Moments before the drug sends me on my way, there is a flash of blinding light and a figure. His words crumble, before the black velvet cloak of numbness takes me into its waiting arms. This is the first time during this whole journey it’s felt like this. As if perhaps I am almost there. As if perhaps I’m on the downslope and will ease into the final stage.
Chapter 19 Chernobyl
Rudolf kicked down the already damaged door. Not only were the hinges shattered, the whole door flew across the barren landscape that was the decrepit warehouse in the middle of who the fuck cares. Rudolf was unaware of anything but need, his own need, and the need to round up Marlon Teagarden once and for all.
His need filled his head; his body was electric and alive and insatiable. He had only a taste, traveling along the dark in-between, waking in the real to revelations coated in hedonistic ecstasy, the control needed for his survival—containing the energy within—obliterated by another need, this one, to have just one fix, just one more fix. So his goal here, now—soon; sooner—was to get Marlon Teagarden in his grip and never let go until he found out where he could get more of—
What? The drug? What if it was only a heightened sensory overload while he traveled within Marlon’s head? No, the drug had to be the engineer. Just one fix. Just one more fix…
So.
He burst through the door and there he was, on his haunches next to a fat man who flailed obscenely. This abundant, amorphous blob of a creature grunted and gasped as he tried to reach for Marlon—his Marlon; his—Marlon cranked his head in Rudolf’s direction and saw the light of Rudolf, the piercing light. His eyes squinted, blocking out the light. Blocking out Rudolf.
“Finally,” Rudolf said, hurling his voice toward Marlon, but it was too late. Two steps into the battered shell, Rudolf watched as Marlon quivered like a heat ghost, misty and swirling and—
Gone.
“No. No!”
He watched the fat man finally tumble off a chair, that sighed in relief, onto his knees, pulling something out of his mouth. Clumps of something that looked like wax, half solid and crumbling.
Rudolf was swift to approach him, hands clenched then loosened, the joints never fully relaxed, he said, “Where did he go? Do you know his next destination?”
Gagging and spitting and still reaching into his massive maw, the man, who has the fidgety, illusive countenance one would associate with a rat, said, “The fucker got away. That little fucker got away without giving me what I wanted. That little—”
“Where did he go?” Rudolf said, gripping the man’s damp shirt, pulling him close to his face.
Rats shuffled through the refuse and scattered to and fro.
The man pulled on Rudolf’s hands, struggling for release.
“Look, buddy. I got no beef with you. The boy stole the drug, this leg of the Centipede. He’s fucking gone. Gone.”
Rudolf released the man, his fists raised in the air and let out a garbled vocalization of frustration that stretched into the starless sky, mating with the wind as it howled from the ridges of the decimated roof.
The man worked hard to gain purchase and pull himself into a standing position. His breath was heavy and smelled of sizzling fat and clotted meat and stomach acid trying to break it all down.
Rudolf brought his arms down and closed his eyes. He must regain some semblance of control. What was he doing? What has Marlon Teagarden—no! What has the Centipede done to him? Asking the bloated pig anything would get him no information, he knew this already.
The man bent over with a grunt and a fart and attempted to pull up his khaki shorts. Rudolf noticed the man’s filth-encrusted genitals. Visually trespassed over the man’s sagging rolls and sweaty slime, sticky and stinking. Took in the whole of this human atrocity, a man who has let himself go in magnificent ways. What a horror, a travesty of life this man represented.
Rudolf dialed down, way down. Put his hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Ouch, hey…” the man said, slumping again to the garbage-laden, concrete floor. “Give it a break, buddy.” He swiped at Rudolf’s hand feebly.
The warehouse was silent except for a new sound, a crackling sound, like metal being chewed that lived in Rudolf’s head. He did not like it. It was a constant reminder of what he needed. It was the sound of his world being siphoned into the void of self-annihilation, which only made him squeeze the man’s shoulder even harder.
The man screamed in protest. His clavicle, even beneath the layers of fat, snapped. Tears poured out of slit sockets. The man looked up at Rudolf, pleading as he struggled to disengage Rudolf’s clamp-screwed-tight grip.
Rudolf let go, his breath even and his control as close to balanced as he’d felt in however long it’d been since he passed through the in-between.
He’d lost track of time.
Time did not matter anymore. What mattered was the drug. That’s all that mattered.
No, control. Control mattered…
He steadied himself. He needed something to remind him he was the one in charge of his body. He reached deep within, to the core of who he was, of what he was, and gathered that something, ready to make a stand for himself.
He squatted down on his haunches and put his hand on the fat man’s damaged shoulder.
The big man flinched, not wanting anything more to do with Rudolf Chernobyl. He scooted away from Rudolf, rats nipping at his ankles. He swiped at the rats with equal success. They clung to the flab; he swatted again.
Rudolf took it all in, called up his core being—that one truth that superseded the rest—and proceeded accordingly.
“Have you ever read a book called 1984, written by George Orwell?” he said, eyebrow arched, hands on his thighs. Fingers flexed.
The big man leaned back and up, though still on his knees as if silently praying for Rudolf to leave him be.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question…sir.” Rudolf’s words hissed like the birth of fire, vehemence coiled in every syllable. His eyes brightened and he immediately toned it down. From the inside.
But the man’s eyes grew wide as he noticed Rudolf’s eyes a wonder of strangeness he had never witnessed before.
Taking the better path, the one not marked on the map that led him to this point in his life, the big man said, “No. Never read the book. Don’t much have any use for books.”
Rudolf extended his arm toward the man’s knee, where a rat circled as if blind, yet driven by the nauseating stench and promise of meat to feast and said, “Allow me.” He snatched up the gray rat. Another rat scampered away, while two more, brave and ravenous, replaced the first in the queue of sick need.
Rudolf grabbed both in swift motion, clutching all three tightly in his large hand, their squeaking the glum chorus to events that transpire in such gloomy places.
“Too bad,” he said, about the man’s lack of having read the book. Knowledge might heighten what was going to happen next, but Rudolf really did not care. Care, compassion—never one of his negotiating tools. Sadism and the bliss inspired by immense cruelty, humiliation—these were the things that Rudolf was made of.
“There’s a scene in which our protagonist, Winston Smith, is made to wear a cage over his head.”
The big man scooted back again, his swishing motion distributing garbage and wayward rats out of his path. His forlorn expression indicated he wanted nothing to do with Rudolf’s intentions, whatever they were.
“No, no.” Rudolf shook a finger at him.
“Please…”
“No, you repellent excuse for a human being, who is even more repellent than most human beings who repulse me with their mere existence. At least those who waste their lives crawling through the slime as if it’s a road to heaven.”
“C’mon, buddy—”
“No, no. Never. We could never have been buddies. Look at you, draped in deplorable attire and having let yourself go. No, we have nothing in common,” he said
, though a thin sliver of their relation twitched in Rudolf’s boiling brain pan, where addiction resided in the petri-dish, waiting to express itself. He bared his teeth, the rabid dog, the furious orangutan.
Closing his eyes, he said, “There is a scene where our protagonist, Winston Smith, is made to wear a cage over his head. At the opposite end of the cage, there are rats. The first of two doors is raised, moving a rat closer to Mr. Smith’s face.”
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything here?” the big man said, but he wasn’t that stupid, was he? Rudolf waved the fistful of rats in the man’s face.
“I don’t have a cage. I don’t need a cage. I don’t know where Marlon Teagarden is off to, but I will find him. I will,” he said, nodding with certainty. “I know exactly where you’re going, though, fat man.”
“No, whatever you got in mind…no…” He raised his flabby arms, inconsequential shields to the ministrations of Rudolf’s mayhem.
“Oh, yes, yes. You’re going to be food for these rats,” he said, as he pounced on the man, sickened by his presence, while he stuffed one, then another, then the third rat, into the man’s gaping mouth, both hands pushing with all his force. “They will start from the inside.”
The man’s jaw opened wide and cracked loud.
Rudolf seethed as he stuffed the three rats deeper inside, grabbed another rat nibbling on the fat man’s revolting loins, and stuffed it in as well.
They filled the mouth, the throat and blood from their chomping teeth coated their gray and brown bodies, the big man’s lips and cheeks. As they tore through his toad-like throat, the big man’s eyes rolled back in his head.
Easy prey.
Rudolf dropped the still jerking man to the floor. A flash flood of claws and hairy bodies and rodent glee covered the man, sliding into the folds, slurping and gnawing and tearing and eating him alive. Alive, but not for long.
Rudolf stood tall, pleased with his presentation, his exhibition. Another standout piece of art created by his hands. But that wasn’t why he was here. He wiped his brow on the sleeve of his shirt. What he needed was the drug, the Centipede. He needed to find Marlon Teagarden before he slipped through his fingers forever.
Rudolf centered himself. There would be nothing to latch on to. Marlon was in that place in between. He could not go there unless he was already homing in. Which meant he would have to wait until Marlon’s signal surfaced again, like a buoy bobbing up to say, hello, here I am.
He reared back and wailed into that ebony wasteland above and stomped out of this piecemeal shithole with more determination than ever before.
Chapter 20 Blake
“My name is Terrance Blake.” He removed his black hat. “I am a private investigator.” Blake found himself flexing his fingers along the rim. His jawbone slid sideways with the clunky insistence of tectonic plates shifting and settling. When it clicked into place, the sound was akin to the hammer being set on a pistol.
“Do I know you, Terrance Blake?”
As before, the voice seemed to take the odd conglomeration of sounds floating through the empty space and spin, fold, and manipulate them into a semblance of speech.
“No, sir. I’ve just a few questions and can be on my way.”
“Questions?” A sound as if Solon was moving about in the darkness. There was a sense of space being rearranged.
Blake realized his toes were also joining in the anatomical discomfort, scrunching and stretching and scrunching again.
“Have I done something worthy of questions?” The sound that followed tickled deep in Blake’s belly. He thought it laughter, as if Solon was laughing at him, but the tickle passed the point of delight and dived head first into pin-pricking torture.
“No. Not exactly, sir.”
“Call me Master, Terrance Blake.” The tickling again, branching out to his thighs. Burning.
“Excuse me.”
“Am I not clear, Terrance Blake? Call me Master. All my acolytes as well as lesser beings address me in this manner.”
He was mad, this much was certain. Blake exhaled slow and long, attempting to set free the weird sensations he felt within his system, to no avail.
“Blake. Call me Blake. Just Blake…Master.”
“So, what shall Master and Blake discuss?” The tones were surrounded by discordant clatter, not big sounds, but small ones, circling as vultures around Solon’s vocalization. Comrades to the lone vulture Blake had seen outside, for sure.
“Sir—”
“Master.” A buzzing joined the clatter, the busy ambience, and stretched out after Solon’s words died. Bees. Perhaps wasps. Blake glanced around the sweltering confines, noting insects and lizards and more of those that defied description, but no bees or wasps—or related, unknown flying insects—anywhere. He contemplated leaving, just leaving, but there was no reward in cowardice. He had only one option.
“Master.”
A sigh of satisfaction emitted from the dark room, the bristling void. The buzzing had eclipsed all other sounds at this point, besides their voices and Blake’s noticeably audible breathing.
“I’ve a question about the green limousine.”
A murmur Blake could only think of as an extension of curiosity like the twitch of invisible antenna. Antenna branching out from within the consciousness of Solon.
“A fan? You are a fan, Blake?” Solon’s voice clapped hard in speaking Blake’s name. Blake thought the sound similar to a singular applause in recognition of his stalwart determination to even have found the recluse.
“No, sir.”
A grumble from the void, more movement. Space expanding, as the wings of a large bird.
“Master. It’s just the only thing I have to go on in a case I’m working on.”
“How do you mean?
“I saw a green limousine in San Francisco as I was searching for a runaway, the focus of my case.”
The void dilated. Blake sensed this and had to rub his eyes, an excuse to shut them, block out the impossible shifting of geometry. The buzzing rattled around in his head. He shook it, as if it was real and this action would set it free, as if something would fly out of his ears and leave him be. Perhaps winged monkeys…
“You saw a green limousine. Rare as they may be, I’m sure there are many green limousines, Blake. Why do you think this has anything to do with me?”
“The person, the runaway, I suspect…” What did he suspect, really? The evidence was flimsy at best. Still… “I suspect the person I am searching for had entered the green limousine and—”
An immense crash and earthshaking rumble blotted all conversation and thought out for the extent of the fit. An abhorrent stench seeped out of the darkness. Blake thought, if rage had a smell, this would be it. It clogged all pores. It singed nostril hairs. It burned the back of his throat, curling up into his brain. It was acidic as much as odorous. The buzzing amplified as if it was embroidered into the house, the wood, the foundation; the air and sunlight beyond the front door; the heat. All of the reality out here, as inconceivable as that might be.
The first “word” was indecipherable, yet furiously vehement. The second word was “Burroughs.”
With all he knew about this case, and the literary connections, he knew the Burroughs noted here had to be William S. Burroughs. Dead for almost twenty years now, but a center of fury for Solon.
“William S. Burroughs?”
“Of course, William S. Burroughs,” Solon said, followed by more of the vocalizations that had nothing to do with human language.
“What’s he got to do with the green limousine?”
“Nothing. And everything, the conniving thief.”
“What do you mean?”
“He stole that from me. The green limousine was my invention, and he’s degraded it with his manipulative sense of ego. He knew it would rub me frantic, but he does not care.”
Blake covered his face, the smells making him woozy.
“Decided to utilize it as a
doorway for his ever dreamed of yet never successfully attained promise to the traveler of the dark frontier bequeathed with the gift of Riding the Centipede.”
Madness reigned, but Blake knew he had to push on, now that the green limousine had triggered something of possible substance amid the locomotive impetus of this ride on the crazy train.
“What are you talking about? What is Riding the Centipede?”
Deep inhalations within the void pulled on Blake’s cheeks, his ears; made the door frame fluctuate, as well as all of the empty frames on the wall. Blake thought he could perceive a shape beyond the dark doorway, yet what he perceived was not human.
“Don’t look too hard, Blake.” His name again, a whip snapping against an already welt-riddled back.
“Answer my question.” He spat without tact.
This seemed to amuse Solon as the ambience within the room piped down. Even the buzzing, though now Blake noticed a lone bee exit the void; and another, plump as a plum.
Calmer: “Answer my question, Master.” Blake felt himself bend without breaking, but it was getting close.
Now that Blake was reconciled to subservient status, the pleasure in Solon’s quirky vocalization was evident as he relayed the information.
“Riding the Centipede is Burroughs’ gift to the dark frontier traveler in search of the so-called ultimate experience. The ultimate experience being drug related, of course. Each leg of the journey to Burroughs, another drug is ingested, preparing the traveler for this ultimate experience. Experience leaves scars. On the flesh or deeper.”
A curious aside, then back to the mainline.
“What the traveler does not know is there’s been none who have made it to Burroughs so far. It is rumor. Perhaps a lie played out for his amusement, testing the mettle of the chosen one’s. I only know there’s a sense of validity to it because that bastard used the green limousine as a snide comment on my writing.”
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