namesnot-rick

[namesnot-rick]

Johnson and Gilligan’s “Two Weeks in Hell”

(And Other Strange Purchases from the Dream Marketplace)

“Excuse me, is that a Boeing-737?”  I say, shuffling my feet toward the sun-bathed creature at my direct far-left.  She looks puzzlingly; examiningly, I may say.  The hiss and growl of machinery crawl in my ear and scream me deaf.  I point the ample-titted Mary toward the hulking plane which soars just overhead and nearly rips my head in two.

“I said- is that a Boeing-737!”

“I can’t hear you over this Boeing-737!”

“What!”

“I said-”  Useless.  The woman-species has proven futile in the quest for a simple inquiry; not the first, nor the last time.  The beastly idiot-mother - she which has denied the relinquishment of her youth for twenty years beyond her prime - those which should sag, perpetuated unnecessarily by the vanity of the grotesque, obscene, leech-brained Mother of the illiterate and the neurotic.  I dream of heaving those mammaries-in-denial straight into the sky - sending them through a jet engine, shredded upon contact, clogging the deafening mechanical beast with silicon and sending it spiraling into the Atlantic abyss!  What a glorious lark, what a plunge, what a-

“Excuse me, is that a Boeing-737!” says a blind fellow, whose grasp encompasses my shoulder.

“What!”

“I said, is that a-”

“Is that a Boeing-737!”  He shrugs and falls away.  Signs read, ‘Florida Man mauled to death poking alligator with stick down in the bayou’, and then flash green, and bathe under the sunlight for two hours, and then melt away.  It is silent now except for the radiating humidity and a hose attached to an extinguisher, whirling in the air and spouting ocean-water until the water goes back in the ocean.  The ocean is next to the road and the road is next to a highway and the highway is next to three buildings; one looks like Miami and the other looks like an airplane and the other looks like a hit disco nightclub, in bright blue neon script, “Havana.”  Vehicles zip through the interstate route, six lanes of terrifying speed and inhumanity, the road threatening to jump up and and strike my elbow bloody and pull me down; litter-infested industrial non-sentient rats screaming by at eighty miles an hour and blowing down palm trees as they go by,

All standing between myself and the hit disco nightclub, “Havana.”  Threat levels rise as I inch forward with a single-toe, testing the dangerous and rabid white-foaming waves, biting back, and

I close my eyes and hold my breath and plunge into the polychromatic midnight-indigo entrance of the hit disco nightclub, “Havana”; there’s another doorway and I’m in a dimly-lit waiting room.  A bouncer stands before me, an immovable palm tree of a man with laser-show pink stealing through the cracks and reflecting against his massive white shoes.

“Tell me the business,” I say.  He nods and steps aside.  The beat rises like heat from the pavement, the funk pours in as the doorway proceeds open, lights dazzle epileptically across the purple-checkered dance floor, littered with inflatable tube men embracing and assaulting each other; simultaneous and communal and chaotic, stuck in their single inflatable spot and reaching across and then up and falling down, to repeat the process.

“A sight to behold,” a voice comes over the PA.  I nod.  Four non-inflatable men, apparently Puerto-Rican or Dominican, donning green-striped zoot suits, dart their eyes my way.  Two drop their shades, like Risky Business; one spills his drink all over himself and blushes; the other, long and handsome, hair slicked all the way back, pulls me forth on an invisible rope, stringing me toward the floor and dancing away.  I feel my bones give way to the liquid-

“Feel your bones melt into the radioactive beat, my sweet child,” says the PA.  I am amid the chaos of dozens of inflatable men and four zoot-suited Dominicans, shoulders and waist in unison; the disco-flavor is ingestible, and open my eyes to see that I, too, am donning the slick-sly-livin’ green-striped zoot suit.  This is the moment; I am the moment; I am not me; I am- I am- I am-

“You are the child of a new funk,” says the PA; euphoria emanates from my core, stings my extremities; I feel alive and dead and passed on to a higher groove.

“Florida Man mauled to death,” says the PA, and a beat drop.  “Poking alligator,” the voice melts into the music, “down in the bayou.”

* * *

“We may have to commit violent crimes,” says the slick green zoot to his friends, over a radioactive yellow drink that spills over the side and melts through the wood floor.

“I don’t think.”

“We could, but the logistical processes are immense.”

“Is she prepared for-”

“Of course she-”

“The island is a horrible dangerous venue, complete with razor blades on all corners of the mountain, and such a trek could not possibly be expected of a mere-”

“Are you in?”  The zoots pause their quibbling; they shoot expecting glances toward me.  “Are you in,” he repeats.  Anticipation motors overhead, lingers in the air like silicon-shredded tits behind a malfunctioned jet engine.  The inflatable tube men lean closer.  The music ceases; the frogs no longer croak; the world is at a stand still.  “Are you-”

“Well, is this Havana?” I reply.  It remains still for a moment; the men then throw their collective arms up with all the inflatable tube men, and a ‘huzzah’ the size of Tampa overtakes the “Havana.”  I relish briefly in the sweet moment and three of the zoots melt into the floor; the remaining one follows me toward the backroom.  There stands another palm-tree bouncer with huge white shoes.

“It is Tuesday,” he tells me.

“Now it is Thursday,” I reply as Christ himself, shattering the previously accepted bounds of time and space.  He complies.  The zoot hurries alongside my epochal steps, which surpass thousands of documents in a mere instant.  The room we enter is dark, noir-esque; my zoot suit turns monochromatic.  The room is heated, dry like baked ceramic.  It pervades my lungs.  It smells of vast conspiracy.

“We’re looking for a book,” he says.  I slant my eyes and light a cigarette, and look about the room.  A small office, blinds drawn, entirely black and white.  A coat rack in the corner is bare; papers are strewn hectically across the desk in front of dozens of filing cabinets.  The door reads, backwards, ‘FITZGERALD, M.D.’  I remember being here before; scheming of some sort, and the overwhelming existential dread of a plan gone awry.  I clear my throat, compose myself, exhale smoke from my nose, and speak from the far corner of my mouth:

“What kind of book… fiction?”  The zoot falls silent and looks suspiciously at the oncoming shadow; he hides behind the coat rack.  A dame staggers in and falls drunkenly across the desk, failing to notice me standing there with a cigarette frozen to my lips.  An incoherent tune passes through her messy red lipstick in heaving, inebriated sighs.  Some sort of old jazzy standard, mixed with a cheap perversion of the Star Spangled Banner.  Her sweeping, bare leg knocks a stapler across the floor, and she looks up with the expression of a junkie whose stove has caught fire.

“Who are-” she burps, the words falling from her slacken jaw.  “You’re not supposed- this isn’t your office.”

“Dammit, Johnson, get this whore out of here!” the zoot exclaims fiercely, storming out from behind the wall with a ‘FITZGERALD, M.D.’ nametag sewn to his shirt.  “This is no time for games; I, the owner of this fine establishment, have pressing matters to attend to.”

“I don’t understand-”  the zoot knocks her unconscious with a swift and gruesome blow to her painted cheek; the whore goes flying into the back wall, and the zoot turns away with the look of a prize fighter, shaking his hand painfully.  He rips off the nametag, crushes it beneath his foot, and spits on the remains.

“My name’s not Fitzgerald, anyway.”

“Who’s Johnson?”

“We’re in too deep now, Johnson.”

“What about the book,” I reply.

“Yes, of course; nonfiction.  Island based.  Look for the volcano with razors,” says the zoot.  I drag the befallen whore across the floor to get to the ‘I’ filing terminal.  Behind her is a pool of dried blood; her lipstick has turned a shade of grey.  Sunlight, peering through the drawn shades, strikes obliquely across her exposed cleavage.

“What a mess,” I comment.  The zoot spins his detective hat around and removes a magnifying glass from the front of his pocket.

“We’re in too deep now,” he says.

“We haven’t much time.”

“We’ve committed a violent crime, Johnson.  Barbaric, illegal, striking at the very core of man’s depraved soul.  The question is: whether you, a capable man but surely one of a decent moral fibre, maybe a tinge of childhood innocence lurking in your soul - whether you are willing to confront those demons when the inevitable day comes.”

“Volcano with razors,” I reply.

“This is not a game.  The stakes have been raised infinitely.  This poor woman, probably a mother, certainly a daughter - her blood is on our hands.”

“Volcano with razors.  Volcano with razors.  Volcano with”

“That is the owner’s daughter which you’ve so ruthlessly struck down, Johnson.  Notice the dark-grey appearance about her; lifeless! just as every other god-forsaken item in this room.  Gone.  Dead.  Sunken into the earth, receded into a dark and timeless void beyond our solar system.  She, whose demise is a mere infinitesimal speck on the blood-stained shirt of humanity’s graveyard!”

“Volcano with razors.”

“Murder, Johnson; goddammit, it’s murder!”

“Got it!  Volcano with razors.”

“Delightful!”  The zoot rubs his fingers across my cheek affectionately, burns my temple with a wet kiss, and removes the book from my grasp.  He rotates it thrice, and sifts through the pages hastily.

“Aha!” he exclaims.  “This is it.  You’ve done it again, Johnson!”

“Volcano with razors.”

“Yes, Johnson, very good.”

“Volcano with razors.”

“We must first attain a million dollar boat; inflatable, preferably.  And then we may proceed to the next step of our plan.”

“What is the next step,” I inquire.

“We may have to commit more violent crimes, Johnson.”

“It’s Tuesday now,” I reply five days later.  The zoot has crowded himself into the back corner, five o’clock shadow stuck indelibly to his chin.  He gnaws hungrily at the cuff of his suit, struck by the vanity of it all.

“Johnson, we’ve killed the owner’s daughter.”

“Have we yet attained the million dollar boat.”

“I cannot stand to look anymore at these grey walls.  A man needs color in his life, Johnson.  A man needs sexual gratification.  Will you make love to me, Johnson?”

“It is Wednesday now.”

“Have you any idea what it is like to starve oneself of physical intimacy and nutritional sustenance for nearly a week, Johnson?  I could eat my own suit.”

“You already have,” I reply.

“That is correct, yes.  I remember yesterday quite clearly.  The pain is immense, but my memory is still sharp.  I say, Johnson, the digestion of that seersucker cotton has certainly been something of a struggle.”

“Yes, it has.”

“Oh, the defecation, don’t mind that.  Merely the sign of a healthy and functioning digestive system.  In the black and white you cannot make out the entrails quite so clearly.”

“It is Sunday now.”

“The Lord’s day on Earth, Johnson.  Perhaps this time he shall save us from this noir-influenced hellhole.  Johnson, are you going to eat that suit anytime soon?”

“I am quite full, courtesy of the dinners brought to us by the owner’s secretary.”

“May I have that suit?”

“It is Thursday now.”

“One week and nine days, Johnson.  An insufferable experience, surely; but there is no man I would have rather spent it with than you.”

“I’m a woman.”  The phone rings.

“Yes,” the zoot says.  “Killed the owner’s daughter, yes.  Banned from the club, you say?  The most expected route of action, undoubtedly.  I am truly sorry for going through your things, sir.  Yes, I will let Johnson know.  Yes, yes.  No, no.  Perhaps.  Well, I would not say I was discourteous in refusing the secretary’s dinners, but I was quite full from the suit; you could understand.  Mmhm.  Repulsive, you say?  Well, I have not exactly kept my body in peak physical condition, but that seems a bit harsh.  Get the Hell out?  Surely, sir.  Thank you for the extended stay.”

“Johnson.”

“Yes?”

“Check the phone, please.”

“But you’re holding the phone.”

“Not this phone; the computer… no, not that computer; the printer.”  There is a letter, in color, designed much in the way of a diploma.  It reads: ‘We hereby grant the deed of  ONE ONE-MILLION DOLLAR INFLATABLE BOAT  to a Mr. D. Gilligan, courtesy of the Avalanche Holding Company.’

“Who is D. Gilligan,” I inquire.

“Avalanche Holding Company… where do I know that name?”

“Who is D. Gilligan?”

* * *

“I tell you, I’ve had plenty of fine meals in my lifetime, but nothing in life compares to the pop! of the reds and blues and yellows after two weeks and two days in that monotonous hellhole.”  Gilligan has one hand on the steering wheel of his classic convertible sportcar, and the other is chomping on the blunt end of a thicket of seersucker cotton.  His teeth gnash expertly through the various tightly-wound fibers, and sit dryly at the back of his throat.

“Johnson, grab me a glass of water, will you?”

“You haven’t any water in here.”

“Grab it from the ocean, Johnson!  The coastline is your proverbial oyster!  Nothing can stop us now; ‘tis but a dreamland!”  I do exactly so, and he thanks me kindly while removing his other hand from the wheel to suck down the musty ocean water.  “Doesn’t it feel good to be alive once more, my friend?”  Johnson throws the glass across the interstate pavement, and places a pair of sunglasses at the tip of his nose.  “Miami Vice, Johnson!”

“I suppose it feels positively enlivening to be alive, Gilligan.”

“You know, Johnson, I’ve grown quite fond of you over these past two weeks in Hell.  You’ve danced with the inflatable, committed violent crimes, graciously surrendered your suit to my digestive tract, and then watched me strain and yank that very suit from my bloody asshole.”

“I suppose I have, Gilligan.  I’d like to think of us as partners; quick-thinking, detective types.  Struggling immensely through the hard times, and, as of now, enjoying the fresh and colorful breaths of a life on the run.”

“Indeed, Johnson, a positively liberating lifestyle.  That was very well put; have you considered writing the next great American novel?”

“I fancy a working class tale myself, Gilligan.  One which speaks to the fiercest plights of our downtrodden peoples; the chilling battle cry of a hundred million in unison, calling upon Marx’s inevitable ascent and ushering in the calm and slumbering twilight of man’s existence.”

“Yes; yes!  That which shall tickle furiously at the very pudenda of the working man’s discontented soul!”

“A tale of sound and fury, Gilligan, though told by an idiot it shall not be!  I envision the vanguard of a new and permanent order, under which our people shall at last flourish in material and intellectual prosperity.”

“I have always desired the stately mustache of an absolute ruler, Johnson.”

Perhaps I shall entitle it: Gilligan and Johnson’s ‘Two Weeks in Hell.’”

“Try this on for size: Johnson and Gilligan’s ‘Two Weeks in Hell.’”  The flattering sentiment hangs in the air, accompanied by a coastline peace and the low whirring of a well-functioning motor vehicle.  Before us, the sunset twists into deep blues and reds, the palette of God’s own improvised brush for the enjoyment of a few appreciative mortals.  The highway breeze spindles delicately about my bonneted hair; I feel like Elizabeth Taylor from the movies.  No - Thelma and Louise.  No - Bonnie and Clyde.  Outlaws on the run, mired in chaos; forced by our respective low upbringings to commit violent crimes, and finding in the process that we love the thrill of it all.  And what better place

“What better place,” I look over at Gilligan, “than sunny Miami, Florida.”

“I tell you, Johnson, I am not set at ease by this whole Avalanche Holding Company thing.  It feels like a classic ploy from the movies.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, what the hell would an avalanche be doing all the way out here in the sun and bayou?”

* * *

Feeling several miles beyond the civilisation of the metropolis, Gilligan and I look about the shipping yard with squinted eyes.  Silent apprehension creeps toward and festers under our fingernails.  It is thick with flour.  It pervades like bacterial mud-soup.  It leeches at the sides of our matching leather platforms; unties our premium polyester shoelaces; discolors the bottoms of our four-hundred dollar green-striped zoot suits.

“Tragedy strikes,” says Gilligan, “in the muddiest of crevices.”

“Vanity is not a luxury afforded to the working class,” I reply.

“Even Tony Montana had to dirty his shoes every once in a while.”

“Montana, you say?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t they have avalanches in Montana?”

“My God, Johnson!  Where is our  MILLION DOLLAR INFLATABLE BOAT????”  In pure shock and revulsion, I turn to see a strange man charge Gilligan with a crowbar and strike him twice across the skull!

“The zoot man is dead!” he exclaims in an Eastern European accent to his charging accomplice, a table-sized pizza box with eight menacing legs extending well over a foot into the air.

“O zoot está morto!” responds the beastly creation, its pizza-box mouth flapping triumphantly.

“You fucking bastard!” I shout, pulling a four-inch dagger from my green-striped zoot suit and promptly jabbing it several times into the side of the wicked Bulgarian swine.  He falls to his side wheezing, splattering mud across my green-striped zoot suit; he convulses erratically in the desperate fashion of an inflatable tube man.

“It is the tube man!” I respond horrifically, the full weight of this conspiracy before my disbelieving eyes.

“Ah, veja, ele é o cara do metrô, mas eu sou o Avalanche!”  The arachnid pizza box rears his back toward me, and reveals the letters upon it, spelled across the cardboard in faded ink: ‘COURTESY OF THE AVALANCHE HOLDING COMPANY.’

“It cannot- no, it cannot be!”  I fall back several steps as the table-board-eight-legged-freak inches toward me, cackling heinously, deafeningly, each leg stabbing inexorably into my predestined fate.  I hold to my dagger in trembling fear; the beast’s shrills grow nearer.

“A avalanche atinge o pior ao amanhecer!”  With a single crow-barred blow, the revived Gilligan collapses the monster in the stew-thickened mud.  The beasts transmutes immediately into a vile, Portuguese conquistador, whose twirling facial hair and fragile, South European frame are caked in the bayou earth.

“O sofrimento; O sofrimento,” he whispers despairingly.  Stimulated by the violent crime and the near death of my closest companion, I throw myself onto the useless conquistador and jab my dagger into his belly repeatedly.  Entrails spill out onto the tip, which I promptly wipe across his teary, dirt-plastered cheek.

The imperialist cunt cries aloud, pleading for mercy, claiming his innocence in the vain last breaths of the desperate and pathetic; in his infantile hysterics, I derive a cold and unfeeling pride, that of the unchallenged victor, forgetting the presence of my faithful companion for the briefest moment.  With a swift one-two, I pull his blood-suffocated tongue from his throat and cut horizontally, leaving a long gash which flows exceptionally across quivering lips.  Pulling the tongue apart, I peer in as one might at a piece of seared pork, to make sure it is of an acceptable internal temperature.

“O, ye sweet red-milk of the soon deceased, ye tender flesh of the befallen conquistador!”

“Johnson.”

“O, ye convulsing body of the sick Portuguese whore!  O, ye bloody triumph and arousal!”

“Johnson!”

“My Lord, Gilligan; when did you arrive?”

“Johnson, we must make it to the sea; the great pangs of our journey lie ahead yet.”

“A volcano with razors?”

“Indeed, my dearest friend.  Now, that  MILLION DOLLAR INFLATABLE BOAT has got to be around here somewhere.”

“Could it be near the sea?”

“Genius, Johnson!  Simply stupendous, on the ball, on top of one’s feet, thinking on the balls of your feet, Johnson!”

“It is Friday now.”

“That it is, Johnson, and the shallow Everglades are nearly behind us.  Phone for you, Johnson.”

“Hello?”

“This is your mother; when will you be coming back home to Nebraska?”

“Whenever; I have new a new friend now.”

“The meatloaf is almost cold,” she responds in a heaving sigh.

“I’ve committed serious violent crimes, Mother.”

“You’ve what?”

“And I’ll commit them against you if you’re not careful, you crustaceous, obscene, darling bovine cunt.”  I drop the phone in the water, and a stillness permeates the air.  Gilligan continues chewing on the sopping ends of a thin slice of seersucker cotton, stabbed through on the end by a wooden prod.

“Easier for bayou dipping,” Gilligan explains, to which I nod agreeably.

“Say, Gilligan?”

“What’s the word, Johnson.”

“I’ve been thinking.  We haven’t quite confronted the nature of our violent crimes, have we?”

“Death toll of three, Johnson.  Such is the life of crime-detectives on the run; we who’ve lived an extensive two weeks through the fiery plight of Hell, endured hardship and near starvation in the depths of a noir-influenced catatonia.”

“Well… what will I tell my kids?”

“Have you any children, Johnson?  This is pertinent information, you should’ve warned me sooner.  Kids carry diseases, Johnson.  Swampy diseases.  Dysentery, chlamydia, influenza, schizophrenia, the like.  Have you dysentery?”

“No; nothing of the sort.”

“Then get to the point, you sentimental bastard.”

“Well, provided I do.  How do I look them in the eye and tell them I murdered a table-sized, pizza-box, Portuguese, arachnid conquistador in cold blood?  That I truly enjoyed slicing open his tongue like a pan-seared pork fillet?”  Gilligan mulls over the question pensively for several moments, seeming quite perplexed by the potential moral quandary of our actions.  Looking ahead toward our destination, he responds:

“That is something you’ve got to confront, my dearest amigo.  In the meantime, we’ve a volcano with razors on our mind.”  Gilligan, finishing his piece of seersucker, looks about himself, and has tragically run dry of the digestible fabric.  He clutches impatiently at his stick, slaps it against the side of his boat to the tune of Smoke on the Water.  Smoke rises from the water; something sinister stirs beneath the surface.  “Say, could I get a slice of your shirt, Johnson?”

“Why, you’ve ate it all alread-”

“Johnson, look - a beastly gator; a dirty swamp-toothed reptilian of the sea!  Perhaps I shall poke it with this handy stick!”

“Gilligan, no!”