Dream scene of child sliding out of his vulva confines and straight into a state penitentiary.
He takes another drag from the cigarette and looks at the smoldering butt all confused. The cowboy nods, chewing on a stem of wheat. Suddenly a foul smell fills the cell. The kid adjusts his diaper and makes an apologetic face. The cowboy tries to hide his repulsion.
ACT TWO
The kid becomes increasingly bored. He’s gotten distracted by the strange figure roaming the hall outside his cell. The cowboy sighs, forlorn.
– He had a hand in bringing ya here.
– A hand?
– Sh-e-e-i-t! He considers y’all a violent and reprehensible criminal.
The cowboy gives another hideous cackle that echoes against the cell’s stony walls. He gestures to the pacing figure outside and asks:
– What do you think about him then, the surgeon or the daddy?
The kid glares into the darkness, trying to focus on any familiar contours. Suddenly the voice booms—ferocious, masculine, barely human.
– VISITOR. YOU GOT A VISITOR.
A set of keys jangle in the lock and the cell door slides open. A woman appears. She seems vaguely familiar to the baby. She is dwarfishly short with cropped black hair and two bulging, soul hungry eyes. Her breasts are large and milk engorged. They meet the baby at eye level. He stares at the two massive, sagging bags and his stomach growls with hunger. She is small but still appears tall compared to the child sitting on his bunk. The woman squats. The tight flesh around her mouth cracks into a grin. She is fat too. The cowboy gets up, adjusts his waistcoat and places two hands on either side of her shoulders to turn her around. They share a wet display of affection.
Having stooped to her level the cowboy is almost able to consume the woman’s entire head, his jaw dislocating like a python’s. They reluctantly separate and, together, look down at the baby.
The woman keeps grinning, undoing her large brassier with her stare fixed. She stands before him with her exposed breasts.
Outside, the agent appears displeased by this display. He punches at the bars with both boulder fists, snorting and swearing insanely. The kid looks over to the neighboring cell at a worker doubled over in pain.
Close-up on anguished face—bespectacled, fat and unshaven man in a boiler suit.
A television sparks to life. The agent is calm now. A re-run of M.A.S.H is on. The industrial machinery starts up again. The cowboy flips open his pamphlet again and reads.
– The victim seems to experience arousal and an erect state, which is completely perplexing. You can almost see the brain working on a million different thoughts at one time.
Worker falls to the ground, facedown—blood dribbles down his chin.
– Do you miss your momma? – the woman asks snapping the kid back to attention.
– No . . .
– Do you miss your God?
– No . . .
– Do you miss my God?
Disgruntled by the relentless questioning and still weighed under the anvil of injustice he’s carried around his neck the duration of his short, painful life—the baby feels himself succumbing to something—the tragic parables behind those wet eyes are impossible things to conceal fully. He cries.
– Baby gonna cry? – teases the cowboy, pretending to lasso cattle from thin air. The kid clenches his eyelids shut and bashes his rattle against the frame of his bunk. The grotesque laughter gets louder, in perfect dissonance with the clattering machinery outside and the TV’s blare. They’re all laughing.
The priest is laughing.
The woman is laughing.
The draped agent is laughing.
Captain Trapper is laughing.
Then there is nothing.
Fade Out.
ACT THREE
The baby opens his eyes and chokes back tears. The cell is empty and he’s all alone—stuck in silence.
His surroundings look different but he can sense something has changed within himself. He looks at his reflection in the long mirror hung against the wall. He stands tall now, wearing an ivy-league jacket and acid wash jeans. His round baby face is now angular, chiseled from muscle and jagged chunks of bone. He is broad-shouldered and tall. The kid wants to cry some more but something in him resists.
The umbilical cord is still there too, sucking tight at his belly button, draining his life source. He tries to tug it free. The desire to separate himself from what he once was is overwhelming. As he pulls, umbilical cord keeps coming out—in a never-ending line. He gives up after a minute or so, sitting back down on the bunk with a bundled coil in his arms. The whorls and loops of his own external organ bring a flurry of nausea to his gut. The kid ups his college blazer and rubs his hands together. The cell is suddenly freezing.
He watches as the poisonous vapor outside kills two squirrels by the roadside.
Outside a figure is still wandering the shadows, only he seems much smaller in stature now. The kid can hear something—the tinkling of xylophone keys. He recognizes the tune but from a long time ago. He looks down to see a tiny parade of insects marching across the floor from under his bed. He lifts his knees up to his chest in automatic fright. Upon closer inspection the marching band appear to be cockroaches. They make their way to the metal bar at the foot of the cell and pass between the gap. The digital clock chimes with “TEN MINS”—at which point the cell door slides open and the agent allows a young woman to enter.
Her face is hidden by a large wicker hat with fruit on it. She promptly removes it. The woman’s face is young but chalked completely white, and her nose is long and sharp like a cone. Her eyes are murky with no sign of any pupils. When she opens her mouth to speak she has a row of crystalline fangs along the top row of her gum. The kid is quite startled by her.
– Don’t you remember? – the woman asks.
– No.
– You don’t have much time.
– I know.
– I brought you something.
The woman hands over a handkerchief.
– Open it . . .
The kid cautiously unwraps the offering. He stares into his palm.
– What is this?
– Your first tooth.
He holds the tooth into the light to observe it—a sharp, pointy incisor, just like the woman’s. The kid gives the woman a distrustful glance.
– Not long now – she says.
– Here, you can have this back.
– Put it in.
The kid looks down at the fang. With his other fingers he feels along the course of his gum line until he finds a craterous space. He lodges the tooth into the hole and the root attaches immediately.
– Take a look – encourages the woman.
He bares his teeth in the mirror and sees the fang protrude beyond all his others.
The woman appears pleased, reveals her own row of impossibly sharp dentures.
– Do you know what it feels like to die?
– No.
– Are you afraid of it?
– Yes.
– Do not be afraid of dying.
– Easy for you to say.
– I have died almost a dozen times.
The boy begins weeping uncontrollably. The woman forwards a handkerchief to him. He blows his nose.
– What’s wrong with you? – asks the woman.
– I’m almost three years old.
The woman leans in and lightly tousles the boy’s hair. The agent rattles the bar with his fist and announces – TIME’S UP!
The woman gets to her feet and tells the boy to stand up. He does. She presses her lips lightly to the boy’s cheek, turns and leaves. The boy can still feel the cold impression she left on his flesh minutes after she has gone. The agent appears to be entering the cell. He is as tall as the boy remembers. In his left hand is a syringe full of a yellow substance. He poises his fat finger over the plunger, ready to descend.
– First thing’s first – says the agent, still hidden
behind a blanket of shadow. In his right hand is a surgeon’s tool kit with operating tools clattering around inside.
– I’m gonna cut you off for good.
The kid becomes aware of his blood-saturated connecting tube. He doesn’t want to lose his placenta like this. Still, he won’t put up a fight. He’s paralyzed by futility and fear and pure curiosity. The needle spike breaks the skin and everything becomes vividly clear . . .
Flames engulf the stage and the curtain drops. A young lady wearing a baby’s coverall wanders onto the stage sucking ruthlessly on a dummy. She speaks:
– I know there is nothing beneath this replicated flesh but a mass of circuitry and manmade mechanisms. What is a broken heart like? Is it similar to this virus? A fat tumor on the left hand side, throbbing like a plate of red, wobbly jelly? Do I really aspire to this? I confess this fascination with human deterioration has escalated to near obsession.
She looks at the crowd in awe for a few moments before the brutish hand of an agent appears from the depths of the curtain and yanks her through . . .
Applause.
INLAND WHERE SECRETS LIE
JOSEPH S. PULVER, SR.
Then
(punch, and severance-feral streets)
want. Step out of ghostly shadows. Stay alive.
Then
(deadpan sunset of flaws . . . and later, again, after the other again and the
others before them, jump-and-shout lights about to go dead)
transformation. Grab it.
Stay alive and grab the roses.
Long dark hair sits perfectly on her shoulders. Exactly the right amount of bone to her collar bones. Sculptor would say that’s art and be right. Double take perfect. Perfect hair, the bangs, the color. Perfect shoulders, pale, sculpted. Black cocktail dress for this engagement the same, perfect. Eyes perfectly define every action of bodies together.
Soft perfect cheeks above Christmas-red lips, no pudding that whispered “Lover” or “Yes” (and let its heat linger) ever had more sun inside.
Perfect how the one word poem of her name cooks the thunder of his need and slides over his lips.
Everything’s perfect—breathtaking—
Unless, as she floats across the lawn of your libido in black heels, or as she sits glossed and manicured on your red sofa, you look over your drink while you’re holding court and your eyes are quick and catch the old East End/poor-side-of-town failures in her eyes twitching . . .
Perfectly poised, perfectly beautiful (beautiful enough to imagine the sparks of her kiss in a hotel room are the only real High Society and every one of those kisses are worth dying for), she sits alone in the back of the black stretch limo that picked her up at her one bedroom apartment in North Hollywood just after 7 o’clock. Its headlights illuminate the charcoal darkness that has settled over Wonderland . . .
Masquerade night (again). Warm. Light, how it soundlessly spread and splashed, and hot had done their damage and been swallowed.
There’s a breeze. Like there often is.
There’s a moon. Like there often is.
She’s gazing out the window. Like she always does. Her expression is perfectly polite and impartial.
Hasn’t said a word. She’s learned it’s best not to.
. . . ride
. . . winding . . .
To there—
Stars (luminous, not astronomy engraved aloft) swim. Over unsated Mulholland. Black snake Mulholland, the double yellow lines, the dotted yellow lines. Mulholland’s “Don’t come” hidden from eyes. Moon comes. Shows. Nouvelle to . . . vague. The notes bounce puppet to too-high-a-price. Round sounds arc from stress, “That” dialogue complete with embers.
The Western Land, pier and patio and (slump your half-dead libido) 30dollar rooms (won’t hear a sea-shanty by the pool, or see a free breakfast bar) (free centipedes, cockroaches, and jet roars overhead) by LAX—Mexicali rice & beans & paper-cup coffee half a block away, Hollywood twistin’ in your manhole of blues all night, and, and Last Gleaming red breeding colorations (leave your cineradiography at home) and intoning handsome and hot and buzzing, is beautiful. Fragmented. Relentlessly. If you have the money to hustle the jazz on the grapevine.
(this river don’t come with a throw of dice) for the Tralala’s (no days off) sharpening their whore’s alphabet on goodbye sheets and Bukowski’s (without priests and afflicted with otherwise) revolving on stung, let’s (crawl, over the pulse of bones) drink, “I don’t remember,” in a room stained with sat incur bare life, look for surviving coins to feed drink, sleep, reserve a quick happens (to ME) for the next contradiction, requiem. Fit in a prayer if you can. Steal one to sleep on.
If you can.
If you can.
This is The L’America, Baby. Every freshly-squeezed frame/by/frame . . . Feeders, pants free of gravity, lift their hands and look for you. The L’America, holiday immoderation to plan and gather. All the uneven pleasure-shapes (wearing chain-link cigarettes and screeching scavenger-grit while they motions-perverse) folding unevenhandedly, mapping need and beautiful into demented. Then they bitch the beer’s not cold
Mulholland dreams (some manifest X marks the spot, others eternally hidden).
. . . ride . . .
(slid off the stem of ritual) limo . . . lights . . . Round the round slow curves. Miles. None conform to straight. All slow. And she sits (in the rear) and watches, wonders . . . and wants the unfolding of revelation . . .
Black suit in the front seat levels .9mm’s take-all at her shock. “You’re getting out here.”
Starlet-red lips carry, “What?”
“You get out here.”
Afraid of what the Ferryman will build with her heart she moves slowly through the passage of the open door . . .
Fastfun-joyride jacked on WeeEEeee (with beer cans & laughter & heat) and Whoooooooooo comes around the black-snake curve, too late sees the bride of dreadful stripped naked. Don’t see it, tough, her hand still offers TRUTH—
Metal world
CRASH—(bride&groom coffin-twisted in the FORCE field
Sparks & shards, diamond-glass becomes event & CRUNCH—beercan jigsaw
&
smoke.
The screams. Flame, tearing. Fire . . .
DEAD. One there. And there—thoughts in that head erased, and there . . . Swiped. Hit. Unclear circling “True?” And what to do?
Confusion—Who? WHY?—why (without a door or doorknob or key or intermission) cluttered with why . . . WHY as apocalypse.
Down. Gagging on scared’s muted scream—the syllables sound rusty . . . Dwindling (the enamel of her partitions shallower), eyes roll back, blacked out . . .
Struggling to get up.
Add dimmed. A
little
blood.
Small.
head wound. Sharpness is an
abstraction.
Looking. Eyes that never saw see . . . Add (awake in the rafters of despairing) considering problem found in the defining force of what-was . . .
Looking. For aid. For all clear.
Looking at what/was/done.
Scattered—launched into delirium, small, thin, some thing of cubist inscriptions (voice, no glue to it, leans close asks, where does your mind go to?). Try to move . . . Sugar (was there ever?) refuses . . .
Drawn—
Lights. Down THERE an acute billion. Could walk there—make her way back? “Back? Was . . . I?” Low-cut LIGHTS with needle-soft hands. A distinctive otherworld. Filth/anger/breaking windows/ strutting neon GIRLS—Bon voyage, Spellbound. Skingame steps no lifeboat—and movies and COLD BEER - Cigarettes - LOTTO and ADULT and the Priest of the Sun and the Priest of the Black Cross and the Priest of the Rose and the Priest of the Thorn and Women—Bon voyage, Spellbound. Skingame steps no lifeboat—and OPEN ALL NIGHT and Come on In and JESUS In Hollywood and the Spearmint Rhino and Jumbo’s Clown Room and—/“Drop it in.”/the stroke of across working an obit/400 little kids and no clown/a saxophon
e with one arm. Cars. Cars, libido that won’t stop, spitting tunes and cartridges and curses. Cars—Senator High-tower doesn’t have to drive by the culture that lives in them. Lights and LOUD and bright and mad running Sunset to sunset, all the lines it’s not safe to cross. The Hole. All test and TEST. Reality marked X. And X. X = target.
Won’t be. Again?
Can’t.
Down is one thing . . .
Forest behind her.
Droplets of idea, sight-line to instead. Cross-reference without specific.
Swallows—fastens on
Uphill.
Velvet black. Velvet smooth black trees black forest.
. . . winding . . .
(She walks . . . The ghosts don’t.) . . .
path . . .
Dizzy primes fragile. Fainting could occur. Other things as well . . .
Up.
Ten toes_wooden steps_cautious_as_weakened_muscles_will_motion.
Climbing
blackness. Turning. Around this tree, around this brush thick as mystery. Nothing here is straight. Nothing cast in light. Scraps and slashes of moon skin the ground . . .
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch Page 21
