d3.wps

by phuc

  And, of course, for me, there was Reba.

  She was pretty and smart and we didn't seem to age.

  How would that work for children? The children in the drive-in hadn't aged a lot.

  They grew, but, come to think of it, none of them ever made adulthood.

  Then again, how long had we been here?

  The oldest the kids had been was three or four, and most of them died. Or got eaten.

  And there were the weird creatures. The results of the Popcorn King's poisoned sperm.

  They had grown very fast, to a kind of retarded adulthood on one level, and on another, to an advanced childhood where they could move things with their minds.

  And there was the drive-in mist. When we were close to the sea, it would come out of nowhere, floating along the black water. But it never came to shore.

  Never. It was a sea-going thing, or so it seemed. And Grace had a theory about what it was.

  It was similar to my own idea. Television ghosting. If this was a movie world with different stories going all at once, perhaps our past and our present were colliding; different channels and episodes running together; movies mixing and misting, and falling apart. It was a disturbing thought.

  My mind rambled like that, going from this to that, as Reba and I lay in the boughs, she cradled in the crook of my arm, my eyes on the sky.

  And I thought: What a pretty thought. To stay here. To have children. To live naked and free and full of piss and vinegar to the end of our days.

  Lots of lying about in the sun. Lots of fucking.

  Lots of doing nothing and needing only something to eat and drink.

  Life was really simple if you let it be.

  But life was never simple here. You could never let down your guard. My arm had gone to sleep and I wanted to move it, but hated to for fear of waking Reba and disturbing the wonderful fact that I had a fine looking woman on my arm. For she had recovered fast.

  The puffiness was gone. Her hair had lightened. Her body was lean, but not starved, and her skin had developed a glow. She also wasn't wearing much in the way of clothes.

  Always a plus.

  Yet, even with that wonderful thought to consider, we were still here.

  On the Drive-in world. And this was a world where Chicken Little would be right.

  The sky was falling.

  5

  On the morning after my night contemplating, thinking maybe this place was a good as it got, and that was good enough, I awoke and climbed to the top of our tree and saw an amazing and disturbing sight.

  First off, the world was blood-colored; the sun had sunk halfway into the sea and great clouds of steam were rising up from it.

  The water was drying up, running away from the shore. Fish were leaping about as they were boiled alive. All of this I could see, and when I told the others, we made the decision to hasten our pace, to see if we could reach the great bridge to the sky.

  Steve said, "I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice to go back there and get some of those boiled fish."

  "And I was thinking," Grace said, "the time we spent doing that might be a bad idea. We too could soon be boiled. And if the sun goes completely down into the sea, will it rise again? Will there be only night? Will the moon come out? Will it fall too? Will the stars drop off? Time, however it works here, is not on our side."

  So we went along swift in the blood-red light, and in time that light turned stranger yet as night fell. The sun didn't want to go away, so there was a red stain across the night sky.

  The moon shone silver, and full, and the stars were dots of fire, and if you looked real close, there seemed to be creases in the night, as if dark velvet cloth that had been stretched was no longer taut, but was in fact drooping.

  We ate the dried dog urine fruit, and kept pushing, and just as the moon dipped away, and the day came on bloody-dark, we began to smell the odor of death. It was a stiff odor that shoved at us, but we ignored it. We could see the bridge clearly above the trees, and we pushed on in that direction, the stench growing strong enough to cut and make bricks.

  It got so stout, that each of us took turns puking, but we kept on keeping on. In time, though the smell never went away, our nostrils and our stomachs accepted it.

  By the time night had come, and we had slept, and risen again before the moon fell down, we came up on the source of the odor. The tropical forest had disappeared, and there was just a bleak stretch of ground, and a great mile-high (I'm guessing here as to the height) pile of something we couldn't identify. We stood there looking at it, and as we did, slowly, the moon fell off and the dying sunlight was all we had, giving us a rusty glow and a view of the clearing and the pile in the middle of it.

  "My God," Steve said.

  "If God had anything to do with this," Grace said, "then he's just as big an asshole as I've always thought."

  I had to agree.

  It was a great black pile, and the pile buzzed and flexed and moved.

  6

  When we came closer, an immense cloud of crows rose up against the red sky with a caw and a savage beating of wings, and with them rose a swarm of humming flies.

  The bloody sunlight, formerly shiny on the dark wings of the birds and the bright green and black bodies of the flies, now shone on a pile of human shapes. Some of the shapes were of wood, some of metal, some of plastic. There were crudely whittled soldiers with tall hats and chin bands, painted up red and black with big blue eyes and Groucho Marx mustaches. There were less crudely molded metal soldiers with turnkeys at their backs.

  There were women, too, and unlike the male soldiers with painted-on clothes, they were roughly shaped with blonde and red hair and big bow mouths and wide blue eyes, pink knobs for nipples and quick swipes of black paint for pubic hair. Some of them, like the soldiers, were made of metal and were slightly better formed with windup keys at their backs. Their flesh tones varied: there was white, black, and yellow, and even green; there were all manner of shapes and sizes. Amongst these human-sized, crudely-whittled, and sophisticated windup toys, were what looked like mannequins with perfect-painted features and real hair on their heads, male and female. And on these were truer anatomical features; missiles for the men, grooves for the ladies, patches of what looked like real pubic hair.

  Twisted in amongst them were long green tentacles and bulbous heads and huge pop-eyes. Rubbery looking aliens and some that looked to be made of flesh; flesh going gray and dripping with slime. I had dreamed of such beasts from time to time. Up there in the sky somewhere, twisting dials, moving cameras, proceeding along dolly-runs. Making movies, with us as their reality show. And here they lay.

  Further up the pile were what appeared to be real human bodies, rotting, arms dripping off like melting plastic, legs falling free of the bone, heads twisted, coming loose, the eyes plucked out. At first I thought some of the bodies were moving, but soon realized it was the maggots squirming amidst the real corpses and the termites chewing about in the wooden figures, the crows flapping about, giving the glancing illusion of the human shapes making movement on their own.

  "My God," Reba said. "What place is this?"

  No one had an answer.

  Beyond this pile was one great beam of the bridge. And it was very wide. We couldn't see the edges of it. All we could see was the gold and silver metal that made up the bridge, and those huge black cables, twisted thick and numerous as armpit hairs on a French lady.

  Way up, dead center of the pile, was a dark hole in the sky, like someone had burned the tip of a cigarette through red construction paper; a hole like the one that had pulsed and shat its refuse above the drive-in.

  "It reminds me of some white trash fucker's yard," Reba said. "Throwing shit out the window. You know, food and cans and such. But here we got a waste disposal of giant toys and dead bodies. Still, the attitude, it's the same."

  Grace moved over close to the pile. She said, "Look at this."

  We eased next to her. The stench was so strong
I wasn't sure I was going to be able to stand in front of the pile another second. My stomach did a flip-flop, gathered itself, and the feeling of nausea and light-headedness passed.

  Grace reached out, took hold of a rancid, blackened arm, said, "This one has been here a while. Look at it. Look close."

  The arm had rotted and the crows had been at it, and though the arm was clearly meaty, inside it I could see a flexi-metal rod that served for bone, and twisted around this "bone"

  were wires, red, blue, white and yellow.

  "Part human," Grace said. "Part machine."

  "Holy shit," Steve said.

  "Question now," Grace said, "is do we still want to go up there?"

  She pointed up at the wall of metal, the jungle of wires.

  "I don't know what else to do," Reba said. "The world is caving in on itself. Whoever runs this crazed-ass shithole must be up there. I think it's time to confront him. Beard God in his own goddamn cheap-ass naugahyde, cheetah skin decorated den, and kick his ass."

  "Hear, hear," Steve said, and stuck out a hand.

  We piled our hands on top of his.

  "Up, up, and away," Grace said.

  "By the way," I asked, "how do you know if there's a God he s got naugahyde shit up there?"

  "It fits his toss out the window white trash image," Reba said.

  "Ah," I said.

  PART 5

  Complexities are contemplated. A bridge is climbed. Toy soldiers get funky. Experiences with rubber, wood, and flesh. Aliens are found. Bad things happen to good people. The world is folded and our remaining heroes travel through a glass darkly.

  1

  Let me tell you how we did it, took that climb.

  We decided, as we always knew we would, to go up that great beam, which was slanted slightly and had those multitudes of cables to cling to. From a distance those twists of wires had looked like one big dark cable on either beam of the bridge. Now, I could see it was not a bridge at all, but what it was, I was uncertain. The metal beam and its skin of tangled wires ascended into the red sky, disappearing, not into the waste hole, but advancing to the top to be wrapped in clouds like a precious possession in fluffy balls of cotton.

  It was not a short trip, dear hearts.

  It might not have been Everest, but it wasn't a hill back home either. It was WAY

  THE FUCK up there.

  So, we took the dried fruit from my pack, laid it out, determined it was not enough.

  We went about picking more fruit and drying it. It was a scary decision. Every moment we wasted, meant the sky could fall, doing us in. But, if we were to take the climb unprepared, and if it was as high up and difficult to travel as we suspected, then we could die of thirst and starvation. Not to mention we might fall off and smash our asses.

  Maybe that's where the bodies and shapes of humans had come from. They had fallen, not been pushed.

  But, shit, man. Did those wooden critters walk?

  Or were they just prototypes?

  And how were those great potato chips made so thin and vacuum packed in a can without crushing all of them.

  I wish I were home with a can of them, sitting in front of the television set watching a rerun of THE LONE RANGER. Guns snapping, bad guys falling. But no blood, man.

  No blood. No real terror.

  Of course, when we got to the top, we could find ourselves in worse shape. But again, it was that goal business, dear hearts.

  The goal.

  The reason to strive.

  It's what made us want to climb, and it beat standing around with our thumbs up our asses, waiting for the world to fall apart and the sun to blow down on our heads and cook us.

  Steve found some gourds and we labored at hollowing those out by twisting off the narrow, blackened, umbilical cord tops and working a sharp stick down into them. We wormed the stick about until we liquified the gourd's guts, then we poured the goo out. There were numerous pools of water about, and we dipped the gourds in those and rinsed them, filled them with sand and let them dry while the fruit dried.

  We even went back to the beach and found some of the boiled fish. We ate some, and found that they were pretty good, considering we had been living off dog urine fruit, which made for a very real and very regular bowel movement, dear hearts. I figured, way we had been eating and shitting, the woods were full of scat.

  We cut the boiled fish open with scoops made of sharp sticks, wrapped them in leaves and stuffed them in my pack. We made spears by twisting off limbs in such a way that a sharp piece was left on the end. It wasn't a great weapon, but it was all we had.

  On the day when fruit and gourds were dry, we packed my pack full of the withered dog urine produce, filled the gourds with water, corked them with pieces of wood, made slings of vines to carry the gourds, made similar straps with vines so we could fasten them to and carry our spears on our backs, then we started out.

  Our plan was to take turns with the pack. We all carried our own water gourds and spears. As for the pack, I carried it first. We took a hike around the pile of busted toys and rotting bodies, made our way to the shiny beam that rose up to heaven.

  And with the red-stained sky dripping down frighteningly low, we did the pile on hands thing again, made with a little one for all grunt, and started up.

  It went well enough at first. The wires were thick and they gave you something to cling to. The beam slanted enough you weren't just hanging out in space, but it didn't slant enough for you to be comfortable. It didn't take long before I was tired. I thought it was just because it was my turn to tote the pack, but when Grace took it over, I found I was even worse off, as if the weight of all that food had given me what strength I had.

  Finally we came to a great bolt in the beam, and the wires were nestled about it in a wad. We found we could crawl up in that wad, and the wires were bundled tight enough, very little light got in. We crawled in there and pressed up together, mostly in a sitting position, opened the pack, ate and drank sparingly, then rested.

  Resting turned out to be a full bore doze.

  When I awoke, stars were in the sky, and I watched two of them drip off and fall. I could see way out there, dear hearts, and I watched as the stars hit the sea and the water rose up big time, came crashing down on the island, washing trees away like matchsticks with a garden hose.

  The drive-in mist, which was cruising the water below, was hit by the waves and disrupted. It curled and coiled and broke apart.

  Reba, who I didn't know was awake, said, "We left just in time."

  "It's not going to wash the whole thing," I said, "not this time. But what if the moon falls?"

  "It's all over," she said. "Davy Jones' Locker, baby."

  The moon was out and it was bright, but that old lunar wad nodded from time to time, as if it might doze off and drop into the waters below. We watched for awhile, until the drive-in ghost had regrouped and began to float over the waters, then we decided to wake the others, keep climbing, making time while the moon was up and its light was high.

  As we climbed, Grace and Steve in the lead, Reba (carrying the pack now) and I lagging slightly behind, Reba said, "What do you think about all those bodies down there, the toy soldiers, the mannequins and such?"

  "I don't know. I'm having some thoughts, but they aren't altogether formed, and what thoughts I'm thinking I can't express, but, baby, somewhere back to the rear of the old bean, I'm not liking what I'm thinking at all."

  "Want to share?"

  "I meant what I said. I don't know how to explain it. It's more a feeling than an expression. But it comes to me, you'll be the first to know."

  "I think I do know what you mean. Something is nagging me, too. And it feels uncomfortable. Like a pretty bad thought is trying to burrow out, and I won't let it."

  "I hear you." I said.

  Many days and nights passed, and sometimes there was no place for us to really rest, so we had to keep on climbing. And sometimes, when we found a bolt, where the wires were a
lways clustered, we decided to stay for a day or two, if anyone could in any way decide on what a day was.

  In time, more stars fell, and the water rose up way high, and soon there was no land or trees below us. Oh, for a few days it was there, in patches, and the water would roll back and show us at least the tops of trees, and now and again a patch of mud, but eventually that went away too. And then one night the thing we had feared happened.

  The moon came up and went down fast and furious. Striking the sea so hard it sounded like an atomic bomb had gone off. The great beam vibrated and the metal sang with a sound like a scream from a robot's lungs.

  The ocean yawned and the water went all about, then it gathered itself together with what sounded like a moan and rushed forward. All the waters of this drive-in earth appeared to have loosened their bounds, and they had gathered together in one great wet flood; it thundered below us with a gush, and it began to rise, like a plugged toilet, and in a time so short as to be somewhere between our taking a deep breath and cutting a fart of fear, the water charged up and around the beam, rose nearly to our feet.

  Well. Okay. That's an exaggeration. But it rose up as high as we had been two drive-in days before. Had we decided to hang out a little longer down there, we would have bathed the big bath, baby.

  The flood brought with it a bullet-hard rain and a cloud of mist, and the mist collected itself and became the drive-in ghost. We looked down on it, and I saw within it the island and us on the island, and then I saw us and the pile of corpses, false and real, and I quit watching then. Feared it might show me our future. And, frankly, I didn't want to know.

  2

  All these wires," Steve said, "I think they run the drive-in world. They travel along these great beams, and the interconnecting parts that look like ladder rungs. They run through those. They go from the sky to the ground. They're worked into this world's fabric. They give it light. They make the sun, the moon and stars, night and day work. Or did. They're starting to go bad. Shorting out maybe. No maintenance. The whole goddamn thing is breaking up. I don't know, maybe it's on purpose. But down there, it's all over. I'm sure of it. From sea to shining sea, from one end of the jungle to the other, all the way down that single stretch of highway, the drive-in at either end. It's done, companions. Done."