All of which for some reason made me remember Nakota, the clot I had once caused to form on her sleeping shoulder; childish pique, the way you might deliberately spill some coffee in the house of someone you don’t like; just a little meanness. Maybe I had done a greater wrong than I knew. Not from her point of view —she would love it, probably had and just hadn’t bothered to tell me—but from my own. but it was kind of late in the day to worry about morals, or fairness, especially as regards Nakota, who considered the concept of fair play as quaint as that of true love.
Outside, the mask’s jabbering sermon droned on and on, swill unworthy of a TV preacher, twice as insulting because it was using my voice. Stabbed in the back by a broadcasting mask giving off bullshit the way garbage gives off a stink, attracting the same kind of shiteaters, all of whom were ten times scarier than me. On a good day. I wanted to tell them all to go home, that unwashed gaggle of the crouching faithful, imagining them slack-jawed in their bulky coats, grinning as they bit their nails, but they were too busy listening to Radio Free Funhole and besides, I had my own concerns. Selfish? Yeah, but then again I hadn’t been myself for some time. Ho-ho.
Up the hand. Watch it crawl. Blinking my burning eyes and I thought, Do you really want to do this? Do you even have a choice? Of course I had, we always do, isn’t that what free will is all about? Freedom of choice. Just like a beer commercial.
And all the while behind me the holy smoke rose, pervasive and praline-sweet, approval’s incense because apparently, finally, I was doing it right. Whatever the plan was, I was falling in with it. Maybe literally, someday? No, that’s too big a leap, too much faith for me because I had none, only the certainty, dry as my eyes, that things would continue just the way they were.
You would think, I thought, it would hurt more, feel more, something. But no. Just the march of fluid and the trickle of smoke, the drone outside and the mumble of the worshipers, stupider bastards there never were unless you count me, lying like a fetus beside the mother of all holes, watching myself be painlessly eaten alive, a living chrysalis. And proud of it, too, which was maybe the funniest part of all. Or the sickest. But it’s so nice to feel wanted, isn’t it.
I fell asleep, I must have, numb and dumb in the darkness with my tickled nose drunk on smoke and woke to Randy’s voice, saying my name with the insistence of a ringing phone. I still had no real sense of the passage of time, day or night: it was just lighter or darker or variations thereof. Now it was darker, definitely, and there were definitely more people outside. Lots more people, some of them loud, most of them clustered around the door; shit around an asshole, one might say if one were Nakota. They were talking to me, or more accurately the mask, which of course to them was the same thing, Nicholas Nicholas blah blah blah, mumble blurt and giggle and still Randy’s voice, harsher now: “Nicholas, man, are you okay? Nicholas!”
“Yeah,” and raising my hand I saw it coated to the wrist now, the congealing fluid a salmon color that was very beautiful if you could ignore its amazing textural mimicry of tinted chicken fat. It didn’t gross me out but then again by this point I was no man for the niceties anyway.
Wondering if he’d heard me, I said it again and louder, into a quiet, so quick it seemed artificial, was the joke on me again? Embarrassed, “I’m fine,” I said. “What’s going on out there?”
Commotion, sudden and vast for such a small space, war of voices saying my name and Randy’s bellow and somebody’s cry, elbow work, yeah, Randy’s fuse was getting shorter as the days went by, and so was mine. Manifesting in my case as extreme passivity. It really does take all kinds.
“Shut the fuck up\”
“Randy,” my mouth right by the door, “Randy?” and Randy’s shouted answer, “Tell them to shut up, man!” and so I said it, in my own voice.
And they listened. And obeyed.
Which made me feel nothing. I should have felt frightened, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t. Not nervous at the implications of control, not guilty, not even sneaky-pleased; the usual rules did not seem to apply. Maybe when you give yourself over to an anomaly it automatically negates all the rules? Certainly Nakota thought so, that was why she was so hot to be where I was now. One of the reasons anyway. Besides the fact that she had always considered herself the uncrowned queen of the bizarre.
But what she failed to notice, or maybe had and didn’t care, was that no rules also translates into, and past, no safety, to the chilly land where no one’s in charge and that most specifically means you. Or in this case, me. Maybe she’d thought about that, too, and just didn’t give a queenly shit. I did; not enough to stop, obviously, but enough to wonder, what would it be like to pass at once and finally into that daunting atmosphere, that place where the rug stays permanently pulled out from under you, where the murderous tilt is the lay of the land? How would it feel?
Still silent outside, except for Randy’s tired breathing, even a horse gets tired. I opened my mouth to talk to him and realized I was shaking.
Little fatty drops of fluid trembled pff my arm, dropped onto my knee and lay atop the rank material of my jeans like fastidious oil on water. The sense of people listening.
Randy spoke again, something about did I have enough to eat and drink and what was goin’ on in there anyway, man, what’s happening with you? Are you all right? “Been hearing some noises,” he said.
“Me too,” though I had no idea what he was talking about. “What’s going on out there?”
“Well for starts we got the usual shitload of assholes out here, Shrike’s friends, and they’re hanging on every word this fuckin’ mask has to say—”
“It’s not the mask talking!” A girl’s voice, nasally indignant, a seconding chorus and this time I said it louder: “Shut up!”
“Like I said, it’s a real crew out here,” and in each word I read Randy’s lessening control, scaring me because Randy was the one, now that Vanese was gone, the only one I could trust or depend on, “and plus which they keep watchin’ the fucking video when they’re not out here listening to this stupid-ass mask.”
The video, wonderful. “Randy, where’s the skull? Your steel skull?”
“Around the doorknob. I mean its mouth is. Kind of clamped around the knob.” A ghost of creator’s pride, I didn’t mention how glad I was to have it gone, or at least away from me.
Randy kept talking, I was glad he couldn’t see my yawn. Just so tired. Of talking, of listening. Tired of this smelly room, my smelly self, of the father of stinks there on the floor. Call me Nakota: What would it be like to go down there? Charnel house? Garden of unearthly delights? And why don’t you find out, you chickenshit? And tired, of course, of that, too. Speculation becomes meaningless when it never blossoms.
What will happen?
Because anything could happen. I could wake up and my hands could be alligators, I could roll over and find my internal organs turned to shrill and individual mouths, find myself turned to livid garbage, corroding on the bone like the slick pulp of rotten fruit, something that decency if not kindness commends to instant burial in a Hefty bag. Or worse. It was like falling in a bottomless pit, literally endless, exponential dissolution in as many ways. No end in sight. You might say.