Chapter Fifty Eight

I watched the universe turn around me. The dew evaporated from every single blade of grass and I witnessed the transformation of the water into vapor and the vapor becoming part of the sky. The fiery hot sun made it's way directly overhead in what seemed like a minute. The world had changed around me and even though I was lying still in the field, I felt the changes inside.

When Popeye the Sailor would eat his spinach it would come out of the can in a blob and drop into his oval mouth. You could see the blob as it went down his pencil thin neck, stretch his chest, split at his crotch and fill his shoes. With the boom of a tympani, it would bounce back up to his stomach, chest, and then shoot down his forearms. With this instant infusion of green steroids he developed the strength of a thousand rogue elephants. He would have enough power to beat the ever living shit out of his enemies, in such a painful and cruel way that it was hard to believe that they could ever survive such a violent attack. They always did, somehow, though the pain should have been enough to leave them physically impaired for life or at the very least the beating should have remained in their memories long enough that they wouldn't fuck with Popeye ever again. One thing for sure, they were back in the next feature, tying an anchor around his neck and throwing him to the bottom of the sea so they could be free to date rape his girlfriend. Maybe the ferocity of the attacks erased all of their imprinted brain functions. Like walking into a tornado.

I didn't feel the physical strength of a Popeye/Spinach transformation, but emotionally I was filled up from my head to my shoes and I swear I heard the tympani sound as it came back through my heart and into my head. I had memories, I had attitudes, I had anger, I had desire, and I was waiting for my body to catch up. My jaw ached like I had just swallowed another person. It must be how a snake feels after lunch. My ribs didn't have the hard consistency of ribs, my chest felt more like the partially inflated tire in the trunk of Ted's Black Maria.

One other thing had changed. My sight was different. I now had tremendous peripheral vision. As a matter of fact, I could see behind me. I could see all the way around! It was very disturbing at first and while not exactly a "Super Power" for the moment it gave me the feeling of an empowered hero.

I used my new power to find the ringing cell phone that had been cast 40 feet behind me into the Kentucky scenery. It was saying "Ring, Ring!"in Cy's voice. He had a special ringtone made of his own voice.

Crawling to his phone I saw the sky and the ground and everything within a mile around me. The phone was speaking its Ring and flashing and buzzing like a carnival ride. It was a flip/style phone and needed to be opened to activate the communication process. Opening it was difficult because Serge's detatched right paw, still wrapped tightly about the device, was stiff and hardened in the same death grip he liked to keep on the little box when Cy allowed him to carry it about.

There was no other sign of the little monkey in the vicinity besides his little monkey hand on the phone. In my head I imagined him still alive, running to freedom in those woods I could see a half mile behind me. I snickered when I thought of him preparing to swing from tree to tree and discovering, all too late, that he was missing his right paw, plummeting, screaming that monkey scream, head first to the earth.

Having a monkey as a pet is like having a Gymnast as a girlfriend. The fascination only lasts until you realize that you don't have the energy to keep up. I was glad he was gone.

Serge's fingers made a crunchy sound as I pried them from the receiver. It's emotionally hard to break digits, even when they're dead. I put the hand in my right front pocket and it scratched my thigh a little as it went in. I didn't have the heart to throw it away. My mind raced with the ugly pictures of the possible types of bacteria that must live under a monkey's fingernails.

The caller ID display on the front of the phone read "Raymond." Why was he calling Cy? What would I say to him? Was it Raymond from the drug store? By the time I found the "talk" button the limited time I had to answer had expired and the call went to Cy's voice mail. After fumbling and typing on the buttons I managed to retrieve the terse message. "Yellow hammers!" said the voice, the word "Click!" and the call was over. There was no number to redial the caller, only the ID that said "Raymond."

I put the phone in my left pocket to keep in separate from the monkey hand and began to walk. I passed the accident site. The wrecked car was gone. Cy was gone.

All I had to remember what had happened was Cy's cell phone, Serge's right hand, and Ted Stockings inside my body. I was walking towards Louisville. I guess.