Uncle Drew's Lysergic Backbrain Apocalypse (Slight Return)
Saturday I was clean for several days---it was going to be a hopping night and there was no way in hell I was going to work straight. I figured four hits of acid would do me. I was there maybe a half hour by the time it started hitting. I still had fourteen hits left, but I subtly let Uncle Drew know I had a paycheck and he had a willing customer if he was willing to keep swinging doses. Drew made no secret at this point that he was starting to feel pretty sour about drug transactions at work, but the money fairy was calling, and he couldn’t turn a deaf ear to that.
‘Round about Seven, Eddie Kidd let me and Linus out to dump trash. I didn’t say anything at all, but Eddie’s rosy Santa Claus smile bore down on me with the intensity of a thousand suns. Outside the sky was shimmering purple and so I got lost in that and tried not to play Eddie’s weird cop games.
That ended and there was the night’s business to attend to. Everything was very vivid and I could hear the big dishwasher roaring over everything. Clem called to me from the loading end. “James! Get it in gear!”
“Meow,” I responded. He shouted, “yeah, yeah, yeah,” and a lot of other noise I was unconcerned with. I planted myself on the unloading end of the dishwasher and went to town. The guys deliberately loaded it in such a way where no human could ever keep up with it, even someone in the Herculean thrall of the flying cats, as I was. Naturally it stopped every five seconds or so. I didn’t care---I was lost in the roar of the steam and water jets. The guys razzed me down on the other end and I meowed back at them. At one point or another Pete decided (or someone decided for him) that he should get his hands dirty and start pulling dishes off the machine. “James,” he gasped, as if this were some sort of national emergency, “you’ve got to pick up the pace!” In the grand scheme of things his concern was ridiculous--petty, even. Pete could leave whenever the hell he wanted.
Candi came over to my end of the machine and screamed for something----bread-and-butter plates? Salad Bowls? Puppies? I couldn’t tell for sure.
“What does it matter to you?” I asked and gave her the cold shoulder.
“I need them.” She squealed. It reminded me of how she sounded when she came.
“Yeah, well, tell the Grateful Dead.” To this day I wish I hadn’t been so harsh on her. What did she know? What did either of us know? She went away mad and I went back to work. Everything was vibrating and ringing in a whitehot symphony. Let me tell you what the most perfect sound in the world is, boy….it’s the perfect vibration of a quarter landing on a formica tabletop and whirring to a standstill. Times one billion, forever and ever. Can’t handle that? You have a flatbed truck, okay? You take one hundred thousand mason jars and you build a pyramid on that flat bed. Then you stand there with the truck idling for hours and you listen to all those mason jars rattle in rhythm with that idling engine. That’s it, bunky….that’s the sonic key the whole dadblamed universe plays on. Anyone who tells you different is sorely deluded, I truly and deeply believed that.
I still do. I’ll stick a shiv in any man that wants to argue. Gut him like one of those catfish swimming in the lake over there.
Somewhere in the chaos and the din I had another case of the shits. I spent a half hour, at least, on the toilet. People need to do a better job cleaning their bathrooms…they don’t understand the danger that occurs when the whites are so white and the browns are so brown.
The mildew was wiggling like an exotic dancer. At one point I imagined it formed the face of Eddie Kidd, beaming off the tile wall with that knowing smile.
It was maybe four in the morning when we got done. My shitbox car had been in the shop for a week, pending my ability to afford the work that needed to be done to get it up and running again. Fourth time in a year I’d been in this situation. Bob asked me if I needed a ride---I told him it was cool…I wanted to walk. Everything around me had a subdued sparkle and the ring of a million mason jars on high idle was still eating my brain. I felt jittery as hell. As I left the hotel grounds and came to the main road I saw a whole motorcade; three or four cop cars, an army jeep and a big vehicle with several troop transports on it. All the drivers in those vehicles seemed to be staring at me. I wondered what was going on.
Now, of course, we have history on our side, and we know what was going on, don’t we?
C.F. Roberts is a writer, visual artist, videographer and antimusician living in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, writer Heather Drain and a small menagerie of animals. He published and edited SHOCKBOX: The Literary/Art Magazine with Teeth from 1991 to 1996. He sings lead for the rock band, the S.E. Apocalypse Krew while also commandeering his own industrial project, 90 Lb. Tumor. He most recent publication credits are in Fearless, Paraphilia, Pressure Press Presents, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Blue Collar Review, Corvus Review, Antique Children, and Guerilla Genesis Press. His book, The Meat Factory and Other Stories, is available from Alien Buddha Press.
