by Wilson, David Niall; Brown, Tonia; Meikle, William; McCaffery, Simon; Brown, TW; T. A. Wardrope
PROPERTY OF KONG-TV, SEATTLE, WA.
Below, several cables and electrical wires dangled like spilled guts.
The creature wasn’t one, but many. A conglomerate. Nowhere, except in its face, did it have two parts that were the same. Every section of fur resembled a patchwork quilt––some grey, others mahogany, most black, a few even rainbow swathed. Between them, Moody could see stitches, made partly of rope, partly of twine, partly not stitches at all, but gleaming staples. Metal had also been fused to the heap of its body: some bits were unknown, others he recognized, like the car hump on the gorilla’s back, the aluminum sign on its chest, and the metallic sheen of its jaw.
Its face was one piece, maybe an animatronic from a giant gorilla robot. Or part of an attraction at a theme park. Its rubber and latex skin had fallen off the jaw, though the rest was intact.
“Okay, not who… what are you?”
Again the monster shrugged.
Moody asked, “You don’t know that, either?”
“Nope.”
“Then where?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Tennessee, originally.”
“And before that?”
“Uh… from my mom?”
“And before that?”
Moody paused. The gorilla’s point washed over him like a cold shower. “Whoa… I don’t know.”
“Exactly.”
“So you don’t remember anything?”
The giant scratched its head and pondered the idea. “I remember the sea, the crabs in my brains… fish fell from my fur, but the fur isn’t mine. I use new pieces to replace those I’ve lost. I pick them from the sea, from beaches, from stuffed animals and dead dogs, from parked cars and amusement parks. I pick them out of trees and from under rocks. But something must have been there before, because… how did I know to replace them?”
The gorilla pinched two fingers into its side and pulled out something long. It was an oar. The wood was splintered and soft, bending from its own weight. The gorilla dropped the oar and sighed.
“Seems I’m falling apart faster than I can maintain. My legs went yesterday. At the beach, I saw the museum’s flyer, and I thought I’d sneak in to get some replacements. Maybe the journey overextended my resources.”
The beach was only a few miles from the museum, but it was a long walk on one’s fingers.
“Can you walk now?” asked Moody.
The gorilla shook its head. “My other leg’s gone entirely. I have to build it from the ground up.”
Moody took a deep puff and held it. “Maybe… I can… help.”
“Really?”
Moody coughed a plume of smoke. Why the silly son of a bitch not? This is a dream, and a kooky one, at that. I didn’t pay for the trip, but I should get my money’s worth, despite the fact.
The gorilla waved its hand to clear the air. “That’s a nasty habit,” it said. A finger fell from its hand. “Oh… that’s not good.”
“Can I give you a name?”
The gorilla picked up the lost finger and sighed. “That would be nice.”
“Then I’ll call you Kong.” He pointed to the television station call letters on its chest.
“Brutish, but okay.”
“One last question.”
“Fire away.”
“Did you say you’re made of dead things?”
“Some. Some were never alive to begin with.”
“Like a zombie. Zombie-Kong.”
“Zombie… returned from the dead. Let’s hope so. By the looks of things, we may soon test the theory. Maybe you can be my Messiah? Zombie-Messiah!” The gorilla, now named Kong, grinned. “Enough sad talk. We’re all just pieces of a whole, I suppose. If this is it for me I want to go out with a bash. You like to party?”
“Does a hooker turn tricks?”
Kong reached into the gash in its stomach. With its thumb and forefinger, it pulled on a cord. “You’re going to love this.”
The sharp smell of gasoline bit Moody’s nostrils. The rattle and hum of a motor sounded from within Kong’s chest. Smoke steamed from the giant’s ears, which acted as an exhaust. There must’ve been a generator in there somewhere.
“Cool beans,” Moody said.
“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Kong thumped a place on its neck and the lobby filled with music, a song by The Grateful Dead.
“Righteous!” Moody motioned for Kong to wait. “I’m not going to run and leave you. I just need to get something that might help with your predicament. Is that okay, Kong?”
“So long as you return.”
“Oh, I will.” He sprinted toward the janitor’s storeroom, careful not to slip in the river of maggots and muck covering the lobby floor.
Since he was dreaming, he considered pulling a Playboy bunny out of the air along with a chili-cheeseburger. Hell, two Playboy bunnies! When whatever flushed through his system, ending its spree, he was positive he’d pay for it tenfold. Might as well go balls to the wall while it lasted.
Behind him, Kong shouted one last thing. “If you can find bananas, much appreciated.”
* * *
Halfway back to the lobby he dropped his items––mops, extension cords, and a vacuum cleaner––to the floor, and thought, Moody… what the fuck are you doing?
The drugs, if they ever existed, were gone. His weed high had faded, too. To the best of his knowledge, he felt sober.
He looked around the janitor’s storeroom: plastic jugs of detergent, rust-covered paint scrappers, piles of dirty rags, a nudie magazine tucked behind a case of WD-40. This was reality––not the kooky idea floating around in his skull.
“I was actually going to drag this stuff into the lobby to help an giant imaginary gorilla make a new leg,” he said. Then he repeated it to make sure that he understood the degree of his craziness. “I got to stop smoking.”
Maybe his high school teachers were right; maybe he did kill too many brain cells. They said he’d end up with a job no better than this––what if they were right about everything else, too?
He went to the water fountain and splashed cold water onto his face.
No, he wasn’t snoozing. He was definitely awake. Could he have been sleeping before? Kong seemed so real, so vivid in his imagination, and he’d never been creative enough to envision such a thing.
Of course, if he believed Kong was real, he was certifiably schizoid.
Only one way to solve this dilemma––
He pushed open the storeroom door and started toward the lobby. The music was still there, increasing in volume as he approached.
It’s not real, Moody. Just ignore.
He found it hard to ignore the ripe stench of decay with a hint of ocean salt, the rotten meat, moldy wood, wet hair, and musk.
His foot slipped and he grabbed the submarine exhibit to keep from falling. The thick slime now coating the heel of his boot moved. Tiny maggots fell from his boot to the floor.
You’re seeing things. Ignore, ignore, ignore––
He walked around the slimy footprints that led to the storeroom. His own, from when he had left the creature.
Ignore, ignore, ignore––
Moody rounded the corner into the lobby. A wall of buzzing flies slapped his face. Despite their itching wings, he did his best to obey his own instructions… but when the gigantic head of a mechanical gorilla swiveled his way––the face atop a mountain of living garbage––he heard his inner voice scream.
You’re on your own for this one, pal! I’m getting the fudge out of here…
Moody began to cry.
“Please… don’t weep over me,” said Kong. “Or else… I’ll feel worse than… I already do.”
Moody didn’t stop. In fact, he bawled louder. To his credit, the giant gave him several minutes before it spoke again.
“I’d be inclined to allow you… whatever you need to reconcile me… but I think my time in this world is done,” it said. Kong’s head slumped, as if its ne
ck could no longer hold the weight.
Moody’s fit started to recede. He wiped his face. “You’re… real?” he said between sobs.
“Mostly,” Kong answered. “But those parts… not for much longer.”
Moody stepped closer. Why not? If he was a lunatic, why fight it?
Kong didn’t appear as healthy (if that was the right word) as before. Its massive arms seemed deflated. The digits, once used for walking, were now disjointed and broken at the knuckles. Each finger crawled around in circles lethargically, gradually slowing. Kong’s body had come apart, too. The stitches holding together its patchwork skin had become unraveled. Its giant head was malformed, as if the metal had begun to sag. To melt.
The giant no longer looked threatening. It was falling apart.
Moody regained some of his meager courage and approached.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“My guess is no.”
“Are you… dying?”
“I don’t think I was ever really alive.”
As they spoke, Kong’s body deteriorated quicker. The fur began to shed. The beetle’s roof on its spine shriveled like a raisin, flaking into dust. Every part of the creature was crumbling or dissolving.
“What’s happening to you?”
Kong’s face twisted into what looked like a smile; it was hard to tell with the animatronic head folding together like Play-Doh. “Never should’ve taken so many different parts… this body’s not good enough to survive.” Kong’s voice was devolving, too. The syllables slurred. “I need… to find something more whole… to start… to take… need another to join with me… ”
At Moody’s feet, the ooze that was Kong’s body lapped over his steel-toed boots. He stepped away, watching Kong’s head join the mush.
Poking through the softening skull, he recognized the shape of a skull. Kong’s face fell away to reveal a set of human bones, which protruded from its giant metal head.
For a moment, Moody thought he saw the skull smile at him––but what skull doesn’t smile? he thought. Regardless, he returned a grin, as if they shared some private joke.
The bones lasted no longer than the rest, and they liquefied, too. Seconds later, there was nothing recognizable in the debris.
Moody scanned the enormous pile of stinking compost. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes hard. The heap didn’t disappear. He gave himself a couple of slaps on the cheek. Still it remained, clear as a pink slip, ruining the lobby floor.
Kong was gone. Even the flies had died and fallen to the ground, joining their lifeless babies, which were curling by his feet.
He sat on the mammoth display ledge, wiping tears from his eyes. Hmmm, he thought, and that was the sum of it. He felt dead from the neck up.
He pointed his light toward the center of the pile. Several bubbles popped in the shape of a circle. Below them, the ooze stirred until a thick bulge, shiny and raw, rose through the bubbles. It twitched back and forth, sprouting a long neck. The bulge and the neck grew several feet into the air, curled to the floor, and then slithered from the bubbles before the bulge––must be the thing’s head––rested at eye-level with Moody.
It was a worm of some sort, though none Moody had ever seen, not even on nature channels. Its pink body was as thick as his forearm. Unformed came to mind; the thing looked like something aborted. It had no nose, no ears, no eyes, and no mouth that he could see––just a fat nub swaying on the end of a thin body. It seemed to be examining him.
Normally he would run screaming at the sight of such a thing, but after having a conversation with the giant gorilla, his threshold felt pretty lax.
The thing lowered its head toward his hand.
Moody yanked his hand away.
The creature made no effort to attack or bite (as if it could with no mouth). Instead, it waited silently beneath his palm.
Cautiously, Moody touched its head. The worm pressed against his hand. He stroked his fingers along its wet bulge. It vibrated, and Moody heard a purring sound he couldn’t place.
Euphoria washed over him, inside and out. Moody smiled so wide his cheeks hurt. His pants swelled as he sported an erection––the intoxicating emotion filling him everywhere with an indescribable ecstasy. It was the best high he had ever enjoyed.
He removed his hand, but the feeling didn’t go away. The worm cocked its head coyly to the side, and Moody, despite the lack of words, understood what the creature was saying, what it was asking––what it offered.
“I’ve never been chosen for anything special in my life,” he said. Knowing he might feel different in the morning; he unbuttoned his shirt and opened it wide. The worm slid inside and coiled around his torso, its tail slinking down to wrap around his leg, the bulge of its head nestling against the beat of his heart atop his breastbone. Carefully, he re-buttoned his shirt and left the lobby to get a mop.
He only had a few hours to clean up the colossal mess, but he didn’t feel worried. There were bigger things on his mind.
* * *
“You gained some weight, fat boy,” Eddie said. “Night shift has been good to you, Mood. It’s been a couple months and already you look like the spitting image of a young Buddha.”
He patted Moody’s stomach, then snapped his hand away as if he’d been burned.
Moody smiled. “That’s not fat. It’s muscle weight.”
Eddie nodded and cleared his throat. “Well, don’t get your panties in a wad… and make sure you check in tomorrow a few minutes early. I’ll need to show you the new security system––”
“Is the code 12345?”
Eddie answered with a grunt, and left the locker room.
When Moody was sure he was gone, he opened his locker and took out a bag of alligator bones, swiped from the museum’s storage shelves. No one would miss them, at least, not for some time.
He left the museum and drove home with a grin. When he reached his shitty apartment complex, he shielded his eyes from the morning sun, slipped in through a broken door, and ran up four flights of stairs to his one-bedroom apartment.
It was a tight fit. His new project had already filled his apartment to the door inside a month.
His stomach growled, but he ignored it. Work first, then food.
Moody stepped over the arm of the construct––the new body he was building for his friend––and he sat beside the sack of its hand. He dumped the alligator bones on the stained carpet beside it, and he went to work sticking them inside the hand, building the new skeleton, piece by piece. Of course, he didn’t know how a hand worked beneath the skin, but his friend––the worm he named Kong Junior––sent the required information to his brain.
Since Kong had disintegrated in the museum and the worm had joined with him, he spent every free hour rebuilding. The apartment stunk to high heaven, but no one complained. His neighbors were either too afraid of being deported or too busy cooking methamphetamines in their kitchens.
For the skin and fur needed in a single arm, he’d sewn together half his carpet, a dead dog, a road-kill cat, and three taxidermy raccoons stolen from the museum’s prop storage. For the inner muscles of the forearm and bicep, he used maggot-swollen strips of meat. For strength, he added bungee cords.
Combining his determination with Kong Junior’s smarts, there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish.
The masterpiece was the head, the biggest part he would finish before working on the chest. They manufactured its face almost verbatim to Moody’s memory, only this time without the animatronics. For eyes, bowling balls hung heavy in their tar-covered sockets. Other features included clothing from his closet, rubber from stolen tires, caveman dresses from the museum, leather from a cow he had poisoned at a nearby farm, and countless other bits and pieces he had scavenged, swiped, or skinned.
Kong Senior would’ve been proud.
“We’re one and the same,” Kong Junior said to him, in his thoughts.
“I know, I know,” Moody said.
The worm un
coiled from beside his intestines and poked its head through Moody’s elongated navel. The bulge slipped through the buttons of his shirt, examining their work firsthand.
With his free hand, Moody petted its head.
He wondered where the worm had come from, what it was, and if it had a purpose––but he couldn’t answer those questions about himself, either. No one could. It was better, he had found, simply to exist.
However, there was one query that just wouldn’t leave him alone:
“Why a gorilla?”
“I don’t know,” said Junior, in his mind.
“That’s your answer for everything.”
Junior thought a moment, then said, “Don’t you want to be something you’re not?”
He didn’t answer, but both of them knew he couldn’t agree more.
Once the work was completed, he would add the greatest part––himself––into the cavity he had once seen smiling: the creature’s skull. There, he’d become its brain, forever interwoven with Kong, or at least until it was time for another metamorphosis. By then, he wouldn’t care. He’d forget his name, forget his past––forget everything. He would be part of a new life, something bigger than any of his pieces… bigger than himself, larger than anything he could’ve imagined. Literally.
He had finally found his place in the world, a place where his life mattered––higher than he’d ever been before.
“Maybe a month or two to go,” he said. “Maybe less, if we hurry.”
Kong Junior didn’t answer. Instead, it slipped free of Moody’s body and slithered into the new giant’s arm by the shoulder. The construct’s hand flexed, the arm tensed. Moody gave its huge palm a high five.
Kong Junior popped out of the arm and danced around the living room.
Yeah, he was happy, too.
TREVER PALMER
Reach For The Sky
My name is Calvin Jackson. I’m eighteen years old and this is the story of how I befriended a giant zombie gorilla. Yeah, you read that right. What the hell? I was only twelve when it happened, so cut me some slack.
