by Garrett Cook
“No.”
“Fuck you. Give me the mask.”
“No, I’m not gonna breathe that shit.”
“It’s your fault I don’t have a mask, so you should give me yours.”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you, too!”
“Fuck you more!”
There was a sudden silence between us as we both fully processed where we were. The suburbs were a mythic and mysterious place, horrible as they were, and our bickering would only serve to dilute the experience. It wasn’t a nightmare world right now. There was no gas cloud, the Suburbanites were all inside, the mud was old and hard and dead, far from the organic slimy obstacle fresh mud could be. The only sound was the cackling of hundreds of laughtracks from inside the houses. I was sad that these creatures had to live out here and didn’t even know about liquifilm. Then again, Suburbanites didn’t exactly have high standards for what constituted entertainment. It made me feel bad about all the times I’d injected that mud into my brother for the experiments. The last four times were, of course, to progress his escape, but every other time it had been nothing but leisure, a way to pass an afternoon before a liquifilm buy.
It was beyond simple cruelty on my part. It was completely inhuman. Mud is the off switch for the Superego and the Ego, the big maybe. It says “maybe human flesh tastes good”, “maybe you are a rhinoceros”, “maybe everything that you wished was true about this world is right and nothing has been stopping you from becoming omnipotent but an invisible schoolmarm who just wants to cramp your style because she’s jealous.” How dare she cramp your style. How dare your body tell you you aren’t a rhinoceros. How dare your conscience tell you you can’t eat your own child. That’s why my brother began to develop Deep Objectivity as a coping mechanism — an anti-venom. I had a shot of CRAMPS in my backpack, but enough mud and that wouldn’t do a whole shit load of good. I went full circle to the Reverend and the danger he’d be in again. I’m one of those people who can’t get up in the morning without wronging somebody somehow. I probably should have stayed at the mall, just right for me: the end point of human culture, the last people place for somebody who barely had humanity in him.
As he had on the elevator, the Reverend shook me out of my funk. In spite of the answers that only come at the edge of being, we were still wandering the very same utter wasteland of petrified hallucinogenic mud I was guilty for sending the Reverend into without proper protection. He was over his anger at me and now intent upon surviving. He was surprisingly on top of everything.
“We have to head north until the mud stops,” he told me, “when the mud stops, we’ll know we’re there.”
“How will we know that?” I asked.
He got that look on his face that people give you when you ask for directions to the street you’re walking down.
“Because the mud is an authorial conceit. Narrativism has declared sacred any place that blurs the boundaries of authorial conceit. Archelon Ranch and the Sad House both do this. The Sad House, I must warn you, will be strange and terrible. It is a gathering place for demons in the author’s psyche that he cannot defeat. Going there, will mean experiencing the broken parts of the author and feeling temporary objectivity.”
“Good. I’ve always been jealous of Bernard’s objectivity.”
“That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.”
I knew full well that it was, but I didn’t dare say it. It was bad enough that I knew I had no good reason to envy that part of my brother. Objectivity might actually be worse than being a Suburbanite, although I’ve been told that an Objective at least can’t be turned into a Suburbanite, so I guess it has that edge.
“I’m sorry,” said the Reverend, actually meaning it, “it must be extremely hard for you.”
“It is.”
The next thing the Reverend said surprised me, “It’s hard for me too. I do everything I can to keep the narrative pure, but I know that due to Garrett Cook’s personal disdain for metafiction, something as stupid as a Church of Authorial Intent really looks like a bad idea. You and I are actually in the same position, only I believe in the book and you don’t. Otherwise things are exactly alike for us.”
I began to like the Reverend John Calvin Jenkins again. He began to feel like a friend. A friend who I had kidnapped and dragged on a mysterious journey into a world of horrors on the off chance that I could prevent my brother from fulfilling his purpose in life, which is a unique kind of friend that I don’t think anyone else could boast.
“Sorry I kidnapped you and forgot your gas mask.”
“Sorry your worthless brother’s the protagonist.”
A drop of water plopped against the Reverend’s head.
“I’m sorry it’s starting to rain and Suburbanites are attracted to the scent of gas.”
We laughed together for some reason as the rain began to come down and doors of nearby houses began to open. A ragged band of Suburbanites stepped outside to breathe in the gas and go about their baffling daily routines. A naked man with long grey hair beat a fat man with a guitar. The fat man was chewing on pieces of insulation. A girl in a raggedy cheerleader uniform was led out on a leash by a shirtless clown whose chest was covered in scars. A man dressed only in a catcher’s mask sodomized a priest. A bald man in a business suit swung a broadsword back and forth as two twin brothers gnawed on each other. A teenager in dirty khakis finished strangling a middle-aged woman in a skirt and tight sweater and stared at us hungrily. Their lives were nothing but a continuous cycle of eating, fucking, beating and wanting and they found nothing wrong with dragging intruders into it.
“Just do me a favor and shoot my ass,” said the Reverend, “I’m startin’ to see things.”
“I don’t know if I can, Reverend.” I probably couldn’t. Why couldn’t I have kept hating this man?
“It was the best of times it was the worst of times.”
He stood there staring into space as the group of Suburbanites descended on him. He did nothing as the guitar smacked him in the head and as the cheerleader reached under his robes, pulled out his penis and started gnawing it. I blasted her, then the clown. The businessman with the broadsword charged me screaming, “Have at it, knave!” and I did, shooting him in the chest. I blasted Suburbanites as the Reverend scribbled in the air, spending his time doing the one thing he had subconsciously always wanted to do. I shot him too along with every other Suburbanite I could. Some of them backed off, but the fat man was on him. I shot him, but knew I was only delaying the inevitable. Suburbanites fuck and eat their dead and there were enough of them in town that I’d run out of ammunition before I could stop them. Even as I spent the last of my shells, the last one left alive, the one in the Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and cum and mud stained khakis kept at me. I dropped the shotgun, picked up the Reverend’s pistol and began to head north as fast as my boots allowed me.
As two more doors burst open, I got a terrible feeling that I wasn’t going to make it. They fell on me. I shot them off, quick as I could, but they were yanking at my gas mask, and I couldn’t save it any more than I could have saved the Reverend. I ran and shot, ran and shot, but I couldn’t flee the gas and my dark, ecstatic dreams.
I was a stiff cardboard cock springing up from the ground, satisfied with life under a beautiful cardboard sun with a big smile on its face, a loving gentle master that Garrett Cook had never offered before. The nude, dark haired girl frolicked joyfully among the penises here, unhampered by clothing, ethics or responsibility. She licked me, kissed me and ran her tongue down my whole cardboard length. She smiled, put her hands on her lips in a “shhhh, don’t tell” gesture and sat down on me, taking my whole cardboard girth inside her. There was a warm, happy sun overhead and a warm pussy around me. I could no longer remember ever being a part of that stupid, godforsaken city that Garrett Cook had built to punish us. Almost. The unreality hit me fast. I felt this world’s negative potential all at once and on a chain of semicolons the happy sun
was yanked away and replaced by the scowling face of the moon.
I had never seen the face of Garrett Cook before, but I knew this had to be him. Nobody else had such dreadful power over my world; nobody else could make me suffer so much for so little reason. With the moon, the wolf appeared. It was Bernard in the wolf suit, slicing the naked girl to ribbons with very real and sharp claws, splattering her blood and insides all over the place. He laughed silently as he turned those claws on me, seeking to destroy my cardboard body.
Somewhere in there, I found myself. I thought of what I’d wanted from life, how I’d sought to get it and who I was. I thought about how this world offered me even less than the real one and the enchanted forest grew blurry. I found my body and reached into the backpack, actively denying the enchanted forest as I did so and took out the syringe of CRAMPS. I calmed myself, counted to one hundred in my head and reminded myself that Suburbanites were here, some of them willing to kill me if I hesitated or did anything other than run or shoot. Run and Shoot. Those were the two components of my reality, the two things anchoring me to the earth and keeping me out of the enchanted forest until the CRAMPS set in.
As soon as I had the presence of mind to think of anything but running and shooting, I pulled the pins on two grenades and tossed them back at the angry suburbs. I fought in my head to maintain the existential integrity of the hell I was fleeing and to destroy the devils that came out of it at the same time. This place had destroyed my friend who had sought nothing more than to understand life and to feel important in it. I left behind a graveyard of sweatshirts, business suits, sweaters, khakis, fetish wear and sporting equipment, the last traces of people that had no personhood. The further away from the suburbs I got, the further I got from the pull of the gas. I felt a sudden feeling of both purpose and aimlessness, the kind of freedom that would paralyze a man who did not know he was a fictional character that wasn’t even supposed to be part of this narrative. I walked off the edge of the story, no more city, Mall, suburbs or book.
IX
Nothing had felt as wrong to Bernard as the suburbs. It was too quiet here. He had gotten used to the hustle and bustle, the noise, the psyches calling out for him to experience them, the objects to comprehend. There might have been walls and chimneys and doors, yes, and behind those walls, couches and televisions, but the Objectivity did not want this, the closeness to the Suburbanites was too much. Bernard was forced once more to deal only in his own experiences. It was disgusting.
I am Bernard and I am Bernard yet again and I am Bernard. He could think of nothing but survival, nothing more than the future of being Bernard. At Archelon Ranch Bernard shall be happy though Bernard is not at all happy now. Archelon Ranch couldn’t be far, could it? If it was the future of being Bernard, then it was a torturous thing to deal with. Surely Archelon Ranch lay ahead as it was important to go west through the Mall out into the world, part of which had to be Archelon Ranch. He tried to feel nothing more than the call to Archelon Ranch, but he had other things to feel, things that were not at all pleasant.
He experienced the feeling someone gets to feel when they wonder why someone else had suffered. He had felt a multitude of sufferings, but not many that he could connect to himself and none as acutely connected to him as this one now. What exactly was it about Bernard that made somebody else willing to suffer for him? He could not think of anything in particular that he had ever done for anybody. The only thing that could have been considered beneficial was suffering through the tests that his father and Professor Sagramore had made him go through. He had been kind to science, but could think of nothing that he had done that was to the benefit of Chuck Callaway, especially nothing that would warrant Chuck dying for him. It was very unfair. Perhaps as unfair as Bernard’s father had been toward him. Pity. What of all the people he had trampled while in his tyrannosaurus rex body? Pity. So many dead and none of them had deserved it, none but his father and Professor Sagramore. Those two had made him suffer, so it stood to reason that they deserved a measure of suffering themselves.
The only place with no suffering had to be Archelon Ranch, where he could go and feel and think of nobody’s suffering and let the others who suffered make him suffer no more. Maybe the others suffered because he was made to survive mud injections, built to be special. Since he was that special, he was made to reach Archelon Ranch. He was special enough that others suffered so that he could reach a place where he suffered no longer. He considered this, and decided he would not have minded feeling the sufferings of others here since he knew they suffered for a reason.
But inside the houses around him, the souls and psyches did not move. The things in here suffered silently, walked in pain and brought it on others with no purpose beyond that they had nothing better to do. He shuddered knowing that were he not so special, the mud injections could have done this to him. Nearly mindless, nearly soulless, they had killed Bernard’s first friend, Chuck. He knew behind those walls they were moving and at any time they could come out and that they wanted nothing more than to make people hurt. He held the gun tight knowing he would need to fire it soon.
He walked past the houses, felt them inside and saw them looking out at him. What was keeping them? He got nervous, paranoid and extremely angry. He wanted them to come out so he could hurt them for indulging in nothing better than hurt. He thought that if they did not wish to come out and hurt him they might have thought that he was one of their own and this would not do. One of them waved at him. The one on the stage hadn’t snarled at him or made an effort to attack him either, but that had just been a show. Some of them might have been harmless. All of them could be harmless. He didn’t feel like trusting them. He was glad he hadn’t when suddenly the Objectivity refused something. I am not a Suburbanite.
Refreshing thought, but what was not a refreshing thought was the meaning of Bernard’s refusal and the catalyst of it. It was a teenager wearing a baseball jersey with no pants, his pale green manhood dangling out offensively. The jersey was covered in petrified mud and a few spots of something that definitely had to be blood. He fired the gun, shooting it in the eye and sending it flying. The feeling kept coming. I am not a Suburbanite. I am not a Suburbanite.
“Hello Jesus,” said a stark naked old lady who was missing her right nipple, “mama’s ready for you.”
He fired the gun again, one shot. His shots were always perfect. This wouldn’t be too difficult. An old man emerged from one of the houses. He pointed up at the heavens and bits of green meat came out of his mouth as he talked.
“Look up. When the poundcakes come down, it will be okay.” One shot again this time. Bam. Down. I am not a Suburbanite. I am not a Suburbanite. A burly man in a plumber’s uniform held up a dead cat on a string. There was blood on its anus and one of its eyeballs was pulp.
“Fix it! Fix it!” he screamed. One shot. Bam. Down. I am not a Suburbanite.
A tall, birdlike lady in a bloody wedding dress swung a katana in circles over her head.
“I have found it! The perfect turkey. Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble…” Bam. Down. I am not a Suburbanite.
A lovely, slender teenage girl dragged a radioflyer wagon full of heads behind her.
“I will trade you four for your moped. Four for just one. It’s a good deal.”
He aimed, squeezed the trigger. Click. Checked his pockets for ammo. Nothing. I am not a Suburbanite I am a Suburbanite I am not a Suburbanite. A well-muscled young man with skin that might once have been brown had a rotten chicken on his left hand which was he was using as a puppet. Behind him, a four hundred pound woman wearing only an apron brandished a pair of hedge clippers. Behind her a green tinged Harvester was lining up a golf club to take a swing at her skull. A one legged old man behind the Harvester was trying idly to jump rope. The young man with the chicken puppet grabbed Bernard with his free hand and lifted him up. His strength was amazing and he was able to toss Bernard onto the girl’s wagon. The girl jumped up and down
and applauded.
“Five?” she asked.
“You’re not going to take my son,” the strong young man answered, almost replying to what she was saying.
The gigantic woman with the hedge clippers plunged them into the once brown young man’s back. He wobbled, shifted, almost lost balance, but his well-muscled calves held up.
“You’re not going to take my son!”
“Five!”
“You’re not going to take my son!”
Recovering from the impact of being tossed, Bernard staggered to his feet. As he moved away from the wagon, the girl punched him hard in the back of the head and he grew dizzy falling back onto the wagon, where he decided to stay until he could somehow slip away.
“Five! Five for your moped!”
The once brown young man took a bite from the chicken and began to cry.
“Look what you made me do!”
The girl stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him. The fat lady reached for her hedge clippers. The Harvester brought down his golf club on her head. As they distracted each other, an injured Bernard took this chance to roll from the wagon and run west, hopefully to the edge of the suburbs and the mud and from there, hopefully to Archelon Ranch. It had to be at the edge of the suburbs. It had to be out there somewhere.
Doors opened. Suburbanites in pricy wooly sweaters, moth-eaten suits, or more often no clothes at all, walked outside, knowing that something that wasn’t them was out there and seeking, in their addled bundle of instincts, to make it one of them, to play with it until it died or to fuck it bloody and then eat it. He tried to become the houses, the doors, the windows, the couches, the televisions and begged the Objectivity to let him, but it refused. It didn’t want to know what it was to be them in spite of the pull in their direction. It would not comply whether it was a matter of survival or not.
He kept running, getting winded, getting weak, knowing that they were behind him and emerging from their fog of Id driven confusion into the realm of predatory impulses. He gave up trying to become anything, until he reached a place where he felt the Objectivity salivating, begging him, whimpering like a puppy or a child. It yanked hard, suddenly understanding an immense experience could be theirs, one so undeniably vast and nuanced that it had to know what it was like.
