“Intergalactic Soul Delirium II: The Elimination of Officer Kilgore Trout”
By:
T.F. Tait
I.
A child collects bottle caps, blankets, loose silver,
and, with hunger that rushes through her like rain down gullies, arranges them
in a kind of room, a place to stay the night on the cobblestone. She plays the
recorder—a simple tune—soft and composed of only a few measures that grasps for
the concentration of the men who pass by. Her bed smells of spoiled meat, and
on the middle of her thigh is the gray-blue grit of a bruise. There is a Collie
that sits tolerantly at her side. It’s Labor Day 2011. Among the men that pass
by is a certain Officer Kilgore Trout, and he sees her but it is hard to tell
if he is actually aware of her, his attention is directly averted to an old man
trying to urinate onto a moving tram. There are four or five others that are
encouraging the man, and all the while he is singing in a language Kilgore
can’t even begin to understand, in a firm, unyielding baritone:
„Každý den je svátek
ve starém Václavském náměstí. .
.“
Trout
passes out of the gate into Wenceslas Square, wearing black Levis, Nike
sneakers, and a massive white Stetson, all the while drinking a 2L Pilsner
Urquell out of a paper bag. Since his discharge from the Navy he’s been working
as a road-laborer, and when there’s no work just traveling, and it just so
happens that the Officer’s Alaskan Klee Kai’s just so darn cute he’s ended up
in Prague for the 20th Annual Prague Dog Show. Other than that Trout’s
simply been giving in to outside impulses, and tonight it’s the Absintherie, a touristy
sort of joint that all of his friends guarantee to be one hell of a time. But
to get there he’s got to take the 5, and it’s not coming until 22:35, a whole
13 minutes. Trout glances at his watch and immediately becomes exceptionally
bored. He paces, slurps from his Pilsner, arranges and rearranges his hat,
takes out his phone, puts his phone away, takes it back out and pushes some
buttons. After what feels like an eternity the tram shows up, and he is taken
away, rushing under the starry night past elaborate communist architecture,
churches like giant brick monoliths, gray-green sculptures, and the hot stench
of 24-Hour Herna bars…
The
tram screams up to Dlouha Trida, and K’s super excited for his first hard drink
of the night, so excited that he’s essentially skipping out of the doors, (and
perhaps he’s a little bit mushy from the Pilsner here, folks), but he looses
his footing and all of the sudden the pavement is rushing towards his face and
an alarming rate. So he tries to pull off a tuck and roll in order to look as
inconspicuous as possible but its too late and BAM! right in the kisser. The
normal guy would be down for the count but Trout’s a fighter. Trout rolls over
onto his back and looks at the sky, and as the drops of blood from his forehead
mix with the spilled beer and sodden sludge from the city street he really
thinks for a brief moment in his bones that he might lay there forever and die.
“Whoopsies”,
he says.
He
gets up and walks through the topsy turvy Old Town streets to where the bar is
situated. Weeknights out here aren’t too different than the weekends, so this
part of town is already bananas with the clangor of funseekers, drinkers, and
tourists that either just got off of work or just got in town for holiday. But
Kilgore doesn’t really mind. It’s true that the extreme city life used to be
more exciting for him though, back in he old days, before everything was
high-rise, high-intensity, high-technology. . .
“That
you, Trout?”
She
sounds just like she always used to. He hasn’t seen her for a few years, nobody
has. Back then she was always sandals, long hair, glasses, bottom half of a
flower-print bikini. Now her hair is short, looking just like she swore she
never would.
“Kil,
listen, I need your help. How about a drink?”
“You
look almost unrecognizable”, he tells her.
“Thank
you.”
They
step into the bar and order a shot. Trout feels like he just got hit in the
face with a flaming piece of licorice.
Cringing,
“Damn Jess, this place isn’t my office you know. And besides, I’m here on
business. Ignatius is going to run in the show here in a week. I’m trying to
stay fit for the cameras.”
And
indeed he is. Ignatius is one hell of a hound, blue eyes, grey/bone coat, 12kg
and 33 cm/56cm; he's a noble stallion of the Klee Kais. And this is not the
first dog show he's been in; in fact he's won a competition in Trout's
hometown, Warren Ohio (The folks there said that the whole thing was rigged
however, since the whole contest was organized, run, and judged by Trout
himself). “Then why not compete in the US?” you ask,
“Isn’t Prague a bit out of the way?” Well, wonderful question. It just so
happens that Trout has competed a few times in the US before, but mostly with
bad results. For example: Pucks N’ Paws Show, 2001, Nueva York City. It was a
close race between Ignatius and Grundula the Norwich Terrier. It all came down
to the Dog Agility trial, where the two canines had to run through a tunnel,
the dogwalk (sort of like a flimsy raised bridge), a winged jump, two
additional winged jumps, execute with finesse the teeter-totter, and finally
the dreaded tire jump. Grundula’s performance was quaffable, but lost a few
points dismounting the seesaw, although it was mostly a technical error from by
his handler. When it came to Ignatius’ turn he started off magnificent, but
right after exiting one of the collapsed tunnels and following through with a
perfect winged single jump he totally lost his footing in the weave poles,
crashing violently into a sandbag, which was used to hold up the earlier plastic
tunnel. Trout couldn’t believe his eyes, he practiced this over and over with
his darling Ignatius, it must have been a turf problem, and too much water
makes it slippy, without a doubt. Trout was red with rage and fury. From them
on it gets sort of blurry for Kilgore, but he can recall a certain conversation
with the judges regarding things like “drop kicks to the face”, and “you don’t
know what I’m capable of.” It got really good when he said, “Give me your
fingers, I swear to God I’ll peel them back like they were ripe bananas.” But
it was useless, Grundula took the Gold Prize and Kilgore was banned from
competing in the US ever again. But no matter, he doesn’t really like the way
most people in the US treat their dogs anyways, particularly in New York City.
Every public park restricts the dogs to a level of near absurdity, they allot a
tiny plot of land for each dog to play around with his owner, except every
owner has to share that tiny fenced-off plot with 10 other dog owners, while
the rest of the park sits there unused. It’s sheer stupidity. Not like Prague,
no. In Prague there is not a single canine leashed, much less muzzled, and they
can run and shit and piss wherever their tiny little heart desires.
“I
don’t feel well, Kil. I’m tired to death. And I’m really sorry to burst into
your life again like this. I know we haven’t spoken in a really long time, I
mean, since you left to work on that submarine and I came out here to work for
Globus, but things have really been getting sort of peculiar around here. I
mean, I got a message the other day”,
says Jessie, jolting K out of his reverie.
No time for catch-up, Kilgore thinks to
himself. Darn shame too, he’s feeling pretty drunk and slightly horny right
about now, he hasn’t exactly been romantically engaged these days. Despite this
he attempts to stay totally interested in her conversation:
“Message.
. . I seeeeee.”
He
lights up a Pall Mall and looks out the window.
‘What
through Facebook? What are you so scared about?
Jessie
continued to tell him what was really wrong,
some seriously messed-up stuff that chilled Kilgore straight down to the
deepest, darkest pits of his being. It turns out that one of Jessie’s friends,
Ms. Gwindlyn Bugeja, tragically died in a motor accident. She was riding her 2009
HD Iron 88 down the interstate and got nailed by a drunken person handling
heavy machinery. Cars are serious weapons, she tells Kilgore, a speeding metal
rocket that weights 4,000 lbs, it’ll smoosh you like a breadcrumb. Bugeja didn’t
stand a chance. It’s tragic. She was only 34. But here’s where it get’s sort of
peculiar, she continues, the Facebook message she got the other day was from Bugeja. She can’t understand it. It’s
only a week after the funeral and somehow she was contacted by the recently
deceased, it was a cry for help, somehow Bugeja is still existing, somewhere in
cyberspace, floating around them like a ghost of data and numbers. She’s
convinced it’s not a joke, no one would be that psychotic to do something like
that, and ever since she’s be struggling with a crippling psychic delirium that
even the strongest whiskey can’t kick, and Kilgore’s just sort of staring at
her, confused as to whether or not this whole thing is a joke and why me, why me, but Jessie’s just
continuing, letting the words flow out of her mouth like rain. She’s gotten two
more messages since, and they are always the same.
“What
is the message?”
At
that moment the door to the Absintherie burst open and a young man with lime
green Ray-Ban sunglasses jumps through. He’s holding a boom box on his muscular
shoulder and he has a sleeveless tank top that says Keg Stand Champ upside down. Kilgore actually finds it pretty
clever.
“Alright,
bros!” He calls out, “It’s precisely 9:32PM in Bro-hemia!” He pauses for a
second and looks around the room. “Commence drinks to the FFAAACCCEEE!!!”
All
of a sudden an army of teenagers all looking exactly the same come flying
through the miniature door of the bar, it’s got to be about 20 of them cramming
into the tiny space, all rushing to the bar for a drink. The Bro Leader places
the stereo on a table and puts on “I Don’t Really Care” by Waka Flocka Flame
(Ft. Trey Songz), and pulls a .5 liter Kozel can out of his pocket, which he
immediately begins to shotgun, finishing the whole thing in a matter of
seconds.
“Holy
shit”, from Kilgore.
“Jsem kurva nenávidí
Američany”, mutters the
bartender.
There’s
pandemonium everywhere, Absinthe Mojitos flying left and right, Absinthe ice cream
and slushies being consumed at alarming rates, Chupitos, Choosey Tomcats,
Absinth Sperms (really? That’s a real shooter name?); people are kissing each
other’s necks and faces and hands and touching each other all over, tables are
being danced on and crumbling into pieces, a Bro slips on a spilled Mohito and
nearly cracks his head open on the counter but gets right up and keeps
partying, another two Bros are in fisticuffs over who drank more beer, Jessie
could swear she sees a dildo made out of gold out of the corner of her eye, and
Kilgore and Jess are just looking around them in an amazement that is
remarkably close to disgust, and before Trout knows it there’s a couple flaming
B-52’s directly in front of him on the countertop.
“Have
you ever done drink for drink with the Bro-King?” The young man with the tank
top asks him.
Rapidly
the whole room becomes completely silent.
* * *
Cut
to Beelzepub Herna Bar, Holesovice. It’s 2:30AM, two traditional Czech men sit
among the smoky interior, surrounded by the buzz and clangor of erratic slot
machines, reflecting flashing yellow and orange lights on their pale faces. The
entire space is dark, like a massive void, except for a tiny blue light shaped
like a money sign above their heads that acts like a neon blue dynamo. On the
television screen there is a police officer violently beating a man with his
nightstick. The man falls to the floor, powerless and insensible.
Jan
hits the jackpot: “Yeeeaaaoooo!!!”, he howls, smacking the side of the machine
with his free palm. The other holds a cigarette that is burning down to the
filter. Koruna shower out the slot of the mechanism. Silver rain. After he
collects his reward he steps back to his table and lights another cigarette.
Hansa joins him with a beer in his hand.
(translated
from Czech)
JAN: “So
Hansa, what d’you wanna do tonight?”
HANSA: “Well,
I don’t know Jan…”
Silence. Both take a long slug from their
glasses.
HANSA: “O!
I got it! Let’s defen’strate somebody!”
Together: “Yeeeaaahh!!!”
JAN: “Who
d’you wanna defen’strate Han?”
HANSA: “O,
o, o, how ‘bout that Tomas fella? I hear he peed all over the Cerny
statue
last week.”
JAN: “Yeeeaaahhh—O,
but wait… We defen’strated him yesterday…”
Both sigh.
But wait, out of the window they see a figure, he’s
cloaked in the dimness of the murky Holesovice morning. The two men can
abstractedly make out a white hat on his head. And they’re moving, moving out
the doors to see who the figure can be, who the figure can possibly stand for .
. .
* * *
“This
is all falling apart”, Kilgore thinks to himself. “And when it does, I will
think of home.”
Kilgore
remembers Jessie from his hometown in Ohio. Back then she was young and
beautiful, having a particularly unusual beauty, much like the sun when the sun
goes down. Back then she loved the books, fruit, sun, clouds, and stars, and at
night when the sun was going down she would walk out onto her balcony and look
at the sky. All the men of Warren, Ohio wanted Jessie, even when she was a
child.
Kilgore
first met her on a train to New York. It was a long ride, full of silence and
sleep, and the pattern on the seat covers was olive green with scattered, blue
ovals.
She
turned to Kilgore after a brief introduction, “It looks like a peacock”, she
said. “It reminds me of a story my grandmother would tell me as a child. The
young boy, studying that
autumn in junior high, watched house for a week. It was the home of an angel,
and he needed to meet him, for he knew that angels had the capacity to enter
any object and arrange its appearance—God had put them on Earth to make it more
beautiful, and the boy believed himself to be very unattractive. One day, as he
was walking back from school, he came to the angel’s door and asked him if he
could mold his unsightly being to be naturally beautiful. He turned to the boy
and said, ‘I would like that too, but I don’t think I could.’ And when the boy
didn’t understand, ‘Every time I change something’s exterior I forget something
about myself.’ The hope and radiance that the boy carried around his belly and
chest cavity withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at the angel when
he said, ‘But it is for you.’ The next morning the boy awoke in his bed as a
peacock, and, feeling very concerned, he walked back through the pines to the
angel’s house to have the transformation corrected. The home looked to be
empty, but after walking passed the fence to the backyard the boy noticed the
angel dead in his swimming pool—he must have forgotten how to swim.”
Kilgore
was devastated by the tale.
“Can
I put my head on your shoulder?” He asked.
“Yes,”
she replied.
They
sat like that until they reached New York City.
II.
Things
are not going well. The Bro-King has enslaved Kilgore into a battle to the
death. At this point he won’t even attempt to stand, if he did he would surely
fall flat onto his face, and yet he’s successfully keeping his composure. To
him (Kilgore) this is suffering, but to the Bro-King this is art, his art, his
method of overcoming the outside, evil forces surrounding him, conquering,
claiming his will over nature. And there can never be art without suffering,
one can say.
“Another
Absinthe Sperm!” A voice calls out. They’ve lost count. Kilgore can’t even tell
how many people are in the room, things are doubled, tripled, floating and
twirling like a slipshod performance of Swan
Lake. The crowd surrounding them is silent and focused. It’s like they’re
holding their breath, afraid that the slightest change in the room’s density
will cause one of the artists to make some faulty maneuver, ultimately making
the entire competition void.
Gulp. Down the hatch. Another sperm is
waiting. It’s fucking staring at him the face, laughing with a hideous, toothy,
shit eating grin. It goes down with some added effort on Kilgore’s part. The
crowd shutters. Whispers from a couple bystanders. Two of the Bros bet 100Kc
that Kilgore is going to go into cardiac arrest. There’s sperm everywhere,
floating around in his stomach, in front of his face and whispering in his
ears: Sperm. Sperm. He can’t shake
it. If he keeps this up he’s going to turn into a sperm for Chris sakes. I mean
you are what you eat right? Or drink I suppose (heh-heh). Another one. Things
are becoming ambiguous, murky, Kilgore can feel himself entering a void, it’s
surrounding him like a round, gigantic disc, like heaven, or perhaps the green,
rubbery vacuum of hell. He can smell the taint of its nothingness. Or maybe
that’s just the considerable amount of liquor he’s consumed burning a hole in
his intestinal lining. Sluuuurp. He
can’t make out the figures surrounding him, they are ghosts, mere outlines.
There is a moist piece of flesh in his mouth, pink and muscled. Teeth surround
it and lips surround the teeth. It is nice, and for a moment he feels un-alone.
But the abyss is growing. All of a sudden he’s falling into it, the massive
black void, it swallows him up, and he dissolves into the immense, swirling specter
of its oblivion.
Well
folks, now something a little weird happened here—and don’t ask me how the hell this happened—but it turns out Kilgore
is now in his own cock—well his balls
to be precise—actually reduced to a teeny-tiny spermatozoon, surrounded by his
entire gamete family tree. Oh hey Mikey,
how’s the kids these days? No time for chit-chat soldier, nuh-uh, this is
bizness . . . Officer K. Trout now notices a streetlight in front of the giant
army of sperm cells and its getting warmer, the stationary red light on, things
are vibrating, getting stimulated, stirring stirring and everyone’s totally
focused on that little red light, waiting for the exact moment when they can
race, race, race for the prize, the light at the end of the tunnel. Suddenly it
flashes to green and BLAST OFF! Now everyone is swimming and giving all the
chutzpa they can possibly muster, heaving, panting, pursuing the magic,
gleaming light. Its getting closer, soon it will be here, all surrounding, like
a giant disc from above . . .
The
light surrounds, it’s percolating through the tiny cracks of the shutters,
sprinkling drops of luminosity on Kilgore’s nipples and brow. He rises out of
bed and looks around the room, at the armoire, desk, a bookshelf half empty.
Where is he?
III.
It
took approximately 3 minutes for the paranoia to set in, a crippling psychic
stress that slowly tip-toed its way into Kilgore’s bones, and before he knew it
he was galumphing around the room looking for the slightest clue as to his
approximate location. His search would be going a lot better, but naturally he
is exceptionally hung over. He feels sort of like he got hit in the face with a
mountain, if that is any clue. And his stomach; well, lets not even go there.
Oh yeah, and about a minute into the search he realizes he’s ass naked. He puts
on his Stetson, thinking that the pressure might relieve the foul mess inside
his head, but as expected nothing changes.
The
room is small, only one open window and potted plants on nearly every flat
surface offered. Judging by the room color—a magenta carpet with light orange
walls—Kilgore assumes it is the abode of a female, and starts fishing through
the cluttered desk, through the jars, bottles, candy wrappers, half empty coffee
cups, wine bottles and cigarettes assumed to be left over from the night
before; there’s a half empty can of salsa next to a bag of chips, condoms, chicken
nuggets, a Raymond Chandler book (Jeez, whoever he spent the night with is an
absolute slob), cough drops, and then it hits him. Jessie, you dumb bastard. He picks up an opened envelope with her
name and address on it. At this moment in time, of absolute realization, he
can’t tell if the weight he was carrying around in his stomach, the delirium of
being totally and completely lost, disoriented, and misplaced, died, rather
quickly, or just welled up into his throat and made him want to vomit like a
little baby. Well yeah but then where the
fuck is she? (Yep, the paranoia is not gone, that’s for sure). Did they get her? Man O Man, she was totally
for sure kidnapped, man . . . What the fuck am I gonna do?
Now, lets not jump to conclusions here, Kil. Sure,
things look super fishy, but maybe we should try to take things slow, maybe try
to find out some info., you know, with the internet or something. Isn’t that
cool, that you can share all sorts of information like that, that you are
exactly the same exact distance away from finding out how to get in touch with
Jessie and massive amounts of pornography? Just the click of a button. O yeah.
Well I'm totally and completely lost,
thought Kilgore to himself as he stepped down into the cobblestone streets
surrounding Jessie's apartment. Haven't
been lost this bad for several years, not since '97 when me and Cherokee Joe
met those cannibals in Southern Africa.
Luckily
at that time Ignatius rolls up, tongue hanging out of mouth, and jumps up to
greet Kilgore with a big lick on the face.
"Wow!"
Said Kilgore out loud. "Is that really you Doggo?"
He
checks his underbelly for reassurance. Luckily there he finds a brown spot of
fur that is shaped like a tetrahedron directly above his left thigh.
"It's
really you! Let's get into town and save Jessie!"
Ignatius
takes a shit on the street, and then begins trotting away towards the nearest
tramvaj stop. That way they can take a short excursion into Old Town, where
hopefully some information about Jessie and this mysterious Globus Corporation
can be revealed.
On
the walk down the street they run into a young man and woman.
"Hey,
killer hound, brother."
"Oh,
danke schön. His name's Ignatius. Had him for a solid 11 years and he still
looks like a spring chicken."
"Yeah
man. Hey, you want a cigarette?"
"Do
bears shit in the woods?"
They
both light up a Camel.
"Oh
yeah, and this is my girlfriend, Petra. Like the Greek word for stone or sort
of like petrified shit, except she doesn't smell like that. More like fungus
growing on an aspen trunk."
"Like
what?"
"Like
fungus growing on an aspen trunk a.k.a. the sweet scent of hibiscus languidly
in the summer breeze a.k.a. a gaggle of beavers building a damn in the
Adirondacks a.k.a. the salty radiance of the ocean breeze a.k.a. a stag
immediately after a sun-shower in the middle of August a.k.a. when you make
birthday cake but you put in 1 cup too much baking soda a.k.a. precious
dandelions dancing in the summer moonlight."
"Isn't
that sorta presumptuous?"
"Nah,
man."
"Groovy."
"How
old are you?"
"Hey,
I'm actually looking for a lady as well. Perhaps you can lend a hand. Do you
have a computer?"
"See,
I knew you were an old-school kinda cat. It's 2011. Yes, I have a computer. And
Internet access on my phone at all times. But right now I'm heading to campus,
I have class in 20. Wanna come? You can use the Internet there and find out
everything you ever wanted."
"Sounds
good to Uncle Trout."
"Then
follow me."
So
the four hop on the next tram that arrives, and it’s approximately 20 minutes
until they arrive in front of a sandstoney sort of colored geometric building
in the city center. It turns out its Charles University, and Kilgore's newfound
acquaintance studies there, majoring in Visual Praxis with a minor in
Storytelling.
They
enter the front door and are immediately accosted with horrific smells.
"Sweet
dancin' Jesus in a dress that's some exceptionally evil smelling shit,"
Kilgore says.
"Oh
no," says the student. "This is big shit."
"Please
elaborate on this smell."
They
stroll down the hallway and observe the horrendous scene. Students are
galumphing down the hallways, with pale faces, eyes nearly rolled back into
their brains.
"I'm
not kidding. Big shit. Probably diarrhea."
"Excuse
me?"
"This
has happened before, but only once."
A
student looking strikingly like a zombie drags his body up to them and then
vomits onto the floor. The students surrounding them are either lying on their
backs, or sprinting to the toilets to let out a nasty excretion.
"What
the fuck is this?"
"The
internet is down. Everyone reacts differently around here. It's sort of hard to
get used to life without it. Sometimes you just gotta lay down because there's
not too much else you can do if you don't have the capability to surf the web.
And lying down is usually your best bet, because the withdrawal makes you feel
totally shitty, like you just woke up from the worst hangover of your life
except you're kinda wired too and can't fall asleep for hours. And then there's
"the tweaks". Little compulsive twitching that creeps into your
joints and you sit there clicking an invisible mouse, staring in front of you
except your not really looking at anything. That's the one that freaks me out
the most and it only happens to serious Net-users. Last time it happened I just
wound up talking a great deal louder, I felt like I needed to make up for the
absence of constant music or just the presence of a kind of anonymous, digital
noise or something. Actually, I might need to go."
He
runs down the hallway, pushing the zombie students out of the way and rushes
into the closest commode. You can hear the noise of him voiding himself echoing
down the hallways, accompanied by the moans and whimpers from the throats of
wasted students and children. It all dissolves into itself, into an
unspecified, nameless racket as it enters Kilgore's cochlea. For a moment in
his bones the Internet is round, a giant disc that surrounds him and everything
ever—an infrastructure of interconnected networks and diagrams and data and
numbers that is undetectable but simultaneously present and infinite at all
times—like Heaven or the green, rubbery vacuum of Hell; its neither here nor
there and yet it is everywhere. But behold! Where is it now? Where is Kilgore
now? It was this, now it’s that. He can feel himself being dispersed,
dissolving, being crushed by the machine into anonymous digital noise . . . But
there never was anything but the atoms and the void, claims Democritus . . .
Yet how sweet, how loving, how wet, how noxious, how kind, how warm, how light
it is . . .
