Francis of the Filth

by George Miller

  Pink Guy and Salamander Man got into the spirit and began to work the money. Pink Guy would break into dance and spin and pose to the rapturous applause of onlookers before a short queue of photo takers would form again in front of him. Salamander Man was not to be outdone. He produced his recorder from nowhere, thrust it into his nostril and began to play a tune while dancing on the spot like a leprechaun. Within an hour they had enough to buy themselves a fine meal for dinner.

  Frank recalled seeing a Japanese bar and bistro named Kyushu Kuisine on their way to the square. “It’s not quite Okinawa,” he explained to his friends, “but I don’t think we’re going to get anything closer than Kyushu.” Retracing their steps, they found it easily, descended a dark staircase and entered a world that was vaguely familiar to Frank. Adorned with rice paper screens that opened onto blank walls, rising sun flags and posters of Japanese beer girls, it was a taste of Japan, sort of, in the heart of New York City. They were greeted with the customary ‘Irasshaimase!’ although to Frank it sounded more like ‘It’s a shame to say!’. The place was full. True to New York, there were people of every color, size, language and odor gathered there, drinking and eating and having a merry time. At the end of the bar, holding an audience with tales of his homeland, was an odd-looking Japanese man wearing brown tortoise shell glasses, a Hawaiian shirt and a safari hat, speaking with bad breath in a voice that was aggravatingly loud.

  Frank and his friends took a seat nearby. “So I said to them,” he was saying, “‘why don’t you try some octopus balls?’ And they said, ‘We didn’t even know that octopuses had balls’ and I said, ‘They sure do and let me tell you my friend, they are enormous ha ha ha. The size of golf balls and they come in packs of six’.” The small crowd around him were enthralled by his storytelling. “I once ate twenty-four in a row,” he said. “I almost inked myself ha ha ha!” There was hearty laughing all around. “Now as I’m sure my compatriot friend here will tell you,” he said gesturing toward Frank, “there is no place on earth that produces more delicious octopus balls than the streets of southern Osaka. Right, my friend?”

  “Okinawa,” Frank replied. “Okinawa actually has better takoyaki than Osaka.” The Japanese safari man laughed with a hint of embarrassment. “You must be a little confused, my friend. Okinawa has the goya chanpuru, Osaka has the octopus balls.”

  “Have you tried Okinawa’s takoyaki?” Suddenly there was silence around the bar. It was a showdown and a tension rippled across the bistro. “Osaka’s are good and they have the name, but there is a stand just off the beach in Onna-son in Okinawa. Their balls are equal to those of Osaka but they top them off with green furikake and shaved fish that is second to none. I tell you, Safari Man, their takoyaki is superior.” There was an awkward silence before the safari man spoke again. “Ha ha ha! Looks like we’ll all have to go to Okinawa then!” and the whole bistro returned to levity.

  The safari man took a seat at Frank’s table and introduced himself. “Good to meet a fellow expat,” he said. “My name’s… oh just call me Safari Man. I like that better.”

  “Frank,” said Frank. “Pink Guy, Salamander Man,” he added pointing to the others.

  “I know,” said Safari Man. There was a suspicious silence for a moment. He leaned in. “I’m a rankenfile, too,” he whispered.

  “How did you recognize me?”

  Safari Man pointed to Pink Guy and Salamander Man. “What else could they be?!” he belted out in an audible voice again. “Ha ha ha!” Pink Guy looked perturbed at the idea that he stood out so much. “What brings you to New York?” he asked again, in a quieter voice.

  “Chin Chin.”

  “SSShhhhh!” Safari Man pressed his hand hard against Frank’s mouth. “Don’t say the name. He knows this realm well. He could be listening.” They spoke in lowered tones for the rest of the evening at the end of the bar. “Are you on the run?”

  “We were cast here by the dark lord. He found me in another realm. He knows what even I have only recently come to know. My chromosomes are multiplying.”

  “Wow, Franku!” Safari Man jumped up at this, startled and excited. “It’s you!” he said. “It’s you! There have been rumors. But no-one knew if they were true. But they are! And it’s you!”

  Salamander Man began to play a tune on his recorder.

  “Not now, Salamander Man.” He sullenly put it away. “The dark lord gave me a choice: provide him with a lifetime supply of my chromosomes or spend eternity in the deepest, darkest abyss.”

  “New York?”

  “No, I gave him my chromosomes. I’m here so he can find me again when my chromosomes have increased. But I don’t know how long that will take in this realm. In the meantime, I’m trapped here.

  Safari Man leaned across the table and whispered in his ear. “Come and stay with me, you and you friends. There are ways, Franku. Ways to increase your chromosomes here. You can defy the dark lord and escape, Franku. Gain your freedom. There are ways that he doesn’t know about. Come with me and I’ll show you. Frank turned to his friends. “What did I tell you? If you go where the people are, they will come to you.” Pink Guy grunted his annoyance.

  Their new friend lived in a small, one bedroom apartment in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He offered Frank a futon in his room, leaving the other two to sleep on the sofa or the floor. They all gratefully accepted. As Safari Man started passing around drinks, the real conversation began.

  “What year is this, Safari Man?”

  “2017.”

  “2017?! That takoyaki stand in Onna-son is surely gone now.”

  “So I was right after all, Franku! Ha ha ha. It is Osaka with the best balls.”

  “I hate this place,” Frank said. “I hate it with a passion.” The sound of gunshots could be heard outside in the distance. “I was born at a time when the Americans were destroying us - nuking the flesh off our bones and, after the surrender, terrorising us and shooting the innocent.” Vivid memories of Sergeant Benson came to him and he began to sweat and tremble. “They were monsters. I hate all they were and all they stood for and now - look around, Safari Man - it’s only worse. Look what has become of them! They are an immoral people filled with poor discipline, rudeness, greed, gluttony, perverseness, stupidity and pornography. And they’re so angry.”

  “Ha ha ha, er, actually, er, I don’t mind the porn to be honest. It’s…er… it’s..well, just a bit, you know. But you’re right, Franku. A perverse people!”

  There were more gunshots followed by screaming, car tires screeching and more gunfire.

  “This culture is so self-centred and self-righteous. It makes me sick. How can you stand it here?” There was silence between them for a while. “Of all the realms I’ve been to, Safari Man,” Frank said dejected, “I think this one confuses me the most.”

  Pink Guy and Salamander Man were exhausted after their first day in New York, and soon fell asleep on the sofa to the sounds of police sirens, knife fights and neighbors making wild love. Frank and Safari Man continued their conversation in the other room.

  “You said something about increasing chromosomes?” Frank asked.

  “Yours are already multiplying, Franku, but you can speed up the process. And the more you get, I’m betting the faster they multiply, It’s exponential ha ha ha!” He leaned in as though to whisper a secret of cosmic repercussions. “You could outwit Chin Chin. Get out of here before he comes back.”

  “How, Safari Man?”

  His Hawaiian-shirted friend leaned back out. “You can win them!” he said opening his arms wide. This was pronounced in a voice that was way too loud and Pink Guy and Salamander Man turned in their sleep in the next room as he said it. He looked so pleased to be revealing this to his new friend, one who he sensed was vastly superior to him even though they were on equal tiers.

  “How?”

  “Illegal crawfish racing!”

  It was a common, yet unexplained phenomena, that that those who found themselves stranded in foreign di
mensions were quickly drawn to one another. Whether this was a cosmic working beyond their means or a natural gravitation of the like-minded was unclear but small gatherings of them would assemble and, with little or no hope of escape, bet chromosomes. The mechanisms for such betting were almost endless yet for some reason illegal crawfish racing just happened to be Safari Man’s favorite kind.

  Frank’s response took Safari Man by surprise. “Why is crawfish racing illegal?”

  “Oh, Franku, it’s not the racing itself, it’s the betting. Only we won’t only be betting for money - that’s just the cover - we’ll be betting for chromosomes and the idiot mortals won’t even know what we’re doing!” He was delighted with this in a ‘toying with the cosmos’ sort of way. It was like a kid at the electric company finding a screwdriver in daddy’s toolbox, sticking it into a fuse box and bringing the whole grid to a halt. “Leave it to me, Franku. I’ll bring in the shady characters, you just wait here. We’ll have you bursting with chromosomes in no time ha ha ha.”

  Frank woke in the morning after a night of deep throat snoring and heavy salivation. Safari Man was nowhere to be found. Pink Guy and Salamander Man were squatting on the sofa squealing and grunting and ‘Nyessing’. They were spinning a tangerine on the floor. Frank was left to wonder if he’d woken up in a sheltered workshop. Without so much as looking in a mirror, Frank left the apartment and began to walk the streets of this metropolis. He felt different doing it. Edgier. Angrier. Filthier. It was as though the very ether of this place was infecting him, polluting his DNA and retarding his mind. There was something weird about this city. As he walked by a vomiting woman, stepped over an addict and under a statue of Roosevelt heralding the wonders of the free world, he sensed that this might not actually be the real New York. It felt as though it was more like a fabricated, alternate version of the real thing. Yet his own senses were being so frustrated he could no longer be sure of what he was thinking or feeling.

  He turned into a large park hoping that nature would restore some peace to his mind, if not bring full rejuvenation. He was disappointed. The grass, shrubs and trees gently bent and bowed in the breezes that blew across the ponds, the birds sang to each other in rounds and the squirrels playfully quarreled over nuts and berries before returning to their drays and resting from their escapades. But all that life, teeming and tumbling and leaping and laughing, seemed to be overcome by something else, quenched by a great melancholy, tormented by a ringing anxiety. He headed back to the apartment not only without the cheer or carefreeness that eluded him when he left, but now completely without hope as well.

  He barked at his friends upon entering and they scrambled out of the way. Safari Man had still not returned so Frank entered the bedroom, closed the door, sat on the bed and clutched his head in a deep despair. “This isn’t the earth I wished for,” he muttered. He stood and paced the room before sitting again, then stood and paced and sat again. This routine went on for hours. He began talking to the wall, gesturing toward it as he did so and occasionally screaming. He was going out of his mind. Pink Guy and Salamander man, too scared to intervene, remained curled up on the sofa in fetal positions, waiting for Safari Man to return and offer help.

  In a moment of lucidity, Frank grabbed a video camera from one of Safari Man’s drawers, sat it on a tripod and began to record his ramblings. He thought he was dying (brain cancer, he suspected) and had to document his deterioration. Little of it made sense. Most of it was incoherent filth yet it provided him with a means of self-analysis and escape.

  “Ha ha ha! Franku!” called Safari Man, swinging the front door wide open. He was taken aback to see the other two curled up and sucking their thumbs. Pink Guy pointed toward the bedroom door and began to tremble slightly. Safari Man burst into the bedroom in the same freewheeling fashion. “Ha ha ha! Franku!” He took one look into Frank’s bloodshot eyes and said the only thing that would come into his mind: “Ha ha ha! Franku!” Frank turned and looked at him with a surly expression. Safari Man was not to be deterred. “Wow! Franku!” he continued in his excitable tone. “You look like you’ve just gone ten rounds with one of those midgets on roids, ha ha ha!” He spoke in Japanese but Frank had no trouble understanding him. “I think you need a drink, Franku.” With a stiff drink and Safari Man’s ineffable good cheer, Frank returned to a less disturbed state and invited Pink Guy and Salamander Man to join him and Safari Man for dinner.

  “It’s set,” Safari Man announced thirty minutes later while wiping his greasy mouth with the back of his hand. The three newcomers all looked at him. “The illegal crawfish racing event! Ha ha ha! It’s all set! It’s good to go! It’s ready and steady. Next Saturday. In the park. Ha ha ha! It’ll be great!”

  “How do you know that? Who’s coming that will make this event so great?”

  “I’ve got a few old friends lined up.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Well two of them are amongst this city’s finest black gentlemen.”

  “When were they released?”

  “Just yesterday ha ha ha.”

  “Excellent. What were they in for?”

  “One was in for assault. It was no big deal. He survived. But ha ha ha, he’s a tough cookie. He went fifteen rounds in the ring with Mike Tyson.”

  “That is impressive.”

  “Unfortunately it was during training and he was unconscious for fourteen of the rounds.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “Tyson simply used him as a punching bag. But hey Papa Franku, he was still in the ring with Tyson for fifteen rounds!”

  “Fair enough. Who’s the other?”

  “A low-life who makes the other low-lifes look like shining arcs of kindness and charity.”

  “What’s his specialty?”

  “He was arrested for molesting a dead elephant seal, but was released on a technicality (the elephant seal was not yet dead) and was then rearrested for stage diving at a nun’s funeral.”

  “I like him already.”

  “But otherwise a really nice guy. As I said, he’s only just been released. He’s up for anything.”

  “Excellent. Who else?”

  “An old Latino friend of mine. Always good for a flutter over chromosomes.”

  “When was he released?”

  “Ah, ha ha ha. He’s never been caught!”

  “Sounds like a smart cookie.”

  “Wouldn’t know if his head was being seared with an iron. He once broke his leg in half purely to see if he could set it again by himself. He now walks with a permanent limp. Easy pickings.”

  “Perfect. Anyone else?”

  “Anyone else? Of course, my friend, of course! This next guy is a legend. You’re gonna love him. Just love him. All three foot two of him.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a leprechaun. Alpha Centurion. Escaped from the circus just last Wednesday. Not a clue when it comes to gambling chromosomes. Not a clue ha ha ha. Ripe for the picking, my friend.”

  “Do we want the chromosomes of a leprechaun?”

  “They work. And they’re better than the chromosomes of a vegan.”

  “Good point.”

  “I must say, Safari Man, you’ve done a stellar job.”

  “Not done yet, Papa Franku. I have also arranged for Drone to come.”

  “Let me guess. Drone is the product of an incestuous relationship and has spent the last fifteen years roaming the wilderness and howling at the moon?”

  “Not quite. Drone is a drone. A flying camera.”

  “How are we supposed to get chromosomes from a flying voyeur cam?”

  “We don’t. But it comes in useful for controlling those who do have chromosomes.”

  Frank enjoyed hearing of the fruits of Safari Man’s labors but remained unconvinced that the event would produce anything of real value. “Safari Man, I just don’t see how this is going to work. How can we even be sure of winning, let alone obtaining any chromosomes from the losers? And I do mean ‘losers’.
”

  “Franku! It’s set! It’s rigged. Our crawfish can’t lose!”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “Because our crawfish are actually mice disguised as crawfish! Brilliant, huh?!”

  “I like your style, Safari Man.” Frank was starting to really enjoy this camaraderie.

  “But I just can’t see how we’re going to get many chromosomes from a bunch of misfits like that. I’m mean, why would humans be gambling for chromosomes at all?”

  “Ah! my friend,” said Safari Man rubbing his hands together. “These guys are not, you see, actually human!”

  “They’re not?!”

  “Of course not! Ha ha ha. They’re humanoid. They’re tiered as mere mortals but they are not actually human. They’re something entirely different. And what makes them such easy pickings is their desperation to become rankenfiles. They’ll literally gamble their souls away trying to jump tiers but most of them actually have the intellect of beasts and the morals of sewer rats. They’re nothing. Take my word for it, Franku. You will score at least two million chromosomes from this event alone.”

  “Are you serious? Two million chromosomes?”

  “I guarantee it.”

  “How do you guarantee the procuring of chromosomes?”

  “Papa Franku, I bet you my apartment that you will win over two million chromosomes from illegal crawfish racing. That’s how sure I am.”

  There was little more for Frank to do than agree. “Ah, done,” he said.

  “But there is a small catch, Franku.”

  “I knew it.”