The New and Improved Romie Futch

by Julia Elliott

  As he loped toward the porch light, I saw that his left leg dragged from some injury, that his jeans were mud-stained and torn. And I felt a sore place in my heart.

  • •

  At last, I had Trippy J seated at my kitchen table, a can of Miller in his trembling hand. At Trippy’s insistence, we both wore stainless-steel mixing bowls on our heads to scramble the nonstop barrage of wireless signals that, Trippy claimed, pelted our souped-up brains. Trippy’s skullcap sat on the table, surrounded by scraps of aluminum foil, the shield he’d concocted in a panic before fleeing his sister’s basement.

  The dude looked shell-shocked, ghoul-eyed. Ashy-skinned, brittle-haired, dry-lipped, and thin. Bedeviled by voices. Sapped by insomnia.

  “What’s going on, man?” I said.

  “Where to fucking start? First things first, though: the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience no longer exists.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I finally hauled my ass over there to see what was up, and the whole place is now Blue Cross Blue Shield.”

  “An insurance office?”

  “Judging by appearances. The building now has this big-ass crucifix on the side, hypocritical signage of the usurious institution in question. I quizzed the robot at the desk. I even snuck around a bit—nothing but straight-up office shit, as far as I could see. The whole interior had been remodeled, though the old Nano Lounge was still there, cubicle moles wolfing down instant noodles in a somnambulistic daze—no test subjects, no labs, no dorms, nothing.”

  Trippy was troubled but still witty somehow, still rattling off streams of purple verbiage that were wine to my parched ears. We compared notes on blackouts and dreams, hallucinations and synesthetic episodes, uncanny sensations and acute déjà vu. Trippy, too, had suffered bouts of feverish, visionary creativity. He’d spent most of his postexperiment time in his sister’s Atlanta basement, sawing at his cello, noodling on a thrift-store Casio, composing experimental pieces that he recorded on an eight-track analog Tascam.

  “Started off sober,” he said, “sipping home-brewed kombucha, an ancient Chinese elixir concocted from fermented green tea. Then I upped the ante with bhang tea and goji wine, which had my ass tripping old-school, heat in my flow, game in my tunes. Spent the wee hours grooving to the likes of Alfred Schnittke, Lindsay Cooper, and Sun Ra, constellations exploding inside my skull, white dwarves collapsing into pulsars, black holes evaginating into white-hot universes, dog. I was on a fucking roll.”

  “But then the voices.”

  Trippy sighed. His shoulders sank. The passion leaked from him.

  “That and my stipend scratch was dwindling, even though I had weekly gigs lined up in this live karaoke band, an outfit that Irvin hooked me up with.”

  “You talked to Irvin?”

  “Just a few times. Put me in touch with this guy he knows. Solid work but beyond lame, playing for drunk college brats. Plus, I was starting to get paranoid about going out.”

  Trippy described the voices that regularly broke through—a chorus of shrieking harpies, a flirty feminine giggle, but mostly this cheesy clinical baritone he presumed was Dr. Morrow, gibbering medical mumbo jumbo, perhaps speaking to some corporate zombies, maybe reciting notes into a voice recorder.

  “Shit got real when I realized I’d left my apartment one night,” Trippy said. “I could deal with voices, blackouts, lost chunks of time. But then I woke up covered in dog hair. Now, my sister, a middle-class prig and a germophile, hates dogs. As you may recall, I myself am deeply disturbed by the master-slave nuances embedded in the human-pet power struggle, the sadomasochism and mutual dependence that naturally flowers when a wolf forgoes wildness for the perks of domesticity. Reminds me too much of the human condition, I guess, but anyway, I digress: in short, I don’t dig dogs, dog. Waking up after what felt like a dream, covered in dog hair, with Dr. Morrow gibbering away inside my dome made me think they’re starting to play around with remote control.”

  “Remote control?”

  “You know, programmable human flunkies. Making us do shit.”

  “Like what, assassinating spies and whatnot?” I forced out a croak of laughter.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Trippy. “I don’t think there’s necessarily any rhyme or reason to these experiments—just the lollygagging medical-industrial complex dicking around with their equipment. But the experiment continues, badly designed as it is.”

  “Which means?”

  “That Dr. Morrow and crew still have access. And they’re fucking around with it. Just to see what they can make us do.”

  “Access?”

  “Wireless access. Not as reliable as before, but access for whatever so-called research their punk-ass souls can dream up. Which means that any interested parties could, conceivably, gain access to our commodified minds. And though I’d long suspected that they were checking in on us here and there, I didn’t get too freaked out until the dog-hair incident.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a month ago. That’s when I started experimenting with signal interruption, shamefully donning the proverbial tinfoil hat. And then, just yesterday, I had what felt like a dream in which I was investigating some kind of underground sewer area. When I discovered fecal matter on my shoes, that was it: I swaddled my skull in tinfoil, hid it discreetly under a hat, and headed straight to the Center.”

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t know, check out the scene, see what was up, but my intentions were moot, because, as you know, the whole kit and caboodle has shut down without a trace. So I hopped a Greyhound to Hampton to track down your ass.”

  “It’s about fucking time, man.”

  “The tinfoil worked pretty well until I was in the bus station. Heard the damn voices again, seeping through the cracks, something that seems to happen in public places, key locales of the grid. What I needed was a stainless-steel bowl, but I still got a shred of dignity. Not gonna go traipsing in public with crockery on my head.”

  “I hear you,” I said, not sharing my own story about the Monopoly money and the mud on my feet, fearing that Trippy’s paranoia might be contagious, that I might soon become a member of the fabled tinfoil-hat set myself, a border that I did not wish to cross.

  “You talked to Skeeter, perchance?”

  “AWOL,” said Trippy. “Has been ever since we ditched the Center. Irvin hasn’t heard from him either. I’m sure he’s laid his hands on some kind of phone by now, and he’s got our digits.”

  “Only on paper, which is easy to misplace.”

  “True that, but you can find people online—you know that. Even you’ve got a website. Maybe he just wants to shake the experience. Like getting out of prison—put the bad dream behind and get a fresh start. But still, once inside the prison-industrial complex”—Trippy took a solemn sip of beer—“you’re in for life, dog. You got an internalized guard pacing in your brainpan, boots echoing, like, forever.”

  When I reached for my beer, Trippy eyed my maimed hand, shot me some what-the-fuck bug eyes.

  “So, like, I just noticed you were one finger shy of a full set.”

  “Just noticed, huh?”

  At last, I unburdened myself. Let it all spill out in drunken convulsive heaves: Helen and her silver-fox paramour; Hogzilla, the monster who’d maimed me for life; Scovel Boughknight and his recombinant rats; Jarvis Riddle’s mysterious ravings; and the recent appearance of two FDA agents, who’d invaded my house like TV goons.

  Trippy winced and emoted, but he didn’t seem surprised by any of it.

  “The world is a surreal clusterfuck.” He sighed.

  And then we hashed it out until well past midnight, soaring into the old high talk again, ascending into the heady altitudes of philosophical abstraction and tumbling into the marshlands of scatological wit. We soon found ourselves talking Art with a capital A, plotting an elaborate collaboration, an animatronic Hogzilla diorama with original music composed by Ernest L. Jeffords, aka Trip
py J.

  “Man,” said Trippy, “I can hear the overture now, a slow hog trot thickening into thunderous hooves.”

  “Killer,” I said. “And when that bastard takes flight, some kind of cosmic whoosh, a leap into something interstellar.”

  “Teleportation to Saturn via Sun Ra.” Trippy tapped on the tabletop. “A dash of Harry Partch, all cloud-chamber bowls and harmonic canons. A hint of Miles Davis, Bitches Brew.”

  “And a full range of porcine sounds: grunts, squeals, roars.”

  “You on it, dog. I’m thinking field recordings,” said Trippy. “Combined with eerie electronica, à la Delia Derbyshire. Girl did the theme for Doctor Who.”

  We schemed deep into the night, plotting the collaboration of the century, thinking Trippy could hang at my place while we worked it all out. We switched from beer to liquor and enjoyed a joint, worked our way through three plates of microwave nachos, dished on the literary traditions of epic beast slaying, the epistemology of monsters, the deconstructable polarities of science and sci-fi.

  We found ourselves picking at corn-chip crumbs in the wee hours, surrounded by crushed cans—red-eyed, raspy-voiced, clawing at epiphanies that were always an inch out of reach.

  “You think we can change the world with art?” Trippy said quietly.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but at least we can try.”

  “Always already commodified.” Trippy sighed. “And I don’t know, maybe art versus action is a false dichotomy, but I still got a mind to track down those motherfuckers and—”

  “What? What can we do?”

  “I don’t know, Romie. Let me sleep on that. My brain will be more functional tomorrow.”

  My friend stood up. We embraced again, a quick manly pounding of backs, and then I led him back to the old bedroom that Helen and I had once shared, hooked him up with sheets and a blanket, thinking we could get started on our masterpiece the following morning.

  Trippy was the closest thing to a brother that I had, both of us mutants with newfangled minds. And as I fell asleep on the couch, I envisioned a golden era of collaboration, evenings spent pursuing our artistic visions, dallying in the kitchen with beers in our fists, our eyes aflame with the feverish speculation of visionaries.

  • •

  The next morning I made grits and eggs with bacon to vanquish our hangovers, took two Excedrins, opened the blinds, and braved the sun. I tiptoed around in sock feet lest I waken my slumbering friend. My ancient coffeemaker gasped. Thick-cut pork belly crackled cheerily. And dust motes sparkled in the sunny air.

  After a few gulps of coffee, I almost felt like singing. Thought I might take Trippy down to the swamp, introduce him to the great pink beast; maybe we could take out the monster together. But when eleven o’clock rolled around, I could no longer ignore the free-fall tug in my gut. I went back to the bedroom and found Trippy’s rumpled nest, proof of a restless night, the window wide open.

  I shot him a couple of texts, suspecting that he’d ditched his phone again. But still, I kept at it all day, firing scraps of impotent language, volleying useless signifiers into the void.

  • •

  I kept texting Trippy over the next week, kept my ears pricked for invading voices, though I refused to cloak my skull in a stainless-steel dome. I distracted myself with HogWild.com and fanatically consulted online lunar charts.

  According to the charts, the moon would ripen on Tuesday at 2:36 PM, which meant that Hogzilla would be in homing mode, casting his snout toward GenExcel and rooting his way back toward his origins—unless Jarvis Riddle was full of shit.

  My firearm of choice, a Savage .270 Winchester, sat dead center in the gun cabinet, its deep mahogany grain a shade richer than that of its peers. I’d oiled the gun and cleaned its barrel and scope. I’d loaded it up with a four-round stainless magazine. I’d fortified the old Iron Maiden flask I’d bought in a head shop back in high school. It featured the mug of the band’s mascot, Eddie—a ripped, futuristic zombie, his skinless muscles pulsing with fury, his rotted face wrenched open with a fuck-you snarl.

  FOURTEEN

  Tuesday was a milky winter day in the midforties, the sun a wan smear in the sky. My phantom pinkie finger throbbed from the chill. Spectral birds cawed in the forest fog. I’d started my hike from Jarvis Riddle’s abandoned campsite. On the lookout for a wallow, I’d meandered down a creek bed and found myself on boggy ground, cold ooze trickling into my leaky left boot. Stooping to inspect it, I caught a flicker of movement in the brush. A gangly human being darted behind a puny clump of fetterbush. I aimed my gun right at him, heard a nervous cough, the brisk click of a handgun safety release. We stood poised, intent on mutual destruction. A woodpecker was going at it somewhere, tapping for a spot of rot.

  The hiding man couldn’t keep still. His ridiculous hat—a green felt toque with a feather that might be dubbed, by a catalog, the fairy-tale woodsman’s cap—bobbed above the bracken. When he moved again, I recognized his fox-like mug, his thin, reptilian lips. The FDA agent who’d invaded my home a week ago wore a red plaid shirt, a sweater of bright evergreen. Behind him was his seal-like companion, peering at me through binoculars.

  I wondered if they’d been following me or if I’d just happened to stumble upon them out in the bush, where they were chasing recombinant rats and other unholy species from GenExcel. I had the eerie feeling I’d blink and see them melting back into vapor. But they stood their ground, gun hoisted and ready to blast.

  When a billow of fog rose from the creek bed, I darted down a side trail and scrambled over a piney hill. At the base of an uprooted tree, I found a hollow to crouch in. I practiced my circular breathing. I swiped creeping things from my neck and shifted my weight from leg to leg to ward off cramps. My ears pricked, catching birdcalls, soughing leaves, and finally, the splash of gauche boots in the creek bed. The buffoons were scampering away from me, north toward Scovel Boughknight’s double-wide. I wondered if they’d already questioned the poor man, if they’d break into his house now, looking for me. I wondered if Scovel would find them sitting smugly at the bar in his sad bachelor’s kitchenette.

  • •

  Deep in the swamp, a mile south of GenExcel, I found it, the quintessential hog wallow, a basin of rich red mud swathed in clouds of primeval mist. The clay-and-sand wallow, big enough for a triceratops to roll in, was littered with telltale turds. I felt myself go light with fear—feet and hands numb, a sensation of bodily buoyance—as I picked up something beyond the sense of smell.

  I was ominously close to the beast’s musky lair, that intimate indentation where the pig lay down to dream his murderous dreams. Not far from the wallow, I found slash pines ringed with mud where the hog had rubbed his mammoth flanks. I saw tusk gashes in tree trunks, vast expanses of rooted ground, huge swathes of forest floor overturned, chunks of chewed wood strewn higgledy-piggledy. I found a scattering of ten-inch hog tracks, cloven hooves pressed deep into the mud. And I thought I could make out a hog trail, tunneling into thicker cover.

  Upon closer inspection I discovered, tucked behind a tupelo, an ancient deer stand teetering up in the pine boughs. I couldn’t resist the boyish urge to climb the ladder that was nailed to one of the tree trunks.

  Pressing the floorboards for signs of rot, I crawled into the stand. A square, rough-plank box with a rectangle of lookout window, the stand overlooked the wallow, offering the perfect shot should Hogzilla come snarling forth in a whirlwind of foam and rage. As a gust of wind blew through the structure, its old wood creaked, and I recalled tree houses from my childhood. Chickadees chittered in the boughs. And then a raw human voice jumped out of the forest texture like a loose thread.

  I recognized Chip Watts’s nasal whine before I saw Jarvis Riddle staggering across a clearing with a nicotine inhaler in his mouth. Chip was right behind him, toting a .338 Win Mag in a sling, waving a camo hat in one hand while tearing at his hairdo with the other.

  “I’m on to your ass, Jarvis. You’re lea
ding me on a wild-goose chase ’cause I’m paying you by the hour.”

  “Takes patience to track a boar, Chip, and how many times I got to tell you to quit yelling?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if Hogzilla’s real.”

  “You are, huh? Then check out these tracks.”

  Chip squatted to take a look.

  “Holy shit. Look at that toe spread. Even a charging five-hundred-pounder ain’t gonna leave that kind of impression. Sure you’re not scamming me, Jarvis?”

  “You think I got the wherewithal to mark up the swamp with fake boar tracks?”

  “Maybe. You got lots of time on your hands.”

  “Smell that hog scat?”

  “I don’t smell nothing.”

  “Except your own cologne, insect repellent, and hair spray. How many times did I tell you not to come out here reeking?”

  “I put on some cover scent, as you advised.”

  “That won’t do squat if you stink to high heaven of civilization. Better pick your tree.”

  “What you mean pick my tree?” boomed Chip.

  “I mean,” rasped Jarvis, “your ass better not hesitate for a millisecond if that bastard comes charging through here. Now, don’t say another word. Holy motherfucking Jesus! You smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  Straight from hell’s latrine, the shit-cheese stench of wild boar hit my nostrils, flushing my brain with corticotropin and jump-starting my rickety heart. Before I could blink, the creature itself materialized: a ton of grunting muscle, jaws popping the biggest cutters in the history of hogdom. The razorback spit enough foam to fill an industrial sink. And there they were: the famed wings, stunted and bald, smooth like the patagia of a bat, and flapping in a useless fit that sure as hell wasn’t flight. In a flash, the wings vanished—tucked, I gathered, into some nifty dorsal niche. Two seconds later, the hog was bounding full throttle toward Jarvis and Chip.

  I aimed my piece and fired a full clip. Though my bullets did little more than knock some dried mud off Hogzilla’s hide, the pig roared and veered leftward into brush.