John's Chapters 2-9

II
And then we started drinking. We laughed at the immensity of our aloneness. We laughed at the prospect of love. We laughed at its mere existence. I wasn’t going to win any arguments tonight, not that I had anyone to argue with. I thought about the word loneliness, how it paled in comparison to aloneness. He’d have never said loneliness. Loneliness seemed like such a pathetic, helpless word. It sounded better when women said it.
They let the whole town into the bar tonight; in times of tragedy, the drinking age was disregarded. I felt like I’d inherited my father’s tolerance to alcohol overnight. Unlike everyone else, I wasn’t mourning over my losses. I’d lost nothing I hadn’t already expected to lose. My sister and mother’s bumptious presences, specious precedence and emotional necessities were both obstructing. I’d felt personally responsible over my sister because I didn’t naturally feel responsible of her; it was merely out of guilt.
Regardless, I missed my sister’s querulous, deadbeat sponge quality. I could bounce ideas off of her without actually saying anything.
A woman approached me.
“I’ll be your sister.”
“Alright.”
My sister and I and my contently sulking anonymous drinking buddy watched the TV intently. Reporters were scavenging for expose. No one wanted to believe that it had survived, had simply wandered off into the distance. They wanted victory. Everyone was an insomniac without security. Even tourists felt at home at the bar.
Our whole generation was on speed and sleeping pills. You could hear the click of pill bottles opening like someone punching in cellophane. The kids were reacting Lord of the Flies except the stage was set in the collegiate admissions bicuspid.
I eyeballed my brew, having lost interest in the nauseating imagery of the jabbering TV’s. My new sister seemed somber and austere. I was okay with that.
I tipped my bartender and whisked through the crowd of onlookers, getting into my car outside, which was wedged in between a truck and another SUV. My sister didn’t bother with her seatbelt. She didn’t as much as look at me when she got in the car. I realized I was dealing with a professional.
I nearly backed into a sports car, not bothering with the rearview mirror. I suddenly remembered I didn’t know how to drive. I figured it wasn’t that difficult. Now that it had arrived, the entire human species and its produce seemed expendable. I somehow knew that I could find it. It was almost like it wanted me to find it. There must’ve been a reason it hadn’t killed me.
I pondered whether its decision to wade off into the gloom and leave it’s wake in chaos wasn’t incidental. It reminded me of an artist who, for his entire life, created a work of art every day and showed it to the same critic, only to receive the same response from the critic every day: “This is the best work you’ve ever done in your life.” It was the man on wall street who felt nothing and only fulfilled his archetype to the disdain of the martyr and his facsimile, the man surfeit with complacency.
My sister gave me a look that made me realize I was brooding. No one could brood like I could. I could brood someone to death.
I noticed my sister was carrying a holstered magnum, strapped to her belt, which resembled a chewed lash of beef jerky. She was prettier than my former sister. As I drove I kept this in mind, as it might prove useful in sordid situations. She hadn’t said anything since we’d departed from the bar. We were driving down a deserted highway; our surroundings resembled Death Valley. There were even cacti.
Overhead, bombinating vultures.
“What do you think of the concept of marriage,” my sister asked.
“I think it violates all laws of science. But that no longer matters, as so does it.” She didn’t respond. I didn’t think many people were going to get married after it’s arrival, but then again, maybe an influx of people might get married, associating this with the end of their lives. I wouldn’t blame them. One more contrived machination to keep people occupied with each other.
My sister gave me eerie Egyptian vibes, even though I didn’t know what Egyptians looked like. She had wiry, chest-length funereal black hair. It reminded me of death. I thought the amount of cleavage she exposed was profligate, but I kind of liked staring at it. She was wearing cowboy jeans, Frye boots. Everything she wore matched with her hair, except for her blouse, which was jingled with gold. Her eyes were preternaturally emerald.
I realized I needed a new name. My old name just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I needed one of those names that you could tell a child’s parents had argued about.
Like Travis. Travis was a great name.
My new name would be: Travis.
“What do you think about the name ‘Travis’,” I asked my sister.
“Great name,” she said. I agreed. It was a great name. “Where are we going,” she added.
“I don’t know,” I grumbled, turning on the windshield-wipers by accident. She looked at me skeptically.
“You better not pull any fast ones, or I’ll blow your fucking head off,” she said, a little too calmly.
I didn’t know how to turn the windshield-wipers off. We drove in silence, comforted by the sound of the windshield-wipers. She didn’t object to them. Women are always flirting with you even when they’re not.
I didn’t know where I was driving, but I didn’t want to stop. As long as I was driving, I was going somewhere. Plus, no one was attending the gas stations, so it was free. I felt like I was in New Jersey, even though I wasn’t. I’d never been to New Jersey in my life but it was somewhere I wanted to go.
We passed by thieves burglarizing general stores. They’d rush in and start shooting at cashiers that might as well have left cardboard statures of themselves in their place. Every town was deserted, except for its tavern or bar. The radio was blubbering about how the country had actually run out of its alcohol supply. People were in a state of panic. They huddled near their former oases, like a deaf, blind child holding the hand of its mother who has just died, who, unaware of her death, keeps walking, holding on to her hand.
“I hear voices,” my sister says.
“What kind of voices.”
“Not yours.”
“I beg to differ. You just heard my voice.”
“I was referring to the voices I was hearing other than your voice,” she snaps.
“Then you should be more specific,” I say, charismatically soothing. “I meant…what do these voices say.”
“Girls under the legal age, flirting with me,” she says laconically, blushing violently.
“Can you hear these voices audibly or just in your head?”
“Audibly,” she answers, dismayed.
“Sounds like you have a problem,” I say casually, as to not offend her.
“I suppose so,” she says, in a considering, almost affectionate manner.
“Here, take these,” I pour Xanax bars into my hand and pass them to her, not taking my eyes off the road ahead of me. She thanks me and takes them without asking what they are. She trusts me, or she knows what they are. My bets are placed on that she trusts me.
Most strangers try to race to catch one another in an egotistical state so they can secure their own. This thought is random. It happens upon me when we cross over the border into another state. We’re not even headed in the direction that it wobbled off in, but something impels me to keep driving in this direction.
I notice a car behind us in the rearview mirror. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but after thirty minutes I’m nearly positive that it’s following us. I slow the car down to a halt, waiting for them to do the same. They drive past; the windows are tinted. My sister glances at me quizzically.
We wait. The windshield-wiper’s have mesmerized me. I think about my former sister, and how she always pictured me reading Moby Dick on my spare time. I’m not going to deny it instilled emotions in me that I didn’t want to feel, but at that moment, they felt appropriate to feel. I think most people would have felt them.
I got out of the car, and just started walking, musing over my father. He used to train me to play football. The only position I could play was tailback because I didn’t see the point of abiding by any of the plays. As a tailback, you have the freedom to disobey the plays. Just don’t get tackled. Just find the gaps in the tide.
Then someone on the radio started screaming and it fizzled out. The actual radio exploded. My sister, who’d been staring out the window, was now standing in front of the car, holding her pistol with both hands, aiming it at me. I was more curious as to why the radio had exploded than her. She was talking to me as if I was a sixteen year old girl trying to seduce her. She mentioned something about blackberries. Why had the radio exploded? I looked into her eyes as if she knew. She began to strafe, yelling at me to get away from her, yet I hadn’t moved since she’d aimed the pistol at me. Her face reminded me of a hissing cat.
I stopped looking at her and walked towards the car. She threatened that she’d fire but as I closed the door she kept on strafing backwards, hopping away from the car. I analyzed the radio. I saw the car that had been following me earlier roaring towards her. She failed to notice, preoccupied with her delusions. I heard her shriek, and watched her as she died in a manner that argued against physics.
My father stepped out of the car. He looked at me without saying anything, then got back out of the car, which meant he wanted me to do the same. When I got into the car he had stolen he turned the music on. I turned the windshield-wipers on. He was so drunk he must’ve thought I’d turned them on because it was raining.
I knew he knew that I was thankful for what he did without my having to express it. He began to drive in the direction I did; he was balding, his hair graying. Whenever I saw him I thought of a golem. I knew it was going to be a long car-ride, so I leaned the chair back and closed my eyes.
When I awoke he was still driving. Michael Jackson was still playing on the radio. I looked at the backseats and realized that the clinking of vodka bottles had woken me up. I didn’t know where we were; we could have been anywhere. I’d noticed that my father had disemboweled my cell-phone while I was asleep. I would’ve done the same sooner or later anyway.
I noticed that this car’s radio had exploded too. I knew my dad wouldn’t have notice the radio exploding, so I couldn’t ask him how long ago it had happened. I don’t think he even noticed that I fell asleep.
I also noticed that he was about to drive the car into a crowd of people standing in the middle of the highway. I had the feeling he was too enchanted by fatigue to break. I waited for him to stop but he never did. He drove right into the crowd; the windshield smeared with blood. It’s a good thing I had turned the wipers on.
We’d ran into so many people that all the bodies eventually bogged down the car. The tires squealed, spinning in place. My father grumbled. The crowd began to beat against the car, breaking in the windows. Someone fired a gun; its earsplitting crack distracted the entire crowd into panic. The car began to exert itself forwards.
I thought we were going to make it out unscathed until I saw the grenade politely bounce onto the windshield. I slammed the door open and fled into the crowd. My father reached into the backseat and tried to protect the cache of vodka bottles, spreading his arms as if he was bear-hugging the side of a building.
I dive for cover as the grenade goes off, propelling the car into the air in a surge of flames. I can’t hear anything. Someone’s dismembered hand slaps me in the face. I can’t hear anything. My temporary deafness causes my vision to slant and everything to take place in slow motion. The car seems to float in the air…people on fire scamper beneath it, except that they remind me of people sack racing. I can feel a stream of blood trickle out of my ear and down the side of my face like a tear.
When I can hear again all the sounds I couldn’t hear take place all at once. I push myself off the ground, already running before I’m on my feet, and I run, run, run. I don’t stop until I’m running across a field of uncut grass, straight into another congregating crowd. I listen to the people conversing…about how their televisions, radios, everything and anything remotely electronic except for their cars have spontaneously combusted.
In my mind a wolf is slowly being swallowed by an electric pig, whimpering and gazing desperately into my eyes. One of its paws is sticking up, askew.

III

I was riding inside of a tank. When technology spontaneously combusted most people started acting as if they were actually under attack. There were many stray tanks rumbling around. I was actually hitchhiking when this one picked me up. The driver asked me if I had anywhere to go and I said no so he brought me aboard. His name was Chip. He talked a lot.
He told me about how he thought the technology revolt, as he referred to the spontaneous combustion, was an act of God. God thought that technology was making our lives too easy and with the snap of his fingers, destroyed it all. I asked him why God hadn’t destroyed vehicles. He answered that God must’ve thought vehicles were necessary and appropriate. Everything in his life was the result of God’s bidding.
I didn’t want to bother him. I enjoyed riding in a tank. I thought his beliefs were pretty self-absorbed. I don’t think if there was a God that he’d care about one person’s wife leaving him, or be the cause of it. I also don’t think he’d have the time to inveigle himself in human affairs. They’d probably bore him.
I thought of God committing suicide. I thought of him writing out a suicide letter. I could picture him waving farewell, putting his headphones on, and letting the pills diffuse, lying on his bed like an angel.
I questioned him about it. Was God the cause of it? When I asked this he became very solemn and didn’t speak for at least thirty minutes. I had forgotten I’d asked him the question when he answered it.
He believed it was a spawn of Satan.
I don’t think science could have explained this man’s thought process. I wanted to invade his mind. He was thinking things that were absolutely fucking absurd. He might as well have been delusional. I was intrigued. I wanted to know about his God, in particular. Everyone has their own God.
He tried to explain to me the meaning of life, which changed every single time he told me it, but in the end, it was usually a supernal matter. This man’s God was austere, relentless, and shared common beliefs and delusions with Chip. Chip even hinted at the concept of an Arian race, except if I reiterated it to him he probably would have thought I was describing an actual race, from start to finish. For anything inexplicable to this man, his God prevailed.
The only times Chip hesitated was when I mentioned it. He almost couldn’t grasp the concept. It was like listening to him explain why he was driving a tank across the countryside. He just couldn’t explain it. It was a divine intervention. God had willed him to.
I realized this man’s God went much further than his mouth. I watched as he steamrolled over who he merely assumed to be atheists and agnostics. He steamrolled over everything that didn’t believe in his God. Certain animals and objects lacked the required faith. I began to have faith in his God, as a precaution. It was much easier to live life entertaining the belief that I was someone else’s puppet, and even easier to feign it.
Chip and I roamed from state to state, from one side of the country to the other. I told him that it was out there somewhere. I told him I was damn sure. That was enough to flood this man with zeal; the thought of Satan alone rendered him varicose with rage.
I never knew tanks had CD players. We blasted music as we cruised aimlessly about in search of the spawn of Satan. I wanted to find it so obsessively that I almost started believing it actually was a spawn of Satan. I couldn’t believe most of what was happening outside the windshield of the tank; the people we pancaked mercilessly. It was like playing a video game. I had to get used to the sound of Chip whooping and cheering every time he ran over a clump of people.
Weeks passed. We lived off of what we stole from the stores we razed by. Chip and I would walk wherever we wanted with bullet-proof armor and assault rifles, taking whatever we wanted from wherever we wanted. Whenever the tank began to smell I released a smog of Febreze inside of it. The stench of body odor became pretty rank. It reminded me Chip was the only person I knew that was still alive.
Eventually, on the horizon, I spotted it. It was swatting at fighter jets. Somehow, Chip recognized it at once. All of a sudden he flared up and I realized that he was the very God that he believed in. I watched him in awe as he continued to steer the tank gun-ho in it’s direction. He didn’t register the other tanks around it that were being instantly pulverized. He stood up in his seat, frenzied by his delusions, cheering us onwards fanatically to our doom.
I didn’t really want to stop him. I just watched as the tank chugged, rollicking, towards it. I wished at that moment that I was with a prostitute. I wanted some kind of affection. I wanted to die in the cloying arms of someone who put people under the impression they were listening to them when instead they were speaking with their thoughts.
I gazed out it one last time and closed my eyes. Yes, life is more than I am. I didn’t actually think I was going to die upon impact; I had a hunch.
When I heard the thud of the tank floundering against it, it groaned. Chip was screaming, his top-trucker hat faced forwards, punching at the air, banging at the windshield, doing a sacred Indian dance. And then he froze, mid-foaming, in place; at least as much as I could tell with my eyes closed. That or he was dead.
But when I opened my eyes he wasn’t. He was petrified. His arm was winding back, ready to pummel at the tank’s flooring. I tentatively got up, staring at the part of it that we’d run into, slowly walking towards the ladder that lead to the hatch. I climbed out of the tank and gawked upwards, attempting to digest it’s behemothic grandeur. It was…colossal, and just as ineffable as when I last saw it. I wanted to…describe it as some kind of, shambling, overweight whale-mummy that’s arms sagged downwards with draped flesh like inverted wings, dragging on the floor. It was hunched over, soggy, groaning, and undulating. It had no eyes; its head protruded up out of it’s body like a bent nail.
I surveyed the area; everything was frozen in place, blanketed in a light-blue temporally-paralytic brume. The atmosphere reminded me of the backstage of a Broadway play. I waited in harrowing silence for it to enact, yet all it did was shamble and groan and undulate, emitting blubbering noises from it’s stomach as if it was hungry. I felt like I was telling a girl that she was beautiful only for her to respond that she was sick of hearing she was beautiful. It stood there, as indurate as it’s stage. I began to…remember memories that filled me with chagrin and insufferable shame. I began to regret.
I bent down on one knee as an ensuing deluge of emotion encumbered me. I tried to quell my thoughts, but that only exacerbated them. I stared down at the tank I was standing on top of, collapsing onto all fours, overwhelmed by the emotional torrent. I knew that it was afflicting all these petty and subverting emotions in me. I was impotent. I knew I could just pop a Xanax bar or ten but I could do that until I died. I couldn’t understand why humans were designed to become victim to their own emotions; why emotions were regarded as an enfeebling by our society, especially our immediate society. It’s almost as if we were born to create dummies of ourselves that lived for us whenever we weren’t in the safety of our own confines. I reeled over onto my side, dizzy thinking how we profit off of and even kill ourselves seeking stolidity.
And then it told me it’s name was…Dessy.

IV

When I woke up my cheek was squished against the sooty floor of the tank. I must’ve blacked out. The music was blaring. Chip was bopping his head along to it. I pretended to remain unconscious. I scrutinized him; his lumber-jacket, his Timberland boots, his paint stained jeans, his beguiling moustache. It was difficult not to simply smile at the oblivious simplicity of his appearance if I didn’t think about the things he’d done.
“Chip,” I yawned.
“Hey Travis!” he cheered, punching his fist into the air. “You been out a while.”
“What happened?”
“No clue skeet but it got away. Son of a bitch just disappeared! Must have been one of those, watchmecallems,” he glanced at me earnestly to fill in the blank.
“Yeah. I know what you mean,” I said, stretching backwards. “So what’s the plan.”
“Up to you skeet.” I could hear him mowing over bodies into ground viscera. I wondered why the hell he called me skeet. “I dunno why you was outside of the tank when I saw ya but I shouted at them motherfuckers surrounding ya to back off y’know and I picked you up in my arms like a babe and lugged you back into the tank. They ‘as all lookin’ at you like you was some kind of prophet.”
“Don’t kid yourself. I am one,” I smiled. He guffawed heinously. I reflected on everything that happened up until the point I assumed I’d blacked out. “Hey Chip I got to tell you something.”
“What?”
“You’ll think I’m nuts.”
“You’re already fuckin’ nuts,” he laughed, slamming his hands against the steering wheel.
“That thing told me it’s name. It told me it’s name was Dessy,” I said. Chip didn’t respond. I knew within seconds he was going to have some sort of divine epiphany that would send us both sprawling headstrong into peril. I could hear him slowing down the tank to a stop.
“Travis, I think…no, I know that, well, you’re not going to want to hear this,” he moped. “The Devil himself is talkin’ to ya. He’s right inside your head. There’s a chain in your head and that’s him and he’s dragging down on it,” he demonstrates this with his hands. “He’s draggin’ down on it and that chain it’s gunna, it’s gunna, it’s gunna fill you with lies skeet, it’s gunna fill you with lies but they ain’t true and you can’t believe em. No you can’t. ‘Cause if ya do he’ll…” he pauses, waiting for me to goad him on.
“He’ll what.”
“Possess ya.”
“I see.” I nodded my head meditatively. I had respect for how Chip stupefied himself by his own stupidity, it was moving. He had this deranged, reflective, awe-inspiringly mastodonic look of stupidity on his face. It was erogenous. It was unstoppable.
We were parked on top of a the rubble of a former post office. Envelopes fluttered up like a spray of white doves. I imagined them flocking together and all taking flight at once, leaving us in the dust.
“Hey skeet,” Chip noticed I was paying attention to something other than him. “I got something that can help.” He said this so sincerely I knew that whatever it was that he had that would help me was jeopardous if not fatal. I watched him remove a pipe from his satchel. He continued to rummage around for a minute until he pulled out something else. “Here.” He tossed the pipe and whatever else to me.
I think it was supposed to be crystal meth but it looked more like something you’d find in a derelict garage. It was in a small bag. “If you smoke that,” he said, tossing me a lighter, “the voices will…go away for a little while.” He winked at me and gave me a thumbs up. “Here, I’ll show you how to smoke it.” He jumped out of his seat and began to gesticulate what I was supposed to do with my hands. I knew at once I couldn’t say no; he was too eager to help me, it would hurt his feelings, and with Chip that could have precarious ramifications. I brought the pipe to my lips while he nodded his head with an imbecilic toothy grin on his face.
And then I could hear the Devil’s voice inside my head; the Devil was actually talking to me. I couldn’t understand what he was saying because he sounded like he’d smoked ten packs of cigarettes a day for his entire life. I realized that for my own entire life I had been fooling myself. The Devil, Satan, actually existed. Which meant that maybe even God did. I looked at Chip with determined empathy. Then I just looked at him with determination.
I began to question God’s authority. I was…superior to God. Who was he to tell me what to do. Who the hell did he think he was? And this fucking voice in my head; I couldn’t get the goddamned racket out. I approached the steering wheel of the tank. I was going to run over the voice in my head.
I looked out onto the street before me and saw all these people trying infiltrate my mind. They all believed in God instead of me. I smiled deviously. Chip had folded his arms and I could tell without him having to say anything that he approved of my incontrovertible reign. Why bother listening to what people say, just read the fuckin’ minds. I asked Chip to go outside and try to convert some of them before I manually did so. He instantly ran towards the ladder and climbed out the hatch. I could hear him above me with a speakerphone.
They all looked at one another and huddled around the front of the tank, gazing up at Chip. I, however, was no longer paying attention to Chip or any of his audience.
I was focused. I was focused on being focused. I had to find Dessy. I screamed at Chip to get back inside the tank; I had to walk to the ladder and scream up out of the hatch to get his attention. He looked at me quizzically as I returned to my throne in a berserk trance. I screamed at the people in front of the tank to move but the hatch was already shut so I trampled over them all. I told Chip something about them all being possessed by the Devil and he stopped whining. I didn’t really give a fuck about Chip anymore. All I could think about now was Dessy.
I needed to find Dessy. It was as if I was a cripple and someone gave me the ability to walk and then took it away. For some reason everything around me was moving at a slower pace than I was. It vexed me. I ran over all the people trying to infiltrate my mind. I didn’t even bother to look where I was driving because I knew that whatever direction I drove in, it was towards Dessy.
A couple hours passed by before I started thinking about my father. My spine was in agony; my whole body ached. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad and there was something under my skin, amassing. Chip was asleep. I kept telling him to shut up whenever he’d snore but then I’d realize he was asleep. I was constantly out of breath. There was so many emotions I wanted to express except my entire body was rigid; they were trapped inside, along with whatever was beneath my skin.
I hadn’t found Dessy yet, and it felt like I’d been awake longer than I could possibly stay awake. People outside of the tank that I drove past were still trying to infiltrate my mind but all of a sudden I knew that running them over would be wrong. I didn’t know what to think about, I just saw the image of my father laughing heartily at a bar, talking to some bartender.
I stopped the tank and walked towards the ladder, twitching and jerking; I fell while trying to climb up the ladder—it took me a couple tries. When I was on top of the tank I felt like everyone was looking at me except no one was there. I walked, jittering, until I remembered that I’d smoked meth. The realization hit me all at once. I felt like some kid riding a bicycle trying to turn it in the direction opposite that of a broken handlebar. I kept trying to turn but the bike wouldn’t turn and I just peddled in circles.
I couldn’t escape the moon’s condemning eye. I realized I’d been pacing around the tank for hours trying to hop-scotch out of the patches of moonlight when Chip grabbed me by the shoulder. He told me the Devil was inside my head and to follow him. He helped haul me back into the tank. He continued to watch over me until I fell asleep.
I woke up in the same position I’d fallen asleep.
“Aw you’re awake! Been out for so long I thought you might have sold your soul to the Devil,” Chip said, relieved to see that I’d come to.
“Nah, I was just…fighting off the Devil. Inside, my head,” I stuttered. “He’s not there anymore. I got him pretty good,” I added quickly.
“Told ya that stuff works wonders,” Chip grinned, winking at me. There was no point in reflecting on what I’d done, I knew. It made as little sense as the rest of this rabidly demented phantasm.
“Yeah. Really does.”

V
May was the most beautiful retired prostitute in the whole world. May and her dog Dipshit.
We had parked the tank at a sleazy nightclub. The nightclub was deserted; no one was there but us. I can’t begin to fathom why Chip decided to actually bother parking outside of the nightclub instead of just bulldozing it like everything else. He kicked open the doors of the nightclub like it was some crowded saloon. There wasn’t even anything to steal. I shrugged and slummed back to the tank.
Chip and I had really bonded over the last few weeks, as much as a kid with Down’s Syndrome can sneak into a nightclub. Sometimes I actually felt like he empathized with me. Of course he empathized with me. Both of us had committed mass genocide in the name of God.
I stood on top of the tank and looked at the entrance of the nightclub. For some reason I felt like setting the place on fire. I wanted to burn the motherfucker to the ground. Running it over with a tank didn’t do it justice.
“Hey boss,” a woman’s voice chimed behind me. I turned around. A wolfdog barked at me. Then I saw her. I immediately wished I hadn’t seen her, because as soon as I did, I felt like fleeing back into the tank and smoking crystal meth again. She just stood there, rotating her hand from waist to waist waiting for me to stop ogling at her. I remembered I was holding an assault rifle. I must’ve looked pretty intimidating. I hoped.
Thirty minutes later we were all in the tank and Chip was driving, May sitting on the ground next to him, both of them laughing while Dipshit nuzzled me lovingly.
I tried to think about finding Dessy but all I could do was stare at May like a medicated schizophrenic stares at a wall. I wouldn’t bother describing what she wore, or her voice, or her resplendent umber hair. They don’t even have names for the pieces of clothing she wore. Her voice might as well have been that of a siren’s.
I recalled my old girlfriend, Sandy. I couldn’t contact her now; I hadn’t memorized her number and it had been stored on the phone my father disemboweled. I wanted to call Sandy and talk shit about May, but we’d probably run over Sandy before I got in touch with her again, if we hadn’t already.
Only Chip’s God stood a chance against May’s embodied lullaby. He’d talk about God for only God himself knows how long and she’d just sit there, smiling up at him. She might as well have been sucking on a lollipop too.
After awhile I blotted her out of my mind. It was like trying to ignore someone talking behind my back.
At least I had Dipshit.

VI
My obsession with Dessy quickly eclipsed my infatuation with May. Only three days had gone by since we’d met her at the nightclub. Supposedly she’d been a prostitute since she was fifteen, but she didn’t look much older. Right now she was perched on top of the tank, sunbathing. Sometimes I’d help her lug Dipshit on top to keep her company. He’d howl as we drove along, hunting for the elusive shambling blob.
“How are you two suckers doing down there,” she shouted. Her dialect was similar to that of a redneck and yet her accent was Ukrainian, which is where she told us she was from. She said every woman from the Ukraine was beautiful, and I didn’t doubt her. She’d tell us meretricious tales about Vodka, prostitution, and heroin. She told us many tales, but they all revolved around those three elements. Sometimes it was obvious when she was confabulating, but I was so weary of searching for Dessy that I was willing to believe anything.
“Mighty fine!” Chip whooped. May occasionally sunbathed topless. I could always tell when she did because her blouse would, like a feather, float down from the hatch in a radiant golden aura. If I was going to be run over by a tank I’d want that image of her on my mind—legs folded, propped up on one elbow. I wasn’t the only one. Men would stop dead in their tracks to gaze up at the sight of her. Sometimes even women did.
I thought about the laws we had formerly abided by, before Dessy had rifted us all into pandemonium. They seemed so trivial now. I ought to have felt more guilty for killing so many people. I almost even wanted to be punished for it. Someone should be punished for murder, shouldn’t they? It wasn’t my place to say.
May hopped down the hatch, landing on her knees, one hand touching the flooring in a hike position. She smiled at me coyly as Dipshit leapt about around her, barking cheerfully.
“Bitch, shoulda fly,” she said, looking me right in the eye. I didn’t know what she was talking about but I smirked anyway.
“Should stop at a general store soon,” I remarked. “We’re running out of provisions.”
“Aye aye capt’n,” Chip hollered. We’d started sacking homes and apartments for new clothes and hygienics. I liked catching May off-guard while she fretted in front of every mirror. It was like grabbing a dog by the tail and circling around it as it dizzied itself chasing it’s blindside. Chip had a fetish for pirates and always ransacked every house for anything he could emphasize his outfit with. Whenever he found something he’d stand in front of us, akimbo, one knee jutting out. He looked flamboyantly homophobic.
I didn’t know the date but at least a year must’ve passed since I’d first encountered Dessy. I had no idea what was going on aside from our trio’s plundering. The planes, helicopters, and other exotic vehicles that passed by us were no longer just American. That was confirmation enough for me that North America was the chosen battleground; for what exactly, I didn’t know. I don’t think anyone knew who the enemy was. We frequently happened upon people fighting each other. We’d stop the tank in front of them and just observe them, attempting to discern why or what they were fighting over. I don’t think there ever was a reason, it was just what people did when they felt that their survival was threatened.
Except their survival wasn’t really threatened. Dessy was innocuous compared to what we inflicted upon ourselves. We were the ones that had lured it out of the ice-cream store in the first place, and we were the ones that insisted on killing it, despite that we absolutely couldn’t. I was anticipating when I’d see that first mushroom cloud budding on the horizon like a seizure; once you’ve had one, you’re more susceptible to having another. It wouldn’t be long after that until we’d nuked ourselves into submission.
May was sitting up against the hatch-ladder, cradling her knees against her chest. She somehow always represented the emotional atmosphere vicariously through her body language. We’d stocked up on supplies and Dipshit was panting at my feet as I leaned up against the back inner-wall of the tank. Chip and May both let me call the shots, and I now considered them as my crew. They were waiting on me to point them in the right direction. I’d been trying to map our location, but what was left of our country was mostly a wasteland. May would sometimes stand next to me and stare awkwardly at the map, pretending that she knew how to read it.
“Whattya’ think kid,” she’d say, chin at hand, chewing gum and blowing bubbles. Outside the terrain was similar to that of a blasting ground; jagged mountains and torren.
“Let’s just follow the choppers again,” I suggested, out of ideas.
“Alrighty,” Chip replied, demoralized. I could tell even he was losing faith in the choppers. May never objected to what I said. She was always daydreaming or concentrating on something. Those wistful, listless eyes. I had to wave my hand in front of her now and then to get her attention.
So we followed the choppers. There were thousands of them, migrating together, befuddled. They often collided with one another and clashed in furious squalls to the ground, exploding in a tumultuous plume of flames. May would shoot them sometimes with the tank, out of boredom. I watched her once until I realized that she wasn’t even aiming at the choppers, she was just firing. She wasn’t even aiming. I approached her and put my hand on her shoulder and she slammed her head on the dashboard and started laughing hysterically until tears started streaming down her face.
I’d never comforted a crying woman before. I didn’t know how. I thought maybe I should put my arm around her shoulders. I thought that might be going a bit far. I’d never so much as grazed May. I didn’t know what to do. I got on my knees beside her and just, I just, I wanted to wipe her tears away but by accident I leaned a little too close and my nose wiped one away instead. She must’ve mistaken it for my lips because she immediately turned her head and kissed me. It was a short kiss. Afterward she smiled meekly and returned to sobbing.
I put my arm around her.
“We need to find a chopper,” I said, slightly drunk with disbelief.

VII
“Where are we going to find a helicopter?,” May asked, dubious.
“Just shoot one down from up there,” Chip pointed up at the overhead choppers. May laughed. Chip glanced at her, puzzled. “What?”
“We need an alive specimen,” I mumbled, rehashing unfavorable memories.
“You okay boss?” May looked at me, concerned.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied. “Holy—Chip! Stop the tank!”
All of us instantly somersaulted forwards; the tank rose in the back, nearly tipping itself vertically into the air. “Nice one, Chip,” May muttered, askew beneath the dashboard. Chip had nearly cracked the windshield; I rushed towards his body to make sure he wasn’t unconscious. He pretended to be for a few seconds, then opened his eyes and tried to make a pirate’s “Arrrgggh!” but failed. May laughed again. I couldn’t help chuckling.
“So…what was that all about,” May asked, emphasizing the word ‘so’.
“I saw a groundhog,” I said. They both looked at me in utter silence, expecting me to continue.
“You saw…a groundhog,” May confirmed.
“Aye, mate, it’s a charm of good luck,” Chip fashioned, protruding his chest out. May rolled her eyes and smiled. The groundhog, standing on its hind legs, was still alive and negligent, despite our Pyrrhic tumult. I couldn’t bring myself to run over it. As May reassured us, it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and I’d never seen a groundhog before.
The groundhog turned around and began clawing frantically at the windshield. It’s eyes widened with consternation. May glanced at me; she was on all fours, on the dashboard, having attempted to gain it’s attention by poking the windshield behind it. I looked up and saw…something in the sky, attacking the choppers. They exploded around us like a blind man dodging landmines.
“They look like…” May squinted, peeping through the windshield as if it was a telescopic mouse hole. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Geese,” I said, dumbfounded. Chip began giggling, brandishing his scimitar.
“What, are you going to attack them?” May smirked slyly, blushing with her shoulders. She used her blushes as an ensnarement more than a response. I was hoping that she didn’t use love in the same manner, yet, I knew I—the impediment that I shouldn’t love her because she was a part of my ragtag troupe only exacerbated my impassions. I knew such emotions were subsidiary compared to our own survival, and even in the greater scheme of…thinking of it all just—any distraction at all just—amplified my infatuation with her, which was becoming a volatile, unkempt obsession. I doubted whether or not I could prolong my masquerade, whether or not it’d succumb to my ever turbulent emotions.
Goose excrement began to rain down from the skies in bombardments. Chip adeptly maneuvered around the fecal shelling, which would have easily plugged our tank into the splintered, arid badlands. He also weaved around the inferno of plummeting helicopters. May, tranquil with panic, gaped up at the tendrilous, meshing clouds, the blackening sky, the glaring flashes of lightning.
“Head’s up!” Chip would shout, hurling May and I from one side of the tank to the other as he evaded heaps of dung and fireballs. We were about to reach an underpass of crag when the tank lifted off from the ground and ascended into the air. I heard the honking of a geese, but none directly above us. May had already started climbing the ladder to raise the hatch. I heard her gasp, slamming the hatch shut and glancing at me in dread. She rolled her head back against the ladder and panted for a few moments before speaking.
“It’s a vulture.” I looked out of the slanted windshield of the tank until we’d risen above the mountains. The tank careened back and forth as the vulture dangled us. The sound of it’s wings flapping reminded me of children pillow-fighting. Chip crawled towards our arsenal of heavy weapons, stored in a compartment at the tank’s rear.
“What are you going to do, shoot it with a bazooka?!” May exasperated. “It’ll let go of us and we’ll plummet to our doom.”
“She’s right,” I concurred. “There’s nothing we can do.” I sauntered towards the windshield, gazing out over the barren waste below that unfurled as far as I could see. I watched the manic carnage pursue: human versus human, human versus animal, animal versus animal. It was vacuous pandemonium. I stood there, placing Valium after Valium onto my tongue, letting them dissolve, one by one by one. I swished them around in my mouth, chewing them in a trance while smirking at every transcendental, inexplicable abstraction I whorled into a mural of unearthly metaphysics. I began to focus on nothing in particular or directly, expressing the odium and jaundice I repressed; only my glazed eyes betrayed me intrinsically.
“So much for needing a helicopter,” May scoffed. Chip had slung a rocket-launcher over his shoulder, hunched over in dismay, as if he’d lost his plastic pail and spade to the sea. I could picture him mourning over the remains of a sandcastle he’d built, inundated by the tide.
As I continued to scrutinize the entropic maelstrom, my eyes glossing over the sheer tramontane absurdity of monstrously titanic animals that once didn’t even reach my kneecaps, May wrapped her arms around me, gritting her teeth in an attempt to empathize with my despair, or maybe her taut, uneasy carnal affection was seeping through her strident floodgates (reassuring herself that a deluge was feasible)—but not even May’s fey beauty could distract me from the benumbed, surrealistic perversion of reality that I was dreamily engrossed by.
And then I saw it. The vulture screeched, lurching backwards; one of its claws sunk into the chassis of the tank. May had her face burrowed between my furrowed shoulder blades; I felt the heat of her breath as she continued to burrow her face, and within seconds the rest of her, into and against my back.
And there it was, the mushroom in its bloom of youth, erupting into a nuclear sunset. I couldn’t tell how far away it was but it felt right beside me. I watched it sprout into a monolithic cumulus of conflagration. A brain, having thought something flammatory, flared into a blight of epiphany.
“Looks like someone wants to play dominoes,” May pouted.

VIII
The vulture continued to fly in the direction of the atomic harvest. The sky was an eldritch panorama of garnet, crimson, amber, citrus, and other colors and hues they probably don’t even have names for. The three of us watched it in awe. It occurred to me that maybe they’d bombed Dessy as a last resort.
“Fuckin’ A,” May whispered, leaning her head against my shoulder. Chip remained silent, leaning his head against the rocket-launcher propped on his own shoulder. “And we’re headed straight towards it.”
“The radiation alone will kill us,” I said, monotonously, still mesmerized by the magnitude of the blast.
“Maybe the vulture’s tryin’ to save us,” Chip suggested, grinning wickedly. I got the impression that he liked things that go boom.
I heard the denotive groan, resounding from beneath the blast. It was Dessy they’d bombed. Suddenly I saw a man standing on top of a plateau amongst the ravaged mountain range spreading between the blast and the flatland we’d been crossing. He had propped up an easel and was painting the explosion. I pulled out a pair of binoculars and zoomed in on the painting itself; the man was painting an idyllic, pastoral interpretation of the scene before us. The nuclear mushroom was an actual white and dopey mushroom. The sky was ultramarine and the badlands and wastelands beneath us were forest and grassland. I turned to the others: Chip was divagating garrulously to May about the aftermath of nuclear chess; he talked about it as if it was benign and didn’t concern us. He was talking about how if anyone managed to survive the holocaust that small communities would begin to sprout here and there and there and there until there so many that inevitably they’d go to war over territorial, ecclesial, provisions, supremacy, etc. until if the nuclear powder train didn’t exterminate us we would. It occurred to me this was an uncharacteristically savvy concept for Chip to comprehend. May wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. She just leaned against the dashboard and woolgathered, her eyes swirling like the enmeshing clouds above, varnished with languish.
“So if’n we manage to survive we’re ‘oin have to somehow recruit some lackies ‘n bunker s’mwhere secure like one of them bank vaults,” Chip prattled.
I thought about the man painting the picture of the halcyon immolation taking place. Meanwhile the vulture soared higher and higher into the sky; I heard Dessy groan again, disappointed and grieving. It was apparent it wasn’t here to exterminate the human race, and I believe it genuinely felt regret as we continued to exterminate ourselves. I couldn’t explain why Dessy also indulged in exterminating us, though. I could tell by the way it sulked and lackadaisically swatted down fighter jets as if it were doodling during a soporific lecture that it didn’t find pleasure in inciting genocide.
“Where do you predict the next one’s going to,” May gesticulated a flimsy explosion, unable to finish her sentence. She exuded sensuality, though not intentionally; whenever she was hopeless she became nonchalant and cynical. Her vulnerability aroused me. She must’ve noticed the desire in my eyes when I stared into hers while she’d rant, cockily and assertively futile.
“Over there,” Chip pointed next to it. Dipshit was lying down next to me, aghast, his tail tucked between his legs. I pet him, watching his eyes peeping to and fro as if his face was hidden.
“Third time’s a charm,” May chuckled.
“God is ridding the Earth of the sinners,” Chip babbled.
“We’re all sinners,” I droned, my mind writhing in bed with May. My mouth was currently kissing her left breast, my tongue gently circling and licking her areola, softly biting her nipple, lowering down now to the underside, sucking—
“You can’t even confess without sinning these days,” she added, morose. Whenever she said something I always imagined her drinking coffee. Chip shook his head and glanced at us; we’d never understand.
“God is also smiting the spawn of Satan, for we have failed,” Chip persisted, still shaking his head. “We are being punished for our negligence.”
“Someone’s been reading the dictionary lately,” May rolled her eyes, moseying from leaning against one of the walls to the passenger’s seat. The tank’s dangling made me nauseous. I wondered what interest this supersized vulture had in a tank. What, was it going to eat it? Us? “You know maybe the vulture’s saving us,” May mused, stretching her naked, golden leg out and applying skin cream to it. She was wearing a Chanel dress; her face was painted. She’d certainly die beautiful; I’d never seen her so dressed up. She might as well been attending her own funeral had it took place at a fashion show. I hadn’t thought about how we were inevitably going to die. Seeing the nuclear explosion was the first time I hadn’t felt inclined to criticize a pretty sunset.
I resumed ogling at May. I knew this infatuation I had with her was merely chemicals heckling me in my brain. I knew that my individual adoration for her was just another encumbering emotion. I knew the human race, as it was now coming to an end, was insignificant to what humans referred to as “the greater scheme of things.” I didn’t see how believing that there actually was a greater scheme of things was any different than believing in God. I was ruminating out of habit; I wasn’t even listening to May scoff and make sarcastic and ironic comments. I just ogled at her. Ogled at her lithe, sinuous movements, her angelic, sirenic face, her spry and coquettish shoulders of which she expressed her attitude and emotions through; her nubile, jejune, vivacious body. Watching her lissomely ebb was like watching water vampishly tease a parched, desiccated man.
I remembered once when Chip was asleep and May was painting her nails, Chip’s cannibalistic snoring emphasizing our tedium, she soundlessly got up and beckoned me with a cock of her head, silently climbing up the ladder and opening the hatch. I followed her, entranced. As she hopped off the tank I saw that we were parked, concealed by foliage, nearby a town that hadn’t been demolished and plundered. There were sentinels with firearms and heavy weaponry standing guard at every entrance and throughout the town. As we explored the town, May fickly holding my hand, I noticed they had tanks as well. I figured there must’ve been a military compound nearby and this was Noah’s arc.
May, waltzing around whomever we passed; the street we were strolling down was surprisingly bustling with people despite how late it was. She raced ahead, dragging me by the hand, dazed by the feverish heat pervading my body from touching her. She finally came to a jarring stop and elegantly strut towards the entrance of a seedy, rowdy tavern; YOU ARE NOW ENTERING KANSAS was scrawled on the door. When May pranced in most of the men were momentarily stunned; every woman in the room gave her sidelong glances of scorn. She smiled radiantly and plopped herself down on one of the bar stools.
“So boss, let’s play a game,” she purred, having already seduced the bartender. “A bet; let’s make a bet. Shall we?” I knew that I didn’t have a say in the matter so I didn’t bother protesting. “I bet that…I can out-drink you.” I smirked; very few people could out-drink me. I drank for years when I lived with my parents; my father didn’t care, my mother was in denial, and I had nothing better to do. I would sit in the den where my father would when he wasn’t asleep and watch cartoons while drinking his vodka. I knew I was too old to be watching cartoons. When my father woke up he’d prop himself up on the couch in his stained underwear and we’d drink together. Sometimes he’d watch cartoons with me, not bothering to change the channel. Every day it was almost as if he was trying to drink himself sober. He acted more intoxicated sober than he did intoxicated. He taught me to store vodka in water bottles if I ever needed to drink in public, which was particularly useful when I went to school, as I had no friends.
“Hey boss, you there?” May was eyeing me curiously; I had been so enthralled reminiscing that I’d gone into trance. I nodded at May and she ordered two bottles of Finlandia. “It’s a good thing you only drink vodka,” she said, slyly beaming at me. “What ethnicity are you, anyway.” She skid both bottles in front of me to open. I had the feeling she could herself but wanted to emphasize my manhood. I couldn’t imagine her ever having been a prostitute; I tried to picture her being sexually objectified by some john. I raised the bottle to my lips, wistful, and drank nearly half of it. May started clapping. “By golly mister! Starting off with a stunt like that. I’ll be damned, boss, you ain’t the lightweight you look,” she chimed. She spoke as if she knew she’d already won, but I was barely buzzed.
“Your turn,” I said, anticipating her riposte. She strangled her bottle’s neck and winked at me, kicking her leg into the air and onto the bar counter, tilting back in her chair and leisurely brought the bottle to her lips, letting them rest on it’s mouth for a moment, as if she were about to blow on it. There was a fleeting look of nostalgic remorse on her face, and then all at once she began to guzzle from the bottle mercilessly. I couldn’t, along with the rest of the tavern, believe my eyes. She was going to quaff the whole bottle. Tears began to stream down from her eyes before she slammed the bottle down on the counter, which was a sip away from being empty. She closed her eyes and tossed her head back; she was wearing a felt fedora with a pom-pom on top of it. When she opened her eyes she reassumed her uniquely charismatic smirk and raised one of her eyebrows at me.
“You going to finish that, boss?” she taunted me playfully. I smiled and shook my head, scooting what was left of my bottle to her. I got up from the stool and paid for the liquor, sighing forlornly as I hunched towards the exit. May was gleefully bewitching the tavern’s abject, male clientele. Disconsolate, I sulked outside onto the sidewalk. Being around May only riled my grueling desolation. I psychoanalyzed the cracks in the pavement, waiting for May to prance out of the tavern, haloed by a corona of effervescence, prepossessing wit, reckless chivalry, and audaciousness.
“What’s the matter sport,” she asked, leaning up against a brick wall next to the tavern. She’d probably been there long enough to witness me in a state of wretched vulnerability. I didn’t want her to see me like this.
“Nothing, just planning out our next move,” I lied, too humiliated to turn around and face her. I could hear her trace her gums with her tongue.
“Don’t lie to me, boss. I can read the suicide note you’re writing in that head of yours, the one congested with martyrdom. Right now you’re scouring for the pen to write that note, scavenging desperately for it amongst all those littered thoughts, amongst those cluttered rationalizations and pastiche of emotions. Sometimes maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of something shimmering in that junkyard: an epiphany, an excuse to live, and etcetera. You, you, you! You could spend your entire life up there, scrounging for that glint of genius.” May pushed herself off the wall she’d been leaning against, approaching me compassionately. She softly placed her hands on my waist.
Across the street a besotted couple were devouring each other, both of them voraciously famished for whatever reason inspired their anthropophagite love. I had the inexplicable inclination to kill them. They’d die soon anyway, residing in this town. It wouldn’t be long before it was demolished by the rampant paranoia, carnage, and moonstruck bedlam. I knew I could never love May more than on a platonic level. I glanced at her, my obsessive thoughts salivating over murdering the insatiable, hungering couple across the street. I didn’t want her to witness the act. She wouldn’t understand. I couldn’t even justify my craving to kill them. They ironically made love as if they had to express it in every sexual and bodily means possible before their time together ran out.
I ordered May to go back into the tavern; as she walked inside, she glanced back at me with pleading concern, her eyes begging me to reconsider my decision, aware that I was about to do something insensate and aberrant.
Once she was inside I steadily advanced towards the couple, screwing the silencer onto my pistol. In their rash frenzy of ardor they failed to notice as I silently stepped within arm’s length of them. As the woman eagerly collapsed onto her knees, desperately hassling with unbuckling the man’s belt, I pressed the nuzzle of the gun against the back of her head and executed her. The man, too traumatized to apprehend such absurdity and verisimilitude, knelt down on his own knees and continued to kiss the toppled corpse of the woman. I watched him grovel in denial, hysterically intimate while deviantly fondling her corpse, making love to her lifeless body. I listened to the melancholy, anticlimactic sound of flesh thumping and clobbering against flesh, his unrequited moans of pleasure. I waited until he orgasmed to shoot him.
I stared at their bodies; they were lying on top of each other, and still, technically, even though they were both dead, having sex. I couldn’t justify my actions, though I perversely felt like I was saving them. One word couldn’t express the chaotic intricacy of emotional and chemical farragoes that concocted one fleeting sensation which could be designated as a subdivision of love. I wondered what subdivision of love these two would have been classified as sharing. I thought that love should have more metaphysical sinew. I thought it should have transcendent significance that substantiated our existence.
Vigilant, I slouched back to the tavern where I saw May sitting by herself on one of the bar stools, tracing her finger around the rim of a glass. I nudged her and we walked towards the back entrance of the tavern. She put her arm around mine and leaned against me, resting her head my shoulder. She was unusually mellow and affectionate, sashaying beside me.
“What were you trying to prove?” she murmured, obviously having spied on my compulsive and nihilistic act of malice.
“The Bermuda love triangle,” I muttered, unscrewing the silencer from my pistol. May giggled and squeezed my arm, terrified of my impassive virulence. As we ambled towards the tank in silence, she neurotically babbled about prostitution while I thought about how feckless morality and ethics had become. They deterred any chance of survival. Paranoia had stymied any possibility of social or diplomatic reformation. May was still babbling about prostitution, some hitman she once fell servilely in love with, but I was choking on the miasmic fumes of human corpses, of which I’d become quite familiar with. Barely able to open my eyes, I spotted a dissipated barn in front of us.
I approached the barn, trying to resist the handicapping odor of what I could only assume as a slaughterhouse. May, incapacitated by the miasma, had fled nearly out of sight; I squinted and saw her on all fours, vomiting. When I reached the barn’s entrance, I drew my pistol out and shot the rusted lock off. The door creaked forebodingly as I eased it open. What I then saw was so grisly, abominable, and livid that I gawped faintly, inert with revulsion, unable to conceive the macabre atrocity.
It was indeed a slaughterhouse. It was also, however, a sadistic artist’s studio. I started cracking up at the obscenity of someone who sculpted shapeless effigies out of human entrails, flesh, limbs, heads and somehow managed to mutilate them until they were interlaced and tightly knotted together. The deranged, bizarre shapelessness of the effigies is what made them so vile and heinously intolerable to imagine the hideous process he must’ve condemned his victims to; skinning them, butchering them, grinding them, deflating them, starving them. It appeared as if he’d disemboweled them while they were still alive.
I heard May shriek shrilly from outside; I’d forgotten that I’d left her by herself. I reached for my pistol but to my dismay, the clip was empty and I was out of ammo. May continued to scream and shriek like a banshee; the panic in her trembling pitch sent shivers up my spine.
When I swung open the rickety doors of the barn, she was already gone.

IX
I searched for May fanatically, overwrought with guilt, clandestinely strafing from tree to tree, obfuscated by the umbrage. The nebulous dusk settled on the grounds of this forest was murkily thick and stifling. It was too tenebrous to risk anything but camouflage behind the warped and grotesque trees. The forest was watching me. I had been lured into a dour, sinuous maze. I swore at myself for being so brash as to parade into such a conspicuous trap.
Whoever the feral, depraved mortician was I knew I didn’t have very long before he eviscerated May into post-modern art. I began darting haphazardly, zigzagging around trees, covering as much ground as I could. I imagined May being autopsied alive and winced. I knew that my relationship with her was impermanent, but I preposterously hankered to preserve it for as long as possible. Even though I simply was whoever people wanted me to be to manipulate, humor, placate, and exploit them, I oddly felt…obligated to safeguard her. She had reluctantly tendered to using me as a refuge when she, ashamed of her clingy neediness for affection and chaste intimacy, became forlorn with grief.
Eventually I sprinted out of the forest into a cramped field teeming with slaughterhouses. The grass rose to my waist. Hanging from the trees around the perimeter of the field were flayed and lacerated bodies slung from meat-hooks, swaying in the wind. Even though I’d become inured to the smell of festering, mutilated carcasses, I couldn’t help but feel the least bit nauseous thinking about how they were the dregs of disgorged art supplies. It brought to mind used tubes of paint and kitty-cornered, stringent brushes. I was in pursuit of what I presumed to be the canvases and easels; the virginal ones, at least. I supposed that Van Gogh had a tied up batch of untouched ones lined up against the walls of one of these slaughterhouses.
Crouching and vigilant, I furtively lurked in the thick of the hirsute grass, peering into each slaughterhouse noiselessly. Each one was chocked with the failed attempts at some kind of masterpiece the artist was machinating. I never understood the concept of art; the convolutional fermentation of expression and interpretation. The laxity of what can be constituted as art includes life itself, the mere narration of the amaranthine portrait of one’s irrational incentive to live. Obtaining what you want in life is an art itself; however, art does not explicate life: it only portrays it, and what the artist means to portray is delusively bridled by the interpretation of it’s critique and evaluation by those who are portraits of art themselves. The only true artist is the cockeyed charlatan who puppeteers and cajoles meaning to those who, spellbound, rehearse their alleged role in life.
Finally I heard the formidable, haggard groans from one of the slaughterhouses. I stealthily nudged the door open and happened upon a row of unused canvases, squirming, gaunt, vermiculated by muscular, fibered ropes, hebetudinously muffling through duct-tape. To my dismay May wasn’t among them, so I left them there. I examined the rest of the slaughterhouses nearby only to find more unused canvases. Pistol at hand, albeit unloaded, I fled back into the forest, resuming my scatterbrained search for May. I had the uncanny suspicion I was being hunted, and as my suspicion continued to itch in my mind I became almost certain that May wasn’t the one in danger, but that I was.
I hurtled past flora, roots, and shrubbery, trying to keep vigilant in every direction, paranoia heightening my senses, amplifying the atmosphere and inflicting me with casuistry. The density of the spectral film that slithered throughout the forest increased dramatically; I could only see about three feet in front of me. The film, however, no longer felt natural; it was more akin to a gas. I began to doze off as my running gradually diminished to a floundering trot, then seconds later I collapsed, unconscious.
I woke up in the stomach of a clockwork dungeon; I couldn’t tell if I was above or below ground as there were no windows. As my vision came back into focus I saw May sitting on a wooden chair against the wall adjacent to mine. She was in the nude but…painted or doused in some kind of black substance. Her eyelids were closed. Her hair was soaked with the substance and viscous, pinned back, adhering to her shoulders and neck. She was bound to the chair by heavyset cables. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that her erogenous zones were too coated to distinguish.
On the other hand, I was bound by no restraints, nor drenched in what I now suspected to be oil.
“It’s not oil,” I heard a solacing, weary man’s voice mutter, must’ve having noticed that I’d regained consciousness. I was startled by the voice, but more so by the fatigued despondency of it. I saw the man’s back at the front of the room, hunched over an autopsy table. “Don’t worry. It’s just aesthetic lamination. She’s not dead, yet.” I fumbled for words as I tried to comprehend how composed and doleful this man was having committed such gruesome atrocities. I figured we weren’t much different, as I remained composed despite my own atrocious actions. It was a relation I would have preferred not to share with a grisly…I couldn’t even label him as a psychopath; he simply had a higher tolerance for gore than I did.
“So what are your intentions? What are you trying to create?” I couldn’t help but to sympathize with the man’s slightly obese, piteous stature. There was a sense of nostalgia and wistfulness about him that was poignantly grating. I had expected some mad scientist, not a docile, melancholy old man. “Are you a scientist? An artist?”
“When I succeed in my endeavors, I call it science. When I fail, I call it art.” The man continued to austerely nitpick and mince whatever was on the autopsy table, removing internal organs and whatever was inutile to his machination. I observed that he was meticulously precise and callous, extracting the extraneous innards and preserving the applicable apparatus.
“Why did you…douse her with that black substance?” I asked, piteously intrigued.
“Decorative purposes. You get sick of exenterating the limited pigments of flesh. Sometimes…you just need an alteration, a change, something that motivates you despite your consistent failures.” The man said all of this without bothering to physically react to my questions, as if he’d heard them all before. I don’t think there could have been much that would deter him from his obsessive paperwork—the necessary, bromidic probing for viable material; something he could work with.
“Is she sedated?”
“Thorazine,” he mumbled, once again as if he’d been asked this question countlessly. “You love her,” he surmised, his voice rising slightly though still unenthused.
“It’s—”
“Complicated. I know. It always is,” he interrupted. “But…you doubt the concept of love, don’t you. You care about her out of habit, or, because you feel like you’re supposed to. When you don’t.”
“What is it you’re trying to create, design, conceive?” I asked, circumventing his presumptions.
“Anything, anything at all. A superior being, a recreation of myself that’ll last beyond my death, resurrection, anything, anything, but all I contrive is…art. Art. Ornamentation.” He paused from his work finally, straightening his back and sighing. “You see, now that our race is in a state of chaos and anathematization I finally have the efficacy to experiment on human specimens. At the precipice of human eradication the possibilities are ultimately feasible. The irony of it all is…only when we are on the brink of extermination are such possibilities available to manifest.” The man chuckles, disenchanted, reassuming his paperwork.
“So why have you culled us. And why am I not restrained?”
“I know that you pose no threat to me. You have no desire to harm me. And even if you did, your…love, or what not, would die in that chair, as you have no idea how to release her from it.” The man turns around; he’s balding, what’s left of his hair is brilliant white, as is his prominent beard. His eyes are sunken; though his face bares few wrinkles it connotes his sullen jaundice. He is humbly plump, and cogently innocuous. “The toxins seeping into her body from the solvents, additives, and vehicles in the paint alone would kill her.”
“This has nothing to do with her, then. She’s merely another vessel that might have what you find applicable inside her.” I noticed for the first time that the entire clockwork dungeon, postmortem laboratory, whatever you want to call it (as the whole world was quickly becoming a necropolis), was alit by candles. There was no electricity, no light-bulbs, nothing. When night fell, the world was not only in the dark as to what was taking place, but it was also literally in the dark. Except lanterns, candles, flame. We might as well have just started bombing areas to illuminate them.
“Correct.” The post-modern coroner replaced his bloodstained gloves with another clean pair. I stared at the expired pair of gloves; they left bloody handprints on the floor. I imagined this man washing the dishes. I had precocious characteristics but I never learned the basics: how to be self-sufficient, for starters. Never learned how to wash the dishes, I smiled passively. I remember my mother futilely attempting to inculcate doing the laundry to me but it went right over my head. As an autodidact, I ignored most of the familial chores that avail you later in life.
“So then what’s the plan, doc. Why am I to give birth to this brainchild of yours? What’s the master-plan, doc.” As I said this I became saturated by giddy despair and began laughing vapidly like someone on narcotics in a room fraught with condescending sobriety. “You know just as well as I do that there’s no angel on top of this Christmas tree.”
“It’s peculiar, isn’t it? How alike we are?” The man hesitated for a moment, dropping one of his instruments; it clanged shrewdly on the floor, grinning as it impishly silenced the room. “But no no no, I am not in need of a partner. You would only…balk my—”
“Aesthetics?” I began to giggle. “Doc, you can try and try again but you can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again, especially if you’re the one who’s sticking your foot out. I must say, though, you’d make quite the scene if you introduced your miscarriages to the MoMA.” At this he became rigid, stiffly placing his instruments onto his pallet. Before he could circle around I had bolted from where I was on the floor leaning against the wall and had my arms around his neck in a deadlock. As he tried to resist I knocked the body he’d been dissecting off the autopsy table. I swiftly strapped him down to it, smothering his mouth with cotton balls until I could find a roll of duct-tape. “Alright, doc, I’m sort of rusty at the whole disemboweling process; in fact, I’ve never done it before, but as they say,” I pressed what I presumed to be the instrument that incised that Y-shape incision against his chest, “Art is hard.”
Once he had bled to death I rushed towards May with one of the saws I used to cut through his ribcage and fastidiously cut through the restraints she’d been bound to the wooden chair by. I scooped up her painted black body and rushed her to the tub the man must’ve used to scrub clean his canvases before gashing them open. There was already a body in the tub when I lied May down next to it; I scooped that one up, vomiting at the sight of how the water had corroded the corpse. After cleaning out the tub, I placed May down it it, fidgeting as I scrubbed the paint off of her. I felt contrite and sheepish as it washed off. I had never wanted to see her naked. Not like this. It was something I’d always wanted to leave to my imagination—
“Travis, you alright? You’re shivering. What’s wrong?” May put my jacket over my shoulders as I realized I’d been reminiscing, and that we were still in a tank in mid-air, carried by an oversized vulture, heading straight in the direction of a nuclear explosion. Straight in the direction of Dessy.