Braineater Jones

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  Well, it didn’t hold. Rich bastard had brand-new ivy. Brand spanking new. It didn’t even hardly stick to the wall.

  I fell.

  I fell like a sack of wet newspaper.

  Then I was lying on my back with two clumps of cheap-ass ivy in my hands, my nose in the dirt, and my neck twisted all the way around like a bowtie pasta.

  “Son of a bitch.” I stood and found myself looking down at my own backside.

  You ever have one of those days? One of those days where you wake up and you’re already out of cigarettes, but it doesn’t matter because it’s raining and your umbrella has a hole in it? Then, by the end of the day, sometime between when your boss handed you the pink slip and your old lady left you for your brother, nothing fazes you anymore because you’re so numb?

  I may, and I may not have, but I must’ve at some point in my past life, because that’s what jumped to mind at that point. So what if my face was on backward and I was still thinking about it and able to move? That was all after being naked, wet, dead, chased, and jamming myself into some fatbody’s clothes.

  I took a minute to twist my head back the right way. But then, it was twisted all the way around instead of just twisted back the way it came. I grabbed the sides of my head and got it all straight, and by that point, it had been too long.

  They shot at me. Dumb bastards. They sat up there in that window and watched a man literally screw his head on straight and then took a potshot as if a bullet would do something.

  I took off running.

  “Hey, come back here!” X yelled.

  I don’t guess they got a good look at my face, but, heck, they might’ve with all the time I sat there rotating it in different directions.

  Daddy Warbucks had a hedge maze. A hedge maze! Who really has a hedge maze? Nothing Rothering owned surprised me at that point. I was waiting to trip over King Tut’s sarcoffa… sarcaca… coffin. From the wild gunshots, I figured X and Y were pursuing me even as I plunged into the bushes.

  What can you say about a hedge maze? If I ever get to Vegas, I’ll put down good money that it spelled out “Ernst Rothering” if read from an aeroplane. But from on the ground and in the weeds, I just saw an unnavigable mess. I almost wished I was back in the pool, staring at those three lovelies, but there wasn’t much for it.

  I would figure that with two guys, one would go in one entrance to the maze and the other would go to a different one, then they could cut off their quarry. But no. Those guys weren’t exactly Rhodes Scholars. They both chased me, coming from the same direction.

  I kept hitting dead ends. But, then, you know what I did? Just went straight through it. I mean, it was a shrubbery fer Chrissakes, not a brick wall. What good even is a hedge maze unless you’re willing to go along with the illusion? I got all cut up from the briars, but compared to the scratch in my chest and the kink in my spinal column, that was small potatoes.

  So after a spell, I gave them the slip. I discovered that I was in the suburbs, so to speak, of Ganesh City. I didn’t see a whole lot of green, which was strange because the rich guy’s mansion wasn’t all that far from the part of Ganesh called the Welcome Mat.

  In my ill-fitting clothes, all I needed was a bindle and a glove with no fingers, and I would’ve fit in perfectly.

  The Welcome Mat is a slum. They don’t call it that because it’s welcoming. They call it that because it’s where the city wipes the shit off its shoes.

  Turning toward the Mat from Lionel Avenue, I was greeted by a decaying gothic archway, a relic of the last century when the Mat was a different kind of place, proclaiming it had once been called Matthew’s Parish. I was reminded of the entrance to a carnival, partly by the archway and partly by the weird smell of carnies.

  The graffito was good there. Some of it was glow-in-the-dark. I ran my finger across a tag, wondering what made it glow. I stopped almost as soon as I started. It occurred to me that whatever was making it glow was not something I wanted to get on my bare hand.

  The entrance had a message in Bohunk or something. I grabbed a Tribune-Chronicle from the ground to write down the words. There, I saw the date—October 31, 1934.

  Of course, it’s after midnight now.

  I copied the note with a piece of charcoal I found on the pavement.

  Now that I’ve got this notebook, I’m going to recopy it. I’ll keep all my clues here, just in case. Never know when I might need to be reminded of something.

  I don’t know if it’s important or not. The graffito was in a different language. Rothering was a foreigner. Coincidence? I think not. Here’s what it said:

  PER ME SI VA NE LA CITTÀ DOLENTE,

  PER ME SI VA NE L’ETTERNO DOLORE,

  PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE.

  LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE.

  4. What does the cryptic entrance sign mean?

  I read the paper to get my bearings. It took a whole lot of words to say not a whole lot of things. All the articles were about the rich part of town, the Altstadt, and the landscaping work in Kelly Park. No mention of Rothering. If he was as big of a bigwig as his house made him out to be, that was a little surprising, but maybe he was trying to keep a low profile for some reason. The paper never mentioned the Welcome Mat, so it seemed like a convenient place to disappear.

  I felt like a troll when I settled under the footbridge. A couple of other derelicts were already there.

  Christ, I’ve only been undead for a day and I’m already thinking of myself as a derelict.

  Anyway, I was feeling tired. Bone tired.

  That raises all sorts of questions.

  5. Why does a—whatever I am—need sleep?

  6. What am I?

  I guess I’m a dead man. A living dead man. A nonbreathing, walking, jumping, tap-dancing living dead man. Or something. Damn it. Leave it to me to get philosophical now while I’ve already got six mysteries to solve. Where am I getting all of these big ideas from? Maybe I was a professor before I died, or a doctor.

  7. Who or what was I before I died?

  8. For that matter, why can’t I remember anything from before I died? Is that artificial, or is it part of the resurrection process?

  This list keeps getting longer and longer. I’ve got to get to the bottom of it all. I guess I’d better figure out how I’m going to tackle this. I need information, first and foremost. I’ll have to find out if there’s a library or a university where I can look up some of this egghead stuff. For the rest of it, I’ll have to hit the streets and find some underground contacts. Do I have any underground contacts? Probably not. And if I did, I doubt they would talk to me now or even recognize me. Well, maybe I did. Maybe I have family.

  For some of the more existential stuff, I’ll have to find others like me. Unless I’m the only one, which is a depressing thought.

  9. Are there others like me?

  Anyway, I collapsed under the tunnel and threw the pages of newspaper that I hadn’t written on over my face. I wasn’t there for more than a few minutes before I started feeling a dull thump in my sides, like when you’re watching a clock pendulum and you can sort of feel it moving back and forth. It wasn’t until one of the bums snatched the blat off my head that I realized they were putting the boots to me.

  You wouldn’t think that bums would be so picky about their company. But then again, I guess you never know when somebody’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  There were two, one on either side of me, and they were kicking damn hard, too. One was even wearing steel-toed boots. And you know what? It didn’t hurt. It was annoying. Degrading, even. But I felt no pain.

  A third bum flitted in and out of my field of view, encouraging the other two.

  “You’re the king of the devil’s army of fishermen Visigoths,” the third said.

  The crazed kingmaker started folding up my newspaper into a little hat.

  I raised my hand. “Hey, I need that.” I heard my voice for the first time.

>   Do I really sound like that? Is that what I always sounded like, or was it just my vocal cords rotting out? Well, it couldn’t be worse than getting my neck twisted the wrong way around. My voice sounded as though, instead of just a frog in my throat, a whole swinging big band of amphibians had set up shop in my neck.

  “Get out of here, braineater!” said one of the kickers, who was clearly more cogent than the one wearing the newsprint crown.

  “Yeah, we know what you are, you bastard,” Steel-toed Boots said.

  They didn’t really let up on the kicking enough for me get out of there. But hey, logic takes a holiday with these people, right? Their spiritual leader was spouting sweet nothings into the cold, empty universe. Unfortunately for me, I was thinking, “Hey, here are some answer men.” Yeah. Right. Derelicts are always full of useful information.

  “What do you know about me?” I croaked in that unfamiliar voice. “What am I?”

  “You’re not welcome!” the boss yelled, the first meaningful thing he had said since muttering to himself about “techno-vampires” and infested fruits and Sha and God alone knew what all else.

  I tried to get up, but my muscles refused to respond. It was as though my whole body was revolting against my brain. I thought it was a symptom of the booting, but there was something deeper there, a sluggishness I hadn’t felt before I went to sleep under the bridge. I probably muttered some nasty black curses.

  “Wait, hold on. Stop, you pus-burning, flag-growing handy cats,” the leader said.

  Believe it or not, the two kickers took a break. I thought to myself that maybe those guys should go out for the all-bums international soccer team, if such a thing exists.

  The leader didn’t show pity. He grabbed his old bindle, which was sharpened up like a pencil, and jabbed it into my leg. I grunted, but honestly, it didn’t hurt any more than the kicking. It seemed to help get my leg moving, in fact. At least enough for me to kick out.

  I forced myself to sit up, and let me tell you, it was a hell of an effort. All my muscles and bones were tightening up like one big sprain. I clutched the sharpened bindle stick and wrenched it out of my leg. I stood, hoping against hope I would tower like a giant over those street people, but they dwarfed me.

  “You can have this,” I said, throwing the stick at the boss man, “but I want the paper.” I snatched the little newspaper hat off his head.

  His eyes grew so wide he looked like one of those kids in a velvet painting. “You’re a leaf-drawn chariot. You’re an unwanted little orphan of the radio tower universe. Avast! Avast!”

  That didn’t answer a whole lot. The two who hadn’t seemed fit for the loony bin had called me “braineater,” though.

  It’s a funny term for whatever I am, and I don’t know if I like it, but it was the first real description I’d heard. What did they mean? I haven’t felt hungry all day, or if I have, it’s just been a dull ache like every other emotion and feeling in my body. If I was hungry, would I want a brain? And why would that be different than normal hunger when I feel like I want a pie or…

  What do I like to eat?

  No, that’s not a numbered question. I don’t need to get to the bottom of that. Just kind of an idle thing to wonder about.

  Since they were so desperate to have me gone, I left the bums to gibber and bite one another’s thumbs or whatever street loonies do. I regretted it though, because they really seemed to know more about what I was than I did. Then again, it could’ve all been crazy talk. I can’t pretend they made a whole lot of sense even when they were talking to me instead of their invisible pink elephants.

  Braineater. That’s what the lucid ones called me.

  Huh.

  I elected at that point not to go to sleep again. Or at least, if I did, to do it somewhere nice and quiet and secluded so I could take as long as I needed getting up. I had kind of a tingling terror in the hairs on the back of my neck that no matter what kind of seclusion I went into, I’d never be able to get up if I went to sleep again. I’d be locked in, like a lobsterman in a diving bell.

  Could you imagine? I went to sleep for a few minutes, and my body became numb and unresponsive. What would happen after a few hours? I might never move again. I might sit there, unalive, and who would be able to tell? Unless I left my eyes open, I’d be unable to see anything but still be aware. Terrifyingly aware.

  Maybe that’s what it’s like for everybody once they’re dead. Who knows? I probably never gave it much thought. Despite having been over to the other side, past the Pearly Gates or whatever they call it, I have disturbingly few answers. And even fewer impressions. I’m just another soul, lost and damned.

  I guess the bums gave me a kick in the ass that I needed, along with all the kicks in the ribcage I sure as shit didn’t. I got to thinking about all these questions swirling around in my head and how I needed to gather my thoughts, and how I probably needed more than a charcoal note on a newspaper to get anything done.

  Then I remembered the billfold. Well, there was only eight bucks in there, and it was stolen, but I figured it was a start.

  There was a five and dime not far from the bridge. The great thing—if you can call it that—about the Mat was that I wasn’t even the weirdest looking one in there. I snagged a fountain pen and a notebook—this notebook, come to think of it—and somehow got fewer weird looks from the clerk than the shirtless, tattooed street prophet trying to buy a telephone slug.

  So all that was left to find was a clean, well-lighted place. Why did that phrase stick out in my mind? It seemed important. Clean and well-lighted. Not a dank bridge to hang out under and get accosted by Herbert Hoover’s bastard children.

  The flophouse I found had a neon sign on the roof that was missing a couple of letters, and the word “VACANCY” ran vertically down the side of the building. It also boasted hourly rates. That made me scratch my head.

  What’s it even actually called? I don’t know if I ever looked. Maybe it’s just called “VACANCY.”

  The swarthy front desk clerk with the Greek accent looked at me as if I had a tree branch growing out of my forehead when I said I wanted a room for the night.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “The night.”

  “How much of the night?”

  His English was fine. It was, you know, the idea of actually staying overnight that had him confused. Actually sleeping with all the bedbugs and cockroaches and maybe half-smoked cigars that other patrons had left there in place of pillow mints. It was just kind of baffling to him, I guess.

  “All night.”

  The clerk looked me up and down. “This the Welcome Mat. Nobody stay all night. I stop even charging for that. You wanna stay all night, maybe you go find the Ritz-Carlton in the Altstadt, huh?”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and shook my head. “Fine.” I turned toward the door.

  “Hey, wait!”

  I didn’t turn back, but I halted mid-stride.

  “You got money?” he asked, and his skeptical tone made it clear he wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said.

  I pulled out the billfold and showed it to him.

  He shrugged. “Two dollars a night.”

  I knew he was trying to chizz me, but I didn’t know if I could do any better anywhere else.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  He had one of those guest books where all the names were the same. Smith, Smith, Smith, Smith. I guess I paused too long, because he prompted me.

  “Smith?” he asked. “Is usually Smith. Or Johnson. Sometimes Jones.” He didn’t seem to care. I guess a guy in his position can’t be made to care too much.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Jones.” That struck a chord for some reason.

  “Okay, Mr. ‘Jones,’” he said. “You in Room 217.”

  He handed me the key. Something struck me as odd. The arithmetic just didn’t add up.

  “You got two hundred seventeen rooms in this joint?” I asked.

  �
��You stupid? Forty rooms. Two floors, twenty each.”

  “Oh.” The old stiffening I felt when the bums were kicking me was coming back like a prizefighter on the ropes. I stretched and felt as if my muscles were snapping apart. I knew one thing I would kill for. “Hey, you know where I can get a drink around here?”

  It might’ve knocked my flophouse money down to two nights instead of three, but it would’ve been worth every penny.

  “You a cop?” the clerk asked.

  “No?” I guessed.

  “You get out of here,” the clerk said. “Nothing illegal go on here. No prostitute, no alcohol. You get out of here.” I had a white flash like a migraine of me drinking a bottle of Yuengling, not that Mexican crap that had gotten us through Prohibition. Prohibition… but surely that was over if I was drinking American-made? Ganesh could just be a dry town. Or county. Either way amounted to the same thing for me: a dusty throat.

  So here I am. That’s about all I know so far. That, and I think I’ll die—or double dog die—if I don’t get a drink in me. Luckily, Luckies aren’t outlawed, so I’m toasting through my bullet hole right now. Time to wrap this up. Time to get some sleep, although I’m terrified this journal entry may end up being my suicide note.

  If you find me here, looking dead, don’t bury me until you jerk my eyes open and check if they’re still moving. I’m leaving this out so you can read it. Please read it. Please find it.

  Here’s hoping I see you tomorrow.

  Knock came at the door late last night.

  “Who is it?” I moaned. I wanted to leap out of bed, but I couldn’t. I could barely move.

  “I heard you talking at the front desk,” a voice barked. “I think I can help. Can you let me in?”

  I struggled. I felt as if I was covered by a mound of dirt. No, better not to think about that image. “I can’t!”

  “Oh, yes,” the voice said. “I suspect you can barely move.” He sounded smart. Too smart for his own good.

  The door flew open, and the chain went flying in a hundred pieces. A shadowy figure stood in the doorway with a brown paper bag in his hand. He shuffled in and swiftly closed the door.

  “Sorry about the damage,” he said, kneeling next to me. “I had to kick it in.”