MUDMAN – Friend of the World's Detritus!
The body of this slow-talking, fault-finding cultural critic draws dust and dirt molecules to itself as if possessing the gravity of the sun. Also unfortunately born a sweaty, sweaty man, the accrual of this debris gives him the appearance of being covered in mud. Dungeon master. Lover of graph paper. Encyclopedic knowledge of b-movies like Robot Holocaust, Robot Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, etcetera etcetera. Quietly decisive in moments of crisis. 8-bit Nintendo expert. Host of late-night cable access TV movie show. Probably, honestly, the coolest guy in the house. Basement bedroom, just past the washer and dryer.
JERRY RIG – Furniture Roboticist!
Abrasive inventor, most recently of miniature robotic doll furniture, or furnimicrobots, which are despised and feared by El Humidor. Ambiguously ambitious, demonstratively and demonstrably delusional. One-time worker in the G.I. Joe motor pool. Lonely lover of wordplay. A heavy-set guy in sweatpants and, all too often, a lab coat. Can never keep a thought to himself and wears Pokemon gear like it’s something to be proud about. Fanny packs in public. World's Biggest Fan: Hot Pockets. Sucks at Contra. Former member of agony rock band Send More Cops. Chairman: High Style logo committee. Second story bedroom, overlooking back yard.
No. 17 - Attack of the Raftermen!
(continued from No. 15)
Silently, almost sheepishly, Humidor and Aecca/Decca and Mudman and Jerry Rig walk through the southern approaches of the eastside industrial district to their final destination. A triangle of dried blood splays down from Aecca's nose over his mouth and onto his shirt. Mudman sports an impressive bruise on his cheek just below his eye, which is starting to swell. Humidor's pants are torn and ripped at the knees and shins, cuts and scrapes just visible through a mix of blood and grit. Rig is unwounded, but like all the others his hands and clothes are covered in a fine black powdery dirt acquired from transversing the railyards.
They hardly cut the figures they had hoped to at Punk Hotel, which now looms before them as they come around a corner. Where once two large houses had stood for decades, an enterprising landlord had purchased and melded the two together. The half on the corner sported a little roofed turret, the other had probably been more modest in appearance. The connecting segment jutted out all the way to the sidewalk, where concrete stoop led up to the hotel's European-courtyard styled double doors.
The party was in full swing, as it should as midnight drew near. An easy dozen people were arrayed on the stoop and sidewalk, smoking or talking privately or getting some air. Everyone held a red or blue plastic cup of beer. Every time someone went in or out of the front doors the great cacophony of humanity socializing from within would boom out, like a hurricane in a box. Doors closed, there was only the humming drone of muted music and voices.
"The fuck happened to you guys? Fall down getting the mail?" Jukeboxer’s usually dour face was grinning hard enough to split. As the foursome drew closer she got a better look at them in the dim streetlights. "Jesus, what DID happen to you guys?"
"Aecca lost a fight with the sidewalk," says Rig.
"The rest was collateral damage, really," says Mudman. Aecca scowls. Humidor's already eyeing the scene.
"How's the party going?" Rig asks.
"S'kay," Juke gestures at the Punk Hotel's proud sign, a collection of mismatched letters from other businesses, screwed on to a frame of 2x4s and hung by cheap rope from eyebolts in the windowframe above the doors. Snaps her fingers. "Rafterman's gonna play at midnight!" Four sets of eyes meet Jukeboxer's, wary of bullshitting.
"Bullshit," says Aecca, his previous dumpy mood vanishing.
"Its true," Juke nods furiously, "Wastrel had the Hotel keep it secret, not on the flyer and stuff."
"Wastrel's here?" Aecca eyes shift across the hotel's windows, almost expecting to see someone looking back.
"Yeah, back from Olympia, or Astoria, or wherever he was or goes. Yeah, see you around later," Jukeboxer nods at Rig and Mudman, who are drifting towards the front door. Humidor's long since vanished. "You should really go clean yourself up a bit, Aeck" Juke grimaces as she eyes Aecca, "you look disgusting."
Aecca looks down at his blood-stained shirt, "I thought it was pretty punk rock, but yeah, good idea. I'll catch ya later." Juke nods in response, takes a sip from her cup, turns and walks toward another group of celebrants standing at the corner. Aecca mounts the stoop and pushes through to the front door.
Beyond the immediate foyer, Aecca is greeted by a large room that stetches all the way to the back of the building where a staircase clings to the wall. This space, along with the apartment directly above, comprise the connecting structure between the two older buildings. The usual clutter of bicycles and debris has been moved elsewhere to makeway for a sweaty mass of party-goers in various states of intoxication. Aecca makes his way through the throng, smiling and nodding at the various ejaculatory exclamations at his appearance. About two-thirds through the crowd, he pauses. He could go down the hall to the right and wait to get in the hotel's only "public" bathroom and wash up, or could go left where he knows the keg will be. Judging in favor of personal hygiene, veers right, wincing when he bangs his shin against the low stage made out of a couple of old ping-pong tabletops and some cinderblocks.
"Aecca. Jesus. What happened to your face?"
"Tripped on the way here," Aecca grins, gives a casual handshake to the Pocketeer, "y'know, you could have called us that there was party here tonight, y'know? We came straight from the Pillbox."
'Teer smiles and figets with the collection of two inch long dreadlock stubs which punctuate his head in neat rows, "hey man, I was on my way to the 'Box and Juke and Ritch pulled up and were just like 'get in the car!' So," a shrug, shuffles forward with the line.
"S'kay. You seen Rafterman play before?"
"Nah, I'm fucking stoked though! I've heard a million stories. Everyone says they have to be seen to be believed," the line moves again.
"Yeah, it's like a rock and roll crucifixion."
"Wow. Strong praise," Pocketeer is next for the loo.
"I shit you not. I've seen grown men cry and women swoon at Rafterman shows."
"Wow. How many times you seen 'em?" the bathroom door opens, 'Teer steps into the breach.
"Four times," the door closes. Aecca turns, smiles at the couple behind him. "Geez, you get punched or somethin'?" the fella asks. "One of those booby traps, with the log on vines, my face," replies Aecca, grinning broadly. He hears a flush. "I could be in there for a while, so consider yourself warned."
The water going down the drain is pink in color for quite a while. Aecca's face is once more clean. His shirt is soaking wet but the heat of the crowd will dry it out and the night is warm. Ignoring the banging at the locked door, he tenderly palpates the cut on his upper lip. Maybe someone has some liquid skin or superglue or something he could borrow, cause the cut is deep and could scar bad. Wastrel would have some, or point at someone across the room who he knew did. As he wipes his hands on his pants (no way he's touching the pair of hand towels hanging on hooks by the sink) he hears the familiar whine and screech of microphone feedback. A spattering of swears and cheers. Sound check, he thinks.
"Way to take your time, fuckface!"
Aecca ignores the insults and does his best beeline down the hallway, back across the hallway in front of the little stage, now arrayed with mics and amps and a drum set. The hall is more crowded now, as people filter down from upstairs from the private apartments of the residents and from outside. Aecca makes fleeting eye contact with Mudman, whose ear is cantilevered in the direction of Jukeboxer, who herself gesticulates emphatically regarding some exciting anecdote recalled over the din of the crowd, all the while her mouth squarely aimed at Mudman’s poised ear. Aecca smiles slightly, to which Mudman replies with a small grin and the merest of head-nods.
Pushing on, Aecca heads down the hallway and gets in line for the keg. Glimpsing over his shoulder, he espies Humidor on the stairs, in full smoke-puppetry directorial mode. An audience of six or so giggle and smile and ooh and aah as Humidor’s employs his telekinetic sway of smoke to bend and shape the ample cigarette smoke into some silent-film shadow-theatre tale of derring-do.
"We meet again."
'Teer turns, smirks, "hey, how could I forget a face like that? Jesus, that's a hell of a cut you got there."
"No shit, yeah?" Aecca delicately prods at his wound, "I need to find some antibiotic ointment or some liquid skin or something."
'Teer snorts, "yeah I'd hardly call this an antiseptic environment," a hand pans across the great panorama of the Punk Hotel's interior.
"Man, I remember the last Rafterman show I saw here. Wait, was it here? Yeah, it was here. Hey, oh my gawd, I totally forgot about this." Aecca produces a can of beer from his pants cargo pocket, long forgotten from the evening's early provisioning stop.
"How do you forget you have a beer in your pocket? Especially when you're in line? To get beer!" 'Teer absently rubs an eyelid in mild exasperation.
Aecca cracks the beer open, thumbs at his face, "easy to forget when you're busy plowing your face into the pavement!" he takes a deep swig, his first beer since what seems like forever, hands the can to 'Teer, who accepts, drinks. Rig parades by, back towards the main hall, a pair of beers in hand. As he passes Aecca, his eyes lock onto Aecca’s upper lip as if for the first time. A snicker, then a chortle. The briefest of pauses, as if to say something, then a shaking of the head, and Rig continues down the hall. The corner of Aecca’s eye twitches in time to some internal clock of rage, then fades.
"Anyway, Rafterman show. Its crowded. Rafterman's well into there set. Women, fainting. Men, crying. Its hot as hell. Booze and beer, everywhere. I look over, and the guy next to me, he's got his dick out, and he's just pissing on the floor like its no big deal."
"Whaa?"
"Yep. You'd think that'd be a slipping hazard, but there's so many people, pressed so close together, its like, impossible to slip, the crowd just holds you up. And besides, as the crowd jostled me around I was always on the lookout to make sure I wasn't stepping in piss, but its like the stuff evaporated or something, or was mopped up by being stepped in ten million times. Shit. What time you got?" Pocketeer looks at his wrist, which has no watch on it, then shrugs.
"You ladies gonna get some beer or hit on boys all night?"
'Teer and Aecca's heads snap around to find themselves at the front of the line, the four or five people in front of them having acquired their beers surprisingly fast. The two grinning line-mates stride forward and then slow at the sight of the source of the inquiry.
An imposing giant of a man, if not for poor posture, stands before them. Framed by a cruel overbite made crueler by impossibly thin lips, and a haircut that looks like his mom was possibly the world's biggest Ringo Starr fan, beady eyes regard Aecca and 'Teer.
"Oh, hey, Ogre."
Ogre nods at 'Teer, "hey, you guys are gonna need cups," he nods at a bag of blue plastic recepticles. As Aecca and 'Teer grapple with the bag, Ogre reaches over to three mismatched plastic beer pitchers sitting on a plank atop a broken radiator. The pitcher closest to the front has a sheaf of paper duct-taped to it, "TIPS" scrawled in sharpie. The middle pitcher appears to be foamy slop from the keg. Ogre picks up the third and takes a long quaffe. As he tips his head back, the true size of his stature is hinted at, as he actually straightens his back a little. He shrinks a good twelve inches as he sets his to-scale mug back down and returns to his preferred slouch. Aecca and 'Teer profer empty cups in his direction, which he begins to fill from the keg's hose, occasionally pumping the tap for good measure.
"Aecca, right?"
"Yeah," Aecca adjusts the tilt on his cup to minimize foam.
"The fuck happened to your face?"
Aecca considers a reply, stirring the head of foam with his finger while 'Teer gets his cup filled, then, not coming up with any funny retort, nor sure such a retort to be a wise course of action, simply says, "I tripped."
Ogre considers this answer but says nothing more.
"Okay," Aecca says, as he and 'Teer head back down the hallway. Mingling into the fringes of the crowd waiting for Rafterman to play, Aecca intones, "is that guy, like, slow, or somethin'?"
"Y'know," 'Teer says confidentially, "I can never tell. I think he's actually just a boring person."
"Oh."
The two pause in an eddy at the edge of the swirling crowd, take survey. At that moment there’s a spattering of applause and cheers as Rafterman’s drummer, a lanky chap with hollow cheeks and a magnificent red mullet wearing a white matador’s jacket, crawls onto the stage and begins to arrange himself. Aecca taps a distracted ‘Teer on the shoulder, and signals at a nearly invisible open spot against the wall by the entry to the hallway leading to the bathroom. The two of them shoulder and slide and shimmy their way through the mob, and then alight precariously atop a pile of bicycle wheels stacked against the wall.
Now that the drummer’s arrived, the room is packed. People are giddy, even scared. Yelps and curses fly at squashed toes and elbowed ribs, splashed beer and cigarette burns. With every passing minute, even more people pack into the space, now crowding and hanging off the stairs. A few of the more dimunitive girls perch on the shoulders of husky men, the girls’ fingers caressing the ceiling. The collective lust whumps and expands again when Rafterman’s lead guitar is suddenly seen on stage. A slighty built woman with whispy brown hair whose guitar almost seems a bit too big for her, wearing gray jeans and a black denim jacket with the collar and sleeves cut off, she flashes the crowd an infectious smile that yet again, impossibly, ratchets the excitement up a notch. Aecca’s breath is ragged, not just because of the impending show, but at the potent electricity in the room. He’s wearing his usual rubber-soled shoes, but the ambient charge of static electric in the room is massive. Should it come to him (if not for his precautions) his hair would be fairly trying to jump of his scalp, Jacob’s Ladders would course between his fingertips, he could probably start fires with his caress.
His reverie is muted by a wild cheer as the bass player catapults himself onto the stage. A lean, mean,Visigoth of man, easily over six feet tall, sporting dirty blonde muttonchop sideburns, paisley pants and violently pink buttondown dress shirt, topped with a little navy blue cap with a little red puffy ball on top that would be more at home on the head of a drummer of Scottish bagpipe band, the bassist hollers if anyone is thirsty and produces a 12 pack of beer and starts tossing fresh beers to outstretched and raised hands. Then he produces another twelve, and yet another, then a goofy smile and shrug when than one is gone. The crowd’s laments pass as he straps on his bass and thrums a few chords, then starts strumming a simple bummm. bum-bum. bummm, bum-bum. The lead guitarist starts clapping her hands above her head, inciting the crowd to follow her lead with her wild grin.
And then, there he is, Rafterman’s lead singer and rhythm guitar. He wears a modest black vest over a forest green long sleeve dress shirt with ample collars from which springs his long neck and arch-featured face, the seemingly oversized mouth of the great rock and roll vocalists, deep-set eyes surveying the crowd from beneath a heap of corkscrew curls.
Cheers and applause greet him, but the bassist’s thrum and the lead guitar’s clapping return the crowd to their beat. The lead singer’s cuts into the electricity of the humid air.
"I tell everybody we want everybody to do. Tell ya we want everybody to clap their hands. Warming up like this. C'mon Hands up in the air an' warming up. Everybody c'mon. Hey. All right.”
Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap.
Let me hear it now. I think we're getting ready to do the hard way."
The bass stops. Clap clap clap clap. The lead guitarist lets out a guttural, primal “yeahhhhhhhh!!!” Clap clap clap clap.
"Alright alright hey!"
Clap clap clap clap.
Rafterman's building tank of anticipation crescendos and explodes into a rocking, romantic ballad called Denim Dreams and Sex Jeans. Packed gill to gill, the crowd is largely incapable of dancing or thrashing about to Rafterman's rock and roll melodies – and it’s the good stuff, too. Rafterman's talent is evenly spread, no one player trying to prop up the others. The crowd feeds off this joyous democracy, which is entirely evident in the band's stage persona. Standing shoulder to shoulder, heads bob and hands clap (Rafterman is nothing if not a crowd participatory experience) and feet stomp. Fellas and girls with a bit more room, whether it be atop someone's shoulders or a alight a coffee table, freely air guitar or sing along (the lyrics are simple and easy to pick up after a listen or two, and Born Again Hard might be the best selling local independent EP ever).
As the band launches into the bottom third of its set, Humidor and Mudman emerge out into the cooler, open night. They run into Creet and her friend Levy. Levy's a friend of Creet's, lives out in eastern Hinterland area, just up Church Row, in an apartment above a biker bar. A bit on the short side, she has dark hair down just past her ears that flips up and out around the perimeter, and has a rather general hunted, haunted look to her. She’s sporting a kung-fu-style dark blue coat with bright red stitching. It’s the type of fashion Humidor finds exotic, and irresistible. Creet catches his admiring glances, “Humidor, this is my friend Levy.”
“Pleased,” Humidor nods his head quickly in a sort of abbreviated bow.
“What’s your excuse?” Levy disdain is exaggerated and probably false.
Creet jumps in, “he can control smoke,” waves her fingers in front of her like she’s a magician, “with the power of his mind!” Levy’s stoney mask breaks as she laughs at her friend. Humidor laughs uncomfortably, unsure of whether these two women are sharing some sort of inside joke. Perhaps about him. Levy suddenly offers a Humidor a handshake. Creet smiles, “Levy can read the secret language of cities!”
"You can read the secret language of cities?"
"Yep."
"How do you manage that?"
"Well, its not linear, like, left to right, or up and down like our written languages, buts its like 360 degrees, and curvey tossy-turny, and its atemporal, so old scribblings and new ones are around at the same time. In some ways its real time and in others its historical."
"So, sometimes you can see, erm, read, what the city's writing right at this moment? This very moment?"
"Yeah."
"Like spying on someone's journal?"
"Like spying, yeah. Like spying on somone's journal over their shoulder without them necessarily knowing you're there, but then like every other page, every other paragraph, heck, every other sentence, they ink it over, they tear it out, they set it on fire, so you have a stream of consciousness AND you have fragmentary pieces of old stuff. Sometimes I think William S. Burroughs could read city."
"Whoa."
"Wait. 'Not necessarily know you're there?'"
"Yeah, its like you're spying on someone writing in their journal on the bus, and then all of a sudden they just turn and look you dead in the eye, y'know?"
"The city KNOWS you're there."
"Yep. Its why I try to avoid peeping as much as possible. At least on purpose."
"What's it do then, when it, uh, 'sees' you?"
"It usually writes something snarky, like 'like what you see?' or something, then goes quiet for awhile til it thinks no one's looking anymore."
"Is it writing right now?"
A pause, eyes darting at the sidewalk, at the telephone poles and wires, at traffic signals and clutters of litter. "Yes…"
Hushed, "…what's it saying?"
"…Stop pissing on my face, fuckers!"
Due to his unassuming yet attentive quiet nature, and the fact his dirt-covered skin causes him to blend into the night, Mudman slips away from the conversation. He crosses the street and shambles towards a dual-purpose parking strip and loading dock in front of a industrial/commercial space. The lot is like a hundred others except for the presence of a rather bedraggled monkey puzzle tree growing out front on a narrow strip of otherwise barren earth – a reminder of the area's well-to-do residential past. Beneath the tree's hanging branches two men talk, each holding a cup of beer.
The taller, skinnier one, with cylindrical face and lantern jaw, black hair in a monk's cut, finishes a detailed yarn to his companion, a stocky fellow with an explosion of bleached hair, all higgledy-piggidly with gel product, his eyes attentive but red and glassy with booze.
Treading closer, Mudman makes out the tall skinny guy to be Ritch, who, having finished whatever he was saying, now listens closely to the other man, the man called Wastrel. Now under the umbrella shadow of the monkey puzzle, Mudman dimley sees that Wastrel's upper body describes a lazy orbit above some undetermined pivot point below his waistline. Wastrel's musky scent of stale beer, sweat, second-hand smoke, and slept-in clothes wafts in the air.
"Well, Ritch," Wastrel was saying, "I'd say you do just what you're thinking of doing, there," he reaches up and sloppily pats Ritch on the upper arm, "now, if. If you'll excuse me, I haven't seen my good friend. My good friend Muds-man here in a while and would like to see what he done and whom he's seen and what to whom!" Ritch smiles, waves at Mudman, oblivious to Mudman's bruised cheek in the low light. Ritch then looks at Wastrel with eyes of deep significance, and heads back to the party.
"Muds, how's it going? How is the High Style, these days? You guys holding down the fort?"
"Not the same without you, Wastrel."
"Well, hey," Wastrel shrugs, falters back on his heels a bit, "whoa, think my buzz is plateauing," Wastrel puts his index finger on Mudman's collarbone like he's holding down the pause button on a tape recorder and promptly downs the rest of his beer. Wastrel's biochemistry is all reverse-upside-down-backwards-opposite when it comes to alcohol. The specifics are hazy. Rig speculates Wastrel has a biological symbiotic relationship with alcohol, specifically, beer, although its unclear what services he and the beer are exactly rendering for each other. Wastrel lowers his cup and wipes his lips with his forearm, "so, what were we talking about?"
"You could have told me."
"Told you what? Hey, what's that?" Wastrel squints, "that a bruise on your cheek, there? What is that?"
"Aecca/Decca hit me with a traffic cone."
"Why'd he do that?"
"To get even."
"With you?"
"With the sidewalk."
"Oh," Wastrel reaches down a picks up a full cup of beer from the ground, "pretty in character, really, then.," Mudman notices at least two more full beers resting in the darkness, "wait, I should have told you about what?"
"The party. You should have told me about the party," Mudman glances towards Punk Hotel as applause is heard. Rafterman must be done playing.
"I left a flyer at the Pillbox. With Sling. I knew he'd show it to you guys."
"A little haphazard."
"Well, you got here, yeah?"
"A little last minute," Mudman hears angry yelling from the direction of Punk Hotel.
"Pfft. Not my fault you didn't get to the 'Box earlier," Wastrel peers and cranes at the growing commotion. The entire party begins to spill out Punk Hotel and into the street, led by Aecca and followed closely by Deadbeat, who accosts Aecca about being a liar, about the tag "Master of Static Electricity" being a total joke.
Wastrel puts an arm around Mudman's shoulders, "y'know, some parties are good, great even, but with a little narrative, some gentle prodding, then can become legendary!"
Mudman furrows his brow, "this is one of your dioramas?" Wastrel responds by with a sidelong glance and devious smile.
"Aecca's a nice guy," says Mudman, "he doesn't deserve this." Aecca's stopped in the middle of the street, fists clenched, breathing fast and shallow.
"And what," asks Wastrel, trying to look over the top of the crowd, "of poor Deadbeat?"
Mudman considers, as Deadbeat continues to loudly and coarsely berate Aecca, then concedes, "he deserves to be manipulated."
"Besides, Muds," Wastrel sways in his semi-stupor, "Aecca needs to impress."
The crowd has encircled Deadbeat and Aecca. Humidor and Rig end up side by side on the very inside of the circle. Humidor asks how it started. Rig says the band finished a song and then when the applause died down everyone noticed that Aecca and Deadbeat were yelling, screaming at each other, and then Aecca tried to just disengage and walk out but Deadbeat just kept it coming and followed him, saying something about Aecca being a DI washout and a never-was. Humidor's face crinkles in anger at this last piece of information, his eyes darken.
Rig and Humidor, and the murmuring crowd, and Deadbeat go quiet when suddenly and silently Aecca unlaces his boots and kicks them off.
Then it begins.
The air starts to smell of ozone. Aecca's hair, everyone's hair, stands on end, fairly jumps about to some unknown rhythm, their clothes cling to their bodies. People giggle and holler. Tiny bits of trash pinwheel gently toward Aecca and spin in circles around him.
Creet appears at Humidor's side, "what's happening?"
"He's polarizing," Rig says in a distant, abstract tone.
Under the monkey puzzle tree, Wastrel's grins ear to ear. "No one. No one will forget this party, now, Muds." His eyes fix drunkenly on the ground at his feet and sways with the waves of a rolling blackout.
Deadbeat's still standing unmoved and scowling at Aecca, but a trace of anxiety begins to sneak into the corners of his eyes and mouth.
The atmosphere on the street is now silent but electric. Debris hypnotically orbits Aecca in two tapering clouds, like the top and the bottom of an hourglass.
"The air's so… still," murmur's Creet.
"Any second now…" says a mesmerized Rig.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" says Wastrel to Mudma, snapping out of his glassy-eyed drunken reverie.
Mudman looks on with a discerned, almost mournful expression, "I still don't like it."
Wastrel ignores him, "the crowd is the note, the power, yet unformed, and Aecca the chord yet unstrummed, the hand that strikes it."
Aecca's twinges minutely, and, for split second he smiles at Deadbeat the smallest of dastardly smiles. Then there's a barely audible crinkle noise, and in an instant, a blue bolt of superheated air fairly leaps from Aecca's stomach, throwing him and Deadbeat to the ground in opposite directions like they'd each been hit by bus.
The air temperature on the crowded street jumps a good ten or fifteen degrees, and those closest to Aecca momentarily see the floating debris around him ignite, burn, and disintegrate, like cinders from an open fire. The lightening bolt arcs magnificently a good 50 or 60 feet into the air, and then jaggedely plummets back to earth and violently conducts itself down the length of a streetlamp into the ground. The lamp explodes, showering broken safety glass bits and pieces onto the crowd beneath it. People scream and howl in fear, run in random directions, tripping and falling over each other.
Then the lamppost groans and cracks, and begins a slow, drunken fall to the street, a section of it splinted and burning about five feet up from the pavement. The top of the lamppost catches on another set of electrical wires, hangs suspended for a split second, then the broken off lower half canterlivers out and under the wire, like a man clothes-lined onto his back, hitting the street with a loud, final clang.
People scatter or go back inside. When the fire department shows up and a few police cruisers lurk about, even more people begin to dissipate. Aecca sits on the curb across from Punk Hotel, his boots still off, the belly of his shirt is blackened and burnt, with a hole the size of a softball centered roughly around his navel. Mudman and Rig sit to either side of him. They all sip beer from plastic cups. The upright stump of the remaining street lamp smolders 30 feet or so down from them. The fire department and some electric company workers have the rest of the lamp over to the side of the road. A fire marshal and a utility worker listen incredously to Wastrel's tale of a flukey, spontaneous electrical explosion, of an arc of lightening that nearly killed his buddy (pointing at Aecca for effect).
"I'll never understand why it shots out of your belly button," Rig says and shakes his head.
"Yeah, let's just not talk about it, huh?" Aecca's voice is thick, like he's got an awful sinus infection. He looks at his feet and wiggles his toes. His feet are covered in a fine black soot. You'd think he was wearing ballet slippers.
Creet crosses the street, two cups of beer in her hands. She gives one to Aecca. "Thanks" he says, setting it down on the curb next to him, taking another sip of the one he's still working on. Creet plops roughly to the curb next to his cup, not-so-discreetly bumping Mudman over to make room for herself.
"You okay?" Creet's mouth crooks into her distinctive smirk.
Aecca shrugs, stares at his feet and smudges some of the soot off with his thumb, "its not the first time, but its never really easier, so…" he shrugs again.
"I had no idea," she rubs the back of her neck, "you never told me that it was like that," indicates the broken lamppost.
"Yeah, well," Aecca smiles absently, "I guess I always hope the last time is the last time, y'know?"
Creet smiles warmly at this confession. Aecca smiles back, sharing the tiny intimacy.
Humidor emerges from the mingling remnants of the party, wearing a shit-eating grin to which everyone's gaze it drawn. He smokes his cigarette flamboyantly (even by his standards) as he stops in front of his assembled housemates, striking a faux-casual pose which screams I-have-news. His smokey exhalations form into a cloudy tail which spirals behind him, as if he was being followed by a transparent vortex. His eyes flick across his audience.
"Well? What is it?" Rig asks at last.
Humidor smiles, nay, verily beams with self-satisfaction. He pulls his free hand from his pocket where it had been at rest, and with a jingle produces a set of keys with a flip his wrist.
"You got your keys back," Mudman states, not asks.
"Indeedy, and I'm giving all of the Raftermen a ride to the 'Box."
"Yeah?"
"Yes! Ritch Jukeboxer and Pockster have already absconded. I have agreed to rendevous with them there shortly."
"Ah, here! Here you are!" Wastrel stumbles up and wraps an arm around Humidor's shoulders,
sir! Your payment due!" he pushes a wad of cash into Humidor's front shirt pocket, "fifty buck, as promised! For use of the van."
"Housemateys!" Humidor cries, "Assemble!" .
"Bet we're all here."
"Tonight!" continues Humidor, "the beers are are on me!"
The other housemates' sit in dumb silence, then Mudman says "everyone in the van before Humidor forgets what he just said."
No. 16: Grounded
The smooth black monolith squatting serene
The heart-master dynamo of a squalid house
A lurker not at the threshold but at the center, where teem
Full four failed men, friends, each a souse
Ever thus desperate for a noonish elixir
With strong flavor and stronger power
To uplift and overcome—fuel to conquer last night's mixture
Of folly and liquor. Each day's foul routine repeated first: one dour
Figure shambles into a fetid kitchen, himself rancid as any forgotten dish,
Shifts through drifts of filth to fetch filter
And find bean or grounds according to which
Sad wretch first fled sleep to flinch the day. A welter
Of debris on the counter faces whichever one of four
Founds the day. Woe betide the step
Of that becalmed wretch who finds no brown reason to live to pour
'Pon arising, who must scrounge the couch for cash and trek
Instanter out to 'plenish the go-juice supply,
In iron accord with the one law of the High Style.
"If you get up first, you make a pot of coffee." No need to describe
The punishments for this frank sin; any violator would greet exile.
Let all that passed be prologue only, though,
A mere sketch of regularity, lines of a still life
Like ruts in the exhausted earth, a ditch-image existence in a field better left fallow.
Because today is no stock gift of same, but a novel slice—
Nearly an attack, this new obstacle now, this new failure
This morning of things broken (besides the men
(A known quantity, and one none too large)) following the sure
Setbacks suffered last night, then the stumbling back to this den...
The coffee maker's busted. That's what's different.
There's little enough coffee, but that's not the problem. The money's fucking spent.
There's no more replacing the ancient Braun than there is overpaying rent.
Like a cattle-gunned child stands MudMan silent, staring at where once happiness came from, where hope went.
A few times he tries what makes sense.
Checks the cord and plug, jogs the switch.
There's power to the outlet, he means to check (twice). When
Did it last work? Doesn't matter. No good now to wish
Now were then, with then's things working still.
MudMan's morals founder on a challenge this big.
Would yours? A feint, he thinks: go back to bed, let somebody else uncover this rotten deal.
He slumps to turn and slip down the stairs. "Oh. Hi, Rig."
"'Man. Coffee yet? Man, my goddamned head.
Shit, it's not even on, you must have—"
Rig flips the switch, sees no light, stops. Looks at what's dead.
MudMan stands mute to history, knows there are no words for some facts.
Jerry recapitulates MudMan's actions with plug, cord, and outlet,
To of course no particular avail. That's not how these things work!
The futility doesn't stop him. He pauses, and the friends stale the air with cigarette
Smoke. "The hell are we gonna do?" Rig sighs. "This one hurts."
Humidor slumbers. Dekka, like always, keeps to his bed.
He hates making coffee—for anybody else, anyway—
So he's careful to avoid stirring before there's something to stir, playing dead
To the world. Let others prepare potions at the break of day.
"I'm gonna find a tape—" "No. There's no point.
That won't fix this." "Helps me think."
Rig slouches out; 'Man left, bereft, wishes his exit had been so adroit.
No coffee. Nothing to drink. Maybe a drink?
Bleak. Harsh realm for sure. A lamestain unlikely to be caught
On the flippety-flop. Or anywhere else. Almost
Unnoticed, MudMan's second beer is half gone.
Rig noisily munches on toast.
Some horrible blare rackets away and the coffee maker sits, inert.
"We'll clean it up!" Rig blurts. "Act like it's new
And return it for exchange." "Without a box? Wrapped in your shirt?"
MudMan's far from buying this shit. Few
Retailers would mistake the questioned unit
For anything made in recent times
Anyway. Even if divested of the crust of years accrued to it,
Its like hasn't haunted shelves since cigarettes cost just dimes.
An impasse. Rig spits crumbs. "Well? You solve this,
Then, dick." MudMan opens his fourth.
The center is not holding. The house is cracking. The risk
Is that the coffee/beer cycle—the last strong support
Of any kind of reasonable life these men know—
Will collapse forever, and they will be lost.
Humidor's on the couch already, already crying. Rig: "I'll fix—" "No."
"We've lost enough today. We can't stand the cost
Of some stupid fire or any more broken shit
From you kit-bashing our stuff for parts."
Thus Akka/Dekka, roused and moved to roust or rout. Rig takes the hit
Silently but sour, fingers his wallet and departs.
He'll buy his own coffee. Gawp at the girl
Working the counter, if there is one,
Heaving his heavy load about the place, hiding a grotesque whirl
Of emotions. A ghastly attempt to flirt. Dumb.
He'll be half-mute and will say nothing smart
As his sausagy body, smock-stuffed, phocine
And hardly gainly, repels faintly. Rig didn't start
The day with a hot shower. Or a cold one. He nor his clothes are clean.
Gross. Leave him his self-hewn hell. Contemplate the High Style
Anew. Humidor has uncovered surprises. Two,
In fact. First, he revealed Akka/Dekka's own coffee machine, hidden the while.
Second, an admission his footfall had known Dekka's little room.
A violation uncool. Chamber of Solitude! But protocol be screwed
For the moment, as the small tool gets shoved
Onto the counter and stoked with solid and liquid that coffee might brew.
"Smaller than the house pot," notes 'Man, "But enough."
Fuming Dekka stomps a sulk away. Humidor anxiously flits.
MudMan's hands dole the groups—use the very last
To full fill the hopper, topped to the brim. Turning back, he jars his wrist
Against the unfamiliar dimensions of the new maker. With a blast
The carafe falls. On the floor it irrefixably shatters!
Stumbling back, Humidor flails in shock
And strikes the machine's basket. It too falls. Grounds scatter
Amidst broken glass and into standing water. Fuck.
Everything's ruined. No coffee. No money. A pair of
devices down with no prospect of change.
Let alone bills. The 'mates despair of
Resolving this with money. Their minds are made strange
With lack of coffee and so many awful blows
Delivered by this shitty world in one day.
They retire from the fray as from life. Hosed,
They yield. MudMan and Humidor run away
Now from everything. The night now to fall will be the end.
The end of all things. The end of sobriety.
The end of any bond to bind the friends.
Coffee—the ritual and the drug—was the last anchor to the world they flee
And sure the only world they'll see again
Will be at the bottom of cans, tops endlessly popped.
Without coffee, eternal night of yellow beer descends.
What little forward motion these men could caffeinated muster now forever stops.
Hours later, all wallow in something like fate—or frank doom.
Rig sits in a state trooper's car. Long story. He's ripped.
So are his pants, and the other 'mates. MudMan and Akka are sad at the bar, Humidor same in his room.
Unseen in the Chamber of Solitude sits a circuit breaker only tripped.
Words & drawings by C. Collision
EL HUMIDOR – Smoke-Mentalist of the Sky Pirates!
Not an actual sky pirate. A self-styled citizen of the world, he speaks with bizarre accents and rhythms, reflections of somewhat confusing social and cultural origins. He talks and thinks like he's part of several elaborate fantasies happening at the same time. Never been employed. El Humidor is an adept fumokinetic – he can control smoke with his mind. (Usually the smoke exhaled from smoking an Oggie brand cigarette). Typically creates smoke-figurines which play out escapist fantasies. Favorite themes involve biplanes, dirigibles, and general airborne adventure. Also, generic fantasy and 1950s-style pin-ups. Humidor's skinny and wears whatever was cheapest at the surplus store, usually Swiss, Czech, and other army gear from tiny, boring, socialist-type countries. Average day consists of being the last to wake up, drinking coffee made from left-over grounds, laying on the couch smoking, foraging in the streets for dropped change and returnables, laying on couch. Terrible with directions. Owns a van he calls the 'Valiant,' which he apparently 'won' from someone in a game of Magic. Obsessed with hanging out at the Pillbox Tavern during afternoon hours, with the godawful old Liverspot Gang daycrowd (they tend to buy him at least two beers, for reason unknown). Quick healer, in the event of a hangover. Second story bedroom, overlooking side yard.
AECCA/DECCA – Master of Static Electricity!
"Master" might be an exaggeration. Aecca/Decca's corpus acts as a super magnet for static electricity, turning him into an overloaded (and grumpy) battery of useless electrical power. Rubber socks and, for social occasions, thin strips of rubber super-glued to his fingertips allow him to live a relatively normal life. Once a level-headed guy, Aecca gets pretty edgy because of his condition and a diet consisting largely of coffee and beer. And a world filled with slowness and obstacles. Dedicated diarist. Adequate DIY bike mechanic. On-the-fly battalion cook extraordinaire. Can be a bit of a bully. Probably the closest thing the housemates of the High Style have to a leader, largely due to being the loudest voice. Second-story bedroom, overlooking front yard (this would be called the "master" bedroom if the house were for sale).
No. 15 - Eastside Transversal
With a combination of relief and dread, Sling greets the familiar noises of further customers opening the heavy steel-plated front door of the Pillbox Tavern. Sling nods at the guys from the house called High Style, all squinty as they adjust to the dim lighting. The 'Box is entirely lit by neon beer signs, a regular light bulb nowhere to be seen. The squints give way to movements floaty and lazy, the first steps of a well-practiced and beloved dance.
Sling reaches for the fridge door, starts pulling out four cans of beer. Sling's arms are long. They come down just past his knees. Ideal arms for a bartender, he can pass a beer to a customer over another customer's head like a crane loading a cargo ship. Most regulars get used to it. El Humidor always gawks in joyful fascination.
Sling nods hello at Mudman, who thumbs at Aecca/Decca since he's holding Mud's money tonight (stays cleaner that way). Mudman and Sling get along grand, probably because both are visually freakish, Sling with his unnatural wingspan, Mudman with his covered in sweat-soaked dirt skin. They also both speak only when they have something to say. Mudman grabs his beer and takes first sip and idles his way to an available booth back by the dart board.
The remaining beers distributed and dollars collected, Aecca meanders to the jukebox and feeds it a crinkled dollar. He reads the machine's catalog with the concentration of a medieval scholar. Humidor and Rig settle down at the booth with Mudman but after a sip or two Rig gets back up and has a go at the pinball machine. Humidor talks. Mudman nods occasionally. Aecca joins them as the chords of the seventies spill out of the jukebox's speakers. Rig curses as the pinball gutters his third and final ball and slides into the booth as Humidor's lecture winds down.
Conspiratorial glances and asides. El Humidor gets up, heads back to the restroom, taking another swig from his beer.
Awkwardly, the remaining housemates continue the previous dialog. Mudman gets up and heads to the bathroom, beer dangling in hand at his side. Seconds after, the door closes, Humidor exits and returns to his seat, and launches into an anecdote about a Steven Seagal movie and a bag of Arby's. Aecca chuckles unnaturally at the anecdote, rises, takes a drink from his beer with a forced casualness, and heads for the toilets.
Oddly, as before, Mudman exits mere moments after Aecca enters the bathroom. Mudman sits down and resumes drinking. Humidor restarts his story to bring Mudman up to speed. Mudman nods in acknowledgement. Jerry Rig excuses himself and beelines for the bathroom, beer in hand.
Pushing the door open, Rig steps in far enough to let it close behind him. Aecca peers over his shoulder from the stall, then turns to face Rig. "C'mon, hurry up," he hisses, and holds out an open thirty-six ounce can of malt liquor. In his other hand, Aecca's beer can is topped with the frothy foamy head of a refill.
Rig takes the malt liquor and turns sideways so Aecca can sidestep past him. Rig does his best to pour the malt liquor contents into his empty twelve ounce can. "Jesus Christ, Jerry, go in the stall!" Aecca whispers through a snarl. Still pouring, Rig tries to slip into the stall in a smooth motion, but jostles his twelve-ounce can. Foam quickly begins to rise out of the twelve-ouncer. Half-way through the stall-door, Rig stops pouring and quickly sips at the top of his over-foaming can.
The door squeaks open, held open by Sling's long arm. The arm begins to bend and seems to almost draw Sling into the doorway. Sling appraises the scene before him, Rig frozen mid-sip, halfway into the stall, Aecca pressed up against the wall to let Rig past. Rig and Aecca, children caught at mischief, await the sure-to-come reprimand.
Sling's mouth crinkles in disapproval, "geez, guys, here I was thinking you were doing drugs in here or something." Rig and Aecca exhale a little. Sling reaches out, takes the can of malt liquor from Rig, starts pouring it into the sink. Sling angles his elbow up to form a sort of bridge that Rig and Aecca can pass under. They shuffle out of the bathroom with guilty gaits, make their way back to the booth. Mud and Humidor give them exasperated looks.
Sling finishes dumping the malt liquor and tosses the can out the open back door into the parking lot. He walks up the booth and picks up the two ashtrays on the table. He empties one into the other and places the empty one in front of El Humidor. "Seriously, if you guys want to do shit like that just drink in the bushes out back like everyone else." One of the Liverspot Gang, seated in earshot at a video slots machine, gruffaws loudly. The housemates gaze at their beercans, eyes downcast in shame. Sling turns, swaps the full ashtray with a clean one sitting on the bar, sets it down with a slight clatter, and strolls back to his post behind the bar.
"Jerald Rig. You are about as subtle as a hand grenade," Humidor says, pulling a fresh cigarette out of its pack.
"Real subtle," Mudman says, a slight nod in agreement.
"I knew you'd fuck it up, axelrod," Aecca lightly backhands Rig on the upperarm.
"It was your stupid fucking idea," growls Rig.
They finish their tainted beers, sharing only grumpy expressions and killjoy attitudes. Sling stares at them from behind the bar, his arms folded across his chest in disapproval. The cans before them empty, cash is ponied up and Mudman buys another round with a healthy tip as penance. Sling forgives them by ceasing to stare at them.
The mood lightens slightly. Aecca recounts the time him and Humidor set off little firecrackers behind the bar. They'd light them individually and throw them away quickly before they went off. They giggled and swore when they wouldn't throw fast enough and burnt their finger tips. Then Sling had come out back and yelled at them to knock it off.
The jukebox finishes Aecca original four-song selection and goes mute. Rig gets up and heads over to reload it. Something grabs Humidor's attention. He rises from his slouch and peers around the bar like a meerkat. "Where IS everyone?"
Aecca looks around, says, "I don't know if I've EVER seen it this empty?"
Rig returns from the Jukebox, looks up at the wall clock. "Yeah, its after 10. On a Friday. But no Pocketeer."
"No Jukeboxer," says Mudman.
"Hey, Sling!" Aecca hollers, the night's previous transgression forgotten, "where is everybody?"
Sling looks up, then reaches behind the bar, snags a small piece of paper, holds it up between two fingers and shakes it twice, then slides it onto the bar facing towards the housemates.
Rig waddles over and picks up the paper. Reads it as he slowly walks back to the booth. Rig loves a mystery.
"Well, what is it?" Aecca's eyes begin to glaze into a rage. Rig also loves to make dramatic expositions, usually by withholding information to build suspense. Aecca hate this habit. Rig's mouth hangs open slackjawed. He plops into his seat and faces the front of the paper towards his roomies. It’s a party flyer.
"Christ!" Aecca throws his hands in the air, "How did we not know about this?"
"There's a Punk Hotel party tonight? For real?" Humidor examines the flyer, glimpses at the wall clock. "It starts in, like, now."
"We have to leave," Mudman's can, freshly emptied, rattles out of his hand onto the table, his other hand wiping beer from his lips. He stands up, looks at the others expectantly.
Three chugged beers later, the flatmates burst out the Pillbox's entrance onto the street.
"I can't believe we didn't find out about this 'til now!"
"Must have been planned that way, keep it secret 'til the last minute."
"That's Wastrel's style, for sure!"
"Or it was a last minute thing anyways."
"How we getting there?"
"Uh, the van, I suppose."
El Humidor stops walking. "It is out. On loan."
"What?"
"How could you do this? In our hour of need?"
"El Humidor has favors to pay, favors to earn." He stands in silence.
"Bikes?" Mudman addresses Aecca, the house's resident bike engineer, their ride captain.
"Pump's fucked. Flat tire on each and every one. We ain't got no wheels, man!" Aecca's pacing in a tight loop, the crisis escalating.
"Well, there's the bus…" offers Rig weakly.
"I have not that kind of money!" Humidor is almost insulted.
"Jesus, Rig, pay the two buck fare?"
"Well, fuck, guys" Rig, getting defensive, getting panicky, "how else the fuck do you propose we get there? We're running late already!"
"Walk," Mudman stares at the sidewalk, at his feet, really, "we'll have to walk it." He looks up, eyes flinty determination.
The others' resolve hardens. Jaws go grim.
Rig's science-brain kicks in. "Right. Its, like, thirty-two blocks due west and about, uh, 20 blocks or so north from there, so…" he thrums his chin with his fingers. The others wait for the pending judgment. "…so… its gotta be like 5 miles, tops, about an hour or so walk."
"An hour! Five miles!" Humidor, interminably lazy.
"Can it, Humey," Aecca says, "we'll be there a little after midnight, then. There'll be plenty of partying left to do."
"A long walk home, too, maybe…" muses Rig with a shrug, picking absently at a fingernail.
A spate of silence, the brink of decision. This is no leisurely stroll. Almost all the way to the river. And a long drunk, tired death march back, most likely. But a Punk Hotel party! One does not miss one of those.
Without saying a word, their minds are made up. They begin to walk. The exact route is decided as they go. That way too steep. Too much traffic here. Dead ends there. A convenience store on the way that way, for Humidor to get smokes.
As is the character of their loose friendship, the conversation rambles in and out of topics, starts and stops with fits and nonsequitors. Verbal abuse is carefully doled out, but never to the point of true hurt feelings. El Humidor relates a tale about a guy he met whose chosen fashion styling was "soviet cowboy."
Walking briskly, moving away from the main roads to quiet streets of small houses, the sidewalks crowded by mossy fences and overgrown rosebushes and trees whose roots push up and crack the concrete, the conversation turns to the subject of Deadbeat and Creep. Deadbeat was an ex-housemate of Mudman's and a subject of unabiding spite for Aecca. Creep is affluent and give everyone the heebie-jeebies. In Aecca's opinion they represent the ying and yang of everything dispisicable in his social universe: a go-nowhere do-nothing hipster derelict and his everpresent rich slumming-it-around friend who will split town the second there's more money to be made working for the family business.
"Gawd I can't stand those guys," Aecca angrily cracks his walking beer aquired at the last convenience store.
"Creep's such a snake in the grass, I swear!" Rig grimaces at the heavens, if he could see them through the thick foliage from all the trees lining the streets – the occasional street light is invariably obscured by crowding branches. "You can just tell the guy's up to something, whatever, whenever it is."
"Exactly," Aecca nods, high on hate, "he asks for a pack of matches and it feels like he just stole your tombstone!"
"Oh, El Humidor gets along with him just fine! Just the other night we…"
"Yeah, Humey, we know," Rig cuts short the anecdote.
"You just like hanging out with him because he picks up your tab at fancy bars downtown," Aecca sneers. Humidor slows his pace, falls behind the rest. In the dark shadows, murderous miniature daggers of hurt feelings stab out of Humidor's eyes at Rig and Aecca.
"Don’t act surprised. It’s the only reason Deadbeat hangs out with him all the time, that guy pays for nothing!" Rig's hands swipe outwards palm-down in clean sweep motion.
"Gawd I hate that guy." Aecca stews in his rage, his anger, his spite.
Then he trips on an edge of malformed concrete and falls on his face.
His roommates swear variously and vigorously. Rising to his knees, Aecca grabs at the wet stuff on his upperlip, curses as he realizes its blood. The laughs subside and Rig instructs him to stand up and fishes a penlight out of a pocket, assesses his patient.
"Ah, dude, you cut your upper lip something fierce," Rig crinkles the side of his mouth. Aecca, still cupping a hand to his mouth, in which a puddle of blood periodically overflows, steps out onto the street and finds a parked car. He brings his face up to its side-view mirror.
"Ah shit, you gotta be fucking kidding me!" Aecca's speech is pickled with spatters and sputters of blood and saliva. "Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Fucking shit!"
Aecca rages a few car lengths down the street, cuts back up onto the sidewalk. "Shitting fuck! Fucking sidewalk! Fucking tree! All broken up! Shit! Goddamn it! God fucking damn it all to fucking hell!"
Aecca continues his blitzkrieg of profanity, at which Rig sniggers. Humidor laughs out loud.
Not satisfied with making his displeasure verbally present, Aecca snatches an orange road safety pillar – a bright orange plastic tube 4 inches in diameter and a good four feet long threaded through a heavy recycled tire black octagonal base - and begins to physically assault the very sidewalk itself.
"Piece of shit sidewalk! Motherfucking fucker! Fuck! Shit! Aaaaaaaaarghh shit!” the plastic tube thwacks loudly on each impact, “goddamn it! Goddamn it to fucking hell! Fucking shit sidewalk!"
Humidor can barely keep his balance he's laughing so hard, and Rig is dangerously close to hyperventilating. Mudman, wary of local residents who might be a bit nervous about a profanity-spewing safety-pylon wielding psycho lurching around their neighborhood and might call the cops, attempts to approach Aecca and talk him down. "Aecca. Hey. Try to keep—"
Mudman's head snaps back, hands grasping up at his face, then his whole body doubles over in smarting gasps as an errant backswing by Aecca catches Mudman in the vicinity of his left eye.
Aecca freezes, his pylon slack, nostrils still flaring, chest heaving, still-wild eyes gazing at Mud. "Shit, Mud', you okay?"
Mudman straightens, uncovers his hands from his face. His fingers play over the area around his left eye. "Jesus, Aecca, calm the fuck down, huh?" In the shadows and through the perma-dirt one can make out a rapidly forming bumpy bruise under Mudman's left eye.
Humidor looks from Aecca to Mudman and back, grins, "don't you two make a pretty couple?"
"Get bent," Mudman examines his fingers, "I'm bleeding a bit."
"I think I've stopped," Aecca dabs at his nose, takes note of the mess on his shirt.
"I was just going to say, with the noise you were making, a neighbor's gonna call the cops on us," Mudman glances at the small bungalows nestled back from the street in overgrown shrubbery. As if on cue, the curtain in the front window of the house before them flutters, as if someone had been watching them. They peer up and down the street nervously, awaiting the inevitable silhouette of a police cruiser.
"Me thinks it might be prudent to beat a stealthy retreat,” says Rig, but Humidor's already gone. Feet on heat, they near-sprint through the dark, cutting irregularly west and north and west.
"Which way?"
"The trainyard's up ahead, we can cut through there!"
They run awkwardly down a street penned in by the high walls of warehouses and machine shops which doensn’t dead-ending so much as disappear under the gravel track beds of the train yards. From here they can just follow the tracks north and end up a few blocks from Punk Hotel. Their headlong sprint gives way to a light jog and errant wary glances over shoulders for signs of pursuit. Humidor pauses at the base of the track bed, waits for the others to catch up. The four stand, catching their breath.
"I think we're okay."
"Yeah."
Humidor grins at their escape, a grin returned met with smiles high on adrenaline. Humidor turns on a heel, "lets go," and bounds flamoboyantly up the trackbed. On his second leaping step he loses his footing on the sliding gravel and falls forward heavily, catches himself on his hands.
As the others climb up to the tracks, Humidor gets back up to his feet. "Shit. Look at my pants." The knees and shins of his trouser legs are torn, revealing scraped and cut skin, blood mixed with dirt and grit. By the light of distant streetlights, Rig glances from Humidor's thrashed pants to the puffy bruise under Mudman's eye to the mess of blood on Aecca's face and shirt. Rig smirks, chuckles, "what? You guys fall down getting the fucking mail?" Rig turns and starts walking down the tracks due north.
Tired, weary, bloodied, the expedition moves along the tracks, across empty lots, through shadows cast by cyclopean industrial machine surplus. Old cranes and railroad trucks rust in waiting for purposes unknown or forgotten. They tread lightly more than once as they come across makeshift shacks and hamlets fabricated of discarded pallets, cardboard and plastic sheeting. At one point they hug the rough ground beneath them when Humidor catches glimpse of a prowling police car, seeking troublemakers, vagrants, vandals, and trespassers. The gravel of the track bed leaves their hands and clothes covered in a fine, black dust which smudges when they attempt to wipe it off.
At last, they climb clumsily up an embankment by a viaduct and over a guardrail. They blink at the increased light from close-by streetlights and smile, because on top of the distant sounds of a streetcar pulling away from its stop, and the background industrial noises of nighttime manufacturing, they can hear the distinct sounds a party – a big party! – in progress. Laughter, cheers, muted music. Crossing the street, they make their way to Punk Hotel.
Words & drawings by D.D. Tinzeroes
No. 14 - Rags and Bones
Your mom is right: breakfast is the most powerpacked meal of the day. Jerry Rig never quite learned that, so he was taken entirely off-guard by the totipotent combination of egg scrambled and imbricated with soft, wet potato. Wrapping it in an oven-warmed tortilla had proven far too puissant for his gin-wracked morning body, and he had made for the dubious comforts of the porch couch, bolstered by running the boom box' power cord through the window and fortifying himself with his all-Boston mix tape and the cleanishest glass from the kitchen (for a lengthy series of red beers).
It wasn't like he wanted to vomit, or die, or go back to bed, exactly. It was like his heart wanted to vomit, his eyes wanted to die, his neck felt made of splintering beestung granite. Flickers of flashback guttered over and through him like choppy seas surging amongst chunks of calving iceberg.
"I dunno. I loved the first one as much as anybody, but I genuinely think identity-fuckery combined with musings about that which is real versus the ersatz and the simple sadness that the satisfactions of the latter may well be more profound and accessible than the former is/was a bad choice for sequels--indeed, for a franchise. A certain dilution has occurred, and the subtlety of the original formulations has been lost, has become mere obfuscation..."
Humidor stared, straddling the beach cruiser he insisted upon riding everywhere. "Akka/Dekka...I am stunning. That was...easily...the most nuanced thing you have ever said. On anything."
Dekka shrugged and yanked at his backpack straps. Squinted into the early evening sun and muttered around a cigarette. "'Man said it. I just read the note he passed me."
The four grunted quietly as their respective bikes creaked under them, empty beers forgottenly stuffed and leaking their can-leavings in four men's bags, the last single-screen theatre in Portland receding behind them, the marquee grimly inflicting TOTAL RECALL 3 on any eye turned to the east on this sunday afternoon. Any eye at all: the letters were vast pillars of an eternal eldritch flame, dozens of cubits high.
"Fuck you, buddy!"
Rig rolled his eyes and adjusted his fanny pack. A stub of cigar worked its way around his mouth as the dank, starkly underlit club shook itself to pieces around him. Leather squeaked inaudibly everywhere, piercings gleamed and flashed, fishnets more a uniform than an accessory. Rig liked the flesh parade, bodies colliding as though they were in a large, invisible rock tumbler turned on its side, but mostly he just filed away the flickering cleavage and pale thigh meat for lonely later use. His mind fixed on strange, pointless things as he strained to avoid the things that actually bothered him. How had nobody ever noticed that the main riff in this tune was lifted directly from "woodpeckers from Mars"? Did nobody have ears?
In this way and by maintaining a very strict regimen of one tallboy per song was Jerry Rig able to avoid thinking about how a cover band--Hedgehog's Dilemma--had become a huge success playing songs his own band had never had a whole lot of luck playing, even as that cover band cavorted photogenically on the chest-high stage at Duckworth's. It
had been a long day. Bike ride to their favored theatre for a free noontime screening, mile upon mile to the east. A brief post-film visit to the graveyard, a hustling exit before being rousted by the paracops, some amiably unsuccessful attempts to grill in the back-yard, followed by a sighing abandonation of tantrum-stricken Akka/Dekka, who'd climbed up on the roof for no reason anybody understood as everyone else jettisoned themselves into the remains of the sunday. Energy expended leaves a void to fill with alcohol; this cavity sours quickly, home to a sullen rage, the lashing pout of the naturally overlooked and underappreciated.
Rig had passed out on the couch, running the boom box cord out the window. He came to to a monday afternoon spalled by the flinty tenor of Akka/Dekka, raised yet beyond its usual car alarm heights. "My loan!? Her birthday? This is bullshit! What do you expect to talk about next--period panties, the glass ceiling and mascara ads? This is asshole shit walking!"
As Rig fussed with his musty lab coat, sweat-moist from drunken, overfed couchsleep, Dekka's unfocused eyes strayed to the corner where walls and ceiling met. One arm hung limply from a bum, bruised shoulder. Almost no time passed. "Uh-huh. Okay, yeah. You're right. I will. Today, I promise. Today. TODAY. Right now. Love you too, mom."
Scowling, Akka/Dekka hung up the phone and repaired to his war room. All the rage and despair locked within that craggy frame would have to wait another day. Afternoon lost time like shedding hair and evening slid over the High Style like mustard on a biscuit. Sweating and shaky, Dekka clambered out of the stifling, repurposed mud room. "Ha-HAH!" his rough cry, a flat lozenge held above his head with his working arm. "They said it couldn't be done. They later retracted that statement and lengthily questioned my abilities, my suitability for the task. And yet I stand. Here I stand--victorious."
Jerry, drinking on the porch and enjoying Boston's late period, nearly audibly ignored Dekka. Humidor was long
gone to the bar and Mudman lurked below, still playing games alone. Grumpy and underappreciated, Dekka intoned "Yup. Cool. Is. The. Word. What I got right here is probably the best thank-you note any man ever wrote to his aunt. For kicking down a little cash when she makes like a million dollars a minute. And I am currently between jobs. Which she expects to be paid back in like 2 months." When this proclamation somehow failed to win the spectacular response it merited, Akka/Dekka dropped his envelope hand and went to rummage the couch for stamp change. Still grumbling.
His night both ruined and fulfilled, his face lumpier and bloodier than usual, Rig slumped on the ped access platform of the Steel Bridge. About a third of the way across it (going east) there's a spot of black between two lights. Rig was treating his soul to one of his beloved punk rock picnics, a Black & Mild smoldering, bebourboned Plaid coffee half
forgotten, a filthy handkerchief around a fistful of ice held to his bleeding brow. Occasionally he'd toe the rear tire of his jounced and battered mountain bike to hear its comforting ticks. As the ice melted through the handkerchief, blood from his eyebrow seeped around and covered the stains from the 5 fluids from all 4 of his body's front's primary emitters of same.
It started in a tavern. It always starts in a tavern. Humidor hadn't noticed anything odd or interesting about the Pillbox when he's stopped in as afternoon lost a savage match against evening. Had he noticed two pairs of ember-eyes hotly glowing from corner shadows, he would simply have waved to Jukeboxer and Ritch Tapestry.
Who sat beclouded by smoke and gloom. Back by the pinball machines.
Humidor approached the bar. All he heard was two old men at talk. "Wow, your ex?"
"Yeah. Dating my girlfriend's stepson."
"They came in here?"
"Right up in here. Said they didn't know I drank here. I felt like a Mexican in a bookstore, for sure."
"..."
"Awkward. I felt very awkward."
"You're a fucking asshole."
Armed with a tall yellow beer, Humidor beat a retreat to the
pinball forest. "Humidor. Sit." Ritch Tapestry stood over the pinball machine like a stalk of bamboo. The ball hurtled through the gates and switches, careened off throbbing obstacles and caused lights to strobe. The score mounted, grew intimidating. Though his hands were in the customary and appropriate place on the table, his fingers never moved, the buttons never were pressed, and his eyes always burned, never straying from Humidor's wan, swarthy face.
Jukeboxer leaned forward creepily and got to the crux. "It is time, El Humidor. To be tutored in the ways of power. For example, you can walk down the street drinking a beer. Right out in the open."
"No! That's not true! That's impossible!"
"You know it to be true."
Time passed. Humidor's mind was further blown. The jukebox transmorphed into a pulsing vortex--something like a screen saver or a particularly good visualizer--eldritch spectra frying eyeballs over comet/planet collision drumbeats. A phalanx of guitars grinding like cavalries churning across the steppes. The portal didn't open so much as simply appear; by its very presence the dingy tavern was changed.
Humidor in a strangled voice asked "You mean...like some kind of...Eternal Champion?"
After a pause, Jukeboxer answered him. "Yes. No. Well, an overnight champion, one could say. A midnight warrior of a sort, chosen to battle once--"
"And only once." Tapestry followed his interruption with a freight train of a glance and a brief monologue. "You must understand. Grim forces abound. Occasionally a man is
selected to help another throw one or another dire yoke. You wear the mantle of the midnight warrior like a rank, and sally forth on some yet unknown sortie, like so many before you, so many yet to come. No one knows who will be chosen, or when, or where. Except us. Jukeboxer and I have the honor of introducing you to tonight's task."
Cued, Jukeboxer said "There are ways, Humidor, ways of power you have been introduced to. Ways any of us can, for one moment, hold the whip hand."
"Yes. And save another." Tapestry sat back and smoked. Jukeboxer glanced at the portal somehow disgorging Creet.
Humidor knew why he had been chosen. "What...what must I do?"
"Her. Buy her a beer." At Jukeboxer's point, El Humidor steeled himself and swallowed hard. Then he swallowed beer. A lot of beer. Then got up, squared his shoulders and his recollection of his bank balance and headed to the bar and the slim young lady waiting there.
Akka/Dekka woke up in free fall.
"Fu--" whump.
When a man falls asleep on the roof, he will sometimes wake up on the ground, or nearly so.
Creet smiled. "Hey, El Humidor."
"You have on me a disadvantage. I think we haven't never met."
"Oh, I was at a party at your house a while back. Don't get out much now."
"No?"
"Nah. Dumb desk day job thing. Dress code, the whole bit."
Humidor finally caught the bartender's eye. Thickly he thumbed at his envelope, impressed at a distant remove by the bulk of his rent money. "Hey..." distracted by the jukebox, omnipresent as the surf and powerful as summer thunder, "Can I get another? And whatever she's drinking? And some quarters?"
Receding to the shadows, Jukeboxer mumbled a question at Ritch Tapestry. "You think he's got a shot?"
"I think he'd better."
Gorgeous late-summer monday afternoon in Portland. Cloudless sky, everything's clear, blue and green. The air has a magic sweetness rarely attainable by lesser cities, even near Jerry's cigar, on a porch that could be promoted to ramshackle with a few free hours and a pressure washer. "These Dreams" blared, because Jerry's view of "all-Boston mix tape" is as whimsical as everything else.
Dekka and Humidor mounted the porch from opposite directions, both struck by Rig's struck face.
"The fuck happened to you?" Akka/Dekka gently inquires. "You fall down getting the mail again?"
Pinball, jukebox and vast accessible alcohol took the night out back behind the barn, shoved a rifle in its mouth, delivered an Oscar-worthy disquisition on the topic of renting oneself, and loosed two shots. The second was just for effect. Creet and El Humidor laughed with newly-won familiarity as last call happened, and delivered their orders with glee. Somehow they'd spent most--55, maybe 60%--of the night talking about Creet's "dumb day job".
"Seriously. Not one person there will drink a beer at lunch. At least three people have told me they don't understand why I'd rollerblade to work instead of owning a car. They decorate their cubes and can't understand why I dress the way I do. I get there in a good mood from my ride; by lunch I'm furious. Every night I roll into my pad and just go to bed I'm so tired from dealing with all the bullshit."
Humidor shoved his cigarettes across the table. Creet spoke around one, absently clicking her Zippo a few times after lighting the tube.
"It's like getting beat up. My life is getting abused. Bruised. They won't let me be who I am when I'm there. By the time I get home, I'm too exhausted to be who I want to be."
Humidor cleared his throat quietly. Now was the crucial moment--as the midnight champion, he needed to strike a blow for the forces of freedom. He could just tell.
"Would you excuse me for a moment?" Creet's eyes were focused on some dimension unknown to most as she unfolded her lanky frame and vanished out the front door. Humidor slumped, crushed by the weight of failure as Jukeboxer and Ritch Tapestry appeared behind him, radiating thrill and not a little surprise as the bar's get-out lights suddenly shed harsh illumination on outing's end.
"Good man."
"Well done." And they were gone. Confused, Humidor finished his quarter-inch of beer, eyed the surround, shrugged and downed Creet's last inch. As he attained the pavement, Creet rushed him. "Wanna hit the Plaid? We have like 6 minutes."
"Thought you worked in the morning, not?"
Creet moved her cell phone like a tambourine. "Nope. I just called them and quit. Let's grab a sixer; I want to show you that anime I told you about."
"O-ohkay."
"Well, I don't entirely know. I remember going in to La Dolce 'Gina for a second, and getting kicked out for getting blood on the stage."
"The hell did you get the dough to go to a peeler bar?"
"I wasn't there for long."
Rig was lying. He'd been there for about a hundred bucks. And he knew perfectly well what had happened to his face, now that a raft of red beers had reassembled his sundered memories. As Hedgehog's Dilemma had wound up their second to last number, Rig's voice had unleashed the mightiest known heckle. "You're not very good!" The words wheeled around the room like predatory birds. The Bowie knockoff known as Kludge had hurled his keytar to the ground and leapt feetfirst onto Rig's grinning, furious face. He'd hung out alone on the bridge for a bit, then paid to look at naked women. But your roommates don't need to know everything.
Words by C. Collision, drawings by D.D. Tinzeroes
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