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Where the hell am I? Why can’t I move?
Dank, loamy darkness envelops me in its foetid embrace – so perhaps I’m home in bed? (I’ve been meaning to change the sheets, give the john a quick brushing, but it seems there’s always something else to do, especially with the new TV season beginning.) I try to call out to Mr. Bumfin – come here, you big heffalumpus! – but only the high, twittering twee-pee-pee sound of the red breasted wood tit emerges from my rubbery lips. I feel groggy and my tongue is swollen and rancid. Is it possible to taste one's own tongue? Wouldn't I need a second tongue for that? And then they might fight for lebensraum, like Cyclops and Blob awakening together in the tactile dome of The Exploratorium.
One tongue is plenty. Though, now that I think of it, Jeannine, that greedy little sensualist, might feel differently … I’m too tired to think it all out.
Wait! I remember something … it’s important! … an image … Crazy Legs being … dismembered like a chicken by … No, it’s gone. Probably nothing. I tug weakly against my restraints, then fall back into the blackness, spinning like a hairpiece blown into the abyss.
Am I awake or still dreaming? I hear someone whispering in an eerie sing song:
“… giblets n’ niblets…. tender chicken and galoushkas ...” Mama used to make this tasty Hungarian dish. Lots of paprika. Meat falling off the bone, and those soft, chewy dumplings called galoushkas.
Mama? Are you there? But no, Mama’s been dead for years. I sure miss those galoushkas...
Screaming and thrashing! “Who are you? Get away from me! I don’t want your filthy needle with its mysterious substance! Please no, dear God, no!”
I want to help, but cannot move! Then it becomes ominously quiet, and I hear only the clogged whimpering of an abused child, “Panky makes you happy, Master. Little Panky bees a good boy. Not nasty or tricksy like the fat hobbitses, no, he bees good for Leather Man.”
My heart overflows its sand-bags: poor little fella. Still, a part of my mind notices the simpering similarity to Gollum-Smeagòl’s repetitive and sibilant diction. I sadly ponder the influence the liberal media exerts over the spongiform minds of our young people. Last year all the kids sounded like Borat. Before that, it was Branagh in “Hamlet.” The limbo bar gets ever lower.
Hey! Wait a second! I’m Panky!
I hear raucous, phlegmy laughter as if from miles away. (Mama? Please tell me if it’s you! Then, with an icy chill, I know beyond any doubt – this ain’t Mama!) A critter scurries over my bare legs dragging a long hairless tail. Too small to be Bumfin. Then the greasy leather curtain of oblivion falls once more, blotting out a surging tidal wave of horror.
Madonna! I don’t feel so good. Oh right, ugh … all-you-can-eat-Scallop-Night at Long John's Kentucky Squid Pail. Lordy, the thought of another Coquille Saint-Jacques … surging magma, queasy kilometers of peristaltic, liquid rippling from tonsils to anus … Fuck me! I just had to get my $5.99 worth.
It’s starting to come back: Crazy Legs goading me on – “Go for it, man!” – the room giddy with deep fried fat and cheap alcohol, the crowd counting each scallop chunk sliding down my gullet – 101! 102! 103! – Leather Man smirking at the bar, my supercilious bellows of “Garçon, another round, chop, chop!” A symbol of damnation drawn in hot, glutinous blood on a heaving chest. Ugh, don’t think about it, old buddy. Just blowing off steam after another long day in real estate, making people's dreams come true. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Splash cold water on my sagging, grizzled mug. That feels good, got to shake off the cobwebs. What the fuck? There’s a crimson pentagram on my chest! A garish scene flits briefly across my consciousness: three fat naked witches playing leapfrog around a giant crockpot; Crazy Legs butchered like a chow mein chicken, his mouth a gaping, hellish O-face of pain.
Funny thought! Are scallops psychotropic? I can just picture the slouching shkeeve at a Dead concert, leaning against the wall, barely moving his lips, “Humboldt bud, X, acid, PCP, mollusks …” Hee hee! Have to tell Legs that one.
Can’t remember getting home. Was I dragged by a … Leather Man? Crazy isn’t dark and leathery; he’s as pallid as a, as a … well, as a plucked pullet sitting on the chopping board, skin all goose-pimply and moist.
(Whack!)
Christ, I’m getting too old for this shit. Time for a new regime. From now on, I wants to bees a good boy, not nasty or tricksy.
That’s kind of an odd way of putting it, but, sure, Henry, that’s the general idea: the straight and narrow, a fresh start.
A handful of Excedrin and Benzadrine, 32 ounces of coffee, and the hair of the dog – that’s what I need. Speaking of dogs: Hey! Come here, Bumfin old boy! What’s the matter, you big dufus? Huh, he’s avoiding me, looking at me from the corner of his eyes, guilty-like, drooling and walking funny too, like he's got worms. Reminds me of a Stephen King novel...
Out of the blue, I picture two enormous tongues, big as Godzilla, battling furiously inside a wet, glistening cavern. Uh uh, I’m definitely not going to put that idea in Jeannine’s mind. That’s just the sort of thing the little tart would latch on to and not let go of. A relationship needs boundaries.
Something’s wrong. The day’s been weird ever since I pulled out of the garage.
I'm driving down Chestnut, and right there in front of me, a guy’s making a turn without using his blinker! I lay on the horn: wake up assbag! Another driver gives me the bird, and then doesn’t stop for a pedestrian! I toss him a dirty look, and notice, next to Wendy’s, a loiterer! Has the whole world gone insane? Dear Savior! Why am I being drawn to crime scenes immediately before the crimes occur? (Bright hallucinatory vision of a plunging hypodermic filled with a mysterious substance; a sharp sting in my buttocks. Huh?)
“Respect for law: the cornerstone of citizenship.” The climax lines from my award-winning Optimist Oratorical speech in junior high school.
I’m not perfect, no, but I do try to respect the rules, the social contract, as it were.
I turn on Van Ness and a mean-looking old biddy in a fur coat is crumpling her egg-mcmuffin wrapper into the gutter; a fat man in a porkpie skips across the street against the light; a toothless squeegee man smears my windshield with a greasy rag and smiles. Am I trapped in a nightmare? An oily sweat breaks out, I slap my face, pull out a nose hair (real pain!), then scuttle up to my office and lock the door. Block out the madness. Time for a quick nip. Peek again at the now crusty pentagram on my chest – Jayzus! Should have showered: I’m starting to attract flies.
I feel much better, now that I made some calls, did some “bidness.” No sellee – no eatee, as they say. I do believe I spy an Agent of the Month plaque choogling down the tracks.
“Thank you, thank you very much. Yes, it was a big game for us, but we knew what we had to do. We took it to the basket, gave it 200%. And we never gave up!” Just like Legs on the carving board: put up a helluva fight. Made me proud; wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him.
(Chop, chop! Hippety hop into the pot!)
Yep, took it to the basket. Greatest country in the world for a hardworking salesman. After a couple buckets of buffalo wing-nuggets at the local bistro, I head to the restroom to freshen up. And there, before my eyes, the “Chef” exits his stall and heads straight back to the kitchen. Without washing his hands! Hey, the sign’s right there on the broken towel dispenser, you ignorant shit-for-brains! My bowels loosen and my tummy suddenly doesn’t feel so good. Then my waiter comes in, a sullen, grunting brute, who put his thumb in my wing-nuggets' dipping sauce. He doesn’t look like a hand washer either. I scurry back to work, eyes on the sidewalk, too spooked to ogle the ladies.
Where is that twerp, Crazy, anyway? I call him for the third time but only get voicemail. I could sure use a few commiserative chortles. He’s got his faults, but at least Chicken Legs, I mean Crazy Legs, has a sense of humor about the vagaries of modern life.
Wow, I feel a lot better with a few doubles down the hatch. Relax amigo! Sniff the roses, enjoy the lingerie show, mosey over to the buffet for another plateful of those tasty cocktail wieners. Maybe Legs will get my message and join me here at The Velvet Turtle.
Heh heh. I lift my bleary eyes. Whassup? His back to me, the bartender is making my fourth gimlet. Yum, yum. I lick my lips in anticipation. Come to mama! But wait, something’s not right, the fat hobbit looks furtive, kind of … tricksy. What’s he doing anyway? And then, in the mirror, I see him pour my “Grey Goose Premium Reserve” from a cheap plastic jug of Wolfschmitt’s.
No! The room begins to spin, the floor cracks open, the needle squirts its abominable load into the tender meat of my bottom. Leather Man turns on the adjacent stool roaring with hilarity, and the stench of paprika floods the bar …
I hear the high twittering twee-pee-pee of the wood tit from my own rubbery lips … and, suddenly, beyond all denial, I know that Crazy Legs now swims with the galoushkas.
Henry E. Panky
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