I know I am not the same now as when I left, my dear sister. Time in the dark frontier has shown me so much, sowed the sickness of being, sewing it to the fabric of experience, ragged, yet well-worn.
My ears, or the sonic receptors deeper within my brain, read the wavelengths now. Unable to tune in, but able to decipher clips.
I hear so much amid the tinfoil chatter:
Marilyn Monroe says something I can’t quite make out.
She’s here, can you hear her? Let me hold the microphone up, where she’s standing in the shadows.
There’s Lena Olin, naked except for the hat she tips in my direction.
My steely erection, more proof of paradox. In this vile place, even the potential for bliss arouses. But that’s never been my true path.
“You know you’re fucking crazy, Marlon,” Marilyn says. “I love you, I do. But the Centipede is a lie. You’re wasting your time and not going to like where this is all leading—”
“Shut up! The Centipede is the ultimate experience. The Centipede…”
We are interrupted by a person who approaches from the shadows opposite from where Marilyn stands with her hands on her shapely hips, and Lena covers her genitals with the hat, an arm across her modest bosom. Rita Hayworth dips in and out of the darkness. Others too. Many others masked by the dodgy light. The person is humming. It is a murmuring grumble, throaty and masculine. It’s almost musical, a dissonant symphony culled from a sentient vortex. Or a Wagnerian nightmare. But it’s not that extravagant.
The figure lights a candle and I am witness to the man, if it is a man, of abhorrent girth, rolls upon rolls buried beneath a stained shirt of indistinct color that stretches the limits of the buttons.
I hear their struggle, the button’s struggle…
Khaki shorts, the button at the waist missing, the zipper lolling down, unable to secure what bulges within.
No shoes, no socks, but he strolls gingerly through the debris. Some of it moves and I realize there are rats hitching along with his every ponderous step. Rats scrambling, rats climbing his plump calves. Rats everywhere.
How could I have missed them?
The figure unfolds a metal chair and sits in it. The metal strains in protest. The rats gnaw on the chair, chipping metal with ravenous teeth. Metal clicks and sparks in response to their assault. Blinking like stars, the sparks.
The man lights another candle, lets them both drip to the floor on each side of the chair—the first candle has already coated his ham hock fist, yet there is no reaction to this—and places each in the hot, hardening wax pool.
Light is set. The stage is set. I am ready for my performance. I need the next dose of the Centipede to send me on to the next leg away from here.
Far away from here.
Yes, I have lived among those you might think of as the scum of the earth and scum in general. Life means getting dirty, dear sister. Living dirty.
Cleanliness is next to godliness, they say. The eternally washed yet unfulfilled amongst you. Godliness has nothing to do with the goals of the dark frontier traveler. Freedom does. No rules, no regulations, all destinations slaughtered at the will of living at a heightened level of awareness. Every second is a potential revelation. But this place, this person…I am repulsed beyond any previous experience of filth. Yet I must consider my quest. I must consider the final result.
I must consider the broadest meanings of the word “different” and understand that is where this being resides.
“You know why you’re here, boy?” the voice says. A heavy voice, the weight of wasted time swinging from the man’s jowls. A closer inspection elicits a gasp. His features are those of a rodent, a human rodent, like the rats surrounding his chair and scurrying up and down his legs, his body.
Marilyn’s voice burrows into my ears and only my ears as this man does not react to it. I think of him as Ratman; that is his hidden name, a secret only I know.
“You can’t let him do this to you, just like all the other times.”
I have to ignore her. The razor sharp implication of what she is hinting at draws blood from memories.
“Of course. The Centipede”
“Fuck the Centipede. That’s not why you’re here.”
Promise turns to ice, melts.
Marilyn, groans. Lena and Jacqueline and Rita and Sean and Naomi, sweet Naomi—I see them all, phantoms in the dark cowl surrounding him. Portraits of disgust, their faces etched with the deep lines of loathing that crawls over features and cripples their beauty as they stare at me. Judging me.
Your face, too, sister. I see you, too. Are you really here? Our eyes never meet to confirm my suspicions. You are not filled with disgust like the rest. Your look is one of curious detachment, as if you don’t even see me. Feigning indifference at my predicament.
“I am on my way to Burroughs, to Ride the Centipede. There can be no other reason for me being here. That must be—”
He sniggers. Large paws scratch at his crotch, fondling…
“Touchy, aren’t you?” Ratman pulls his hands from his crotch, reaches out toward me as if about to grab me, though the intent is meant more as cruel teasing. I want nothing to do with touching or allowing this grotesque creature to touch me. But just as swiftly, his hands divert to his crotch again, with more enthusiasm now. “Yeah, yeah, the Centipede is your sole purpose in this world of shit and fool’s gold dreams. But that’s not truly why you’re here. You’re meant to fulfill my request. That’s the real point of it all, of this leg of your trip. Nothing more.” He leers at me, pulls his shirt open. Buttons pop out toward me, BBs from a gun fired by blubber.
It is worse to see him unveil himself.
Though I cannot see him, somewhere to the far left and back, behind chunks of cinder and twisted metal, I hear Freddie Mercury—Great King Rat was a dirty old man and a dirty old man was he—and it’s as if this man, Ratman, embodies that ugly creature.
I do not want to venture a guess about what Ratman’s request might be. Whatever it is there’s no avoiding it. I am here to get the next rig, to move forward. I just want to get it over with. His presence sickens me.
“Your revulsion arouses me,” he says, that heavy voice like molasses pooling out of an excrement crusted asshole.
He starts to tug on his khaki shorts, and then stops.
“Pull these off,” he says; demands. The voice is seared with depravity.
Yes, Marlon, take this in your mouth like a good son…
I scream and the contemptible person doesn’t move in the least. Not even a jiggle.
Then, he rears his head back, cawing. A choking rain of laughter chopped out of the black night above. I realize there is no roof above us, but I don’t see stars. The walls end in darkness. Dizziness joins the tilt of my head.
“What is your request,” I say, knowing where this is headed. Sex, after all, being a currency here, nothing more. But with this monstrous person…
Tinfoil chatters ever more insistently, pricking my thoughts, draining more memories:
You need to stop with the drugs, Marlon. You’ve already got enough to deal with without enhancing your already unstable mind. This can only lead to bad places.
How can freeing one’s mind be a bad place, Jane? My already freed mind wants more.
This is not freedom. You’re trapping yourself in a cage you’ll never be able to break out of if you insist on carrying on with your experiments.
You’re just afraid.
It’s just pot, man, Daryl says, putting his hand on your shoulder. You jerk sharply away.
He’s not just doing pot. Ask Steve here. Ask Maddie. You’re all walking a tightrope bound to snap at the weight of what you’re doing.
Fuck you, bitch. I don’t care if you are his big sister, Marlon knows what he wants, Maddie says, making a V with her fingers and flicking her tongue down the middle.
Fuck you, you say, but Steve grabs your arm before you can follow-up and says, You should leave if you don’
t want to indulge, as I take out more of the huge allowance Father gave me, gives us, and hand most of it to Steve and Maddie, who take it and smile as one would imagine pythons might smile, and I swear their tongues flick out, crudely slit in half, dancing…
Still, I pause. My quest in question? No, I cannot pause. The Centipede calls to me. Burroughs waits for me.
Marilyn rages, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Gonna let this scumfuck do to you as has always been done before?”
She’s right, I know. But I’m right, I know.
Paradox Complete.
“Are you back yet?” Ratman says, running his fat fingers in between the rolls of his belly and scooping out something white and moldy, looking like cottage cheese gone sour. He puts the fingers to his cracked lips and slurps loudly, not wanting to miss a bit of this snack, this appetizer before the meal, the act, whatever that specific act might be, with enthusiasm. Rats clamor for their taste of the diseased treat. A few of them bore into the folds with rabid single-mindedness. Focus is needle sharp and digging deep. I must get this deed done and on my way. Soon. Sooner.
“You’re no boyfriend of mine if you let him treat you like all the others have treated you,” Lena Olin says, wearing her hat again, pulling it down to shield her face, her view of my surrender.
As if I have a choice.
Tears stain my cheeks, burning.
“Enough delays. It’s time for you to pleasure me. Pull these off, now. Or there will be no Centipede for you.
His power over me is complete. I will do whatever he needs. I must.
That’s a good boy, son…
(I imagine a claw hammer tearing his skull open and supping on his brain. I imagine a chainsaw whirring into his bloated belly, dissecting him, a living autopsy.)
I pull off the khaki shorts, the effort extreme as they barely fit. I struggle as I work them over his elephantine thighs, revealing hideousness beyond compare. The rolls distend over his groin. His groin, hidden beneath more of that moldy, cottage cheese substance, white and sour smelling, epitomizing rancid to a degree uncharted by anyone but me. I would attempt to hurl again, but the futility of the act would fall well short of what I would rather experience: a purging of everything within.
“Get to it, boy. Start with your pretty mouth, before I take your asshole.”
The thought of even touching Ratman annihilates my senses. I totter on my knees, woozy. Usually I would shut down and do it, just do it, close down self and do what is necessary to get what I need. But circumstances here leave me hesitant.
He leans forward, fleshy rolls threatening to plummet over me as a cellulite waterfall, and grips the back of my head with his hand.
“No Centipede until I fill you with my white, sticky disease,” he says, that cawing laugh again. Knives being sharpened for the kill.
He pulls me closer to his crotch, roughly mashing my face in the horrendous human mold, smothering me. Within the mottled texture: movement. Lots of movement. As if a penis or three or more has awakened.
That’s right, my boy. Take it all in.
He turns to somebody else in the room; many somebody else’s, watching, breath heavy…
Daddy loves you so much. Take it all, wait for the surprise.
Somebody laughs; somebody groans. Somebody says, I want some, in a tiny voice that speaks volumes for the rest in the room. Mumbles of approval follow. A sick ritual has commenced, private and despairing.
Movement again, and a sudden splash of urine into my face, my mouth, the bitter tang bursting through the rotted cottage cheese.
Ratman guffaws as if in on a private joke.
“Ah, had to drain the lizard so’s you can get to the meat, boy. Get to the meat,” he demands, the slow flowing molasses intonations pricked by needles of desire punctured by desperation. His breath is a halitosis cloud, fog caressing heat-battered landfill.
Good boy. Good boy.
And the world turns white as father ejaculates in my mouth and we are alone again, not always, but he cherishes these times most, sells me otherwise and I wonder if he did the same to you, my dear sister?
“He’s fuckin’ loony, but he needs to stop this,” Marilyn says. “That cage your sister talked about is looking like a stint on death row if you continue along this path—”
This leg, I say, in my head, amid the turbulent clutter. The hurricane of anguish delegating me as its personal whipping boy.
“Boy.”
Boy…
“You can kill him and take the rig and be on your way. No matter he gets anything more than he’s gotten. This cannot go on. Not like before. Not like before.” My voice, in my head, joined by a defiant horde of pissed off girlfriends.
I pull my head from his fist, hair tearing. I don’t care. This cannot go on. This cannot be the way.
“No,” I wail, as rats start to chew through the walls. The echo bounces back, from the heavens where absent gods rarely ever tend to our world, yours or mine, dear sister, anymore.
Surprised, Ratman leans back, hands sinking into layered hips, and says, “Then no Centipede for you, you belligerent fuck” His hands slide down his oily rolls, settling on the white moldy crotch, and the three, perhaps four, five penises probing underneath for attention.
“No,” I say again, firm.
“The dark frontier grapevine informed me of what you did to poor Nellie, fuck her and walk away. No shame in giving her less than what she wanted to know, what it means to be human. But that’s not how it’s going to pan out here, boy.”
He pushes his girth up, swings and sways as I grab one of the candles and tilt the flame to his oily flesh.
Oily.
He howls and slumps back down.
“This is not the way this is supposed to play out. I want…”
“What I want,” I say. “I want what I want.”
“Why you little fucking twerp. I’ll show you—”
I’ll show you how much I love you, son. So much. So much…
“He’s crazy, but is he right?” Marilyn says, to the shadows and the fading faces of all my ex-girlfriends.
“No,” I say, a voice calmer, sadder. “Don’t leave me.”
“Then kill this fucker like you should have done to dear old daddy.”
Ratman looks at me quizzically, as if enamored by a side-show freak.
“Yes,” I say, bringing the flame toward his face, his weighty arms unable to fend me off. My limbs bend in magnificent ways to avoid him, and shove the candle flame down his throat. His eyes go wide and a scream gurgles amid the fire and wax, sealing him shut. My hand grips fire and hot wax, relenting not the least though pain should be scalding the nerves. I hold strong and fill his mouth, no matter the protests of his teeth or the jellyroll tremble of his body.
“Kill him. Put the ratfucker down,” Marilyn says, her face crystal clear, a moon lighting this dark hub. Other satellites float around her, my ex-girlfriends all gleaming in approval of the task at hand.
I hold my fist steady, my limbs articulating impossible angles or, more so, improbable, but not for me.
Ratman quivers. His eyes bulge as red veins explode in the uncut cocaine whites of his eyes, his protest spreading. He knows his death is at hand, my leering satisfaction the last thing he will ever see.
I hear the rats whine and whisper, the language familiar. Not the language of insects or lizards, but of vermin. A language new to me, no matter the nights I’ve slept with them whispering close to my head.
But their whispers shift, translate as English, clear and cut to the marrow.
“Where’s the rig, moron? Can you find it?”
I am flushed, distraught at their delight at my miscue. I’ve not seen it here. I’ve not seen it in this scoured, shithole Hell.
I’ve not seen it.
The moment stretches, my sanity a rubber band about to snap.
The laughter of rats is a hideous indictment for the deed I have done.
I pound Ratman’s face. I pound
his jiggling mass of blubber. I know where he must have hidden it.
He must have.
Desperation, the usual motivator, impelled me to start to dig between the folds, scooping out clumps of the white mold, some darkened by age. I sling the scum to the floor and the rats gather, anxious to dine on the morbid feast. I pull and toss and more gather, chowing down on the blubber-made buffet.
I turn to them, the rats, his rats.
“Tell me where the rig is and I will give you a feast worthy of a king.”
“We’ll have our feast whether you tell us or not, they say, in unison.”
I think quickly, my brain hot-wired for the Centipede.
“I will take him out of here if you do not tell me. The feast will be left for other scavengers, but not you.”
Universal disapproval echoes from the walls.
“Tell me, or he’s gone.”
The murmur of a hive-mind in action. They have a response within seconds. One of the rats climbs the rolls and settles beneath the large pink areola, the thumb thick nipple.
“In here,” it says, signaling me as best it can to the roll beneath the nipple. I move the rat aside, dig into the roll, the moistness sticky, and relinquish my prize. The rig.
I back away and they take this as their cue. Ratman’s body is instantly covered with rats.
I keep backing away until I reach a wall. The slickness appalls me. But I have no worries now. I have my syringe. The lone candle left in the room glimmers slyly at it. I see a clear liquid, with tiny divots like lizard scales floating in it.
I ready it for injection. My impatience as well as my abhorrence with this leg of the Centipede hastens my task. I need out of here now.
I am sickened at how my nostrils have almost become immune to the unrelenting assault they have withstood. I don’t want to remember this place. It is the past. The past is dead.
I stick the needle into my neck, my jugular, press the plunger, and immediately, primordial dreams fill my head. My thoughts turn atavistic, primal. My thoughts turn inward, to my self, the human, the being I am becoming, and how it relates to the first spurt of life. How I am something new and special, not trash to be coddled by perverts in your world, or even my world, but special. Special… I am the one to receive the gift of Riding the Centipede. Me. Marlon Teagarden. Not you or anybody else. I am the chosen one.
Riding the Centipede Page 14