by Michael Faun
There's no place like home!
BROOKLYN
KROKODIL DUNDEE
T he last place on Earth Flynn thought he would be stranded for eternity was Brooklyn.
Flynn abhorred Brooklyn.
He missed his beloved homeland, Australia. Missed the deadly critters lurking on every square inch on dry land. Missed the Vegemite sandwiches. Missed his cattle.
Here, in the Big rotten Apple, the land was replaced by sky-high steel and glass buildings, stressed out humans, filthy hot dogs, and cattle-sized cockroaches.
But since he was stuck here in the states, he had no other choice but to adapt and accept his miserable situation.
He had been trapped here for years now. Had burned his last US dollars, which had been earmarked for a plane ticket back home, on heroin after having been introduced to a scary dealer in The Bronx known as Bomber Bill.
Hawkers and their flamin' gronk names...
After his wedding night with the drug, nothing was ever going to be the same again. Flynn fell deeply in love with the smack and was willing to do almost anything to score more of it. And on the rainy days he couldn't, he confined himself to the selection of low grade substitutes such as Buprenorphine, Subutex, etc., while enduring withdrawal hell inside his makeshift home: a semi sunken barge in Coney Island Creek.
Lucky for Flynn, there was a new operator in town called Krokodil. Less expensive than its tarry cousin, it created the same high, though it didn't last as long. But in Flynn's eyes, the only drawback was the ulcers that came popping up in patches over his arms and legs.
Apart from that, Krokodil was pure magic!
Flynn, or Krokodil Dundee as most pushers knew him by, stood like a packed sardine on the F train from Church Avenue. The oven hot subway car screeched as the silver train left Kings Highway and snaked its way to the next station. Sweating bullets, both from the heat and the creeping high, Flynn clenched his jaws in anger over the fact that the beef-faced Ukrainian up in Red Hook had not only stiffed him on the price, but was also a sloppy cook—he could tell from the taste of red phosphorus in his mouth...
“Matches… the fucknuckle uses matches in his cook... I'ma set him on fire... fuckin' Ukrainian with a face lookin' like a bucket of smashed crabs,” he grumbled to himself while smacking his dry lips, trying to keep his head from stooping over the passenger before him. The passenger, a short stocky lady in a thin purple blouse and a bra struggling to lift her enormous breasts, squirmed uncomfortably each time his scaly face accidentally nudged the back of her head.
People usually kept an arm's length distance from Flynn given his repugnant appearance and B.O.; but on a Coney Island bound train a fine summer's day, people had no choice but to jostle with all kinds of freaks.
A little boy stared at him with horror in his wide blue eyes. Flynn stared back, baring his black gums and rotten teeth, and the kid cowered behind his mother whimpering about zombies.
Flynn twitched and squirmed. This occurrence was yet another part of the mind loop. The perpetual insanity show playing in his head, in which he had the starring role, toying with the last crumbles of his wretched sanity.
The black dog mind loop!
The big breasted lady turned to face him. Rheumy eyes scowled through coke-bottle thick glasses, and the woman's eggplant-colored lips wilted to a morose arch. Flynn needed to get off the subway at once.
The Devil operates this train!
Bullets of sweat trickled down his flushed face as his brain revved up an overpowering paranoia. Every living soul inside the subway car was glaring at him, wanting him dead.
Flynn desperately pressed through the crowd of passengers who grumbled and cursed in response. He had not come far back when his leather boot accidentally clambered down on a shiny black shoe.
“Watch your step, douche,” snarled a business-type man.
Flynn froze. He felt as though the entire world were on pause. He lifted his sluggish head and saw the passengers' masks come off—revealing their true guise.
The angry businessman transformed into a beetle, wielding its sharp mandibles at Flynn, who quickly reached for the butterfly knife in his pocket. Heart racing under his sweat-drenched Aloha shirt, he stabbed the blade right into the beetle's big eye.
Shrill screams dinned all around him and the atmosphere grew more hostile.
Brown goo oozed from the beetle's eye as it tried to wind its bristled legs around Flynn. He fended them off with his knife and escaped further down the cramped car, stabbing his way through the demonic mass of insects.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw the rheumy-eyed lady chase after him, worm-like fungus dripping from the deep furrows in her spider face. She bared a pair of Nosferatu fangs as she scuttled quickly toward him.
Then Flynn saw his opportunity...
An ear-splitting screech ensued as he pulled the emergency brakes and began to pry open the subway doors. He managed to stick one knee in between the door pair, forcing his emaciated body through the small gap.
Police sirens screamed in the distance as he squeezed through the door pair and jumped, landing feet first on the scorching metal tracks.
I made it! he triumphed, inhaling the smell of electricity and charred stones, when a deafening blare sounded to his left. He barely had time to turn his head before the steel beast subway train ran him over, smearing his infected blood and flesh over the rusty tracks.
†
A grinding creak stirred Flynn's senses back to existence; dismembered, decapitated, and smeared over the bottom shelf of a grinding luggage cart. A one-eyed demon in bellhop garb was pulling the cart through drab blue corridors, lit only by blue neon bracket lamps.
They passed several doors in different shapes, colors and sizes. Some huge, some small, all crooked and askew.
“Welcome to Hotel Neon Golgotha, sir,” said the monstrous bellhop with a smile like a worm-ridden grave. He stopped the cart and from his belt produced a large key with which he opened the yellow door to room 3358. “Here we are, sir. Your room. May your stay here be to your satisfaction.”
Pushing the luggage cart into the suite, the bellhop shut and locked the door behind him, leaving Flynn to his own mutilated devices.
Flynn's eyeballs rolled in their lidless sockets as he ogled the multitude of video monitors stacked atop one another inside the urine-colored suite.
The monitors all switched on, displaying a looped sequence recorded from a home security camera with a view of a kitchen. The unraveling scene showed three individuals: two of which lay dead in a pool of blood.
The first one was a man with a face blown to mush. Next to his body, a milk carton was pumping out milk that mixed with the blood, creating a pink sludge.
The second person was a twenty-something woman, her pregnant belly cut wide open revealing a six-or-so-month-old lacerated fetus screaming and crying ever-so-faintly.
The third person in the kitchen was Flynn himself, confused and clearly high on drugs. He was rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, holding a dripping fillet knife in his leathery hand. A smoking shotgun sat on the counter top next to the stove.
Room 3358 was indeed to Flynn's satisfaction.
QUEENS
PINBALL MADNESS
1.ID
Name: Amanda Kovac
Marital status: Single
Sex: Female
Occupation: N/A
DOB: 6.06.1976
Age: 18
2.HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
The patient is an 18-year-old female with a history of one prior suicide attempt who was brought to the hospital emergency room by ambulance, accompanied by her roommate, after having taken an overdose of atenolol (Tenormin) (twenty-five 25-mg tablets), zolpidem (Ambien)(twenty 10-mg tablets), and possibly fluoxetine (Prozac) pills (number unknown) in a suicide attempt. All of these medications had been prescribed for the patient's roommate.
The evening before, the patient had had a fight with her roommate. She believed th
at her roommate was trying to kill her in her sleep. They slapped and punched each other. The patient went to a bar with another friend where she consumed four beers and a shot of vodka. When she arrived back at home, her roommate told her to go to sleep, which she interpreted as a planned attempt to attack her in her sleep. She locked herself in the bathroom and took many of her roommate's pills. The patient filled the empty pill bottles with water and left them in plain view on the sink.
The patient then unlocked the door and went to bed, telling her roommate where to find syrup of ipecac. (Ms. K. carries the ipecac in her knapsack to induce vomiting when she drinks too much alcohol.) Her roommate saw the pill bottles, realized the patient had overdosed, and tried to induce vomiting by administering syrup of ipecac. Unable to get the patient to vomit, she called an ambulance.
Ms. K. currently drinks alcohol once or twice each week, usually on the weekends. A usual amount of alcohol for her consists of two vodka tonics and eight or nine beers. Often, she drinks until she blacks out. She used cocaine this past New Year's Eve (“a few lines”) and occasionally takes LSD (unknown amounts). She denies any history of intravenous drug use.
In addition, she has needed little sleep since age 10. Racing thoughts, pressured speech, and decreased need for sleep have become more pronounced since September, when she started feeling “very up.” Since then she has been getting at most 5 hours of sleep each night without feeling tired. She says she can be very influential, but that she has no special powers. She reports that she gets angry quickly and that her mood can change very easily.
Since September she has also felt more depressed and physically restless. She considers suicide frequently, “just to escape the boredom of life.” She has lost 6 pounds in the last 2 months. There is also history of hallucinations and of delusional thought.
Psychotropic medication has been prescribed.
Could you please give to me a hot dog and a root beer?” Haji said in a thick Indian accent.
Amanda scowled at the businessman who wore a white turban, a white shirt, and a pair of round glasses. He was sitting by the counter next to the four other diner regulars: Babs, Boris, Pepe and Buck—each a nuisance in Amanda's eyes. But as the service profession required, she offered Haji a courtesy smile and a nod, saying, “Sure thing, hon.”
She sped through the hectic diner on her silver pinball feet, bouncing into the six-lighted drop targets up and left from the counter, her lissome body sore from the violent collision.
“ORDER UP!” blared a digital male's voice as Haji was served his food and drink.
The drop targets reset.
“I'd like an Iced Tea and a Frankfurter!”
Amanda wiped her brow, eyeballing Babs, the Margaret Thatcher-looking crone, across the counter and replied through clenched jaws, “Yes, ma'am.”
Amanda looped round the Cup Ramp and rolled back down to the right-side flipper, flipping herself toward the six drop targets but missed them.
“I'd like an Iced Tea and a Frankfurter!”
“I heard you the first time, ma'am. Coming right up.” Babs' manners started to tax her patience. Glancing at the Dine Time value clock, Amanda cursed her shitty day and rolled up the Cash Register Ramp where she picked up 20K worth of points—just to lose control over her pinball-feet and tumble down the drain.
This day couldn't get any worse...
Amanda returned to the plunger. She shot back out on the red and black checkered floor, when Buck barked out yet another order in his thick Texan accent, “I'll have the Texas Chili and Fries!”
Amanda's brain started to melt. Her skin prickled and her eyeballs stung as though someone had sprayed them with acid.
“I'd like an Iced Tea and a Frankfurter!” Babs repeated. “Really, I haven't got all day!”
“Gimme' the Chili and a Root Beer!” demanded Pepe the Mexican.
“Hurry up, partner!” stressed Buck the Texan.
The entire diner with its unreasonable guests, its blinking lights and checkered floor, dwindled to a dizzying vertigo.
Amanda grabbed a bread-knife and tucked it in the back of her apron as she finally went to get Babs' food. Orders were piling up too fast.
“I'll have Burger and Fries!” Boris decided.
“Gimme' the Chili and a Root Beer!”
“Hurry up, partner!”
“Andelay, andelay!”
The cacophony of orders only fed her rising fury. Then, when she felt as though she was about to explode—
“I'd like an Iced Tea and a—”
“FRANKFURTER?” Amanda filled in and grabbed Babs by the hair, forcing the greasy sausage down the old lady's throat. “ORDER UP, BIDDY!” She pulled the knife and stabbed Babs several times right in the chest, blood pumping out in a fountain arc.
TILT!
Amanda's eyes were black as she rolled over to the next guest, Pepe, and sank the blade deep into his right eye. Spinning around, she then punctured Boris' wrist—
WARNING!
She sliced open Haji's face and nailed Buck's fat hand to the wooden counter—
TILT!
Diner, the pinball machine, bleeped and flashed alarm but the sound was drowned amid the screams and cries of horror ensuing from the injured patrons. Then everything inside the arcade hall ebbed to a deathlike silence, followed by a low electric hum.
END OF BALL!
* * *
“18-YEAR-OLD WOMAN SHOT TO DEATH BY POLICE AFTER KNIFE-ATTACKING GUESTS INSIDE MODERN PINBALL NYC!”
An American citizen in her 50s died after multiple stabs to the chest and four others were injured after young knife-woman 'went on the rampage'.
Police was called to Modern Pinball NYC at 10.30 pm last night after witnesses on the street outside reported screaming victims tried to flee.
Per eye-witnesses inside, the young woman was roller skating around with a knife, attacking and stabbing people at random.
The victims are British, Indian, Mexican and Russian. Three are in hospital and one was discharged with a milder hand injury.
NYPD spokesman said attacker had 'significant mental health issues'.
†
A manda roused from death by the smell of bacon. She was in her girl's room in the house where she grew up: an old yellow ramshackle up in Glen Oaks, Queens. Insects chirped outside and the sun was shining through the blinds in dust-specked gold sheets. Indian summer. But for some reason, on this morning the sun rapidly dawned and lost its luster. Faded to a dull blue shimmer.
Amanda yawned and climbed out of bed. She looked at herself in the floor mirror. Several gunshot wounds, child fist sized holes gaped in her thin body. Sooty blood washed over mangled innards. She couldn't recall how, why, or when, but she had evidently been shot multiple times.
Her little brother played Nintendo in the room next to hers, mom whistling while making breakfast downstairs. Removing mucus from her bloodshot eyes, Amanda lit up like a flare as the familiar sounds of Ice Climber blared from Nicholas' room.
Her absolute favorite game...
Whenever its upbeat, whimsical melody was in earshot, her brain took hostage her self-control. She had to play.
Had to beat her little brother's score!
There was a knock on her door. She opened and was met by a grotesque man-monster dressed in a deep-red hotel porter suit. He was holding a hefty ice ax in his knotty hands, foul breath escaped his mouth as he spoke in a crackling voice, “You are in the wrong room, Miss Kovac. Follow me, please.”
“Huh?” Amanda said, nonplussed, chalking it up to be another one of those bizarre dreams she'd had lately. She didn't protest but simply followed the implacable bellhop the short stretch down to her brother's sloppy dwellings.
The bellhop halted outside Nicholas' door, croaking, “Please excuse the mix-up with the rooms.” The number 6676 was carved into the white gold plaque. Was that figure familiar?
The bellhop extended the ice ax to Amanda, nudged the door ajar and bid, “On behalf of t
he hotel management, we do hope you enjoy your further stay here,” tipped his little round red hat and disappeared in the now pitch black corridor.
The ax felt perfect in her hands. The soon-to-be-moment beckoned for her to make everything sensible again.
Ice Climber's whimsical upbeat melody blaring now, Amanda's lips curled back forming a deranged smile as she entered her brother's room, ice ax hidden behind her back.
Nicholas, turning his head, smiled at his sister. “Wanna play?” He offered her the second controller by throwing it on the empty seat beside him.
He had recently lost both his baby front teeth which made him look a little goofy. Amanda giggled. “Of course I do, dork.”
The closer she inched toward the TV-set, the more Ice Climber's hypnotic melody wrangled itself through her skull bone and into her brain until every other sound melted to a reassuring beehive drone.
The two-player game commenced as she pulled the ice ax from behind her back, raised it midair and brought it down in a stone-splitting swing over the back of her brother's small head; each swing crushing the 8-bit ice blocks hindering her from climbing higher.
By the time Amanda finished level nine, she and the baby-blue boy's room were glazed with blood, skull fragments, and brain tissue. In the background rang the frantic points as they were being counted on the screen.
High score.
STATEN ISLAND
PINK MOUTH WINSTROL
B arbara's tears dredged over her big black biceps reflected in the full-length mirror she stood poised before. And though her body was beyond what most people would consider normal, muscles akin to a she-hulk with rope-thick veins appearing close to rupturing, Barbara saw nothing but failure. Hence her tears. All she saw in the mirror was a fat troll with a snatch like a bloated fish caught in a neon yellow thong.