Bobby on a stick

by Vasileios Kalampakas

  * * *

  Sometimes, the human mind has the propensity to eschew the really important stuff that pass through it, oblivious to the larger picture, indifferent to what’s going on beyond it’s comfort zone. Instead of being troubled by a crisis in the economy and a seemingly hopeless future, it fiddles with a remote, not being able to choose between American Idol and Hell’s Kitchen.

  There’s a very good explanation for that and it usually has to do with the qualities of such matters: disembodied, intangible and nefarious. What I cannot see and what I cannot touch, is probably of no interest to me, and definitely somebody else’s problem if it comes to that. And that’s why, I couldn’t think I had about fourteen hours to live. That’s why it didn’t bother me that I had already almost died four times. Because I couldn’t stop staring at Eileen’s ass.

  I’m not sure whether it was good old fashioned women’s intuition or the fact that she was a guardian spirit of the after-world, but she turned around and gave me that knowing look that was definitely meant to silently - but effectively - convey the general idea of being roasted on a spit, alive.

  Then I heard this deafening burst of static from the PA that didn’t seem to trouble anyone else but me. I’d bet some good money that the announcer was wearing a Bud baseball cup and his actual name was ‘Bubba’. He talked in that giggly, wholesome, isn’t-this-fun kind of way that deserves a punch in the face and a kick in the nuts. The echo from the PA system was pure gold:

  “Well, isn’t this fun folks? Now remember, the “Knit that Sucker” contest begins at nine o’clock, along with the Bellevue Home for the Elderly Cotton-ball Machine Technicians’ ball right by the riverside. Now y’all have some ribs, courtesy of NovoCotton and Co., and definitely don’t miss the “Married my Cousin” event comin’ right up!”

  The Country Cotton Candy fair did not involve any kind of cotton candy whatsoever, despite its name. It mainly involved lots of people consuming large quantities of left-over soon-to-go-bad pork ribs, of whom most were drunk or definitely in the process of becoming so. As a bonus, most of them seemed to be relatives in all sorts of ways that were illegal in twenty-three states. On top of that, a significant percentage of the crowd seemed eager to perpetuate the tradition of keeping things in the family, and was eagerly working on making more relatives in situ; in public view, no less.

  We were there because Eileen had made a couple of calls. I thought she would just swoosh about like some sort of tasteless ghost and frighten people out of their minds to get the info we needed, but it seems that in most cases just picking up the phone and lying your ass off to certain people with a straight face can work miracles. Some people actually believed we were calling on behalf of the Elvis’ Secret Moon Base Society, and a few of them could actually remember having attended one of our balls. On the moon.

  However, all that bullshit on the phone paid off and we learned that Novorski was sponsoring the fair - a highly prestigious event considering the amount of vomit already visible - and had been scheduled to appear right about midnight, say a couple of words to the gathered crowd and then probably go back to counting cotton balls in his well-guarded warehouse complex, complete with electric fences, a minefield, and a piranha-filled moat, with trained alligators for guards, riding sharks armed with lasers and rocket jets. That last bit of information could not be easily confirmed and was a bit doubtful, seeing as it came from a member of the local press, the same one who had insisted that he had attended an Elvis’ Secret Moon Base Society ball; on the moon.

  The fire at the mansion hadn’t been on the news, and his private secretary hadn’t said anything about canceling the appearance, though she had sounded very interested hearing about the Midget Awareness program going on in St. Cuthbert’s and the annual Ms. Crucifix pageant. It seemed then that plan B was our best choice. Any plan followed by the letter ‘B’, usually is preceded by a plan A. Which is to say, the fair wasn’t part of the original plan.

  I’d popped the obvious idea that maybe Eileen being his daughter and all could just waltz up his office, ring the bell, get inside, say ‘Hi Dad’ and stab him repeatedly with something sharp until he bled to death. But that wouldn’t work because now she’d awakened, she was giving away a spirit aura that anyone properly attuned could see just by looking at her. Even though it sounded a lot like ‘I’ve got this awful headache’, and ‘I can’t do this lying down’, she was pretty convincing when she tuned her aura to the visible spectrum as well, and I was surprised to know that the human eye could actually see all those colours without causing a man to go blind.

  With that idea being impractical, Eileen had come up with a novel approach to the problem, based around a simple, easy to follow strategy that had proven extremely popular in the past, with the foremost memorable example being the Charge of the Light Brigade: Just barge in his warehouse office, kill him, and burn him with some gasoline or any other flammable material, except perhaps bourbon. It’s useful to remember that even though the Light Brigade went down in history as a self-sacrificing act by men of heroic courage, sadly none of the men involved were available for a comment afterwards.

  Being a professional thief, one of the job requirements is being able to examine the many minutiae that comprise a plan and make an assessment of the plan’s viability and chance of success, based mainly on experience and preferably dependable, current information, as well as taking into consideration the chance of acceptable losses.

  Having taken all that into account, and after prolonged and thoughtful deliberation, the idea of barging in Novorski’s office could only be compared to a village of natives in the Amazon waking up one day, and deciding they were the rightful rulers of the entire world, before promptly setting out to conquer everyone else armed with sticks, spears, stones, and the occasional sharp tropical fruit, arguing amongst themselves that the one hiccup in their plan was whether or not their canoes would be able to provide the required logistics support, mainly mangoes and coke leaves.

  In other words, it was beyond silly. It was suicidal. So, we’d gone with plan B, which was to kill Novorski - who was in fact a demon, I had to keep reminding myself - right there, at the fair. The where and how remained to be seen. Probably once he had made his little speech. Maybe in some thick bush, while he was taking a pee, or inadvertently while stargazing. We’d have to wing it, and my spider-sense tingled erratically whenever I had to wing things, which had been a lot in the past few hours. So plan B didn’t account so much for a plan and ergo wasn’t that much better than plan A, but it did not involve sharks, piranhas, trained alligators, lasers, machine gun fire and assaulting what was in effect, a small fortress.

  What it did involve though was somehow getting close enough to Novorski to lure him someplace quiet away from the crowd, doing what had to be done and then burning the host without people getting in the way and asking questions like ‘why are you trying to stab that nice man?’, or hearing the announcer say ‘oh golly, someone’s shot Mr. Novorski in the head! What a show folks, eh? Now, y’all have some of those ribs’. As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor. Since my idea of valor was staying in the shadows and creeping silently behind the enemy before I jumped at him while he was taking a dump, that also meant I was a big fan of discretion as well.

  It was hot, damp, and dusk had just fallen. The fair was taking place at this large old barge station right by the riverside, where the smell of cotton seed oil mingled with whatever happened to be floating in the river, and the resulting odor was less than agreeable. We were wading through the milling crowds, doing light reconnaissance work, identifying the stage where Novorski would appear, and all the while being careful not to attract unwanted attention.

  That translated into avoiding the usual hotspots in the gathered crowd, namely blind drinking contests (named so because the winner usually ends up with optic nerve damage), prostitutes (sex workers is a more catchy term, but in Memphis they still call them whores), and alligator
fights (popular opinion is that the losing ’gator is turned into women’s accessories, but some local news outlets circulated some rather more sinister rumors about zombie assasin ’gators).

  Shorts were the practical attire of choice for women; I had one more reason to stay transfixed on Eileen’s behinds as she waded through the crowd, surveying the place and filling in the gaps in the details of our little plan. She turned around suddenly once more and knew I had been focusing my attention on her butt once again. I smiled reflexively without bothering to think this was the new Eileen, and promptly enough I was in a position to try and remember the constellations of the northern hemisphere.

  “You go girl!” I heard someone say, and then I realised that it was Steve who was unfortunately as drunk as a skunk. It seemed like when he said ‘I gotta go pee’, he had actually meant ‘I need to go get drunk as a skunk and then go pee’, which was perfectly reasonable taking into account that he had a drinking problem (those kinds of people are still called alcoholics, even in Memphis).

  If one needed proof of that, all one had to do was take a look at him and notice the shiny, embalmed, and thus quite dead skunk he was holding in one hand, the obscenely shaped carrot dangling in front of his nose tied with a red T-string around his head, and last but not least the fact that he had been carrying a ten-gallon beer can strapped on his back, with a regulator valve hanging over his shoulder, wearing nothing other than rubber boots and some boxer shorts sporting the American bald eagle, front and back.

  That kinda caught Eileen’s attention and while I certainly wasn’t exactly gaining any points with her, Steve had just lost the whole pot.

  “Steve! Where the hell have you been?” asked Eileen turning around, sounding as if she were unable to believe the spectacle in front of her eyes.

  “The weirdest thing happened, I swear. While I was searching the bathroom stalls, I -”

  “There aren’t any,” interjected Eileen, hands folded across her chest, seething with anger.

  “’Tis, not true; I found a whole stand filled with stacks of cans of piss, so I thought maybe I should give it a go, so I -”

  “That was beer, wasn’t it?” I said after having got up, still dusting off my behind.

  “Was it? Tasted like rat’s piss, I think,” said Steve with as much naivety as his face could express wearing a piece of underwear around his head with a dick-shaped carrot tied to it.

  “So you’re wasted?”

  “What? No, not all.. I was just thirsty. And I met these midgets, and we hang out. And they said, you couldn’t drink all that, and I said ’course I can, I’m a shaman.”

  “Midgets?” said Eileen, unable to comprehend, and rightly so because even though she wasn’t herself, she wasn’t mad anymore either.

  “Yeah, and then we fought these ninjas, man. And I killed one, look. Got blood on my skunk.”

  “No, don’t do that, not here. Not now, please,” I said and I sighed.

  Steve looked at me as if gazing through thick fog, not being able to see a god-damn thing. He then pointed the skunk towards me and said, apparently confused, wide-eyed and drunk like a wine taster at a marathon event without a spitoon:

  “Elvis! Man, I love you. Y’know? Not in that way, no. Never. Big fan. Lemme buy you a drink, will ya?”

  “I told you he had a drinking problem,” I said and noticed Eileen was looking at Steve with a cold, hard measuring stare, as if deciding whether he should fillet him first or leave the bones on for that extra flavor before she boiled him.

  “Just what we needed!”

  “I know, you’re right, but please don’t start smiting stuff left and right, just calm down. We’ve got some time until Novorski shows up, no need to get agitated. I’m sure that after a couple of cups of dark coffee and a cold dip in the river he’ll be right as rain before you know it,” I said trying to sound convincing. Hearing the words coming out of my mouth, they sounded just like what an estate property agent would have said to a couple of newlyweds: that the old, haunted house that caught fire back in ’89 and is now used as a meth lab by a gang of homicidal junkies is actually a real steal.

  “Do you really think it’ll wear off soon?” she said giving me half an eye, while Steve was trying to eat the carrot dangling in front of his face, jumping up and down with wild abandon, and naturally meeting little success.

  “No, not really,” I said sounding rather morose.

  “Good,” she said smiling, and picked up a caramel-glazed apple from a nearby stand, then motioned me to pay the woman - or man, I wasn’t sure - behind it. I rummaged in my pocket, found a fifty-cent, and left it on the stand. I was about to ask Eileen why Steve’s drunken stupor was a good thing, when I heard the - on second glance - slightly bearded woman behind me say with indignation:

  “We don’t need no stinkin’ negro money! Now git!”

  The many ways in which the sentence didn’t make sense threatened to bog my brain down in a quest for the unattainable; the knowledge of how people as weird as the duckbill platypus have survived to this day. Thankfully though, Eileen just pulled me and Steve through the crowd, and said in a hushed voice:

  “He’s gonna be our distraction.”

  “What kind of distraction? I don’t understand. Are you talking about that dangling carrot?”

  “No. Now pay some attention and stop looking at my ass,” she said and walked us hand-in-hand to a more quiet spot while Steve’s head arched all around him, apparently mindful of all the invisible ninjas around us.

  V

  Midnight was approaching fast. Eileen had gone to great lengths to explain her idea fully, but somehow I still had my reservations. I always did when things approached the hour of truth, and this wasn’t that different. It actually was far more important than any job, heist, robbery or con I had pulled off before. She had made it perfectly clear that Novorski, the demon, was to be killed and burned, but not before she had a chance to ask a few very important questions.

  If we didn’t get what we wanted out of Novorski, she had made it perfectly clear that no amounts of spirit shards would open a doorway to the after-world. And that was something that curiously enough had to do with me, not Steve, and definitely not her.

  I wasn’t sure if she wasn’t just playing me to her own ends, but then again I thought Steve had been a fed, which would have meant the FBI’s standards were stooping too low, even for the likes of them. Giving her the benefit of the doubt and having no real alternative, I grudgingly accepted the fact that I had to trust her. And hope.

  One could have said that things were ticking along with military precision if it wasn’t for Steve who was roaming the stands making lewd gestures, not being able to hold his water like a grown-up should, making faces and obscene gestures at passers-by, and generally blending in seamlessly with the rest of the fair-going crowd.

  I kept my eyes continuously on him, and part of my job involved keeping tags on him. For the most part though, Eileen had entrusted me with a role that made good use of my existing set of skills; primarily lying, stealing, and running with the intention of not getting caught under no circumstances whatsoever.

  For the better part of about two hours, I had been plying my trade like a pro. First, I tried picking some wallets, but most were devoid of cash, filled with pennies, plastic money, the occasional condom, and the usual NRA member’s card. I tried to lift some cash off the various stands, but all I got was some Mexican pesos, some one-dollar bills cut in half, and monopoly money, which seemed to be legal tender in the crowd but wouldn’t be of any use in the real world.

  Had it been any other day, I would have called it quits, and gone home to a glass of wine and watch the film at eleven that hopefully didn’t involve alien sex or Sigourney Weaver. But I had to make it count that night, so I went above and beyond: I raided the money pot of the ‘Save the Memphis Armadillo Fund’. The actual money pot happened to be shaped like a huge armadillo and placed smack in the midd
le of the whole fair.

  Now, I rarely happen to talk about myself and how great a thief I am, but any professional in the business would admit it was a damn hard job to pull. And they’d also call me ‘an audacious son of a bitch’ or in case their vocabulary didn’t include the word ‘audacious’, which is more often than not the case, ‘a cheeky bastard’. And that would be the right thing to say, because I did it in plain sight.

  It was a basic technique among social engineers (who in Memphis were still known as con artists), but one that was rarely applicable to the sort of jobs that paid off handsomely. When the opportunity or the need for some quick cash arose though, and the situation allowed for it, robbing people in front of their eyes and acting as if it was perfectly alright to do so worked amazingly well.

  All I had to do was grab myself a Cotton Candy Fair T-shirt stamped with the catchy motto ‘Now y’all have some ribs’ and tape a couple of pieces of paper on my front and back that read ‘STAFF’, and presto, I was a bona fide fair staff member. All I had to then was walk up to the huge armadillo, lift its bottoms, reach into its innards and grab the plastic box brimming with some real cash, all the while smiling, nodding and waving encouragingly to everyone who happened to venture a look.

  I then walked away, and counted the paper money without a care. It took some time but there was a hefty sum involved which proved adequate enough for what Eileen had in mind; and that was making a large, charitable donation to the fair, with the stipulation that the donor had to have a private talk with Mr. Novorski, in person.

  And that person would be me. Because, naturally, I’m the go-to guy when dealing with demons, evil spirits from the after-world, and all sorts of supernatural stuff that’s really bad for one’s personal hygiene, since dead bodies go to rot pretty quick and the smell’s, well, rotten.

  So I had a quick chat with a cheerful old lady who seemed to be the Country Cotton Candy Club’s cashier, secretary, president and sole member. When I showed her the money, she had a second or two with herself before shaking my hand as if her life depended on it and assuring me that Mr. Novorski and I could have all the night to ourselves for twenty five thousand dollars, which she wasn’t loathe to admit was almost as much as the annual ‘Save the Armadillo’ fund raised each year, more or less.

  It kind of felt like buying the sexual services of a business entrepreneur who had become a male prostitute purely as part of an ongoing market research in an effort to diversify his approach to potential customers, which in fact probably meant that he had a very sick hobby and not much in the way of scruples.

  It also felt like whatever money people donated each year, the armadillo would still be in need of saving, long past after the sun went supernova, and perhaps even after the heat-death of the universe itself.

  Having set the trap, my end of the job was done. All that remained was Novorski’s arrival, and then we’d be game.

  Steve was participating in a belching contest and though I couldn’t hear from that distance, the applause and cheers when his turn came were indicative of his chance at winning. Eileen was also watching, albeit from a different angle. She shot me a weary glance; I shrugged knowingly and smiled. She shook her head and grinned, and I noticed Steve had just stage-dived, still holding his embalmed skunk way up high, as if it were some sort of tomahawk, an electric guitar, or a combination of both.

  Then we heard an announcement from the PA in that familiar, aggravating, friendly-sounding voice:

  “Now y’all put those ribs down, and keep off the hooch jus’ a lil’ while, cause the managers and directors of the Country Cotton Candy fair are proud to welcome our very own benefactor, well-known and loved for his many contributions to the community, especially the ribs, Mr. Jeremiah Novorski.”

  Nothing much happened, and the usual round of applause and perhaps cheers did not ensue. No-one really seemed to have even acknowledged the announcement, even less so the fact that Novorski had just appeared onto the center stage, prominently featuring right behind the huge, and by now mostly empty, armadillo. The announcer felt he had to make a suggestion:

  “Now y’all better clap those hands for Mr. Novorski, or the skinny-dippin’ party’s canceled.”

  Instantly, as if a light bulb had gone off above each person’s head, the crowd responded with a hefty amount of applause, and a loud cheer. Novorski appeared to smile politely, but very thinly. I’m no expert on demons, spirits, and the like, but I’m pretty sure these sort of events weren’t in his job prescription originally, and he loathed every minute of it, especially since it appeared like he was supposed to play the role of some good Samaritan, bringing joy through ribs.

  Eileen was standing with her back against a weeping willow, pretty much hidden by all the low-stooped branches. I could see her features plainly taut with determined fury and a clear purpose in mind. It was one more reason why I was very relieved to not have her inside my mind. There was something about the way she clenched and opened her fists continuously that made me believe that just a glimpse of her mind right at that time would have felt like a floating balloon does in a shitstorm of monumental proportions.

  Steve seemed to be completely unaware of his surroundings, quite drunk and judging from the very rude body language about to exchange his laminated feathery hat for some sexual favours from what appeared to be a small group of height-challenged people (I believe in Memphis they’re still called midgets). Now, I don’t consider myself one of those judgmental pricks but the value for money on that deal seemed horrible, only I couldn’t tell which of the involved parties was taking advantage of the other.

  As far as I was concerned, Steve was probably having the time of his life, while everything important in my life, mostly the ability to keep breathing, hang by a thread. One could even say I envied him for being so care-free, seeing as the midgets put on his hat and rubbed his belly with cotton seed oil, but that would be a very wrong assumption.

  Novorski’s voice through the PA caught my attention, while most of the crowd kept on about their usual frolicking and lollygagging, and the midgets along with Steve were no exception either. I heard him say in a squeaky voice:

  “Good evening to y’all; I’m certainly going to enjoy it. I hope everything’s going along smoothly, ’cause you know, smooth is fun. Up to a point though, right? I also hope that Mrs. Robinson here, our organizer, has done everything in her power to keep things running along, like she does every, single, year.. Now, usually you’d hear me say a few things about how important it is to remember to support the local cotton industry, which is to say keep buying everything related to cotton, and especially that worthless cotton seed oil that’s only good for gettin’ your hands dirty and your rifle clean.”

  That sounded a bit strange, bad-mouthing his own product. It unfortunately made more sense though when he continued after he briefly pausing to rearrange his belt:

  “But this time, it’s a different year all together, so I’d like to take this opportunity to set some things straight. First of all, I’m sick of you people. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about Memphis. I’m talking about people, in general. I hate that pestering ability of yours to have hope, even when everything’s going to hell faster than a fast-freight train. Which brings me to the next issue: and that is that I’m not who I seem to be at all. It was about god-damn time things got going, but you won’t really mind about that, I’ve seen to it. Y’all had ribs, right? Last but not least, Eileen, or whatever your real name is, you’re in for a shitload of pain, honey. ’Cause you’ve been a naughty girl and daddy’s really pissed.”

  Those last few words in the wrong context could have been interpreted in a slightly perverted way, but when taken at face value they kinda got me thinking that plans A and B were both painfully inadequate to deal with Novorski, who seemed aware we were going to be there from the start. Instead of bidding his time, he just literally sprouted wings, grew horns and a set of sharp fangs, a barbed tail, as well as an array
of the assorted nasty features usually associated with demons, beelzebubs, balrogs and the armies of hell as portrayed in popular religious fiction. He had turned into a physical form of the demon he really was, and I wasn’t sure we could just burn him now, much less kill him.

  It was a bit of a laugh actually, realising that all those quaint depictions of evil demons were actually true, but it wasn’t as funny when that demon stood twelve feet tall, with an impossibly inhuman but overly developed physique, the stink of rotten eggs and stale blood emanating from him reaching hundreds of feet away, and a very real, shiny, and quite sharp-looking set of serrated bone claws of the sort that made visceral death a most literal notion.

  Eileen did not shy away though and stood her ground, looking at the demon with a piercing set of glittering eyes. That meant she wasn’t about to start running which would have been my primary, secondary, and tertiary choice (and all subsequent choices, rest assured). She seemed to be grinning, like letting everyone know she was ready to put up a fight right then and there.

  That didn’t resonate all too well with me, especially seeing that Novorski had turned into a demonic creature weighing probably half a ton, and the ability to kill a man with a mere slap in the back. Not to mention its breath, which was in urgent need of some mentos (or any other fresh-maker, take your pick, I’m not splitting hairs).

  I wanted to help, sure, but I wasn’t pretty sure about what I could actually do against something profoundly irrational and monstrous like Novorski, other than bleed profusely in the off chance that it might slip on my own pool of blood, fall on its back, and provide a mildly comedic intermission to the real fighting. Because there was bound to be a fight, and there would be blood. It felt like Mama Adele all over again, the difference being this time I felt we were slightly mismatched.

  Especially since the crowds kept looking at the demon positively bedazzled, mostly pointing at him without realising what it was they were seeing and quite possibly thinking this was some sort of special event organized by the Memphis Association of Special Effects, which sadly in fact consisted of a twelve-year old boy with a penchant for vampire flicks and half a pint of raspberry syrup in his mom’s fridge which happened to look a bit like fake blood, if one looked at it from the right angle, and under the right light.

  No-one started to run, scream and shout, or alternatively fall on their knees, pray in despair for deliverance or grovel and offer virgins as sacrifice, both practices being equally probable in succeeding. In fact, I think that the ‘Married my cousin’ and ‘Marty the Memphis Midget is a Mean Mother-you-know-the-rest’ events were still going on unabated, judging by the sheer number of beer cans thrown at Novorski-in-demon-form from their respective spots, protesting for Novorski ruining the party.

  Steve did more than just bat an eye-lid when he saw the demon. He instantly dropped the beer can he had strapped on his back, threw away the dick-shaped carrot and T-string, and rushed over to me, skunk still in hand, while Novorski erupted into an evil uproar of demonic proportions that frankly sounded like someone facing severe stomach trouble. I was idly watching the crowd silently - and almost on cue - part in half and create a wide path, as Novorski jumped off stage.

  Marty the Midget could be heard, shouting on his own ‘Think ya tough? Huh? I’m the Memphis Mean Motherfucker, motherfucker!’, followed by shocked gasps from the majority of church-goers who had attended the show in an effort to fight profanity and evil in all its forms but were somehow still undaunted - even indifferent - to the demonic monstrosity that fumed sulfur and sported ember hot eyes that seemed able to peel one’s skin by their mere gaze. Perhaps it was because the demon wasn’t wearing the customary informative T-shirt based on a tune, like ‘Am I evil? Yes I Am’, ‘This is the Road to Hell’, or ‘Hell ain’t a bad place to be’. Perhaps it was just the fact that these people seemed to act like mind-wiped idiots. Eileen then shouted something that caught my attention:

  “It’s them! It’s all of them! Their minds have been poisoned!”

  “What about them? Who’s ‘them’?” I shouted back while Steve took a ladle off a steamy stew pot still boiling on the “Neil Young & Stew Lovers’ Appreciation Society” stand, fell on all fours and started doing something on the ground that seemed similar to a drawing. His movements and disposition were clear, precise, purposeful. He somehow seemed not just to be suddenly sober, but pumped up. I couldn’t help asking:

  “What the hell are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be drunk?”

  “I’m drawing. No, well, yeah but not really, no. I’ll explain once this shitstorm’s over, okay?” he said, hurriedly scribbling all sorts of gibberish and weird geometric shapes that frankly looked a lot like something I was fairly certain he had ripped off from Rosemary’s Baby. I thought this was a really bad time for being so nostalgic about a film by Polanski. Eileen interrupted my train of thought with a regal shout, her feet barely touching the ground as she levitated towards Novorski at a slow, deliberate pace:

  “Their minds have been poisoned! They don’t see the demon for who he really is! They might even turn against us! Stand fast, Alabama mani-chi-kwa! Protect Bobby with your life!”

  I would have protested that these folks had very little in the way of brains, ergo minds to poison in the first place, but that thought somehow became something quite irrelevant when I realised Eileen had tasked Steve with protecting me, with his life.

  That did in fact sound somewhat prestigious and it certainly made me look like a really important person like all those famous folks who can’t take a leak without someone watching over them in case something bad happens to them, say like a pot plant falling on their heads from a high balcony, or a group of bullets with the intention of using said famous folks as handy inertial dampeners (in Memphis they call that ‘stopping a bullet’).

  That meant Eileen thought I was some kind of target. And that made me highly uncomfortable, and as was usually the case that sort of thing tended to kick off my run-and-hide instincts, perhaps the single most useful of the traits passed on from our early hunter-gatherer ancestors (that and the tendency to proliferate sexually - which in Memphis was still called porkin’).

  “That’s it, time to split man. We tried, we failed. We can still keep the cash though, right?” I said with the slightest hint of hope to Steve, who had just finished a rough sort of circle on the ground; I noticed we were standing right in the center of it. Steve looked at me and replied in a very strange way which I didn’t expect or liked at all because it involved doing absolutely nothing:

  “Whatever you do, don’t do a god-damn thing. Just sit inside this circle on the ground, and no matter what happens, whatever you see and hear, just pretend it isn’t happening. If you don’t do exactly as I say, you will get hurt, die, or worse. Do you understand?”

  I nodded my understanding in a perfectly clear fashion that made my neck hurt, and was determined to follow Steve’s advice. Even if every inch of my body wanted to start running on its own, in various mutually exclusively directions, at record-breaking speeds.

  My fear was only strengthened when I saw Novorski purposefully stride towards Eileen, who was silently slightly bobbing up and down in mid-air, radiating a bluish neon light from her skin, as if she’d just come back from a really hardcore rave party where shooting paint intravenously instead of just dabbing it on the skin was the norm.

  The crowd was cheering and yelling boos at the same time, in anticipation of what they perceived to be some sort of UFC match-up the likes of which they had never even thought possible, not very much unlike what a real fight between Mothma and Godzilla would’ve looked like to a Japanese crowd: Unreal, yet so cool you couldn’t resist touching it even if it meant losing a finger to frostbite. They were stupefied, fatally attracted, and grossly mislead altogether: they threw ripe tomatoes at Eileen who seemed to be putting a lot of effort into resisting the urge to adopt a more vengeful attitude towards the bystanders.

  Novorsk
i on the other hand had already tramped on a couple of folks unlucky enough to ask for his autograph. He was casually whipping his tail around as if it were some kind of pet making others suffer from its own ADHD, and making gestures suggesting lewd activities that seemed to involve his bifurcated tongue and his - thankfully - asexual pelvis.

  As some sort of invisible clock ticked away and everyone seemed to be attuned to the dispositions of its hands, I saw Steve had closed his eyes and was repeating the same thing, over and over:

  “This was the right ward to draw and I didn’t fuck it up.. This was the right ward to draw and I didn’t fuck it up.. This was the right ward to draw and I didn’t fuck it up..”

  That kind of self-assurance led me to believe that Steve might have been the wrong person to assure my safety from this demon or any other threat that involved something more dangerous than a cake fight. My attention was drawn to what sounded like badly-greased chainsaws throttling away at a junk yard:

  “Bobby Barhoe will be ours! And you’ll go back to your housekeeping chores!” grunted the demon, who grinned with all the malevolence usually associated with his kind, showing off a couple of tusks that shone sharp like razors. Eileen’s response was immaculately well-thought out, original and appropriate for a spirit of her stature:

  “Eat shit and die,” she said with a calmness that belied her strength, raised a hand, and out of the clear night sky without a cloud in sight I saw lightning strike at the feet of the demon, with a blinding flash of light. The sound of cracking air followed by the deep rumbling echo of mountains crashing into the sea made me think the world was coming apart at the seams.

  It was an astonishing show of sheer power and command over nature; an unparalleled tour-de-force that made Eileen look like a heathen goddess of yore, powerful and unforgiving, smiting folks all day long for no apparent reason and them worshipping her for it as well. Too bad it didn’t actually do anything to Novorski, who appeared to be left unscathed. The smile on his grotesque, demonic face had a gleaming quality about it, which implied he was enjoying this immensely. His voice was sticky, like tar:

  “That tickles. My turn, princess,” he said and with the flair of a world-class sprinter jumping the gun he flung himself towards Eileen with just one flap of his wings and a giant leap; his arms were outstretched, ready to clench her in a swoop of his claws that would leave little to be imagined about what guardian spirit hosts looked like on the inside.

  His ferocity was abundantly evident; his supernatural physique left no doubt about the extend of his strength, speed, and agility. He was a demonic machine, bred for bloodletting, destruction and chaos, indeed designed to wreak havoc on human flesh. But there’s always flaws in a design, and that fact was remarkably pointed out when Eileen arched her back all the way, hands touching the ground, exactly the moment the demons’ claws swept at nothing but air, and then sidestepped him by rolling to the side, avoiding his kicking legs and tail with a motion so graceful and regally syncopated, it reminded me of a cross between Grace Kelly and Tito Puente.

  As the demon flew past Eileen without being able to hide his aggravation and surprise, he managed to bring himself to a stop after a few yards, and I made the mental note that somehow these things were limited by physical laws as much men as the rest of us. Which was probably a good thing, as long as they were somehow persuaded to fall from tall cliffs and onto jarred, sharp rocks.

  Steve still hadn’t opened his eyes, but he had at least stopped reminding me that the circle around us with all the cursive writing and the weird sex symbols was just a circle and nothing more, and the only thing that stood between us and that thing was Eileen. He did ask though:

  “Is she dead? I hope she’s not dead.”

  “No, she’s not dead. Have a look yourself. I don’t see what the fuss was all about, to tell you the truth. They seem to be keeping it pretty civilised. Couldn’t they just do that from the beginning? I mean, what’s the danger to protect me from if he’s occupied with her? I just don’t see it,” I said, and when I turned to look around me I immediately knew I had a very big, and very stupid mouth, which in Memphis is sometimes called a pie-hole.

  “Bobby, I’m not sure why you haven’t noticed, but I can hear those snarls and moans, and I can see these people have turned into evil zombie thralls. Look at how they’re drooling and stumbling. Now, if you are refusing to see them, I can marvel at your willpower and I certainly respect it’s your prerogative to not see things; but the fact remains, there’s about at least three hundred zombies coming our way, and all that stands between them and your brain is this warding circle,” Steve told me with a feeling of acute worry in his voice. The fact that he was wearing shorts with the picture of a bald bird did nothing to reduce the severity of his words. I said the simple truth that dominated my thoughts:

  “What can I say? I was watching Eileen. I wasn’t prepared for zombie night fever.”

  “Just stick to what I said. Do nothing. Shut your ears and eyes if you can’t stand what your senses are trying to tell you. It should work. If in doubt, it’s not happening,” he said and closed his eyes once more, humming the theme from Rocky.

  “It should work?” I asked in vain but did not bother to wait for an answer or to press the matter further. What was going on in the background, behind the approaching throng of Memphis zombie demon thralls, as far as I could tell, was pure mayhem.

  Though I didn’t have a clear view, I could see fireballs the size of a car shooting up in the night sky. Some of them where actually real flaming cars, but that was just a pedantic difference. I also saw lots of lightning, sheets of hail and spikes of ice, flying blocks of stone, as well as giant swirls of water raised from the river and hurled at Novorski. They were swooping, and tilting and turning in the air, with Novorski trying to get his claws on Eileen while she kept pounding at him with everything nature could provide. Except fire, which seemed the demon’s natural element, seeing as he writhed in red hot and yellow-white flames of purgatory.

  Steve tugged at my jeans at a really inappropriate place, and I thought that being gay and perhaps about to die was in no way a valid reason to try and fondle my private parts. I saw that he was just reaching for me blindly, keeping his eyes shut, but mysteriously saying nothing:

  “Goddammit Steve I thought you were trying to touch my -”

  “Shhhhh! Listen! Don’t talk! Just listen! Close your eyes, and listen!” he said and acting on his earlier advice, namely to do as he said, I closed my eyes and listened.

  And all I could hear was shuffling summer flip-flops across the Memphis soggy riverside ground, interminably coming closer and closer. The zombies’ feet were meandering at the edge of the circle, with hands outstretched, quite possibly hungering for brains or other vital parts. In a rare fit of actually thinking about how things could be any worse, I imagined that maybe there existed such a thing as a gay zombie. I didn’t dare think about that further. I simply said to Steve with a wavering voice:

  “I hear them, Steve, I hear them.”

  “You do? So I’m not just imagining things! Maybe those ninjas were real as well, then?”

  “No Steve, these aren’t invisible ninjas. These are zombies, and they’re right here. If I reach out, I can touch one,” I said in a matter-of-fact manner despite the sheer terror at the thought of touching something that wore flip-flops as if they were real shoes.

  “Yes, yes! I can see those fine, man!”

  “I thought you were trying not to look,” I said as another fireball erupted in the backdrop, and Eileen flew into view, responding with a flurry of zaps of lightning that made Novorski giggle as if it tickled.

  “Well, I peek. But, really, try to hear them, man. Can’t you?”

  “I can hear Eileen’s lightning bolts and mini sheet storms, I can hear Novorski’s fireballs explode among the trees. I can even hear Marty the Midget still going on about how he once knocked up two twins while sleeping with only one of them. Wha
t else do you want me to hear?”

  “The ’choppers man, the ’choppers..” Steve said, and I heard the faint but characteristic sound of music spreading upstream the river, wading in the night sky. I couldn’t hear any choppers, but after a moment or two, above the snarling throaty sounds of the mindless Memphis denizens that encircled us, I could hear the unmistakable sound of Wagner’s Die Valkyrie, and I suddenly smiled and thought that all this must simply be a very elaborate film set.

  I kind of dismissed that idea when the corn started falling from the sky, while horns and other brass instruments blared in epic fashion.

  The pellets of corn seemed to fall right out of the sky in wide jets, as if someone was throwing it at us through large hoses. I instantly caught a whiff of garlic, and saw the gathered zombies unable to resist themselves. They reflexively opened up their mouths to gulp down as much of it as they could, like a water-starved man does when it finally rains.

  In the background I could see the demon looking surprised, even apprehensive, trying to fly away from Eileen instead of trying to cut her into little pieces like only moments earlier. It was as if he was thinking what was happening was bad for him, and he was trying to escape. I couldn’t make a possible connection, until one of the zombies grabbed me by the shoulder and asked me:

  “Hey ol’ buddy? Mind if get that ladle back? Kinda need it to stir the stew, y’know?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied, completely flabbergasted while Steve started yelling right in my ear:

  “It’s them! Woo-hoo!”

  “Koreans? Who the fuck’s them anyway and why is corn falling out of the sky? And for fuck’s sake, Wagner?” I asked, feeling quite irate and definitely believing that some kind of explanation, however illogical or impossible was in order. As the crowd of former zombies dispersed pretty much in the same way as it had been formed, returning to whatever they had been doing before they were turned into minions, I noticed Eileen was nowhere to be seen, and Novorski had vanished as well, leaving nothing but flaming debris and the occasional cinder of a tree, which weren’t all that unusual for a Memphis riverside fair on a summer night.

  My question wasn’t left unanswered for too long, since I suddenly saw the demon form of Novorski being shot through with a couple of harpoon-like sharp things, from which a run of cables seemed to disappear into the night. Not a moment later, the harpoons and the cables flashed electric blue and seemed to sizzle hotter than a melting pot.

  Like I had noticed earlier, demons seemed unable to escape the laws of physics, so this one was dropping down fast. The Wagner music had stopped by the time I heard a splash and then the usual hubbub of the crowd which as always, seemed happily oblivious to absolutely everything that had happened, apart from the fact that Marty the Midget had peed his pants, for no apparent reason. From what I could hear, that stirred up some pretty heated debates on whether or not that was legal in the state of Tennessee. Still, there was no sign of Eileen, and that was kind of unsettling. After all, I was almost knee-deep in corn because I needed her to help me save my ass.

  Steve suddenly cried and pointed to the sky right above us, while I felt the gentle rush of a downwind ruffle my hair:

  “Them, man! The Bureau!”

  “Feds? But how? I mean.. I’m a dead man, ain’t I?” I said mostly to myself, believing that pretty soon I’d be in custody for felonies committed in fifty-one states (counting the job in Puerto Rico). Once processed and in a federal prison, my life would end abruptly at the hands of one of Falconi’s men. There was no point in running away from people who could turn zombies back into regular people by shooting corn at them anyway. Then Steve managed to make me slightly more likely to punch him for mixing thing up:

  “Not the feds, man! The Bureau! Look!” he said and sounded positively thrilled about it.

  The downwind grew into a real gale, and the stands around us were upturned, and some were even swept away, while the few folks who had been sitting behind them just kept on pretending everything was in place. I could now feel hot air trying to strip most of my facial features off my face. I could barely open my eyes but I could still see Steve had done a hell of a job with his teeth, as a constant turbulent flow of hot air was shot on his widely grinning face, his teeth clenched as if glued together and the skin around the mouth fluttering away as if someone was trying to slice jello with a jackhammer.

  Then I saw it with my own eyes, and while still unable to explain most of it, the idea that this was actually an elaborate movie set popped back into my mind as the hull of a large blimp became visible as it had just touched the ground, with what resembled a quad of tilt engines coming to rest in an upright position. It looked a lot like the Goodyear blimp, only beefed up, painted jet black, and giving off an aura of being indestructible, even though the damn thing would probably fall right off the sky if a bird with a really pointy beak decided it had issues with it.

  Steve was looking relieved, calm, and beaming with enthusiasm. He reminded me of someone who has just had great sex with some twins, followed by a Cuban cigar, a glass of Hennessy, and couldn’t wait for the Baywatch rerun to start on TV. Then the blimp’s cupola door swung open and I saw this tall black fellow pop out, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, wearing a pair of black glasses coming my way, hands easily visible, his posture cool, and calm, business-like and natural. I was about to ask what the hell this was all about and who the hell these people were, when I saw Steve smile like this was a Kodak moment worth pure gold. A few dozen feet away from that black-suited guy, he pointed at him with a cheesy-looking hand in the shape of a gun, a grin as wide as the Panama canal, and said:

  “My niggah, Jules!”

  The black man in the suit stopped abruptly, and didn’t look particularly happy; definitely not as happy as Steve. In fact he looked like he had been offended somehow, kind of like if someone called his mother an ugly, unscrupulous, sex worker. He shot Steve a look that said ‘don’t go there’, while he said with deserved indignation:

  “Niggah, please. Do I even know you? What gives you the god-damn right to call a niggah you ain’t never even had a threesome with ‘niggah’, niggah?”

  I saw the white of his eyes bristle, as if it somehow shone with his furious anger. I think I cleared my throat before deciding to speak, which was the perfectly wrong thing to do at that exact point:

  “If I could just ask a simple -”

  “Now who the fuck died and made you king?”

  “Wha-at?”

  “Wha-at ain’t no king I ever heard of!” he said waving his Magnum .44 around like it was some kind of completely harmless, insignificant object.

  “Whaa-aat?”

  “Say what again, motherfucker! I dare you, I double-dare you mother- .. Oh, man, shit, I’m sorry. Hey, I’m really sorry, that’s my other job talking. Shit, a niggah can only be so many places at once, right?”

  Steve saw the man he had called Jules smiling now, seemingly having mellowed a bit. He took the opportunity to try and set things straight, perhaps making some sense out of all this in the process:

  “Well, I know what you mean. See, at one point I was working at this tattoo parlor and-”

  “I don’t recall asking you a god-damn thing!” he roared suddenly, pointing the hefty-looking silver-finished Magnum at Steve, who subsequently went silent at once and seemed content to just listen. The man in the suit then seemed to relax again. He smiled at me, took my limp hand and shook it saying:

  “Jules Caesar, Normal Bureau Agent, at your service. I’m really sorry for the mix-up, I wasn’t briefed extensively. You’ll have to come aboard, as we’re all in a bit of a hurry, aren’t we?”

  “Normal Bureau? Not the Feds?”

  “No, sir. We’re not in the business of chasing invisible terrorists, thank God. I guess you have some questions, but you will be briefed in the dirigible.”

  “You mean that blimp thing? What’s this bureau about? Some kind of men-i
n-black?”

  “What? Shit, no, nothing to do with those alien freaks and cheap-skate postal agents. We’re the ones who keep things normal. You’ll be briefed en route, sir.”

  “En route? Listen, where’s Eileen? I need to talk to her.”

  “She’s safe with us, sir, already en route.”

  “En route the fuck where to?”

  “Topeka, sir. I believe you need to be in Topeka, is that correct?”

  “Well, yeah. How do you know that? Never mind. That thing can fly us there in time?”

  “You’d be amazed, sir.”

  “I’ve seen some pretty weird shit today and I’m pretty tired of seeing amazing things. I’d prefer not to be amazed.”

  “Sir, can a rhino dance the waltz?”

  “I lost you right there with the waltzing rhino.”

  “Well, we sure as hell can make a rhino dance the waltz, sir. Now, please, clock’s ticking and there’s no cure for that. Agent Johnson will ride along.”

  “So you do remember?” said Steve who suddenly looked like a kid that had thought no one remembered it was his birthday.

  “Shit, niggah. How can I forget? I was just fucking with you, man. Nice job, back there. Hop on,” he said as he led the way towards the blimp, while I kept pace by his side, having given up on my distrustful instincts and eagerly embraced the philosophy best summed up in the phrase ‘I got nothing to lose’.

  “Well, you got me there, niggah!”

  Steve sounded like one of those people who try too hard to be popular with their peers, and only then did I release these two knew each other somehow.

  “Niggah, please. Don’t call the Niggah, ‘niggah’, ’aright? I’m getting itchy trigger fingers here.”

  Within moments, we were ushered first inside the blimp. It didn’t look much different than a trailer to be honest, and there were these other guys - also wearing black suits - who motioned us to sit down in two - comfy, I’ll admit - chairs. They wore the most expressionless faces I had ever seen, and I half expected them to start doing those pre-flight emergency presentations, wearing life-jackets and showing us how to use an oxygen mask.

  But they just sat there like immovable objects, parts of the decoration; rigid and stone-like. That was until Jules got on-board; one of them erupted in a stomach-killing laughter of the kind one cannot voluntarily stop, and soon the other guy followed suit. Jules just looked at them disapprovingly, shook his head and said:

  “You two clowns did the whole ‘I’m such a hard-ass I can tow I fucking truck with my butt-cheeks’ routine, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah! I mean, the look on this guy’s face..,” one of the suits said and pointed at me, while the other was still trying to stop laughing like a maniac high on laughing gas.

  “And you got a bet on it as well? Who’s going to crack first or some shit?” asked Jules with just the right hint of anger-buildup in his voice.

  “Like always, man. The standard fifty,” he said gloating, chewing gum and looking like someone very difficult to genuinely like no matter how many times you went fishing with. Jules seemed to be like-minded when he said, tapping that guy’s chest:

  “I can make life so difficult for you in the Bureau, you’d be wishing you’d pursued a career as bait for schools of piranhas in the Amazon, or perhaps a target in a shooting range the size of a phone booth. Now you shut it, both of you. And start flying. Did I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” the not-so-funny-now-looking guy said and proceeded through a door to what must’ve been the cockpit, while the other guy had finally managed to contain his laughter and close the door. Within moments, we were lifting off the ground. Jules then asked me, while eye-balling Steve in a threatening way that perhaps involved non-consensual sex:

  “Can I get you anything? Some refreshment, a drink perhaps?”

  I was about to say I was fine, when after finally having sat down and being able to just let someone else do something for a change, I heard my stomach rumble violently, and realised I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning, and that didn’t even count as a real breakfast humans eat.

  Of course, there were are other pressing matters my mind should’ve been occupied with, like ‘Who were these guys? Was Steve working with them? Why? Where was Eileen? Where they telling me the truth? Was this some kind of trap? What did they want with me? What’s with the black glasses in the middle of the night?’. But it completely disregarded those and filed them under ‘interesting but not pressing’, and instead concerned on getting something to eat. So I replied:

  “Is there something like a ham and cheese sandwich?”

  He looked like someone who aimed to please when he replied with an easy question:

  “Mayo, mustard or ketchup?”

  I settled for some mayo, and when Jules disappeared to some sort of small kitchen, Steve said in a low whisper with an excitement that prompted me to check whether or not he had peed his pants:

  “Oh, man, Jules Caesar’s making you a sandwich!”

  “Should’ve I asked for a salad?”

  “Man, you really have no idea what an honor that is!”

  While I did in fact have no knowledge of the honor involved, I was perfectly satisfied with enjoying the sandwich itself when Jules returned with it. Happily gobbling it down, I ventured a fleeting look outside a small window pane, and I was amazed, just as I had been promised: we were flying so fast I could see the lights on the ground below zip past like this was just another freeway, eating away at distance like peanuts. I was interrupted by Jules who pulled a chair from a little utilitarian table, sat across me and said:

  “Mr. Barhoe. I’ve been asked to do a preliminary briefing. There are some things you must know.”

  And then the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard in my life started pouring out of his mouth, and the worst part of it was he didn’t seem to be making it up.

  VI

  What Jules told me on those few minutes, made no sense at all. I had questions, lots of them, and he promised that people of a much higher authority than himself could fill me in with the details. All I’d gathered was that there was some kind of war going on. Not on communists, drugs, or terror, but a war with the forces of evil at large. I think I just shrugged, thinking that I didn’t really care about that sort of thing as long as it didn’t involve me; after all, there’s wars going on all over the world all the time. Unfortunately, this specific war somehow did involve me, and perhaps not as surprisingly, Eileen as well.

  “It’s kinda hard to swallow, I know,” he had said with a knowing, almost sympathetic expression on his face. For just the slightest moment, I thought he was referring to the sandwich, but that was just my stomach thinking for me.

  I learned Steve had been working for these guys, the Normal Bureau, as an undercover agent taking part in what they called Operation Beetroot. He was positively psyched, sitting face-to-face with Jules Caesar who apparently was some sort of legend in the Bureau. I don’t know if that was indeed the case, and what kind of feats had earned him that sort of recognition, but the look on Steve’s face meant he was willing to do anything to get on Jules’ good books. And I do mean, anything.

  Somehow all that new information failed to materialise into something useful; for instance, could these guys with all their invisible supersonic helicopters and their oversized zap-guns make Falconi disappear from the face of the Earth, or at least help me open that damn vault without John’s help? Hell, I’d even send them a postcard from the after-world if they somehow helped me get in, and then back out.

  When I suggested just that, all I’d gotten was two sets of awkward looks, with Jules adding with some hesitation that “you’ll be briefed by higher echelons”. Maybe it wasn’t exactly something on their list of top priorities, since they seemed preoccupied with a lot of weird demonic shit, but it was number one in mine. And I had this very distinct impression that ‘briefed’ actually meant ‘jerked around’.


  I heard then a chirping sound from what must’ve been the intercom. A syncopated, synthetic female voice announced:

  “Touch down, in, thirty seconds. Prepare, to, disembark. Mind the gap. Mind the gap.”

  “We’re here. Johnson, wards,” he said, prompting Steve to jump up from his seat like a spring. He then opened a cabinet of sorts, revealing a large number of what appeared to be very silly hats, the kind the Pope wears. Steve put one on his head, and gave me one as well. I honestly felt we were going to some sort of Halloween party, or maybe one of those extravagant dinner parties held by eccentric rich folks where nothing was ever considered over the top. Jules insisted:

  “Just a precaution, Mr. Barhoe. Please, put on the mitre.”

  “The what? You mean the hat?”

  “These are highly specialized warding devices. They’re a safety measure, and blessed by the Pope himself, hence the mitre design.”

  “Safety measure against what? Good taste?”

  “Demonic entities and incorporeal creatures, sir,” Jules said, and for the first time I detected a very serious and grave tone in his voice. The intercom chirped once more, but this time it was the pilot:

  “Anchored, sir! We just got word, we gotta head for Missouri. Another imp infestation.”

  Jules pressed the intercom button and replied while pointing a very unfriendly-looking finger at the speaker:

  “Don’t you try and keep any as pets like the last time, I’m gonna go medieval on your ass, you hear me?”

  “No, sir!” came back the terse, almost frightened reply. He then turned the door handle and let the door slide open. With a quick hand signal, Steve was the first one off. He quickly glanced left and right, as if in some sort of confusion, and gave a thumbs up. Jules then nodded to me, and I got off next. A warm summer breeze greeted me, and I felt my feet bury themselves in something soft.

  The characteristic smell of manure became instantly prominent. Which was to be expected since we had landed on what looked like a cow farm; the fresh cow dung I had just stepped on was a dead giveaway. The blimp’s engines went full throttle in a few moments, and it disappeared into the night sky like an immense phantom whale, leaving nothing but a faint haze and an imperceptible rustling noise behind it.

  Jules urged me to move and I duly complied; he kept walking right behind me, while Steve lead the way, heading for what appeared to be a nondescript, pretty characteristic barn. The moon was full, and its light cast a silvery sheen over everything, except perhaps cow dung. A few yards away from the large, half-open barn door, the unmistakable length of a hunting rifle appeared, while the rough edges of a figure that still remained in the shadows could be roughly traced. Steve froze in his tracks and pointed hesitantly at his silly papal hat. The figure took a step forward, revealing himself to be a squat, short, fat old little fellow wearing a farmer’s overall and a pair of boots twice his normal size. He shouted then with a voice that sounded like weasels making out in the woods:

  “What’s that nigger doing in my farm?”

  Jules shouted in response, calmly and clearly, almost spelling out the words:

  “Who the fuck, you callin’ ‘niggah’, you redneck.. inbred trailer trash?”

  The sudden and violent exchange of insults started and ended right there, when the old man uncocked his rifle and stood at attention before saluting Jules, who didn’t as much as even look his way. Steve ushered us inside the barn, and before long we were walking in complete darkness.

  I heard a knock followed by a dull thump, and then I heard Steve say in poorly concealed agony:

  “I’m OK. I’m OK.”

  We stopped. Jules’ distinctive voice echoed inside the spacious barn:

  “Stupid redneck motherfucker.”

  “I’m a native Indian, sir.”

  “Not you, Johnson. That white-trash asshole on sentry duty.”

  “That was a sentry?” I asked in disbelief. No one bothered to satisfy my curiosity. Steve was also curious in his own way:

  “What about him, sir?”

  “What about - Can’t he tell I’m Jules-fucking-Caesar?”

  “We could’ve been fakes sir.”

  “Fakes? Why the fuck are we wearing these clown hats for then?”

  “Regulations?”

  “Fuck that,” Jules said and I heard a clicking noise that soon turned into a whir. Before I knew it, the ground below us was moving, and we were smoothly riding down a shaft on some kind of a platform.

  Warm spotlights around the edges of the platform lit up then, while soft hall music started playing. Jules started humming along, and Steve couldn’t resist the urge to do so as well.

  “You think you’re a funny guy Johnson?” Jules said, giving off the aura that a positive answer would have been wrong. Steve stopped, lowered his head and kept looking at his feet like a scolded schoolboy, while I was fascinated by the amount of gems hidden away in the various layers of ground, making a mental note to myself to invest heavily in Topeka real estate, provided of course that I’d put all this nasty business behind me soon and live through it as well.

  After a minute or so had passed, and while certainly the illusion of riding a perfectly normal elevator kept my mind adequately numb, I couldn’t help asking Jules:

  “Uhm, how deep is this?”

  “Quite deep, sir.”

  “I meant, is this going to take long?”

  “We’re almost there sir.”

  “Why do you always build these sort of things underground?”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “Why not build a secret base on a mountain mesa? Or a deserted island? A huge flying base perhaps? Or an enormous ship?”

  “Oh, you mean that. Cost, sir.”

  “You mean this is cheaper?”

  “Everything below a depth of a thousand feet is US property.”

  “Everything?”

  “Even the god-damn dinosaurs, sir.”

  “Dinosaurs?”

  “You’ll be briefed about that.”

  A polite little ‘pong’ was heard and we came to a very soft stop in front of a dull, plain looking steel door. Jules cleared his throat and said in a very loud and clear fashion, as if talking to someone hard of hearing:

  “What’s a niggah.. gotta do to, get some.. respect around here?”

  To which promptly, as if actually responding to his voice, the door opened and revealed an immense well-lit space, with large balconies the size of plazas extruding from the rock, rigid superstructures extending from the ceiling downwards to scary depths, and uncannily curvy gangways crisscrossing like a metal knot.

  It was perhaps unsurprisingly filled with people wearing the same stupid-looking hats as we were, milling about on foot, Segways, bicycles and even skates. It somehow reminded me of LAX on a bishop’s annual convention, only this complex appeared to be a lot bigger. Jules stepped off the platform and showed the way, while Steve said with a proud smile, walking right behind me:

  “Bobby my man, welcome to the Rabbit’s Nest.”

  “Is that supposed to sound cool? ’Cause it’s a lame name,” I said, walking right behind Jules who led the way.

  “I know, but don’t tell Von Papen,” whispered Steve.

  “Von who? Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “What’s he gonna do? Shoot me?” I asked jokingly.

  And then I realised Steve didn’t answer ‘no, of course not, don’t be silly, he’s not a Nazi or anything like that’. He just gave me a wary look and kept his mouth shut. And then I started feeling nervous again.