Utterly Mad

CHAPTER 3 Grilling with Morgan Freeman

"John?" The dog farted. I got nothing else out of her the rest of the night.

I drove downtown, scanning the alleys until I saw a rail-thin Mexican kid standing by a Dumpster wearing a St. Louis Rams jacket. The kid was wearing the jacket, not the Dumpster.

"Now do you guys understand what it wants with us?" Fred said, "Man I think he's gonna make a fuckin' suit of human skin, using the best parts from each of us." "Holy crap," said John. "He'll be gorgeous." I sighed again, rubbed my forehead with both hands. There was a very real chance that the conversation had taken a turn that would allow John to talk about his dick, which was a subject it could take hours, if not the better part if days, to come back from.

I looked around the dim group, saw moonlight from the window cracks reflecting off tears on Jennifer's cheeks. Big Jim had his eyes closed, maybe in prayer. Fred Chu looked around as if uninterested, stroking his goatee with one hand and fidgeting with a strip of carpet foam with the other. John was staring vacantly at a spot on the other side of the room already distracted into a dull stupor. Molly licked her crotch. Ladies and gentlemen: The Undisclosed Hell-Conqueror Strike Force!

"John, let me make one thing clear," Jim said, cutting me off in his most stern, evangelical voice. "Every man is blessed with gifts from the Lord. One of mine happens to be a penis large enough that, if it had a penis of its own, my penis's penis would be larger then your penis."

I flung the gun at another one of the monsters, missed, hit an elderly man in a wheelchair instead, toppling him over.

The usual MCDONALD'S--I'M LOVIN' IT! slogan was replaced by a jumble of crazed red letters saying, MCWONGALD'S-- SHIT LUNCH TURDWOMAN

"Who are you? Who are you to one like Korrok, who fills his belly with great men, swallowing them as a whale swallows swarms of krill? The desires and ambitions of men who towered over you are, in Korrok, digested over eternities fermenting into an anguish that exceeds the sum of all living mankind's suffering through the ages. Populations of worlds roll in his guts, the mad screams and desperate longings of seven trillion souls escape every time Korrok farts. And he does fart. So let me repeat my question: who are you. you shit-spewing crotchfruit?

Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck.

I have this tarp, a blue one, one I always used to keep my firewood dry before I ran out of firewood. Right now it was in a loose roll along the gravel floor of my toolshed, above another frosted stain of cranberry-coloured slush. There was something wrapped in the canvas, something the size of a body, something I knew was a body, rolled up like-- A murder burrito!

You know how sometimes when you're drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It's nothing to be concerned about, it's usually just the parasite adjusting its grip.

There exists in the world a spider the size of a dinner plate, a foot wide if you include the legs. It's called the Goliath Bird-Eating Spider, or the "Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider" by those who have actually seen one. It doesn't eat only birds--it mostly eats rats and insects--but they still call it the "Bird-Eating Spider" because the fact that it can eat a bird is the most important thing you need to know about it. If you run across one of these things, like in your closet or crawling out of your bowl of soup, the first thing somebody will say is, "Watch it, man, that thing can eat a goddamned bird." I don't know how they catch birds. I know the Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider can't fly because it would have a different name entirely. We would call it "sir" because it would be the dominant species on the planet. None of us would leave the house unless a Goliath Fucking Flying Bird-Eating Spider said it was ok.

John, possessing a genetic defect that makes him walk toward danger, strode down toward where it looked like some cops were trying to set up a perimeter around the chaos. Somewhere, Charles Darwin nodded and smiled a knowing smile.

It was a wet, chilled morning under a lethargic November sky that had rolled out of bed and thrown on an old, gray, grease-stained T-shirt.

NAME: James DuPree
OVERDUE: 0
ACCT STATUS: A
COMMENTS: THIS MAN HAS WORN THE SAME TROUSERS SINCE HE WAS A TODDLER.

Many memos had circulated at Wally's about abusing the customer comment box on the computer. We have John to thank for that. He worked here a few years ago, after I begged the manager to let him on. John was fired a few months later, but not before he managed to add something to the "Comment" field for pretty much every single customer he served.

NAME: Carl Gass
COMMENTS: If he doesn't have late charges, and you tell him that he does, he LOSES HIS FUCKING MIND.

NAME: Lisa Franks
COMMENTS: Had sex with her on 11/15.

NAME: Kara Bullock
COMMENTS: Thinks I have an English accent. Don't forget.

NAME: Chet Beirach
COMMENTS: Always smells like fish. I think he fishes for a living. He's sensitive about it so don't bring it up.

NAME: Rob Arnold
COMMENTS: It's the white Patrick Ewing!

NAME: Cheryl Mackey
COMMENTS: Had sex with her on 7/1