Not Andersen Prunty

I crawl out of the fire hydrant. Reach out my hand and stroke its rough surface. “Wood?” I mutter. I look around. A treelined suburban street. Where the hell am I? I don’t know. But I do know I’ve come here to die. From down the street I hear a loud car. It speeds toward me. A super jacked up hot rod, black and covered with gleaming white skulls. This car looks designed to take me to my death. I put my hands in my pockets and wait for the car to stop. It doesn’t. I enclose my right hand around an object. A paint can opener. I had used it to open a can of paint but the can was filled with …

I hurl the opener at the car. It clangs off the bumper and the car stops. I wait for it to back up. It doesn’t. I wander down the street until I reach the car. Apprehensively, I stand next to the passenger-side door until the driver shouts, “Wanna lift?!” He has an unkempt mustache that eclipses his lips and wears a pair of mirror-shade aviator sunglasses. He wears a trucker hat with a skull above the bill and, above the skull, the word: “Necrophiliac.”

“You bet I do,” I say, tugging rapidly on the door handle.

“Handles don’t work! Gotta hop in through the window!”

After several clumsy minutes, I make it into the car, bashing my head on the top of the door.

“Bitch, ain’t it?” he says. “I’m glad you came along. I need me some tunes. Grab that disc up off the floor and slide it in there.”

I wonder how me being here has anything to do with him being able to listen to music until I notice his hands are nailed to the steering wheel. He catches me staring.

“Keeps ’em from slidin’ off,” he says. “I got that sweatin’ disease? Gets damn slick. My wife, great woman she is, nails me down every time I go for a drive. She usually puts some tunes in too but, well, I been drivin’ around for a long time.”

I press the EJECT button on the stereo and the remains of a disc spill out. It’s melted and runny. I hesitate before putting the next disc in. This one is plain white with strange markings on it. Maybe it’s gibberish or maybe it’s how people write things here.

“I’ve never heard of them,” I say, more or less to make conversation.

“Me neither,” he says. “Some whore left it in the car. I like to stop off in The Alley and pay for sex favors sometimes. That one, as I recall, gave me an exquisite blowjob. Dropped that out of her bag.”

I slide the disc into the player.

“Thank god for automatics,” he says, peeling out into the road, speeding through a series of residential suburbs, each one the same as the last.

The music is at top volume. It is very discordant. No vocals. He rocks his head and shouts made-up words as though it’s some arena rock anthem. He burns to a stop in front of a small white ranch house. I guess this is home. I start to get out and he tells me to take the disc with me. “I don’t know what the fuck that is. It ain’t music in my book. Sounds like listening to a TV test pattern through a box fan.”

“Thanks,” I say, ejecting the disc and putting it back in its paper envelope.

I walk up the cement path to the house. He speeds two doors down, whips the car into the driveway and then just sits there. I reach the door and look over at him, sitting there in his quiet car.

“Hey!” I shout. “Do you need some help getting out of the car?!” It must be difficult with his hands nailed like that.

But he seems to be enraged. He shouts violently from his car. “Get the fuck in your goddamn house and don’t you ever say another fuckin’ word to me! If I catch you so much as lookin’ at my house or my car I’ll come out and fuckin’ slit your throat! Got that! SLIT YOUR FUCKIN’ GODDAMN THROAT!”

Reaching my hand out to turn the doorknob to the house, the door swings open and a clothed inflatable doll stands in the doorway.

“We’re through,” she says, pushing her way past me. A giant bag is slung over her shoulder. It’s nearly as large as the house. I have no idea how it fits through the door. Even though I have no recollection of ever being here, I know all our possessions are in that bag. “There’s a note for you on the floor,” she snarls through her O-shaped mouth. Then she lifts up her foot, flicks open an air stopper protruding from her heel, and goes shooting into the blue sky, carrying the bag with her.

The note on the floor says:

THE FLATS

FIBE A.M.

Five in the morning, maybe? I don’t really know. Knowing this is where I’m going to my death, I go into a rage, running around the bare room, kicking holes in the unadorned walls. I go into the kitchen and rip the cabinets from the walls, tip over the refrigerator, yank out all the drawers, piss on it all. Exhausted, I spiral into the living room and collapse but the silence is deafening. I remember the disc Necrophiliac gave to me and, for no apparent reason, take it from my pocket and lick the underside of it. I hear snippets of the music way back in my brain. I lick it again and, again, I hear the music. The house, with no source of light anywhere, is plunged into darkness as afternoon slides into night. I lie on the floor with the disc clamped between my teeth, my tongue touching it, until the music fills my skull. This is my last night to live and I make the most of it by falling asleep.

I wake up. The disc has fallen out of my mouth. It’s covered in drool and I no longer want to touch it. I go outside and trudge across the yards until I reach my neighbor’s house. He’s still in the car, rocking to and fro, growling. I kick the passenger-side door. “Hey!” I say.

He stops growling and whips his head around. “I told you never to get near me again you fucking shitsucker! I’m gonna open you up! Come on over here and I’ll fuckin’ rip your neck open you FATHERFUCKING SHEEPLEG!”

“Look, I need to go to The Flats.” I throw my stupid note into the car. “You have to take me.”

He growls. “I ain’t got no lights. No lights at all.”

I hurl myself into the car, plopping down in the seat next to him. “I’m sorry but we have to get going. The note said five … I think.”

He manages to turn the key with his knee, truly fascinating, it has little fingers. Rather than backing out of the driveway (the sick little hand can’t reach the gear shift) he just guns the accelerator and swings the wheel with his gruesome-looking hands until we are back on the road. I get hungry and rummage through the debris on the floorboard. I hold up a white triangular object and say, “What’s this?”

“Think that’s a guitar pick,” he says, keeping his eyes focused on the dark road. We leave the suburb and cruise along in the inky blackness.

“I’m gonna eat it,” I say.

“Go right ahead.”

I put the guitar pick on my tongue like a communion wafer and swallow it down. Amazingly, my stomach begins glowing and, once again, I hear music in my head. This time it’s really loud and I’m surprised it’s not leaking out.

“You hear anything?” I say to the driver.

“Nope. Nothin’ but the road,” he says.

I concentrate on the music and the glow filling the car. It’s so bright it drifts out of the car, illuminating the countryside around us. Only it is no longer countryside. It is a flat, cracked-earth desert.

“Here we are,” he says. “The Flats.”

“I think this is where I’m supposed to die,” I say.

“Best get out then.”

I clamber out of the car, feet smacking onto the hard earth. I’m like the moon, sending out all this light. I watch the driver drive back toward the neighborhood. I can see him for quite a way. I stand there and wait. Dawn comes up pink and golden. I feel myself growing weaker, the light from my stomach dying down. I collapse onto the scraped and scarred earth and know that I will not rise again.