by Drew Stepek
I cracked my knuckles and then my neck. I blinked really fast twenty times, wiped a little bit of spit off the corner of my mouth and then jogged in a circle. Ah, the art of procrastination is an area of life that I had mastered. It wasn’t so much that I felt I couldn’t tackle a ten-foot barrier as much as I was pretty burned out. Compound that with the fact that I was desperately in need of blood and heroin and you have a formula for defeat.
ThAt’s right friEnd. You need hEroin.
I managed to creep up the shaky fence with relative ease. That was, until I reached the razor wire. Remaining as steady as I could, I propped my legs up to the highest point and extended my body upright. This maneuver allowed me to shift my left leg over the death trap as I supported my weight by grabbing onto two razor-less strands of wire. It would have been nice if I had clippers.
“Wait a minute,” I said to myself. Why was I bothering to climb the fence at all? It would have been much easier to simply open an entrance for myself at the bottom. After all, I did have super strength. I was being such a dipshit.
As I pulled back my leg and prepared to hop down and start over with plan B, a bright light flared on behind me.
“Fuck!” I lost balance and nearly swallowed my tongue. I fell backward and upside down, tangling my legs in the razor wire. A little bit of piss squirted out of me and a sharp pain bit into my ankles. “Dammit!”
I figured the cops had me. I slowly peeked out of one eye into the glare, expecting to see a patrol car’s spotlight blazing on my face. There were no cops standing in front of me with guns drawn, however. The light came from the marquee of the rundown cinema across the street. I hadn’t noticed it when I was jogging in circles like a fucking idiot. I kind of wished I had.
Before I sat up to untangle myself, I tilted my head sideways to read what was playing. I figured it was probably some late night rubby theater for perverts who didn’t believe in home video.
CHAPLINS, the marquee read. Well, it was supposed to be CHAPLINS, but for some reason the N was hung backwards. I didn’t know if it was a piss poor attempt to be alternative or subversive or if the pock-faced usher who hung it was just stupid. I decided that my first assumption was correct. The great lengths that the Austinites went to being perceived as counter-culture was exhausting. “Funky Cold Medina,” I said, remembering the dumb hipster who threw change at me. “What an asshole.”
The double doors of the building flung open. From the blackness inside, a figure appeared, spinning a cane. Under a black bowler hat waddled a man with a white face, Hitler mustache and dirty, crumpled suit. As he reached the front of the theater, the humming neon of the marquee illuminated and blinked so I could see his full get-up. The cane stopped spinning and as if it was controlling him like the winding key on a toy robot. He stopped right before he reached the curb and stared at me.
Still inverted, I grinned out of the side of my mouth and pointed at my legs. “I really wanted a dog.” I gave an uneasy laugh, unsure where this encounter was headed. “Right?”
The man didn’t respond. He blinked a few times, then he bent down, the bowler hat toppled from his head and landed in his palm as he took a bow. That was a good sign. I mean, it was queer as hell, but it was much better than half of Austin’s cops surrounding me at gunpoint. He rolled the hat up his arm and back onto his dark, greased-back hair.
He continued to gaze at me. After a minute of us uncomfortably making eye contact, I attempted to bend my body upward and unlock my legs. Unsuccessful, I dropped back down.
Two other figures appeared on both sides of the Charlie Chaplin impersonator. On his left stood a thick-bodied sheik guy in a turban with his arms crossed. He nodded. On the right was another guy in a bow tie and a gray-striped jacket. He tried to pull a pork pie hat onto his head and it popped up into the air above him. Frustrated, he pulled it down again to the same result. All three of them, their faces painted with bright foundation, thick eyeliner and black lipstick, remained dead silent.
“So, are you guys in a ska band or something?”
The silence continued. They didn’t even smirk at my attempt to lighten the mood. The marquee caught my eye again. CHAPLINS. I slapped myself on the forehead. “Oh, I get it. You guys are supposed to be Buster Keaton and Rudolph Valentino.” Surprisingly, I knew a lot about pre-talkie movies from living with that washed-up-kiddie-star-turned-junkie-nun, The Habit. At the time, she was trying to get her career on track by playing Mary Pickford in a Lifetime movie. They laughed her out of the building during her first audition. She may have brought a bunch of heroin home for both of us, but in hindsight I should have killed her when I had the chance.
“You boys playing dress-up tonight?” I joked.
And yet, they still didn’t respond.
I nodded and looked up at the sparse blood in my body running down my legs. Defeated, I looked back at my new friends. Their numbers had doubled. Some fat fuck in a bigger bowler, kerchief, and thick bacon-sized suspenders that reluctantly held up his enormous pleated pants appeared behind the sheik. Another sharply dressed guy with a top hat and a cane tucked under his arm was joined by some woman with greasy-ass hair who I guessed was supposed to be Garbo. That is, if Garbo had a meth face.
I scratched at my thigh and covered my hand with blood. “Okay. I’m sorry,” I pleaded. “I shouldn’t be breaking in here. Can you give me a pass this time and help me down? I’m gonna bleed the fuck out.” I brought my hand to my mouth and licked it, trying to refuel my body with whatever I could.
Still no response.
I exhaled, deciding that these clowns were going to sit there and watch me die. What a way to go. Fucking idiot. And just when I decided things couldn’t get any worse, the centerpiece, the Tramp, flipped his cane and held it straight across his chest. Spikes popped out of Chaplin’s cane, and the rest followed suit by arming themselves with various weapons. Fatty Arbuckle bounced a bat off his foot as Valentino unsheathed a half-moon sword from behind his back. Speed-scarred Garbo snatched two blades from her garters. Another new member in a Sherlock Holmes get-up—either John Barrymore or Basil Rathbone—lit a match and fired up a deep-bucketed pipe.
I tugged on my legs with my pelvis, trying desperately to somehow shake myself free. The razors dug into my shins, scraping into the bones with their points. My body started to grow a little cold. I bounced my back against the fence and almost said, “Come on guys, this isn’t funny anymore,” but it was never funny and I would have sounded like a pussy.
And then, as the neon of the marquee popped and blinked, the now ten-person 1920s horror show started walking toward me. Chaplin led the way, twirling his death cane.
“Fuck me.” Knowing if I didn’t get free that I’d become a living piñata, I reached up and began tearing apart the razor wire that was crippling me. I was becoming increasingly dizzy as I started grabbing furiously onto wire wherever I could to snap it free. The blades thrashed my hands. I looked at the cast of terror. They had made it half way across the street. They closed in on me in a tight half-circle, with the Tramp moving to the back center.
My left leg finally broke free. Knowing time wasn’t on my side, I tugged the right leg free, tearing some wire down with me. I managed to shift my body and bend my head to the side so I could land on my shoulder instead of my head. I pushed myself up quick and faced them.
“Okay, you fucking weirdos.” I wiped my hand up my body, trying to capture as much blood as I could. I drenched my face. “The time for talking is over.”
I jumped toward them as they took to defensive positions, raising their weapons. “You guys don’t want to fuck with me!” I swung the razor wire like a whip and they folded back a bit to avoid contact with the spikes. There wasn’t enough slack from where the rest of the wire still connected to the fence though, and my only weapon was pulled back from my hand and clattered to the ground.
“Fuck it.” I put my fists up and stupidly jumped into the center of the posse, swinging away.
Fro
m my right eye, I saw Fatty lift his baseball bat to swing at my face. I caught the end in my palm and tugged it free from his grip. I flipped it over to my other hand and plunged it into heinous Gretta Garbo’s nose. She didn’t scream or cry. Rather, she went cross-eyed, and as she dropped to her back, she latched onto my belt loops and slid under me, cutting into my heels with her daggers.
As I ducked down and jumped backward to avoid the rapier of Douglas Fairbanks, I managed to catch Garbo by her snatch. Disgusting wharf-like fumes materialized in my nostrils. Her eyes shot wide open as the smell made me vomit on her, then pounded my heel into her throat, snapping all the bones like a box of crayons. Trying to hold my breath so I wouldn’t get sick again from the smell of her lady juice, I set my thumb on her clitoris and shoved my four free fingers into her hole.
Before she had the opportunity to fight me off, I held down her thighs with my other foot and tore her plumbing from pelvis, up to her gullet, and all the way through to her heart; plowing through her organs and opening her up like a body bag. I smashed a hodge-podge of her insides into my mouth and used my tongue to squeeze the nectar like a sponge.
Vampire blood. There were vamps in Texas. There were girl vamps in Texas.
With my strength returning, I nabbed the bat off the ground and swung it savagely, completely knocking Fairbanks’s head off his neck. The body stood for a second and then went limp, falling on top of Garbo. Without taking any time to assess my situation, I jumped on Arbuckle as Valentino started to make his move with the Sinbad sword. I dug into Fatty’s jugular and ripped it free from his sweaty, clammy flesh.
To avoid Valentino’s sword, I spun lard ass around by his neck, using him as a shield in front of me. The blade split his head down the middle of his skull as he gasped for air. I shoved his jugular vein into my mouth and leapfrogged over his shoulder, trapping Valentino’s arm between my thighs. I clamped his forearm tight, and as he released the handle of the sword, I spun around and broke the arm in half. I kicked him down and hammered the bat repeatedly into his clavicle and sternum. Trying to remain focused on the movement around me, I clawed his chest open and had at whatever organs I could get my hands on.
It was about the moment when I swallowed Fatty’s jugular vein and shoved Valentino’s liver into my mouth that I realized these motherfuckers were on some pretty heavy drugs.
ThAt’s not hEroin.
I didn’t know which drugs they were, however, because an unfamiliar tingling throbbed in my head, causing me to become disoriented. Seconds were dropping from my vision and everything around me became choppy. The world seemed to melt as I tried to shake off the feeling. The marquee blared into my eyes and zoomed in and out, becoming more and more faded and losing focus. Everything went hyperactive.
Before I had the opportunity to take a breath, piano wire snapped about my neck. I whirled around to find myself only millimeters from Sherlock’s pipe. The synthetically-laced tobacco smoke blinded my already fogged eyes. I palmed the pipe into his mouth and, catching him off guard, I bent down under the now loosened piano wire and headbutted him in the chest. As he doubled over, I knocked off his deerstalker hat, seized the back of his head, and pounded him face first into a pile of rocks. His arms shot out cartoony and stared flapping around like a breezy geezer at a car dealership. I planted my knee into the back of his head, flattening his face into the concrete. I shifted all my weight into my knee until I crushed his cranium, exposing his brain. I huddled over him and dug my teeth into the hole. I could have sworn his brain was talking to me. Maybe The Gooch had made a telepathic connection.
Pleased with my meal, I looked up to see the lesser known stars retreat into the theater. Chaplin, however, swung his cane around and pointed it at me. His faced stretched horizontally, opening holes in it that flickered like film grain. I was having massive hallucinations. The marquee shined from behind him and lit up his black outfit. He looked like Hitler combined with Christ.
I stood up, brushed myself off, and walked toward him. He stood his ground, and then, in a moment of breaking character, he ran at me with the cane in front of him. Clicking another button as he closed in, he released a massive switchblade at the cane’s tip. Distracted by the terrifying hallucinations unfolding everywhere around me, I fell backward. Before I realized it, Chaplin was on top of me. I turned sideways, catching the blade in my right arm. I looked at my arm. It looked like my foot. He shoved his hand in my face. It also looked like a foot. He secured the dominant position on top of me and for some reason, he started slapping me in the face.
Realizing that wasn’t damaging anything other than my pride, he tried to gouge my eyes out. My body was so jumpy and wired that he couldn’t hit either target. I slipped my arms under his knees, breaking off the blade from the cane which was now deeply lodged in my bicep. I latched onto his trunk and pulled him close. The white makeup on his face smeared into his black hair as eyeliner cascaded down his cheeks like tears. I locked my arms together around his back. He sucked in, trying to gain the air coming from my mouth.
That’s when I sat up, snapping him inversely over himself. He hacked out some blood and bent back onto his legs like a folding chair. I don’t know if I was afraid that he was going to crawl away, but before I got back up I pulled my arms out from under him and wrenched his head off.
His shirt buttons popped open and much to my surprise, it said “Funky Cold Medina”.
“Why were you taking pictures of me?”
I stared into the horror of his dead eyes for a few seconds, expecting him to say something. He didn’t. So, with my fingers, I moved his lips and started singing. “So, I gave some to my dog when he began to beg, then he licked his bowl and he looked at me and did the wild thing on my leg.”
I tossed the head aside because I became preoccupied with my hideously deformed hoof hands. I started picking a hole into my hoof hands.
“Ha. ‘Funky Cold Medina’. What a fucking awesome shirt.”
My body pulsated as the marquee went dark.
You’rE wEt, The Gooch said.
And he was right. The Chaplins were filled with the strongest PCP I had ever taken.
It took me awhile, but I was almost back to the abandoned barn and fire pit where I’d left Eldritch and Pinball. As soon as I saw their silhouettes bouncing off the fire, I gunned the dogcatcher truck. If I timed everything right, I figured the truck would drift to a halt directly in front of them. Then I’d kick open the door for them to get in. Of course, piling in would take them time since the shock and awe of my stunt man-inspired entrance would leave them dead fucking silent for a bit, and they would, of course, have to shake off the dust that I sprayed all over their faces first.
The way I envisioned it—mind you, I was on enough PCP to make the entire 70s’ student population throw themselves from a high school roof—when I kicked open the passenger door, I would hear a sad trombone sound effect as if God were supplying the score and Foley work for my every living move. I would tip my black felt cowboy hat up, if I were wearing a hat. Covered from head-to-toe in the desert’s salt of the earth, foolish Eldritch would open his eyes and then throw his Texas sheriff’s hat on the ground and stomp on it. Deputy Pinball’s eyes would suddenly appear behind a mask of dirt. She would remain still for a couple of seconds and then begin shaking. BOOM! Tears would burst from her face. Then, at the very end of my dazzling automotive ballet, after they realized that I had gotten the best of them, I would wink.
Fuck, I wished I had that hat. I decided that the hat wasn’t as important as a toothpick. I needed a toothpick. Wink and toothpick. The toothpick would surely go down as the icing on my cool cake.
So, yeah. It didn’t quite go down like that.
I gunned the truck, at the same time I started flicking my high beams and honking the horn. It was then that I noticed that the steering wheel look less like a steering wheel and more like a doughnut.
I finally looked up at Eldritch. As expected, his eyes bugged from his dumb face
like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. Maybe not. I don’t know. He nabbed Pinball by her collar, popped her under his arms and started running from the fire pit. I quickly recalibrated my mission as Eldritch leapt like a bitch of a billy goat and headed toward the abandoned barn in the distance. I told him hours earlier that we should take refuge in the barn, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He insisted that it gets cold in the desert at night and that we would need to build a fire. He argued in way too many words that the years of sun on the old wood was a certain fire trap for loose embers jumping from a campfire.
I tried to roll down my window but my broken wrist prevented me from success. So I just used that hand and mashed it through the window. “That’s right, assfucker. The barn is good enough for you now,” I screamed. “Yeeee hawwww!”
My margin of opportunity was closing. Seconds before he reached the entrance to the barn, I decided it was time to spin the custom steering wheel—which my warped brain still saw as a cruller—and perform the money shot. My heart raced in my ear as I ground my teeth in anticipation. I spun away. Spin wheel. Spin. The race car drift sequence began as planned, but I overcompensated for the turn and whirled the wheel off the console with my super vampire strength.
“Oh shit!” I cracked in my best southern twang. Actually, it was more of a southern drawl, I think.
The dog catcher truck oscillated about one hundred and eighty degrees before it began rolling.
About three and a half revolutions later, the truck came to a stop on its side. Some obnoxious alert sound buzzed in my ears as if the door was ajar in my brain, signaling that I was in imminent danger. There was still a fifty-fifty chance that when I untangled myself from the truck, Eldritch and Pinball would be covered head to toe in dust and that the only real casualty would be the truck that had taken me around six to seven hours to commandeer.