They Had Goat Heads (10 page)

The Latin term for walrus is
Odobenus rosmarus
. Translation: “Tooth-walking sea horse.” I read this in an encyclopedia. It was a traumatic event.
   I captured a walrus and put it in my freezer. It froze.
   I shot a walrus and put it in my basement. It bled out.
   I put a sleeper hold on a walrus, skinned it, and put on the skin.
   Another walrus tried to seduce me. I took off the skin and beat it to death with a crowbar.
   Another walrus figured out what was going on and tried to run away. I pursued it in a Volkswagen Rabbit and ran it over.
   I took a sip of bottled water.
   Ten thousand walri drowned and melted in a deluge of boiling oil. I stood at the top of a cliff, hands dirty, manga eyes flickering . . .
   A friend suggested I buy a pet walrus. I kept it for a week. I fed it. I groomed its hide and mustache. I took it for walks. I polished its tusks. I bragged about it to the neighbors, read it bedtime stories . . . The walrus barked and spanked its fins at the conclusion of my puppet show. I removed the puppets from my hands, bowed, cocked my head, frowned, frowned . . . and cut the walrus in half with a two-handed executioner’s sword. I dumped the halves in my friend’s driveway with a note taped over the walrus’s face. It read: “Friendship is an excuse for hairy deeds.”
   In the aftermath of traumatic events, victims often demonstrate “extreme” behavior. The events revise selfhood, desire, personality . . .
    . . . walri stampeding through the jungle. I launched missiles at them from a military helicopter ripping across an orange sky . . .
   “Tell me about that dream,” said my therapist.
   I nodded. “Which dream was that again?”
   “You know. The one about the walrus.”
   “Oh. Of course. It’s better if I show you, though.” I stood and opened the closet. A walrus shuffled into the office. Rolls of fat formed on its neck as it angled up its head and looked back and forth at the doctor and I.
   “Apropos,” I said, raising a finger . . .
   Things got out of hand and I accidentally slaughtered the doctor, too.
   They arrested me.
   I refused to post bail—perfect waste of a trust fund—and spent three weeks in prison eating ginger nuts and lifting weights and making friends. I wore a suit to my trial and hired Sam Waterson as my lawyer. He wore jeans and a tattered Harley Davidson T-shirt, but he made a convincing argument on my behalf. The jury acquitted me with unanimous applause and delirious grins.
   I hugged Mr. Waterson.
   On the bleached white steps of the courthouse, I noticed a herd of walri chasing a double-decker bus down the street. I tailed the herd for six blocks until the bus tipped over and the walri invaded it. I killed them before they could do anything to the passengers, then saved the passengers, escorting them from the wreckage one by one. Moments later the mayor handed me the keys to the city. Flashbulbs popped. “Thank you, Mr. Soandso,” intoned the mayor. “Thank you for that hairy deed. You are truly a good-intentioned and thoughtful soandso. I hereby . . . ”
   I hugged the mayor.
   I indulged a delusion of grandeur.
   I used a key to open a manhole and disappeared forever.
   

GUNPLAY

I heard gunplay.
   I opened the door of my room and looked down the hallway.
   There was a man with a hole in his chest. The hole was on fire.
   I closed the door. I opened it and looked out again.
   There was a man in a ski mask cradling an elephant gun. He stroked the muzzle like a woman’s thigh. He removed his mask and stared at me. His jaw had been torn off. I saw the distended epiglottis in his neck cavity dangling beneath a row of horse teeth.
   I closed the door and turned on the TV.
   There was only one channel. In the featured sitcom, a man with a white beard purchased a red balloon from a balloon vendor. The helium leaked out immediately. Laff track. He explained what happened to the vendor. The vendor encouraged him to buy another balloon. He did, a blue one. It deflated like a Whoopee cushion. Laff track. The vendor said, “Sometimes it takes three times to get something right.” The man bought another balloon. Green. The vendor popped it with a syringe. Laff track . . .
   I turned off the TV. Two men in gray leisure suits had entered the room. They stood in the corner and observed me for a long time. Slowly they turned and observed each other . . . One man began to stab the other man in the chest with a butcher’s knife. The victim didn’t scream or cry or struggle. He let his attacker kill him, politely, admitting only twice how much it hurt.
   A woman with long blond hair in a skintight dinner dress and shoulder-length gloves rushed into the room and admonished the killer for not paying enough attention to her at the party. The killer ignored her, stabbing his victim with methodical precision until he slid to the floor, emitted a meek croak, and died . . . The killer grabbed the woman by the elbows. He shook her, screamed at her. He threw her onto the bed, tore off his clothes, yanked up her dress, and made love to her. I pretended not to see them. Occasionally I glanced in their direction.
   Somebody knocked at the door. I opened it.
   “Room service,” said a man holding a semi-automatic pistol. He wasn’t wearing a mask. His jaw was intact.
   He stormed inside and shot holes in the ceiling until the killer and his mistress snatched up their clothes, opened the window, and threw themselves into the sky.
   I closed the window and drew the shades.
   Satisfied, the man pointed the pistol at me and fired. It was empty. He continued to pull the trigger. He put the barrel of the pistol to his temple and did likewise.
   It fired. A tentacle of gore reached out of his skull and sloshed against the wall. Bewildered, he stood there dumbly . . . and collapsed. He fell to his knees, his head bounced from shoulder to shoulder, and he slumped onto the corpse of the killer’s victim.
   I covered them with the bed sheet.
   Somebody had turned the TV up too high next door. I pounded on the wall and urged them to turn it down.
   I heard gunplay. I couldn’t tell if it happened on the TV.
   There was a knock at the door. I opened it.
   A diminutive bellhop asked if I wanted my bags taken downstairs. I said I wasn’t leaving. He asked for a tip. I gave him five dollars. He told me a long joke and clarified the moral: “In life, we must make fun of death
ad infinitum
. Because death will always have the last laugh.” He smiled and asked for another tip. I said I didn’t have any more money. He scowled.
   There was a knock at the window.
   “Excuse me.” I shut the door. I went to the window and opened the shades. It was the killer. I opened the window.
   “Is he gone?” the killer panted, studying the room.
   “Who?” I replied.
   “The man in the hallway.”
   I went to the door, opened it, and looked down the hallway.
   There was a balloon vendor. The colorful bouquet of balloons floating above his shoulder appeared to be attacking him, diving down from the ceiling and thumping him on the head. A few balloons popped and dirtied his face with powder. He swatted them away like flies. Then he unfolded a pocket knife and—
   I shut the door and told the killer that I didn’t see anyone. He climbed back into the room, complaining about relationships. “Never fall in love,” he intoned. I said I would make coffee. But I only had decaf.
   There were dead ladybugs in the coffee bag.
   “I don’t drink coffee anyway,” said the killer. He took a long shower. I waited for him to finish, inspecting my face in the mirror for imperfections.
   He got out, toweled dry, and asked if I had deodorant. I retrieved a stick of Old Spice from my toilet kit.
   “I prefer spray cans. I don’t want to roll this substance across my dark places.” He gave it back to me. He put on my suit.
   I heard gunplay.
   The killer made a gun with his finger and thumb and blustered into the hallway. “Lock the door!” he exclaimed, and shut the door.
   I opened the door.
   There was a police officer in an English Bobby hat. He had also made a gun with his finger and thumb. He and the killer pointed their fingers and fired silent blanks at one another, pausing to cock and recock the hammer of their thumbs.
   Their fingers unexpectedly went off at the same time. Their heads exploded into hydras of sparkling brains.
   I shut the door. There was a woman on the bed. Brunette. She had taken off her clothes and spread her legs. “Let’s pretend we love each other,” she said.
   “But I do love you,” I said.
   “But let’s just pretend,” she reiterated.
   “I know how to do that.”
   “You are capable. You are free.”
   “I am what I want to be.”
   “Nobody knows what they want to be. Ergo” She removed a sawed-off shotgun from underneath a pillow and aimed it at the TV.
   I paused . . . “There is ointment in the bathroom.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
   She opened her legs wider.
   I went into the bathroom. As I searched for the ointment, I disavowed the corpses that somebody had crammed into the shower stall, and I evicted the sound of gunplay from my ears . . .

HOG RIPPING

“I can rip just about anything in half.” I started with a sheet of vellum followed by a slice of cheese. Neither feat garnered much acclaim, so I moved on to a quarter, a picnic basket, and finally a hardcover edition of
War and Peace
.
   Spectators observed me with bovine expectancy . . .
   “What about this here hog?”
   The farmer pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He removed a choke chain from the hog’s neck and kicked it in the shin. He kicked it again. The hog crept forward, glancing nervously over its shoulders. Occasionally it emitted a subdued oink.
   I knelt and clicked my tongue. The hog came closer. I reached out my hand. It sniffed and licked my fingers.
   I stood and circled the hog, gauging its distribution of poundage. Most of the weight appeared to be in its haunches, although its oversized head gave me second thoughts, and its potbelly commanded my attention, too. I looked into the hog’s eyes. It oinked at me assertively.
   I lifted the hog over my head and ripped it in half. Offal exploded across the sky like the pulp of screaming watermelons . . .
   “My hog!” shouted the farmer, falling on the carcass. He struggled like a child to cram the swine’s entrails back into its severed halves. “I loved this damned hog! It was a prize hog! God help me!”
   The crowd became unruly, but their tempers weren’t beyond repair. Things didn’t really start to get out of hand until a slot technician dared me to rip his vending machine in half . . .

ELBOWS & VESTIBULES

How he denied the existence of elbows. How he engaged the machinery of tall vestibules.
   A bridge made of Cornish hens.
   Stitched together at the legs and wings, the hens had been neglected and gruesomely overcooked. And yet they each exhibited textbook quotas of rosemary. Still, as I began to cross them, their collective skin flaked, splintered, cracked . . . Chunks of fowl plummeted to the river of conveyor belts below.
   I took myself by the elbows and ushered myself to the wayside.

THE BURN

It burned . . .
   The curtain hummed into the ceiling and exposed a grocery cart. Theatergoers stiffened in their chairs.
   The grocery cart inched forward. It squeaked across the stage, spitting suitcases, toilet kits and garment bags out of its chainmail belly. Bellhops rained from the roof beams. They nailed the stage and clambered after the treasure . . .
   A theatergoer’s walkie-talkie came to life. He put it to his ear and listened to a voice.
   “It burns,” the voice whispered . . .
   The grocery cart squeaked to the edge of the stage and toppled into the orchestra pit. Tubas and maestros sprung into the air as if off of trampolines.
   Theatergoers slapped index fingers against palms for thirty minutes . . . Fatigued, they climbed into Mini Coopers, sped up the aisles and out into the city. An usher sealed the theater doors behind them with a blowtorch.
   The bellhops dropped the baggage they had collected and screamed for the audience to come back and tip them. Their throats shredded into long ribbons of spaghetti, and the curtain fell onto the stage with a wet thud.
   The usher lit a cigarette. He took a puff, exhaled, and slowly twisted the ember of the cigarette into his palm.
   It burned . . .

TO BED, TO BED—GOODNIGHT

I marched into the kitchen and dropped my suitcase onto the floor. It exploded. Dirty socks and frayed underwear sprung onto the appliances.
   “I’m home,” I announced.
   “Where have you been?” asked my mother, blowing steam from a cup of chamomile tea.
   “Everywhere. I am a world traveler. I have seen everything and met everybody. A snake tried to bite me once. A cobra. I outran it. Now I’m back.”
   “Where are you going?” asked my father, blowing steam from a cup of lentil soup.
   “To bed, to bed—goodnight.”
   “Goodnight,” said my parents as steam swallowed their heads and melted the cone of their throats . . .

The author in Kyoto circa 1888

D. Harlan Wilson is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, literary critic and English prof. Visit him online at: