The Bridge

by John Skipp;Craig Spector

  “Umm…Dad?”

  Blake’s daydream vaporized instantly; the voice behind him made him turn. A long tall black-and-white apparition hunkered in the doorway, the weight of the world on its shoulders.

  “Not now,” Blake soundlessly mouthed, impatiently waving him off.

  The apparition was unmoved. “You plan on getting off the phone, like, ever?”

  “Hang on just a second…thanks,” Blake said pleasantly into the mouthpiece. Then he cupped it in his hand and glared venomously at his pride and joy, his progeny.

  As father and son faced off: each the other’s worst nightmare, made flesh.

  Garth Blake slouched in the doorway, angular and obtuse. He was six-foot-three and scarecrow-thin, and his presence filled the room: a tidal wave of spiked black leather, big black hair, and attitude. His ash white skin and sepulchral pucker of ebony lipstick did their best to affront and unnerve, but they could not conceal the ugly truth.

  Garth was the spitting image of Blake, Sr.

  It was a fact that appalled both of them, but for different reasons. Garth possessed the same riveting gray eyes, the same innately upturning Grinch smile. His face was as yet unsullied by time, but Garth carried a premature gravity that rendered him sullen and pained. It was tough going through life as the privileged son of such utter corruption. His T-shirt bore a black-and-white print of JFK, waving and grinning, while hot multicolored inkblood spewed explosively from his forehead. It was the single most offensive T-shirt Blake had ever seen; which explained, of course, why his son had purchased two.

  Garth loved his exploding Kennedy T-shirts. They spoke to him. Moreover, they spoke on his behalf to the world at large. Like the black dove’s foot earring dangling from his ear, the buzzwords and slogos buttoneered to his lapels: THROBBING GRISTLE; SILENCE = DEATH; THE SEX WAS BETTER IN PRISON.

  Or, most specifically, the one stenciled huge across his black leather-clad back: the word future in blood-red letters, blotted out by the chalky white circle with the diagonal slash through it, the universal negative symbol like a canceled stamp across it. It summed up Garth’s attitude toward life very nicely.

  NO FUTURE.

  That was what Garth had to look forward to, and boy was he excited. Only just sixteen, and already it was over; or, even worse, it might drag on like this for years. A lifetime of hypocrisy, followed by an ugly gray descent into middle-aged decrepitude and ultimate pain-filled oblivion.

  Just like dear old Dad.…

  Garth cringed involuntarily. “So can I use the phone now?” he inquired.

  “No!” Blake hissed the word like the first spit of poison out a gas-chamber vent. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  Garth groaned, shrugging heavily. “Aw, c’mon. Lydia’s an hour and forty-five minutes late. It’ll only take…”

  “Goddammit…!”

  Outside, a car horn sounded.

  “No problem, Dad. Thanks. You’re a real pal.” Disgust wadded like puke in his throat. He split before he got some on the rug.

  Leaving Blake, for a moment, in the grip of a genuine moral dilemma.

  Then the front door slammed, and a car engine gunned. The squeal of tires that followed relieved him of all responsibility. Jesus Christ, he thought. Maybe it’s time to start fresh, after all…

  Then he returned to the phone, and the matters at hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Scuzzbug was moving before Garth was fully seated. He liked it that way. It was more of a challenge. “HEY, DAD!” he hollered, loud as it got, out the still-open door. “SUCK MY SCROTE, YOU IMPOSTER! YOU ALIEN SCUM!”

  “I like that,” Lydia said, peeling out in a fog bank of rubber and dust. With her deep green eyes, too-wide features and sidewalled mane of bone white hair, she looked like a spookycute nineties version of those little troll dolls in the toy bins at Woolworth. “I’m sure the neighbors will, too.”

  “ADMIT THAT YOU ARE AN IMITATION PODMAN!” he continued, even louder, hanging half out the door as the car pulled a wide screeching one-eighty in the crushed stone of the drive. “ADMIT THAT YOU ATE MY REAL FATHER’S BRAIN!”

  They broke the circle, headed out for the street. “Say ‘bye now,” she said.

  “‘BYE NOW!”

  And then they were off.

  “Feeling better?” Lydia asked pleasantly.

  “You bet.”

  “I’m so pleased,” she deadpanned, slowing the Scuzzbug to a mild-mannered, law-abiding crawl the moment she hit the main road. On the street, she couldn’t afford to drive so crazily; the cops would pull her over in a second. Even without provocation, cops pulled her over from time to time, just as a matter of principle.

  Because the infamous Scuzzbug of Lydia Vickers was an act of visual terrorism on wheels. Like the woman herself, it was born to raise eyebrows and frighten the natives of Paradise. She felt quite certain that no one had ever seen its like before. She knew she certainly hadn’t.

  From the inside, it was just a beat-to-shit black VW Superbeetle, completely upholstered in leopard-skin print and festooned with weirdo stickers. Funky-cool, but not unheard of.

  The exterior, however, was something else again: covered bumper to bumper in a fetid gray-green fuzz, painful to look at and loathsome to the touch. This experiential delight came courtesy of Lydia’s day gig, where she worked on the loading docks at the Yummy Potato Chip Company in Hellam.

  It seemed that the oiled soot emanating from the Yummy Potato Chip smokestacks would drift across the parking lots, dousing every car in range with a tacky, mottled goo. Airborne particles, dust and road dirt would quickly and permanently adhere themselves, transforming any vehicle within range into a veritable scuzz magnet.

  Of course, turning her cherished Superbeetle into the ugliest car on earth certainly hadn’t been her idea. At least not at first. For a while there, it had driven her nearly insane. But after a brief, pitched, and losing battle, Lydia’d gradually come to admire it, the cultural statement it made.

  So instead of fighting the endless uphill battle of scrubbing it down three times a week, she instead reversed and assisted the process: driving through industrial areas a lot, always leaving her car exposed to the elements, never ever washing it. Etcetera, etcetera.

  And in no time: Voila!

  A legend was born.

  “So,” Garth said, staring out the immaculate windshield—along with the windows, lights, and mirrors, the only things Lydia ever cleaned—“what’s the deal? When you woke me up this morning…”

  “Afternoon,” she corrected.

  “…you sounded like it was pretty major.” His grin was huge. “So what’s the goddam story here?”

  Lydia’s poker face began to falter. “Oh, nothing…”

  “Come on!” His too-enormous smile chiseled away at her composure. She actually cackled. “WHAT?” he bellowed.

  “Okay, okay,” she relented. “Look in the back.”

  He looked. There was the usual pileup of Lydia-clothes and bizarroid lifestyle accessories. They just seemed to be piled up quite a bit higher than usual. Like they were trying to cover up something big.

  Like maybe a couple of boxes of…

  “Ooo,” Garth said, pausing just for the moment of impact. Beside him, Lydia beamed with pride. “Ooo ooo ooo!” he elaborated, sweeping the camouflage aside.

  And there they were: one thousand copies, hot off the press. One thousand little eighty-eight-page Molotov cocktails, with his and Lydia’s names all over them. Just waiting to be fired and flung.

  One thousand copies of their homemade brainchild pride ‘n’ joy.

  NO FUTURE—The Magazine of Famous Last Words.

  “TA-DAH!!!” Lydia trumpeted, exulting in their triumph.

  “God DAMN!” he echoed, pulling the first one off the stack. “Just look at this thing…!”

  But Lydia was driving, so Garth had to content himself with looking alone. And though he’d seen the original a million times, there was not
hing like seeing it mass-produced, knowing it was there for the world to experience.

  “God damn,” he repeated, almost reverent this time.

  The magazine’s cover, like the contents, was a malign collaboration—artwork by Garth, layout and pasteup by Lydia. It was a wraparound slap in the face, an unremitting motherfucker from front to back. Garth was pleased that it had printed up so well. They’d spent months honing the premiere issue to just the right aesthetic of blasphemy, melding Steadmanesque inkblotch and mutant photomontage in an ultimately neon-colorized assault on complacency and the neutral reaction.

  Beneath the schizo surf-punk masthead, the central image was simple and direct:

  There was a paunchy naked white man with an ugly pinched grin, and he was raping and killing the New Year’s baby for the banner year 2000. The man held the screaming baby’s head up by its hair while his crotch interlocked with its raw baby buttocks. In his right hand, he held a power drill. It was boring into the baby’s skull. Blood drooled from its mouth. Its sex was indeterminate and entirely beside the point.

  Behind them, a mob had assembled. They were laughing and shouting and waving signs. The faces belonged to George Bush, Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Ivan Boesky, Donald Trump, Jesse Helms, and a dozen others. They all had their pants down, waiting in line. Their signs read GO GO GO and BETTER HARDER FASTER.

  That was the front cover.

  The back cover was even better.

  It was a mirror-image mob, representing the opposition. They all had variations on the old sad-eyed black velvet face, modeled after hippie ikons Abbie Hoffman, Ralph Nader, Buckminster Fuller, The Beatles and the Kennedys (not to mention dozens of more contemporary hero-figures, from Bob Geldof to Michael and Jesse Jackson).

  Though they, too, were shouting and waving signs, not a one of them was laughing: and though all of them had their pants around their ankles as well, none of them seemed to be wanking off with any degree of success. Their signs read CUT IT OUT and THAT’S NOT NICE.

  And at the front of the sad-eyed crowd hung poor old Jesus, three-quarters crucified. He’d gotten one hand free, and it held a magnifying glass. He was trying to find his dick with it: squinting real hard, also without success.

  The little sign nailed above his head read, simply: WUSS.

  “So,” Lydia blurted, practically beside herself, “what do you think?”

  “I think,” Garth proclaimed, “that this is the most vile, repugnant, penocentric wad of indefensible swill I’ve ever seen.”

  “Me, too,” she agreed, smiling. “Don’cha just love it?”

  “You bet!” Garth said. He felt all warm and fuzzy inside.

  “Yeah,” Lydia beamed, gunning the Scuzzbug down South George Street, “if this don’t get us orphaned, nothin’ will.”

  And, of course, it was true. Taken together, it was an utterly obscene tableau, calculated to outrage and horrify even the most open-minded member of the studio audience.

  That in itself, though gratifying, was simply not enough. So Garth and Lydia had found it neccessary to go that extra mile, by adding that little personal touch.

  The face on the paunchy baby-raper belonged to Werner Blake.

  The face on the dickless Jesus was Lydia’s father, Frank.

  It was their special “Sins of the Father’s Day Salute!”

  And it was just their little way of saying thanks.

  Because Garth and Lydia were pissed, no question about it. When they said NO FUTURE, they weren’t just pulling a petulant teenage hissy-fit. They were only sixteen years old, and they knew that their civilization wouldn’t last out the century. They knew that they’d been fucked out of their birthrights by the greedheads who ran the world and, worse, the cowards who watched it all happen without lifting a finger to stop it.

  Which was where, Garth reminded himself, assholes like Lydia’s dad came in.

  It was one thing to hate men like Werner Blake. They were wholly transparent scum, and they certainly didn’t deserve to live, but at least they’d never volunteered the pretense of brotherly love or global concern.

  Guys like Frank Vickers, on the other hand, were nothing but pretense: a bunch of pathetic old ex-hippie-turned-yuppie-turned-bitter-old-lecherous-drunken liberal shmucks who, if anything, Garth and Lydia hated even more than Garth’s old man, because at least Garth’s old man could get it up once in a while.

  If there was one thing more pathetic than listening to Frank Vickers drone on about “the Sixties”—when people really cared, unlike today—Garth couldn’t for the life of him imagine what it was. These days, Frank’s idea of social responsibility was to form an “environmental action group,” which mostly consisted of other middle-aged whining pisspots like himself. They would get together and talk about political action and drafting resolutions and shit, except it always turned into an argument about who was in charge, if it even got that far. They they’d break for refreshments and wind up trashed, having accomplished nothing, playing Trivial Pursuit and talking about how the dope was better in the good old days.

  Chalk another one up for peace, love, and understanding.

  Which leaves people like us with pretty damn little to work with in the role-model department, Garth mused. Not that this is a big surprise or anything. I mean, we would have liked to believe you guys, but you’re just too utterly full of shit.

  All we want is a fucking admission of guilt. That’s all. Just to hear the truth spoken—just once—in our lifetimes. It may seem like a lot to ask, but what the hell.

  Everybody’s gotta have a dream.…

  “Hey, careful with the merchandise,” Lydia cut in, bursting the bubble of rumination. “You could put someone’s eye out with that thing!”

  “Huh?” Garth blurted, then looked at his hands. He had rolled the premiere issue of NO FUTURE into a cylinder tight enough to train puppies with. “Oh, sorry!” Garth said sheepishly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lydia replied. “Here, take out your impulses on these.”

  She handed him what looked like a roll of laminated toilet paper. “Oh wow!” Garth exclaimed, unfurling it: piece upon piece of lovely, adhesive-backed sticker paper, each square throbbing with the NO FUTURE logo.

  “No shit.” He turned to her, pleased, met the gleam in her eye. “How many did we get?”

  “A thousand, so far.” They just couldn’t stop smiling. “That’s why I’m so late. I’ve been sticking ‘em on pay phones all morning…”

  “Without ME?” he hollered, horrified.

  “Yeah, well,” she said, as the Scuzzbug rolled straight for the heart of Paradise. “That’s what we get whole lives for, they tell me.” And Garth just laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Their day, it seemed, had at long last come.

  And what a day it was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sunday, Nov. 23

  FROM THE DESK OF:

  Bernard S. Kleigel

  To the editor:

  Am I the only one who’s fed up with all the “parasites and leeches” on the Body Politic? Isn’t anyone tired of supporting lazy “Good-For-Nothings” who get fat off the fat of the land? And I’m not just referring to “Welfare Cheats” and the Socialist programs that make it possible for Mixed Races to rage Drug Wars in America’s backyards.

  No, I’m talking about the very “Public Servents” that our tax dollars are supposed to be SUPPORTING!!! That’s right, I’m talking about the people who “Operate” our 911 numbers, and the

  There was somebody at the door.

  “DAMMIT, MILLIE!” Bernie bellowed. “GET THE DOOR, FERCRISSAKES!” He couldn’t for the life of him comprehend that woman’s problem. Here he was, struggling over draft seventeen of his letter, and he couldn’t even concentrate on what he was doing, because of all that hammering on the damn front door. For God’s sake, she knew how important it was! He’d told her a million times: if you complained loudly enough, eventually they had to listen!


  No question about it. It had to be kids. From his perspective—stuck in the paper-cluttered corner of the basement he called his office—it was a distant, persistent tattoo of thudlike sound. He had half a mind to march up there and sue their parents, but God did he ever have a headache! And he had to finish this letter. Strike while the iron was hot.

  our 911 numbers, and the so-called “Peace Officers” who are supposed to protect us!

  Today, my son and I were NEARLY KILLED by teenage hoodlums (I can only assume they were involved in “Illegal Drug Activity,” which is just a fancy name for plain old dope dealing!). That in itself was “bad enough”! But it was nothing compared to the treatment I got from the “Friendly People” HAH!!!) at 911

  “GOD DAMN IT!”

  Now they were stomping around up there, and he could definitely hear laughter, high-pitched and giddy. Who the hell were these kids? They sure weren’t friends of Billy’s; so far as he knew, Billy didn’t have any friends. It just didn’t make any sense…

  Then Millie screamed.

  And Billy screamed.

  And Bernard S. Kleigel, the Conscience of a Nation, just sat there: paralyzed, sweating, with a hammer for a heart.

  “No,” he whimpered, as the footsteps thundered down the hallway: Millie’s in the lead, two other sets in hot pursuit. Billy’s persistent screams moved with her. Bernie could picture his son in her arms as she ran, crying out as well.

  Crying out for him…

  But there was nothing he could do. She had to understand that. She had to understand that he was helpless, that he had no choice, that he absolutely could not move, he had spent his whole life imagining the worst and now that it was here, he was completely unprepared for it.

  “Please,” he whined, as if it would help. As if he were tapped into some cosmic 911 line, relaying his message directly to God for immediate customer satisfaction. As if he could wish his cares away.