The Freewayfayers' Book of the Dead

by John Okas

  A Microwave Prick

  Re-made in fresh, empire-size white linens, the customized bed, master-built by Hudson Homer, looks like an altar to Sarah. She opens her black science books, lights some candles, rings her bells, and throws herself necromantically, dramatically, unconditionally, on the soft mattress which issues its strong exudations of life and death through the new covers. She offers herself to the dogs of the inner springs as sacrifice.

  Benji, Benny, Buffy, Scout,

  it should have been me without a doubt.

  Her doggerel couplet prayers and her sirening are muffled by the pillows, but she spells out her message loud and clear using reverse psychology and alluring body language. Hoping for the buck’s second coming, she pulls up her sleek black satin night dress, holds her sweet valley high and waves it like a white flag, pointing to herself here and there with her polished fingernails, her breath coming as a soft high whistle.

  She tries to be rescued, or to have her surrender accepted so she can be reunited with the risen Corn Dog. Whereas every previous night she has run out of doggerel and fallen asleep in despair, tonight, on the longest night of the year, the first in her new house, she receives a response that extends her ears beyond terrestrial stations. Either she’s gone completely mad or something is coming in! There’s a tingle in her inner ear that stiffens her knob of woman-flesh.

  “aaaaaahhhhhhoooooowwwwwwllllll!!!!!!”

  The second time it’s unmistakable. Dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl … that’s the pack she hears, hell’s kennel at bay. She raises her head, opens her eyes, and listens: there is something beyond her imagination and it is getting louder and closer.

  “aaaaaahhhhhhoooooowwwwwwllllll!!!!!!”

  Yes! Yes! Yes! She buries her head again in the pillows, feathery soft sea of musty down, shakes her moon with all her might and calls with renewed eagerness.

  Rusty, Dusty, Clootie, Puck,

  let the dead dog stand for a living fuck!

  Micky, Ricky, Golden Retriever,

  come on, go bang in my wide open beaver!

  “Toooooooot-tweet! Tooooooooot-tweet.”

  “aaaaahhhhhhoooooowwwwwwllllll!!!!!!”

  A rush of hot wind parts the bed’s curtains and there is a definite whiff of something besides the scent of life and death on the mattress and pillows. The text of many an old-time religion asks you to believe what you read over what you can see or touch, but when it comes to worship the testimony of smell is incontrovertible. The signature of her Lord and Master is a strong, hot, peppery bass note, and a bouquet of burnt sage. Heaven-scent in her mind, firearms, frankincense, and brimstone burn in her nostrils. It traces back to the days of her youth when she sang in the Service of the Lord in the Shibbolite Temple, and would get a noseful, and what all else, of the Heavenly Father. She knows she can take the divine thrust in deeply, with all her body and soul. There is no question of yes or no. It would be like telling lightning not to strike.

  “Holy gee! Come and get me!”

  And does it ever! Suddenly the bed is struck by a ball of clear white lightning. It spins counter- clockwise, luminous, numinous, pulsating, godlike-brilliant, diamond-pure. Sarah tries to look but must bury her head in the pillows to keep from being blinded. Behind her back the light refracts into a spectrum of fire. Above and below the range of ordinary heat and light, this glow has spectral extremities, fingers of fire and ice so cold it feels hot, all aglow with supernal violets and infernal reds. Eyes closed, head buried, Sarah cannot see those intemperate bands of red and purple-blue passion descending on her, like jets from a gas grill, yet she feels the waves of power, hot as hell, washing over her, broiling her back from nape to calf. They scorch her, but already humping mad, she roasts in ecstasy, whimpering hysterical cries that tell no difference between hot and cold, pleasure and pain, between what is in her mind and what is on her back. Then, in those ardent surges she feels a body: a man of sorts who has weight and strong arms, enough to reach out of the curl and hold her face down in the pillows, so there is no chance of her turning to see that which would only burn her eyes anyway. She looks forward to death by fire, but on contact with her the turbulent hot stuff on the air cools, calms, and collects into something deeply and clearly tangible.

  She feels a fleshy chest, covered by a fuzz that feels like animal hair, slide up and down her back; and it seems to soothe the burn it just inflicted. Hands caress her hair, her neck, her arms, her sides, her breasts, her back, and her legs, and there are still fingers left to go for her insides. She revels in the masterfulness of the hold on her. Her prayers are half-answered. The dogs have brought her a bone from the dead, but it is not her Cornie. Not something she can direct as she did the shy, inexperienced underdog, this presence is forceful, like the leader of the pack. And while the tender young buck was all smooth skin and pretty face, as beautiful as beautiful boys come, this—she cannot see it but she can feel the face upon her—has a beastliness to it. A wet snout smells her hair, and snuffles around her neck. The feel of coarse whiskers makes her twist and turn, to scrape herself for pleasure. There is a slavering mouth, full of snaggly teeth. It snorts like a pig, buzzes in her ears, and licks her burning shoulders. Its breath, hot as brimstone, should be offensive, but she finds its foulness fair, as a goat’s breath when he has been nibbling on the sage brush. She responds with her own greedy grunting and finds herself melting in the force field of cosmic spice and the strength of the husk that holds her. Her downy peach flesh dissolves to a runny liquid, spilling and spewing, feeling alive for the first time in months.

  Now a rod, hot and red, comes swelling from the low end of the spectrum, a microwave prick. The hot pole pushes against her, dwarfing her own upright tissue, and powders her puss with a foreplay smoke that makes her lips swell and open wide to the power of kingdom-come. The presence penetrates the model’s cold heart of darkness, strokes her, up and down, in and out, until it bursts into a broadcast of waves of purple grain inside her. Nothing ever hurt so good.

  After the climax, the white goddess has lost her marble. She sidles with delight and doesn’t want the visitation to end. She knows what to say to keep the ball rolling.

  Bowie, Wowie, Yahweh, Zahweh,

  lead me down your primrose pathway.

  “Toooooooot! Tweeeeet!”

  The body on the air answers with another breaker, a stormy surge of furry lightning; and the frothy ultraviolet coat rolls in on her again. She foams at the crotch with the fury of the spirit and screams into her pillow. Her whistles, her delighted bawling, her cries of pain and pleasure, the bouncing on the bed’s springs, are muffled by the bed curtains and the thick walls of that old house, yet both Harry and Laudette lie awake with the feeling that there is something more rotten in the Apple than there was in the City by the Bay. Only Gloria who dreams all day while she is awake sleeps like a baby at the bosom of mother night.

  It is not until the hour that the wolves come home, when the split pea drops off, moaning and shivering, in a pool of cold sweat that the mystery caller, his ultraviolet and infrared lights flickering, makes like an outgoing tide, and ebbs.

  The Blankouts

  You can’t receive a high power transmission on equipment that’s only made to handle the slow poke of meat and not do some damage to the receiver.

  In the morning the good looker looks like hell. She comes down late to breakfast, red-eyed, limp-lidded, her sleekest nightgown crinkled, torn fore and aft, and,—could it be?—singed in places. It’s a rare occasion when Sarah lets anyone, even little Gloria, see her without the lightening of her cosmetics. This is one of them. Nothing, however, could smooth over the change in her complexion from marble to maraschino. The pale, juiceless peaches and watered-down cream of the past several months are gone. Her cheeks have turned a lusty, rusty apple red; her lips are stoned, red and wrinkled, like a pair of preserved cherries. And most shocking, her hair, normally combed slick and well-behaved, is as tangled as a mess of vipers. The luster o
f the goddess crown is lost overnight, gone to a grey dullness. No longer shining like filaments of a soft and smooth white rare metal, it has the common frays and frizzies of cheap aluminum wire.

  Sarah doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes have a faraway look, a fervent rapture of mystic exaltation. She walks slowly through the doorway into the dining room, as if she were out of touch with the floor, then stops for no apparent reason with a senseless grin on her face. It becomes clear to her husband, baby, and sitter that her bloodshot eyes can’t see the shock in theirs.

  Glory Bee rolls her own, Mummy is so strange.

  Harry groans to himself, why did this have to happen to me?

  They both have the good sense to leave the problem in the hands of the well-versed nurse Miss Lord. Laudette approaches Sarah, waves her hand in front of her, up and down, back and forth. No response.

  “Gangway! Let Sugar sit down and have some breakfast.” Laudette leads her to the table, but cannot make her eat the eggs and toast she offers. The morning-after Sarah sits with both arms crossed in front of her coffee until it gets cold; she shivers and stares blankly, settling deeper into her daydream.

  The playboy is uneasy seeing his Cupcake looking so mad, under the weather, and unattractive. He can’t take it for very long and offers his hand and the promise of an Xmas shopping expedition to Gloria. “What do you say, Gee Bee, want to see what this city has in store, maybe watch the ice skaters in the rink, try a spin or two ourselves?”

  “I’m with you, Daddy-o. Bye, Mummy. Bye, Lawdy.”

  Woman to woman, Laudette puts a heavy arm around Sarah’s shoulder, and pulls her close. “Praying to the devil is not going to change what happened to Mister Corn Dog. Remember, I know what’s bothering you; you know you can always talk to old Laudette about it.”

  Abruptly the day begins to dawn on Sarah. A crazed look replaces the dazed one. She comes back from the dark side of the moon and turns sunny side up. “Well, good morning, Miss Lord. Oh, and don’t these eggs look delicious! Mmm. I need a big breakfast. Today I’m going to start putting the rest of this house in order.”

  Laudette hears the notes of frenzy in her voice.

  “Now you’re chirping like a bird, cheerful. But I’m not convinced, Sugar. Jeepers creepers! Where did you get those red cheeks? Honestly, you look as if you slept on the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “One morning I don’t feel like getting dressed and putting on my makeup and you have to make a big fuss about it? I can’t remember when I’ve had a better night’s sleep.”

  Laudette holds a compact mirror up to the model. “Take a look, Sugaree … well, is that what you call the effects of a good night’s sleep? And what’s this rash on your neck and down your back? I declare it looks like sunburn!” Sniff. “And what’s this funny smell on you?”

  Of course, Sarah would prefer not to face herself this morning in the mirror. What the rest of the world sees in her has always interested her too much, but in the aftermath of the unusual experience she has had, the thrills of having whatever- it-was in bed with her last night, it’s easy for her not to be too uneasy about the way she looks. She sees what Laudette is talking about, though: her hair is horrible, her eyes and cheeks are reddened with inflamed capillaries. “Nothing a little powder and a trip to the salon can’t cure,” she says. “I’m married now. I don’t always have to look perfect, do I?”

  “And don’t you remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “You just had a blankout! I swear they’re getting worse! Why, right now you seem straight as five to nine, talking to me, but just a minute ago you were further out of your bean than you were at the wedding: you came down and stood in that doorway not showing any daylights at all, grinning like a zombie, as if you were having some kind of hellucination. You only did just come back to life. I’ll bet you don’t even remember seeing Sir Harry and Miss Gloria, do you?”

  “Back to life? Blankouts? Harry and Gloria? Why of course I remember them! Whatever nonsense are you talking about?”

  In contrary Sarah’s case, every understanding has an equal and opposite urge to deny. Her way of braving the darkness is both extremes, either a depressive, repressive stare, blissfully mindless, or a period of frantic, self-deluding liveliness. A moment ago she was flotsom on the river of oblivion, now she is suddenly, painfully conscious of being the one accountable for a host of horrible sins.

  Whatever possessed me to take toads to bed and deny my prince? Was that really me doing tricks for heels while my sweet ear of Corn was waiting in the Bay Area? And how faithless I remain! Even in my act of faith to him I am unfaithful! Not only have I betrayed him in life but, last night, in death as well.

  She remembers last night, how she gave herself, openly and eagerly. She is not so far gone from reason that she can’t put one and one together: she knows that it was her prayers to the dogs and that extraordinary bed which brought on the searing blow. She knows there’s no use trying to control her urge to go upstairs and pray for it to happen again. Blacklisted by the Shibbolites as well as the ladies who lunch, she now goes on her own worst enemies list, right under her father and the Lord in Heaven. Self-knowledge hurts. Her mood blackens with thoughts of her inner ugliness, and she condemns herself back into the darkness. She dwells on that bristly muzzle that nuzzled her ears, the sharp teeth on her neck, the strength of the beast, his smell of smoky sage and brimstone. She thinks about being spiked by the incandescent transcendental hot rod. When he struck like lightning, she got wet as rain.

  Shame on her, she knows it’s not her brave Corn Dog and that she deserves the fires of hell. And at the same time, heading to hell anyway, she is overcome with the urge to bend over forwards and backwards, using whatever charm she has to get the bustle from beyond again. The day has hardly begun, and she is oozing with the itch to be punctuated by the animal point.

  The pea must split in order to come to grips with the opposing directions of her destiny. She does not want to know herself when she cups her mouth with coffee and whispers, calling all dogs, calling all dogs …

  Lassie, Laddie, Lucky, Star,

  come on, you monkey man, wherever you are!

  The little trill she adds ripples the surface of the coffee in her cup. “I feel like putting my feet up again for a little while, Miss Lord. I guess that long train ride wore me out more than I thought.”

  “Sugar, don’t fade out again. You’ve got to face your problems. I’m here to help you.”

  On-again, off-again, Sarah misreads Miss Lord. She takes the sitter up on her offer. “Help? Oh, why, thank you, Miss Lord,” she says, with a faraway look in her eyes, talking quickly, as if she knows she hasn’t long to say what she has to. “I know I can always count on you. We’re going to have to see about cleaning and fixing this place up. Though we don’t want to change its essential old-fashionedness now, do we? Of course not. Even Harry agrees. But we will need all the electricians and plumbers we can get. We should have the telephone installed first, shouldn’t we, so that we can call for what we need, fixers to fix what needs fixing, cleaners to clean what needs cleaning, painters to paint what needs painting, and so forth. I’ll be upstairs resting in my room. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to answer as you think I should.”

  The baby-sitter savors the vote of confidence but does not like the sound of the first person plural in the subject of general contracting. Just when she thought that her job, sitting for queen-to-be Gloria, so agreeably self-sufficient and nicely bonding to her stepfather, would be a cake walk! The thought of the new office, the responsibility for all those home repairs, handling all that money, having to sort out estimates, contracts, and bills, makes Laudette so nervous that she needs to eat before she can refuse her employer’s nomination. Emergency! She puts six slices of crispy bacon on a piece of buttered toast, tops it with a bed of scrambled eggs and katsup, bolts it in two shakes, then a big gulp of milk. She eats fast, but not fast enough to catch the fading Sarah. When the
big sitter feels nourished enough to turn down the job, the boss is unhinged, blank as a wet slate, and making her way, dreamily adrift off shore of this ordinary physical plane, toward the stairs that lead up to her new bed and the other world she found in it.

  A Monkey On Her Back

  Singeing notwithstanding, the hairy thing is heaven to hold and hell to let go of. Whether gone today, depressed, or here tomorrow, raving and frivolous, waxing effusive in an attempt to escape herself, Sarah settles down to naps morning, noon, and night; chances to dream of creamy purple hazings. While she calls the pack of hellhounds on her tail to fetch their leader to her bed, she leaves the sensible Miss Lord locked in her place, suffering the pains and aggravations of finding qualified workmen who do quality work for an equitable price, and her husband to bed in the workshop alone, and her daughter entirely in their hands.

  While no actual drugs are involved Sarah has become a user. It is as if there were a well of sea water on the second story and she were habitually thirsty from drinking from it. The more she drinks, the drier she gets. As often as possible she goes to the dogs, commanding them to get her a fix of the bright lights and scorching heat, the soothing rub of the hairy chest, the smell of sulfur and sage, and best of all, the hot prod, and there, without fail, at the crack of doom comes the peppery spice that seems like paradise.

  The fix breaks her fall into the abyss, but has no staying power to help her forget. The burden of her accountability for betraying Corn Dog, first in body and now in soul, temporarily fades from her mind. She can touch herself, and feel all atingle, great to be alive, glad to be a woman, but memories of the days she spent with the gentle underdog creep back, and she feels the burning pain of the horrible rash she’s developed.