My hard-on is still going strong when I get to Satan Burger, trying to hide it from my friends when I see them (I use the history book of mankind as a shield). Mort, Nan, and Gin’s body parts don’t seem to notice my hard-on. They probably don’t care enough to let themselves notice.
“We need to get going now,” I tell them. Then I realize one member of our group is missing. “Where’s Christian?”
Mort sway-looks around. “Must’ve wandered off.”
“Where?” I stomp toward him.
He shrugs.
“Stay here. I’ll find him.”
I jamble-hike to the other side of the hill, searching, searching… but my vision is too harsh and unclear, so I call to him. Three yells, but he doesn’t give an answer. If he’s joined the crowd of insane ones, I’ll never be able to find him. I won’t even bother, not even for my best friend.
Richard Stein’s best friend was a guy nicknamed Hobby, who produced twenty-six children from thirteen different women, none of which he was married to. It had something to do with his brain, but Hobby loved to impregnate women, more than one woman at a time, and every pregnancy happened to manufacture identical twins. His friends, like Richard Stein, thought he was funny, but thirteen pairs of children thought he was a jerk.
They ended their friendship the day Hobby was arrested for giving twins to a sixteen-year-old. Richard normally would have thought it was a funny thing for Hobby to do, but Richard’s little sister was where he drew the line.
I find Christian across the street. He managed to climb to the roof of the bakery building on the left foot of the Satan Burger hill.
“What are you doing?” I yell to him. “You lost your fucking mind?”
Christian stands there messiah-like, his arms spread. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he calls.
“What?”
“This place is groobly-goo. The whole world. The streets full of creatures and colors. I feel like Mr. T.”
The rain has gotten to him, or maybe it’s the silly-go.
“You’re going crazy, Christian,” I say. “Stop it.”
He laughs. “I know. It’s great.”
“Try to fight it. We need to leave.”
I see him swaying and twisting in my ocean eyes, drowning. The rain has drizzled him soggy and he can’t stand up on his own anymore.
“We need to get to Punk Land,” I scream to him. “That’s where the walm is.”
“Sounds like fun,” wobble-words from his mouth.
Christian looks at a point high above me.
“Scorpion flies,” he says.
“What?”
“Scorpion flies.”
I see the swarm tornadoing above me. Buzz-whirling for an attack. The scorpion flies have gone crazy as well, and are actually coming to ground-level to kill. A BIG panic hits my face. A smaller one hits Christian’s.
“Get out of here!” I scream to him. “Meet us in Punk Land. We’ll be waiting for you.”
Christian nods, jumping onto the whirl crowd below, and I run back to Satan Burger, slipping every footfall and moving in circles with my rolling world.
“Let’s go!” I yell to Mort and Nan, who are already up and ready to run. Staring dead into the millions of beady-minded insects in the sky.
I glance up at the sky on our way down the Satan Burger steps, wheel-screeching black ones in the orange wind.
“Where is it?” Mort screams.
“Punk Land.”
We jump full into the crowd of insane ones and barge our way through. Breakfast and all of Gin’s other body parts begin fall-hanging from Nan. She loses one of the Medusa Hairs and keeps moving through, pulling off her shirt and wrapping the demons inside of it. Her skin now exposed to the dirty world, cuts and bruises from the sex with Gin and her bra is ripped in places where Gin’s teeth had been. A pink nipple smiles in the soaking air.
My hard-on will not go away, especially with Nan rubbing her open breast against my arm, trying to keep with me. Also, all of the insane ones seem to have gotten into a rumble-orgy of licking and rub-scouring. Pressing against my shank as I barge my way through, feeling very displaced by the performance…
A masturbating woman with green-speckled hair licks the sweat from my neck, trying to keep me with her, trying to pull me down. She must realize my condition and wants to release the pressure, as a favor to me. And I want to go into her. But I must shove on. I try to pull her forward, to come with me toward the walm, but she releases her grip and continues pleasuring herself.
I keep going, pushing through the rolling insane ones, trying to keep my shank from running into any other hungry women. I wonder if the rain is what gave me this unstoppable hard-on. Maybe my penis has maggots in its brain.
The scorpion flies attack.
I hear the people scream from behind us, dropping paralyzed.
Running begins.
The whole insane crowd, just now getting a glimpse of reality, filling their nerves with fright over lust, terror. Then trampling starts. Screams and thrashings through the puddles of pulpy yellow.
My legs and eyes don’t communicate properly, but I’m moving. Jumping over the already-paralyzed. Fighting the slow ones in my way. I still feel Nan’s arm and breast wrapped against me, running with my speed. I’m not sure if Mortician is behind us, or if he’s been taken down, but I keep going, crushing MAN’s history book against my erection.
Some people take to a manhole, to the dark ones’ territory, which might be the safest place to go. But I don’t follow them. We might get trapped down there, unable to reach the walm, or maybe the dark ones will hold us there and let their dark females molest us beyond death. I push into my erection again and groan. I still have the dark female’s love wounds from when I was with Vodka, and the open sores are still numb-felt. Even the flaps of skin hanging from my shoulder feel like cloth, or something not attached to my nerves. Maybe the rain is some kind of special acid juice and melted my nerves.
The crowd is thinning, too many fallen prey to the scorpion flies. It doesn’t seem like the scorpion flies are eating all of their victims. Normally, a swarm of a hundred would sting one human-sized creature and it would be enough food for the whole family. But the scorpion flies are crazy now. They’re trying to take down every member of the group, as if the crowd is one prey instead of a group of prey.
Nan cries out and goes limp, falling from my grasp. Turning, huffing, I stomp on the scorpion fly eating her stomach, grinding its insides out, pushing all the wind out of her. I gawk around. Gin’s body parts are squirming in Nan’s shirt. There aren’t too many scorpion flies attacking nearby, just a couple. I can’t see Mortician. He’s gone. He must be one of the frozen bodies in the distance, where some scorpion flies start feeding. I’m not going back for him.
I am alone.
I stare down at Nan’s thin, vulnerable body. She looks as if she’s asleep, but her eyes are open and blinking a little. Her legs have fallen open and there’s a wet pond between them. Her exposed breast is now sweat-dungy, glistening and oily. The history book pressed against my shank is only making things worse.
She can’t do anything if I pull down her tight shorts right now, and give it to her right in the middle of all this chaos. I never liked to think about Nan sexually, but the rain must have gotten to me. We need to get going. If I do this here a scorpion fly might get me. Then we’ll both be devoured, without dying. And even if a scorpion fly doesn’t attack me, she’ll kill me once she comes to. Literally kill me.