IN FRISCO JELLY

IN FRISCO JELLY
Christopher Skolik

I was the Emperor Nero Cat, all and everyone knew it; get the respect then, see? They fair tremble with admiration tempered on envy.
Dr Copernicus Dog cut my morphine script down to zero, sat in his consulting room of cold white bones and used car parts, the stink of mouldy patient files and decaying medical journals. I made him aware of his faulty position, made him feel the fool he was, as a result our doctor-patient relationship suffered irreparable damage. Him blinking wildly like a mouse having some kind of fit.
My cohort and fuck buddy Sheldon Fyzzachkali was waiting for me, I was in a nasty position, with an uber rattle on the way, but I was also free, so I told Sheldon the gory details. I think he suspected my bulb had blown long ago.
His eyes where open like a front door. I knew where we were going from the look on his face.

The Greyhound bus passed thru a landscape of oil derricks, pylons tottering into lakes of tar, derelict steel foundries filled with illegal immigrants, mental patients who had taken to squatting in the burnt out car wrecks that line the freeway. The hills made geometric and strange by asbestos mines.
In the seat next to me Sheldon slept. His reflection fused with passing cemeteries that go on for miles and miles.
What I needed was some Shipman-esque GP, me offering my arm, a challenging glint in my eye; "C'mon if you think you’re hard enough…”
An unlikely prospect I realised, so here I was with Sheldon hurtling towards the 'periphery'.
Out back here the technology don’t work too good, it gives up the ghost, ‘metaphoric interference’ I guess. That’s what they call it. The air thick with it.
We pass a maze of mobile homes, just waiting for a tornado.
We pass Chapel Perilous (The prison where the inmates drove out the guards, then realised they needed the prison officers to give shape and meaning to their lives, at first they made prison officer scarecrows, pretend they are still in charge. Now they have internalised the prison officers inside their own heads, none tried to escape, way too institutionalised, in fact, they have a problem with guys breaking in…)

Soundtrack; ‘It’s over’ by Roy Orbison.
The town had this one dust blown, piss stained Main Street beyond which one felt there would be nothing, like a film set. Full of bars with dirty grime for windows, motel signs with one letter flashing in broken neon, lounges where bad acts make their presence felt. Vans and litter.
There is a roar; a dust cloud, and the Greyhound pulls off, leaves us deposited outside the IX Bar.
So me and Sheldon on the dust strip of the great depression that is Main Street USA. Dusk was gathering around the edges of vision like the early symptoms of migraine.
Became aware we where being watched, from around corners, the shadowy interior of stores, net curtains the vivid orange brown of nicotine, behind which crab eyes peer. Eyes without lids or humanity.
I suspect it was me, miscast the way writers are. Writers are not here for the same reason as regular folks, they are here to live, and writers are here to write. Come on all creepy and ill intentioned, trying to get into God’s place, what can one expect? I suspect creativity is a form of autism.
The whole town was playing dead, an ambience of repressed juices.
“Small town hospitality, eh?”
The sidewalk is burning with heat. Sheldon shrugs; “Let’s go in.” He nods toward the IX Bar.
The saloon has been utterly trashed, and fixed, over and over, made me think of a hastily sown up victim of a combine harvester accident. The scene of a thousand cinematic Western brawls. On a small garish stage Maria Delgado looked as if the only choice you had was to ravish her. Real classy.
We made to sit at a table near the stage as a four piece band drunkenly strikes up a show biz encore.
Her jaded Mexican features still attractive, sultry, seductive, even after fifty had long gone, she nodded and smiled recognition at us. We sat to listen.
I see a cute blonde redneck farm hand type at the next table, 'bout 25; I look into his eyes down to his marrow jelly, he shifts nervous in his seat, shy. I got him. Once I can have them I lose all interest.
After the song Delgado stalked down to our table, rednecks whooping and grabbing after her.
She joins us; an immigrant in a white tux takes our orders.
She lights a long cigarette, rolls the smoke across her tongue-“Surgical spirit Dahlink…”
I go for laudanum with an oxycodone chaser; Sheldon has water and shoots me a hard look.

I watch the girls’ work the tables, the droogie-chav types lurch at them, make maudlin advances. They where renowned, especially Lucilla Frerespowte, Joan Frensshewoman and Red Emma, the self styled Trollop of Tow puddle.
Maria takes her drink-“Forgive me Father for what I have done, been and imagined-" and empties the glass in one.
“Seen Luke?” I ask. She slams the upturned glass on the table for effect.
“Cool Aid Luke? Y'know he cannot stand closed in spaces…gets stir crazy in his own head. I heard he even broke out of the womb while his Mother was sleeping, substituted a pillow, and made off…hasn’t looked back since…”
“So? You seen him?”
She threw her head back, grimaced out expansive and replied in clouds of cigarette smoke which she began to sculpt with her gestures.
“Luke eh? Yes, me and he go back long ways, holding out in the bordello of celestial delights, at the mountains of madness…but my face started to crack-” She held a finger to her face, drew the tip in a line along her cheek bone, pale with pancake make up. She gave a lopsided grin.
“Yes?”
Sheldon and I nodded. I drained the laudanum.
“Me? Not forever. Eternity took its toll upon me, but Luke? Times fingers are numb to him-we are all bit players my dear, extras, but Luke, he is headlining.”
She wafted away a fair representation of Luke shaped in cigarette smoke.
“He is in town. Made a bundle exporting the concept of the Western to the Pakistan-Afghan badlands, y'know? Seen the ‘The Seven Taliban’? Made a packet I hear. Come here after my act tomorrow night. Go see him maybe? How are you two? Still in love? I believe that’s what they call it, isn’t it? ‘Love’?”

Outside the saloon darkness manufactured the night.
The laudanum and oxycodone kicks in as me and Sheldon walk out. The scenery moves out a million miles in a smooth warm rush.
On Main Street where everyday is Sunday, every night rape and pillage, it is filled with ghostly forces; Indians, the old west, Vietnam, the civil war, Iraq. Hear the spectres of the executed singing thru coyote throats. Serenade the stars with production line growls.
Falling stars become gunshots become fireworks become disintegrating space shuttles become falling tornado debris become tracer fire.
Sheldon stands, face etched in the epilepsy inducing flicker of faulty neon; “Not impressed here. Not impressed at all.”
“Look Sheldon, I work better from the poppy fields, you should be glad, it’s really quite touching that I made such a sacrifice for us both…”
He knows this is crap of course.
“Well you get hooked up all over again and I will not be mopping up the effluent, all that physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional toxic waste. Watching you shed your skin is not my idea of fun, OK?”
“Sure, whatever…” I shrug, feeling all benevolent and expansive, warm snuggled up in purpose-some part of me back there, in my Hong Kong opium den, kicking the gong around-has that effect on me…
We walk Main Street USA-a group of white supremacist skin heads are comparing muscles and fingering each others tattoos, I watch with a disconnected lust.
“Jesus-” Sheldon jabs me in the ribs, “Can we get a motel, do not have time to indulge your stateside Pen Indef homo eroticism-right?”
“A bloke can look can’t he?”
“There’s looking and there’s looking. You literary types look in the wrong way. Like it says in Lovecraft, 'do not summon what you cannot put back down.'”
I shrug.
“I saw you with that redneck at the IX, digging out his bi-curiosity like that, fucking his head up, it is not nice and it could be dangerous.”
We step over the dead, the drunk, enter the lobby of a RANDOM MOTEL, Maria recommended, run by her associate Clout Force Jones.

Viewing what had to be done in the total awareness of the harsh motel room. The light was too bright, showed too much.
Sound effects outside ambiguous, when you think it’s a fight they start laughing.
Sheldon sulks in front of the TV set watching the DOMESTIC VIOLENCE GAME SHOW. That’s fine, I just lay back and enjoy the meds, another’s body would just get in the way.
“What are we doing here?” Sheldon speaks without lifting his gaze.
“The same thing everyone is doing-trying to work out what we are doing here.”
“I am worried about you Dennison, you seem intent on throwing everything away. You got talent, but you waste it…”
“Maybe the alternative is much more terrifying.”
”Fucking hell you can be so hard to reach sometimes…”
“I know, I have thought the same myself.”

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