CHAPTER V FEAR & LOATHING IN REALITY # WOULD YOU BUY A USED WOMAN FROM THIS MAN? The new psyche-weapon had an almost imperceptible, subtle effect: I no longer knew whether I was manic or depressed as an ecology of neurotransmitters shifted, changed: I could feel myself rising into planes of higher consciousness; became increasingly aware of vast & elaborate conspiracies to kill me. This was paranoia, a more than U-boat madness.... I am referring here specifically to Barney da Pimp: 1 Sunday afternoon at the beach when it grew late & not wishing to walk all the way back to my apartment for supper I entered a Cantonese Kitchen on 93rd Street. While I was waiting for the waiter I saw that Barney da Pimp was sitting at the next table w/ assorted prostitutes & lestitutes. Southside Barney saw me & exclaimed, "Hitman? Hitman? You want to know who really has a hitman after him?" He was undoubtedly referring to the Karen Relationship. As Claudius Schlausmuller, my new ID, I had fallen in love w/ Karen, a big-titted girl who was a tease & a flirt....She would come & hang around my room, walking w/ her hands behind her head so that her boobs stuck out--like a hooker in heat. I had fallen madly, shatteredly, in love w/ her. She rejected me. She rejected me for Mel Paraffin, a waxy fellow w/ a mustache. Insane w/ jealousy & the burning of the brain, I had threatened to kill him. I had had to go before the Turk, Dean of everything, that madman in his oasis. The U-boat eased my mind like a bridge over stormy water. I looked out the window & saw a Turner sunset; I finally put out Andy Roach & in the remnants of my food. I'd have to get out of here. I'd have to die & be resurrected again so that the hitman wouldn't recognize me. But my new identity was only that of a low-paid professional comic book writer; & I couldn't even count on the Hog: He had moved back to LA to write science fiction. This was a job for the monad! But my monad was busted so the only recourse now was to get a haircut & shave my beard so that the hitman who was looking for me wouldn't be able to recognize me. I wandered, lonely & stoned, to Abel's barbershop. The place was crowded but I found a chair in back & read Players Magazine until my turn came up, looking at breasts of total Penthouse perfection, round & brown, the brown nearest black. Suddenly there were voices: "Boy got himself new glasses & a haircut so the hitman who's looking for him won't recognize him...." Some dread superbeing had seen thru my disguise w/ X-ray vision. I was in a cosmicomic world again; the world of Reality.... I looked up from a black satin seductress to see a Black Panther talking to Reality. Concern was suddenly etched on my neighbor's handsome face: "Hitman? Who's telling Reality about a hitman?" The youth in the black beret, black like Reality, repeated Barney da Pimp's story. I strained to hear over the hubbub, yet as the tale was told the place gradually quieted down: In the telling of Relationship's hatred you could've heard a pin drop. "We want you to help us protect him," the Black Panther said, superkool, Kool enough to deal w/ Reality. "Why should Reality stick his neck out for some redneck honkey?" "Because when he was in North Dakota his best friend was Joe Kool, the new drummer for Apocalypso." "Zoc sucks! I ain't gettin' into no business w/ no zoccie band!" "Because it has been an open secret in the black community for years that Apocalypso is a Panthers front." Suddenly Reality was excited. "Can you take me to someone in the Panthers? If this kid is Kool I'd lay my life on the line for him!" The Panthers led, Reality followed. Together w/ half of the throng that was there that day, Reality ran out of the barbershop shouting, "If anyone hurts that boy they'll be speaking to me, Bubba Free!" # MUHAMMAD'S RADIO I sat in the Unexpected Boot, my favorite coffeehouse, chowing don on a microwave cheeseburger & munching incredible pretzels. & of course, drinking Scooby-Dew. So what else do you do in a coffeehouse? It was a typical day: The wall of the Boot opened up into galaxies, alternate universes; I saw dinosaurs, reptiles abounding; I saw fossils, caves, heights where bird-things played. & the radio did play: "The mindstorms are continuing at full Satanic fury, his Satanic majesty requests...excuse me, I am the Bozo King. I can do anything. Let me get a sip of Protriptylene Pop. A little bit of antidepressants, mellow this schiz back to reality. `His Satanic Majesty Requests' coming right up after this newsflash, but 1st I have to give you the straight dope on Reality: "A bomb was found this morning in Reality's backyard. The Police bomb-squad found 7 sticks of dynamite wired to a clock timer. Fortunately, Mr D, Reality's bodyguard, spotted the thing in time for it to be defused. In a statement to reporters, Reality said he suspects the Ku Klux Klan of having planted the..." I shuddered w/ dread, fear....I fled the place, radio suddenly reverting to pulse-pounding zoc. I was frightened, terribly frightened: Now not only were they after me, they must've found out that Reality was protecting me, they were after Reality now too. VADIS' father...that man was a Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.... Again I shuddered. I would dream of my enchanting night & the million silver stars that guide me w/ their sparks....Some- thing had to be done. & I knew what. # Box 69886 Los Angeles, CA 90069 Dear Scuttling Rock: Help! Let me explain: While a student at the University of Night, I had a bad habit of writing suicide notes to girls & the victim of 1 such sequence, VADIS, got her Father, an official of the Fireman's Friends, that dread mob run union, to hire the top Fireman to wipe me out. In case you want to interview him for the Rock, his address is: Roscoe P Rosencruetz 666 Bingetoke Lane Henderson, Alabama (I forget the Zip) I saw Sheriff Roscoe & his dread daughter walking along the beach once. He reminded me of the character in the song Joan Baez sang at Woodstock: He's a Drugstore Truckdrivin' Man & he's the head of the Ku Klux Klan When summer comes rollin' around You'll be lucky to get out of town I know someone is trying to kill me because a couple weeks ago the Invisible Lampshade attacked me. I found out about the Height Park Hitman from Barney da Pimp. I don't know his address. CLAUDIUS SCHLAUSMULLER # I SHOT THE SHERIFF I knocked on my landlord, Bill Donaldson's door, waiting for the man w/ 126 dollars in my hand. They just didn't build apartments the way they used to. I handed him the buckadingdongs, turned to leave, suddenly froze in my tracks as CBS Evening News came on the holovision: "Today Sheriff Roscoe P Rosencruetz of Henderson, Alabama, was shot to death by a motorcycle gang, the Death Devils. Doc Barbarous, leader of the gang, & the person who fired the fatal shots, was arrested today by Depute Anus after a high-speed chase thru the Alabama countryside. Doc Barbarous claimed that Rosencruetz was the head of the Ku Klux Klan who had attempted to bomb Bubba Reality, the world's greatest boxing champ...." My thoughts raced. Alternate worlds came to be & disin- tegrated in the rushing rage of rampaging neurotransmitters. The Fire-Witch consumed me, delicate love of savage nylons, & lipstick the color of sunrise, sunset.... Darkness increased by One... # BUP IT UP My monad was still not back in working order. I assumed the ID of Rootboy as close as I could from w/in the bodanon of Claudius Schlausmuller to go home for Christmas. It was a difficult thing to do, difficult to bring the danger of the Height Park hitman to these innocent North Dakotans just outside the Cat's Foot Hills. One day Pops left for work as usual, but I viewed this w/ hideous fear as paranoia reigned over me. There are 2 types of paranoia, paranoid schizophrenia & paranoid manic-depression; I was suffering from both as the schizophrenia virus still infected me--was still infecting everyone--& the new m-amphetamines which had been dumped into the water supply by cruising shuttles took hold. I knew w/ paranoid illumination that the Drugstore Truckdrivin' Man was hot on Pop's tail. He was trying to get revenge for what I'd done to VADIS....A hideous, loathsome mass of slime, I slithered behind Pop's gerpmobile, intent on stopping any dread hitman who would try to kill Daddy Doder Doodyman. The December chill bit into my miry flesh; slime monsters just weren't made for the North Dakota winter. Suddenly a loathsome evil confronted me. & I was w/o Mountain Fresh. It was the Sheriff's daughter, gunning for revenge: & she had power-packed motives: "I am Achamoth. "I am a sub-unit of VADIS; the powerful mindstorms which she projects are re-routed, re-radiated thru me: I turn the very power of total insanity upon you now: Die, Rootboy!" Raw power. It just wouldn't quit. Beams of Freudian intensity assailed me. I saw deep into the ambivalence of my own emotions, saw that my fear of being killed was also compensation of my desire to die. Jung Americans. Laser fire flared. Just then there was a mighty grunting, a sniffling as though of some mighty truffle-hunter: Biggolith, the Pig from Outer Space, using Star Wars technology, sent breams of crimson & jet into the heart of Achamoth. She fell; in falling was transmuted: I confronted the bodanon of a dying VADIS now. Sophie, who was the image of God, a whore, a blasphemy of the True God. I looked at Biggolith w/ despair. "We've done it now. Now that the daughter of the Drugstore Truckdrivin' Man is dead, the whole Ku Klux Klan is gonna come gunning for us!" Biggolith merely sneered defiantly & said, "Well....do ya think they can stop--the Pig from Outer Space?" Pop driving the gerpmobile churned on over nightmare fields of snow, crimson & clover in the mindstorms, & Pops--this 1 time--wasn't called on to use his secret identity as...Daddy Doder Doodyman. Because Biggolith & I were defending him. W/o any Mountain Fresh. Yet evil still lurked. Evil. Evil pursued me. Evil had a shape, a form: VADIS. Her Prophet was Zarathustra; in this hell that was not-life I went to bed to await a sleep that was not-sleep, after coming home w/ Biggolith from Gandolph's thoroughly descoobied on Mountain Fresh beer; awake & undreaming--Zarathustra visited me then; trying to learn to forget I pulled the covers around my head, but the hideous screaming would not stop.... I dressed in my tattered rags, the remnants of clothing that remain when man is transformed into man-thing, & went downstairs, hoping that Zarathustra hadn't left an incendiary grenade in our mailbox. Small Cute Bup was up; I thought perhaps peeking around to see what parcels were for free in curiosity. Instead he was Bupping It Up. & he did so w/ dread intent. "Uh-uh-ah, diddy uh-uh-ah!" he chanted, poking his finger at in invisible toomy. Often Ma had remarked on the incredible cuteness of this, but now I saw that he was confronting an invisible demon. "Uh-ah-ah, uh-ah-ah." The chant went on ever faster. I perceived awesome portents: This was the demon chant, a song Bup used to protect himself (& others) only from the most malefic spirits. His finger yet poonched an invisible toomy. I knew foul doings were afoot so I called on the power of my decoder ring to materialize the specter. It was Zarathustra: the grand Prophet of evil working foul magic. I myself was impotent against this power. Only Bup could save us now. Bup bupped it up. Beams of astral force shot from Zarathustra's eyes. For a second, it almost seemed as though he were vorkling. Yet this moment of illusion passed even as Small Cute Bup's little finger shot out 1 more time, triumphantly: "Poonchy toomy!" "Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggggh!" Suddenly Zarathustra vanished, back to the Void where he had come from. I turned w/ Bup to unwrap presents; Midnight Mass would be soon. Rituals of crucifiction & crucifixation would exorcise me just as good as Bup had. Yet even as Bup tore silver wrapping from some package, I knew I owed my life to him--were it not for the strange ritual of Bupping it Up the hairy Yog-Soggoth would be a dead man. Dead swamp monster. Playing poxy pinball, smiles, & grins, pokes his finger at everything: "Bup it Up!" # TRAIN RIDES ALL OVER YOUR BODANON Monster bats soared outside the windows of the onrushing Nova Express, blocked from view as we passed thru a long, dark tunnel. Ooga-Chugga! Out of the tunnel, again the bats soared, the gay apparel of Christmas forever blasted from my mind. At least I had picked up a new, fully digital noise-gate for my stereo; now I could de-hiss the old DATs. Why they just didn't do it digitally was beyond me. On the train Invisible gerps whispered dark conspiracies: Fred Bigelli. The Apocalypso Concert. Drugstore Truckdrivin' Man. This was the old west, out here the man who drove the monster 18-wheeler was a cowboy hero. & he had fallen at the hands of the Pig from Outer Space. I tried not to listen. I hunched back in my seat & read my cosmic comic, Slime-thing, although as Author I knew exactly what was happening in this issue--& the next 10 that followed. The conversation meandered on & on; it was all about basketball players turning into angels & I knew we were approaching the center of the cyclone, the very incarnation of eeeeevil as the Nova Express rushed on. I went down to the bar car & ordered a Lithium Lager. It wasn't enough. I ordered a Prolixin Pop, mixed w/ a heady vodka that was also fortified w/ potent antidepressants. Even the very water we drank was dosed w/ lithium, proof against insanity. In dazzling mindstorm instants we were beyond the cowboy wastelands; we entered urban space & urban cowboys entered the Nova Express. Their ghetto blasters also spoke the horrible news: Achamoth had died. Killed by a Pig from Outer Space. Invisible, intangible evil forces congregated around me & in another acid instant I found myself aboard a cab. Taco & I cruised a City of Night, a city of dreams, a City of Angels: Somewhere out there Timothy Leary had opened another branch of Uncle Tim's. We came at last to my dreamhome apartment. I had left Nekbael behind me; the demon Resurrectuarant had been possessed by an evil which devoured galaxies. The lawn was covered w/ snow, twinkling in acid dreams. The cab departed, bearing Taco to coed Flintstones; I rose to the warmth of the 3rd floor of the immense mansion, heater cranking out warmth against the ice chill of January.... I called Bob Vecker, who had been following the mysterious doings of the Height Park Hitman almost from the get-go. I had much to report, alienation & fear in Invisible City.... "Hi, is Bob there?" I said into the numerous wiretaps. Vast conspiracies elaborated themselves in labyrinths of dread & death. "Speaking." "Oh hi, Bob. This is Savage Id; I'm sure as a Freudian you're going to appreciate talking to the Id again. Listen, I finally found out who hired the hitman: It was VADIS' father...." "VADIS' father!" he ejaculated in a moment of psychological insight. Everybody's playing Happy Freuds. His tone became savage, angry: "Rootboy, you've never treated that woman quite right. She's in love w/ you, you know." I contemplated this for a second, yet it didn't shake me from my delusions: VADIS was trying to kill me. Instead of being calmed by hearing that someone I had pursued so assiduously actually loved me in spite of the way I had treated her, I was driven to new heights of paranoia. "Well, that's too bad because he got blown up. He got blown up real good. & I don't give a shit about it, either, he was the Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who tried to bomb Reality!" There was a moment of silence, the cold ice of terror. Finally, I continued: "There are 2 wiretaps on my phone, 1 is by the Police & the other is the..." He grew agitated, exclaimed in dread, fear, loathing: "No, Id, I don't want to hear it...!" "...the Black Panthers. But if they think they're going to start the Revolution this way they're going about it all..." CLICK!!!! "...wrong!!!!" The machine was dead, silent, still. What was Reality going to do now? I went to my window, facing west, saw the little white coachhouse in Reality's backyard. Reality was dangerous, it was possible that even Reality would turn on me now.... Suddenly a whole bank of floodlights on Reality's mansion switched off. The mansion was dark for a moment, then the lights flashed again & again: Reality was trying to signal me. All of a sudden Reality stood in his window, shouting, "Id!!!!" at the top of his lungs. Boy howdy, I had really done it now, I had gotten Reality pissed, & everybody knew how awesome a force Reality could be. A streetgang named the IUDs marched down the street. Seeing my hideous slimy form in the window, they shouted, "There really is a hitman!" I was being threatened by Insane Underdogs. The situation was boiling over, totally out of control: I had to confront Reality at any cost.... A minute later I was outside Reality's mansion. As I approached a black Cadillac pulled up into the driveway. Hitman S Hunter got out. He walked up to the fence, stood at the gate staring for awhile, a tremendous grin on his face, then walked off. I rang the buzzer. Mr D, Reality's bodyguard, appeared in the door, asking what I had disturbed Reality for. "I want to talk to Reality." "Reality ain't in Height Park. Reality's in New York," he said, shivering in the January cold...or was it from fearful insanity? I went on, "Then can I talk to someone who knows Joe Kool? I'm trying to get in touch w/ the Black Panthers!" "I know Joe Kool," the mohawked bodyguard replied. "Joe Kool is the President of the Panthers. Anything you want to say to Kool, you say to me." My tone grew urgent. "Listen, the John Birch Society is trying to bomb Apocalypso, I hear they're playing here &..." Mr D exclaimed, "The Birch Society! A bunch of crazies!" I had to agree w/ him. "I've got some good news: I can tell you who the hitman is: It's Fred Bigelli & he..." Mr D was jubilant. "Great! Now that we know who it is, we know who to hit!" I said, "It's really too bad about the Fireman's Friends, the way they've been taken over by the mob. My Pop's a Union leader but he'd never let any Mafiosi take over his Union." The muscular bodyguard thumped his chest. "I know Horse Jamaica. & Horse Jamaica's Kool. Horse Jamaica's been Kool for several years now. & I can get on the phone right now & we can do the same thing to Fred Bigelli that we did to Horse Jamaica!" Although I wanted the hitman eliminated, I was still concerned enough not to want anyone to share Jamaica's fate; natty dread flying as I shook my insect head, I said, "If at all possible get rid of Bigelli by legal means, but if you can't do it that way, hit him w/ everything you've got: I want to see a big hole in the ground where Fred Bigelli's house used to be!" At that instant I caught sight of Hunter, in the alley behind Reality's mansion, walking on tiptoe, taking cartoon steps. He was holding a zoom mic & grinning evilly. Mr D said, "Reality's going to fight again. The fight of the century: God vs Reality. We'll get you front row center tickets, kid, okay?" The door closed. I was isolated, cut off from Reality. Just then a Cadillac drove up & I was caught in a hail of bullets: I was dead. But so was the Resurrectuarant: I needed an Orgasmatron badly, but Nekbael was dead, & I was outside, looking in. & so it goes. # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.