Killer Joe

A Story by Lynda Bloom

Fiction

“See the tiny whippersnapper tug tartly on the infected infants tongue”, chirped flabby Patty as Susy Que sang sultry songs in ‘memberance of her silk lined Salvadorian sedan.

“Dribble”, muttered Pissna, who once wobbled on tiptoes to Pugnian ballets within and without the other members of her ‘42 Black Flag festering troop. Studded linings of silver then laced her thighs, her patron feminist haberdasher sewed lewdly in almost a too fast and frantic sexual pace. Rubina once garnisheed men’s clothes but absconded exclusively to reichish female fetishware as she ‘found herself by living a life of erotic bondage and externally enforced Nazi discipline. Pissna cradled a small ball of fur that gorged on everything in reach and some things that weren’t. Phhhhhhhhtt! Came a strange unsettling sound from one of its ends, foul malodorous odoriferous compounds wafted secretly amongst life forms far and near.

”What?” mouthfully mentioned Malcolm, chewing eggplant lasagna, spittle drooling down his chin, globs of garlic spread sordidly on top his meal, “It’s a*s ‘s odor’s awfully ripe now that its insides figured out what its food’s composed of, it eats as though Bartok were directing its dietary script.”

“Pip pip, cheerio, old fart”, bode Bugzy baldly bravely.

A dull thuddish knock emoted from outside the small nummulite cabin door. “Where for art though sweet Malcolm, its dear brother Ferd, has’t though lost all regard for such a sibling as me?”

“Hush!” cried Pissna, “babbler, don’t disturb us in here, has tricky Dickey’s immoral protégée been whispering in your over zealous ear? IBM was bad enough, jewing profits off Nazi dataware, but then your Bush baby blew up buildings to start a war for corporate greed.”

Susy Que began to stutter as Flabby Patty began to swear.

Bored entered Ferd, Malcolm’s somewhat sibling, who held no regard for others’ needs.

“Plumping up again, eh?” Bugzy baldly queued.

“Pip-pip cherry-oh to you Bugzy, old boy.” sneered Ferd, “what is that miasmatic bouquet?”

“Old fart”, muttered Bugzy baldly softly.

“See the tiny whippersnapper”, sniffed flabby Patty.

“Circular entropy?” mumbled Ferd, who’d been dropping eves outside the door.

“What’s a whippersnapper?” whinnied Pissna.

* * * * *

Billy Soarels sat sleepily upon a stump somewhere near the Steinhart aquarium. Up Kennedy Drive road a curious sole on an extra large front -wheeled bike holding a voluminous plastic flower in one hand while honking a big black -balled horn with the other. The rider of the extra large front -wheeled bike appeared to have a red rubber ball for a nose and huge white round-toed shoes on both feet.

‘Honk honk!’ emoted the sole as it passed staring at Billy, giving him a wink with one eye, in its bye and bye. A sleek black limousine quickly drove near slightly grazing the sole’s side making the bike’s extra large front wheel wiggle wildly back and forth. Billy could swear he saw the faint image of a skull nodding to the curious sole as the sole’s head turned unnaturally backwards to great it in return. Soarels shook himself in disbelief trying to assure his mind this illusion was not real and could not happen here in the City by the Bay.

Slimy Sally sat by the waterfront impatient for flabby Patty, Malcolm and flabbergasted Ferd to appear. Straddling a cement block she began to swear. From a dock building behind her, an old drunken bum stumbled far too near and sat-fell right down next to slimy Sally’s side. “My name’s Bill,” the old bum slurred, drunk-breathing in slimy Sally’s face “and I’m an alcoholic”.

Billy Soarels, by that time having conveniently recovered from his experience near the Steinhart aquarium, seeing slimy Sally’s precarious position, dashed over to help by pouncing on Bill and dragging his drunken a*s out into the ocean where a large shark sat patiently waiting for a meal.

“Ahoy there,” shouted Malcolm, holding a book in one hand while using a finger as a page mark, “seems you’ve just been saved from a sticky predicament.” He, flabbergasted Ferd and flabby Patty slowly entered the dock’s arena.

”Not so bad,” slurred slimy Sally as she tipped a bottle inside a bag to her lips to take a swig. Flabby Patty, swearing rudely, pulled Sally’s bottle from her hands and tilted it upwards to guzzle the rest.

“You shouldn’t be doing that in public,” softly spoke flabbergasted Ferd, worriedly, adjusting his coat buttons, his fingertips encased in elbow length white gloves he’d just slipped on both arms, “you might get us in trouble.”

The shark had finally finished eating its meal leaving a red rubber ball and one huge white round -toed shoe in the water’s wake.

“Dippidee do da,” sang Bugzy baldly badly as he skipped in circles randomly, “Adumbrative alethiology, see the tiny whippersnapper sing songs of blue. Pull the limbs off Dilby Dapper, what’s he got to loose?”

“Madman,” mused Malcolm, lost in one of the later 21st century Pynchon works. Opening his book mumbling, he read, ““There was debate in the aftermath about what happened to the Mayor,”” lolled Malcolm’s mind in Tom Watian song phrase, ““Fled dead, not right in the head, the theories proliferated in his absence. His face appeared on bills posted all over the wood fences around vacant lots, the rear ends of streetcars, its all-too-familiar bone structure shining with the unforgiving simplicity of a skull. ‘Remain indoors’, warned bulletins posted on the carbonized walls over his signature. ‘This night you will not be welcome in my streets, whether there be too many of you or too few’.””

* * * * *

“Malcolm, why are we here? The City’s filthy and there’s too many homeless.”

“Ah yes, the City, I’m getting tired of it too. We could hop a bus. Let’s find some place to eat.” Spitting on a golden fire hydrant somewhere near Ferd’s foot, he began off tune,

“The Sutter Boys were raw and mean,

their days were pranks and glee.

They laughed and drank and sang lewd songs

and loved old s**t Sally... 

But John the elder Sutter Boy,

 he loved the equine lot... 

his fetish was for blow up dolls,

 four legs, huge girth, large c**k... 

he rode his horse into the woods

 and bent beneath its trough,

 to pull its tool from ‘tween its legs

and rub it stiff from soft... 

but the horse that day stood none of it

and reared with hooves aloft,

 to piss in Johns red bearded face...

and drown his sordid thoughts.”

Chuckling, as Ferd walked Chaplin style, the pseudo brothers shuffled off to a bus stop a block or two down the road. While waiting, Malcolm read aloud, “”You see how many whips and things there are here. Our horses are very, very naughty.” She handed him the whip. “I imagine this one must sting just terribly.” Before he knew it, she had turned, and lifted the skirt of her riding habit, and presented herself, gazing back over her shoulder with what you’d have to call a mischievous expectancy.””

“What the hell are you reading?”

“Pynchon, I’m lost in it, I might think I know where I am and what’s going on but things keep changing all the time. It’s like being tossed in a earthquake with his writing style; his words have way too many meandering meanings and my mind shivers in addictive discontent and periods of random glee.”

“Can’t you stop?”

“Its fascinating, the paragraphs are divine, you land in one place, then, in an instant, you are somewhere else. It reminds me of dropping acid.”

The brothers boarded the bus and sat together in the black back. Malcolm, read in silence for a bit then abruptly quoted Pynchon out of nowhere, “”But no Jewish homeland will ever end hatred of the unpropertied, which is a given element of the suburban imperative. The hatred gets transferred to some new target.””

“You know, this transfer of hatred to a new target thing keeps happening here in the states, they’ve been doing it at least since world war two.”

“Huh?”

“Greed runs this country, the one percent put puppet presidents in office and create hatred for other peoples and countries to illegally invade them for profit by making them the temporary ‘badguys’ then they steel their mineral rights and every thing else so they can make lots of money. The brainwashed citizens of this country believe all the crap ‘cuz the television stations are owned by the corporations the one percent own and their news is absent, slanted and/ or fiction. Now they can even enter our homes without a warrant and they illegally tap our phones and track our online activity and e-mail. So much for the Bill of Rights.”

“Shh, someone might hear you.”

“You’re just like all the rest, your so involved in your own little world the biggest problem going on in our country is either oblivious to you or you just don’t care; its never addressed by the president either because he would be assassinated, just like Kennedy was for trying to break up the CIA.”

“Fool, be quiet, I’m trying to read.”

* * * * *

The brothers sat beneath a window in a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Malcolm greasefully gorged down his meal.

“You know someone found a fried mouse once,” inserted flabbergasted Ferd.

Malcolm mouthfully munched on.

“Thought it looked funny ‘cuz of the tail though.”

Pausing to wipe his lips, “a Joycean fricassee?”

“Chicken on a string they called it.”

“Aw, that’s just an old wives tale.”

“I heard they found a ring once too,” Ferd baited with glee, “ I bet they wondered what happened to the finger though.”

Malcolm belched, looking up with discerned distaste, “What’s this plan you and you’re band of misfits have been cooking up?”

“A free universal power for everybody,” came the reply in a simple sort of way.

“Where did you hatch up a futile idea like that?”

“We’re bringing life to it, all of us, we’re going to take back the wealth the one percent is sucking from the rest of the world like greedy leaches.”

“And how do you intend to do that, Robin Hood?” chuckled Malcolm, munching on a leg of foul.

“Explosives, the ballot and the bullet, what ever it takes.”

“We’ll rename you flabbergasted Ferd X” teased Malcolm. Looking serious suddenly, Malcolm changed the subject, “I really would like to meet Pynchon sometime though.”

“Thomas? That’s impossible, I don’t think his mother even knows where he lives.”

“A recluse, eh,” lip-licked Malcolm, “and how do you know about Pynchon? He’s seventy-nine or eighty, depending on when you read this line, I doubt his mother’s around. Hey, maybe we should write a paragraph and pretend its his, just for kicks.”

“Why? That’s a waste of time. And who do you think would read it?”

“We’ll post it online under his name and see what kind of response we get, you know, entropy that makes pseudo sense,

Vector Freeze came to the edge of a timidly steep cliff near the east half of the Amazon jungle, having hiked to the end of an excessively long trail composed of a thick black dirt left over from the age of the dinosaurs, one of which being the pterodactyl, which flew like an aircraft in humanly unseen clear blue skies unique to that era, where rain fell frequently for millions of years, conjured up from storms, the likes off which have never occurred since, creating bizarre weather conditions, changing ice age to ice age due to extreme volcanic action, prevalent in that age, that produced hot spots and low ebbs of heat and cold forcing energy to collide sideways constantly enacting friction, morphing eventually into lighting bolts, splitting trees upon trees, big trees, somewhat related to Stanford Pines found exclusively in one area of the Southern Nevada Sierras, where, conveniently, Tim Sample had been camping for six weeks with his brother Calvin the Raccoon Boy, a cousin of Flem Snopes, a man who frequently sucked on lizard eggs in which he believed lived microscopic organisms that created a proteinaceous substance significantly more potent and of better quality than those of Burmese Chickens which grew in only one location, a small town in Burma by the name of Penilbag, though, unfortunately and secretly this egg had been genetically modified by a professor, Dr. Finkelstein, a biochemical engineer, temporarily located near the North Pole, an Eskimo, it seems, living ah naturel, but actually and unknowingly, a descendant of a New England Langolier, who once or twice appeared in several Stephen King novels, for many years, last seen adrift at sea somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“What are you talking about, that’s nonsense, it sounds more like you, and you’re not even Jewish, who’s Vector Freeze?”

“Jewish? Who’s Jewish? Freeze should be arriving at my place around four, Dilly Dapper’s going to be in 1988 pretty soon, won’t he?” Malcolm slurped, sucking up the rest of his high fructose soda.

“You know about that? Then why the routine about my ‘band of misfits’?”

“I’m not quite as dumb as you think,” mumbled Malcolm licking his fork and sucking loudly on sticky fingers.

* * * * *

Dewalla Deballa slipped tightly through the door erupting into Cool Kirk’s jazz and blues club.

“What’s happening, girl,” smoke-breathed Rodchester eying Dewalla’s entrance to the scene.

Dewalla’s face grinned lip end to lip end.

“You’re looking good,” suggesting more, he was eying Dewalla’s jiggling tits and amygdaliform eyes as she slowly shuffled across da’ floor.

“You got some more?”

“Some more?” inquired the lizard man peeping his head ‘round the neck of his bass.

“Yeah,” whispered Dewalla, “you know, I sorta live at Dupoce and Church, why don’ cha come by with some more sometime soon, I’ll pay ya’ll real well.”

“Girl, you got it baby, any time you want it, I’ll be there...”

“She ain’t yours to play with,” mildly but madly retorted Rodchester, “you don’t make no entrance you’re not s' pose to make. B’sides, I got the stuff, its in her now and you know she’s gonna need some more.”

Abruptly, a loud racket happened at the door. Gunshots fired and they all hit the floor, except for Dewalla, who just stood there with a happy dumb look on her face, her eyes all glazed and glossy green.

Big John then entered the scene, a .37 in one hand and a shotgun in the other. “Where’s Kathleen?” he ghostly asked. The shotgun hadn't been fired, the .37 was smoking hot, in John’s left pocket sat seven .38 caliber hollow points, his revolver near empty too. His rig, the 309, sat softly out in the phantom black and blue.

“She left for Curly Cue’s,” stuttered Dewalla Deballa, “her and Mini da’ Moocha’ just called to let me know where they’d be. I don’ know if she’s still there but she kind ‘a wanted a fix so she might be balled out in the back room. Please don’t hurt her she can’t help the way she is.

Sexy Sadie, as if on cue, leg-walked down the stairs, tilting on spiked heels, wearing a sheer lace blouse and an obscene short skirt. She eyed the tall built black sax player, the drummer and the bass, “Hey Kirk, play us a tune, nice and slow now, so we all can get in the mood.”

“You got it girl, ‘eh cats, a one-a a two-a,” and the band began to play ‘Killer Joe’.

* * * * *

Ms. Deballa and the lizard man, having left Cool Kirks quickly, two-stepped around a dark dirty brick corner like sex partners in heat. A panhandler sat beneath them, back slouched against the wall passed out or drunkenly asleep at the wheel. When everything cooled down the two had left the jazz club, nobody’d been hurt and Big John had left in seek of Kathleen in his rig, the phantom 309.

“Let’s stop at Pete’s for a cup of joe,” slyly injected the lizard man with a gleam in his eye, “then we’ll get us a bus to Berkeley, and score you some stuff.”

“I need to see Suzy Que and Bugzy baldly badly,” insisted Dewalla, hands shaking as she tried to hide them from the bass player’s eyes.

“Where do they live?”

“Berkeley, near Shattuck, I think.”

The couple reached a bus stop, caught a bus, sat in back and played with each other’s genitalia anonymously through their cloths. Breathing heavily, they reaching Bugzy baldly and Suzy Que’s place. Dewalla knocked on their log-like cabin door. Dark curtains parted slightly and Pissna’s pale face peered out to see who had disturbed the secrecy inside. Cracking open the door Pissna fended, “I don’t quite feel myself today.”

“You look pale girl,” Dewalla replied, “don’t you feel well?”

“Its odd, I can’t explain it,” Pissna said, as if to herself.

“Ma'am, I need to speak with Suzy Que and Bugzy baldy, are they here?”

“I think so, come in and have a seat, they should be with you fairly soon. I’ve got to lay down for a while ‘cuz I feel weak.”

Bugzy baldly parted stringed beads acting as a kitchen door and asked seriously, “Can I help you two with something?”

“Oh hi,” grinned Dewalla Deballa, “word has it on the street that a group of you are going back in time and it has something to do with the 99%, is that true?”

Bugzy’s eyes shifted towards Pissna as he called Suzy Que, “What are you talking about?”

The lizard man eyed Dewalla strangely as she replied, “I know what I am talking about, my sources are good. If you are going back in time I demand you take us with you.”

“Now hold on a second,” began the lizard man, ”don’t include me in your conversation here.”

“I’m afraid, young lady,” started Bugzy, “that the group which you are referring to is indisposed at this time, and if they were going back in time, they would already have been there by now.”

* * * * *

Tiny Tim sat on an itsy bitsy pink chair strumming a ukulele, hair long, stringy dark and tangled as he sang his new hit, ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’, to a packed house at the Fillmore auditorium. Up in the balcony’s corner at the back of the room stood a clown with a red ball for a nose looking down at the audience below.

A Pynchonian crew of twenty-seven or more had traveled sideways in time through a multi-dimensional quadratic ice cube that seemed to simulate Pynchon's airship traveling through the earth tool but stepped through time instead. Most gave claim to Dr. Finkelstein for inventing this cube, but Erik Weisz had actually discovered time stepping. Rumor had it Weisz was trying to escape a sealed, rope bound, black chest he was intentionally trapped inside of underwater, just before he almost lost his life, because he couldn’t undo a knot that tied his hands together behind his back. By the time his appendix ruptured Erik hadn’t told a sole this secret. It leaked out somehow, however, and in some way unknown landed on this page.

“Where’s Vector Freeze?” Bugzy baldly bravely asked.

“I believe he’s still with Malcolm in 2016,” Pissna replied.

“Aren’t I there too?” Bugzy questioned himself.

“Wow, just think of it, we’re here on Fillmore in ‘68 listening to Tiny Tim, “slurred Flabby Patty, “though I wish we’d hit the Hendrix, Joplin, Gabor Szabo gig. Imagine; we’re here now while others are there in 2016. That means that all time periods exist together at the same time at all times infinitely. Jeeze, what a reality concept.”

“That’s drunk thinking for you. That gig was this year too, well, in 1968 too, were you alive then Flabby Patty?” enquired Pissna. “You know The Band cut an album with Tiny Tim before they became The Band.”

“Yep,” answered Flabby Patty, “I’m that old. I thought the Band was Dylan’s?”

“Not so,” Pissna pissed-offidly muttered, felling insulted, “The Band and Dylan played together at times and The Band played a few songs Dylan wrote, but outside of that The Band simply was and is The Band.”

“Ok, geese, its not that important anyway,” Flabby Patty replied, “you know my dad was a in a band playing professionally somewhere around this time and he used to spin yarns about those days when lots of bands were in the San Francisco scene like Moby Grape, Country Joe and the Fish, Kaleidoscope, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Sons of Champlin and..”

“When, now or then in the future where we live?” Bugzy baldly asked.

“Everywhere and always,” answered Flabby Patty, “its all the same!”

“Wow, I guess that means you’re here somewhere else on earth now too at a younger age.” Bugzy baldly finally figured out, “and you must still be in 2016 too, you can’t just disappear.”

“Two time periods happening at once within all the infinite time periods going on together at once, I don’t think that makes much difference,” slurred Flabby Patty.

“How the heck do we get back?” asked flabbergasted Ferd.

“Uh,” thought Flabby Patty.

“Oh no,” thought Pissna.

“Okay,” slimy Sally interrupted,” lets find the snipers and get back to the business at hand.” She looked over the list of assassins that were active during the Viet Nam war, picked the top five and typed their names into her iPad to hopefully track where they might be.

* * * * *

Patty sat in the middle of a great big bouncy sofa in the back end of her parent’s front room reading a book as an assignment in her 7th grade English class. The novel was a bit hard to under- stand but Patty loved the part about the kids becoming a special group of friends during their experience with a magical or perhaps evil clown that haunted the town of Derry. She’d read that grown ups couldn't see the clown, and that made the clown seem very special to her.

Patty fantasized about being one of the girls in that group because it had been hard for her to make friends at the junior high school she’d just transferred to. A group of boys there made fun of her and labeled her flabby Patty because she always looked so soft and out of shape. Her ears were big too and she kind of looked like Dumbo thought she couldn’t fly. Patty often wished the clown would come to her school and make the boys disappear down a drain like one did in Derry so she wouldn't be afraid of them anymore.

“Bed time,” chirped Patty’s mother from a bright yellow kitchen, a dining room away.

Patty loved going to bed and waiting until her parents were asleep, it was then that the clown would come out from under her bed and take her with it to lots of different places and times with all sorts of new people to meet. Patty loved to pretend she was one of the group in Derry but secretly she was a special friend of the clown’s because when she thought of Itshe got a funny feeling between her legs. The clown was very special. Ittouched her at times and she loved the feel of its tight rubber gloves on her young supple body and especially down between her soft virgin thighs.

* * * * *

Erik Weisz had been studying chaos theory, specific gravity and entropy to create new ideas for his upcoming magic acts. He had also read books by Nikolai Gogol and James Joyce to tickle his mind about his acts as he read. Once Erik had finished all of both author’s works his mind flared in a literary brainstorm, “why not create a book of my own by taking The Noseand Finnegans Wakeand rewriting them together as one immense novel, intermixing words and phrases of each to create a literary mass of unstable entropic chaos.”

It took fifteen years, but his task was complete. Once finished, Erik began to reread his work to edit it and see just where his unstable chaotic entropy led. Coming to page one thousand six hundred thirty three an odd paragraph jumped out at him and imparted a feeling of raw fear. Weisz slowly reread this section of his work hoping to identify what had made him feel so uneasy. As if in a dream, a clown’s face began to emerge from the page, It’sjaws gaping wide enough to swallow him whole. To keep from being engulfed, Erik reached for something solid to brace himself with but found his hand clutching the clown’s red rubber ball of a nose instead. His fingers began to slip, the rubber nose twisted as though it were a dial and Weisz fell endlessly, descending deeply until Houdini feared he would drown in the clown’s sick stench somewhere deep inside. Peering upwards Erik stared at the monster’s razor sharp teeth gleaming like freshly honed steel, jaws spread wide, then, in a instant, all went black.

Eventually Weisz awoke, groggy, to find himself swallowed into a different periods of space -time. “Wow!” the magician whispered, “I must be dreaming, nothing here seems real.” Searching for an answer to where he might be, Houdini realized he had fallen into layers of space -time, transparent, as if stacked side by side. Looking around Weisz found these layers to appear infinite, not only linear but convex, covert, inside out, backwards and everything else. Standing, he walked to different periods of space -time and found, to his amazement, he could straddle two of them at once.

“This seems impossible,” Houdini mumbled to himself, “I’m not a singularity, void of time and space, on the verge of becoming a big bang thus creating a new universe / reality. And I’m definitely not governed by the laws of quantum gravity, how could I be? I don’t even know what any of this means, where’d these thoughts come from, anyway?”

Fully awake, Houdini became anxious as he heard his wife’s voice. She sounded frantic; her words seemed so faint, coming from somewhere other than there. “Is she outside or underneath,” thought Erik to himself, and then Weisz realized he had no idea of what dimensions here were. Hearing a noise, Erik froze in terror as he viewed vacant images of ‘clowns’ in each of the layers of variable space -time. The figures seemed hidden as though each weren’t supposed to be there, but they greedily watched everything that happened everywhere at all times.

“”Pygmies at the Club stared at him with unspoken loathing. Chinese in the street cursed him, and, knowing only a few words, he still thought he could recognize “kill,” “mother,” and “f**k.” Word was about that Alden Vormance was getting up a greeting party to go north and recover a meteorite. There would be no gold, no diamonds, no women, no dream-inducing smoke, no coo- lies or blacks, though possibly the odd Eskimo. And the purity, the geometry, the cold.””

Weisz, with no idea he was being read Pynchon aloud by what seemed to be infinite hissing ‘voices’ asked,“What are you?”

“Ruggles reflections, amongst the entropy of infinite realities.”

Houdini conceived ‘clowns’ were mouthing these words, “Are you inferring entropy is God?”

“No, gravity is God Erik, entropy’s its antithesis. I quoted Pynchon for he’s entropy’s avatar, its watcher and, at times, its keeper. I’ll give you a tip, so you think you’re a magician Houdini, watch out for entropic leakage.”

The voice/sounds were so loud Houdini covered his ears. Itspoke in almost a hiss. Somewhere he heard the sound of a rattle, perhaps a snake’s, “who’s Pynchon? What’s entropic leakage?”

“Entropic leakage, Erik? Surely you’ve heard the term, ‘S**t Happens’?”

* * * * *

Billy Soarels sat in Malcolm’s living room watching a documentary on Netflix. By the time the program had ended the narrator had drawn the conclusion that the first president Bush had spearheaded the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy.

The front door opened and Malcolm and flabbergasted Ferd slowly waltzed into the room.

“What ‘cha watching Billy?” asked Malcolm with a sarcastic gleam in his eyes.

“Malcolm, this isn’t funny, we’re all puppets of the corporate gestapo.”

“Many don’t even know it,” Ferd slipped in.

“Oh come on you guys, its a free country,” griped Malcolm.

“Its in danger of becoming the opposite.”

“Supper’s almost ready,” cried Wifie from someplace unseen. Her voice reminded Billy of Edith Bunker in the TV series All in the Family.

“I’ve already eaten wifie”, Malcolm yelled. ‘Wifie’ was how Malcolm defined his wife; the little woman, sort of speak.

A severe sudden jolt shook the couple’s home. All was silent; each of them felt as if they were in the eye of something vast. Loud knocks sounded abruptly from the exterior of Malcolm’s door.

Peering out a side window Soarels watched dirt mounds form in Malcom’s front yard. “Wholly s**t,” exclaimed Billy, ”they just disappeared!”

“What?”

“Did you hear somebody knocking?” whispered Ferd.

“Something smells fishy here,” Malcolm moved toward the door. He squealed and quickly moved away as a crowd of over thirty individuals crowded in his living room. “Jesus, what the hell is this? You just scared the s**t out of me, literally, Christ, now I’ve got to go to the head.”

“Who are all of you?” asked Wifie walking from the kitchen drying her hands with a towel. Vector Freeze munched a stick of celery walking close by her side.

* * * * *

Henfart Sow sat like a blob on a stool eating Jack in the Crack ‘food’ with both hands. The fat on her face slid down past her chest making it seem to onlookers as though no neck held anything up. Sow’s a*s sagged so far over the seat it appeared she was sitting with a stick up her a*s.

Phillip Fink, behind the counter of the Crack, watched Sow inhale her meal. He knew, by the way she ate, she would be asking for at least two more helpings, maybe even three.

Unexpectedly Sow slipped-plopped off the stool, waddled into the bathroom, turned and sat /fell backwards onto a somewhat broken toilet seat. Her a*s hung over the seat so far it nearly reached the floor.

Content, Henfart reached into her bag of a purse, the insides of which wreaked with an stench so foul that it could only have come from some rotting thing deep down inside, and pulled a thick soiled book out. Opening Finnnegans’s Wake she turned to a stained page folded over and, farting, began to read, “”-Arra irrara hirrara man, weren’t they arriving in clandestinies for the Imbandiment of Ad Regias Agni Dapes, fogabawlers and panhiberskers, after the crack and the lean years, scalpjaggers and houthhunters, like the messicals of the great god, a scarlet trainful.””

Henfart paused to scratch her head then thought, “Flambéed homne grits with green eggs in ears of man to tighter bellies we squander plink for the valley girls which eat green ergs or ends in great latitudes; Eire land is just stilts with us playfully in ruts and mitigated pride unjust for they think they be whitener than us cuz wears’ just bit darker than theso unjust and fried to hang; or lynch us cuz a dat der slit I jinni jab-jab jig balder bladderblades, or jingle jaunty blazers boilers and can’t ya just dell willy falknuts was in it too knee diapers wading fishing and cutting charset’s wife’s n*****s; suckers went in with not stopping Para- grafters to see whets she might doo

Butt appeared ahead; his diaper doggies’ fleas blinking at her winders slingers. Huisnt brothers and their swag sent steams and hops across the mid-so ocean horns might below. Scaling greenbelts, sodden with shaggy scars, fig thing on the battlements, mints gringo spots of erroneous iridous; driblet wrote bi mire dib sect fetters, if gibe gore al, whose bells toils, who blizzards roles, whose did it ditto n blink theirs eyes in strops of rage. RAGE, RAGE; bull rage thru bullhorn, blown loud in clever tommy dyllinus tumorous clouds of glee.”

Slowly a shady image appeared in the mirror eventually catching a fatted corner of Sow’s eye. As Henfart moved her head fat toward the filthy sink sitting atop a pedestal she envisioned the faint image of a clown in the reflection above starring intently her way.

Sow spewed gas once more; loud foul eruptions shook and stank the Crack. Thick darkish odor drove everyone gasping desperately towards the door.

Billy Bob, riding a bicycle hugging V shaped handlebars on the sidewalk, a droid plugged into both ears, passed the Crack to gag on Sow’s noxious gases falling sideways out onto the street.

Honk! Honk! Beeped the horn of Bill’s car. Rodchester, sitting in the back seat, was scared shitless and mumbled to himself, “Mr. Kurtz, he dead.”

“Get out of the way you fool, are you drunk or something!” Gates gagged, stepping on the brakes as his senses became sodden by Sow’s sick gastric stench. Bill thought loudly to himself, “Jobs! I know you did this; it’s a plot or something to steal my new Ubuntu hybrid kernel for Microsoft Windows 12.6. You’ve come back from the grave to haunt me.”

Billy Bob, half recovered from the foul blow beset upon him by Henfart’s fumes, uprooted his bike and, fuming at Gates, pounded on the hood of his car.

“Hey, kid, don’t do that! Don’t you know who I am? I’m the richest man in the world, I can make your life a living hell if I choose!”

Billy pulled a can of florescent orange spay paint from his pack and endowed Gate’s car’s hood with the word ‘PIG’. He then hopped on his bike and quickly rode off to never be seen again by either Gates or Jobs.

If there were a camera it would have panned to Rodchester who sat looking, as if in an aside, saying to the audience in general that wasn’t, “It was a whole lot easier working for Mr. Benny”.

Whispering softly, as they stepped through a field of poppies amidst a bright sunny day in Kansas, Suzy Que, Dilly Dapper and Bugzy baldly were befuddled while wondering what had placed them in this fairy-tale setting during their intentional trip to 1988.

An image of a clown came briefly to Bugzy’s mind as if he had fallen asleep on his feet and had a quick dream. Conscious now he thought to himself it must have come from an image he remembered subconsciously at a circus he’d been to as a child.

Suzy brought her iPad mini awake and found she could not find their location. Laughing, she thought to herself, “they didn’t have the internet in this phase of time.”

After walking a mile or two the couplet found a lean-to pitched against a tree at the edge of the poppy field. Reaching the tent like structure Bugzy crept around to its front and saw a man dressed in clothes that looked as though they had come from a costume store.

A startled Houdini looked at Bugzy.

“Hi, we’re here to find some people to help us.”

“What?” asked the figure in the antique store costume, “has anyone seen my wife?”

“Who?”

“Do you know when we are?” Houdini stared at poppies, his world upside down.

“1988,” whispered Suzy Que coming to Bugzy’s side, though it’s really 2016.

“1988, 2016? How will I ever find 1918?”

“1918?” questioned Suzy.

“My name is Erik, I’m Hungarian but live in America.”

“Ah, Bugzy began again, “we’re from California but our time is 2016.”

“2016,” Houdini repeated, “that’s possible, to walk that far in the future?”

“This is all very odd,” thought Suzy to herself, “how could you possibly be from 1918?”

“Its kind of an unbelievable story, I penned this book and was conducting my first edit when something unreal occurred. Please believe me, I know it sounds as though I’m touched but this clown appeared,” pausing, Houdini wiped his brow, “this clown appeared, out of a page I wrote.”

Bugzy balked which startled Suzy, “a clown, are you sure?”

Dreaming, Derry Darby slept deeply, his mind-drift afloat unrupt inter sparsed with sort ofs bright yellow, blue, white, green and brown some growls, chirps, snorts and howls, movements black and grey unseen, seemed-thought somehow to scare though not deadly. Dreaming Derry dreamed but not quite be sure the movement was-had been there leaving uncomfort and be wary feel, but now elsewhere with car and building else, where is she, Karen, who? someone else feel like her? oh, lost my what? where is, did leave back where in car, there but when waken remember its not mine, where to pee and thirsty too, but where did she who? go, why did leave, must get in car to go? home? for know not why I late at/for college /assignment, home, where is the place I need? Wake up must pee,

Awake now, bald black Darby had to pee, and shower and dry and fix breakfast before he leaves for work today, oh, its weekend, oh boy! Chores later now lie on sofa and do what ever. Where’s Lilly? She went out? Check her room, still asleep then phone rings, pull out of pocket, “Malcolm?”

“Black hole time, deep web time, Tor time, awaken, awake? Ferd want’s assassins, it would be much quicker if he used the dark web than time stepping over and over again but he doesn’t think I know much about this nor does he know of the deep web.”

“Malcolm, your NSA, what are you worried about?”

“Shh, not so loud. Time manipulation in the dark web is a lot harder to track that the time stepping they are doing now, so if they learn of this it would be very bad for our country. Certain monetary interests concluded that the corporate powers that be (U.S. government) develop an internal defense and tracking system to keep corporate growth intact by way of fear tactics. Secret unspoken of contacts developed a ‘CLOWN’ anti revolution defense system using an idea they expanded on from a King novel to keep not only the people of this planet in-line, but genius deviants and revolutionaries (terrorists) too. Its creation involved utilizing various sources in the deep web not fully understood which makes it volatile so this must be handled soly by experts. So, if someone in flabbergasted Ferd’s ‘troop’ should contact you for any reason DO NOT give them an ounce of information regarding me OR the deep web, capish? This is of extreme importance to this country, understand that, after all, we are Americans and this is the country of the free. We depend on corporate interests and we must defend them from internal risks such as these.”

“Ah, come on Malcolm, you know I developed a discrete internal defense system using arms and snipers from the deep web for the U.S. government, you guys and the C.I.A. I’ve also set up a number of sources of very large income for the government by way of the silk road before it was determined that it was time to shut it down. I understand why you do what you do and just what you and the deep web mean to the government.”

“Ok Darby, I just want this hush-hush, remember that. There is micro-gossip that a S.O.W. interior defense system is in the makes also. Its sole purpose is to dissipate dissent inside the U.S. if terrorist stir up unrest amongst the civilians. Pretend the ‘I’ you know doesn’t exist to those not on the trustlist. I’ll handle these terrorists myself with aid of Henfart once S.O.W. is operable. Oh, and make sure the President’s office does not get a whiff of this either.

“Oh god of god oh god oh god, I know this isn’t right, this isn’t right, its just not working the way it should and its taking way too long and going around and around and around and around and around and around and around.”

“Here, do a few more lines, it will keep you going so you can get done all the many things that you need to do and then you can do them again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again,” prompted Vector Freeze.

“Ok, ok, ok, ok, I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve figured it out, I’ve figured it out, Pynchon, he’s just created the epitome of genius, a living breathing person that is entropy and experiences entropy, caught in it as a rat in a trap, between Hawala and the deep web remailer Markov chain, caught in the movie likeThe Cube, actually living within entropy itself.”

“Who?”

“Maxine! (A Roseanne remake I think.) He’s figured it out! His next book is the accumulation of entropy squared. Originally one person kept loosing limbs of his body to form an entropic collection of inanimate parts on a life form, now, there is a person actually living in entropy, caught betwixt it.” Saline Strattles, deep within her erratic eleven identity multi-personality disorder sat before a television and a computer watching various episodes of Seinfeld, type casting herself as each of the dysfunctional personalities which within the various reruns of the television series acted randomly separating themselves from the other characters present wherever they were at whatever times they found themselves in. Strattles fed on the randomness that some semi serious genius presented in each episode and identified with each and every iota of nothingness presented in each scene. And she loved being Elaine.

“What’ch watchin’ wifie?” Malcolm seemingly accused as he sidled nearer walking in the door with a sly grin.

“Who? (Remaking herself and adjusting quickly to wifie) Oh, just another episode of Seinfeld.” 