In the drive: We're a happy family: a tribute to the Ramones by Various Artists

I hate picnics.

Before we go there, I seem to have forgotten some of the details of last night. While I was tending to Terri, and doing a little psychic triage, D and N decided to do a little poking in Mr. No-Face. See, when he first attacked, he opened drawers in his chest and removed certain items. The boys wanted to see what was in there, and, using D's knife, commenced to digging. No-Face had somehow created voids in his chest cavity, and sealed them over. The contets were: fish hooks, small black capsules that resembled eggs, an optic nerve sans eye (which E points out probably belonged to Peter Capelli, and was the channel through which the eyeball over the refrigerator spied on us), and SEVERAL index fingers.

In the guy's chest.

Made me want to beat on him some more. N threw the eggs into a mason jar (after they started eating their way through two of E's baggies).

Z decided to take a look-see around the place, while D and E escorted Terri to the relative safety of the truck. She and N spot a flickering light coming from downstairs, stage right, coming from hundred of luminara which lead us to a strange shrine to...something. It's hard for my brain to process these items into any coherent pattern. The walls were lined with shelves, with every square inch holding luminara. There was an old desk, and suspended over it was a cleaver, attached to the ceiling with thin steel wire. There was also a tarot card--the Magician, I think, similarly hanging from the ceiling. There was a creepy portrait of Terri, and a black and white picture of three people--two of which were the Castrato in his tweed suit and Mr. No face. On the desk was a briefcase that held encyclopedia samples and order forms, dating to, well, to a time when the encyclopedia people went door to door, as well as a tarot deck. Z noted that the briefcase was far too deep to hold just those items, and figured out a way to pop open a false bottom. Inside were your standard issue tools of torture and maiming, Serial Killer Local #102. At that precise moment, E screamed that the cop sirens were headed our way (in Bakersfield, it's not enough to say, "I hear sirens," because you ALWAYS hear sirens). We had time to cut down a creepy portrait of Terri and grab some pictures tacked to a corkboard, and we hightailed it to E's.

On the drive back, N shared that he dabbled with the Tarot cards, drawing The Tower and Death. Good for him, I say.

Well, that was all for last night. I was awakened by the chirping of my cell phone. It was Aunt Claire, a woman I hadn't spoken to in, well, ever. She sends the occasional Christmas card with no return address, bless her cold black heart. She thanked me for visiting her the other week (!), wondered how Vivian was doing (!!) and told me she found a copy of the book I had asked for (!!!) autographed (!!!!). I'll assume that it's not creeping senility, and I'm the asshole here. The book is called Death and everything after. Aunt Claire wasn't forthcoming with the author's name, and I didn't push it.

So then Nunzio Capelli shows, complaining of stomach pains. I'm ready to wave him off to a doc-in-the-box, when I realize he's presenting classic symptoms of peritonitis. Given that's how Valentino bought it, I decide to do a slightly more comprehensive exam. As I prod the affected area, figuring our how I'm going to treat a disorder that normally requires fairly invasive prceedures in a less-than-sterile enviornment, I spot the movement. Something just under the skin wiggles its way up his torso, and Nunzio contorts in pain.

To say I'm not ready for this is an understatement, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to try. I fish out my best scalpel, and try to intercept the beasty's route. I miss-badly, and Nunzio starts shrieking. I try again, and manage to snag it, pulling tightly. What emerges is a cross between a tapeworm and a lamprey, which is a bit like finding a cross between a Walther PPK and a toaster in your mom's attic. Like the cantaloupe-puppy, this thing was engineered. I realize now that E's valiant effort to make Nunzio throw up what No-Face made him swallow the other night was futile. Something lingered, and roto-rooted his insides. The internal bleeding was enormous, and Nunzio expired within moments of the extraction of the creature. I managed to scrape the reamins of the creature off the floor (D having smacked it once or thirteen times with his shit-kicking boots). Tracing the time Nunzio started to experience gastric problems, I realized that the rooter must have been activated upon the death of No-Face. Nice fail-safe.

So now we have yet another dead goombah on the kitchen table. E uses that big brain of his, and corrals Terri and Danny out of the house to pick up their father, while I clean up the mess. Somewhere in all that, Carl shows up. Carl's a friend of E from 'The Shit', and seems to be a pretty cool Buddhist. D heads out with Carl to track down Fredo Capelli, the second-in-command, and the guy whose ass we must kiss to stay alive. He sets out for Benny's place, and returns with a young girl in tow. He pulls me aside and explains that he discovered Ashley home alone. Benny, her dad, was dead and digested by the Hungry cops. Her mom was in her room, having overdosed on heroin two days before. Based on that, bringing her here was the right move.

Somehow, in all that, Fredo got the message and came to visit. He brought Clarence (aka "Mister Mittens") and Mr. Punch, who had a Mr. Punch puppet on his right hand. Fredo announced that he was burying his father tomorrow, which we all took the wrong way (having seen waaaay too many gangster films, we assumed "burying" was a euphemism for "killing") and that he promised a role for all of us in his reorganized mob. I saw a flash of understanding in D's eyes, and resolved to ask him about it, but not before Fredo specifically asked me to work as a mob doctor. Seeing as I was a de facto mob doctor, it made sense to sign up and get all the benefits that go with it (few though they might be), but I'd need to talk to Terri.

After they left, D shared with me the theory he'd been working on. Fredo was caught in a power grab with his brother. First, though, his dad had to go, so he gave the cat to us, the cat that had preserved the Elder Capelli up until this point. I pointed out to D that this made perfect sense. After all, if someone offered you a miracle cure to a fatal disease, the first thing you would do would be stop taking the meds. Elder Cappelli did, and died when we didn't get the cat back in a timely fashion. It did seem a little strange that someone who had no faith in a magic cat statue that brought his father back from the edge of death would emply clearly deviant hoods like Mr. Mittens and Mr. Punch (who has the annoying ability to sense the truth--and that's the puppet, not the man). So Fredo was behind it all, including the Unholy Circus Trio.

And I had conditionally sold my soul to him. Great.

E returned with his brother Wilbur in tow. At some point, Saffron tried to screw me out of $20. Wait, that came out all wrong. Uh, she tried to TALK me out of $20, and I gave it to her just to make her go away. Wilbur had become a good little white supremacist in the joint, and had returned in excellent shape, which is problematic. I had already blamed him for poorly raising Terri and Danny, but this new evidence--that Terri and Danny were being used in Satanic rituals, apparently with Wilbur's knowledge--moved him into a whole new category. Soon after I was adopted by E, I started sneaking into his bedroom and sleeping on the floor at the foot of his bed. Before I dozed off, I would hear him mutter in his sleep about "fragging" an "asshole lieutenant". It took me a while to discover that 'fragging' involved a grenade, duct tape, and a can of gasoline stashed under a bunk. Wilbur sounds like a good candidate for fragging.

And then we get to the picnic. I hate picnics about as much as I love my wife. I've never been to a good picnic, and the best I can come up with was the one where Danny found a nest of fire ants, and decided to start kicking the anthill, to teach those "dirty little thieves" a lesson. From that day on, I carry an epi-pen, just to be on the safe side.

This one was no better. Somewhere between the cole slaw going bad in the hot sun, and the beer brats being pulled off ten minutes too late, the Satanists showed up. It's probably expeditious for me to point out the rest of D's theory--there are three forces that oppose us. The Mob is one, clearly. The Satanists here, who call themselves the Seventh Gate, are the second. I'd like to think the Killer Circus Folk are the third, but D points out that they were brought into our lives at the behest of the Mob, so there goes that theory. The Satanist side of things actually goes way back, when Terri and Danny were very young. E recalls two fellows named Rick (see dream 1) and El Mudhi who terrorized Bakersfield and LA long ago. Sharif "one-knee down, one-knee to go" El Mudhi was the elder El Mudhi's son, and decided to crash our picnic with friends and shotguns. With all the preparations, I forgot the cardinal rule of surviving a Kinkaid picnic--always come armed. I ran into the house to fetch a piece, while everyone else started firing indiscriminately. Actually, E did that cool trick where he freezes someone in place, and Carl shows off some of the little known teachings of the Buddha, involving gunning down incapacitated targets. I fish out my piece, and emerge, gun a-blazing. Wilbur catches a shotgun blast in the back, and already I feel sorry that I have to put Sharif down--I owe that man a beer! D and Carl take out a few of the followers, and E continues to show off the mojo, putting one or two to flight. Z does this cool thing where she films while she shoots, bringing new meaning to 'combat photographer'. In the end, N goes for Sharif's gun, and trips on the horseshoe set I put out earlier (sorry, N). That put him in perfect position to become a hostage. E does the freeze in place trick on Sharif, which endears us to him, let me tell you. N recognizes that he's the one who's gonna get whacked, and bargains with Sharif to push him out of the circle. This is a very clever application of the mojo that I had not considered. See, you're stuck, but that doesn't mean other people can't move you out of it. Z and I dash through the house, to round him off at the pass. As we clear the front door, we see Danny sneaking up behind Sharif with his trusty wrench. He puts the kah-WHACK! on Sharif, and proceeds to pound his cabesah into hamburger.

So, uh, that's it. I realize that Wilbur's not nearly as injured as I hoped. Maybe I can convince the Big Bad Buddha Daddy to help him to his next incarnation. I'm typing this, and watching a perfectly good porterhouse incinerate on the grill, while Saffron and Wilbur mack unrepentantly.

Excuse me while I get the garden hose. Wilbur's trying to mount Saffron on the patio, and that's just not right.

In the "drive": st. anger by Metallica (thanx Kazaa!)

It's been four hours, and my hands are still shaking. I'm counting on being able to eat with a fork by Christmas, so I'll keep you posted. Until then, excuse the typos. It's kinda hard to type when you aim for the "d," and hit the "y" instead.

More on why later. It's hard to focus on that right now, so I've decided to share a few dreams with you. When I'm done, you'll see why they're pertinent.

Okay. I can't really remember details. These were dreams, people. Every time you try to gets specific with a detail, you end up confabulating, which is a medical term for making shit up on the fly, to make the irrational seem rational. In a way, these blogs are me confabulating my life, because as I re-read them, it doesn't even scratch the surface of weirdness. The first was about Rick. I don't know anyone named Rick, nor anyone who looked like this guy. He looked like a thousand performers in a thousand pr0n movies I've seen over the years. Well, that's not true. He's more a throwback to the studs of the 1970s, with a cheesy moustache and a ripped bod. Back when video was starting to dilute the thoughtspace of the industry. I'm nine again, the age when my mom died, and Rick's there, shirtless. I can only thing he was a composite of mom's creepy boyfriends, coupled with my evolving notions of what a sexual male would look like.

So Rick's shirtless, and he has an eyepatch (did I mention that? No one in pr0n have eyepatches--nothing to suggest physical imperfection. In their fucked up world, Ron Jeremy's hairy back is seen as a sign of virility). I'm fully clothed, but I'm sexually threatened by his presence. We're in a house, but it's not any house I've lived in. He's behind me, and he touches my shoulder. It's a good touch, the kind they teach you to give to avoid sexual harassment lawsuits, when a lack of physical contact can be seen as threatening as no contact at all. He touches me, and applies not-so-gentle pressure, towards a room that I can only presume is the bedroom. I can hear sounds coming from it, and it isn't happy 'pr0n' track sounds. No thigh slaps, no throaty grunts and moans. The mattress springs sang out a creepy tune. Someone was getting punished in there. "You need to see this," Rick whispered in my ear. His grip tightens, and he slides his hand down my torso toward my crotch.

I wake up, fully intending to say, "Mom," because that's the woman getting fucked to death in that room, but instead, the word on my lips is Terri. My wife. I wake up next to her, and she's asleep, smiling strangely. I spend the rest of the night falling into and out of consciousness next to her.

That was two night's ago. Here's last night.

I'm not me. I'm someone else. This is a common enough dream for me. I'm in the future, on a spaceship. There's not many of us on board; more Firefly than Enterprise. Anyway, we're docked at a space station, and all sorts of action and adventure is going on. Based on what was occuring in the real world, this was the right dream at the right time. I seemed to be the hero, but it didn't feel that way.

Anyways, there's this female crew member, and I'm hot for her, and she's not giving me the time of day. Well, that's not true. We flirt, and then I fuck up, and she grows cold for days, until I finally warm her up, only to fuck up again. Standard TV fare, right? Only I know this woman, but I can't bring myself to say her real name, as if that would ruin the nature of the dream. In an animal part of my brain, I know it's Bunny, or Pretzel, or any of the other women I screwed while married, and by admitting that they're pursue-able, I'm devaluing my wife yet again. I'm damn close to getting into her pants, closer than I've ever been before, and suddenly she turns ice-cold, and starts spending more and more time at the bar. More of a fighting arena than a bar. She's not interested in a fighter, but in this pillsbury dough boy clone who talks in this strange halting style, as if he's scared to say the wrong thing. She hangs on every syllable, and listens attentively as he describes his fucked up world where he's the only one who's bold enough to leave and see the universe. There, he's a hero. Here, he's more than a little pathetic, but not to her. It occurs to me that d-boy has her under some sort of mind control, because I'm not buying this a little bit, and she's eating it up.

He finally invites her to see this thing he has from his world, and I invite myself, because it involves going to a hinky part of the station, and I don't want her to be there without backup. We get there, and it's more a lab than a room, but he's right at home. He confesses strange feelings towards her, and she smiles sweetly. I want to vomit. She tries to get close, and he backs up. Physicaly contact on his world is very heavily regulated, and he doesn't know how to reciprocate. She fumbles at the snaps of her uniform, and eagerly smiles, "We'll figure it out as we go along." He shrugs, and starts pulling off his clothes.

I see her body for the first time ever. It's perfect. Not perfect, as in designed according to the harmonies of heaven, but perfect for me in every way. She doesn't even look at me. She steps towards him, pushing him against, then atop a lab counter. There's something so clinical. It's not about passion or ecstasty, but simple human curiosity. She's the man here, on top, taking charge. Her hand slides up his inner thigh, and arrives at his crotch to find...nothing? She pulls her hand back, and there's a dark mucus that hangs from her fingers and trails back to a mass of black cilia that part and fuse like anemone in a coral reef. He registers confusion, and she turns to me in consternation. "A little help?"

She wants HELP to FUCK THIS GUY IN FRONT OF ME! I shriek, "What?" and realize that was the wrong thing to say. "Why did you come here, then?" She's angry. Hurt. I've misread the situation badly. I step forward.

There's nothing that suggests a penis in the juncture where legs meet torso. The cilia move in their own rhythm, but do not offer any suggestions. I shrug.

She grunts, and forces her crotch into his. Her eyes grow wide. It's hard to tell if she approves of the sensation. She holds perfectly still, then rocks a little. Is she trying to extricate herself, without doing any more damage, or does she find this pleasant? She bites her lip, and moves a little more, then pauses.

"Are you all right?" I ask. "Can I help?"

"Touch me, " she says. She closes her eyes, and nods. I reach out with my right hand, and touch her back gently. She whimpers, and I withdraw. She turns her head quickly, and barks, "PUT IT BACK!" I comply, placing it, feeling her flesh tense and release. I realize, somewhere in all this, that she's going through an hour long orgasm. She wants me to feel it, to feel what this alien can do to her. After this, how could I possibly be adequate? I look again, and it's not an alien. It's a human, a fat, puffy, white-faced human, with lantern-lights blazing in his eyes. I try to tell her, but she's lost to me. It's Terri, my wife, and now and forever, she belongs to him.

That was last night, before the events of today. I tell you this, in an attempt to explain how the hell I was able to do what I did four hours ago.

Four hours ago, I killed a man. Two men, actually. I saved my wife from...something, and I know now that things will never be the same between us.

----

I just took a fifteen minute porn break that did absolutely nothing for me. I need to get all this out, to put my actions into perspective. I doubt anyone would call what we did anything less than self-defense, when you see how ineffectual going to the authorities would have been. Most of the cops in Barkersfield are in the pocket of someone like the Capellis, and tend to turn their head at times of true danger, and those who aren't, the good, decent police, would sooner piss on drug dealing scum like us than help us. We get what's coming to us, I guess is the fucked up philosophy. So going to the cops is out of the question.

We stopped by the pawn shop where Z acquired her 'special' movie camera, and found it closed (it's Sunday). The pawn shop (Gently Used Things) is back to back with a magic shop (The Magic Hat), with no other back entrances than their respective front entrances. Illegal as all hell, but I think the building inspectors in Bakersfield aren't exactly top of the game. The front window, where the camera was, is dominated by a wedding dress. No clues there, so we move on.

Going to LA seemed like a real good idea. You'll recall Vivian, the woman who supplied Rex with the films at the dance club. Rex sent her payment to a mailbox in LA, and my appearance in one of the original films occured when I was visiting a Vivian in LA. Given that LA is 111 miles from Bakersfield, and I have no car to speak of, you would think that I would remember it. Maybe the sex wasn't that memorable. But all the bread crumbs were headed that way, so off we went.



It took all of five seconds for me to regain my bearings in LA, but not enough to fill in specifics, such as what Vivian looked like. We made a bee-line for the mailbox, and with Z's key, which was curiously in her possession, but which she had no idea as to its significance, we opened it. There was Rex's last payment, and an empty film can. Z had a flash of insight, and peeled off the labels to reveal the film processor. It was an outfit in Cologne, Germany, so no easy clues there.

Perhaps it's necessary now to talk a little about Z. Her name is Dresden, and I say that, knowing that it's pretty unlikely that'll endanger her. See, she's an amnesiac. She woke up after a suicide attempt with no clothes, no memories, and a weird movie camera that films something a little "more" than reality. She seems to be a good egg, but when the chips are down, and we need an extra pair of hands to stop the rising floodwaters of death and dismemberment, she's filming it all, thus ensuring our futile efforts will be remembered. I now know why Heather kept filming in The Blair Witch Project; she was cut from the same cloth as Dre. As there are a lot of people in our wacky party whose names start with D, I'll continue to refer to her as Z.

It's more than that she's an amnesiac. Something seems to be, I dunno, eroding at her existence. All of her phone numbers on her cell phone have been erased, replaced by a certain film lab in Cologne, Germany. You can understand why I'm a little freaked out. D called Z on her phone, right in front of us all, and she saved his number in the phone's system, but instantly, it was replaced by the Cologne number. We finally bit the bullet, and called the place. We talked to the proprietor (actually, N did, and soldiered through admirably, despite not being able to speak German) named Uter Guggenheim, who was absolutely no help. After the call, we walked around a bit, trying to retrace the path seen in Z's first film (the one I appeared in).

While we're reviewing the tapes, Z lets in that she recognizes one of the shadows on the wall as being Danny's. Unless you're Alfred Hitchcock, I can't imagine anyone's shadow being that distinctive, and yet the moment she points it out, I can't think it's anyone else but Danny. What's worse, the other shadow seems awfully familiar, too.

We arrive at the playground featured in the film. Prior to this N and D did a little research, and discovered that there were no abduction reports or 'suspicious character' filings with the police. The kids apparently knew something the parents did not. Scrawled on the jungle gym was the phrase, "Run! Sweetie Pie is coming!"

This is where we let out a low, "fuuuuck!" and everything begins to come together. Sorta.

Back to Henry Darger.

Henry was a lonely fellow who produced volumes of work--watercolor illustrations and prose--for himself and no one else. He worked as a janitor, and went to Mass every day. His visual style was very particular. Most of it existed to further his prose, a long, meandering 'novel' (15,000 single spaced, typewritten pages) called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. Here's a brief summary:

The Realms of the Unreal takes place on an unnamed planet, 1,000 times the size of our own, which has the Earth as its moon. Here the evil Glandelinians practice child slavery, seeking to extend their dominion over a rival nation -- the Christian, child-protecting Abbiennia. At the center of these hostilities are seven blonde Abbiennian princesses, the Vivian Sisters (daughters of the Emperor Vivian), perpetually aged five to seven and always matchingly dressed (or undressed). The wax lasts four years and seven months, and involves armies of stupendous size -- casualties in individual battles often run into the millions -- as well as natural cataclysms such as lightning storms, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions and forest fires (all of which the heroines interpret as the work of their enemies). The Vivian Girls, whose lives oscillate between periods of bucolic enjoyment and terrifying peril, always manage -- by wit, charm and the grace of God -- to escape from their frequent captors and to elude death. Not so their female coevals: many are vividly throttled, hacked, hung, shot, burned or blown up. Occasionally the nymphets are protected by good dragons, caused called "Blengins," which can be as much as 45,000 feet long with immense multicolored wings. (These sexually suggestive creatures have piercing tongues which can inject young girls with an immortalizing liquid; in some cases, the two species apparently merge, producing humanoid females with large curling horns and expandable dragon tails and wings.) In the end, the goodly Abbiennians prevail, and the girl-children settle into a blissful existence amid fields of oversized flowers.

Anyways, Henry needed these pictures, but his ability to draw realistic human forms was lacking, so he'd either collage, or trace them out of catalogs, giving an unearthly quality to his girls. And they were, for the most part, girls, but whenever they would appear nude, he'd feel free to add a tiny penis between their legs.



Strange bird, right? Well, he also wrote The story of Myself, a 5,000 page autobiography, the last 4878 pages are spent describing a sentient, orphanage destroying tornado called Sweetie Pie, that occasionally helped, occasionally harmed. Coincidence? I think not. So we have Darger references, and multiple women calling themselves Vivian. Great.

Enough Darger. Terri calls on my cell phone, and tells me that Danny's been hurt. We race back to Bakersfield, and discover that Emmett's van has been stolen by a bunch of punks who call themselves the Seventh Gate, the leader of this group having left his right knee on our front lawn a few days ago. Danny tried to jump on the back, and ended up being dragged for a mile or so. He's hurt, but not terribly so.

We decide to pay a visit to the home base of the Seventh Gate. It's in the basement of an abandoned slaughterhouse, where the usual numb-nuts Satanic paraphenalia litters the floor. There's a guy there who's acting as a guard/lookout for the gaters in exchange for drugs. We point out to him that we'll pay a hell of a lot better than they will, and he agrees to let us know when they return.

Oh, and someone's burned down Rex's club, along with all the films we were going to see later today, in exchange for the three in our possession.

Back home, and Terri's gone. She's finished the picture that had been haunting her ever since she came face-to-face with Mr. No-Face (now called The Geek by my companions. Whatever). It's a, um, castrato. N explained that they were young boys who had their testicles removed so that they would never sexually mature, with the usual attendant drop in vocal range. It also meant the castrato would bulk up, and this guy was no exception. In the painting, he seems to be floating/flying, and there's several huddled figures under him. Terri has put so much pressure on his crotch area (where there's nothing but a black void) that she's pierced the canvas, leaving a literal hole there. I find out from Danny that Terri received a call from Bunny, and I know I'm well and truly fucked. Bunny told Terri, and my marriage is as good as over.

But no, that's a bad assumption on my part. Bunny may have told Terri, sure, but that's not why Terri's gone. Z wants to return to the Pawn Shop, now that it's dark, and I want to find Terri, but Z points out that we can do both, and we're off to commit felonies while my wife is getting farther and farther from me. Well, we get to the shop, and discover that the dress is gone. E gets a weird look, as he jumps to his own conclusion (having to do with "not every case of Satanic abuse was false") and primes some mojo to find her. He follows something only he sees, and we come to an abandoned theater that they used for live theater and ballet here in Bakersfield a million years ago. And we hear singing.

We gear up. I have a .38 special, and D has two nine millimeters. I don't know if E's packing, but he has his own heat. Z and N probably have something, but I don't know how good they are at it. E and I used to do target practice when I was younger, so I'm a pretty good shot. D takes the left door, E takes the right, and I go up the middle.

Well, there's the castrato, and whaddaya know, he's floating! There's a punk in leathers who calls himself El Diablo, and a girl I've never seen before. Oh, the Geek's there, and he's wearing a priest's collar, which make sense because he's marrying the Castrato to my wife, in the wedding dress.

Did I mention that behind them, shot in Z's unmistakable style, is playing a film of me fucking the shit out of Bunny?

At that moment, I lost all moral reason. Someone had to die, and I was going after my competition, the floating fat boy with the paper lantern face. Every time he sang, I felt a small piece of me flit away. I had to shut his face. I aimed and fired, and all the hate I felt towards him and all the love I felt towards my family steadied my hand. Each time I hit, he dropped an octave, and in four shots, between me and N, he was down. E was lending a little mojo assist, freezing El Dorko and the Geek in their tracks. Emmett, filled with the cup of human kindness, drenched El Dorko in everclear, and fired his shotgun at close range, igniting the fumes.

At about that time, when I was wondering where the fuck Z had fucked off to, the film stopped playing, and Terri popped out of her daze. Fat boy burst into flames, and Terri got out of the line of fire.

D had my back, taking aim at the Geek that was charging towards me and me alone. Him first few shots didn't seem to do much, but what I like about D is his persistence. He kept drilling that bastard, until Gumby stopped being so elastic. I emptied my last two in the Geek, and that still didn't finish him. He reached for me, and I remembered Peter Capelli's eyeball, his compound fracture, and his loop of intestine, and knew what must have happened. I screamed, "Fuck you, No face!" and spit in his no-face. He wasn't expecting that, and missed me, twice. Finally, D took a bead on his now visible face, and brought him to a conclusion.

N was having trouble fighting a girl, and couldn't climb onto the stage unassisted, so she got away. Go figure.

We made it home. Terri's in shock, which is understandable. I undressed her, hid the dress where she'll never find it. The only reason why I didn't burn it is that I need answers, and I suspect I'll need that dress to get them. I stare down at her, and turn off the light in our bedroom. My cheating ass is sleeping on the floor downstairs, until I can figure out how much she remembers. As I go, I catch her silhouette on the bed, normally a familiar and pleasant sight. Tonight, though, I can only think of where I've just seen it--next to danny's shadow, in the film.

Terri's father gets out of prison tomorrow. If my suspicions are correct, he has much to answer for.

Biography for Rudolph Valentino: "peritonitis"

Rudolph Valentino Home Page

I'd like to say it gets better for us, but it really doesn't.

No, I'm not missing an eye or anything, but my self-respect is AWOL. I'm a scumbag of the highest order, and others suffer for it. What can I say but the truth?

I came downstairs after writing the last entry to discover everyone suiting up to go to war--specifically, the carnival, the dance club, and maybe N's party. I'm not much for any of those scenes, so I dressed casually, and ended up not fitting in any of them. Par for the course, really.

E was a blast. I thought I was socially retarded! His idea of what's appropriate at a dance club leaves much to be desired, but the his rep opens a lot more doors than my rock hard abs. *ahem*

D had to run some errands, and we really did miss his menacing presence over the next few hours. So it was me, E, D, N, and a few other letters of the alphabet. I let Terri and Danny behind, to discuss some shit. Terri's actually looking forward to the return of her father, which means I have to do a check to see if there are any pods in the basement. Other than the ones E keeps down there for "medicinal purposes," I mean.

Terri's father is an asshole who ran a stripclub in Bakersfield into the ground. That's a hell of an accomplishment right there. Going to jail for embezellment was the icing on the cake. 45% of the reason why I'm hesistant to start a family with Terri is the realization that this asshole is her role model for fatherhood, so what does that say about her choosing me?

Anyway, off to the circus. We skipped the usual draws (Tilt-a-whirl's still a bitch, if you ask me) and went right for the freak show. Oh, wait. Festival of the Transmundane. My bad. There we were met with enough blockheads and geeks to do clinical trials of antibiotic ointment. There we also met Pretzel, a lovely German lass whose partner, Handsel, liked to put his hands where they didn't belong (like toasters, fishbowls with razor blades, etc.) Pretzel just bent, and, uh, so did I.

Time to come clean. Y'all probably know by now that I'm a pr0n freak, and I think you can respect me for that. But I'm also a sex addict, and I hope you're as disappointed in me as I was in myself. And before you start sniggering away in your parent's basements, wishing you could be a sex addict, let me say that no one willing to call themselves that would ever want to be one. Like most addictions, it means you do something beyond the point of consequence. In my case, it means I conveniently forget I'm married to the most beautiful woman in the universe, and decide to 'cat' around, because they mean nothing to me. And if they meant nothing to me, then I probably should have left Mr. Happy in my pants. The point is, I cheat on my wife, and I will move heaven and earth to keep her from finding out about it, because my treachery is my pain, not hers. As you're about to find out, I'm in a lot of pain.

Me and Pretzel hit it off really well, and from what I could see, no one else was getting anywhere, so I decided to dip my rod in her hot mustard.

God, that sounds pathetic. I'm going to leave that up there, so you can all see how pathetic I am.

What I learned: There's a local blockhead called El Diablo, with black hair and goatee that kinda-sorta might know something about No-face. There was also something else, but not particularly pertinent.

I rejoined the group, and they shared a little more information. We then headed off to the dance club, where I got the really great idea not to look like a total tool, and pulled my shirt off. Too bad my farmer's tan took off any points my pecs would get. Z talked to the bouncer, and we went in filming.

Of course, within five minutes, my asshole magnet kicks in, and a candidate for retroactive abortion walked up behind me, and told me not to look at his girl. Being a concerned memeber of the medical field, I performed a routine surprise involuntary hernia check. Took me a little time to find his raisin-y nuggets, but I gave them a yank, and got as good as I gave.

Z was our point-(wo)man in this brave new world, and she had to keep her attention on her filming, just in case there were some surprises out there in the crowd. Given what I saw with that puppy, I think Mr. No-Face was made by whoever made the puppy, and if they can do that to a human being and a puppy, there might be other surprises waiting for us. We eventually wandered to where we needed to be, a filming of 'experimental cinema'. Terri had dragged me to enough of these, that I had a tremendous tolerance for the bullshit. But this was just plain fucked, mostly because I'd seen work by this filmmaker before: Z's films. The ones she made when she tried to off herself. She, of course, recalls none of it.

The filming was in a renovated toilet (not terribly hygenic, but I wasn't eating popcorn, so I wasn't complaining either). All three were black and white, and the first was a card game with five players, all wearing masks: Nixon, a Pig, a Witch, a Donkey, and Shirley Temple. The game was poker, and they were playing for mice. When the game had ended, the Donkey had all the mice, which he put in a big cage, where they started fighting each other.

Before I go on to the next film, allow me to indulge in a little interpretation. The time period seemed to be the 1950s. The players, I think, were all representative of the various forces controlling America during that era. Nixon was a rising star in the Republican party, and the Donkey has always been the symbol of the Democrats. I think Shirley Temple was Hollywood, still yound and vulnerable, especially in light of the McCarthy hearings. That, of course, was the witch. That leaves the Pig, which was either big business, or Communism, neither of which are terribly satisfying, unless the Witch is the Communist menace everyone was seeking out, and the Pig stands for the forces trying to root them out. Whatever. The democrats win with Kennedy, and the country goes to hell.

The next is actually run backwards, so things seem a little disjointed. Basically, a young girl gets all of her teeth extracted by a dentist (but since it's run backwards, they're actually being replaced one by one). My cinema notes say, Dildo, pipe wrench, shoe box, chewer. Unless I accidentally wrote on the same pad I was reviewing Star Whores 5: Attack of the Big-Titted Clones, I think I forgot something important. Oh, yeah. The pipe wrench is virtually identical to the one Danny wielded a few days ago. Fuck.

The last is plain weird (not like the other ones were sane, mind you). We see the back of a head. We see ants. Back of the head, head rocking back and forth. Ants. Ants crawling on head. Pan to see front of head, which is masked, and the head has a pole in his/her mouth. Not the fun pole--a wooden pole, taped in there, the pole being pushed by someone off camera, forcing him to rock. The rocking motion's agitating the ants, and they're crawling out of a hole under the chair. Somewhere in all that, Dirty Bitch came up, which is Danny's phrase that pays these days. Fuck Fuck.

We head downstairs, deeply troubled by what we saw, and E insists on seeing the manager of this upstanding drinking establishment. He's, of course, the DJ suspended in a cage above the dance floor. When his set ends, he comes out to talk to us. His stage name is Rex Ochre, which is pretty stupid. Rex, I understand; king and whatnot. But Ochre? That's one of the colors you only find in the 128-crayons pack (the one with the free sharpener). It's kinda yellow. So he's King Yellow. I don't get it. Maybe King Brown or King Pink was taken. With Fred Rogers dead, King Friday's open--he should think of a new name.

Rex lets us in on his supplier, a woman named Vivian. Around this time, I go all brown trousers, because I start remembering things about that day I spent walking around, and found myself in Z's film. I was banging Viv, a woman who lived in Hollywood. Given Bakersfield is 2.5 hours from LA, and I have no reliable transportation, what I was doing there is a matter of some speculation. Somehow I knew that my Viv and this Vivian were one and the same. To make matters more hinkey, I received a wrong number on my cell phone, asking for Vivian. Small fucking world. We get an address (Box 1902, Hollywood, CA) and a price ($500/set).

I'd like to say it all fell in place, but in fact, it all went to hell. Well, it went to hell after N's party. That, I have to admit, was a lot of fun. I did a good job, making myself as unattractive as possible, and did not stray, and the night passed quickly.

Oh, yes. The cat. Forgot about the cat. Turns out N never saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, or any one of a thousand different movies where something bad happens when someone opens the super sekrit artifact. Inside was a shrivelled penis, stuffed inside a mummified cat (in the pussy, right?) There's also a 9-volt battery (Ever-ready, though Ray-o-Vac, with its Cat emblem would make more sense, though I can't recall the last time I stuffed a castrated penis inside a mummified cat, so what do I know?) and a piece of paper, with what looks to be an eye from one of Rudolph Valentino's movies (the Sheik, methinks). Anyway, I'm examining the injury E received from the puppy-cantaloupe, since he was complaining about an escalation in pain. I noticed that somehow a chemical had been injected, and grabbed a little saline to wash it out. At just around that second, I had a brain fart, and forgot to tell E to close his eyes. Had that shit gotten in there--man. Blindness, definitely.

But just as I was pouring, I looked at the cat. And it looked at me.

None
No view
Will not see
Will not be alive
Leaving you, alone with self hate

It told me that that, but I didn't hear it. Actually, all it really did was delay my action long enough for E to ask me what the hell I was doing. Good question, E. I had no idea. I stopped, and checked myself. I get some base, neutralized the acid, and went on with my life, knowing somehow that cat had done right by me and E. Now I can see why the mobsters want it so badly.

With thoughts like that ringing in my skull, I went to bed.

When I awoke, Bunny was calling.

Bunny, E's girlfriend. The one with the collapsed vein problem. She wanted to talk.

Did I mention that I fucked her? Twice?

I don't know how much confession is necessary here. Most of you probably stopped reading a long time ago. I'm really not that bad a person. Sure, I've violated the sanctity of our wedding vows, but it's only happened a handful of times.

I have pretty big hands.

My epiphany made me realize that my relationship with Bunny would fuck up a lot of shit, so I knew I'd have to cut it off with her. She wasn't game. Not only did she want to mess around, she wanted me to leave Terri and E. If she asked me to get the dog collar, I might have said yes. I'm weak. But she crossed a line when she told me to abandon the only father I've ever known, and the woman I'd die for. So I told her to go fuck off, and went home to fess up with E.

He took it pretty well. I figure he's seen enough bull crap to put stuff like this in perspective. He agreed that telling Terri was a colossal mistake, and it was his turn to fess up about something.

I wondered what it was. I mean, after I punched him in the gut, figuratively, I wondered what he could say that would somehow balance the scales. Nothing short of, "I'm your dad" seemed to qualify, and I know that's not possible, since I ran our blood types for compatibility when I was in med school.

How about, "I killed your mom"?

I've had this dream, ever since I became aware that E's tinkering in the basement was a little more than the standard chemist, making a new designer version of crank. I wondered, if it was possible, to brew a drug that would completely cure Terri's addictions, and mine, for that matter. Well, it seems E was well ahead of the game. Mom scored her scag off of E, who lived across the street. He tried to help her, by administering a dose frighteningly similar to what I proposed, and it killed my mother. I guess out of guilt, he took me in.

I'm not angry about it. Just sad, really. It makes sense. Why was I drawn to Terri? Because I saw what I did not see when I was 8-years old--someone I loved who I wanted to save. The cycle's repeating itself. This time, though, I'm getting off. Me and her, we're getting help, after all this gets resolved.

We had a little cry, we had a little laugh. Then the Egyptian, this weird guy who buys hand rolled cigarettes from E, stops by with a book about Rudolph Valentino. Suddenly, a lot of shit starts making sense, and a lot more presents itself,some of which seems to fit a little too easily. More on that later.

Still, some weird things to consider:

My boss at the telemarketer firm: Dick Valentine. Dick, as in 'severed thing in the cat in the cat', Valentine as in Valentino?

Aunt Claire, my one and only living relative, works as a costume designer in hollywood, where all this is happening.

Saffron, my psycho dildo-wielding mother-in-law: Her name means Yellow.

In the drive: Trouble no more by John Mellencamp

From quasi-child molesters to things you barely remember from math class. My life is grand.

It's technically tomorrow, I guess. I must have snoozed off sometime around 4 a.m., and Nunzio Capelli, my erstwhile patient, was up around 7 a.m., cooking the Breakfast of Legbreakers (scrambled eggs and scotch). I wasn't up for most of it, having been worn to a frazzle the day before, and forgetting how damn comfortable bean bag chairs can be. Anyway, E and Nunzio had a chat about things, and it turns out that our faceless friend may have a deeper connection to the Capellis than we thought.

It occurs to me that a lot of what I say is actually a composite of things we learned throughout the day, and by doing that, I may omit certain people, but given who we're dealing with, perhaps a bit of anonymity is useful.

There was this girl named Heddy Parker, with a questionable taste in men. First, there was Tommy, apparently a Gothboy loser who she dumped for the likes of Peter Capelli. Faithful readers will recall that Peter was the fella missing a few eyes and with a loop of intestine danging to his dangler that showed up last night, killed by faceless guy. Peter, displaying a wonderful comprehension of the mating rituals of the free-range Guido, kills Heddy. Oh, and steals a cat, I guess.

See, that's key. When Mr. No-face showed up, he screamed, "Where's the cat?" to the eye-less Peter, who didn't bother to reply. At the time, we were all distracted too much trying to stay alive to pay attention, but there you have it. No-face was looking for a damn cat, and No-eyes didn't have it. I also have one more tidbit that Z reminded me of--No-face had numerous drawers in his chest (his torso-chest, not his friggin' hope-chest) that he extracted things from. He had a screwdriver in his ear and a chicken in his pocket. Or maybe he was just happy to see me--it was hard to tell, staying alive and all.


All of this MIGHT be about a cat, and it MIGHT be about a teenage girl who didn't have the sense not to date a member of the mob. Whatever the case, two people are dead and I'm still crapping my pants at the thought of the return of Mr. No-Face. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell I got myself into all of this.

Back to the narrative. We figure that we have to find Mr. No-Face before he recovers from his non-existent damage and comes after us. So in classic horror movie fashion, we decide to split up, only it's okay, because we're NOT in a horror movie, right? Show you what I know. E and N stick around to do some research. N's is more legitimate, using a computer and whatnot. E goes downstairs to his lab, which I'd normally see as a classic defense mechanism, only I'm getting the impression that E does more down there than futz with the amount of nitrogen in his batches of LSD. Before we left, he asked us if we wanted something that would make everyone our friends, or something that would help Z with her memory. Clearly the latter is more important, but I could see the strengths of the former. And then I realised, what the hell. Are we going to have to slip this 'friend maker' into everyone's drink? Apparently not. Apparently you take it, and everyone just RESPONDS. How weird is that? The weirdest thing about it is that N and Z are acting as if a drug like that is totally normal and, more to the point, the fact that my addled adoptive father can brew it up in his basement is No Big Thing. At that point, I was content to just hit the road, and let the tabs fall where they may.

The rest of us - Z, D, and me were off to a carnival, which apparently was where Peter and the rest of the Goombahs were meeting No-Face and his crew to arrange some sort of exchange, and was where Peter lost his eyes. Before we could hit the road, Danny asked for a ride to the junk yard to get a new gas tank for the motorcycle E told him he could have if he fixed it up. After Danny's help yesterday, I wasn't going to deny him ANYTHING. He also wanted to drive by the local Sears to get his picture taken. It makes sense, given that we just found out his dad's getting out of prison (Wilbur, Terri and Danny's dad, is a psychotic piece of shit, about whom the less said, the better...I have a feeling that, since he's getting out, he'll be playing a larger role in our lives. That won't be too healthy for Terri and Danny, so maybe I can recruit a little help from D to make it not too healthy for Wilbur). I also needed to track down my wife, Terri, who took off last night after seeing No-Face.

We follow the trail of breadcrumbs to Dante, E's chief rival. He sold her $100 worth of friendship, and she went elsewhere. When we got to the motel she'd crashed at, I discovered that she hadn't used, but had stayed up all night, sketching dozens of pictures of No-face on a sketch pad. Given that she hadn't used, and that her using diminishes her talents, they were quite good. Too bad each one made my memory of last night come back to vivid reality. She agreed to take Danny, which was just as well, since she and he need to talk about Wilbur.

There's also something else that's bugging the hell out of me. Danny's a mutterer. It's in his nature, given his brutal father and his desire to slip between the cracks at school, coupled with a serious case of ADHD that won't let him stay completely quiet. Some of his comments are typically inappropriate, but a few are downright disturbing. Had he been a patient in the ER, muttering those things, I would have probably issued a psych consult, just to be on the safe side. He seems to hold a lot of anger towards women. ("Dirty whores", etc) We can't afford to get him help, so that means we just have to pay more attention to what's going on with him. Like I needed one more person on my plate.

Off to the carnival, which was useful with the information gathering in the Long Run, the Long Run lasting over three hours, wherein we shadowed a goth-y girl that Z did a good job interrogating without getting on her bad side. I think Z would make a good cop, or maybe a good CSI. In the midst of all this, D wanders off after a carnie, and he doesn't come back after a good long while. Z and I take off after him, and we find him in a little clearing between the trailers, sitting on the ground, seriously messed up. Not physically, but mentally. He's totally out of it, telling us we need to track down those cops from last night and KILL THEM! D claims to have seen the ghost of Bennie, one of the Goombahs who died last night (and were hauled away by said cops, one of whom apparently eats said corpses and the other eats his said shit). I don't think either of them is really a contributor to society as a whole, but c'mon! A cop's a cop, and a cop that apparently in the pocket of the local mob family is doubly hard to 'erase'.

We get back home, only to discover that, while we were gone, the Head Guido came and picked up both E and N, for a 'sit down'. Before I got booted, I had occasion to review Boss Capelli's chart, and was pleased to discover he had pancreatic cancer, which is exceedingly painful and 100% fatal. Well, he's still kickin', and he believes that the cat that Peter Capelli stole has given his wang new life, and thinks it'll keep the rest of him alive. He's nervous that No-face and the rest of his merry crew (which was pretty much One Dead Goth, last I checked) will come after them. Them. The ones with all the weapons a thriving vig industry can afford. We're supposed to make No-face go away WITHOUT giving him the cat, even though it's pretty obvious that No-face wants the cat and nothing less. To seal the deal, Boss Capelli gives E and N the cat to take home. That's a bit like securing Noah's Ark by giving it to a colony of termites, but I digress.

The cat's a statue, about 1.5 ft high, with four sides. It has numbers carved on the side. One might think it was some sort of ushabti, unless, of course, one spotted the "Made in Japan" label on the bottom. The numbers are in fact the Fibonacci Sequence, where you start with 1 and 2, and add the last two numbers in the sequence to get you the next. So it's 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 33, 54, etc. What makes the FS so important is that it's one of those neat things that creates patterns we see all throughout nature (you can tell by now that I had to do a report on this in grade school, right?) The key thing was the Golden Mean, which was discovered by the Greeks and describes the curve of the Nautilus shell and the proportions found in the body. E's all into alchemy, and he was pretty jazzed by all this, as was N. How this makes Boss Capelli get a stiffy is beyond me, but hey, I just patch people who've had their eyes ripped out here. I did notice a seam, so it could be opened, if we were so inclined. I'm not. I've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. I know what happens next.



Seeing as how it was hollow, I recommended taking it over to a friend with an x-ray machine he wasn't using. No one laughed at the CAT scan joke. Man, that would have KILLED the radiology geeks! Inside was a fat load of non-descript crap. Something metal. Something phallus-shaped. The usual, really. N wanted to pop it open right then and there. I really don't know how he scores with women as well as he does. He reminds me of the kid who's eaten waaay too much sugar at breakfast, and wants to know if he can make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using pop-tarts for bread.

So we get back, and Bunny's there. Bunny, great. Bunny is E's current girlfriend, and is apparently a hell of a businesswomen, aside from the scag habit that makes her bubble over at the realization that she has ONE MORE VEIN that hasn't collapsed, and could E put it in for her? Eh.

I'm in the kitchen, getting away from the domestic bliss, when Bunny and E decide to come in and we get attacked by the fruit. At some point, I suppose I should have mentioned N noticing the eyeballs on the top of the fridge. Some sick bastard plugged Peter Capelli's eyes (at least I HOPE they're his eyes, else there's someone missing a pair) into the outlet back there, and left them for us to find. At least, that was my impression. E and N start going off about how we're being spied upon, which is a little 'jumping to conclusions' in my book. Anyways, the fruit. It attacks. A cantaloupe that blended right in, being all pink and soft and nasty, and, let's face it, no one eats cantalope in the damn house, so why do we keep buying it, especially if it's just going to attack us?

But it's no mere cantalope. This fleshy pink globe sprouts legs like a spider and scuttles after E. His reflexes ain't what they used to be, so it gets a good grab on his face, and starts gnawing on his forehead. He slams it into the countertop, and it seems to do more damage to him than it. I score a few good hits with a ginzu, figuring that I can probably do a melonectomy with the best of them, right? Between me, E, and I think Z (holding the camera all the while she swings on it), we free E, who proceeds to kick it to death, screaming, "Die, you fucking puppy!"

That's right. Remember the puppy that disappeared last night? We assumed George the Cowardly Goombah took it. Nope, it was apparently No-face, who has mad reconstructive surgery skills, on top of his not-dying-anytime-soon skills. I examined the corpse, and indeed, it was the puppy. Which means that E knew it when he was kicking it to death, which means E kicked a puppy to death.

Did I ever mention that E's not a very good hippie?

So, y'know, that called for a shower, considering the night is far from over. We have to stake out the club where Tommy, Heddy's ex-boyfriend and his Goth gang might be hanging out. We also have to take a look at the carnival, under appropriate lighting. Oh, yes, and N's teaching assistant / screwtoy is having a party, and we're all invited. Also, my mother-in-law, the perfect companion to my psychotic embezzling father-in-law stopped by, and wanted to move in. E shooed her off, and she left her double headed dildo on the front lawn, just to show him what he's missing out on, I guess.

On a brighter note, I just got laid, so all's good in the world. Bring on the mutant cantalope puppies!

Just kidding, God. I could do without those.

In the drive: Liz Phair by Liz Phair

Gah, that was nasty. I have a sneaking suspicion that the events of tonight will leave a lingering impression, and I so don't want to attach the taste (or smell) of something I love with all of this bullshit, a la Clockwork Orange. So I steered clear of my precious Bombay and tonic and went for the malt liquor that D offered.

Fuck. I liked it. After 25 years of steering clear of brown paper bags and stone cold 40s, I discover a real hankering for the bull piss. Go figure.

Anyway, so the THING shows up. I thought the Goombah at my feet was fucked up. This THING had no facial features to speak of -- no eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. We're talking hard core plastic surgery, or birth defects that make Thalidomide look like a tasty alternative. But none of those things prevented IT from apparently tracking them across Bakersfield to E's domicile, and kicking all our asses to boot.

Nothing stopped IT. I figured at first IT must be cranked on PCP and wearing kevlar, because the numerous rounds the goombers and D pumped into IT had absolutely no effect. Then that BASTARD took one in the face, and for a second, I cheered, like it was a movie and Jason had impaled himself on a neutron bomb seconds before it went off. But just like in that dumb-ass movie, when, deep down inside, you know nothing can stop Jason, this FUCKER took it and grinned. Well, not grinned, because IT's got no mouth, right? But it's like IT's body wasn't solid. The bullet splashed through it and popped out the other side. IT finishes off the eye-less Capeli, and, apparently not satisfied, starts in on the others.

So I'm thinking, "Fuck." And then I'm thinking, Fang guy right before, and now an IT that shrugs off bullets and sees without eyes, with supernatural strength that allows him to rip into people and not actually pierce their skins but do massive internal damage--vampire?

Vampire. I don't care how dumb-assed that sounds. If IT's really made of liquid, I'll boil him off with good, clean American fire. I grab a bottle of everclear from E's drink cart, and I realize these bottles are designed to survive being dropped by crack heads trying to cook crystal meth, so throwing it at him isn't going to help. I figure that if I throw it at the ceiling, we'd douse him with the 180 proof, and light him up when he cleared the doorway. Only I miss, and most of it lands on Nunzio Capeli.

Somewhere in all of this, IT picked up a little friend, a Goth asshole with a shotgun who took out Nunzio through the picture window that E just replaced last month. The whole Goth thing makes my vampire theory work better, so I'm running with it. IT stops at the door, and shoves something nasty into Nunzio's pie hole. Furtunately, Nunzio starts vomiting up whatever it was, but I'll keep an eye on him, and make sure he doesn't turn into a vampire.

Right about that time, I realize there's somebody newat the door. I'm going for my holdout piece, hidden where I used to keep the pr0n before I realized I'd need a little more room(s) to store it all, when I realize Terri's come home from the movies.

Fuck. FUCKFUCKFUCK! She's in the line of fire, and in front of her is a GUY whose body seems to allow bullets to pass through him right into her (said GUY having no eyes, mouth, etc.) Thank god she freaked and ran. I know, though, she's run to an old, bad friend, and I won't see her for a while. I don't blame her in this particular instance--I just wish I was there for her, an alternative to her friend. But I'm not.

IT rips the head off of a Capeli, and gets away. Goth boy gets capped by a Capeli. I'm on my knees, trying to keep Nunzio Capeli from dying from the shotgun blast. It's not enough to find the pellets--there's glass from the picture window in there. All the while, I keep thinking, If only I was at the ER, I'd grab the..., and then I realize I can't and I've gotta stop playing the shoulda coulda woulda game. A conversation I had with D comes back to me. I think I might take him up on it.

I keep working on mending Nunzio, and I'm at a critical phase, when we hear sirens. Now we've had cops come visit once or twice, but we've never had corpses on the living room rug and front lawn before. Nunzio slips E a card, and lapses back into unconsciousness. Everyone starts heading for the hills, and I give them the, "Go on without me" speech. If I leave, Nunzio dies, and then there's nowhere we could hide from the wrath that would come. The fuckers I call my friends and family take me up on my offer, and bug out, but fortunately for me, they run like girls, and D, seeing they won't get away in time, apparently tries to lure them away. These are, of course, the worst cops in California, seeing a large African American male in a pimp-purple Escalade as an honors student picking up medicine for his sick cat, apparently. They don't follow. Instead, they enter the home, and I figure we're fucked.

But we're not.

Nunzio muttered something about "hungry cops," but I figured that was a metaphor for cops on the take, who were always willing to look away a little farther when the cash was good, or maybe they were fond of the donuts. Nope. These guys were literally HUNGRY. They relieved us of our crop of corpses (sans the eyeless Capelli), and acted as if we were doing them a favor. Oh, and they asked for a puppy, licking their lips. One of them actually had breath that smelled of foecal matter.

So after they walked out, things settled down a little. Nunzio stabilizes, and I'm fashioning a stake out of an old broom handle--just in case. Z shares some of her new footage, and we see that the fat cop has a mouth like a lamprey, with a ring of sharp teeth and a central maw. Maybe the camera doesn't show reality, but perhaps a metaphorical reality, if that makes any sense. No, probably not.

Malt liquor's making it hard to type.

Z comes clean about her past. She tried to off herself, and instead woke up three days later, with three reels of film shot with her ancient 8mm camera. Each is pretty fucked up, and they point to a child molester with transsexual qualities who either gets beat up by children, or flagellates himself after the act. I'm pretty sure none of this is in the DSM-IV, but I'll check later on. The only real clue we have is that this guy's obsessed with Henry Darger, a fucked up individual in his own right. The one thing I took from the tapes is that I was in one of them, coming back from an...err...appointment. I don't remember seeing anyone who looked like that, but the urge to track down this fuck and find out if the children at the playground are okay is overwhelming.

Need sleep. N and E are discussing making drugs in the corner. Business as usual for these people. God. Me and Terri have GOT to get OUT OF HERE.

Oh, Terri.

Where are you?

In the drive: Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age

Looks like I got my laptop out of hock just in the nick of time...

See, I needed to get something for Terri, it being the anniversary of our engagement and all. I guess a guy's supposed to forget shit like that, but life's too short to let the things that matter slip away. So I headed over to Omar's, and got a quick loan.

Two month's later...

The weird thing is that it's running better than ever. I think Omar rented it out as a loaner, and it came back all souped up, with a whole lotta software added on, and, I kid you not, about twice the capacity it had before. There was also a network card crammed in one of the pockets, and I've been warcasting around Bakersfield, trying to find some unprotected nodes. There's a few, but that means getting out of the house, which I guess is good, but it also means missing time with Terri.

God, what the fuck are we gonna do?

Wow. This is turning out to be the worst pr0n review site EVER, but I need to tell you about this weird shit that just went down. Perhaps a little background is called for:

My name is Darryl (*HI, DARRYL!*), and I used to be a doctor. See, I was finishing my residency, when I ran afoul of a little bureaucratic bullshit. I was kicked to the curb, and just like that, I ended a glorious career as a surgeon before I even began it. Now I'm a telemarketer, but that's not really relevant to what happened. What's relevant is that I'm living with a drug dealer.

Oh, no, not the gangsta kind, who wants to put a cap in yo ass and all. E's the best fucked up father figure a fucked up kid could ask for. He's a chemist of the old school, who believed you could drop a few tabs of acid, and see through time or whatnot. I can't really complain about the morality of what he does, because it's meant food in my belly and a roof over my head ever since I was ten. I try to stay out of his way most of the time, and lend a hand with a few unfortunate OD's. People live their lives before they come to E's, and if they're already fucked up when they pass his threshhold and don't tell him before stepping into the shooting gallery, then that's just really unfortunate. I'm not passing judgement in any direction. E provides a service and does it in a fair and honest manner. I can't fault him for anything.

Well, maybe his choice of clientele leaves a little to be desired. He draws all types, but mostly the college kids and mostly on Friday night. The hustle gets so bustling that he often runs a card game, and sometimes when I have the cash to burn, I sit in. I'm luck's bitch most weeks, but you never know, right?

So last night D, a nice guy as large Black old school mofos go, is hanging around, which is normally a good thing. Fuck, it's a GREAT thing. He always packs, and he knows how to handle himself in a staredown, and sometimes we take his pimpin' ride to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. E's there, as always, and N, a professor from the college, brought some of his jailbait along, just to make my life hell.

(Well, maybe he didn't bring the girls with him, but they followed his tweedy breadcrumbs right to the domicile, so what's the difference?)

This Black woman, who'd been there a few days before, showed up with a cheap 8mm camera (which is always bad news--hey, little shits with camcorders recording your escapades for Jackass Lite: IT'S CALLED EVIDENCE, you fucking morons!), and that's not cool. In fact, I had a peek into her bag, and saw a VHS tape with "DM" on the spine. DM can stand for a lot of things, but for some reason, I knew it was "Darryl Moody." I'll call her Z for Zapruder, because she has a bad habit of getting shit on tape that calls the official record into question.

And that's what happened, more or less. This Asshole shows up to buy from Emmit, and he has date-rape etched into his DNA, and he's macking on one of N's little moths. I really don't want her to get burned, so me and D step up (actually, D steps up, and I stand twitching in the corner, creeping toward my doctor's bag and the sense of purpose it gives me). Things get tense and a little weird, and Z actually gets the whole thing on tape. Anyways, the asshole makes a break for it, and D decides to put one in his knee. Asshole manages to limp into his car and drive off, against my best efforts. He was a shit, but he looked like he needed some serious medical attention.

While exciting, all of this is secondary to what happened next: Z passes around the footage she's just shot of asshole, and...

Hm. I'm not sure. There's this intense fuzziness surrounding all my memories of that event, like a shot of rohypnol. I mean, I remember what happened with perfect clarity: the guy had fangs growing from his chops! But it was in the film ONLY. I would have remembered the fangs, I think, and he had none to speak of. What's weird is the emotional detatchment I feel about seeing that. I know I would have freaked out if / when I viewed the film, but I don't remember my reaction to it (except a little bit where I got in Z's face about the tape in her purse) at all. I hope E didn't decide to slip me a lil' sumpin. That's the last thing Terri and I need right now.

So we're all arguing about the film and what it means, and how we might have to go after Asshole and see if those teeth are really there, and I'm all for it, because all of a sudden, I can't get his damn bleeding knee out of my head. (D reassures me that he knows someone who makes ballistic matching irrelevant, but I've seen enough CSI to know that prudence dictates getting rid of the gun) Then the goombahs show.

I just realized I've mentioned my name and Terri's, but everyone else's name I've changed to protect the 'innocent'. But there's nothing innocent about the Capellis. Three of them rush a fourth in, and he looked like he was tortured. Compound fracture of the radius and ulna, both eyes brutally removed, and the capper: a length of his small intestine that's extruding from his abdomen, despite no evidence of surgery or trauma that would cause this extrusion. It was as if someone reached through his skin and muscle mass as if it was not there, grabbed a length of intestine, and yanked a coil back through. I cauterized his eyes, stopped the bleeding on the compound fracture and set the arm, and made an incision through which I replaced the coil. Meanwhile, E and D were arguing with the other three Goomers, and Z--stupid, stupid Z--was getting it all on tape.

There's a lot of shit I'm leaving out. Danny, Terri's brother, was in and out this whole time. He lives in his own private idaho most of the time (more like his own private Newark, New Jersey). Danny actually sucker punched the asshole, so kudos to him for that. Terri and Chris, a friend of Terri who works as a 'dancer', stopped by before the Goomers showed. Thankfully, Terri, Chris, and Danny were elsewhere when the THING attacked.

Fuck. My mouth is full of bile. I need to wash it out and get something to drink before I can go on.

Don't worry...it gets worse.