Iceberg memories. Bright blue sunshades. Watching kids play basketball. Good-natured yelling. I realize that I am recognized, I just know.
Tinfoil hat time. Still at the BB game. Or is it BBs and skeet shooting? Sleet when no one is looking? This is me when the drugs kick in.
But I've been clean for three reality shifts now. Took the cure back in Room 77, the sweat room, psychDad photos on every wall, plastered.
How long had I been searching for Calumet even after I thought he was dead? Why wouldn't I have gone after Mantell or Degnan, next to go?
The river Calumet drowned in has dried up, his remains long since drifted in the AC/DC air-conditioned diagonal curvature, current carried.
Into the lake, begone! No more current in the river's West Branch, unless it rained or more likely a hobo pisses like a banshee, wailing.
Bubbly Creek, the South Branch, is still there. Ghosts of slaughtered stockyard cattle and stocky slackers, grocery store baggers, selective
this city can be, it will rain in dissections. There is a subdivision where the West Branch watered, now nothing but sunshine over riches.
And I'm stuck in Joy Motel. When did I start my last manuscript and more importantly, what was it about? A mnemonic memoir, sci-fi HI-FI?
State of the art computer repairs? A cookbook to serve man (wrong-o, liabilities ensue!). Kindred at Earth Online dot c'mon you know, why?
It all makes sense at times, if I let the morphing drip begin and the revels halt: SCI-FI RECORDS in the 70s, the parrot a parakeet, tweet.
Forget Mantell, I contemplate for three days. I can leave here because I'm special. Degnan is on the border & ultimately out of luck. Tweet!
Its 1 in the morning, 20 degrees below zero, Venus has gone past the horizon, the church steeple on the corner is not lit. And so I set out.
I crawl across a white landscape pebbled with black lines, curved and straight, clumped in clusters with spaces between, windtunnelempty.
My fingers are turning black, not from cold or gangrene. But what? They smell pungent. Tin? Lead? Ink? I pause and look back, squintpanting.
Barren as an ice floe, Antarctic blindwhiteout. I stab my blade into the surface, testing. It rips a neat hole with tattered edges. Paper?
I'm on a piece of paper covered with text. It stretches to the horizon on all sides. I wander until I find a curve I recognize. Sweeping J.
It takes ten minutes to walk from the top of the J down the main shaft and around the curl to the tip. Several yards away, thick black line.
Exploring. It's an O. J-O. I spend the rest of the morning tracing out letters. J-O-Y-M-O-T-E-L. And a plain of smaller letters tumbling.
I appear to be on a manuscript. Am I the protagonist? Am I the villain? Am I the author? Am I in the Joy Motel? Or a novel called Joy Motel?
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
29 Gastric juices
And The Man comes on the radio, transistor gluegummed in my ear. He says to me, he says, Do you believe? Do you, Phil Kindred, believe?
I stopstart on urban sidewalk, bunnyhop step, surprised. Me? Do I believe? But The Man is gone and I hear ticking. Or is it tapping? Do I?
Fingering the flatblade in my backbelt. Razoredge draws blood. Billboard poster whipcracks in the north wind. Up I look, I look. BulletEyez.
Gazing implacably at my cocked head, his mouth a sneer, shutterbound. I jig sideways into an alley and pressflesh on cold brick, shivering.
Do I believe? Not me, oh no. Virgin Mary flashfrozen in an eyeball, superimposed on Trinity's mushroom cloud. Not my religion, bang a bomb.
Peering edgeways I see the poster is a toaster, BulletEyez vaporized, a toaster full-o waffles ready to be syrup-slicked. Advertising at me.
Calumet, I have your number. You are next. Puffa huffa your last breath. Breaking sidewindow on a Caddy, I climb inside and get it a-going.
Rolling tirehard U-turn skidding. Clipping sideview mirror, sparkcity. Foot mashed floorboards, engine thrusting. Baby, I'm a-comin', hear?
Kill'd ya once, bud, whatchoo doin' still heartpumpin'? Neon skips off puddle and kisses my windshield, me panting at a red, vibrating hard.
Gunning the Caddy through a plate glass window, cheapdive called The PorkRind. Glassmashing crashing. Half a pig on a plate, bibs 'n diners.
Calumet's in the booth in the back, plate of bigfries dipped in bacon grease, slippyfingered shinyfaced not too happy to see me crusading.
Collared in my fist, I drag him out the back door, his leather shoes carving a halfpath through swiny innards on the floor in the kitchen.
Somebody's squealing, it ain't me. Calumet porcine, eyebugged. Shoulder hits a green sedan and two heads popup in the backseat, lustbusted.
Black and white rolls by, copsters eating lobsters. Tapping? They don't see. I drag Calumet feetfirst to the D-bridge, pools of nightlight.
Any last words? Calumet blubbering. Kindred your dadddddy! My daddy what? Your daddy was our leader. My daddy what? Our leader, the Elder.
This I don't want to hear. I bend and lift, bodygrip and over he goes, a spiral fall, cracks the riverice fifty feet below and goes through.
Blackhole winking lights from neoncity, blackwater running silent, breathless, blackblood freezing on my sleeve, Calumet on an astral plane.
Retracing steps, icy air lungfully. Peaceful, hungry. Through the kitchen in The PorkRind, waiters cleaning up the mess I made. Menu please.
Diners scrambling, give me clearance. I get into the Caddy, snouted into the front window, engine still running. Hornhonk and piggyfood.
I eat a plate o' porkrinds and chase it with a Bud. That waffle poster sure stimulates gastric juices. Lipsmackin', I back her out, no tip.
Tinkle of falling glass, put it in gear and crawl east, cityscream in my pitydreams, disciple down, Calumet drowned, my shadow slowdancing.
28 Bonyhead
Mr. Kindred, your bonyhead seems particularly knobswollen this morning. Is it packed full of letters and numbers waltzing pyrotechnically?
Ouchy. I know it's sore, little fella. Shall I give it a gobsmack directly upon its achinpate? No? But it might provide the relief you seek.
Tell your old docdad wassamatta boy. Spill the beans, ballpeen. You've been sneakingpeeking on fireladderescapesloudsirens, haven't you son?
Did you managemenagerie to grabnab Mr. Culhane's mysterylockbox? You did? Was the luscious Cella Slink a-bouncin' on the bedspringadings?
And what was inside the talkinbox? A dozen cousins in a row? Leaning on elbows watching the show? In the boomroom? Year of our Lord 1945?
Must be erased posthaste, I think we all agree. I met surreptitiously with the fictitiously adroit duo BulletEyez and Baldo the Magnificent.
They were passing through you on a little jaunt from your old haunts, somewhere in the humidair over Miami, ten years hence-ish looking tan.
They tell me you're going to be quite famous, though somehow nameless. Fans will know you by the letters PKD. Or maybe it was KFC. Could be.
Odd, huh? CIA black ops put you in the drainpool living without rules. But you must emerge from creepdeepshadows to countersink your foes.
Exposure without closure could become your ruin. As your docdad, I advise: do not look directly at the scum without proper eye protection.
Kindred streetward slouching feetward spies a bluemoon with flashtired eyes. Headfull mission, nuclear fission. Smiling smallest of smiles.
I was on the run from Calumet, thought he was dead. No, HE thought he was dead. Zombie Motel, I tell you. And this is what my head is like.
Calumet, the corpus linguist, Mantell, the progressive ruin. The latter wanders as if dead, leaves one life, the next is worse than mine.
I'm not happy that Calumet is alive after I killed him for real-like in the last book I wrote...wait, I died before I wrote his death scene.
Where's the bible sublime? My answers are there. My questions are where? Soylent Green is food! Nope, that's the wrong bible, right future.
Calumet just will not quit. Spraying me with brain bullets not my own. Wrong stories, lost in the frames. You cut out his brain you blurgh.
Coughing up catch phrases not just right. Peel before Zod. Feel crunchy, punk? Puking up peels and parrot guts. It wasn't a parrot after all
It was a parakeet. Tweet, tweet. Invasion of the Bobby Soxers. Tweet, tweet. Channel change. The inner mind to... The Uber Litmus.
Brainflash spritz as a citybus blatted past, windows full of wide-eyed riders, Kindred buffeted by the backwash and metallic shift of gears.
Databits jangling skullcore. Do I remember the names? Slippage royal. Regroup, reload. Yes. Wallinfo intact, memory serves, rock and roll.
27 Yellow run
Hello, I'm Kindred. (chorus) Hello, Kindred. (K) I will be sober eleventeen years and 6,213 nanoseconds from now. (chorus) polite applause.
There was this song I always listened to, you know? When I was on my own, solving crimes and staying solvent but not sober so sue me. You?
Stand with the accused if you can't accept me, READ me, I'm a novelty, get it? No? Then stand with the accused, the ones who drove me here.
Here. Joy Motel. 1968, so I thought. But Bobby Kennedy is still alive and MacRant is just a kid and Culhane drives a '59 Chevy Biscayne.
ksshh. The first letter falls, the SC teeters over HI-FI, blurring the H. I thought I was real. The future was better, right? You were there
Baldo the Magnificent, one of my DTs DTs, my DTs were so bad. Then there's your pal, Hawkwind Bulleteye. Psycho cruise ship name, you ask me
The letters keep fizzling under your watch, Baldo. PRESCHOOL HIGH FIVE GEENPOOL CYANICE kish kish kish I'd like to vie a bowel? Aye aw why?
The parrot imploded and that was my wake up call, back in bed, room 223. I looked out the window. Dick Nixon was working on the turbines.
Woke up to find Culhane's box in my bathtub. Don't remember leaving it there. Hum of turbines rattling up through the drain, pipe vibrating.
Fire axe. Got it from the glass cabinet in the hall. Nice heft, redhead. Overhand swing, accelerating downward. Wristsnap chunk. Busted box.
Paper, scraps, notes, scrolls, pads, booklets, folders, receipts, maps, bills, IOU, marriage license, love letter, death notice, house deed.
Culhane is a squirrel, hoarding life snippets. Names all different. These are not Culhane's. Must be a dozen identities here. Motherlode.
Clues and leads for the Disciples. Culhane like some kind of club secretary. The wheres and whos and whys and whens and whats. Collated.
Thumbtacks pinning everything to the west wall of 223. Floor to ceiling, overlapping pages, curled edges, all colors. Grouped and sorted.
Danko Drout, he was easy. Number six. Lethal injection behind the ear, church in Sacramento. Deedle, tougher. Hard to trace. Number three.
Got him with a parcel bomb. Watched from a rental car parked in the shade across the street. Neat little pop bang did the deed, over easy.
Kindred memorizing the wall, eyes fixed from three feet away, scanning, scrolling, shuffling across the carpet on bare feet. Drinking it in.
Four and half hours, neck aching, brainthrobbing, synapses firing in neat sequence, CIA trained mnemonic techniques, numerical shortcuts.
Brainfull mindful soulful. One last deep breath, hold it, snap, yes. All the data in Culhane's box, ingested, congested, consumed, devoured.
Turbines powering down for slumber, earth sighing, disciples dying. Dick Overtone pushed a fork into a fried egg and watched the yellow run.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
There was this song I always listened to, you know? When I was on my own, solving crimes and staying solvent but not sober so sue me. You?
Stand with the accused if you can't accept me, READ me, I'm a novelty, get it? No? Then stand with the accused, the ones who drove me here.
Here. Joy Motel. 1968, so I thought. But Bobby Kennedy is still alive and MacRant is just a kid and Culhane drives a '59 Chevy Biscayne.
ksshh. The first letter falls, the SC teeters over HI-FI, blurring the H. I thought I was real. The future was better, right? You were there
Baldo the Magnificent, one of my DTs DTs, my DTs were so bad. Then there's your pal, Hawkwind Bulleteye. Psycho cruise ship name, you ask me
The letters keep fizzling under your watch, Baldo. PRESCHOOL HIGH FIVE GEENPOOL CYANICE kish kish kish I'd like to vie a bowel? Aye aw why?
The parrot imploded and that was my wake up call, back in bed, room 223. I looked out the window. Dick Nixon was working on the turbines.
Woke up to find Culhane's box in my bathtub. Don't remember leaving it there. Hum of turbines rattling up through the drain, pipe vibrating.
Fire axe. Got it from the glass cabinet in the hall. Nice heft, redhead. Overhand swing, accelerating downward. Wristsnap chunk. Busted box.
Paper, scraps, notes, scrolls, pads, booklets, folders, receipts, maps, bills, IOU, marriage license, love letter, death notice, house deed.
Culhane is a squirrel, hoarding life snippets. Names all different. These are not Culhane's. Must be a dozen identities here. Motherlode.
Clues and leads for the Disciples. Culhane like some kind of club secretary. The wheres and whos and whys and whens and whats. Collated.
Thumbtacks pinning everything to the west wall of 223. Floor to ceiling, overlapping pages, curled edges, all colors. Grouped and sorted.
Danko Drout, he was easy. Number six. Lethal injection behind the ear, church in Sacramento. Deedle, tougher. Hard to trace. Number three.
Got him with a parcel bomb. Watched from a rental car parked in the shade across the street. Neat little pop bang did the deed, over easy.
Kindred memorizing the wall, eyes fixed from three feet away, scanning, scrolling, shuffling across the carpet on bare feet. Drinking it in.
Four and half hours, neck aching, brainthrobbing, synapses firing in neat sequence, CIA trained mnemonic techniques, numerical shortcuts.
Brainfull mindful soulful. One last deep breath, hold it, snap, yes. All the data in Culhane's box, ingested, congested, consumed, devoured.
Turbines powering down for slumber, earth sighing, disciples dying. Dick Overtone pushed a fork into a fried egg and watched the yellow run.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
26 Time rain
Hnm. I grunted, came out more like a reality that went down the wrong pipe. TV static scattershot, hookers whisper price markdowns hearshot.
Not in my day. I turned, Sid Skin had tipped into his drink. Hmn? I seemed to have my voice in a vacuum. Sid: In my day, men wore hats.
Skin touch the brim, a newspaper boat. Random words. Mr. October, someone's son was named Sam. Four Sevens. Bicycle fish. Last call, ump.
Sid touched the brim, you mean? The guy in the stall next to me said & I stalled. Ah, you meant it clever, like you slammed 2 words into 1.
I flushed the stranger away, knowing full well my typos were no good in this reality. Means justify the mens room. Over my shoulder, bullets
Out the door & back to my stool, my new friend a grunting Gilgamesh. I saw you were confused before, chin nodding me. On the instant replay.
And this is? He asked, then shook his head as I kept wronging my heads with the bar towel. Joy Motel? TwiNam Zone? 1968? Washington AC/DC?
Hear, watch. He nudged Sid Skin, who flamed out in a nick. Then he moved the ragged scalp, placed it over the tv above that, told me no
the real news was above the faceless news. You are in 1968 and yet your faceless friend's strange hat is a newspaper from 1978, a Best Of.
Yes, let's stick with that, a best of, a compendium. You watched swore a man was president & no one wore hats but for the two of the unknown
Tomb of the Unknown Offensive, sorry this freak wince see's break cup further future hear put that aluminum plug in the other's empty face.
I push & crinkled & shoved exotic time into the facial gravity well. I saw a man with black skin become President and it was my own reality.
Relatively speaking, I watched him replace the oaf of office and then I was pulled from my paper: Best Of The 21st Century Brainstream, V.1.
When did Ted Kennedy get so fat? What were the Indigo Scavengers? Sid had his real skin back on, Rod Serling hosted the evening news. Again.
I still wasn't getting any, I left Tourette's, wistful for Scrip City. Culhane deadeyed me from Rm. 125. Seein' th' future from the future?
Mocked and feeling cold-cocked cock-knock he was locked out of his room. You have to do everything so half-past when you needs those meds.
Voiced from behind, Kindred turned and saw a baby blue parrot on the side of a pink balloon. Washed with age, he was fading, on the nod.
Swimming pool crystal, turbines sparkled, didn't squeak. Nowhere to be found: Big Q. Meeks. Kindred was in a rhyme frame, Meeks thin grins.
All the letters in PRESCRIPTION CITY AND HI-FI RECORDS lit up red neon in a time rain when every letter was important for the i's to c twice.
Kindred walked closer, surprised that there were no brainstream potholes, past was smooth, no. HI-FI had a Rod McKuen 8-Track in the window.
Watch it for what it was, man. It aint gonna fade no more, just focus in and fall apart shot to sunshine what little there is in his days.
vinyl gone eight track data spools old school brainstream the way he might've written it had this this event occurring in his head had ha
been around when he was young and might've understood better. A man named Gene Splice tried to sell him a time share on a CB radio. smirk.
8 tracks shrinking something smaller sub-atomic no, just like Graham Crackers instead of Pop-Tarts christ the dope made him hungry for love.
25 Fizzle dee dee
Jacked up on joy juice, jittery in the temple. Left one. I was in a city that had a Chinatown snowglobe, that's all I knew. Then I was gone.
I missed my incredible shrinking manhood docdad PsychDaddy T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, give me MORE capital letters and let my manhood bugger.
Clowns in my morning coffee: I drown them, then put them with the mac & cheese for later. Found myself crying because cars didn't have fins.
What the balls, you know? Not a drop of redemption in my shorts. Thought of an old broad at the hospital. Vigil Auntie: Vigilante. Praykill.
And now Auntie is my cleaning lady at Joy Motel. Steroid fueled mopqueen with biceps poppin'. Scours up the spilled blood in my braindrain.
She slips under my sheets when I'm not there, and sometimes when I am. Goes at me with a bristle toothbrush, cleaning my nooks and crannies.
I look ceiling-ish while she's busy. My head full of motor oil and my elbows dipped in sweet grease. Oh mama, gotta get goin' soon, eye hawk.
Postshower hobnobbin' in Tourette's. Meeks jawing about Nixon the Unshaven. Should nuke the North, he says. Flatten Hanoi, end it quick.
Need a plan, K thinks. Not random nukin'. Culhane's maps, coordinates from the Insane Unknown Offensive. Bullseye, bombsights hot white.
While Meeks is pontificating, Kindred's gaze eyeslides ten degrees left and he sees a static event afflict the bar TV mounted in the corner.
Crizzle de dizzle de bop, crackle me smackle on top. Picture fuzzy, image slipping. Weatherman transmogrifies into Bullet Eyes benificent.
He's holding something flat and black in his cupped palms, thumbs flicking cobra-like, tapping tap tapping. Face impassive, concentrating.
Holds it up, tiny screen with an image diffuse. Wait... there, it snaps into clarity on the Tourette's TV. Black man in a black overcoat.
More fizzle dee dee as the static roars in and out like a ghost train in a tunnel. The picture dances and settles. Black man. White teeth.
He's at a microphone in front of a sea of upturned faces. Millions of listeners, respectful connectful rainbow of skin colors, many crying.
Kindred glimpses the Washington Monument, banner says Inauguration. Black man? President? What alternate universe is this? Hallucination?
Twilight Zone? Kindred waits for Rod Serling to fix his universe in crisp, even tones, cigarette ready. You are watching an America where.
But Serling doesn't show and Kindred watches Bullet Eyes snap closed his plastic thingy and dissolve into gray dust and garish advertising.
Meeks flipchanges the channel and Reggie hammers a homer for the A's, white shoes, Catfish in the dugout pumping a fist, America's pastime.
Kindred slurches streetward with his pal Jim Beam snug pocketly and scrunches his collar to kill winter wind. Stands cornerish buswaiting.
Crosstown downtown fullblown paniczone. Snowplow crossways on the bridge jamstuck tween railings, riverice upcracking below, bang crackpop.
Kindred debarked bussish, hoofed it snowblind, Culhane's box tightgripped, begging to be opened, spillage of contents, download Disciples.
Boxfull namegrab defines mission, Kindred ready. Abort bomberama, one by one, stick in his thumb and pull out 12 plums, makepeace on Earth.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
I missed my incredible shrinking manhood docdad PsychDaddy T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, give me MORE capital letters and let my manhood bugger.
Clowns in my morning coffee: I drown them, then put them with the mac & cheese for later. Found myself crying because cars didn't have fins.
What the balls, you know? Not a drop of redemption in my shorts. Thought of an old broad at the hospital. Vigil Auntie: Vigilante. Praykill.
And now Auntie is my cleaning lady at Joy Motel. Steroid fueled mopqueen with biceps poppin'. Scours up the spilled blood in my braindrain.
She slips under my sheets when I'm not there, and sometimes when I am. Goes at me with a bristle toothbrush, cleaning my nooks and crannies.
I look ceiling-ish while she's busy. My head full of motor oil and my elbows dipped in sweet grease. Oh mama, gotta get goin' soon, eye hawk.
Postshower hobnobbin' in Tourette's. Meeks jawing about Nixon the Unshaven. Should nuke the North, he says. Flatten Hanoi, end it quick.
Need a plan, K thinks. Not random nukin'. Culhane's maps, coordinates from the Insane Unknown Offensive. Bullseye, bombsights hot white.
While Meeks is pontificating, Kindred's gaze eyeslides ten degrees left and he sees a static event afflict the bar TV mounted in the corner.
Crizzle de dizzle de bop, crackle me smackle on top. Picture fuzzy, image slipping. Weatherman transmogrifies into Bullet Eyes benificent.
He's holding something flat and black in his cupped palms, thumbs flicking cobra-like, tapping tap tapping. Face impassive, concentrating.
Holds it up, tiny screen with an image diffuse. Wait... there, it snaps into clarity on the Tourette's TV. Black man in a black overcoat.
More fizzle dee dee as the static roars in and out like a ghost train in a tunnel. The picture dances and settles. Black man. White teeth.
He's at a microphone in front of a sea of upturned faces. Millions of listeners, respectful connectful rainbow of skin colors, many crying.
Kindred glimpses the Washington Monument, banner says Inauguration. Black man? President? What alternate universe is this? Hallucination?
Twilight Zone? Kindred waits for Rod Serling to fix his universe in crisp, even tones, cigarette ready. You are watching an America where.
But Serling doesn't show and Kindred watches Bullet Eyes snap closed his plastic thingy and dissolve into gray dust and garish advertising.
Meeks flipchanges the channel and Reggie hammers a homer for the A's, white shoes, Catfish in the dugout pumping a fist, America's pastime.
Kindred slurches streetward with his pal Jim Beam snug pocketly and scrunches his collar to kill winter wind. Stands cornerish buswaiting.
Crosstown downtown fullblown paniczone. Snowplow crossways on the bridge jamstuck tween railings, riverice upcracking below, bang crackpop.
Kindred debarked bussish, hoofed it snowblind, Culhane's box tightgripped, begging to be opened, spillage of contents, download Disciples.
Boxfull namegrab defines mission, Kindred ready. Abort bomberama, one by one, stick in his thumb and pull out 12 plums, makepeace on Earth.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
24 Watcher's eye
Lynxville, Wisconsin. Autumn of 1983. We had to protect the Unnamable Nativity from being seen on the bluff, in the end, 26 dead boaters.
Twiddling dials, pulling out of Prairie Du Chien. Ted Bundy giving interviews, suggestions on what a killer might do to a victim. We met?
Shunted back to 1971, fresh from Attica, Culhane a consultant on an Al Pacino flick, me free to find out why he mind fucks me. Ingo Swann.
Ever since Stanford. Culhane kept rattling on about an NSA listening station near the Doomsday Hotel. He became part of my experiment.
He'd feed me beryllium toast, burnt and jellied, I'd nod like a happy and fatefull dog. Time dilated then expanded, I fell through myself.
At least once that I know of, I dropped dead at my desk and I could see me dead and them above, they made me climb into my corpse to 1972.
I was angered at not learning the exact date of my death, unless it was another fantasy (un)life. Culhane: Make a date...at the Watergate.
Some nights, when I stood on the 2nd floor balcony of Joy Motel, I thought of the desert, each had infinity recessing backgrounds, watched.
Trinity 1945 and the dry air rolling dense a deepsea wave pushing matchstick figures back like the hand of God. Atomic groundburst fist.
In the shelter, Kindred the Kid, age 9, eyes shining brightly, mouth agape as the mushroom cloud flexed its muscles, declaring its arrival.
Birth of the Atomic Age a deathbringer, a scientist named Johnson Dack the designated watcher, observing the blast from outside the shelter.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, everyone said in post accident interviews, even as men in white coats wrapped Dack's body in tin foil.
In case he was radioactive, the foil would reflect the harmful rays and hold them inside what remained of his body, semi-vaporized, toast.
Loading him into an ambulance as Kindred slipped behind a row of black Buicks and watched, his father obliviously accepting congratulations.
Then the two government men moving in, snakes on a mouse, ruthlessly incapacitating the ambulance driver, putting Dack into a white truck.
Kindred creeping close enough to see them go at the body with pincers, knives, screwdrivers, pliers, fingers, teeth, eyes gleaming, alight.
They removed his right eye and held it aloft, murmuring incantations about the image burned into the retina, a billowing smoky gray shroom.
The sudden flurry of excitement as they realized that the shroom was shaped like the Virgin Mary, the glass jar, hands on service revolvers.
Kindred the Kid hiding under a Buick as the G-Men got into their vehicle and sat, engine idling, waiting for... what? For Kindred the Elder.
Kindred's father calling his son to hit the road to LA, interviews beckoning, a famous scientist triumphant. Rolling out, followed by G-Men.
And two hours later, after the ambush, after Kindred the Kid had dealt death with the shotgun to rescue his father, after all of that, then.
Kindred the Kid with the radio up, Sinatra, sailing west into a burnt orange sky, glass jar on the passenger seat, the Watcher's eye inside.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
Twiddling dials, pulling out of Prairie Du Chien. Ted Bundy giving interviews, suggestions on what a killer might do to a victim. We met?
Shunted back to 1971, fresh from Attica, Culhane a consultant on an Al Pacino flick, me free to find out why he mind fucks me. Ingo Swann.
Ever since Stanford. Culhane kept rattling on about an NSA listening station near the Doomsday Hotel. He became part of my experiment.
He'd feed me beryllium toast, burnt and jellied, I'd nod like a happy and fatefull dog. Time dilated then expanded, I fell through myself.
At least once that I know of, I dropped dead at my desk and I could see me dead and them above, they made me climb into my corpse to 1972.
I was angered at not learning the exact date of my death, unless it was another fantasy (un)life. Culhane: Make a date...at the Watergate.
Some nights, when I stood on the 2nd floor balcony of Joy Motel, I thought of the desert, each had infinity recessing backgrounds, watched.
Trinity 1945 and the dry air rolling dense a deepsea wave pushing matchstick figures back like the hand of God. Atomic groundburst fist.
In the shelter, Kindred the Kid, age 9, eyes shining brightly, mouth agape as the mushroom cloud flexed its muscles, declaring its arrival.
Birth of the Atomic Age a deathbringer, a scientist named Johnson Dack the designated watcher, observing the blast from outside the shelter.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, everyone said in post accident interviews, even as men in white coats wrapped Dack's body in tin foil.
In case he was radioactive, the foil would reflect the harmful rays and hold them inside what remained of his body, semi-vaporized, toast.
Loading him into an ambulance as Kindred slipped behind a row of black Buicks and watched, his father obliviously accepting congratulations.
Then the two government men moving in, snakes on a mouse, ruthlessly incapacitating the ambulance driver, putting Dack into a white truck.
Kindred creeping close enough to see them go at the body with pincers, knives, screwdrivers, pliers, fingers, teeth, eyes gleaming, alight.
They removed his right eye and held it aloft, murmuring incantations about the image burned into the retina, a billowing smoky gray shroom.
The sudden flurry of excitement as they realized that the shroom was shaped like the Virgin Mary, the glass jar, hands on service revolvers.
Kindred the Kid hiding under a Buick as the G-Men got into their vehicle and sat, engine idling, waiting for... what? For Kindred the Elder.
Kindred's father calling his son to hit the road to LA, interviews beckoning, a famous scientist triumphant. Rolling out, followed by G-Men.
And two hours later, after the ambush, after Kindred the Kid had dealt death with the shotgun to rescue his father, after all of that, then.
Kindred the Kid with the radio up, Sinatra, sailing west into a burnt orange sky, glass jar on the passenger seat, the Watcher's eye inside.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
23 Spectral soldier
Kindred in '65, Cambodian Bandit Recon long range reconnaissance patrol LRRP in Vietnam, penetrating deeper where others feared to tread.
Unit winning Presidential Unit Citation, extraordinary heroism. Kindred with blue Jungle Expert patch living up to the slogan Sudden Death.
Conducting first night combat rappel along the northern Cambodian border to extract a mysterious solo Airborne Ranger, guy named Culhane.
Culhane coming back with a box full of bombing coordinates, mapped during a 75 kilometer patrol over two weeks, top secret up river, insane.
Maps and plans, detailed most desirable targets, dropzones, killspots, no go areas, prime ops, sunspots, moon phases, riptides, river depth.
Kindred dubbed it the Insane Unknown Offensive. IUO. Nobody knew Culhane went up there until he came back. No one knew why, or how, or when.
Thought he was dead, captured, buried, dismembered, beheaded, disemboweled, castrated, skinned, boiled alive, tortured, drained, out, empty.
Culhane gut shot, leaking oil, going down, ammo gone, Kindred emerging from the the jungle into a clearing, sees him on a river rock dying.
Three enemy open up from the treeline and according to Culhane, retelling the tale for years to come, Kindred simply disappeared midstride.
Bullets thunking into the trees, whining through the space where he was, or used to be, he wasn't there any more, he was submolecular, true.
Kindred sucking the life out of the three men, their lungs imploding with a sick pop, no other sound, using no knife, no grenade, no weapon.
Rematerializing in midair above Culhane, hovering angelic, Culhane swore to investigators later he could see right through him, see the sky.
Kindred carrying Culhane 50 clicks through muck and slime, torrential hot rain, heavens melting vengeance like warm lifeblood of the gods.
Flashbacks always, answers never, Culhane could not figure out how Kindred did what he did, savior of the Insane Unknown Offensive, alone.
Trying to put the war behind us, I started to work with Culhane, odd jobs, busy work. Two hours of pushing broom. Kings of the open road.
In the summer of 1970 we took janitorial jobs at Stanford, heard a man named Ingo Swann talk about remote viewing, I fell back five years.
Culhane reeled me back, told me it was new age mumbo jumbo. Crystal skulls. Appearances on the Mike Douglas Show. Undercurrents of deceit.
After Stanford, we took our roadshow to the burnt ruins of Fallon Ridge, caught in a cornfield nexus, downstate Illinois. Pirate pillaged.
I did not know Culhane had been slipping synthetic ununoctium in my drinking water and, rather bravely, beryllium copper shards in my toast.
Stanford had changed him. The copper in my bowels offset the magnesium in my scalp; we still took odd jobs. I dreamt about a man named Bundy.
Culhane and I caused the riot at Attica. We dressed in aluminum underwear and saluted Hitler to hillbillies in Greenville, Alabama. Lucid.
I could almost grasp it, my tranquility. Like my origins rewritten; retconned by the faces I see in a sky of torn plums. Sci-fi-noir nowhere.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
Unit winning Presidential Unit Citation, extraordinary heroism. Kindred with blue Jungle Expert patch living up to the slogan Sudden Death.
Conducting first night combat rappel along the northern Cambodian border to extract a mysterious solo Airborne Ranger, guy named Culhane.
Culhane coming back with a box full of bombing coordinates, mapped during a 75 kilometer patrol over two weeks, top secret up river, insane.
Maps and plans, detailed most desirable targets, dropzones, killspots, no go areas, prime ops, sunspots, moon phases, riptides, river depth.
Kindred dubbed it the Insane Unknown Offensive. IUO. Nobody knew Culhane went up there until he came back. No one knew why, or how, or when.
Thought he was dead, captured, buried, dismembered, beheaded, disemboweled, castrated, skinned, boiled alive, tortured, drained, out, empty.
Culhane gut shot, leaking oil, going down, ammo gone, Kindred emerging from the the jungle into a clearing, sees him on a river rock dying.
Three enemy open up from the treeline and according to Culhane, retelling the tale for years to come, Kindred simply disappeared midstride.
Bullets thunking into the trees, whining through the space where he was, or used to be, he wasn't there any more, he was submolecular, true.
Kindred sucking the life out of the three men, their lungs imploding with a sick pop, no other sound, using no knife, no grenade, no weapon.
Rematerializing in midair above Culhane, hovering angelic, Culhane swore to investigators later he could see right through him, see the sky.
Kindred carrying Culhane 50 clicks through muck and slime, torrential hot rain, heavens melting vengeance like warm lifeblood of the gods.
Flashbacks always, answers never, Culhane could not figure out how Kindred did what he did, savior of the Insane Unknown Offensive, alone.
Trying to put the war behind us, I started to work with Culhane, odd jobs, busy work. Two hours of pushing broom. Kings of the open road.
In the summer of 1970 we took janitorial jobs at Stanford, heard a man named Ingo Swann talk about remote viewing, I fell back five years.
Culhane reeled me back, told me it was new age mumbo jumbo. Crystal skulls. Appearances on the Mike Douglas Show. Undercurrents of deceit.
After Stanford, we took our roadshow to the burnt ruins of Fallon Ridge, caught in a cornfield nexus, downstate Illinois. Pirate pillaged.
I did not know Culhane had been slipping synthetic ununoctium in my drinking water and, rather bravely, beryllium copper shards in my toast.
Stanford had changed him. The copper in my bowels offset the magnesium in my scalp; we still took odd jobs. I dreamt about a man named Bundy.
Culhane and I caused the riot at Attica. We dressed in aluminum underwear and saluted Hitler to hillbillies in Greenville, Alabama. Lucid.
I could almost grasp it, my tranquility. Like my origins rewritten; retconned by the faces I see in a sky of torn plums. Sci-fi-noir nowhere.
CLICK TO READ NEXT CHAPTER
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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