by Wayne Hill
Splinter Salem is in his crow’s nest sanctuary. He is swaying over the brightly lit jukebox, breathing heavily through his mouth, and staring at numbers and song titles. Doing this soothes his drunk and troubled mind during tough times — times when the painting of Ophelia not only refuses to sing but seems to scream; to accuse. He is trying to memorise the songs as numbers. Despite all the years that Splinter has run O’Shea’s, and been trying to memorise them, he can only remember a handful. This is a bigger achievement than it first seems. After all, Splinter Salem has been drunk for thirty years.
“Number 67E,” slurs Splinter, tapping the glass case of the ancient jukebox before closing his eyes and raising his limbs in the air jubilantly.
After rhythmically swaying for a little while in silence, Splinter notices his mistake. Confused, he ducks down to examine the white oblong buttons on the front of the ancient contraption. Above the unfinished alphabet on the left of the machine, a sign reads MUSIC FOR MILLIONS. This always amuses Splinter. It is his machine. It is for his use and, perhaps, on occasion, that of a few close friends. This provokes a feeling of honour and importance, but also one of drunken loneliness. In the Lanes, despite the crowds, loneliness was a constant war.
“Millions,” he reads aloud. “Millions ... Millions ... Millions.” The word rolls quietly over his blue tongue, until the bitter taste of it starts to raise his temperature.
The word is old and alien to him. Splinter knows that millions of humans existed on Earth, at one time or another. And he would have done anything to have mingled amongst them, in that ancient and fascinating time when Earth was an Eden. When it felt less hellish. When peace and free love, the topics in many of his records, existed.
Long ago — recalling the lyrics of an ancient song — there existed a place called San Francisco. When you visited this place, for some abstruse reason, you needed ribbons in your hair. San Francisco was a place where, Splinter envisioned, he could be wild, a true child of Nature, and explode into space. It was a place where there were ‘strawberry fields, forever’ and even ‘sympathy for the devil’. Maybe, above all else, he cared about MUSIC FOR MILLIONS. About what it stood for, in his mind. About what had been lost, and about what needed to be reclaimed.
On the front right-hand side of the machine is a small picture of an arrogant-looking tribal sun surrounded by the different creatures and objects of the Zodiac. He liked the sun. He liked the machine’s simplistic mechanics and aesthetically pleasing design.
“What are you smiling at, ya big yellow bastard?” says Splinter, on many occasions, stabbing a mangy green finger at the sun. It sounded original every time, as it always does to people who drink heavily. This is one reason Splinter needs his memory plates. They fill in the blanks. Well, that and they are highly amusing to watch. He often watches them with the rest of his lawless friends — in the Holo-projection cinema room, on the third floor of O’Shea’s — reliving raids.
A grimace appears on Splinter’s scarred face, as his long mossy fingers search for the correct buttons, skimming over the ivory-coloured, raised buttons, and leaving flakes of lime-green mange in their wake.
The familiar vuh-vuh-vuh-vuh-vuh noise starts, and the record-selector buzzes and clicks as it moves. The drunken space pirate places the cold metal of his right arm up to cool his throbbing brow, in a now familiar gesture. Splinter’s closed eyes see phosphenes dancing before him, as if someone has thrown a heavy log into a quiescent fire. Splinter waits a while with the metallic forearm balancing on his forehead. His purely biological arm — Old Lefty — is out to the side, a fleshy ballast for a ship on a rough voyage. Always steadying, he thinks. Always needed. Good Old Lefty.
Pinching his eyes with his fingers, waiting for the dancing lights to ease, Splinter stands swaying. He violently shakes his head, trying to forcefully speed up the process. His three-foot long blond hair, naturally matted into dreadlocks, whips about his craggy face. He hawks up some phlegm and, spitting the foul-smelling, gelatinous blue substance into his hand, smooths the hair from either side of his face. This is another Splinter mannerism, and one that causes the blue streaks seen in his dreadlocks.
He stands, still swaying at the jukebox, and the sun picture catches his easing sight once more. “Fat, bright bastard!” mumbles Splinter.
He moves to the ancient armchair on his sheltered balcony. Splinter loves sitting out on the balcony, watching the sun set on prison planet Earth from his comfy chair. The chair is a lovingly restored Lay-Z-Boy, from the pre-Dagon twentieth century. He stole the chair many years ago from a museum of ancient and rare artefacts. He lost some men on that raid. One was called Rally, he muses. Or Kenny, or Kendo. An echoing voice from deep in his head chuckles, You killed Kenny! You bastard! He is not sure why. He has a lot of thoughts he does not understand. This does not worry him, though — it is the thoughts that he does understand that trouble him.
This is one comfy chair, he thinks, stroking the left arm lovingly. And it’s what they want to see.
The space museum had restored the Lay-Z-Boy well. Space museums are among Splinter’s favourite places. He, rather ironically, loves the way things were before everything became what he considers to be overly computerised. He adores mechanisms in their most basic form.
Splinter grabs a bowl of his favourite food, Oinkers Rind (synthesised) Pig Snacks, from a nearby table and, crunching on the savoury food, considers how surprisingly incident free his walk to the Lay-Z-Boy had been.
Tall, at six-feet-six-inches, his head is usually the target of the low roof beams of his bedroom or, indeed, the door frames and fixtures of most space crafts. Low pipework brought him more headaches than hangovers did. Well, he had not experienced a hangover for over three decades.
The trip to the Lay-Z-Boy had not gone that well last Thursday. He chomped a few more pig snacks, and, gazing at the setting sun, tried to order his piecemeal, alcohol-blurred memory into a summary of that night.
He had tripped over the Lay-Z-Boy and fallen over the balcony’s death trap of a balustrade. The balustrade was merely decorative, aesthetic. It served no obvious safety function. It was wooden and stopped at knee height — which was clearly a massive issue to those with balance problems like Splinter Salem. Every time Splinter looked at it, he thought, I must make that fucking balustrade higher! But he never did. Perhaps he begrudged losing his view.
On that fateful day, Splinter had plummeted three floors and landed on his back. Luckily, someone broke his fall; unluckily, it was unintentional, and that person died. When Splinter had heard a skull crunch under his metal arm-cannon he was instantly filled with dread.
“What have I done? Is it someone’s child?” he asked. “Is it an elderly woman, now with many a devoted relative mourning the greatest of their clan? Wait! — God, no! — Is it the fat cook, Toad, and his cat?”
Hmmm, the cook, he remembered thinking at the time. Things are looking up. That wouldn’t be so bad. He had never really liked Toad, anyway.
Looking wildly around, he had noticed the somewhat pleased looks on peoples’ faces, and he instantly knew it could not be any of the real or fictitious people he had listed. He wriggled free to see a sprawled, cloaked figure.
“It’s alright,” said a faceless voice from the massing crowd, “it’s only Duke. Duke Heaven-Hiker.”
Relieved, Splinter sprang to his feet and strode back into the O’Shea’s. Nearby, a one-armed, elderly gentleman, gave a toothless grin and shouted, “Rot in hell, Duke Heaven-Hiker, ya filthy animal!” He laughed heartily and danced a drunken jig.
Splinter had killed Duke Heaven-Hiker in the fall, but Splinter still blamed Duke. If he was too drunk to move out of the way, he thought, when he could clearly hear a man screaming directly towards him out of the sky, then fuck him! He also backed up his case-for-the-defence with, No fucker liked Duke fucking Heaven-Hiker, anyway.’
Duke Heaven-Hiker claimed he was named after his ancestor, Duke Heaven-Hiker — made famous by the popular
series of films called Sun Battles©. He also claimed to be a Redeye Knight©. Splinter, like most people, thought Duke was talking Buckie sludge. Duke seemed to think those old films were documentaries about his late ancestors.
When they had first met, Splinter had loved talking to Duke Heaven-Hiker. Splinter had given him all the time in the world. He had even made Duke his very own Lightning Lance©— a fictional laser-based weapon popularised by the Sun Battles© franchise. It was around this time that Duke turned nasty. He had shown his Shadow Side©. An incident occurred that had changed the way everyone in the Lanes thought about the poor deluded sap. Duke had chopped off an elderly man’s arm with his Lightning Lance©. Just for tapping Duke on the shoulder. No more, no less. He then compounded this heinous crime by denying it, despite multiple witnesses.
When confronted by people, he just waved his hand in front of peoples’ faces, intoning, “Duke Heaven-Hiker hasn’t chopped anyone’s arm off.”
People were shocked by Duke’s action but were almost more alarmed by his subsequent lack of remorse and blatant, repeated lies.
Many of the pub’s patrons were upset because the victim, the old man, was a fantastic Bodhran player. His name was Billy Barr, known to many as Beat Bar Billy.
Splinter had taken the Lightning Lance© from Heaven-Hiker and told several of Beat Bar Billy's relatives to take Heaven-Hiker outside and knock some sense into him.
Duke Heaven-Hiker had fled before justice could be meted out. That was ten months ago. It was the last time anyone had seen Duke Heaven-Hiker — until last Thursday, when Splinter had accidentally crushed his skull.
He had pulled the memory of last Thursday night, blurringly encased in silk, away from the boozy spider of time, but it snapped back. To be devoured and lost forever.
Most of the denizens of O’Shea’s pub are in their final days. In the Lanes, death is always near. The Grim Reaper goes about his business, ridding the place of the good, the bad, and the insane. He needs no pattern, nor method. His work is neither right nor wrong. When your time is up, you have no choice but to accept the Ivory Man’s solitary, lipless instruction — “Follow” — and hope the next place has less pain, less loneliness, and less fear.
One week on from the Heaven-Hiker debacle and Splinter remembers something else he has forgotten:
“OI, OI, THREE-HUNDRED MILLION METRES A SECOND! ... AHA!”
“He’s made it!” Jonesy shouts, from behind the bar, three floors below. This is a new system that had arisen from the untimely (but not overly regrettable) demise of Master Heaven-Hiker. Every day, before sitting in his Lay-Z-Boy, Splinter was to shout something down, to make his presence known, in case of future accidents.
A chorus of cheers rise to Splinter from his piratical marauders drunkenly rolling in the muck below his balcony. Splinter smiles a twisted, thoughtful smile and pulls the lever on the side of the Lay-Z-Boy. The chair-back reclines, and the leg support flicks out, cushioning and raising his legs. At the exact same time he pulled the Lay-Z-Boy’s lever, Zager and Evan’s In the year 2525 starts to play on his jukebox.
Splinter sighs, letting the purifying music wash over him, and pulls a sizeable sliver of glass from his foot. He tosses it nonchalantly over the balcony’s pointless balustrade. (Unfortunately, the glass shard lands in Beat Bar Billy’s pint, and he chokes to death.)
Splinter’s gaze takes in the stars, unseeing. He knows what he must do tomorrow. A breeze from the north picks up, flicking his dreadlocks and carrying with it the foul smell of rotting seaweed. The smell, like all smells, triggers a memory. Something he had not thought about for a long time. Something horrific.
"Barrenites," Splinter mouths, barely a whisper. Swarms of black snakes suddenly fight their way across his stoic face. He raises his flask and gulps some blue space grog, grimacing as it burns its way down his gullet and spreads out, warming his stomach.
Then he closes his eyes, the writhing shadows on his face slowly fading, and he listens to the music.
IN THE YEAR 2525 (WRITTEN by Rick Evans, 1964)
IN THE YEAR 2525, IF MAN IS STILL ALIVE, IF WOMAN CAN SURVIVE, THEY MAY FIND ...
IN THE YEAR 3535, AIN’T GONNA NEED TO TELL THE TRUTH, TELL NO LIES, EVERYTHING YOU THINK, DO, AND SAY, IS IN THE PILLS YOU TOOK TODAY.
IN THE YEAR 4545, AIN’T GONNA NEED YOUR TEETH, WON’T NEED YOUR EYES, YOU WON’T FIND A THING TO CHEW, NOBODY’S GONNA LOOK AT YOU.
IN THE YEAR 5555, YOUR ARMS ARE HANGING LIMP AT YOUR SIDES, YOUR LEGS GOT NOTHING TO DO, SOME MACHINE’S DOING THAT FOR YOU.
IN THE YEAR 6565, AIN’T GONNA NEED NO HUSBAND, WON’T NEED NO WIFE, YOU’LL PICK YOUR SONS; PICK YOUR DAUGHTERS TOO, FROM THE BOTTOM OF A LONG GLASS TUBE...
IN THE YEAR 7510, IF GOD’S A-COMING, HE OUGHT TO MAKE IT BY THEN, MAYBE HE’LL LOOK AROUND HIMSELF AND SAY, “GUESS IT’S TIME FOR THE JUDGEMENT DAY!”
IN THE YEAR 8510, GOD IS GONNA SHAKE HIS MIGHTY HEAD, HE’LL EITHER SAY, “I’M PLEASED, WHERE MAN HAS BEEN,” OR TEAR IT DOWN AND START AGAIN...
IN THE YEAR 9595, I’M KIND OF WONDERIN’, IF MAN IS GONNA BE ALIVE, HE’S TAKEN EVERYTHING THIS OLD EARTH CAN GIVE, AND HE AIN’T PUT BACK NOTHING...
NOW IT’S BEEN TEN THOUSAND YEARS, MAN HAS CRIED A BILLION TEARS, FOR WHAT HE NEVER KNEW, NOW MAN’S REIGN IS THROUGH,
BUT THROUGH THE ETERNAL NIGHT, THE TWINKLING OF STARLIGHT, SO VERY FAR AWAY, MAYBE IT’S ONLY YESTERDAY...
“ETERNAL HAPPY HOUR AWAITS!”
—Splinter Salem.
6
Splinter wakes with a jolt, the fading dream still fresh in his memory. Previously, recalled dreams were hazy, but this one had crystalline clarity. He dreamt of a better place, a better time. Coming back to harsh reality was painful. In the silken, woven tapestry of dreams, composed of abstract metaphor and outright falsity, he sometimes found a twisted nirvana. Somewhere he would like to live, forever. He grasps at the dream, but it slips away; evaporating like the morning dew on Hendricht’s crops, burnt away by the inevitable heat of the rising sun.
Splinter’s brain fires up, like an old reluctant computer. He finds himself — whomever he is — in a comfortable red leather armchair by the ash-strewn fireplace in the familiar surroundings of the barroom of O’Shea’s. He aches like he imagines an old man does. Surely, a forty-seven year-old man shouldn’t have pains like this! he thinks muzzily. Tough break, kid. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? Stop whining like a pussy about things you can’t change. His harsh inner voice is never far away.
The mornings are always the toughest. Especially if it is cold, and the log fire has not been banked up with slow-burning peat the night before. Splinter stares at the dirty hearth. The fire has gone out.
“Fuck,” Splinter mumbles.
Time to go to work, thinks Splinter. Time to move. Lovely. Oh well, let’s get this shit-show on the road!
Coordinating limbs might seem trivial for hoity-toity sober people but it is a Herculean task for drunks. Splinter scowls and concentrates. Pulling the joy-riding DUI pieces of his intoxicated mind together into a (barely) functioning whole, he stands up ... wobbles, falls back into the chair (“Fuckssake!”), stands up again.
The wheelbarrow for the dry logs and peat is around the back of the pub. Splinter hopes he does not run into anyone. Mornings should be solitary. Who likes talking to people in the morning? he thinks. Especially these needy bastards. Always wanting something, despite all that I’ve given them. Parasitic Bucky-fuckers! I’ll put the fire on, open up, and go up to the crow’s nest. If anyone needs me, they can, for a few hours, as Jonesy would say, ‘get tae fuck!’
Splinter grabs the nearest glass to him and, without looking, downs its contents. The half-empty glass had been used as an ashtray. He swallows a mixture of brandy and cigar butts. He chews contemplatively one of the partially smoked cigars, which has snagged on a tooth, and searches for another drink-with-added-cigars. It was quite tasty. The smokiness of the rich tobacco sets the brandy off nicely. He does not see any further
cigar-enhanced drinks but there is a full bottle of Whisky on the bar. He staggers towards it but ends up careening over a table, knocking assorted bottles flying. Lying on the floor, covered in beer and glass fragments, he despairs.
“What’s the fucking point in all this?” he screams to the indifferent universe. “Is nothing reasonable? Am I to be constantly betrayed by life, by gravity, tables and floors? Just fucking take me to hell, now! Take me to hell, now, Old Rumble Guts!”
Still lying on his back, he twists a band on his arm-cannon. He lines the selector arrow (on the band) up with a crude drawing of Jonesy breaking wind. He points the blaster at the smashed glass and filth on the floor and a gust of air blasts out, firing the debris across the room. The glass is sent skittering under long benches, under pipework, through cracks in the floorboards. One glass shard, travelling at high speed across the bar floor, embeds itself deep into an unconscious teenager’s face.
“Arrrggh! What the fuck, man?” shouts the teenager, pulling the shard from his bleeding cheek.
Splinter immediately twists the band on his arm cannon so that the arrow aligns with a small animation square showing a hench green troll with fiery hair electrocuting a bald, skinny Indian gentleman wearing a nappy. Splinter had stolen the icon from one of his favourite retro computer games — Alley Scrapper©.
“Who goes there?” Splinter says, searching for the source of the voice.
“Unwanted noise maker, who goes there?” The blue, neon electricity flickering at the mouth of his arm cannon illuminates his face, accentuating his deep scars. It makes him look frightful, monstrous, crazy.
The teenager emerges from beneath an overturned table, at the other end of the pub, and walks over to the bar, perching himself on a bar stool. “Might as well get another drink, if I’m going to be living in this place for a while,” says the teenager, picking other pieces of glass from his face and hair.
