The Pisstown Chaos

by David Ohle

  When she got to the pen, the stinkers were continuing to walk in circles, policing the perimeter of the pen. "You stinkers," she called, stepping into the pen. "Do you have names?"

  All three stopped walking at once, but continued looking downward. One of them said, "Spanish Johnny." Another mumbled, "Percy Chips." The third, whose shoes were on the wrong feet, grumbled, "They call me Side Porch."

  "'Cause they found him under somebody's side porch half-buried under trash and dirt," Spanish Johnny offered.

  Percy Chips said, "Me, I started getting stiff when I was playing a lot of poker in a Pisstown slum. Got stiffer and stiffer and deader and deader. Now look at me."

  Spanish Johnny told of coming north to pick persimmons, then being shifted to a donor farm, where he succumbed in a desperate state of mind. "They found me in an old wooden water tower. Stunk up the whole town's water most of a year. People went around in clothes that smelled like they'd been washed in a sewer ditch."

  "Well, then," she told them, "My name is Mildred Balls. Let's get you washed, one at a time. Take off your clothes, please."

  In unison, all three kicked off their shoes, peeled off socks, loosened belts and lowered trousers. Spanish Johnny gasped, but did not cry out in pain when a strip of hide that was stuck to his underpants came off, exposing a swath of moist, red muscle tissue. Another accident occurred when Side Porch removed the snap-brim cap he was wearing and took a divot of scalp with it. And when Percy Chips's trousers fell, it was apparent that his entire sexual apparatus had been excised and the incision left to heal without benefit of stitching. It was an ugly, suppurating wound.

  "Yeah, go ahead and gawk," he said.

  The others pointed to similar evidence of excisions on themselves. "They took our manhood away is what they did," Side Porch said. "Worse, we're not dead enough to burn yet."

  "I got maybe a pound of liver left," Chips said. "I lost my stomach, thyroid, one eye, all my toenails and half my brain."

  Side Porch and Spanish Johnny had donated kidneys, spleens, lungs and teeth, they said.

  "I'm sorry about all that, fellows, but my job is to wash you on a regular basis. Now, all of you kneel down on all fours and let me get you wet." When the stinkers complied, without objection or hesitation, Mildred sloshed water over their frail, withered backs and began soaping them up, being very careful not to puncture or tear their paper-thin skin. When the washing was done, the stinkers stood in a close circle and let her rub them with scented oil.

  Side Porch said, "You got the parasite, Mildred? Is that why they put you way out here?"

  "Yes."

  "That's bad," Chips said. "By the time they're through, you'll be a bag of bones."

  "Hell, I had them bad when I was third-stage," Side Porch said. "Got to where they were coming out in my hanky when I blew my nose. I could feel them moving around in my head. I'd shit a bucket full every morning. Then they went away when I got to be fourth-stage."

  Spanish Johnny admitted to becoming infested when he was in the Reverend's Guard during the occupation of Pisstown. "When the Chaos ended, a first-stage female came up and gave me a kiss. That's how I got the parasite. I tried every remedy that rumor delivered to me, including moxibustion and urpmilk enemas, but it just got worse."

  Mildred told them she had high hopes of finding a way to cure herself.

  When the stinkers put their clothes back on and returned to walking in circles and searching the ground, Mildred could no longer keep her curiosity at bay. "Are you fellows looking for something?"

  "No, Miss," Spanish Johnny said, "We like to get dizzy and faint. It's the way we have fun."

  "Good day, then."

  "There's a full moon coming tonight," Percy Chips said. "We go crazy sometimes when that happens."

  "But don't you worry, Miss," Spanish Johnny said. "There's no way any of us could get up those stairs. We're way too stiff in the joints."

  Side Porch took a few rigid, awkward steps. "See, most of mine are fused. It's a damn good thing I don't feel much pain, or this would be pure agony."

  "I won't worry, then," Mildred said, closing the gate.

  "This day'll never dawn again," Chips said.

  Side Porch spun around like a top, but slowly. "We'll see what tomorrow brings." He fell to the ground then. Chips and Johnny picked him up.

  "He's all right," Johnny said.

  "Be very careful when you fall," Mildred warned as she closed the gate. "There are hungry imps in the area. This fence won't keep them out."

  When the moon was up and the haze had lifted, Mildred watched the stinkers from her window. They circled the pen dozens of times before Percy Chips crumbled in a dead faint. Moments later, she heard the squealing of wild imps and watched in disgust as two of them burrowed under the fence wire and tore away most of one buttock and part of Chips's face before Side Porch was able to chase them off. "I'm okay," Chips said. "I don't feel anything. I don't see any blood."

  Mildred's attention was suddenly drawn to a feeling of pressure, an itch, and a subtle throbbing in her heel. When she sat on the side of her cot and removed the boot, a flattened brown spider tumbled out. When her knee sock came off, she saw a foot that was puffy and enflamed. A conspicuous target-like bite mark lay on that part just beneath her long second toe, and rings of disturbed flesh spread outward from the site. The dead spider was a dark, long-legged one, and there was the unmistakable marking of a fiddle on its back.

  Dear Roe and Ophelia,

  I am in quite a fix. A poisonous spider has bitten me and my foot is swollen all the way to the ankle. Walking on it is too painful to bear and I don't have anything to make into a suitable crutch. Where am I going to find a physician to cut out all the necrotic flesh that comes with these bites? Here I am, three stinkers to take care of, and I can't walk. Another day or two and their odor will begin to sicken me further. I don't think I've ever been in such a pickle before. This will have to be cut short as I'm growing weak and my fingers are too numb to write. How I long to be home again.

  Your Ailing Grandmother

  PM.

  Nowadays, you aren't necessarily sent to Permanganate Island Prison because you ve violated any law. Anyone could be ordered there as a side effect of the shifting process. Because of the complex stochastic methods used in calculating the shifts, some unfortunates have to be "side-shifted, " most often to an out-of-the-way or isolated place like a prison island or watch tower. In urban areas it could be a warehouse, a derelict theater, or an abandoned building.

  In a show of sympathy the Reverend spent an hour with a sick stinker yesterday. She had vomited everything for a month except piquant foods. She told him her physician had prescribed aqua chloroformant, spirits of menthol, willywhack and urpmeal Yet she had not gotten better. For eight years before this, she had suffered with arthritis deformans. Her hands were nothing but clubs. I was once very pretty "she said. I was admired by the whole bailiwick for my beautiful hair. "

  When the meeting was over, the Reverend said that her complains had led him to reconsider drugless healing. "Since the beginning of homeopathy followed by chiropody osteopathy and chiropractic, drugless healing has taken tremendous steps forward " he said to reporters. "When one realizes there are other ways of healing, they will not be slow in forsaking the nauseating draughts medicine ofers. "

  A fondness for pickled lips has led to the arrest of a Kootie Fiyo, a stinker known to be a trader in tooth gold and a vicious biter. Fiyo was just leaving the impeteria in South Pisstown when two Guards entered. The proprietor said, "That stink can eat more imp lips than I can heap in front of him. "

  The Guards remembered receiving a report from Bum Bay that a stinker of Fiyo's description was wanted there on an infectious biting charge, and that the suspects most conspicuous affection was for pickled lips.

  Fiyo was arrested after a scuffle, during which one of the Guards was bitten on his face, neck and hand and is now under observation at Pisstown's Pasteur Clinic. The othe
r Guard escaped with minor bruises and abrasions. Fiyo was rushed through the judication process at the Templex and just as quickly sent to a dentist to have all his teeth extracted. Should the bitten Guard die, Fiyo will probably hang.

  Lovesick stinkers have set up a spooning area in the alleyway between the Radiola and the Gons Hotel. Flocks of them are a nightly disturbance to the hotel's guests. There are always two or three couples under every windows spooning away and their shrieks awaken the guests.

  The Reverend told the City Moon, "I can't say that I am opposed to stinkers coupling publicly if they so desire, but they have no right doing it in the proximity of a hotel, " and promised to use his influence to keep the unwanted lovemakers at bay.

  Reverend Hooker tells of the time his body became the dwelling place of an outsize parasite. Physicians were consulted and by various methods they tried without success to kill the large parasite. It was hoped the monster would come out of its own accord, via some natural passage such as the mouth or anus. Once when Hooker ate urpflanz hones it crawled into his mouth and parted his lips with its head. It was without eyes and its color was green.

  One of the Reverend's assistants grasped the head and part of the body and attempted to pull it out altogether, but the slimy thing slipped through her hands and down the Reverend's throat as though it had been greased. Often thereafter, Hooker ate honey in hopes of the parasite again making its appearance, but it never came up farther than his gullet.

  A year ago, while in bed, he was awakened in his sleep by something crawling across his chest. He screamed and the parasite quickly drew itself back down his throat. Late Saturday he was seized with a choke, which continued periodically during the night, and early Sunday morning the parasite slithered out of his mouth several inches. With great presence of minds he closed his teeth on the repulsive creature and ran to his assistant, who succeeded in entirely relieving him of the unwelcome tenant, which was fifteen inches long, and died a few minutes after being in the air. The Reverend's stomach has refused to hold food except in liquid firm since the parasite came out. For months he grew weaker and weaker, until physicians thought he would die as a result ofgetting rid of the parasite, which had made his internal anatomy its home for so many years.

  It has been revealed in the Reverend's newsletter that he would like to speak to the ones who hid a large syringe filled with what he believes to have been imp-liver extract, pointed upward in his Q-ped seat. He sat on the needle and the pressure of his body operated the plunger. He did not get the full injection, but did become iU.

  A.J. Beals, Pisstown mortician, will take likenesses of the sick or deceased. He employs beeswax and plaster techniques similar to those used by the Macedonians. He asks that patrons contact him immediately upon the death of their loved ones, before rigor sets in. In the case of illness, he will take action when all hope is lost.

  I went down to Camp Legion today to the stinker fish pavilion on the banks of the National Canal. The place was swarming with blackflies of every size. Just above one of the metal tubs where Canal fish were being boiled, hung a sign emblazoned with the Hookerite credo, "We Die That We May Die No More."

  Mose Howard, chief of the crew, pulled a small section from the stomach of each fish as it went by him on a hand-cranked conveyor belt. He whiffed it and passed judgment. If the odor was strong enough, the fish continued to the cooking room. If the fish was too fresh, it was yanked from the belt and thrown back into the Canal. Mose complained that he was plagued with aching neck muscles because of the constant intake of putrid air, averaging one smell every two and a half seconds. Mose says he smells thirty to thirty-five tons offish every shift, working from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. He can sniff more than twelve thousand tons offish every year without once inhaling a fly.

  As a boy, Mildred's grandson, Roe, was housed in a rickety wooden structure on the grounds of the Balls estate, well away from the main compound and hidden by brambles and brush. The hastily built structure was an oven in summer and an icebox in winter. The yard man advised him to dig a small trench around the building and fill it with tooth powder to keep out rodents, adders and most walking insects. This he did, and nothing walking or slithering entered, but flying things had free access through a number of broken windows and things that hopped could occasionally take advantage of a door left open.

  The National Canal ran cold and babbling through the property and Roe liked to fish it. One afternoon, in an effort to throw the line far into the stream, where the grandest fish lay, he slung it high into the air, with the result that the hook, sinkers and line lodged in a tree thirty-five feet tall. He climbed the tree to release the tackle. When he reached the limb on which the line had become entangled, a whippoorwill was fast to the hook, the barb having penetrated the eye socket. The bird had gone for his grub in error and had suffered the consequences.

  When Roe brought the whippoorwill home in his creel and showed it to his grandfather, explaining how it happened that he'd caught a bird while fishing, Jacob's reply was, as it often was, off subject. "Too bad it wasn't an oyster," he said. "I did love the oysters I once harvested from that Canal. Even the famed oysters of Britain, devoured by the Romans, cannot be compared to the once-great oyster of the National Canal, which weighed two pounds and always contained a good pearl."

  "The pearls're all gone now," Mildred said. "But I have a trunk full of chokers as mementos."

  "Should I tell him now?" Jacob asked.

  Mildred lowered her eyes. "Yes, this is the right time. We don't want to keep it secret."

  "All right, young man, I'm in the middle of a scandal. It happened during a quarrel in the saloon of Bartholomew Donohue, at No. 9 Varick Street. I slapped a female stinker across the face. In falling, her head struck an iron radiator, and she was completely dead in a few minutes. By the time an officer arrived, Donohue had washed the woman's face and brushed her ragged clothing clean."

  "The other patrons and your grandfather," Mildred said, "discussed things and agreed that what had happened was merely an accident. The woman slipped on a spot of spilled Jake and fell, they agreed to say. But the officer would have none of that and charges were brought."

  "Fleecing the rich is what they're all about, this Administration. Just because I own a brewery or two, they'll be trying to send me to Permanganate Island or Indian Apple, or some other smelly hole on the slightest excuse."

  "What will Grandfather do, Grandmother?"

  "The charges won't be proven. But for the meantime, we'll be traveling."

  Jacob sat in a soft chair and lit an urpflanz cigar. "You don't know much about your grandfather's past, do you, Roe?"

  "Very little, to tell you the truth."

  Jacob dusted ash from his lapels with a starched handkerchief. "There will be revelations about that and more at another time."

  "We'll be back when this all blows over," Mildred said.

  Jacob crossed his legs, his patent pump glinting for a moment in the candlelight. "As a matter of fact we'll sail tomorrow aboard the Titanic, past the Cape and around the Horn, as far from the warring factions as we can get. A nasty Chaos has broken out in Pisstown and it could spread here to the exurbs any day. I hope you'll devote more energy to maturation from now on. Your grandmother and I will not be holding your hand forever."

  "What about me, Grandmother? What happens to me?"

  "I've asked your sister to take care of you."

  "Seems like joining the Reverend's Guard would be the decent thing for a lazy lad like you to do," Jacob said.

  "I'll enlist tomorrow," Roe sighed.

  "Toodle-oo," Mildred said. "We promise to send you cards with regularity."

  The next day, Roe enlisted. The day after that he was bivouacked somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, where he nearly met disaster when a railcar, heavily laden and running on the downgrade at top speed, approached a spot where he and other soldiers sat resting. Behind the railcar came a rolling platform carrying a load of porous clay zeer
jars. The conveyance was built this way so that the heavy jars might catch the rush of air and thus cool the contents to drinking temperature. As the car rounded a curve, one of the zeers toppled and struck the soldier sitting next to Roe with full force, crushing his skull. The worst Roe suffered was a drenching.

  Other than the time he volunteered for a risky mission, the remainder of his military service was unexceptional and dull. Reverend Hooker had come to the bivouac to deliver a message to the newly enlisted troops, who assembled in a large tent. "Listen, men," he said, "striped adders are so thick in a pasture on one of my farms that they have taken to milking my imps. And when they are active at this, there is a distinctly pungent odor. Last evening I found that every imp in a herd of nine hundred had been milked. I camouflaged myself and watched the pasture. Every minute or two, I saw an adder crawl up an imp's leg and begin to milk the animal. And men, let me add that those same imps rarely grin when I palm their teats. Now, the point of the tale is this-I need volunteers to hunt down the adders and kill them. It's dangerous work as these slithery things will strike with deadly effect. Let's have a show of hands, then. Who'll volunteer to save the milk supply?"

  Roe volunteered. It promised to be more engaging than sitting in a tent all day and night with the steamy rain pelting down. Taking the next available wagon, he reported for duty at the Reverend's imp farm. The operation proceeded in a straightforward way, beginning with a few remarks from Hooker. "Listen up, men. This is the way this will be done. You'll line up side by side in the nude and you'll cross the entire pasture. Every other man will carry one of these rubber udders filled with imp's milk, letting it hang by his side." He took a full udder from an assistant and demonstrated the best way to dangle it. "When the adders begin to climb the man's leg, I want the soldier next to him to snatch up that serpent with one of these gloves." He held up a pair of elbow-length gauntlets. "And put it in a sack like this." He held up a burlap bag with a drawstring. "Now, no matter what safety precautions we take, some of you will be bitten, some of you will die, a few will suffer lifelong from the effects of the bite. To date no antivenin has been made available. So, in closing, let me wish you the best of luck. I've never seen such a lineup of finely made men."