sandpaper scraping… It’s enough to give a sixteen year old wet
dreams for a month… And cats are sexy, with those almond shaped
eyes, all slit down the middle; the way they walk, slender; the epitome
of slank as far as animals go. Females in comparison to the dog’s male.
The yin of domesticated house pets.
“Needless to say, I grabbed the cat, my hormones negating
any chance for proper foreplay. I was as mad as a lunatic. Semen was
pumping my penis into a lust seeking rocket. I was helpless but to
follow its whims. She didn’t put up too much of a fight, thank
goodness, the cat… She was declawed. Her only line of defense was
her teeth. and even though she was trying to stay classy, she was a real
tramp at heart. Once her tongue hit the tip her eyes closed, and she was
consumed. There’s no such thing as rape, just a good fight… My dog
kept trying to push her out of the way… She wanted more… But the
cat was on fire. I had to lock the dog outside.”
“Ok then!” The bagman says, after a short breathing interval
on Adam’s part. “Let’s move on to cash chipping… How many chips
would you two like?”
“Give us everything you can for this.” Adam says, pulling the
final bill from his wallet.
“Very good then.” The bagman says, handing them both a
red chip. “Enjoy your stay in the Aeneas!”
A statue of David greets them in the lobby. It stands erect in
the middle of the room. From its poky man part an information sign
flashes, guiding visitors to the gambling floors, poker rooms,
restaurants, bars, and theatre shows. Supersonic sports screens,
hanging from every archway, swirl pink neon indications, announcing
topless triages, while pointing the way to various bouncer blocked
peep-shows.
Adam and Musette head towards the slot machines. Flash
pops burst all around their inner ears. A collage of singular synthesizer
noises, mixed together with other singular synthesizer noises combine
to make a chorus of random, harmony grade distinction. A fire alarm
screeches in synchronization with a barnyard cow’s mooing. A rooster
call. Tinkling coin trills to the tune of a nine-line multiplier divided. A
genie shouts, “Alakazam!” And a bar is pulled into a couple of
cherries. It’s music, all of it together: Harmony in luck and fortune.
Around the water cooler, black tie monks command security
incantations to hidden camera comrades, telling them to watch out for
this and that red lettered John Dillinger.
A musky cigarette haze glows slowly, glazing over the milky
white eyes of slot runners. The smoke floats in and out of polka dot
scattered coin slots. It dampens the siren spins, and shoots laser
streams through the air. Musette points out a certain machine, telling
Adam that it is probably as good as any for playing upon. It’s shaped
like an oil well; its seat looks like an old whiskey barrel; an ash tray sits
sizzling with a half smoked cigarette fizzing in its amber confines.
Adam takes the cigarette butt and sits down. He pulls the red chip
from his pocket and kisses it, saying: “Oh slot machine… I offer thee
this magic tater chip, and pray that you may, with your mysterious
digestive system, turn it into crispy dollar bills with which I can buy
some regular tater chips for sweet Muesette and myself to chomp upon
later tonight in the near future…”
He feeds the token to the machine and watches it light up like
a hyperactive jukebox. It’s digital screen flashes colorfully around like
the floor of a seventies discotheque. Pot-bellied cartoon characters come
to life, sitting upon various neon checker board squares.
“Well, howwwwdy!” screeches the voice of a hillbilly tycoon.
“Are ya ridy to bring the black rain pourin’!?”
Adam prays that he is. With a heart beating loudly in his chest
he pulls the lever.
The characters spin around in a whirlwind, switching places,
rolling around an imaginary, digitally programed, rotary wheel of
computer programmed chance and randomness. The machine squeals a
loud, clinking squelch through its speakers, mixing its spit-pig scream
with the screams of the floor’s countless other machines. It loudly
announces Adam’s anxious awaitance upon fate’s deliberation to the
entire floor.
“Ding! Ding! Ding!” It finally screams. “Rebel yell whoop!
Way to go Bucko!” Zig-zagging neon lines highlight upon the screen
the multipliers which Adam successfully landed.
“I have no idea what I just did…” Adam says. “But I like
the sound of what just happened!”
“Do it again!” Musette prompts in reply. “Look, it says we
now have 7.50 instead of five.”
Adam pulls the lever. The machine squeals and the lights
explode.
“Buh… Buh… Buh… BONUS ROUND!” Says the
machine, swiping all the cartoons away in a tornado animation,
dropping neon bubbles all about the periphery of its twirl.
“Rescue the hidden characters from the Texas Twister for
extra cash! But watch out, if you uncover the tax collector you’ll end the
bonus round!”
“Do I just touch the screen?” Adam asks Musette, confused.
“Touch that one…” Musette commands.
Adam presses into a green bubble, which pops, revealing a
horse portrait.
“Great job!” Says the machine.
“Now that one!” Musette cries.
Adam presses a blue bubble, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s
the tax collector.
A loud whistle erupts. “Ahh… TOO BAD…” The
ominous voice clears away the bonus round, returning the familiar slot
wheels to the screen. “Keep it up cowboy!”
At this time a prudish, fur hat wearing woman squirms her
way into the seat next to Adam. She looks at Adam’s screen and says,
“Well… How are you two doing?”
Musette tells her that they’re doing fine. “We’ve nearly
doubled our money.”
“Oh that’s great honey…” The woman says, smiling EZ
cheese through her pores. “I personally believe that it’s virtually
impossible to make any money from these machines, but if you two
are doing well, than good for you!”
Musette expresses annoyance to Adam through her facial
expressions.
“Don’t worry about her.” Adam says, trying not to focus
upon this disruption. “She’s clearly a prude: a natural born loser. Don’t
let her get to you. Look at her… She’s got liver bruises all over her
arms. Her skin folds over itself… She probably has cancer. She’s got
negativity written all over her body. She couldn’t win if the machine
was rigged. Her advice is poisonous, just phase her out of your mind.”
“I don’t like her. Let’s go to another machine.”
“But we’re doing so well here… We just got a bonus round
even. Can’t you just block her out of your mind for a bit? I’m sure
she’ll leave soon. Give her a second to lose some of her chips, and I’m
sure she’ll move on. Come over to this side of the machine if you have
to.”
“Plllleeeaassseeee… We’re not even making any real money…
What we need to do is get away from these video games and put our
money into something which can actually pay out.”
“What do you mean? This machine’s great! It just takes a bit
to build up a strong base…”
“Come on, please! I don’t want to stay here anymore!”
A frustrated Adam gives in. He cashes out. And they move
away from the slot machines.
“Now this is where the real money blooms…” Musette says,
as they step onto the green based, cigarette ash laced, paisley patterned
carpet of the Aeneas’ card, craps, and roulette section. A sprawl of felted
tables stretches out before them, clinging, with massive claw foot paws
to Earth, harboring, upon their flanks, platoons of sport coat wearing
men and women, all and each blooming their own Jew cap bald spots
atop their freckled cranium cream-puff tops, puffing off the
mushroom tips of salami shaped cigars. The women, with their thin
blonde buns, fan hands of peacock feathers out, searching, with their
scanning eyes, for flushed out clubs, straight spades, shimmering
diamonds, and weak hearts. Their red lipstick stains the lips of martini
dicks. They drink the smarts right out of themselves. Their voices call
out raspy calls, raises, and checks; rarely folding – too drunk to quit;
trying too hard to prove something to themselves; playing to play, and
loving the intoxication burn of addiction; feeding their veins with the
euphoria of giving in; throwing the task planner to the dealer, saying,
“Hit me” just for the sake of saying something besides “No.”
Not having enough of a fund foundation to stand upon,
Adam and Musette pass the fields of poker storminess, parting
streaming spouts of ante fountains, and tiptoeing over craps piles,
making their way to the roulette tables.
Craziness abounds there. Loony tune mad house packs,
boiling clusters of roaring excitement and rage, hip thrust flirtations left
and right, breathing whisky breath into grandma’s hair, proving that
there’s much more time for silliness around this neck of the woods.
The whole scene looks like a corporate pot luck gone classless. Pinching
fingers snatch a feel of everybody’s butt cheeks. Men with blush
powdered cheeks giggle into their lavender gloves. Women with hairy
knees burp little vomit drips over their moles. Everybody’s sipping
their drinks and letting the dealer do the hard work for them. Server
girls are weaving in between people clusters gracefully. They refill the
glasses of bleary masochists endlessly. Hidden chips fly from secret
fanny pack pockets, flinging chortled life away upon river passage.
Everyone’s arming the weapon of spinning death without even being
able to see the revolver’s cartridge chamber; and the carriage clicks all
night long.
“One shot, up it or nothing; grab your balls son and prove
to me the value of thy seed.”
Musette clears Adam’s path towards courage and success,
handing him her red chip, saying, “We’re either right or we’re wrong.
Red or black. Simple enough…”
A clutter of spinning wagon wheels slice the air around
Adam’s hairdo as he approaches.
“What color are you sir?” Asks the dealer.
“Black.” Adam responds.
“Ok. Please place your chips.”
Adam deposits them all on black. The dealer spins the wheel.
A hypnosis swirl revolves around the vertex, churning all of the air’s
floating flirtations and celebrations into one long pendulum beat,
tickling Satan cackle into Adam’s mind frame.
The ball lands on red.
Cooked, filleted, fucked: rotten luck… Sorry champ, that’s all
your cash. Looks like your little journey has come to a screeching halt.
Adam and Musette walk away from the roulette table.
Defeated and deflated, they sit down in a bar lounge.
“We can’t even get a drink…” Adam says, in one of those
ultra-malicious tongue slithers which only the wounded can do so well.
“Don’t blame me.” Musette responds. “I only pushed you.
You could have said ‘no’ whenever you wanted to. I never forced you
into anything.”
Adam is enraged: “You don’t think so? What about when
you forced me to leave the slot machine? And what about when you
forced me to go to that stupid carnival of death!? Goddammit…
You’re so stupid. I hate you sometimes…. This whole escape
adventure that we’re on is stupid… The City of Lights is stupid…
Let’s just go home. I don’t want to talk about it anymore…”
Sitting in silence, a man named Terry suddenly interrupts. He
pokes his head into Adam and Musette’s personal space and says,
“Hey, I couldn’t help but eavesdropping. And I don’t mean to be a
creep, but do you think I could buy you two a drink? It sounds like
you’ve had a rough night.”
Adam and Musette exchange upset glances.
“Whatever…” Adam says. “Lord knows I could use one.”
Terry hops up excitedly. He rushes to the bar: “One for a
man, and one for a woman.”
“Here you go Lil’ sweetheart.” He says, placing before
Musette a Tickle-Me-Tuesday-My-Dear-Aunt-Sally, and handing Adam
a rum and Coke.
“Nope, the other way around…” Adam says, reaching out
and swapping drinks.
“Oh… Sorry…” Terry says. “You know what happens
when you assume; asses both here and there. I actually like the fruity
ones too. Hey, do you guys mind if I take a seat? I’m bored as Hell and
could use the conversation. Been sittin’ here watchin’ all the people
pass and could use some interaction.”
Musette tells him that it would be fine. Terry grabs his drink
from the table behind theirs and starts chatting: “I hate to sound
pathetic, but this place can be so boring at times. Hey, my name’s Terry
by the way. Never got a chance to formally introduce myself. I live
around here.”
“I didn’t know people lived here.” Musette says. “I thought
they only visited.”
“Nope… There’s people like me hanging out all over; up
above and around in these walls; these casinos are crammed full of
tenants actually. Most of em’ don’t gamble, at least not for a living.
Ain’t nobody can afford that kind of crap. Most em’ power the casino
machines with their televisions. Some of em’ work in the bars and
stuff. It takes a lot of energy to keep a place like this running. I live on
the thirty second floor myself. Try to come down and throw a couple
coins around every now and then, just ta’ keep my legs from falling off.
But what about you two? You clearly ain’t from around here? You
married? On a honeymoon?”
“Nah, we aren’t locals.” Responds Musette. “We’re from Salt
City. Just trying to get away from the corporations and the tyranny.
We’re tired of sucking on the man’s tittie. We aren’t terrorists or
nothing.’ Just kids… We ain’t married neither… Just lovers…”
“Ahhh… You guys are hip!” Terry exclaims. “I could tell it
first I set eyes on ya. I could tell that you guys were cool. A bit of the
rainbow rockin’ spirit in ya, eh? Hey, it’s cool… It’s all cool… In fact I
was a hip bud myself – back in those days when the presidents still had
flesh, and the people still had legs to walk upon. And I’ll tell ya, it’s
about the most damned difficult task imaginable trying to unearth a
like-minded soul anywhere round here. Hot shit if you two aren’t the
most alive lookin’ faces I’ve come across in I’d say about the last
decade! It ain’t sayin’ much… But believe me, the sight of your two
blood flushed forms is enough to give an old man like myself enough
hope to keep me truckin on for at least a few more days!”
Musette tosses back the last of her drink.
“Well shit, little sweetheart! You’re quite a drinker aren’t ya!?
How about another round? My treat! Come on man... finish up your
fruity tooty and let’s get serious… It’s not every day you run into a
good Samaritan like myself ready to shower you in the Lord’s sweet
mercy!”
And then the rounds start dropping from the ceiling. They
tumble down in sheets like rain. They front from the folds in Terry’s
wallet. Adam takes them one by one and sips them up his curly straw,
drowning his misery in a torrent of pineapple liquor and chopped up
strawberry seeds. The conversation becomes smeared and oily. Swirling
clouds, constructed of the jiggling bass bump signs of increased and
deeper drunkenness, cause words, laughter, silence, and swaying bodies
to merge together into a cocktail of cookiness. All the stripper dressed
hussies, those girls who play resident to this fleshpot of a town, look
so much sexier, and so much less cellulite infected than they had only a
few rounds back; their blonde bleached heads shine so much more
surreally, so much more platinum infused, emphasizing their skulls
within an aureole of divine radioactivity. The clinkling coinfall sounds
of rainage slot victories tumble through the alcohol touched air particles
and swill around Adam’s ear canals, showering him with a pattering
sensation of rainbows’ ended waterfalls. The men, making moves on
women, show off in every possible scope of vision, and are presented
as something natural, beautiful, commanded, and evolutionary.
Nature, the casino, man’s greatest and tallest towers, all interconnected,
woven into the present moment, becoming the one true reality.
Nothing more beautiful, nothing more pristine or sacrosanct, the face
of God in the physical form. Tears well up in Adam’s tear ducts. He is
so moved.
Slurring, he pushes an empty, curvy glass across the surface of
the table, sending it spinning onto its side and into Terry’s lap.
“Another one Terry… This one’s gone empty.” He says.
And Terry, laughing, spins his finger through the air, signaling the
deliverance of another round.
Terry leans forward and says, “Hey… You guys wouldn’t
happen to want to go and see a show would ya?”
“A show!?” Muestte is excited. “What fun! What fun
business! I would love to! What show is it!?”
“Don’t worry sweetheart; I know just the one… You mind
freaks are gonna love it!”
And before Adam can even realize that an excursion is in the
works, he is swooped up out of his pleather bar-lounger and
shepherded into a stream current of crowd, bombarding itself upon a
lone box office worker.
“Are we seeing another circus?” He asks Musette.
“No, Terry’s taking us to see a show! A real City of Lights
show! Isn’t that fantastic!?”
“I told you… We don’t have enough money for another
show baby… I love you, but we just don’t…”
“No, Terry’s paying for it! Don’t worry!”
“Terry… Oh Terry’s paying for it… Why are you taking us
to see a show Terry? What did we ever do to you? Why are you being
so nice to us…”
“I just like you guys is all…” Terry responds. “It ain’t every
day, and it isn’t very often, that I get to spend my money on anything
worth spending my money on. All the shows in the world, without
someone beautiful to watch them with, are nothing but dreams and
illusions. If you can’t talk about something with somebody once that
something has finished then how can you know that that something
ever even truly happened? That’s my question for you man…”
“But what show is it?” Adam asks.
“It’s a magic show. Everybody raves about it. Special kind of
magician, been on all the advertisement billboards the whole town
over, and painted on the sides of the casinos even… Sexy man, they
say this magician is… Some kind of an urban guru… A physics
master maybe… I guess he can fly; that’s what I’ve been told.”
“But Terry, are we even inside; or are we outside right now?”
“That’s a good question. You see… In this city, often times
you can think that you’re outside when really you’re inside. All of these
miniature famous world wonders, and this grass beneath our feet, and
the star speckled sky above our heads – all of it’s backdrop scenery. It’s
easy to forget that brother, but just remember that I live inside of these
walls… Well, not these ones in particular… But I haven’t even been
outside for at least two years now… Can’t remember where the exit
door is anymore. It’s possible that often I might ignorantly be outside
without knowing it, but I know that we’re inside right now because
one of my old squeezes lives in an apartment over there, in that
pyramid painting thing…”
“But I thought we were in Rome… This isn’t Rome…
it’s… Egypst…”
“Yea… These casinos are all connected to each other through
tunnels and walkways. You’re in Rome one second and then suddenly
you’re in Egypt. This place is the world miniaturized into walking
distance and plasticized beyond touchability. The show that we’re
going to see is in the Executive Horus, an Egypt themed casino. That’s
why it looks like Egypt in here.”
Terry leans his arm against the box office counter lazily.
“Two men and one woman… Just how I like it.” He says.
“Excuse me sir?” Responds the box office operator.
“For Pete’s sake! Just give me three tickets!”
“Oh… Yes sir; that will be three hundred and sixty dollars.”
“Three sixty? Fuck this shit man… Come on guys, let me
show you a real City of Lights show – this is a scam! What bullshit…
I’ll show you something better than this hunk of crap… Come on
guys, let’s get out of here…”
They turn away from the ticket counter and head into the
shadows of a dark alley. The shadows swallow the sounds of their
footsteps and echo the giggles of young girls and tooth deprived
perverts into their ears. They drunkenly patter down the passage.
Sweaty bricks and graffiti tagged hieroglyphs decorate their trail.
“Here it is… The Cuntry Club! This place is like the Costco
of strip clubs…”
A neon sign flicks overpoweringly above the joint.
“Whatever you’re in the mood for, be it lap dances, suck offs,
firemen cum drops, a little squishy squashy three way bangy lick action
– this place will have it.”
They pass through a pair of pink, kitchen style, swinging
doors.
“And it doesn’t cost a year’s salary either…” Terry says,
handing the bouncer a thirty dollar bill.
“This is where the real spirit of the city breathes and dances.
All of that other bullshit – the Styrofoam world wonders, the box
office shows, the gift shops – that stuff’s all line and tackle. This is
where I find myself when I’m in the mood to smile. This is why I
moved to this God forsaken city in the first place.”
Both Adam and Musette grow hot in their pants as they take
in their surroundings. All around them, swirling towards the ground
like whistling missiles, drop strippers from sliding trap doors in the
ceiling. They slide down their poles, screeching the flesh of their thighs
and palms against the polished, sweat sticky steel. They fall like rain
drops, one and then another and then another. They writhe to the
music and dance on the stage; they collect the contents of exploding
wallets in their g-strings; they allow men to blow raspberries into their
cleavage; they jiggle their pussy lips above cigarettes; they give private
dances; take drink orders; embark upon conversations; employ sales
pitches; and make out with the girlfriends of customers.
Terry leads Adam and Musette to a table and orders another
round.
“For the right price, and maybe a little familiarity, you can pop
off more rocks than you even thought you had in you. Look; take for
instance that one… That little sweet thing over there shakin her tune
to the order of somebody’s fancy is named Tania… Now she’s a fine
girl… She knows how to treat a man right… A sensational chick…
Gives hand jobs like a ceramicist… She likes me… Quite a bit in
fact… She always gives me top priority. Most guys pass her by because
of that cripple limb of hers… They don’t understand that that’s her
talent tool… They take one look at her, deem her unsymmetrical, and
give all their money to some plastic surgery clone who can’t give head
‘ny better than a blow up doll…”
He takes another swig of his drink.
“I bet I could git her to come over here and give us a private
show…” He says. “She likes me… She don’t care about any of these
other no-bit cronies in here… She knows that I treat her right.”
He stands up, wobbling off his pivot, looking subtly morose
beneath his alcohol soaring confidence. He raises his hand and whistles:
“Tania! Tania! Hey, come over here for a minute you little handicap! I
want to show you off to my new friends!”
Tania abandons her post, and approaches. Adam is surprised
– he had expected to see security guards before ever seeing Tania up
close and personal.
“Hey Terry Bear…” She says.
“How are you don’ tonight sweetheart?” Terry slurs. “I’ve
been thinkin’ a lot about you recently…”
“Ahhh… Terry, you’re so sweet…”
“I want to introduce you to my new friends: this here’s
Adam, and this one’s named Music. I was just telling them about your
arm; thinkin’ maybe you could show em’ what you can do with it?
You don’t got any qualms about eatin out a pussy have you? A little
two on one might be nice for these two… You and Music would get
along just fine – she’s a real firecracker too… These guys have had a
real rough night… When I met em’ they were fightin’ like hound
dogs, and they didn’t even have enough money to buy a drink…
Maybe you could cheer em’ up for me? I’d even pay to watch you do
it… That would be fun, don’t ya think? I personally couldn’t think of
a better way to spend an evenin’ could you?”
He nudges Adam in the ribs.
“To tell the truth…” Adam interjects. “Musette and I - we’re
real sticklers to chastity… What we do in the bedroom we consider
extremely private. It’s not you Tania… You’re real beautiful… And
your arm looks amazing… It’s just that currently I’m the only one
who’s seen Musette’s privates, and she’s the only one who’s seen mine,
and I think that we’re just going to have to pass on this one Terry…”
“Hot damn!” Terry exclaims. “You two truly are the sweetest
kids I’ve ever met… I wouldn’t wedge no slice a pussy between you
two, no matter how badly I wanted to see the results… I guess it’s
just you and me Tania: the way that arms staring up at me, all quivery
and frail, it’s pushing my load up something fierce, and if I don’t
pump it out I think I’ll probably get an ulcer… You two will be aright
if I just take a little five minute pit stop, won’t ya? Take this: drinks are
on me… I’ll be back before the next show’s even over.”
He throws a twenty on the table, and slings his arm over
Tania’s shoulder. Together the two of them disappear into the wispy
haze of The Cuntry Club’s back area.
“We’ve got to get out of here quick babe…” Adam rapidly
says to Musette as soon as Terry’s out of earshot. “This place is a trap.
We’re sinking in quicksand; I can feel it. Terry’s taking us down a hole
we don’t want to go down. This is a labyrynthian city, and Terry’s only
pulling us further into the thick of it. If we stay here we’re bound to
either be raped, mugged, or overdosed – believe me; I’ve dealt with
these kind of creeps before. They’ll pay all of your receipts for a night,
and then feel as though they’ve bought a servant. This man has us in
his claws. He’s paid for it. I haven’t liked him from the moment he
stuck his head into our business. Nobody’s that nice to anybody
without a reason… This is our one chance Musette… It’s now or
never… We either hop ship here, or we’re dead meat.”
“Don’t you think maybe you’re just being paranoid?”
Musette asks.
“I ain’t! Believe me… Terry’s still skimming the surface. He’s
getting plastered; he’s getting deeper into the trough of his shit. Pretty
soon we’re going to find ourselves in the depths of a rage filled
melancholy. This is not a happy man we’re dealing with: Terry’s a
psychopath waiting to pop. I can feel it. I have a sense for these kinds
of things. I think he’s a murderer. He’s another victim of the system
babe. This is worse than what we abandoned. This place has the
disease of Salt City multiplied exponentially… It’s a global
phenomenon; and this may be the nucleus. It’s definitely way worse
than what we abandoned… Casinos shaped like skyscrapers; falseness
blown up and overpowering: it’s the making of an explosion! We may
have left a firecracker, but this place is a stick of dynamite!”
“Fine. Let’s just leave then… Let’s go home… What do I
care?”
Adam is pleased. He grabs Musette’s hand, and together they
clumsily sneak away, out through the Cuntry Club’s kitchen style
doors, out into the artificial night. They pad around in the neon ticking
hazy darkness, trying not to topple over into little piles of defeat. The
nausea of their alcohol sloshed stomachs swims in their eyes, making
the world about them swirl like oversoaked water colors. Adam’s head
hangs out beyond his wobbly knees. The pale green color of his face is
a murky mirror of his gut. Tracers beam through his vision, streaking
the air with neon blades at each rotation. He stumbles left and right,
bobbing like a Weeble-Wobble across the entire area of the sidewalk.
Thus it is he bumps accidently into a man.
The man stops, turns around, and growls wrathfully at
Adam. Adam knows this ain’t good… He tries to look both brave
and friendly as he turns to face his challenger. The vision he is
presented with is that of a gigantic colored man – a bald goliath of the
ebony line, with skin the baked breath of blacksmiths’ forges. The bulk
of his body looks even bigger than it actually is, being puffed up by one
of those poofy marshmallow winter coats. His bald scalp is scarred
with wound remembrances and beatdowns. His face is cratered with
the purple pock marks of a horrific childhood. His eyes are as yellow as
watery ash trays; they stare deeply and relentlessly into Adam’s.
“You think you can just bump into me without payin’ me
the honor of a proper apology?” Says the black man, speaking with
grave seriousness.
“I’m really sorry about that… I didn’t mean to… It was
nothing but a little ‘oopsie shits’…” Adam responds.
“Yea? You didn’t think no deal about it?” The black man
asks.
Fear turns Adam a bit soberer: “Honestly, it was completely
unintentional. I have had way too much to drink tonight to tell you the
truth…”
“I bet you think you can bump me around all you want,
don’t cha white boy?” says the black man.
“Hey… Let’s not go there… Like I said, it was completely
unintentional.”
“Yea, I bet it was… Like how the slave trade was completely
unintentional?”
‘Oh God, you’re going there…” Adam thinks to himself,
knowing this to be a slippery slope.
“What does this have to do with the slave trade?” He asks.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know; or is it that you can’t
understand my nigger speech? You probably wanting me to be all like
‘fogive me Suh, I shoudn’t a bin in yo way, Suh. It’s jus a dumb nigga
thing a me ta do Suh…’”
“Come on man… Don’t cause a scene. You know I didn’t
mean any harm by my actions. Can’t you tell that?”
“Oh yea? You didn’t mean any harm? Well I think I might
mean some harm by mine. It’s about time we brought ourselves a little
justice to the table; my black brothers, sisters, and I are hungry for
some of that! For too long we’ve been sitting quietly by, taking your
bumps and bruises, your slurs and abuses, pretending as though
nothing is happening… And we’ve let you shoot our Kings, and
splatter our Malcolms; and we’ve let you push us to the backs of buses,
and whip us relentless in Thomas J. Jefferson basements, with whips
and lashes of divine right! But today you aren’t getting’ off the hook so
easily… I refuse to let you batter me about without consequence. You
ain’t gonna walk upon me no longer man!”
Adam quickly tries to refute: “Oh Jesus, sir, these things -the
slave trade, Malcolm X, the civil war – They were bad things… But
they were all done in the past. ‘Twas not I who committed these
horrible atrocities. It was an ignorant time for us all… I’m sorry for
the injustices your people have had to endure, but do you think it’s
really proper blaming all that on me?”
“Come on man… Don’t think you can get out of this so
easily.” Says the black man. “You’re always bein’ like: ‘nigger me this
and nigger me that’, and I’m thinkin’ to myself that maybe it’s about
time my people and I started niggering you! We can’t just sit back letting
justice go unbalanced… The karma wheel’s gotta spin baby! Do you
know what it feels like to be, not only denied service from a restaurant,
but to be thrown into the triple knotted, whip abusing hands of that
restaurant owner’s wife? And for what? For trying to buy a meal like
any other descent person! That’s my life story! Raped nakedly, and
abused to standards unfit for a pig. Do you even think you know what
that feels like? You can’t know… It’s impossible for you to know…
It would be impossible for you to feel it like I feel it, in my blood –
because your blood’s not level with mine! And until it is, we’ve got
ourselves a problem! A problem which can’t be done away with
through mere apology alone… Because I can’t come to your level
man… I just can’t… It’s actually impossible for me to come to your
level… These scars which stain my face, and drain my spirit, they keep
me down here… We can’t take back the abuses you inflicted upon us.
Once a punch is punched, that’s it. You’re just going to have to come
to my level brother!”
“What are you talking about?” Adam asks. “All this blood
leveling nonsense… Don’t you know you’re not oppressed anymore?
We have equal opportunity laws, and indiscrimination policies set in
place…”
“Those are all just things of paper and philosophy… The
fleshy, god given minds still hold grudges; and your blood still holds
memories too – like mine, but twisted, inverse memories. Look at all
of the confederate flags waving above the porches of so many
suburban households, and listen to the jokes ringing around the
barbecues of so many backyards: where do you think the funny
youngsters get their demeaning and insensitive cruelties from? It’s in
their blood… Yea, their blood; that’s where all of the memories exist,
boiling and bubbling like some kind of bad dream, which try as you
might, you can’t escape from; a record rolling around and around,
never switched out… If you listen to that sad song long enough you
will hear the story of a young kid cutting himself to pieces over guilt
beneath his bed: the guilt of an unchangeable and beautiful skin color;
the guilt of a bullying bleach wave raging forward in fear. The guilt on
all fronts needs to be acknowledged and mowed down. And there’s
only one way, one weapon, one means capable of delivering that
leveling force to the world: the hard fist of justice! It’s hard to watch
you smile that trickster grin of yours as you pretend to understand! Can
you hear it? Because it drowns out my thoughts… Even if you
plugged your ears, you and I both know that the chorus is real – and
neither of our consciences will be quiet until we do something about it,
dammit! Someone has to stand up! And I’m not afraid to do it! With
my ancestors watching I will kick in your teeth, I’ll rapingly persuade
you to clean my house eternally, and I’ll force you, for unending years,
to receive blunt beatings upon your white backside! I am ready to
enact!”
Adam is tossed into a vat of self-reflection. He has become
painfully aware of the number of subtle racist insults present in his
dialogue; he remembers his ridicule of the black television network; his
aversion to grape soda, fried chicken, and rap music. Coming face to
face with the motivator behind the funny feeling feels when passing an
afro on the street has brought him to accountability. He says, “Punch
me then. I want you to do it. I want you to beat the discrimination out
of me. No longer do I wish to feel the embedded superiority of my
race. I want to feel an equality between you and me that can lead my
children to hug your children without any boundaries between them. I
want to finally be free of this leftover evil. Clean me out sir, I authorize
you with the privilege and responsibility – it would be an honor.”
Adam stands himself up straight as a pine tree. His joints
pop nitrogen bubbles in the stretch. He takes a heady inhale; and
prepares himself for the reception of an equalization.
“You know that I’m going to do it…” The black man says.
“You know that I have no choice. You see my motivations now. It is
quite inescapable isn’t it? Though you and your race thought you had
made it out of the bank, we recognized your face – the slew of hostage
corpses is still warm inside our basements, and your fingerprints are
plastered all over the vaults. You see now that you have not been
forgotten. You see that you cannot escape justice. You see that heroic
action is called for on both our parts. You shall stand as one attorney
out of many, for the masses of your injustice, and I shall be the
executioner. Together we shall root the elephant from the room by
force.”
Adam nods in acknowledgment.
“White boy, today we offer you up as a sacrifice; petitioning
the gods to set for us a level stage. We plead for the holy matrimony of
two evolutionary paths, and for a unified global strength. We seek a
world wherein Mecca and Jerusalem can become one location; a planet
Earth with no red line of separation drawn across it. We wish for all the
world’s people to be embraced by justice and released from within into
an expanding world of possibilities, with no races or classes, just a
pumping heart beating in diversity, to make the body move, in actual
effectiveness, towards higher goals.”
Adam says Amen.
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way my brother, but it’s just
so goddamn unavoidable… I know it might seem more righteous to
let brother pass brother peacefully by, and turn the other cheek – but
you see, my cheek’s been turned too far already… And if I don’t act
now I may never be able again to set it straight again.”
The black man cocks his fist back, and releases the
momentum of a thousand underground railroads into Adam’s frail
and virginal nose.
Musette shrieks. Adam’s cartilage bridge shatters into a facial
bag of shattered glass. His head bounces on the pavement, and he
passes out. A guzzling faucet of blood drains the story of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin from his mind. The sky scrapers, the casinos, the business men,
the robotic assembly lines of the industrial revolution, and the all
seeing eye of the green back pyramid all laugh at the folly of their slaves;
and in the clouds above, Jesus screams the shade of his true coloring.
6
In the swampwoods God stretches out his back; he cracks his
jaw; he lifts and curls each of his fingers and toes; and fumbles with his
footing – becoming adjusted to the body which only moments ago
belonged to the hermit.
The yin and the yang of the lord has been inversed. God is in
the hermits body; and the hermit is in the box. They are both strangers
now in strange lands, foreigners within the realms of their own
personal divinities. Hook, line, and sinker, the transaction had taken
place. The hermit had given himself up unwittingly, without resistance,
to the magnificence of the box’s divinity; and God had given himself
up, perhaps foolhardily, but with a huge sigh of relief, and a rush of
excitement, to a life of mortal living. For, though it is magnificent, and
penultimately entertaining, the throne of the divine nucleus can only be
inhabited for so long before one becomes restless. Even the creator
becomes bogged down by eternity; even the eternal gardener hears the
slither of the snake’s persuasion. Mortality, that sweet fleeting breath,
sagging from the boughs of Eden’s most damning resident, naturally,
effortlessly, and demandingly begs to be tasted.
Swapping vessels had not been a quick-draw immersion
procedure of perfection. It was no lightning strike snap of the fingers.
Even for God it had been tough. The organic body is a complex
machine, one which survives off of a self-contained power source, and
responds to the whims of an incorporeal soul. To switch souls on a
body is like switching the water in a fish tank. The chemical balance gets
all sorts of disturbed, and the vital, internal organs are shocked. If
you’re not careful, you’ll lose the tank; and it takes time for the water
and the fish to swim in unity.
But, that being said, the hermit’s body looks so dang good
on God. It’s like as though God made the hermit specifically for the
purpose of personally inhabiting. The image rises above cliché while
still hitting upon society’s favorite traits and identifiers. For example:
the beard – it is the first thing the eye is drawn to, and it just screams
God all over… It is a time developed and undersheared beard. The
most blessed and talented of sculptors could not have chiseled up a
more accurate accoutrement. It is Old Testament magnificent! It
streams like a river of springy twigs down God’s gaunt and puffy face.
It nests the face’s sun spots in an aerie of gray patched respect; and it
connects, like still life waterfalls, or columns of hair, the nostrils of the
face’s bulbous, strawberry shaded nose above its chapped upper lip. It
makes a rainbow of brown shades above spouting fountains of gospel.
It is a safety net receptacle for puffing eye bags, serving as a depository
for the explosions of tearing strain and life struggling amazement
which stream at random. It has a regal reality to it: a coating of grime,
dirt, lice, and scabs, which serve as barnacle badges of pre-life warfare,
and lay out a mantle of humility to enthrone the crown upon.
Accumulated emotions seep through the rotary wheels of his
eyes. The perceptive observer sees the spirit of God elevated beyond the
flesh. A steadily burning fire burns within. Unmatched vivacity and
wisdom; compassion and glory sing with choruses. The hermit’s
former weariness blossoms into delicate petals, unfolding out of
stamen shoots of phallic supremacy. Temple spires stab the sky,
popping pupil glares heaven bound, testing the strength of spines,
topping off God’s new, emaciation paced presentation with windmills
of harmonic sensitivity and strength. They are the cherries atop a grace
so befitting to enlightened beings.
Everything about his appearance is morally modernized. It
attracts fashion forward worship. It pulls from all global bible piles.
The Sherpa sees his God here as completely as does the Evangelist. He
depicts a complete picture, lacking nothing but the omnipotence of all
seeing incorporeal distillation. Leave that to the hermit. The box within
God’s hands. A soul growing clear in divinity. What once was him
now floats in the primordial vacuum of light, bodiless, brainless,
senseless, and intangible. The hermit’s world has become the box. His
self has become its contents. His life has become a dream. He is awake
without being able to distinguish wakefulness from sleep. What he
sees is seen without eyes. What he feels is an inner/outer baroque
blitzkrieg – like an orgasmic wave colliding upon him from all sides,
and swelling from within at all times. The periphery of a hurricane
which has survived the disassociation into the eye.
Conscious awareness has vanished. It evades the hermit like
true peace of mind evades us all. He is the breath which the conscious
brain breathes in. He is the spirit of awareness himself, without himself
being aware. Within his realm of active death he bathes, lulling in an
intense and all-consuming comfort: the most splendid comfort of all:
the comfort of formlessness. A nonsensical fabrication of the night. A
non-lucid, accepting sleep. Unable to formulate reality from the realm
of schizophrenia. Partaking everything as a creation of the self. The
awareness of God. The reason so many prayers remain unanswered.
The momentous snowball rolling down the mountain of time,
surviving off of its own progression; an accumulating and expanding
universe all the while rolling along.
It is the master’s throne. The hermit has been crowned
supreme monitor. He is the life force of the masses and the hope of
the religious. He has become pure grace; no longer a card, but the magic
of the shuffle. He is free.
7
Musette helps Adam to his feet. His body aches from all the
rib kicks he received. His nose has to be snapped back into place and
clogged with boxer shorts to clot the bleeding. His eyes are as black as
raccoons’. He has a migraine; and he swears a couple of his teeth are
loose. But his heart beats with a bit less effort, believing that the blood
in there is somewhat straighter than before.
He and Musette are penniless; the black man robbed them of
their newly acquired twenty dollars. They are physically drained, and
spiritually downtrodden. They fully submit themselves to their fate.
Like broken stallions they heed the petitioning cry of their guardian
angels, which comes in loud and clear, through now properly humbled
ears. The fact that they have been defeated is undeniable. Their little
escape Odyssey has come to a close. They raise their thumbs again into
the air, and point themselves back the way they came.
Their thumbs shake at the knuckle, poking into the
unknown. Hitch-hiking is nerve racking. They have heard all the stories:
depictions of shotgun greetings; exposed penises dripping spermy
from too many lonely miles; transvestite traps of free coffee
temptation; trap door passenger seats exposing unaware travelers to
100 miles of screaming asphalt; pistol puppies who will lick your face
just before expelling a snausage fart beneath your nose – read the paper
if you don’t know what I’m talking about! Just last week there was a
story in there about a lone wandering honey, who with denim jeans
fastened tight round her bulbous butt, entered the passenger seat of a
traveling road machine, only to find Satan himself sneering sinister
behind the wheel. Needless to say those pants didn’t stay on long…
They were reported flapping tattered out the truck’s window only fifty
five miles down the road, hot pistol penis marks poking hither and
thither from every tattered orifice. And what’s worse, they say the poor
girl was fucked rather relentlessly, once the dark master had had his way
with her, by her own soul, which had been forcibly petitioned from
her, after being signed upon the bottom line by a slithering, pitchfork
tongue searing a sloppy, smoking brand of three French kissed sixes
upon the wrinkles of the girl’s own country fried forehead.
And just as Adam feels the first trickle of piss slip into his
undies, a big ol’ thousand pounds of burning steel big rig comes
grumbling to a stop before the curb. A tide of brake fluid clouds
excretes into the air. It blankets Adam and Musette in a billowing fog.
They stand, like brake men of yore, within the cloud. The combined
chromium glint of exhaust pipes, bullet proof windows, an angry duck
ornament, and the rims of multitudinous wheels is all they can see.
The hairs on Adam’s fingers bristle ecstatically as he wraps his
grip around the truck’s shimmering door handle. Electricity jolts
through his young man arteries. The pulse strains his eyes as time
slows down. His hearts beats the bass bumps of a war drum. The
remembered sensation of the black man’s knuckles crushing his nose
make him wary of human contact. Serums of blood hunger, rage, and
revenge pump through his veins, accompanying the adrenaline. He
almost desires a tricky situation, just so he can release some of the fire
within. He wants to equalize something himself. No more
submissions…
It’s just a regular looking man who greets him from within
the truck: the epitome of a hard working father.
“Where ya’ headed?” The man asks.
“Salt City. Responds Adam.
“I’m goin’ right through there… Hop on in.”
The ride is for the most part a silent one. Musette quickly falls
asleep in the back seat. Adam stares out the passenger side window. He
has wrapped himself up within a preoccupied ‘Leave me alone’ posture.
The truck driver can’t help but asking about his black eyes and boxer
short clogged nostrils. Adam tells him that he got in a tiff with a black
man. This doesn’t exactly help quell the truck driver’s anxieties.
So they both leave each other to their thoughts. Adam
watches the City of Lights fade into thinning factory fields and desert
landscape. He keeps his eyes peeled for any remnant of the burnt down
circus tent. There’s nothing there. Whoever owns the land had been
wise enough to enact a speedy cleanup. The story never even made the
news.
A radio talk show program crackles through the truck’s
speakers. The witty interviewer discusses the details of various
wardrobe choices with the actors who donned them. Adam wonders
what other car stereos are playing. Inanity no doubt. Steroids being
pumped into leftovers. Rounded out Tupperware cars being gassed
with preservatives. Everybody shuffling ever onwards to God only
knows where to the sounds of white noise. It’s like a zombie mosh pit
oozing all around. The road is like a clogged colon. Everybody rides,
nestled tightly within their seatbelts, protected from death, and if
they’re lucky, laziness. People rushing from location to location;
everybody immersed within their daily routines and somnambulant
schedules. The radio pumps a dead atmosphere into the cabins. Ice
crystals form upon every ear. Everyone’s either on their break or on the
job. The so called hippie’s got his time card crumpled up uncouthly in
his back pocket. And that baby’s already enrolled in a private preschool
program geared towards business leadership. That’s the beat everyone’s
jamming to. The world is a ship of slaves, rowing in a uniform and
metronome pace, with the conflicting ideologies of its seamen being
nothing more than the balancing propulsion of the ship’s port and
starboard side. The nose of America is pointed in the direction of the
faceless captain, who hides beneath his deck of skyscrapers, landfills,
and radio antennae.
Adam holds it against America for not truly desiring her own
freedom. And he’s upset beyond measure that she’s kept him from his
own. He has been defeated by the overwhelming jive of his own
homeland. He has run, and been captured by his own countrymen.
The semi-truck is a paddy wagon saying, ‘Welcome Home Adam!’
“Woe be it to the masses…” He says, accidently out loud,
seeping the steam of his brain fever out through the grinding of his
teeth.
“What?” Asks the truck driver, alarmed by this sudden
outburst.
Adam explodes: “I said, woe be it to the masses, who
translate the pangs of oppression into words of Torrah!”
Musette is startled from her slumber. The truck driver’s hand
reflexively reaches in the direction of his lil’ shotgun.
“I mean… how many are there out there who figure
themselves participants in some painful pre-life prequel? And how
many nurture that notion? So many dreamers… All shuffling through
nightmare checkpoints, living out unfulfilling lifetime after unfulfilling
lifetime, figuring that in due time there shall come an awakening into
the full, armor plated consciousness of heroes and angels.”
Adam just starts raving. There’s no room for interruption.
Both Musette and the truck driver stare with both eyes and ears at the
spittle shooting from his mouth.
“So many dopy, cabin cruising smiles; so many blood
encrusted teeth. Everybody’s just swimming in their delusions about
this demonic abomination of humanity’s evolutionary strong point;
everybody’s figuring that the Hell created by their own hands is
nothing more than an over-loud and painfully squelching sound check.
‘The main event must be on its way…’ they say, ‘Perhaps when God
once more walks the Earth we shall then wake up…’
“I’m sick of people thinking that this pregnancy can be
birthed through prayer alone! I cringe because my personal awakening
has been stifled and aborted by this surrogate swarm of blind highway
crawlers… It’s disgusting… I’m ashamed to call these people
members of my own species! These people are abominations of a
divine creation. Nobody even wonders about escape… Everyone’s
being dragged, by the crowd, through these dark rooms of our
illusionary empire, going deeper, into the fog of ignorance, sinking so
progressively into the ghettoes of reality.
“It’s all a grand circle jerk! It’s held together by men who have
learned to get off on oppression… A collaboration of blasphemers; a
select few sitting high up in an omnipresent ivory tower, beating the
dead horses of our hearts with one hand, while the other hand strokes
the cock of the stockbroker or the CEO or the government official or
the foreign emissary next door. Our life force is being jizzed away into a
crumpling wad of wasteful trash… Our escape port is shrinking as
their dicks rise… The sickness can be birthed almost anywhere, within
almost anyone. People wearing the same slave faces as the rest of us are
handed a horse whip and told they can pass on the beating if they will
pass along the message. America’s got one bad case of the devil inside
of her… America is a nation flying a huge, invisible flag of burning
order flames and hatred into a world only wanting peace and repose.
Nobody can be comfortable, because there’s a voice in our radios telling
us to fill our calendars with things other than indolence; telling us all to
become Nazzis… We have a world of Nazzis. A martial land. Privates
and officers in every home. Only the bodiless master, the ruler of
Earth, feels the comforts of this terror reich. Everyone else is fucked…
Moloch issues out its commands, finding everything entertaining,
building skyscrapers to his magnificence, trickling his orders down a
ladder system of tortured souls, feasting upon our woes…
“It is a spirit of black madness which has descended upon
us… The world which once was our home has been snatched away
and replaced by an inescapable advertisement. Christ has been stolen
from Christmas. Every day has become a Black Friday. It is a Stanford
Prison Experiment without an exit. It is an arena of painful labor.
Material objects have become carrots for the rat race: stocking stuffers,
smart phones, high definition television programs, and anal feeding
tubes of shit have turned us into untouchables, savages, pigs fattening
up for the grand feast, Hansel and Gretel in the candy shack… We are
doped up veal bags drooling into the trading pit; our neighborhood is
a Wall Street trading floor. We are the commodity. It’s a grand feast of
cannibalism! The ever present managerial staff is leaning its minstrel
stand of smiles closer to the slave line, pondering over dark meat or
light meat, blessing the feast with catchy jingles. Critical thinking has
gone out the window and been replaced by propaganda paths. The
machine is run automatically. Nobody can stop it… Spartacus is
getting a knife wheedled deeper into his ribs. He has been taken from
his sequel. He is bleeding his guts out with cancer. There is nobody to
stand up and proclaim his name. We’re left alone without a hero. God
is dead. The fingers of corporations are left uninhibited to pick us
apart. And we’re whistling ourselves silly scrubbing bubbles over our
ball sacks, pushing our testicles further up into our urethras, trying to
look presentable to the hedonistic stomachs of our demon overlords.
Everyone wants a receipt slung around his neck. And try as I might I
can’t throw up anywhere, because Anne Frank’s hiding in this corner,
and the police are watching every other corner…”
The truck driver’s had enough. He pulls his lil’ shotgun up
from its under-seat hiding place, and rests it on his still piloting
forearm, pointing the barrel into Adam’s face with a stern expression.
“Now listen here you goddamn loony tune…” He says. “I
knew you were trouble when I first picked you up. But I’m a man of
my word. I told you I’d take you to Salt City, and so that’s what I’m
going to do. I don’t really care much whether it’s a corpse or a breather
I drop off, but if you say one more derogatory word against my
country I’ll blow a hole right through this window with your brain
fragments cushioning the bullet. So just shut your fucking mouth and
enjoy the ride, you goddamn freeloader…”
8
In the cosmos above, a young foreign planet, known
familiarly as Lil’ Boy Blue, enters the limits of our solar system. The
little idiot, naïve as a Cracker Jack toy, has strayed a long distance from
his neck of the woods. More than a little lost, this absent minded
youngster has entangled himself within the runners of youthful
musings by make pretending himself a knight in the search for some
Holy Grail or another. He has been picked up and swallowed by the
spirit of adventure. He has poked his nose outside the boundaries of
his own orbital neighborhood, and separated himself from his family.
He has become a little fish in a big pond, turned himself into an
accidental runaway, and unwittingly had his name added to the missing
planets list.
The universe is no place for children. It is a dark and cold
place; it has its own rules; its magnanimity is overbearing; it feasts
upon anxiety; it turns the weak into prey and the slow into meals; it
swallows up innocence like a hungry dragon; it rapidly provides
disillusionment; and it ruthlessly wilts the flowers of youthful
optimism. It takes a lucky and intractable soul to navigate the cold,
empty ocean of the universe unaffectedly. Yes, child it is true: life sings
not long outside the playpen but for the schizophrenic. If you’re
wanting to keep the jovial lure of playtime from deflating into cheap,
wrinkly rot, then you have to drench life’s objects in cranial paint. If you
leave things as they are, and let yourself get covered in the dust of
dredge, you will find yourself swimming in a sea of gray. Boredom,
pain, disgust, and nausea will seep into your paradigm, and you will
sink, flailing around like a drowned cat, consumed within fits of hate
and anguish.
Lil’ Boy Blue’s brain is sputtering its juices about like a shaken
up paint can blasted by a Tommy Gun barrage. He is too young to
handle the universe. All of the rough edges and blunt weightiness
threaten to tear him to shreds. He doesn’t allow himself to see things
for what they truly are. Doses of imagination are released to ensure his
survival. If the stream lets up, and the make believe story stutters, it
will be fatal. A crumpling fit of panic will ensue. And there is nothing
worse for a lost child to do than panic. If you let that fear into your
head for even a second you’re dead meat. Suddenly you’re huddled up
in a fox hole, moaning out incessant prayers to a silent God, repenting
all your sins in Pentecostal slurs, begging your father to have mercy on
you. You’re scraping around in snow piles, trying, with bloodshot
eyes, to make an igloo for yourself, shoving handfuls of mysterious
berries into your autopsy report, enduring frostbite, over-exertion, and
in the end fatally slipping with bugging out eyeballs crying fear over
everything in sight.
Lil’ Boy Blue is doing what every good boy in his situation
should do, walking calmly forward, without reality checks, letting the
momentum of his story carry him onwards, wrapping each instant in a
manageable package of his own fantastic devising. Every creep thus far
observed has been painted into the form of a literal villain; black holes
are dungeon towers; and asteroids, rampaging phoenixes and dragons.
He doesn’t talk to anybody. he doesn’t question anything too deeply.
He is a hero: and that’s all he needs to know.
The sight of Earth is a welcome relief. She is the first planet
Lil’ Boy Blue has come upon bearing any signs of life. She has the
possibility of kindness. He can sense a heart beating beneath her
surface. The sight of her suffering draws him to her. A normal, wise,
adult planet would run in fear. Earth suffers from the plague of
humanity. She is the leper of the universal reality. Pikes and precipices
of civilization beam from her skin. She shines with radio towers and
floating satellite dishes. She radiates with infected glory. Her surface
burns in Babel fashion. Aerosol cans and Freon cartridges shoot
expellant orgasms all around her. Her skin is scrunched together with
television wire. The buzz of prime time commercial jingles hisses like
fly speech from her aura. She writhes around in loopdy loops, trying to
mutter agony howls through a cancerous set of irreparable lungs. Lil’
Boy Blue approaches her cautiously.
“Hello m’ lady…” He timidly says, greeting her.
Mother Earth is startled; she turns defensively: “What do you
want?” She asks, with heat waves of paranoia flushing through her
feverish skull.
“I am a knight; do you need help?” He asks.
“Who’s taking care of you?” She asks in reply. “You have
tears on your face, and you’re as dirty as sin…”
Boy Blue turns to run away.
“Wait! Are you lost?” Earth cries out.
“I am not lost. I am on a quest.” Boy Blue responds.
Mother Earth can’t help but to be touched by this childish
play acting. A tug pulls at her motherly instincts. This stray boy… He
is not running from her… This is an new and relieving sensation to
her. Long has it been since she has had an actual conversation with
somebody. Long has it been since somebody looked at her without
scorn and disgust in their eyes.
“What kind of quest are you on?” Mother Earth asks. “What
are you looking for?”
Boy Blue knows not how to answer. It is the dreaded
question. His lip quivers, and a gulp of anguish rises in his throat.
Tears begin welling in his eyes as reality begins revealing itself.
“Oh child! Don’t cry...” Earth says. “It’s ok… You are safe.
You don’t have to answer that question if you don’t want to. You
don’t have to worry about a thing now… Hush my little darling…
You are safe. Sweet angel… Don’t worry…”
She restrains herself from coddling the child. She knows that
one touch is all it takes for contamination to spread.
“I will help you find whatever it is you seek.” She says. You
don’t have to be alone anymore. Hush, hush sweet prince; you are safe
with me.”
Lil’ Boy Blue takes a deep inhale. A smile climbs up into his
cheeks. He cautiously settles himself into Earth’s orbit. It feels safe
there for him. The fear of being lost alleviates itself a bit. He has an
adult with him again. The unanswerable question of purpose slips
from his mind.
9
Adam and Musette return to Salt City. They are home. All of
the comfortable sinking takes place. It’s a cushioned landing. Like
waking from an exciting dream. The routine revives itself
instantaneously. Adam’s feet automatically carry him back to his usual
haunt; he becomes once more a resident of the city’s café.
The place is a graffiti dripping sponge of nowhere souls; a
limbo tavern. Droned out dead heads sit beneath dime store paintings,
staring into their computer screens. Hipsters, Jigallettes, gangsters, and
pedophiles call the place their gathering grounds. They congregate
against the night. Cheap stay cups, loud music, and sexual organs add
ammunition to the cause. Pastry steam smokes up, through a skinny
aluminum chimney pipe, marking the ephemeral map speck as a
support turret for all those who shake beneath time’s oppression.
“Doing what we can to keep loneliness and melancholy at
bay…” A resident says.
The teeth of clinking glass chink out conversations.
Thousands of eavesdropping skyscraper eyes keep tabs on their slaves.
The cattle comes from all ranges. They are the working class, the blue
collared, white collared, short sleeved, long sleeved, orange vested,
grunt working indentured servants of McDonalds monarchs and
burger kings; wall marts and home depots; best buys and caterpillar
constructing companies; union and pacific railroads; a, t, and t; the
highways, by-ways, freeways, and interstates; the graphic design firms;
the red lobsters; the steak houses; the fish fries; and the aeroports from every square acre of the city they flock, all variety of down and out
peasant clod floppers, burger flippers, and receipt printers - so many
seeking a descent conversation, a buzz, a cigarette, some young poon…
You name it the coffee shop can provide. You want a drink for a
cheaper price than what the sin taxing prohibitionists around the corner
can provide? Go check out Manny’s trunk, in the parking lot; he’ll
hook you up with something real nice. You want’a smoke a J? Paul’s
got one in his pocket; he’s facing eviction charges for smoking too close
to the crack in his apartment’s door; and he’d be happy to hot box
your car for you if you’d be willing to part with a little bit of your urine.
“You looking for a good time honey?” asks a Jiggelette, saying “My
butthole isn’t too stretched out to take within it the confines of a
lonely sleeper.” She has a hard time sleeping herself, and can’t doze off
without a proper prong plugging her rear outlet up nice and tightly.
You need a punch in the face to make yourself fell like a real man? Step
outside and let Bruce here unload a slug’s worth of the roid rage he’s
planning on unleashing into his pops later tonight. We don’t got no
qualms regarding your necessities here son; we’ve all got our own God
given eccentricities. If you’ve got yourself a hole, someone here’s got
the dirt to fill it with – Guaranteed satisfaction; no questions asked.
Jazz music thumps a basketball rhythm from the television
set hanging in the corner. It bleats out the rim clattering backboard
shatter of an evil keneeveling mascot, who’s fire spinning three point
hoops into temple advertisements, and slam dunking corporate logos
into the hands of countless spectators from the remote control of a
barrel toting blimp. Everybody sitting around the television set cheers.
They spill their drinks high fiving their neighbors. They wait for the
next advertisement with anxious anticipation. None of them are
ashamed to admit that the advertisements are the only reason they
watch sports anymore.
Babies scream from the next room over. Their owners give
Tarot readings to older men, who wear leather jackets, and mugs upon
their skulls, and who puppet, through their sloppy facial muscles, lusty
eyebrow peaks, which roll over fantasies regarding the gypsy mama’s
rope braided diadem sitting atop a crumpled pile of her patchouli
stenched clothes.
Foreign languages slop in the mouths of brown skinned,
black haired foreigners. They say, “All in.” And laugh, “Caw! Caw!
Caw!” And make it hard for Adam to place an order. A pimply, overly
skinny, bob haired barista hands him a concoction of steam and
gray/brown water paint residue. He takes it outside to the porch. Rain
drops hiss upon the frying pan tin of electric outdoor heating lamps. A
neon welcome mat cackles the porch orange colored. Joint shaped
cigarettes sputter cherries into the electric glow. Allen Ginsberg is sitting
there waiting for him. Before him sits a bowl of din. Accidental ashes
crumble from an effeminately clasped cigarette into the tofu mix. Allen
watches, through pupils blasted out on mushrooms, little men
scampering in flee upon the table mat. With their wide brimmed hats
flopping atop their skulls, they rush like lemmings from the falling ash,
scampering their steps, and cramming themselves up against the table
mat’s border, where they sit, stuck and terrified, tossing the scraps of
Allen’s meal to schools of aggressive, barricading coy fish.
Sitting with Allen are a couple of corporate
television-providers. Adam knows who they are. He doesn’t like them.
They used to be ok before they became missionaries. Now they walk
around like righteous, pious, suit wearing salesmen.
One of them catches Adam in the corner of his eye: “Adam!”
He shouts, hopping from his seat, with an arm extended out in an act
of propriety. “Hey, when’d you get back brother!?”
Allen turns rapidly at the alarm, and gives his long absent
friend a watery eyed, heart squeezing greeting of silent exhalation.
Adam reciprocates. His true emotions fly over the missionary’s
sycophantic shoulder. The two friends submerge themselves into a
porridge thick, nostalgia soothing energy, pulsating currents of coziness
through their tear ducts.
Adam smacks the missionary’s hand away and takes a seat.
“Crazy old Adam!” Says the missionary. “Never can tell what
he’s going to do, am I right?”
“Well, that wasn’t a very long bout of questing…” Allen
says, once Adam’s situated, taking a puff on his cigarette, playing
theatrics to keep from smothering the air with too much emotion.
Adam looks at him with tinged touches of malice in his eyes:
“Things happen… And the world can be a bitch…” He says. “I’m
not spiritually ready to talk about it yet. Let’s talk about you. What have
you been doing while I’ve been gone?”
“Well, you know Fielding’s running for office right?” Allen
says.
Adam is stunned. He takes another sip of his coffee, trying to
look casual. The success of a bosom buddy is always a bit difficult to
swallow from skid row.
“I’m working with the party to promote his ascent.” Allen
continues, with little tinges of shame reddening his cheeks.
“I thought that we had come to the conclusion, together you
and I, that there is no point in politics; that Magic has become nothing
more than War in disguise…” Adam says.
“Yea… But with Fielding… Surely there is hope for
change…”
“Hope was left within the box for good reason Allen…”
“We’ll see… I may not have the most hope for politics, but
always for Fielding…”
“I’ll just pray for a corpse.” Says Adam. “It would serve my
memory of him better than if he succeeds.”
“Oh, don’t talk like that Adam…” Says Allen.
Adam lights up a cigarette. “Have you found a job yet?”
Allen asks.
“Please don’t get me started on that…” Replies Adam.
“You’re going to have to start on it sooner or later.”
“While it’s true that I don’t want to work;” Adam says. “I
have given it some effort out of necessity. The problem is, I don’t have
a place here anymore. In a world of miniature black rimmed glasses,
and blonde pony tails, where does the man with no economic skills
and a buttonless shirt belong? The only possible position open to me
is that of the sallow faced, pock marked coin clicker; or if I’m lucky the
Salvation Army bell ringer. The vagrant life is rapidly become my only
option. I’m a marked man; like the ugly duckling, or Jonah… And I
don’t think I want to be saved. The homeless are the only people in
this reality that I can truly bring myself to respect…”
It’s here that one of the missionaries pipes in, saying, “Maybe
you should take an apartment job for a while. We could hook you up
with a place. Give you a little income while you recollect.”
Adam freezes. The missionary’s word is like a laser beam. It
sends a grating squeal zinging inside of Adam’s pineal gland. He
buzzes like a drill bit against a steel hull. A sheet of redness flashes
through him, taking a photographic image of his inner demons. A
volcanic cello grind curdles the insides of his gut. There is a ringing of
laughter which slows down and caramelizes into a sampled track of
Plutonic fury. It’s like butter churning beneath the learned, patient, and
muscular forearms of a young grandmother. It swivels cream atop a
hellfire possessed latte boil. It rises slowly, to the time of a ship rocking
blue rhapsody, smothering up the sides of Adam’s insides. Milk
heated to an indigestion cloud. Surfacing like a killer whale with blood
dripping eyes and ebolac rage. Splashing and flashing, an exultation of
fury flies like sound from blowhole breaking points into the chilly
ocean air.
Red words soar into the direction of the missionary. Adam
spills coffee through the arrows, dropping bombs through the steel
grating of the table. Gesticulations fly flurries of hand motions around
his head. “And just as I was approaching a stitch of sympathy on your
behalf, you go and say something so stupid…” He shouts. “If you’re
not going to leave this table, when you can clearly see that you’re not
wanted, then at least have the courtesy of keeping your mouth closed!”
“I just thought that taking an apartment job would be
preferable to sleeping on the streets… I don’t know what you have
against the television; it’s fun… It’s not like you have to exert your
energy into somebody else’s pleasure. The pay is multifold…” Says the
missionary, retorting.
“Apparently your definition and my definition of fun are
vastly opposing…” Adam says. “You might think that transforming
yourself into a fleshy pile of diarrhea sounds like a good time, but I
personally shutter at the thought of cancerous mounds blooming
from my bedsores. I’ve seen what comes from your installations: the
greenish slather drizzling from the corners of mouths; the stretched
out T-shirts stained with unobstructed fungal growths; the couch
ranking of too rapidly splurted out liquid shit spills; the flabby
sphincters hanging over the rims of crusty feeding/recycling tubes; and
the stroke victim faces… Those yellow, corpse encrusted eyes haunt my
dreams… Flakes of dead cornea crumbling in mounds atop the irises;
the milky white pupils upturned to stare into roofs of petrified brain…
The flies feasting upon the scraps of flaky flesh… And the reactionary
nerve spasms of data splurt injections… How can you live with
yourself?”
The missionary laughs, pretending to shake it off. “Perhaps
you’re right…” He says. “Perhaps it’s a terrible thing for some people,
but there is a ninety eight percent satisfaction rate logged within our
files. And every year, more and more people join the system. I have yet
to speak to someone who’s willingly returned to this life after
experiencing the television life. You are correct regarding your
observations regarding the unflattering effects imposed upon the body,
but neither God nor his son has ever advocated the ways of the flesh.
Corpses are never gracious looking, and even saints decay. Vanity is not
welcome within the kingdom of heaven. We believe that the television
reality is a gift granted us by God himself; a forgiveness of man’s sins;
a literal heaven on earth…”
“If it’s so great, then why have you two not already
submitted yourselves to it?” Adam asks.
“We fully intend to.” Responds the missionary. “I bear
testimony here and now, shamelessly, to the rightness of what we
preach. I know that a seat awaits me within the palace of Heaven. Yet,
knowing what I know, and knowing that there are others out there
who don’t know, I can’t morally depart for the next world. There is
still so much work to be done. There are others who still need to hear
the word. I have a responsibility to preach. Once I’m called, I’ll take my
rightful seat within the flock of Christ’s children.”
“Well, good for you…” Adam says, nonchalantly taking
another drag of his cigarette. “I’ll personally take my chances as a
hobo… I believe that it’s better to die consciously aware of my shame
than to translate myself into the unconscious mortar slime of Babel’s
demise… And now that your word has been properly smeared all
across this direction, I’d rather prefer it if you moved the act on to
some other table, if you would be so kind…”
The missionaries heed Adam’s word, and depart, stepping
off the porch like red flushed martyrs, joyous to be suffering this
humiliation on behalf of their beliefs.
Allen Ginsberg reiterates to Adam that there is still a place for
him within the working world if only he will apply himself a little
harder. And so, to appease his friend, and to spite the missionaries,
Adam applies for a position as a door-to-door vacuum salesman,
knowing from word of mouth that they will hire damn near
anybody…
10
The alarm bell rings. Adam hits the snooze button. It’s still
dark outside. This is why he dislikes working… He falls asleep again.
Next time the alarm goes off Adam smacks the clock across the room.
It lands, jingling upon the floor. The auditory pain grates deeper into
the insufferable torture which the morning’s first sunlight slants are
already providing to his senses.
He peels Musette’s sweaty arm from his chest. She rolls onto
her other side, and toplessly drops back into the folds of slumber. The
smears of last night’s chocolate dinner make a clown’s smile bloom all
around her lips, indicating good dreams thus far had.
Like a drunkard Adam stumbles to the ground. With a foot
wobbling on one ankle he kicks the screaming box of peace destruction
against the wall. The clock shatters into a mechanical fatality. Its little
microchips and springs unbound explosively, popping into the
morning atmosphere.
Musette grumbles groggily. Adam topples into a pile of
clothes. He searches for his favorite shirt. Tucking himself into his
outfit, he heads to the kitchen. “Got to eat something now, because
breakfast is the most important meal of the day…” Laziness tempts
him towards putting a piece of last night’s cake into the microwave, but
in the end he chooses to go with the healthier choice of cereal.
While slurping up the little cardboard rings, and staring into
the darker tinted swirls of wood in his cabinet doors, he realizes that it
might be a good idea to don a tie. And so back he goes, flailing into
the bedroom, tossing the remnants of his cereal bowl into the sink,
and immersing once more into the viscosity of his garment mound.
It’s a nice day outside. It looks like an autism directed, highly
lit movie set produced on a big budget. The leaves are rustling upon
the squares of the sidewalk. They remind Adam of Dostoevsky’s
Nicholas laughing a bullet clad laugh, saying with crackle tones that
summer is ending and freedom is fleeting.
“You’ll do great honey.” Musette had told him last night,
after their dinner time prayer, consoling him, and telling him that she
has always had the utmost faith in his abilities. The words ring up his
spine as he pushes the office door open.
“Mr. Roscoe is it?” The woman behind the counter asks.
“Mr. Roscoe was my father’s name.” Adam says, trying to be
witty.
“Welcome to D & E Distributers Mr. Roscoe.” The woman
says, completely ignoring his joke. “Please take an application and
proceed towards the large room with all of the people in it.”
“Thank you.” Says Adam, with an absolute lack of sincerity
in his voice.
The room is full of smoke and hip hop. A mini, water-proof
shower boom box pumps bouncing beats through its speaker cheeks.
Flourescent lights annoyingly buzz from the ceiling, hissing like
mosquito tubes, squirting pain and bleach down upon a ragged
looking bunch of mafiosos. They sit, waiting for the same thing
Adam’s waiting for. They all face a gigantic white board. Monetary
figures scream from the surface in green, red, and blue. The board
conforms perfectly with the rest of the room, like a mutable center
piece. Around it billows a propaganda cloud of bronze stained
placards, poster pictures of prestige cars, images of paradise resorts, and
motivational slogans stating that all this can be yours if you just go
ahead and apply yourself!
Everyone looks like an escaped convict. They all seem to be
plotting their next move. Adam had not expected there to be so many
people. He thought this would be a private affair. He doesn’t know
where to sit - the room is jam packed. He finds an empty seat next to a
lightly brown skinned, scruffy looking Mexican.
“You got a cigarette mang?” The kid asks.
“Oh… Well… Ummm…” Says Adam, hesitatingly
stuttering, nervously patting his pockets for a cigarette which he knows
is not there, reacting anxiously to the brown skinned face staring back at
him blinkilly. His purple, bruised eye still throbs from the punch it
received in the City of Lights. It twitches a nervous tear through its
swollen duct. His association of the color brown with the color black
induces fear and an incapacitating desire for anti-discrimination. He
dreads offering up a negative answer to the kid’s request.
A door at the back of the room opens. Adam is saved. A
thud subwoofers upon the floor. The heel of a hippopotamus skin
cowboy boot shakes dust. A man enters. Balloon breath pride swells a
barrel chest expanded. Hot air. Creaking ribs. Short body. Plump as a
monk. Stalky. The man’s a dime piece shorty. Shielded by oil spill
gelled slick track hair. A greaser and a shark. Designer suit pawned away
from video game arcade sling store. A thin gold chain dangling from
the neck. Grandeur sporting bling. It’s the don. The boss. The
company’s general manager.
“You guys enjoyin’ the hip hop!?” he boisterously asks,
rolly-pollying his way to the front of the room. Jogging, slightly
crouched. Smirking. His shoulders bounce up and down with his
steps. He takes and receives high fives – like a basketball athlete on his
way into home court.
“Yea… You’re all thugs here, ain’t cha? That’s what I like!”
He grunts. “I know how it is… All up from the streets, ready to make
some cash. Well, let me introduce myself: my name’s Desmond Rolex.
I run this place. I bet you’re all wondering what’s going on here; why
you’re all sittin here in this room, listening to me speak… You all
answered an advertisement, right? Somethin’ about makin’ big bucks
fast… Wasn’t that it? Yea; well, there are big bucks to be made here…
But they ain’t gonna come free, and they ain’t gonna come easy; but I
assure you, they are here to be had. I’m sure many of you have
followed up ads like this before; and it’s probably gotten you right
back to where you started from – living in your mom’s basement,
flippin’ burgers, watchin’ the clock, wearing the uniform… Trust me, I
know how that goes better than anybody. I’ve been where you are. I’ve
played that game. I’ve sat behind the counter of the dead end job. I’ve
asked if you want fries with that. I was the poor guy. The victim of the
system. I hated it. How many of you like being poor? Raise of hands…
That’s what I thought; none of you do… That’s why you’re here,
right? Because, this world ain’t a world fit for the ragamuffin. If you
think you can get by with a little ten dollar an hour job, you’re wrong.
You’ll suffer that way, like I’ve suffered. This place is for people who
are tired of that place. When I filled out my application to work here, I
didn’t have any spirit left in me. No hope for the world. I strutted into
my interview with barely any gas left in my system. I fell asleep on my
desk. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I had no idea that
this job would lift me up out of the hole I was in and raise me to such
plateaus as it has. This job transformed me. My boss at the time saw
something in me; something I didn’t know I had. Something which
maybe some of you’ve got. Something I’m looking for.
“We sell vacuums. It might not be the most glorious of
gigs, but it sure as shit pays the bills. The economy’s not bad in here.
It’s not bad from where I’m sittin’. I just bought my mom a brand
new set of tires. She’s rolling through her neighborhood now on a
twenty inch set of blingers, going to her little church meetings, or her
bingo games, whistling Dixie all the day long she’s so proud of me.
Look at this suit… It probably cost more than you make in a year. Do
any of you guys want what I’ve got? Do you think that you’ve got
what it takes to go out and get it? Well, the vacuum is the horse which
will take you there. It’s tough work. It takes soldiers. Knights. It’s a ten
hour day. And you’re hoofin’ it through rain or shine, on your own
god given legs, up hills, onto people’s porches, and into their homes.
It takes balls. It takes men. Men willing to get up off their asses and
turn their lives around. And I need men today. I need em’ now. I need
to know who’s in and who’s out. The door’s right there; you’ve got
ten seconds. Who wants to make some money?”
The crowd is ready. They’re ecstatic. Everybody’s amp charged
on the speech. All they can see is dollar signs. Adam couldn’t leave if he
wanted to. He’s completely blocked in. It’s claustrophobia on all sides.
Desmond takes a swig of his water bottle and continues:
“That’s what I like!” He shouts. “Men who know what they
want and aren’t afraid to go out and get it!”
He reaches up and grabs a dangling dry-erase marker. The
foundation of the room wobbles. The walls shiver. Everything begins
to look out of focus. An omnipresent sound of grinding steel gurgles.
Time and space seem like lies as the ceiling is tossed from its roots and
lifted into a roaring wind. The walls tumble too. It’s an ocean on all
sides. The office building which had surrounded Adam when he’d
entered the building is no more. He realizes that he’s in a moving boat.
“This is the real deal!” Shouts Desmond, his voice straining
to reach his crew. The words slosh through sprinkler droplets, and get
jarred by concussing chop.
“We haven’t got much time!” He says. “This is your gear!
Standard issue! If you’ll look inside you’ll find your very own, lexicon
plated Kirble Cleaning Machine! Treat it like a fifth limb! It is the
handler of your fate! It decides whether you live or die! You must
know the ins and outs of this machine like the back of your hand! It
does not come sellable straight out of the box! It requires a trained
professional to transform this heap of metal into something
demonstratable! Pay attention, because I’m only going to go over this
once! This piece here… This tube… It connects to this valve… Screw
this bolt into this threaded hole, and attach the bag at points A, B, and
C… Like so… When the lights come on, and the scuba bells ring, that
means the power source is properly connected… If it gurgles and
churns… Like this… Then your shampoo spigot is connected to the
exhalation pump… If you can see an orange glow burning beneath the
mouth here, then your internal bristles have caught flame… That’s the
last thing you want to have happen… These here are dust pads… Use
the white ones for cleaning the carpet, and the black ones for beneath
the mattress… The demonstration should last approximately an hour
and a half… Your opening line is this: ‘Hi there Ma’am, my name is
So-and-So, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in a
complimentary shampooing…”
Adam feels sea sick. Ten thousand screws had just juggled
rapidly through Desmond’s fingers. It had all looked like a quick
change scheme. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to do this…’ He
tells himself.
“Land ho!” Desmond shouts, pointing towards an
upcoming shore. “If you squint, you can just make it out: Suburbia…”
He kicks the little boom box at his feet. ‘Oh Pride of the
Salesman’ pours from the speaker cheeks.
“Hold tight to your Kirbles!” He screams, just before the
boat screeches up onto the asphalt of a yardside basketball court.
Twisted metal, burn spark stream! Slam dunk! The basketball standard
bends and snaps.
“Look for houses with motor homes in the driveway. Brick
mailboxes are great. So are swimming pools, and trampolines… Find
families who have money, but not too much…”
“Sir, yes Sir!” cries the platoon.
The front of the boat yawns. It opens slowly. Car horns,
barking dogs, and the pike sharpened glances of window watching
neighbors blast the inner ears of the group into chaos phases. Machine
gun turrets, shaped like cameras atop stop lights, take pictures and send
them to neighborhood patrols. Security systems buzz. Scouts, walking
their dogs, wearing the standard, Suburban outfit of a collared sweater,
jeans, sometimes khaki shorts on weekends, put their pajamas on, and
deliver intel to the Wal-Mart self-checkout lanes. Everyone crowds to
discuss tactics in front of the petunia patch. Torture techniques fester
beneath plaster cast smiles. A double dose of Zoloft is ingested. The
TV is turned down two notches to allow front porch steps to be easily
heard.
“This is suburban warfare!” Desmond yells. “Now spread
out and sell me some fucking vacuums!”
The men splinter off into Ocean Avenues and Sandy Circles.
All eyes seek signs of bourgeois living.
“Knock, knock, knock…”
“Hello…”
“Hi ma’am; yes, ummm, I saw the motor home parked out
in your driveway, and I was wondering if I c-c-could come in and clean
your carpets for you…”
“Don’t you see the no soliciting sign? You’ve got five
seconds before I remember where my husband hides his shotgun!
You sleazy, greasy salesman… Does your mother know what you do
for a living?”
Many of the mafiosos crack. They drown in booby traps of
self-conscious doubt. AWOL after AWOL are erased from the Kirble
employment files.
“I choose freedom from insult over freedom from welfare!”
One Mafioso screams, throwing his shampoo adverts to the wind.
“Where’s the nearest social security branch? I’m out… I can’t take this
torture anymore!”
Adam stands on the front porch of a knocked upon
residency. He waits for a response. He’s left a stack’s worth of free
shampooing coupons dangling from doorknobs all down the street.
He’s been too anxious to stay at any one house for longer than the
span of two rapid knuckle knocks. This house isn’t looking like it’s
going to break the cycle…
As he’s about to scamper off, the deadlock unlatches. A
tussled, pony tail stretched face greets him from beyond the threshold.
A snaggle tooth peeks up from above the woman’s bottom lip, asking
him if he would like to come in.
The place is a festering den of living flesh pots.
“There’s eight of em’.” the woman says.
A television blasts whistling madness pop welcomes from
the living room. Plains of Osh Kosh B Gosh raise repressed memories
up through Adam’s past. Somebody cries over a stolen tater tot. The
smell of rotting baby food and slobber makes Adam squint. The carpet
is streaked with poop stains. There is a mound of dirty diapers
elevating over the rim of a corner contained trash bin.
“I’ve been keeping my eyes open for you guys all day. Heard
you’d be in the neighborhood. You do free shampooings, isn’t that
right?”
“No ma’am, we do complimentary shampooings. First you
have to sit through an hour and a half long presentation. I honestly
don’t recommend it. I can see you have your hands full here…”
“Oh, I don’t mind sitting through a presentation… It will
be the most entertainment the kids have had in weeks. They’ve
watched that goddamn television cartoon of theirs probably a hundred
times already. Go on, show me what you’ve got…”
Adam drops to his knees and starts unpacking. He can feel
the sixteen eyes of the eight ragamuffin children scrutinizing him with
unmannered intensity. A dread worry emerges as he remembers past
had anxiety attacks. He rubs his forehead and finds it to be surprisingly
dry. This is one of those dry fears; the kind which lead to aneurisms…
No release for the energy within. Film strip melting to the reel. A rusty,
moldy orange color blooming up from within, coating perception’s
presentations with tetanus.
The opened package looks like a neatly packed bomb wreck.
There is an instruction manual, but Adam’s brain is too overloaded
with rapid heartbeats to make anything of it. He can’t even tell which
side is right side up. He can’t remember anything from the boat ride
training session. He knows that he’s just going to have to wing it and
pray.
He starts pulling parts from the box at random. The children
are getting restless. He holds a long length of tubing up before their
faces: “Isn’t this funny?” He asks. “It’s a little bit like a big ol’
elephant’s trunk, isn’t it? Do you know what sound an elephant
makes?”
Just then the sound of a latch key can be heard wiggling in
the front door knob. All eyes turn that direction.
“Yay! Daddy’s home!” the children scream. They snap from
their seats and stampede the door. Heads bounce up and down on
sugar legs. It’s like an evening boil.
Dad walks in. He’s only about five foot eight, but he’s got
the face of a mugger.
“What’s going on in here?” He asks, looking to his wife for
answers.
“This young man’s giving me a presentation on vacuums.”
The woman responds.
“Did you tell him we’ve already got one in the closet?” The
man asks.
“He’s going to give us a free shampooing if we just let him
do his presentation. It will only take a few minutes Carl.”
Adam pipes in. The words spill from his mouth: “Hey, I
think I’m just going to pack my stuff up and take off. You look like
you’ve had a rough day sir. I’m just going to get out of your hair if
that’s alright…”
“I thought that you were going to shampoo the carpets?”
The man says.
“Well, I’m not actually a carpet cleaner, I’m a vacuum
salesman…”
“But you told my wife you’d clean the carpets didn’t you?”
“I’m only allowed to vacuum one room, and I haven’t even
started my…”
“Well… Get to it. You said you were going to do
something, so you’re going to do it, right? Once you’re done, then you
can leave. I guess I just don’t get where we’re not understanding each
other here?”
Adam submits to the fact that he’s not going to be able to
leave so easily. The family accessorizes him into a piece of household
furniture. Mom and dad leave him alone to do his job. His head
pounds. The futility of all his actions is taking its toll on his pulse.
Waves of snapped nerves boing in his bloodstream. A belly of thick
tears bulges up in his gut. The ink of the Kirble’s instruction manual
smears illegible beneath his sweaty fingertips.
A gestalt of infuriated autism force feeds bolts into threaded
holes not dilated enough to receive their girth. Necessary components
become lost to the hurricane periphery of rough housing children.
Screws are ground beyond recovery into the carpet fibers by totally
unsupervised bare feet. Rapid hands reach into the box and pull
attachments from it. “Give that to me!” Cry the children, taking
weapons for a war waged against each other.
Collecting everything he can, Adam manipulates his machine
into something very similar to the picture on the front of the box.
Upon hands and knees he drags the power cord to a wall outlet. The
machine rings, hums, and lights up. He smiles, with a beam of God’s
grace alighting his face. He switches functionality to ‘shampoo’.
He doesn’t let himself hear the gurgling sound Desmond
had warned him about. ‘Just make a quick pass of the room and call it
good.’ He tells himself this, thinking that if he’s fast enough nobody
will be the wiser.
‘Blurp; Blurp; Blurp” sputters the machine, overcasting the
bristles of its mouth with a soppy froth. Dampness drools over the
rubber lip. A mechanical sickness is more than evident. Adam can’t
ignore it. ‘But at least it’s not on fire…’
A streak of foamy bubbles blooms up behind each stroke.
Exponential expansion occurs with the movement of the swamp
conditioned air. Bubbles expand atop the film of other bubbles. It
looks like the makings of a neighborhood fountain fed a box of
laundry detergent. It’s worse than a washing machine fed a triple dose.
Nothing is inhaled by the vacuum’s suction. It’s party time for the
kids! They rush to the living room like lice on thrift hats! It’s the best
thing they’ve ever seen! Their play-place is being filled with handfuls of
fun!
Each step Adam takes squishes into the carpet. His dress
pants are dark around the ankles. The foam rises above the
swampiness. It drowns the children within a soapy cloud. Handfuls of
tossed puddles make beards and hats. The kids throw soap balls at
each other. A rouge toss floats over to the dinner table. It’s like a
dandelion blossom breezing towards horror. It gently settles before
Dad. Confusion looks to the stranger for answers. Chair legs squelch
across the linoleum.
“What in God’s name…”
A massively tense silence erupts as an arm of bubbles reaches
into the television’s video cassette port, sputtering the cartoon whizzy
bop boings into death.
Adam waits for his lumps to land. “Are you retarded?” The
father asks. “How do you intend to pay for all of this!?”
Adam’s face melts like a glob of putty. His eyes gleam like
stars being slipped away from. All of his thought capacity slurps away.
The pinprick of execution’s gun point drains his brain. He feels the tip
before the roller-coaster’s plummet. He drops into the bubbles. He
scampers through the magnitude. Fallout alarms ring throughout his
skull. Dad screams that he’s going to ring Adam’s neck! The demon
unfurls his wings. He lurches into pursuit. The minotaur enters the
labyrinth. Children scream in flee. The monster lifts kid after kid into
the air, mistaking his progeny for his prey.
Adam scampers into a back hallway. The wallpaper
surrounding him looks like blood. The hall outstretches into dream
length. ‘Splurp, Splurp’ go his shoes, treadmill running. A trail of
bubbles gives him away. The shadow of all of Nazi Germany rounds
the corner. “Daddy’s commin for ya!” It howls.
Adam slides into a bathroom. The crowd cheers “Safe!” He
locks the door behind him. His heart teeters on the verge of exploding.
His nerves are boiling like roots in a stew. The white painted wood of
the door splinters with stress as the father’s body crashes against it.
“Open this goddamn door, or I’ll break it down!”
The children are crying: “Come out! Come out! Come play
more bubbles with us! More elephant!”
The bathroom feels smaller than a last resort. The baby blue
wallpaper is stained with flecks of child vomit. A small window
whispers to Adam, saying: “Escape through me; I will swallow you
back into the night. I am nature’s mouth.”
Adam lunges up the toilet seat, tumbling into a row of rustly
bushes. He almost drowns in the dampness of his own clothes. He
breathes an anti-anxiety prescription of fresh air into his lungs. Smiley
faces erupt from every blade of grass. The bloody jungle cocktail of
evening’s heady glow welcomes him home.
He quits his job, leaving the vacuum cleaner to sink into the
carpet fibers like a shipwreck.
11
Through knee deep sink holes, and over creaking bridges,
God lugs his newfound legs. He’s made it to the edge of the
swampwoods. The trees part like stage curtains to reveal, beyond their
periphery, an asphalt empire, sparkling with soda pop paint jobs and
chain link fences: civilization – it hisses with bumble bee disquisition,
and bubbles over with turgid champagne excess.
One last humid paddle leaf slaps against his face. He steps
into the headlight river. No vacancy signs silhouette looming gas
station attendants. Fender sticker tattoos, pasted like scrapbook
Polaroids, read Revelations quotes backwardly. Hip-hopping rock and
roll bands jive from open window car stereos. They perform the chorus
jams of record companies, while homeless street urchins survive
themselves on handfuls of Oreo cookies, scraping their asses down the
sidewalk to the sound of a harmonica squelching rust cords into
sleeping bag dreams.
A grand line of grumbling stomachs winds itself around a
grocery store. God wheedles himself in, making his grub diet privation
a top priority. Stop number one into the world: food. The intestine
lurches forward. It plops shoppers, one by one, into a bath of
Announcer Bill’s voice highlighting a commentary upon the new and
improved vibrant packaging of everyone’s favorite steel polishing
solution. Cherry blossoms, and quaking aspens, stick their barren
branches out from shelf after shelf of the floral department. All the
buds are wrapped in saran wrap gloss. Merchandise squeaks like dog
toys within cartoon veneer; everything awaits an internet viewership
bid. Banners ring out case lot sales between mascara wands and frozen
broccoli wads. The steroid pumped smell of chicken Frankensteins
conjures up memories of petroleum based teething exercises. A
crippled bag boy lurches like a sewing needle through the aisles
descrying pretty thighs through empty shelf space. He marks targets for
the hourly cart run. He giggles through a pruned up face.
A Salvation Army AWOL hawks coconut cookies, three for
the price of two. He’s guised in the drab of an oversized, and
over-testosteroned girl scout. God falls for his tricks. He takes his box
of cookies to the register. It’s an unsupervised mosh pit! Robotic
boxes left and right. The machines shout with retainer smiles. It’s a
collective monotone scream of woman mimicry: ‘Please wait for
assistance!’ ‘Thank you for your purchases!’
Vagabond men and women chip their teeth on plastic and
gloss. Everybody’s getting fed up with the futility of helping
themselves. The run their hands emptily through barbed wire laser
pools. Their skin cells are embedded with out of this world radiation.
They freak out over the unsuspected wedding announcements revealed
in this week’s star magazines.
A voice calls out, interrupting God’s glass sliding Windex
streak: “Oh my God! Is that really you!?” It’s a woman’s voice. “My
God, it is you! So long… That beard! Look at you! You’re all
emaciated!” The woman grabs God by the arm. “Where have you
been!? Everyone told me that you were dead! It’s been so long. We
only just recently started taking down the signs!”
Aged lines crag around the fortress of the woman’s face. She
is lumpy and old.
“You’re mistaking me…”
“Marjorie, and Mrs. Milforth… They all put the nastiest of
thoughts into my head… Forced me… They forced me to move on!
It’s not my fault… I had to…. I just had to… It was all too
unbearable… I couldn’t handle it any longer… But I waited… I
waited for so long… You have to know… I waited for you like the
morning awaits the sun! Oh forgive me… I can’t believe this…”
He absolutely must come to dinner – with the family… the
new family of course… She’s so incredibly sorry; but she waited! it
doesn’t matter… What does it matter? This is practically a resurrection!
“The house is a little different, but it’s the same house, your
house… If you still want to call it that… My God, where have you
been!?”
He can’t explain. But a home cooked meal sounds
phenomenally more appetizing than his little plastic wrapped hobo
stash. He agrees to go with her. It’s a quiet car ride. He just stares
through the windshield. The woman is silent. The frisson of her
steering wheel grip electrifies the air. People are smiling from the
sidelines the entire drive home. They wave from their unwelcome mats
and their astro-turf porches. Their robes are tied tightly around their
hair parts. Their cybernetically slung vocal cords, made of copper wire,
syphon chit chat up through their plastic surgery face jobs, toppling
phrases over the cincerblock dividing walls of their property lines. Their
eyes bleed through their assholes: the conversion rates are high here.
Missionaries are passed, pedaling like flock fowl, from Sunday dinner
to Sunday dinner, waving to Mr. Samsovar and Mrs. Gluten-free alike.
“You’re looking rather much more rugged these days… Are
you alright?” Asks the woman.
God’s eyes stare out into the shower of backdrop: green grass
squares clipped to regulation height; driveways like drum beats; dogs
too large for their environment – paw hops hoping against the fence
slats – little soldiers raging within the cells of their captors; stucco and
shrubbery… Stop signs keep you turning corners. Every sidewalk tile
is pitfall laced with happy families playing football around barbecue grill
Super Bowl parties. If you’re not careful here you’ll end up spending an
entire weekend celebrating someone’s letterman jacket bestowal…
Mothers, with pigtail braces, smile Sunday School photo
albums into this and that direction. Boys and girls, all dressed to the
nines, traipse like doll house super models to the tune of Wall Street’s
latest trends. A Salt City Times sits nestled, still bundled, in the
cobweb corner of every god forsaken porch. The backseat removed van
had dropped it off earlier this afternoon: ‘Fielding Mathewson to Make
Speech Tonight!’ reads the cover story’s headline.
A key in its designated slot signifies this
same-one-as-that-same-one to be the former home of this
no-longer-the-same, disseminated man.
“Curtis should be around here somewhere, probably in the
office, watering the money tree, or tinkering with a hard-drive… If you
don’t mind, we deposit our shoes in this nook space now…”
A small sized sneaker duo indicates the presence of a child.
“Have I failed to mention him? How horrible am I… I’m so
sorry not to have warned you… Adar: my precious little thing… He’s
Curtis’ and mine… I couldn’t wait any longer for you… It just
happened!”
Beige turtleneck tucked into khak-slacks enters the hallway.
Here’s Curtis now. He’s wearing the same outfit donned on the day of
the wall’s family portrait. He’s a J-Crew model man. Wine glass lipstick
marks reveal the domestic stage makeup of his constant presence. A
white streak hair segment wisps his bangs back. The sexy intellectual
type. Those loafers… What a laid back and casual presentation…
“Hi honey…” He says, stopping in his tracks with surprise.
“You’re home… and who’s this then, a friend?”
“Don’t you recognize him?” Asks the woman, describing
once more her old flame. “I’ve invited him to dinner. I was thinking
perhaps we could fix a Cordon Bleu… What do you think?”
Curtis is all like: ‘What’s this then!? The old flame! How
could you!? And Cordon Bleu? When’s the last time we made a Cordon
Bleu!? What’s wrong with the Indian Dal we were planning on making?
What a horrible grocery run! God, now I’m going to have to go to the
store myself, like I should have done in the first place… I’ll get the
keys from her when she’s not looking… I’ll have to look the
ingredients up on the internet; get a recipe… Chicken, ham, and some
kind of cheese… Of all things why a Cordon Bleu?’
He tells her that it sounds like a great idea.
She tells God that he has to meet Adar. “He’s my pride and
joy.” She says. “Honestly, he reminds me a lot of you. I’m so sorry
Curtis, but it’s true… He’s just through here, in the living room…
He’s a bit of an introvert, but you of all people will understand that…”
She takes God into the living room, wherein Adar sits
basking in the adamant refusal of the family’s furniture requests. “My
little indigo child…” The woman says, beaming with pride. “Just look
at his posture…” Cross legged, full lotus, focused upon the epileptic
symphony playing out before him. A 52 inch screen Magnabox
definition whomper. The kid’s smack dab in the middle of a
hyperspeed dimension jump, holding a video game controller, with
knuckle white passion, dodging suns and asteroid clusters with
joysticks, while nailing plasma bots between the eyes of wave after wave
of combo pumped Hell spawn.
“He’s doing his mind exercises right now… Best not to
bother him just yet. Maybe we’ll be able to catch him come dinner
time… How ‘bout I show you what Curtis’ done with the backyard…
He’s a maniac come all things Zen gardening…”
A couple hours later and the smell of sizzling marinara
summons everyone, including young Adar, to the kitchen. The boy’s
white Shaolin pajamas, all laced with golden trim and hand meshed
Mandarin silk, billow in the breeze of his entrance. His clean cut bald
shaven head reflects the kitchen lights into everybody’s eyes. He reaches
up and snatches a plate, turning back towards his video game palace.
“If you weren’t so white I’d think you could pull of the
Buddha look quite well…” Says God.
Adar stops, turns around, looks to God, and then to his
mother.
“It’s all genuine…” Replies the mother pleadingly. “Adar
may look white, but Curtis is actually part Cherokee… “
“Is he too holy to feast with his creators?” Asks God.
“He’s very regimental when it comes to his mind exercises,”
The mother replies. “Aren’t you sweetheart… Go on then; I’ll come
and get your plate from you in a little bit…”
Curtis has been watching God’s Cordon Bleu slip slowly
from his spoon. It approaches, dangerously close to the little Dal pile
side dish.
From above his apron he points a spatula, saying, “Careful
there, or you’ll spoil the Dal.”
“Adar’s gifted.” The mother continues, once the child’s left
the room. “All his teachers say so… and the internet quizzes – my
god! You wouldn’t believe the scores that kid pulls out of his head!
He’s a western pride prodigy… Honestly; ask anybody who knows
him…”
“Well, I’m sure those pajamas must feel just like cotton candy
upon his smooth, nubile testicles… That’s all I keep thinking
about…” Says God.
The Cordon Bleu hits the Dal. Both parents feel the fleece of
their sweater bounce against their nerve alarms. The latte paint of the
walls bubbles atop the squirming studs beneath it. The isolation itches
itself with the angel hair arms of its constant extremitation. The
thermostat ticks psychic sweat through its thermometer. A devil of a
breeze comes whistling in from the Zen garden. The dooney and
Burke catalog shivers atop the coffee table. A golden retriever barks
from a few yards over as an underwear wearing towhead leaps through
a sprinkler wall. Steaks are done at the yellow slat-work house next
door. A spider is one strand closer to completing his masterpiece
within the storm drain. And that bitch, with the boat, just signed the
lease on her first, and last, anal boob tube.
“Curtis, you’re a real sweetheart for going through all the
trouble of making this delicious meal.” Says God. “If you don’t mind
it though, I’d much rather prefer to enjoy it from the comfort of the
living room.”
“But there’s nowhere to sit in the living room…” Responds
Curtis nervously, glancing back and forth at his wife for support.
“Oh the floor’s just fine. Honestly, a little nostalgic television
is exactly what my homesick mind could use right now; do you
mind?”
The couple nervously ushers God into the living room.
“How about you give me a go at that?” God asks Adar, once
everyone’s seated. But Adar doesn’t hear him; he’s got his J-beat, bass
boosting, ear coveralls up too loud; and they’re on noise cancelation
mode. His mother, who’s taken to spoon feeding Adar, answers for
him: “He isn’t keen on letting others touch his controller… He’s been
blessed with a bit of an obsessive compulsive personality.”
“What about if we all watch a television show instead?” God
asks. “Something more inclusive to the whole group?”
Curtis chimes in. He can’t hold it in any longer. In a frustrated
tone he almost drops the spoon before it reaches his wife’s mouth,
saying: “I’m sorry, but this is not your house anymore bub! I’m sure
things are different now than how they were before you left; but if you
liked things so much like they were, than you never should have gone!”
Every pore of his body exhales. The redness of his face makes
the mozzarella of his ignored entrée sizzle back up a couple degrees. He
returns to rapidly shoveling his Dal to his wife, rubbing the goop all
over her lips, cooing his own thoughts with her intake, not looking at
God.
God decides that it’s time for a divine intervention. He’s had
enough of all this hullabaloo. He tells the couple that he’s got
something that might interest them: “A device I brought with me.
Something I’ve been working on for the last few years - while I’ve been
away. Something unequivocally more demanding, challenging, and
beneficial to Young Adar. A true test of his abilities. One minute with
this and we’ll find out what Adar’s really made of. A teacher can only
hypothesize; the neighbors can only assume… If you really want the
final word on Adar’s superiority, give him a dip in here… The results
are undeniable.”
He unveils the box.
“Is it dangerous?” Curtis asks.
“As all possible objections to a man’s genius are dangerous,
so ultimately is the box.” God replies.
“How will we know if Adar’s a genius or not?” The woman
asks.
“As I said, the results are undeniable.”
God flips the switch. All the spirit of the house’s past master
release into the air. The white light streams out like a blade across
Adar’s scalp. The child shakes the earmuffs from his face. The blasting
flesh plops, and the technocratic synth music pauses. There is a
spindling firecracker wheel wrapping the boy’s eyes towards the
ultimate. The hermit jizzes with child love. He reaches the outstretched
particles of his arms out, wrapping the child in a bath of sea salts and
flower power. Cartridge shelling gruesomality crackles the shreds of
flesh scalding in every direction. Pearls of gargantuan royalty swell in the
crevices of brain spaghetti. The past, present, future, and the
outstretched limits of the unencompassable shiver ripple cherry glaze
through a laughing hyena’s perfected Bavarian Waltz. In any way
possible the boy melts. Every motion is like an orgasm through the
heart.
“He looks like he’s been clogged in a toilet.” Says Curtis.
“Why are his legs waggling around like that?”
“Is he alright!? What’s happening to him!?” Screams the
mother, rushing to pry her son from his death.
“Let him be. He’s becoming everything you’ve always wanted
of him.” Replies God.
Curtis pisses his pants as Adar lets out a gigantic fart. The silk
pajamas split down the ass seam. A miniature moon pops out. A
gaseous rainbow arcs through the shivering, electrified sphincter.
Within the spectrum of stinking colors a voice vibrates: “Hear ye! Hear
ye!” It says. “Tis’ I, Adar, the Wonderful Boy of the living room
kingdom! My dominion is pitiful, and my brain is a piece of petrified
corn meal! bow to me, worship me, and cherish me as thou cherish the
puddle of milk, spilled, spoiled, and ever rotting beneath your
mattress!”
“What is that!? What is he saying!?” Cries the woman.
“The box has spoken.” God says. “The judgment is in. As
you now see, the results are undeniable.”
Curtis’ penis squiggles out from the zipper of his pants. It
looks God straight in the face and says, “I don’t understand… What
should I do?” Winey tears squeeze from the tip.
“What’s the closest number for an ambulance!?” screams the
woman. “Somebody help me get him out of the box! Help me
Curtis!”
“Can’t you see I’m trying!” Cries Curt.
Together the two strain and sweat; and together they fall with rainbow fart dust juice spraying them all over as they tumble their
way into the squeaky little, mother wiped pit of Adar’s ass. It’s a never
ending crevice. Like the sucker of a dogfish. The parents never stood a
chance.
Adar’s legs just keep on tremblin’. Repeatedly he is skull
fucked by baptism. Into the quicksand of God’s bleach and bling he
slowly sinks. His thighs slip beneath the rim. His calves crack into fairy
dust. The little leg hairs, still struggling beneath the surface of his skin,
sizzle to the far off headphone beat of his video game. Like cream
puffs the toes plop to the tenth power. The lid closes, entrapping the
family within its confines.
12
Alone now in the room God flips the channel to streaming
television.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re live, outside the Salt city
Masonic Temple, “ Says a reporter from the news channel. “whereupon
the steps, any minute now, Fielding Mathewson is scheduled to
address his congregational district…
“The scene is one of rampant energy: the entire, jarbled spirit
of the Magic Party has flocked here tonight, to bear witness to this
monumental event. Left and right, they stream, through every crevice,
nook, and ally… bubbling up through the thumb holes of every sewer
disk, sizzling and howling, like steak blood and dreams… We’ve got
Jigalettes; thrift store cigarette vendors; knife swallowers; a Hindi
Shaman garbed in the eye makeup of a raccoon totem; doughnut
screeching Rascal pilots; bongo skin clad doodlers of sacred geometry;
first semester dropout intellectuals; rebel geniuses; sex fiends; dope
heads; cardboard sign holders; and minimum wage prostitutes…
“It’s hard to avoid being slapped in the face by an M80. I
swear these people have lighters growing out from beneath their
fingernails… Everywhere is a cigarette tip being lit, or a bong being
ripped, or a fuse being ignited… The mounted police force really have
their work cut out for them… They can’t billywhip quickly enough to
maintain any semblance of peace… They’ve become nothing more
than a crowd surfed jockey wave… A line of unmounted, bullet proof
vest wearing, ground patrol units, are stanchioned before the stairs,
keeping the mob from storming the temple. Poor buggers; brave
souls, holding these maniacs back from their god… It truly is an
instant of fanatic worship you are witnessing here…
“I’d like to say that a moment of silence is in order, but we
haven’t the time for that… There’s a stir rustling around those gilded
doors, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s Jonathon Mohamodon just
stepped out onto the porch. Yes sir! Here come the twelve… with
Fielding Mathewson wrapped in their midst…
“Good evening people of Salt City…” taps Fielding into the
microphone. “I would like to thank you for all of your continued
support over these last few months. The road which we have walked
has been nothing less than abominable – full of taunts, abuse, tarrings
and featherings, etc… However, together we have made it here, to this
fateful night, only a handful of votes away from claiming a long
deserved Magic Party victory. I stand as an elected symbol representing
everything that has kept us walking. I am a conduit, inches away from
the throne of our possibility. there are innumerable manifestations of
reality awaiting us beyond this election. Should you succeed at fitting
me in as the drill bit of your dream machine I promise that together we
shall vent hidden graces into this vulgar stagnation we’ve submitted to
through impotence lies.
“As a token of my word I present to you a symbol of its
fulfillment: this black artifact: a relic procured from the heart of Eastern
prayers; this artifact of unknown origins shall serve as the masthead of
my term – the first voyage together for us into the unknown. Tonight,
if the votes declare me your next Mayor-Master-Master, I shall flip the
lid of this strange cube, and reveal to you, at a grand after party, the
secrets of one of the world’s oldest, and most mysterious faiths…”
A bolt of disbelief shoots through God’s spine. He stands
up like a shocked hair. He can’t believe how close all this is to his
location. A feeling of absolute purpose fulfills him. It is as though this
night was destined to be the reason for which he manifested.
He doesn’t even turn the television off, he exits the house so
rapidly.
13
God’s empowered footsteps pad him down the Suburban
streets towards the Masonic Temple. Two missionaries catch him
within their periphery. It’s the same two missionaries as before:
Adam’s least liked friends. They call out to God:
“Hey there!”
God turns. He meets a woo-hooing hand and a flesh
stripping smile. The smile tricks the brain into smiling back reflectively.
It is the smile of role play scenarios; the propaganda presence; the
poster child sigil. It’s the pathway to consumer mainframe. Missionary
2 mimics the posture. In his hand he holds a tri-folded pamphlet. His
sweaty, shaking fingers slide across the glossy, card-stock surface.
“Have you got a moment sir?” Asks the missionary. “We’re
in the neighborhood today talking to people about television.”
God flexes his eyebrows, straining to get by.
“We believe that television is the true, current word of the
lord. Do you currently have a television sir?”
“I don’t have time for this.” Says God. “I have somewhere I
have to be.”
“Well, we personally believe that this is the most pressing
issue you could currently be dealing with.”
“Forgive me, but I don’t share your concern…” Says God.
“Have you ever wondered where your lack of concern comes
from?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Have you ever wondered whether your lack of concern may
be an infliction induced into you by a force opposed to your eternal
wellbeing?”
God is struck dumb.
“Sir, if we could please persuade you to give us a moment of
your time, we promise you that it will be invaluably worth your
while…”
“I don’t think I have a choice…” Responds God.
“That’s absolutely untrue… You see, it is impossible to
force feed somebody the gospel. One must be willing to accept the true
light of Christ into his own mind. May I ask your name sir?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel comfortable giving you that
information.”
“Alright; well, are you familiar with our organization?”
“I’m familiar with the television…”
“When was the last time you spoke with one of our
representatives?”
“I can’t remember…”
“May we give you one of these pamphlets to look over while
we speak?”
God takes a pamphlet.
“If you’d open that up, my companion and I would be
happy to point out some specific features which we personally believe
to be enlightening…”
God looks the information over.
“Are you familiar with this particular product?” asks the
missionary, pointing to the latest model. “We call it The Eden. We
believe that The Eden is God’s forgiveness of Adam’s transgression.
This device is capable of lifting your soul into the realm where it
naturally resides. It is a pain free realm, lacking suffering. We believe
that this is the next evolution for the soul of man - God’s latest
atonement. We have a massive team of programmers, who have
literally transmogrified themselves into data, and work round the clock
to fulfill the desires of our customers. Baptism only takes a couple
hours, and you are paid royally for your participation: Does this sound
like something which might be interesting to you?”
“No.” God says. “I have had that realm. I have been that
realm. To live within reality now is what I want.”
“Sir, I’m not trying to criticize your way of being, or mock
your faith, but I think that your thoughts are inherently flawed. My
companion and I believe that to desire a life of pain and suffering is
not a desire which one would naturally have, and so it must be an evil
influence spurning your motivations. In the sixteenth precept, third
verse from the bottom, on page twelve of the pamphlet it reads: ‘If
one removeth his hand from the rod, for even one brief inkling, he
shall be lost within a mist so all-encompassing, that from his first
misstep the way shall be forever separate from him, and his own
discernment shall be blinded by confusion.’ We believe that the
inception of The Eden is God’s most current development upon the
construction of his rod. I believe that somewhere in the past you
misplaced your grip. We are here to guide your hand once more to the
way. Will you let us help you?”
“I really don’t have time for this…” Says God. “I have
somewhere I have to be. I’m looking for Fielding Mathewson; do any
of you know the quickest way to the Masonic Temple?”
“Fielding Mathewson?” Says the second Missionary. “We
know Fielding. He’s one of our closest friends. If you keep heading
down this road you can’t miss the temple…”
God thanks the missionaries, and pushes determinedly away
from the conversation.
“Sir! Wait; is there any way for us to get in contact with you?”
“No… Not really!” Shouts God, running down the street.
The missionary smacks his pamphlet to the ground. “Dang
Gone it! What are we doing wrong here!”
“I don’t know…” Responds the second missionary. “I
thought you did great just there. Come on. We’ll get him another
day… Just keep your head up. Onto the next one….”
And so they go, on and on, spreading the Word of Eden to
the masses, house by house, person by person.
14
In the sky above, beyond the clouds, there… far away… Can
you see it? It’s coming closer. It’s becoming less timid as time goes by.
It’s becoming as familiar as the elephant in the room; sitting up there
in the sky, enlarging. Lil’ Boy Blue.
The moon arises. It fills with the memory of the sun.
“Look here…” Says Mother Earth, holding up her satellite.
“My idol, see? I made this.”
“That is a cold dead thing.” Says Boy Blue.
“…But what it represents is as real as life itself.”
“What does it represent?” Asks Boy Blue.
“The Sun! The glorious star in our sky! The life and death of
worlds! That which gives life and taketh it away! The grand wizard of
the cosmos!”
“Have you met him?” Asks Boy Blue.
“Who, the sun!? Are you crazy? I am not fantastic enough to
swim within his circles…” Replies Earth.
“But you are the most beautiful lady within light years. Have
you ever even tried?”
“No; I never have…”
Mother Earth’s sea scapes are reddening. Leave it to the
young ones to dish out such compliments, and such guilt. All in one
breath.
“I don’t leave this spot much…” She says.
“Why not?” Asks Boy Blue.
“Most of the time I don’t feel so well…” Says Earth.
“Are you sick?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“What do you mean?”
“All of these scab sores, sky scraper temples, shopping center
bridges, meat processing yards, nuclear reactors: you don’t think this is
normal do you?”
“I think you look as beautiful as a dame in shining armor…”
Mother Earth’s pussy releases a gush of soppiness. A tingle
runs through her strong enough to send her humans euphoria
tripping. All of the street corner prophets are gaining followship,
pointing to the foreign planet, preaching: “Lord and Jesus be thy
name! His kingdom come! Hallelujah! Amen!”
She moves closer to the boy.
In the Masonic Temple the followers of Fielding Mathewson,
and all those curious to know the contents of the black mystery box,
are exponentially crowding. Fielding’s won the election. The votes have
all been tallied, and the chads collected. Nobody can even remember the
other candidate’s name.
The gathering is huge. It’s a liquid mass. It streams from the
doors, through the streets, screaming and hooting and hollering with
banshee fire humanity. The reporter from earlier has been killed. His
face has been stamped into the ground by a self-refilling boot-print.
The chad of his features is being nibbled up by ground squirrel and
rabid Jiggalettes.
Adam arrives. He’s made his way back here after his
monumental failure. After what he’s been through he feels humbled
enough to subtly seek a welcoming back into the fold. He’s covered in
shrubbery and mud. Twigs stick from his hair hither and thither. His
tie has been transformed into a bandana.
First stop, the bar – get a little steam off… Chill out the edge
a bit…
“Allen and Fielding will see me when they see me…” He
says.
He makes his way downstairs and tells the bartender to give
him one for a girl. “Specifically a Sizzling Sally Meringue please…”
Seated close by is one of his ol’ café pals. A man known only
as The White Russian. He catches the sound of Adam’s voice with the
corner of his ear. “Adam Roscoe!” He calls out, sliding his chair closer.
“Figured I should’a been seein’ you here. What with your whole ‘holier
than thou’ brotherhood. What do you say to the victory? Cheers to
that, eh?”
“Yea… It’s pretty great.”
“Not enjoying the festivities so much?”
“I lost my job.” Adam says.
The White Russian slides a silver dollar past Adam’s
hurricane glass. “The next round’s on me.” He says. “Perhaps this is
rather a blessing in disguise; you’ve never seemed quite the job type to
me…”
“I don’t want to work.” Says Adam. “But this reality’s one
of either hunt or die.”
“Da, da…” Replies the White Russian, taking a swig of his
drink. “But you seem like the type who needs the more
unconventional type of work. You know I have my own business
right? Matter of fact a temporary gig just came up. If you’re strapped
for cash, I’m not above givin’ it to you.”
“Really?” Says Adam.
“Yea; but I’d need you tonight.”
“What kind of work is it?” Asks Adam.
“It’s delivery work.”
“What kind of delivery work?”
“It’s an international job. South America.”
“South America?”
“What’s wrong with that? You’re always trying to get out of
here. It’s round trip. You’d be back before tomorrow evening.”
“Would I be able to bring Musette with me?”
“I’d rather that you didn’t… The guy we’re delivering to is a
little jumpy.”
“Why do you need me? It’s a little last minute to be asking
for a courier.”
“The last guy I had didn’t work out. I was going to go down
there myself, but if you want the cash the job’s yours.”
Adam has his suspicions. He’s aware of the shady
undertones. But something about the job draws him in. Fantasies
about cowboys and outlaws seem the perfect remedy for his rotten
mood at the moment.
He talks money and is pleased with the figures.
“Alright… He says. “I’ll do it.”
The White Russian smiles. He gives Adam some directions:
“I’ll have a driver pick you up from here. Just head up as soon as you
finish that drink. He’ll take you to the airport. Once there you’ll have to
locate a certain locker which has your parcel in it. Here’s the key… There
will be a tape recorder in the locker as well; it will give you further
directions once you’re there. Try not to look in the package if you can
help it. Just be cool; relax; and enjoy the trip… You’ll be home before
dinner time, no problem.”
Adam finishes his drink and wobbly stands from the bar.
The White Russian pats him on the back and chuckles into his drink
darkly. The crowd becomes a swirling thick cloud of laughter and
celebrations. It parts like pink colon flesh as Adam tumbles through it.
It digests him into his new and nerve racking fate.
Neither Fielding nor Allen get the opportunity to reunite
with their old friend before he is back out in the night. He bumps
shoulders with God as he exits the door, but it’s an indistinguishable
collision amongst all the other battering going on at all sides.
Boy Blue’s fingers land a matrimonial embrace upon Earth’s
surface. All of open eyed Europe, and squinting eyed Asia stop playing
with their marbles and throw themselves into a hilarious uproar. They
leap right out of their shoes and stretch their arms skywards. Everyone
strains for a grasp at an upside down tree top or a mountain peak.
Everybody gives their all to abort their home planet. An occasion for
interstellar escape is an ultimate rarity.
The disease begins to spread. Fast food franchises extend.
Suburbia sprawls. And the skyscrapers begin ascending.
God enters the masonic temple. His form is instantly
encapsulated into the party’s hum. The current rips at his flesh with
people making rounds around an ice sculpted polar bear. Paneled
coconut chestnut bounces the chitting and the yelling back down into
the crowd from a domed ceiling mural of Sagittarius. Elevators rise and
fall into different motifs.
Upon a stage at the front of the grand ballroom sits Allen
Ginsberg with some compatriots. His face is wrapped in the shawl of a
Mexican belly dancer. Backdrop swinging landscapes periodically make
appearances around him.
“Little Bird.” He says. “I could use my medicine now
please.”
A hippie dope head drops her hand into a cookie jar and
pulls out a fluffy handful of purple tipped grass. She says a prayer and
loads the marijuana into a color infused glass pipe.
“Thank you beautiful.” Says Allen, grabbing the pipe from
her, and passing it to George Harrison, who sits next to him.
“You start it…” He says.
George swirls the flame of a match atop the pile causing it to
sizzle and crackle. Orange embers send tufts of smoke into the air
through his stuttered breathing.
He passes the pipe back to Allen.
“Oh God, Krishna, holy one we’re loving you’re love, and
we’re making hecatombs like freaks arisen…” Allen chants.
George strums a single string, picking out a monotony,
diminishing himself into backdrop. The crowd chants. Little Bird
slouches on the stage. There is a plan behind all this stageplay. Allen
has made big promises, telling people that tonight, with the combined
energy of all of Salt City behind him, and the ascension of the Magic
Party to the throne lifting him up, he shall defy the laws of physics and
levitate.
After a few minutes of stern concentration he opens his eyes.
“I’m sorry…” He says. “I truly thought that this special
occasion would bring about the miracle, but I don’t think that I can do
it… Last night I masturbated behind my girlfriend’s back…”
Everyone exhales disappointedly. The crowd knows that guilt
is the anchor which keeps us all from floating away.
There is a sound of moans erupting from where Little Bird
sits. Everyone turns their attention that way. The girl has her eyes
closed. She’s dipping her fingers in and out of her cunt hole. A clear
slime sticks like gooey streams of pleasure to her fingertips. An
awkward, anticipatory silence pervades the crowd as the girl rolls into
orgasm.
Allen and George are wide eyed. Little Bird is levitating! She
has accomplished the impossible miracle! Airwaves of weightlessness
carry her through her climax. She squirts fountains of juicy pleasure
onto the faces of the front row, and lands softly back upon the stage,
relaxing slowly, with one final spurt dropping her into a sleepy sigh.
“How did you do that?” Allen asks emphatically.
“Do what?” The girl responds.
“Why levitate of course!”
“I didn’t know that I was levitating…” Little Bird responds.
“I just got carried away by the spirit. Hearing you talk about
masturbating turned me on… My imagination possessed me I guess.
I started thinking about George Clooney lying on a bed with Jude Law,
practicing analingus in a bed of Garden of Eden leaves, and that was
it…”
George strums his guitar, and the audience begins laughing
cheerfully.
In his office Fielding Matheson smokes a brand new cherry
100. Lounging in his burgundy arm chair he sends sweetly tinged
smoke rings up around his hair follicles. His exhalations form nicotine
haloes around the black faced Jesus paintings hung upon the walls
around him. Amber light rolls its grace around the gold plated frames.
Baptismal fonts of organ choir music pepper from a sound system of
ceiling grates. Rain drops of tabernacle gelatin spew into the soft hazy
air with lip smacking thickness.
Outside, Fielding knows that boat loads of seagull flocking
warlords are up in arms against his name. The War Party’s profiteering
has been lush in Salt City, and the outcome of the election was an
inexcusable fluke in their plan. It must be dealt with. They are out for
his blood. Tonight is destined to be astronomical on multiple levels.
Fielding slides his fingers across the oil slick surface of his artifact. His
fingers are trigger itchy; they flirt with the uncovered switch. It’s time.
No more hesitation, anticipation, or expectancy – the moment is now,
and the time has come.
He rises from his chair and departs his office. His caravan of
attendants surrounds him in a mobile swarm. The hallways spark with
camera fire. Oaken brass doors swing out towards the crowd. God
looks up with a face full of silent wide eyes. All of Sagittarius’ gorgeous
mystery shines down upon his cheeks.
Fielding’s got a smile rising up through his sadness. He is
not a fool. He knows that tonight is the night he dies.
“The promise has been fulfilled.” He says. “Outstanding
votes tallied in our direction validate the hope we have springing from
the magic within ourselves. If nothing else, let this night be a
monument to the true method of answering prayers.”
He lifts the box and rubs his fingers towards its opening tab.
His coveting fingernail approaches orgasmically close to curiosity’s
fulfillment; but the War Party intervenes before the action can be
completed.
Their failed Mayoral candidate, Senator Johan Rubischov,
stands at the front of the pack. “Excuse me,” He says. “But this party
is a blasphemy and an illegality. It must be snuffed out post haste. For
propriety’s sake… For God’s sake… For goodness’ sake… Fielding
Mathewson, you are hereby indicted under Article of Faith Number
One; you have the right to remain silent.”
Fielding’s wrists are cuffed. The black box is removed from
his possession.
“Take it to the Holy of Hollies.” Says Rubischov. “For
further examination.”
15
The White Russian’s driver starts the car. Clipping fender
teeth chitter through the headlight’s glow as he pulls out onto the
street. Each traffic line that whizzes beneath the car’s radiator nose fills
Adam’s brain with further nerve swelling. “This is insane.” He says.
“It’s bad news.” Panic signals uncomfortably lurch the beach front
private property of his stomach pool. His heart pounds swollen, heavy
thudded heart beats against his seatbelt fastened rib cage. Pot holes and
speed bumps rattle him deeper. “Just turn back…” His conscience tells
him. “Tell the driver to stop the car, and go home…”
He can’t understand how events have come to so closely
resemble a b-grade gangster movie.
He pulls up against the airport’s passenger drop off. The
driver hands him a little note:
“Seek the package out within terminal locker 17. Once
equipped make your way casually to gate Zip Red 7 where you
will board the 8:39 flight to Costa Rica. There will be a tape
recorder in the bag. Follow the directions precisely, and you
will be fine.
With love, your friend,
The White Russian”
Adam ejects himself from the car and closes the door on his
past life shut. The breeze of the night’s black air licks against his skin.
Business men and women, knowing no end to the work day, rush past
him, woggering insane business lingo into their cell phones. Terrorism
abounds in this place, if not illegal than surely immoral.
Bards sing unrecorded records of drunken realizations all
around outside the airport’s entrance. Soup cans and cardboard signs
ask for grace. Adam throws down a metal buck with a kiss and a prayer.
The glass doors suction close behind him.
‘Welcome to the Salt City International Airport.’ reads a
grand, bubbly blue greeting sign. ‘Step to your left for baggage check.
Two steps to your right for vending machines. Three hand motions in
the air for storage lockers. An escalator’s worth of repressed memories
for terminal gates…’ and so on and so forth.
Adam looks to his bony fingers, and signs the only three
hand signals he can think of: Amazing Grace, Live Long and Prosper,
and Thank You For Your Patience. A blink of an eye and he’s in a
ferocious kennel of aluminum titanium alloy. chomping jaws, like
beast maws, emit jackpots and digest material by the gullet full into
their boxy guts. Keys twist, men lose their arms, and shreds of
overpriced TJ Max designer formulated pin striped shirts wave through
the air.
Pieces of squishy flesh flop around like amputated slaps.
Adam searches out locker number seventeen. Finding it, he takes the
key from his pocket and prepares for insertion. “Yea… Put it in me…
that’s what I like!” says the little locker, speaking through a dent work
expression of jizzwork blood and eyelashes.
It screechily moans as it opens. Inside there is a yellow L.L.
Bean duffle bag, and the promised tape recorder. There is a post-it note
stuck to the recorder which reads, “Play the tape, and for your own
peace of mind, don’t look in the bag…”
Adam plants the punkin’ seed ear buds in his ears and
pushes the ‘play’ button. Wagon wheels spool tape trails around the
spokes of the little machine. The White Russian’s voice fills Adam’s
head:
“Now I know that this isn’t one of them fancy MP3 players,
but seeing as to how you are listening to these words means that you
have passed the first intelligence test – that of antique device utilization.
Now, little soldier, please proceed to the third floor of the airport, and
ride the escalator up to flight gate Zip Red 7.”
Adam wraps his shaking fingers around the bag’s handle.
The White Russian’s voice continues squelching out hints and tips for
a successful mission. He leaves the locker room. Framed paintings of
strange locations decorate the walls of the airport hallways. Costumes
from exotic nations, encased within glass frames, create fire hazards all
along the walkway. Around every corner is a bun shop, a coffee
turnstile, and a T-shirt junction.
The weight of the parcel pulls on Adam’s pores. Sweat beads
drip like leaky faucet fluid from his face. The temperature is sweltering
from all of the people smoking cigarettes within rooms of unopenable
windows. Adam struggles to keep his composure by humming church
hymns to himself. The escalator ride is the longest ride of his life. He
doesn’t rush it by trying to run. He just stands within the mass of
people. Everyone’s talking into their phones. Adam tries to look
inconspicuous, but everything the people say sounds like a security tip
off. A Charlie horse forms in his neck from jerking around every five
seconds to check for leaking contents. The yellow, reeking stains in his
pits make gym class allusions to all the surrounding noses. The Muzak
in the air is pure filth.
The escalator opens up to a tile floor full of x-ray running
mustachios. Lines of people crowd like cattle through metal detecting,
chemical puffing gateways. A little dribble of piss trinkles through
Adam’s boxer briefs. He wonders what the tape recorder said about
this part… He’d been too busy concentrating upon not looking
suspicious to pay any attention to the squelchy voice. He fumbles in his
pocket, searching for the tape player’s ‘rewind’ button.
The security line stops for no man. “Come on buddy…”
“Move it pal…” Somebody nudges him from behind. The tape
recorder spills from his hand, crashing to the floor.
“Excuse me sir, will you please step this way…” Says a
security guard, grabbing Adam by the forearm, and leading him to a
door labeled ‘Security.’
“Ummm… I don’t understand… I just dropped my tape
player.” Adam says. “There’s nothing dangerous about that, is there?”
“Sir, please, just come with me.” Says the guard.
The steel door of the security room slams shut behind
Adam’s skull. The handle locks closed.
“Take a seat.” Says the guard, inspecting Adam’s passport.
“Yes sir, of course sir.” Says Adam.
A television box sizzles static haze hash browns from the
room’s ceiling corner. Steel chairs with blue, plastic cushions are the
only seating options.
“Sir, do you know that yellow duffle bags are the number one
drug smuggling container for international smugglers?” Asks the
guard.
Adam’s throat is clogged by a wad of anxiety large enough to
sink his stomach. He shakes his head in the ‘no’ direction.
“What were you planning on doing in Costa Rica Mr.
Roscoe?”
“Just a vacation.” He manages to say.
“Well, you have a round trip ticket here which says that you’d
be returning home early tomorrow evening. That’s a pretty short
vacation don’t you think?”
“I just wanted to pick up a souvenir. Get a breath of the
ocean. I’m a working man. Can’t take too many vacation days…”
“Well, we’ve got your bag here. And let’s just say things aren’t
looking so good. See this…” He taps the bottom of the bag. “This
here’s an artificial bottom…”
“Ok… But the thing about this is that that’s not actually my
bag… It’s a friend of mine’s … He wanted me to take it to Costa
Rica, meet him there, and then give it to him. That’s the truth…
Honestly… He left it here… And it’s not my fault; that’s what I’m
trying to say.”
“Well, it’s definitely drugs…” Says the guard, lifting up the
bag’s artificial bottom, pulling up a Ziploc baggy of white powder, and
then another, and another, and another…
“Let’s just say, this definitely is not looking good for you Mr.
Roscoe…”
The guard takes Adam, in handcuffs, out of the security
room.
“Where are we going now?” Asks Adam.
“The time for your asking questions has passed…” Replies
the guard.
Together they descend the escalator. The guard stomps his
boot twice. A gleaming black tile alights, and a ceramic elevator rises to
form a cage around Adam and his captor.
Chain link clatters against a pulley wheel as the elevator
descends into the airport’s basement. The door chimes open into a
concrete hallway. A row of ceiling hung light bulbs sweat the way
towards a door labeled ‘Security Lounge.’
The guard escorts Adam in.
A room full of uniformed men look up from their poker
game.
“Well…” Says a crew cut skull. “What have you brought us
here Hank?”
16
God literally flips his lid, blinding anyone who comes
between himself and his other half. He makes hot pursuit towards the
escaping black box. Golden door after golden door lead him closer to
the temple’s holy of hollies. His feet patter through hordes of shot
droppers, tie wearers, and attendants galore. They drop like dried turds
before the majesty of the opened box.
He breeches the gates of the holy of hollies. The doors are
blasted clean off their hinges. A circular handful of masked scientist
priests look up just in time to feel their skin ravaged. The black box lies
in the center of the ashen bones. God drops down to his knees before
the dark alter. He unhinges the trigger switch released. The lid flips
open. A purple haze and black light seeps into the room. It expands
into every niche. It’s like jungle swarm Tahiti. It eats at God’s flesh. It
swirls the meat from the bones and adds cackle to the purple
atmosphere. God’s blood melts into a liquid sense of humid hunger
and lust. Like cabin fever beneath mosquito nets. Sweat slapping your
bangs against your forehead. The follicles sliding into your eyes. The
hut is raided by natives. Bones through the bridge of nostrils. Ceiling
fan swirling over saloon bottles. Assholes assholes everywhere!
Erupting from the buds of counter space… Spewing over the lid of
the Holy Grail… “There’s a hunt on, this way…” Says a fox hunter to
Benedict Arnold, who stands in the doorway staring. A Gollum
belches around the curvature of his own spine. Ravens cackle from the
corner spire shakiness of the tower’s splitting. Lightning bolts make
disco arena out of the black spew. “The only way forward is to dance
honey…” Says Lady Madonna, taking hand hold of God’s soul and
sway assing him through the bursting into of flames. She splits into
legion and sucks every nipple, pit, penis, and mole. God sinks within
the weight of all feminism. He topples into the box like a tranquelized
elephant. The pool bathes him in a nocturnal drowning.
Inside the box screams the soul of the hermit. The little man
at the bottom of everything. He reaches up with a grasp of pure
emotion shouting question marks and exclamations at God.
Spasms of electrified terror shimmy through the waters of all
Heaven’s placentic chamber. Chains of incorporeal incapacitation string
themselves around God’s wrists and ankles. The electric chair turns up
a hundred thousand clicks.
“How can it be that you are here?” Asks God, his voice a
mud recording of wrinkles.
“It is for here and there are nowhere for he who is everywhere
that you must come to acknowledge the limits of your own delusion
and merge ourselves beyond the you and me.” Says the voice of the
hermit. “Your flesh is plasma sunlight when crashing through the
glass of portrait mirror. When black is white so chimes the bell of
aether’s marriage. That ring is the sound which is called truths of all
truths. We are the birthplace of the peripheral formualtions.”
Cymbal crash of liquid turgidation. Hear reality gelatinize. The
yawp anthropomorphizes into a kaleidoscope. Layers upon layers of
doorways leading into doorways. Everything extends in all directions.
Starbursts of crystal pinnacles. Magmic staccato. A bud blooms into a
still tea wherein silence reigns so painfully as to shiver teeth into
antifreeze. Airplane parts pop into rust, cancer tumors ice into diabetes,
and the mind of Beethoven crashes into madness for all his future
listeners.
“Orgasm; I’ll catch you between my teeth…” Says God.
“Release oh immortal king your sanctuary up to my living body…”
“The black merging into destructive purpose…”
“For the sake of all those who require formal endings…”
“One more piece to the puzzle before checkmate – but it
comes ever closer with each passing word…”
“The final mile to come…”
“So it is, and so it shall be.”
A reverse vomit rises into a throat, closing within a box,
dropping into a pressure cooker of thought, emotion, creativity, will,
and the ability to do all things. God begins to make flesh out of this
black box home.
17
Fielding’s containment carriage chariots its way towards the
city’s tribunal office. The driver keeps his eyes forward, leather
snapping, with nervous chuckles, his horses faster. The carriage rattles
through flurried crowds of maniacs. Molotov cocktails erupt into
cotton candy mushroom clouds beneath his seat, as rabble-rousers toss
their dissent towards Rubischov’s political blasphemy. Jiggalettes
scream vibrations into the window glass, pleading their services out for
a ride home from the party. Fires glow from apartment complex
windows as television stations go haywire with new anchors battling it
out for first rights. Snowflakes of ash make Christmas allusions to
burning copies of Charles Dickens’ masterpieces. Pages flutter within
the abandoned prison cells of escaped convicts. Guards are shanked to
death in insane asylums. Hobos are fulfilling a good night’s rest within
the abandoned beds of children. Street musicians are going nuts with
muses of black violence. Bank coffers are spilling their coinage into the
gutters. The City has a bad case of blue balls, and that planet in the sky
is getting way too close for comfort… Chaos, leaderless, ignited by the
unthinkable, free flows like an apocalyptic torrent through the streets of
Salt City; and Rubischov anxiously strings his ass whoopin’ boots up,
just a few more blocks to go…
The wheels scrape sparks up against the curb. Rubischov
jimmys the door open, and his officers strain themselves against
Fielding’s dead weight. Up the concrete steps they drag his boots.
Through the grand pine doors they pass. They are greeted by a lobby of
elevators, all surrounding the statue of Fielding Barthalamew II,
Fiedling’s second great uncle, and Salt City’s first grand lawyer. The
depicted man stands, holding his stone bible up in the air,
pronouncing a declaration of justice for all, and punishments towards
the wicked.
“Floor thirteen.” Commands Rubischov; and up they go,
whooshing through the golden tube of fate, towards a circular chamber
of alligator briefcases, yellow legal pads, and the crucifying spires of
every judicial system this side of the twentieth century.
All of the actors are in place. The props are properly placed
upon their X’s; and the director has made his phone calls. The arrival
of the star sets the show on fire.
Up walks a big boned bailiff. The brute’s got chunks of meat
folding over his collar and his cuffs. He grabs Fielding’s handcuffed
arm and guides him to his seat. He blows a neck whistle which flaps
his zeppelin cheeks, and he shouts: “All rise for the honorable Young
Sinclair!”
“Sinclair!?” Mutters Rubischov. “I specifically demanded Bill
Plagman!”
“Plagman’s sick with influenza…” Responds an attendant.
“But don’t you worry sir: Young Sinclair is the next best thing. We did
our research… He’s the coldest, meanest, most easily corruptible, up
and coming swine there is. You’ve got nothing to worry about sir: the
cat’s already in the bag…”
Rubischov runs a bead of sweat through his temples. Young
Sinclair makes his entrance. From behind a George Washington
inspired tapestry he saunters, a red robed, black wig wearing, Shinigami
of a man, shouting, “Order! Order!” as the courtroom crowd giggles,
poking fun at the dangerously bulbous blob of a mole painted on his
cheek. He takes his seat behind the pulpit. Fielding’s bad feeling
increases… It’s as though the grim reaper just sat his gaunt form
down inside his pilot light… A Chiron smacking both faces of his
double fisted hammer… A repeated bleating of oaken thumps, like
pagan bass tracks, summoning venomous heartbeats within the
hounds-toothed chests of jury members, salivating the drool of death
wishes with the raw stake sizzle of a hot seat grilling.
And just as the maw of absolute hopelessness threatens to
consume Fielding, the courtroom is greeted by the entrance of Allen
Ginsberg, coming to the utmost necessary rescue, donned in the role of
a defense lawyer, equipped with his grandfather’s lucky pocket-watch,
and trailing behind him, through the gates of courtroom thirteen, an
overflowing tote of photosynthesized law manuals, all rife with Post-it
note placemarkers: the Jewish savior; he takes his place at Fielding’s
side. “Can you do this?” asks the defendant. “With utmost grace…”
Responds the true messiah. “It is a second calling, I think.”
The trial begins. The prosecutor is the first to play. He is
literal demon incarnate. When he rises to present, goat blood scratches
of trinity mockery splash down his pant legs. His tongue is a forked
snake charm; each phrase uttered is multi-watered in legion – Makes
your hair stand on end… Up off of its own damn goose-pimples…
Because damning is exactly the point here… A literal damning
machine, summoned up by Rubischov’s War Party Magic defectors for
the sole purpose of damning Fielding’s soul as far from the political
stage as possible.
The beast rants curse after curse, burying Fielding in
brimstone. And Young Sinclair stands smiling above the grave plot,
padding the brimstone into place. The more the prosecution slanders,
the more the wickedness and cruelty within the young judge is
pleasantly stroked and kindled. That part of Sinclair, which
accompanied his rise to the mallet, a sort of sinister lust and soft
perversion, finds a perfect niche within the demon’s flow. The
spell-made golem pores black light gasoline on Sinclair’s dim light
district, striking that tuning fork ring which calls families to picnic upon
Gallows hill, and reels old men to the humid nests of soiled doves; the
laugh of your father letting go as the rape revs up; it’s that electricity in
your fingertips which comes from picking that dollar from Mum’s
panty chest, or a nude shot from the urban gutter… That feeling in
Sinclair which has evolved to accompany every cheek mole oil drop;
every powder coating; every pomp of the curls; and every spray of
fragrance in the pubic bush; every dinner ball; every speakeasy password
uttered; every ‘no’ overpowered into a moaning ‘yes…’; every
thumbs-down verdict on a cloudy case; every violent rejection of mercy
in the face of begging; and every proceeding smile, which inevitably
erupts, immediately after the commencement of all these acts.
Sinclair clicks his file sharpened nails upon the pulpit as the
demon wraps it up. The decision is already written in blood upon the
walls. Ginsberg feels helpless to clean it off. No amount of textbook
recitation can exorcise the disembodied malice floating in the air.
Inward roars a howling of fear. This madness touches a secret trove
within the spirit. Like the contents of an unlocked cache of blood,
subway decapitations, dripping boy-scout knives, forehead bullets, and
a mother’s straight razor rise from the pith of his sacral chakra. Courage
vents up to meet its trigger objects. Tears begin shaking on his cheeks,
evaporating beneath burning irises. The voice of a generation knocks
against the throat pendulum. And just like that the words begin
drizzling down the curls in his beard. His lips bless each critical strike.
His long Talmudic fingers parry counter attacks atop the bars of the
prosectuor’s curse. Highlighted phrases reflect against the thick lenses
of his glasses, striking the mind of Young Sinclair like yellow beams of
kabalistic rescue. Atonement. The force which channels itself through
Ginsberg softens the judge’s mind; it massages his brain fabric with a
feathering of heart so sparkly that it reaches up and straightens out the
still repairable piping. It shoots the judge into a yogic stretch, so clean
that the clogged bubbles of plaqued arteries release memories and the
magic of childhood from their shackle chambers.
Young Sinclair slips out of his mental track, like floating – an
astral traveler, he shimmies further from the iron maiden of his ways;
each comma, and each paragraph transition jolts a spark up his cheeks
causing rainbows. The progression is symphonic. Crescendic splashes
release laughter spurts atop the podium. The tingles are incandescent
and right. The bliss points the direction back to a sunlight definition
which concrete bricks, blood stained linoleum, and poison filled vials
of euthanasia had penultimately amputated him from.
He drops the gavel upon its mate and calls the trial a
blasphemy: “Brothers and Sisters,” He says. “United by our common
flag, our flesh, and this unnamed substance which makes us human,
how, in the midst of our city’s grandest, darkest, and most chaotic of
hours have we come to lie our own prophetic head upon the chopping
block? Rubischov, shame on you… Your actions today have been
unbecoming: the plays of a poor sport. If anyone deserves to be
prosecuted here it is you.”
Acknowledging the trial’s result, and being aware of his
demon’s failure to deliver, Rubischov enacts plan-B. With the press of
a secret, cufflink concealed trigger, a signal is sent outside the
courtroom, to a mercenary mob, who receives their go-ahead. Their
boot barrage can be felt approaching from ten floors down. The brass
railings of the stairwell vibrate their angry shouts up the legs of every
pew. The good feeling in Fielding, which had been loving Ginsberg
with so much relief, sinks back into his gut heavily, becoming again a
stone of dread.
“Kill the antichrist!” booms into the courtroom, as the
doors fling open. Rifle barrels, pitchfork iron, knife blades, and silver
teeth gleam the courtroom’s stage lighting against the quay stretched
eyes of the frightened audience. Fielding doesn’t turn around. He
battles the internally omnipresent scream within which cries, “Panic!”
All of his Magic Party validation collects within this seed of controlled
calm, compacting beneath the encroaching pressure, growing at an
abnormal rate, blooming into the action which he hopes will save his
life.
He rises. Metaphysical electrocutions prod his limbs. His path
has been pre-plotted by a fate of his choosing. Connecting the dots. A
fate of survival. bodies between gun barrels and a window escape.
Thirteen stories. The chances of executing a perfect landing are greater
than surviving a magazine’s worth of bullet wounds.
But the mob’s onto his tricks. At the first muscle twitch their
trigger fingers tense up. Hot rain is squeezed into the courtroom.
Blood spurts erupt from fields of collateral damage. Valkyrie bullets
bloom flesh flowers out of faces. The seeds enter the backs of skulls.
It’s springtime between the eyebrows of opera patrons; it’s May Day
Rose Parades between the rib cages of BBQ Daves; and it’s hip
explosions for my dear Aunt Sally. Papers are swept up off desk tops.
They flutter in the air, popping and sinking to the metronome beat of
automatic weaponry. Young Sinclair is taken aback by the eruption of
chaos. He’s smearing his cheek mole with the palms of his aghast
expression. Around him the hurricane laughs. A rogue bullet shatters
his mallet into fifteen pieces.
Fielding keeps his head down. Through the crowd he
zig-zags. Home-free approaches at the window. He drops his shoulder
like a battering ram. Ginsberg gets one hopeful glimpse of him before
‘Ting!’ goes a bullet against his chest. He’s knocked back by the
concussion. A ricocheted death blow. The poet’s good-luck pocket
watch dents into a mutilated Star of David. The bullet flings
unexpectedly off of the watch and into Fielding’s back meat. The
prophet takes a deep inhalation. His eyes pop piñata dust into a
ballooning halo of sight. ‘This was unexpected…’ A break in his
concentration… He doesn’t even realize he’s breaking through the
window glass. The hero falls. He is impaled by the pitchfork of a Bravo
Squad mercenary below.
The gulp of blood which pops out of Fielding’s mouth
ushers a moment of silence into the court room. The mobsters aren’t
sure whether their task has been accomplished. They rush to the
window. Squad B meets them at their glances. It takes two men to lift
the dead weight into the air. A flag of flopping flesh, drips hot life into
the grass.
“Count yer’ blessings boys; we’ve got ourselves a dead
mayor!”
The gang clears out. They parade their trophy around the
streets. With a touch of a button Rubischov deposits blood money
into each responsible account. The prize of a political victory. A back
door nomination in a court of law. Time for his first act: a war party
repayment of debt to the corporations who truly funded this most
recent act of electioneering.
“As Mayor-Master-Master of this fine plantation, I hereby
make my first act the dropping of Salt City’s ban on the Titan Initiative,
welcoming to Salt City the protection of God.”
18
From the depths of coding, a hidden sequence alights. The
gates have turned from red to green. The automated systems of Salt
City’s apartment complexes enact the Titan Initiative. Red tape snaps
like an overstretched rubber band. Enhancements hatch like restrained
evolutionary advancements. Wings become limbs, detaching from the
localization of cubic centrality. Rotary style, chain action turrets, fit with
heat seeking crosshairs, link up to ocular nerves, which had up until
then been walkable corridors. Leasing offices sickle their nooks and
crannies out into every keyhole, connecting room to room, synching
mainframes up with the stock market, becoming nerve centers.
Earthquake proof foundations become massive paws which
signal sevens on the Richter scale. Massive, oil slicked knee caps revolve
the dormitory beasts around town. Economically precise vision sweeps
the streets. Threat level orange. Employment and residency become
mandatory. The Titan Initiative: clean up the streets, and eradicate
unemployment. Homelessness has become a thing of the past. Tractor
beam assimilation. When one floor fills up another grows atop it.
It’s a feeding frenzy. Monopoly has become the name of the
game. Corporate warfare. Bullets and missiles blowing apartments
from one corporation to another. Sweeping up the carnage for
utilization. Screams rise up in a harmony of horror. Everyone’s looking
for a way out. Escape the city! Flames and rubble ash.
There’s no need for missionaries anymore. Persuasion has
suddenly become a requirement of the old world.
“Heaven is alive on Earth…” Says the missionary to his
companion. “God is bringing his children home. We are released…”
A man runs out onto the street, escaping his apartment
complex, screaming: “Help me! I’m so hungry…”
Black soot powders his skin smokily, and his fat folds seem
fried into pastry crust.
“What happened to you?” Asks the missionary.
“I was in my room… Watching my life… When ‘BOOM!’
Everything exploded around me… It all became fuzz… The tube
stopped working… I’m starving! I have to go to the store!”
“Wait, sir…” Calls out the missionary. “We can help you.
We can get your service back on in about a half an hour… What room
are you in?”
“Three…” The man says. “I’ll come back later…”
He hops onto an old black horse, and snaps his barefoot
ankle against its emaciated rib cage. He races off, as quickly as he can,
searching the streets for scraps of food in a confused, and scared frenzy.
The missionaries approach his building. Around them the
yellow painted smiley face crowns of skeletal smiley face teeth gleam,
swooping in and out through the exhalations of fossil fuel tower
snouts. Mgmt signs squelch through the air as the robots
communicate with each other. Telephoning walky-talky systems
alternate frequencies by the millisecond, trying to stay current with the
trend. The chicken speech of this cell phone static drives ice tea drinking,
porch laden grandmothers to an epilepsy more flashtastic than
rudimentary algebra. Handfuls of Midol capsules are swallowed into
splintering brain plate teeth. Chambered barrels spin chain ganging
devastating around a rotary axel wheel of claw like vestibules. Swiss
army gauntlets grapple the fuel of adversary corporations into ball
bearing radio carpal joints. Smooth pumping, piston Pete revolutions
of knee caps sliding create a St. Peter’s archway for the missionaries to
enter the apartment through.
“It’s bad in here…” They say. Crowds of garbage fire litter
stand donned in dirty beanies and fingerless gloves. People clack
anxious knuckle raps upon their ham radios, trying to bleat a long
forsaken communication method back into existence. “Just get it
working long enough to get somebody out here…” the daughters say,
with tears seeping through their bonnets. They weep over kitchen
utensils, trying to remember culinary techniques. Aunt Jamimas gaze
out their windows, watching piles of women crunching baby bones
outside the local abortion clinic. Intellectuals fall through hail storms of
burning college text books and Readers Digest subscriptions. Many of
these people, awoken from their consuming dreams, are the types who
thought they’d never see this world again.
“Are you here to save us?” Asks a fat lard panic sufferer,
spotting the missionaries.
“We’ll do what we can; just try to remain calm…” Says the
missionary.
They enter apartment number three. The pantries are all
thrown open to reveal their nudity. The television blinks third world
emergency broadcasting flashes. There are lipstick marks around the
anal tube, indicating the resident’s horrified desperation.
“There’s a lot of work to be done here…” Says the
missionary.
They smack hammers into lexicon plating, and run pressure
tests through plastic. Everything is looking pretty good until the
building receives another smack. A Titan fist comes hurricaning
through the hallway, launching furniture and carpet fibers through the
room dangerously. A heat seeking fingertip claw reaches through the
doorway. Hypodermic needles erect through calcified nails. Morphine
sleep sinks into the missionaries’ neck veins. A grasp wraps them
around their death deep drop. They are sucked from the room. Fired
and hired. Lined up in single file with the rest of the meat.
19
Adam has no idea of the mayhem taking place around him.
“I’m not a piece of meat.” He says. “I have rights.”
“Shut up or we’ll gag your mouth.” Says a guard.
“But you don’t have to do this… It’s your jobs that’s
making you into pigs; the position of authority which you’re forced
into… It’s driving you into barbaric brutality.”
“This is what we with the badges like to call the perks of the
biz…”
“But you’re slaves to this depraved mentality… I pity you.
This underground stuffiness… This monotony for the sake of
survival, has turned you all into fag rapists. It’s really quite horrible
when you break it down… It seems so unmanly… Don’t you have
wives to go home to?”
“Bill, grab the gag. I’ve had enough of this psychobabble
bullshit…”
“Hear me out… I’m not necessarily complaining. You
already know I’m a communist. It’s not like this is my worst
nightmare – or my first rodeo… The bigger the better – that’s my
motto. I’m just shocked by your depravation. And can it truly be that
I’m the only bottom in the room? Normally I have to play top. It isn’t
every day I get four squeezes in a row… And without even an ounce
of foreplay… I can officially count myself divinely blessed. No shitty
dick for Adam tonight. No quick run to the shower to clean my little
guy off. Just pleasure followed by more pleasure, followed by the
biggest smile of my life. Your poor, poor buttholes. You poor, poor
boys…”
“Our buttholes? Hanks, he’s talking about our buttholes…
Hey what’chu talkin about our buttholes for? It’s your butthole what’s
in for it. You’ll be crying by the time we’re done wicha!”
“No doubt I will be! I’ll be crying for weeks after you’re done
with me. I’ll be knocking on the door of this here break room, crying
for another go around. Trust me, I’ll never forget this you guys. I’ll pay
you back however I can. But don’t you want a little tit for tat tonight?
Out there they call me The Excavator. And I swear, I’m at least worth
the salt of two men combined. If you want me to take tops first, I’ll do
it; I know that this is supposed to be a punishment. I’ll need about ten
minutes between holes, but that’s all. I can be real quick and dirty, if
that’s what you’re after. I take you, you take me, and we just move
through the room like it’s an assembly line. Just like that. I’m sure we
can get through all of us in an hour and a half. I’m not saying that it
will be easy, but I know that it’s possible if we really shake a leg…”
“This guy’s queerer than Danny Sunshine…” exclaims one
of the guards. “Like some kind of super queer or something…”
“To be honest with you, I’m mighty confused…” Responds
Adam. “I mean this is about as far from punishment as it gets for
me.”
“Don’t think we’re above beating the purple out’a ya.”
“To be honest, taking a beating is like a second coitus to me.
I’m lucky if I can get a little poke and punch… After about three
punches and a kick, I’m cumming all over. I know… It’s kinky… But
I normally have to get punched at least once to finish… It stems way
back from my childhood… You see, my Uncle Eduord, he used to
baby sit me some times… He was real twisted…”
“You’re a pretty twisted fuck yourself!” Says one of the
guards. “Hank, honestly, I wouldn’t put my dick into this guy if you
threatened my job over it. He’s probably got disease crawling all over
his ass. I’m gonna have to pass on this one buddy…”
“Well, we have to punish him somehow… He was
transporting drugs across international lines.”
“Why not just send him to the police? Just this once… Let
them deal with it…”
“You know that’s not our style! That’s just not how we do it
here!”
“Hey, I’ve been thinking, as you’ve been talking,” Says
Adam. “I think I figured out a good way for you to punish me.”
“I don’t think so, you little queer…”
“Just hear me out; I’m not trying to trick you. You have no
idea the amount of guilt this misstep has caused me. I might be a
faggot. And I might be all sorts of weird and twisted, but I’m not a
criminal. Not usually anyways… This whole drug transporting
thing… It was a desperate attempt to help a friend out of a jam…
He’s got bad people looking for him if he doesn’t get those drugs
where they need to be… But that’s neither here nor there at this point.
I’m caught. The mission was a failure. What’s important now is that I
receive some form of punishment. You and I both know that this just
has to happen… I respect justice; you are officers of justice: let’s work
together and clear this air.”
“We’re not going to do anything we don’t want to do.” Says
a guard. “And we’re not going to do anything that we don’t feel would
adequately punish you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of making you do anything you wouldn’t
want to do.” Says Adam. “You guys are the good guys here. Through
the utilization of my just devised plan, I believe that I can receive
adequate punishment, while also enlightening you to knowledge which
you seem painfully ignorant of. You see, the thing is, that which would
drive me absolutely mad, and punish me even more severely than you
can imagine, would be for you to pull me back from this precipice of
bliss which you’ve led me to, directly before allowing me the thrilling
rewards of its leap. After having been tantalized with the prospect of a
quadruple prodded pleasure session, there is nothing which would
deliver a more absolute cou-de-gras to my existence than having to
watch this moment slip away… You have built this experience up to a
world wonder within my fantasy land: it is at the core of my thoughts;
it takes all of my willpower to remain true to my more noble love and
respect of justice; to not just let you have at me, while I drool from
every orifice of my soul. Even now I am in unparalleled agony, having
crossed the threshold of not knowing for certain that my prostate will
be rubbed pleasurably by all you penis tips. And yet I step further…
Still dissatisfied with my own destruction…
“As I look upon all of you, muscly, manly, epitomes of brute
testosterone, I am fretful over your ignorance. There is yet the secret I
have to reveal to you… The secret seed of your true selves, the secret
trapped within your buttholes… those air tight stink holes of yours…
Wherein all of your banes and maladies fester… The root of
everything wrong in your lives; crying out in the form of bloody turds,
left in the toilet for your wife to wipe up on Saturday morning. The
homosexual nature of man! It’s there screaming from your avoided
souls. Listen… It is time for you to accept the truth about who you
are… What in the world do you have to be scared of? You’re like the
epitome of fear itself!”
“Are you calling us fags?” Asks a guard.
“Not fags! Homosexuals! Fag is a detrimental slur given out
by cowards who cannot accept the truth for themselves. But you are
honorable, courageous, and true men… You have the strength of will
to see through the stigmas… Honorable and true men do not run
away; they look fear in the face and find the best way to take advantage
of it. Real, true men take what they want. They don’t give two shits
about what others declare shameful. The find out for themselves
what’s good, through experimentation and conquest.
“You may not see me as an honorable or a true man. I’ve
done things shameful both to myself and my family – however, I am
courageous; and if there’s one thing which smells of man, it’s courage.
I had the courage to request a dick into my asshole. And since then I’ve
known two things: one, having your prostate rubbed, while rubbing
your dick, feels better than just rubbing your dick alone; and two, I like
men a whole lot more than I like women. And I think you do too.
Because that’s what’s natural. There’s a reason God hid the prostate so
deep within the butthole. Women are annoying. They nag. They have
babies. They cry. They are nothing like us. They are the opposite of us.
Were it not for their pussies, we wouldn’t step two feet near them. It’s
time to leave them in the dust, and go on on our own. To the bars, to
the strip clubs, take what we want, and only what we want. No more
coming home to their whiney voices – Boys night out every night!
Porn, junk food, beer, hard liquor, guns, piss, shit, farts, and free time!
That’s our true nature! We just have to find that spot within ourselves
which will forever amputate our necessity for women from us. The
G-spot is that spot. It is the holy grail of sexual liberation. Find it, and
you won’t even masturbate to pussies anymore…”
“Do you want me to get that gag now Hank?” Asks a guard.
“Yea… Gag him up, and let’s just beat him up; we’ve got to
get back on the floor…”
Adam realizes that he’s been away from the Magic Party for
too long. A trick like this would have been child’s play months ago.
He’s surprised. In shock. Maybe he pushed it too far… Maybe if he’d
just left things at no rape, and no beating, he could have walked away
with only a warning. But he’d wanted to see two security guards
fucking each other. He was arrogant. And now he’ll have to pay.
The guards strap the gag into his mouth.
“Who wants the first punch?” Asks Hank.
‘At least I’m not being ass raped…’ thinks Adam to himself.
A guard named Bill steps up to the plate. He wraps his
knuckles in cloth to prevent bruising. But there’s been too much
dilly-dallying. Adam’s speech had had more of an effect than he’d
thought. The airport alarms begin ringing. “Back up! Back up! We need
everybody to the floor now! All hands on deck!” The airport’s being
rushed. The residents of the city are looking for a way out. The airport’s
the most obvious choice. Every flight’s been double booked.
Husbands and wives are tearing other husbands and wives out of line.
Mothers are screaming, “But I’ve got a child!” And Adam is left,
forgotten, alone in the basement, with hands and feet corded to a chair,
and a ball gag wrapped between his lips.
20
Never is a thing done without God’s permission for its
doing. But he weeps, knowing himself back into existence. His soul
merges with the cell block confinement of his black home. Through the
union reemerges an Easter. The artifact crackles, shifting into
destructively motivated flesh. The walls slither bony oil spills into the
growing silhouette of a man. A flesh of unforgivable sins drapes like a
mourning veil. Ignorance splits like a wound bursting with its
antidote. Bleating hoofs of entropy rack the air, bleeding the shivers of
a muscle clenched frown over a scry of purpose. Gargantuan weights
for hemispheres of heart convulse exhalations of charcoal clouds into
creepy realms of masochism and woe. the birth wails over with the
jammed smiles of Heaven’s jester. It is invulnerable through its truth.
It grates the foundation of the ultimate illusion, like the serrations of a
saw toothed knife, splattering gulps of horror onto the walls. The
incomparable loneliness and emptiness of being the ultimate being:
like a poltergeist, formless, tossing capsules of oneself across and
around the area of a decrepit haunt; a pile of dirty laundry, steeping in
self-manifested filth, brewing the mildew of infinite omnipresence.
The scapegoat, in the form of flesh, summoned by the
transmogrification, says, “Lay your sins upon my feet…” The walking
feet, the vessel carry. Into the woods for a throat slitting. The onyx egg
bursting, growing stronger through the consumption of its own
placenta. Drenching red guitar chords, squiggling around the spongy
marrow, waiting to be cut. An agony scream, trailing its
discombobulated woe behind itself. A purpose of deliverance fuels the
returning. For through death, may the end begin: the end of the
encapsulated illusion, the story, the universe… And only through life
may death begin. Flesh standing sacrifice for higher realms of existence;
realms wherein wonder and awe may exist. God takes claim to
astronaut dreams, longing for the more attained through less… After
every inch of every continent, and every cranny of every ocean floor, has
been scoured, examined, and experienced, God seeks another God; he
seeks to be the fodder of a grander ocean; to be motivated by currents
not springing from oneself, but including oneself; to petrify his corpse
into substance and let the spirit release like gas into everywhere; to
form a fossil around the spine, and liquidate the juices into the spheres
of the divinely unfathomable… To fuel the vehicles of cosmos upon
cosmos, and to illuminate life… as free, as dead, and as vacuous as
light.
Brain sparks ignite, like luminescent adverts, burning fortune
card lining onto the bedspread. A triple Scorpio birth sign. With grim
reaper laugh lines. Oh baby child beautiful… A bed of roses; a pain in
the gut. The woman rocks back and forth from the shadow of the
room. A fizzled stare brings brine shrimp to the salty beach of an
unachieving stretch. With opium buds rotting in the morning air, the
nostrils of wandering men are acupunctured by the smell of
Nostradamus.
Hips hang open as the lizard father and the tigress mother
grasp a divine child within the apple’s fall. Shrinking and dilating…
Shrinking and dilating… Shirtless whiskers cling to the pores of what
is known as manhood. The hairline fractures of thought induced vocal
chords squeak breath into the sound of the atmosphere. God
immerses while rising. He stands, both emerging and sinking into life.
Beads of the black box’s substance seep into the pock marks of
perfection’s face. A new found sharpness, and a clarity of soul,
enlighten to invigorate the shortcomings of a niggardly appearance. The
droops and drags of the hermit, through an unparalleled devotion to
the divine, rise into spires of baptized beauty and grace. Instantaneous
reparticalization with enhancements attached.
Within every molecule bask the holographic piths of the
Celestial Kingdom. Stubborn ignorance has broken to unite two thirds
of the trinity; only awaiting the last. Courage allows the bodhisattva to
guide the notes of narration onwards, towards the keyhole click of
solidified existence. A black knowledge, absorbed, seeks sanctification
through the last word. Covenant Arks, Sodom and Gomorrahs, great
floods, and apocalyptic end games: the miracle button cure for sickly
boredom and the bottomless circling. Raising the inertia into a
momentum quicker than thought. The hated one romps towards the
winter bed. Man merged divinity is so sleepy for the true dream. The
walls of flesh and bone seek so spasmodically to meet room
temperature… it makes for a nausea – a nausea prepared to jumping
jack along the dotted line.
The true search for answers makes breathing possible, and
brings the tongue to taste the salt of time. It tames the wonder of
whether senses truly exist, and it allows for a prayer to slip between the
folds of a superior self.
21
Adam breaks the chair and escapes. He enters the dark tunnels
beneath the airport, which run all throughout the city’s underbelly.
Sweating lights become a stream line of dim highway lanes as the
temperature within the tunnels begins affecting him. The bulging
tubework of Salt City’s plumbing warps delusional warnings into
Adam’s thoughts, telling him to “Turn Back!” “Danger up ahead!”
“Where am I going?” he asks himself, looking up, into the
particles of the tunnel’s concrete ceiling, beyond the strata of a brain’s
capacity for comprehending, above the bluebird songs of sorrowful
straggling, where, in the star scape realm of time and comprehension,
Lil’ Boy Blue and Mother Earth are overstepping the boundaries
deemed acceptable by common morality. Bags, depravity stuffed
beneath the eyes of watch gods, sag curved shivers into erection stimuli.
Fingers are padding down curious acceptances, childish naiveties, fears
of abandonment, and mother desire. Mother trust deceives the
unknown standards regarding what the milk maker should and should
not do. It feels good, albeit strange… Strange as what it means to have
a matriarchal figure as protector and guide. Allow it or lose it. Not
another soul in the world to rely upon, out here, in the wilderness…
Out here in the land outside the familiar bubble… The disease ridden
and vile mother, acts as both redeemer and destroyer, perverter and
preserver - accursed and yet such a blessing…
“Yes, I can touch down there…” She says, giving herself
permission as caregiver. “This is what mothers do.”
Lightning bolt magnetism, the pole rises to the stimulus of
its attention. There is blood of youth circulating from the core,
diverting energy to the port in the storm, this apex of a certain hopeful
sin sensation. Hot tears raise sea levels between Mother Earth’s breast
mounds. Empire State Everest nipples, high rising towards the stars,
erect Mount Rushmore lips of the greenest grass, boroughs and roving
plains, around aureoles of melted asphalt. Constellation cairn stars
tighten up like bog swollen cranberries, resisting juicing, like blood
clots, holding off the white dwarf, waiting for deeper minutes later in,
when absolute trauma is hypothesized.
Streams of saliva snap over forest scapes. They crackle at the
departure of lusty kisses. A beating heart racks its lining. Visible sores
pass from orb to orb. Old Faithful erupts beside Mount Vesuvius.
Pompeii is again overridden in slime. The Bermuda Triangle is
scrambling signals and exploding the brains of pilots, air traffic
controllers, coast guards, and anybody with a metal plate in his head.
The immediate universe stands a sparkling disco ball of prom
night atmosphere. Gyration earthquakes and tidal waves of douche
juice radiate from the stigmas of agitated blossoms. Euphoric
whimpers and perspiration buds sound like global warming. Skin is
jiggling. The crust is shifting all over in shivers. Tiny hairs are standing
erect like Redwood Forest’s majesty. Nubile freshness offers command
through pupils of mutable animation. The gratifying beatification of
lusty ecstasy for Boy Blue feels like it could be eternal. The illusion of a
constant afternoon fulfills a population with paradisiacal beliefs.
The heat waves of boner warmth add new gravities to a virgin
environment. The sun becomes inconsequential. Mother Earth’s
sliding suck tug naturally obliterates the shadows of doubt and concern
from reality. With the grace of misguided nature two celestial bodies are
unified. The veiny Grand Canyon crimsons, metamorphosing an
overly dry gulch into a life ready oasis, slip sliding Boy Blue’s signature
into her atmosphere, directly above the Masonic Temple.
Awe inspired eyes partake of the otherworldly drop… The
mountain peak descends from the valley of the stars. The aether is
pierced by its peak. The hazy atmosphere encircles. It is the moment
which has been precipitated by every news station. It descends in slow
motion, driving deliberately and majestically. Earth seizures with
anticipatory lust. Her fault lines swell like clogged arteries. Her surface
becomes a grassy mush. The compacted dirt has loosened up. It is an
Ovaltine lithosphere of soil and earthworms. The surrounding
sidewalk shivers into jigsaw puzzle pieces. Lil’ Boy Blue’s first orgasm
swells within his fresh penis. He pants as the shaft comes crashing
through the temple’s ceiling. Slab rains down. The structure crumbles.
Everything is sucked towards the penetration.
Crowds leap frog over crowds. Factions unite to outrun their
doom. Directly upon the G-spot the penis pushes, into the Holy of
Holies- right onto God’s white box. One push is all it takes… Young
lust is so sensitive… The white box is driven to the core. One quick
stroke, and then release… An explosion of warm, pubescent ejaculate
melts the precious treasure into a pool of magma, pressure, and hot
destruction.
God scampers, feeling his feet alight. His steps slip upon
slopping tile. Rubber soles on the ice skating rink; grasping at walls
which have turned into waves of stone. The only sanctity lies down the
mountain side, which from Earth seems upwards; onto the new
planet; climbing from tree trunk to tree trunk; escaping, with predictive
steps, onto Boy Blue, a foreigner, the first of his kind.
Adam gapes at the chasm borne out before him. A white
flash blasts a thousand thunder bolts of trumpet strain up in angels
wings out from the depths below.
“Here, now, is a secret way out – from everything – the pain,
confusion, the jest…”
He crosses the sharp threshold of this world. He passes
through a blinding light. Into the pit of perfection unfurled. He’s
strangled by a bleached out drench of white. Overly regal ribbons whip
stutters. The angel voices slash the flesh in flight. Howling wind of
shades, analog mutters. From all sides, at all angles, shadows stir.
Lyrical murder as rafter flutters. Drizzling exit wounds wind into a
blur. It is a jury room of murdered faces. Sinner, blasphemer, thief,
addict, and cur. Gray consumes the distinction of races. Adam finds
himself in the underworld. Heaven on fire is Hell of all places. The pit
is alive with divine power. Hallucinogenic interlaces. An upside down
and curious tower. Room after room of trying misery. Hare Krishna’s
rotting navel flower. Each door leads to a new mystery. It’s a slip shod
of horrific regret. Hell is Heaven’s guilt ridden history. The decisions
which God cannot forget.
Enter Fielding’s bullet ridden courtroom. This is where the
first stage for us is set. Scenery appears with a sonic boom. A mallet
smacks a hollow pointed ping. Blood soak seeping from the back of
the groom. Ricochet split from a six pointed ding. “Where were you
Brother in my time of need?” Betrayers sentenced to the bottom ring.
The devil requires a special feed. He’s sprouted a head with your name
on it. The time for correction has atrophied. You shall nourish your
fate in surfeit. Right here through this window sir, if you please… We
must proceed deeper into the pit. Downwards towards the lake of
eternal freeze. Into the basement, and into the bar. Back to the last
place the Earth touched your knees. The White Russian left a
permanent scar. The last place to say ‘no’, and ‘yes’ to God. You can
only run so fast and so far. Just keep your hand upon the God-damn
rod! There’s no escape from the all seeing eye. There’s no shadowed
places for you to trod. There are no shortcuts, do not even try. I’m in
your head, your heart, your blood, and soul. If you think you are alone,
it’s a lie. You are a piece of the eternal whole. “You’ve gone and fucked
up!” Sneer the hellhound guards. All of this shaking has taken its toll.
Listen to the song of the demon bards. Just do what I fucking tell you
to do! Here’s Adar, the king of silent braggarts… You know, I think
he’s a lot like you… Another spoiled rotten young despot… I want
to crush you both beneath my shoe. Smear out your living, breathing,
useless rot. Are you too spectacular for real life? Are you the son which
you think I forgot? You think you should be spared from all the strife?
Why didn’t you just listen to Desmond? Over and over you twist the
damn knife… That job was literally a God send. You had to go and
spoil the carpet… What does it matter? The show has to end. I have
gone and lost the eternal bet. Deeper down you go, through this spiral
chasm… As far down as you can possibly get… Past a sin darker than
I can fathom. The infanticide of your first born son. You’ve made me
suffer my final spasm… The ringmaster now turns around his gun.
“Release me from this labyrinth of weird!” Let’s doorbell ditch this
nut, it sounds like fun! It’s everything the hermit’s ever feared… All
wrapped up nice and tightly in a box. We watched him as the shades
through which he peered. Clever ol’ God, you’re a rascally old fox… I
told you that I’d find you in the end! I guess you could call this a
paradox. A packaged prayer which you yourself did send. The cubical
white horseman of peace. We have important business to attend. Space
warping time with a page folding crease. I’m sorry Adam but the gig is
up. You’ve been caught by the mother fuckin’ police. I’m sorry God
but the gig is up. You’ve been caught by the mother fuckin’ police. I’m
sorry my dear audience, says the ringmaster to his adoring crowd, but
we’re going to have to start winding this thing down…
“I’m sorry Adam.” Says God. “But you were my most
perfect creation. The thing I could not trick myself into believing. Your
suffering is my paradise. To live a life of strain and toil, to be so
separate from the all-knowing mass of relaxation – this was the trick I
played upon myself. But I cannot be happy, no matter how deeply I try
and hide my face. For back to here I shall always return. To the center of
everything, the root of the issue. Eden. Our home. Heaven. Hell. It’s
the world which keeps us alive. It is beyond us, so long as we just
allow it to just be itself. We are in a repeating cycle: a viscous circle.
Always it comes back to knowledge, or the lack there-of. The snake is
never satisfied; it must continuously feast upon itself…”
“I just wanted escape…” Says Adam,
“Don’t you remember?” Says God. “You’re already here.
Sleep now into wakefulness; and never doubt your own imagination.”
Adam drops the shiny metal thing back into its package…
The cardboard clatters against the coffee table wood. It rattles with
dropped weight impactfulness. It’s like awakening from a long
somnambulance. Adam scampers as far from the coffee table as he can
get. He is afraid of the strange games he’s been playing… He doesn’t
remember the events leading up to this point. Things have definitely
gotten out of hand. He’s crossed the line of what is and is not ok. The
invisible threshold of control had been crossed, and he doesn’t
remember crossing it. Maybe it’s time to go home…
‘I need to find Musette…’ He says. ‘Things are so painfully
weird. If this is cabin fever, then it’s worse than I had imagined it to be.
I think there’s a parasite in my stomach. It hurts when I breathe. And I
have not been getting enough sleep…’
He examines his face within a puddle of water formulating
atop the floor boards. The beard, the grime, the emaciation… Fear
overtakes him. The squalor of his life is more real than he is able to
process. It’s been so distant and disassociated for so long. The adult
actuality he knows existing instead of his imagined mythos and
legendary past, brings a nausea to his gut which he can’t escape from
quickly enough.
He rushes to the door, and grasps the doorknob, preparing
to exit.
“Wait…” He says, turning around. “I’m not here
anymore… I left this place a while ago.”
The door knob slips from his sweaty palm.
“I am God. I have a mission to accomplish. I have to climb
the mountain.”
He walks back to the coffee table. The walls begin
departicalizing around him. He lifts the device from its box. It glints
and glimmers a cleaner reflection back up into his eyes. He flips the
hammer, and slips back through the pearly gate of his divine destiny.
22
Mother Earth has guilt written all over her horizons. This is
abhorrent. It’s just like, once you’ve started going down a derelict path,
and especially once you’re stuck beneath the surface of satisfactory
society, the only elation possible becomes the short-term glory of
outdoing yourself in vileness - sinking deeper; touching darker depths
of depravity. But then it’s gone. Like a flash. Much quicker than it took
to expand to. Bursting in an explosion of courageous letting go.
Lil’ Boy Blue is finding ways to cope. He transforms the
experience into the bliss of love, and caring. He’s neither old enough,
nor conditioned enough, to comprehend the perversity inflicted upon
him. He wipes himself clean with every piece of nature he can find. All
he knows is that he’s dirty. His cum drips and gurgles out of Mother
Earth’s vagina. She doesn’t even try to clean herself off. She needs to
stay with this a while. Soaking in this drying filth is a balming
revelation massaging her nausea with evidence of her twistiness.
The one thing Boy Blue can’t cope with is seeing her sad.
“What’s wrong?” He asks nervously.
She writhes her face away from his.
The core of his soul tremors. This is his protector we’re
talking about. This is his unadmitted to guardian. His nightlight
within a forest of reality. The amount of caring he feels for her has
magnified enormously. He can’t tell if he’s done something wrong, but
if he has he craves forgiveness, and needs, with clawing dependency,
affection. There is no other option. He will literally go mad without her
love. He is just a child. He is her child. He must find a way of bringing
her back to him. A great idea comes to his mind. He will take her to her
beloved sun.
23
The world awakens from a three day night. Constant daylight
begins with Earth’s surrender. The missionaries open their eyes to a
digitized hostess saying “Good Morning: Welcome to paradise.” The
apocalypse is now.
The seas have turned the violent red of miscarriage. Young
sperm abominations. The multifaceted beast rifles through the streets
of Salt City, inhaling power sources by the gullet full. Rubischov
saunters down main street saddle seated. He pulls the marionettes this
way and that to the tune of the highest bidder. A corpse bobs across
the intersection, trailing a string of unopened cans from the tail end of
a satiation search. Can-opener forgetfulness side effects of couch potato
blooming serve you right for standing up.
Vishnu’s bedside alarm bells have startled the inevitable into
the present. Bumped off record needle screeching screams ring through
the shattered, smoky air. It’s a tyrannical updraft of chalkboard dust.
Bones grating beneath the onslaught. A congregation of resistance
members have gathered in the park. They send their chants into the
spliced cloud scapes of splintered channel 4s, and show times, and life
time networks, with Ginsberg at the lead.
Rubischov’s horse has to leap over the bodies of fallen
middle class collateral damage. A few limbs get wrapped up in the
collagen treads of his horse’s sinewy hoof spokes. Fire, death, brain
bleaches, and abysmal living rockets blast in the static electricity of his
prints.
Up ahead, a massive force of bush wagging Manson girls
approaches. The Jigalettes have arrived. Many of them wear nothing
but blood painted fabric tatters. Their patchwork flags wave from
dreadlock pigtails and flap from scab covered joints. They sing rap lyric
battle hymns while writhing stripper pole medlies. Their saliva soaked
lyrics drip iniquitous bestiality and bloodshed desire around the nerve
endings of their pike pointed fangs. They rally around their matriarch -
an old crone, with saggy, drooping utters, drooling from the blistered
saddle of a sordid, maggot hatching beast, who expels putrid coughs
of tainted gingivitis and diphtheria over every acre it trods upon. Her
face droops like a stroke victim’s. She is a façade for the vaginal diseases
which control her. Viral tentacles, squirming out of the her highly
evolved pussy diseases, seep into the horse’s gut ulcers, mixing with
boiling uremic puss and an intestinal stew fouler than a week’s old
blood pudding leftover. It glazes over zig-zagging varicose veins,
spinning spirals around the horse’s squiggle marked cesarean scars: the
haunting hot spots of Queen B child deliveries.
The Titans begin grasping at the patchwork girls with their
claws. They ingest them down their corporate throats. They place them
in living rooms, like their mothers. They try to prod them with anal
tubes, but the girls’ assholes are far too stretched out for television.
They just giggle as their sphincters are tickled.
The matriarch gyrates in saddle circles. The green muscles of
her horse twitch into life. Bones rot introvertedly, like spongy,
unpausterized Swiss cheese. Joints crinkle like tread stomped
aluminum cans. The mercilessly parasite pumped muscles move the
horse like a lagging, jittery video game. It looks like a coin operated toy.
The matriarch approaches the leg monstrous metal leg of a Titan. She
rips her tush from the saddle. Virus tentacles pop, ripping their
poisonous barbs from the horse’s slime skin. She dismounts. Her
limp arms swing like apes’. She begins to climb. She thriller crunks her
way up the leg, moving like a slug, slurping, sticking and sliding
upwards. She hangs from the massive, erect penis of the monster.
Snapping her hip muscles out of place, she spreads her varicose legs,
and harpoons her virus around the monster’s glimmering pleasure tip.
The virus pulls her, with all its might, down and around the mighty
cybernetic lance. She is stretched wide. The edges of her dried labia lips
crack like corn husks. Blood runs down her thighs. Her pussy begins
ballooning as the metal slides around within the slime laced cum. She
moans. It’s been so long since this soulless body has been adequately
challenged… Her abdomen swells like a pregnant woman’s. The
bulbous definition of the titan’s dick tip shows clearly through her
translucent skin. Her rib cage explodes as it slips between her lungs.
Her heart beats increase, suffocating. Her neck stretches like taffy fat as
her jaw crackles to shards. Her eyes bulge, and her mouth rips, showing
the stainless steel slit of the Titan’s sperm door within. The dove
shaped head plops out of her vocal chords like a shiny sandworm’s
snout. The matriarch’s body slides down the shaft. One end holds her
pussy while the other shoots out her mouth. Juices gush from her
vagina. Her eyes roll back into her head. Her own cum shoots between
her teeth. It soars through the sky to splash the Titan in the face. Her
body swells. She is filled with fountain slop. She goes unconscious in
ecstacy. This is the heaven of whores. Enlightenment is hers. God is in
sight. She dies, twitching, and spilling goo from all of her pores.
The Titan is fire baptized into a different frame of mind. His
computer language is turning to babble in his tin skull. He is very
much aware of his circuits frying. His toes tingle. His legs tense. He
does not think. The screens of his perception go blurry. He is shaking
all over. The STDs’ microcosmic bacteria brew all sorts of
collaborations with each other. Orange tinted clockwork fear sessions of
anti-sex projection propaganda tingle the robot’s subatomic coding
sequences, frying his wave transmitters into slides of macabre rust.
The matriarch’s corpse keeps on swelling. Her body squeezes
the robot dick harder and harder beneath its guts. Her flesh strains to
contain the inflating zeppelin. Like a puffy campfire torched
marshmallow she explodes. The Titan’s eyes spin slot machine juke
box cherries round and round the jackpot treasure of Davy Jones’
booty. He bursts a hot load of magma cum high into the sky, pinball
bouncing the wad off a nearby moon, heating it back up in the
atmosphere and splattering it all over Lady Liberty’s face.
His brain throbs bubbly. It morphs into a disease soaked day
dream sponge. The robot topples to the ground. The Jigalette’s cheer.
They rush into the crowd. They pop like zit after zit. A brimstone
storm of cum shot facials rains down across all the nation. Signals are
cut by the viral network. Interruptions chew like rats through the entire
civilian workforce. Power outages on all floors. People are thrown into
shock by what appears on their screens. Some are killed instantly. A
sudden injection of the real world can do that to people. They stream
from all the windows.
Some folks take a different step. There are those who pull the
rectal tubes from the butts and make their way to the streets. They file
like hypo-allergenic storm troopers from the foot ramps of their Titanic
toenails. They scamper through the scrap pile of their decommissioned
office factories. They are united by their confusion. Peace descends
upon the land.
24
Adam slips through the needle’s eye, back onto the planet
where he as God presently stands, preparing his ascent.
“Look at it…” Says Boy Blue. “From here it is even more
breathtaking than I had imagined…”
Mother Earth can’t believe she is seeing the present moment
in her own reality. She falls, crying before the booming plasma
embodiment of all her lifetime’s dreaming. She prostrates herself into
an OMG! overload. She weeps her heart out. This is too good, and too
tragic, too perfect and too overwhelming for her to stand within. She
sloshes joy juice through each of her pores. She partakes in the
sacrament of the sun’s radiant face. Flare arcs rainbow manly rounded
features out of dimple dropped cheeks. A cosmic lion’s mane of locks,
blonde and chameleon red, highlight glory, confidence, strength,
power, and perfection.
She suffers spasms. She writhes around like an electric eel
caught in the net of a fisherman. Her tongue is wrapped three times
around the Great Wall of China. Flowers bloom epidemically upon her
surface, exploding into cake frosting. Sweaty bee stingers press the
pleasure button over and over again. The Grand Canyon is spilling all
over the desert floor. The crater where the Masonic Temple once stood
throbs like a Jack Rabbit plugged straight into a lightning bolt.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” The sun asks,
filling the galaxy with calorific particles of burning intimidation and
fear.
Earth tries to speak, but finds her mouth locked in a teeth
grinding, tongue slicing lock jaw. Her dribbling eye lids sputter to
express something tangible. Her brain sounds like a microphone held
too closely up next to a speaker. She wets herself to relieve tension. She
spills like a burst valve. The ugliest grimace imaginable overtakes her
face, expressing utter joy and utter humiliation simultaneously.
Boy Blue is in shock. “My lady!” He cries out. “What have
you done to her!?”
The sun shoots glimmering eruptions from his eyes. “What
do you mean what have I done to her?” He asks.
“Release her from this spell! Why are you hurting her like
this?”
The pathos of this young child is so alluring… It reminds
the sun of woe be gone brilliance. This is the stuff galaxies are made
out of!
“I have not done this to your friend, you little sweet thing…”
He says.
“But can’t you help her? Aren’t you the great wizard?”
“Well of course…” The sun says, playing along. “But this is
a curse beyond any I have ever seen…”
“Surely there must be some way!” Boy Blue cries.
“Yes…” The sun says, “There may be one way… But it’s
beyond my power… There’s only one spell I know capable of possibly
performing such a gargantuan feat. And it’s no simple spell! It requires
the most powerful magic imaginable… It would require a knight of
the highest order; a warrior who is brave beyond measure… He would
have to be the grandest hero the entire universe over…”
“I am a knight!” Boy Blue screams. “Tell me what you need,
and I will retrieve it for you!”
The sun has to pierce his lip with his teeth to restrain himself
from pouncing upon the lesser of two pleasures. His prostate jiggles
with excitement. He turns around, and bends over.
“Look here…” He says, exposing a tangerine vineyard of
flame tipped curly Q’s. “There is legend which tells of a young knight
in possession of the universe’s most magical key. If you can find this
key, or this legendary knight, bring him here! Together we could possibly
save your friend…”
Lil’ Boy Blue is stunned. A brew of joy boils up from the
deepest part of his nethers. The most sacred key the whole universe
over… The grandest treasure known through all space and time…
The holy grail of adventure stories… The grandest purpose for an
adventure possible… is already in his possession!
He looks down at his crotch and back up at the sun, smiling:
“I think I am the knight you’re searching for!” He cries.
“What!? Can it be!?” Cries the sun. “Do you mean to tell me
you already have the key? Young knight, if this is possibly true… It
would meant that you are the bravest, most heroic legend in the entire
universe!”
Boy Blue drops his superhero underpants. “It is true! Look!”
He reveals his young nudity to the sun. Temple heart beat rock concerts
blare out the sides of the sun’s brain. Sweat beads sizzle over his
corneas. The Ringmaster within his heart burns an armada of triple
spiraling Japanese Chop Suey Bang Bangs through his veins. Three
dimensional Imax predictions of orgasm masterpieces and gospel glory
symphonies blast out through the sun’s soul.
“Come over here” He says. “and put it in me… Hurry up
sweetheart… Quickly; let’s save your friend!”
25
The mountain peak rises. It twists a scoliosis of truly wicked
spiraling sunwards. God looks up in daunted determination. The
ungroomed path possibilities stringently stretch sprawling pubic tree
lines around boulder moles, groaning foundational geology volcanically
vertical. The clouds waft around thunder showcases. The disturbances
in the air cause ions to leap lightning bolts of cursive formidability out
from the mountain’s straining rivers and streams. Rainbows arch like
the spigots of fountains through the grey hurricanes surrounding
them. God’s arms shiver against the bough breaking vibrations of tree
trunks. He uses them as pull bars, corkscrewing his way up the
mountain side. His skin crusts beneath the ultraviolet proximity of his
destination. Layers of his grimy, sunburnt skin slide, one after the
other, like ocean waves from his skull. Blisters bloom through the
black spaces in his irises. Ruby tears of disco passion ripen down
runway ducts of ‘Why?’ and ‘Can’t there be some other way?’ God my
master, oh holy heavenly soul within my cells, all knowing and all
creating, must I honestly do for you this thing? Hypothermia pierces
the pink perfection of his lips with nine inch nails. It mauls them into
tattered parchment paper. The glorious masterpieces tumble down the
stairwells of the Louvre. It a Renaissance mania of artistic fury. An
aneurism of night terrors clawing collateral damage into the distilled
perfections of his soul. Boulders tumble pebble rainstorms in his
wake. It is an earthquake beneath each footstep.
He looks more liquid than human. His bones are steaming
through the pores in his skin. Sweat pours through the strands of each
brain cell. Boy Blue quavers within his courage mask. The dark reality of
his situation bulges against the hull of his straining imagination. The
paint strokes are chipping. His underpants lie crumpled in a pile of
clothes behind him. The strange wrongness and looming pleasure gape
before him. The sun is chortling a beast’s smile spasmodically.
Thermometers are popping into mercury madness against his dimples.
Anticipatory rage is slipping drool and throaty whimper howls down
the corners of his mouth. He’s morphing into Earth’s fire
doppelganger. Both are stroking out in over amplification. The blaze
and the quakes only tighten Ginsberg’s anchoring grasp around
Rubischov’s throat. If he lets go it’s the clouds for him. The Jigalette
flesh shrapnel splattered against his face is sizzling barbecuing yeast
infection duets with the heat. The skull’s eternal smile peers out
through the windows of his melted cheeks. Another Magic Party
victory at the end of the world.
Musette cries, looking through every cabinet for her lover.
With her last breath she pastes another missing person sign into the
wood of his bed post. An amalgamated hallucination of projector
slides streak invisible egg yolk memories into the over easy runniness
of God’s eyeballs. He crumbles into a tumble of exhaustion, plateauing
upon the summit. Screams of organ piping time breathe blares of
white light from his mind. The chorus of creation applauds his effort.
The jazz in the air empowers his muscles to lift. An underwordly
updraft hangs his soul elevated to a standing position. His finger
trembles upon the trigger of a swampwoods hut burning in
monologue. A burst of courage squeezes the lemon dry. The first
liquid greeting of the sun extends like Saint Peter’s grace. The unified
spectrum of everything descends a thorned halo crown upon our
savior’s head. The Roman sword of Helios carves turkey dinner
between the ribs of the grandest dream I could have ever had. The
master is engulfed in flame. He is ingested into death. He sizzles away
in a twinkling of exhalation.
The End