I grind out the joint, rise and stretch. I count fifteen nobles in my pocket. It isn’t hard to find the bookmaker—he’s the only one of these illiterates to know of such a thing as a ‘book.’ “I’m putting everything on Stilgosb.”
He cackles. “Stilgosb! She-it, boy! That thar’s the puniest one! Odds are seventy to one against! Haw haw haw! You ain’t from these parts, boy, are you?” I take this as a compliment, and melt back into the crowd with my ticket. The carneys set up the colosseum—a wretched labyrinthine pit of earth, plants, and rock pilfered from Mutant Mountain. A country band wails out a mangled patriotic tune while the goblins are dumped into the pit from their cages. There’s a cacophony of cheering and whistling.
The landscape of the pit immediately begins its shifting metamorphosis. The mutations in a goblin’s temporal lobe allow him to twist the environmental features of his home region, which is why the colosseum is made from stolen Mutant Mountain materials rather than lazy chicken wire like you would expect. The paths and corridors of the pit change constantly, like the shadows of cloud cover transforming the landscape on a windy day.
I begin to question the wisdom of my bet. The goblins sure look like they’re out for blood. They scratch and claw, and when the post-peasants dump in a crate of sharp and rusty farm implements, it gets far worse. One is crushed under a mountain rock as it falls from a pile. The whole fight takes about twenty minutes, an orgy of blood and death, punctuated by songs like “The Ignobles Gave All” and “Gods Bless Provisia” and whistles through the gaps of missing teeth. The colosseum is an abattoir of severed limbs and gore. I see an ear lying in the branches of an uprooted bush. A small goblin, scraped and scratched, climbs a pile of stones and a length of ratty twine is extended to him. The bookmaker hoists him out and reads a bracelet encircling one twig-like wrist. “Stilgosb!”
There’s a delightful chorus of angry shouts and groans. The bookmaker tears off the bracelet, slaps Stilgosb on his rear, and watches as the goblin flees the tent. I show my ticket and claim the prize money. It’s mostly bills and scrip, but I can barely stuff it all into my pockets. “How’d that barky-malarky motherfucker know that runty goblin done gonna win?”
“He ain’t nothin but a Leveller anna faggot! Cut his nuts off’n throw him inna pit!” Some of the post-peasants look like they’re fixing to do just that, so I draw my Provisian Peacemaker and keep it on them until I get clear. I could tell some of them want to form a lynch mob and make a day of it, but in the end the siren song of laziness and apathy lulls them, and they’re off to drink and drag race in circles on the Trash Junction Superhighway, praying to the Gods for a pileup.
***
In spite of the grizzly shittiness of the whole spectacle, I felt like a king Flaff hopping into his harem. My pockets were stuffed with cash. Of course, when the Gods-damned MPs caught me off base without leave they jacked my whole stash and left me to write this article in the brig. But the truth is, at least it got me thinking. People love their heepshit sports, and there is good money to be made in rigging them.
Letter To Beth Orned
(Beth was a childhood friend of Forrest, and his aunt harbored hopes that they would marry until her dying day. Though their friendship was platonic, Forrest confided in Beth, allowing himself an intimacy and a vulnerability in his correspondence with her that was often lacking in his interactions with others in his circle.)
AWOL from the Provisian Airforce…Down and Out Among Burialist Pirates…Kargivian War Journal…The Provisian Special Forces are Delirious and Depraved…Folly and Fear in the Last Days of a Doomed Era…Or Something to that Effect…
Dear Beth,
I miss you terribly. I’m holed up on a Burialist Pirate ship, and I am practically dying from poverty, terror, and the ravages of a floating terrarium of parasites and carnivorous insects. I apologize for all the blood and sap smearing the letter. I don’t know how to even begin to describe the ship, and that’s rare for me. It’s like a child’s drawing of a seafaring vessel, like something that was not designed so much as scrawled on the blank parchment of reality. The shipbuilder who constructed this thing was either oblivious or indifferent to the dynamics of the sea. The slightest gust of wind and rain causes it to pitch and yaw like it’s having a seizure.
I got my own vomit on the ceiling of my cabin, which is not all that impressive when you realize that the ‘cabins’ are no bigger than coat closets. I’m sure that the boat has capsized and then righted itself by capsizing a second time, and done this more than once in a single night. The idea that the Burialists ship anything elicit for the Dry Men is absurd. No sex slaves or wonder drugs could survive this kind of constant abuse. I don’t ask questions, but I gather that the boat is full of medicine or food to be smuggled past the embargo, though weapons aren’t out of the question. Weapons are just as much a necessity in these doomed and dreadful times.
This is a shit deal, even for someone like me, who deserves it, but there was no choice. I went AWOL from the Provisian Airforce. The only thing keeping me there was the sports desk gig and a deep-seated fear that the Dark Messiahs were still after me. Those bastards will hunt me down like a mountain dragon after a retarded heep, and the discipline and institutional violence of a military base seemed like the only thing that could possibly serve as a buffer.
It could not last. The military and I don’t mix, which I’m sure is hardly a surprise for you. Hell, they can’t tolerate a pocket that doesn’t have regulation stitching or a crewcut that’s a micron too long, so I can’t be surprised that loud shirts and fleshbark threw them off. It’s not an institution that was made for writers. They have nothing but contempt for anything that can’t be fired into the guts of an enemy. It’s a miracle I got away with my column for as long as I did. I got to be a pretty good pilot too, not that it matters
Don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t bail as an act of high-minded civil disobedience. Only a fascist or a waterhead would want any part of what the Provisian armed forces are doing to Burial and Kargivia, and it does make me sick. It’s just another round of their game of picking an Other to annihilate, and it all seems quite pointless when the government could just conquer the land and have done with it. But I left out of self-preservation, not principle, and I won’t deny it.
Our country has lost its way ever since Selectman West got shot. He was no saint—he was a politician through and through, and a sex fiend to boot—but he was the only one who could keep a level head through this horrible shitrain. It doesn’t help that his fishy death just kept feeding a blast furnace of unhinged conspiracy theories—Ignoble sympathizers who always swore up and down that West was a deep state puppet changed their tunes pretty easily once he went from pretty boy politician to patriot-martyr, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
You would be disappointed by the pirates, who are far and away the most colorless people I’ve met on or around our dreadful and doomed supercontinent. The idea of keeping a bionic parrot or wearing a sequined eyepatch over a functioning eye to keep it safe would never occur to them. They kill and steal, but not by choice—only out of a kind of desolate and self-hating necessity, maybe to feed people back home. They are violent men, dead to their families. And they look dead—skeletal men who seem all cheekbones, sad eyes, and efficient weaponry.
Well, that’s my story, if the damned pigeons can carry it to you when I’m this far out to sea. The pirates are the only people I’ve ever met who don’t mind the clicking and tapping of my typewriter at night. It’s as if they’ve given up on ever sleeping again, or like the noise of the keys jams the signal of whatever death march of guilt and misery plays in their heads all night.
What are you doing with yourself these days? One of the old Bloodhawk guys wrote me that you got into costume design and makeup. So much damage can be done with a skill like that—maybe we could go into cahoots and make some money when all this is over. I learned recently that you can make a bundle rigging sporting events. I know I said this befo
re, but I miss you terribly. Maybe we should have gotten married just to give poor aunty a thrill before she died. I’ve never been remotely attracted to you, and no one could want a guy who looks like a ne’er-do-well brother of Commodore Cactus, but I understand there’s some interesting finagling and scams to be wrought through marriage and Provisian tax law.
I hope you’re doing well, and keeping the art alive—whether it’s prosthetics or art installations or whatever keeps you awake and throwing pottery at five AM on a Jeffersday…
If you’re feeling creative, see about dreaming up something that can kill all these Gods-damned bugs.
Buccaneeringly,
Forresty
3
“You’ll never be bad again.” The doctor repeated. “Everything…”
His head exploded with a sound like a gunshot. The violence brought me back into myself a little, and I heard what sounded like cowboy boots knocking the floor behind me. There was a low chuckle.
“I unstrap yuh, yuh gonna run, boy?” I was getting damned sick of disembodied voices, but I was too groggy, foggy, and strung out to care too much. Above me, the beach scene was improved by a mist of quack blood.
“No, I get the feeling we might be on the same page, somehow.”
He laughed again. “I’ve got legal per-mission from the highest quatuhs o’ the land to get youse outta here. But yuh’d be no dang use if he had thrown that there switch. Plus I loves me the shootin’. Yuh promise not to run?”
I nodded. I couldn’t have run anyway, doped as I was. The savior came into view. It was obviously a fake skin, gray and mottled. It looked like someone had carelessly spooled it around his skeleton. He was tall and spare, army fatigues over a t-shirt and jeans. Huge sunglasses mercifully hid what must be killer’s eyes. And yes, he wore shit-kicker cowboy boots.
He unfastened the restraints and I stood up. “Who the hell are you?”
“I forget my name.” He said. “People these days call me Mission Creep.” I told him that was a pretty good name. We left the doctor in a pool of his own blood and took an elevator like sensible people. When it opened, doctors, guards, and interns were pressed against the walls in respectful terror. The mousy receptionist held her hand against the notch of her throat, her eyes wide behind grandma glasses. I was so happy I didn’t even feel like saying any of the millions of clever things that were coming to mind.
The metal gate swung open as we approached, and Mission Creep ushered me to a speedy corvette painted with the pentagrams, heptagram, and stripes of the Provisian flag. “We’re going to take a ride now. That’s the deal.”
I have a policy against trusting people who are named ‘Whitey,’ ‘Jasper,’ or ‘Mission Creep,’ but I decided my best move was to get in. I was curious about who would give a shit enough to spring me. I had done enough bad things to ruffle some feathers.
“Youse wonderin’ why I done sprung yuh.” Mission Creep said.
“You could say that.”
Mission Creep sped up, zipping along the country roads with impressive speed and skill.
“When I was a boy, my momma had a priceless vase that contained my pappy’s ashes.” He began. “We didn’t call ‘em ashes back then, we called ‘em pappy. That vase was prob’ly worth everything else in the house, combined. It was a ramshackle shotgun house on the border of Oily Peaks and Dusthaven. Rich we weren’t. Dirt poor, some might say. The vase was whatcha call a family heirloom, somethin’ that couldn’t be sold.” It seemed that I was destined to get lengthy stories today instead of straight answers, but I decided to run with it. If this guy was going to get in my way, I could always unlock the door and roll. I’d done that before, and at faster speeds.
“Well, sir, I was a chile, and I didn’t understand these things. I was in skin one of eight so far, the one I was born in. And being a young and healthy male there was only one thing I really cared about, and that was tear-assin’ ‘round that tiny house re-enacting various wars from the great and esteemed history of our nation Provisia. I was patriotic even back then, you bet.”
“And momma always tole me—she tole me, watch out for the vase, be careful of the vase. And I was careful. I was careful until the day me an’ Rickie was re-nactin’ the battle of Mutant Mountain. We was being the Noble’s 101st brigade and we was storming about a hundred million imaginary mutants, lobbing things at ‘em. And that’s when the vase broke. Pappy’s ashes was spilled; sprayed ever’where.”
I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, but the car was going far away from that damned nuthouse, so I didn’t mind. I seemed to be listening to yet another fucked up, broken man. It may have been the last effects of the dope, but a part of me wondered if I’d found a kindred spirit.
“Yuh’d probably think, to look at me, to listen to me, that momma did something to me to make me the way I am. Maybe she beat me or starved me in the cellar for twelve weeks. She didn’t. She didn’t do nothin’ but cry. And that was ‘nough. Because that was the day I realized what it is I am. I’m a tin soldier. I’m a heart breaker. I fight other people’s imaginary wars for ‘em. I kills other people’s pappies and I spills my own.”
A tiny ornament hung from the rearview mirror—it looked like a Provisian soldier with a bobblehead. “And I enjoys it. And much as I may seem a poor redneck to you, Forrest, it’s made me a mighty rich man. And it can do the same for you. That’s why ah sprung yuh from Weeping Willows. You ain’t crazy. And you ain’t like none of these liberal fag-journalists. Shit, I’s useta want to write novels, but thas a waste o’ men lik’n us. What yuh done done to that lab, that was sharp. What you done to those Grami-phonies and their ‘musement park, that was sharp. And riggin’ the game, yuh were just unlucky that time. Your talent’s being squandered, boy. Youse deep state to the bottom, and I been sent here to en-list yuh. All we have to do is sign yuh up with the Dry Men and have yuh initi-ation.”
What the hell was this moron babbling about? Dry Men? Could Mission Creep really be with the same secret society Owlish and the other cranks were always ranting and raving about? This all sounded much too sober for what I had been through recently. “No thanks, chief. I appreciate you buying out the funny farm, but I’ll get out here, please.”
Mission Creep clucked his tongue disapprovingly, but he slowed down. “I’m right sorry yuh feel that way, but I know’d yud need to come around your own sef. I’ll check back with yuh in a few days.”
He burned rubber out of there before I could tell him my decision was final. I hawked and spat as the Creep’s ride kicked up a tempest of dust. New growths of twigs were starting to tear their way through my asylum uniform, and I snapped them off and threw them away.
Part 2: Hung up to Dry
“Out of the sewer, literal vampire pot-bellied goblins are hobbling around coming after us!”
--Alex Jones
"But something is happening and you don't know what it is/Do you, Mr. Jones?"
--"Ballad of a Thin Man," by Bob Dylan
“LUNATICS, LOATHING, AND LIES”
1
I stared blankly at the eviction notice. It was pouring rain and I was very sure that I wanted to be in my dry apartment, watching porn and getting hammered instead of out here. I blinked my eyes in consternation and ripped the notice from the nail. “The Gods-damned landlord.” I said. My trouble at the Questball Series, the trial, and the asylum had only pulled me out of town for six days, and I’d already been evicted by this prick. “The Gods-damned fucking landlord.” I decided that it was time to pay him a visit.
He owned my slum complex, running the rent and his red-light district holdings through an LLC called Noble Consultants. I didn’t give a rat’s ass if he were a noble or not. I was going to fuck him up. My car had been impounded right before I tried to rig the World Series—it was one of the things that helped me to screw up my courage to see if lightning could strike twice on that scam. I grabbed a bicycle that someone bequeathed to me by forgetting to chain up and hightailed
it through the depressing rain.
“Slumlord!” I shouted, pounding on his door. “It’s Forrest Cromwell, the celebrity writer and voice of a generation that you have mistakenly evicted, even though he graces your otherwise shitty complex that you run for purposes of money laundering and tax evasion!” This was gold. I elevated my voice higher. Embarrassment is a powerful magic. ‘Mortify’ and ‘mortality’ have the same root for a reason. People fear being shamed like they fear death. “Open the door, you rich, scheming, fascist pile of scum! Or I will start telling people what I know about you!”
Still no answer. It was time to reel out the big guns. “My skin looks like bark because I got an STE at an illegal brothel that this pompous moneybag owns!” For once, I was telling the unvarnished truth. A hooker named Lauren Deadwood. She had what I had, only her skin had been sanded and beveled smooth by a hotshot plastic surgeon. She looked like a sexy lingerie mannequin that someone had enchanted. It was an expensive night. I didn’t see the effects until two months later, and by then she had made herself scarce before I could exact my revenge. I always hoped that she did the wrong person and that she had been murdered and embalmed to be put on display. I could imagine people in a mall walking by her every day without knowing that she was a corpse.
Fables of Failure Page 6
