The Box
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Chapter Fifty Nine
A little walk in the woods... a shortcut. It was ok for me to take the path off the road into the dark forest. I was not afraid and besides that I could see everything in front and behind me.
The back of my head had an itch. When I reached around to scratch it I could see the palm of my hand. Pretty neat, eh?
When I ran into Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time, I was very excited. He was dressed in his Yankee uniform, his pantlegs knee high and tucked into his stockings. In one hand he held a giant, smoking cigar that smelled like a burning cat. He was using his free hand to balance his weight on a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He looked like he was posing for the cover of Life magazine.
"Marty! How nice of you to drop by!" He took a step towards me with those tiny feet making short strides. The cigar flew into his mouth as he shook my hand so hard the skin on his face fluttered. "I've been really looking forward to meeting you!"
"Are you kidding me? I never thought I would ever shake the hand of the Bambino! Not even in heaven!"
"There's a damn good chance you'd never shake it there Clark." He let out a belly laugh that shook us both. I laughed along with him, not really knowing which one of us was the least likely to reach the pearly gates. "Come over here a minute, I've got something to do."
I followed him to a clearing in the thick, dark, green woods. A streak of sunlight found the only gap in the trees and was shining down on a white box about the size of corporate trash dumpster. On the front of the box was the painting of a frown-faced clown with a daisy drooping from his ramshackle hat. The tragic comedians image was on top of a large red circle, outlined in white, another outline in green, and a black border. This combination seemed familiar to me but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.
A horrible racket was coming from inside the box and it's lid jumped and banged like a large animal was inside trying to get out. The Babe stood with his legs parted like the Eiffel Tower, his bat lying on his shoulder.
"So what's in the box...Babe?" I asked playfully.
"It's the Devil." Babe spoke through his bouncing cigar.
"Ha! Do you mean Satan?"
"One and the same."
I was skeptical. "The Prince of Darkness is right there in a wooden box, here in this forest outside Louisville Kentucky?"
"Can you think of a better place for him?"
"What's keeping him in there?"
"A Yale padlock."
Sure enough, a Yale padlock was affixed in the loop of a flimsy metal hasp that had 6 screws fastened into the wooden lid and front. 3 on the splintering top and 3 on the cracking front.
"You know you can shoot a bullet into a Yale padlock and it won't open. I saw it on TV."
"Yea, that's a good lock alright!" The growling and spitting of the Devil was nauseating to me and getting louder by the moment. "I'm just a little concerned that the greatest source of evil on the world is trapped in that wooden box and the only thing between him and the rest of the world is that poorly made hasp there...Babe."
"I know, it seems a little flimsy doesn't it?" His eyes twitched nervously towards me and then back to the clown face.
"What's the Devil doing in the box to begin with?" The noise from inside got louder and the wood was starting to buckle.
"Do you know who Red Skelton is?" I nodded knowingly. "He tricked him in there. Made him think it was a giant case of cigarettes. The Devil's favorite brand. When he leaned in to grab a carton, Ole Red pushed him in and locked the lid. He called me to help him watch the thing and I've been here ever since."
"You're shitting me!" I would never had said "shitting" to Babe Ruth in my right mind. I recoiled a little from my own crudeness. Babe didn't flinch.
"It's true. Red was pretty disgusted with the guy and the way he ran things down in hell. He decided make the afterlife a better place."
"Red Skelton?"
"Look at the clown he painted on the front. That's him! He painted that there, just to stick it up Belezabub's heinie."
With a bang as loud as a shotgun firing, the screws flew out of the wood and the lid swung open wide. A large greenish creature with a mouth the size of a Yule log and teeth of a mountain lion poured from the opening. Growls and obscenities bubbled from his throat. His eyes shot flames onto his battered and bruised cheekbones. His arms stretched out wide as he spread his grimy fingers and wiggled his long, pointed, curled up fingernails. The horns on the top of his head wriggled like fishing worms and his tongue, long and forked, snapped like a bull whip.
The smell of death and sulfur filled the woods. My heart was pounding out of my chest in 3/4 time...Up tempo.
Just as Satan began to close his claws on the Babe's head, Ruth pulled the Louisville Slugger back behind his hat. In classic form, Babe Ruth hit a 500 foot homer over the center field bleachers in Wrigley, right into the Devil's jaw. His front left foot lifted, toe first, as he turned the bat into imperial ruler of hell.
The club, striking the face of evil, made the sound of a thousand railroad cars crashing into the audience at a Megadeath concert. Sparks like those from a welders torch spewed from his nose as he fell backwards, into the box. Little yellow birds circled his head.
Babe closed the lid and produced an old fashioned screw driver from his back pocket. It was 2 feet long and had a rotating screw machine in it's middle. He replaced the hasp and set the screws by pushing the device inwards towards the wood. Each screw took one quick motion. Six times he did this, and put the driver back in his pocket. Pulling the cigar from his mouth, he turned to me. "So, let's talk Marty."
The back of my head had an itch. When I reached around to scratch it I could see the palm of my hand. Pretty neat, eh?
When I ran into Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time, I was very excited. He was dressed in his Yankee uniform, his pantlegs knee high and tucked into his stockings. In one hand he held a giant, smoking cigar that smelled like a burning cat. He was using his free hand to balance his weight on a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He looked like he was posing for the cover of Life magazine.
"Marty! How nice of you to drop by!" He took a step towards me with those tiny feet making short strides. The cigar flew into his mouth as he shook my hand so hard the skin on his face fluttered. "I've been really looking forward to meeting you!"
"Are you kidding me? I never thought I would ever shake the hand of the Bambino! Not even in heaven!"
"There's a damn good chance you'd never shake it there Clark." He let out a belly laugh that shook us both. I laughed along with him, not really knowing which one of us was the least likely to reach the pearly gates. "Come over here a minute, I've got something to do."
I followed him to a clearing in the thick, dark, green woods. A streak of sunlight found the only gap in the trees and was shining down on a white box about the size of corporate trash dumpster. On the front of the box was the painting of a frown-faced clown with a daisy drooping from his ramshackle hat. The tragic comedians image was on top of a large red circle, outlined in white, another outline in green, and a black border. This combination seemed familiar to me but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.
A horrible racket was coming from inside the box and it's lid jumped and banged like a large animal was inside trying to get out. The Babe stood with his legs parted like the Eiffel Tower, his bat lying on his shoulder.
"So what's in the box...Babe?" I asked playfully.
"It's the Devil." Babe spoke through his bouncing cigar.
"Ha! Do you mean Satan?"
"One and the same."
I was skeptical. "The Prince of Darkness is right there in a wooden box, here in this forest outside Louisville Kentucky?"
"Can you think of a better place for him?"
"What's keeping him in there?"
"A Yale padlock."
Sure enough, a Yale padlock was affixed in the loop of a flimsy metal hasp that had 6 screws fastened into the wooden lid and front. 3 on the splintering top and 3 on the cracking front.
"You know you can shoot a bullet into a Yale padlock and it won't open. I saw it on TV."
"Yea, that's a good lock alright!" The growling and spitting of the Devil was nauseating to me and getting louder by the moment. "I'm just a little concerned that the greatest source of evil on the world is trapped in that wooden box and the only thing between him and the rest of the world is that poorly made hasp there...Babe."
"I know, it seems a little flimsy doesn't it?" His eyes twitched nervously towards me and then back to the clown face.
"What's the Devil doing in the box to begin with?" The noise from inside got louder and the wood was starting to buckle.
"Do you know who Red Skelton is?" I nodded knowingly. "He tricked him in there. Made him think it was a giant case of cigarettes. The Devil's favorite brand. When he leaned in to grab a carton, Ole Red pushed him in and locked the lid. He called me to help him watch the thing and I've been here ever since."
"You're shitting me!" I would never had said "shitting" to Babe Ruth in my right mind. I recoiled a little from my own crudeness. Babe didn't flinch.
"It's true. Red was pretty disgusted with the guy and the way he ran things down in hell. He decided make the afterlife a better place."
"Red Skelton?"
"Look at the clown he painted on the front. That's him! He painted that there, just to stick it up Belezabub's heinie."
With a bang as loud as a shotgun firing, the screws flew out of the wood and the lid swung open wide. A large greenish creature with a mouth the size of a Yule log and teeth of a mountain lion poured from the opening. Growls and obscenities bubbled from his throat. His eyes shot flames onto his battered and bruised cheekbones. His arms stretched out wide as he spread his grimy fingers and wiggled his long, pointed, curled up fingernails. The horns on the top of his head wriggled like fishing worms and his tongue, long and forked, snapped like a bull whip.
The smell of death and sulfur filled the woods. My heart was pounding out of my chest in 3/4 time...Up tempo.
Just as Satan began to close his claws on the Babe's head, Ruth pulled the Louisville Slugger back behind his hat. In classic form, Babe Ruth hit a 500 foot homer over the center field bleachers in Wrigley, right into the Devil's jaw. His front left foot lifted, toe first, as he turned the bat into imperial ruler of hell.
The club, striking the face of evil, made the sound of a thousand railroad cars crashing into the audience at a Megadeath concert. Sparks like those from a welders torch spewed from his nose as he fell backwards, into the box. Little yellow birds circled his head.
Babe closed the lid and produced an old fashioned screw driver from his back pocket. It was 2 feet long and had a rotating screw machine in it's middle. He replaced the hasp and set the screws by pushing the device inwards towards the wood. Each screw took one quick motion. Six times he did this, and put the driver back in his pocket. Pulling the cigar from his mouth, he turned to me. "So, let's talk Marty."
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
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.
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.
