Satan Burger (5 page)

It all started when she was eleven and going through puberty.  All her friends were boys, of course, and would talk about a thing called
masturbation
.  (Richard Stein, by the way, said that masturbation is God’s gift to ugly people who have trouble finding any other way of obtaining sexual gratification, like myself.)  They told her it’s all about fantasizing intercourse with the opposite sex.  But she always felt she
was
the opposite sex, so she couldn’t fantasize about boys without feeling
gay
, and she thought of girls as stupid and disgusting, so both sexes were ruled out.  The only person she could think of that she loved was Jesus – let me remind you she didn’t know the difference between Jesus-love and sex-love back then - so the savior, Jesus Christ, became her first masturbation fantasy. 

Nowadays Nan masturbates to paintings of him all the time.

Around Christmas, you can see a strange glimmer in her eyes, like the spirit of Christmas is generating all kinds of nerve-tinglings on her insides, forcing her squeeze-excited.  Even the nativity scenes get her sweat glands drip-drip-dripping.

Gin says that sometimes she’ll let out a BIG 
Ho!  Ho!  Ho!
when she climaxes on him.  "I think I like that," he says.  Christmas is a happy time for Gin too.

The strangest part of Nan’s Jesus-sex fantasies is that she gets the most aroused by visualizing Jesus going to the bathroom.  She likes to picture him on a toilet, or crouching down in the bushes, or peeing over a balcony onto a crowd of his followers.  Sometimes she imagines dropping a log on Jesus while he is being crucified (Richard Stein says that when you drop a log of sexual excrement onto your partner it is called a
Hot Carl
or sometimes a
Dirty Sanchez
, if you were wondering) or even squatting over his face to pee in his mouth. 

Richard Stein said that the whole process of digestion and egestion of waste material is considered sexually stimulating to many people, even though it’s socially unacceptable to admit.  However,
very
few people dare to watch that kind of thing and even less dare to participate in the act.

Nowhere does Stein mention anything about Jesus Christ being actively involved in sexual performances with excrement or being dominated on his crucifix.  It’s not a very common topic for discussion, I am guessing.

I go to the inside of an autocar:

Stag – a shirtless guy with spiked hair and a tattoo of his own face on his face – is indulging in his favorite pastime: drunk driving.  The road is empty and Gin in the passenger seat changing through radio stations and nervous-sweating over it, as if it’s dangerous to leave one on for over a second.

"Watch this," Stag says, a grumpy-goof voice.

He lets go of the wheel and begins to slam a beer, with the autocar leaking into the left lanes.  But before the autocar goes over any curbs, he finishes the beer, crushes it into his skull, slam-seizes the wheel, and straightens the autocar back out.

"Pretty Mr. T, eh?" he says.

Gin’s buzz is wearing him down to sarcasm.  "Yeah, great."

"I can do it every time.  Never fails."

"Impressive." 

"How many beers are left?" Stag asks the back seat.

"One," says the back seat.

"Who drank ‘em all?"

The back seat burps.  "Sorry."

"You asshole.  I paid for twelve of those, not five."

"Sorry," says the back seat.

"Give me the last one."  Stag claws his hand over his shoulder.

The back seat reaches the last beer over Stag’s neck, but the autocar hits a bump and the beer rolls out the window.

"DAMN IT," Stag cries.

"Sorry."  The back seat is too drunk to care.

The brakes slam.  "I’m still gonna drink it."  And he jumps out of the car to look for his crippled beer.  Instead of a beer, Stag finds a dead jogger.

"Whoa . . . Fuck yeah!" he exclaims to the dead person, but the dead person isn’t listening. 

Gin gets out of the autocar in response to the
whoa . . . fuck yeah
, asking, "What is it?"

"A dead guy."

"Did you kill him?"

"Maybe."  Stag daze-smiles, kind of proud.  "What should we do with it?"

Gin’s gut kinks up. "There’s gotta be all sorts of Mr. T stuff we can do with a dead guy."

They pause to think about
all sorts of stuff
.

"We can give it to my uncle," Gin says.  "He’s a taxidermist.  We can get him stuffed and mounted on the front of our stage at the warehouse."

Another pause.

"What I think is . . . we should strap it to the roof of my car and drive around town so we can pick up goth chicks."

"Yeah," Gin says.  "Dead bodies turn them on."

The warehouse is asleep now.  It was very tired and told all of our guests to leave immediately.  Normally, a crowd of tough guy skinheads would not give in to the threats of a warehouse, but
our
particular warehouse can be rather intimidating when it’s cranky.

Now I am alone in my own room, watching a Grim Reaper poster jingle-dancing up the walls, striking cello strings like a drum.  Grim Reaper and other butt rock bands are very popular these days.  Back when they were touring you’d get beaten for listening to them.  But now they are funny and everyone loves them. 

In other words: BUTT ROCK = PUNK.

My room is nothing more than a janitor’s closet that can only hold my body and a mattress.  A whole bed couldn’t fit inside, so I just put the mattress on the ground.  I can’t sleep on an entire bed anyway.  If I sleep too far away from the ground, I get sucked out of my body and hover in the air above it.  And believe me, it’s pretty hard to fall asleep when you’re floating outside of your body.

Richard Stein said that sleep is the best part of your life.  Many people take sleep for granted and don’t think to appreciate its beauty, but Richard Stein said his sleep was quite beautiful.  If you do not find satisfaction in something as simple as sleep, you might never find satisfaction in something as BIG as life.  Being without satisfaction makes you
bitter
, so it is best to obtain it wherever you can.

Also:  a man who enjoys sleep never puts a gun to his head, he just sleeps his problems away.  This is because death and sleep are very similar states, due to their tranquil conflict-less characteristics.  So the suicidal man can trick his brain into thinking he is dead, when he is actually just asleep.  However, it can be a very dangerous thing to trick your brain into thinking sleep and death are so related, because if a person is very tired and can’t fall asleep at night, he might pick up a gun and shoot his skull across the room.  And I’m sure he’d feel pretty stupid the next morning, when he finds out that he traded his brain to the wall for a good night of sleep.

At this time, Christian is entering my room.  He doesn’t emerge fully, because of his claustrophobia, standing by the doorway instead.  I can see Vodka far behind him, on the toilet in a stare, caressing his bagpipes and the porcelain. 

"Do you want to go to Satan Burger now?" he asks.

I look up at Grim Reaper joy-tumbling, Christian splashing. Pieces of fish meat falling from the ceiling.  "Yeah.  How we gonna get there?"

"I didn’t think that far."  Then Christian yells to Mort, who is putting all of the equipment away and getting no help from anybody, as usual, "Mortician, did you get your bus fixed yet?"

"No," Mort says within working, "I probably won’t be able to until next week or next month."

Mort’s bus hasn’t been working all year.  He gets it fixed every month, but it only works for a couple of days before it needs fixing again.  It is always polluting the back of the warehouse.  If it was a normal autocar I wouldn’t care, but this is a bus.  Not a VW Bus, I mean a full-sized school bus, laced with graffiti and bullet holes.

I point to Vodka, whispering, "What about him?"

Christian turns to Vodka.  "Vod, got a car?"

Vod is in a trance.

"Vodka!"

He snaps hard out and twitches at Christian.

"Do you have a car?"

Vod glimmers down to his bagpipes.  "I do."  Then up to Christian again.  "It is only the most luscious and vigorous piece of machinery UPON THIS INSIGNIFICANT PLANET."      

"Well, can you drive us to Satan Burger?"

Silence.

Vodka continues a trance at Christian until his face turns dirty, the toilet seat sweats round pools into his buttocks.

He coldly answers, "Certainly."

Christian claps his hands together.  "Great.  Let’s go then," heading toward his next bottle of liquor, and his polyester jacket.

"NOT YET," Vodka howls at him.  "There are rules in my car that must not be taken lightly.  If you break any one of them you’ll be THROWN OUT INTO THE STREET AND BANNED FROM MY CAR FOREVER."

Vodka’s autocar turns out to be an AMC Gremlin, not the usual style of car to be remarked as
luscious
or
vigorous
, but some people seem to like them.  It is sparkling black with silver lightning bolts on the doors and large metal wings attached to the back end.  Vodka approaches the front and cuddles to it, warming the cold metal.

"It is more powerful than life itself, isn’t it?" he says.

A smile cracks Christian’s lips, not concerning Vodka though.  He has remembered the most essential thing to remember upon entering a vehicle. 

He yells, "SHOTGUN," and we all grunt.

Mort argues, "Paper-rock-scissors, ye bastard."

Christian argues, "I already called it."

Vodka barges in, "NONE OF YOU SIT IN FRONT.  I get both front seats in my car."

"We can’t all fit in the back seat," Mort whines.

"How dreadful," Vod responds.

We pile into the Gremlin, with my corpse squished in the bitch seat.  Vod starts up the car and takes a few essence-breaths into his lungs, humming with the engine purrs.

Vodka is one of those people who loves everything that is bizarre and disturbing and dreary and dead.  Richard Stein called these people
Black People
, because they always wear black clothes and sometimes listen to black metal.  He said that these people become black from hating everything.

They only like things that nobody else likes, and that is because they hate everyone else.  Once their favorite underground band becomes popular, they won’t like it anymore.  Not because it isn’t good anymore, but because they can’t stand to see normal people listening to their favorite band.  That is why many of them turn to black metal, because that style of music can only be found in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

He also went on to say that the leader of the black metal scene was a small troll who could only speak in ancient druidic languages.

After Vod finishes his car-meditation, he blesses the steering wheel.  Then we leave for Satan Burger.

Scene 5

Silence Hurts the EyeSilence Hurts the EyeSilence Hurts the EyeSilence Hurts the Eye

Stag and Gin and a corpse strapped to the roof, all drunk-slobbering and bobble-stupid.  Up a sideling sludge hill, where crab-thorn trees and scorpion flies live - no female baboons up here, but neither man nor corpse is afraid.  Stag’s motto is: "Too drunk to fear."

The moon is a white construction paper cutout, the sky and night stars colored with crayon-chalks, which made God’s fingers all dust-gritty from the smudging and trying to color between the lines.  When God fails to color properly and misses a tiny space, we call it a
ghost
. 

Beginning colorists, such as kindergarten students, always finish a picture with many ghosts unaccounted for, but the mistakes are pardoned because they are only five-year-olds and aren’t even old enough to buy beer.

Sometimes five-year-olds will go back to their creation and fill the ghosts in with color, and the picture will be fine.  But when God creates ghosts while coloring the world, it’s not so easy to correct them.  They have to be filled in with the souls of people who have recently died.  These poor souls are condemned to Earth forever.  Instead of going to Heaven, they have to stay here and cover up God’s mistakes.

Neither Stag nor Gin believe in Heaven.  They believe in a place called
Punk Land
, which is kind of like an amusement park but people can punch each other bloody and none of the security guards seem to care.  It is supposed to be a gladful place to live, like Heaven, but only for punks.

Since the punk style of person would not be happy (nor welcome) in Heaven – being surrounded by white colors and angels and God and very
nice
people – he is sent to Punk Land, where he can be punk and talk about punk and listen to nothing but punk rock all day long in a totally anarchist society. 

Stag is still very drunk.  He is swerving widely about the road, singing an Irish drinking song called
All For Mr. Grog
.

I once knew a man named Mr. Grog.  He lived next to my ex-parents and would buy me alcohol when I was underage.  He always told me that the world is just a boring place made for rich conservative old men and there’s no reason to try to succeed in it unless you’re one of them.  Best to just get drunk, try to be happy, and screw lots of married women.

Last year, old Mr. Grog was arrested for selling heroin to an twelve-year-old.  At that point, he didn’t have any emotions left in him at all.  When the judge asked for his plea, all he did was stare at his wall and shrug.

The autocar starts faster-faster as Stag’s foot goes heavy with intoxicated weight on the gas pedal.  Faster-faster.  Soon it is
wind
-fast, and since the wind sees the autocar as competition, they begin a race.  Autocar vs. the wind, getting me confused to which is which.  And they both go faster-faster-faster . . . Stag thinking he can actually beat the wind.

Stag has drunken reflexes and doesn’t make the sharp turn at the bottom of the sideling sludge hill.  Going full speed on a grass field, out of command, drunk-fast. 

He’s also blinded by a sharp orange light similar to a lightning flare, coming out of nowhere and electrocuting the horizon.  Bright like an atomic explosion, but then gone in an instant.

Then I see the difference between the wind and an autocar.  The wind can hit a tree, shift around it, and then keep going, but an autocar becomes crumpled to a wreck.  And that’s what happens here.

Both of the characters are tossed from the car, through the unforgiving windshield.  Stag’s face attempts oral sex with the tree’s trunk, but since the tree is not attracted to Stag it breaks his skull indoors, and Gin’s neck cracks on a large branch as he flies face-leading into the grass field, with dirt and a bug tasting into his mouth.

And as the wind passes, there is
silence
.

However, neither of the two drunkards actually died, because right before the autocar made contact with the tree, something supernatural happened.  There was that blinding flash, the sharp orange light similar to a lightning flare.

           Richard Stein said that sometimes a god will give his people a message, or sign, to alert them of something he has done wrong.  The sign can be a lightning flare, frogs raining from the sky, a long extinct animal found in a public place, or the ocean turning to fire.  If one of these four things happen, it is safe to say that God is trying to communicate.

What God was trying to tell the world’s people with this lightning flare is that Heaven is full and there’s no room for any more souls, so He’s made the decision to discontinue the performance of
dying
to save His home from overpopulation. 

Meaning:  death doesn’t exist and everyone is immortal, including Stag and Gin who would’ve been dead if this had been yesterday or even minutes prior.

Now Gin’s face is in the dirt, tasting some soil and a bug who is tasting him back.  His heart is no longer beating; he thinks he is dead.  He can’t feel any of the physical pain that he should be feeling.  His thoughts spark-flicker through his eyes and he can
feel
them moving about inside of there.  It seems the only body part that still has nerves is his left eye.  Extremely sensitive, the eye even hurts once his thoughts become nervous, stabbing through his brain to the eye as they panic.

And the only thing he can hear is the
silence
.  Growing so loudly, it hurts.

My vision shifts into Vodka’s autocar:

I find my corpse alone, sleeping there.  All of the car doors are open, letting the lifeless kind of air get a hold of my shivering nerves, tottering breaths.

Hesitating the cold, I don’t enter my body right soon.  I just stare at it (me) and explore the flesh.  It is without color or muscle, just bags of grease-goo hanging from the nerves.  My facial skin is tight to the bone; I am sick-ugly, healthless.  The God’s Eyes go closer into me, to within an inch of my face.

My eyelids jerk.

It is strange how nobody ever sees their own eyelids jerk.  People go through their whole lives living with jerking eyelids but never get a chance to really see them jerking.  It’s only common for someone else to see your eyelids do this.  Even when looking in the mirror, there’s no way, because eyelids only jerk when they are closed, and not a single person out there can see with closed eyelids.  Well, I am seeing this performance now, but I don’t actually consider myself a
single person out there,
so I don’t count.

It’s interesting to see your own eyelids jerk, I tell you, because they are jerking in response to certain thoughts – thoughts that bring out emotions powerful enough to twitch-jerk the lids.  And usually when you watch this happen to yourself, the emotional thought hits you twice as hard and makes your entire being twitch-jerk.  But this time my entire being did
not
jerk, which means I’m becoming alien to my emotional thoughts.  I think this is a bad thing.

I look again and find that my complete body is hardly familiar to me, almost a stranger.  So many years of neglect that I’ve turned sour-soggy and ill without realizing. I can’t bear to go back inside of myself anymore.  And the worst part is – I know I have to in order to survive.

This will never change.

After a lot of convincing, I go inside my body - back to the rolling world.  I touch my stranger flesh and become sick.  Best not to think about it; I’m always too aware of my defects.  Better to ignore . . . Then I get a sick spell from a giant whirlpool-waver on the autocar’s eel-skin interior, so I change to the outside.

I crack my knees to the pavement, cough-cough, choke my vision away . . .  My voice croaks . . . a short groan . . . Then I relax.  Relaxation is the key.  The spell sifts to a mild swirl, all pacific inside.

I am at a gas station, the gas hose still inside of the gas tank, glunking-glunking it full.  The emergency lights are going
blink
, questioning their purpose.  And their purpose, of course, is to make you ask it questions.

"Where did everyone go?" I ask the emergency lights.

The lights say, "Blink-blink, blink-blink."

Then I notice the whole gas station is empty. The lights are all gone.  Only the bright flickers above the gas pumps and the lights that say "Please pay inside" brighten my walk, but it is dark inside the store,
nobody
there, and all the surrounding buildings are dark and empty too.  The street lights also seem to be burned out.  It’s like the whole town is saying, "Sorry, we’re out of service."

Coldly
silent
.

The silence is muscular.  It is a force that has eaten away all forms of sound, excluding my breath, my footsteps, and the blinkers.  Like Mr. Death is creeping, stalking me.  All signs of life have been taken away as well, stored inside of Earth’s closet beneath the surface, and the dusty
emptiness
that is usually in Earth’s closet is here with me now, along with plenty of closet skeletons.

Silence is the first stage of slipping into oblivion, objects just stop making sounds for you.  Here are the other four stages:  nothing will be smelled or tasted, nothing will be felt, nothing will be seen, and nothing will be thought.

Richard Stein said that oblivion is the worst possible thing that can happen to an individual, worse than going to hell.  He said there is little difference between reincarnation and oblivion because in both cases you lose all your memories, and it’s better to go into damnation and keep those memories than have them forgotten permanently.

He also goes on to say that Alzheimer’s is the worst possible disease you can get since it erases all of your memories, which do not return even after you die.  People that go into oblivion are usually the people that have a bad case of Alzheimer’s.  So, word of advice: if you know you’re going to have this disease in the future, it’s a good idea to kill yourself now, before it comes.  Sure you’ll go to hell for committing self-murder, but it’s better than
nothing
.

I feel the oblivion all around me.  Maybe it has taken my friends and all of the other people in the town to it’s home - to
nowhere
.  And it has forgotten all about me.  Lucky me, all alone in an empty world with no sound, with a spin-wheeling picture.

It’s so cold now.  There’s no wind but it’s still freezing, even for New Canada.  My teeth start chattering.  It scares me at first.  I’m not used to having my teeth chatter in me.  Maybe they are trying to communicate, to tell me there is something wrong with this place and to leave immediately.

"CHATTER, CHATTER, CHATTER," my teeth scream at me.  But I don’t seem to leave.

I begin to look for my friends.

All the nearby streets are closets.  I do not take them.  The buildings behind the gas station look more admitting: a slight light shining from that direction.  Once I go, I see all but one of the windows are darkened, still silent.  An alley of vacant crabwebs and pallid scraps of plastic dolls.

The only lit building looks like this:

A wood shack structure with one window and one door.  It has no sound coming out of it, but there is a dull light.  The structure blends in with all the alley garbage.  It is moist from rain, malodorous, stodgy.  There is a sign that comments,
Humphrey’s Pub
, looks to be made from the aluminum of beer cans and black house paint.

I enter to a small room made for no more than ten sitting or eighteen standing.  There are four people inside of here, but it still seems as lifeless as the outside.  They are bundled up in snow clothes, seem to be Russian. One man is a waxy-faced bartender, polishing his beer steins, and the others are on stools, nodding at their drinks.  The only noise they make is a tipping of their mugs.

I pause, waiting for a response to my presence. 

No response.

"Has anyone seen three men?" My voice echoes over the silence.  The sound seems stale.

Nobody answers.

"One pirate-like Asian, one in a suit, and one vampire-looking wannabe German?" 

Nobody even turns around.

"I’m talking here."

Nothing.

Patience
. . .

Then I get an answer:

One of the customers speaks without turning to me.  His words slip out from under a bushy handlebar mustache, whisper softer than the breath that carries them.  "We heard you.  Nobody’s seen anyone here.  Nobody
ever
sees anyone here."  His voice has no sensation.

Another one, an old man, whispers, "You should be quiet.  Nobody talks here."

"Why doesn’t anyone talk here?" I crusty-ask without whispering.  I’ve always been annoyed by whisperers.

"Nobody ever talks in Silence," the third one answers.

My eyes curl about.  The bar rolls in my vision. 

The bartender remains silent.

I don’t understand them.  I say, "I don’t understand you."

"You’re inside of the Silence," he says.  "The Silence has eaten you away from your friends and put you in her belly.  You are not dead, however.  And you will not be dead for as long as you keep quiet.  If she doesn’t hear any noise inside of her belly, she will think there is no food.  She will figure you are part of her and forget about you.  Otherwise, she will digest your meat and you’ll be excreted as part of the wind."

"I don’t understand," I say.  "I go to this gas station all the time.  And it has never been quiet here before."

"What gas station?" one asks.

"The one outside.  You’re all cracked on dippy bobs, aren’t you?"

"I’ve never heard of your gas station, nor dippy bobs," another says.

"All of you, be quiet," whispers the bartender, cop voice.

"You can see the back of it from outside the window," I say.

I try peaking through the window but I see blackness; the glass doesn’t seem transparent.  Huff-frustrated, I open the door and point to the station’s backside.

"See," I say, still pointing.

None of them speak.  They ignore me.