Quest for Sex, Truth & Reality

“What brings ya back?” asked the keep.

The fat blonde ripped off another belch, which sounded like a tree cracking. “Maybe he wants more pizza.”

“You haven’t seen my hopelessly inadequate boyfriend wandering around, have you?” the redhead asked.

Jesus, thought the writer. “All I want to know is when the next goddamn bus comes into this goddamn town.”

“Call Trailways,” invited the keep. “Pay phone’s by the john.”

Finally, a phone!

“But hold up a sec.” The keep slapped a yellow shooter down. “Drink up, seeker. And don’t worry, it’s a —”

“I know, a tin roof.” Can’t hurt, can it? The writer shot the shooter back, froze mid-swallow, then spat it out. “What the fuck was that!”

“A Piss Shooter, partner.” The keep’s fly was open. “The house special. Bit more tasty than the last one, huh?”

“You’re all a bunch of psychopaths!” screamed the writer.

“Crank up one of them Snot Shooters,” suggested the fat blonde.

“Good thing I’ve had a cold all week. Makes ’em thicker, meatier.” The keep applied an index finger to his left nostril, then loudly emptied his right one into a shooter glass. “Yeah, there’s a beaut. Go for it, seeker.”

The writer’s head was reeling. “No, thanks. I’m trying to cut down.”

“Cheers,” said the fat blonde. She tossed it back neat, swallowing it more or less as a single lump. “Nice and thick!”

It just never ends, does it? The writer wobbled back to the pay phone, dropped in some change, and waited.

No dialtone.

“Goddamn this fuckin’ shit-house piece of shit crazy-ass motherfuckin’ town!” the writer articulated to the very best of his refined and erudite vocabulary. “Suckin’ fuckin’ redneck shitpile town ain’t even got a fuckin’ phone that works!”

“Phones haven’t worked since last night,” he was informed. It was the guy in the white shirt, who’d just come in the back way. He was hefting a shiny 44-oz aluminum softball bat. “Shh,” he said next. “I want to surprise her.” He snuck up behind the redhead, assumed a formidable batter’s stance, and swung—

Ka-CRACK!

The impact of the bat to the redhead’s right ear sent a big spurt of blood from her left. She flew off the stool like a golf ball off a tee and landed on the floor.

“How about that?” White Shirt softly inquired. “I’ll bet that was big enough for you.” The keep and fat blonde applauded. The writer just stared. White Shirt dragged the redhead out the back door by the throat.

“Still ain’t found what’cha seek, huh, seeker?” commented the keep. “Still ain’t found the truth. Well lemme tell ya somethin’…truth can change.”

The writer peered at him.

“I know what the truth is,” claimed the fat blonde.

“Yeah?” the writer challenged. “Tell me then, you fat hunk of shit redneck walking trailer-park puke-machine. What is the truth?”

“It’s black!”

Great. The truth is black. Wonderful. The writer started for the back door, but the keep implored, “Don’t go yet. You’ll miss my next one.” He was lowering his trousers.

“Jizz Shooters!” cried the fat blonde.

Laughter followed the writer out the door. It made him feel rooked. Perhaps in their madness they knew something he didn’t. Perhaps madness, in this case, was knowledge.

In the alley, White Shirt was eviscerating the redhead with a large hunting knife. Less than patiently, he rummaged through wet organs like someone looking for something, cufflinks maybe. “Give it back!” he shouted at the cooling gore. “I want it back!”

The writer leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. “Buddy,” he asked quietly. “Could you please tell me when the next bus comes through town?”

“There aren’t any busses anymore. Things have changed.”

Changed, the writer thought.

THE TRUTH HAS CHANGED, elaborated the voice. YOU WERE RIGHT. IT HAS BEEN REBORN, THROUGH ME. I LIVE ON IT.

The writer gave this some thought.

“I’m looking for my love,” White Shirt remarked and gestured the redhead’s opened belly. “I gave her my love, and I want it back.” He scratched his head. “It’s got to be in there somewhere.”

“Love is in the heart,” the writer pointed out.

“Yeah, but this girl was heartless.”

“Well, the patriarchal Japanese used to believe that love was in the belly, the intestines. They believed that the belly was the temple of the soul on earth. That’s why they practiced ritual suicide by disembowelment — to release the soul and free the spiritual substantate of their love.”

“Intestines,” White Shirt contemplated. “So…if I gave my love to her…” He stared into the tilled gut, fingering its wares. “To get it back, I have to bring it into me?”

The writer shrugged. “I can’t advise you. The decision is yours.”

White Shirt began to eat the girl’s intestines.

The writer’s sweat surged. The redhead was as dead as dead could be, if not deader. Nevertheless, as her ex-lover steadily consumed the loops of her innards, her eyes snapped open and her head turned.

She looked directly at the writer.

“He’s taking his love back,” she giggled.

“I know,” said the writer.

“It…tickles.”

“I would imagine so.”

The moon shone in each of her eyes as a perfect white dot. “Real truth sustains us, just in different ways.”

Sustains, considered the writer. Sustenance.

“The end of your quest is waiting for you.”

The writer gulped. “Tell me,” he pleaded. “It’s very important to me. Please.”

“Look for something black,” she said, and died again.

The writer leapt the alley fence. The fat blonde had said the same thing. Black. But it was nighttime. How could he hope to find something black at night?

Then he heard something — a stout, distant chugging.

A motor, he realized.

The he saw…what?

A glow?

A patch of light that was somehow, impossibly, black.

He was standing in a schoolyard — ironically a place of learning. The light shimmered in a rough trench-like bomb crater. It’s black, he thought. In the distance sat the source of the motor noise: a squat U.S. Army armored personnel carrier.

The writer looked into the dropped back hatch.

“Don’t go out there,” warned a crisp yet muffled voice.

Murky red light bathed the inner compartment like blood in a lighted pool. A sergeant in a gas mask and full decontamination gear slouched at a console of radio equipment. Very promptly, he pointed a 9mm pistol at the writer’s face.