OLFACTORY
by
Matthew Jordan
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Matthew Jordan on Smashwords
Olfactory:
Copyright © 2011 by Matthew Jordan
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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OLFACTORY:
We're so trendy we can't even escape ourselves.
--Kurt Cobain
Chapter 1—Unpredictable
My mother tells me to go to a psychic. I tell her she needs to see a psychiatrist. I mention to her that I’m unhappy with the way things are going. Sick of the fame, sick of the music, the world--all of it. I don’t feel like writing--forget about making--music. She says it’ll be good for me, to see what my future holds, so I go and appease her. I go partially because I want to make my crazy mother happy, and partly because I want to see what a self-proclaimed mystic has to say. I want to know if it’s possible to escape my own reality; the one I never intended on creating. I’m a man of science, but desperate time, you know. The rock and roll fantasy that follows me wherever I go like a lost dog has taken its fair share of bites out of my heels, and my ass. I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to become un-famous.
I go to the fortune teller and she tells me that my love life is going to improve as if it wasn’t the most cliché thing she could say at that moment. She looks into her crystal ball and finds out that a girl is going to come into my life and change the way I see things. Apparently she’s going to look me in the eyes and make me see what it was I was looking for.
Right.
I have no idea what this witch is talking about. I’m scientific. I follow logic and straight lines, and I’m trying to escape the harsh reality of a celebrity status I never wanted in the first place. I reduce things to the lowest common denominator. In most cases it’s the electron. There are smaller particles. I never studied quantum physics, though.
I pay her fifty bucks after listening to the predictions about the rest of my life; the prophecies about my money, my family, my pet cat. Everything this crazy, head-scarf-wearing, gold-hooped gypsy is telling me--complete bullshit.
“Don’t mind the mess, I spilled some cherries earlier,” the gypsy says as I eye up a small stain on the floor by the counter on my left.
That part was true. There was a mess. Who knows who made it, though.
I’m getting upset at the lies being told. Really upset. I’m crazy, thinking about the falsehoods being discharged into my ears, and into the ones of who knows how many unfortunate believers before and after me. She’s like the preacher on the mount. She’s turning water into wine for people, but no one’s allowed to drink it. She’s turning one fish into a million. People are still starving. It’s all bullshit.
Fake.
“Wait a minute,” she says. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”
“No. No you don’t. We’ve never met before today.”
She says, “Yeah, my son listens to you all the time.” She says, tapping her long finger nail on the table, “You’re that Johnny-guy, aren’t you?”
Some psychic.
“Johnny who,” I say. “Johnny Smith? Johnny Appleseed? John Lennon?” I’m getting upset. My temper’s flaring and I do not want to hear that a strange, old gypsy recognizes me from one of her son’s CD covers. I never suspected that a crooked-nosed sage like herself would have any clue who I was, especially since she makes money by predicting futures--making shit up.
“No. None of those other fellows.” The witch says looking up toward the hanging plants in her kitchen above the sink.
“Then who? If you can tell the future, you sure as shit should be able to tell me my fucking name?” I abandoned all reverent language and became increasingly hostile to this predictor, this fortune-telling whore.
“That’s it!” She says like she surprised herself by remembering a fact. “You’re that guy that fell off the stage onto an admirer, a fan, right?” Without waiting for an answer she says, “Yeah, you’re the guy who got his ass stuck on some other guy’s hand. His hand up your, well, behind, right?” She says it bashfully like she never curses and almost did. She’s looking at me now, looking at her with fire in my eyes. “You’re Johnny Cocaine, the singer. The guitar player. The grunge hero. Well, according to my son you are, I absolutely detest that electric guitary-stuff. Too loud.”
I realize that no matter what I do, or where I go in the world, someone somewhere will recognize me. They’ll see me as a star, as a joke, as something they want to be or someone they don’t. They’ll always see me. In their crystal balls, in their newspapers, on TV--they’ll see me. They’ll see Johnny Cocaine, the singer, the song-writer, the ass-impaler, and I’ll never escape it. Ever.
I look at the heavy, light-refracting, glowing ball in front of me, in front of the quack. The imposter. It’s in the middle of our hands, which are both sitting on the table resting in front of us. The clairvoyant keeps shaking her head like she’s just discovered some important lie, and can’t believe it.
“Johnny Cocaine, huh? Who’d believe it?”
Everyone.
“Too bad my son isn’t here right now. He’d love to meet you.”
I don’t want to meet him.
With a swift upward movement, like you see in martial arts movies with the actors attached to wires, I jump up off my chair and palm the gypsy’s looking-glass in my hands. I lift it to the ceiling then bring it down, right in between the top of her head and the middle of her nose. I crush them. The skull and the nose smashed with a devastating blow. I think of a poor, innocent squirrel, having its skull broken by a projectile. I don’t feel saddened, though. This time I feel dreamier, more surreal. Not guilty.
The lady’s nose is more crooked and flatter than before. Dark ruby fluid spurts onto my face and hands as her head and shoulders fall forward onto the dragonfly card, the black night card. The demon with seven heads. I’m breathing hard. My heart: beating like a drum. Sweat mixed with blood slides down the sides of my face onto the red cloth covering the round table. Red on top of red forming black.
A crime of passion confirms the bullshit spewed to me moments before; how did she fail to predict this?
I move to the door, the fifty in the palm of the palm-reader. I notice a cat, which wasn’t there before, licking a small patch of something sticky and red. Looking up, an opened jar of maraschino cherries sits on the counter, juice running down the sides of the glass turning the nutrition label transparent.
I wave goodbye to the fortune teller whose eyes are still open, her hands encircling the ball that betrayed her. The cat looks up from the sticky stain on the floor then jumps onto the table, into the gypsy’s arms. It begins to lick its owner’s blood, craving a salty snack instead of a sweet one. I feel like that sometimes. I let the force of my arm swing the witch’s heavy oak door until I hear the obvious click of the knob meeting the jam of the wall.
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Chapter 2—Lost Innocence
A friend of mine, his mother and younger sister had invited me along for a summer holiday at their cabin. It was a regular outdoorsy place with a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. The place was old, had some flowery wallpaper from the sixties, and a smell that reminded me of an old travel trunk that had never been opened: sitting, collecting dust, becoming staler by the day. My friend and I weren’t concerned with the facets of the interior; we had a giant playground seemingly made just for us waiting only a few footsteps away.
Most of the time, we’d spend our days fishing from the dock or exploring different corners of the magnificent kingdom-forest that surrounded us. Sometimes I’d watch my friend Denny torment his little sister to a point where she’d cry, which was his intended effect. I on the other hand never liked or understood such mindless acts. Instilling distress in people--on purpose--seemed cruel and unusual, even if a little sister was the recipient. I’d frequently console the young girl with just enough frankness so as to not solicit unwanted jeers from Denny.
This detailed day, which will never wash from my mind, has entered my life.
Denny found in the storage shed in the backyard, an old, half-rusted Y-shaped handle with a thick, sun-cracked piece of rubber going across the top. A soft, well-used piece of leather in the middle of the stretchy material was waiting to be filled with some sort of ammunition. It was a slingshot. I’d never seen one before. Being a reserved city boy with parents that valued education over all else I was genuinely intrigued by the potential of this primeval weapon.
We set up empty beer cans on the wood pile not far from our agreed shooting spot. Denny picked up a suitable rock for ammunition and placed it inside the worn-out leather holster, pinching it between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. His other hand held the base of the Y shaped shooter tightly; his arm straightened out and pointed toward one of the aluminum cans. One of his eyes closed, taking aim while simultaneously pulling back on the leather held tightly between his fingers. For a moment he looked like a professional archer, poised and breathing slowly. His breath was held just before his fingers released the leather vessel, sending the stone flying with impressive speed; its velocity ended on the pile of wood mere millimetres from the intended target.
“Aw, shit,” he said, obviously disappointed.
“Oh, man that was close,” I said with encouraging energy.
Denny retorts, “close only counts in cigars and horseshoes; don’t you know that?”
“Yeah, well, lemme try that thing.”
Denny handed me the weapon and I gripped it tightly. Too tightly, because my fingers were white from the pushed out blood the uncomfortable clutch resulted in. Anxiety came over me when I realized the potential of this simple contraption, feeling like the son of a hunter being offered his first rifle. It felt smooth and ergonomic, tempting me every second. I wanted to realize its impending possibility for myself at this very moment.
“Here! Use this one,” Denny exclaimed confidently, handing me a smooth rock. It’s a perfect fit for the leather receptacle.
I loaded the pebble and pulled back on the flexible trigger, setting aim on one of the closer beer cans.
My heart was beating hard and fast.
I squinted one of my eyes to form crosshairs and held my breath before squeezing the trigger.
I missed completely.
Not only did I miss the can, but I missed the entire pile of wood that the cans were sitting on. Denny laughed an indisputable, authentic belly laugh and proceeded to poke fun at my shortcomings.
I said, “I hafta try that again,” eagerly trying to make up for my embarrassing first attempt.
Denny and I spent the remainder of the afternoon shooting and playing with our new found toy. Denny fast proved to be a much better shot than I, hitting targets like a marksman. My skill was much less, hitting only the odd tree trunk by luck.
Being lucky is not what happened next.
It was my turn to shoot and I prepared the slingshot with care. I found a perfectly sized, shapely rock that felt at ease within the leather restraints of the sling-shot. As customary, I pulled back on the rubber trigger and took aim at the base of a tree trunk, which was sitting behind a wood pile further than my skill level should warrant success. I went through the usual preparations: breathing slowly, steady hands, squinted eyes.
My heart was beating hard and fast.
Just as I was about to release the projectile from between my fingers Denny said, “Hey, look on top of the wood pile; it’s a squirrel. I bet you can’t hit it. You could never hit it. I don’t think you’ll even hit the tree.”
He said it with arrogance. He didn’t yet have the decency or tact to be modest.
I spoke louder than usual, “I bet I can!” in a defensive tone.
“Do it then.”
“Watch me.”
I shifted my gaze to the mini mammal propped on top of the pile of wood, which was munching on a tree-nut. While taking aim, doubt and restraint eclipsed my mind. The first thing I thought was: you’ll never hit it.
The second? I don’t want to.
I grew up with a medical doctor for a father and a trophy wife for a mother who did not take me hunting. I always had pets: turtles, fish, cats and dogs. I loved them, never once having an interest in taking the life of anything, ever.
I steadied my gaze and emptied my mind of any distractions. Everything was quiet when I released the small stone from its constraints. It flew with great speed, and to mine and Denny’s surprise, incredible accuracy.
Before we could process what happened the squirrel that was calmly minding its own business was out of sight, chirping a high pitched chatter that reeked of pain and suffering.
“Ha! You got it! You got it!” Denny hopped up and down.
My heart sank.
Never once had I ever intended to hurt another living creature, never mind done it. Now, hearing the high pitched wails of an animal that’s been fatally wounded, it was reality. We walked over to the pile of wood that had become a murder scene. The whole time I thought to myself how I wished this innocent bystander would be fine that it was only cheeping echoes of anger instead of death.
We moved closer to investigate.
Peering behind the main stack of chopped lumber we found laying on its side, with one eye popping out of its head like an over-filled balloon, the victim. The tiny animal was stunned, paralyzed from the pellet that forcefully rocked its world. Blood trickled down the side of its tan fur and its front paws stayed limp while one of the back ones twitched irregularly, indicating head trauma.
My dad had explained to me once before that the human brain will go into a state of disarray, firing chaotic biochemicals through its synapses if significant force is applied to the skull. Whether it’s a pebble connecting with a squirrel’s skull or a hard piece of concrete making contact with the head of a helmetless biker, the result is usually the same--blunt force head trauma. The brain will come into contact with the bones of the skull damaging vital tissues and nerves causing the rapid, panicky firing of neurons. The twitchiness one observes when dealing with said traumas is the consequence.
This explains why the blameless mammal’s leg was behaving the way it was.
“Ho-oh, shit.” Denny said with awe and a hint of fear. He looked at me surprised then quickly dismissed himself as having no part of the accident.
“You have to do something. Get rid of it before my mom finds out.” He said with harsh, impersonal feelings toward the dying animal.
I was unsure of what to do, but knew that I couldn’t leave the helpless creature to die a slow and painful death. The noises coming from its tiny mouth were much bigger than their origins, stabbing into my ear drums with intensity similar to police sirens next to my face.
I reacted and decided to move the weakening being. I picked up the chopped log with the twitching, cheeping squirrel that was still bug-eyed from the devastation of the stone, and changed its life forever.
I moved the grim scene over the road that passed through the back of the cabin, which separated it from a forested area behind it. Working sporadically, all I could think of was the pain and suffering that the accidentally wounded was feeling. I couldn’t let it suffer anymore and throwing it away into the forest with the rest of nature seemed barbaric being dismissed as an option as fast as it came on.
I moved down the slight hill that leads to the forest floor near the road. My emotions were still a mixing pot of fear and guilt with a painful example of mortality resting in my hands.
Chirping.
Gasping.
I had to find some way to end the squirrel’s misery, fast. I considered crushing its head with the open coffin that it was resting on, but I couldn’t do it. I spotted a shallow pool of water in a small area where the land was dipped.
By this time, my compassion for the animal had erupted and tears of sadness and remorse flowed from me. I stepped into the small bog below. The dying squirrel was chirping less frequently, and the blood that was running had coagulated around the small animal’s face. Tipping the piece of wood over, the near-dead slipped into the shallow pool that would become its grave. I found myself thinking if I held it down under the water that the suffering would soon end.
I was wrong.
For what seemed like an eternity, I held it under the surface with my foot on top of the log on top of the squirrel.
Crying and intense, I pulled my foot off the log and lifted the wood off of what I hoped at this point would be a lifeless being. Its suffering ended.
Peering down at the animal’s face the worst consequence imaginable was seen. The squirrel was soaked so that its previously fluffy coat was now a thin death shroud. Its mouth: gasping for air, trying desperately to pull in minute amounts of life-giving oxygen.
Its brain ceased the chaos of twitching receptors now directing resources to the respiratory system that was being polluted with bog water. Shocked, more frightened and feeling guiltier than before, I flipped the log back onto the drowning squirrel and stepped onto it, this time with more force and even more emotion.
Tears were streaming down my face. My mind raced with images of torture chambers and other medieval methods. My initial plan to liberate my accidental shooting from its agonizing death had transformed into a more severe form of punishment for the wounded creature.
Drowning is a fear that many, including myself possess. It, along with burning alive would probably be one of the most untimely, excruciating deaths.
This is how I chose to release the squirrel from its misery?
I tried to think calming thoughts while my foot rested on the grave of the catastrophe beneath me. I tried to think of ways to justify my actions and repeated to myself that I was only trying to help, not harm this animal. My tear ducts were out of salty water, my spirit was snuffed out. The only thing I could hope for was that the suffering would be over soon.
Bit by bit I removed my foot from the log, the log from the squirrel. I panned down to the horror show seeing a quiet, inanimate shell of a being, which squeezed the flow of liquid back down my face.
It was over.
The small mammal had moved onto its other life, free from the pain and suffering that was unintentionally inflicted upon it, leaving me with an empty, broken sensation pitted in my tight stomach.
I looked back and Denny was staring at me confused and eager to move on, like he’d seen something as unfaltering as a butcher preparing meat for purchase.
“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go swimming. It’s super hot out.”
And with that, I followed him up to the top of the sloped hill and back into the yard toward the lakeside.
For the rest of that holiday, I remained silent and depressed. I felt as though I had committed a terrible crime and that I should turn myself in to the appropriate authorities. I thought about going to the Conservation office building and telling someone there what had happened, but I was afraid.
An accident is what they’d say; my mother having a hard time keeping a straight face, my dad’s eyes showing pity, sharing my guilt.
As a young boy, the squirrel event illustrated to me that even the most premeditated of people can respond with harsh consequences; thoughts turned into words, melting into action.
The squirrel has stayed with me, although dimmed after some twenty years; it still echoes memories once in awhile. I know what happened wouldn’t be significant to most people, but neither is the death of an animal or human being to someone that murders for sport. Some people think about their whatever-calibre rifles, their shiny new bullets, then act.
React.
An accidental execution revealed my most human characteristics: facets that respect the world unconsciously with unclear motives. It was a moment that proved my existence as an imperfect person who sometimes just reacts. I had what alcoholics and drug addicts call a moment of clarity.
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Chapter 3—Johnny’s --ARK
People have a hard time being self satisfied. They infest each other’s lives with judgment, trying to measure up to everyone else, never themselves. They’re self-consciously scanning others the same way they do to the broken stars in Hollywood magazines. They’re watching television programs with unfortunates playing lead roles, finding all the imperfections, comparing these faults to their own. They count up the totals, skewing the data so that theirs is better. Ego boosts. Shots of confidence. Delusions of superiority.
People should mind their own business.
Imagine you’ve been pulled out of a deep sleep and have been told that someone close to you is dying: you’re tired, confused, upset--unstable.
This is how I feel.
I had to get away after snapping on the fortune teller; not only because I’m a murderer, and her grunge-loving son would soon walk into his own personal horror show and report the scene, but also because I needed to get away from everything.
Feelings not dissimilar to the ones found after driving all night, stopping at an unfamiliar gas station to fill in the voids: your gas tank, your stomach. When you step out of the old Volvo people are staring, like you’re the antichrist.
I’m living this. I’m tired. It’s been six days on the road. I feel the same way I felt when my band was touring: on a bus, pulled up at a rest stop somewhere, except no one was dying. Not yet. I’m in unfamiliar territory. I’m still getting clean, sober, so I’m unstable and irritated. I just want to disappear from the earth, blend in with the crowds.
My eyes are bloodshot, like I’ve been shooting heroin for the last five years. I had been, but I’m clean now. Well, as clean as an ex-grunge-playing-junkie can get. I look around and an interested man is staring at me, ridicule covering his face. He begins to snicker.
I mutter, “Fuck.”
I look down and find the nozzle of my gas pump pissing yellow-brown fluid all over the ground and my shoes. The onlooker gives me a menacing grin. He shakes his young, fat face while beginning to laugh, pointing to his friends who are smoking cigarettes by the entrance to the store so they too can get a look at the strange visitor watering the concrete with gasoline.
“Look! It’s Johnny Cocaine! Holy shit!” The fat face yells.
This is the type of thing I wanted to leave, what I wanted to escape. I’m trying.
Even though I’ve stopped the flow of fuel now, they’re all laughing hard, which makes me uncomfortable.
You know, the type of uncomfortable you feel when you’re talking to someone and they aren’t saying anything. You can’t tell what they’re thinking.
I’m that kind of uncomfortable.
Not uncomfortable like you just bought a new pair of stiff jeans.
More like the feeling you get when you walk into a family barbeque with your favourite blonde treat of the week, vomit on your eel skin shoes and a tear in your expensive navy blue suit. You realize after a couple high-fives and an inquiry for narcotics that the party you’ve so charmingly entered is the birthday celebration of some daughter whose father is now right in your face. His breath smells like scotch and vanilla cake.
That uncomfortable.
I barely remember that but it reminds me of the person I’m trying to put away, trying to leave behind. My friends never let me forget it.
Anyone who knows me can tell you that it takes a lot for me to feel this way because I know that everyone is fundamentally the same. They’re feeling just like me most of the time. I learned that if I don’t think the way they do then I can be comfortable while they rot in their sweat-stained shirts with their chest-bulging, palpitating hearts.
Normally I would’ve looked the other way, but in my current sleep-deprived state with caffeine and nicotine running thick through my veins, I guess I just reacted.
I look over at the guy. Still laughing, now joined by two of his friends. They’re all laughing at the same pitch, which, if it wasn’t for their diverse type of hysteria, I wouldn’t be able to tell that it was three instead of one.
The gas nozzle is gripped tightly in my hand. A bead of sweat trickles down from my humid hair toward my eye, takes a quick detour, and travels the rest of the way down my cheek. It rides my four-day beard finally dropping off the bottom of my chin, mixing with the fresh gasoline on the ground. The world has gone silent and all I hear is my heart beating like a hammer.
Looking around the parking lot of the gas station I see five cars. One of them is a mini-van with a family of four getting ready to leave to wherever it is classic families of four like that go. Another one is an old Town car with a little old lady who’s struggling to lift herself into the enormous car.
Something grabs my attention.
An old Mazda--red. It looks older than it probably is. It looks like a car I used to have, like the vehicle of someone that doesn’t care what they drive. It’s a vehicle for necessity.
It turns so I can see the interior. I can clearly make out who’s inside: a gorgeous female with long black hair, bright green eyes; the kind of green that shines in the light. Green like the emerald Buddha in Bangkok when sun-rays move through the green sculpture. It’s actually made from jade--fake, like those different coloured contacts that turn brown eyes green or green eyes blue. When the sun shines into her eyes they glow. Her eyes look that green.
I momentarily forget where and who I am until a quick left turn puts the beautiful stranger on the road somewhere, placed in the back of my mind.
The other two vehicles are empty.
The three young men’s’ torments seem to have disappeared into the air with the rest of the sounds. The family of four and the little old lady have left. I steal a glance inside the gas station. I see no one.
With an unconscious flick of my wrist, the gas pump is switched back to the ON position and out comes the vintage, platinum, wick and flint lighter that my mother gave me after my grandfather died. I point the streaming combustible liquid at the cause of my discomfort.
Lighting the lighter, and before anyone even knows what’s going on, I begin to shoot huge flames of fiery hell onto the laughing assholes in front of me. At first I don’t think much of the suffering I’m inflicting until I actually realize what it is I’m doing.
Then I really start to enjoy it.
I stun them all, starting their clothes and hair on fire with a smooth, swift wave of my arm.
Panic sets in. The flame-covered bodies start to move in circles, frantically waving their arms trying to extinguish the flames, which are engulfing them. I flip the gas switch off and drop the nozzle. I move toward the first guy I see trying to go somewhere.
Where? I don’t really know. He’s on fire. The flaming man trips and falls to the ground. Unfortunately for him, he’s the first one that my feet and fists come in contact with.
I catch up, and from behind, give a nice hard kick to his ribs, hard enough that my boots cause the bastard to roll and tumble on the pavement. His burning flesh is stinking up the air around me when I start to kick him with full, solid swings of my leg. The first blow hits him square in the nose. I can feel it shatter and squish into his face. Blood begins to pour out his nostrils like an intravenous blood bag that someone poked two roofing nails through. His screams make me want to stuff his mouth full of boot. Shut him up. That’s what I do next.
The man is screaming loud and long, which makes my next action all the easier. His mouth is open wide enough, for a long enough time that I’m able to fully wind up and swing my foot directly inside.
The sound that follows is like throwing a ball of raw bread dough on a tile floor. It penetrates my ears.
I feel every tooth in his mouth bend and rip from his gums like trees being ripped from their roots during a powerful avalanche. I leave my foot inside for a few seconds before pulling it out, breathing deeply and enjoying the rush of euphoria that is circulating heavily through my veins.
Upon removal, I first notice the broken teeth and blood that are covering my boots. The silence of the disjointed hyena catches my attention. He isn’t laughing anymore. He isn’t smiling, pointing or calling his friends to join in either. He’s lying half-cocked on the oil-stained ground with charred skin, a broken nose, and a mouth full of smashed teeth. His eyes are still open. The smell of burnt hair and flesh is nauseating, but in a good way. Like when you take a high dose of opiates and you’re waiting for the rush of euphoria to fill every neuronal gap in your brain. Like you could puke any second, but you know you’ll feel fine soon, so you hold it in and before long all the sickness is behind you, leaving only the exhilaration of the drug.
He’s dead now.
I turn and head toward one of the others. The man is writhing in pain with smoke coming off his clothes. Bloody, burned patches of skin are showing where bits of cotton shirt or denim have burned away. I can hear him yelling something, but I still can’t hear much else other than my heart, which is beating like a drum.
I’m standing over him now, looking down at a person that looked very different only moments ago, and I begin to feel something inside me that I have only felt a couple times before.
A feeling similar to the one you get as a child when you successfully trap a cat underneath a clothes basket or when you’re fishing and a rainbow trout swallows your hook. You reel it in, get it in the boat then bash its head in with the fish bat you got for Christmas the year before. Powerful.
The feeling of pure power and control is pulsating through my rigid body as I look down at the burned mess underneath me. If I come down hard with the heel of one of my boots in the center of his forehead, I’ll break his skull. Enough damage to have bone shards pierce his grey matter and push deep into his frontal lobes. The scalpel-like sections of skull, slice-destroying the area responsible for motor skills, will guarantee death.
My dad used to read me bedtime stories that weren’t your typical nursery rhymes. He would use his vast knowledge of the human body and clinical experience to tell us different ways he has seen life disappear in little more than an instant.
Like the way people stop breathing if hit at just the right angle in the center of the neck with a quick chop of the hand. The Adams Apple will break so that a piece of cartilage will move and block the passageway of air from mouth to lungs. The brain will be deprived of its precious oxygen. It will turn off, shutting down the rest of the body.
I lift my leg above the first example of near instant death, and come down hard with the heel of my heavy boot. A perfect hit.
I hear the skull break and see the tell-tale sign of irreparable damage--the blood running down the sides of his face like tears from a child that scraped its knee. This lets me know that the pre-frontal cortex has been punctured, rendering the frontal lobes useless, which will shut down the rest of the body soon.
Specimen number two has seen what I just did and is whimpering like a new puppy taken from its mother left to sleep in the dark by itself.
He’s trying to get to his feet, but the burns covering his body are so bad that pieces of skin are sticking to the ground and he’s unable to move any more than a few centimetres. To be sure of this, I kick his ribs and hear the quiet symphony of cracking bones, which forces him onto his back. Taking one last look, I raise my leg. I hold it there for a second, looking at the burned, bloody head beneath me.
I think again of the times I used to go fishing with my grandfather when he’d make me bash in the skull of a fish to get it to stop moving. I didn’t want to do it, but he kept calling me a little girl, or threatened to push me out of the boat and make me swim back to the shore.
I was eight.
With one, silky motion I bring my whole body down on the heel. It lands directly in the middle of the melted man’s forehead, splitting the burnt, marshmallow-looking cranium. The same result as the first is observed.
I was never unsure of what was going to happen; my dad always said you have to be able to repeat an experiment in order to prove that it’s a valid one. This was no experiment, but it had all the sound methods of science to back up the results--two crushed skulls, and ripped frontal lobes.
I take in the grim scene that resulted from the previous moments’ tyranny. The stage is set with a dark background from the night sky. The air is silent, except for the odd cricket--ignorant of the murderous events--chirping as crickets do. Lights from the pump stalls are shining down brightly on the main cast members.
A feeling of celebrity comes over me.
The three dead men are lying limp on the concrete. All are on their backs. All are dead in the spotlight like Shakespearean actors that just played out the final act in a horrible tragedy. I look over at the store and wonder. Where is the lonely part-time employee that may have been witness to this grotesque scene? I walk toward the first of my smoky fatalities and see that one of them is wearing a red and black polo shirt with a piece of plastic melted to the skin of his chest. I bend down to inspect the liquefied, then hardened chunk, which to my surprise has the letters: A-R-K etched in black on a gold background. Looking up at the man’s face, I crack a smile like a sinister child that just ate the last cookie in the jar and say out loud, “Well, Mark, you’ve just made my life a whole lot easier; I forgot my wallet in the car.” I’m smiling, “Oh, and I’m terribly sorry about your disagreeable sense of humour. I’m not who you thought I was. Not anymore.”
* * * * *
Chapter 4—“The Freak”
I had a fairly normal childhood, or at least as normal as someone with my family could have. I grew up in a large city in a large house that had a large dog--I prefer cats. My dad’s a small man, and he practiced medicine at High Hopes Hospital in my hometown, which is also small. He’s the genetic reason for my appreciation of all things life-science. My mother and father married before my sister was born during what old-timers call a shot-gun wedding.
They’d met in university when my dad was a young med student, and my mom was a young, externally beautiful gold digger. She had never majored in anything but everyone knew who she was in the professional colleges. She’s the type of woman that thinks good looks trump hard work. Sometimes they do.
When she was growing up, her parents always told her how beautiful she was and how she was going to be successful by fanning her palm tree eyelashes toward any man. She was deluded at an early age, usually getting whatever she wanted.
I’m sure she wanted more from life; she had to.
My dad however, had life in perspective for as long as I can remember. He grew up in a small town on the outskirts of a major city with one sister--a family of four. His mother died at an early age, which put his sister into a mental hospital; he visits her now and then. His dad was a doctor, and as was customary, he became one too.
I don’t know much about my grandparents. They were all dead by the time I was born. Pictures reveal that my dad looks a lot how my grandfather did. They were both small men with medical educations. Serious, with kind faces. They both had the same nose, large and prominent. Not as large as the counterfeit breasts a woman that strips for money has, but just as famous.
My mother would always tell me how much of a geek my father was during his university days. Other girls called him The Freak--Mom would never admit it. His nose is shaped, such that it’s quite easy to see the giant head of a circumcised penis.
The ladies loved it.
At first, the attention my dad received was due to his scholarly merit. His honours and achievements were only noticed so far as the prospective pay check, which the schoolgirls made obvious with their ignorance toward anything as meaningful and life-saving as medical science.
“Oh my god! So you’re, like, gonna be a doctor?” The gold-diggers would say. “So, like, could you, like, save my life, if you wanted too?” The attention was unintelligent and annoying, but it was attention anyway.
The Freak was born and kindled after one specific incident. In my father’s special way, the tale was functional; being one of the first pieces of advice he gave to me with regard to my quandaries about women.
I was ten, working out my anguish from a freshly torn out heart, when my father told me a story.
“Women are trouble,” he says. “The sooner you learn that you can’t live with ‘em or without ‘em, the better. They’re the world’s greatest paradox, my son.”
I don’t understand the logic, and can’t see the relevance of the story, but it’s my father’s and I listen.
In his first year of medical school, my father began to relax; experience and enjoy all that an expensive education had to offer. He got smart to the come-ons from his fan club of Uni-girls, which were anywhere between twenty-one and twenty-seven. They were relentless, so he gave them what any intelligent, hot blooded new med student could offer.
He fucked them.
They loved it.
It’s your typical scene: meet at a house; drink till puking; clean up with toothpaste and warm water--an instant mouthwash. Move like a young baby through an obstacle course. Stumble into the dark, unfamiliar room where said new “friend” has already passed out.
None of these unrefined nuances matter to my father who grew up in high society, and he took the opportunity to try what he’s been so nervous about doing up until this alcohol-numbed moment.
He lay beside the flirtatious, sexy, brown-haired beauty for a few minutes and steadied the tornado that circled above his head. Satisfied with his state of nausea, he awkwardly kissed her on the neck, down toward her collarbone peeking out from under her trendy top. She made a couple of quiet grunts, and parted her lips forming a tired smile. This is all it took for my father to be ready to try anything.
He’d had girlfriends in the past. Never anything serious though, and he’d certainly never done what he was about to do.
After some warming-up like kissing, dry-humping, over clothes groping--the usual--my father’s bedroom friend was panting and well lubricated. Multiple shots of vodka were given sixty percent of the credit. My dad pulled off what remained of her underwear and threw them in a miniature mound by the side of the bed. He kissed her breasts, stopping at her nipples long enough to get a reaction, and an erection. He moved down her youthful, firm stomach until he was just below her belly button, pausing for a moment to get his nerves back to a confident state, to allow his mind and body to function together. He took a deep breath of sweat and alcohol saturated air then moved further down, engulfing her clitoris.
He’s sucking and licking.
She’s moaning and groaning.
Both are enjoying themselves like a good one-night-stand provides. They’ve never been lovers before, and their passion for each other quakes with the newness of the situation. My dad shifted positions to allow his flicking tongue to tickle her perineum--the skin between her vagina and anus. She loved it, and started to grind her hips harder and with greater intensity than before. My father took this as a good sign, continuing his processes until he made an observation, an inspection like the scientist he was. This moment would change his name from Gerald G. Cochrane to The Freak until his days in medical school were over.
While he was poking and licking her naughtiest of dirty parts, my father realized that he was becoming uncomfortable. The position of both anatomies forced him to cock his neck in such a way that caused a twinge. He had to shift his pose.
The pain of a crooked neck and the laziness of a drunken nervous system were responsible for his soon to be designation.
As his head moved forward to release the tension on the muscles holding it up, he clumsily allowed his uniquely shaped nose to fall hard and deep into his gasping girlfriend. Her moans were clear to anyone that she was not embarrassed by the unique situation. Her vocalization of “harder” and “faster” solidified his opinion of the situation and he pressed his face deeper inside. All the while his tongue was lashing at the sensitive muscle tissues that were contracting and dilating in euphoric complex. He moved his nose in and out of the skin that makes up a woman’s sexual rose. It felt good to him knowing that it felt good for her, persisting until her grinding hips moved faster and stronger.
Her hands gripped the back of my father’s head pulling his useful face into her pushing, soaked vagina, signalling she was about to cum. My father continued to do what was evidently right, moving with her body in tandem. Her desire came to symphonic release as her body put out the fire in her pussy. A flow of tropical proportion came out of her like the downpours of Thailand in May.
It was finished. My father, with a gigantic grin on his face and a sexual solution dripping from his chin, lifted his head up from the white water of her nether region and made his way to the bathroom.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely apologetic. “I really have to blow my nose.”
The woman winked in the beam of light that entered the room and said in a sexy, I’m-not-finished-with-you-yet tone, “Hurry back, Freak.”
That was how my father decided to console me. With a story that has his fibres intertwined through the very soul of it. He’s the type of man that has an answer for everything, even if it isn’t an obvious one.
He told me this particular tale when I was feeling down with the catastrophes that come from realizing that people--girls specifically--were heartless. My mind was made up with elementary reasoning: she likes my friend; I’m not big enough, strong enough or handsome enough. My father turned the situation around by using his not so ordinary parenting skills and gifted story telling. The only problems: I was ten and inherited my mother’s nose.
* * * * *
Chapter 5—Grandpa’s Dead
My father had many talents. One of the most impressive being that he was able to tell what was wrong with people by only glimpsing at them.
This was especially true when his family was the concerning faction.
It was midmorning and I was coming out of the bathroom. I was younger, around twelve, and my father turned and looked at me from his large chair in the common room and told me to take some vitamins.
Just like that.
A fleeting glance and an imperative. I didn’t pay any attention to the request thinking it was just another one of those parental power trips. Besides, I was at the age where getting sick didn’t mean much. Paying no attention or just not caring was typical.
I got sick.
I didn’t have an obvious sickness of any kind. Not fifteen hours on the toilet, alternating between liquid defecation and projectile vomiting kind of sick, just the hidden genesis of a viral infection. The sniffles.
Something that no one, not even most diagnosticians would be able to spot until the evidence of a running nose and sand-coated throat gave it away.
He was right.
Before I even knew I was sick he’d tell me to drink some fluids or get more sleep. He would say to me to eat some fruit, like an orange or some other excellent source of vitamin C.
He was right every time.
He was a great doctor, a good father and a tolerant husband.
Most of the time my parents spent together was around other people. I can’t actually remember a time when it was just the two of them, or seeing them act even slightly interested in each other. Except when we had visitors or we were at some kind of party or another. But it wasn’t like they didn’t love each other. They stayed together until my sister and I were raised properly, out of the house. Then my dad finally left. It’s a memory in my mind so clear that it still feels surreal.
Fake.
Like the first time I went to the funeral of one of my relatives, old enough to understand what death was all about.
I was dressed up in clothes that are only worn on days like that one, pressed and ready to go for the day’s performance.
My shoes were tight, uncomfortable because I only wore them on talent night to perform the sad, sombre role that everyone else had been practicing for years. The atmosphere and how I feel are the same. Like a reoccurring dream it’s dark, damp, and bizarre.
The surroundings were wet from rain and tears running down the faces of all the aunts and uncles who I’d never met. Strange faces in a stranger environment, wearing strange clothes are all performing their tragic little hearts out.
The sandwiches were good though.
A buffet table of meats and cheeses and pickles surrounded the sad scene like an audience encircling center stage. In the middle--grandpa. Dead at 76. Pale-faced and blue-lipped. The same smug smile that was planted on his face for the last fifteen years of his life is now permanently etched into his immobile, dehydrated face. The morticians had sucked out whatever remaining heart there was and prepared his corpse with stage makeup, readying him for the events to follow.
The whole time I sat by my mother’s side, offering support, playing along. With a fresh ham and Swiss in each hand, I surveyed the roles artfully displayed, imagining if the people actually felt how they looked or if they were simply acting. It felt like a hallucination, uncanny.
Indeed, my father had many talents, like being able to save lives and preserve his own. Disappearing during times of death was not uncommon. Actually, it was more commonplace than most people realized. He was so good at it that sometimes the people he was hiding from didn’t even know he wasn’t around.
He had a different view of life and death and all of the philosophies that followed. He also played by his own rules, which made him who he was: a very busy man with a career in medicine, a wife and a family, all of which demanded a lot and demanded it automatically. I suppose he grew tired of the repetition, and knew that the death of my grandfather would affect my mother in ways that were unbearable just thinking of them. And using one of his many magic wands he left, disappearing from my life, out the doors, away from the roast beef sandwiches, away from us.
I couldn’t face my friends. I viewed all of them how I used to view myself--normal. I was like everyone else, which was comfortable and I liked that. When my father left, that part of my life was shattered like a broken mirror on the floor. Its reflection was impossible to make out. My previous identity broken, gone.
* * * * *
Chapter 6—Suicide, Accident, Murder
After the parking lot in the gas station I’m jumpy and hurried. I keep driving. I have no idea where I’m going to go. I don’t care. I’m too wound up to think. All I do is keep my foot pressed hard on the accelerator, my eyes looking straight ahead of me. My palms are sweaty; I have to readjust my hands on the steering wheel every few seconds. My heart’s beating. A steady rhythm that sounds like the hard dance music played during all night rave-parties.
I feel like I’ve just taken two, double pressed, blue-devil ecstasy pills. I’m waiting for the onset of euphoria. I have ants in my pants, sitting excitedly like a ten-year old on Christmas Eve waiting for a fat man with presents to slide down the chimney.
It hits me.
A full tidal wave of serotonin and dopamine floods my neuronal synapses, tickling every crevice of my cellular self.
It feels amazing.
I forget about my heart rate and try to focus on this feeling of pleasure. I roll down the window and let the cool breeze blow over my face, feeling the fresh wind tickle my body. It’s making the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I smell the fields of wheat, flax and rapeseed that take me back to a previous time.
My lips begin to divide. Teeth begin to show. Eyes squint softly. All result in the familiar symbol of genuine happiness. It’s what the Christians would call a “Parting of the Red Sea” moment, where people are free to journey to the holy-land through a majestic, parted mass. Just like that, except this is real. My mind is freed by the simple human act.
I smile stridently.
Taking a hold of whatever understanding I can clutch from my current situation, I ponder all the possible outcomes of my prior actions. I think about where I should go, if the police already know who or where I am. All of these questions and more are swirling around my brain like the cows in The Wizard of Oz’s witch-induced whirlwind.
I glance around at my surroundings and see a small valley approaching. There’s a river that winds around it. Like a snake winding around a rock in its path, trees thick and full like a developed female with freshly curled hair. It doesn’t look like anyone lives in the hilly landscape or anywhere near it. The last hour of unaccompanied driving is all I have to go on. All I’ve seen so far are fields spotted with odd clumps of birch and pine trees. I decide it’s probably best to ditch the car. I drove past a tall bridge over a narrow valley twenty kilometres back, so I decide to back track and execute a plan that’s still in the making. Leaving a trail for someone on a trail is not part of the plan.
I make my way back to the tall bridge, and stop short to look through the contents of my car. I look to see if there’s anything that I might need for my ill-prepared journey as a fugitive.
A pack of Benson and Hedges Gold glitters in my eye. I throw them into a small backpack. Two unopened bottles of fresh water get tossed in afterwards. I have my wallet in my pocket, which I take out and count four-hundred and thirty-three dollars that sits beside two gold coloured credit cards, one platinum.
“Damnit, this isn’t going to be enough cash,” I say aloud with frustrated realization. I know if I try to pull out more the digital bread trail will lead the big bad wolves right to me.
No time to think now.
I continue to rummage through the car, flipping through the glove box, pulling out anything that might be rendered useful. The already practical, retro, platinum Zippo-lighter from the war era is thrown into the mix. One unclean, wool sweater and the clothes I have on my back are going to have to suffice for now. I spot a couple of cheap bottles of wine on the floor that will prove to be functional, but only after I pour one out in the ditch. Half of the other follows the first. The rest is poured into my stomach.
After all the useable items are thrown into the small canvas backpack, I leave the front seat, walk around to the rear, and open the trunk. While pulling a thick black garbage bag from the trunk, I spot a half-empty bottle of lighter fluid. I pick it up with my right hand. It stays there. I disregard the empty oil cans and booster cables, slamming the big metal flap shut. Something catches my eyes though and I head for the back passenger-side door before re-entering the driver’s seat. The long yellow rope in the back of my car is going to ice this whole cake.
I jump into the car and take a deep gulp of clean country air. My mind is slowing to a reasonable pace and I can think a little clearer now that I have an idea of what I’m going to do.
The wine helped.
I think of my sister, and my friends back home. I think of my father and mother and how my cat is doing. I catch myself drifting, smack myself out of it, preventing further delay.
I don’t take much notice to the fact that I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere, about to do something most people would consider insane.
Insanity is relative. Be normal, and the crowd will accept you. Be deranged, and they’ll make you their leader.
I don’t want to be anyone’s leader. I’m done chief-ing the crowds. The masses end up thinking for you anyway. Societal puppet-masters manipulating marionettes. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you have no say, like someone else is pulling the strings. Controlling you like a pathetic lab animal, forcing things in and on you like only they know how. Making you do things only sadistic scientists can dream of. They pull the wool over your eyes with promises of a better life, a bigger penis, a faster car. I am not made of wood. I don’t have strings attached.
My name is not Pinocchio.
Pushing those thoughts away, and pushing the small backpack into the thick black garbage bag I begin to wrap the whole works tight with the yellow rope from the back seat of the car.
Here I am, sitting in the driver’s seat of my car with the possessions of a renegade wrapped in a garbage bag, tied tight with a thin yellow rope.
I visualize what happens next.
Faking your own death takes a lot of planning. It requires you to keep your mouth shut. You can’t go telling everyone your plan, so if you can’t keep a skeleton locked away forever, forget about it.
I don’t have much time to prepare, but I’m alone, and not concerned about friends or family. I’ve got no one to spill the beans to; no one to foil my plan.
First, you need to figure out what kind of death you want to have: suicide, accident, or murder.
Next, figure out how you’re going to do it. Suicide and murder are the two easiest to fake, unless you live in a town with an excellent police department, or have a suspicious parent or spouse who loves you a lot, and has money to spend.
I haven’t seen a hint of a town for the past couple of hours.
I’m not married.
I don’t know where my father is.
My mother is probably looking for her golden retriever. It died five years ago.
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