“I will. Thank you so very much.”
“Where’s the genius now?”
“Sleeping on the floor. He cut up a star-shaped section of the carpet and says that sleeping in the star-shape section of the carpet gives him awesome, mental powers. Drac tells me, via telepathy, that therapy will be the new religion of the world. That in the future all shall bow down to therapy.”
“I think he’s a Satanist.”
“Even better.”
“I’m going home now. I’m hungry.”
“Drac says that you and I will be this religion’s new commanders. And that we will roam the earth converting the lame.”
“Who’s doing what now?”
“Drac also says that you can eat whatever he has in the refrigerator.”
“Like what?”
“Strawberry ice cream.”
“Then it is settled. Before I leave, I will eat his cream. Would you want to dine with me?”
“Yessm. I would.”
I stroll into the kitchen, hands held out before me just in case I walk into something scary. I can hear Joann walking back into the room and closing the door. I was hoping she’d eat with me. Hoping she’d want my company. Booo! Forget her. Just eat your strawberry ice cream and leave. Beat it. Scram.
Darkness.
I open what I feel is the freezer and dig around. It’s hot inside. Sweat is falling into my eyes. Something smells bad. My fingers dig into something soft. It feels like a face of some kind, except there’s a long, tube-like front. I feel sharp, tiny teeth…two eyes.
Is this some kind of saved-to-be-eaten-later, freakish, pig head that you can buy in China Town?
I quietly close the freezer and instinctively lick my fingertips.
Stupid.
It tastes like so many open sores.
I throw up a little in my mouth with short gags and bring my hands to my throat and make surprising chirping sounds.
Unable to find the kitchen sink, I make a go for the bathroom, banging into walls.
I turn on the faucet and drink handfuls of water, washing down the sick.
Visions of my mum boiling chicken’s feet in a bubbling pot, reeking up the whole house – the stink creeping up my nostrils while I sleep, giving me nightmares. That awful stink! Why did I go into the kitchen to see what was inside that pot? Why did I do it? Why did I look, when I already knew what it was?
I sleep on the freezing floor as a baby would, sucking my thumb…and close my legs.
“Bottlenose Connection”
THE SUN BEATING against my eyes. The sound of an obese jet, struggling from high above. I open my eyes and they hurt as if on fire. I reach up and grab the toilet, pulling myself up. Children are playing outside. They sound so joyous. I look out the window, but don’t see any kids. What I do see is an elderly, white woman with witch-like, stringy hair, speeding in a motorized wheelchair, chased by an exhausted policewoman who runs with her hands on her jingling belt.
I close the bathroom curtains for no reason and walk out into the hallway. The walls are painted black. At the end of the hallway, on the back wall, is drawn a giant red lightning bolt. Was all this here before? How could I have not noticed this odd detail? Do I need glasses that bad? Yes. Yes, I do.
I search the place, but find no sign of Drac or Joann.
The television doesn’t work.
I decide to raid his food, in anger and jealousy.
I open the freezer and fall back.
“GAG!”
There’s a dolphin’s head, between a box of frozen pizza and 5 bottles of water. The head is wrapped in cellophane – its teeth bared.
I poke at it with my pinky.
Nothing.
I think it’s safe to assume that it’s dead.
I feel my belly scolding me again, so I decide to lay off the food until noon. Maybe all I need is a little air. As I make my way through the living room, toward the balcony, I happen to glance down the hallway and this time notice something new.
A door near the back – painted black like the walls – that’s covered by a clear, thick plastic. I bring the cigarette box to my lips and bite out a stick. I’m not going to light it. I’m trying to quit (sometimes I wonder if all I have is some kind of weird, mouth fixation).
I walk to the covered door carefully, as if expecting something hideous to jump out and impregnate me.
A soft breeze whistles down the hallway, rustles the folds of plastic.
I play with the cig in my mouth – tonguing it to the other side – and open the door.
The stink SLAPS me on the nose and I gag. It is the heavy perfume of what I can only describe as the inside of someone’s mouth.
The room is quite large – even larger than the living room. The floor and walls are white, but covered in the same thick, clear plastic. There’s a lone window, looking out into the blue sky, also covered by plastic. Birds fly by, singing. In the middle of the room is the open corpse of a dolphin, on a plastic-covered table.
There’s a rather cartoon-sized butcher’s knife in its back.
I bring my right arm up and bury my face in the inside of my elbow.
I step on things: Bloodstained boxes with the handwritten words Aloha Happy Meat on them. Some boxes are sealed and addressed to India and Canada and Israel and France and Alaska and the Philippines. How are these boxes going to be shipped? Everything gets checked everywhere nowadays after 9/11. You can’t use the bathroom at McDonalds without being searched by a grinning security guard with a tattoo of a nude George W. Bush Jr. on her thick neck.
On bar stools, I see 6 answering machines. There are phone numbers on them. Curious, I call each one and receive these messages:
You make eye contact with a radical nun doing a cartwheel, in place.
You squat in the middle of the aisle and you like it because I said so.
You kissed the priest with your mouth and then your tongue touched his tongue and he exploded into flames.
You put a detachable clitoris into the offering basket. Will you notice?
A pregnant woman cries in the distance. Oh God, she has a hook for a hand!
You put mini corn into the holy wine jug, and then you say you did it.
You touched the small of the priest's back.
This man is very smart. Obviously, these are codes – probably shipping instructions for his illegal meat, at least that’s what I make myself believe.
The dolphin seems oddly at peace.
It gives me the stiff one-eye.
I stick my finger out and touch the eye.
…Soft…Wet…Slick…
Then I touch its nose.
Hard, yet soft.
Like a cold burrito.
I decide to stay the night – to watch over Joann. I’ll be observant. I’ll see if she is truly, madly, deeply in love with him. If yes, then I’ll scram.
The phone on the kitchen wall rings. My heart JUMPS. I run out of the room and shut the door and pretty-up the noisy plastic, trying my best to get it looking just like I found it.
The voice on the other end of the phone is who I hope for.
It’s Polly.
She tells me that I have to get up early tomorrow for work.
I tell her that’s fine, and that I shall do my best.
Polly asks if everything is going well with Joann, and I tell her “Yessm, excellent,” that she seems very happy indeed.
Polly explains that the reason for the early wake-up is an important one. The script changed due to crazy reasons and now the two of us have to go location scouting at 3 in the morning. The production is also running late, and we have to find a beach to film on ASAP before everything turns FUBAR – somewhere remote and picturesque. The idea of waking up at the crack of ass tires me.
An hour later
I stay in the bathroom the whole day with a sharpened spoon at my wrist…thinking about how I could end it all now. Maybe I can come back in my next life rich. As Paris Hilton. We choose our lives be
fore we are born.
So what the hell did I do – or not do – in MY past life to deserve this shitty life? Why the fuck didn’t I choose a more relaxing lifestyle?
I wish I KNEW what I was THINKING.
But would it really be better if we all knew what we did in our past lives?
How would you live knowing that in your past life you raped that cow?
I press the sharp thing against my skin – against the hard, tube-like tendon. They say you should cut vertically, not horizontally like how you see in the movies or like how your depressed-therefore-they’re-cool emo pals say.
And then, of course, I can’t do it.
Blahhhhh.
If only I had the strength to push down faster. And then what? Come back in my next life as Angelina Jolie’s lips? Maybe. Then again, since it would be cheating, I really don’t think the Universe would sing praise to a soul that “gave up”.
At best, I might be lucky to come back as Steven Spielberg’s 26th stool.
I shrug and instead take a hot shower. Then it gets too hot, and I take a cold shower.
Later…
I wake up on the toilet. It’s still dark out. Polly picks me up in a black van and we speed down to Ala Moana beach, across from Ala Moana Shopping Center. Polly tells me that we’re going to search this beach first. She loves it here – tells me that she has a pal, Mandy, whose mother gave birth to her on these sands.
I ask if Mandy is still around, and Polly tells me no, because she was run over by a drunken bus driver and is dead. I say my sorries, and we stroll down the beach, looking for a good spot for a scene in the movie involving two women who find a magical crab shell. The prop, made by Mr. Snake, is to have a mannequin’s torn hand holding onto it.
It was in the back of the van, wrapped in bubble-wrap. I had asked to see it earlier, but Polly said it would be bad luck for the production.
The sky is cloudless: A black skin with glowing pimples. The waves shhhhhhhushed and rolled away from the sands, shimmering under the moonlight.
We took our shoes off and held hands as we walked, feet cold, skin erect.
She tells me that she’s lonely, and puts her head on my shoulder. I think about how short I am and how disappointed I am at myself for not drinking enough milk as a young man. Polly brings her hands up and cups my face. I want to laugh for some hideous reason, but don’t because this is a precious moment.
We stare at each other for what feels like hours. Are the homeless hiding in the bushes, watching us and crying of better days?
Polly kisses me.
I pull back.
“Wow. Sorry. I don’t know why I pulled back. I’m not gay.”
She bear hugs me, lifting me off my feet. My toes wiggle sand.
She laughs.
“Aww, cute! My fucking God, you’re such a good boy! Weeeeeee!”
She spins me around.
“Weeeeeeee!” I shriek.
Something heavy falls behind us.
We go to inspect it. Was it a coconut? Maybe the corpse of a bird that suffered a heart attack, mid-flight?
Five people in dolphin suits jump down from the trees, carrying electric guitars. Polly yanks my hair and yells into my face.
“Run away! Run away!”
I cry immediately, nodding, and run after her. In two seconds she is a bus’ length ahead of me.
The crazies chasing after us hoot & holler: “None shall escape from the Dolphin Masters!”
Running on the sand in a panic is hard. It’s like you’re running in slow motion. My foot trips on a large shell and I hit the sand – my head landing in a family of tiny, wet, shiny black crabs that dance in my hair.
I jump up shrieking and spinning around, slapping myself on the face and punching my hair, trying desperately to get the crabs off my person.
I take a ready stance (a kind of half-crouch) and brace myself and POP my eyes open.
I am surrounded by fifteen Dolphin Masters.
The costumes are open-mouthed, yet I can’t see the humans inside. Their costumes are thick, and honestly look quite uncomfortable. Their electric guitars – Fenders – dangle at their sides by black, furry straps. No one moves. Their dolphin eyes are round and eerie – poorly made and crooked.
The waves hush.
The group parts, making way for a naked woman, painted in a glitter-based blue that shimmers, gloriously. She wears the decapitated, hallowed head of a real dolphin. A Dolphin Master guides her at all times, for she is blind while wearing the dolphin head.
She holds her hands out in front of her while walking in tiny baby steps, scratching the air. Her guide stands her before me, and then something beautiful happens. The Dolphin Masters take hold of their guitars and play Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, although the sound is a tad retarded and sad, seeing how their instruments have no power.
She crosses her arms.
“For the endangerment of the holy ones – meaning dolphins – the punishment is…YOU DIE NOW.”
She makes to point at me, but aims a little too low, if you know what I mean.
Her guide corrects her.
“The punishment is death. How plead you, ma’am?”
“I…”
“Silence, leaky anus! You filth of swine! Oh, man.”
I want to run away. Can I outrun them? I wait for my move. Like the answer to every problem: Timing is everything.
The Dolphin Queen, as they call her in the Midweek newspaper, walks toward me, blindly.
She trips and falls like a dull slap.
Her dolphin head rolls off and she begins to squirm and bounce on the sands like a fresh baby while making annoying pig sounds.
She springs up before me and crosses her arms as if nothing happened.
“Now you see my true face, ma’am.”
I want to say that I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll anger her.
She brings her crossed arms higher to cover her breasts.
“Destructors, destroy!”
“No! I’m sorry!”
“Silence, man!”
The Dolphin Masters make bear-like sounds and raise their guitars for the attack. The Queen laughs with her head reeled back and I PUSH her angrily while drooling madly. She falls back into the arms of her guide. The Dolphin Queen points at my retreating bulk and SCREAMS.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The others run after me, many of them falling because running on sand is hard.
Each time one of them falls, I hear a high-pitched shrill, like a baby pig being squeezed by a proud muscleman.
A voice calls me:
“Rubs! This is Polly! I’m in the parking lot! I want to help you! Hurry!”
I run after her voice.
“God, help meeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Now! Right now!”
I see her in the van and I hop inside.
The Dolphin Masters throw their guitars through the windows. The headlights sweep across the parking lot and land on two, female, 80-year-old Dolphin Masters, squatting on the road, undressing quickly and flinging mad poop at us, which thud against the windshield like moist sandwiches.
Polly grinds her teeth and leans into the wheel.
“GO!”
She steps on the gas and the Dolphin Masters jump out of the way – their aged breasts jiggling. They land tough on the road and roll under cars. As we jet into the night, I look in the rearview mirror to see them jumping up and down and shaking her fists at us, crying.
The van is furious.
Polly exhales.
We look at each other.
I begin to cry.
“I’m so sorry.”
She opens her mouth to say something lovely, then looks to the road AND SHRIEKS.
“Whaaaat!”
THE VAN FLIES INTO A DOLPHIN MASTER GIVING US THE MIDDLE FINGER AND DESTROYS THE FIEND.
Its body rolls OVER the van with the noise of many pigs’ feet.
The van screeches to a halt.
My head bumps against the dash
board and I fly back in my seat, screaming as it reclines and throws me off.
Polly hops out of the car and slides open the side door.
THUNDER in the clouds.
Polly puts her hand over my mouth and puts a silencing finger to her scared lips.
“Thunder…thunder in the clouds.”
I nod.
“Oh, heinous omen.”
She grabs a baseball bat. We walk to the van’s rear and hold hands as our faces turn sour.
There, in the middle of the road, under a drizzle of rain, the Dolphin Master stands, head bowed, its back to us, swaying from left to right.
Polly walks toward it, dragging me along as she readies to hit the Dolphin Master with the bat. Its plastic waist wrinkles as it sways over and over again, arms swinging. I can see through the back of Polly’s wet scalp: The closer she gets, the wider she grins.
THUNDER and the sky FLASHES.
The Dolphin Master looks up and jumps and takes off for the shopping center.
Polly raises a commanding finger into the moist air as lightning explodes the sky – says, “Pursue!”
She runs after the Dolphin Master and goes “Roarrr!” and I follow her, waving my arms in the air, yelling at her to be careful not to run into the mini-lake.
She jumps over a tiny hill into the night and I lose sight of her. I am depressed, and stop, struggling to breathe – my hands on my knees.
“Polly! Polly! Polly! Polly! Polly! Polly! Polly! Polly! Polly! Oh!”
…silence…
…pitter-patter of rain…
Then…
POLLY: “Gaaaaaah!”
SPLASH!
I run toward her voice, to the lake.
The mall lights bounce and snake on the surface of the lake. Polly is wrestling with the Dolphin Master. Her hands squeak over the costume, trying to latch on. Polly head butts it in the face. The dolphin puts her in a headlock.
It looks at me – frozen – as they sink sink sink, disappearing under the lake.
Stillness.
Cars in the distance.
Tiny figures on sidewalks, carrying shopping bags.
Get Zombie: 8-Book Set Page 55