Terror Incognita (13 page)

“Where is the humor in T-shirts which feature photographs of movie stars as they appear in death...or victims of war and murder...deformed circus performers and deformed children...with captions that make light of death and pain, animal and child abuse...”

“Ah, just a minute, reverend.” Hays was actually smiling as he reached out to flick ash into his waste basket. He loved to take these people on, even if they never did concede to his points, such as the concept of freedom of speech. They called to aggravate him, but Dicky Hays was the master of aggravation. “I’ll bet your parents have taken in a circus sideshow or two in their time, pal. Maybe you yourself...and hey, I didn’t run over that dog. I didn’t start any wars or murder anybody. I’ve never given somebody an extra couple of legs. You wanna complain to somebody about the horrors in the world? Go talk to the president and God, pal...but I suppose the president and God can do no wrong in your book, huh? And of course a guy like you wouldn’t
dream
 of looking at a car accident if you drove by one, right?”

“To be curious about pain and misfortune is natural. To seek to comprehend it and deal with it is natural. To celebrate it and trivialize it is disturbed.”

“Hey, pal, who is
really
the disturbed one here? I think up-tight frightened little prudes like you are the ones obsessed with death and sin and all that. Have a laugh, guy, live a little. I help people
face
 pain and suffering by getting them to laugh at it.”

“I hadn’t realized your noble intentions, Mr. Hays,” said the distant, softly droning voice. “But I doubt that dog’s owners would have a good laugh to see it on your shirt. Nor would the grieving parents of a deformed dead infant be very amused at your therapeutic T-shirts.”

“Hey, you can’t please everybody, pal. You live your life and let me live mine. I don’t go telling other people how to live.”

“You contribute to the moral climate. You distribute a product to impressionable young people. You have a responsibility...”

“To entertain people. I do
sell
 these things, ya know. And speaking of entertainers, Elvis and John Lennon wanted to be famous and immortal, right? Well, they got it.”

“What about respect for the dead?”

Dicky couldn’t hear what was said immediately following that, as there was a buzzing increase in static which seemed to be full of dozens of incoherent voices, maybe other callers on the same line bleeding through. Sounded like a tape over-dubbed with layers of voices, making for one rasping howl, but through it Dicky
thought
 he heard the caller add, “John doesn’t like it.”

“I think it’s time to change the channel, Mr. Swaggart. Do you have anything to say to conclude your sermon?”

A long pause. Just the diminished but still audible fizz and crackle of the bad connection...those other voices talking in the far distance.

The voice said, “How would you feel if it were you?”

Dicky narrowed his eyes warily. “How’s that, partner?”

“Aren’t you concerned about the consequences of your actions?”

The blood began rising hot into Hays’ face. “Is that a threat of some kind, my friend? Because if it is I’d like you to know that I have a beautiful fifteen-shot Beretta, and if you wanna come around and play games you can be the first person on one of my shirts that I
did
 actually kill myself...understand?”

“I have to go now, Mr. Hays,” the voice on the other end droned.

“Yeah, pal, I think you’d better.” And Hays slammed the phone into its cradle.  Goddamn creeps. Hays liked to engage them but he didn’t like threats, blatant or subtle. Not that he hadn’t had those before.

Probably this clown had a kid with a club foot, or his father had died in World War II, or his dog had got hit by a car. Hey, Dicky Hays wasn’t the master of Fate...he just made some T-shirts.

*     *     *

Linda never called, and her phone went unanswered. To hell with that bimbo. He did finally hear from LeClair, however. Strangely, he flinched when the phone rang, was hesitant to pick it up and even relieved to hear LeClair’s oozing voice. Definitely time to call it quits for the evening. They settled their business quickly and Hays was finally clear to go home.

The car was in the shop, that brand new hunk of junk. No problem; his apartment was a fifteen-minute walk. A real catch, so close to the teeming action, the gaudy electric life of Hollywood Boulevard. His light jacket slung over his shoulder, Hays started down there now. He knew some of the hookers (not intimately; he couldn’t risk that with Dawn working for him, so close) and exchanged greetings with them. The stars were sticky and ugly with grime under his feet. It made him smirk to think how sentimental morons sniffled over these long-dead people, still had crushes on them. Rotten hideous corpses. Why shouldn’t he show them that? They could use a good slap in the face. Welcome to the real world, pal.

Look at the life here. Rich and colorful and diverse as the life of a neon coral reef. Bikers and teenagers, hustlers and dealers...all richly alive. And on their own terms. But no doubt a repressed little clown like that one on the phone would be only too happy to come down here and tell everybody how they should live and behave.

Up ahead as he lit a fresh cigarette, Hays spotted a knot of teenagers, clustered in the light from a shop like tropical fish in a glowing aquarium, and there looked to be some juicy teen girls amongst them. The yummiest. Linda was just out of her teens. If he had more time he might start up a conversation with some girls like those...mention that acquiring cocaine was no problem for Dicky Hays. But he was in a hurry and they had a couple of tough-looking punk boys with them anyway...

Hays might have just kept on walking past them, but he stole a sideways glance at one girl’s chest, and in so doing got a look at the front of the T-shirt she was wearing.

“Hey,” he said, involuntarily reaching out to take her elbow, turning her toward him a little to see it better.

“Hey,” she said also, slapping his hand away.

“You got a problem you wanna discuss, mister?” sneered one of the thug boyfriends.

“I just wanted to see the T-shirt you’re wearing,” Hays said, staring at it.

“You just want to look at my
breasts,
 I think.” The girl dragged out the word teasingly.

The shirt showed a dead woman, hanging by the throat. Young, pretty—once. Busty. She looked so much like his juicy friend Linda it had startled him.

“Where did you get a shirt like that?”

“From a man. He was selling them in the street today. Don’t ya love it?”

Pretty close competition, both in subject matter and locale. Hays didn’t like it. “What else did he have?”

“All kinds of great stuff.”

“Move along, will ya, mister?” said the sneering punk. “Can’t you see we’re busy over here?”

“What did he look like?” Hays asked.

“He was creepy—like you,” laughed the girl.

Without cocaine and in the presence of the boys, Hays couldn’t say anything to change the girl’s opinion of him, so he just resumed his walking...but with a last, furrow-browed glance over his shoulder at her.

He felt unsettled. Not just because of the competition. That girl on the shirt looked so much like Linda...length and style of hair and all...

The second shirt was worn by a boy with a purple mohawk...such a cliché of a punk teenager that he might have been auditioning for a part in a TV show.

Hays saw the shirt first from a distance, couldn’t make out details, but kept his eyes on it until he was close enough to make it out...and when he did he said, “Jesus!” and took the boy by the arm.

This time he was punched in the mouth for his uninvited arm-touching.

The boy’s friends laughed and pulled the mohawk punk away; they started off down the street. Passing people glanced down at Hays in half-sneering disgust for lying on the star of some dead actress with blood on his chin.

“Hey, kid,” Hays snarled, dragging himself to his feet, “I just want to look at your Goddamn T-shirt!”

“Look at this,” said one boy, pretending to open his fly. The mohawk boy turned to laugh, and Hays saw the shirt again for a moment...

Had it just been a picture of a dead man, propped shot against a wall, who resembled his father, he might accept that. Or a dead woman, also riddled and awash in black ink blood, he could dismiss that, maybe...even if she did resemble his mother. But not both—and in the same picture.

“Kid! Hey—
kid!”
 Hays roared after them. They didn’t look back again; one just raised his middle finger. Hays took a step or two forward and nearly fell...staggered. In falling he had smacked the back of his head on the pavement and you’d better believe that hurt worse than the punch.

Hays wanted to scream a swear after them but was in no condition to fight if they should come back. And in any case, within moments he found himself a new focus to command his attention.

Someone had taken his arm to help support him.

It couldn’t be his parents. Someone else’s parents...

He began to turn groggily to see who had come to his aid.

Couldn’t be Linda. Somebody else he didn’t know...

As he turned he saw the shirt first, because the man was so tall that it was nearly at Hays’ eye level.

It couldn’t be Dawn on the shirt, her arms and legs hacked off, reducing her to a man-made, bogus circus freak—staring glassily out from the shirt so vividly that the image seemed
more
than a photograph: he had been talking with her on the phone only an hour ago, and that wasn’t enough time...wasn’t enough time for someone...some insane, psychotic monster...to do
this...

...someone else’s fiance...not
his...

Hays stared at the man’s T-shirt in numb, vibrating awe and terror, then looked up as the man gently holding his arm said in a soft droning voice, “Hello, Mr. Hays...”

The man was a stranger to Dicky, and to California, obviously. He was just
much
 too pale.

Hays’ mouth began to work soundlessly, the pain in his head rushing in as a flood of drowning icy water...

“Fashions for spring, Mr. Hays. Would you care to laugh?”

Hays did, in fact, start to laugh a moment later. And laugh. And laugh...

MANDRILL

T
here were 3,000 mandrills surviving in the wilds of Central and West Africa, 300 in captivity, 3 in a cage at PlayTime Amusement World in New Hampshire and 47 dead mandrills living inside the body of Nathan A. Tower.

Nat, to family and friends—both rather depleted these days. Nat was one of the caretakers of the animals at PlayTime. His pale blue uniform was a heavy burden on this scorching summer day, and to the woman who observed him as he placed a bowl of fruit inside the mandrills’ cage, he looked like a sweaty, tired war-time surgeon. She drew closer to the enclosure, marveling at his courage.

The thought of being inside the cage with her back to two of the three bizarre creatures gave her a shiver. The mandrill was a fantastical assault on the eyes: God, or Mother Nature, depending on your bent, had been on peyote that day. The one male was particularly showy. The size of a large dog, his fur olive-brown above and silvery below, his massive head made pointed by a tuft of fur...and that face. Yellow beard, black-masked yellow eyes, a long scarlet snout bordered on either side by ribbed patches of bright blue. He looked to the woman like a baboon gone punk. Nature had provided the garish war paint that primitive men had had to dab on by hand...and women buy at the cosmetics counter.

The male went from pacing on all fours to sitting back on his haunches, and Nat handed him a hard-boiled egg, minus the shell. The monkey accepted the gift and picked it apart, popped the pieces into its mouth. The woman caught sight of big yellow tusks in there.

“Why does a herbivore need such big fangs?” she asked Nat.  

Clapping his hands clean, he turned to her and smiled. He had already noticed her peripherally. “They aren’t herbivores; they’re omnivores, like us.” Not many people who came through here used the word herbivore. Some people who came through here seemed little more proficient at speech than Nat’s charges. “They can kill a large animal if they have to. Though they prefer bugs and reptiles.”

“Wow, they’re more like me than I thought. You aren’t afraid in there?”

“They know me. They’re basically shy animals.”

“Baboons, are they?”

“No...related. A species of Old World Monkey, technically.
Mandrillus sphinx.
 I like that—they are kind of sphinx-like. Mythical-looking.”

The woman chuckled. “That’s for sure. Psychedelic, I think the word is.”

“I remember one rather unfair scientific appraisal of them. ‘Probably without exception the most disgustingly hideous living beings’.”

“Oh, yeah...that’s terrible. Grotesque, maybe, but not disgusting. Or hideous. Had to be one of those uptight Victorian naturalists, huh?”

Nat had turned his head to watch the hundred-pound male pluck some fruit from his bowl. “I think they’re beautiful.”

“Why the bright faces?”

Nat gave her his attention once more, smiling mischievously. “It’s a mimicry of his genital region.”

“Say what?”

“It serves as a threat. His...um...”

“Go on.”

“His penis is bright red and his scrotal patches are bright blue. Just like his face.”

“So calling a mandrill dick-face is no big insult, just telling it like it is, huh?”

“Exactly. Other monkeys mimic their genital regions, though usually with their chests. And what about us?”

“Us?”

“A human woman’s breasts and buttocks resemble each-other quite closely. More or less, of course, depending on the woman. But it’s been suggested that there’s significance.”

“Oh, come on. Breasts and asses are purely functional.”

“Not so much asses. We had asses before we had chairs. Asses didn’t adapt to us, we adapted to them.”

“What’s your name?”

“Nat. Nat Tower. Gonna report me to my boss for suggestive lecturing?”