Mighty Unclean

by Cody Goodfellow

  ««—»»

  It was easy to lure Mom, Pop, and the Obnox to the cave. Hello, Operator, get me the Televisory Vidscreen of the last remaining Humans on Earth. Ooh, ooh, Mommy, Poppy, the Big Bad Hairy Guy in the Helmet has your poor widdle Alice and I only just managed to get to this communicator while he’s recalibrating and recalculating his recalcinator. You’ve got to rescue me.

  And here they come. Mom going woo-woo, Pop singing the Internationale – and the Obnox. (You tell me your dream/I’ll tell you mine.)

  And when they’re at the mouth of the cave, Ro-man clunks Mom and Pop’s heads together KA-THUNK! (Nyuck-nycuk-nyuck, you hapless halfwits!) Ro-man grabs Snotty Johnny by the googler and sets to squeezing.

  Takes maybe five seconds, all in all. The three of them lie there, as dead as Adlai (Commie Symp) Stevenson’s presidential plans.

  And now, I, I and my Strange and Wondrous Love, can begin, Adam and Eve, on this world that is ours and ours alone …

  EIGHT

  THE GREAT GUIDANCE: You wish to be a human? Good, you can die a human!

  The Great Guidance gestures. Lighting shoots from his fingers.

  Zap!

  Ro-man staggers and falls dead.

  Nonplussed, Alice says, “Shit.”

  NINE

  ROBOT MONSTER, DREAMING

  Though in many aspects the Anthropoid Ape resembles the Lowland and Mountain Gorillas of Africa, there are marked differences originally noted and recorded by enlightened zoologists of the mid-19th century. The true Anthropoid weighs less than and is not as stocky as his evolutionary underling, the Gorilla. An Anthropoid walks fully erect with no knuckle-dragging and considerably more grace and poise, has a rudimentary but practical language consisting mainly of noun and verbs, and by any measurable scale, is of far greater intelligence than your average maggot-eating, shit-flinging ape.

  Which is to say that in their natural habitat and conditions, gorillas are fucking morons and Anthropoid Apes are merely pitifully stupid. If this sounds judgmental, ah, mine is the right: It was my curse to be born Anthropoid. Indeed, from my entrance onto this Earthly plane, was I doubly cursed: Though all was proper for an anthropoid infant from my neck down, I was born with the face of a wrinkled, double-ugly infant human being.

  Speculate as you will, and certainly as I often did, there is a simplistic legend among Anthropoids. Yes, now I know about Archetypes and Collective Unconscious and all that, but trust me; with your typical Anthropoid having at best a low double digit IQ, we are talking about a super-simplistic mythology:

  Once, long ago, an orphan infant human boy was adopted into a tribe of Anthropoids and grew up to be Tarmangani: The Great White Ape. He learned from his extended foster family how to sleep safely in trees and flee the claws and fangs of Numa, the Lion, and to keep from being trampled by Tantor when the seasonal mating-madness came upon the tusked behemoth. On his own, he learned the use of a knife (my unimaginative clansmen refer to it as a “hand fang”) to read and write English, French, German and Spanish, and, for all I know, how to floss three times a day, use a Zippo lighter, and strum “Whispering” on the tenor banjo.

  With smarts like that, Tarmangani soon established himself as King of the Apes. I would assume he suffered an epiphany one day: I am Ruler of this bunch of hairy, stinky shitheads? I am dying for good conversation, for a seven course meal that includes no fruits, leaves, shoots or grubs, for a dance with a non-hirsute someone of the opposite sex who can waltz or polka rather than stomp around grunting and farting at the ceremonial Dum-Dum.” Intellectually, Tar had gone far above his raising, and so can it be any surprise that he abandoned those who’d taken him in and given him food, shelter, and, on occasion, a backhanded smack to the chops?

  It is whispered that Tarmangani will return one day. Myself, I don’t care if he does return in glory, riding a white ass though the jungle, while all the assholic anthropoids wave palm leaves and chant, “Ben Gund Yud (The Great Leader returns)! Hosanna in the highest! Now there’ll be fat larvae in every pot! Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!” Frankly, once my own brain cells were energized and making connections, putting two plus two together and working quadratic equations on the side, I couldn’t buy it: Tarmangani would never come back to this. I sure as hell would not. Not while Howard Johnson’s offers 31 flavors.

  I mention the legend only as it’s thinly conceivable that it supplies a clue as to how I came by my countenance. Genetically, anthropoids and humans are 99+% the same. It is not impossible, methinks thinks me, that Great White Ape grew tired of playing pat his own cake and held his nose long enough to plant his Tarmanganiness into an Anthropoid lass, maybe he got drunk, and then, recessive and dominant genes at work …

  Ah, why am I here? Why was I born? What the fuck? Such philosophical questions can and will be contemplated even unto the End Times – and if you come up with the definitive answer, I’ll see you get your shot on The 64 Dollar Question.

  I know only that I grew up with an ugly human face on top of my neck. Other little anthropoids called me “Balu Ug Lot,” which translates “Little Baby Ass Face,” and my own mother, Gloopit by name, used to wrinkle up her nose, nostrils as big as Oldsmobile headlights, and grunt most un-mommyish phrases.

  I was outcast and exile. Oh, I maintained contact with my peers and their elders – my ass was frequently contacted by a foot of a playmate, my head, a fist – but I was the classic ugly duckling, the lonely little petunia in the onion patch, the matzoh ball in the Irish stew.

  Until one day … Fate intervened.

  Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Do you know who proclaimed that? Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton who created some of the worst prose in the English language, perhaps outdone only by his friend and crashing snob and bore Charles Dickens.

  I can give you a thousand quotations, pertinent or impertinent. I can build a harpsichord and admirably perform upon it no fewer than 300 Bach Cantatas despite my having fingers like Polish sausage. If you need someone to offer critical thought on cave wall painters or Caillebotte, cite each season’s batting average for Monte Stratton, or espouse a credible opinion on why Cyril and Methodius should not be credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet, good sir, I am your huckleberry!

  And how did this happen?

  Why, one day in the skies overhead there was a eye searing flash and ear drum shattering explosion. And then, no more than a kilometer from us, an earth shaking impact.

  “Pandar pandar!” yelled one another.

  “Zu tu!” shouted another.

  And of course, the obvious “Kreeg Kreeg-gah!”

  “Loud, loud!” and “Big Bright!” and “Beware, danger, danger!” Such were the keen observations of my landsmen.

  Please remember, I had not yet metamorphosed into the Einstein of the Anthropoids, but there was a brute force of curiosity within me that overcame my fear.

  What had I to lose? My life? As Cesare Pavese has it: “No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.” Human or Anthropoid, both species have an occasional and enviable bent for self-destruction.

  Or perhaps I was yet too fucking stupid to know there might be danger involved.

  With the cheerful encouragement of the tribe, “Numa will eat you if he can shut his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at you,” and “Ngh amba wob at!” (Don’t trip over your little bitty penis), I set off.

  I found the wreckage of a flying saucer. (I of course did not know then it was any such thing.) I discovered a grayish dead body, non-anthropoid and non-zan-mangani If you are in the mangani family, you normally have five digits per hand. This little pisher had three. He also had big glassy eyes like some of the bugs I used to find pretty tasty.

  And I found … I did not know what it was, not then, but it was round and gray and like any babbling human toddler or most primitive mammals equipped with hands / paws, I had to try it on.

  My head lights up like Coney Island. It is like I’m getting the ext
ra A-Bomb they’d planned to drop on Tokyo if Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t do the trick.

  Epistemological Instant! “What is knowledge?” “How do we know what we know?” “How is knowledge acquired?”

  You don’t have to send in to the Rosicrucians, amigo. I can testify and proclaim without contradiction knowledge is acquired Just! Like! That! Zappo-Bam! Bang! Pow! Zoom! Maybe not the sum total of all Earthly knowledge and that of the worlds beyond, but a damned good bunch for a freeby was contained in the helmet I lowered down over my accursed ugliness (that’s a literary allusion, bwah: Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera!). I could untangle Tesla and find the Lost Chord, mesmerize the masses and perfect perpetual motion, and even proffer a koan spun off from the last words of Dutch Schultz: “A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim.”

  Thus I became the intelligent anthropoid with the ugly human face.

  I fear to remove the helmet. I do not think it would happen, but it is just possible I could revert to my pre-smart state. I could not bear that, to descend to once more being an obtuse pariah.

  Because, while I am ever so solitary now, the only one of my kind upon this planet (uberanthropoid!), I dare to hope there are other beings – human beings – who may come to look upon me and discern only my mind …

  And if there is such a thing (the helmet does not impart any knowledge of the matter!) my SOUL!

  O Joseph Carey Merrick, O Elephant Man, You of Hideous Visage and Victim of a Thousand upon a Thousand Torments, did you not at last find Kindness, did you not come to know Compassion, and to possess companions with whom you might laugh and weep and speak of the Pyramids and poetry and cabbages and kings and all things great and small?

  I set forth upon my quest, and Joseph Carey Merrick, you are Inspiration and Companion.

  Courage, Friend Merrick whispers, and I take courage, and Hope, Friend Merrick whispers, and I take hope

  that

  my loneliness might reach out

  to touch the lonely

  those who carry their own sad and frozen

  exile within themselves

  that

  we will meet

  The Lonely

  that

  we will come to know one another

  that

  we will love

  that

  we will love

  that

  we will love

  ««—»»

  Note: Robot Monster is in public domain and thus I have borrowed some lines of dialogue from the film. My thanks to writer Wyott Ordung, director Phil Tucker, and “N. A. Fischer Chemical Products” for the “Billion Bubble Machine.”

  Music On The Michigan Avenue Bridge

  By Mort Castle

  t’s dark, the special dark of the city as it is punctuated by street lights. We see the shoes of the saxophone player on the sidewalk as he is moving right along.

  The saxophone player is a man with somewhere to go.

  He has somewhere to go tonight because—

  —It is Springtime. We have Spring and we have the night.

  We have Two A.M. and the city is angles and rhythms. The city is moves and slides and whisperings. You can hear the city breathe.

  The city is stutter-starts and staccato tickings. It’s the wheeze in the wind and purple after-images and free floating dreams.

  The saxophone player is black. He sometimes thinks of himself as African-American. This is America, so sometimes you have to think about that. Mostly, though, he thinks of himself as a saxophone player.

  It is the alto sax hanging from its strap that defines him. His fingers are on the keys. He doesn’t have to be playing. He is playing when he is not playing.

  He is playing the city and its song, because the city is, if you listen, the city is music, it is night music and it calls to you…

  If there is music in you.

  The saxophone player is on the walk of the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago river. Now he stands near a pillar. Now he leans on the guardrail. Now he closes his eyes. Now he feels the city.

  Now he plays.

  And the police squad car is approaching.

  There is a man in the back seat, huddled in pain, groaning.

  He is not what the policemen hear.

  The white police officer, driving, says, Hear that?

  That is very fine sax.

  His partner and his friend, young and black, says, Yeah.

  The man in the back seat says, Uh… Says, My nose… Bastards… Says, You hurt me.

  The squad car pulls up in front of the saxophone player.

  This is a silent moment. Are you eager to talk to a policeman, even if it turns out the cop is only telling you you dropped your ball point pen? Now if you were a black man doing something borderline weirdhead like playing a saxophone at 2 A.M on the Michigan Avenue bridge…

  Exit squad car, White Cop and Black Cop.

  Saxophone player says, Is there…

  White cop says, No problem, no. Heard you. Like the way you sound.

  Saxophone player says, I’m not high or anything, if that’s what…

  White cop says, No problem. Really. You play beautifully.

  In the squad car, man in back seat says, Mother Q. Fucker…

  Says, Busted in my goddamn teeth…

  Black cop says about his partner, He’s the one knows his jazz. He says you’re good, you’re good, y’know.

  White cop says, Yeah, you are good. Like Marsalis, you went and listened to the old guys. You’re tradition. I can tell.

  Saxophone player says, Yeah, I guess.

  White cop says, Benny Carter, right? There’s a lot of Benny Carter in your music. I can hear it.

  Black cop says, Me, I’m not into jazz. Not really. Country is more for me. Clint Black. Travis Tritt. The Dixie Chicks.

  The man in the back seat of the squad struggles to sit up. Manages to. Yells, All right, all right! Cut the bullshit! You fuckers had your giggles, now how’s about we cut a deal?

  The saxophone player doesn’t say anything and wishes he were somewhere else.

  White cop talks to black cop as though saxophone player is somewhere else. Don’t guess that prick understands. Think he’s dim, y’know?

  Black cop says, Dim prick.

  Saxophone player doesn’t want to talk but figures he had better talk so he says, Maybe I should leave. You don’t…

  White cop says, It’s all right. It’s okay. You just stay here.

  Black cop says, It’s okay, y’know. You’re good. My partner knows jazz. Smiles. Don’t you worry about what’s in the car. That’s Grade A certified asshole. A very bad person.

  White cop says, He is a bad asshole.

  Black cop says, We’ll take care of it, y’know.

  Saxophone player does not like this a bit. No, he does not.

  White cop says, You play. Do the changes for Bird’s “Cherokee.” You can do that, can’t you?

  Saxophone player says, I guess.

  Black cop says, Don’t worry. Nothing to worry about.

  White cop says, Yeah. Bop time. Laughs. Hard bop.

  Saxophone player plays “Cherokee,” runs the changes.

  Wishes he were gone. Wishes he were way the hell away.

  Plays changes.

  Knows this is seriously bad.

  Wishes he were gone.

  Cops yank the man out of the squad car.

  Cops walk the man, drag the man, kick the man’s ass.

  White cop says, This way, sir. Concert about to start.

  The man says, Fuck you, you fuck. The man could be Hispanic. He could be white. He could be black. His face is bashed in. Dribbling blood is red, dried blood black in street lights, jutting exposed bone, white.

  Now the cops handcuff the man to the guard rail.

  The saxophone player plays changes. “Cherokee.”

  Now the police take out their batons.

  They begin hitting the man. Snap the sticks into him. They get
a rhythm going. Syncopation.

  The saxophone player plays changes.

  The man screams. A baton smashes into the scream.

  Saxophone player plays sheet of sound. Like Coltrane. Yeah, non-melodic thing, up and down, all notes equal, like finding something, like—

  Cops use feet now.

  Wet and breaking sounds.

  Loud breathing. Cops. Not only the cops. Loud breathing.

  Plays. “All These Things You Are.” “A Train.” “Goin’ Fishin’.”

  Plays. “Cristo Redentor.” “Cristo Redentor.” “Cristo Redentor.”

  There, shithead! Black cop.

  There and there and there! White cop.

  Saxophone player plays.

  Free jazz. Chaotic counterpoint.

  Sound breaking and shattering from the bell of the saxophone.

  Sound of the police.

  Sound of the city.

  Sound collage.

  White cop says, Well, then.

  Black cop says, Yeah.

  Saxophone player cannot play any longer. Doesn’t say anything.

  Cannot say anything.

  Black cop says, Dead?

  White cop says, Could be.

  It doesn’t matter all that much, they decide. They remove the handcuffs. They hoist up what may be a dead man.

  Before they toss him off the bridge, the black cop says, Shit, I think we forgot to read him his rights.

  There is a surprisingly flat-sounding splash.

  Now, there are only the three of them on the bridge, the saxophone player and the cops.

  Black cop says, Nothing happened, okay? No big deal. A shithead.

  White cop says, It’s all right. The man understands.

  White cop says, You play beautifully. Really.

  Then the squad car is gone.

  The saxophone player looks down sees the dark Chicago River, does not know what he thought he might see.

  Says, Jesus…

  And it is springtime and night and the city is razored angles and thick shadows and he wishes he were somewhere else far from the screaming the screaming the screaming.

  About Gary A. Braunbeck