Dead Nolte

by Borne Wilder

  Dead Nolte

  Borne Wilder

  DEAD NOLTE text © 2015 Borne Wilder

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Photograph 2012 Junior Libby

  ISBN-13: 978-1516828616

  ISBN-10: 1516828615

  Visit: www.bornewilder.com

  Contact:

  bornewildertales@gmail.com

  Also read:

  Plastic Jesus

  Somebody Stop Me!

  The Christian

  Touched in the Head

  Beauregard

  The Battle for East Louise

  Ron and his brother Charlie had been painted out of the family portrait by Nolte’s second attempt at family life; an arrangement that suited the brothers, just fine. Neither needed a constant reminder of whence they came nor wanted to deal with the embarrassment, such an intimate association to an asshole provided. “You’re Nolte’s kid, ain'tcha?” was always accompanied by the facial expression: 'There’s a pubic hair in my soup.' – Dead Nolte

  “Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer came down upon his head.”

  - Beatles

  “At one time in my life, when I was down and out, my dad gave me some money to get back on my feet. I’m going to do the same for you. Here’s five dollars.”

  – The Real Nolte

  “If you don’t use your head, it’s like having two assholes.”

  – Mr. Meadows (the old man who lived across the alley)

  “Jesus wept.”

  – John

  Reviews:

  “It's one of those books that make you wonder just what you may have gotten yourself into at the beginning and then by the end you wish there was still more to read because you don't want it to be over. The story is great, the characters, especially Nolte, are fantastic. This is easily one of my favorite books I've read this year.” – K.Linter

  “Dead Nolte is unlike anything I have read before. It is equally brilliant and mad.” – M. Naylor

  “This story was like a roller coaster of emotions I cried and laughed, I was terrified but exhilarated throughout. It was by far one of the “Stand-Out” books for me this year. I am highly recommending this one!” – L. Harrison

  “I found myself "casting the movie" so to speak with actors who popped to mind as the characters unfolded and became more and more real. I'll add a vote for Wilder being so lucky as to see his warped fantasy of a journey unfold on the big screen.” – M. Bear

  “It's funnier, it's stranger...and, well, It's Wilder than anything you've ever read. Highly recommended for those who are tired of the same old same old.” – T. Scott

  Dedicated to, The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost

  1

  Nolte’s death only lasted a fraction of a second. The exact moment of his death was replaced by the precise moment of his birth into darkness. The sensation that something had been taken away from him was overwhelming. He could no longer feel his body, his arms or his legs. He felt like a disembodied head floating in a thick darkness, however, there was more of him missing, something more substantial than arms or legs, he suddenly felt empty.

  The cowardly idiot, who lived in his head, was alive and well, he was always there. The little coward couldn’t be killed off; Nolte had tried many times over the years. Though he didn’t like to admit it, that part of him was more Nolte, than Nolte was Nolte, but the quiet fellow, the suppressed fellow, the one Nolte, always and without question, ignored to the utmost of his concentrative ability, the still voice that had, for so many years, resided unfriended in his cold heart was suddenly gone. He had packed his bags and left.

  Nolte had never given the quiet guy much thought before, nor had he realized how large a role the character had actually played in his miserable existence, but it was clear as crystal, a large part of Nolte was now gone.

  Except for the fraidy-cat and his shadow, Nolte’s version of the reaper, which seemed to be ushering him along, toward Lord knows what, there was nothing. In fact, there was so much nothing that it manifested in a physical presence and actually seemed to be sucking at what little there was left of him.

  Although he couldn’t see it, he was sure the foul shit cloud behind him was smiling, completely un-phased by the sucking, or Nolte’s missing parts, it had gotten what it came for. Nolte was dead, and the foul thing had collected its prize.

  ‘So far, so good, I’m finally dead,’ was what he tried to tell himself, however, the sensation of travel unnerved him, travel had never been mentioned. The possibility that the witch might have lied, gnawed at him. More than that, it scared him.

  In his former life, Nolte had trusted no one and it had served him well, but concerning the witch, he’d had no choice. Desperation breeds trust. What she had promised him was going to happen or it wasn’t, he knew he was going to die no matter what, that was a given, so he really had nothing to lose and if the witch turned out to be on the up and up, great. If not, Nolte would be forced to sleep in the bed he’d made. One thing was certain, the witch could do amazing things, he’d seen it with his own eyes. Still, he hated to have faith in anyone, and the coward in his head felt the same way, for no reason other than the little guy’s goal was to stay alive at all costs and faith was an unknown variable.

  Other than pressure from the shadow’s pushing, Nolte couldn’t see or feel any movement, but the impression that he was covering a distance was undeniable. There was no wind rushing by, or anything that even hinted at motion, but he sensed they were going further and faster away from where he wanted to be and closer to something dark and ugly.

  The physical stillness began to stink, it reeked sweet and rotting, like the air over stagnant water. The kind of smell that left a coating on one’s tongue. It’s what dead things smelt like.

  In the darkness, without landmarks, it couldn’t be measured how far they had gone, but Nolte had the feeling it was a good distance, too far for him to find his way back on his own. The dread that he had been had, scammed, taken to the cleaners, came over what was left of him; he was never made aware that travel was going to be involved in the ordeal, he repeated the thought in his head. His understanding had been, after his death, he would wait in another dimension until he heard the all clear, traveling had not been mentioned. The further they went, the more he felt as though he’d been taken. The stink grew and with it Nolte’s paranoia, finally, the feeling he had been hornswoggled increased to a fever pitch and blended with panic, his plan had failed; the cocksucker witch had cheated him! Nolte couldn’t hear himself, but he knew he had joined the little coward, and he too, was screaming. No one had mentioned travel, not once.

  The sensation of movement slowed, and the darkness took on an even thicker, more ominous feel, perhaps an ominous taste, Nolte’s senses were discombobulated and it was hard to keep them straight, whichever it was, feel or taste or smell, it was menacing. If it was at all possible for silence to have a quieter cousin, this place was it, not even the ringing that fills your ears when everything suddenly goes quiet, even the little coward sounded distant and muffled. “I fucked up,” Nolte told himself. There was a time when Nolte took comfort in such a silence.

  As a boy, as soon as the first eighty-degree day of summer vacation arrived, and pretty much every day after, Nolte could be found clinging to the side of the municipal swimming pool. For hours, he would tread water with two legs and one arm, keeping a firm grip on the lip of the leaf and bug catcher that ran the circumference of the pool.

  He stationed himself at the point where the six foot ended and the deep end began, and the only thing that kept unskilled swimmers from a watery grave, were bobbing, multicolored buoys on a rope. It was there young Nolte watched. There he laid in wait, butterflies churning in his tummy.

  Sooner or later,
the older girls would crisp from their tanning, and one after another, in a fashion similar to the way women use the restroom, they would join each other at the diving board and like lemmings, they would leap into Nolte’s abyss. Single file, they would walk the plank, as he liked to call it, into the perilous deep end. No fancy dives, they would just drop awkwardly off the end of the board. They played right into his hand.

  Though it was a game that required great patience and perseverance and also, personal sacrifice (Nolte’s skin had a tendency to prune), the potential for reward was tremendous. Equipped with goggles and an extraordinary ability to hold his breath for semi-long periods of time, with impeccable timing, he would plunge beneath the surface and wait for the inevitable. By inherent flaws in its design, the bikini could not withstand even the most simplistic of leaps from a diving board. Most of the time it was the top that went askew, allowing him to glimpse the forbidden fruit, the naked nipple, gloriously exposed with nothing more separating it from him, than a few feet of transparent liquid.

  The clarity the goggles afforded him under water, felt like a secret superpower. The hussies of Mommy’s warnings were, more or less, ignorant of Nolte’s uncanny ability, because each took their sweet time tucking their gems back into the confines of their brightly colored swimming suits. Sometimes, the gods showed favor on young Nolte, and bottoms would be torn away by the awesome natural power contained in the treacherous waters of the deep end, rewarding him with a glimpse of hair! The rare hair sightings were usually followed by several large gulps of chlorinated water, and a lung flaying bout of coughing, but as Nolte would learn, as with all things in life, you have to pay to play.

  Over the years, Nolte had suffered many near drowning’s, all stemming from genitalia exposure. By the time he was sixteen he was pretty sure there had been enough pool water pass through his lungs to get his name in the Guinness Book of World Records, and quite possibly an honorable mention for hair sightings, but the thing he had grown to love most about what the lifeguards began to call “his creepy goggle activities”, was the comfort and protection offered by the water.

  The thick, pressing isolation the water wrapped him in was profoundly soothing to Nolte. Some might assume it was resurfacing memories of the primal infant, a yearning at the cellular level, for the good old days, when we were all safely encased in fluid, or perhaps, something more sexual, something related to the Freudian womb and the proximity of the vagina, but oddly enough, when Nolte was under water, the umbilical that connected him to Mommy became limp and impotent and though his watery armor was only an illusion, it felt like true freedom. He felt as if he were cocooned, imprisoned in freedom.

  There was nothing at all comforting in the pressing isolation Nolte felt in the darkness of his death. The primal infant, that seemed so content in the warm water of the municipal swimming pool, found no comfort in the oppressive stink Nolte had been plunged into and it too started screaming along with the little coward. Nolte had begun to realize that the stillness in the true abyss was also an illusion created by the density of the stink that surrounded him.

  The nothingness had given way to pressure. He imagined the atmosphere inside a clown car packed tight with sweaty clowns, although physical movement is limited, there is still a shit ton of activity within, if you consider all the hearts and lungs, and the blood and air that’s moving around. Soon he realized that the darkness he had been engulfed in was far from empty, he was surrounded by chaos so thick and so pure that even light couldn’t escape it. The stillness he felt, was chaos in perfect balance.

  Nolte felt a sharp push against the back of his head, the kind of a shove that would normally have him spinning on his heels, ready to dish out an ass-whuppin’ to some drunken transgressor, but the shadow wouldn’t let him turn around, or even budge to one side or the other, for that matter, Nolte was at its mercy. Another extremely rude shove and his face was pressed into layers of invisible webbing, that stretched and clung to his cheeks. Each layer would tighten against his face, then slowly and softly tear open, allowing his bodiless head to pass through, a short pause in the thick gloom and he was pressed into another, each increasing in thickness and elasticity.

  After the third layer, he could see the darkness lifting; a soft murmuring rose and fell in sporadic swells. Once through the fourth layer, the light increased enough for Nolte to make out the fifth one before his face touched it. He could see the webbing was actually woven smoke. With his returning vision, his other senses began to sort themselves. After he broke through the sixth, it was just bright enough to see that the seventh was alive and teeming with movement, like germs cramped onto the slide of a microscope. Strands of woven smoke, clung to his face like cobwebs and reeked of burnt hair. As he was pushed nearer the next smoke web, the clarity of the murmur increased to include the lips smacking, sinus grunts and the slurping of tongues.

  The shadow pushed him again, the next membrane was actually a wall of faces, or rather the shapes of faces, all straining against the thin, black barrier. Wisps and fingers of the smoke curled away from the fabric where it was stretched the tightest. No hands, or arms, or legs, just faces, all gaping and gawping, all apparently, trying to get a taste of the new arrival. Masonry faces, all pressed and fitted tightly together, like living bricks, chomping, and gawping, and gaping, with no wasted space between them.

  To the left and to the right, the wall stretched out and disappeared into the gloom, although he couldn’t see how far, due to the rude manner in which his head was being held, Nolte got the feeling that it was a long way. Neither the top nor the base could be seen for the same reason, but from what he could see, he figured the number of heads it took to build the structure had to be astronomical. The primal infant, the coward in Nolte’s head and Nolte all screamed in unison when they realized they were about to become a brick.

  A loud gong sounded in the distance, when his face came in contact with the wall, the sound wasn’t loud, but had a quality which gave the impression that it was tremendous in size. If there had been an echo, the gloom had swallowed it. When chaos was in perfect balance, it seemed that sound suffered the same fate as light.

  The faces nearest Nolte, either alerted by the gong or sensing his presence, suddenly directed their chomping and gaping directly at him. They sucked and gnawed greedily at his cheeks, large globs of saliva painted his head. Long trowel shaped tongues applied the spit mortar that would soon secure him in place.

  Further and deeper, he was shoved into the wall. Some of the heads vibrated fiercely with mechanical speed, some twitched and jerked like the nerves in a dying animal, some shivered in intermittent bursts, all of them bit, licked and sucked at Nolte from every angle, adding to the foulness that already drenched him.

  From almost the moment of his death, the little coward’s screaming had been more or less continuous, but for the first time, he spoke out loud. “What have you done to us, Nolte?”

  The smell of sweet stagnant water had been replaced with the horrific odor of rotting flesh, stale saliva and eye bleaching levels of ammonia. His sense of smell had definitely untangled itself from his other senses. The little coward screamed again and Nolte joined him, this time, he heard himself with his ears, it was loud and hollow and pitiful. This had to stop. This was too much, too soon.

  No one had prepared him for this. Was he just going to be left here to fend for himself amongst gawping faces? His eyes and nose burned from the stench. Glass shattering wails, mere inches away, pounded his eardrums. Cold tongues lapped at him. Rotten teeth bit at his cheeks and lips. He was defenseless.

  The claustrophobic crushing on all sides grew more intense, as he was pushed further into the wall. Suddenly all movement and sound stopped among the heads and without warning, every deviate thought, misdeed, and atrocity that Nolte had ever formed or performed was instantly shared with every slobbering head in the wall’s construction. There was an actual physicality connected to the thought exchange, as it rushed from one head to a
nother. Though muffled by the surrounding heads, he heard another bell ring out and a huge vibration swept through the wall of faces, they all roared in unison and returned to their gawping. All his dirty little secrets were somehow available to all these screaming strangers, to be picked and perused at their leisure. He could feel them judging each one as they were sorted and distributed among them. His dirty laundry had just been aired before millions, perhaps billions. Mommy would not have liked it one bit. His mind was being raped. Mommy had always been big on discretion, and Nolte was fucking that up, he was spilling the beans.

  The Reaper seemed to not fully understand, nor care about Nolte’s predicament, the thing continued in its role of the diabolical stone mason, steadily pushing on the back of his head, guiding him. Couldn’t the shadow tell he wasn’t ready for this? “Please, I don’t belong here!” Nolte tried to inject heartfelt pleas into his screams of horror and protest. The shadow only worked harder at getting Nolte deeper into the slobbering, snapping mass.

  In between the tightly stacked faces, a hissing fissure of light blinked and then formed. The hissing quickly grew into tormented screams, as the fissure widened. Nolte breached the last layer of faces and was suddenly drowned in a horrible cacophony of sound, yellow light and unimaginable stench. It was at this moment Nolte realized, he had never really experienced fear before. His screaming was now in the company of the screams of others, millions of millions of others.

  An enormous cathedral constructed entirely of anguished faces, all snapping, sucking and screaming at each other, stretched out for as far as he could see. No discernable language could be heard, just the screaming of millions of mouths in an unholy chorus of pain and sorrow.