Riding the Centipede

by Smith, John Claude

  “Now,” I say. “Now. Give me the Centipede.”

  I watch her teeth vibrate and a sound like a chainsaw emanates from her mouth. Laughter. Satisfaction.

  She hands me the syringe and I do as Grimes told me I must do before commencing with this trek. He didn’t know much, but knew this much. After getting the register, I jam the needle into my neck. It burrows into the soft flesh, into the hungry artery. I let out a scream as the sensation is like nothing ever experienced. I’ve known the itch and scrabble of insects on my flesh, under the skin, countless times before. Though the sensation relates, this…this was atypical.

  I feel many—hundreds, thousands—of tiny feet scrambling for purchase in my artery, my veins, branching out as I relieve the syringe of all its contents. My eyes bug out and I see differently. Wider. Deeper. Broader. More honestly? I don’t know, but Alice’s already monstrous smile seems even more inhuman, like slivers of glass spilling drool in slimy waterfalls upon her chin. She’s hungry, too, and I wonder what she is hungry for.

  I don’t know what more she wants. I gave her what she needed in order to acquire the Centipede, the first step of Riding the Centipede. That’s all that is required of me, at least as far as I know. But she’s salivating with obscene, mesmerizing intensity, dripping into her dark cleavage, and my tongue hangs limp as a wet noodle as uncertainty makes the experience elusive. Perhaps it’s just the understanding that a step is being taken. Yet that never hindered me before. Perhaps the experience is to feel the Centipede in my veins. And to let this green liquid and its insect inhabitants do whatever magic they must do to get me where I need to go. But the discomfort is mounting as they seem uncertain as well. Their trek is slow to kick in. Hemorrhaging at my throat, my breathing clipped. Worry hovers as a vulture about to swoop down and scavenge my soul.

  That’s when I realize it’s not just my artery and adjacent veins being clogged. It is the visceral machinations of me. My body. Hordes famished and pecking at me, drilling into me. Into the sweet meat within, the sweetbreads, the blood a la mode dessert of my organs. I don’t enjoy this part of it. Yet. Will I? Has Alice duped me? Does she want to use those glistening teeth to devour me?

  She would not be the first to resort to cannibalism as a means of sustenance in the dark frontier.

  All manner of food is undertaken here…

  Yet Alice goes on.

  “Let the centipede free. Let it roam within. Let it take control.”

  “I can’t…”

  “You must. That’s what the voice told me to tell you. His voice.”

  Lack of control in this case makes me wary. Why am I going against the grain of the usual experience? Swimming in mud. Stuck. Uncertainty meant to disappear, but it’s not. Hanging like an empty noose. Waiting to kiss a neck, hug it.

  She foams as a rabid boar, the hot white tide coating my mind. Is she in there? Has she lied to me? Liars run rampant in the dark frontier. No repercussions mean no fucking rules. No nothing.

  But then her words ride the gray matter railways with furious intent. I watch the space expand even more. Sucking me into the G-force vacuum of surrender.

  Shadows shuffle within the confines of the green limousine. Alice pants as she chews on them. She squirms as she slurps them up with unhinged glee. She spreads her legs open, no shame in this expansion of her addiction. The abundant teeth, the swallowing of shadows, and the yawning, churning chasm between her legs.

  Sighs reverberate, slick as tongues around a tasty morsel. I hear a cacophonous din of breathing, just breathing. Wind from Hell. Exhalation of demons or perhaps poets, literary explorers. Whores who babble-on…

  Broken bone chimes dully decorate the plane of sound. It all flutters on wings of sandpaper.

  I’m not sure what Alice is riding, and I don’t care. She’s getting what she needs. As I am getting what I need.

  The Centipede crackles in my veins.

  The Centipede fills me to bursting. Will I? And into what, I am not sure. Into where, I don’t know. All I know for sure is I am on my way.

  I am on my way.

  Are you still holding my hand, dear sister?

  Chapter 6 Blake

  Blake liked it bloody or not at all.

  “You might want them to kill it next time,” Derek Potters said, as he did his T-bone steak no justice, dousing it in A-1 sauce.

  “I prefer it red over dead. Gotta feed the beast within.” Blake sliced off a chunk of the barely seared meat and shoved it into his greedy maw. His teeth ground the meat into mush as blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. Potters pointed toward the escaping juice; Blake eagerly dabbed it with his tongue.

  “You must be getting in touch with your atavistic side, my friend.”

  “When haven’t I been in touch with my atavistic side?” Blake swallowed and sliced off another pink chunk. He was more meat and potatoes, while Potters, who had been meat and potatoes when they first met, had moved on to meat, potatoes, and perhaps caviar. San Francisco and its sometimes snobbish demeanor had added frilly edges to his man’s man repertoire, though Blake considered Potters more asexual than gay, as he’d never seen any outward signs of the latter, except when an occasional lover would drop by while he was hanging out and feign jealousy at Blake’s presence.

  Blake’s years in Los Angeles only added indigestion and disposable women to his repertoire, so who was he to judge. Potters was a good egg.

  They’d decided to meet up on Blake’s presumed last night in San Francisco, though Blake felt his plans altered by the scenario from earlier in the afternoon: street vermin spewing curious clues before vanishing into the seams between two buildings, leaving only his stench and a head-scratching revelation.

  “True, true. You’ve always willfully exhibited your Neanderthal roots. Hunter-killer. Bloodlust.”

  “Pussy.”

  “I’m sure in ancient times, bent over and taking whatever they wanted, Neanderthal man probably wasn’t too picky as to what hole he was filling.”

  “Well, I still prefer mine to come slick and with a pair of tits.”

  “You are such an icon of class, my friend.”

  Blake raised his bottle of Heineken to Potters’ raised glass of wine. He thought about the ridiculousness of the conversation. Hell, he hadn’t been with a woman in over a year. All bragging rights or phony mano-a-mano posturing aside, he had a moment to contemplate Potters’ cheerful manner and the possibility of following in his path, only to find himself gagging on his beer.

  “Smooth, eh?” Potters said.

  “As a baby’s behind.”

  “Too bad. I prefer mine hairy,” Potters said, winking at Blake, inspiring a squirm of disapproval.

  Switching lanes without signaling: “Any signs of Marlon Teagarden?”

  “No real signs, but something for me ponder.” He shook the Heineken bottle toward the waitress, a sleek number with wide hips, just as Blake liked them. They’d had a glimmer of flirtation that turned to ash when a younger, more virile specimen showed up at the bar.

  “Ponder away, Sherlock,” Potters said, as the waitress set two bottles on the table, realized she’d brought one too many as Potters was drinking wine, went to pick up the extra, but Blake grunted, “All fine,” as he pressed the icy mouth to his lips.

  Sufficiently fueled, he said: “Had a run in with one of the local scum, one I’d talked to yesterday and left me cold. Hinted at something odd, as if this odd thing meant anything to me. I went on a brief chase to follow up his misconstrued hint. It led to nothing, and then I couldn’t find the scum to question further. The whole thing, perhaps five minutes from the day, played out as a Keystone Kops comedy skit, as if somebody was funnin’ me.”

  “What was the something odd?”

  “Mention of an ano-anomaly. Me working the ano-anomaly into a just viewed green limousine that—”

  “A green limousine?” Potters set his fork and knife down with a hard metallic clunk that turned heads in the restaurant.
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  Blake set his utensils down with less drama, leaned back and said, “Yeah, a green limousine. Is there something I should know about a green limousine?”

  Potters relaxed his shoulders, the weight of surprise lifted. “No, well…”

  “Don’t fudge, get on with it.”

  “Have you ever heard of the urban legend about the green limousine?”

  Blake shook his head as he picked up his fork and dug into the sour cream and butter drenched baked potato, though his eyes never left Potters.’

  “The legend is, whenever somebody enters the green limousine, it’s meant as a sign of one’s fate, of one’s final destination moving to the front of the line in the queue. Though it doesn’t completely reveal if death is the final step, or if something else is in the cards. Something like that.”

  “Wouldn’t intimations of a final destination point toward death?”

  “Because of the source material, it’s left open-ended.”

  “Just the way you like them.”

  “Asshole,” Potters said, shaking his head in amusement at his crude friend.

  “Cheerful,” Blake said, tipping his ever-present black hat. “Source material. Give.”

  “I first read of the legend in one of the experimental short stories written by Peter Solon.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You wouldn’t. Most people haven’t. Anyway, he was cut from a similar mold as William Burroughs, California Myers, Hubert Selby, Jr., and any number of lesser known writers who cut their teeth on words as though they’re laced with drugs.”

  “Never much liked Burroughs. Don’t get him. The others pull up blank slates.” Blake remembered a couple of watch-tapping, time-filling “relationships” he’d had with women into the likes of Burroughs. He tried to read his work, thought it might be good to get into what the women were into—always a failed concept within his love life—but there was nothing there to hold on to. Too perverse, though some of the wild imagery touched something within his eager to learn mind. But not enough to sink in and push for more. When the relationships petered out, he left Burroughs behind as well.

  “So, I’m on my last legs…”

  “No, actually, the reference is for those who enter the green limousine. You saw it and did not enter. But seeing it under the circumstances you saw it…I don’t remember, but I believe there’s a like-minded take on simply seeing it if one has a connection, however loosely, to it—yours being the person who informed you of the anomaly…and how this might relate to Marlon Teagarden, yet…” Potters shook his head, perhaps trying to jostle the memory, but it seemed to remain lodged in a crack in one hemisphere or the other, unobtainable.

  “Well, I’ve no use for urban legends or experimental fiction.” But what did he prefer? Men’s adventure fiction and occasional porn, both bound to let him know how empty his life was. Life had led him nowhere on a trail to nowhere in the middle of nowhere—all rather inconsequential, this fair maiden, Oblivion. What good was it all? Perhaps the green limousine would be a welcome addition to his life or a chauffeur-driven ride to his grave

  “Well, in Solon’s fiction, the urban legend is something we know he made up, yet many urban legends have a foundation in our world.” Potters swished the wine in his mouth, looking much like a puffer fish as he did.

  “So, who’s to say it was simply something he made up, then? Perhaps it’s one passed down from when he was a child.”

  “Right. Though the nature of Solon’s writing was so—how do I put it?—different. I mean, the use of an urban legend was as close as he ever got to something that might even make sense in our world.”

  “Our world?”

  “Solon dealt mostly with an imaginary world in which insects and reptiles and the likes ruled, and humans were low on the totem pole. He even incorporated elements that might be indicative of how those in this imaginary world would speak. I remember reading a copy of his first book—never got the second one; he only published two—and that stuff was just hard to comprehend.”

  “Like reading A Clockwork Orange without the glossary of made-up words, eh?” Blake remembered reading the book and tossing it across the room before finishing it, so put off by the gibberish. He dug the movie, though.

  “Kind of, but much different and way more extreme. Anyway, it was not easy reading. It made me think and really stuck with me for quite a while afterwards, but somewhere between twenty or so years ago and now, the book must have been lost in a move, or stolen.”

  Blake’s thoughts were dogpaddling to the edge of understanding, but never getting to the shore.

  “None of this makes any sense. We’re speculating on the impossible, on the meeting of circumstance and a strange tale as influenced by too much beer. And wine. Can’t mean anything,” Blake said, though his stomach roiled as if the dogpaddling were being conducted from within.

  “I…I would be careful, Terr. Not liking the vibe of this one.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, taking it in, letting it roll over in their minds. Potters poured himself another glass of wine while Blake acquainted himself with the extra bottle of beer the waitress had left behind.

  Blake flirted lightly with the waitress as they paid the bill, though her flirtations, already diverted, were bandied about with formula calculation. With the tip in mind and nothing of substance beyond that.

  They stepped outside into the always chilly San Francisco night.

  “I wasn’t kidding, pal. You’ve never found any evidence of Marlon Teagarden up to now. This isn’t evidence of anything but weirdness. Not a good weirdness—”

  “Is there a good weirdness,” Blake said, lighting up. Dessert: smoke to distract the indigestion.

  “Look. Sometimes things are meant to show us something. Sometimes whatever it’s meant to show us is a warning.”

  “A warning?

  Potters harrumphed. “A warning. Time to make a choice and move on. Ignore this day or, more aptly, avoid what it suggests, what is already playing ping pong in your over-used noggin’” Potters knuckles wrapped lightly against the black hat upon Blake’s head. Blake sensed a migraine stumbling around the periphery and already wanted another beer. Or something stronger.

  Back at Potters’ apartment, more beer and something stronger were ingested, to deal with the clusterfuck of nonsensical thoughts. Or perhaps to shut up the ping pong paddles that sounded like mortar being shot into a brain not prepared to deal with the possibility that Potters had touched on more than a nerve. He’d yanked it out and stomped on it. A handful of aspirin and more scotch blotted it all out, his usual path to sleep. Or at least to Morpheus, waiting patiently and ready to have his usual fun with Blake.

  Chapter 7 Chernobyl

  Rudolf Chernobyl, sharp angles and stiff composure, posture rigid as he sat in a wooden hardback chair, focus narrowed—thin as a paper cut—was mesmerized by one of the many paintings peppering the sunset, yellow walls in the sprawling den.

  He did this often, a call to meditation. A means of grounding himself before the game commenced.

  Two lamps adorned in tin lampshades shaded bronze and copper illuminated the visual wonder of oils and imagination that so intrigued him. He sipped from a Bloody Mary, stabbing a green olive with a toothpick, chewing with fervor.

  He knew this would be the last calm instant for him until his latest job was completed, so he cherished it all as he waited. But the impatience inherent in the act of waiting disallowed the pure joy he usually got from immersing himself in Frida Kahlo’s masterful painting, The Wounded Table.

  There were other paintings in the long room, some famous, though most were frivolous exercises from his own hand. But The Wounded Table was the centerpiece, all two hundred forty-four by one hundred twenty-two centimeters of it, and it was his.

  A knock from behind attracted his attention, derailing his already brittle concentration.

  “Yes,” he said, the Russian enunciation barely touching the words, his
voice cavern-deep, yet stiff as his back.

  “We’ve got her,” a voice replied, muffled by the door, but the words were clear. A grunt followed, signifying physical exertion, as well as a female voice: “Let me go, goddamnit. Let me go.”

  “Show her in,” Rudolf said, still taking in the painting, not wanting to give in to obligations quite yet.

  The large oak door pressed open, shifting the dry air in the room. Dodgy shadows did a cryptic dance. The owner of the voice tossed a tiny woman into the room. She hit the floor hard, yet bounced up, fists clenched, turned to the shadows as if she were ready to rumble, though her attitude was a façade, and, anyway, the door slammed shut in her face.

  “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  “Let me out of here,” she said, turning from the locked door—the knob filled her fist, unmoving—eyes skittish as the surrounding colors flooded into them.

  Rudolf Chernobyl sipped again from the square glass, set it on a thin-legged table apparently made for holding a single drink upon it, and stood. As he rounded the table, he said, “Come, Alice Seniyro. We have business to discuss.”

  Rudolf saw in her spooked eyes a woman who lived in a perpetual state of wariness.

  “Fuck you and your fucking goons. I got no business with you,” she said, arms crossing over her abundant bosom.

  She reminded Rudolf of the table upon which his Bloody Mary sat: skinny, yet large where it counted. It was a sexist thought. It reminded him of his human father. He wondered what it would feel like to destroy this woman.

  But that wasn’t why she was here.

  Rudolf walked toward her, the flat click of his polished black Bruno Maglis sounding like brass knuckles kissing a cheekbone, a rib.

  Alice Seniyro’s arms dropped to her side, birthing fists at the end of the bony appendages.

  Rudolf extended his hand to her. He smiled benignly.

  She cautiously opened her hand and reached toward him. He took her whole hand in his, completely engulfing it in the hungry palm. He could tell by the glass-eyed repose that settled over her countenance, she understood he meant business.