Frankentown
Page 13
Frank was shocked and literally didn’t know how to react to that. Nobody’s said anything even remotely like this about his dad in half a decade. That didn’t stop her from talking however.
“Today, they could actually telepathically control their space so well that a ball of rock with no doors, could be a great thing to travel in.
The Rebels have orichalcum…based pods. It is a molt of various metals, which together get electrified, heat to extreme temperatures and molds with beings to cover extreme distances both in space and time.
The beings can simply climb into a ball and it would start glowing and fly. Why this happened they couldn’t explain, not even to my husband, who had a chance to communicate with them.”
She took a swig of her coffee and lit a cigarette, as though they were the tools she needed to carry herself over this, however many times a day.
“So he died of Typhus, transmitted by the survivor of the legendary ‘Roswell crash’ and died within weeks of Typhus.”
“Typhus?”
“He was extremely susceptible to disease after the radiation poisoning. That was the first time we’ve dealt with anything like that. May have even come from them.”
“So how’d you come to work here again?”
“I’m getting there. Pour a coffee.”
Frank did as he was told and suddenly remembered, looking over his shoulder at Chida, how he’d see her and his dad talk in a very similar way. As a kid he’d always tune it out.
It was always grown-up talk, and the stench of alcohol and smokes were a wall he couldn’t get past.
At least there was Laura.
“When Marlon Alabaster was 23, he got a call from a small lab of alternative sciences.
Very hush hush.
He was always a brilliant boy.”
From what Chida spoke of him, he was full of great ideas, new concepts, and very inventive.
By high-school, he built an enormous maze of glass tubes. Then they put an octopus in it and were astonished with the find; octopi are brilliant coordinators and can squeeze through numerous tubes within seconds. There were no other animals in the test. From a scientific standpoint, having the sample size of the experiment be limited to a single octopus made his ‘experiment’ a lot more of a ‘show with an octopus’. Anything other than one unit can show any amount of correlation between facts and measured numbers, but on its own, it hardly held any scientific data whatsoever; how quickly it swam from point A of the maze to point B was irrelevant.
So- it wasn’t even that scientific. He won the prize, though.
The Roswell crash of July wasn’t until fourty-seven. The book that Frank held in his hands confirmed that there was a ‘guidebook’ of ‘what is actually happening on earth right now’.
Or it could be fiction.
Everything in basically lead him to think that
We are basically their pets. The ‘Grays’.
All at once Frank began feeling slightly insignificant. The feeling grew all around him until it enveloped him like a snake would a mouse.
Whatever the differences between him and Chida were, he was compelled to listen when she spoke about an alternate creation theory. Somehow, the transfer of information was pleasant. It was also the most that the two have ever spoken, even though he hardly spoke.
“Hundreds of thousands of years ago, before the last ice age, when the planet was warm and crawling with life, they came. The nature was purely untouched by humans or anybody else.” she started pointing from picture to picture, “when the ocean floors were lower.”
It was so obvious.
He should’ve already seen through all this.
“There was a city, that’s now deep underwater, where their civilization lived and remained. They cut these enormous shapes out of solid rocks of the mountains to build with. You can still find these around.”
“Hold it right there.” Frank yelped. His head started swaying side to side. Chida grew more impatient as he started losing all of the thoughts in his head until there wasn’t a single one left.
They’ve been here to stay.
It really happened.
And so far not bad,
they seemed friendly so far.
So far.
So far.
So far.
So far.
Echoed in the caverns of Frank’s mind.
Chapter Eighteen
A Good Career
When Al Cohen came to, he was surrounded by people and the Rebel grays have just disappeared, along with their rainbow lights.
Everybody wanted to know how he’s feeling,
whether getting put back together hurt,
and whether he was ‘feeling alright’.
Somebody had even offered him a sandwich. He was the miracle man.
The proof of a miracle that happened. People cheered like he’d just finished the marathon, but all he did was die in a car crash, break into a million pieces and got put back together, no effort required on his part. His face was familiar before from his cheap-looking campaign TV ads to those who watched television.
To others he was just another backward politician, an in all likelihood, a crook.
Within half hour strong winds announced the arrival of a white medical helicopter bearing a red cross.
As it descended down to recover what may have well been goulash from a crumpled up car, the blades’ cruel slashes dispersed a radius around Al who willingly climbed onboard.
Scotty, the guy piloting the helicopter even waged with the attending nurse Eric (it always had to be a male for helicopter shifts) that they won’t be able to get him out and will have to literally incinerate what was left.
Eric thought it would be bad, but that they’d be able to get him out with the jaws of life.
Both were wrong.
“Where are we going?” Al asked, still perplexed from his car-lobotomy moments earlier.
“The hospital.” Eric retorted with a sizable donation of well deserved sarcasm.
There wasn’t even a scratch on him.
The crowd below was going crazy, and one guy even tried jumping up onto the helicopter’s skates as it lifted off, only to fall back down and knocking a few people over.
The whole journey back to the East Park hospital near the PB&J park, Scotty and the nurse said nothing. They had both lost the bet.
Al was a perfect American.
And the perfect consumer.
People used to say he was as pompous as he was clad in plaid shirts and denim. Previously thought to be a slob, the getup represented the everyday-man's image that was to become his campaign uniform. He looked accessible.
There was more to him than him being a functional alcoholic; he was also a very successful one, by the standards of alcoholics. His campaign was poor in appearance, but he was a relatively popular vote for the very same reason.
And now, undazed and unchanged, he came back to be; Alive.
A nasty, cold and foul smelling soul. Resurrected.
People. Nasty leeches.
He was a rage monster. He knew it and tried to make it go away with rum. It was exactly this that he lost and couldn’t seem to find on the bottom of any glass. He’d spend many nights with his nose buried in it, sniffing sips of his rum with his nose.
On a good day he’d take the sweet delicious rum, but today was a call for the smoky and oaky kind.
While his nose slowly turned a shade of scarlet, he pondered about the meaning of it all.
He just couldn’t figure it out. He hated most people as he hated himself. Intensely.
He was a land mine. Walk-on eggshells.
For him, nobody was smart enough to hang out with.
Not even himself anymore.
And none of his former friends ever called anymore, either, so why should he care?
He carried a lot of hate around with him, but kept the most of it to himself anyway.
He tried to understand it, but it was beyond any reason
. Or at least to him; he just never got it.
So it was that this man was Al Cohen, and that he was rescued from a burning car crash of death by gray aliens. Deservedly? Probably not.
At least that’s what he thought, because despite the fact that he had a problem, he was never ignorant of its existence and loathed himself for it. For Now, however, he had a rational fear of aliens, but fortunately for him, he didn’t remember them at all. The Apparition of the grays had concluded into a further dimensions before he ever came to.
Their stout figures all elbows and knees were now but a fractal in the fog of his mind. Buried.
The hospital was very busy.
Lot of people were trampled in the sighting. People had started talking about an impending ‘Event of Doom’ as the Mayan calendar predicts. There was never any clear explanation of why it should happen in Oakland, a city with one of the highest criminal rates in the United States.
Two candidates for the city mayor who were also running were now waiting for Al Cohen to arrive at the hospital. They immediately knew their prey. He was clearly going to be competition.
One of them greeted him on the rooftop when the helicopter landed on the hospital roof.
He was commonly mistaken for a lefthand liberal, but that was also the image he projected.
“Harry Lincoln, my name.” He said as he shook his hand, the moment he came out.
The blades moved with threatening speed and the air was cut into ribbons.
“Huh?!” was all Al could muster up as he was being led inside by the nurses to ensure he’s ok. Harry was favored by a modest but strong 35 percent. By now he must have known that he basically had no chance of winning, but he still had quite a few votes left to go.
“Are you related?” Al asked when Harry introduced himself for the second time inside.
Are you retarded?
“No. It’s an honor to meet you. I would like to pick your brain and talk to you if you have a chance this week?
Here’s my card.
I hope you feel better.
Hope to speak to you soon.”
It took Al few minutes to realize what had just happened, after he’d gone~
Feel better? After what?
He never even registered the car crash.
Harry Lincoln’s official stance was that he is not aware of any relation to Abraham Lincoln, but an urban myth slithered among crowds nevertheless; he was his great great great grandson. Even with a 30% popular vote, he had basically no chance of winning now that Cohen was brought back to life from a car accident. Obviously, this was something that would do wonders for his campaign.
Still, the 30% was more than nothing.
The other candidate was less ‘subtle’, and quite without the use of a helicopter, had his room already set up with flowers, brandy and chocolates before Al ever got there.
Even a box of cuban cigars was on the shelf next to the now memory-foamed hospital bed that Al was meant to lie in for observation for the next 24 hours.
His name was Michael Venoman and he was a filthy bastard son of a city mayor with only his own wallet’s best interest at heart.
Viteszlav Venoman, his father, had been a popular vote for mayor back in nineteen-sixty-nine. which was about to more than well (quite swimmingly in fact) thanks to his well executed marketing campaign, which essentially qualified as propaganda.
Streets were lined with hundreds of posters, printed in power-blue, with his silhouette and big bold lettering that said only ‘VOTE VITO”.
People ate it right up. But then he was also a good politician. His father’s reputation made him a viable choice this election season. He had big shoes to fill.
Vito was more of an alternate spelling of his first name, Viteszlav. His campaign was strong, he had made a lot of changes, some that people didn’t like but also a few that they did. Most importantly, it came with a big check and an arena to fuck around on his wife with escorts.
Michael had never quite adopted his dad’s ‘years of experience’, but he was, in his own way, his dad’s son indeed. As a kid, his dad rubbing off on him seemed to get into trouble; sent home from school for his behavior. Rotten to the core.
This provided him with pride; he liked getting into trouble. In the latter years he slithered toward rock bottom by abusing any drug that can be abused and if possible, in excess. Many mornings his bodyguard discovered him half unconscious, on drugs, in the puddle of his own shame. He was highly unstable, but that’s not how the public saw him. His marketed image was even better than his dad’s, and he was proud of it. He actually scolded his own dad on national TV (which he was advised), promised to lower taxes (though he never actually mentioned who he will lower them for) and promised to create many more jobs. Win Win Win.
Yeah right. Of course, the majority never knew that he was making jobs for drug dealers, illegal prostitutes, legal prostitutes, even a few murderers and several other well-to-do thieves.
This man was now standing at the foot of the bed, smiling a snake smile down at Al, who was on the bed in a hospital gown, freaking out. He opened the box of cigars and looked inside.
There was a note.
We’ve heard about what happened to you.
I wanted to talk to you a little bit when you’re feeling better. In the meantime, I hope I’ve made your stay more comfortable.
Warmest Regards,
Michael Venoman
This was all the introduction he felt he needed to do, except for brochures and a t-shirt with his campaign logo on it to remind him who to vote.
After the initial 8 hour checkup was done,
Al was released as completely healthy. Nobody had to see his body crushed with their own eyes to know that it happened. Some still carried bruises from the bloody hail, but nobody could believe that this man was the consistency of raspberry jelly, mere hours earlier.
It was nothing short of a miracle.
He had no visible marks, scuffs, tears or dents, except the small cut on his face from shaving that morning. He was simply returned to original condition prior to the crash. The big scar from his childhood dog was still on his hip.
It was tim to check out. He was fine.
When the nurse wasn’t coming back for a minute or two, he put his shirt and warm-gray slacks back on and went for the main lobby.
Outside, four television stations awaited his exit from the building along with newspaper reporters for hours now. Two reporters were having a heated fight over the closest spot to film from, when Al finally walked out of the hospital’s automatic door, he was quickly overwhelmed by the number of TV cameramen, moderators and boom operators, swarming him like a pack of velociraptors out on a hunt.
The overwhelming quickly faded in favor of what the most shallow of Al’s pleasures centers recognized:
Fame.
He enjoyed it and posed for the camera, then went home to tell his dog about the day he’s just had. It was minutes after 8pm that he entered his warm but bare house with high-end furniture.
A small red blinking light in the dark illuminated the hall of his 1 bedroom apartment, signaling not only his lack of socializing but also his loneliness.
Today, however, he was Mr. Popular.
The light on his answering machine blinked green with rapid tempo. There were quite a few messages, most looking for an interview. PB&J news, NPR and the SF Chronicle.
He had no idea that the military was out to find him as well, but those guys just don’t call.
Next morning he had just enough time to retrieve a day-old bagel from a cabinet in his kitchen and prepare it with his favorite toppings, before the doorbell rang twice and hard.
When he opened the door he met a tall gentleman with a lame toupee and a dark trench coat. Before Al could even ask
“What can I do for you?” he was cattle-prodded and fell to the ground like a sack of wet bricks. Whether he’d had it coming or not was not the army’s concern.
Chapter Nineteen
Al Cohen never fainted, but wished he had. Paralyzed and in a puddle of his own piss, curled up on the floor of his soon to be ex-apartment, he was aware of everything around him.
The tall dark figures were accompanied by two even bigger ones. Through the haze of his saliva bubbling and tears, he could only make out ominous dark silhouettes looming over his helpless body; the foremost in a jet-black overcoat and black hat resembling a fedora, like the death itself came to settle matters of the past.
The two blurry guards grabbed him each by a shoulder and dragged him away into a huge old truck parked outside his apartment complex. He couldn’t struggle; he was as limp as raw fowl and the only resistance he could give was the weight of his body scraping with his heels into the concrete patio. Once inside, they threw a blanket over him where he lied to keep him from going into hypothermic shock. It was freezing.
The driving and the agonizing pain churned inside his head and stomach, swashing bright lights and many turns head and stomach, reminding him that he is in a helpless situation and can’t fight back, much like his problems with drinking.
About halfway through the ride his arms went all pins & needles, reminding him that he wasn’t bound and could actually move a little, maybe even get up. It was dark but it seemed that he was in the back of a large outdated cargo truck.
It would be an effort, as the rest of his body was still helplessly tired from the high-voltage his hip sustained with a military-grade cattle prod.
The only chance he had was to distract the drivers, though he barely had any strength for any heroic acts. At last, he mustered all the strength he had to slowly get up and stumble toward the thin sheet of canvas that separated him and the driver. The element of surprise was on his side; they did not expect he could get up so fast.
The ride was anything if not noisy, and each of his steps was carefully calculated despite the situation and fading muscular paralysis.