The man and
the woman, bodies young and unblemished, drive the vintage Chevy Malibu through
the fog, a great obfuscating body stretched out a million miles fore and aft
the muscle car, they an old pirate ship rolling across the ocean waves,
searching out its quarry through the endless, its very soul extant only in the
mind’s ether, just another dream of a past created to assuage the priceless
insecurity of the present.
“Where the
hell are we?” The man rubs his hands together as he asks.
“I thought
you knew.”
“How would
I know?”
“You’re the
passenger, aren’t you supposed the be the navigator?”
“But you’re
the driver.”
“We should
stop somewhere, get directions.”
“Do you see
anywhere to stop?”
“I don’t
see anything.”
The man
looks earnestly at the woman, ponders her face, old acne scars, ratty, bleached
hair, a nice enough body though, all things considered. He finds himself
thinking about her and finds realizes he can’t quite remember who she is. He
wonders if they’ve ever had sex, and he feels his dick getting hard.
The woman
grips the steering wheel tight between her hands, and tries to keep one eye on
the man, even as she tries to peer through the fog bank, get some glimpse at
where the road goes, if it goes anywhere at all. She wonders if the man drugged
her, because she can’t seem to remember just who she is or how she got there.
The two
look out the windshield, minds equally occupied, see the double yellow line
running down the middle of the road, rushing underneath the hood, eating up
distance as it goes. The man tries to see out the side window, but he can
barely see the embankment at road’s edge, let alone anything beyond.
Eventually
a glow rises up in front of them, harsh, unnatural, blues and reds, then the
glow turns into the familiarity of a gas station sign, and underneath it, a
little gas station, and the woman pulls the car off the highway and up in front
of a pump.
“Do we need
gas?”
“The needle
is almost on empty.”
“Huh. Do
you have money?”
“Why would
I have money?”
“I don’t know.”
The man checks his own pockets, finds a wallet, opens it and sees a few hundred
dollars in an unfamiliar currency. “Where are we?”
“Didn’t you
already ask me that?”
“I mean
what country.”
“America.
Where else could we be?” The man simply shrugs.
The woman
begins to pump gas, and the man heads inside, looking for something to eat.
There is no one at the counter, and he begins to peruse the shelves. He picks
up a package of what look like Twinkies but are called Yellow Cock, and he
wonders at this, but when he looks at them again, they are covered in a thick
layer of mould, and what he thought was a little bit of sticky white stuffing
oozing out, he sees now is a writhing maggot. He drops the package and backs
away, then sees all the food is mouldy and rotten, and he begins to smell
something deeply foul all about him, and he stumbles towards the back of the
store, looking for the toilet, feeling vomit rising in his chest, but the smell
only gets stronger.
At the back
of the place is the men’s room, and he pushes the door open without knocking,
and he finds who he assumes is the clerk, scrubbing frantically at the walls
with a giant sponge, hung green and heavy with mould.
“Oh, hello.
Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.” The man pushes open the stall door and
vomits into the toilet. As he raises his head, he sees that the walls are
coated in a substance he doesn’t even want to consider. He backs out of the
stall. “I’m sorry it’s a bit of a mess in here. I just can’t seem to get rid of
this stuff.”
“Wha...
what is it?”
“Come here,
take a look.” The clerk gestures to where he is scrubbing. The man leans in.
Upon the wall are a million little bodies, diseased and festering, covered in
tiny maggots, blood and pus and a sickly green substance oozing out of every
crack and hole and pore. And then he hears them all screaming, a million tiny
voices, lost and forgotten. The man goes back into the toilet and vomits again.
“What the
fuck?”
“I’m sure
I’ll get it, I just need more time. Do you need gas?”
“Y...yes...”
“If you
wouldn’t mind going out to the counter, I’ll be right with you.”
The man
goes out and finds the woman standing there, waiting.
“Did you
see the food?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
The two
stand together awkwardly, and the man once tries to look at the woman. When he
does so, he finds she suddenly looks much prettier, and he looks away again.
Eventually the clerk comes out, and they pay for their gas.
“Hey, do
you know anywhere we can get something to eat around here that isn’t, well...”
The woman avoids his eyes as she asks.
“Sure,
there’s a diner a little ways down the road.”
“How far is
a little ways?” The man interjects.
“A little
ways. I’m sorry, I have to get back to the mould, if I leave it too long, it
will burst its bonds, eat through the very walls, and then where would we be?
This entire land, possessed by the stuff. Can you imagine? And it’s such lovely
country.”
The two
hurry back to the car and pull back onto the highway. If possible, now the fog
seems thicker, and the sense of claustrophobia is overwhelming. The woman
thinks about trying to talk to the man, but she thinks better of encouraging he
who is probably her abductor, and this feeling is only reinforced as she
notices him put his hand down his pants.
The man
notices his hand and removes it immediately, hoping this beautiful woman didn’t
see his depravity, and he thinks of trying to talk to her, but he decides
against it, figuring a girl as pretty as her would never have time for a nice
guy like him. She’s dressed like such a slut, he thinks, she’s practically
asking for...
“Hey, would
you turn on the radio?”
“Uh, yeah,
uh... sure.” He fiddles with the dial until music begins to play.
“Wu-Tang
Clan ain’t nuttin ta fuck wit! Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuttin ta fuck wit! Wu-Tang
Clan ain’t nuttin...” And then, without touching the dial or the song finding
its end, “She... wore blue... velvet... Bluer than velvet was the night...
Softer than satin... And now we’re back to our main feature of the night, an
interview with acclaimed author and world renowned child psychologist, Charles
Manson! *Live audience claps appreciatively*
‘Mr.
Manson, it’s great to have you with us tonight! I’m a huge fan of your work,
particularly the Sharon Tate murder...’
‘Oh,
really? You’re such a dear, I’m simply flattered. Now I have a special treat
for you tonight- how would you like to help me re-enact that famous killing?’
‘I... I’d
just love to!’ *Live audience cheers*... Its the cars... and the clubs... And
the drinks and the girls and the drugs... I get lost in the life... I get lost
in these Miami nights!” Then the radio slips into a fuzzy static.
The road
never finds its end and its beginning is long forgotten, lost in the primordial
soup concealed in the fog behind them, and the night never ends for, if the
night is to end we must have sun, and this is a land without sun, and the two
drive for days and days without gap in the fog or landmark on the roadside.
Eventually,
after a time such that a hundred generations of fruit flies have born, lived,
and died, the two find themselves in front of a roadside danner, tin sides, out
of an old movie, big neon sign spelling out “End of the Liner.” This is a pun.
Because it should be “end of the line,” but it’s a diner, so it’s “liner.” The
joke works better written down.
The woman
heads inside, and, after a moment of hesitation, after the hell of their last
stop, the man follows, watching her ass sway as she moves. The inside of the
diner is as normal as the exterior, though the only people there are a single
waitress standing behind the counter and, in the back, a chef. The two look at
the menu and see a half dozen dishes more suited to a Michelin starred French
restaurant then a roadside diner.
“What’s
with this menu?” The woman furrows her nose.
“That
Gaston! He’s such a character! He used to be a chef at the most expensive
restaurant in Paris but then, one day, he came in here. He liked the look of
the old End of the Liner, I guess, so he cut the cock off the old cook, fed it
to him, then slit his throat! What a card!”
“Uh...”
“But trust
me, his cooking’s nothing to laugh at. Best food in the world!” They order,
then take a seat in a booth by the window. The woman excuses herself to use the
toilet. The toilet lies down a long, underlit, chrome tinted hallway, and she
takes her time because the red tile floor looks slippery, and with every step
she feels as though her feet are going to betray her, and she’s going to crack
her skull open, but she reaches the hallway’s end unharmed.
The woman’s
toilet is sparkling, immaculate, hung with the scent of violet and rose petals.
There is even a bathroom attendant, handing out big, fluffy towels. The
attendant speaks in a sultry, Edith Piaf voice, volume little more than a
murmur.
“Inside
that stall...” she gestures with one, elegant arm “is a passage to hell.” So
the woman, her curiosity piqued, walks into the indicated stall and finds,
indeed, instead of a toilet, a deep hole, walls made of wet mud, with a rusted
ladder leading down into the depths, one solitary oil lamp hung fifty feet
below. She begins the climb downward, stopping only briefly to consider whether
her food might get cold if she goes to hell before she eats, but figures that
French food is often served cold anyway.
As she
climbs down, a foul odor, that of warmed over shit, creeps up around her, and
the air gets horribly humid, the passage clouded with a noxious yellow mist,
but at the bottom, the air is clear, and the woman walks forward, down a
brightly lit rock corridor, and finds that, if this is hell, it is a little bit
underwhelming.
Finally,
after walking for a few days, she finds herself in a great room, the ceiling a
mile up, the back wall beyond her sight line, and, in this great emptiness,
there stands one man.
“Are you
the devil?”
“No. I’m
God. The devil is dead.” And then she hears a million billion souls crying out
in anguish, and suddenly the empty space is full of bodies uncountable, broken
and beaten and battered, all crying out, and one lies close to her, and it
looks up at her, and she sees that one of its eyes is missing, and the other is
turned to liquid, and all its fingers are bloody stumps, and where once it had
genitals now all it has is a bloody cavity surrounded by pubic hair, and it
speaks in the voice of a theremin.
“The devil
was a pretty decent guy. This place was all free sex, good drugs, cheap booze,
you know? 24/7 party. Then that dick God took over, and, well, you can see what
happened then.”
The woman
turns around and sees another passage behind her. She begins walking, and,
within a few moments, she finds herself walking back through the front door of
the diner. As she sits down across from the man, the waitress brings them their
food, two beautiful steaks, cooked to a perfect pinkish-red. As the woman is chewing
her last bite, she finds a human ear in her mouth, but she doesn’t mind, the
steak was well prepared.
As the man
pays for the meal, he talks to the waitress.
“I think we
may be lost - do you have a map, or maybe a telephone we could use?”
“Sorry, no,
that joker Gaston, he cooked the map in butter! HAHAHA! And we don’t have a
phone.”
“Do you
know somewhere that might?”
“A little
ways down the road there is a whore house, I think they still have a phone.”
“How far is
a little ways?”
“A little
ways.”
Back on the
highway, the two drive in silence, until, after a few minutes, the fog to their
right drops away, and they find themselves driving alongside a dark, vast sea.
Then, out of the darkness, a few miles away from shore, rises up a great
industrial superstructure, covered in bright lights, up on giant legs, an oil
platform the size of a small city. But then they see great flames a thousand
feet high rising up from the thing’s deck, and the fire is so bright that they
must turn away.
They drive
for days, and still though, there is no sign of the whore house.
“Why don’t
you try the radio again?”
So the man
does.
“‘So what’s
the deal with airplane food, eh? I mean, really, people bitch and moan about
airplane food, but, Jesus, think about all the people on earth who are starving
to death! Everytime I fly, I think how much better off I’d be if I’d just stop
eating and let myself die, stop being such a burden to all the people who
pretend to love me!’ *The audience erupts in uproarious laughter* ‘But
seriously, guys, you come here, and you listen to me complain about my life,
tell you how depressed I am, how much I wish I was dead, how much I want to
shoot my wife, strangle my infant son, and you come, and you just laugh, haha,
and’” The man sounds as if he’s about to cry. “‘And you just laugh and laugh,
and you never, just put me out of my misery. I wish, just once, one of you
would come up here on stage, and blow my brains out.’ *The audience starts
laughing, and they don’t stop until the end times*... Do you ever feel... like
a plastic bag... Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Do you ever
feel, feel so paper thin... Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?”
The song cuts out.
“Hey, I
liked that song.”
“I didn’t
touch it.”
“Okay.”
They drive.
For a while. As before, though, eventually they see the lights cutting up from
the fog, a bright, hallucinogenic glow. The woman pulls off the highway, and
they look up at it, huge, a dozen stories high, and as long and wide as it is tall.
The sign reads “Fuck for money. Big tits. Big dicks. Your choice.” As they get
out of the car, they notice that where once they were young, now their faces
are deeply lined and wrinkled, their hair gone grey, tits and stomachs
stretched and sagging.
Inside, an
impossibly obese woman sits at a reception desk completely naked, her breasts
the size of the man’s head.
“Do you
have a map, or a phone?” The man asks, as he tries to avoid staring.
“Yeah
honey, just through those doors.” She points to two huge double doors off to
her side, easily twenty feet tall. “Just go through there, and you’ll find what
you’re looking for.”
“Thanks.”
The two walk through the doors together, and out the other side apart.
The woman
finds herself in a seemingly endless velvet padded corridor, the loss of her
companion not noticed. She pads down the hallway, and passes on either side of
her doors, and from behind the doors she hears sounds of ecstasy and wet flesh
smacking into wet flesh. She hears footsteps behind her, and turns to see a man
with long greasy hair, shirtless, arms rippling with muscle. As she stops, so
does he, then, as she begins to walk again, he follows, never increasing his
distance but never falling back. She tries to talk to him, but he only looks at
her. She walks for an age eternal, and she feels her own bones turning to dust
within her, then, finally she reaches a door at the end of the hall. It is
labeled “The Truth.” She opens it and goes inside.
The man
finds himself in a seemingly endless concrete corridor, the loss of his
companion unnoticed. He walks down the corridor, the sounds of his feet echoing
about him through the concrete. The walls are hung with pipes every so often,
steam jetting off here and there, a horror movie maintenance tunnel. He turns
to look at one of the pipes, and, when he looks forward again, there is a woman
in front of him, tall and beautiful, long dark hair, tanned legs falling down
under a short summer dress. She turns and looks at him, then keeps walking. He
follows her, but is afraid to get closer. He tries to talk to her, but she
doesn’t respond. He walks for a long time, and he feels his heart’s ticking
begin to slow, until, finally, they reach the end of the corridor. The woman
opens it and walks through, shutting it behind her. He reaches it and it reads
“The Truth.” He follows her in.
The
man and the woman, bodies young and unblemished, drive the vintage Chevy Malibu
through the fog, a great obfuscating body stretched out a million miles fore
and aft the muscle car, they an old pirate ship rolling across the ocean waves,
searching out its quarry through the endless, its very soul extant only in the
mind’s ether, just another dream of a past created to assuage the priceless
insecurity of the present.
“Where the
hell are we?” The man rubs his hands together as he asks.
“I thought
you knew.”
“How would
I know?”
