Riding the Centipede Read online

  It was 4:27 a.m., 26 April, 1986.

  He salivated as he pictured the man starring in the mad play in his head stuffing a urine saturated rag into the woman’s mouth. He didn’t delight in the thought of the foul taste, but he thrilled at the depth of sadism he assimilated from the man.

  The woman was simply a means to an end, a born victim, human refuge, a whore, a junky. The man was a junky as well, but he was a functioning addict. He could fit into society without notice. Nobody ever thought much about him as he worked the swing shift janitorial job at the plant. Though he understood much more about how things worked within the plant, he chose to immerse himself in his insidious lusts rather than the higher aspirations his intellectual gifts would have allowed him to pursue.

  He didn’t aspire to be human. He fixated on the black malignancy that corroded his every ideal.

  As the seated man with the sparking fingertips continued along the diseased path of his origin, his memories splintered, as they always did.

  Loudspeakers filtered into the womb, voices tonally different than the harsh tones of the man, or the muffled grunts of disapproval from the woman. Those voices he felt as much as heard. The other sounds were surging floodwaters and fluttering jackhammers and a flailing salmon pawed by a grizzly bear—the body in revolt—and then silence. Days of silence.

  During this time, he sensed something within the speck of fleshy self, the idea of his being: radiation.

  Some moments roam outside the realm of possibility, outside the laws of nature—what a comical assumption, nature adhering to any arbitrary laws—and miracles that join those moments as they roam.

  A smile illuminated the darkness.

  What meager aspirations and understanding humans had when it came to the immeasurable potential that was life. Humans believed they understood it, but they constructed their theories within a limited mindscape. Their egotistical certainty disgusted him. They were rather pathetic.

  This much the seated man knew. He was evidence of what a concoction of radiation, region—hence, nature—human potential and unyielding desire could be. He was a hybrid of flesh and foible: radiation infused with radical intent; with whim and impossibility.

  He was a miracle.

  Behind his sealed lids, the luminosity from his smile creamed the black to orange, a distant fire. He tamped it all back, pulling on the reins. After years of training, it was easy to control that which resided inside him. Easy, yet necessary, for his existence relied on restraining the chaos within, only tapping into it when required.

  Radiation with a sentient foundation. Radiation with a nuclear heritage. Radiation acclimating to its birth with a whisper of phantom consciousness and a dream of life as melded with the fertilized egg.

  Converging on a moment, crystalline and clear as the immaculate merging of sea and sky into a lush, electric blue horizon.

  Not a radiation to destroy, but one to create, to carry on with his and, hence, its creation.

  In the now dead womb of the woman, radiation blanketed him with soothing, tingling warmth, and a desire for improbable survival.

  For life.

  The radiation accelerated his formation. Neurons and electrons bristled impatiently while axons and dendrites jolted into corporeal conspiracies, into a jitterbugging frenzy. Hot-wired channels within the sticky web of fresh tissue that was his being prompted a profound topographical transformation fused by revolutionary synaptic hardware, enhanced muscularity and heightened gray matter development.

  Yet, within, his roots—demons cackling for attention, strapped with subversive, generational binds—would always play tag with his potential.

  Bony, talon-like fingers scratched at the viscera as he took it into his toothless maw and absorbed all he needed from it, and then continued on, until he tore a hole out of the womb, out of the stiffening carcass.

  He didn’t cry as the stale, infected air entered his lungs for the first time. He only yearned for more.

  It was dark but his vision glowed much as it does now, in the vast art gallery that covered the walls around him, only with less control.

  All of the fundamental elements of the third and most prominent participant in his creation had taken hold. The man and woman of flesh were only a means. Radiation from the exploded fourth reactor at the power plant nearby served as the most vital ingredient. The itchy trigger finger squeezed hard, prompting mischief of an inconceivable audacity.

  He survived by sheer will, living on the remains of the mother, then gumming insects and rats, suckling them as surrogate breasts in his eager mouth; and sucking on torn wires and cables, draining them of whatever was left to fuel his being.

  After a time the splintered pictures glued together again; even if fragmented, they were clear enough.

  He was taken from the desolation by a big man—Dmitry Ramazanov—part of a final reconnaissance crew sweeping the area before it was turned into the Exclusion Zone.

  Dmitry was astonished a baby could have lived without food or water for the five days since the evacuation, and six days since the decimation of Pripyat.

  As he clutched Dmitry’s large finger, the big man said in Russian, “Strong grip. I fear he’s not long for this world, though.”

  During the decontamination process, the radiation coiled into his heart, disguised itself with efficiency. Much to the shock of all involved he lived. His accelerated growth slowed down, back to a semblance of normal. He was only six days old, yet he passed for six months No one would ever know, or believe, the nine months gestation that zipped by in the wink of a blind eye.

  When Dmitry got back to his home in Tolyatti, his wife, Tatiana, took the baby into her soft, eager hands and showered him with affection. She’d never been able to conceive which had been an issue between Dmitry and her in an otherwise loving relationship.

  The years that followed were filled with their love as they showered him with affection and what little they could afford, nurturing his love of art by spending money best set aside for food on art books that he would immerse himself in for hours at a time. But there were also the stark truths delineated by death as Dmitry succumbed to the cancer his lone trip to Pripyat had inspired…and how he was pleased to have this message from his true father, the radiation that lived in a symbiotic state within him. A message of power. A message of means. Not the threat of cancer when contained, as much as the gift of radiation that he knew he needed to explore. It was his birthright.

  Despite Tatiana’s unwavering love for him, soon after Dmitry’s death, with her health failing as well—similar cancers had taken roost in her, though she’d never stepped foot in Pripyat—she sent him off to her brother, Ivan, who lived in America. Her overwhelming grief had crippled her spirit and exacerbated her condition. The terminal kiss lingered within her; she lasted three more years on the steep downward slope to death.

  At this time he was ten years-old and had already filed her in his memory banks as nothing more than a stepping stone across a wide ocean.

  Time simmered as he grew up in America, “the land of opportunity.” The years accumulated without much fanfare.

  His Uncle Ivan recruited him into the family business when he was seventeen and big enough, strong enough, imposing enough, to lend a menacing presence in situations requiring such appearances.

  Acne scars littered his otherwise handsome, sharp-chiseled face; acne, born in those moments when his control had slipped. Moments when anger moved beyond simmer and boiled over. Moments when spontaneity unleashed the beast within. Moments he avoided as best as he could.

  He remained stoic, a sponge for all that transpired around him, while Uncle Ivan’s Russian underworld connections thrived in small pockets around America, taking advantage of the opportunity America flaunted and abusing it unmercifully.

  The man whose fingers sparked brighter as he climbed through the muck of thoughts and memories, now purely his own, cherished the depravity that swelled in his head. Thoughts of murder, mayhem and deed
s done quite dirt cheap with value besides financial gain and sadistic glee filled him with a feeling like hunger. With his special tastes, he had to feed regularly.

  He opened his mismatched eyes and the room was momentarily lit as with a fire. He smiled and his whole body reacted with rare pleasure.

  He pulled hard on the reins, not allowing himself to get lost in the joy of such experiences. His breath heavy, he regained control.

  He remembered Tatiana telling Dmitry they would name him Rudolf, after her father.

  He liked the name Rudolf, though when he was thirteen and a kid in the neighborhood made jokes about a reindeer with a red-nose, he’d lost control, for the span of a minute, perhaps two. He’d experienced the first concentrated distillation of his power, surging with tingling efficiency as he squeezed the boy’s neck in his already large hands, pulverizing the vertebra as he did. It was his first taste of murder on a personal level. Sure, he might have played a part in the deaths of Dmitry and, more so, Tatiana, his mere presence and what frolicked within seeping out on occasion, but this was hands on, and he liked that, loved the feel of life bending to his will, his strength.

  No one caught him. He left the body slumped next to a homeless man drinking and sleeping away his life. Nobody ever made fun of his name again.

  By the time he was eighteen, he was six foot three, a stone-faced mountain of brute force topped with a shock of slicked, spiky, white hair. He’d garnered a reputation for delving into the deepest gorges of pain distribution for Uncle Ivan and his cohorts in crime. He was ready to freelance, move beyond the constrictions of Uncle Ivan’s rule. It was time for him to cater to his own whims amid the mayhem he promoted. For this he needed an appropriate surname.

  Though Ramazanov had been the name he’d used since Dmitry had taken him from his birth place, he finally could acknowledge his origin, no matter the curious looks he got from others.

  He finally could acknowledge his only true father:

  Chernobyl.

  Chapter 3 Teagarden

  “What are you fucking looking at?”

  The woman cowers, as if disgusted. Shields her baby from my glare, as if I will bring her or the drooling tyke harm. As if they amount to anything within the world I live in. As if they matter.

  She does not understand me. How could she? She’s one of the boring. Those trapped in conformity’s clutches. The normals.

  Can you think of anything more revolting than them, dear sister? Well, perhaps you can, you’ve never joined me here. Perhaps you’ve become one of them, a blob never to be shaped into anything of worth.

  You see, dear sister, it’s like this, my life. It’s like an oily, black glacier slowly melting, new revelations gleaned from the process. Years spent opening the synaptic channels, rewiring the corrupted neural circuitry, has culminated with a new purpose, a new revelation. This purpose is derived from all that has come before it via experience and memory and my excursions in the dark frontier. Memory is altered by time. Time is of no consequence in the life of the enigma. Therefore memory is of no consequence. Melting away.

  The trick is not to alter the truth, to allow the passage of time to sheer the edges off of memory and soften the impact of the truth. The trick is not to manipulate anything. Simply let it be, as is, without enhancement or embellishment or contemplative distortion. The knot is incorporated into the weave, the tongue within the mind’s faculties. The teller of each tale, each autobiographic recitation, must adhere to the experience in its purest form.

  The teller is God. Yet God is a fantasy, an illusion. Therefore, the teller’s words are only worth the spit it takes to tell them.

  Believe what you will. I deal in truths.

  After ten years, time is irrelevant, The life I’ve lived in the margins and ephemeral black holes dug out of rag-tag tenements and garbage-strewn alleys, out of shards of broken mirror is coming to an end now that the promise of the green limousine is on the horizon. I’ve finally found what I was looking for, even if I had no idea what it was until I found it.

  “Fucking hell, all of you, march on your petty way.”

  I split my lips to show them my chipped, decayed grimace and let my tongue loll like a dead toad to send them on their way. They have no idea what it means to live. I disgust them because I am different, yet my difference is negligible in the scope of things, because I live a true life.

  You’re always with me, you know? Yes, you’re always with me. I wonder if we have a psychic link. I’ve never felt you, sensed you, but perhaps you are a receiver. Not many of them in my world. Only those who take.

  When was the—

  I make a face at man in a thousand dollar suit and his broomstick skinny woman in her short, snug, red dress, teetering and about to topple, unaccustomed to her too high heels. She’s hanging on his arm and hiding behind the pin-striped limb. What the fuck are they doing in this part of town anyway? Strip clubs and slice-of-pizza joints, a few Beatnik book stores.

  “Oh, tell me to fuck off, will you? Slumming might get you closer to living if you just let go of your ideals. You wouldn’t understand living if it bit you on the ass.”

  I trod in their direction, lanky me and my ragged attire, worth a buck fifty, perhaps.

  “That’s right. Listen to your woman, just leave me be. I’m fucking crazy, man.”

  Laughing now. Lunatic laughing. There is joy in watching them awkwardly avoid our dance. Wallflowers. The normals.

  Where was I? When was the last time we were together? Perhaps you are a distant memory made concrete by my insistence and nothing more. I could let you go, but this was always our plan. What came before in our time together lingers as rumor as much as truth. Because out here, where living is truly experienced, I know of truths that blur the past. Out here life is lived uncorrupted by the media-manipulated mentality of the average human, the normals. Over-stimulated expectations stunt dreams with the avid assistance of glitch-in-the-machine technology. Our parents literary decadence is part of the inspiration obliterated as they crumbled into sexual obsessions. Yet I often wonder, with all this madness, why you’ve never made the trek out here yourself, joining me in the bliss of experiences without restrictions. Away from the world we hated.

  Why did you not come with me, dear sister?

  I wonder if these words that constantly roar in my head are even for you.

  I’ve been to San Francisco so many times you’d have thought I would have heard about the Centipede before, and of Riding the Centipede. It infuriates me my slow learning. My different learning in the dark frontier. It infuriates me.

  I repeat myself as a means of refining all I have learned. I will get to the Centipede soon enough. Here and in the limitless world I live in.

  I live. What are you doing?

  Rumors are the hobgoblins of any true reality. Equal parts imaginary imp and soldier of substance.

  Allow me to enlighten you, as I often do, with some of what I have learned:

  Reality is objective. A. My reality is not your reality.

  Not yet

  But soon

  I hope

  *Define soon.

  Time is irrelevant.

  Rumors are the hobgoblins of… *I said this already.

  Expand:

  A. Rumors court truths within the psychic realm.

  B. Lies constructed from truths usually get lost in limbo.

  C. Rumors have their fangs set in the throat of reality.

  ∞

  “Fuck.”

  I spit and stick my fingers into my mouth, scraping out the vile condiment. How could anybody ruin a perfectly fine burger with this yellow shit? Must be why they dumped what’s left in the garbage.

  “Watch all you want. I’m not here long. I got people to see, meetings to attend, drugs to ingest, rides to take. Watch all you fucking want.”

  Back to you, dear sister.

  ∞

  Memories are psychic lies and nothing more. A. The past—what’s known as the past�
�is inconse quential to the ideals forged in the Now.

  B. Memories wallow in the swirling undertow of the past.

  Therefore, memories have no bearing on my life. C. There is only ever the present. Now. Which dies with every passing second.

  What is essential one moment is parchment the next.

  Drugs are the trains we use to travel along the rails of the metaphysical world. A. Only full immersion allows the sensory expansion inspired by full immersion.

  In your world full immersion is a fantasy.

  In my world it is a way of living.

  The word metaphysical has different meaning in my world because it is just an acceptance of the totality of reality, not a splitting of the known and the unknown, the undefined. I separate them above so you can understand. That is all.

  The drugs of the world you live in serve purpose as pain killers, pleasure derivatives, and means of mind expansion. In my world the drugs are different. Different. The word different is paramount for understanding in my world. I know it is different here and better at least for those who wish to experience spiritual and physical sensory overload. For those who wish to experience. I’ve done time with heroin, cocaine, et cetera. They bore me now that I have experienced the drugs only those such as myself and a few who really engage in the polished-to-gleaming gist of living life as if they mean it.

  Literature is truth.

  Imagination is freedom. ∞

  Enough of this. I will infuse more insight as I go along but now I’ve spotted my connection. My rig with the first and perhaps last ride to the place where Burroughs awaits his followers.

  Yes, William S. Burroughs. He is not dead. The literary translator of languages and drug-infused visions from inner and outer space, William S. Burroughs, waits in a tomb of sorts somewhere, I don’t know where yet.