Sodamen III - Xenophobe

From “Endgame: BigJon Moreland and The Genocide in South Kingston” by Greg Munchi.






“The first time I ever heard about Xino was twenty-eight years ago, just about a year before they broke ground to build it.”

It’s an old man’s voice. Walking while he’s talking, looking at the ground.

“The guy who told me…Heh, as a matter of fact, the guy who told me is a big guy now, important guy. I can’t even say who it was he’s so important. But back then he was just a guy worked at Brad. He was an, an executive there, just under Warden I think. This was at the 1988 Christmas party for the staff at Brad, but not the whole staff , that was another one. This one was just executive staff, and then some political people. And we were over there, and we were just puttin our coats on, ya know? Getting ready to leave…Holiday season and everything.”

He makes festive finger-motions.

“So, we’re just saying goodnight and I said something like, “home sweet home,” or something like that and he says, he saystomehesays, “home safe home, right Glen?” And it’s the end of the night, he knows I live right on the grounds, you know. And we probably were drinking anyway and I raised my fist, you know.”

He mimes a gun-hand, sets the thumb-hammer with a vocal “click.”

“And the guys laughing, but then we turn to go and he’s…He’s coming outside with us. It’s weird because it’s not his house and I know he’s not leavin’ - his wife’s inside. As we’re walking out…Well at first I think he’s givin’ me a stink-eye is what it looks like and he’s brass, and me, I’m nothing so, you know, I’m getting in trouble right here. I said to my wife I said, “wait for me,” you know? And I give her the keys. Boop, she goes off. Now, just me and the guy. I’m trying to think: was I late, is it gambling? I’m racking my brain. He must have seen I was confused cause right away he’s like, “Oh Glen, you know, I din wanna get you or your wife nervous but I feel I have to tell you this” and he starts telling me about it: A new wing, security clearances, no public relations or press. He tells me a little about VAI. Not everything but enough.

For a little while we just listen to the earth, whisper and vibrate.

“So then he’s like, “Come on over my car for a minute.” So we go to the guys car and he starts askin’ me about any guns innahouse? I’m like, “you shittin’ me?” I tell him about like, two out of twelve. He says, “That’s good, but I am gonna give you this” he seztome’sez:, “Courtesy of state of Connecticut Criminal Penitentiary Division.”

More silence.

“He’s reaches in and he grabs a beautiful, I mean this had been done like by a real guy, it was goddamn beautiful.”

He says beautiful like an old man, touching hard off the ee-YOU-tee part.

“Brand new .12-guage military shotgun, sawed off at the mid-stock, and just after fore-stock. It was in a mahogany case with a black leather covering and black velvet inside. This is a weapon only for killing. I mean like people, killin’ people. Unless you hunt for dear that you don’t plan to eat. This weapon, if you shot a full-size deer with it, it would make a deer-sized hole you get me? I mean like all hole. No deer. All hole.”

We stand and he fidgets.

“He says, “this is for you.” Now keep in mind there’s me and three other families live on them grounds. He says: “This for you, and when are you gonna see your buddies?” I looked in the trunk there’s four more cases in there just like the one he’s givin’ me. I guess he got to keep one for himself.”

The old man laughs an old man laugh.

***

Bradford State Penitentiary has a misleading name. Being called “Bradford” one would assume it’s location to be somewhere within the limits of it’s namesake town. Anyone driving up through the woods on old CT Rt. 66 in Bradford would understand immediately that this is not the case. The red brick brutality of the Bradford Pen’s 1950’s institutional architecture bursts like a sudden malignancy invading the pristine tissue of the central Connecticut greenway. As quick as it appears, though, it’s gone. If you aren’t concentrating it’s possible to drive right through “The Brad” - as it’s known to every one of Bradford townsfolk - without noticing. The town of Bradford itself doesn’t appear until The prison is miles back in the rear view mirror.

The Brad, for all it’s fearsome architecture and oral tradition (everyone around tells stories of it’s various uprisings, escapes, and general unwholesomeness) has been a boon to the denizens of Bradford. Most of the townspeople work there, and most of the vendors that tend to it’s needs have storefronts in town. In addition, the prison contributes boatloads of discretionary funds to Bradford’s annual bottom line and pumps millions of dollars a year into infrastructure and educational concerns for the town. Although it is a maximum security facility, and although there is a “death row” for penitents awaiting execution (CT has had the death penalty for 90 years) the fact that the Brad provides so much and is so interwoven into the fabric of life here creates a kind of benign bubble around the prison and those who work there. Even Its nickname “the Brad” belies an easy, harmless nature. Good ol’ Brad. Like family.

***

The same however cannot be said to the newest facility on the grounds of the Brad. The Stephen E. Xino Penitentiary Barracks has, since its original commission in 1989, been the central stimulus to a massive and interminable storm of conjecture and drama. Up until 6 months ago a Pentagon security clearance of three or higher (the President has a five clearance) was necessary to even be allowed to know that the place existed; which is especially strange because Xino is not a military facility.

“It’s interesting that the general public thinks of the death penalty like some all-powerful tool that sets the scales right again, automatically back to zero.”

The man speaking is the Stephen Xino that the Xino Facility is named for. He’s driving me out to what appears to be a small (maybe 12x12 square house in the middle of big field of dirt. The BSP van we’re in is traveling at a snailish 15 miles per hour, and after driving 5 or so minutes we appear to be no closer than when we started. Xino - 5 foot 9 and all of 205 pounds - talks loudly for the entire ride.

“I’m going slow because all this area is mined” He says as an aside and continues his civics lesson:

“This premise [of the death penalty] is that death can be a punishment of some sort, and then we don’t even make it hurt. Fucking painless. There were times in Viet Nam that I would beg them to shoot me in the face, shoot my fucking skull please, anything to make this end. There were times there - in the jungle - when I prayed for death.”

The “this” he refers to is a six month bid at a Viet Cong prison camp at the Cambodian border. Xino was Army special forces, in the very middle of his second tour in southeast Asia, when he was taken captive. He talks about it a lot.

“The Green Berets didn’t serve with units as such in Southeast Asia. Most of what I did - the part that I’m allowed to discuss anyway - involved far-forward recon and sometimes assassination. It was like: Here’s a knife, a compass, and a name. See you in nine months.”

After two tours and two purple hearts, Xino decided to come off the front lines, trading his jungle BDUs for the stars and bars of an MP. He mustered out as a Sgt. Major in 1998. His job, just before he left the military, was the building and filling of top-secret prisons wherever the army needed them. His experience taught him the math involved in locking people up, but his time in a hanging bamboo cage taught him the dirty part.

“I was hung in a 3x3 foot bamboo cage for two months. Would’ve been longer, but I got rescued. Air Mobil - God bless’em. The VC though, those guys were good at prisons like they were good at killing people: They made it happen on the cheap. No frills.”

Xino’s cage was never opened and he was never allowed to get out of it. He’d been captured with the two injured American pilots who had crashed and bailed out deep in VC territory.

“The first guy, guy named Rick, he was definitely gonna die. Had a suckin’ chest wound, been in shock for like, since I got there. He’s a goner. I know it, the VC know it. His partner and him, they both fuckin’ know it. That fucker couldn’t so much as moan in agony at the end there, much less escape. You think Charlie let‘em outta the cage to die like a man instead of an animal?”

He’s talking and chopping out the action with tight circles, swipes of his arms. When he gets to this point in the story you can tell that the man is no longer here, in the present. He let’s the silence settle and fester, as if in memoriam.

“They didn’t let him out. And after he died they stuck his own dick in his mouth and put his severed head into his buddies cage. They told him he wasn’t gonna be getting anything to eat until next week, and suggested he get to know his friend a little bit better.”

***


Xino was out of the service three years before his home state of Connecticut agreed to sit with him and hear proposals regarding the construction of a super-maximum security prison in his own back yard. It was to be the state of the art. The very edge of the envelope. As we gain the 12x12 structure I’m struck by the sheer scope of land. A gaze in any direction from tiny cube goes uninterrupted for miles, so far in fact that the twin 12-foot electrified fences which I know surround us on all sides are all but invisible. Only barbed wire and concertina topping giving them away with distant tell-tale sun-spots.

The Cube, oddly enough, is known to both Brad and Xino personnel as “The Cube” . No vehicles are allowed to park anywhere near it and so Xino and I are dropped off, he assures me, at the front door, which looks just like the rest of the building. Xino, however, produces a gadget the size and shape of an Iphone and the cement edifice pushes out, revealing at least three feet of fine-poured cement and a crack that’s big enough, but nothing like a normal door.

We get inside and are greeted by a man dressed in what looks like a black jumpsuit with no logos or insignia of any kind. He is however holding an M-4 assault rifle at the combat ready.

“Safety’s off, in case you were wondering,” says Xino. The man introduces himself as Matthew and from just behind us another voice says, “Daniel”. We turn to meet a similarly dressed man, also bearing a combat load and not much else.

Xino says, “These guys are sort of the gate keeps here”

Matthew: “Yeah, except there’s no gate.”

Daniel: “Yeah, anybody dumb enough to approach here without escort deserves to get rewired.”

And they have been instructed to do it. In addition to the two sentries here, there are two more on every floor and the place goes down for nine floors. 1,478 feet deep into the earth. Twelve cells. Twelve convicts, each with enough concurrent life sentences to make even the hope of a hope for release seem profoundly ridiculous.

The floors are circular. They are eighty yards across, with ceilings exactly four and a half feet high. Every surface is covered with a three-inch layer of smooth Kevlar, all of which has been colored bright, Tylenol white. There are white florescent bulbs burning seamlessly in the Kevlar and lining a ring around each floor. The white light and flat white reflecting surface has a disconcerting effect on the equilibrium that is wholly on-purpose. We are given safety glasses with a heavy tint as soon as we climb down the central hatch bolted into the floor of the Cube.

As we carefully scaled down the tiny ladder hole and start going through the floors you can see the dazzling white light is blazing away on each floor, rendering almost invisible the 5x5 holes lining the outside of each floor. Xino is tour guiding from above me:

“The twelve cells are sunk five feet into the floor on each floor, or tier. Each cell is covered with fifteen 8 inch steel bars that lock three feet deep into the opposite side. The bars open and shut at the command of another sentry located in an underground command center just adjacent to the tiers.”

It’s hot down here, and I’m wondering how far it is to the command pod.

“Oh it’s down here but there’s no access from the tiers, I just wanted to get you the lay of the place. If you’re here to talk to BigJohn you might as well get a peek at how he spends his days.”

We climb back up and all the way to the top of the cube. When we get there I am led to a staircase sinking away and down some stairs. More freaky white glow down there. We go, me after he, down into the white.

“The command center encircles each tier , but is divided from each by four feet of steel and cement. There is a 360 degree view from which we can take firing positions here.”

He gestures to a three-inch slot at just about head height. I bend a bit and look in: White. But it’s clear that it’s one of those creepy tiers.

“We keep it hot for the same reason teachers in inner city schools keep it hot: We like ‘em drowsy. Also, the air environment can be controlled directly from the computer system. One button will inject a mist of tranquilizer that will put them all to sleep within two minutes. One button will make breathing painful. There’s a button that will cause hallucinations. Those are all security measures of course, strictly riot control type stuff, but to be honest, the guys here…We probably don’t need it. Once you’re driven a mile into a field and climb 150 feet underground to live naked in a 5x5 white cell…It kinda takes the fight out of you.”

He’s right. There are 105 men here now, which leaves three cells empty and ready should they ever be needed. Math and entropy both tell us that they probably will. Just as every prison in America probably houses at least a few women and men who are innocent of the crime that ultimately put them away, so every prison in America usually has at least one incurable problem child.

Nobody is sentenced to do time at the Cube. Instead, they are put here as a last resort. There isn’t any way to misbehave here, because if you do the “guards” positioned in the surrounding control pod will shoot you deader than shit. Don’t make it to your cell before the bars close? They shoot you. Don’t answer the first call of your name over the loudspeakers mounted on your tier? They shoot you. Fuck around on weekly rec detail? Shoot you. Do anything that can be considered anyway out of the ordinary? Guess…

Twice a week the patients are allowed to climb, one by one by one, to the top of the tower and spend five minutes in the cube. While they cannot be allowed to look out of the skylight in middle of all that concrete (they shoot you) they can, and do, stand in the warm yellow glow it creates. This represents the sum total of the prisoners interaction with the outside world for the entire time they spend here and - in respect - the Sentries in the cube can usually be persuaded to look away for a few minutes.

“Yeah, most of‘em you kinda say “alright, I don’t agree with the guy but we can give him this small thing. I mean it’s like two minutes. Most everybody here gets that, ‘cept BigJohn of course. When that guy’s up here I get an extra gun from the control pod and post him in here with us. Honestly when he’s in here I still don’t feel like that’s even enough. I feel, it’s fuckin’ embarrassing to say it, but I feel exposed almost. Three M-4’s trained on him with cold motherfuckers at the switch and I fuckin’ feel like he’s got us right where he wants us. When he hits the column I watch him all the way down. All the fuckin’ way I watch him.”

Stranger In A Strange Land

General Dynamics

There wasn’t much in the way of warning. At 11:41EST an emergency alert became the crawl that ran along the bottom of the CNN feed in Times Square. November. Broadway matinee-ers and business-folk stopping. Reading. A guy said:

Well I guess that shoots the whole afternoon.

An old lady said: What does it mean an “unmonitored body?”

A guy in a turban said: That’s 37 minutes from now

Since everybody dialed their cells at once, none of them worked and 20 odd minutes later the cell-grids collapsed under a weird flood of hot magnetic interference. The last thing that flashed on the CNN feed in Times Square was a 17 second shot of the President looking somewhere off camera and saying “Like a microwave oven?”

Then everything went off for good.

In Times square, two things happened. First, and immediately , people began to yell and scream. It started all at once: a yearning, freaked-out, information-hungry thing getting louder. Murmuring begat curiosity begat realization which turned loud and violent. Argument and fear blossoming everywhere in the valley formed by the intersection of Broadway and 7^th Avenue. (37 minutes). The next and - as it turned out - last thing that happened in Times Square was that everybody in it stared to try to get out of it. They couldn’t of course, there was no time. But some people did make it down to the shore of the East river or the Hudson and those folks were rewarded - in a way - for the trouble.

At 12:16, just as a teeming , stumbling mass of hundreds of thousands hit the shore area of the Hudson, the asteroid - which an astronomer in the early goings of the 14^th century had named “Mord” - Collided with an insignificant yellow star in the central quadrant of the milky way galaxy. This yellow star, though small, held 10 planets and countless smaller bodies in it’s considerable gravitational sway. Three of them had been populated by living things at one time or another and one - a watery, smallish and volatile stone the inhabitants of which had named "Earth" - still did. None of the system, which had been hanging in an astonishingly testy galactic balance for almost 300 trillion years, ever had a chance.

***

When Gi Then first became aware of Mord he was only a boy. He came from a long line of astronomers and the nature and tendencies of the stars and planets was his passion and his birthright. Mord was one thousands of heavenly bodies that his father and grandfather and great grandfather had discovered and cataloged with careful notations and imagery. But - his own father had told him - it was the only one they’d ever come across that had suddenly ceased to be. Somewhere around 400 years BC Mord just disappeared from the night sky without a trace.

Gi Then’s Great Grandfather - who was also named Gi Then - proclaimed in the days and weeks following Mord’s disappearance that he could predict, with great accuracy, the last days of human kind, and of the very earth itself. He summoned the townsfolk saying: “These are secrets known only to me, so it is up to me to keep them or do what good I can with them. I choose to protect our people and our families.”

Unfortunately though, The Emperor at the time didn’t agree with Gi Then or his findings. When Gi arrived to reveal the amazing date and time, he found a crowd gathered for a different reason. He was still loudly cursing the Emperor, the townspeople, and all their unborn kin as the Emperor’s goons sliced off his head and paraded it around the square and the town like Lord Stanley’s Cup. And thus, the secret prediction of Earth’s untimely destruction went undiscovered for many many thousands of years.

***

At around 12:17 the giant rock Mord collided with the sun triggering a series of amazing and awful events. The initial collision was so loud that everybody on earth not wearing protective earplugs was instantly and irrevocably deafened. Following the noise there was a blinding flash of light that seemed to get more intense and hot with each passing moment. If you were on the earth and standing outside, your eyes - even closed - were burned out, rendered useless by the scorching.

So most of the people thronging on the banks of the Hudson at 12:15 were too preoccupied with their burning eyes and blown-up ear drums to appreciate the spectacle. Nevertheless, a spectacle there was. The explosion of Mord and the sun was millions of light-years from earth, but the concussion wave that it spawned moved very quickly. Like a tsunami racing unseen through deep seas, so the burning, roiling heat-wind beamed across the universe. Most space-born objects in the first million light-years of it’s way were simply vaporized. The earth however, seemed to occupy a space in the void where the massive burning wave began to cool. So instead of being vaporized instantly the blue planet was superheated very quickly like a slab of leftover steak in a microwave. This superheating lasted only 7 scant minutes before the poor planet’s infrastructure began to tremble and give way. Also, because the sun was instantly doubled in size and temperature, it’s gravitational pull was also doubled and what wasn’t immediately destroyed began sucking irrevocably toward the conflagration.

***

Miss Rachel Thien, who through an astronomically improbable series of events, was actually Gi Then’s only living descendant, was able - through another set of ridiculous and fortunate improbabilities - to stay alive longer than any other living being in the metropolitan area. Since Rachel had been wrestling with clinical depression for the better part of her 30 years on earth, she’d confined herself to a life lived only for sleep and other bed-related activities. She'd ground her way through most of the 2000’s nestled safely in bed, sleeping or watching movies and gobbling whatever anti-depressed-anti-angst-anti-thinking meds her doctors had seen fit to dose her with. On the day when Mord hit the sun Rachel was bundled under two down comforters and a sheet and wearing a thick black eye-shade that helped her shut out the world and all it‘s mindless jibbering. At 12:17 the sound did not deafen her and the light did not blind her. From buried in the covers she saw the hot white glow filling her hallway and decided to investigate.

She doubled back to get her thick, black, old-lady style sunglasses and then took to the balcony of her apartment facing the Hudson at 23^rd st and the river. The first thing she saw was the George Washington Bridge in the distance coming free of it’s giant concrete housings and slowly drifting up into the air. Under it she saw the entire Hudson river heave itself skyward, breaking up into component parts from the bottom like raindrops which, also, then floated up. She looked to her right and saw New York City folding up like a gigantic carpet. The effect was uneven though and, in some places, appeared to have been reversed. She saw buildings lifting toward the sun (the entire sky seemed to have become the sun) and buildings being sucked down into a black void below the streets. Everywhere she looked she saw flying people screaming. She a terrified mother grabbing at her children as they floated bye. She saw a gaggle of people on a distant roof begin to ride the roof up like an oversized snowboard. She saw each one pop like a red-paintball as the gravitational forces - collapsing and confused -acted their last. Rachel was so amazed by what she was seeing that she didn’t register her own building shaking, coming un-mored, and blasting into the black space that had been the safe blue sky of NYC just a few minutes ago. She saw a couple making love in the air as they spiraled in the gold-white heat. She saw them burst one after the other and she saw the misty remains falling and spinning. She managed to stay in one piece as her building drifted higher and picked up speed. Just before her body imploded and rent itself apart Rachel looked out from her perch and regarded this final, amazing maelstrom and smiled. “Pretty much what I expected” she thought, and popped like a water balloon.

***

In the deep pacific, a man named John Fellows was diving in the Mariana Trench. Fellows had gotten the news but didn’t think much of it. He was already almost a mile underwater when the warnings flashed and he was making for a spot at a depth double that. “If everything’s over” he had radioed his wife “then I might as well try to set a record”. He took a heading for Challenger Deep, a small pocket in the trench that went down another five miles. Fellows hit the two-mile mark at 12:16EST and was racing downward like a bullet. At 12:17, though, his equipment started to flutter. His depth finder was all over the road. First it plummeted to beyond four miles deep, which Fellows knew was incorrect, and then it rocketed up to 2 miles, then one mile, then it was telling him he was back at the surface. By his own measure, he hadn‘t moved at all. He was aware then that his radio wasn’t working. No noise, no signal or interference, nothing. At 12:18 fellows was enveloped in a warm white light emanating from someplace below him, He didn’t have time to properly think it over though because seconds after he took his last reading (the depth gauge read +23meters) he falling downward toward an inky, total blackness. He'd washed out of the water which, plucked from it's ocean bed was now floating toward the heavens. He looked around, and finally up. Just before his body succumbed to newly minted laws of physics, he saw the entire pacific ocean suspended over his head and breaking into a trillion tiny drops. He smiled.

***

Valeri Hickey was just getting back to her pod at the north end of Icicle Works when Mord met sun. Icicle Works was located in “Santa’s Village” as her boss liked to call it from the warmth of his operations center hundreds of miles away. Valeri worked closer to the North Pole than just about anybody on earth ever had or (it turns out) ever would. Her “office” was in an large facility called “the pod” filled with magnetic monitoring devices and food. Valeri’s day to day activities were not complicated (“Two phd’s and a masters for that??” her dad had said when she’d been offered the post two years before). Basically she was there to watch.

“Watch what?” her mother had asked, sort of accusingly.

“Watch whatever happens” she’d replied, knowing the next question.

“What happens?” they both said at once.

At 12:17 Valeri watched the entire 230,000 square miles of the northern polar icecap buckle violently and start falling up. It was very, very cold day as most of her days were. But standing outside on this day in just jeans and a t-shirt she found herself sweating. She was standing on a gigantic sheet of ice which - in seconds - became a freezing sea. She was floating in a roiling icy sea, and she saw the pod hundreds of meters distant pitching and rolling like a sport-fisher. She was boiling in the sea as she felt herself begin to rise and separate into component parts.

***

Nobody got as good a view as Sgt. Major Tad Broach and he knew it. When the word had come he’d been drinking heavily in the hold of the massive Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier Abe Lincoln. Standing orders were that he get topside and fall in for debriefing, but instead, Broach made straight for his flight deck and his F-22 which, as luck would have it, were both at least partially fueled and armed. It hadn’t been post-flight checked and it wouldn’t be pre-flight checked, but Broach wasn't planning on a long flight. None of the other guys in the wing were anywhere around, but the Abe's shooter, a cranky old corporal named Kune materialized from a hatch opposite the flight deck:

“I can’t Tad”.

But as Broach moved past him he didn’t offer any resistance. He actually cleared both ends of the flight deck as Broach powered on and up and allowed his machine to slowly crawl toward the runway. Sgt. Tad was from place called Hope, North Dakota. He’d moved there when he was three years old from a small beach town in Rhode Island. As he and his parents drove through the state and the town that they’d be living in for the rest of forever, Tad Broach couldn’t get over the space. Such pure, constant, flat geological sameness was unheard of in New England and especially Rhode Island, where forest lead to woods lead to beaches and back to forest again. To stretch a gaze out over his back yard in North D and be able to let his eyes range for hundreds of miles before coming to rest on a staggered, Rocky Mountain horizon, was nothing less than perfection for a young Broach. He’d spent his life entire seeking vistas that could even come close to comparing and today he found one.

A Navy pilot is as close in theory to a robot as human tissue can afford to be. When in flight, the pilot is subject - at all times - to the commands of his wing commander. He cannot so much as slow down without clearance from command and witness by many more random radio operators. His life as a pilot was very much one spent in service of others.

Today though all that was gone. The instruments, awash in cosmic debris, proved almost completely useless and there wasn’t any voice on the radio. The shooter waived him into position and Broach powered up, engaging 29,000 foot-pounds of thrust under his aircraft and giving it as much throttle as he ever had before. After two minutes clear of the Abe, Sgt. Tad Broach was running 4 times the speed of sound and gradually gaining altitude. This is what he saw:

What appeared to be 4 suns had taken the place of the one usual sun in the sky. Broach was just singing the outside edge of South America heading northward toward Alaska at mach three. He was at 1500 feet when Mord struck. The four suns he had seen were suddenly mushed together and the light - even through several layers of Army tint and sunglasses - was blinding. To counter this effect, Broach began a long slow turn back out over the pacific and towards Japan. The explosion happened just as he settled into that heading and powered back up. As Mord dissolved into gas and kinetic energy, Broach had the aircraft pinned with every bit of horsepower she could muster running wide fucking open. When he heard the noise he pulled back on the stick and stared heading up up and away. Below him the earth could stand no more of gravity’s fickle games and finally came apart. Broach was straight backward and looking down over his shoulder as the sphere below him ripped itself into sections. He saw a sizable chunk of the north Americas, and the north pole itself, break away from a larger piece of the earth. He saw a weird brown light inside the middle of the bigger piece and he saw landmass drifting and spiraling in the void below him. He felt the aircraft losing traction in the sky like a car driving over a rickety bridge, collapsing more and more with every inch of advancement. He heard and saw another huge concussion. Then he was back home. It was the summer of 1972 in Hope North D. He was ten years old.

And so that’s it?

That’s it.

That’s all there is to it?

Cyclic on your left, throttle on top. Stick between your legs and pedals to move the nose.

Who taught you that?

The Army

I can’t believe it. It’s that simple.

Well maybe not that simple, but I sure could teach you. Maybe some day I will.

I hope so.

Yeah me too. So now lesee: that’s Fenway for a game, and learn how to fly. We’ve got ourselves a to-do list there.

Yeah but that’s what mom calls it, so lets call it something else.

Ok. But what?

How about just a list of things that we’re gonna do together?

Works for me dude. Maybe we can learn you how to fly and then have you fly us to Boston.

Really!!? That’s awesome…

And he remembered thinking long and hard about it. And laughing.

Win III: Murder at the Two-Six

The Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle is a selective fire, gas operated weapon that’s been in production since the end of World War II and its design has undergone almost no major adjustment since 1945. There is a good reason for this: the AK-47 looks scary, like bats and King Cobras look scary. Its complex stock design, its use by the Russian military, its signature “banana” ammo-clip: all conspire to make the AK the weapon of choice for many a bad guy both in movies, and in real life. The thing is an intimidating motherfucker, and as such, the AK might be (unexpected anatomy notwithstanding) the most unpleasant and dread-inducing thing that one human being can point at another. “Cross me” - it seems to say - “and your closest relatives will identify you from DNA smears.”

And so - because Charlie’s coke-shakey hands were pointing an AK-47 at him, and because this particular AK was actually an AK-47S, (an even more intimidating version with a crazy Miami Vice - style folding shoulder stock)- the man in the back of the limo found himself terrified to the point of shocked, wide-eyed silence. His whole body was shaking like Sheen’s hands, and this strange synchronicity was even more terrifying. He found himself using every shred of composure simply to keep from pissing his pants.

Charlie said: “Alright Toucan Sam, soups on”

The man said nothing. Toucan Sam?

“He’s gone away” said Keith Richards from 1972. “No room at the inn…” It came out: “eesgahway. Now roo theenn”

“Is that true you little tit-grab weasel fuck? You scared?” Then something unintelligible and the word “UP!” Motioning all over the place with that scary fucking AK.

Somewhere along the line in this most awful of nights, the man remembered that Sheen had mentioned that he’d been “eating acid and leaning into gaggers for the better part of a week”. The words, unnerving enough at the time, became almost physically debilitating as he watched the muzzle of the AK dance and vibrate around like cinema verite. He got up.

OK Maverick, close the door, let’s take a power walk.

　

***

Los Angeles, like most major cities in the America, has a big aquarium downtown. It’s called, oddly enough, The Los Angeles Aquarium. Everyday fish-viewers and their noisy, excitable progeny make use of the facility by the tens of thousands. The Los Angeles Aquarium, like most major aquariums in America, houses one big tank around which several smaller tanks sit in orbit. While it stands to reason that this main tank (official name: Tank 26 or simply: “The two-six” ) would have to be sizable, even the most juvenile and ham-fisted daisy-chain of adjectives could never hope to capture the reality of it’s largeness. Stretching 50 feet up and 150 feet across, tank 26 holds, in addition to the 12 metric tons of gravel, rocks, and coral that the aquarium staff laid in for effect, between 7,500 and 10,000 pounds of live, hungry fish.

And they’ve got a whole shitload of flavors: 27 different varieties of baitfish providing eco-system baseline for hundreds of game fish and shell fish. They’ve got teaming Grouper as big and heavy as manhole covers. They've got lobsters, clams, giant lobsters, and giant clams, and 9 different types of hard-shell crab. It’s fabricated “reef” is home to urchin, anemones and eels of every description. There are 8 sea turtles - each the size of a Volkswagon Beetle - only two of which have ever laid eyes on one-another. There are two giant Manta patrolling like twin millennium falcons oozing in tandem through the gigantic pod.

And there are sharks. Blue sharks, grey sharks, dogfish and hammerheads. They have no less than TEN tiger sharks. Just recently Tank 26 had become home to a 14 foot 8000 pound great white shark that the snarky, superlib LAA suits had dubbed Sarah Palin. Every Wednesday, after dark when all the customers had gone, the entire aquarium staff gathered to watch Sarah Palin take down three whole adult deer. They threw them in live and drowsy from medicated darts. It took minutes.

　

***

Alright sexy lissen up ‘cause I’m in a sporting mood. Both of your legs are fastened at the ankles to a concrete block that weighs 80 pounds. Your hands are bound as well, but don’t worry, I’m going to unbind them when I throw you into the pool. Also, I’m going to give you this.

Charlie held up his right hand, displaying what appeared to be a hacksaw.

It’s old and very dull. Have you seen Mad Max?

The man said: The movie?

No dicklick the physicist. Yes the movie.

Yes.

Ok. Then you get the picture. If you’re an outdoorsman - and we know you are - then you will know what to do with this.

Now, in his left hand, Sheen held up what looked like a mini-fire extinguisher with a rubber mouthpiece attached to the top. The fake Keith Richards made a “you’re in trouble now” sort of ooooh noise.

If you’re not then you’ll appreciate me telling you that this is an emergency scuba tank similar to the one used by the Coast Guard to backup their deep-dive guys. Officially it’s got 10 minutes of air at full capacity but I’ve seen guys get almost double that by maintaining calm, breathing slow. It’s going to be hard for you to breath slow. I’m going to put this in your mouth (held up the tank again) and throw your ass into this tank, and I’m going to film what happens. I know I know, I said I’d be sporting. Here’s the sporting part: If you can make it out of the tank I won’t shoot you in the face. In fact, I’ll give you this gun and let you shoot me in the face capiche? Oh one other thing…

With this Sheen picked up one of two large buckets by his feet and dumped it’s contents over the mans head, jumping back to get clear of the splatter.

I’m going to douse you with these fish guts before you go in.

Again the “Oooooh” noise from Keith.

***

The surface of Tank 26 was slightly rippled because Keith Richards from 1972 had been pissing in it for what seemed like five whole minutes. Nobody spoke during this and the pee sound echo through the empty facility was in quad-stereo. Charlie wasn’t speaking because he honestly thought the moment was bigger than that, and that his words would never be equal to it‘s considerable measure. Keith wasn’t speaking because to do so and urinate at the same time was beyond his dulled cognitive abilities. The man wasn’t speaking because the drugs that he’d been secretly given were beginning to take hold. The surfaces around him swaying and breathing. When Charlie and Keith finally got around to hefting the concrete slab up and over the low wall surrounding the tank, the man had a smile on his face. As his legs were yanked from the floor, he found himself with a few moments to spare before he went in. He was still trying to think of something clever to say to them when he hit the icy brine of the two-six.

Charlie and his companion ran down some fire exit stairs so they could observe from a better vantage.

***

So why you waste all this acid on the jobs? It came out: “Soowhyyy…uhve”

Well mainly because I know neither one of these toads has ever tripped before and I wanted to provide that before they draw that final curtain; so to speak.

Mm hm.

And then, only slightly less important, because as terrible as these jobs have been, I think experiencing it with a brain-full of ridiculously strong acid might just push it towards something even scarier. I mean the most I ever ate at once was like a thimble full, and believe me: a thimbleful is enough to make a bull elephant meow like a kitten for three days. I gave vanilla sky there like a coke can full. I’m surprised his head didn’t just spin off his shoulders and take flight like a helicopter.

Mm Hm

That answers your question?

Yah. Hey look he’s hit bottom. Would you look at that. It came out: “Ayelueeitbomb, wooyalooatha”

And he had. You had to hand it to the guy he was trying to make a go of it. He sank all fucked up because the concrete weight was awkward, but it looked as if even before he landed he was already sawing away at his left leg. The drugs were messing with his spatial judgment though and he was cutting up around the outside of his thigh where the leg was thickest. He was further unmanned by actually touching down. A cloud of silt was wrought up by the impact and for a minute the two psychopaths outside the two-six could only make out a vague motion and a growing red cloud where the guy was. Slowly the cloud settled though, and when they could once again make him out he’d switched to the other leg and was sawing closer to his ankle.

That ‘a boy, said Charlie. Work smarter, not harder.

But by now things were pretty well out of hand. The dude was sawing but he kept messing it up and having to regroup, wasting valuable seconds. He was hyperventilating and making all sorts of bubbles. The wound he’d created on his other leg was bleeding like a thing that bleeds a lot by this time, and the fish were beginning to take notice. Odd little critters started flitting in and out of the silt-mist trying to see what all the fuss was about. Then, after about 5 minutes of flitting three things happened at once.

The first thing that happened was all the baitfish investigating the scene bolted in 40 different directions. It was like watching an huge explosion from a safe distance. Phht! And just like that they left. The next thing that happened was that a 7-foot Tiger shark appeared out of nowhere and bumped the man hard in the back, spilling the hacksaw and arching the dude into an uncomfortable back-bend. The last thing that happened was that the dudes feet suddenly came free from his handcuffs. It was as if the big beasts chop-block had applied just the right pressure to the whole works and in an instant the man was free. The impact must have crushed his foot-bones to powder but free he was. He himself didn’t realize this at first but when he did he turned toward Charlie and Keith and flipped them off with two fingers. He pushed off the bottom on his ruined leg and ankle and made for the surface like an ICBM.

Halfway up, he’s bleeding and smiling like Christmas morning, and Sarah Palin bites him lengthwise. It takes three quick chomps to bisect him along the sagittal plane. His head, drifting and falling down through the muck, is still smiling, filled with the belief that the insane fellow who dropped him in the tank would keep his word and not shoot him in the face.

Small-ankled little bastard

said Charlie Sheen, and started making slowly for the rear fire exit of the Los Angeles Aquarium.

Oh fuck!!

Wha?

I forgot to film it.

Sodamen II: The Wrath of BigJohn

…So I really don’t know and you know what? That’s a good question.

Yeah, like did he peel it, then freeze it, then use it?

I dunno I guess once the banana comes into play there’s choices.

Hell Yeah there’s choices. There’s nothing but! I mean right off the bat: does she bring it up? When? During or before, or weeks before. Like “Hey on the off-chance we end up fucking, I want you to use…”

Yeah, I don’t know. Why would somebody that hot even allow that sort of thing? That’s the thing that bothers me really, cause if you’ve met the girl…I mean, she’s good. She’s got the “Yes I’m super hot, but let’s not make a scene about it” sort of attitude ya know?. Not at all trashy. I can’t picture this girl even smoking weed much less asking to be rogered with a frozen banana. wouldn’t even have crossed my mi…Ohhhhh Fuuuuuck. There he is.

What? Cop!?

Samoan turns in to look back and, at the same time, attempts to fling a smoking two foot glass bubbler out the passenger-side window and into the soft brush beside the shoulder. M-hat gets a little blow-back bong juice on his face. The glass puts a spider crack in the not-rolled-down passenger window and implodes, noisily soaking Samoan with the smelly, dirt-colored mess. Dude.

Lights spinning on top of a roof three vehicles and a hundred yards back. M-hat doing a tennis-watch head move between the rear-view and side-view. Dude yanked a U in the middle of the street and he’s coming with lights and stereo sirens. The three sets of head lights behind them are ducking out of the way and exhaling boldly…Pheeeew, but the cloud-silver Prelude is dead.

***

Time is weird during traffic stops. The stop-ee doesn’t know anything but (possibly) why he was pulled over. The stop-er, likewise, is mostly ignorant of what conditions he will find once he gains the car. Most approach with their hands hovering a tight orbit around their service side-arm and a stern countenance. Then there are the x-factors: - the fluid context that basically dictates the choices available to all parties involved during the stop: Is their driver drunk? How about the passenger? How many passengers? Are they all drunk? Where are they going? Where have they come from? What time is it? Is there a weapon in the car? Are there females in the car, and are they wearing underwear, or even just regular clothes? How about drugs? What about the cops themselves? Are they drunk and naked? Both of them? Are sexual favors going to be leveraged, and who’s going to be doing the favoring? Are the officers good shots or will they even have the guts to draw down if things escalate? Has anybody involved ever killed or maimed another human being on purpose, and if so what the fuck is up with that? Do the people in the car have children? How about the cops? Are there children in the car? The Cop Car? And what about the cops anyway: Are they the white-horse-riding, good-doing, boy-scout, Frank Serpico type? Or are they the envelope pocketing, bribe-farming, meth-snorting kind who take blow jobs from street-trade and still haul them in, pocketing all heroin for their own personal use. Maybe they’re falling apart from the unrelenting torture, pain and pressure of a life spent foraging for and wallowing in shit and violence. Maybe they just don’t give a shit. Are they Nick Nolte in 48 Hours or Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop? Or are they Jimmy McNulty from “The Wire?”

All of this and much more in play during the 15 odd minutes of the traffic-pull. Each one snowflakey in it’s different-ness.

　

　

License and Registration..

Non-committal. Maybe timidity or maybe just cagey professional indifference that swallows the syllable “ation”.

OK. Just a…Ok

From behind a teeny tiny crack. Dirty mope hiding away in there with tenandtwo hands.

Sir your window…

Yep!

Muffled, ‘cause now the mope’s Gophering in the glove.

Sir. Open your window sir.

OK. Yes.

It takes a loooooong time rolling the crank-arm, 1970’s style windows levers. A face revealed in sections while illegal tint falls in slow motion. The cop is already pissed, and even though the citizens of the cloud silver Prelude are fucking dead already, they're getting more and more dead as we progress. Both parties take a minute to study facial areas. The cop completes his inventory (small driver, barely-a-man hands on the wheel, friend in the car staring forward, hands on lap, with bong-smell billowing out into the New England autumn) and cuts to the chase:

Get the fuck out of the car sir.

His partner, looking at the mess and illuminating with his Maglight: “Was that a bong?”

***

Dude what the fuck is this?

Pronated on the brushy border of the bottom of a high shoulder. M hat and Samoan eating dirt and smelling a rat.

Officer? Why are we down here.

You’re being arrested sir. And don’t call me “dude”.

Arrested for what?

Right now, only for smelling bad and littering but…

Littering?

When your shithead friend tried to eject the water pipe he ended up knocking some bong watered safety glass on the road. I found it and sent it to a lab.

A lab?

Shut the fuck up.

Officer?

I said sh…

I know, I know. But I just want say one thing.

Sir you may not.

That’s his weed sir.

Samoan going quietly ape shit in the prone. He mouths: Whatthefuck? Fuckyou!!

M Hat mimes a one handed spinny motion - encouraging: goalongwithit!

At the top of the shoulder a door slams and a stupid sounding voice carries into their valley.

Merry Christmas!

Everybody looking up and road-ward at once. The big cops partner is holding cellophane baggies in both hands.

Ah children. A brown and white night! What else is there.

That shit’s his too!

Dude what the fuck?

Shut the fuck up, both of you.

When he hoists them both up by their cuffed-behind-them wrists there’s yelping. The tall cop waves his heavy Mag-light toward the woods.

In front of me you roaches, and if anybody tries anything I’m going to put one bullet up both your asses. Walk!

***

It wasn’t the worst beating he’d ever given, but it was - no doubt - the worst his two victims had ever been subject to. Later on, well after shift change and well deep into the h and coke they’d liberated, The big cop had to laugh to himself.

What’s so funny Big John?

I’m thinking about the mopes. Not bad whiff they had…You know, years ago when I first started you could still get real rocket-fuel coke here. I mean this is OK - he motioned to a smallish white dune on his coffee table - but I’m talking about fine, fine yays. The kind where you do one or two lines and that’s it for the night cause there’s no fucking WAY you can get any higher. The kind where your face becomes numb for three hours just because you spent five minutes in the same room with it.

His eyes, already wet-glass and red lines, became misted, as if he remembering a sparkling family dinner from the holidays of his youth.

Same with the deez. Years ago it was China, like from China. Unloaded that morning from a boat in Central Falls and stepped on only to make it non-lethal. Nowadays your lucky if they don’t sell you a bag of brown sugar mixed with baby laxative. It’s a systemic thing I guess - the world moving on and all that - but sometimes I have to wonder if we’re not fooling ourselves. I mean, if the quality of illegal street-narcotics has fallen off by 70 or 80 percent then what the fuck is going on with our schools and hospitals? The laws of supply and demand are ever-evolving and degrading it would seem.

He snorted and horked aggressively, using his own uvula like a piece of white toast cleaning a plateful of breakfast goop. He grunted.

Yeah. I’ve thought that as well.

Yeah.

Anyway, Im gonna go set Dawn’s clock alarm cause I’d like a blow-job. When I’m finished let’s just cook the rest of this. I’d like to get an hour or so of sleep before I arm myself and take to the streets.

***

Dude, I have a black eye.

Dude, you have a black ear. And yes, you also have black eyes. Plural. You look like shit, because of when he rubbed your face in that pile of shit.

Stop man, stop. Let’s make a truce to forget everything that happened last night.

No. FUCK you dude. What was that about you hanging me for possession of all that!?

Especially lets forget that part. It’s late, I’m not at my best.

That much is obvious. Let’s not bowl anymore. Hand me the Sports Resort one and that bottle of aspirin.

Sodamen

First: The road. THE ROAD: See it. See it? OK…

Actually, scratch that. Not the road, not yet. First: The girl, no…The lady.

The lady’s name is Dawn Webb. The Lady lives on High St. The lady is looking for a job. In her house, in the morning, at around 9:00am she reaches for the telephone. She dials a number, sits down, waits as the tones sound out and there’s 1...2...3...4...(she’s going to hang up) and…No. Somebody answers at the other end. The Lady, Dawn, smiles, face-changing from concerned/hopeful to energetic!/optimistic!!.

It’s 9:00am on a Tuesday in late July when our Dawn gets on the phone. Dawn lives in a small house on a small street in a small state in a small town on the east coast of the North American landmass. By the time Dawn hangs up the phone it’s 9:16am. Information has been exchanged, opinions formed. An agreement has been proposed and agreed to between Dawn and whomever it was that she’d spoken to after dialing and waiting through 4 and one half rings. In order to meet her end of said agreement, Dawn must take action. She uses the next 5 minutes to make a list of three items. The first thing on the list is “Shower” capitalized for no reason and underlined. The next is “eat”, no caps and no line. The third and last item on Dawns list: “Resume”. It takes a total of 25 minutes for Dawn to clean herself in the shower. It takes another seven minutes to dry off and get dressed. It takes one more minute to scratch the word “Shower” off the list using a different pen than the one she’d written with. Since she’d practically eaten already (she’d had a tic tac to counter her morning breath)Dawn went ahead and crossed out the word “eat” as well (Big John likes ‘em “small in the right places and big everywhere else”) . She crossed it out twice. After that she attempted to erase both the word and the cross-outs but only succeeded in basically ruining the note-pad paper which she then crumpled up and ripped into tiny little pieces and ate. She washed the pieces down with the first guzzle of a brand new bottle of Poland Spring ™. The last word on the list “Resume” would remain unconsidered and un-dealt with until sometime in the future.

And now: the antagonist or in this case “ists“. All stories must have both antagonists and protagonists. The reason for this is that firstly, that’s how things are real life. In regular everyday life there are good people and bad people, and so it’s that way in stories as well. I was going to say that secondly it helps the reader keep track of the details of the story, but that sort of goes along with number one there. Having good and bad guys (or girls or women) in a story also ( I guess this would actually be secondly) gives you somebody to really hate so that you appreciate it all the more when they “get it” somewhere near the beginning of the end of the story. But I’m getting way ahead of myself though. I’m overstepping the bounds of my created unreality. No reason to have that last sentence except that it sounds cool and fits rhythmically. same for these Italics.

　

So, the bad guys. Ok, first see the car, no, first see them. They are: Men. More accurately they are men in their very early 20’s. They have baseball hats on. One has a baseball hat that says “Michigan” on it. It’s dark purple. Michigan hat is also wearing shorts. He himself made the shorts three days before by cutting an old pair of jeans off just above the knee. Michigan hat has a shirt as well but he’s not wearing it and the same can be said for his shoes. The shirt is - in fact - lying in a crumpled pile behind the drivers side front seat of his car. The shirt (hunter green heavy duty cotton with face of a popular T.V. cartoon over the left pocket) is covering his shoes (canvas and sort of skateboard-y). This boy is 5 feet 9 inches tall. He weighs 168 lbs exactly. He has what cops in pursuit would refer to as a “swarthy” or “Mediterranean” complexion. The other boy is wearing a blue hat with the logo of the Boston Red Sox ™ on the front. He is wearing his shirt and his shoes and if the cops were chasing him they’d say, “we are chasing a light skinned black dude.” They’d be wrong though, the dude is not black. His family is from Samoa. Both he and his friend are nursing bruisies and contusions. Samoa has a black ear and Michigan Hat's got two black eyes and a fucked nose. They ache.

After you see the two boys then it’s ok you see them in the car. The car is a small Japanese two door sport coupe with some dings and pings and a carpet of empty and almost empty beer cans that’s two and three cans thick in some places. The company that manufactures the car calls this car CLOUD SILVER.

It’s at this point in the story that I’m going to deploy a story-telling technique called “the flash-forward”. (and I MUST STRESS, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH!! That flashing-forward is something best left to the masters. Don’t try the flash-forward even as an experiment to see how badly it would come out. Just be glad that you get to bask, for a few precious moments, in the wholly benign and entirely joy-promoting light of the authors prodigious talent. You can tell your grandchildren “I was there when he flashed forward,” and they will actually love you twice as much as they did before you spoke the words. I just decided to italicize again. This whole paragraph right above us.

Wow. Just wow.

And so we will point out a few things just to get everybody on the same page (no pun intended) (but actually did intend for their to be a pun. Even so, “no pun intended” looks cooler. It sounds cooler too. “no pun intended no pun intended no pun intended no pun intended.”

Well see now it just sounds weird. It sounds like a bunch of blathering nonsense is what it sounds like. As a matter of fact the whole thing is coming off the rails right here. It’s a train wreck AND a pier six brawl. I haven’t addressed any of the characters or any of the story like since like 6 ‘graphs ago. ’Graphs is an abbreviation that wicked smart people use instead of saying “micrograph”. Also, no I did not forget about flashing forward but I did feel like - upon further consideration - flashing forward just then wouldn’t have been the best play. I didn’t want to call attention to that though so I just went on like nothing happened. Which - coincidentally - is what Dawn Webb did for a while after a flying soda hit her in the tits when she was walking away from her car, which broke down on the way to a job interview.

See that: the flash-forward and also got right back into the “story arc” and even indulged in a bit of “plot exposition”. You don’t know what any of those words mean but trust me: they’re of no importance. By this point in our story I’ve built so much volatile, molten, tension-fraught suspense that I bet you peed a little in your pants. No matter. Take them off. Take your pants off.

　

THE Daynomah. Daynomah means “the part of the day that is not remembered because of drink and/or narcotic inebriation” in Lebanese. Because Lebonians are so good at writing, they named a whole story part after them. The Daynomah part of this particular tale is so powerful and compelling, so dynamic and thought-provoking we will have to break events down to their component seconds!! Minds will be blown, but again I proceed too quickly towards that which I am proceeding to.

Melting back into the action at 9:30am. We have our protagonist (DW) and antagonists (the boys, Michigan Hat and the Samoan) and clever, non-intrusive exposition has told us everything we need to know about each one. We know that Dawn has a job interview and she’s got to be there at 10:00am. The interview is in town. Town is five miles down a road called Bisquit City Lane. Since Dawn lives on Eire Road, and since Eire Road becomes Bisquit City Lane 3 miles from town, we can deduce that Ms. Webb should leave her house by 9:45 if she is to gain that golden five minutes of earliness that she suspects will put her over the top if the job is too hotly contested.

Michigan Hat and Samoan have nowhere to be. We know that they’ve been up since 4:30 the night before. We know that they passed out around 2:30 and then right before they passed out they - in a drunken coincidence almost too improbable to consider - came across 4 postage stamp-sized slabs of the exceptionally clean, high-powered blotter LSD that Michigan Hat had been brokering in the early goings of the summer before. They found the acid in the sleeve of a video game called Wii ™ Sports Resort. Samoan split the blotter into two equal tabs and they washed them down with 5 more cans each of Busch beer. By the time they wake up two hours later they’re going hard toward the good part. It takes almost three hours of constant demented laughter to decide to go to the beach. Once they collect themselves to get into the car they sit for another hour, listening to the song “Seasons of Wither” by Aerosmith almost 14 whole times before finally getting the thing on the road and pointed at the beach. Since their houses are next to each other, and since said houses are on Eire Road, and since Eire Road t-bones into the road that goes to the beach, we deduce that: a) the boys will probably listen to the song again a few times on the way to the beach and b)that they are traveling on the about the same road at about the same time as our Heroine. The tension: still ramping as we color in final details

Dawn. On the long straight, flat part of Eire that goes about 2 miles through the turf lands, Dawn’s Car stops working. How and why? We can but ponder… The car is a shitbox, and it has been very hot lately, and Dawn and Big John aren’t the type of people who adhere to a strict every-three-thousand mile type service routine. Also Dawn is the protagonist. Things can’t be too easy for the protagonist because the reader will loose interest. We identify with hardship and suffering and so our heroes must climb mountains and fight dragons. Or - in Dawn’s case - they have to endure both the complete hassle of blowing a job interview, and the added hassle of her shitbox Camry done shit the bed just when she needed it most! Sucks. It’s been fucking hot and humid like hell. It’s late July in New England and walking outside is like walking at the bottom of a pool filled with warm wet dust. Dawn Webb steels herself against the heat and gets out and starts to trudge back toward Big John’s house.

So see it: the stage is set. Anticipation about to become action. DW trudging, head down, shoulders slumped, mute shame and a long hot wet walk. “But“, she’s thinking, “who cares?” Who cares if she really thought she had a chance at the job and that she vibed well with the voice on the other end of the phone. It’s nice out. It’s beach weather. Her dress is glowing white in the beach-flavored New England summer. She looks good and she knows it, and it’s ten minutes tops to walk back to her house and take off her dress and smoke some weed and hit the beach. Her head stops the shame-drooping and now she’s hovering, fucking gliding back down to where Bisquit City drive turns into Eire road.

In the middle distance, a car comes into view.

Samoan is in the passenger seat trying to smoke an un-smokably small roach. He’s working the radio trying to get Seasons of Wither on for a 15^th go-round (around S.O.W. listening number ¾: “This is the craziest shit I evuh fuckin hudoot…”) the stereo volume is pinned against it’s decibel limits and he’s lost track, so now it’s little 2 second mega-burps of tunes that aren’t quite as good as the one he’s trying to find. Michigan hat is driving and he’s into it. The roads back here are, well they’re sublime is what they are. He’s locked into the car, wearing it like a giant ergonomic backpack that sings to him in the voice of Steven Tyler. His left hand is feathering the wheel against the lefts and rights. His right hand is holding a big gulp cup with half a bottle of Bacardi and 20 ounces of CocaCola ™. He’s horking the vile brew up through a .12 gauge straw from McDonalds as he pod-races through the backchannels. He feels a nice 4 wheel levitation around a hard left and then leans right into it. The whole circus makes the jump to hyper-space while the stars and old-growth oaks smudge out all around them. 55, 60, 65, 75 and beginning to just gently caress the underside of the number 80.

Then, in the next 4 seconds a lot of things happen at once.

The first thing that happens is this: Michigan Hat sees a car stopped and blinking in his lane and a girl, or lady, or woman, or something female anyway, walking toward them. Again on his side of the road. The vision and M. hat’s understanding of it happening take up 1.5 seconds. The next two things happen at the same time and they are : Michigan Hat becoming quickly and completely enraged at whomever that is walking slow on his side of the road AND Samoan saying “Hey look at that girl,” and pointing with his stereo finger. Another 1.5 seconds have ticked by. The car is going 73 miles an hour. The car is 150 odd yards away from DW. Two more things happen, again at the same time: Samoan also becomes sharply and aggressively bitter towards the intrusive walker and M. Hat holds up his monster cocktail and says with a chilly lack of emotion: “throw this at her”. 5.5 seconds. There is one second left. During that second Samoan takes the drink and flicks the mirror toggle and begins zeroing his target. Some deeply evil and mathematically proficient quadrant of his acidified mind uses the final moment to consider the constants and coefficients while another sparks the required muscular response. Michigan Hat watches the window going down as the Big Gulp cup is jettisoned and he sees: The cup and the car and Dawn Webb.

The cup in moving forward through space at 80, Dawn Webb moving opposite at a trudging pace.

The cup actually leaves the window with the soggy rum corroded bottom leading. The Samoan’s primitive core is, again, in sharp relief as he feathers the thing like George Gervin and effects a spin that flips it slow through 190-odd degrees, catching our Dawn in the right shoulder area and depositing the entire stinking syrupy gruel all down her interview dress. M-Hat catches her shoulder-slump from behind as they speed for the beach.

Michigan Hat and Samoan scream and cheer like the fucking Enola Gay.

Later that day they are arrested and processed on two counts each of felony possession and public drunken-ness. One of them also ends up doing a month long tango with a loooong federal bid behind two more pieces of LSD that they didn’t even know they had with them.

Dawn get’s 376 mosquito bites on her shoulders arms and face on the walk home. Big John tunes her up smartly for being stupid and getting her dress messed up, and allowing her car to fail, and not getting the job. When she tells people that she walked into a door they look at her like a doctor looking at a patient who doesn’t yet know that they’ve got permanent, inoperable, quick-acting cancer.

I know, amazing, but don’t think too long on it. I’m a slave to my almost godlike storytelling talent. It’s just something I do…Let’s fire up the italics one last time before we go off to bed shall we? There…Much better no? But now that we’ve gone italic I feel like maybe we rushed the ending a bit no?

But see now I’m sort of at a loss. That end part seems a tiny bit contrived, a little less than “massively satisfying” or “brilliantly conceived”. Also, I’m remembering now that characters in a story are supposed to change in some way as the *story arc progresses. Fuck it, I leave it to you, oh dearest reader: Come back in a minute and get the rest of the story (meet the abusive husband, be surprised by his occupation, read a sexy sex scene (!)) or just bail now and go jag off. I myself will enjoy the luxury of being able to do both, and will indeed.

OK fer now.

WIFE

So I want you to fuck my wife...

Uguhhhhhhhh. hrmmm.

Well?

“Well?” what’s that? “Well?” Fuckin “Well?” Dude…

What..

“What’!? “What” is that’s fucked up.

What?

Well it’s just that you’re asking me to fuck your wife. It’s not a question that you really hear, I mean like ever . That’s the first time anybody’s asked me that.

Really?

Yeah

Wow

Yeah

Well I don’t wanna make things like fucked up between us like all of a sudden I’m like…Like I become the guy

Well that’s just it. I think you are the guy

Oh really? Really…Is that it? Like a guy - your friend or whatever - he asks you one time to fuckin fuck his wife and now I’m like the creepy fuckin swingin wife fucker or whatever?…Dude that’s not right

It’s not? I dunno - I think it is right

You think it is…Dude that’s just fucked up. A million thousand other things we been through and now…

Now…This. Yes, now since you asked me to - and dude that’s fucked up too: like not to sound like a dick but could you be anymore fuckin…Fuckin low class about it? (affecting a dumb-guy voice) Like “Ugggh…I want you to fuck my wife man!…Yeah just fuckin fuck ’er sensless…

What…Dude I’m sorry. (affecting a sort of almost Julia Child-like voice) I want you to make sweeeet love to my wife. Make sure she’s got beautiful climax after beautiful climax and you both ascend to the heavens and Jesus fuckin - I dunno - has lunch with you. Nah man I want you to fuck her! Fuck my wife man!! I want you to fuck my fuckin wife. What?

SMURF

Papa Smurf?

Oh yes! It’s nice to see you Smurf. What was it you wanted to smurf about?

Okay…Uh this isn’t exactly easy for me to uh…Say soooo…

Just smurf your smurf little smurf. Papa Smurf always has time for a Smurf who needs to smurf.

Ah. Ok: I’m glad you said that Papa Smurf. That’s actually what I wanted to see you about.

How smurf?

Hmm. How smurf…See, the thing is, uh I can’t talk like that anymore.

Like what? Smurf me…

Like you just did. Like you always do and all the other smurfs…

I’m not sure I smurf what you’re smurfing about smurf.

Right. Ok. Why do we substitute the word Smurf for every word in every sentence? It’s inane. Actually it’s fucking retarded is what it is.

I’m not sure I like how this smurf is smurfing smurf.

No other people do that. No other beings do that! Fuckin’ giraffes don’t say : Oh hey giraffe, you wanna go giraffe a giraffe and then later we can get a giraffe?! You see Papa? It’s confusing. Also it’s sort of egotistical, I mean are we so insecure that we have to have our name mean like 20,000 different things? Jeez Papa Smurf it’s almost too weird to even talk about.

Now you listen here s…Um, what did you say your name was smurf?

That’s the other thing: our names. Don’t you feel like it’s sort of stifling to have everyone’s name reflect one of their character traits? I mean, I know Greedy has an eating disorder because he always feels like he’s got to be eating. Nobody should eat that much man! But since you branded him with that ridiculous name he feels trapped - held to a standard no smurf could ever attain. I won’t even get started about Jokey.

What’s the matter with Jokey?

What’s the matter? What isn’t the matter Papa? The guy is constantly partying, and laughing - again because of his stupid fucking name - and then you add the element of incendiaries. You think he could be that jokey without chemical assistance? Jokey begins every day with a joint the size of your leg. Dude, I’ve seen that guy stay up for like 2 weeks straight, and then go and explode other smurfs all day with those bomb-presents. Dudes gonna cost somebody a limb!

Well my little smurf you’ve certainly given this a lot of thought. Why don’t we take the night and think about it and we’ll see if you feel better in the morning.

Better in the morning?! Papa, I can’t take another day of this! I came here to tell you: I’m out.

Out?

Yeah out. Call me Out Smurf. I’m gonna move to a place where they don’t utilize confusing grammar. I’m going to find a place where there’s more then one fucking female dude! I mean Papa, come ON! You thought it wise to create 100 boy smurfs and one girl smurf dude? Do you realize how many times that bitch has been turned out?! Goddamn Papa Smurf, it’s like a Hell’s Angels party every night at her place. Christ the smell alone is enough to attract raccoons! You went and made her a million lacy white dresses but not ONE pair of fucking underwear! But it’s ok, I’m sure her self-esteem is sky-high Papa Smurf, sky-fucking-HIGH!!

If you are quite smurfed I’d thank you to smurf out of smurf.

I think you just told me to leave and if so, then you’re in luck sir. I’m already gone.

Good day smurf and good smurf.

Yeah smurf you too. Fucking dick.

~

Hello Handy Smurf, get Jokey Smurf and follow Cynical Smurf out of the village. When he’s out of earshot I want you to throw a smurf over his smurf and smurf his smurfs off. Tell Jokey he can burn the rest but I want his smurfing smurfs on my smurf.

Consider it done Papa.

Smurf you my little smurf

Win Part Deux: CandleDart

He woke:

Before hanging him they’d cut off his pinkie fingers and hammered his feet into revolting husks of connective tissue and bone.

He came to for just a few seconds while they were duct-taping him to the wall. A blurry face, scaly and shiny with sweat and twitching, - dominated his field of vision. He felt a pinch somewhere around his legs. A voice from somewhere else said:

“You’re giving him pure?” and then, a few moments later, the same voice (he was almost positive the voice had an accent, British maybe, Australian?) “nice one mate” and laughing.. Well, not quite laughing so much as coughing with an amused lilt..

The twitchy face moved back a bit and spoke: “Yes, the pure, and the one before that was about a vials worth of acid. The patient, nurse Richards, must be properly anesthetized.”

“Of course, of course” from the other voice. It came out: “ ‘ vgawwwce…Gawwwce”

Everything turned brown and pink and back down he went.

He woke:

This time to a searing white flash and a thunderous cracking sound and in his mind he was outside at night. A child; helpless and cowering in heavy, indifferent weather.

His captors were seated across from him in gigantic twin reclining chairs and watching him bleed and squirm with what looked like fascination. The only furniture in the small gray room was the coffee table in front of him. It’s glass top piece was partially covered by a gigantic pile of cocaine and an enormous handgun. He couldn’t help staring at the handgun.

He was having a dream.

In his dream he was at a concert. He could tell it was noisy - everyone around him was jumping up and down and cheering in slow motion and sometimes in regular motion. He couldn’t hear them, but he was sure they were cheering and swooning. He could hear music. He felt bass and treble. The Stones - stewing and grinding their way through the burning coda of a song he didn’t know the name of. He was in the front row. Mick Jagger crooning something like “the guitar player gets restless” (reckless?..Restless)

Then the Stones aren’t playing the song but the music was still going and the crowd was still cheering and swooning. Mick is talking to Keith. He’s laughing. They’re both laughing and pointing at him. As they cross the stage they’re speaking still and he can’t hear them because now the crowd is freaking out screaming. He’s panic-racked. This situation with the crowd is tense with all the screaming and what- not. Confusion is setting in. He sees some girl next to him crying.

Charlie Watts gestures toward him and then Charlie is next to him. Charlie watts is getting in his face and he’s about to freak the fuck out amidst all this confusion. Charlie watts is about to just tee off on him. Watts somehow blaming him for making all this mess. Watts is really gearing up. He’s ready to get medieval. He’s saying something about…Shooting out his knee? Blowing out his knee? Keith Richards is crying from laughing. Keith Richards says “Well then, give him more then”. It comes out: whallen…Hemoden

He does not wake from the pain of his knee exploding - the heroin racing around his system is too much for the pain. It’s THE NOISE of the pistol that he’d been staring at way back when. Like a million pianos falling from a million Empire State buildings and amplified with a 3000-foot high Marshall stack similar to the one Keith Richards plays through. He sees all the pianos and he sees each one of the million Empire State Buildings and he can’t quite figure out how something like that might be amplified although he does see each individual “Marshall” logo on each of the amps. They’re piled up to the moon from the room in which he’s now been duct-taped to the wall.

　

“You like it?” asked Charlie with reverence. “It’s a Heckler and Koch MK-53. I just got it yesterday!

I’d let you hold if you weren’t…Uh…” His eyes got wide “you know”.

The hanging man gave a small wave of his chin and then let his head just hang on his upper chest. He began to urinate weakly.

Keith Richards half-stood in alarm. “Hey bub! Hey bub! you’re wettin yer britches.” he said. He was dressed in a blousy white shirt and had on leather pants and to the hanging man he looked a dead ringer for Keith Richards circa 1972. “Charlie, he’s peeing on you carpet mate!”. None of it is intelligible.

Charlie said “’s okay Keith it’s Martins. Most of the shit is Martins actually. I was in Africa when I bought it and he was pretty much in charge of putting the place together.”

“Really? Well he did a bang up job in this room luv!” he laughed a long dopey laugh and added “brilliant shades of white”. It came out: “Brillyshazehwhye…”

The hanging man was confused: Was it Keith Richards here with them? How weird would that be that Charlie Sheen and Keith Richards getting co-producer credits for authoring his destruction. He cried, and then laughed a little, and then cried again and harder. As he cried, Sheen snorted a mound of white powder that looked as big and wide around as a can of tuna. Then he lit a candle.

He said to nobody in particular: “you’re gonna love this”.

It was itchy where they’d smashed his foot and his kneecap was starting to bark. He couldn’t look at his broken carcass for the duct tape. Sheen was holding something over the candle. They’d tucked his pinkies into his ears. They fell out. One bounced off his former foot. They looked like worms.

Keith Richards said: “Not the Uni‘s mate”. It came out “nudayounzmae”

Charlie replied: “Oh yes the Unicorns brother. This is a big occasion! Only the finest will do…”. As he spoke he held a bigger-than-average looking throwing dart over the candle, moving it slowly back and forth through the flame. Gibbering like a monkey:

“You see, it’s numbers dude. I mean, like numbers. Takeforexample…I don’tknowfuckin’…Fuckin’…Fuckin TIME man!. Not real ! Ha ha…You laugh ha HA! But it IS notreal, it IS something that we made up. Not we like you and me we but WE…” at this he made a circlee motion with his index finger pointing down.

Back and forth with the dart. The candles flame rent at the point where the metal of the dart is heating and then uniting at the top with the two sides becoming one. His pinkies are on the floor and they look like worms.

You know, wayyyy back when when the first guy, fuckinnnnn, uh! Correction: first guyZZZ (circlee motion again, this time faster) are walkin around they don’t have I dunnofuckin, fuckin, fuckin WATCHES. Fuckinnn, dudes not looking at his Rolex to see fuckin MINUTES! toseefuckinnnn…Seconds TICKING! No he’s fuckinnn, he’s seeing changes. He’s seeing changes all around him man. He see’s leaves and fuckin days and nights and fuckin winters…”

The hanging man can’t hear the ranting. He can’t see Sheen slowly working the dart back and forth through the candle again and again…He can’t see anything because he’s gone to sleep again. And he sleep right up until the moment that Charlie Sheen throws the molten dart through his heart.

He wakes up then, but just for a few seconds.

　

　

　

WIN

“When the public begins to associate your name with an act, Charlie, when that happens…that's the point of no return. There’s no coming back. You become that thing. Then and forever. And that’s what they talk about when you’re gone.”

“In my case I think it’s at least six or seven acts Dad. Three of which are illegal in the continental United States.”

“I’m not joking son. I know what I’m talking about.”

There’s rustling at the other end, but no reply. A distracted silence ensues. He's patting his pockets and finding the four gram rock of fish-scale cocaine in the inside pocket of his jacket. No bag, just the lonely rock. There’s an upside down Frisbee on the front passenger seat. It’s a Whammo.

“I know I know. Believe me - you’re one of two people I do actually listen to.”

“Me and Emilio…”

More rustling and then he’s looking around the center console for something else. He finds nothing. Karate-chops the rock till it becomes a pebbly, sparkling dust. He raises the Whammo to his face…

“Charlie? Hell-Oh-OO!? What the fuck?…”

A long SNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIf. Then smaller, less productive sniffs.

“Emilio!? Dad fuck no! we haven’t spoken in years.”

“Charlie shut up.”

“Ok”

‘So what we’re at staples on Saturday? Courtside?”

“Not courtside. Better.” The flat black CL-700 crawling up the slanted switchbacks of a three story parking garage.

Here he is: glistening and stinky in the hot-smoggy LA noon. Charlie stalking the am, cracking off to the plebes and public servants. A legend! A man of the people. One of us…He’s a little wobbly. He’s got the scent of mischief on him. Mischief mixed with bodily fluids and four or five different kinds of rotting booze. He registers the wave of head turning and giggles that marks his trot toward the Palm and conditioned air. People phone-filming his every mood for u-tubing later. He tips the garage guy 200 dollars and the hostess 300. He's being led. His table is the literal and figurative center of the room and as he moves he’s seeing more of that wave. There’s hushed talking, much giggling. Someone yells out “Sheeeen !”. Its Chris Rock. Charlie wishes he’d come to the Palms to lunch with Chris Rock instead of the miserable ass-douche who’s table he’s being led to by a hostess who (like many waitresses before her) whispers something truly sordid in his ear. He raises his eyebrows, whistles out loud…Classic Sheen. Finally he sits and a cloud of intoxicant vapor sits with him. The restaurant breathes out.

“Honestly, when we made the lunch I did not expect the pleasure of your company”

“Oh Bill you big silly…Why book it then fuckwad?”

Uhm…Ah. Well, where do I start?.

Charlie moves the molecules in his body a fraction of an inch upward and just begins to slightly move his eyes that way. Coupling the move with the words: “not hungry”. It’s more than enough. Bill reaches out, places three fingers on an immaculate Sheen fore-arm. The restaurant - waiters, bussers, owners, everybody - gasp as one and then fall totally, completely silent.

“OK…Well naturally, we feel…He feels wronged. We try to talk to him,. We try to make him listen to reason but, well, you know how he can be. I spent the entirety of the last two weekend trying to fix this, and after that much hard going I wanted to come myself. Now Charlie: they’ve - how do I say this? They’ve empowered me to…”

And as the stooge is blabbering, CS is drifting. He’s traveling, first around the room, then around the building, and then up up and a-fucking-way. He’s high above everything there is. He’s fucking orbiting, and people are starting to notice. He waves downward and he’s beaming, smiling a hall-of-fame smile.

“…Of course we could never have that much of this thing fig…”

A crowd is gathering under him. He sees them running and swooning and screaming to him. From the houses and churches and schools they empty and spring toward a growing, seething, moaning mass. Mothers offering their asses and their mouths and cunts and tits. Fathers offering blowjobs and cocaine. Whole families offering their very children, their unwavering devotion, their hearts and minds. A planet focused in blissful agreement. A hand reaches up. Then another…

“…So my position was: why bother, you know? Who are we to…”

They’re gazing up at him and yelling his name and suddenly he understands. This is EVERYBODY. This is total, a thing with no end. The world has finally given itself over to him, and after so many jealous, scared, hating, and god damn doubting rat-fucks have tried to take him out. The world: below him by miles and apologizing by the millions. Charlie…Charlie…Charlie they chant. It’s you! You win…

“…So that’s the long and short of it: In a word: Yes”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“No”. The words: whistled out of grinning Sheen lips.

They stare at each other. There is no blinking. The restaurant is a silent motherfucking restaurant. Chris Rock says “awwwk-ward” in a silly falsetto. Nobody laughs. Sheen whispers, but in a silence so complete even whispers are broadcast:

“He wont”

“He won’t?”

“Nah…”

“What does that mean?”

“It means fuck you is what it means. Fuck you and fuck him and fuck all of you. Tell me something Bill: did you really need a Wharton MBA to sell auto insurance? Did you really have to spend 7 years of dad’s hard-earned so that you could one day be a car salesman who has to BEG people on behalf of OTHER FUCKING CAR FUCKING SALESMEN? Here’s what I want you to do. I…Wait are you crying?”

“I’m not…It’s sweat…I…I…”

“It’s sweat? I had sex with three separate people - that I KNOW of - last night. I did coke and ecstasy last night. LOTS of both. I was in fuckin‘… fuckin’ VEGAS last night you SHITHEAD! It’s 12:00 and I had my last drink of a three day rip in the car as I drove here to be ON FUCKING TIME. You can‘t just…”

And then, just like that, Sheen’s seen enough and Sheen acts. As he’s booking for he door he’s bellowing:

“Tell them they are invited - all of them and their assistants and secretaries and wifes and sisters and…And sons. Every is invited to gently nuzzle my moistened taint! There’s not enough room in this world for the money it would take.”

He says the last from the door with the door open and the air boiling one side of him and the AC still blast-freezing the other. He walks out to ringing applause.

How Things Got Names

It wasn’t till Og had brained the man, built a fire, cut off the man’s arm and started roasting it over said fire that he realized he might have a problem. He remembered the others he had seen on the other side of the hill; remembered being puzzled when he’d seen them running around down there, making odd noises. He thought that maybe they wouldn’t like what had happened here. He thought that perhaps they would come over to his side of the hill. He thought they might want some of the arm. He quickly peed out the fire, gathered up the arm, took the other attached arm in his free hand and dragged the dead guy to the underside of a huge rock nearby. After sufficiently concealing the pieces of guy, Og set out for the other side of the valley. Thirty-five minutes later (if minutes had been invented, which they had not) he came slinking back, wondering without direction about the two people he’d seen on the other side of his world.

Now before we go on, it must be made clear: Og, at this point, did not have a name. Nothing had a name. Since this is the story of how things came to have names, it follows that, at least in the very beginning of the story, nothing had a name. What actually happened was that a vague series of events transpired in this particular caveman’s imagination. The series of events made him feel uneasy, and so - in an attempt to ease his worried mind - he took up a physical action, which was to travel on foot to the opposite side of the mountain he lived on in hopes of meeting some other caveman/cavewoman and doing something to/with him/her.

At the moment when all this happened, Og hadn’t a clue as to what he would actually do if he saw those other people, but as he walked he decided that he would probably try to eat them, and that if one of them was a female he would probably want to have sex with her. The thought got him all hot and bothered, and he decided then that it didn’t matter if one was a female after all. He would make it a point to fuck both of them regardless.

It’s important now to explain - before we get to deep in who did what to whom - just what happened between Og and the poor fellow whom he’d been preparing to eat when we first made his acquaintance. To do that, it must be understood that the man who was becoming food in the first few sentences of this story was the first human being (besides himself) Og had ever seen. Ogs own mother had pooped him out just in the immediate vicinity of the water-hole near which he himself now lived. His mother, however, had died just a few seconds before Og was born and so by the time he was old enough to want some answers, she’d been dead for many years. Because Og had been born so near the water-hole (and mind you: the water hole had no name either - not even the term “Water Hole” had been coined!) it had been relatively easy for him to get along and he forgot about his questions almost as soon as he realized hat he’d had some.

Water was, of course, never a problem, and even when he was too young to understand his need of it, instinct led him over to the small puddles surrounding the larger hole to frolic and drink. After a while he began to take notice of some of the larger animals that would come to the water from the surrounding jungle. Sometimes one would die and eventually become dinner for whatever lucky meat-eaters who happened by. Other times, a larger animal would drag a carcass over to the jagged grey rocks surrounding the water. He learned that the bigger animals would never eat their whole kill in one sitting but rather they would take time in between pig-out sessions to strut and preen all around the area, oftentimes losing their meat and sometimes becoming dinner for some greater beast, sometimes even to Og himself. But I both digress AND get ahead of myself.

By the time he was the equivalent of 11 years old, Og had himself a near-perfect system at the water hole, and for a year he enjoyed what had to be the most satisfying and pain-free existence of pretty much any cave-person that had come before. Alas, this tranquility was not destined to last. On that momentous day Og rose as he did every day - at exactly the time when the first rays of the new rising sun touched the high rocks around the hole and reflected back down into the fertile green pocket where the water was. He stretched. He farted and pooped and peed a little. And he crawled over to the shallow pool now filled with warm fresh water and waited for the first rat.

Now of course, Og didn’t know that the creature he’d been waiting for was a rat, or even that it was even any different then himself. He did know that the little beasts a) showed up every day at about the same time to drink and swim in the water, and b) were slow and easy to catch, kill, and eat. Og’s days had basically been winnowed down through the years into alternate 12-hour periods during which he either lay in wait for rats, slaughtered rats wholesale on the sharp rocks in his nearby cave, fucked rats he’d recently killed, and - once in a great while - tried to fuck rats he hadn’t killed yet; all this time blissfully ignorant of the verminous nature and toxic reputation of the rats of the future. To Og the rats weren’t rats at all, but rather incredible, tiny, tasty miraculous creatures that made him feel awesome in many different ways.

The rest of the time he spent eating and sleeping. Sometimes both at the same time.

So you see, it was with GREAT surprise when a rather different looking rat appeared one day at the water hole in the chilly morning sunlight. A rat that looked a lot like Og himself. Og watched as the creature tentatively approached the water, splashing in the shallow out-lying pools and then settling contentedly into one of the deeper ones. The rat was big, meaty, and two-legged just like Og. The rat smelled like new meat. The rat was no rat at all. Og looked from the safety of his cave and tried to choose between the myriad ideas waxing and waning in his poor under-developed cranium.

In the end though, he just did the same thing with this newer, larger rat that he’d done with the smaller ones. To be completely fair about it though, he wasn’t all-together comfortable. For a creature whose entire existence heretofore had consisted of destroying, eating, and fucking every living thing he’d come in contact with, this new creature presented a vexing predicament. Destroying it would prove exhausting, eating it would prove complicated, and fucking it - well that was damn right well impossible.

We will not track, on a blow-by-blow basis, the long, strange, and wholly revolting sequence of events that came to mark this new rat’s demise. After a while even the most reprehensible and inconceivable of violent acts becomes gratuitous and loses its effect. Suffice it to say though, that it took Og a good hour to fell the beast and another two or three hours to make it stop moving. He was finally able to end things using a piece of rock as big and wide around as his arm to violently expose the deep insides of his rival’s head to the cool autumn twilight. Og lay on his back and watched the rat’s legs twitch and jump. He had a vague thought about more rats shaped like this one. He’d heard them and seen them in the hours since he’d murdered the first one. They were yelling and trudging around on the far valley wall. A hundred yards away if you were throwing a rock but a thousand feet down and back up over jagged, toothsome rocks if you meant to make the distance on foot. Again he was uneasy.

Now would be a good time to tell you that, despite the title of this story, things actually did have names before the events depicted. However, at the time no human knew the name of anything. Most animals knew that things had names and a great many of them knew a great many names. Also: it’s important to keep that in mind when we meet the next character on our little morality play: The Bird. The bird had been watching Og with some interest for a long time. Og fascinated him. He’d perch on one of the cyprus trees around the water and wait for Og to come from his cave and watch him all day. He watched Og kill the creatures that came into his unfortunate orbit. He watched Og eat them and fuck them. He watched Og flagellate himself violently for countless hours as the prehistoric days oozed by. Of course Bird knew - as did most birds and most animals - that only destruction could come from communicating with a man. So instead, he watched. And so it was that he was watching the day that Og caught the unfortunate man fixing to swim in his water. Bird was especially fascinated with what had happened and after thinking about it for a day or so, he made a decision. A decision upon which he acted the very next morning when he introduced himself to Og.

Bird hardly found the caveman in good sprits. Og had spent most of the last few days going back and forth toward the other side of the valley. He’d set out all fired up, and then, just as he began to climb the hill on their side of the valley, he’d lose his momentum and sit down to ponder a bit before - inevitably - setting back toward his cave and his (by now almost completely rotten) food. It’s here that we find him, and it’s here that Bird finds him - but not before thinking up a nasty little manipulation guaranteed to keep him in meat for a least a few weeks.

Bird said “hello,” and you must understand: Bird did not actually say anything, but instead he projected ideas into Og’s way-underdeveloped mind and then sort of read the ideas that Og had in response. I know you read this and say “fuuuuck…” but at the time when the story takes place - before man controlled fire, before he understood his place in the Omni-verse, and, of course, even before he had given things names - before all these things there was magic on the land. A bird that spoke using telepathy and schemed to be the undoing of a dumb human was hardly controversial. In fact just the opposite. If you were a human living around this time and came to the end of your days without even once having been fleeced by a member of the animal kingdom, you could consider yourself favored amongst the children of God and you could die easy. All of which brings us back to Og and Bird and their summit at the cave:

Bird said: Hello

Og said nothing. The birds voice was but one of many clanking around in his brain.

Bird tried again:

“You, who stand before me. You who lives here in this cave. You who wants to go cross the valley, to the other side to deal with those big rats over on the far wall. I am here above you, alight on this stone at the edge of your cave.”

Og glanced around. His gaze found the bird standing so boldly at his step. He stared for a moment, and then launched into a series of paroxisms and gesticulations. He danced around, he began to sweat. His eyes bulged, he got a gigantic erection and fondled himself, fell onto his back and screamed and shit out a steaming pile of fetid black scat. He cried without knowing he was crying. Finally he was still. The bird began again:

“I understand you, and despite your trying to dissuade me from the fact, I know that you can understand me as well. That’s good my friend. Very well indeed for you!”

And with that, Bird proposed a long con simple enough for even Og to play at. By the time he was done, Bird was quite certain that the next morning would find him successful, and rid of at least one more of this virulent strain of two-legged creatures that made its home altogether too close to his own.

“But how will they know that they must come here when I call them?” Og had asked.

“They will come because I know their names, just as I know yours. And just as I have made myself known to you, so I will make myself known to them. And just as you - by my favor and my favor alone - now know your name Og, so to will they know theirs. You must wait until the sky becomes dark and then becomes light again before you act.”

Og spent the night entire standing in that position. Birds words echoed in his tiny, inefficient consciousness. He became very dehydrated and at one point he believed he had taken flight. He rose up over the ancient valley. The blusters of that old sulfur-tasting sky carried him up even higher than the highest hard ground he could ever have imagined. He looked to his left and saw the Bird smiling back at him. He looked to his right, and the Bird was there too. He realized that the sky was full of Birds. They were all the same and they were swarming and thick and twisting. Their number grew and eventually Og was no longer flying at all, but instead borne up an the ever-shifting birdmosphere from which there could be no return. Bird was talking to him in words he would never come to understand. He started to cry. It was then that Bird told Og the names.

When he woke, the sky was already aflame with new brutal sunlight. Og followed the Bird’s instructions to the fucking letter.

Bird knew that there were a few ways to play out his little theory; where men were concerned, options were never at a premium. His original plan had been simply to tell the other two cave-dwellers that Og was into doing some evil to them and that they’d have to go over there and smoosh his head with a rock while he slept. It was the simplest plan and Bird knew that simple was usually best. Even so, he thought, there is something to this man, Og. When Bird had first seen him he knew that this man was somehow different than the rest he’d seen moping about the area. For one, Og was a good bit taller than most of the men. In addition, Og was the only human Bird had ever seen who seemed to be able to create fire at will and that was something to consider - no small feat taking into account that matches and lighters and fuses were many lifetimes removed from this one. Most importantly, bird realized that there were two big plump humans on one side and only one on Og’s. From a strictly pragmatic view, Og’s success offered a more substantial culinary possibility. In the end, Bird decided to give equal armorments to both sides and let the winds decide. Bird was in no hurry, after all - and that last scenario was more rewarding in terms of dramatic potential.

Bird had said: “Go back to your cave and give me some time with them. When you see that I have left them, call their names as I’ve taught you. Once they get to your fire, my new friend, it’s all up to you.”

And he took wing. Og watched as Bird caught a bluster and rode high into the sky over the valley. For a moment he hung there, and Og was blinded by the pollution-free light of pre-cambrian morning. He picked up Bird again on a low swoop into the valley and watched him ride another gust - this one at ground level - into the very midst of the strangers across the way.

　

“…He will come because I know his name, just as I know both of yours. And just as I have made myself known to you, so I will make myself known to him. And just as you - by my favor and my favor alone - now know your names, so to will he know his. You must wait until the sky becomes dark and then becomes light again before you act…”

　

When the sun finally came tear-assing up the sky the next day, Og found himself at loose ends.

He’d only thing on his mind since his compact with Bird had been sealed. All through the night he replayed their conversations across his puny, depleted psyche. All night long keeping vigil over a predicted and hoped-for sequence of events. He did not sleep. The Jurassic sun beamed and reflected and bore into him. It burned his eyes as he walked to where his part of the valley wall cliffed off and bellowed:

“HAAAAAHHNNZ! HAAAAAAHHHNZ! BECKY!”

He shouted over and over drawing out the ‘HAAAAHHHNNNNZZZZZ”’s and clipping off “Becky” just as Bird had said to do. Then he was silent, and watching. His opposite numbers on the far wall stirred. He could see them trying to bridge the valley with their eyes. The walked around some over there. They sat down next to each other. One of them began to vomit profusely. The vomit looked (at least to you and I had we been there to see it) like Mexican black beans in their own juice. Og didn’t like any of it. He peed down his leg a little. What had bird told them?

Then he heard it, and a few seconds later he saw it. One of the two, the one that had been ill: cupping its hands over its mouth and screaming…AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.

And after the 12^th-or-so time Og recognized his own name. He grabbed a rock about the size of a baseball and started down his valley wall.

While it isn’t necessary to recount every last detail about Og’s adventures on the opposite wall, it might be helpful to note a few truths pertaining to that situation. Firstly, Og never did end up using the rock. Secondly, Bird, whose tolerance to extreme, brutal, often senseless violence was off the charts, did not get even halfway into his viewing of the goings on before having to look away. Fly away actually, and when he returned, his friend Og was nursing a roaring fire. The meat was - as predicted - more than sufficient.

The two didn’t talk or share any thoughts until well after midnight (midnight, that is, in some future world where the concept of Time had been proposed and accepted). Bird thought he saw Og begin to drift off to sleep and he turned to leave. Just then the caveman swept him up in one giant hand and took the birds head between his index finger and thumb. A signal was sent from the fetid pit that was Og’s brain stem toward the ( ) muscles that would squeeze the finger and thumb. A quick moment before that message arrived however, Bird was weaving his carpet:

Og, I’m not afraid to die, and if you think I didn’t know you’d try something like this, well, lets just say I was born at night brother, but not last fuckin’ night. Anyway, allow old Bird to pass along one more gift before you do what you’re going to do. There are more rats, Ogger. Yes, that’s right, you heard me. I’ve flown the length and breadth of this valley and a hundred others, and you know what? There all chockfull of folks just like these folks. You like the taste? Then together we can taste it! Kill me now and maybe things work out for you, and maybe they don’t. But spare me mighty Og, and we will summon them all here and they will come. A night. ONE night, Og, to name them all. One night and you will know all of their names…