Satan Burger (16 page)

Scene 18

The Death Of A City

Rippington died last night.

It just looked at all the people in its belly and figured that its life wasn’t worth carrying around anymore, since the citizens were ungovernable and incapable of becoming civilized ever again.  It found no reason for itself to go on.

So it rolled over in its bed and died.

This morning, its rotting corpse can be sniffed in the air, all over the streets and inside buildings.  Madness-rain is pepper in the grey sky.  There aren’t anymore businesses or any money being circulated.  No one has any food or water left to survive on, and nobody cares.  No one even has sense enough to leave town to search for food; they’re all just waiting to die and become zombiefied.

           Rippington is no longer here for us.  No more city for us, we’re just living inside its remains, mutating into nothing but remains ourselves.

           And little boy Earth watches us die and giggles.

I awake to the rain tapping on the ceiling and the blue woman lapping at my damages, sucking on my shank with her eating hole - not hungry enough to eat, just vagina-licking it, like a funpop - propped on top of me again.

When she sees me awake, she gives her tongue a rest and glares at me.  Her BIG eyes - engulf-swallowing me like normal, but something is not all-normal about this look.  There seems to be something new added.  It almost seems like . . .
love
.

Just as I see this look, I feel it coming on . . . a love-passion moment, which she hasn’t felt for me even though we’ve had sex many times, thinking that it was impossible for her, impossible for blue women to love because they are machines.

And just as any two regular human beings tossed into such a situation, we bend our necks forward and wrap ourselves into each other, lips into osculation,
kissing
.

I soon feel human again.

I thought the act of kissing became extinct long ago, even before the walm, people just stopped caring enough to kiss before fucking.  Love is a dead performance.  Only the hardcore fuck job is required.

But here love is, right between us, flaming up and stabbing us.

And it is almost beautiful, in a pedophiliacal sort of way.

Richard Stein said that love pops up when you least expect it.

He also said that alcohol can play a BIG part in the birth of love, even though love is only love because of drunkenness.

The killing of a buzz can kill this emotion very quickly.

After a few minutes of passion, a slug of mucus-goo - a squirming worm-ball - crawls up her throat and into my mouth, sliding down my throat too quickly for me to react.

It chokes me with its intense, porkfat scent, this large regurgitated stomach booger, which goes down my throat and into my stomach bag like a bowling ball.

Then I cough her kiss away from me.  Push her back like she just took a shit in my mouth and hack up the bad taste.

I dip my face over the bedside to puke up the snot ball, but nothing comes out.  It resists.  I turn to the blue woman to see her face, wondering what she did to me.  Was it some accident that she’d be sorry and disgusted for?

But she just smiles and grabs my stomach for a caress.

Her touch burns cold.

I forgive my blue woman once the taste leaves my mouth.  I
must
.  She is something I cannot stay mad at.  Besides, without her my world would be blunt-somber, perhaps
nothing
.

I stagger from my room, slight hunger.  Into the meaty wreckage, swirl-whirling me into dizziness, tornadoing red.

An arm hangs from Fria like an offering, and her companion’s disfigurements received body chunks as well.

The storm and madness are still fill-screaming the streets outside. People are babbling crazy and beating and killing each other.  Some rain-pounds fall through the roofless section of the warehouse, almost a
Hell
carnival outside.

My feet stick to the floor, and my eyes dizzy-roll as usual, as they walk to the toilet, pass a few sleep-dying corpses in the corner.  Not too many homeless ones in the warehouse today, just a few.  The rest must’ve been sickened away.  I guess there’s not much point in them staying; half of the roof is missing along with the entire front wall; not much shelter for anyone here.  If there was another place to go, I would’ve left too.

I piss in a corner, too weak to move the sculpture gore.  It burns, and I like it . . .

When I turn around, the blue woman is there; she has been behind me for the whole piss.  An inch away, watching me go to the bathroom.  She’s not sleeping like she usually does at this time, like
all
blue women do for entertainment, like I figured she was doing now.

She has the same happy look on her face that she had when I awoke, issuing
love
emotions from her blue skin that sink acidly into mine.  I grab her around the back and pull her closer.  As I caress her buttock-mounds, she caresses my stomach.

Vodka groans from his toilet seat, trying to push his way out of the sculpture-fortress.  He crawls out with palms flaky with dried blood-film.  The blood isn’t his.  It came from the wounds of skinheads/crazies.  Coughs take turns burst-popping from his lungs.

He sits and lights an old cigarette, sitting next to the corpse of John - the weird old guy that lived in back of the warehouse.  John isn’t completely dead, as everycorpse else in the room, just sleeping without a heartbeat.  Vodka uses the perverted man’s back as an ashtray, spitting
shhh
-dust all over him.  Vodka always loved his smoking.  But he doesn’t seem to be enjoying the smoke now, even when defacing a half-dead man’s back.

"Where’s the portal?" Vodka asks me.  The tone is unfamiliar.  A
normal
tone - not a fake German accent.

I look around the room for the portal, but it’s gone.

When my mind goes back to my girl, I feel a sharp pain of perception.  It creeps up on me and swims through her skin into my mind.

Looking into the blue woman’s eyes, I figure her all out.  I see all of the plans she has for me and know that I’m not just sex-food for her.  I feel that emotional-telepathy the blue women have.  And my mind snaps with a greenish-red color, the color of unbelief, mistrust.

Her eyes glitter into me, guided by icy fingers to my stomach.

Her telepathy-emotions tell me: You are
pregnant
.

She had shot her cum ball into my gut - tongue-kissing gave her an orgasm - and now a baby blue woman is squirming in me.

She smiles, proud of herself.

I start thinking.  Seriously.  Men can be the
only
creatures to spit cum into someone else.  I come to the conclusion that blue women are actually
men
with breasts and vaginas.

So.  I must be
gay
.

With the rage of homophobia - a phobia that’s very strong in me because I was never exposed to homosexuality during my younger years, and it is yellowish-gray in color. Blaming the blue woman for turning me into a pregnant homosexual - as if I didn’t have enough problems - my fists decide to break her face.

She doesn’t swell or bleed from the punches.  She doesn’t seem shocked at me either. But she does fall down into a comfortable sleep, curled up in a red film.  Some of my knuckles go fat.  They darken around the edges and say, "Why’d you do that for?  You don’t know how to hit anybody."

"Why’d you do that for?" Vodka asks from another side of the warehouse.

I grip my swelling parts.  "She turned me into a pregnant faggot."

"A pedophile, too," he adds.

Sighing, looking down at her/his sleeping body.  And even though I hate homosexuality, I still find her/him amazingly attractive.  Which means I’m in the middle of a sexual identity crisis.

"Fucking bitch," I tell her/him for putting me in this situation.  "I’m getting an abortion."

Of course, I’m kidding myself.  She/he has me now.  I’m the wife of a four-year-old blue woman and there’s no getting out of it, because she’s an absolute beauty - even if she
is
male - and I’m slave-weak to her.

"Go back to being a street whore," I tell her.

Then I carry her into my room, into my bed.

Suddenly I realize something else:

My God’s Eyes have ran away from me.

I can’t see in the third person anymore. 

I panic, sick.

A whirl of gin-dust heat pours over me.  The only sight left is the crippled one, drug-damaged.  It makes me frenzied and ill.

The power left me the second I tried to look into Satan Burger.

It has to be the storm that cut out my vision, cut out my vision like it cuts out electricity.  Or maybe it was God.  Maybe God stopped feeling sorry for me and wants me to use my normal sight.  Or maybe something happened at Satan Burger that I’m not allowed to see.

"There must be something wrong," I croak at Vodka.  "At Satan Burger, I mean.  The portal wouldn’t be down like this."

"It’s just because of the storm," he answers, cigarette calm.

"The Crazies probably got in and ripped apart Satan Burger, like they did to the warehouse."

"Nothing’s wrong.  You’re being paranoid," he says.

"I’d be lucky if paranoia is the
only
thing I’m being."  I hear my words freaking, silly-going.  "
Everything
’s wrong.  Let’s go to Satan Burger."

"I don’t want to go to Satan Burger," he whines.  At least he can still whine.

"You don’t have a choice.  It’s the end of the world."

"We’re not going anywhere, not with the streets clogged up like they are."

"We might as well try," I argue.  "Unless you want to become one of these living corpses on the ground."

He says, "That doesn’t sound like a bad idea."

Scene 19

Streets Raging

I convert Vodka to get himself up and going, trip-boring into the car.  The old lightning Gremlin starting up a
whir
, with a good collection of gas still in its gut.

A puddle-mud row is the closest thing to use for a street; we spark-scrape over curbs to get there.  People and debris and handmade shelters - cheap patchwork or plastic tents, boxes, piled up scraps - clutter all other areas; even the carpeting on the sidewalks are not accessible.  The rain seems to be black-yellow in color, I stare up at it in the sky.  Mud water splashes under the wheels, greasing up the windshield.

The street is furious.  The rain is sinister and the ill-fighting people are all coated with blankets or trash and plastics over their tops, trying to stop the cold and the plague-rain.  The rain’s consistency candywrap the street people, melting them it seems, leaking over their eyes and faces to make them blank or inflamed or uncontrollably nervous.

We find an empty spot in the street and take the opportunity to merge.  We plunge into the ocean of people, surrounded by Crazies zombie-walking in circles, all trapped inside of their minds - their own little terrors.

The driving is slow.

Vodka travels with caution.  I’m not sure if he’s afraid of the Crazies or just too bored/lazy to use force.  The street people soon crowd us into small sections of off-street.  Then it gets too thick to make through at all.  The Gremlin comes to a snarling halt and I shiver-cough.

A boy without hands crosses and Vod decides to drift from consciousness.  He flows outside of reality into his go-away place.

I tell Vodka, "Just run through them.  Force ‘em out of the way."

The Gremlin finds its fashion through without hurting anyone, not terribly at least, just toughguy shovings.  A woman spits on the car for touching her.  The spit might be blood or vomit.  Vodka frowns at her.  She glances at me as she spits again, a dead stare, almost a doll-face looking at me.  Her eyes don’t seem to be inside of the sockets anymore - I see two yellow eyeholes screaming at me.  Her face wrinkles in and around and
dissolves
.  A good many Crazies give me the same horror-melting look, all soggy with yellow gleams.  Paranoia washes over me.  The sick rain seeps into my skull.  Some of the devils punch and kick the car. Bleed-slashing claws attack and splatter against the metal. The autocar drips blood. 

Vodka doesn’t seem to care.  He continues to drive as if the traffic is normal.

A small tribe of microwave ants crawl on my arms - not certain whether they’re real or just a rolling vision.  It’s getting unbearable to be alive without my God’s Eyes.  Can’t escape the uneasiness.  Maybe I’ll get them back after the storm.  Hopefully, praying . . .

I’ll be praying for a
real
death otherwise.

"This is going to take forever," I tell Vodka.

"I told you," he says.

Vodka’s voice is too foreignto me; he sounds like another person completely.  I can’t tell whether he’s still himself or somebody new.  Maybe this is the real Vodka, Gin’s brother, the way he was before he started pretending.  Maybe his soul is so far out of him that he doesn’t care to pretend.  He says, "Oh, well," more than occasionally.

"I’m going through them," he says.  "I’m sick of waiting."

At least he is sick of something.

"Finally," I say.

"What do you mean,
finally
?"

"You’ve been driving like a scared old lady."

"I didn’t want to hurt anyone."

"Who cares about hurting them?  Go ahead and
kill
them, nobody dies anymore."

The car hits its power chords, Vodka’s foot full on the gas.  The engine fart-rumbles and we go faster, beating our way through the Crazies that scatter in an ant-frenzy.

Only one person goes under the wheels, lifting the car upward on my side, and I feel a little
pain
for that person, but it soon passes.  It’s more important to get to Satan Burger right now.  Much more important than worrying about millions of crazy street people that can’t be killed.  If people could die, the population problem would be easily solved.

Speed builds.  We’re still moving slow but at least we feel like we’re
driving
now instead of slim-rolling.  The crowd seems cautious of us up ahead.  They bowl out of the way easily enough, gleam-yellow eyes on all of them as we go.  The population seems smaller too.  And for litter in the gutter, we have human corpses too soulless to ever get up again.

I don’t notice - because of my rolling vision - what race of people we have gotten into until I see them coming out of the sewers and shadow-corners. 

The dark ones
. 

All pale features, mostly naked, more reptilian than I heard - tough skin, lizard-sharp faces, snake eyes - we see a male stamper to our car.  Evil white eyes.  I can tell it’s a male because he has long pale hair and is veiny with muscles. 

My eyes skip a beat.

And then I see that we’ve been thrown into a reel-violent situation, flee-flying out of the scene.  Vodka jammed the gas, maybe out of fear, as the dark male approached us.  We just crushed his ribs underneath the Gremlin wheels.

And the lightning Gremlin breaks some legs underneath the wheels, curling through Crazies, and a few dark ones are chasing after us - two females and one male.  Looking back: a thrash-tatter of movement ripping through the crowd.  Our vehicle is the wind.  It splits open the air and through the street people . . .

The crowd is thicker up ahead.  The Gremlin accelerates, hoping . . . Vodka gnashes his teeth, squeezes his eyes, locks his joints.  I watch the dark ones fall further and further behind us . . .

The car beats into the ruff ahead, popping. Some of it over the hood and knocking some of the Gremlin’s life out of it.  But we don’t stop . . . and then we do stop.  The Crazies’ faces shriek at our lack of motion . . .

And the dark ones catch up to us.  The females, with their hook-blade claws, rip into street people who are too close to the car.  They frighten into balls and some of them run away, clearing a path for us to fly-flee again.

But the dark ones come too quickly, one female gets onto the roof, straddling the Gremlin.  Another female pop-breaks my window and tears into my shoulder, worming its claw-fingers deep-deep into me.

I don’t seem to feel any of the pain.

Then her face appears to me, as her other arm grabs my neck.  She pauses, stare-growling.  Fang-like teeth and snake-like eyes.  And I just stare at her . . . she’s actually a beautiful creature - maybe it’s because I’m drunk-crazy from the rain, but she is extremely attractive to me right now.  Her slender white body, chiseled breasts.  Her eyes are black pools, trancing me.  She tears at my shoulder, howling at me like I’m her food.

She reaches her head inside, my body shock-shaking at the pain I do not feel, opening her mouth to expose sharp snake teeth to my neck.  She lures my body closer.  My head penetrates the window, my skin is opened by the glass shards, cutting folds of meat from me.  Vodka screams in a faraway place . . .

My head emerges into the outside whirl . . . ruffling around me . . . her face wrinkles lewdly.  A naked feeling seeps into me, like the passion of being born; this must be the passion of death as well.  Orally defeated by a beautiful snake woman.  And the dark female screeches, leans closer to chew my neck apart.  But stops biting . . .

She gushes out her BIG goo-tongue, pressing against my chest, long-long and thick but like a human’s, and tough.  It gorges into my shirt, probing, tasting the blood that streams there.  It’s large enough to drench-hug most of my torso, and it caresses my neck and face, a pepper-melon flavor that drools into my nose and taste.  My hand begins to polish one of her breasts.  They’re rubbery but
nice
- a nipple harder than a human’s could get.  She is powerful and strong, not a soft little girl like my blue woman.

She grips harder into me, clawing upward under my skin.  I don’t feel the pain; her nails soothe instead of worry.  She bites my chin to the bone.  Then the tongue slides over the wound, tasting, healing it.  She loosens her grip and slithers her giant tongue into my mouth.  She pulls my jaw far out of lock and forces it down my throat, painfully shoving it in and out.  Fucking it.

I awake a few minutes later, detached from the dark female.

Vodka is covered in red and whine-driving uncontrollably over curbs and street people - they come in flashes as we go through, skiing in a forest.  They had cut him, the dark male and female, from his neck to his stomach, jugular open and sheeting him.  His eyes are fading in and out, but he won’t die.  A large hole is in his stomach, and his insides mumble-screech and bubble.  My body seems fine, though bloody and molested.  I look around at what’s going on with chaos-eyes.

Vod’s voice makes a gurgle-blood noise.  "Get it off the roof!" he shrieks.

There’s still one hanging onto us.  She’s trying to cut into the car’s top, holding on tight and getting in a scratch or two at Vodka’s face.  His whimpers turn to shrieks at each of her attacks.

The dark female’s yowls scorch into me, just above my ear, in a torture-fury, and I scream, "How the hell am I supposed to get it off the roof?"

But Vodka doesn’t answer.  He’s zoning zombie-minded and curling at the eyes, driving
harder
.  We destroy anyone/anything in our way, breaking through crowd and rubble, unstoppable.  The dark female cuts into him again, screaming at him, and again, but he doesn’t feel it or seem to care.  His meat is dead, and all of his blood is resting on his lap.

Then there is Silence.

The Gremlin piles straight into the Silence, and everything clears.

No more crowd ahead, just quiet and deserted . . . The dark female’s howls continue for a few more seconds, then fade away, eaten.  Even the engine sounds go away, we feel deaf.  The car razors into a wall, near the autocar graveyard - where I found the blue woman.  I don’t scream before we hit, I let it come, I don’t even bracing myself.

Vodka just didn’t seem to care enough to hit the brakes.

I awake alone, Vodkaless.  In the rain-molested autocar.

The Silence is gone too, traceless as it came, and another crowd of street people has filled the area, gushing in as the Silence cleared the way.  The pain starts in, from my forehead - broken over the dashboard.  Skin flaps from my shoulder, where the dark woman’s nails screwed like shanks.

I feel sick.

I have to get to Satan Burger.

The crowd is too BIG.  There’s more people here than there is space.  Head-dizzy and
grrrrr
ing, I can’t even open the car door.  I climb out of the collapsed window, to the roof. Vodka’s living corpse is up here.  He’s sitting there wet and soggy, like the street people, rocking-rocking, red-stained clothes.

"I thought you were dead," I tell him.

"I wish it were possible," he tells me.

The street people wave-ripple in the storm.  Miles, miles of ocean-crowd, rolling with patchy colors, dissolving in the distance.  They really seem like an ocean now.  The car’s roof is our raft.  

"We need to swim for it," I tell Vodka.

I can’t hear his reply in the metal-clanking rain.

I lug-haul Vod off the raft.  We go into the water – sweaty smells from the water-people.  He’s lunked over, drug-headed it seems, not swimming very well.  I have to pull him so that he won’t drown.

The ocean people press tightly together, then roll-expand a little so we can move a few feet, then they crash together again.  Everyone is struggling to move but nobody’s getting anywhere.  We get shoved back toward the raft, then forward across a building wall.  A piece of the water claws another gash into me.  Blood drips through my fingers when I hold my face.

My breathing is weak.  I’m trying to stay above the water, trying to get some breath going.  I find Vodka’s hand slipping from mine . . . he’s getting away.  The water behind me is moving back toward the raft.  My body is going forward.  I stare Vodka in the eyes, examining his stone expression.  Then I let go.

The force wasn’t even that great.  I could’ve kept us together easy.  But I let him go.

Looking into his face, I didn’t see Vodka in there at all.  I saw an empty container.  There was no soul behind his eye-windows, just a calm
brrrr
noise.  So I let him go, and the crowd swallowed him up, another one of
them
.  It doesn’t take long before he gets to the distance, and I can’t tell which one of them he is anymore.

Vodka didn’t seem to mind.