Riding the Centipede

by Smith, John Claude

  “Try to escape, Alice Seniyro, and I will break you in half.” He clenched tighter; her breath ceased, then leaked slow as a nail-punctured tire. She was set to sprint, but there was nowhere to run. “I will turn you into ash,” he said, as if breaking her in half as accompanied by the oppressive vibe and grip wasn’t enough of a threat.

  “Do you understand?” he said, he smiled as if in cahoots with the Grimmest of Reapers.

  Alice Seniyro nodded as a broken bobble-head doll. Rudolf released her hand and she pulled it swiftly away, massaging the fingers, the wrist, as blood surged into compressed veins.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Information, my dear Alice,” he said, and moved to her right, large hand to her shoulder like a sleeping python.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  His gaze drifted toward Kahlo’s The Wounded Table, not wanting to move onward yet.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Sure,” she said, though Rudolf noticed she wasn’t really looking at the painting as much as gauging the situation.

  This annoyed Rudolf.

  He squeezed her shoulder as if squeezing lemon over salmon or swordfish, drowning the fish in the sour liquid. Alice Seniyro said, “Ouch,” bending forward, almost buckling to her knees. But he held onto her shoulder, held her up. Didn’t allow such leniency.

  “Don’t just give me a sure without considering the painting and all its metaphors, its meanings. Its beauty. Take a look, a real look, and tell me what you make of it, Alice.” His insistence was steeped in a menace that came naturally.

  “L-Look. I don’t know what you want with me. What business we have. You want I should suck your dick, that’s how I make my money. But I don’t get you want that from me. And paintings. I got no eye for paintings. Metaphor, whatever the fuck that is.”

  “Initial responses to the painting compared it to da Vinci’s The Last Supper. An interesting interpretation, but one that fails beyond Kahlo sitting front and center, a Christ-like figure”—his free hand gesticulated wildly, as if wind allayed the strong fingers to dance, to play—“because in her world, one where God was absent and pain took the reins, no mercy from this reminder hoisted her into the surreal realm of existence where she understood, even with Diego, her husband, or even in crowds, she was alone. Yet her solitude of mind, something I can relate to, honed the image within and expressed by so much of her art as God as self. We all should consider ourselves God-like. No, The Last Supper is the easy way out for scholars and art critics. Those who know Kahlo’s body of work realize she only persevered out of a sheer will to create. Yet her autobiographical art, in which she was always the focus, self-portraits steeped in experiences most of us would shove away as too painful, confirmed the assumption that she knew, completely, who her God was. Crippling pain could not hold her back. It might be the one she bowed to, but she did not allow it full reign. She reigned as her own queen, her own God.”

  The room fell silent as Rudolf stared at the painting. He pressed on.

  “This is the original, you know? Stolen in 1955, swept underground, shuffled between a handful of aficionados of Kahlo’s work, those with the knowledge and means to acquire it and appreciate, with awe and respect, its beauty, but here it is, in my possession. Mine.”

  After fifteen solid seconds, he glanced down at the woman. She was oblivious to any of his observations, yet surprised him with a question.

  “How’d you get ’hold of it?”

  Rudolf’s hand lightly pulsed on her shoulder.

  “I deal in destinies, my dear Alice. Altering destinies. I’m paid quite well for my services. My interests veer toward art, as you can see. Even rock stars like Madonna, the former owner, have a price,” he said, turning his head to take in the room as her head swiveled along with his, taking in paintings that surely meant nothing to her.

  “Madonna? The Madonna?”

  “The Madonna of our era, though there are many more substantial Madonnas throughout the history of art,” Rudolf said, pointing to the opposite end of the large room where Raphael’s Sistine Madonna reigned.

  He glanced down at Alice Seniyro’s blank expression, sighed lightly and said, “Which brings me to you, my dear Alice. You have something I need. More so, you have something my employer needs. Information.”

  “Does this have to do with Rummy? I told him I wasn’t working for him no more.”

  “Such a small mind you have,” Rudolf said, his lips stretched wide, canines glistening.

  “Fucking…just…what the fuck do you want from me? Insults don’t help, man.” Alice feigned toughness, but Rudolf expected she was whittled from shit and desperation.

  He glared into her eyes, her face. The hand on her shoulder settled into a vice-like squeeze, the mouth of the python opening wide to swallow her whole, and brought her to her knees.

  “What I fucking want, fucking fuck fuck—God, your vocabulary repulses me, you fucking feeble excuse for a living being—is to know where Marlon Teagarden is? You were the last to see him. I need to know where he is. Where he is off to. Tell me and you might get out of here with nothing more than a faint kiss upon your chapped lips and a thank you, my dear.” Rudolf realized he had to tamp it down, though those like her, those who catered to addictions in a way that destroyed the gift of life, brought out his bad side.

  Simmer. Simmer…

  “Marlon…Marlon Teagarden? That was not my deal, man. I just did as I was told.”

  The look in her eyes traversed the same dimly lit empty house Rudolf had registered when talking about The Wounded Table.

  “You saw him yesterday. This much my employer knows. My employer apparently has his eyes on Marlon.” Rudolf found it curious that, if his employer knew this much, why hadn’t he snagged Teagarden then and there, but it was not his place to question motives. “What I need to know is where he is off to. Anything you can divulge would be appreciated.”

  “Look. I gave him what I was supposed to give him. Got a phone call and weird shit followed. Did the deal in a dirty green limousine. Got what I was meant to get. He got what he was meant to get. I watched him shoot up and fucking disappear—”

  Rudolf abruptly cut her off, pulling her within licking distance, both hands gripping her biceps, accentuating the already bruised arms in ways that brought tears to her eyes.

  “I don’t appreciate lies, my dear Alice. Disappearing is not a part of the deal.”

  “You don’t gotta believe me, but that’s what happened. He shot up and disappeared. It was the first leg of a thing called Riding the Centipede.”

  Rudolf released his grip, dropped his arms to his sides, though Alice remained stone still, fear sculpting her into a statue.

  When his current employer “Mr. Smith”—a name many of his employers used—had contacted him, he only gave lean information. A price well over seven figures. The name of the one to be tracked and found: Marlon Teagarden. As well as mention of something called Riding the Centipede. This last item was outside of Rudolf’s knowledge. Though for the money and with the name, that was all he really needed.

  Until now.

  “What is Riding the Centipede?”

  “How the fuck should I know? I just know it had something to do with the drug.”

  Rudolf furrowed his brow. So, this was a wild goose chase for a person that would lead his employer to…a drug? What a steep price to pay for what must be a really good high.

  He mulled over the situation, when it hit him the obvious path to finding Marlon Teagarden.

  “What did you receive from Marlon Teagarden?”

  Alice shrugged her shoulders, looked away.

  “Come now, Alice. Don’t irritate me as you’ve done so far. Just tell me what you got from Marlon.”

  “I got what’s mine. What I had coming to me,” she said, lips creased as a wound. Teeth, plentiful and haphazardly jutting to and fro, peeking out from behind
chapped, bleeding lips.

  Rudolf grabbed her hard and pulled her close. Alice’s thin, large mouth gaped open as she gasped. Rudolf took a gander at the abundant mouthful and overflowing enamel congregation, and asked, “What did you receive from Marlon Teagarden?” when it came to him, so obvious.

  Some people’s obsessions reached deep into the weird. This much he knew from experience.

  Alice only shook her head. There was no way she was going to give up her prize.

  Rudolf brusquely pried open her mouth even wider than it seemed possible. Tears stained Alice’s cheeks. Fresh blood trickled from the corners and chapped seams of her lips. He ran his large fingers over the rows and jagged hills of teeth, some hers, some from others.

  Lifting her off the ground, pulling her face to his: “Which one is his, my dear Alice?”

  She still refused, recoiled in fear. But with her mouth up close and stinking of rot and cock and the bubbling acid cauldron of her stomach, Rudolf noticed the black blood caked around a tooth to the left of three canines.

  He ran his fingers over them again, closed his eyes and sensed the wayward life this woman has lived, and the equally as depressing and wasted lives of those who had contributed to her horrible smile. If she wasn’t going to tell him which one, he’d figure it out himself.

  He had his ways.

  He was right: as he touched the freshly procured tooth, he allowed his finger to linger, to pull up a snapshot image. Marlon Teagarden. Along with a man, and a woman breastfeeding a baby. A foul scene steeped in disarray, confusion. Most of all, though, it brought up a location and a soft blip in his mind’s ear. A soft blip to escalate to harsh gong when his prey was in range.

  “You must understand, my dear Alice,” he said, a sneer in his deep rumble of a voice, “Rudolf Chernobyl always gets what he wants.”

  She shook her head and he nodded, oh yes I do, and pinched the tooth between two fingers. With minimal effort but much pain to her, he plucked it from its diseased, gummy nest.

  Letting go of her, she stumbled backward, banged into the spindly table, sloshing the Bloody Mary to the rim of the glass, though not over the top.

  “Careful, careful,” Rudolf said, shaking a finger at her, though his focus was on the tooth.

  “Fucking freak,” she said, hand covering her mouth, her gums throbbing. Blood streamed out of the freshly excavated wound.

  Rudolf grabbed the neck-line of her rancid, ragged, yellow tank top and pulled her close again. “You’ve no room to speak of fucking freaks, Alice. But I thank you for your help. Whether you wanted to help or not.”

  “Let me go, then. You got what you want. Fuck,” she said, looking into the bloodied palm of her hand. Red rivers filled the lines.

  Rudolf beamed so wide the room lit up: a lighthouse, a crematorium furnace.

  “But I promised you a kiss as reward for your cooperation. A thank you, my dear, sweet Alice.” The name was a hiss spat by a cobra upon striking.

  He forced his mouth over hers, tasting blood, relishing the coppery tang, sensing the bile rising in her gorge but unable to seek release, relishing her struggle. Go ahead, struggle now, there’s not much left for you in this life anyway. His tongue swirled deep into her mouth, tasting her fear, a sensation of gagging, of wanting free of him, Rudolf Chernobyl. Pity her loss, but not the loss of a life wasted.

  When he slowly disengaged, her lips were sealed as if glued, as if mummy stitched. Alice’s eyes grew wide.

  “A kiss, yes, a kiss. A moment to cherish, my dear Alice. Your final moment of bliss, kissing Rudolf Chernobyl. What a way to go!” He laughed, licked his fingers, and pinched her nostrils; they remained pinched close when he pulled his fingers away.

  “Now, you and your fetish for teeth can be put to the test. I mean…why else would one want more teeth than to eat more, to be able to really eat into or out of something? I suggest you get to chewing on your lips, your cheeks—anywhere will do—if you expect to live beyond the next few minutes. My dear, sweet, loathsome Alice. Thank you. Thank you.”

  He dropped her to the floor where she started to flail, tearing without much success at her mouth with fingernails chewed to the nub. Her oral obsessions, as exemplified by her patchwork smile, useless against Rudolf’s insidious handiwork.

  Rudolf took the tooth and mashed it between his strong fingers into a thin powder, which he snorted up his left nostril, laughing at the irony. Him, sniffing as one would cocaine or any other drugs that only dulled the mind, the senses—life.

  Alice’s feet started to drum a disjointed rhythm, black scuffs tattooing the hardwood floor.

  “Better hurry, Alice. Better masticate like you mean it.”

  Her grunts and other muffled sounds associated with the desperate exercise she was ensnared in ricocheted with abandon, futility.

  “Better fuck off you fucking freak,” Rudolf said, his tones drenched in a cruelty Alice had never experienced, with all her bad experiences. This one by far the worst as she pounded the floor with her fists, a percussive release signifying imminent death.

  As Rudolf approached the door, he opened it and said to the shadows, “When she’s done, eat her. Don’t leave a trace. And wax the floor afterward.”

  A grunt of understanding followed, bordering on pleasure.

  Rudolf exited with a vision of Marlon Teagarden in his mind’s eye, while Alice’s drum solo reached a furious crescendo before falling silent. Her last performance quite spectacular, but there definitely would be no encore.

  Chapter 8 Teagarden

  I did not know what to expect, dear sister. Vertigo? Somehow that seemed the obvious choice, but this was nothing like vertigo. Because the stretchability of time, of the now and the Now, makes me feel brittle. As if the molecular foundation of my self has passed through a cheese grater and has only now reclaimed my original shape, body, mask. Mashed together by the clumsy hands of an uncaring god into a blob of me.

  I have no sense of how many seconds, minutes, hours or days have passed since I took the first step of the Centipede. Though my journey has officially begun, I’ve no measure of where I am along the path.

  Though I do know where I am.

  The dank, fetid apartment reeking of weed, the flame to light the joint, the unclean diapers clumped together, stacked as a pile of skulls—this was not the green limousine. The smell was ubiquitous, an aromatic shithouse ambience that bruised the nostrils upon inhalation.

  Then again, I understood implicitly when Grimes had mentioned the green limousine what it meant. Which is why I was so anxious to get a move on. So many years on the fringes, finally my purpose aligned. We seek meaning when experience is the meaning. The ultimate experience, a rumor to be made concrete. My destiny, as noted in Peter Solon’s masterful, narcotic short story, “The Chattering Vein,” that included the history of the green limousine, set in motion. This story, all of his stories, despite the mad, hallucinatory circumstances that imbued them, attempted to address the language of insects on terms most humans might understand, yet most distinguished as gibberish. Those who got the gist, peeled beneath the flaking surface, acquainting themselves with a reality beyond comprehension, yet their willingness to keep peeling, layer upon layer, brought a form of transcendence. All of this threaded into fiction that might not have been fiction at all. Hence, the fantastical reality of the world Solon knew. Of the world beneath, that Solon lived in, even if trespassing in ours.

  Solon, a journalist, not a fiction writer.

  Peter Solon, one we read with perplexed fascination. Yet as with most of those in your world, back when I was there and more so, now—Solon’s mark fades to invisible, if not already gone—you shrugged and set his two books aside without in-depth analysis, or conjecture beyond the shrug.

  I immersed myself in his words, made way through the forest of inconceivable sequences, finding purchase on a ledge in my mind, teetering, but somehow connecting. Peter Solon, who five years ago I learned was a major literary force in the dark
frontier. Two lone publications in your world, a dozen more here, all written in the language of insects. Completely. A language I am still learning to translate, but the snippets I’ve uncovered confirm his mastery of journalistic reportage.

  Write what you know, the experts say. The fools who read Solon’s work and distinguished it as nothing more than gibberish, the rambling of a drug-inspired lunatic. I know otherwise. He wrote what he knew, oh yes, dear sister. Nothing more, no frills. A literary genius because he was the only one willing to fully confirm the veracity of the dark frontier. He reported to your world twice. His first short story collection, Dawn of the Insects, published in 1952, received a confused reception, often relegated to the horror genre for the disturbing, impactful imagery, yet only disturbing to those of your world. To the feeble minions who did not “get’”’ it.

  It had nothing to do with horror.

  His second collection published thirty years later, The Insect Revolution, a slim volume, six stories total, was met with revulsion by the few who claimed to have gotten their hands on it. The print run being a mere forty-five copies, the only book published by the tiny press, Black Carapace. Here for a moment of brilliance, than gone. It was one of the rarest items father had in his collection. I’m sure he never read it. All those books and the art as well, all for appearances. But we read it and you were fascinated but unwilling to give yourself to the words, hence, a shrug posited as a lack of desire, much as you were with James Joyce’s writing, while I was bowled over by the audacity of the stories. Even if they made no sense to us, the language often culled from what I now know is the language of insects, I pored over those stories one summer, my mind set free. More willing, yet not understanding how those words, those letters, the sequence of symbols and such, somehow slithered into my skull and shaped something within me.

  I know, despite your front, you had to be intrigued. I still wonder how, after all we’d read—Burroughs and Myers and Selby, Jr. and so many more and including Solon—you could choose never to venture into my world, into the dark frontier.