Satan Burger (10 page)

When I go back inside my body, I see that Christian has left the room, went to the back of the kitchen, to be with someone more talkative.  I totter to the employee section of the restaurant, to where Mortician is working.

Mortician is always the one doing all the work.  He’s chopping vegetables and tomatoes now, while we sit on our asses.  I think he’s only like that because it’s in his character to do work
all
the time, no matter what it is.  He must keep busy so that he won’t get bored.  And I know that once he stops working, his soul is lost.  Soul resin won’t have interest enough to do work as obsessively as he does it now.

I hear Christian and Satan talking about the blue women and hurry my God’s Eyes inside with them.  I can’t miss a conversation like this, not when the most beautiful creatures on Earth are involved.  I still can’t get the face of that BIG-eyed blue woman passing through the festival out of my thoughts.  I know Christian is as interested in them as I am.  We will both go after them soon enough.

Satan describes the blue women like this:

They look a lot like humans, but they have red hair and what appears to be blue flesh.  Their skin is really just white, just like Caucasian skin, but all the fluids underneath the skin are made of blue so the blue women appear to be blue.  Actually, they’re much different than humans.  On the insides, they’re more like machines, like the insides of clocks, with gears made of cartilage.  They have both male and female sex organs in their mouths, and they reproduce by kissing: two blue women become impregnated by a long tongue-rubbing kiss.  The sperm that ejaculates is more like lime juice than regular human sperm; very sour if you taste it.

Another reason why blue women smell like machines is that they don’t need to sleep, and instead of eating they run on fuel, a fuel that males produce.  Actually,
any
male mammal produces the same fuel, and all types will do them fine, but human-like males are attracted to them and will get inside their vaginas without being forced.  Blue women usually molest every male person or beast they can get their wiry fingers on, because they
need
to ingest the cum through their vaginas and into a certain gland that isn’t all that different from our stomachs.  That’s why they still have sexual intercourse with.  To men, it is sex; to blue women, it is food.

Sometimes the blue women carry diseases and give it to the males they sleep with, just like some mosquitoes give people malaria when they drink blood.  It’s very dangerous to be around blue women because of these sexually transmitted diseases, mostly because they are irresistible to men.  If one comes in contact with a hungry blue woman, there is no escape; even an old blue woman is irresistible.  They must remain irresistible their entire lives, in order to attract males.  They grow up to full maturity when they are two years old and die at the age of two hundred, before their bodies grow too withered and smelly to attract men.  During their two years of childhood, blue women molest animals, forcing the mammals to ejaculate into their vaginas by handling or sucking their sexual organs.

Blue women are also mute.  They only speak to each other telepathically, and they have no vocal chords at all.  The only sound that comes out of their throats are soft breaths, and smacking lip vibrations.  Other than that, they are as silent as a landscape painting.

"Leaf?"

           I hear Mortician calling to my body; my mind is in the next room.

           "Leaf, could you take out the trash for me?" he says.

           I look over at him, dizzy from the mind-body transaction.  I don’t say anything.

           "That one over there," he says, pointing his knife at an orange garbage bag.

           I tie it up and take it out to the thick-greased dumpster behind Satan Burger, out into the fresh-sober morning.  Another cigarette machine hostess, not the one at the entrance, opens the backdoor for me.  It’s the employee cigarette machine, made for employees to buy cigarettes conveniently on their cigarette break, on their way outside.  Since they’re free, I decide to take a pack.  I was never a smoker before - I never cared enough to start smoking - but it’s all right to now.  The worst smoking could do is kill me, and dying isn’t something to be afraid of.

           I buy a pack of Carlton’s, which were always considered one of the low-tar brands of cigarettes, very sophisticated too I think.  I’ve never tried them before, but I always said that they’d be my personal brand of cigarette if I became a smoker. 

           If everyone had not lost their soul, there would still be a BIG conflict between smokers and nonsmokers.  Neither of the two groups would ever have given up until the entire country, or maybe even the entire world, was split into two parts: a smoking section and a nonsmoking section.  Many of the people were neutral, like me, not smoking but not complaining about smokers.  I hate the nonsmokers that complain.  They’re the reason why I take the smokers’ side over theirs.  Smokers always seem to be more down to Earth, not so uptight, not afraid to die.

           The outside is still morning, infinite morning.  Richard Stein always called the morning his cool blue lady.  It was the only woman he ever truly loved.

           I light a Carlton cigarette with an old book of matches I found under some newspaper wanderers, and fill my insides with acid-pleasant harshness.  This harshness is what I enjoy from smoking; the nicotine doesn’t do much for me.

           I look up the hill and see a swarm of scorpion flies, circling, no one is below them, except me, but I’m not worth eating.  The scorpion flies find a nice cow and settle down with it.

           The scorpion flies are buzzing closer than they should be, all wired in some sort of panic.  Like something is wrong.  Like disaster is going to happen.

Scene 10

Hog World

After the working day is considered fully cooked, and Mr. Satan is left within his cancer-breathing office counting his newly earned souls, licking chortles and rubbing himself with fruition, Mort, Christian, and Leaf, go out for a night of drinking and celebration.  The celebration part is meant to stop boredom and make us
happy
.  Without
happy
, the walm might steal our souls before our first paychecks come in.

We go to a pub called
Hog World
, around the side of the Tower Shops - the only business still open at night.  It’s a dirt-sweaty place, but always filled with new and slosh-interesting people who always know to fun it up crazy.

The owners and most common customers of Hog World are of the Hoggian race, but we all know them as
Hogs
.  They are the only race of people that brought their riches with them through the walm. They never go anywhere without their wealth, and were able to fit into Earthling society without difficulty.  Hogs are actually the
only
wealthy people left in Rippington now.  The original Rippingtonians are all poor or going poor, including those of us at the warehouse.  The only income we have, besides life-force, is rent money from John and Satan, and we have to split that up four ways.  We’re going to Hog World to blow the last of this money, but it is blowing to a worthy cause, so none of us are caring.  It is, however, the last time we’ll be able to have this sort of fun, which is very ill-depressing.  I try not to mull on it.

The walk from warehouse to Hog World is still carpety soft on my bare feet, and I have a constant need to say, "Oh, poor parasites," over and over again, directing it toward the people on the streets, but I mean to direct it toward the rest of the world too.  The alcohol has given Leaf some sense of disgust for
all
people, even the thousands of homeless around me.  And I think it’s fun to be mean to them.  They are, mostly, the ones responsible for ending happiness in this world, even their own happiness.  So I say, "Oh, poor, poor, poor," all the way to happy Hog World.

Hog World doesn’t let any parasites inside - they have no money and do nothing but steal oxygen.  The Hogs charge ten dollars at the door, which isn’t that much considering it’s the smug-fanciest pub in town, but during these weeks ten dollars is BIG money, and wasting BIG money isn’t that terrible anymore.  Money is an endangered species now.

They say, "Fifteen Dollars," when we get to the door.

Face-fuckers
, Christian whispers, but I just laugh, not very surprised.  And there is a snarled crowd of starving people, watching us as we pay to go inside.  A child with penis breasts cries into my thigh.

I just say, "Poor, poor
parasites
," with a cold smile.

Richard Stein always said that the RICH are the scum of the world.  He is wrong.  In this world, we are all scum.

Inside is another one of these round-a-go crowds that I keep seeing into . . . too many people jolly-dancing in the waves of my vision . . .

God’s Eyes:

Above the crowd, a ceiling fan’s view, Christian, Mort, and my body walk through to the bar and sit down for some sticky goo-doo - a drink like honey with alcohol mixed in.  A shoe spider is on the counter, pulling a small wagon of walnuts for the customers to handle and eat.  Shoe spiders are much like hermit crabs, but they live inside of shoes instead of shells. 

I take a walnut and put it inside my sticky goo-doo. Walnuts have strong flavor and taste good in thick drinks.

"Let’s get fucked in the ass!" Christian says, screeching a party call.

Christian is not as homophobic as Mort, and thinks it’s funny to talk like he’s a homosexual.  But he wouldn’t have said anything if Satan had been around; Satan doesn’t realize that Christian only says these things when he’s drunk.

In other words:  GETTING FUCKED IN THE ASS = PARTY.

Christian actually enjoys getting fucked in the ass – that is, if a girl is giving it to him with a strap-on dildo.  He feels very homosexual for enjoying the performance and won’t tell any of his friends about it.  Sometimes a girl will think peculiar thoughts of Christian when he asks her to take him in the behind.  Sometimes a girl will become thrill-enflamed by the opportunity to take a man like men take her.  Sometimes Christian masturbates with a dildo.

The shoe spider crawls back into his shoe.

"I’m getting laid tonight," Christian burps.

He puts on his girl-maker face - a sly hollow.  Then he turns the beams of his forehead
on
, scoping the room for a good score - a woman with six breasts maybe or one with more curves than a human girl would own.  I only see two humans in here, females, sitting on the laps of Hogs, very RICH.

Hogs are a flabby sort of people.  Not too ugly, but very unexercised.  The women have large ears and unusually large breasts that bludgeon their sex opponents.  Their eyes are speckled with purple and their clothes, ripped for style, expose the very pale, almost gray, skin underneath. The men are shorter than the women, stocky, BIG teeth in their smiles.  They go, "Gar, gar, gar!" when they laugh.

Christian isn’t interested in a Hoggian though.  He wants the girl with two sets of arms, sitting in the corner over there.  She has a very attractive face, but no breasts.  Smooth yellowish skin, sliming, which is why Christian wants her.  His color is yellow this year.  He goes to her without telling us, a man-sly walk to her and she actually seems interested in it.  Well, maybe she’s just happy that
somebody
is interested in her.  She looks very lonely.

Now it’s just me and the Mortician.  Drinking . . .

I decide to get very drunk, not just
normal
drunk like I usually am.  I want to drink like it’s the end of the world, which it might be.  Where the world ends, hell begins . . . at least in the traditional sense of the word
hell
.

I drink some sticky goo-doo and wash it down with common Earth gin.  Mortician neck-dribbles the gin after me, garbling about his philosophy on life.

"That’s how every day should be," he says, Japanese accent thicker than usual.  "You just work all day and get drunk all night."

"What about weekends?" I ask.

"You get twice as drunk on them."

"Great philosophy," feeling the buzz stab deep inside.

He slicks back an oil-stiff drink, hard on his chest. "Goes down like a cactus."  He hasn’t been speaking in his pirate accent today.  I don’t wonder why, but I’m glad.

"Speaking of philosophy," he says, making me cringe.  "Did you read any Sorpon Black?"

"Sure."  I don’t get excited.  Philosophy is an ugly

color, especially when you’re drinking.

"What do you think about him?" Mortician asks.

Mort is BIG on philosophy.  Always gaming for debates during the drinking times, his way of
socializing
.  He does this with religion too, and politics, and food selections.  But Mort is more into the arguing part than the deep-thinking part.  And Mort is never able to start up debates with enough people these days since nobody believes anything sacred enough to argue over.

As for Sorpon Black, he was an oldtime hippie philosopher, whose deep-thinking came out of his ample supply of repressed sexual energy.  Old Sorpon never had sex a day in his life, not even with himself, and he was an extremely attractive guy.  But very bitter.  The reason why he never had sex was because he was afraid of his own penis.  He couldn’t handle the way it slunk-stickered in his shorts, so sensitive when rubbed against his thigh.  To make matters worse for him, his penis was unusually BIG.  It was five and a half inches larger than mine, and my penis isn’t considered small – at least for my height.

The sick-scary part for Sorpon was the erection.  When erect, there’s nothing a man can think about other than his penis, whether he’s sitting at work or playing a basketball game or fully-engorged within a woman’s vagina.  When Sorpon was in elementary school, he would scream blood-shrieks while watching his erection grow and grow and grow to the unbearable maximum.  It was like a poisonous salad snake had been dropped in his lap.

This phobia came from a childhood mind-molestation, at the age of six, when his very nice neighbor taught him how to perform oral sex and anal sex by showing him homosexual pornography.  But the neighbor never performed these sexual techniques on him.  He just liked to mess up the insides of young brains.  Experiencing this kind of thing as a child will definitely mess up the insides of your brain.  It will either discourage you from being intimate with anybody when you grow up, or it will throw you into the opposite direction: nymphomania for females, andromania for males.

But Sorpon Black’s philosophies had nothing to do with his enormous cock.  They had to do with the intelligence of sandwiches.

"I don’t think anyone
really
believes that sandwiches are the creators of the universe," I tell him.  "Sorpon Black was just trying to be entertaining."

"Hardly," Mort says.  "It all makes sense because sandwiches are made from all four food groups.  And if you compare the four food groups to the four elements, they are relatively the same idea.  And if the four elements were layered together like a sandwich, you would create a god.  Therefore, sandwiches are gods.  Don’t you agree?"

"I guess," I shrug.  Not actually interested.  Like most philosophies, Sorpon’s theory is worthless to argue against.  And I am not one for arguing.

"You’re not a
deep
thinker, are you?"  He realizes my lack of enthusiasm.

"I was into
deep
thinking when I was a kid, but then I grew up," I say, insulting his use of the word
deep
.

"Are you saying philosophy is immature?"

"Basically," I tell him.  "To most people, philosophies are just common sense."  Then I get personally mean – I’m in an odd mood I guess.  It’s fun to be mean.  "People like you don’t have common sense, so philosophies seem
new
and interesting to you, but you don’t realize that they’re not at all new. Only to the immature."

Mortician tries to speak, but I cut him off - the first time I have ever cut anyone off.  "Mature people don’t need to question the world they live in, because they’ve already figured it out."

Mort grins at me.  "So you think you’ve figured out
everything
about reality?"

"Not really, but I’ve figured out that nobody can prove any philosophy theory, so they’re useless.  Nobody’ll ever know the complete
truth
, so there’s no reason to worry or argue over petty beliefs.  The only groobly thing about Sorpon Black’s philosophies is that every single one revolves around sandwiches, and I love sandwiches."

"You’re such a philosophy-bashing philosopher," he says.

I am insulted, of course, because he’s right.  I never expected Mortician to call me a philosopher - he’s more perceptive than I thought he was.  But I’m happy to be
insulted
.  It’s a surprise that the emotion is still within me.  Maybe arguments are good things after all.

I switch the subject.  "What do you think about our situation?"

"What?" he says.  "You mean living forever?  Sounds boring to me."

"We won’t last forever here," I say.  Our lives might be longer than those already dead from history, but those from history have souls that are eternal. 
They
are the ones who will live forever.

I chug some HOT liquid.

The drinking is killing the poor mood I was in.  Taking me from
hating
things to
loving
things, and I smile.

Mortician says, "Yeah, the situation we’re in is not good at all, but you have to look on the bright side as I do.  Think about how everyone else in the world are all zombie-like.  All
gone
.  Thousands of soulless bodies wondering the Earth."  Brains like pillows.  "And we are fine.  We have lives and each other.  We have responsibilities and fun."

I nod at him, scratching my drink.

"We are the luckiest people in this world.  I mean, we still have a chance.  I don’t want to live like this forever, but it’s better than nothing."

"That’s what I’m afraid of," I say.  "Because I’m positivethat we’ll be
nothing
before the end of forever."

"Not me," Mortician says.  "I’m sure there will be a way out someday.  If we hold onto our time and work at Satan Burger, eventually the walm will be gone.  Eventually, there will be a new world."

A new world
.

I take my God’s Eyes to Christian and the four-armed yellow girl he has with him.  She seems to be all over his skin, in a slut-ticking frenzied way.  The skin leaks a little yellow on him; paint smearing across his neck and face, but it’s a sort of grease that seeps through arm-pores.  A reaction similar to sweat, but only produced during fornication.

I examine her closely.  One pair of arms is human-sized but the other is longer and closer to the hips.  The longer arms come thoroughly around Christian’s waist section, tugging him into her possession.  Her eyes have only one color in them: red.  Her lips are thin and curled at the end.  Christian digs his taster deep between those rubber lips and he seems
happy
.  Well, I would be too if I was with a creature as beautiful as her.

When I was a kid, my parents always told me to
only
marry inside my own race, but I didn’t find much fun in that.  I always wanted Asian women or African women or the Hispanic ones or any of them that didn’t seem to have boring Caucasian skin.  I also believe that the melting pot that is America is really going to melt all of us people-ingredients into one product.  ONE RACE.  That isn’t black nor white, but a grayish mud-color.  Because people fuck an awful lot and eventually don’t care who they are fucking.

Of course, fucking is an endangered performance like everything else now, so Americans will never be gray.  But  there’s a new melting pot in Rippington and there will be a lot of interracial fucking going on.  I doubt that this will result in the melting to one color; there’s just too many races to mix.