Where the hell am I? Why can’t I move?
Dank, dark night envelops me in its foetid, loamy embrace – so perhaps I’m home in bed after all. 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 palooka! – 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. It crosses my mind that it’s lucky I can’t really taste my own tongue. I guess I’d need a second tongue for that, and then they might fight for lebensraum, like Cyclops and Blob awakening in the same small Hyundai at a rest stop on Highway 101.
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 pullet 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.
Screaming and thrashing! “Who are you? Get away from me! I don’t want your filthy needle with its mysterious substance! Arrgh, no, dear God, no!”
I want to help, but cannot move! Then all 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, Dark Man.”
My heart overflows its sand-bagged banks: 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 Eddie Murphy playing the donkey in “Shrek.” Before that, it was Branagh in “Hamlet.” The limbo bar gets ever lower.
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. The greasy leather curtain of oblivion falls once more, blotting out a surging tidal wave of horror.
Mama mia, I don’t feel so good. Oh right, yikes … all-you-can-eat-scallop night at Long John Silver’s. Lordy, the thought of another Coquille Saint-Jacques … surging magma, queasy kilometers of peristaltic rippling from tonsils to … 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 merriment and cheap alcohol, the crowd counting each scallop sliding down my gullet – 101! 102! 103! – the Dark Man smirking at the bar, my bellows of “Garçon, another round, chop, chop!” A symbol of damnation drawn in blood on a heaving chest. Ugh, don’t think about it, old buddy. Just blowing off steam after a hard week at the mill. 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 …? There’s a pentagram on my chest! A garish scene flits briefly across my consciousness: Crazy Legs butchered like a game hen, his mouth a gaping, hellish O of pain.
Funny thought! Are scallops psychotropic? I can just picture the slouching skeeve at a Dead concert, barely moving his lips, “bud, X, acid, bivalve mollusks …” Hee hee! Have to tell Legs that one.
Can’t even remember getting home. Was I dragged by a … Dark Man? Crazy isn’t dark; he’s as pallid as a, as a … well, as a plucked chicken 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. The day has dawned to bees a good boy, not nasty or tricksy, no.
That’s kind of an odd way of putting it, but, sure, that’s the general concept: the straight and narrow, a fresh start.
A handful of Excedrin, 32 ounces of coffee, and the hair of the dog – my precious – that’s what I need. Speaking of dogs: Hey! Come here, Bumfin old boy! What’s the matter, you dufus? Huh, he’s avoiding me, looking at me from the corner of his eyes, guilty-like, and walking funny too, like he’s just back from the Stephen King pet cemetery. Do I look that bad?
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 since I pulled out of the driveway.
I turn 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 give the right of way to 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 is the cornerstone of citizenship. The litterbug tarnishes the diamond of our great democracy as much as the urban looter.” The climax lines from my award-winning Optimist Oratorical speech in junior high school. Late sixties: good times, but troubled too – like the Springsteen song, “My Hometown.”
I’m not perfect, but I do try to respect the rules, the social contract, as it were.
The crime binge won’t stop! A mean-looking lady in a fur coat slips two newspapers from the coin box, a fat man in a porkpie skips across the street against the light, a grungy squeegee man plies his felonious trade! I’m reeling! 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 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. But old lady Slobodnick can definitely be talked out of her apartment building, because she thinks I’m her nephew, Ignatz! Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease … and an opportunity. I do believe I spy an Agent of the Month plaque in my near future.
“Thank you, thank you very much. Yes, it was a big game for us, but we knew what we had to do: we gave it 200%, we took it to the basket, 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!
I need another cup of joe to keep up the momentum.
I’m blowing this “crime wave” out of proportion. Everything is dandy. Greatest country in the world. Then after chowing down a couple specials, I head to The Chilidog’s restroom, and my elaborate Potemkin village falls to trash kindling. The “cook” exits the stall, wipes his fingers on his jeans, and heads back to the kitchen without washing his hands! Hey, the sign’s right there by the towel dispenser, you ignorant shit-for-brains! My tummy suddenly doesn’t feel so good. I’m calling the health department, INS, Homeland Security. But then my waiter comes in, a sullen, grunting brute. He doesn’t look like a hand washer either. I scurry back to work, eyes on the sidewalk. I’m too spooked to leave my office.
Where is that twerp, Crazy, anyway? I call him again 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. Calm down, amigo! Sniff the roses, enjoy the lingerie show, mosey over to the buffet for some of those little wieners.
Heh heh. I lift my bleary eyes. Whassup? His back to me, the bartender is making my fourth double Stoli gimlet. My precious! But wait, something’s not right, the fat hobbit looks furtive, kind of … tricksy. What’s he doing anyway? And then, in the mirror, all too clearly, I see him pour my “Stoli” from a cheap plastic jug of Wolfschmitt’s.
The room begins to spin, the floor cracks open, the needle squirts its abominable load into the tender meat of my bottom. The Dark Man roars 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 swims with the galoushkas.
By Henry E. Panky
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