Fuckness: A Novel Part 8

"I'm in a great deal of pain."

"Horns aside, you look like complete and total h.e.l.l. A boy your age shouldn't have those dark circles around his eyes. Anyway, I may be able to construct some form of remedy for that pain. You don't get to be my age without coming up with a few ways of coping with the old pain bug. Can you possibly manage to negotiate the numerous objects on the floor and move over here to the couch?"

I didn't think I'd be able to see my hand if I held it out too far in front of my face. I tried to stand up but my body wouldn't move. Maybe my brain had found a way to wake up, but my body was going to make me hurt if I commanded it to do anything. The mere hint of a movement and a low shriek involuntarily forced itself out of my mouth.

Uncle Skad picked me up like a small child and carried me over to the couch. It felt impossibly comfortable. Like the booth in the bar, my body melted into it. There was even something about the overwhelming smell of a.s.s wafting up around me that seemed comforting.

"There you go," he said. "I guess we have a lot of catching up to do if you don't mind the ramblings of an old man."

Skad walked over to the middle of the room, disappearing into the darkness, and struck a match. He dropped the match and the room burst into a blaze of orange light. A crazy thought sent a sudden shockwave through my body. For a moment, I thought that, either I was still dreaming-all the darkness and h.e.l.l orange-or I had died out there in the rain and gone to h.e.l.l. Maybe this was going to be some kind of punishment, like now it was my turn to be burned alive for setting fire to the parents' house. Black smoke shot out of the barrel Uncle Skad had thrown the match into and I realized the fire wasn't going to spread.

I was safe.

The black smoke burned my lungs. On the floor, roaches scattered in all directions. They were some of the biggest roaches I'd ever seen. Most of them were about the size of my thumb. They ran until they hit a pile of papers or furniture. Once they hit the obstruction, they made horrible squeaky scratching sounds as they struggled to crawl over it. Skad must have noticed me looking at the bugs.

"It's alarming at first, I realize, but it's not too hard to grow quite comfortable with them. When I first moved in here, I used any means possible in order to get rid of them, but nothing really worked. Now, I figure, f.u.c.k it, let them spy on me. I know they have little camera eyes and microphones on their a.s.ses. They'll do anything to know what I'm doing at all times. Besides, a few months ago, they took up religion against me."

Uncle Skad made a broad sweeping motion to the far wall. A ma.s.s of roaches had formed a cross on the brown wood slats of the wall. The fire cast an ominous shadow, giving the cross a darkly luminous glow.

"Like their dear Christ, they crawl up there to die. Somehow, they stay. I guess they were trying to prove a point, too. Messianic roaches. Every now and then, all the other roaches will gather under that wall and I can hear them praying with all their little roach voices."

I could tell right away I was going to like Uncle Skad an awful lot. He fell silent. Actually, he went downright limp, and stared at the wall, his eyes a complete blank, the fire dancing across his huge pupils.

I heard coughing come from the back of the house. A hunchback crept out of the shadows and I was somewhat taken aback. I may have even gasped.

"Are you filling the visitor up with your crazy talk already, Skaddeus?"

"Huh?" the voice brought him back from wherever he was. I wasn't sure, maybe it was just the fire, but I thought I saw something like a flicker run through Skad.

"Oh," he said. "Sorry there, didn't mean to wake you."

The man coughed again. "You know, it's not so much the light as it is the smoke. I do enough of that anyway. I don't need to do it when I sleep, too." He pulled out an unfiltered cigarette, put it in his mouth, and leaned his head over the barrel. He brought his head back up and said, "Who needs eyebrows anyway?"

"Introductions are in order, I suppose," Skad said. "Wallace Black, this is Dr. Blast. Dr. Blast, that couch-bound gentleman over there is Wallace Black."

"Nice to meet you," I said.

"Greetings," Dr. Blast said.

I was captivated by this man. He was completely normal looking except for his hunchback ascending to a rounded hump just below the crown of his head.

"You're looking at my hump, aren't you?" he said suddenly. My answer got caught up somewhere in the back of my throat. Of course I was staring at his hump, but I couldn't just tell him that, could I?

"It's a nice one, isn't it?" he asked.

"It is pretty remarkable," I said.

"Remarkable, of course. My only solace comes from the fact that it's not there most of the time."

"Are you having it removed?"

"No, not exactly. You can't just have a hunchback... lanced or something. No. This here's a Sad Hump. It comes and it goes. I'll be okay for months, sometimes even a year or more, then the Sad Hump'll come and stick around for a few weeks. That's when I come here and sort of hide out for awhile. I don't know, there's something about this place that makes the hump go away. Have you come here before?"

"Not exactly," I said.

Dr. Blast took a deep drag off his cigarette and threw it into the barrel. "Well, I hope you have a great time." He turned around to Uncle Skad, grabbing some piles up off the floor and feeding them into the barrel. "You coming back to bed sometime soon, old man?"

"I'll be there shortly. You go on ahead."

Dr. Blast bid us both a good night, walked to the back of the smallish s.p.a.ce, and collapsed into a heap on the floor.

"Dr. Blast likes his sleep," Skad said.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"No, sleep's good for him. Oh, you mean you're sorry about something else. What is it, Wallace?"

"Just showing up like this."

"Oh, it's better than a stick in the eye. It's so rare that I get company unless, of course, they're sending somebody to spy on me. There's the occasional displaced Tar Mate I extend my hospitality to but they usually end up drinking all of my Scotch and puking everywhere."

"I won't be here long."

"You can stick around me as long as you need to. It has been a very long time since I've chatted with a family member. To be honest, you're probably the only family member I'd want to chat with. On a whole, they're a rather sorry lot, wouldn't you say?"

"Certainly," I said, even though I couldn't really remember any of them.

"I want you to fill me in on what's been happening around the Black family the past ten years or so. It may turn out that you and I have a lot in common. First, though, you mentioned something about being in a great deal of pain, didn't you? And I mentioned something about a remedy?"

I nodded.

"Let me see what I can do about that."

He went off toward the back of the house and I heard some clanking and slos.h.i.+ng and a few surprised exclamations like he'd just found something he didn't know he had. I looked back at him. There was a small counter s.p.a.ce he worked on, going back and forth as he went about his concocting, busily stepping over Dr. Blast, who lay on his stomach, his hump occluding his head. I wished I wasn't in the pain I was. It would have been so nice to join him.

"What, exactly, is the kind of pain you are feeling?" he called to me. "Dull? Achy? Piercing? Thudding? Throbbing? Sc.r.a.ping? Burning? Raw? Stinging?"

"No, it's sort of a grinding bonefeel," I called back, figuring he would know exactly what I was talking about.

"Ah, of course, I should have known. No matter, the secret ingredient's all the same."

He spent a few more minutes of grabbing little jars and holding them up to the firelight. After awhile he brought back a Mason jar full of brownish-red liquid. I noticed he had a gla.s.s of what I a.s.sumed was whiskey for himself.

"You drink some of that," he said. "Let us toast the absence of pain."

He clicked his gla.s.s against mine and lifted it to his lips. Once he got his gla.s.s all the way up there, I nearly retched. A roach struggled furiously against the bottom of the gla.s.s. He had to know it was there. Had he put it there?

Taking my brief disgust for hesitation, Skad grunted, "Go on... It'll put hair on your chest."

I sipped mine. It didn't taste too bad, but it sent this trail of fire down my throat that landed somewhere in the pit of my stomach and made my a.n.u.s burn. I didn't even want to think about going to the bathroom in this place. I couldn't even figure out where the bathroom might be. I certainly didn't see how this was going to help the pain.

"So, Wally, why don't you tell me how you got here? People are often drawn here by strange and magical forces. Tell me your story first and then I'll tell you mine." I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Uncle Skad talk. He had a way of placing emphasis on everything and making it seem really dramatic. Except he didn't seem like the type of person I would have pictured being dramatic.

He threw his head back and downed the last of the whiskey. He brought the gla.s.s down and looked inside, seemingly noticing the roach for the first time. He poked at it and made a surprised motion with his eyebrows. He grumbled a little bit and directed his attention back to me. "Go on, I know you have something."

Glancing down into his gla.s.s again, he gave it a little shake. The roach floated around on the bottom, all bloated up. I took another sip of mine and decided this would be the last time I told the story. No one had seemed the least bit interested in what I had done before. It seemed like they just wanted to know what brought me standing there in front of them. After telling Uncle Skad I would simply tell people I was the devil, sent to the earth to devour souls. Or maybe I would just tell them I was born that way, like I had Johnny Metal. That seemed to be the thing most devoid of any type of philosophy or f.u.c.kness like that.

But I started at the beginning for Uncle Skad. I mean, I started with those Clean People who came to our house and I told him about the lawnmower cord and the bad haircut punishment and all the other stupid s.h.i.+t. And I told him about the blobs. I must have went on and on about the blobs. I think I even told him about fantasizing that I was a ma.s.sive giant and I could p.i.s.s on all of them, my urine melting them like salt melts a slug.

I drank more and more of that stuff and the pain just melted away and I just kept talking and talking and talking. I don't know how I managed to talk so much. It felt like I could fall over at any moment. And I noticed that, instead of crying like I did when I told Drifter Ken, I laughed. Uncle Skad laughed too, but I could still see that look of concern in his eyes. The entire time I talked it felt like my body was winding up, tighter and tighter. And then I finished, flopping back on the couch-totally relaxed.

Uncle Skad leaned in and said, "Wallace Black, at the tender and transitional age of sixteen, you have already lead a wonderful and most extraordinary immaculate life. I will do my best to aid you in your quest and lend my unflagging sensibility and modest resources."

I don't know if it was that drink Uncle Skad had made for me or if it was just being there, talking to him, but my head was reeling. I felt great. The entire time I told my story to Uncle Skad, he looked completely absorbed in what I was saying. I think it was more his electric stare that made me feel a little better. Looking at Uncle Skad, a strange blue glow emanated from him.

I lay down on the couch, an uncontrollable smile spreading itself across my face. I felt like a dope. I felt like the Ches.h.i.+re Cat and, what was most amazing, for awhile, I didn't feel many feelings at all.

"Perhaps I should wait until tomorrow to tell my tale, Mr. Black."

"No, no, I want to hear it. It'll be a bedtime story."

Uncle Skad's eyes twinkled. "I've never had someone to tell a bedtime story to."

"One night only!" I shouted.

"One night only!" Uncle Skad agreed. "One night only! Ladies and gentlemen, Wallace Black!"

"Pipe down, G.o.ddammit!" Dr. Blast hollered from the back.

I laughed. "Begin. Begin already," I pleaded. My head really was spinning.

Uncle Skad stood up from the floor, where he had sat listening so intently to my story.

"First I'm going to freshen up the old gla.s.s, friend. Need any more remedy?"

"No thanks." His remedy still felt like it was punching the f.u.c.k out of my r.e.c.t.u.m. Skad walked to the back of the house and I lay there on the couch, listening to the shuffling and clinking. Dr. Blast grunted deeply and muttered, "You're standing... on my head, you old troll."

"Sorry," Skad said.

Skad came back with his drink, scooted an old chair closer to the couch, and sat down on the edge. I watched him move, nearly hypnotized, as he dragged that blue light around with him. The light seemed to be gaining some sharpness of color, lingering in the air behind him a little bit longer. He sat down on the edge of the chair and scratched his beard with thick grime-covered fingers. His fingernails were thick and yellow. They reminded me of Fritos. A roach crept out of his beard and scurried up his cheek. He casually flicked it away and began his story.

He rocked constantly as he talked, the speed gaining momentum with his story, and continued making wildly dramatic gestures with his hands, sending that blue all around him. My weightless spirit had returned sometime while I was talking to Skad and I found myself sitting up on the couch and, at times, even whipping my augmented head from shoulder to shoulder. This didn't faze Uncle Skad, though. He knew I was hearing every word he said. At times I would also snap my fingers and I swear Uncle Skad was almost able to time his story to those snaps.

It was then, as Skad told his story, that I suspected him of being much crazier than I was and much crazier than I'd first suspected him of being. Except for his living quarters, he had previously seemed like a sane and rational human being. There was even sort of a determinist sanity to his house.

He began his story with his birth, stating that he was fully conscious and aware from the moment he slid from his mother's womb. He knew this would give him problems later on. From the night he was taken home, his mother (my grandmother, I guess) was wickedly mean to him. She would spend the rest of her life denying she was wickedly mean to him, thinking there was no possible way he could remember any of that f.u.c.kness. He had a normal childhood, although he was watched the entire time. Skad said he was well aware of the high volume of airplanes and helicopters that flew overhead, monitoring him while he tried to play outside. When his mother started buying televisions for every room in the house, he realized someone was watching him through those, as well. There were a number of times when he could hear the spies b.u.mbling behind the walls or catch glimpses of them in the mirror.

As Skad grew older, he refused to eat the same food twice, so those people watching him wouldn't pick up his dietary habits and find an easy way to poison him. This had him eating a lot of odd things. You know all those things you see in cans and jars of sickening color at the supermarket-the things that seemed reserved for either the biggest b.u.mpkins or the most pretentious gourmet? Skad had tried them all: from caviar down to pickled pig's feet. He said this strange diet allowed him to keep a totally open mind and avoid any sort of favoritism that would cripple him when he got his first job-the King of Pung.

Apparently, Pung was a very small island nation somewhere in the Pacific Rim and Uncle Skad was able to run this country through the mail. At that point, he launched into a lengthy comparison of political structures. I heard the words, but most of the concepts eluded me. I've never cared much for politics. Eventually, he was dethroned. The airplanes and the television learned he wasn't observing an honored Pung tradition that consisted of shaving off all the body hair, on a daily basis, and saving it in pillowcases.

"I'm just an incredibly hairy motherf.u.c.ker," Skad said. "I simply found the ritual too exhausting and painful to carry on with."

After this failure, Skad was convinced he spent four years in h.e.l.l. Until then, he never really believed in the concept of a h.e.l.l. I interrupted him to ask if he ever got to meet Satan, but Skad said no one ever sees him "down there" because he is on earth doing his work. He was still not fully convinced of h.e.l.l in the traditional sense of the word. "It's all trickery," he said. "A lot of aluminum foil and high-powered sun lamps is all. The demons are just monkeys in costume."

His sentence served, he came back to the surface and became a photographer. He became quite successful at this before being busted on charges of p.o.r.nography. Skad said he still isn't sure what was p.o.r.nographic about his work and, what with the laws and all, it was impossible to find out.

There were a number of other things about Skad's life that he wouldn't tell me, saying they were "Top Secret."

"For instance," he said. "I invented something that has become so commonplace you couldn't imagine that someone had to invent it. Something as seemingly necessary as a pair of pants or a chair. But, when I was bought out, the corporation forbade me to talk about it. Sometime when it's just you and me, Wally boy, I'll tell you all about it but, you know, I'm in a compromising situation here." He gestured to the c.o.c.kroaches littered around him. And they truly were everywhere.

He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook them over his hand. A roach clicked out onto his palm, wet and glistening. He reached his fingers in to pull out a cigarette and got up to light it over the barrel.

The Tar District, in short, was where Skad ended up. He said it made him sad that n.o.body in the Tar District had anything to their names. How they had all been reduced to nothing. "But these people here aren't the ones who are reduced to nothing," he said. "When people give up their souls for more and more and more, that's when people are reduced to nothing. I choose to live in the Tar District. If you ever want to know the true nature of your soul, you'll live in complete and total poverty. Poverty makes people do things that maybe they didn't think were possible. There are a lot of people who are capable of performing great works, either to enrich their lives in the simplest way they know how, or to try and bring themselves up out of poverty. Others find themselves capable of the worst possible deeds when they crack under the pressures of poverty. The people in the Tar District manage to live incredibly full lives. When you find that everything you're doing is done to stay alive it tends to give you a renewed sense of purpose in life."

By the time he was finished, I was very excited and very tired. I shouted, "Hooray, Uncle Skad!" for no reason other than it seemed like a good thing to say. I doubted everything he said was true but, then again, he was glowing and most people would have a hard time believing that. I decided some people live a very real kind of life in their heads. More than anything, I decided I was very tired. I'd done too much of everything that day. I lay down on my back and started spiraling down into sleep.

Skad's voice sounded like it came from very far away. "You sleep tight Wally Black." Then he laughed and said, "May your dreams melt away those awful horns. You sleep tight."

Chapter Eighteen.

Skad's Invention I woke up on the couch and slowly raised my head, expecting the grinding bonefeel to be there. There was no pain at all. All over my body, every trace of stiffness and soreness was gone. Hoping Skad's magic drink had other effects, I raised my hand to feel along the top of my head, but the horns were still there. Happy to be pain free once again, I flung myself off the couch and landed on my feet.

Uncle Skad was already awake.

"You get out of the bed the same way I do," he said.

"Yeah, it really gets me started."

"Come out on the deck with Dr. Blast and I."

I followed Skad through the dim house. He swung the back door open and we went out onto the sagging deck. Standing dangerously close to the far edge of the small deck, I was able to look straight down at the greasy Saints River. Dr. Blast sat in a black soot-covered plastic porch chair, balancing a stained coffee mug on his knee. The Sad Hump was gone. The morning was bright and as clear as Milltown got.

Dr. Blast squinted up at me. "Good morning, Wally," he said.

"Good morning, Dr. Blast. Your hump's gone."

"Strangest thing. I had a wonderful dream last night. It lifted the sadness right away. It's Sat.u.r.day morning, the sun is out, and I'm going to go home to my wife and kids. We'll take a drive in the country and I'll make them listen to Benny Goodman on the car stereo."

"What time is it, anyway?"

Uncle Skad looked around. "I have no idea of the exact time. Minutes and seconds are so restrictive. I'm guessing it's early."