"Dad!" the cowboy greets him. The ghost turns and looks at his son, hissing.
"You're scaring away the fishes!" grumbles the old man. His voice is a rock thrown into a pit. The cowboy looks around in the desert, but he only sees scorpions. They are running next to the coffin on their black needle-like legs. His father pulls out the hook from the sand with a sad look on his face. On the end of the string glints a bullet. The old man adjusts the bait, and throws it back in to the yellow dust.
"Dad." whispers the man, but his father snubs him again. But this time, he adds: "Hurry! You're gonna miss the duel."
"What duel?" The cowboy puckers his brows. The old man points a finger at a distant cactus, and says: "Just stop bothering your old man and go!"
Unbuttoned clouds. Rattlesnakes keep shaking the cuckoo clocks in the end of their tails. Inside them, the sprung birds keep knocking against the wooden walls. They broke. Their small pieces fall out to the sand. They congeal into scorpions; their sprung-tails jumps in the air and poison the sky.
The cowboy is now standing next to the cactus his father had pointed to. Sleepy lullabies come out from the plant.
"Duel." murmurs the man. As he stands and waits there, he notices a creaking noise. From the direction of the town – if there's a town anywhere, the cowboy isn’t sure – arrives a woman, pushing a wheelbarrow. The man recognizes the madam of the whorehouse. Her wig is made of dirty rags; her face is like a sleeping shabby cat. In the wheelbarrow lies the bumblebee like fat whore, with a strange smile on her face – like a curved little bone left on the plate.
The cowboy watches the arrivals with emotionless eyes. The creaking of the wheelbarrow's rusty wheel overwhelms the cactuses’ sing.
Duel – the word pops into the cowboy's head again, and he places his fingers on to the grip of his gun.
The madam stops thirty feet away; she puts down the wheelbarrow, and walks back to the town. The smile on the fat bitch in the wheelbarrow widens, showing broken board-like teeth. Then she spreads her stumpy legs, revealing the stretching sutures that constrict her vagina lips together.
"Get ready, you bastard, here comes your enemy!" the woman laughs, and the yarn begins to snap. Drops of stream chase each other on the cowboy's forehead.
When the last one, like a long, black eyelash falls out to the sand, the whore starts to scream, her fingers are scratching the side of the wheelbarrow, as the labor pain overwhelms her.
"Get reeeaaady!" she yells, and soon, a bloody little head, like a muskmelon, pops out from her vagina. The cactuses croon; the cowboy watches the scene with an open mouth. The thought that maybe he should help the woman crosses his mind, but his legs aren't moving, his fingers don't let go of the grip.
"This is a duel, and you can't leave your place." a sound in his head reminds him.
It only takes a few minutes, and the baby plops into the sand. As the child squirms, the yellow dust sticks to his wet body like breadcrumbs. A scorpion arrives; it cuts the navel-string, then runs away.
The cowboy takes out his gun, and points it at the sky. His hand trembles.
"No…" he whimpers, trying to stop his own finger, which slowly pulls the trigger. The sharp crack shakes the air – the cactuses swallow their song as the flying bullet wound the clouds. The baby begins to crawl. Dragging himself with his hands and knees. The child is ageing fast. After a few moments, he stands up, and begins to walk woodenly, his hair is growing, and the bones keep lengthening. He looks like a five year old now, but he keeps going and going towards the cowboy. The bullet up in the sky, like an eagle ready to swoop, whizzes back and forth.
The boy is now ten years old. Then eleven. Then twelve. His muscles are wriggling rattlesnakes under the skin. Then vipers. Like black grass, hair grows on his groin. As his features develop, the cowboy recognizes himself in the boy. He drops his gun into the sand, as the bitch in the wheelbarrow screams: "Yeah, that's it, go to daddy, go to daddy!"
Soon, the boy turns into a man, and when he steps to the cowboy, they are almost identical. And the bullet screams.
"No!" moans the cowboy. The cartridge bangs his mirror image in his back.
In the distance, the fisherman yells: "What a catch!"
And death. And hosanna lost in saloon music. The machine erections of scorpions, the clouds like empty doghouses. The cactuses go on fire.
The weeks pass, and the madam gets fed up with the laying bitch. What a no good fat whore, staying all day in bed, the other girls carried food to her room, so she wouldn't starve.
"Stop serving her! This isn’t a fucking hotel!" yelled the madam, her eyes rolled so wildly, that they almost fall out of their sockets.
So there were no more breakfasts and dinners in bed. The fat whore's belly rumbled all day long. The whole whorehouse was cracking because of it, and that scared away the clients.
"How could a man cum, when the roof is about to fall on his head?" they grouched, and the dust of the road stole their faces.
There’s a pitcher on the nightstand. The fat woman drinks only one gulp every hour. She doesn't want to run out of water. Her unwashed body begins to coalesce with the sheet. She feels the cowboy squirming in her womb. The bitch knows he's starving too.
After a few days, a terrible pain wakes the woman from her sleep, when the carried cowboy begins to bite out pieces from her insides. Just a little, always just a little, from what he finds. She wants to be mad at him, but she can’t. Instead, she tries to allure a few rats to the bed, using her sausage-like fingers as bait, hanging them on to the floor. But the rodents don't bite; they just run back and forth under the boards, sometimes moving in the walls, waiting for the woman to die.
She eats out the vulture-feathers from her pillow. On the wall, a cuckoo clock crunches, as it chews the bird inside it. In one morning, the door opens, and the madam steps in.
"So, do you give up, and throw out the guy?" she asks, and the fat bitch, using every effort shakes her head no.
"All right. Then you are both going to die here.,” answers the madam. Her nostrils are moving, as she sniffs in the air. "This place stinks." she says with an ugly grimace, stepping to the window, opening it, and then she hurries out of the room. The incoming wind carries street noises – the throbbing of hooves, distant gunshots, laughter, and the clinking of glass. Bear traps clash in the happy hunting ground.
That night, they find the fat bitch dead.
"Was it thirst? Or hunger?" the yawning madam asks the doctor, holding a handkerchief before his face.
"Certainly not." the old doc answers, pulling off the blanket from the big body, revealing a wound on her belly. "This here." he says, scratching his head. "I’ve never seen anything like it. What a coincidence. The bullet must have flied in the open window, and killed both the mother and her child…"
"That wasn't a fucking child!" yells the madam. And as she drops out these words from her mouth, the clock on the wall begins to chime. But the small wooden doors don’t swing open. And the small mechanic bird doesn't jump out. Instead, a metal spring pops out from between the dead woman’s legs, tearing apart the black strings. In the end of it hangs a shrunken cowboy corpse. Blood is dripping from his gunshot wound. Then, the spring pulls back the man; he disappears again in the fat woman.
NIPPLES OF A SODA AUTOMAT
A GUY AT the bus station offers a good price for one of my nipples. I finally let him convince me, but I'm eager to know, what does he need it for? He says he keeps an exotic fish at home. The fish only feeds upon human nipples. I inform him that I may consider selling my other nipple too, if he shows me his extraordinary fish. A bit unwillingly he agrees, and we get on the bus together.
The guy lives on the other side of the city, in a timeworn apartment. The door to his flat bristles with locks; it takes most of the morning for him to work a key into each one. By the time we get inside, the rooms of his apartment were bronzed in waning afternoon light.
"You can never be careful enough," he explains, once we'
re inside, throwing his tennis ball sized key ring onto a table. Stepping into the living room, I notice the big aquarium straightway. In it, a small mermaid girl swims joyfully among the dancing seaweed. The tiny woman's beauty captures me right away – her brown, floating hair, her porcelain skin, the green fan tail, her breasts, which are perfectly formed pearls.
"Wait here!" murmurs the man, heading to the kitchen. I hear him opening the door of the fridge. Then he returns with a plastic box in his hand, full of human nipples. They lay on each other like dead, brown bugs.
"Now watch!" He winks, picking one out, and throwing it into the water. In no time, the small mermaid swims there, catches it, and sitting down on a little treasure tank she begins to chew on the skin.
For a while, we just watch her eat, but then there's a loud knock on the door. The man puts a finger to his mouth. We are listening to the banging for minutes, and then the unknown visitor gives up. Profane words echo through the stairway, then they fade.
"Who was it?" I ask.
He looks distracted and doesn't want to answer my question at first, but then he confesses, that it must have been a former client, who sold his nipples to him.
"They are always coming back! They always change their minds! But what could I do? Somebody has to feed this damn fish! I even cut off my own nipples a long time ago!"
Feeling sorry for the man, I offer to buy his mermaid. He embraces me with tears in his eyes, and brings a pickle jar for the girl. He also gives me the box of nipples, advising me to keep them in the fridge, like mealworms, because at room temperature they can get very mean.
*
I set up a 20 x 11 x 19 inch aquarium, with some seaweed, colorful pebbles, and an oxygen pump that burps bubbles into the water all day. Seemingly, the tiny mermaid is satisfied with her new home, swimming from one corner to another with a wide smile on her face. I just sit and watch her for hours, can't take my eyes off of her. I also can't stop feeding her – though her former owner told me to cater the fish once only a day. But every time I see the mermaid chewing on a nipple, it cheers me up and I began to laugh. She’s hilariously cute.
I gaze the mermaid until dawn, then I fall asleep with the half empty box in my lap. And I dream about nipples.
In my dream, I'm wandering in a giant desert, and the thirst is killing me. Yellow wasteland, as far as the eye can see. The heat squeezes the last drops of sweat from my body. Later, I find a soda machine between the dunes. Like a stone, it just stands there in the sand; the sunshine sparks on its hot metal side. Stepping closer, I'm searching my pockets, hoping I have some change somewhere. A sigh of relief escapes my mouth, when I find a few coins, but when I read a sign on the machine, I can’t believe my eyes.
The machine doesn't accept money! – It says. Under it, there are buttons and the names of the drinks with the price. Everything costs one nipple, except the tonic water – that costs two. Thank god, I hate tonic.
Peeking in the automat's window, I see colorful bottles floating in the water, like it was some kind of aquarium. I lick my lips, and decide to sacrifice a nipple. On the side of the machine, hangs a Gillette blade on a chain, available for the help to the customers.
As I cut into my skin with the sharp metal piece, and blood oozes between my fingers, I'm wondering if there's someone stupid, who would cut both of his nipples off just for a tonic.
Strangely I don’t feel any pain. I roll the bloody meat between my fingers for a while, then I insert it into the machine’s opening. After it’s done, I push the cola button. Nothing happens. The machine stays silent. I push another button, but still nothing happens. I press return. Nothing. I start to kick the side of the automat. Then I walk around it, and discover a cardboard sign on it's back: Out of order.
*
Waking up in the afternoon, the tentacles of the dream still straitens my eye. I feel tired, and the mermaid in the aquarium looks pretty bad. Her water is cloudy, like she had diarrhea. Think I've overfed her; she just lays on the oxygen pump, with hands on her stomach. Tiny bubbles stick in her hair.
But there's another problem. The box in my lap is empty – looks like the temperature resuscitated the nipples, they are running up and down in the room on their small insect-leg like hairs, crawling on the walls, disappearing in small cracks. I try to kill them with a newspaper, but they are too fast.
"Nasty little things!" Nods the exterminator guy later, standing in my apartment. He's fat and smells like bacon, his nipples poke out of his sweaty t-shirt. Looking at them, I can't stop thinking about my mermaid. How will I feed her now? Should I start offering money to people for their nipples? Is this true anyway, that she can only eat human nipples?
Looking toward the aquarium, she doesn't look like someone who’s thinking about food. Still lying on the pump, her skin is all white, and she pukes small pieces of the nipples into the water – the half digested skin pieces wreathe around her head.
"I'll spray the whole house, that will surely kill them!" explains the guy.
"Is it dangerous stuff?" Should I move out?" I ask, watching a nipple crawling over my wall.
"Nah. Not to people."
After a few minutes, I wander around in a thick smoke cloud. The furniture is like rocks on a misty beach, I try to handhold into them. But I'm getting lost in the cloud, which smells bitter, like tonic.
*
Like I was walking in a strange new planet, I can't recognize my own apartment anymore. I almost fell over on some furniture hiding behind the smoke. Am I in the kitchen? Or in the living room? I have no idea. I'm yelling to the exterminator guy, but there's no answer. I'm alone. A lonely astronaut on the edge of the galaxy.
Suddenly, something large and massive blocks my way, it’s like a closet. But it's illuminated, and as I touch it, it feels more like metal than wood. I realize it's the soda machine. How the hell did this get here?
Its lights shimmer dreamingly – I'm sure it's working now. A digital sign flickers on it's front: PLEASE CHOOSE A PRODUCT.
My fingers are searching for buttons. I find them. Their touch is soft, silky, somewhat like skin. Leaning closer I see that human nipples line up on the machine. I push one of them, and the sound of pleased groaning comes from the automat. But no drink, and the signs don’t change either. I try another button. This one's a bit harder and scraggy, but when I push it, the result is the same. The machine just moans lustfully.
Then the idea hits me. Of course, why I didn't think of this. I take my hands away, then bring my face closer to the automat. I take one of the nipples in my mouth, and I begin to suck. Fizzy fluid fills my mouth. Cold and bitter. It's tonic. I hate tonic. I turn my head spitting it out. Wiping my mouth with my shirt, I found two bloodstains on it’s front – where it was pressed against my chest.
*
Later, when I come to my senses, the bitter mist still wreathes around me. The automat is gone, only the exterminator guy putters around.
"This stuff… is killing… me…" I whisper to him.
"Yeah, it killed most of the little bastard already!" he cheers, spraying more and more smoke out from his vaporizer. The man is wearing some kind of brown coveralls. When he comes closer, I can see, it is sewn from human nipples. "Just a few days, sir, and you don't have to worry about these little fuckers anymore!"
I want to answer him, but the room is beginning to fade. The waves of the poison wash me away. Later I begin to sink. The cola-cold space freezes my bones.
*
I come to myself after days or weeks. Months maybe? Who knows. The mist is all gone, and I also can't find the exterminator guy. There's just a bill on the table, and a rotting, dead nipple in the bathroom. Apart from that, the house is clean, and all the nipples are gone.
I wash my face and drink some water. Then I take out some moldy cheese from the fridge and bite into it. Tottering into the living room, I gaze at my mermaid. A tiny, half decayed skeleton lies in the stale water, on the oxygen pump. Tiny pearls sit between her rib cage.<
br />
THE MARIONETTE MISSIONARY
ROUND AND AROUND– the smell of the jungle, made of used matches – there’s a river, with naked reptiles in it. Somewhere, an old negro lady is carving coffins from the trees. Then she carves out a few dead too, so they could hold a blessed funeral. From her back, a lying missionary encourages her, "Yes, yes, you're doing it right! Now this is gonna be a real Christian burial, everybody should come and see in this damned, paganish jungle. No more cannibalism, no more necrophilia, these things must stay in the closet!"
So the woman keeps carving out the coffins and the dead, but she avoids one tree that has hungry piranhas as leaves. If a monkey crawls up, the tree devours its flesh, and a skeleton made of black matchesfalls onto the wet ground.
"Stop dodging that tree!" orders the missionary. "Our Lord cherishes pain and mortification!" (He says, but really, he reads this like his soul was touching the braille words of Christ's wounds.)
A rain arrives – the tears of ancient gods washes the round bellies of pregnant negro woman. Then the rainbows break and the colors die – the world drowns into blackness. The Moon crawls up to the sky, and snarls at the stars, these shining predator eyes. A giant leech hangs on its round pale belly, sucking out the light from its celestial body. Then a new morning rises, here in the jungle, where killer orchids open their petals, and chew on hummingbirds. A giant crocodile bites an oar into half, slurping out the marrow. The minute hands fall out from the old clocks and turn into blood sucking worms.
"Ka-ta-klak!" the alligator-people yell, sitting on the river shore, masturbating, fantasizing about native woman, with acidulous vaginal fluids that even dissolve the exoskeletons of bugs. The door of a forgotten dream knocks on their ugly skulls – the never ending dark nightmare of running waters – broken flutes play music inside their hearts – the sooty ghost of time spins and spins – a fish with razorblade-scales dances in the night of their pupils.
Tumour-Djinn Page 3