CHAPTER 3

Folder:

CLICKITY CLACK

Plundered by pirates minding my own business fishing on a blown-up fishing boat- lovely little lugger- who stab with mad scimitars- like we stab at sharks and such- blasting their pistols at my plastic raft, secret charms held yearning, staring blankly as it hisses and patiently deflates; who abduct and steal advantage of my vigor as a handsome, hunched over, hapless hungry hostage (for three days we did fast, amongst nasty crumbs of slop like moldy cheese, and the fattest rats you’ll ever see!)

‘Clowry they call me… And this…’ he said as he caressed the underbelly grain of the main floorboards from the decaying decadence of the lower deck where now the next moment awaits us and unveils her mermaid salt magic: it appeared as if he was inspecting something infinitesimally small and trivial to him, let alone from the vantage point of any other outside observer, for that matter, me, like searching for splinters in the damp wood, scanned alongside the microscope that were his eyes, for yes, he tested spectacles for a ‘Land Queen Company’ they call them today. ‘Ah, yes, an employee… Oh, this here be Queenie, my own wicked woman, and my old wretched ship, ay, Black Pearl, which is what me no less wretched crew refer to her as, too… ay that, me laddy lark, won’t ye come and share some sup with us, then, or are yous the type-a-lad that don’t know where to stick his prick exactly, ha!’ He heckled and hacked a string of snot, spat, and pulled a fancy canteen from out of his delicious, rambunctious manner of dress, garb, wardrobe, whatever… ‘Yet what worlds warp into, my friends! So, pardon me profanity, then getting smashed to smithereens, ha!’ He then commenced to clear his throat with a prodigious swig of the ‘forbidden whiskey’ by swishing it around inside his mouth, pretty much gurgling mouthwash, and spat it all directly upon my head. Mine, a scared skeleton form, hunched over still in the disgustingly dirty and dim grim corner. A stowaway ocean token. At which point he, Clowry, erupted into a giddy enough song unit which where the stark contrast would only be felt by his few haggard crew, standing upon the mizzen deck with that same dread numbness held in their horrible desensitized eyes like cheap wine, fake gems:

Oh, the things the things

Yes, these be the things!

As has been stated already, Captain Clowry was a major model sponsor for the Land Queen Company. His coattails were rumpled and fluffed, embroidered swimmingly by silken whisper maidens. Rummaging bustling amongst only the rowdiest of crewmen, he would sometimes undo just a couple of those pristine button pearls of pillow, to show off his animal chest hair glittering comfortably beneath the sun, ensheathing the Captain with protection such as that not only gladiators of super swords must submit, but giant Cyclopes who hide in caves, heavy metal artifact rifles being stuffed with pellets, or pushed into the barrel rather, literal cannibals chanting ‘bang bang!’ after fixing their straps and wandering onto the hidden path of a very serene yet eerie feeling island venture, never to be seen again: pumpkins in the field.

Their skeletons bend and shift, long exposed to the horrid effects of deprivation, morphing and curling into inexplicable positions of what looks like leisure, while wobbling as they walk; feeding on their own souls, it would seem… The word ‘slave’ comes from the Slavic race, perchance, denoting flags hailing from out of the Russian border. Much to study. Now that I’m reading Dostoyevsky, all this and more suddenly and ultimately only having capacity to manifest because her panties are caught in a sudden coy curtsy, a bunch of bumps, and shy, reluctant spiderweb sighs…

‘Alexa. Show me a motherfucking vulture, you bitch.’

‘As defined in the Doomsday Press, basically an apocalyptic Desert Dragon species, known to natives as La Vultúra (Indian translation), a birdspawn prophecy commonly cited flying high above deserts, hovering; otherwise imagined, on a bit of a whim, warping through portals, tentacle noodles grope her gaping abyss, constantly begging for more babies, more babies, more babies, spinning nunchucks with one heck of a threatening routine. Now imagine that a moment, a pregnant chick doing ninja shit with nunchucks. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ll have none of it (no pun intended); and farther towards our modern time-trip dating all the way back to Ancient Greek tradition: Phoenix.’

‘My field is like a fairytale prairie’ the Chief of the tribe declares, bidding warm welcome. Seagulls need not navigate their blond wonder of ‘what fish, what fish?’ pursuit upon the compass of a stupidly polluted ocean surface. Clowry now the true new protagonist. ‘A truly fantastic Captain, that.’ Barfing from the mizzen, bathroom gaps, gasps of antiquitous faggots, between the transient pardoning pantomime of our personal swig session of rum in the tum. ‘Now, this, boys, is one pretty pirate party!’ Swig of drink. Barfs again. Mumbles a jumble not worth quoting. I find it all quite funny, really. He’s a role player in the least extreme, donning all the modern dress effortlessly stylized cultural refinement, in the fraction of a niche world, subtlest of symbolic splendor: who, you could be sure, the dames all slobbered over.

Underground gutter assassins polish their potholes by dumping and scrubbing vehement floods and streams of bleach, designating this peculiar little neighborhood, cripplingly unique, due largely to the fact as follows, since its sole inhabitants you couldn't discern any significant difference against calling literal Quasimodo-esque hobbits; hence why they hide, yes, designating their respective numbers, according also to their own strange native tongue, and finally all merely to mark these cute little doors of their kind, so to speak, and shutting off until the next knock, knock, knock comes knocking around.

The Rossaforts reciprocate gratitude, gracious acts of giving, dispensed out upon the public as frogs rain down from the sky. ‘We’ve breeched maximum security’ rabbits ribbit ribbons. Surely I should stop, but I simply cannot. I’ve been taken for a slave on this here ship. Even a simple, somewhat dominant thought-train is merely met with being read to, surfacing from the shallows on the metrics of your stupid and shallow imaginations... Damn, Dostoeyevsky is like Joyce’s Russian ‘Doppelganger’ as coined. The Rossaforts were the most prestigious travel passengers aboard. They gazed out upon the view and absence of anything that common city-kin might see land-wise, heave-ho, with binoculars no less! watching for whales, I reckon. ‘Oh shit, we’re being raided’ they say looking down those binoculars hard. ‘All hands man the cannons!’ Captain Clowry shouts from aft, wheeling the wheel and giving orders and such.

I never could’ve guessed what my life has become. Deep-rooted in the belief system whose broadest fractions alone risk being burned themselves like witches at the stake; not to mention this here missus who won’t flutter free from being ensheathed in these my wings, slurping my juicy mama’s tomatoes without hesitation, and this here much more regionally advanced and vast matter, as head of operations, winking back at you… As I said already, I work a monocle and top hat… The joy of wonder is only felt when you administer drugs of the quota premium standard, exploring a superior level of arrangements… Never to speak again, when the cosmos lie beyond… Most Certainly, My Majesty…

Remember where you came from, the shadows quell. An introspective silence ensues. Some call it a Sabbatical; others, a metric mess. ‘So submissive, yes, great purple flower fever, multitude striped with purple fever hay daydreams in surrender to the full force loving thrust. Glints of gold up above, up and up, ethereal doves murmur. Now commence to undress.’

If you could only just control it, the way you would wish to be controlled, desiring nothing other than scampering off and away into the willows- well, you wouldn’t still be here, would you? My music taste is mint, no doubt, no doubt as to whether that much holds up. As I said, scampering off…

‘Your house is being haunted’ Kora said.

‘By who?’ Kash asked with a smirking grimace, winking while working all awhile, then thinking before he said again ‘You summed it all up in just a single sentence’ hastily making himself absent again; having been abducted from Italy, whose goal it was to travel backwards in time, finally heading home, after long last…

‘Those goddamn Italians, man, I tell you what.’

Where were we? Rationally speaking, of course, a riddle swathed and swindled out of ignorance, given by oceanic nymphs. Permanent waves came. Mermaids no less. A quest ever so fragile, for our ship is frail, compared to the fabulous fair-haired maiden of monstrous waves…

‘Oh, Matan, I’m so sorry!’ screams this hot Japanese robot model of his, robust rubber waifu screams in JAPANESE strapped with thong.

‘Iran is four hours away from developing a nuclear bomb. What should we do in response? Should we bomb Gaza? I suppose we could bomb Tarkazukker for a change. Did you know your dog could bite you if you be disobedient? In an instant, the guy where the show ends and the show ends and he floats to black? But there would be an intermediate time, where the morning. Well, that gives me, that’s seven days of peace and then that would be that but if we poison the neighbor then the dog will die!’

‘What you just said, my animal abuser… It’s because you’ve been watching out for your ear, but you could still take advice from other people… Clearly not, now your ear is infected and you can’t hear what I’m saying…’ she responds.

Blue cardinal swoops down, literally my first actual sighting, cawing loud from the treetops, beckoning flock, to begin this winter’s migration cycle, gathering flock, withersoever they go, down from the mountain tops, hunting bugs above bending rivers. Oh, I wonder where they will go. Putting on a show for us inferior gravity-gobblers, no doubt, guts busting from belt buckles and such.

Kora: ‘I’m developing as a woman, a newly-wed compatriot and spicy gorilla girl! You hhhear me, boy?’ she managed to tweak out, like some big, strange bird, stretching the syllabic rhythm and substituting it with country twang. ‘Even God fears me, boy, hear?’

He laughs and winks to her from over his lean shoulder, stepping over carcasses hidden in the streets. They flood the country with all sorts of ‘fun peoples.’ Don’t worry they’ll do nothing about it. Have a big target on your fucking back. It’s easy to take advantage of her by maniacal force, like when you allow a ‘Queen’ to rule, you turn into a cuck.

Kash: ‘No, because with altruism, you have the ability to empathize with your neighbor. But there’s just never any course correction, either. We’re gonna go back, back, back.’ He turned his coy cracked egg the other direction, out of empathy, of course, and spat off the porch, courteous gentleman, a real perplexing poser, living large on the barge; type-a-guy makes you wanna barf. Yep, that’s me…’ he lets out with a sigh; you’d thought it was a fart.

Heaven and hell are merely states of mind, nothing new. At what point did our concept of survival become so complicated all the time? His face assumed a properly pride-felt persona. ‘The word, reprised, was carved in stone; we dug it up from the dust’ he said. How archaeological. My world is crouched in shadow, in any event: we will always be shaded by the skeptics. A man on the pier walks quickly past me, bumping shoulders. Must be in a rush or something. His coat was wet with salt and grime, carrying tackle box and fishing rod. Walks right by me, says hi, and continues on walking. Person with a ladder. I’m in spy mode. Bafflingly and utterly introspective, like tarnished treasure. Time to stretch. Old Nimrod makes great for that. The person who holds it holds also authority. Minus the Captain, of course…