Chapter Sixty Nine

One hour earlier I was still in the dark. I was afraid to the point of insanity and everything hurt. Everything! Something was pulling at my man parts and I couldn't make it stop.

"God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" I know that sounds overly dramatic, but put yourself in my position. I had run out of people to blame. I had stolen this line from the refrain of a song that Jesus performed when I was in Redneck Heaven. It really got the crowd going.

As I screamed, my arms and hands flailed in the darkness and banged against the walls. I straightened them out and pushed against my prison of blackness. Something brushed the palm of my hand, something embedded in the wall that had a shape and contour. Both of my hands surrounded it and studied it like a blind man reading braille. A slotted screw caught my fingernail. A hard, piercing, nipple-like structure grabbed my attention and I fondled it madly. It started to move upward and then with an earth shattering, mentally devastating, visually crushing buzz, everything went white.

I believed that I had found the great white light that draws all dying souls to heaven. I was at the eye of the Godly beacon that sends warmth and assurance to the frightened and broken dead.

Then, as my eyes began to adjust, I noticed the ceiling tiles.

Recessed fluorescent lighting, the kind that my ex-wife Cynthia felt should be banned from the face of the Earth because the way it made her skin look and because it was created by grinding up the souls of the dead. Right now it was better than the Sun to me.

It's funny how things seem when you're in the dark compared to what they really are when the light switch has been flicked on. I was in a room full of file cabinets. What I thought was a crazy tomb of insanity was actually a maze of double-wide storage chests and I was wedged into a corner created by the Steelcase file cabinet company.

I looked down and saw a human hand on my crotch. I recognized the class ring. It was Louis' hand.

"Louis you fag!" I grabbed the arm, below the wrist and it let go. I found the partially open file cabinet with the name "Tooth, Louis" typed on white cardboard inserted into the identification slot. I stuffed the roaming arm inside and shut the drawer.

Curiosity caused me to open a few more of the cabinets. They were filled with body parts. This was the place were all the lost limbs were waiting. I was thinking about my father and the countless organs and pieces that had been taken from him before he passed away. His file cabinet must have been enormous.

I maneuvered my way through the gray, unorganized maze until I found myself in a large, even grayer room of office cubicles. It looked like the worlds most boring insurance headquarters. It was very much like the accountants office of Foote, Carp, and Thor that I'd worked for so many years.

There were hundreds of work stations, each one with a computer and family photos on the desk. There were staplers and boxes of paper clips neatly arranged on top. The only thing missing was the people.

My heartbeat was all I could hear.

Among all of the desks that I passed, one had a screen saver of a small, bushy plant engulfed in flames. As I got nearer to it, I could hear the computer making the crackling sound of a fireplace. Something about it drew me to sit in front of it.

The screen cleared and an instant message screen from Yahoo came up.

God#1: Marty!!!!!

The visual message was followed by an audible. "Ding Dong!"

I answered.

C.Martin: Who is this?

God#1: Marty, it's me, God! :)

C.Martin: Really?

God#1: Of course. Can't you read my screen name?

C. Martin: That really doesn't mean very much, you know.

God#1: But it says right there.. God. Who else would have an ID like that?

C.Martin: This is IM chat. About a million other people.

God#1: That's why it says #1 , so you would know it's the real God.

C.Martin: Anybody can do that. How is a rational person to believe this is really God? For all I know you could be a 14 year old girl named Judy from Ames, Iowa with a terrible sense of self.

God#1: Then your God would be a 14 year old girl named Judy.

C. Martin: If you are truly the Lord Almighty then give me a sign.

God#1: Like a magic trick? I think you know better than that Marty!

C. Martin: Why don't you just appear to me?

God#1: I am appearing to you....via the Internet. Isn't it wonderful?

C. Martin: Why don't you appear to me in your physical form here in the room?

God#1: I'd like to but the room's not big enough for me. We couldn't both fit in there.

C.Martin You're not that large, I met you when I visited heaven. You looked pretty average to me then.

God#1: That wasn't me Marty. That was a guy that I let pretend is me sometimes when people need a little encouragement or a good scolding. He is actually a television executive from CBS in Chicago, Illinois.

C.Martin:That wasn't God?

God#1: Oh good lord Marty! Did you see his shoes?

Chapter Sixty Eight

I was staring at my receipt for the "Healthy, Breaded, Cod sandwich" that I was eating while sitting in the window at Moby Dick's on Shelbyville road in Louisville, Kentucky. One Cod dinner, Fried Okra side,and one large Diet...$ 7.99. When I reached into my pocket to pay for the meal I realized I had no money. All I could find was the hand of a dead monkey. The lady at the register smiled and said "That will do just fine!" and gave me my receipt.

I was staring at the words at the bottom of the receipt. It had only been an hour since I was trapped in total darkness with something clamped to my crotch. It had only been a half hour since I talked directly to God. It was just 2 hours away from all hell breaking loose. It was 4 hours from when I would meet the planet's greatest Fabulist, Aesop, in person, and discover the true meaning of my life.

I was sitting in the window below the neon sign in the window at Moby Dick's. As Jim Morrison once crooned, "The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes, the street lights share their hollow glow, your brain seems bruised with numb surprise, still one place to go."

The sign above my head was buzzing and flashing red. It said "Now Frying". If you were on the street looking in at me, if you could see the look in my eyes, you would imagine that the sign was referring to my brains.

I was staring at the words at the bottom of the receipt. They were printed in red italics, just below the bold letters that spoke "Thank you...Come again!"

Up until now I had never realized how much I hated the printed words "Thank you!" Fast food restaurants put them on their receipts and the doors of their trash bins. It was frequently embossed on the door handles as you pushed your way out into the street. Sometimes it was printed on urinal cakes in the Men's room. It's like saying "You pigs are all the same to us, we will thank you even if we didn't notice you were alive. We have printed it out for you to read so we won't have to waste the breath it takes to speak it. We don't care if you made a mess, or caused a disturbance, or left without paying, we still thank you! In the case of the urinal cake..We don't even care if you piss on us...Thank you!"

If I had flown into a rage and hacked the lady at the cash register to tiny bits, packed her inside a Hefty bag and shoved her bone and sinew and dripping intestines through the little swinging door of the trash bin, it would have responded with a "Thank you!" and off and away I would go with a smile on my face.

The words printed below, in red italics, made up for the insulting nature of the "Thank you..Come again!" I have never been so affected by the printed word in my life, as far as I can remember.

Perhaps it was because my brain was indeed frying. I was trapped in a world filled with people and lights and cars and 360 degree vision. It was all coming at me so fast and foreboding. My heart was pounding and my skin was wet with perspiration. I must have been quite the sight. My face bruised and scraped. My eyes black and blue. Dried blood below my nose.

This could only happen once in a person's existence. Maybe it could only happen to me. Have you ever found yourself sitting in the window at Moby Dick's in Louisville, bruised and battered, seeing in all directions at once, a "Now Frying" sign lit up above your head, eating a Codfish sandwich that you paid for with the hand of a recently deceased primate after having just spoken to the creator of the universe?

This is why I was staring at the words at the bottom of the receipt. This is why Babe sent me here. This is why God arranged to have me delivered to Shelbyville road. This is why I went ahead and walked right by the Kentucky Fried Chicken store and hopped and skipped into the Blue and White festooned Moby Dick's.

There at the bottom of the receipt. In red italicized letters it said:

You are the most important person in the World!!

Chapter Sixty Seven

Oprah ran through the door like he knew where he was. He jumped on the bed and laid his head on the pillow and shut his eyes. Russell flopped down next to him and kicked off his shoes and grabbed the television remote.

Bob wandered into the bathroom to find Katrina, the housekeeper, standing on her knees atop the vanity with her ear attached to the bottom of a glass pressed against the wall.

Bob's eyes became very large behind his coke bottle lenses. He spun his head to inform Russell that someone was in the bathroom. He parted his lips but no words came out. He looked back at Katrina and smiled largely. He let out a little snort.

Across the hall a little man with two sets of teeth in his mouth was knocking on the door. It was the waiter from the restaurant where Dr. Granger and my ex wife Carol had eaten earlier in the day. Granger had left his credit card at the restaurant.

Ed was doing his civic duty by finding the owner of the card and returning it to him in his free time. He also bought a tank of gas for his customized Astro Van and 16 boxes of 12 gauge shotgun shells with it on the drive over.

Granger was upset at first. "Hey, aren't you a waiter from the restaurant this afternoon? How did you make your way to my room?"

"Got yur credit card here Boonie boy." He flipped the card up between his bony, yellow fingers like it was a switchblade knife.

"Boonie Boy? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Nuthin...that's just a dee-rogatory term for Nigger where I come from."

Granger grabbed Eddie by the collar, yanked him off of his feet, pulled him into the room and shut the door. As Katrina exited Russell and Bob's room she heard the noises coming from across the hall. She flattened her skirt down and buttoned her blouse. She considered grabbing a glass from her cleaning cart and listening in to what was going on, but after what had happened between her and Bob, she felt that perhaps she should just keep moving.

In the next suite down, Coach Butcher was lying on the floor, naked, his hands, legs, and mouth wrapped in silver duct tape. 3 men, who looked as if they could somehow be related to Eddie, were taking turns shocking him in the hip with a cattle prod. They were prepping him for the next step, a Taser gun.

Chapter Sixty Six

Louis Tooth lay prone on the bed, staring up at the ceiling in the luxurious suite at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. Something had startled him from a deep slumber and he was floating somewhere between sleep and consciousness.

Lisa was in the bathroom, holding Louis' prosthetic arm under the water rushing from the golden swan necked faucet over the sink. She was rubbing hotel soap on the fingers and scrubbing it as hard as she could.

Earlier they checked into their room together and Louis used the bathroom and dropped his arm off on the Louis XIV chair in the corner of the expansive lounge. He plopped into bed and passed out cold, much to the dismay of Lisa who emerged from the closet just moments later, dressed in a skimpy ensemble, ready for action. Not a cough nor a gentle nudge could wake the snoring Louis. She went back into the bath.

Lisa had never looked that closely at Louis' faux limb before and having noticed it in the chair, she picked it up and studied it carefully.

Gazing in the mirror she was at first shaken by how real the arm looked in her hands and how the hand appeared to be reaching for her left breast. She opened her top and placed the palm of the device on her bosom letting her nipple pop out from between the fingers.

She had once tried a masturbation technique called "The Stranger" that she read about in Penthouse Magazine. It begins by sitting on your own hand until it falls asleep and then using this numb appendage to touch yourself, giving the feeling of being groped by someone else. It had never worked for Lisa, largely because of the tingling pain involved and because the blood would rush back into her nerve endings, long before the job was complete.

Fondling her breast with the prosthesis was interesting and the image in the mirror exhilarating. The hand worked its way down her chest to her belly button and the index finger gently circled around the diamond stud. Slowly the cool digits made their way even further down.

Her reflection went from intriguing to bizarre as the empty, socket end with its straps and harness came into view, so she turned her back on the mirror.

Soon she was briskly riding the artificial limb like a hobby horse. Her face contorted and her lungs gasping for breath. She raised herself up on to the marble vanity with one foot on the lid of the toilet seat and the other stretched out to brace itself on the rim of the bathtub so she could get a better angle.

The room grew dim and her mind left the Earth to those places that only a woman can locate during an intimate encounter. Part of her thoughts stayed inside the room, causing her to bite her lip, squelching any sounds of ecstasy.

It wasn't her climax or even the fall off of the vanity onto the hard tile floor that caused the blood curdling screams that woke Louis from his extremely deep slumber. It wasn't the bulk of Louis' prosthetic hand being unexpectedly shoved deep inside her vagina that made her howl like a Basset hound to a full moon, prompting the house keeper next door to take the cellophane from the drinking glass sitting on the vanity in the adjoining bathroom and hold it against the wall while pressing her own ear to the bottom just to better hear what was happening. It had mostly to do with the large prosthetic thumb penetrating another orifice that was innocently hanging around in the general vicinity of the crime.

After Lisa had pulled the Stranger's hand out of her ass she sat, slightly confused on the cold tile. She stared at the disembodied arm that lay before her with an odd glare. It was a combination of shame and anger mixed with love. It was almost as if she were wondering what the mystery limb was thinking after having its way with her. If there was a cigarette handy, she would've smoked it.

"Lisa?" Louis called from the next room. He was still not completely awake. "Lisa, are you here?"

Lisa quickly sprang to her feet, winced a bit, grabbed the arm and started scrubbing. She concentrated on the thumb.

It was a frequent occurrence that when Louis would make an acquaintance while wearing the prosthetic arm, the stranger would unwittingly grab the dead hand and shake it only to lose the comforting smile on his or her face and begin apologizing, almost always repeating the mantra "I didn't know, I didn't realize, I'm so sorry."

Lisa was concerned that if she didn't completely sterilize the hand under the scalding tap that any hapless, fake-hand shaker might come away with some offensive smells along with the feelings of embarrassment they would indubitably be left with.

"LISA!" Louis was becoming more awake. "Where are you?"

Lisa held the hand up to her nose. "Coming Louis." She gave the "That should be good enough" shrug and tossed the arm back on to the chair as she left the water closet.

"What's the matter honey?" She said as she tried to regain her composure.

"I had the strangest dream." Louis elevated his pillow and sat up in the beautiful, hand carved, mahogany, 4 poster bed. "I was trapped in the dark and I reached out..."

"Yes honey..." Lisa slid her damp hand behind Louis' shoulder.

"I reached out and I touched Marty..."

"That's kind of beautiful Louis."

"No." Louis swallowed hard. "I touched Marty."

"You touched Marty..yes." Lisa was becoming worried.

"I touched Marty's...dick!"

"Yewwwww. What a horrible dream." Lisa recoiled in horror.

"It was so real!" Louis stared out towards the window at the Louisville skyline. Night had fallen and the city lights filled the room. The landing beacon from a jet aircraft moved slowly across the otherwise frozen portrait of the River City.

A steamboat, the Belle of Louisville was churning the Ohio river water up in its giant, red, paddle wheel, making a 90 degree turn in order to mate with its landing pier. The steam whistles blew loudly, the sound bouncing off of the buildings and echoing down the vacant city streets. She was announcing her arrival.

"I'm home!" Was what the Belle was saying.

Chapter Sixty Five

You should really get injured when you tumble down a long flight of stairs and don't get me wrong, I was pretty banged up, but not nearly as bad as if I'd known I was going to be falling down a flight of stairs. If you stand atop a monstrously long staircase and fear that someone is about to push you down them, your muscles become tense and you would stick your hands out to break the fall causing your injuries to be severe. I, on the other hand, rolled for what seemed twenty minutes over tread after tread like I was falling into a soft, cozy bed, only to spring right to my feet at the bottom.

At least I believed I was at the bottom.

It was so overwhelmingly dark down there that it hurt my eyes to try and see. My 360 degree vision allowed me to look in all directions at one time and nothing is what I saw. My first mistake was walking without knowing where I was or where I was going. Blindly feeling my way, I became trapped in a corner with no sense of direction and no escape. Every time I would try to move forward or to retrace my steps I would bang into a wall. The brightest things in the place were the stars in my head when I slammed into something.

The more I moved it seemed the smaller my world became. The wall came faster and the pain of whacking against it more intense. The futility of it all drew tears. I even tried to give up at one point but the room wouldn't let me. I couldn't lay down without taking a blow to the chin. I couldn't stay in one place without the wall hitting me from behind.

Thinking became impossible. The sounds of concussion can drown out the little voice that tells you what to do.

The little voice would say "Turn around and go back!" BOOM. My forehead met resistance. "Try inching forward!" BOOM. The back of my head would crack. "Stay where you are!" Boom. My nose would start to bleed.

I wanted to take a minute and contemplate how I got there. I wanted to guess where I was. I wanted to be free of this prison. The frustration was intolerable, there was no place to hide, nowhere to land.

I held my hand up to my face to see if I could somehow make it visible. The wall pushed my palm into my mouth. I spit it out and the wall put it right back in.

Time lost all meaning to me. Just like the fall down the stairs it may have only lasted a second or it might have been two and a half years.

A woman's voice called to me. "Come this way Marty."

I took a step in the direction of the sound and the wall didn't strike. "This must be the way." I thought to myself and I began to step briskly in the direction of the sound. Within seconds I bashed my brains out on the wall again.

A different voice called. "No Marty, come this way." Two steps and I was feeling home free until I found myself back in the corner.

Another voice, different from the first two called. "Go back the way you came Marty!" I couldn't move. I was afraid of what would surely come next.

The first voice said. "Don't be afraid to do what you have to do Marty, it's going to hurt right now but in the long run it'll pay off."

The second voice spoke in a dejected tone. "If you think it's the right thing to do then go ahead, I won't stop you."

The third female voice sounded angry. "If you want to stay there for the rest of eternity then keep doing what you're doing. You have the power to change what's happening but its your choice to not even try. If you want to stay, mired down in your own little cesspool, then that's your choice. You are weak."

Somehow I took that as a pep talk that wasn't really working. I didn't put the walls there. I didn't choose to be plunged into black. If I could see myself I would probably be alarmed at the cuts and bruises that I had. "Thank God for the darkness!" I assured myself.

If being trapped in a total void and hearing voices wasn't bad enough, something terrible began crawling up my legs. My imagination ran wild. It felt like a combination of spiders and the cold, bony fingers of death. It surrounded my calves and slithered up to my thighs. It stopped at my crotch and refused to go any further. I tried to push it off of Mr. Happy but my hands couldn't make a difference.

I was cold and frightened. I had nowhere to go. Death had an icy grip on my manhood.

Chapter Sixty Four

"Are we go-eeng to Woo-A-Vul?" Bob asked in a very loud voice to Russell. He smiled a giant smile that changed quickly into a look of distress and back to a fresh smile in a period of 10 seconds. His question was greeted with silence.

Bob sat in the front passenger seat of Russell's SUV while Oprah lay stretched out on the bench seat behind him. Russell was staring straight ahead with his fists clenched tightly near the top of the steering wheel. His knuckles were white. His one good eye was darting left and right while his glass one stayed where it was.

A road sign stating "Louisville 30 miles" in giant sized letters came and went.

Bob queried, once again, in a loud voice. "Are we go-eeng to Woo-A-Vul?"

"YES WE ARE GOING TO LOUISVILLE! WE ARE GOING TO LOUISVILLE! WE ARE GOING TO LOUISVILLE!" Russell was not good at keeping his patience with Bob. It wasn't the first time Bob had asked him that question during the trip.

"Goody!" said Bob.

"I bought you a giant book of expert Soduko puzzles to work Bob, why don't you try solving them for a while?" Russell barked.

Bob held up the book and leafed the pages in Russell's face. "I finished it Wussel! See?" The demonstrative way in which Bob showed the pages to Russell blocked his vision momentarily and he swerved across the highway as he batted the puzzle book away from his eye.

"Bob! Don't DO that!" Russell's heart was racing. The hearts of all the drivers he swerved in front of were racing too. People honked their horns and some stuck their hands out of the windows, giving Russell the "finger" to show their dismay. Russell tried to look straight ahead and suffer his indignity.

Bob answered back to the disgruntled travellers with an enormous smile, an animated wave and a hearty "Heeewooooo!!!!"

"Roll up your window please, Bob." Russell said in the calmest voice he could make come out of his giant, volcanic interior.

"Heeeewooo!!!" Shouted Bob.

Oprah awoke, tilted his head and perked his ears. A giant question mark above his brow could easily be imagined. God has given Dogs the ability to speak without words and Oprah was saying what everyone else was thinking. "What the fuck?"

"Why awre we go-eeeng to Woo-A-bill Russell?

"Because Marty's agent called me and told me that we needed to meet Marty at a hotel there. That Marty really wanted us to be there with him."

"Mahtee has an ageent?" These questions had also been asked repeatedly.

"Yes Bob, Marty has an agent."

"Whatd is dis ageents name, Wusso?"

"Cy."

"Ahhhhhhhh." said Bob.

"Why do you keep saying Ahhhh, when I say Cy, Bob? It sounds like you're sigh........never mind." Russell hit himself on the head. It had taken Russell about 50 of these question and answer sessions to figure out what Bob was doing when he heard the name Cy.

Russell wished he was somewhere else. He had even wished he was dead at one point, but he changed his mind after he considered how he wasn't totally prepared to die.

He had tried to play a Country and Western radio station for about 20 minutes but could no longer stand to hear Bob singing along at the top of his lungs. Bob knew all the words to all the songs, probably. It was most likely going to take another 40 minutes until they reached the hotel and Russell was suffering in seconds, not minutes.

"Are we doe-eeng to Voo-A-Bill?"

"Why yes Bob" Russell said calmly. "Yes we are." He tried to imagine the splendor of the Brown Hotel, a legendary Louisville charm piece in the heart of the near south. Room service, hot towels, and 5 star dining. A smile crossed his face. In- room television with Spectravision, the best in pornographic movies. Spank-o-vision! A mini bar. A Concierge. Spectravision.

"Ahre we gooo-ong to Wou-Eh-......"

"Yes Bob, we are."