Mad Boys (30 page)

I yawned and put the magazine down. I glanced up at the painting on the wall. The “me” in the picture had changed; now it was Xiphi. I couldn’t stand looking at the picture, and I decided to take it down. I lifted it off the nail in the wall, and was surprised to find a door where the painting had been. Well, not a door exactly. More like a hatch. I pulled the handle, and the hatch opened into a dimly lit tunnel. Maybe it was an air shaft. I climbed up into it. I crawled on my hands and knees for perhaps five minutes until I came to another hatch.

Behind the second hatch was a ramp. It hit me then: I had found my way into the mother ship. A purple light fell upon me. At that moment, I saw the Alien coiled like a cobra. He hissed at me. I took a long look at him, the last of my demons to come into being. The face could have belonged to a scholar. The scaly, snake body went back into time long before humankind had been created for the Earth.

The Alien uncoiled and slithered up the ramp. Trembling, I followed, crawling on all fours.

The ramp led to a foot-high hatch, which said “Displays.” The Alien hissed, and the hatch opened. The Alien slipped in, and I bellied through. Inside it was pitch black, but the air felt more lively: I reached over my head. No ceiling. I stood, quivering with fright but determined to go on. A dim spotlight fell on me, and then on the Alien. As I walked, sensors reacted to the presence of the Alien and my body and activated the lights of the displays so I could see them.

The first display featured Pinto, my ATV. I could smell the motor oil. I wanted to hop on and ride away, but when I reached for the handlebars, the Alien snapped at my hand and I jerked back.

The lights on the ATV dimmed to black, while the next display lit up, a glass case holding the trinitite I’d found in the Trinity Site. Beside it was another glass case containing the clothes I’d worn when I’d fled from Louisiana across Texas. A tag underneath said: “Upon Completion of the Exposition, Web’s clothes will be donated to the Repository of Smells, Smithsonian Institution.”

After that was a bust of my head, towel wrapped around it. Under the bust was the picture Royal had taken of me in robes. Between the eyes of the bust was a button. I pushed it. Frog sounds croaked from the mouth of the bust. I jumped back in fright.

The Alien snaked to another hatch, and we went through. I touched the snake’s tail just before it disappeared into darkness. It felt like Xiphi’s whang in a wet dream. The next room was an art gallery. All the pictures were of me from my time in the Catacombs of Manhattan. The artists presented me in different ways. In some canvases, I looked like a lost boy. In others, I had cruel eyes and a sarcastic mouth. In others, I didn’t even look like me, but was just lines, colors, and shapes.

The gallery dimmed to darkness as I walked on, following the slowly slithering Alien. I got down on my hands and knees again, as we went through a hatch. On the other side were life-size statues of myself before I’d matured. One statue wore a Langdon suit, the other was naked, covered with permanent mud: Xiphi. I touched them. Wax dummies.

The Alien and I passed through a twisting, dimly lit passage (I had to crawl) and came out in a good-sized area—I could tell by the change in the air and a slight echo of my breath. From the odd smell and from the sight that opened before me as the lights came on, I thought for a moment that I was back in the Home of the Grateful Dead.

One by one, as the Alien and I passed by, Marla’s liquid-filled caskets were illuminated. I paused before each to pay my respect: Terry’s brother, the murdered boy/girl with the d-a-d hex on his buns; the homeless man with a patch over one eye that the boy gangs had shot; three boys from the boy gangs—Nox, Pope, and Dunc—suspended together in one casket. On a plaque before the boy gang members were written words in poetic form of a conversation I’d had with Pope.

Next was a casket containing a man in a business suit. Floating around in the liquid with the man were thousands of dollars in Monopoly money. I didn’t recognize the man, but I recognized the person in the casket beside him. It was Mother. This time I felt neither hatred nor dream-love for her. She was just my mother, and she was gone. I got down on my knees and I wept for her, and then I wept for myself. I prayed to the persons in God for her soul. Beside Mother was Father, poor doomed, misguided revolutionary, dressed in his flannel shirt, blue jeans, and work boots, suspended in Marla’s secret, preservative liquid. I had a prayer for him, too, but no tears.

I heard a hiss. The Alien lay coiled beside a hatch with a sign on it: “Danger. No Earth Atmosphere Behind This Point.” The Alien slithered through and I followed. The hatch swung closed behind me. The air was musty, dirty, and smelled of puke and shit. I was in a refrigerated room with walls of ice. Encased in the ice were the polaroid pictures Father had taken of me. In the middle of the room was a block of almost clear ice. Suspended inside was an overweight, ordinary looking white man in his middle years. He was naked and his erection was pumped up to full size. A wooden stake had been driven through his heart. He had the same face as the Alien.

I heard a hiss and then a human groan from the Alien. The creature stretched out to its full length and stiffened in a death throe. The face melted to nothing before my eyes. I smelled burnt plastic. The Alien had been only a machine. I started to shiver with fear and cold.

I turned to the man in ice and stared and stared. It was Henri Scratch. We’d traveled together in his van. Someone had been on our trail. That was all I could remember. The lights dimmed behind me, a door swung open. I saw starlight, the bonfire ablaze. The warmth of outside air swept away the cold stench.

Soldiers and whores danced around the bonfire. Bright, eerie stage lights shone in my face as I walked toward the fire.

The Director stood away from me between two lights. Beside him was Siena. She carried her pistol in one hand and my R.O.C.K. 99 automatic rifle in the other. As I came toward them, Siena started toward me. When we met, she whispered to me. “You’ve decided?”

“Yes,” I whispered back. “I’m going down in a blaze of glory. You’ll kill me and I’ll meet my mother in hell.”

The music died away, the dancing stopped, and the cage with Ike in it was wheeled in. A soldier unlocked the cage and marched Ike toward us. He didn’t seem scared, just dazed. I don’t think he understood what was going on around him.

“Make him kneel,” I said.

The soldiers pushed Ike to his knees, and he bowed his head. I stood behind him.

“Give me the gun, Siena,” I said.

Siena put the gun in my hand, and stepped toward her stage mark.

I checked the chamber. It contained one bullet. I lifted the gun, put it to Ike’s head, and I shouted at the camera, “This is what you people want. Death. Horror. Fun. Well, I’m not going to do it.” Ike lifted his head.

Groans went up from the crowd of rebels. One soldier said in his native language, “The young man’s noodle has cracked before it was sufficiently boiled.” (Rough translation of old Souvien expression.)

I put the gun to my own head and started toward the bonfire. I felt the heat, first of the fire and then of the video lights. I dropped the gun down to my side, and turned it suddenly toward Siena. I strode toward her. She started toward her holstered pistol, changed her mind; she held her ground, but I could see her sweat.

“Are you ready to die?” I said.

“No, but maybe it’s better this way.”

I wheeled, and walked toward the cameraman. “This is getting out of hand,” he said in English.

“Keep the cameras going,” rasped the Director. “This is great stuff. He knows what he’s doing.”

I screamed at the Director, “You bet.” And I pointed my gun at him. Siena’s hand dropped to her holster. I fired. My aim was dead perfect. The bullet caught the Director right in the middle of the chest. The force kicked him backward a few feet, and he fell with a thump on his hump. I expected to die—Siena was a very good shot. But she didn’t fire; she had betrayed her cause for my life. I thought it was over for the Director, but he surprised me by staggering to his feet. His black cat-burglar suit was torn up at the chest where the bullet had hit, but no blood showed. “Bullet-proof vest!” he laughed.

I knew that laugh, and I charged, tackling him like a football player. Guards rushed forward, but Royal yelled, “Stay off. This is good footage.” I grabbed his carrot-colored beard and pulled it off.

“I must have told you everything under hypnosis, and you used that to haunt me,” I said.

Royal ripped away the voice squack box from his chest and pulled off the rest of his makeup. “It took you long enough to figure it out.”

“You sent Father the money and tempted him to take those pictures of me. You twisted the truth to make it look like I killed him in a fit of madness.”

“Artistic license was necessary, since even you don’t know exactly what happened, for that night you were mad.”

“You put the note under Ike’s saddle and tormented him.”

“Yes, to make him suffer the way I made Dirty Joe suffer.”

“Ike never did anything to you.”

“He replaced me as your best friend.”

I grabbed Royal’s fake hump and twisted it. In the old days, Royal would have pinned me in nothing flat. But I’d grown stronger and quicker, and he was hampered by the hump glued to his back and bruised from the impact of my bullet. I never let go of the hump. I knew that if he could put some space between us, he’d start punching and I’d start bleeding. We rolled on the ground, getting ever nearer to the fire. He kept getting more and more tangled in his body machinery of bullet-proof mesh, padding, and wires. I finally got on top of him and picked up a rock from the ground.

“I’m going to bash your head in and throw you in the fire,” I said.

“Go ahead, kill me,” Royal said. He wasn’t the least bit afraid. I was impressed. Royal might have his faults, but cowardice wasn’t one of them. He was a noble boy.

“You’ll die with my respect,” I said.

“Fayguck yaygou,” he said.

Just before I brought down the rock, I heard a woman’s voice shout from the crowd, “Stop!”

It was Marla. I turned toward her. “Stay out of this.”

“Yah, go back to your cavern of the dead,” said Royal.

“You can’t kill Royal. He’s your brother,” Marla said.

“I don’t have a brother,” I said.

“Royal’s father was your mother’s first lover. He was a producer for a rock band. You saw him in the Exposition of the Uncanny, the man with the Monopoly money.”

Marla grabbed a flashlight from one of the video crew and walked toward me. I could see us both on a monitor. Marla shone the light in Royal’s face. In that second, I saw Royal’s green and gold eyes.

Royal made frog sounds.

I lifted the rock. I still wasn’t sure whether to bash him or let him go.

Marla spoke in Royal’s defense. “He designed the Exposition of the Uncanny in hopes of bringing back your memory.”

“Actually, Web,” Royal said, “I just wanted to see the look on your face on the monitor when you saw Scratch with a boner. Believe me, I wasn’t disappointed.”

“What?” I said, frowned, and lifted the rock higher over my head. Royal imitated my frown. Suddenly, I understood the humor of the situation. I started laughing. I tossed the rock away. Soon we were both rolling on the ground laughing. Ike came around, and he laughed too. Eventually all the young people were laughing. None of the adults laughed. They looked at us as if we were crazy.

Siena threw her pistol into the bonfire. The bullets in it crackled. The boy soldiers, the girl soldiers, the teen DCs, the Souvz recruits—all the young people—came forward and threw their weapons into the fire. Ike’s pacifism had won out.

“Royal, did you kill Scratch?” I asked.

“I didn’t have to. His wife did.” Royal glanced over at Marla. “She was more of a mother to you than Flower.”

Next came the uncanny, a sensation of being lifted off my feet, turned sideways, and flattened out to two dimensions, thrusted through a black exit of hell into the eden of the silver screen to live out the remainder of my years.

EXT. THE BONFIRE—LATER THAT NIGHT

Web drifts away from the carousing at the bonfire site until he comes upon the green van. He stares hard at it. He recognizes now that this vehicle was the home of Henri Scratch, his abuser. The door slides open to reveal Siena.

                  SIENA

   I knew you’d come.

INT. THE VAN

Web and Siena grope for one other, awkward and unskilled but full of deep feeling. The light is dim, and since they’re both about the same size, built along the same general lines, it’s difficult to tell who is Web and who is Siena. At the same time, we see them on the van’s TV monitor.

                  WEB

   This is it, isn’t it? The feeling.

                  SIENA

   It’s the future.

                  WEB

   Far out. Far out. Far out.

Web and Siena continue their gentle lovemaking, as we HEAR voices from the future, Web and Royal as grown men.

                  ROYAL (Voice Over)