Confusion compelled him to branch out, within. The tumor/soul still there, observant, but allowing him whichever means he needed to be. To be Rudolf Chernobyl. Force of will. Driven by need.
Need.
The diseased elixir.
Rudolf used the need to pull himself from the clutches of the drug—the Centipede—a preposterous conflict of ideals, yet necessary to achieve such a daring objective.
His lids opened within the dark realm that Marlon Teagarden has yet to know. A destination, clouded, but his to define. The homing device illuminated as a white shadow of itself within; the negative positive. The white glow was a reflection of upcoming events for Marlon but not for Rudolf. He was already here. There.
Marlon was still traveling. Rudolf knew this. But Rudolf has made it to the end game destination. He glanced around, taking it all in, reading the map, knowing his next destination.
In the large room, oils liquefied, dripping off sagging canvases that coated the floor and his body with the evidence of his journey. He growled in anger, sighed afterward in joy. Growled again as he stood. His penis was rigid, but he held orgasm in tow. Not now. He had places to be. He could not hesitate. Though it seemed to have taken long, this maligned journey that had corrupted the room—along with the scarred, melted paintings, divots have been ripped from the floor, piles of crushed tiles like ant hills devoid of insect trespass—time may be immeasurable within the realm of where Marlon was.
Yet, there is no sign of Marlon. No, he has not made it to the end of his journey. His destiny.
So, time was of the essence.
Rudolf strode toward the door, the knob hot in his grip. He swung it open and his body tingled at the rush of cool air.
He turned to his right and walked to the bedroom. Making a phone call and setting a meeting place. He pulled a white suit from the closet full of them. When passing the mirror, he was struck by his transformation. His fists knotted into heavy hammers, but he regained control. He had no time to waste on vanity.
He drew a white leather trench coat from its roost in the closet, along with a hooded, cream colored fleece jacket, the better to fly under the radar. His less than attractive appearance demanded such precautions.
His tumor/soul was leaking out. Perhaps, yes, perhaps that was the truth. His fists clenched tight again. There was no soul here. Only existence. He’d deal with this…imposition, and get back to his former appearance after he had attained the drug.
That was all that mattered now. That and keeping his word. His employer has been informed and all parties would meet up, but the scenario would not play out as planned.
He pulled the trench coat over the hoodie, the white cowl a halo above the impurities seeking freedom.
This would have to do. He was dressed in the appropriate manner to meet his destiny. One he’s sure would bring him the ultimate experience.
Chapter 26 Teagarden
If this figure is Burroughs, it is not a Burroughs I have ever imagined. I’ve seen photos, watched videos. The only thing this figure has in common with Burroughs, as far as the shadows allow me to see, is a lanky exterior.
I wonder if I’ve been duped and this is just another leg of my journey, with many more, an eternity more, to follow. Or if Riding the Centipede even has foundation in my reality, dear sister. Is it all a sham? The anticipation renders all thought inconsequential. Yet holding the syringe in my ready fingers—the empty syringe—I know, somehow, this figure is him. It has to be.
Perhaps approaching will clear out the shadows, sunlight over rolling hills, and the man I expect to see will appear.
Perhaps the transformation I sense is woven into my physicality has altered how I see things.
(Perhaps this whole journey has been the result of a mighty powerful hallucinogen…)
—buy the ticket, take the ride…there’s no turning back from the other side—
(“Do it,” Marilyn whispers, from the brackish pool of my subconsciousness, somewhere way back there, where whip-poor-wills screech and wail.)
There is one way. Only one way.
Still standing at a distance, I raise the syringe to eye level. I pull back the plunger, and then compress it, clearing out all the air. A soft hiss passes through the eye of the needle.
A cat sprints across the cold floor; two more follow. I hear soft purring and sounds that relate to soft purring, yet none of this brings me comfort.
It was common knowledge that Burroughs liked cats, though…
I stretch my arm out and it literally stretches, rubbery and laced with ribbons that rise up, ready for action. Ready for the needle.
The veins protrude like mountains on a relief map, but I have no expectation of relief, only more. More.
(Something more…)
My right hand hovers over the mountains, the needle held steady, my fingers concrete and precise. I don’t even need to tie off. My veins are so eager they demand participation, now.
(Chattering, chattering…)
I no longer feel the pinch of penetration as the needle punctures flesh, though sweat trickles down the sides of my face, my hairline damp—a muddy riverbed.
I inhale with slow, concentrated purpose and depress the plunger, pulling back, the syringe filling with blood, crimson flowing swiftly. Tiny creatures accompany the surging fluid. I see tiny limbs flutter as if these unknown creatures are swimming. I think I see a few doing the backstroke. Faint light illuminates what lives within the syringe, my blood; my body.
Even in the act of taking and not receiving, the deed carries weight. I exhale as the syringe fills, pull the needle from the yellow flesh, press the crease to my side into the tattered The Doors T-shirt, staunching the flow. My awkward pose does not matter. I make way across the dark room and nothing changes. The figure seems…inhuman.
Distinguishing human from nightmare—no—from that which should only be perceived as different, seems a dicey task. I want an arm, a vein to fill, to initiate the final stage, the final leg. I must feel around the seemingly slumbering creature. Burroughs, sure, but a transformed Burroughs, as I feel I’ve been transformed. I reach into the shadows and my fingers wander within the darkness. Touch interprets the sensation of fabric, cross-hatched threading. The blanket of shadows is quite literally a blanket of shadows…
A seed of unease takes root, but I bat it away. Why allow fear a foothold when I am so close? Burroughs may be different than expected, but what does that matter? After all I’ve been through, especially the previous leg, why even consider hesitating?
My hands continue to trace over the figure, lightly seeking an arm, a vein.
A low rumble vibrates under my palm.
I don’t allow my surprise to hinder my search. The vibration seems indicative of the torso, the lungs inhaling then exhaling stale air, aware of my intrusion. The rumble voices displeasure, yet I sense it is directing me. I move my eager fingers toward where the arm should be.
Peeling the thin fabric as one might the skin of a plum, the darkness slides aside. The dim light from around me, the source of which I’m uncertain, reveals a thin, long arm, barely more than bone covered in a dull, greasy, grey flesh. Odd blades like curved spikes along a lizard’s spine, or perhaps the prickly, thick hairs that dress a tarantula’s body, are evident here. Yet they are scattered along the length and do not dominate.
There are blue lines beneath the sickly flesh. A simpler road map than I am accustomed to when injecting myself, yet one that I hope is sufficient enough to accomplish my task.
I aim the needle at a blue vein, to the indecipherable ink pen scribbling, the cursive scribble of life. The chorus in my head lifts to heavenly heights, yet the chorus itself is laced with aural debris. Slivers of distortion knot and tighten; tighter.
As the needle approaches the arm, the blue line squiggles. Alive. A worm seeking the surface.
My mouth hangs slack.
Blood has coagulated from my recent puncture. It’s sticky as I open the crease to u
se my hand to hold down his arm. I steady myself and apply the needle to the blue line.
Pushing it in.
Pushing the plunger.
Crimson vacates the syringe. Blood, sweet elixir of life…and life again?
Wakes the legend.
As the plunger pushes to the hilt, Burroughs’ body sucks in a deep inhalation of air. The sleeping giant awakens. The dim light brightens.
I see him now, this thing as much insect as man, yet morphing as the blood surges into his body.
I pull the needle from his arm and back away. His transformation is instantaneous as opposed to my slow metamorphosis. He bloats, a balloon being filled with air, though the crackling and crinkling seems of a wooden derivation.
A growl, yet not from deep within, more like skimming past the lips, as if the lips were made of aluminum, smooth, yet metallic, rises as smoke from an industrial complex. It is visible, dirty, a stained white cloud, blooming.
Something else rises up, a cobra from the basket of his loins. No, of course not (of course not?). It’s his penis filling with blood, with life and length…and insects flood out of the swollen glans, pouring out, twitching along the pulsing veins. Underneath the skin of the shaft and all over the stretched taut flesh. The sound of his orgasm, from his mouth as well as emanating from the insect traffic gushing out of his penis, is of a tonal quality I’ve never heard before, never perceived. A sound so foreign it eludes classification.
The sound draws a response from the cats lurking in the shadows. A chorus of screeches and purring that hums harshly, burrowing into my eardrums.
It goes on and on: the vocalizations of unknown pleasure as well as the insect ejaculation. The body fills out as well. Not a lot, Burroughs was a lean man, but enough to mask the insect within, the insect-like creature he was while sleeping. (Sleeping?)
“God damn the torpedoes, been a long time since I’ve shot a load of such sphincter squeezing articulation, my boy. Even the hemorrhoids will be whistling dixie in appreciation of their parole from just hanging out and feeling ignored. Been waiting a long time for somebody to get this far.”
The voice, the inflection, is unquestionably Burroughs’, though it is different as well. The droning quality is spiked with battery acid, charged and clearing out perhaps years of silence. A few insects, also of an unspecified species, scurry past his lips as the white smoke turns to silver.
He sits up, pulls the shadow fabric over himself. The shadow fabric now a motley jacket, the moldy smell and abrupt movement releases moths from the sleeping folds, indicative of the many years it has hung over his prone body. Steaming fluids that plume from pores, jetting in little bursts all over his still gray flesh like geysers, pass through the shadow fabric. Their interference trims it all in a moldy green hue, before shimmering and fading swiftly away.
“Did I send for you?” he asks, staring at me with eyes the pastel orange color of a Monarch butterfly’s wings.
“Yes,” I say, not one to contemplate beyond need. “I am Marlon Teagarden.”
“Marlon who?” His cheeks are hollow, excavated as empty graves.
There is a moment like glass being blown, frozen, shattered. A slow-motion sprinkle spattering like blood from an open jugular across my thoughts. I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it.
“Worried you, didn’t I?” He laughs, a sound akin to the caw of a crow; many crows, actually; a murder of crows. A murder…
He plucks insects off his still erect penis, their bodies turn liquid then crusty. He crunches them between his blackened teeth.
“Nobody’s ever gotten by my scaly mistress before. Nobody’s ever made it this far. Lost souls but not lost enough. Not true explorers of what you call the dark frontier, but my associates who travel the same margins call by many names.”
I am struck by the awe of being in his presence, of making it to the end, but need to know specifics, to calm my jangling nerves.
“How long will it take?”
“Anxious, are we?” His smile is feral. His smile is lethal.
I nod my head.
“You know what you’ve gotten yourself into, eh, kiddo?”
“Yes,” I say. “Just tell me something, anything…”
“Time does not matter to the dark frontier patron, as you know. But for the sake of putting your nerves to rest, it should be about two hours for your blood to acquire what’s necessary for you to experience as I do—”
“The ultimate experience, yes.”
“As close as you can get to experiencing the multitude of everything unimagined without being me. Though if you think you have a clue as to what to expect, kiddo, you haven’t the foggiest.”
“Unimagined?”
“You have no idea.”
Again, his face tightens, the savage knowledge of what I am to experience, of what is next, sculpting it with a patina of mystery. It is not a comforting transformation.
He has been stroking a cat the whole time he’s been speaking. More than one, I can see. A bustling furball of life has nudged his erection to one side, staking claim to his lap.
“I made it past the Reptile Queen, I’m sure I can face anything now.”
The cawing is a crowd, much more than a murder; a war. After a long spell, it subsides, and he says, “What you experienced with my scaly mistress was but the tip of the needle of what is to follow. The puncture, without depressing the plunger and filling you with the narcotic elixir that is me, my mind, unhinged and free-falling.”
“The Centipede.”
He curls his lips, a brow, his eyes full of sadistic glee.
“The Centipede, of course. A catchphrase name, like Horse, Angel Dust, Dirt Goblin; like your modern methods of enlightenment via destruction. Krokodil. Penny Pincher. Triple Crown. A name built on paradox as I detest centipedes. Venusian slime. Truth is, as surrealist painter Sal Dali once said, ‘I am drugs.’ It was a statement of intent. A challenge to the Bourgeois, the snobs and capitalists. The elite, at least within their own minds. ‘Take me, and see.’ It was not as one might suggest, ego-inspired”—his smile again, so full of ambiguity—“but an invitation: take me, and be’”
“Many of the surrealists, much like paranoids, know a thing or two about what’s really going down in the world up there.” He raises a skeletal phalange, the thumb, indicating up there. Above us. “They know without the perverted psychological baggage, even if the perverse might be part of their make-up. Many of my fellow literary cohorts also get it, this thing called life, forever expanding after the physical body as you understand it, dies. Yet not in a sense those who experience afterward can describe. The point being…”—he pauses, for dramatic effect or an exercise in cruelty, something I did not expect, yet deep down, I think he’s just having some kind of mischievous fun at my expense—“I am drugs. I am the drug. Call it what you will, any worthwhile human with the buckaroo hullabaloo to get on in this thing called life, existence, would be clamoring at my feet to experience something beyond the generic. The bland. I supply this. I am the drug. The narcotic personification of the black meat, the thirsty devil. The puckered asshole of fate.”
My head spins with the information, a lit match to a forest. Burroughs in a chatty mood. No matter the tinge of nonsense inherent in it all. Perhaps nonsense is the true god that deserves our faith. Perhaps nonsense reigns supreme to those who “get it.”
“You’ll meet them all,” he said, the look on his face not lethal nor sadistic. Filled with awe, because he knows what I have coming.
“Meet…meet who?”
“Pay attention, kiddo. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Well, yes, but...”
“No buts, unless you’re talking about sharing something more than your blood.” He leers, though the leer is a flash, and not laced with perverse or malevolent intent. “I will sodomize your mind, not your flesh. Here, that’s where the fullest experiences dwell.” He taps the side of his head, the spindly nail digging into the new fles
h; a bead of blood—my goal leaking out? “Here, where you will join in the chaos of release from your humanly ways and the skincage husk. Here where freedom abounds, simply waiting for you to let it frolic.
I think about it all, want it all, please, go ahead, sodomize my mind, split the hemispheres and fuck my cerebral cortex. Time cannot move fast enough.
“I will meet others as well? Dali?”
He nods his head.
“Ginsberg? Rimbaud? Kerouac?”
All met with hearty head nods and my anticipation is plastered across my face.
“There’s always more. So many more. Unlimited.”
I reel off more names, then an obvious choice, though I am not sure if he’s dead or alive or…
“Solon?”
Burroughs stops on a dime, all momentum sucked dry.
“I mean, I’m not sure if he’s dead or not, but…”
“He’s been dead for many years. Actually, he’s never been truly alive in the world up there, the sappy bastard. Sad sack and quite antisocial. You could probably meet up with him, but not in this way.”
“Why not? He’s a master craftsman of the bizarre.”
“He’s a pulp hack with haughty aspirations never fully realized. A smudge given time in your world, my former world.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He is an insect that dreamed of being a man…for all the wrong reasons. Fame. Fortune. I am a man who dreamed of being an insect. In essence, expanding beyond the range of normalcy that runs the world I lived in. Fame, not really the deal. Fortune? Well, if it gets me more time to attain everything necessary for full mind expansion. To get me where I am now.”
“Sleeping?”
“Living. Experiencing within the brain, using the full capacity of the mind. H.P. Lovecraft opened his tale, The Call of Cthulhu with this tidbit: ‘The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.’ It goes on. Point being, he was wrong. The New England gent was afraid. Though the statement was for a piece of fiction and now, when you eventually get to talk to him, you’ll see he’s anything but afraid.” Burroughs circled back to his point. “The mere sniff of an existence most humans can’t imagine experiencing is a shit stain on tighty whities. Fear. Nothing more. So many people live afraid. That’s not living. Society disapproves of a true life. “
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