Riding the Centipede

by Smith, John Claude

  “No.” Rudolf dropped to his hands and knees, not caring if he soiled his white pants. Again. An orange tabby and a calico friend approached him.

  Rudolf barked, growled and bounced a bit on his hands and knees. A pit bull in angel’s clothing. He’d really gotten in touch with his canine side the last few days.

  He succeeded in scaring off the impending intruders as well as all the rest of the cats. They scurried around the back of the red house. Some hightailed toward a separate garage.

  He let his tongue loll, panting as he did. He howled as the sun prepared to give way to the moon. The gloaming glimmered off the stone with Ruskie written on it. Rudolf leaned down to it, sniffing. He reached out. The stone was wet.

  “Comrade,” he said, nodding.

  He let his tongue loll out, wagged it side to side before touching the stone; then, licking eagerly.

  His reaction was contained, but he heard the sound of something unraveling—something metal—and a rectangle opened from the side of the red house.

  A cat sprinted out of the hole.

  Two cats scurried in, the orange tabby and the calico again, dashing from the side of the house. As if with a purpose.

  (To warn Marlon of his presence? Did Marlon sense he was being followed? Tracked?)

  He stood up and strolled toward the rectangular space. Stairs led down, losing visual solidity in the darkness. Rudolf had no flashlight, but this would not be a problem. He knew it would not be good for his already unstable condition, but he did not expect it would take long to find what he needed. Marlon.

  His veins pulsed hot and furious.

  He tilted his head, cracked his neck, and pulled from within. Tapping into the chaos.

  His eyes pulsed in measured strobes, before settling as beams of twin lighthouses.

  He peered deeper, but only saw stairs. Metal stairs.

  This place was constructed with a purpose.

  For the cats?

  No matter, he knew what was next. He would descend the metal stairs to meet his destiny. If destiny meant the successful attainment of the drug.

  He turned to the van, to beef jerky standing outside the driver’s side door. He raised his hand and waved. Come here.

  He watched beef jerky lean into the van. Watched a side door slide open. Watched as beef jerky rushed to the door and pulled out the ramp.

  Watched as his employer was rolled down the ramp. The bumpy ride the stairs were going to be for his employer didn’t matter the least to Rudolf. Hurry up.

  As ugly as Rudolf knew he presently looked, his employer had all nightmares beat. As much as Rudolf only utilized the shell of being human for what mattered to him up to now—using his inherent strength and guile, along with the sadism that led him down this path, to acquire the things he loved: art; nothing else really mattered—his employer had beaten him to the punch when it came to embracing one’s inhuman side…at least in appearance.

  None of this made a dent in the measured beam of his focus, though. He had one thing in mind. One thing and only one thing.

  It was a long way down, perhaps to Hell, for all he knew. But if shaking hands with the devil was the only way to get to Marlon and the drug, so be it. His grip was firm; he was ready.

  Chapter 29 Teagarden

  Patience: gumming a steak, the ability to rip and tear rendered impotent. Waiting for teeth to fill the mouth, jut through with force, with anticipation, to encourage the primal pleasure.

  I stroke a cat, one of Burroughs’ many feline friends. Their presence altered perceptions, softened edges. This place, steeped in dismal trimmings, made bearable by their purring.

  Addiction is the one truth of my life. Changing over time, as one drug runs its course, the influx needed of a more potent replacement. The expectations higher, scraping the soft bellies of clouds; higher still. Eviscerating everything I have known, the only path for me. Releasing me from the past, the life of comfort sandblasted by all father did to corrupt it. The past that shaped me, realizing this as I sit here with the ultimate experience so close. With my addiction eager to participate in the ultimate experience. This is my truth.

  My thoughts meander to that past again. A past shaped by the cold knife of reality, yours and mine, my dear sister. The reality of simply being and getting by in a cruel world that truly does not care. A reality that just wants to devour souls and consume the fleshy remnants, use the bones as toothpicks.

  That’s why I choose a different reality…

  I choose to grow similar teeth, to devour the soul of reality itself. Fight fire with fire? To swish reality in my mouth like fine wine, something I’ve only experienced when foraging in our parent’s liquor cabinet. Mother’s need for anything and everything alcohol made available without hesitation. She in her own forgetting mode, forgetting to even live. Filling space.

  (“Why are you being nostalgic, Marlon? You’re so damn close to your heaven. Why dwell on the past? Bury the fucker and move forward.” Marilyn again, always chiding me for my melancholic ways, my bending but not breaking. You’d think she’d find something there admirable. “Admirable is a petty conceit.”

  “Shut up, shut the fuck up. I’m not slipping into nostalgia. I am waiting. How the hell else am I supposed to wait?”)

  Bitch.

  Insects and lizards and the strange things that don’t belong to either category skitter under the shadow cover of Burroughs. Cats circle around him, finding open space to feel his body against theirs. They snuggle and purr, lick his arm, the puncture wound their oasis. Warming him, maybe. Or siphoning from the outside a taste of my treat. I almost swat them away, but let it go.

  I am weary.

  I ache in ways inhuman. There is no other way to put it. I ache in ways I have never imagined. My skin looks like skin, but feels as I would imagine an exoskeleton would feel. Restricting the layers beneath. I can acclimate to the mechanics of breathing just fine, yet feel like I am suffocating.

  My body has undergone many alterations, my exoskeleton suit made not to fit, but to change. I have a corset shaped I know not how. A carapace armor never to be removed. Perhaps I will know in time.

  Perhaps not.

  Time is hell. I need it to move more swiftly. With this thought Burroughs’ stirs, the cats shuffle but do not leave him. His penis lengthens again, though no semen masked as insects is ejaculated. This time it swivels and coils, dancing as a snake to the unheard music of the charmer. .

  He props himself up with those bony elbows, and smiles as his head clears the shadows.

  “You’re gonna love this. It’s time for you to Ride the Centipede, Marlon.”

  I stand so quickly my head spins, and realize my limbo state, the thoughts and designs and harsh geometry of being within me, is the last time I will ever have to go there. The past is almost officially gone. The moments before injection, gone.

  I am ready.

  I am ready to Ride the Centipede.

  As I stride toward Burroughs, something echoes within this tight space. The space expands, stretches out, as if made of rubber, as if air is being blown into a balloon. I hear strange sounds, different sounds. Different than the sounds of insects and lizards and purring cats and Burroughs’ monotone rumble. These sounds are more common, in a way. Of the world out there. Of the world I am leaving. My only question is, how did they get in here?

  Chapter 30 Blake

  “They seem to go on forever,” Jane said, hand on Blake’s bicep as they plunged deeper and deeper into darkness eternal. “I would say, ‘You sure this is a good idea?’ but I also know this is why we are here. Still…how much longer?”

  “Only time will tell,” Blake said, stepping down another stair and swiping at abundant cobwebs, hoping not to run into any of the architects, what with all he’s seen of insects over the last few days. Another step, two, three, each one the tick on a clock that grinds patience and reality to gruel. Eaten by the darkness, digested as sustenance. Demanding the price of their descent…when they hit
bottom.

  The room was massive, warehouse large—larger—high ceilings kissing the weeds and the red cottage sitting atop it out of view, way up in a darkness the pen light could not penetrate. Cats slinked or scampered by. The odor was of a cat box, yet much more than that. The cold was hollow, empty, like a cave. A place the sun has never brightened.

  Scanning left to right, Blake spied an odd disarray of stone blocks looking like prehistoric furniture. At about 1:00 o’clock, a dimness that couldn’t be qualified as light, but of a different texture than the darkness, signaled which way to go.

  About halfway to their destination, Blake pocketed the pen light. Jane’s grip, having moved from his bicep to his aching right hand, grew firm. The deep chill of the place inspired protests from every joint. He almost did not mind, protecting this damsel in willful distress. Perhaps not willful, but necessary…

  As they crossed the length of a football field, the light shimmered dully, no brighter, yet with their approach, more of it was visible.

  A figure rose up from where it was scrunched down against one of the big stone blocks. Blake registered the person was in deep concentration. Something about the tilt of the head, the oblivious tint to the eyes.

  The tapping of their footsteps hadn’t echoed in the least, as though they had left them behind. Not signaling their progress but marking the path taken. Invisible bread crumbs. Braille footprints.

  “Marlon,” Jane called out as she rushed past Blake. He had suspected as much, though the figure looked leaner, more ragged, much older than ten years would add to a person. A carnie with the gift of guessing one’s age, if there be such a gift, would fail miserably with this poor man boy.

  “Jane?” Then, recognition, all question marks left to the insects. “Jane! You finally made it.”

  Blake stepped forward, aware of being on edge. He watched as the long lost brother and sister embraced, an awkward thing in many ways. As if they remembered only the people they were, strangers glimmering from the past, nothing more. Of course, time had passed, lives had changed, the brittle princess had become the steely queen. The frantic, mad man boy transformed into the man made of twigs and perseverance, yet still a boy.

  “You’ve just made it, my dear sister,” Marlon said, taking her hand in his. Blake registered Jane’s desire to flinch, yet also her desire to hold on and never let him go. She seemed trapped in a tangle of emotions. The circumstances did not help alleviate her wary condition.

  Insects sprinted between the ubiquitous cats. Many feline eyes peered out from the dark corners as if they were wary.

  “You should have been with me the whole trip, Jane. What wonders await. It could have been ours.”

  “Only one at a time,” a voice said, deep as though dipped in thick, black oil and full of glee. The shadows along a stone slab shuffled, the cats causing a commotion. A figure resided there.

  Burroughs?

  The walls bristled with life. Blake clenched his fists, the right one reminding him of the past.

  “Come with me, Marlon. Let me help you. Let me help you out of this life and to one that will bring you…happiness.”

  “Happiness? What do you know of happiness? I want this. You know I have wanted the ultimate experience since before I left. Life unhinged. This is the real deal, the pure distillation of that quest. I want this.”

  “But it cannot lead to anywhere but deeper into the hole you’ve called home for so long, Marlon…” Jane stroked Marlon’s arm.

  Blake picked up on Marlon’s under-the-radar reaction, a subtle shudder of discomfort. The arm bent oddly, all bones momentarily gone. He seemed elastic.

  Blake took a half-step toward them, blinked hard, and the arm seemed normal again. Bones solid as bones again. He paused, giving the siblings space, not one to intrude until necessary, which kept him amped and mentally armed for action. He felt haste was their best move. A flitting thought about the parameters of normal made him shake his head and turn away.

  “You used to believe,” Marlon said, sounding hurt. Sounding fourteen years old, stubbing a toe into the concrete floor.

  Blake decided against hesitation. Marlon gesticulated oddly, then twisted a tight knot into his hair.

  “Who is this, Jane?” Marlon asked.

  “He is a friend. He’s helped me find you. Please, let’s find our way out of here—”

  “No. Don’t you understand? I am so close. I’m about to Ride the Centipede. I’m about to live as few before me ever have.”

  Jane glanced to Blake, pleading, as if he had the answers to anything here.

  Blake remained silent, observing, letting them work it out. The hackles on his neck bristled with unease. This place inspired dread but, more so, a sense that anything could happen at any time pervaded it all. He changed his strategy, turning to the stone block, the unsettled allegiance of the shadows as if concealment of this figure was unnecessary. Despite curiosity, he wanted the figure to remain within the womb of darkness.

  “Burroughs?”

  “Who were you expecting, Dr. Benway?”

  He could see it in Jane’s features, the scrubbing away of shadows across her always serious demeanor. This was Burroughs. Jane was enamored yet fearful.

  Marlon simply smiled, relief and anticipation propping up the corners of his lips. He was captivated.

  Blake wanted out of there ASAP. The vibe was making his skin crawl. Or perhaps it was the insects. He pawed at his sleeves, pulling at the cuffs.

  The world was at a standstill. Here, time was irrelevant. He gauged the sensation, the tick-tock of footsteps only a suggestion of the passage of time as they made their way to Marlon, and Burroughs. This limbo state dominated. Blake couldn’t escape the sense of being stuck, waiting because that was all he could do. Yet, he could leave, this much was true. He’d led Jane to Marlon, now it was up to her to finish the deal, lead him out. He could just walk away. There was no reason for him to linger here, waiting for nothing but to be a guide out. Out was behind him. Jane could make the trek, hand in hand or arm in arm with Marlon. She could do it. She could.

  Why did he stay? But her eyes told a different story. This woman who seemed made of iron and grit, was made of flesh and blood, emotions and hope. Hope, a word used by the weak to make it to the next day, and to endure the torture of their meager existence. Hope, a word he hadn’t thought of in years, not one to cater to his weaknesses. Not one to allow false idols or frivolous fodder to fill the headspace usually clogged with alcohol.

  So why was he waiting?

  Jane glanced at him as she held Marlon’s hand.

  He stayed to be lost with her, to be supportive in a situation that did not bode well for a positive outcome. He stayed because it was the human thing to do, even as he listened to Marlon ask Burroughs how much longer? And Burroughs replied, “Just about time.” before he laughed, a tectonic rumble that made Blake’s balls scrunch up into the cavity above his scrotum.

  He stayed because in Jane’s eyes he saw a little girl’s desperation…

  (Claire, sweet Claire…)

  “Who’s that?” Jane said, her eyes peering behind Blake.

  Blake, always attentive, had allowed his concentration on Jane and Marlon (and Claire) to distract him from the bigger picture, though he’d sensed something he only qualified as not good ripple throughout his body.

  The sound of footsteps, muffled yet approaching, welcomed him as he turned around. A squeaky, metallic sound as well. Four figures neared. Two silhouettes in suits, one of them pushing a wheelchair carrying a third figure of curiously indiscernible shape. But these figures seemed insubstantial in the presence of the fourth man. A man who’s eyes lit their way. A big man, with lightning for hair, and a countenance to melt glaciers.

  The big fella from Roswell.

  Rudolf Chernobyl.

  And he was not looking too good.

  As the idiom goes: All bets were off.

  Confirmation was attained with the first words to pass from Ch
ernobyl’s lips: “What brings you to these parts, Cowboy?”

  Chapter 31 Chernobyl

  Rudolf Chernobyl rubbed his hands together, the friction white hot, practically welding them as one. He did not need to look down to confirm this. He felt it. He was white hot everywhere.

  He pulled his hands apart. A drooping web of light dripped to the floor, spattered and faded.

  “Probably the same thing that brought you here, Chernobyl,” Cowboy said, his stance one for action.

  Rudolf Chernobyl thought him a fool for both the statement and the stance. But at least he did not need to introduce himself to Cowboy, whose name did not matter in the scope of what he was after.

  It all came down to priorities.

  “Who are these people, Jane?” a man said, a lean, praying mantis of a man. From his previous fleeting moment in his presence, Rudolf knew this was—

  “Marlon. Son.” The voice was thick and sticky, resonant as if spoken from within a barrel.

  Rudolf turned to face the thing that called itself Mr. Smith, the mask slipping fast. Father or freak or remnant of fire, it disgusted even him to view it.

  It. Warren Teagarden.

  “Father?” Rudolf watched the woman take a hesitant step toward them, then halt as the wheelchair was rolled into view. “Oh, my…”

  “Father? No, you cannot be here, Father. I buried you and your depraved desires, buried, never to be—”

  “Marlon, stop.” The woman, the sister, Jane was her name, if Rudolf remembered correctly from the news reports those many years ago. “Stop with the fantasy here, with the fantasy of what our father did to you. Of all of it, the lies. Stop, my brother. Come back with me and let me help you.”

  “A family reunion. How delightful. What do you make of that, Cowboy?”

  “I don’t make anything of it. It’s not my place to judge.”

  “But if you were a wagering man, how would you see this playing out?”

  Cowboy’s face remained firm. A poker face set on bluff?