by Brian Hodge
Somehow the sculpture seemed to have a negative kind of effect on Gnarly Hotep. Maybe it was because all of those paper sculptures had been locked up in the hollowed out gut of the Necronomicon. Maybe it was because Angus was just too simple-minded to catch hold of the madness that old Gnarly Hotep was trying to spin. Or maybe, just maybe, there was something more to Angus all along.
In the twinkling of a mad god's eye old Gnarly Hotep went on the ballistic offensive, growing himself some switchblade wings, razored eyes, chattery teeth and a battering ram nose guard. He came running at Angus with everything he had, but Angus blasted away, firing paper cranes and dragons and elephants and salmon and trilobites and pagodas. His entire origami collection, all of his creativity and imagination pumped full blast into Gnarly Hotep's dark screaming form.
"You rotten eyed prick with ears," Angus swore. "I ain't scared of you. Leave my friends be. Leave go of Fishhook and Stout Willy."
What about me, a part of my mind wanted to shriek, but my thoughts were still turned inside out and wrung clean clear dry and beat to death on some rock of desolation and recycled into a fifty-eight year old spinster's hand bound journal of anglicized haiku. My eyes were rattling around like a pair of last ditch Bingo balls and my ears were radar dishes homed in on the secrets of super models and my tongue felt like it had been used and reused as the welcome mat for the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and the horses they rode in on.
And then all I could see was the moon wide face of my good buddy Angus, shotgun butt whipping the dark messenger of the abomination into a pansy assed pulp, old Gnarly Hotep himself, and then when I was looking it looked to me as if Angus was shotgun whipping me as I was looking up through a billion pair of dirty sunglasses and then everything rolled back into darkness and swam away.
I looked up and saw a seagull, soaring overhead.
"So what happened?" Fishhook asked.
I tried to answer but nothing came out.
"We've had our minds torn asunder by the raving vision of Gnarly Hotep. He's shown us through the dark rear end of the cosmos, the night fears of eternity, the underbelly of blind devious despair, and then Angus went and saved us," Stout Willy summed it up.
The man surely had a gift for concision.
"Angus saved us?" Fishhook said.
I kept looking up at that seagull, lofting higher and higher with every wing beat, dwindling down into a dark spot of nothing against the slow sun-downing sky, wondering just why in the hell a thinking man like me wasn't chucking in his own two bits worth of opinion on the matter.
"I'm not sure just how he did it," Stout Willy said. "Maybe it was his persistence. Maybe it was his love for Donny. Maybe it was all of that creative tantric origamic energy poured out against the nihilistic overtones of Gnarly Hotep."
Stout Willy was standing on his feet, his toilet having been blasted into a scattering of cosmic porcelain dust. He was naked and somewhat unwiped, neither of which added much to the sight of all of Stout Willy's pant-less splendour. Something told me that Stout Willy wasn't going to need that brooding toilet, whole or not, ever again.
Only I couldn't even make that particular observation. It was like I'd been struck dumb. I was way too busy looking up at that vanishing point of seagull, going on and on into the dreaming distance.
"Are you okay, Donny?" Fishhook asked.
Tiny grey seagull, feathered tide, floating away.
"Donny?"
"He's had his mind blasted," Angus explained. "I don't think he's going to be anywhere close to okay for some time past forever."
"Oh hell," Stout Willy said. "That's too bad."
"That's all right," Angus said. "He took care of me through all of these years. Might be I'll have to return the favor."
"You okay, Angus?" Fishhook nervously asked.
"Of course I'm okay. I'm more than okay. You should see the other guy." He squared his shoulders. "I faced off Gnarly Hotep, and he tried to beckon me into a diving pool of madness, but I didn't want any swimming lessons thank you."
"That's an elder god you're talking about," Stout Willy said. "He's driven scholars and wise men into blithering insanity."
"Well, hell, if that's all he's got to show me I ain't impressed. I was born and raised in Nova Scotia, the armpit of Canada," Angus said. "I've lived dirt poor, starved all of my life, hunting for jobs and waiting for the next round of tax raises to come rolling on through. Maybe if I was a scholar of the esoteric or a Miskatonic professor-in-law I might have felt some of his hooks and jabs, but as it was he just doesn't scare me much at all."
Now that was more words than I'd ever heard old Angus Thibault spew out before.
This was certainly worth commenting on, yet for some goddamn reason I just couldn't seem to think of a damn thing to add to any of this. All I could see was that seagull, nothing more than an egg sized dot in the distant sky.
"Deal the cards," Angus said, with more authority in his voice than he'd ever held in all of his life. Whatever had happened, he was definitely a changed man. "If the universe is about to wind down I reckon we've got time for one more hand or two."
"We're short a deck." Fishhook pointed out.
"That's all right," Angus said. "We'll send Donny out to get one."
I looked over, ready to do whatever Angus told me, not taking my eye off of that distant soaring dream.
"Go fetch us a new deck of cards, Donny," Angus said. "I think I saw a deck hidden in the buzzing belly of that hornet's nest in behind Brewer's Garage. Why don't you poke the nest with a stick first, before you get to reaching your hand on in."
I ran off eagerly to find me a stick to find the cards.
Angus turned back to Stout Willy and Fishhook.
"Stick your poker where the sun don't shine," Angus said. "We're going to play us some crib."
Hunger Time at the Midnight Mall
Up here, up north, the roads are cold and lonely.
You can drive for hours without seeing a single car.
A single witness.
I can see lights up ahead. It's what I've been looking for. An all night big box shopping mall. They sprout out here, up among the northern roads, like fungus on a rotting fallen tree trunk. There's a market out here, a demand for supply. There's nowhere else to shop, so an all night mall like this serves to feed that all-consuming hunger to shop that some of us get.
I just need a few things.
I pull into the parking lot.
There are many cars here but I will bet you that no one knows anyone. It is a parking lot of empty strangers.
So I lock the car door.
It never hurts to be careful.
I pause by the trunk. I think briefly about opening it.
For just a moment I pretend to be staring at a small invisible scratch in the paint job.
I listen.
Do I hear breathing?
Sleeping?
Or maybe just death.
It doesn't matter.
She's just something I bumped into on the lonely northern roads. I saw her walking, out there alone with her hair pulled back and braided like rope.
I just couldn't resist.
Did she live nearby?
Will anyone miss her?
It doesn't matter.
It never does.
There were no witnesses.
There was no crime.
Later tonight I will throw her into the freezer at the camp. I should have done it sooner. I shouldn't have kept her so long.
All those lonely hours, just driving by.
Killing time.
Sometimes a body just hungers for a little lonely motion.
Still, the waiting was bad for the meat. The exhaust fumes and the road dust fulminate within the flesh and make it taste too much like metal.
Hell.
It doesn't really matter. It's not like I am a fussy sort of eater.
Sometimes I do that, you know?
I just get a charge out of driving down these
northern roads with a girl tied in my trunk. It's just an itch I get.
A hunger.
It was just her time.
Nobody ever stops me.
Why would they? A fellow is supposed to show a girl a good time, isn't he?
He's supposed to take her for a drive.
He's supposed to show her the town.
See the sights.
I wonder if she can see anything in the trunk. There aren't any cracks that I know of. I have made certain to caulk that sucker good and solid.
Nearly airtight.
Maybe she's dead. Sometimes they go that way. They suffocate or choke on their own puke or some of them even die of fright.
That doesn't matter either.
Dead or alive, she'll be good come breakfast time, sizzling in the fry pan.
I leave the car where it will sit.
I figure it's safe.
I'm at the door of the shopping mall. There's a clerk standing at the entrance. The greeter, I guess. He says hello around a mouthful of ballpoint pen. He's chewing on the pen, like it was candy.
It's weird what some people will put into their mouth.
He's marking something down on a pad of paper. Like he was keeping some sort of a tally.
Is he taking names?
I check for cameras. There is always someone watching you these days.
You can never be too careful.
I think about killing him.
I want to.
I want to kill him.
Now.
That's crazy, thinking like this. He doesn't really see me. All that he sees is another pair of pockets walking into a store he doesn't really want to be standing in. It's just his job and I am nothing more than another faceless consumer. He probably isn't even thinking about me. He probably is just wondering if his wife has cooked him meatloaf for supper.
The old loon.
He ought to try cooking her into a meat loaf – now that's good eating.
I smile, remembering the first time that I did it.
The first time I tasted meat.
It started with a yellow cat.
It was my eleventh birthday. There wasn't a party. I didn't really want one. My parents gave me a cat. I tied it by a rope on the clothesline and let it dangle for a while. I skinned it while it was still kicking, from its ears on back.
Then it bit me.
So I had to bite it back.
Tasty.
Come to think of it the whole thing started even before that. I remember how I used to chew on my GI Joe dolls.
No, not dolls.
Action figures.
Dolls are for girls.
And girls are for eating.
I'm in the mall now. It's a good place. I feel at home here, amongst the cutlery and the naked need. Night time at the mall is a good time. It is quiet. There is room for thought.
It feels like an empty church.
I had a girl in a church once. I told her we were going to get married. Just her and me and the crucifix. Then, while she was looking up at the cross I took a knife and opened her up.
She was pretty inside.
I like the mall.
The piped-in music seems to make things sound clearer. Almost profound, almost meaningful. People are clearer at this time of the night. They are closer to the truth of themselves.
Closer to the hungry time.
It's like walking around naked, with nothing to hide. It is like watching the whole entire universe shuffling around in a pair of worn fuzzy bunny slippers.
I walked around naked in that church.
It kept the blood from off of my clothing.
I like that thought.
I can see all of these people walking around in the mall.
It's like I can see them clear down to their bones.
I like bones.
There is a truth in bones.
Shamans use bones for scrying into the future.
Casting fate and telling charms and rattling the truth around like dice in a dicing cup.
It is always day time in the mall no matter what the time of night.
It is good and it is peaceful and it is quiet.
Good hunting here, if I wanted it.
I am feeling it now.
Hunger time.
Hunger is good and it is bad. It is good because it can make you truly appreciate the gifts that life can give you – like that time that I worked in the community college kitchen.
I worked there all one summer.
The place always smelled of food.
I liked that smell.
It kept me hungry.
There was this girl. I met her in a darkened stadium, while I was walking home from work, still reeking of food. I don't really know what she was doing in that empty stadium. Maybe she was just trying to be alone with her thoughts. Maybe she was just sad. Maybe she was happy.
It didn't matter.
I dragged her down beneath the bleachers, kissing her mouth closed as hard as I could, catching hold of her tongue with my teeth so that she could not scream.
When she twisted I tore the tongue out.
That's when she bit me.
On the joint of my third finger. She left a wound. A notch. It felt a little like we were being married.
The notch still itches when the weather gets hot.
I like that.
It's like she is with me forever. She walks in my legs and she holds me in my arms and she stands up along beside me in my bones and my meat.
It is her hand that carries my knife.
I ate some of her to keep us really married, but it was sloppy work. A real rush job. I didn't have a freezer back then. I just hacked off what I could and stuffed it into my rucksack. I brought the rucksack to work, early one morning. I used her to make stew. Carrots, potatoes, celery and her.
I ate three servings and everyone laughed.
It must be good, they said, if the cook likes it that much.
Everyone had a bowlful.
The whole school.
In a way, I married them all that day.
I keep shopping.
I'm not in any kind of a hurry.
I'm in my favorite part of the store.
The houseware department.
I put a brand new boning knife in my shopping cart.
I like the heft of it.
It's nice and sharp.
There is a woman in this aisle. In her forties. That is a bad age. The meat gets greasy, the older they get. She is a little heavy in the bottom though. I like that. It makes for a very nice marbling, perfect for a long slow roast.
She is holding an ivy painted platter.
Ivory and ivy, she is sizing it up.
Licking it.
That's weird.
I have seen a lot of weird in my life but nothing so weird as a forty year old woman licking a dinner platter in a midnight mall.
Really weird.
I tried the army once, but I hated the uniform. Still, I loved the oversea duty, though. Did you know that Cambodia is a consumer heaven? You can buy nearly anything you crave in their stores.
I remember the taste.
Eyeballs popping in the mouth like raw almonds.
Now I'm in in the hardware department picking up a few necessary supplies.
Duct tape.
Rope.
Tin snips.
You can never have enough.
Now I see the hardware clerk sucking on a screwdriver. He's got it jammed way back in his mouth, right up to the tang.
Now he is even chewing on the screwdriver.
His teeth grinding and sliding against the metal shaft.
Now that is way too weird.
He smiles at me.
There is blood in his gum work, like he has been chewing on red licorice and paint.
Way too weird.
I start to run.
My sneakers slap against the dirty tile floor.
My heart is beating like a piston.
I run past the magazine stand. There's this old woman standing there, leaning on a chrome walker. She's got this physical fitness bodybuilding magazine in her hands, all biceps and body shots. She's tearing each page, one by one, slowly like a long slow strip tease. She's balling each page up and popping them into her mouth – fast, like potato chips.
Chewing and chewing.
I keep on running.
I see a dapper gentleman in the lady's lingerie department. He is tearing at a pair of silk stockings like some kind of crazy orally-fixated beagle pup. There are strands of silk hanging from between his teeth.
I keep on running.
Now I see the cashier, a blue haired wide-bottomed middle-aged crone beating her fingers into the keys of her cash register with a machinist's ball peen hammer. The machine keeps jingling out a cheerful ringing tone every time that the hammer swings home.
I keep on running, but they catch me at the entrance, where they knew I'd have to run to.
The old greeter, his face smeared with blue ink, like a rabid clown. The hardware clerk, the screwdriver poked out of the back of his esophagus. The lady with the plate, with broken shards of china snaggled through her teeth. The cashier, painting my face with what is left of her fingertips.
They have me.
I am caught and smeared against the locked front door window like a freshly trapped housefly. I can taste the window glass and the ghost of window cleaner. Hints of chlorine and the cloying foam flavor of a thousand sale-sale-sale signs.
The flat of the glass, flat against my tongue, leveling and evening like hunger.
I suck and I lick the glass, breaking my teeth against the metal edges.
I don't want to leave.
I don't want to run.
Not ever.
My last thought is of the girl in my trunk.
I can see her gnawing at the trunk liner like a duct taped rat.
I can see her liking the flavor.
It's way past midnight at the twenty four hour mall.
It's my time.
Hunger time.
The Last Curl of Gut Rope
I sit on a round restaurant stool, turning, turning.
Waiting.
I stare out the window at a dark nothing sky. Birds hang on the clouds like pairs of lonely scissors.
They tell me nothing.
What happened? Where did it begin?
I stare at the ring finger on my left hand. Something is missing. The pale white tattletale halo, once choked and hidden beneath a single band of gold. It's missing - like a silent telephone.
