Uncle Drew's Lysergic Backbrain Apocalypse (Slight Return)

Friday. I was on edge, and we had a fairly busy night---I can’t tell you how low my tolerance was for the human race….I wasn’t in the mood for glass racks getting hurtled to tumbling deaths on our counters…..no squalling busboys…no screeching waitresses….Candi and her peccadilloes…..delloes…..dilloes……diddles…..

Did I decide to trip? Of course, I decided to trip.

I didn’t do it up the way I did previously---I kept it at three hits. I think it was only three hits, okay---three hits. That’s not so bad----just enough for the Three Stooges and

The flying cats to guard over us lovingly and peacefully….how bad can that be?

Things were nice….Candi was over at the bread bar and I didn’t have to deal with any of her insubordination---I could just admire her from afar----I imagined her naked---she was doing a belly dance and I saw parts of her flesh floating away from her body and congealing as pretty clusters of bubbles the color of her skin….I thought I might seize some of those bubbles and put them in my pocket and carry them home…when I got lonely I might wrap that free-floating flesh around me and never have to worry about it leaving me or wanting to mess with some other guy….flying playdough of love. Or sex. Maybe just leaving it at sex was a better idea.

They had given me my very own peanut to boss around… we’ll call him Schroeder just for the sake of the story. It was early on in the evening and Schroeder and I needed to do some intensive cleaning. We needed to put down pure, undiluted cleaning fluid on the floor and try to work the dirt out of the grout between the tiles. It was a long, painstaking process but I could be the king of that.

I was laying down the cleaning fluid with the mop and Schroeder was going over the tiles with a stiff bristle broom…I could tell he was bored, but it wasn’t up to me to provide entertainment for him.

I soaked the floor down good between the back hallway that led to the smaller banquet halls up to the Chef’s office. I looked in the window to the Chef’s office. Nick was in there, shooting the breeze with Drew. I didn’t think anything of it.

I looked over to the main counter…Fat Brad was whistling a happy tune and cutting up a huge slab of beef rib. Next to him, Ralph Johnson, in his best tux, was eyeing me hatefully and talking on a two-way radio. Where the hell did that freak get a radio, and what the hell did he want from me? I turned away and walked down past the Chef’s office. I looked in the window. Drew was looking all hangdog, and it suddenly hit me that he was crying---weeping openly, like a goddamned baby.

What the hell?

Nick was talking to Drew. His face looked very severe----he reminded me of an angry badger ready to kill, and in that moment I sort of hated him. What good and loving person would ever treat poor Uncle Drew that way?

Drew looked like a cartoon character. I could hear him sobbing through the concrete walls, now. Tears were flying off his face and soaking him to the bone. His bawling sounded a lot like that obnoxious call of his---like a rusty faucet coughing up the dust of the ages.

I was starting to get very edgy, and then, on the other end of the kitchen I saw him----Eddie Kidd, way off in the distance, eyeing me with those owl-peepers that saw all and said little---talking in a two-way radio.

The jig was obviously up, and every person in the building was on to us.

Raw panic blasted from my head down to my toes and the sound of helicopters filtered into my line of hearing. Helicopters and thousands of mewling cats.

I looked back in the office and Drew’s situation was none too good. His tears were so abundant at this point that he and the Chef were now ankle deep in water. And there was no sign of him stopping. “Haaaaayyyrrrrrrroooooop,” Drew lamented.

It was all about to come down and I had to do something.

Schroeder was dutifully mopping. I ran to the janitorial closet and pulled out a small arsenal of chemicals.

“What’s up?” Yelled Schroeder.

“Take this,” I ordered him. Down the banquet hall I heard barked orders, running footsteps and the ratcheting of firearms. “Dump the bleach across the floor as far as you can go. Soak it down. Do it now!” Schroeder obediently hit the back of the hall and started emptying the bleach in a puddle from the back hall to the Chef’s office and beyond. I was busy hauling jugs of chemicals out into the main hall.

“Do I mop it down?” Asked Schroeder. In the Chef’s office, Drew was up to his waist in a deluge of tears and it was still coming. “This is war,” I screamed. I handed him

another jug of bleach and told him to douse everything from the center of the kitchen on out to the night line. I didn’t have all day to instruct Schroeder on the ways of the world---it was put-up-or-shut-up time.

Fat Brad’s voice broke over the din. “James, what are you doing?!” He was obviously in on the whole thing. I ran down to the end of the hallway and ran back up toward the center of the kitchen, emptying a jug of undiluted ammonia onto the bleach all the way up. As I made it past the chef’s office I caught my last glimpse in there…Nick was standing up in alarm but the room was filling with Drew’s tears and they were all spilling out into the kitchen. Would that I had time to build a goddamned ark. Drew just sat there bawling like a fountain. “Hoorrrrrk,” I heard him sob. The noxious clouds erupted behind me. I heard footfalls, screaming and choking. My gambit was paying off.

Suddenly everyone was running and scrambling and yelling. All hell had broken loose. Shots were flying everywhere. I saw Fat Brad flying backward, his big belly being ripped open, his slimy guts mixing with the raw meat and bones on the counter. Bodies were falling everywhere I looked. Friends, foes, it no longer mattered---the jig was up. It was a new era, an age of fire, the Year of the Cat, and those found wanting were going to be Purina---end of story.

Schroeder had proven a valiant little soldier and done just what I told him, dousing the rest of the kitchen with bleach…I made the rest of the stretch, upending a small container of bleach and a large jug of ammonia behind me. People were pitching forward right and left. I saw Jeff hit the floor….I liked Jeff alright, but the fact remained---war is what happens when the last opportunity to negotiate is exhausted. And in war there are casualties.

Sometimes it’s you or them, and that’s the grim and ugly truth.

“Dude---what are you doing?!” screamed Schroeder. He’d done his bit, but now he was turning to deadweight. It was time for Easy Company to part ways.

“Run,” I yelled. “Run, you fool!” I shoved him through the restaurant doors. Gunfire was everywhere and the poisonous fumes were being followed by a tidal wave of Uncle Drew’s tears. “BWEEAAAARRRRRRK,” I heard him honk from deep within the chaos.

I hit the stairwell. “I wanna be an airborne ranger,” I bellowed, jumping an entire flight. I had put Protein Bob’s military pretensions to rest in one deft move. I made it down the flight of stairs and tore up several hallways to the employee exit.

One thing I had to be thankful for was that the people in control are basically stupid rubes and no one sought to monitor the employee parking lot. Behind me I heard crackling gunshots, screams and sirens.

I hit the shale wall past the back lot and climbed into the woods. Searchlights were flailing in every direction. The Golden Lion disappeared into a toxic haze. Far overhead enormous pinwheels of smiling, pink and purple cats rolled over the night sky. I ran and I kept running.

Sirens……tanks….mushroom clouds…..slackjawed ancestors…..technology uttering one last pitiful roar, like the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and then falling back in its grave…….cavemen……..dust……….