I self published this fictional work a few months ago. I suppose I'll just post it by chapter as the days go on. We'll see how it goes.
It's a science fiction comedy. Here's a blurb some guy wrote: An unapologetically crass retelling of the Book of Revelation. In it, ****** blends extreme cynicism, dystopian prophecy, madness and love into an unlikely and often confusing message of hope for all of man-and mutant-kind.
I understand that the wall of text is unpleasant for the eyes at times. Once I have the motivation I'll upload the entire .pdf file for anyone that would like that.
First Chapter
My daydream was cut short by a tiny man on the other side of the counter. He waved his hand in front of my face until my eyes locked with his.
“Wimsley, what’s up?” I asked, glaring into his painted glass eye. Wimsley tightened his eyelid around the white orb. The watery surface reflected the light hovering above us.
Wimsley grunted as we entered a staring contest. His benevolent attitude towards me had dwindled over the years. Wimsley longed for a confrontation with me after all the free drinks his coworker passed to me. “Well, drink up,” he muttered. “I didn’t poison it this time.”
“The glass is dirty,” I blinked and turned away, forfeiting the match. I never enjoyed locking eyes, it made me feel dirty. I sighed and stuck my custom-made mask back onto my head, carefully tucking in my ears.
“You're a picky little bitch, aren't you?”
I ignored his insult. “I don't feel like drinking, I guess.” I took the wallet out of my jacket and paid this time. Wimsley gave me a strange look as I got up and walked out into the rain.
“Oh, right!” Wimsley wanted to give it one last shot. “All jackasses are passive-aggressive! I get it!” His laughing echoed as I slammed the door with a hidden smirk on my face.
I'm used to getting teased because of my mutated appearance. While I am mostly human, it is hard to ignore my donkey attributes. My ears, hooves, tail and mane are not polite to the eyes. The metallic miasma that appeared twenty years ago affected my birth greatly. I may not be the only mutant, but I can honestly say I would much rather live amongst the ones that heckle me than those insane activists. I exhaled and walked on.
The rain is beautiful. It is as soothing as a llama’s hum, but can be very dangerous depending on the vicious metal in the air. If the droplets collect enough of the particles, it can pierce skin or even kill. If it rains heavy, it showers thousands of needles that pour forth from pin-cushion clouds and crash into the cracked tar streets, creating a gentle sound of destruction. When it snows, grenades fall from the sky. No grenades or needles today, though, it was a gentle drizzle for now.
The smell of metal lingered in my mask as I turned the street corner. It was only four more blocks; but the headache made it feel like a mile. Drinking was out of the question; some squirts of morphine and a warm shower sounded like a pleasant weekend night. By the third block I was unbuttoning my blazer, my lack of patience disturbed me.
I leaped inside the apartment and began to strip. The heavy, wet clothes clung on to me with incredible tenacity. Once I chucked the heavy mound of cotton into a nearby basket, I began the search. I explored my entire loft and found nothing. The vein on the side of my temple was pulsating with an angry vigor. I whimpered for a solid minute until I found it where it always was- inside my jacket pocket. I shrugged at the soggy bag of clear, brown pills. Without thinking I forced three tablets through my shivering lips and chewed until the inside of my mouth was coated with bland delight. I was hoping to inject it, but my quivering hands made it far too risky. My breathing slowed down. The pulse inside my head abated. When it kicked in I felt every ounce of blood tingling underneath my skin like a parade of centipedes. The magical bugs crawled within my fingertips and circulated in my brain, massaging my eyes. I shut them and turned my nose to the ceiling, the furry tip of my tail tickling my lower back. I passionately danced towards my bathroom. The sound of running water in the shower forced me to dance. I jumped into the white cubicle and raised my head to the fountain of scalding hot water. I smiled as my face melted off my skull. A few hours passed until 8 o'clock when I realized I had missed several phone calls from a few friends wondering if I was dead. By a few friends I mean less than two.
I took another one of my magic pills to amplify the effect. The television was on, but I paid no attention to it. Before I could turn it off, my phone rang again and I answered it unsteadily. On the other line was John Strub. John is tall, intelligent, and completely off his rocker. John took after his insane uncle who taught him “everything he knew”. After the untimely “death” of his uncle, Bill Strub, John developed an irrational hatred towards, well, everything. However, there was something to admire about John- it definitely wasn't his lack of sanity. He lived without regrets, unlike myself, who self-pities far too often. John and I had a wondrous synergy. We clicked immediately when I moved in with him in our late teen years. His constant anti-human ranting complimented my envy for the normal man. We were always abused; John constantly picked fights that he always lost (if it is possible to call it losing- he would lay defenseless as his opponent pummeled his chuckling face in) and I was bullied to no end. John never fought back because of his firm belief in flagellation therapy, I never fought back because I was conditioned to think that I deserved such a beating. When I woke up in the middle of the night screaming in terror from the dreadful flashbacks, there was John choking on vomit moments after his dreams intoxicated him with noxious images of humanity. He is my best friend, but I would never take a bullet for him.
“Mutt, get back to the bar,” John demanded over the phone. “There’s a bunch of guys here that I pissed off.”
I let out a long, unnecessary groan. “What did you this time?”
“They had piercings and tattoos all over them!” John breathed in heavily. I heard the mild roar of a blowtorch in the background. “I simply stated that it is too expensive to express yourself with such trivial things when knowledge is free! Don’t you think they should express knowledge over pricey, extravagant material? I’m standing up for myself this time.”
“That’s absolutely repugna-” the phone clicked. The mask went back on.
I traveled back to Wimsley's Bar. The rain had stopped a short while ago. Chrome-colored worms surfaced from the cracks in the asphalt, then waited on the surface to die. I cautiously stepped past them on the sidewalk. Eventually I lost interest and grew careless, shifting my eyes to the clouds that remained darker than usual. The rain might return.
I did a double take when I spotted an old man on a rooftop. He was sitting on the ledge of the building, letting his feet dangle. He was either a suicide jumper or an Owl. There was no time to think about this, John could be horribly maimed by now. I couldn't miss that.
My left hoof took the first step into the dingy bar. The rest of my body followed its lead. The first thing to catch my eye upon entering was a group of deaf aging females laughing like irritated baby bats being fornicated with little twigs. They didn't stop as I stepped in. The sound made me cringe and forced me to cover my dagger-like ears as I headed to the far corner of the counter.
“John's fucking around in the bathroom,” Wimsley shook his head and poured me a drink. “He scared the kiddies away. I don’t know how long I can deal with him, man. He brings in a crowd, but he scares so many away.”
This was my chance to get on his good side for free drinks without absorbing insults. “Hey, man, no sweat. Why would you want a bunch of trouble-hungry punks anyway?”
Wimsley nodded agreeably. “True, true. You ever see how John draws the crowd in with his flaming sword swallowing act?” I nodded back at him as he continued. “I can’t stay mad at him.”
Wimsley was nothing more than an aging hippie. He had plenty of money from his contracting years. Wealth was never a problem, no matter how often he complained about money. He was pretty old, but well-built and had several blood transfusions to keep himself healthy. Wimsley was too old to revel in our era, but too young to settle down and die.
The deaf females continued telling jokes through hand gestures. I shook my head and took a seat right under the television, attempting to drown out the mindless laughing and finger snaps with boxing commentators. I removed the gas mask from my face and downed the shot of whiskey and asked for another. A warm, gentle finger petted the brim of my ear. The finger felt as moist as the atmosphere outside. It was slender and relaxing.
“Mutt?” a delicate voice said. “You're still alive.”
You're still alive. The words scraped the back of my spine. Her name is Mary, my first and only ex-girlfriend. After she dumped me, I often thought why someone so beautiful would date someone like me, especially where bedroom matters were concerned. Perhaps she pitied me; I mean, my appearance could be described as grotesque. My best guess was that she was a complete pervert.
Such a pervert, in fact, she created a clone of herself. She dumped me to go fuck herself.
Cloning was introduced forty years ago. The two types, extrachomosomal and recombinant, have torn a hole into morality and vastly changed the behavior of mankind. It is the sinner's invention that ushered in an era of sex minions and slavery.
Extrachromosomal was used to raise a human from birth, which takes longer to hatch and is much more expensive. The “extras” were technically more real than the recombinants, but people seldom ever made these. It was just an alternative for parents that could not bare children and refused to adopt.
Recombinants should be considered a new culture or race. Their blood is a clear and thick surrogate that must be rejuvenated every three years. Their “oil change” is very expensive, but they are immune to every illness, are medically simple to operate on, and can modify their physical structure to look wildly different and perform incredible super human tasks. This was Mary's choice.
I never met her clone; she never dared mutter her name to me, either. I can only guess that it looked exactly like her. The thought of two perfect creatures in front of my eyes made my heart pound. Ever since she left me, I had a secret hatred towards clones. Love was no longer a blind thing. It is now analyzed in a lab, shit out by a machine, and handed out like a prescription. Mary continued to stare me down. I couldn’t help but wonder why. I’m sure her clone would happily pleasure her all day.
She began rocking my rickety stool with her little black boot, waiting for my answer in anticipation. Ignoring her was not an option, and the first glance of her bare legs that emerged from her little black dress made my chest ache. I shifted my seat and looked into her watery eyes; diabolical and charming, my vision was thrown at her shockingly white canines. Every detail of her face reflected her predatory personality.
“How's the twin?” I said out of spite. She released a tiny giggle from her belly; the smell of alcohol was lingering on her laugh as she closed in for a whisper.
“Getting a check-up,” she said, “She'll be away in Newark for a few days. ‘Till then, I'm very much alone.” I felt her coming closer, her breast pressing against my shoulder now.
My will to ignore her was fading. I knew I still cared for her. It just pissed me off to hell that she always got what she wanted. I stared at the television set perched in the far corner of the room. A live coverage was on the news, something about a man having sex with some other dead guy across the state. The reporter was crouching next to a shallow grave, pointing at the bare-assed victim inverted in a humiliating position. The casket was smashed and pieces of it stuck out of the poor cadaver. The image didn't bother me much. The dead are as common as the living. I looked to my right and saw Mary was watching too. She lost interest and put her full concentration back onto me.
“Sick world, eh?” She said. “You would be surprised what some people would do for pleasure.”
“I bet it was the same guy from last week,” Wimsley interrupted. “His AIDS stricken boyfriend died and he snuck into the morgue for a final stiff fuck. I guess he didn't wanna let go.”
The gas mask was shaking in my fingertips as I finally gave in to her innocent smile. “Okay, Mary, you found me. What could you possibly want? Wimsley, give me a fucking beer.”
“You got it,” he said with a wink. His false eye twinkled with a newly found respect for me. Wimsley was there when I first met Mary. He was enthralled by her charm, just like every other guy. I was too, but chose to ignore her. That’s what lured her to me- the ounce of false resistance sparked an interest, exactly like this moment.
“Mutt...” Her leg was entwined with one of mine. I felt the blood rushing into my heart. The morphine pumped through my veins and withered away.
“And what's with these fucking stools? Can we paste a back on them and call it a fucking chair!” I haven't been this nervous since she left me. Mary giggled at my outburst. I violently shook my head. My eyes managed to scan the room well enough to tell me that, aside from the deaf bats, that we were all alone.
“Come on, let’s play,” she said as she pulled on her elastic garter. “We can go back to your-”
A crashing sound startled both of us as John retracted his boot from the swinging bathroom door with a revolting look on his face. The crashing of a thousand drums echoed in my head when I noticed the fire blazing from his eyes.
“John, that blowtorch isn’t on you, is it?” Wimsley cried.
John snapped out of his power trip and tried to play it cool. “Oh, hey buddy. My barbiturates are wearing off, got anything on you?” He caught Mary staring him down. “Am I interrupting anything?” The rain picked up again.
I untied my leg from Mary's, “not at all.”
Did the necrophiliac wear protection? Find out after this...
The llama’s hum turned into a cicada's shriek. Outside, the sound of scattering footsteps could be heard...
Chapter 2
Second Chapter
John stayed silent as he closed up the bar. He had to flick the lights on and off so the deaf could get the idea. They got up and walked out, giggling to each other as they communicated with hand gestures. Wimsley walked out from the storage room that he was inside of for a few minutes. “Go on home, Wim, I’ll take care of it.” Wimsley nodded and walked out into the violent rain with an umbrella made out of a strong metal. It sounded like a crash symbol pelted furiously with dried rice.
“I'll be back,” Mary said. “I have to use a bathroom.” She got up and walked down the murky hallway. Her stride was elegant and repulsive. It didn't matter how tawdry she was, I was still attracted to her. John and I heard the bathroom door open and close.
John turned to me after he closed the window blinds. “Impudent strumpet,” he said under his breath. “Impudent strumpet!” John spit out a glob of yellow saliva on the floor. He gently grabbed my wrist and tapped at it with his other hand. “She got you into that stuff. She only uses you for kicks!”
“Maybe she’s changed,” I said unsteadily.
“Yeah, and maybe this time she won’t fellate you with a scorpion in her mouth!”
A sloppy shiver coursed through me. John stared at me with relief when he noticed the words had a serious effect on me. “She’s just a pervert! You’re part donkey; I bet she’s into bestiality. Yeah, that must be it.”
“Don’t even act like you never-“
He interrupted me. “Okay, okay. I take that one back.”
“She’ll be joining us tonight,” I muttered. John nodded, accepting defeat. It surprised me how fast he backed down this time. I lit a cigarette and handed it to him with a thank you.
“You owe me,” he said with a puff.
Mary must have been listening through the walls. The second John exhaled his smoke Mary opened the door and returned to her seat while seductively biting her lip. John rolled his eyes as he counted the change in the register. I stared in awe at his incredible speed. If his bill-counting didn’t impress me enough, he grabbed a handful of quarters, tossed them into the air, and listened as the coins crashed on the counter. “6.25!” he shouted.
Mary clapped for him. “You are a sorcerer of true reckonings!” John cracked a little smile, then, shook it off.
The front door blasted open. A large man entered the bar with his face hidden in his reinforced rain coat. Water dripped off his hood and shoulders and landed in tiny pools at the entrance. The sound of his deep breathing made us all feel uneasy.
John turned to the man without hesitation, “Sorry buddy, we're closing early for no reason at all.”
He locked the door behind him and pulled the damp hood off his head. His massive orange beard wiggled as he turned towards us. The ends of his hair were a discolored dark brown. It was Gleesty. He lifted his large hand for a wave. Gleesty’s sausage-like fingers cast a shadow over our bodies.
Gleesty had an interesting way about him. He loved fantasy and videogames; anything that dealt with combat or mythology, really. Nordic lore and history was his specialty. Gleesty studied battles, drank heavily, and oddly enough, was one of the kindest fellows I’ve ever come across. His intentions were always benevolent, the mirror opposite of John or I.
“Oh, sorry, I was looking for the douchebag convention,” Gleesty yelled, relaxing his enormous shoulders.
“Ah, the deranged pachyderm has arrived,” John said, smiling.
Gleesty flung his coat on a table and sat next to Mary and me. The smell of wet leather lingered around him. He patted my shoulder with his gigantic hand, almost toppling me to the ground while letting out a deep, jovial laugh. Once I got used to the smell of leather, the smell of alcohol was introduced, protruding through his neck and making my eyes water.
“What's your story?” John poured him a glass of whiskey.
“Eh, same old,” Gleesty said. “Looking for junk around the area to sell as scrap metal. ‘Still playing that online game, been thinking about joinin’ the military.” Gleesty looked at Mary and I and smiled. “Little buddy, nice lady friend you got there.”
Mary grinned, charmed by the grizzly bear in front of her. “My name's Mary, I'm an old friend of Mutt's.”
John dragged the sole of his foot on the ground, making a horrible squeaking noise. I hissed at him.
“You can call me Glee,” he said. “I am a new friend of Mutt’s, met back in the hos-”
I knew I was trying too hard to keep a good impression on Mary when I interrupted Gleesty with a cough. It developed into an awkward silence, which John embraced with closed eyes. To make matters worse, the rain stopped. I saw Mary's grin growing wider in my peripherals. Thankfully, Gleesty broke the ice.
“Where we goin' tonight?” he asked.
I was worried that John had changed his mind for my torment. Mary and I stared at him for the answer. He frowned when he said “Mutt’s”. The burden was lifted off my back. I handed John another cigarette as a reward.
Gleesty looked at me and smiled. “Are ya bringin' your lady friend with ya?”
I nodded and felt Mary's hand creeping up onto my own. I saw John's knuckles turn white at the corner of my eye. Guilt crept into the back of my skull. However, Gleesty liked her, I liked her, and Mary stays from the popular vote.
“Let's get a move on then,” said Gleesty. “Before the rail spikes get us.”
John fired out a conversation to try and stall us. He wanted lethal rain to pierce Mary. “Glee, you hear about the necro down at the cemetery?”
“Eh?” Gleesty grunted. “Oh, oh no, I have not. Big deal. It's not unusual these days.”
John pouted. He tried his very best to stop us from reaching our destination. “Yeah, but he fucked his AIDS infested boyfriend! I bet after the dead cells and irradiated blood, the STD turns into ultra-AIDS! Super AIDS! The vulgar atrocities! Our lives are at stake! We must stay here!”
Gleesty laughed, grabbed his large coat and threw it over his shoulder. “Well, we all can't be as charming as you, John. Let's go.”
The four of us walked out without saying another word. We examined the horizon, then the streets. The blend of gritty industry and nature's common cycle made the outside look like a melting Hell. It was no surprise to us all except for Gleesty; his giant eyeballs glaring at the environment and putting his steps to a halt. “Shit man.”
John gave up on making us stay. He patted Glee's enormous back. “Come on, it's getting dark.”
We quietly walked down the first few streets, gas masks hugging our faces. Everyone was anxious to get to my apartment. Mary concentrated on the cracks in the sidewalk. John and Gleesty kicked a rock around to occupy themselves.
Gleesty took his mask off. “Just rained, it's not that bad now.” The three of us removed ours as well. The air wasn’t bad, so I lit a cigarette.
“Is it hard walking all the way over here from another town?” John asked Gleesty.
“I actually enjoy it,” Gleesty said. “Some punks actually tried to jump me while coming here today. I grabbed one of 'em and slammed his back on the pavement. Tore off his mask and crammed his skull between a catch basin, watched him chew on the iron panel.”
“And the other punks?” John started to smile. His thirst for violence shimmered in his eyes. John played games with Gleesty fairly often. Most of the time they were strategy games, seldom were they ever trivia. Gleesty played conservatively, while John was liberal and aggressive, often shouting when he got too into the game.
“Ran off, I followed them for a little while though. Their friend is probably still trapped in that iron.”
“Adorable.”
I looked up and saw several people sitting on rooftops watching us. I knew exactly who they were. The same man dangling his feet earlier was with his friends.
I smiled up at them and shouted, “gooble, gobble, the end is nigh!” They blankly looked down at me. Normally, they would smile back and say something outrageously strange. Something was not right, but nothing is ever right with these lunatics. We continued walking, attempting to suppress the silence.
We call these people Owls. Owls sit on their rooftops almost all day and night observing their surroundings. They sit right above the rust fog, safe from danger. These anti-social outcasts take pleasure in watching everything die slowly from the poison underneath them. While their lifestyle is simple, their philosophy is complex and absurd. Their large, leathery eyes and droopy faces reflect on their dull attires and dry personalities.
The Owls have set up an odd anti-culture subculture when the war occurred over two decades ago. Their dangerous motives are cerebral and subtle. They are not some kind of psychopathic Jehovah's Witnesses; they are atheists with one sole purpose: to bury everything with them and to keep it there. They demand technology should come to a halt, and the human race, or, the “morbidly-obese plague,” should be exterminated. Owls are anti-history fundamentalists, corrupting minds of children with false knowledge in order to shatter their brains. They attacked the museums that they own; destroying their own property inside and creating new pieces constantly. They want music obliterated as well. Anything that can express one's soul they have tainted. Many think it's just for kicks, some think it's just a gimmick for attention. But someone out there knew exactly what they had in mind. John's uncle knew the true reason of their actions. He was an Owl too, and the strangest of them all.
John told me the story of how Bill Strub was “accepted” into this tiny cult that littered the east coast. He walked into one of their music festivals- which did not involve any instruments, just humming. They called it the Ad Libitum Festival. Thousands of them were humming on the shores of a beach. Mr. Strub claimed he walked in front of them, and the second a single one noticed who he was, they bowed their heads and welcomed him with open arms. Old Owl Strub had many secrets that he carried with him. We were lucky enough to pry one out of him. When we confronted him about the truth of the Owls, he answered us with a dignity he’s never shown to anyone. “These anti-mongers have figured out how to unlock the secrets of life- why we are here and what purpose we serve. They are on the right page by being in the wrong book. Instead of using logic to understand life, they are going to opposite direction. The less sense they make, the more they learn. Being against art, history, music and life will subtract all the noise and the wrong directions to the point where they find the truth. They are tired of breakthroughs and the linear reality. These folks don't even like the use of language! They are the negative oracles, and they predict the future by canceling out the present and altering the past.
Everyone wants truth. Why not untruth? Uncertainty? Ignorance? Ask Nietzsche, ask the Sphinx, ask the bloody mirror. For rebirth. The stupid are fresh and immortal, the smart shall wither.”
When Bill joined the Owls, they all worshiped him like a mentor. Mind you, most of the original Owls worked under Gleesty's parents years ago. Most of them were fired and blacklisted for “crimes against the human spirit.” Bill was also exiled this way. These scientists were paid very highly, and after they were fired, many changed their identities and became these Dada hermits. I am unsure if they changed names for security purposes, or if it just blends with their other odd beliefs.
Third Chapter
I first met Bill Strub when he and John moved across the street from my old house. I remember crossing the street over for the first time and knocking on their door for a decent hello, back when my parents were not dead and rotting. The door opened and a middle-aged man stared at me dead in the eyes. He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me inside the house. The smell of dried carrots strongly permeated the dwelling. The walls were torn down and replaced with thousands of stiff, worn books. Clocks and buckets were hanging from the top of the ceiling. Bill grabbed my shoulders and spun me around.
“Once you dare a peek of this place, you will never stop staring,” he said, constantly looking over at the ticking clocks. “I often have to change their batteries. Not many people remember what batteries are anymore.”
“I, I know what batteries are,” I said. He made it seem like they were outdated and forgotten; a man truly ahead of his time.
Bill smiled and took off my mask. “Perfect. John, come see our neighbor! Oh, allow me to introduce my entity. I am William O. Strub, a Quantum Alchemist.”
John emerged from the labyrinth of books. His body slithered near the tower of tomes as if he was attached to them. He looked frightened and nervous; his delicate eyes looked directly at my face and, unlike many kids, he did not look away in disgust.
“Well met,” he said. His voice was tender and mild. “I'm John.”
“Hi,” I replied. John looked directly into my eyes; it was from that moment on we connected like brothers.
“How cute,” Bill said. He waved his hand in the air in a shamanistic manner. “I wrote almost all of these books, even the phone books.” I looked over to the massive pile, most of them being school books that I once read- only their covers were scratched out in marker and written over with ANOTHER VOLUME OF BILL STRUBBERY. “Well, my dears, I'm going up top. You boys are welcome to come up once you are both acquainted.”
My brain told me run out the door and never look back, but my heart wanted to stay. They were the nicest, warmest people I have met. They treated me like a human, and even took care of me when I was sick. I felt that I made the right choice by staying.
Bill climbed an old wooden ladder through two holes from the top floors. John looked at me and sighed in relief.
“Good,” he said. “He likes you.”
I stared at John in befuddlement, “What is he?”
“He's my uncle, one of the smartest men in the world. He is trying to kill us all. I'm his apprentice and he is teaching me secrets.”
“What kind of secrets?”
“I really am not sure. Come up top with me, maybe he feels that I am ready to know. You are my first friend, after all.”
We climbed up the ladder and through the hole in the roof. At first glance we witnessed Bill, completely naked, masturbating furiously at the edge of the roof. His toes clenched the tips of the building. A plugging device was lodged in his anal orifice. He moaned, his left arm extending into the air like an antenna as he shivered with an exploding orgasm. His semen dripped off the rooftop and disappeared into the light fog. He turned around and smiled to us. In a nutshell, Bill got off to the thought of chaos, biblical catastrophes, and imagining the fall of mankind. He was a misanthropist and an apocalyptic sadist.
“Incredible!” he said. “This land is perfect! We're just above this terrible fog. Tell me, boy, what is your name?”
“Mutt,” I said as I stared at his naked body. While his face and hands appeared withered and fragile, the rest of his body was extremely muscular. He was in better shape than anyone I have ever met. It was eerie, seeing him naked and intimidating, but I also felt safe.
“Now, Mutt. You can either love life or love hating life. Anything in between is too queer for mankind. Fall in between and you will often ask yourself questions that you will never find an answer to. Understand?”
I was far too confused and scared to speak, so I just nodded.
Bill put his clothes back on and sat down on a chair, looking at me, hardly blinking. “Tell me, young lad, have you heard of my studies?”
I made a squeak and tilted my head.
“Makes sense, I was kicked out of CERN and the university I taught at because of my dark and dangerous knowledge- and don't get me started on those Goresmiths.” He shook his head with a smile on his face, his reminiscing put him in an ecstatic rage. “I was one of the first humans to create an anti-hydrogen particle. I began my studies with elementary quanta at around your age, and with the help of a lightning storm that fried the frontal lobes of my brain, I grew more and more interested in the field.” Bill stood up and reached down the backside of his pants, pulling out the fornication device. “Whoops, forgot about that. I'm still stuck in the anal stage. Oh, that Sigmund Freud.” Bill stuck the fornication device into his mouth, and it was then I realized it was a pipe. “Oh, and oral stage. And the phallic stage, as you witnessed earlier.” He constantly changed the topic, it was nearly impossible to follow his thinking process. It was all coming too fast from different angles.
“Sir,” John said. “You digress.”
Bill smiled. “Oh, right, right. Creating anti-particles takes very long, is very expensive, and is very hard to contain. In fact, creating a few thousand of those particles, which can't even fill a tiny balloon would take years, and I do not have that kind of fucking time, kid.”
I opened my mouth to speak. “What are you trying to acc-”
“Patience, patience. I grew more and more interested in quantum physics, or anything absurd, really. But physics was my main field of study. Thermodynamics was a great part in my work, I was in love with the second law. Entropy. Know it, kid? After creating several anti-hydrogen quarks, I built a tiny room and worked on tiny tiny animals. Kinetic energy and death lead to my affair with entropy. And sex. I worked on the simplest of creatures: the termite. If I performed my procedure correctly, I could accelerate their evolution process in this outdated universe and convert them into beings of pure, powerful energy. I created many of them! I called them entromites! Think about it- tiny, pure, glowing little beings of light! Immortal! Eating at our universe, first taking out wood, the most innocent of all beings.”
My mouth swung open. I couldn't believe what this psychopath was saying. He smiled at my reaction.
“Yes! But these little fucks escaped the room that I spawned them in and began fucking around in my walls! I heard CRCHT CRCHT sounds all night,” he said, while twisting his fists in opposite motions. He stomped his feet angrily. “I had to take the damn walls down to try and capture them, but no luck. I guess they died, they weren't perfect. That's why we moved here, I took apart our last home, is that not correct, Johnny?”
John nodded.
Bill stood up and rubbed John’s shoulders as an act of respect. “I found him crying underneath a pylon, my brother was killed flying a kite with him. As for his mother, who knows. Moving on, I grew fascinated when cloning came about. I took two specimens, John here, and a female. John lent me his sperm so I could convert it to a negative life form so I can artificially inseminate her to create an anti-human. And once John here shook hands with his child, boom. Unfortunately, the girl died during the process, heh. The negative sperm caused an implosion, and it was very difficult to create an anti-ovary to hold it in place inside a typical incubator. It would've been...anticlimactic!” Bill burst out with laughter and then cleared his throat.
“Anyway, all of this would be too much work, and there must be an easier way to create my master plan.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“To create the most sophisticated anti-particle, one so rare and powerful, that just one would cancel out the universe! To make nothing out of an everything! The anti-god quark!”
I felt nauseous. John looked at me in fear. “But, why do that?”
Bill Strub laughed. “Because, this universe is tainted, my child. Nothing is pure; even milk turns sour before it chalks. If I create a completely indifferent solution to this place, a new, more perfect world would sprout out of the former one's ashes. It's not that I hate this universe, I just love it so much that I must put it out of its misery.”
From my first few minutes with him, to the last few years, Bill told me many strange ideas that I didn't bother to comprehend. John was his student. However, I think even John had trouble understanding his philosophy.
The rest of the day ended with John and me cowering in a corner, drugged up on ayahuasca while Bill entertained us with shadow puppets.
John would later grow up and constantly mumble quotes by his mad uncle.
Bill Strub supposedly died during my time in a rehabilitation center. His heart went towards the same direction his brain did. In his death bed, he gave John a lock box. Bill explained that inside the box are the answers to the truth about life, the secrets of happiness and everything that he ever wanted to know. John just has to find the key somewhere in this world, which could be anything. His last words were, “Follow the Owls.”
The problem is that the only person to see Bill Strub dead was John. Also, the room that they were in was filled with a strange hallucinogenic smoke. Bill enjoyed meditating with John. Bill also enjoyed drugging John during their time alone together. Bill Strub's body disappeared when John woke up the next day. He believes that his body had undergone so much stress from his strenuous life that it went on into a black hole, attempting to convert itself into an anti-dark matter particle. It was “explained” in a letter his uncle wrote during the meditation session. Or something.
Fourth Chapter
Everyone seemed to relax a little more once we reached my street. Mary slid her fingers between mine. We didn’t bother speaking; breathing outside without the taste of sulfur on the tip of our tongues was a rare event. We all took breaths as if we had been trapped for several minutes underwater. Gleesty was the first to speak.
“Feels good,” he said, as his heavy breathing continued. “Used to be, it was healthy to breathe outside.”
“Who needs health?” John said.
Gleesty chuckled. “I suppose I'm not healthy in any shape, mentally or physically.”
“Happiness is more important than sanity.” John twitched and muttered something incomprehensible.
Gleesty thought about this for a second, then shrugged once we reached my stairs. I unlocked my door and let the stooges in first. Mary caressed my body lightly, much like the fog, before stepping inside.
John looked at my key and thought for a second. Then shook his head.
All of us headed straight to the living room and chucked our masks at the nearest wall. John sat down on the couch. Gleesty turned the television on and sat down next to him. The silence lingered as we focused our attention on the television. A classic cartoon of a coyote attempting to outwit and catch a road runner was on.
“I always wondered,” Gleesty chuckled. “Will Wile E. Coyote ever catch that bloody thing?”
“I used to watch this cartoon all the time,” John said.
“With your wacky uncle?” I said with a smile.
“With him, yes.” John exhaled and relaxed his fingers on the couch.
“From the perspective of the family, we feel that art is one of the greatest languages that humans have to offer. And it is not straight forward, no. It is abstract. It is hidden in the artwork's guts.
“Wile E. Coyote is the perfect example; a legendary character shit out through the intestines of Chuck Jones. A symbolic meaning is here, and it relates to mankind as a whole. Throughout the coyote's reign, which, during the same days this cartoon was made, real life events of competition were taking place, such as the Olympics. Anyway, he sought after one goal: capturing and eating the road runner. Every single person relates to this. We are alone in a remote universe within ourselves, searching to accomplish a dream. The problem is, our road runners are goals that are often underestimated. They exceed our expectations. Now, a simple animal that could be caught easily would not fulfill our standards. We don't want anything too easy or there will not be any satisfaction. Only disappointment. And we are always hungry. When we eat our meal, we will only be hungry for another dream. And if we plunge to our doom from a cliff, or fall into the path of a moving train, or blow ourselves up, we tend to bounce back. Our goals can be a force to be reckoned with, but humans are also resilient.
“And now look at him. He made a giant robotic version of himself. Can it be man creating God? It is an image of himself, and he is deluding himself into false hope, is he not?”
I glanced at the television. I saw the road runner dodging a cliff and luring the coyote off the ledge. A whistle sounded, followed by a splat with a puff of gray smoke. John giggled at the screen and Mary and Gleesty frowned, saddened by the cruel fate of the animated entity.
I asked John, “What's the E stand for?”
“Ethelbert!”
“Any subtle meaning to that?” Mary asked.
“It's the name of some fucking king.” John looked away from the television and began making shadow puppets.
“Hmph,” I stared at the cartoon for a few seconds, examining the coyote's long wrinkled snout and his beady little eyes. It suddenly hit me. “I knew a guy that looked exactly like him.”
“Mutant?” John asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where? The Zoo?” Everyone chuckled.
“M.A.”
Gleesty wrinkled his forehead, his eyebrows darted down towards me. “What?” His face went back to normal. “Oh.”
“Yeah, Mutants Anonymous.” I looked over at Mary who was holding back her laughter. Her bright red cheeks were ready to explode. John glared at her, filling the room with his vibe. I suppose he thought he was the only one allowed to tease me.
She squeaked and covered her face with a pillow, “Was he fucking a bird?”
My memories suddenly grew more vivid. “Actually... yes, there was a female there that had a beak.”
John laughed, brushing the anger away. “So he stuffed her like a turkey, eh?”
Gleesty giggled violently. “What exactly did you do at those meetings?”
I stood up to light a cigarette, inhaled, and laid back down in my seat. “We spoke about how pitiful we were, how upset we were with our appearances. We held hands and chanted words to raise our esteem and all of that other fancy shit. But that was only the beginning.
“We recited George Orwell's Animal Farm and how it was our sign to strike back at the human race for oppressing us. We crowed, squealed, hissed, and barked at the smooth-faced, average humans. The Pig was the one that really had an impact on me. He would often pull out fashion magazines and paste the heads of barnyard creatures onto them. I remember that gruesome snout of his- full of piercings and hardened over with dried snot. He was the activist of the lot.”
Mary had a look of terror in her eyes. She grabbed my cigarette and took a drag, ashed it, and stuck it back between my fingers.
“We also talked about breaking into sperm banks and replacing all the semen with ours. The group name we used was the Mad Cow Cult; the ten of us felt it had a nice ring to it. It was me, The Pig, The Dog, The Cat, The Horse, The Goose, The Goat, The Cow and The Rat. We never used our real names.
“And what happened?”
“A lot of things happened. Some of us didn't agree with the strange plans, others prepared for it, up to the point where The Pig wrote a code of ethics and created tons of plans. To me, he was all talk. The Cat was the most interesting one in my eyes. He rarely spoke, he was so kind, yet he went through so much in his life. He told us that he had died multiple times already, and claimed to have nine lives.
“Then, the person who held the meetings, an over-sized bullfrog, croaked. We didn't have anyone else to make us coffee. My parents died at around the same time.” John nodded his head with a large smile.
“Hm?” Gleesty raised an eyebrow. “What's John know about this?”
I smiled. “His uncle adopted me for the last two years before I turned eighteen.”
Gleesty shook his head with disgust at John. John smiled back.
“But there are plenty of Mutant groups around, why didn't you join any of them? You coulda gotten paychecks from the government.”
“Yeah, I was going to join one that wanted to settle all the mutants out on an island, it didn't catch my eye. It seemed a lot like 'The Island of Dr. Moreau'.”
“Some of them were scams anyway,” John said. “One of those organizations sent all mutants to a slaughterhouse.”
“Who's Bill Strub?” Mary asked.
“No idea,” said Gleesty. “They've shown me some of his writings right around the day he passed away. Funny guy.”
“That's terrible. When did he die?”
“Six months ago, was it?” Gleesty looked at John, who kept nodding.
Last edited by Village Idiot; 05-13-2012 at 07:07 PM.
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Here's a novel I wrote.
