Squid Pulp Blues

by Jordan Krall

  The teenager smiled, revealing a bright overbite. “Yes, very.”

  “No thanks, no masks.” Tommy handed over the cash and took the tickets.

  As they walked away, he heard the ticket seller mocking them, speaking in a faux-Spanish accent, “Masks? We don’t need no stinkin’ masks!”

  Tommy and Jake stepped into the theatre but not without taking one last look out onto the street to see if anything looked amiss. From what they saw, the Thompson night was close to a normal one.

  The theatre lobby was large; it reminded Tommy of a church foyer, albeit one with movie posters and a floor sprinkled with popcorn. He stepped up to the snack bar and turned to Jake. “Want something? I got a few dollars left.”

  “Just popcorn, I guess.”

  The girl behind the counter had both her hands in the popcorn machine. She was making hand-washing motions, sticking her arms deep into the popcorn. Tommy caught her eyes. “Can I have large popcorn, please?”

  She looked at him, eyes grey and blank. “We have no popcorn.”

  Jake and Tommy looked at each other. “What’re talking about? There’s popcorn right there!” Jake pointed.

  “We have no popcorn, sir.” She continued washing her hands with the warm kernels.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jake’s voice echoed through the lobby. Tommy grabbed his arm.

  “Let’s just go into the movie. Forget about it.”

  Jake slammed his knuckles into the popcorn machine and pointed to it with his middle finger. “Crazy bitch.”

  He followed Tommy towards the theatre. As they walked, something caught Tommy’s eye. A small group of men walked past them and made their way to a small hallway off to the side where only the employees were allowed.

  “Oh, shit, I forgot about this place.” Tommy gestured toward the men. “Totally forgot. This place is fucking loaded.”

  He led Jake toward the hallway and heard the popcorn girl shout.

  “You can’t go in there, sir.”

  Tommy held his hand up. “Really?” He kept walking. Once they got to the door, they could hear the low thump of music, like a rapid heartbeat through the walls.

  “What the fuck’s in here?” Jake asked.

  “Gambling. Been here once, years ago with Joe Gurney. It’s pretty wild.”

  He opened the door and walked slowly in, cigarette smoke confronting them like a cloud. Through the smoke, they saw five tables set up in a circle each with a different casino game being played. In the middle of the circle was a small stage where tall, skinny women gyrated. All of the dancers were dressed in cowgirl outfits and wore Barbara Stanwyck masks, obviously the same ones that Jake and Tommy passed up at the ticket booth.

  The music was a noisy cacophony of metallic clanging and bowel-churning bass. A syrupy voice oozed out of the speakers. “It’s the smiles that keep us going, don’t you think?”

  “Neat place,” Jake said sarcastically.

  “It’s actually not that bad. Let’s have a seat.” As soon as he started walking, a short man dressed in a tuxedo approached them.

  “You don’t belong here, assholes.”

  Tommy smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve been here before.”

  “I’ve never seen you, so get the hell outta here. Hit the bricks.” He stuck a thumb out and made a backwards motion with it.

  Jake took a step back. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving.” He walked out the door and realized that Tommy wasn’t following him but instead was looking past the short man over to the stage where a new dance was starting. The women took off their masks and began rolling around on the ground like worms. As they writhed, they violently caressed their exposed breasts.

  “Tommy, come on!” Jake was relieved when he finally saw his partner turn around and walk in his direction.

  They walked past the popcorn girl who was now smearing a melted chocolate bar on her hands. “I told you. You can’t go in there,” she said, not looking up from her hands.

  Tommy and Jake ignored her and went into their theatre. As soon as they walked in, they were shocked by how cold it was. Though it was freezing outside, there was no heat in the theatre. Goosebumps appeared immediately on their skin even under their coats.

  “Fucking cold as hell, man.” Jake stated the obvious and Tommy just nodded, looking at the screen as Barbara Stanwyck smiled. The film flickered for a moment and between Stanwyck’s lips, Tommy saw the shape of a longhead as if it was climbing out of her throat. It morphed into something that looked like a furry inkblot with four legs.

  Barbara’s forehead was a huge, blank slate on which Tommy envisioned a plethora of grotesque geometric shapes that moved with every utterance of dialogue.

  Jake tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get a seat with a good view of the door.” He started walking to the corner of the room, where they could see the entrance easily and have a clear path to the emergency exit.

  Tommy was still looking at the screen, entranced, as if Barbara Stanwyck herself was performing a bizarre point-of-view seduction for him and him only. She licked her lips. She touched her forehead, forcing the kaleidoscopic forms into a whirlpool of silent violence.

  Jake slapped him on the back of the head. “Tommy! What’re you doing?”

  “I don’t think I wanna stay here,” Tommy put his hands up to his face. “Let’s just go.” He turned around and headed out of the theatre.

  Jake followed him out and they walked past the snack bar attendant who was picking her nose with her wet, brown index finger.

  “Tommy, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m just really fucking confused right now.”

  “About what?”

  They reached the door to go outside. Jake looked out and noticed that there were more people than he expected there to be considering the weather and the near certainty of frostbite and car accidents. Thompson wasn’t exactly a substantial metropolitan city. It was caught in a limbo that was not uncommon in New Jersey. Too small to really be called a city, but too impersonal and urbanized to be called a town. Suburban streets were cut in half by strip malls, factories, and the occasional run-down park.

  As soon as Tommy opened the door, a gust of wind combined with a wall of frosty daggers attacked their faces. Jake closed his eyes and for a split second imagined that he was in a sandstorm, lugging his body through a desert as if his brain was simply a corpse-mover, delivering flesh and bone to a destination that was clear across the treacherous landscape.

  Tommy walked out and then leaned against a parking meter. He coughed and looked at the sky. White streaks were now flashing across the pinkish hue beyond the hill. Through the noise of voices and car engines, he heard the almost-subliminal sound of the factory down the street. The rumbling ambience made him mindful of the fact that he indeed could be in much danger and that he was only a fragile sentient form standing in the cold, waiting for something that was beyond his present knowledge.

  Jake put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, shaking him out of his quasi-meditative state. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They walked back to the car. Nearby, a longhead wearing a Barbara Stanwyck mask was sitting on the roof of a 1966 Plymouth Barracuda. He held a match in his right hand and staring straight ahead, he made it disappear and appear over and over, performing wintry sleight-of-hand for an audience of snow flakes and car-exhaust-stained slush.

  Chapter 7

  Several blocks from where Tommy and Jake were getting into their car, a woman was answering a quiet knock at her door. Dressed in a robe under which she wore a brand new negligee, the woman looked through the peephole and saw that it was her lover, Willie Packard.

  She opened the door and ushered him in. “My husband will be out all night. He’s working a double,” said Mrs. Sara McMadigan.

  Willie planted a short but wet kiss on her lips. “I still feel weird, though, doing it in your house. Why couldn’t we stay at my place?”

  “Because it’s too cold and I didn’t feel like go
ing out. You wouldn’t want your little sweetie to get sick, would you?” Mrs. McMadigan wrapped her arms around Willie and returned his kiss.

  Sara had met Willie when she was a secretary for Dynatox Industries. He had been a fisherman for most of his life but when his wife went missing (she was believed to be abducted by either squid or octopi), he gave it up to work with computers. As soon as they met, there was an obvious mental-sexual connection and the affair began when he bought her a lunch of tuna salad and oysters. They’ve been screwing ever since.

  Sara and Willie walked together into the living room and sat on the couch. Sara had set down two glasses of scotch. Willie grabbed one glass, handed it to her, and went to pick his up. When he did so, he glanced up out the window and saw something in the window of the neighbor’s house. He dropped his glass and the scotch spurted out of it all at once, silently splattering the carpet.

  “Shit! Sorry!” Willie looked around for a napkin.

  Sara giggled. “Don’t you worry about it. I don’t mind stains on the carpet. They remind me of blood, makes me remember when I was a teenager.”

  Willie made a face. “What do you mean? Why?”

  “You know I used to work on a boat, helping bring the squid in. Almost every day someone would cut themselves open because they weren’t paying attention, just slicing open the suckers and their own hand in the process. The floor of the boat had splotch after splotch of blood and squid guts or whatever it is that squids have inside of ‘em. I remember this one sleazy guy who used to always try to get me to bend over in front of him. Ray! That’s what his name was. Anyway, one time he cut his hand open and there was this HUGE blood stain on the floor of the boat.” Sara took out a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. She took three drags before she began talking again.

  “Well, he went right ahead and took out this turtle shell and started draining his blood in there. Then he went around asking us if we wanted our fortunes told. I couldn’t help noticing, too, that all the while he’s doing this, he has the biggest erection I’d ever seen.”

  “He was naked?” Willie laughed.

  “No, no, he was wearing pants but you couldn’t miss it, I’m telling you. After that, I just didn’t mind stains all that much. If I spill some juice or some wine on the carpet, I just stare at it and try to see my future or someone else’s.”

  Willie pointed to the stain. “Well, what do you see here?” He kissed her neck. Sara tilted her head and looked at the carpet.

  “That’s fucking weird.”

  “What?”

  “I just thought of my old neighbor from when I was growing up in Brooklyn. I haven’t thought of her in years. Barbara something. God, she was like a big sister to me.” She got down on her knees and put her face closer to the stain which was now fading, sinking deeper into the carpet fibers. “Yeah, I can almost see her face, her nose especially, she had a big nose.”

  Willie looked down at Sara and then out the window again. The person he saw in the house next door was still there, standing on some sort of stool, waving a flag. While his married lover inspected her stain, Willie got up closer to the window. At that distance he could see that it was a longhead dressed in a Viking costume. Willie couldn’t see what sort of flag was being waved but he could see that it was being moved with fervor and passion as if the man on the stool was actually marching in a parade and not standing in his room alone.

  “Honey, come look at this,” he said. Sara was still on her knees.

  Wait, I see something else, I think. There’re some dog hairs in the carpet and they’re adding shapes to Barbara’s face. Come here, Willie, I want to know if you can see it, too.” She put her cigarette out in a squid-shaped ashtray.

  Willie stared at the longhead for another few seconds and then walked back to Sara. “That guy Ray really did a number on you, huh? Having you stare at carpet stains. Shit.”

  “Oh, who cares? Just come down here and look at this.”

  Willie grabbed the bottom of Sara’s negligee and pulled it up. “I’d rather look at THIS.” He caressed the backs of her thighs. Sara stiffened and turned over. Willie fell into her and they made love on top of the Barbara-stain.

  Afterwards, they leaned against the couch, smoking. Sara nuzzled into Willie’s neck. She pointed to the piano. “Can you play something for me?”

  “Sure can, honeybunch. What would you like to hear?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. I love anything you play.”

  Willie got up and sat on the piano bench. “You make a wonderful audience, you know that?” He smiled, cracked his knuckles, and took a fake bow. “Ladies and gentlemen! Mr. William Henry Packard!”

  Sara giggled and lay on her stomach facing Willie who was sitting naked in front of the piano.

  Willie started pounding on the keys, his face contorted into humorous expressions. Then his face faded into seriousness.

  The piano made no sound.

  “What the hell is this?” He turned to her. “Sara, what happened to the piano?”

  “Nothing, no one uses it but you. It hasn’t been played since the last time you tried teaching me how to play.”

  Willie got up from the bench and opened the piano. He nearly fell backward when he saw that the inside of the piano was filled with long, wet strips of pasta. “Jesus Christ!”

  “What?” Sara took a look inside. “Oh my God!” She fainted and fell sideways, hitting her head on the coffee table, dying instantly. Blood oozed out of her skull, covering the scotch stain with a fresh one.

  Willie’s eyes bugged out of his head in shock and horror. “Sara? Sara?” After checking for a pulse and finding no signs of life, he quickly got dressed. As he scurried out of the apartment he took one more look out the window. Willie thought he saw the longhead pointing and laughing at Willie though he wasn’t so sure he was willing to trust his own eyes.

  Before closing the apartment door, he saw Sara’s new stain on the rug and thought that it looked a lot like a turtle shell.

  Chapter 8

  “Stupid cop.” Peachy shook his head, still thinking about McMadigan but not necessarily regretting what he had done. The detective had made a pastime of screwing around with ex-cons and Peachy was fed up with having to supply the cop with impromptu urine and stool samples at the drop of a hat. That’s the last fucking time I take a shit for that asshole.

  The car moved slowly down the street, windshield wipers barely moving fast enough to keep up with the snowflake assault. Peachy looked out the passenger window as he drove and his eyes caught the movie theatre marquee.

  “Hey, watch out!” a voice called out just in time for Peachy to see five teenagers in the road with snowballs in their hands. He swerved to the left, sending the car straight into an empty fruit cart that sat in front of the Thompson Produce Shop.

  Shards of wood and snow piles flew off of the cart as he hit the brakes. The car skidded and then stopped, hitting a brick wall. “Christ almighty,” Peachy said, stepping out of his car, praising every god that he could think of that he was wearing his seatbelt. He took a step out and yelled a few half-hearted curses to the kids who returned the sentiment. If there was one thing he had a soft spot for, it was kids. Ah, to be young and carefree. Lucky little bastards.

  Then Peachy saw the body.

  A middle-aged man dressed in a tattered suit and a long beard lay against the wall. He had been sleeping in the fruit cart and was killed on impact when the car hit. “Oh, you must be fuckin’ kiddin’ me!” Peachy looked around and saw people walking over to him to see if he was okay. He quickly grabbed hold of the body and dragged it a few feet away and covered it with the pieces of the cart.

  “Are you alright?” one voice shouted. Peachy ignored him and went back to his car. He dug out his gun and then jogged down the street.

  “I’m calling the cops!” another voice yelled.

  Peachy kept going until he saw Scooter’s Go-Go-Rama. He hadn’t been in there since before being locked up and he
was getting erotic stirrings despite the stress of the evening.

  His stomach rumbled so clinched his ass cheeks, knowing what to expect. A wet squeak escaped followed by a spurt of liquid shit. Should of brought an extra fucking diaper, he thought. He walked down the alley next to the go-go bar and started to take down his pants when he saw the body.

  At first his mind didn’t register it as a body because he saw the comic first. The drawings were so vivid, so bold, that Peachy couldn’t help but respect it as a piece of art and not just magic marker scribbling on the back of a corpse.

  Pants down to his knees, his dirty diaper drooping with the weight of diarrhea, Peachy read the comic strip three times. He was no fan of comic strips, comic books, or art in general but this adventure of Fauntleroy LeRoux entranced him with a bittersweet vertigo. His head swam in an increasingly psychotic state, his brain cells screaming the apocalyptic hymns of Little Bing Bong.

  Down the alley, a group of longheads watched intently. One of them grunted and Peachy looked at them. They laughed and continued pissing into empty wine bottles. Deep yellow urine filled each and every one. When the last longhead was done, they muttered words that Peachy could not hear and then as quick as it takes for one’s eye to register a snowflake falling to the ground, the urine in the bottles became deep red wine.

  The longheads proceeded to get drunk while Peachy pulled up his pants, half mad with visions of jack-ass eschatology. He ran onto the sidewalk and then across the street, stumbling to the ticket booth of the movie theatre. The words Barbara Stanwyck Film Festival swirled off of the marquee and into his brain. He didn’t know what Stanwyck looked like but he sensed her as if she was a long-lost lover who was present in spirit only.

  “How many tickets?” the teenage ticket seller asked. He gave a face, seeing the diaper sticking out of the top of Peachy’s pants.

  “I don’t know…what are you….unveiling tonight?” Peachy slurred his speech and felt the sudden urge to wag his tail that is, if he possessed one.