Born Hard Again: Book Three of the Future Remembered Chronicles (27 page)

"Sheeit," Koochy observed.

I thought some more.  What other gods did I know?  Oh, right!

"Becky!" I called out.  "You're pretty much everywhere and saw what happened and can probably hear me right now, yeah?  Can you help us out?"

I waited and held my breath hoping for a response.  Koochy coughed once, then cursed softly.

Finally a control panel mounted on a far-away wall of the septic tank creaked and hummed, then a powerful deep voice blasted into the silence.

"CLEVELAND JESUS," Becky said.  "YOU DO NOT BORE ME."

"I know, right?  So how about a little help?" I begged.

No response came.  Gods were always so aloof.

"Dammit, Becky!" I cried.

Seconds passed, then minutes.

"Marcus, do you have any other ideas?" I asked.  I tried to sound like a leader even though I was full of shit.  I spat out some shit.

"Nah, son," he replied helpfully.  "Stay scrong, playa.  But we dead fo' rea'."

More minutes passed, then hours.  My eyes adjusted and I could see our surroundings in the dim light of the glow-fly maggots.

"Fuck!" I shouted.  "Marcus we can't just die like this, this sucks ass!"

"Ay, while you been bitchin' out o'er thurr, I be makin' plans," he offered.

"What?  Can you get us out of here?" I asked.  Hysteria and crap were creeping into my voice.

"Got damn, son.  I a'ready got us outta hurr, yo' dumb ass juss don't know it yet.  Ya feel muh?" Koochy said proudly.  "Sheeit.  Figguh'd you'd rememburr how it be."

"Huh?" I blurted.  "What?  How'd you do it?"

Koochy picked up a large turd that was floating by and gripped it.  "Muffuckin' taco salad day."  He dropped the turd like a mic.  "Booya!"

The realization dawned on me.  Yes!  Our workers were tirelessly creating taco salads for no pay and the twelve tribes of Boojina were feasting along with all the residents of New London.  It had been a couple hours, which gave them time to make the food and give the taco salads out...

"Yes!  I hear it now, Koochy!  I hear it!"  Slow gurgles from the piping all around us turned into torrents of gushing fluid.

"Yes!  Yes!"  I threw my head back and raised my arms to the roof, relishing in the sudden downpour of fresh toilet drainage.

"Hahaha!" I yelled, my mouth agape in a grin for the lifesaving nectar.  "It's working, Koochy!  It's working!"  The sewage level was rising, bringing us closer and closer to the access hatches in the roof of the tank.

"Damn right, playa!"

It was all so familiar to me.  I flashed back to my time as a child, stepping on my father's dying body to hold myself up above the sewage.  His last shit-filled words. 
There's no point in trying
.  I had thought about those words for so much of my life that they were the center of my personality, but whether I'd adopted them or rebelled against them and the Good Man, I wasn't really sure.

Over and over I'd relived those moments, remembering those words but trying to block out so many of the other memories from my hours in the tank.  So many memories.

Hmm.  But what were those memories?

Strange, I hadn't even thought about what was missing in my traumatized mind.  Even after remembering so many events from the future, the events in my past were the ones that were the fuzziest.

Now that I thought about it, I couldn't actually remember much else about that time in the other septic tank, or what else my father said in all those hours.  Right now in this tank the taco salad was rapidly bringing us to the top.  We were going to be able to get out soon, I was confident of that.

Another thought occurred to me.  I couldn't even remember what my father's face looked like.  Strange, that.  How could I forget the face of my father?  Was I just drugged by the fart gases here?  Or did I really not know, and I'd never even thought about it?

What was going on?

The wave pool of digested taco salad was bringing us close enough to the top that I could almost put a hand on the upper hatch.  I grabbed onto a metal strut to stabilize myself in the thrashing currents.

I looked up at the inscription on the hatch.  Memories flooded back to me in a torrent more violent than any consequence of a taco salad.

I remembered everything about that septic tank when I was a child.

What happened in those other hours.

And the other presence in the tank.

And my father's face.

No...

No!

Nooooooooooooooooo!