We stand before Drac’s door.
I put my ear to the cold door and listen for any signs of life – hoping that no one is home. I don’t want to meet any new people today. I want to resort to my usual ways and lock myself in my bedroom: Away from the loud, evil world. You could be walking down the street and a helicopter blade could fall from the sky and scalp you.
The apartment is silent.
There are weird sounds all around us: Kids play on a balcony above us, jumping on a springy bed and pretending to be roosters in heat; a cat is fighting with a dog as an old women pleads, “I want you to kiss her! I want you to kiss her!” She wields a broom as an insane, martial artist, sweeping away their accidental stool.
Joann knocks on the door and it opens immediately wide. The person standing before us is super skinny and pale and has a glass of milk in one hand and a tiny plate of eggs in the other. He looks wired – up for years: Eyes screaming, the voice at warp speed.
“Oh, hi! You must be my new client. And you must be Rubs. I’ve heard so much about you! You are a good man for escorting her through this rat maze. Never know what you may find – or who may find you.”
He eats a spoonful of eggs and motions us to step inside.
The place smells like wet animal hair. The lights are off. The balcony window is covered by a thin, orange blanket, throwing a soft glow over his bed and tiny table and fluffy white carpet. There’s a large, man-sized hole in a wall. Drac laughs for no reason and sits on the edge of his frameless bed, eating his eggs and drinking his milk. We sit on the floor, cross-legged.
Drac finishes off his milk and looks at us both, intensely. He then walks into the kitchen and pours two glasses of milk, then asks if we want any ice. We say yes. He walks back into the living room and gives us our milk.
It tastes wonderful.
He takes hold of some clothes scattered on the bed and folds them, daintily.
“Let’s do this – now. It’s on like Donkey Kong. What I do…I do NOT for money, but for spiritual development. Being insecure makes the soul cry. One must be confident in all aspects of life to succeed on planet earth. EGO IS GOD. This is what I teach. This is my invention. I invented this. I call it Greedy on the Inside, and it has worked wonders. Let me explain: I am a master therapist. I am The Master & Commander of therapy, and like Russell Crow, you should feel fortunate, being here in my company, about to receive what many have bled over. Are we ready? Good. I’m not. Oh…wait. Now I am. Good.”
Joann holds out her hands.
“Show me your ways, O Master.”
His eyes are half open.
Drac nods and takes her fingers.
“I know why you’ve come. You’re goofy. And the only cure is Greedy on The Inside. I invented that. Don’t steal it.”
He looks at me and pats my head, then takes Joann’s face in his hands and closes her eyes.
He says, lovingly: “Close your eyes.”
Joann does, and straightens her back.
Drac raises his chin and opens his mouth.
“You are so wonderful. I love you very much. You deserve whatever you get – and those things are money & love & a cat. You will be rich. You ARE rich. You are the best at everything. You deserve the perfect boyfriend. You deserve a rich boyfriend with a lot of money and he will do anything for you, sexually. Please, O Satan, throw your stink upon this female. Help her, unlike the Son of God who just teases us with his magic. What was his name? Judas Priest? Call her your fetus – allow her to touch you and sample blast your mana – which in Japanese, role-playing, video game jargon means magic. You should play Final Fantasy. It’s a video game, and can teach you much about life. I enjoy part 8 due to the theme of love, though there are many that love part 7, which I think is ehhh - waves hand horizontally.”
I raise a finger and interrupt.
“Er…”
“Shhh! Don’t interrupt,” he snaps, turning to me, not opening his eyes. If this is a therapist, then I’m the king of France. I should’ve asked Mr. Snake what Drac did to get fired all those years ago…although maybe the answer will come to me soon enough.
Drac tightens Joann’s hands, digging his thumbs into her palms. She drools.
“Ooooooooo.”
He draws her close, and then hugs her. I feel jealousy creeping up my spine again. This so-called therapist whispers into her ear.
“In time, you will be fat with happiness. You ARE happy – right this minute. You will understand NOW! HE THROWS HER ONTO THE FLOOR!”
He throws her onto the floor and points with a strong finger and growls, “The end.” I speed-crawl to Joann and hold her safe and yell at him, “Stop it, you toad!” Joann pushes me away. “No Rubs, allow me.” She front flips into a squat, brings her hands up and turns them into claws and goes “Grrrr!” She does a squat-rush toward him with her arms waving in the air and makes scary, monkey-like sounds. She tackles him at the waist and pins him against a wall and bites his crotch area. A wind chime falls, romantically.
He brings her up and kisses her.
Then she kisses him back.
My heart falls into my stomach and dissolves in acid. Something inside me laughs. I look at them, wishing Joann would come running into my arms and say Sorry, baby, sorry, I love you and want to be with you forever & ever; amen.
But it doesn’t happen.
I get up and walk to the door.
Joann’s mouth flies off of Drac’s with a wet smack.
“No, don’t go!”
“You guys should be alone.”
“Good Lord, I’m so sorry. That was nasty. And I apologize.”
My hand wraps around the bathroom doorknob, and I don’t give a damn.
I sit on the toilet with my pants around my ankles. My head hurts. How did I get here? What was in that glass of milk?
Ice?
Nothing comes out. I flush to make them think I’m using it. What are they doing out there? What am I doing here? Maybe I should leave. Maybe this Drac’s not such a bad therapist. He’s made her happy, obviously. That’s what they do. It takes such confidence to do what he did. I wish I could do that: Talk with such power, and then kiss a girl that I didn’t even know.
I wonder what they’re doing.
I hope they’re not making love.
I’d kill that therapist out of mean jealousy. Or at least think it.
I pull my pants up and go outside into the hallway. The place is pitch black. I stand there with my ears wide open, listening for hints of pleasure. Must be around eight o’clock. I hold my hands out in front of my face and can barely see them. I hear a door open and turn around. I am met with Joann’s floating voice.
“I’m so happy, Rubs.”
“Yessm. Very good.”
“Thank you for bringing me here.”
I claw at the air for her.
“Good. Happy to help.”
“Drac is a genius.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s not what he says, it’s HOW he says it.”
“Yessm. He is the genius. Love him.”
“I will. Thank you so very much.”
“Where’s the genius now?”
“Sleeping on the floor. He cut up a star-shaped section of the carpet and says that sleeping in the star-shape section of the carpet gives him awesome, mental powers. Drac tells me, via telepathy, that therapy will be the new religion of the world. That in the future all shall bow down to therapy.”
“I think he’s a Satanist.”
“Even better.”
“I’m going home now. I’m hungry.”
“Drac says that you and I will be this religion’s new commanders. And that we will roam the earth converting the lame.”
“Who’s doing what now?”
“Drac also says that you can eat whatever he has in the refrigerator.”
“Like what?”
“Strawberry ice cream.”
“Then it is settled. Before I leave, I will eat his cream. Wou
ld you want to dine with me?”
“Yessm. I would.”
I stroll into the kitchen, hands held out before me just in case I walk into something scary. I can hear Joann walking back into the room and closing the door. I was hoping she’d eat with me. Hoping she’d want my company. Booo! Forget her. Just eat your strawberry ice cream and leave. Beat it. Scram.
Darkness.
I open what I feel is the freezer and dig around. It’s hot inside. Sweat is falling into my eyes. Something smells bad. My fingers dig into something soft. It feels like a face of some kind, except there’s a long, tube-like front. I feel sharp, tiny teeth…two eyes.
Is this some kind of saved-to-be-eaten-later, freakish, pig head that you can buy in China Town?
I quietly close the freezer and instinctively lick my fingertips.
Stupid.
It tastes like so many open sores.
I throw up a little in my mouth with short gags and bring my hands to my throat and make surprising chirping sounds.
Unable to find the kitchen sink, I make a go for the bathroom, banging into walls.
I turn on the faucet and drink handfuls of water, washing down the sick.
Visions of my mum boiling chicken’s feet in a bubbling pot, reeking up the whole house – the stink creeping up my nostrils while I sleep, giving me nightmares. That awful stink! Why did I go into the kitchen to see what was inside that pot? Why did I do it? Why did I look, when I already knew what it was?
I sleep on the freezing floor as a baby would, sucking my thumb…and close my legs.
“Bottlenose Connection”
THE SUN BEATING against my eyes. The sound of an obese jet, struggling from high above. I open my eyes and they hurt as if on fire. I reach up and grab the toilet, pulling myself up. Children are playing outside. They sound so joyous. I look out the window, but don’t see any kids. What I do see is an elderly, white woman with witch-like, stringy hair, speeding in a motorized wheelchair, chased by an exhausted policewoman who runs with her hands on her jingling belt.
I close the bathroom curtains for no reason and walk out into the hallway. The walls are painted black. At the end of the hallway, on the back wall, is drawn a giant red lightning bolt. Was all this here before? How could I have not noticed this odd detail? Do I need glasses that bad? Yes. Yes, I do.
I search the place, but find no sign of Drac or Joann.
The television doesn’t work.
I decide to raid his food, in anger and jealousy.
I open the freezer and fall back.
“GAG!”
There’s a dolphin’s head, between a box of frozen pizza and 5 bottles of water. The head is wrapped in cellophane – its teeth bared.
I poke at it with my pinky.
Nothing.
I think it’s safe to assume that it’s dead.
I feel my belly scolding me again, so I decide to lay off the food until noon. Maybe all I need is a little air. As I make my way through the living room, toward the balcony, I happen to glance down the hallway and this time notice something new.
A door near the back – painted black like the walls – that’s covered by a clear, thick plastic. I bring the cigarette box to my lips and bite out a stick. I’m not going to light it. I’m trying to quit (sometimes I wonder if all I have is some kind of weird, mouth fixation).
I walk to the covered door carefully, as if expecting something hideous to jump out and impregnate me.
A soft breeze whistles down the hallway, rustles the folds of plastic.
I play with the cig in my mouth – tonguing it to the other side – and open the door.
The stink SLAPS me on the nose and I gag. It is the heavy perfume of what I can only describe as the inside of someone’s mouth.
The room is quite large – even larger than the living room. The floor and walls are white, but covered in the same thick, clear plastic. There’s a lone window, looking out into the blue sky, also covered by plastic. Birds fly by, singing. In the middle of the room is the open corpse of a dolphin, on a plastic-covered table.
There’s a rather cartoon-sized butcher’s knife in its back.
I bring my right arm up and bury my face in the inside of my elbow.
I step on things: Bloodstained boxes with the handwritten words Aloha Happy Meat on them. Some boxes are sealed and addressed to India and Canada and Israel and France and Alaska and the Philippines. How are these boxes going to be shipped? Everything gets checked everywhere nowadays after 9/11. You can’t use the bathroom at McDonalds without being searched by a grinning security guard with a tattoo of a nude George W. Bush Jr. on her thick neck.
On bar stools, I see 6 answering machines. There are phone numbers on them. Curious, I call each one and receive these messages:
You make eye contact with a radical nun doing a cartwheel, in place.
You squat in the middle of the aisle and you like it because I said so.
You kissed the priest with your mouth and then your tongue touched his tongue and he exploded into flames.
You put a detachable clitoris into the offering basket. Will you notice?
A pregnant woman cries in the distance. Oh God, she has a hook for a hand!
You put mini corn into the holy wine jug, and then you say you did it.
You touched the small of the priest's back.
This man is very smart. Obviously, these are codes – probably shipping instructions for his illegal meat, at least that’s what I make myself believe.
The dolphin seems oddly at peace.
It gives me the stiff one-eye.
I stick my finger out and touch the eye.
…Soft…Wet…Slick…
Then I touch its nose.
Hard, yet soft.
Like a cold burrito.
I decide to stay the night – to watch over Joann. I’ll be observant. I’ll see if she is truly, madly, deeply in love with him. If yes, then I’ll scram.
The phone on the kitchen wall rings. My heart JUMPS. I run out of the room and shut the door and pretty-up the noisy plastic, trying my best to get it looking just like I found it.
The voice on the other end of the phone is who I hope for.
It’s Polly.
She tells me that I have to get up early tomorrow for work.
I tell her that’s fine, and that I shall do my best.
Polly asks if everything is going well with Joann, and I tell her “Yessm, excellent,” that she seems very happy indeed.
Polly explains that the reason for the early wake-up is an important one. The script changed due to crazy reasons and now the two of us have to go location scouting at 3 in the morning. The production is also running late, and we have to find a beach to film on ASAP before everything turns FUBAR – somewhere remote and picturesque. The idea of waking up at the crack of ass tires me.
An hour later
I stay in the bathroom the whole day with a sharpened spoon at my wrist…thinking about how I could end it all now. Maybe I can come back in my next life rich. As Paris Hilton. We choose our lives before we are born.
So what the hell did I do – or not do – in MY past life to deserve this shitty life? Why the fuck didn’t I choose a more relaxing lifestyle?
I wish I KNEW what I was THINKING.
But would it really be better if we all knew what we did in our past lives?
How would you live knowing that in your past life you raped that cow?
I press the sharp thing against my skin – against the hard, tube-like tendon. They say you should cut vertically, not horizontally like how you see in the movies or like how your depressed-therefore-they’re-cool emo pals say.
And then, of course, I can’t do it.
Blahhhhh.
If only I had the strength to push down faster. And then what? Come back in my next life as Angelina Jolie’s lips? Maybe. Then again, since it would be cheating, I really don’t think the Universe would sing praise to a soul that “gave up”.
At best, I might be lucky to come back as Steven Spielberg’s 26th stool.
I shrug and instead take a hot shower. Then it gets too hot, and I take a cold shower.
Later…
I wake up on the toilet. It’s still dark out. Polly picks me up in a black van and we speed down to Ala Moana beach, across from Ala Moana Shopping Center. Polly tells me that we’re going to search this beach first. She loves it here – tells me that she has a pal, Mandy, whose mother gave birth to her on these sands.
I ask if Mandy is still around, and Polly tells me no, because she was run over by a drunken bus driver and is dead. I say my sorries, and we stroll down the beach, looking for a good spot for a scene in the movie involving two women who find a magical crab shell. The prop, made by Mr. Snake, is to have a mannequin’s torn hand holding onto it.
It was in the back of the van, wrapped in bubble-wrap. I had asked to see it earlier, but Polly said it would be bad luck for the production.
The sky is cloudless: A black skin with glowing pimples. The waves shhhhhhhushed and rolled away from the sands, shimmering under the moonlight.
We took our shoes off and held hands as we walked, feet cold, skin erect.
She tells me that she’s lonely, and puts her head on my shoulder. I think about how short I am and how disappointed I am at myself for not drinking enough milk as a young man. Polly brings her hands up and cups my face. I want to laugh for some hideous reason, but don’t because this is a precious moment.
We stare at each other for what feels like hours. Are the homeless hiding in the bushes, watching us and crying of better days?
Polly kisses me.
I pull back.
“Wow. Sorry. I don’t know why I pulled back. I’m not gay.”
She bear hugs me, lifting me off my feet. My toes wiggle sand.
She laughs.
“Aww, cute! My fucking God, you’re such a good boy! Weeeeeee!”
She spins me around.
“Weeeeeeee!” I shriek.
Something heavy falls behind us.
We go to inspect it. Was it a coconut? Maybe the corpse of a bird that suffered a heart attack, mid-flight?
Five people in dolphin suits jump down from the trees, carrying electric guitars. Polly yanks my hair and yells into my face.
Aloha Mannequins Page 9