22 RIP daddio

I found myself in retrograde, not my intention nor my own fault, I had not been to Scrip City in days. People pass me by in my lucidity suit

the parrot next door implodes, my own door remains an open invitation, it takes several eyeblinks but I finally see Culhane's jaw tighten

I had my brain helmet on. You up there, the bald shining one, tell me if Joy Motel is passing by me or through me. I orbit farther away.

Yet I'm never higher off the ground, I recalled having to leap to talk to Ernest, it was hard to complete a sentence to his sentience.

So I'm gone from the motel, banished like scattershot acne, held back by memories of daddy. [INSERT YOUR SOUND OF CHOICE HERE]! He's here.

So many sound effects that blurt from the brainstream, I can see them as ragged stones from the voices in the flatwoods. It needs respect

THUD! My @$$. I can see ghosts of other brainstreams, falling as if in potholes after a harsh winter.BANG! why not: jump back red die right?

sound f/x left & right in slip stream pix stream slip stream slit through sift too this is what I see when all others pass me by me and I.

it is like Ong's Hat, fake documents copywronged by those who know the word big but not the word succinct, the bible sublime, yes, ongs hat.

Fifteen days that parrot implodes yellow Culhane's jaw crunches iron the turbines once smooth now broken nails on ancient cement & finally!

I stop. Motel gone. Sky wide. Nothing left. Nothing right. Literally: this wasn't right, everything gone. I look down: the dwarf from 1959.

This was significant. I realized that my being removed from the spineless effluvium of the Motel was an unexpected boon of self-clarificate.

I recalled reading a comic on my bed, the trailer out in Levelland, Texas. Hourman was fighting the Nanotube Gang. Daddy called to me go out

go out boy he called me boy when he was angry or else by my first and middle name like you are in for it now Kindred Ph--dad wasn't outside.

Empty then as it is now. Dad's voice an echo. Movement in a bush. It wasn't a dwarf, my dad never introduced me to a dwarf, it was a dodge.

And she was back, a telepathic preying mantis with the tattoo of a ribald lobster on its left eyelid. She ate my dad after sex, I remember.

And now she twittered her limbs together, spinning silk, silken sheets covered in blood, dad brought the wrong insect woman home RIP daddio.

9/9/59 dad dead I wrote him letters for years, unread. The preying mantis (her name was ~`~...the sound of space sexcapades) my dad spliced.

You're not real, I told ~`~. You're a motorcycle made from discarded plastics. For nine years I thought she had been a dwarf green blue 1/2.

She reminded me that I had to write 500,000 words before I died on my Smith Corona Galaxy Nine which coincidentally was where she was from.

I did a surprising thing then, I stripped to my Hourman underwear & allowed ~`~ to get close enough that I could smell acid in her pucker up

and I swallowed her whole, sure she was, well, dwarfISH,but she was very thin, secret agent thin crapped her out in a Sunoco in Laredo.

Off my meds too long now, think, thinking machine, think, 1959 1968 1973 flashbacks to Nam, me & Culhane on the Insane Unknown Offensive.

words less clear clever stem streph stream Tet THtThh the sound ~`~ made as I flushed that toilet sigel scratched into the wall in Hanoi's

decompressed by the monstrous colonic, Kindred fell back in the well where have you been world of name your favorite drugged out dreamscape.

try me hide me take me shake be believe thee eyes squint out drought bout gout the rote whirls out hyde in the scream brainscream not then.

Kindred back in the back of his mind at Joy Motel in a 2 Hour Nap with a suicide in his bathtub, 1st month free, the neighor parroting him.

curled in fetal metal Kindred cursed the parrot for cursing him giving up his hiding space bullet eyes look recall Insane Unknown Offensive.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

21 Cello Slink

Culhane pauses at the window of a shop selling rifles, ammo, body armor, birdfeed. Tweettweet! Using the glass to watch the street behind. 

Dead dog, sick frog, out for a jog. Live humans, zero. Seeing nothing, confidence thrusting. Guard down, not a frown. Culhane turns away.

Busted hydrant, flooding, rippling puddle, Kindred emerging, rising to reveal eyes only, blinkless. Or was it a mannequin's plastic noggin?

Culhane shifts the box to his other hand, reaches into his pocket for coins. Tosses them upward, clatterrattling on a fire escape landing.

Metal door groans open, bare feet with painted toenails, making an entrance. Or was it an exit? Curved calves, flexing. This is Cello Slink.

Hispanic smooth springyskinned, black eyeglance, muscularity singularity. Prancerdancer, probably. Romancer, likely. No secondchancer, sure.

Culhane takes the metal steps threefour at a time, hungry, almost desperate. Kindred watching with extreme interest, eyes squintglinting.

Cello watches the street intently as Culhane goes past her and inside. Third floor door. Kindred motionless, his shadow etched in redbrick.

She turns, rotates really, and delicately steps inside, trail of lavender reaching Kindred as he moves, assaulting steps, violent climbing.

He catches the edge of the closing firedoor with his thumb, holds it open one eighth of an inch, sliverpeeking inside. Motorcycle, gas can.

Culhane disappears around a corner 30 feet away. Cello black hair cascading, just behind him, catlike, female. Kindred tightens his thumb. 

Opens the door, smell of gasoline, Vasoline, Valvoline, gunpowder, chilipowder, babypowder, clamchowder. Nose knows those. Kindred, wraith.

Sound of violins played by musicians with doublechins. Sweet sad lingering dust motes hovering in a soft quivering cluster mark his passage.

Motorcycle hotsteaming like a cappuccino, stained wood floors, coffee, mud, oil, blood. Kindred ran an appreciative finger along its flanks.

Drifting imperceptibly, landing toe first on catfeet, soundless. CIA assassin training post Nam. Black ops. Dead kill no thrill. Just do it.

Warhol originals on the wall, crudely hammernailed in with four inch spikes for security. Grunting pigs, barnyard lovers under the covers.

Cockroach scuttling, exits bedroom, seen enough. Kindred scooped it up and swallowed it. No witnesses. No misses. In and out, no trace. 

Culhane atop Cello, bedbound unbound springbanging. Kindred impassively eyedrinking copulative athleticism. Unseen, clean, he takes the box.

CLICK HERE TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

20 Shadowbound

Hhtt. At least now I know why I keep hearing turbines, when daddy was on the pay phone near the Cray computers in sub-level 2.26 (losing it)

hold on memory) Deedle would start the Crays up and daddy would have to shout at me I thought what the why I thought turbines I knew them.

(total recall hurts)*squint*I knew the word turbines from a Flash Fact in an old comic Crays loud jet engine runway loud ride the lightning.

my eyes roll in my eyes roll out I yell for daddy the turbines (Flash Fact!) scream follow Apollo baby strung out weightless pretty son set.

Jem and I, seven. Watching a sky, not yet owning the television. Is that it? Encapsulation capitalizing cannnnndyyyy colored twilight, yay!

I saw fractal images in my coffee, not the broccoli as expected. A face, an eye, an advertisement four glasses. On the ceiling of a train?

Kindred burroughs for the broccoli then, hurried. This time a headline: TEAR THIS WALL DOWN! He looked at the ceiling and saw clear brick.

A glass ceiling? What does THAT mean? Brick walls I can see through but its a ceiling not a wall but my ceiling not my wail a glass eye see.

Canfield's blackberry cola chased with Cuervo in big splashes of yellow and black and pink, the ad on the back of Unlikey Tales#1 July 1968.

I look at the can of Blackberry drink and the images move like a dozing commuter. What is tragically hip? The Fugitive I know, on BVD, wha?

The Prisoner is #6. Patrick McGoohan, Six of One, can't escape the Village, could be the story of my life, trapped in the Joy Motel airless.

Ripped poster detaches from the concrete wall behind Scrip City and floats skittish as a tadpole in a highball. Slaps a passing bus, sticks.

Bus belches bad gas and grunts up the incline, Face #2 piercing the gloom. Hawkwind eyebrows, perpetual smirk, bullet eyes. Seen him before.

Morphs into Baldo the Magnificent, Face #1, vein popping iron forehead, leaning in for a headbutt or a strangle hold. Mystery unblinking.

Always click clicking, the steady tap tap of water torture, bad dentures, lobster on a glass table, IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter. 

Shorthand Face #1, let's call the guy Sam Skoog. Face #2, okay, Gene Angst. Sam 'n Gene. Maybe they're a new duo out of Nashville, hitmen.

Been dreaming about Sam 'n Gene. Salmon Jean. Sam on Jean. Harlow? Platinum Blonde. Somethin' fishy. Brainskip. Get a grip. Let 'er rip Bip.

There goes Culhane. Light white Warhol cube, end of the alley, long shadows. Carrying the box. Numbers, vectors, names, dates, addresses.

Bookkeeper, mindmeasurer, soultaker, discipledealer, fireflinger. Culhane keeps track of the who's and where's and why's for 12 Disciples.

Kindred smoothwalked shadowbound, Culhane unaware, wouldn't dare. Closed gap to regulation CIA, breathing in whenever Culhane breathed out.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

19 Twitter

Past the watcher again, loping this time, down the hall to the pay phone on the wall. Disconnected roar of untraveled universes beckoning.

Tok-city Neural Net, longest distance, unreachable from here. Kindred dropped another quarter in and hoped. Tap dancing lobster clicks.

He could hear voices. One Japanese. The other not, tickle down the wire. Arguing. The American upset about a bad brainstream. His own voice.

After a minute, a snickety-click as the Tok-city voice hung up. But the American, oblivious, kept talking. Shiny pebbles lost in the sea.

Kindred felt a burning in his brainstem. Leakage. Corrosive brainstream, dripping, running down his neck. Data burn. Cold ones, hot zeroes.

Data burn causes time slippage. DB=TS. Loss of temporal sequencing. Years bounce. Childhood merges with the now. Overlinkage. Skips. Peeps.

Kindred pulled the microdriver from his belt and fitted it to the hex screw in his cranium. Three quarter turn clockwise to stop the leak.

Mirror mirror on the shawl is the forest often bowel? I can't keep fractating and yes I made up that word I am a fractal image so yes I can

I turned from my others and the microdriver banged against the door frame oops it wiggled sounds like wachtel wachtel walk to wok Tourette's

talk to Meeks, at the stick spritzing afterlife into gin & ebonics. Meeks is real and he is a singularity. Yet, if I had to describe him

I couldn't, just two eyes and a truckload of white teeth, a staple remover filled with Chiclits. Fractal images, right? Which one of me now?

Which one indeed. You do know, Mr. Kindred, you left Joy Motel under cover of darkness last July? You are no longer there. Checked out.

For some reason your mind skipjacks into unused receptacles and picks up ambient electrovolts, rejuvenates the corrupt brainstream. Virus.

By now it should have decayed and disappeared. You're not the first person to mainline a screamer from Tok-city. Some burnriders, it kills.

You're a lucky one. Your trip mild, relatively. You maintain neurocircuit functionality, flexible reasoning, autodigit tap response normal.

but doc the air so dense i can't move i can't get a lung expanded bigger than a tennis ball pump me up again would ya i see the red balloon

inside of my boot in nam all fulla goo skin and pulp and crushed bugs is this guy nixon gonna drop the bomb on the north or not badda boom

i got a cold neural in the upper right quadrant doc it keeps snappin like a steel clothesline and man it's gonna come out through my eye

Mr. Kindred, you are skip-processing. Brain popping. Imagine a large blue reset button. Can you see it? Can you reach it? Press the button.

cantreachitdocissouttamyarmslengthgimmealadderorwaitaminuteicanstandonthetoiletseatifthatcleaningladywouldjustgetouttamywaymovesweetpeamove!

pressinthebluebuttonnowdocnothinshappeninimpressinitagainresetdammitreset. click. oh. did you hear that? definite click. i can breathe doc.

Very good, Mr. Kindred. That is the first time you have been able to regain motorskeletoncontrol under duress since you joined the program.

i heard a click, doc. didja hear it? i hear lotsa clicks. tapping. typing. birds chirping. tweeting. tweeters, doc. blue letters. twitter.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

18 Trinitite

Kindred sleeps with eyes taped open. Flickering blue Joy Motel sign tickling hardglazed eyeballs. Sizzling retinal memory. Mushroom cloud.

The watcher hovering, his breath moist on Kindred's forehead. Refrigerator, blast-propelled, killed a cow. Kitchen table landed in Mexico.

Knife 'n fork, gone atomic, orbital, floating in spectral ellipses, space junk, spinning universal, out past Mars, on a mission to meet God.

Force of the blast dissipating youthful vapor in Kindred the Kid's nine year old skull. Instant wide-eyed grown up, awake in the shelter.

His father, a small cracked grin of satisfaction, the boom registered and official for all time. Celebration went all day and into the next.

Oh yes it was a lovely explosion chirped a six foot blond with big white horse teeth and a saturnine smile. Your daddy is a genius, really.

Trinity in the books. First nuclear explosion ever. 1945. New Mexico, Alamogordo Test Range, Jornada del Muerto desert. Hot squeaky sand.

Jornada del Muerto means Journey of Death, perfect. Kindred the Kid full of life, thought he was about to see a fireworks display. Dad lied.

No nuclear explosion ever popped off before. Must be monitored with fanatical devotion to ensure it met theoretical predictions. Fanatical.

Trinity. Three. Threesome. Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer. July 16 1945, 5:29:45 A.M. (Mountain War Time).

Yield 20-22 Kilotons. Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell described his impressions at S-10,000, a bunker 10,000 yards south of Trinity:

"In that brief instant in the remote New Mexico desert the tremendous effort of the brains and brawn of all these people came suddenly...

...and startlingly to the fullest fruition. Dr. Kindred, on whom has rested a very heavy burden, grew tense as the last seconds ticked off.

Dr. Kindred scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and then...

...when the announcer shouted "Now!" and there came a tremendous burst of light followed shortly thereafter by the deep growling roar...

...of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief. Several of the observers standing back of the shelter...

...to watch the lighting effects were knocked flat by the blast. All seemed to feel that they had been present at the birth of a new age...

...The Age of Atomic Energy -- and felt their profound responsibility to guide into the right channels the tremendous forces unlocked...

...for the first time in history." Guide. Right channels. Tremendous forces. 12 committed individuals. Watchers. Fanatics. Disciples.

A blackened area of fused soil centered at ground zero. Heat baked into a glassy crust. Called Trinitite. As if invented by cynical admen.

Your smile will be white as right is right when you brush your teeth with Trinitite. That`s Trinitite! Look for tube with the nuclear glow.

Kindred the Kid waited in the motel room while his father, the eminent Dr. Kindred, had an all night meeting behind the locked door of 226.

The Kid listening to the radio reports, twiddling the brown plastic knob. Sinatra. Jack Benny. He didn`t sleep, he couldn`t close his eyes.

He found some tape in a drawer and taped his eyelids shut. But the glow of the blast lit up the inside of his retinas, unearthly gleaming.

They got into the car the next day. Set off for sunny LA, where Kindred the Doc was to be interviewed by the newspapers. G-Men in pursuit.

Now, 1968, Kindred peeling off the tape that holds his eyelids open, grinding the TV remote under his heel and staring into the mirror.

Image reflected alternating between Kindred the Kid and Kindred now. Between docdad and Dr. Kindred, between psychdaddy and the watcher.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

17 Robin Hood

Mr. Kindred, why do you think you're always running into Dick Overtone? Do you think he's real? Do you only see him when you're very tired?

He does have some rather radical theories about this establishment, wouldn't you say? I mean, really, government-sponsored mind control?

This is a four star motel situated at the intersection of love and hate, dreams and reality, King and Main, life and death, Guns 'N Roses.

It's a small Mom 'n Pop operation. Pop's dead now, isn't he Mr. Kindred? Did you kill him? Because he met secretly with the 12 Disciples?

Why do you keep insisting the 12 Disciples were -- are? -- a radical collective of bomb-worshippers? Is this all linked to Trinity? 1945?

That's utter rubbish. How could anyone see the Virgin Mary in a retinal capture of an atomic bomb blast? Flash frozen forever in an eyeball?

Well, yes, okay, if that were true, it could be the iconic touchstone for those who want to quell disorder and randomness with detonations.

Your father, then, a kind of postmodern Robin Hood, leading his merry band of 12 followers on cross-country terrorist bombings. Badda boom.

They went to Tokyo, too, did they not? Where they lost control of the Eyeball? Or rather, sold it to the highest bidder? Gankyuu Bakudan.

Gankyuu means eyeball in Japanese. Bakudan means bomb. So it isn't even the buyer's real name. Are you the buyer, Mr. Kindred? Where is it?

What are you looking at? Who do you see in the mirror? Dick Overtone again? Why would he tell you this is not a real motel? Sinister plot?

Are you in danger? Are G-Men in a white nondescript vehicle going to pull into the parking lot any minute? Are they motivated by revenge?

Do you trust me? I can help you if you take your hands from my throat. You can't kill me anyway. I exist inside your head. Burnt edges.

I am your superego. You id is running out of control and I have been given the onerous task of reconnecting your various disparate neurons.

Of course, that's the sort of poppycock nonsense a psychiatrist might twaddle to see if you're capable of coherent assessment of reality.

Yes, I know there are no farmers from the midwest enjoying the sauna, no businesswomen from Pittsburgh in the pool. No guests at all. Odd?

No teens on spring break, no pastors from Indiana here with their mistresses, no celebrities hiding out from LA paparazzi with zoom lenses.

But that does not mean this is an insane asylum. What am I saying? I meant to say 'government-controlled center for psychdaddy vacations'.

It does not mean anything of the kind. You know, you and I could hang out, be buddies. Whaddya say, K? Pals? Friends? Why are you sneering?

Okay, then, have it your way. Our time is up. Gotta run. Places to go, people to meet, things to do. Busy. I'll lock you in on my way out.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

16 Rogue pellet

I'm slowing down, brain three hours future past, I hear my name, formal like. I'm lost in the woods. I'm someone's pet rabbit. Mmn, carrot!

Words far away, my friends locked out, are they talking to me nice, no, its Mr. Kindred, like I'm their fucking butler goddamn mood swings.

Mix some absinthe with the Aqua Velva, pour on Frito Bandito as he gives it to Mama Puchama, the woods I love, I'm recalling when I was 11.

Short cut from psych school, lovers in the leaves, I think I watched I'm not sure its only when I drink the cocktail I saw them stabbed.

It was Danko Drought, the woman a secretary with no clearance, liasons with a nuclear spy from Saturn maybe I told daddy he whipped me bad.

M@ntell. Didn't know his first name, couldn't pronounce his last name, static buzz from the Aqua Velva hit, makes me remember the blood.

11 Jan 1961 Dear Dad: I have a job now at Thinking Machines, Inc. Had a dream about psychotronic turbines, seems like deja vu. Nauseous now.

Bought an eight-piece ink blot and a fizzy pop at the Scrip City Drive-Thru. Visions of curling fetal in the trash compactor out back. 1997.

Bumped into Dick Overtone on a 3:30AM ice machine run. He was inside the ventilation system, just his head protruding. Dick is hardcore CIA.

He comes and goes like fog licking the Lake Michigan shoreline. Dick says Joy Motel is government-controlled. Deep black cover. Burnt edges.

Thought control, LSD, decapitated pigs, electrovolts leaking out of fridges to numb the brain, big pulsars like water rolling on the boil.

Kindred jammed his empty ice bucket on Dick's head and left him there. That's the way Dick likes it. Echo of his brainwaves in the dark.

CIA, NSA, ASAP. Through a spammer darkly, Ubik twittered to one of the victims. Which spree? Unruh's? Unangst's? All ubiquitious. RIPPKDLOL.

Long, cold night. Moon at apogee. 3rd floor nascent. Lambent streetlights deceptive lies to the border of the brainstream, a secondary way.

G-Men in a white vehicle. Rubber gloves. Engine leaking dark oily pools. Reno, Nevada after the chase. Kindred age nine. His father down.

They had rolled over and slid upside down on the roof. Truck spinning in ever diminishing circles like hands of a Dali clock running down.

Kindred slid out the half open side window. G-Men beating his father with a length of chain. The boy went to their car, a true nondescript.

Shotgun on the back seat, pump action, 12 gauge. Taking it out, the long barrel banging against the door frame, glinting hard black steel.

Two heads swinging around, eyes locking on danger, hands reaching for service revolvers, slow shock of brain pattern recognition. Boy? Boy??

First blast a tight cluster of pellets, hornets from hell, face pulped and head gone at the same time, a standing headless corpse, toppling.

Kindred's father rolling over onto his back, blinking like a salmon, mouth bubbling air pockets tinged with pink direct from lungs wheezing.

Kindred, five feet tall, pumped the action, swinging the shotgun and the second cluster missed wide right, rogue pellet eye-centric, zing.

Entering the left eye of G-Man #2, popping it like a party balloon and angry travel through the back of his brain and out, death dealer.

Kindred dragging his father to the government vehicle and getting him into the trunk and slamming it down and turning the ignition, rolling.

90 miles an hour west dead straight along the desert highway, chasing the dying sun. Kindred the Kid twirling the knob, radio up, Sinatra.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

15 Kissy face

Power to engines, turbines to speed. Moving out dinosaurkraut copyrider was write, garden to unearthly delight a seizure washed my brain.

I need to crank out the kinks, crack the atlas and the axis in my neck drain that sloppy spinal fluid pituitary cycles psychosis zip zing

Wing ding zip zero in on Culhane, his bra, what made him bad? I mulled it all as I brushed errant cocaine from the mirror edged mirror red.

I checked old maps, vision quests from when we were the C & K of the BRBLOLBFF crowd. Only there were more words back then. First postcard:

Greetings From FerroCity. I recalled the angry steam vents, Culhane tossing Flatirons left and right. We laughed at each others jokes then.

glk. reds inside a gusher, full strength brainstream aa--nnnnMANGA empty eyes where are my teeth and why does everyone have a ponytail?

dark-haired girl dirt track date does she hold dusky clues to last month's eventual dire fates? Ooo, look, it's Deedle in a pork belly pig.

What's it like, someone's gonna ask, I know. I'm sitting in a chair by my blessed you self, just one arm rest to shoot up lest I concentrate

on a one-armed chair & a dark-haired girl who was widescreen terminally ill until she snapped out of her bra as I nodded the nod in the nude

nothing came of that but for hindsight. I reached up & felt Culhane inside her, did he forget I had my PI card all hard I should come at him

teach him squelch him he reached out with a lithium air hose berrylium flavored spritzes bellecosy rosy lazy yummy pancake orgasm twice.

screaming yellow theaters of war theatrics that was Tunisia nodding back into it bare feet = hourglass prints in sand stream eyes sting

brain fling Deedle in amber around an Egyptian giant's neck, his face a hawk, his mate a cat, Deedle screaming in empty white balloons * .

Deedle in the past, I'm in his nowhere future, entropy off-white like Beechnut gum. No its bathroom floor tile the old house in Tallow Lake.

The house floats in a teal pool, electric blue corpse where I left it days ago, Nick Lipphid was him. Cut off his tale w/ a carving wife.

Nolan Void was my doc dealer back when, corner of Distaff & Disdain. Benzadrine zoof nosebleeds whwn I wake up in my golden box of love.

On the nod, Mac the Rant & Sid Skin locked out of Joy Motel, banging my brain. Can't help them on Earth Designate 17 in 3 days they kill me.

Mr. Kindred? Hello? Are you responsive? Can you hear me? Run this comb through my harebrain if you read me. Birdbrain, crackbrain, crank.

cuckoo, ding-a-ling, featherbrain, featherhead, flibbertigibbet, giddybrain, giddyhead, kook, lunatic, rattlebrain, rattlehead, rattlepate

scatterbrain, scatterbrains, screwball, shallowbrain, shallowpate, shatterbrain. Mr. Kindred, this is the Joy Motel. It is abandoned.

Why are you still here? Not the corrupt brainstream. That is simply not a feasible medical condition. All brainstreams are as advertised.

Tok-city. Toxic city. Toxicity. Lock City. Mac the Rant & Sid Skin locked out? They are ephemeral non-entities, neural hiccups, brainfarts.

Kindred writhing like a pike on a dock, impaled by the conventions of Freudian psychiatry. He loved psychdaddy like a mother. Kissy face.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

14 Brainstream

Bolo! What was he doing here? K took him down without a sound and rolled him into the bushes. A light came on in the back of the house.

Shrimpboat had recommended Bolo. In retrospect, C should have hired Sunday Benbow, who pronounced his name funny, so it came out Bimbo.

Kindred noted C's broken nose. He had lost an ear. But the grin was the same. Partners, again. They poured shots and examined the photo.

Haven't heard from you lately, C said, laughing. K winced at the pun.The photo: B&W, Joy Motel in checkered boxes, a balloon by door 211.

'What was in the balloon?' C asked. 'Blood,' Kindred said, flat. 'Whose?' C needed to know. 'Not...?' K shook his head. 'No. Let's go.'

C had questions. A balloon. Why not one of those Russian egg dolls? I don't know what they are called, either. K, reading his mind again.

In a diner. C and K, one in each corner, back to the wall, pincer. Like old times. Four guys, sharp suits, muddy shoes, talking too loud.

Last thing K recalled was sitting in the booth w/ C and the two men. He was missing a week's time in his head, a graviton singularity.

C and K, booth against the wall, mirror. Other two guys mere reflections. K pulled out an envelope. Slid it over to C. Door blew open.

So this is where I was. C, a statement. Yeah, from K, looking tired. Damn weak door hinges. C said he had no memory of the pliers.

Kindred opened an eye. Back in the land of the living. A waterdrop dribbled off an iron balcony and fell like a bomb onto his forehead.

What the hell had happened to Culhane? What turned him? Devious. Kindred slaphappied his jeans to get off the crud from the alley floor.

Hopped a cab. Drove to the airport with the driver facing him in the backseat the whole way, like the swivel headed girl in the Exorcist.

Hit 60 coming over the bridge and when the big car got to the peak of the rise midriver they were airborne, landing hard on the downslope.

fishtailing down greasy city streets through icy canyons carved between hard rock calcified snowpiles five feet high and going nowhere soon

bouncing through the ruts alongside a chain link fence beside the runway. gunning to 100 and sliding to a stop, puffing, at The Terminal

Kindred flipped the cabbie a Cnote and went inside, no luggage. Ticket punched in his private headspace no overhead gear stowed in his cabin

Attendant brought the tray. Sparkling vials of brainjuice, fresh from Tok-city. Kindred perused the list, like choosing a chockie from a box

Tok1212bxb. 'Guaranteed to delight.' Yeah, copywriter lingo did the trick. Kindred forked over the credit and she plugged him in headfirst.

Facial tics perfectly normal. All systems go. Wheels up, Mr. Kindred. It's going to be a long trip. Tok-city is oceans away. Brainstream on.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

13 Glossy Black

Times past, man. Sometimes I can think quite luridly juicy loosed lucid before the multiversal towers were opinionated to blockade past tense

Summer of 1974, just had my fake PI card, ink still wet. Grooving towards the man I now know is Culhane, Sting It, Don't Swing It, Baby.

10 cm out of Wichita a farmer flags me down, pays me a sawbill to prove his neighbor was killing his cows, I found he was dressing them, too

Dressing them in muu-muus, the swine in pearls, then raping, strangling, and using his Polaroid Land camera for the family back home.

Hogtied rawhide the guy upside down bleated a confession but he never knew Culhane, cut him down for the count 1 2 hundred bills, case#1.

It was so easy to think back then, I had my list I had my wits I didn't have to have a lisp singsong narrative from popping reds my eyes

12 Disciples, daddy's friends, docDad's money train. Tt-chk tt-chk. Eye am Watching you. Then there was that time on Earth Designate 11.

Route 66 no kicks there, just a fast buck and a high dive. Find a kid who wasn't a mom but wanted a daddy. Might've been near Joliet IL.

Made him warm not laser beam warm the other, knowing that other people had daddy issues, even the guy who raped livestock cried for pops.

There wasn't yet 4 billion people on this specific earth designate when I found myself facing a man with a gun from behind as he shot once &

the man he was facing (with me in back) jammed to a brick wall, shot two, ricochets in concrete meat street they didn't stop I clipclopped.

But I knew what it was like to be lucid and near dead. Men in jungles and on the moon, me knowing I could find the men who killed my trust.

Then came the spring of '82 and a head wrapped in tinfoil in a basket case told me I had died on Earth Designate 14 by The Black Dahlia.

And all of a sudden reality was like pounding wet sand, slops of memory plops on scenery I was beaten senseless by a Toronto pretzel vender.

Flashback to happier times.When Culhane wasn't a suspect, but a benevolent ally. Trust? Hah. He was a blood brother, Nammer pal, GI Joe.

Culhane wondered about K. The way he blew town in the middle of the night, then mailing postcards from Tunisia & Ankara. Never luggage.

K carried business cards, glossy black on both sides, no text. Gave one to anybody who asked what he did for a living. 'I own the night.'

K owned the night, sure. C was on to his scam, the city-size box draped in velvet, bullet holes for stars. But where did the eye fit in?

K put the car in neutral, rolled down the incline and stopped in front of Culhane's bungalow. Taped the KA-BAR to his leg. He was ready.

C'd been watching the bungalow for a day after Shrimpboat hipped me to Salt's plan. It had been a while since he last used his pliers.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

12 Nuclear duke

I see the world didn't end yesterday, Meeks said, behind the stick as I sat down. What makes you think it didn't?, a trail of shadow smoke

I jumped, then Kindred, so did psychdaddy from the shadows, his arms crossed, the fecund scary smoke slashing jetstreams, drunken contrails.

Kindred gestured to each of him, ambitextual and antsy and anxious to break the fourth wall. Nu-uh, Meeks cautioned, you gotta go outside.

Its a sin to smell a crime, docDad in the shadows, still. Say why not why? I spoke though Kindred. Stay here in third a spell, within me.

Culhane broke us apart, literally, as we were combined conjoined combatants after Meeks dialed up to 225. Culhane smelled of sweet pomade.

I checked the open window's blinds blowing from the turbines click clack just like smack my head saw the red the open window was 3rd floor.

Or was it always that way?Kindred passed himself like an errant kidney stone savant & checked the room above sublime turbines, whew floor 2.

Mac the Rant out of the lot down Damen past Scrip City hard left empty store Jupiter Shoes empty lot Schlitz Congoleum signs docDad: halt!

docDad asked Mac for a ride back his back bad that's docDad slurring Damen damn-ed, Damen & Thalamus Place, desert red past that bad back.

Mac ranted I want to drive docDad hand up halt the gospel you took the invite (bait) hooked on your own guitar string swing before the eye.

sugar in my boots sand in my eyes toecapped insurgency can't outrun the watcher tipped back rocking chair hallway monitor blinklessly alert

oh embraceable you cloaked in mist the breath of angels sliding sideways through half-closed eyelids to kiss your midnight dreams goodnight

Kindred on the dead hot run, stretching transparently thin, trying to outblip the watcher, sitting impassively in the open doorway of 266.

Blippin' flippin' whippin' past, a puff of moonlit smoke, Kindred exploding across the watcher's field of vision before retinal registration

Take that, daddy-o, I'm runnin' rampant, ain't nobody can touch this nuclear duke. At terminal velocity, I can almost see the Terminal.

Brainstem injection, off da shelf in the discount section of the Terminal. How was I to know it was untested, unscanned, viral, vile, dirty?

Some fella in Tok-city done uploaded a pile o' neuroses inta ma noggin and ain't nuthin' I kin do about it. I'm digestin' his confection.

Why am I thinking this way why was I talking that way double the questions yeah. My thighs burn, my eyes burn, regaining punctuation skills

docDad has a framed photo on his wall. Auda City At Twilight. Pretentious shit, you ask me. I let it go, because he never charges a fee

Just says the same thing half the other people in my lives say: put me in your next book wrecked nook novel hovel fictdictiondepicted damn

The eye is beaming at me again, trying to shut me off so the third person can come back and sprint and joust. Have to admire the Tena City:/

he waited near the corner, huffing past the turbines. Radio in Room 251 spraying surf music scattershot. Sentient third floor gives warmth.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

11 Dandruff

Of course I don't believe that shrink's growth of lies. @joymotel 2232 Damen Blvd., past the razorroad tracks, its absinthe to tell a lie

And I've been paying weekly since weekly sins tell a tall tales shrink think tank? @joymotel=Manhattan Project 2.0 the new millennium, maybe?

One would think everything had spell check in the future, Kindred mumbled,not know what he created his thoughts with, footfalls/door knocks.

there was a false rhyme w/ Goethe & birthday, another w/ orange & syringe, but my birthday balloon was red when docdad pressed the button GO

BOOM, Kindred slept, wavering between then & yet, Mac the Rant woke him w/ a song about Br3ndaBot, a clue? False rhyme for you are socks.

Psychdaddy (cell): how did you pronounce that name? Kindred (in Tourette's): Which? M@ntell? Culhane (same): Talking too much, you are.

And she wanted to know your AGE? from the doc, Culhane fidgety. I told him, look, hands wide, I know I'm 56 but I think I'm 1968. Doc nods.

Can I add something?: a boxy shadow by the wall. Sure, I redacted. 1100011010010101010wder your face with sunshine. Jukebox not real, is it?

Tonal tonsils warble tang mac the rant so sacrosanct sid skin's salty salad seed broken shadowed box juked, stop the slipstream now said doc

cracked and ratcheted jacket juke duku duke duke of urls urls urls oh yea what a wunderful urll0l0l0olol LOL lozenges will take care of it.

Kindred's paper extracted from the crack inside his closet ceiling. Edges worn from constant handling, checking and rechecking. Obsessive.

A list of psychdaddy's sizes. Shoes, 12D. Belt, 36. Shirt, XL, 17 inch neck. Pants, 34 inch inseam. Jacket 44L. Hat 17 and a half inches.

Kindred in psychdaddy's room, 3:32 AM. Snoring from the bed. Kindred slides a shirt from a hanger and tries it on. Perfect fit, sleeves.

Docdad rolls over. Kindred freezes, balancing on one leg, pants halfway up his thigh. false alarm. He pulls them up. Like custom-made.

The shoes fit comfortably. Kindred tiptoes around on the orange shag carpet, trying them out. Even his baby toe is snug as a bug in a rug.

The belt, the third hole worn. That's the one docdad uses. Kindred uses it too. The hat fits just so. Amazing, thinks Kindred, big-headedly.

Every piece of clothing in psychdaddys's closet fits Kindred as if a tailor from Turin has made it from the finest materials just for him.

Kindred sits down on the edge of docdad's bed. He can hear him breathing. Kindred slides under the covers and reaches across the sheets.

Docdad is not there. Kindred is alone in the bed. After a few moments, he becomes aware of his own breathing. It sounds like docdad's.

Kindred blinks, the light from the bathroom leaking under the closed door, exactly as he left it after his shower. Is he in docdad's room?

Kindred gets out of bed and stands in front of the mirror. Psychdaddy gazes back at him, streaked in the halflight of neon spilling in.

Kindred extends a fingertip and touches the mirror. There is no mirror there. He taps the plaster wall and light dust falls like dandruff.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

10 3D concoctions

Ernest nested in my brain, the worm crawled ratcheting like an empty el train ttchk ttchk there, a random thought from 1971potato soup vile.

August 11, 1973 paraded between pillows covering my hearing motion denied I volunteered by coaxing the probe into my thalamus, naptime now.

September 9, 1959 younger still unknowing daddy kept his secrets of the desert and sometimes i prayed hiding so he would not see & mock me.

random summer day 1947 daddy tore the cover hysterical starman hourman green lantern they are not the heroes we are the twelve the virgin.

return to seen of crime i'm still encased in lower case just in case i must escape from mac the rant a dandy jaunt i leap from 3rd floor yet

I'm still here taking form and writing words no typing worms inside my derma would explain Sid Skinin his polyester spin on my last book, um

um hum turbines hmn? hymn? Sid hated the book, threw it at the blades it made a sound like valis paper shreds my mind complete I need a pop.

skin pop bladder ask Sidblotter ass cid, anything to keep me sayin not in sayin, the doc is sayin I'm not in my very skin yet still I type.

Q: ? A: ./' Q: be that way. A: but I am this way. Q: no, you are that way. And that's how I ended up here @joymotel, by going that way, damn

daddy would say someday son this will be all yours eyeballing sandstorms displacing new mexico to points south on the headache railway

coppertone girl knee dents in desert sand blasted by the devil's breath rolling across dunes her girly smile frozen in a submolecular dazzle

psychdaddy real daddy tell me true did I have a sister was she younger or older than me did we fight hug hurt play climb crawl dive burn

Don't you sea c c rider? Mac the Rant plonked & he clonked. That doc aint givin you the drizzlin' shits, sit & sip, man. My head I clonked

plink dink ka-plumpf, guit-box morphed atomically ocular my hemorrhaged memorages of holding a girl's hands & then the cloud dissolved her

she was virgin to my smooth, unshaven eyes. Daddy said duck & roll but I was too young to play rhyming word games then. Sucking coal, close.

her dislocated dissolution allowed daddy to disavow selected events in my head. Once I shaved my eyes, I could keep my eyelids peeled. SEE?

what if i have left the joy motel but i'm only imagining that i'm still here? is that psychdaddy in the mirror? am i buried in the desert?

everything is condensed inside the Joy Motel...like the air in the red balloon. ummmm... it's a place with a lot of interconnected rooms!!!

docnotes: ...his pleasure seeking id has separated from him to wander the hallways of the Joy Motel and drink and fornicate and kill...

...must reintegrate the id to restore his wholeness. his superego insists his name is kindred. why? he seems obsessed with twitter. WHAT IS?

...where is his rogue element coming from? intermittent babbling about corrupt brainstream. nonsense or unexpurgated truth? dangerous? yes.

...red balloon drifts up up upwind. lobster tap dancing on a glass table. hallway wheezing like a sore throat. virgin mary in 'shroom cloud.

Kindred at the window: The skyline looks like a bad set of dentures when you see it from Damen Blvd. Docdad:You can leave anytime, you know.

Kindred: On another side of town, it's a fighter's lopsided grin the moment before hitting the mat. Docdad: Are you writing a lifestory?

Docdad: There is no Joy Motel, Mr. Kindred. It exists inside your head. Each room an evanescent fantasy. The people in it? 3D concoctions.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

9 Blue worm

Kindred gingered ale his stomach hurt just so, laws yes. No eating five sense, any, not even his. Culhane, mocking, Kindred curled fetal.

Eyes, sight, hurt, wait. Eyes, ears, hurt, moist, touched truncated truncheon ask Culhane for help, do it, I'm telling you, not me/him, me!

Culhane bent down, blocking the wall's eye view, whispered in Kindred's ear, sometimes there's a sentient third floor here, Kindred frantic.

Go ahead, talk to it. It won't bite, none of us do. You should see it, big conference room. Seats twelve. What are you going to name him?

Q: ernest. why am i? A: you purchased a brainstream from a viscous living wet database consisting of thoughtwaves, memories, dreams.

Q: thank you, ernest. that's the first straight answer anybody in this joint has given me. and now i'm talking to a sentient motel?

A: yes, mr. kindred. shall i send the cleaning woman in to scrub between your ears? Q: you mean a brainwash? A: very clever, sir.

Q: is my brainstream defective? A: yes, it is laden with corrupt interdata. that is why i suggested the use of the female cleansing agent.

Q: how can that be? aren't brainstreams pre-tested? A: yours was an untested and unverified discount black market brainstream from japan.

Q: my neural net is polluted with twisted thoughtwaves? A: yes. they are now an uneraseable part of your own persona. is that distressing?

Q: i keep losing track of what's now. A: a brainstream from an insane source may contain twisted misperceptions of actual events, dates

Q: you're saying i'm insane? A: perhaps not. but you may be possessed by a corrupt brainstream purchased from an insane uploader. a killer.

Q: i have a worm inside my head, a worm made in japan. A: in tokyo, to be precise. we think it's blue. Q: we? A: the rooms on the 3rd floor.

Q: ernest, this is an illogical conversation. A: you could be dreaming, sir. Q: i'm dreaming about talking to a sentient motel named ernest?

A: no, you're dreaming about a blue worm nested inside your cranium and feeding on your synapses. i am sentient and quite real. eyeball me.

Q: could i be dreaming about the joy motel? A: you are a valued guest in this fine establishment, mr. kindred. is your pillow comfortable?

Q: is my name kindred? is kindred my name? or is it redkind? drinked? ned dirk? dirk end? dr. kiend? dr. e.n. kid? dr. k. n. die? dr. die?

A: are you asking me if your name is kindred? if you will die here in the joy motel? or if you have already died? or if you are a doctor?

Q: yes, ernest. i am asking. i do ask. i have asked. i ask. A: i cannot answer. i cannot. i will not. i am not. ernest. am i? i am. are you?

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

8 Quasi-nuclear

Kindred did not know if Meeks was talking through him, to be safe, he sterilized his forceps before realizing he was a day from now.

Psychdaddy: enthralled when Kindred vibrated between days, three times the hourly fee. The uneven doc even had time to wipe the bloodstains.

Pirates? Party hats? Partake? What the hell were they mumbling about out there, outer, odder rudder stop think stop. I AM ME! me. Pirates.

Psychdaddy & Meeks outside of Scrip City, minutes after the pirate vision. Ambitextual crime partners. Squinting, their vanishing point eyes.

Will it ever blink?: Meeks, a pissed off mutter, f#cker. The doc, cool & suave: Wait a beat for the shank of the night. There, see? Kindred.

Walking aimlessly & studious a thousand feet high, red balloon the anchor, I see the motel & pharmacy, oh, light pole! Doc to Meeks: so sad.

Doc mocks, morphs psychdaddy, Meeks rocks, clocks out, I see myself stocking up on reds & blues, bennies & screws the lid tight on my mind.

Fireworks, the reds kick in. There I am, tiny, looking in matchbook doors, pounding with sticky fists. Meeks to Doc: you mean he sees twice?

He's split betwixt with his mission between. Spritzing stars microwave his neural nets. Happy New Year, doc. Ain't it a Wundurful Wurld?

Shape of ghosts etched in dust on adobe walls. Flash frozen two dimensional versions of bags of blood and bones. The universe sneezed achoo.

A dozen doppelgangers conspiring to euthanize the unbelieving with a megaton indoctrination. See that cloud? What's that look like to you?

I see the Virgin Mary floating heavenward on a spectral zephyr. Borne aloft by the last exhalation of the vaporized below. I see her, there.

Psychdaddy mydaddy crawdaddy lawdaddy jawdaddy momdaddy rundaddy nodaddy pleasedaddy diedaddy crydaddy liedaddy docdaddy deaddaddy luvdaddy

Good morning, Mr. Kindred. I see you've been working through some issues since we chatted. I'm pleased you are dealing with the Virgin Mary.

Many of my patients would be curled up in the fetal position by now, sucking their thumb and begging for a spanking. You're a tough one.

I FEEL LIKE SHOUTING AT YOU. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? But then the feeling dissolves in a phosphorescent haze of do-gooder nonsense.

The proverbial outside observer might surmise that I am just as in need of interventionist psychotherapy as you are. Funny old world, huh?

Is it the drugs? No? So why the time slips? Did you purchase a corrupt brainstream at the Terminal? Are you mainlining a madman? Crackpot?

the eyeball is carved out of the eye socket of the first watcher of the trinity boom, who was killed by the blast. or am i hallucinating?

the eyeball is frozen and glazed. when you look at it, you can smell the shape of the mushroom cloud. you can also swallow the Virgin Mary.

this eyeball is central iconography to the disciples, because it symbolizes the core of their quasi-nuclear religion. i need to eat it.

CLICK TO READ NEXT TRANSMISSION

7 Calumet & Deedle

The pogo stick cluttered his head as it fell to the ice machine below, a dessert oasis. Words became others unwanted, where was the center?

Wasn't he writing a memoir once? A monograph on a phonograph about skin grafts and radiation wafting through veined curtains? RCA, Victor?

Of course he wore armor as he counted flowers from the hall.An Atomic Knight, the round table an unblinking orb, a novel? Murkey, try later.

Meeks poured him some a ladle of destiny booze from the punch cauldron, enough to go around, little to make sense, himself, Dank, Janssen...

Mitch, Sid Skin, Mac the Rant, & in the corner, the guy everyone knew as The Man Who Always Drew Red. He was a failed artist/card shark.

It was too late in the night to talk. Kindred watched the Nicotine Fits duke it out on the blond colored Philco w/ a blonde who drank Bosco.

False dawn showed up silent. 5 AM, the time most souls plead for redemption or another day's rental on the Dodge Polara they all shared.

Kindred in the lobby, paging through the phone book, half blinded by the sunspots on his retina. Burn baby burn. Peripheral vision cloudy.

Professor Deedle space needle. Parcel bomb for the birthday boy. Pop goes the weasel. Disciple 3. God fearing, Dodge gearing, cod earring.

Man with no name meets man with no luggage. Traveling show traveling slow. Joy Motel welcomes all. Don't I know you? Kindred blinked. Flash.

Kindred tied the front doors shut with a string from Mac the Rant's guitar. No more guests tonight. Full house loses to straight flush, red.

Kindred ducked low, hiding from the existential banditos who seemingly wanted only to converse; conversely, Kindred only wanted existence.

Another name, whispered as if in a silent dream, Calumet. Remy Calumet. Disciple#4. On the floor. War, what is it good for, good god jaw!

Calumet & Deedle & their necessary evils, Kindred blinked, retinas full of discordant sites, a trinity of sorts, three times four is twelve.

Time dilating back, unwrapping the guitar string, unblinking the eye & undotting the i i i an implosion of kinetic psychosis, a frayed knot.

the 12th remember the twelfth, I can't I I I I'm Kindred tried to think was it yesterday again, a bad night's sleep, naked corpse in a tub.

A bathtub, was it his? Or Room 223, nearest the turbines,an easily muffled scream,Mac the Rant's guitar garrote turned her face red to blue.

Meeks slammed the register shut on his last sale of the last night, while Kindred was unstuck in time. The spigots coughed ropes of blood.

He turned to Janssen who twitched in his scars, hotboxing a deck of generics. Hmn, drowning victim again in Room 223, wash our hands please.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

6 Bakudan

First of all, I told psychdaddy that the film was a Betamax, not a VHS. Then I explained to him what a palimpsest was. Writing over writing.

Meeks rinsed out a Stella Artois glass & nodded back to Kindred, who shimmered back into his true narrative form. You scare the patrons, K

When you do that, Meeks told me. He always calls me K. when he's pissed. I told him to think of a blackboard, not fully erased, then written

on again. You mean like my sandwich board & the daily specials! His face brightened, which was strange, as there were no daily specials

Kindred, outside of himself again, bleeding from the gash in thought only, circled the room looking for autographs on labels peeled from Bud

Light bottles, wondering why I can't seem to finish a sentence before my session ends. Succulent sucession of seconds sentenced to breath.

I walked down the second floor balcony, Culhane blinked from an electrical socket near the holiday lights, IT WAS A RECEIPT!, I justified.

Receipt made out to Gankyuu Bakudan: Collector of Antiquities. Tokyo address. Shipping instructions. One ounce parcel.

One ounce parcel? A bullet? A vial of blood? A few cashews? Ancient coins? Dog whistle? Bone fragment? Motel key? Baby finger? Baby carrot?

Kindred wadded up the receipt and jammed it in his ear. It weighed one ounce. A one ounce promise. One ounce clue. One ounce death sentence.

A shriek from Tourette's. Sid Skin doing his pallor tricks again. YOU! Stop trying to correct me, eye spy! (Good thing I palmed the receipt)

And then put it in the OTHER ear, ha HA! Choke on that, eye spy. Kindred shifted gears in a futuristic hybrid of paranoid one ounce passion.

Danko Drout was easy. First disciple to go was Disciple 6. In a church in Sacramento. Lethal injection behind the ear, praying.

Not a murmur of suspicion. Not a nightmare, not a blink. Next morning Kindred had a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast. All American boy, yup.

Drout's dog tags went into the fish tank at the San Diego Zoo. Sank like a one ounce turd while Kindred snapped photos of baby dolphins.

Drout didn't leave a clue. Drout didn't have a clue. He was clueless. The trail ran cold for six months while Kindred, stupefied, cogitated.

That was then. Hiss is now. Voices in the airpipes, gurgling in the ventricles, dumptrucks in the arteries, sump pump in the bowels.

Kindred on a pogo stick, bouncing high from the parking lot to peer in windows. Sees docdad playing solitaire in a suit of armor. O knight!

Hiroshima girl won't you come out tonight? Enola Gay Tibbets has brought her little boy to play a game of hopscotch dropscotch blopsplotch.

Kindred in the vestibule crying in his boots, poisoning his roots. Listmaker listmaker make me a list. Let's play the name game, blame game.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

5 Turbines

Some holiday, somewhen. Like hearing that Bobby Kennedy got himself kilt right before he drank the rubbing alcohol by mistake. Clouded mind.

Sid Skin shows off new radiation retro-scarificate symposium pamphlets & Kindred knew he could never remember that line,forget repeating it.

The new guy-& aren't they all new guys?-is Cubey Townsend. Or maybe he was calling HIM Cubey & asking what town he was in, like a question.

Kindred hated being accosted by strangers when he examined the turbines, which must empower the Joy Motel withsome type of sentience. WHAT?

And this is what you think? What I think? Yes, what you think.That I myself can think. But you can. Wait, what? Kindred asked the Joy Motel.

12 witnesses seeing, 11 cameras hrmmmming,10 puffs of desert, 9 screaming campers, 8 mothers milking 7 babies sucking 6/?:... 5 RED BALLOONS

4 doors wide open 3 windows whipping 2 turbines charging towards a mushroom cloud & a vestal virgin's thighs, he said, to all a good blight

Kindred could not help but feel poetic & roly poly in polemics during the time of happy hostage days. Rant on the road,Culhane on the beach.

Mitch went on about catching the nanotube gang out in Abilene, talking future talk, you ask me. I did ask you. You did? Kindred stared back.

Where's the eye? We're tied? Whatthe? That's what a nanotube does, it compresses molecules of sound, molls culled over sinned Kindred WAKE!

a wink of an eye sliced by time and practiced hands of the new dreaming men. Culhane's words.Kindred: blank. If You Believe, Culhane hissed.

Half the tenants of Joy Motel hissed words out of air hoses, the rest gargled the laughter out of their lives. Sid Skin glowed only at dawn.

You seem to be free-associating more than usual. Skimming neural nets without the usual artificial sweeteners. Are you lucid?

When your father took you to the scene, did he fasten your seatbelt securely? Take your time before answering. This could be very important.

We found this in your room, stuffed inside a VHS box of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. It's an autograph, but we can't read the writing.

You gave me this photograph at our first session. It's underexposed, but it does look like Culhane. You told me it was your father.

What would you do if we took away your key? Would you move your precious belongings to another motel? Do you even know where the exit is?

I am going to strike you now, with enough force to break the skin. Will you retaliate? We don't think you will. I think you need me.

Kindred bleeding brooding swallowing teeth and smiling smirking slashing grin nodding rising steaming exiting through the wall socket gone.

Psychdaddy making a precise horizontal line across the chart and smashing his forehead on the desk with enough force to break the skin.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

4 Eyeball

okay DOC, kindred coughed into a spitoon that turned out to be his lap, momma was a still a virgin when she met me, i'm leaving it at that.

and screw you, i'm talking from inside a lower case of budweisers just to spite your hawk nose, blurred by your latex second hand smoke.

i can roam where i want, janssen borrowed my boxers, the ones w/ the joy buzzer.i can climb atop the ice machine, i need a dental mirror bad

you think i don't know mitch put culhane up to this? the memory retention pond, the time dilation,my sudden interest in 12 degrees separated?

MacRant out there in his '64 Dart, gitbox dangling from strings in the shattered windshield, Kindred scrapin the enamel on his tooth, waiting.

Why the guitar, a wooden missile in his mine mined mind, the car circling the empty lot. Culhane passed out from drink in front of Room 12.

Small, snowy world. Kindred in a snowglobe, puffing effluvium. Spirits of motels & mushrooms past.

Of all people, The Givers of Pain and Rapture check in to Room 244. Hope floats to the asphalt like rancid confetti. No no can't have that.

Once, Sid Skin told me that I must have been programmed by Hell. I still do not know what he was getting at, this was after his parole.

I think about a dark-haired woman in fishnets, vision of a virgin in a cloud of disintegrated earth, disinterested watchers, 12 disciples.

Liquid eyes that melt the sky, the force of the blast a 100 lb. brick hitting your chest. Waking up clutching a pillow that was never yours.

Night again, false dawn.Thoughts of the dark-haired girl, closer than the half-moon.The desert offers too much perspective, his memory none.

Culhane sealed the envelope with paraffin, put it inside the box, locked it and swallowed the key. He keeps the key in his stomach, always.

When the key passes, he sterilizes it and swallows it again. His gullet also contains enough coins to pay for parking meters.

If he needs to leave his truck downtown, he goes into an alley and expels exact change. $6.75. Parking ticket could screw the whole deal.

Brake lights, one busted,wink a trail for Kindred to follow. Culhane wants him close, sniffing and snuffling, overconfident, careless, lazy.

Kindred knows what's inside the box. Birth certificates, death notices, plans, schemes, diagrams, schedules, announcements, news, weather.

And a glazed eyeball. Sugared like spun candy. It belonged to the Watcher, the first to see, the last to know, the blind, bravely dead one.

Frozen on the retina, the image told the story. Her face and form and shape, unfolding, reforming, bearing witness to the almighty power.

Giver of life and taker of souls, bringer of death and singing cold songs that echo dully in the lost chambers of Kindred's ticking heart.

Culhane in the alley, counting out change. Kindred on a fire escape, the glint of fallen quarters flickering in unflinching unblinking eyes.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER

3 Psychdaddy

Good morning Mr. Kindred. I see you're having the orange juice. It's not fresh, you know. We're a long way from anywhere, here. Bad oranges.

Shall we begin? Or should I say, continue? Will you let me look inside your notebook this time? No? It must be very special. A gift perhaps?

You are aware that I could creep into your room while you're asleep and simply take it? I am your daddy, after all. I live inside your head.

Now, tell me. Do you keep a list in there? I think you do. You're certainly no artist. I think it's a naughty list. Labels, digits, names.

You told me last time you saw your mother on a piece of toast. Have your seen your father in the dirt behind the gas station? Or in a cloud?

Yes? A cumulus cloud? A dense puffy cloud form having a flat base and rounded outlines often piled up like a mountain? Or a mushroom?

Are you religious, Mr. Kindred? Do you believe in a higher power? Have you seen evidence of Him upon this earth? In the sky? Is he here now?

What happened in New Mexico with your father? Why do you think he would not buy you a frozen treat that day? Had you been a very bad boy?

It must have surprised you terribly, what happened. No one could have foreseen an event of that magnitude, especially not a boy age nine.

You shouldn't feel guilty. You were an innocent bystander. It was not your fault. Let it go. Wrap it in paper and set it out on the curb.

I see you are doodling the number 12. Does that number have some special significance to you, Mr. Kindred? Twelve months of the year? July?

Is your room satisfactory? Good. Do you have enough fresh towels? Yes? Could you use another blanket? Is the cleaning woman to your liking?

She was carefully chosen. There is a lot to be cleaned in a motel like this one. Nasty surprises. Sudden spills. Blood on the walls. Messy.

You may find her one day standing on your toilet with her head out the window. Pay her no mind. She is claustrophobic and needs the horizon.

You're yawning. Are you getting enough sleep? The desk clerk told me you have been roaming the halls more than usual. Looking for someone?

Your mother was a virgin? What in heaven do you mean by that? What a strange thing to suddenly blurt out in the middle of a session.

Where is your mother now? In a trunk in the basement? In the garden? In the clouds? I could ask Mr. Culhane. Would he know where she is?

Why do you always order things 12 at a time? 12 potato chips from room service. 12 Budweisers at Tourette's. 12 stamps at the post office?

Why do you call me 'psychdaddy'? And 'docdad'? Are you mocking me? I will not be mocked. I am a psychiatrist, but I am not your father.

This has been a very productive session. I was going to say 'fruitful' but I did not want to remind you about the rancid oranges. Goodbye.

CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER