Codename Prague (9 page)

“
Anschlag!
”

The monster froze. Dr Teufelsdröckh tentatively approached it.

He touched its shoulder. He tugged on its genitals. He ran a finger over the flesh of its abdomen. Finally he stabbed it in the navel with a turkey baster and squeezed the bulb…

The monster simmered, boiled…inflated. Its body erupted with muscle and its skin contracted against the muscle as if pulled taught by a drawstring. The final product was a hyperreal caricature of an anabolically enhanced human body that bore resemblance to an animatronic cartoon.

“I stand corrected,” said Truth, itching his thighs, his knees. “This outfit is an atrocity.”

“Wear it!” shouted Dr Teufelsdröckh.

“Why are women who have miscarriages always
whisked
away?” wondered Beauty. “They’re never rolled away, or carried away, or wheelbarrowed away. They’re always
whisked
.”

Truth snarled, “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Wake up.”

“I’m awake.” He thought about the assertion. “I’m pretty sure I’m awake. I can’t be certain. This may be the nightmare of reality.”

Truth attacked him.

Dr Teufelsdröckh stroked the monster’s mustache. “Keats stands to profit by this manner of vivisection. Rumor was he had difficulty growing facial hair. Wordsworth wrote a long poem about it that was originally intended to be part of his
Prelude
, but Coleridge allegedly ate the manuscript one night in a doped up frenzy. This was when Wordsworth was living with his sister Dorothy at Dove Cottage in the Lake District. On the night in question, Dorothy tried to kick the author of ‘Kubla Khan’ out, but he rebuffed her, and he flew into a rage, and in addition to trashing the cottage and eating ‘Book XV: The Unbearded Nancy Boy,’ as it was called, he bit the head off of the Wordsworth’s canary and set fire to the dining room. Coleridge was a madman. But Wordsworth endured him. The point is, Keats couldn’t grow so much as a sideburn, and everybody made fun of him for it. Now look at him.” He stroked the mustache with increasing excitement. The monster frowned. Behind them, Truth and Beauty crashed and rolled through the carnage. “On another note, where would aesthetics be today in the absence of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi holocaust? Think of all the art that has been produced as a direct corollary to World War II-related hatemongering. Cinema, literature, music. Digigraffiti. Architecture. Countless artifacts of text and image. I believe the root cause of World War II was not German Aryanism but an entropic deprivation of the artistic spirit in the human condition on a global scale. There can be no art in the absence of evil deeds, after all. An artist can’t subsist on smiles and handshakes. The Giant Ogre of Cruelty and Violence must bear its screaming asshole to the world in order for an artist to sufficiently realize his talents. World War II was simply an instance of humanity giving itself a venue for future creative expression during a period of dangerous imaginative stasis.” The monster sneezed. Dr Teufelsdröckh began to stroke his own overlip. His assistants’ horseplay continued without remittance. “That reminds me,” he continued, “I still need to download and print out a thimble of
daikaiju
DNA. Where’s the computer? Where’s the prototyper? Look at this godforsaken zoo…”

08

Houses of If

It was a simulacrum of Edmond Dantès’ cell in the island prison Château d’If in Alexandre Dumas’ French adventure novel
The Count of Monte Cristo
. Prague knew because of the inscription on the stone wall. Which read: THIS IS A SIMULACRUM OF EDMOND DANTÈS’ CELL IN THE ISLAND PRISON CHÂTEAU D’IF IN ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ FRENCH ADVENTURE NOVEL
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
.

He ran a fingertip over the words. “If…”

The first year was the hardest. It took a long time to relegate the pangs of hunger, physically and psychologically; he had always possessed a vicious appetite and a speedy metabolism to keep him nice and trim. A rusty metal slot in the cell door opened three times a day and somebody tossed in a tin plate of goulash or soup or gruel. Bad things ensued. He was accustomed to overeating and his body took revenge by way of frequent diarrhea, nausea, hives, cold shakes, brainfreeze, and other unpleasant symptoms of excess-deprived withdrawal. Additionally, a man in an iron blowtorch mask tortured him on a regular basis. The man never used a blowtorch. He used a magnifying glass, burning holes in Prague’s skin with the aid of a portable fusion-powered sun, but usually the man beat him with blunt, Lo-
Tech weapons (e.g. clubs, maces, logs, chains, pipes, baseball bats, bones, candlesticks, broomsticks, hardcover books, stones, bricks, icicles, chair legs, medicine balls, T-squares, hippopotamus whips, shower nozzles, flashlights, knobkieries, sally rods, wrenches, bamboo, etc.). He only tortured Prague once with surgical instruments, cutting off most of his fingers and toes as well as a pound of flesh here and there and the majority of his upper lip. Whatever the case, Prague oscillated between screaming, giggling and snoring, unable to retaliate given the steady influx of sleeping and laughing gases into his cell.

After awhile, Prague adapted to the routine. Even defecating in a bucket wasn’t unbearable. Nor was having his veins artlessly replenished with fresh Victory gin and vermouth whenever it went bad. His only real complaint was the constant draft he felt on his upper row of teeth; he realized the grave degree to which he had taken his lip for granted. He even befriended his torturer, who, while continuing to bruise, burn and break him, developed a high regard for the celebrity/g-man/prisoner, telling him jokes and, once, bringing him a slice of cherry pie.

One day the torturer entered the cell and began to cry. Prague asked him why. He took off his blowtorch mask, revealing the surgically reconstructed face of Vincent Prague
sans défaut
, and said, “Seven years have passed. That’s seven tenths of a decade.” He fell to his knees, sobbing.

Behind the torturer appeared a replica of Armand Dorleac, the prison warden of Château d’If in an early twentieth century film version of
The Count of Monte Cristo
. He placed a hand on the torturer’s shoulder. “Pardon the poor fool. Upon your incarceration, he had his face recreated in your image and has become quite attached to you, I’m afraid. Now we’ll have to burn the visage to ashes. Alas.”

Prague lifted a trembling arm and pointed at the warden. “You look familiar. Didn’t you play bad guys in
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
and
The Crow
?
Strange Days
, I think, too.”

“Amazing, Mr Prague,” said the warden. “How do you speak so well in the absence of your upper lip? Bilabials are an impossible feat of articulation in your condition.”

“Ventriloquism runs in my family.”

“Ah yes. Of course. What doesn’t run in your family? Well, you’re free to go. You’ve paid your debt.”

“Debt? Fuck did I do?”

“You know the MAP. Existence itself is grounds for punishment. Thus and so. By the way may I have your autograph? My kids love your work.” He held out a sheet of parchment paper and a fountain pen.

Prague took the pen and threw it aside. He blew his nose onto the paper and gave it back to the warden.

Bound in shackles at the neck, wrists and ankles, he shuffled up and down and across countless stairways and corridors and planks, pausing only to be flogged by malicious escorts…

A doktor stood at the front gate of Château d’If. He wore a stethoscope and monocle and pale green OR uniform. “Hmm,” he said at the sight of Prague, and took his pulse. “I see. Take him to the madhouse, please. This man is insane in the membrane.”

“Insane in the brain,” droned the diminutive assistant at the doktor’s side.

An escort clubbed Prague in the back of the head. Before losing conscious-ness
, he felt somebody tear another chunk from his thigh.

Next: Another seven years elapsed…

Prague awoke in a straightjacket and muzzle gag. His cell looked roughly the same size as the one in Château d’If. It was much taller, though, and the walls were padded. And instead of an inscription that read THIS IS A SIMULACRUM OF EDMOND DANTÈS’ CELL IN THE ISLAND PRISON CHÂTEAU D’IF IN ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ FRENCH ADVENTURE NOVEL
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
, there was a flickering neon sign that read KILROY WAS HERE. In the background, rock opera band Styx’s song “Mr Roboto” played over and over and over. Prague hung from the ceiling, upside-down, by a long copper wire…

“We want you to get better,” said hospital director Doktor Ray B Flechsig on Day 1 through a yellow, bearded grin.

“What’s wrong with me?” wheezed Prague.

Flechsig punched him in the balls. “Your nuts hurt, for one. But that’s neither here nor there. Nurse?”

A bleached blond wearing a peephole leather bra, fishnet stockings and fishbowl pumps appeared at Flechsig’s side. The doktor pointed at Prague’s crotch. Smiling, the nurse stomped on his crotch with her heels and reduced his genitals to stir-fry.

By Day 563, Prague felt settled in. He had gotten used to hanging upside down, more or less, envisioning himself as an elderly bat who just wanted to stay in his cave, and “Mr Roboto” no longer ailed him; he had exorcized the song of all clandestine messages, references and innuendo. He could barely hear the song, even though half a year ago somebody turned the volume on full blast.

Six times a day, Doktor Flechsig sent in the nurse to feed and sedate him. She removed his muzzle gag, shoved a spoonful of goo into his mouth, and chased the goo with a pill. Sometimes she cradled his head and emptied a shot of shitty scotch into his throat. Sometimes she clutched his hair and kissed him. Her lips felt like tarantula legs. Her tongue felt like leather.

On Day 1,241, they cut Prague down and unleashed him into the general population. It took 100+ days to get used to standing and walking upright.

Patients weren’t allowed to wear clothes. Orderlies shaved them from head to toe with dull straight razors every day. A mechanical pharmacist stalked them constantly, machinegunning pills that were absorbed into the skin on impact. Patients had to sleep two per single cot. Prague’s bedmate was a cannibal. Every morning he woke up bleeding martini juice, chunks of flesh torn from his limbs, abdomen and back, and he had to visit the medical ward, which was owned and operated by cannibal sympathizers who reluctantly sewed Prague up, although not without serving him a fair share of pro-cannibal propaganda. Soon the hospital ran out of Victory gin and vermouth and they filled Prague’s veins with cow spit. At this point he truly went insane. He believed he was a robot. He walked like a robot. He talked like a robot. He made robotic gestures and signals and tics. Then he recovered. He slept, dreaming again and again of the Nowhere Man. One night Doktor Flechsig shook him awake. “I love you,” he said, and molested Prague.

500+ days later, a man draped in a bed sheet served the Anvil-in-Chief walking papers.

Prague had been eaten so badly over the years he looked more like a turkey bone than a human being. The twilight zone of modern science and technology permitted him to function, however, as did the power of ventriloquism, his bedmate having devoured his lower lip and equipped him with a permanent rictus grin.

This state of extreme deformity excited Doktor Flechsig. He hugged Prague tightly on his way out of the ward, rubbing genitals against his leg, whispering, “I never want to let go.” But he did let go. And it wasn’t until Prague skulked down an interminable hallway into an elevator that he encountered further difficulty.

“What floor, sir?” said an aged elevator operator.

“The one with the cafeteria.”

“Certainly.” The doors closed and the elevator went down. “Say, don’t I know you? I think you were in a bad dream I had last night.”

“Boo.”

He pushed the emergency stop button and faced Prague. “Seriously. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Sir, I think I’ve seen you.”

Prague lost his cool and tried to strangle the elevator operator. Years of sedation and loss of flesh rendered him pitiably weak and forlorn, and the incensed elevator operator, who may have been in his early 90s, manhandled him like a scarecrow, slamming him against the walls and then kneeing him in the groin. Prague crumpled. The elevator operator kicked him until the elevator sighed to a stop, the bell went ding, and the doors slid open.

The police awaited him.

The next four years transpired in a semi-conscious blur as Prague was transported from clink to clink…They beat him with billy clubs for three weeks, working in shifts. They pinned him to a wall and threw ripe bananas at him for over a month. They cooked him for thirty seconds at a time in a walk-in microwave oven. They snipped off the rest of his fingers and toes. They starved him, fed him, starved him. They sequestered halfass dentists to enact Knievelesque surgical procedures, sans anesthesia, on his molars. They threw him into a pool of cybernetic leeches and dared him to swim out. They castrated him. They boiled him. They plucked him. They opened a door and told him to go. Prague slumped towards freedom. They slammed shut the door just before he reached it and kicked the shit out of him. They performed this routine 120,346 times…They locked him in a House of Usher haunted by belligerent Edgar Allen Poe ghosts. The ghosts leapt into Prague’s body, engaging it in precarious sexual acts and forcing it to sign incalculable quantities of autographs. Prague moaned. He shrieked. He gurgled and vomited and passed out and dreamt and awoke and growled and croaked and cramped and exploded with rage and enmity and imploded with fear and apathy and went delirious from the pain the pain THE PAIN…They locked him in a mausoleum constructed entirely out of telescreens (walls, ceilings, floors, sarcophagi) that broadcast footage of Vincent Prague’s former public arrests, car chases, scikungfi fights, barista beatings, snake charmings, stand-up routines, assassinations, etc. At this point Prague was a mere quivering lump of flesh that could have easily been mistaken for a pile of elephant shit with a hairdo. But he was alive. They made certain to keep him on the razor’s edge of Life at all times.