Chapter 4
| The Story | The Authors |
|---|---|
| The first to leave the original line-up was guitarist William Grant, who having grown increasingly frustrated with Hickey's primadonnaism, his passive-aggressive manner of narrowing down the subject matter of the band's songs and cover tunes (goodbye Neutral Milk Hotel's "Holland, 1945" hello AC/DC's "Big Balls") until it seemed that no song they played had anything to do with matters other than death and Matthew's testicles understandably the former elf could no longer stomach what had become of his group and stormed offstage one night in undisguised disgust, and it was said that for months afterwards he would stand directly in front of the stage during their shows (the band having meanwhile changed its name to Matty & the Jewels go figure...) and mouth, silently, like a curse, the phrase "That's my band," over and over, while looking directly at Hickey. Whether this hex ultimately had the desired effect will be left up to the reader to decide, but those in the know remain in unanimous agreement that without Grant, the band lost its 'sound,' its 'vision' Weaver had switched over to guitar (replaced on the bass by a juvenile 'Paunch' Ritter, later of the Gherkins) but his technique was noticeably cruder than Grant's, and his style lacked the wriggling angularities and the pentatonic epistomologies so key to the early eighties Massachusetts teen scene 'sound' which came to be called confabulario due to its srtong links with the work of Mexican experimentalist Juan Jose Arreola... Of course, others, in the mainstream, would see this as the ritual sacrifice of a talented guitar player so necessary for a band to make it out of the high school circuit and into the Big Time (see Moriarty and Gammons, "Effluvial Trialecticism and Pre-erotic Manifestations of Faustian Bargain-Complex in the Ur-Garage," Anal Retentive Post-Structuralist Dialecticist Journal of Structuralism Monthly, June, 2007) and certainly from that point on, as Hickey's gyrations and 'expositions" (as he came to call them) assumed the dominant role in the band's stage show, Matt's status among the high school 'In-Crowd' overtook Grant's by leaps and bounds, and Grant faded into temporary obscurity until the chance spontaneous combustion of the Fall's then-guitar-player Brix E. Smith during their September 1986 show at Boston's Paradise venue led to Grant's replacing her on the remainder of the band's American tour, whence he emigrated to England and assumed his rightful place in the pantheon of contemporary rock and roll lumberjacks and the rest, as they are constantly intimating, is History. But by that time, of course, back in old A-mer-i-cay, Matthew Hickey had gone entirely too far... | |
| It was around this time that the "still, small voice" (as he initially qualified it to an oblivious Newton South junior named Sondra Wentz who lay cradled in the crook of Hickey's bed after an sultry afternoon "stone and bone" session) began to talk to Matthew. | |
| It began as a faint but insistent chirping at the veryest edge of his conscious mind... So that when he finally caught the mellifluous tones of its voice and the crackle-sharp meaning of its words, it was like he had known it his whole life... An angel curled in the hammock of his ear... A Jiminy Cricket all his own, perched at the ready upon Hickey's shoulder... An animal familiar spirit all his own, hovering in the ether above him like a living halo... Those were the fantasies, and if the reality of the situation was that the voice came from neither his shoulder, nor his ear, nor the air above him, but from much lower, ranker and darker regions, the Hickeys had never been a clan to put much stock in subtleties they liked their meat and their potatoes, thank you... | |
| And so that first day, after rehearsal, the fifth or sixth flawless afternoon of April, as Matthew sauntered home, under the budding sycamores of Great Plain Avenue, thinking no thoughts in particular, when all of a sudden there was that voice clear as the day "Matthew" said the voice, and "Matthew" again, like an echo, while his body meanwhile experiencing the stimuli of a rhythmic loinal tightening "Matthew," a third time, said Matthew Hickey's testicles to him, and as the knowledge of this flooded over him like a great joy or a horrible shame (he could not qualify the feeling yet, so new was it, as either necessarily 'good' or 'bad') he stumbled on a loose slab of concrete on the sidewalk on front of the Dickersons' house and fell flat on his face on the edge of their front lawn, still sopping wet from an earlier encounter with a sprinkler. | |
|
it incidentally happenned it was raining
When this absolutely beautiful young girl scream for him. He had no idea who in the world she was other than she was drop dead gorgous. As she confronted him, She noticed he was not what she had expected. She caught her breathe and introduced herself as Gretchen. She told him that she was to talk to him for a position at his prestigious firm, she had only graduated law school two months earlier, and especially needed a job. | |
|
Matthew's testicles warmed at the sight of Gretchen.
"Prestigious....fuh..FIRMMMM...." they whispered to him. The sprinkler he was lying on gave him a shot in the belly which broke his Gretchen-cleavage-induced trance. Matthew blinked and looked around. He was lying on the neighbour's lawn, right smack on a sprinkler. And it was raining pretty good, too... And the eternal question came forth: "What idiot would water their lawn in the rain?" As Matthew puzzled this one over, Gretchen shifted from foot to foot waiting for his answer. A job? In his prestigious firm....breasts flashed joyously through his mind.... Another headshake. Matthew was about to tell her that he did not have a firm (breasts..dammit!) when his anus begain to speak.... | |
|
...Not exactly his anus, but close: Command Central, his prostate gland, the
organ through which his testicles were able to communicate and cooperate. "Job?
Prestigious firm?" puzzled Matthew. "What do these strange words mean, what
foreign tongue are they in?"
"Aren't you the boy who won the summer internship at Cackle, Seidel and Arugula?" Hickey responded to the question with undisguised amusement, speading his arms in a loose, helplessly bearlike gesture, as if to say, as the French say: regard sopping wet, skidmarked with grass-green and dirt-brown, even had he not born these proud scars of his encounter with the wet lawn, his clothes were the indiginous garb of the born rocker jeans that had known much, much better days and a faded memento T-shirt from the fabled 1980 Black Sabbath/Blue Oyster Cult "Black and Blue" tour with the sleeves cut off, and a greasy red bandana tied homeboy-style around his tousled locks that anyone could mistake the figure he cut for someone destined to spend his summer as a glorified slave in some stuffy law firm with positivelu unthinkable! Is she blind? he wondered. No, hissed his testicles in response. Don't you recognize that line, you idiot? It's a pick-up line. She adapted it from page 73, paragraph 4 of The Sensuous Woman. | |
|
Matthew had no idea his testicles were so literate. He paused a moment and
wondered if the left one was the bookworm and the other was more of the sensual
cariety. He also briefly wondered if the left brain/right brain phenomena
would apply to them, when Gretchen (seeing the glazed look on Matthew's face)
repeated her question.
"Wha...uh..no..." came the startled response. "I...just...just..." He fumbled a bit for the truth, whatever it was. And the answer came to him..perhaps from deep within one sexual organ or another... "I mean, yeah..yes." He swallowed hard and tried not to think of cuh-cuh-cleavage. "But the firm's name is Blichly, Kilm and Gore. We specialize in medical malpractice suits." And, a lie was born. If Matthew's testicles could applaud, they would. And if testicles had hands to applaud with, Matthew would never leave the house.... | |
| So Matthew figure i need to find a spouse. One who would love me and my two testicles. | |
| And what large and oddly shapen testicles they are! | |
| Where else would one lay eyes upon such grotesque yet wonderful, McNuggets of pure, unique, quivering existence? | |
|
Slowly surfacing as if from a druggy sleep, the Hickster, grogish and confused,
found himself sprawled on the sidewalk with his hair and face wet.
"What The FUH...", he began, looking at the blood covered hand he withdrew from his head. "[yaaap] OHMY, [yaaap] SWEET JESUS, [yaaapyaaap] young man, young man are you alright, [yaaap] OMYGAWD!?" It was at that moment of painful clarity that Hickey began to form an understanding of his current state, But who was this old biddy standing above him with her Pomeranian yapping and straining at its leash? "Young man, I am sooo sorry. Bobo didn't mean t-to do such a thing, did you sweets? I s-swear, he just has an excitable bladder." It was then that Hickey realized, in addition to cracking his head open on an uneven paving stone, this little creature must have trotted over to his prone figure and relieved itself on his head while he was conversing with the woozy world of firm breasted, outgoing women named Gretta, or was it Gretel? The smell of dog urine stung his nostrils while his entire mouth was awash with a vile ammonio-metallic taste. "You fucking stupid fucking cow!" he screeched, drawing back his bloodied fist to swat at the snarling dog. Just then, excited by the reanimation of this human hydrant, Bobo lunged forward yanking a liberal length of slack from the old womans arthritic hands. Sailing toothlong at the threadbare bullseye of Matts crotch, Bobo snapped down hard on Hickeys now silent jumblies. | |
| Matthew's last coherent thought before his adrenal glands went into preconscious overdrive was directed accusatorily at his own genitals: "Where's your wise-ass answer to this? thus separating himself mentally from the still, small voice at the precise moment that the miracle of his sentient testes were irreparably separated from him by the razor sharp teeth of the savage little Pomeramian. | |
| So alas, the poor testicles had not time to answer him (leaving in their wake a hollowness which was to stay with Matthew Hickey like a second shadow for the sterile remainder of his days) he looked aghast at the jagged pool of red spreading in his crotch and then (at last) the pain hit. | |
| Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggh he shrieked as his adrenal glands kicked into overdrive; and seconds after the great jagged elephants of pain had begun to thunder across the Serengheti of his body, they were followed by the hungry lions of adrenaline, and Matthew was become like unto the Incredible Hulk incarnate, seizing the stupid Pomerian and shaking it, inverted, screaming "Spit them out! Spit them out!" before braining the misfortunate dog against a conveniently nearby telephone pole. The the dog's owner looked on aghast, paralysed by fear and revulsion, in its dying gasps the dog yacked out Matthew's masticated testicles, which hit the curbside grass strip, bounced twice, rolled out into the middle of the street and were immediately run over and flattened by a passing milk truck. At this point, the pain (so, so, so many elephants) and blood loss became too much and unconsciousness sucked Matthew down into dark lamprey maw, and he knew no more until he awoke next morning in the hospital not knowing wny the faint strains of "On Top of Spaghetti" came so readily to his lips and memory until he remembered what happened and the full horror and irony of it overtook him and he shook with terror and shame and rage. And in walked his first visitor, the concerned look on his pimply countenance barely masking his perma-smirk: none other than Jeremy Crink, who'd happened to have been on-call in his afterschool job as an EMT when the 911 call came in. It was he who had ushered the unconscious Matthew Hickey to the ER, and though it was only his job (as he shruggingly told the bedridden Matt) there was a level of resentment in Matthew which was to grow and grow as he years passed: underneath it all, he owed Crink his life, and he knew it, and he knew Crink knew he knew it, and there would be a fiddler to pay, someday, maybe not for years to come, but certain as deals made with elves or fairies or mischevious dwarves in the old tales. Nobody got off for free. Nobody. | |
|
"Well, Well. Well, Look who's waking up!"began Crink, "Hickey, my
main...ahem...Man! Got you here in just the nick of time we did. Another quart
lower on the ol' Type O and you'd a-been history. Yessiree Bobby McGee, we did
too. Christ you were bleedin' so bad I had to clean out the rig with a hose,
dude.
But you're back amongst the livin' again and for that you can be thankful. And Hey! look on the bright side of this learning curvature, you'll never have to worry about having to be clean shaven for work again. All taken care of for you already and ever and ever Amen. Probably do wonders for your singing career too. Son, you'll be the real deal man/boy soprano. Hell! you want me to give the Vatican a call? I got the number right here." Crink leaned in close to Hickey's cracked lips with the pitying grinning mix of sadism and repulsion. "And I got something to show you. This indeed I do. I snagged'em from prosthetics special to give you the lowdown first thing myself, 'cuz that's what friends do in dark times like these." He gingerly picked up Hickey's limp arm and plunked down in the palm what appeared to be over sized polyethylene grapes. Sterile, white and slightly squishy. "Soon, my little friend, a nice fresh pair of nuggets like these'll be yours. Of course, not quite so very soon, some healing got to take place. Some blood needs to be replaced. And the Headshrink's got to get in a bit of face to face. But soon enough. They got a Thai Doc flying in special to do the purse building for the new family jewels. (Thailand being the sex change capitol of the world, so the doc's got some mean creds. Can swing you either direction. so get it straight before you go under.) Says he's gonna have to build you a new scrotal sac from some loose ass skin. Lucky for you it'll be hairy enough no woman'll ever know the difference." Crink nudged Hickey and chuckled. "But I gotta go and hit the road again, dude. I just wanted to drop on over and offer my condolences on your dreadful loss, and do the one righteous thing I can do for you in times like these." And with that Crink turned to Hickey's IV and tapped him in for a couple of grains of morphine. The fog was already rolling over Matthew J Hickey before Crink had hit the door to leave. | |
|
This was to have certain unfortunate results: owing to Jeremy's unofficial zap
of morphine, the anaesthesiologist presiding over Matthew's operation a
grizzled old Princetonian known by his students as Ol' Doc Morpheus, ("always
good for a few grains or a handful of Demerol if you knew how to work him")
was unable to put Matthew completely under. So that as Doctor Benway, the
surgeon, was slicing away at the masticated ruin of Matthew's scrotum, the poor
lad came to. The stunned youth began to began to thrash about, gibber and howl
in a most monkeylike fashion, causing Dr. Benway first to accidentally lop off
Matthew's penis and second to stick himself in the right eye with his own
scalpel. A great jet of blood arced across the operating room and landed in a
great red mimosa flower which bloomed in the white valley of Attendant Nurse
Lentil's monumental cleavage, snugly held within her crisply starched nurse's
uniform. "Doctor!" she gasped.
"Aaaaaaaaah" screamed the doctor. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh," screamed Matthew. "Oooooooooooooooooh," screamed everyone else in the room. | |
| What the hell is that ? | |
|
(As a brief aside: the movie version of this sordid tale will, I suddenly
realize, be, like so many other noir comedies in this tasteless age,
incurably marred by the use of Jim Carrey in a role [the dashing, inscutable
Jeremy Crink] which just screams Crispin Glover. Sigh.
I mention this now but it was at that precise moment that this same suburban avatar of pointy-eared Loki-ness, Emergency Medical Technician Jeremy Crink, giggling hysterically, rushed into the gory going-into-shock atmosphere of the Operating Room carrying, of all things, an empty hot dog bun, a small jar of relish, and a bottle of ketchup. "GET YER RED HOTS!" he barked in a loud sonorous vendor-voice, startling the ghostlypale dumbfaced doctors and attending nurses, scooping Matthew's severed organ up into the bun before Matthew's unbelieving eyes, slathering it with relish and ketchup, rolling his eyes up and smacking his lips "Mmm, mmm, good!" as he raced out of the into the hall still shouting "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIID HAWWWWWWWWTS!" | |
| This proved too much for Matthew's already shattered senses; he swooned away into a dead faint. | |
| And Then He Had A Dream. | |
| In his dream, Matthew stood on the edge of a great lake, in which snakes and sea-serpents of all shapes and sizes froliced, fought, spouted water, and floated bellyup on the lake's crystalline surface. | |
| A light breeze blew in from the East and on it floated a huge hot air balloon of the 19th Century variety, covered with fancy trimmings like some great chocolate Bom. In it rode a laughing Jeremy Crink, singing in a high pure soprano a wordless aria after Victor Herbert's "Naughty Marietta". he was carelessly tossing great bloody chunks of chum to the serpents who gobbled each morsel with relish. | |
| The balloon came to a standstill in the air above the lake, and Matthew (standing at the water's edge, too afraid to jump in) watched as the sea-serpents formed themselves into a water-ballet directly beneath the balloon, spinning round the hub of its shadow in a perfectly choreographed mandala, switching effortlessly from clockwise to counterclockwise among the chum-pinked caps of the wavelets. The overture to "Carmen" (music which in Matthew's mind meant fear, connected as it was with memories of Dad Hickey, on a bad drunk, beating the living Bejeezus out of Matt's mother while singing along in his best falsetto to arias on the Pedersen's Cod Liver Oil Opera Hour on an old radio in the livingroom which in the 1970s was still picking up broadcasts from the 1940s) swirled in on an eddy of sweet-smelling zephyrs and the serpents halted expectantly beneath the balloon with one vast collective intake of breath... | |
| The balloon began to swell and turn a deep purplish red expanding and expanding like some vast Jiffypop device until it burst in huge wet gobs of popcorn. Standing on shore still afraid of leaping into the surgin waters around the sea serpents Matthew felt the wind pick up and swell the loose robe around his body. In front of him the serpents writhed and lept in a feeding frenzy as they gobbled and devoured the light fluffy kernels that fell about them. | |
|
The more the sea-serpents ate, the more wildly, it seemed they thrashed around,
still with their same circular choreography, beating the popcorn-spangled
waters to a mad froth all around them, faster and faster until in their very
center there appeared the black eye of a maelstrom, a monstrous whirlpool
spinning in their center. And as Matthew watched, dumbstruck, a man arose from
the maelstrom.
Fully seven feet tall, with white hair and white beard which fell in tousled torrents down his chest and over his shoulders like the very salt-foam itself, and the deepest, most staring-into-starry-nethers-and-the-waw-of-the-Pit eyes Matthew had ever seen, crowned by two bushy white eyebrows so thickly encrusted with brine and tiny shrimps that they might have been a pair of horns, all set into a face weathered to the quality and consistency of an old boot. The tatters of what must once have been a proud Sou'wester hung around him in cracked strips. "I have seen the Moon, mother of tides, closer than any other man, and I have frolic'd with the toothy hagfish, yay, and fathered children half-human half-seal. You may know of me, ay, I see it in your eyes: I am the Ancient Moron, and it is my lay, "The Rime of the Ancient Moron" which I have come to recite unto your ears, that you may hear of the cold sustaining madness of the sea, wherein the nibbling lantern-fish frolic in ocean trenches darker than man's meanest desire, and the Djinn sleep in the twelve-locked boxes whence they were banished by none other than Suleiman the Magnificent!" | |
|
As fear enveloped him, he did the only thing he could think to do: he raised
the Glock .44 to a serpents head and squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared
as a serpents head imploded and scattered blood and brains everywhere. Five
years as a an accomplished and highly decorated CIA hitman had not prepared him
for a journey to some netherworld in a strange universe where sea serpents,
dragons, and mystics roamed freely. He prayed in thanks that he still had his
weapons from Earth. His thoughts were cut short as a serpent threw itself at
him. Matthew threw himself to the ground as its glittering teeth shot over him.
He thrust his foot upward kicking the off balance serpent to the ground. He
shot it once and it lay still. He turned and ran back into the forest as
several mysterious balloons rose from the water once again. As they they blew
apart, steaming acid flew everywhere. Some of it hit the serpents and they
howled in pain and anguish. Matthew just ran. His feet pounded the ground as he
raced for his life hearing the sounds of beastly forest creatures giving chase.
He knew with dread that the dark mystic wasn't far away and that he might have
to face him. As he ran two small arms appered from beside the path and yanked
him into the brush. What looked to be a small pointy eared boy stared at him.
"Quiet! The woodland beasts are stupid but there isnt anything wrong with their
ears!" the boy whispered scoldingly. Matthew looked at him in shock. I, Matthew
Jonathan Hunter, have finally lost it, he thought in disbelief. The boy was an
elf. The creatures rushed by them in pursuit of a nonexistant fugitive enemy
that they thought was just ahead. As their real enemy turned to face the elf,
he instead encountered a cloud of dust which made him immediatly fall asleep.
He woke up on the sun baked plains just by the forest. Hunter felt refreshed and stood up to stretch. He heard a faint crunching noise of feet hitting dirt and looked up to the top of the hill beside him. A man in a black robe whose face was hidden by a cowl looked down on him with glowing red eyes. It was the dreaded dark mystic come to kill the man who had disrupted his plan to kill the king when he had mysteriously appeared from some netherworld and had shot him in the chest when the mystic had tried to fry him with an energy bolt. The man who called himself Hunter had dodged and shot him in the chest. Only the mystics healing powers had saved him from this outlanders thunderrod he called a pistol. Apparently he had been using his multiple weapons to kill someone in the otherworld and had slipped into a portal here. The mystic wanted his revenge and was here to collect on his debt. Hunter eyed the mystic and lowered his hand to his pistol. His shotgun was strapped to his back but right now he didn't have the time to get it before the mystic toasted him like bread. He shrugged off the robe to reveal his black tactical uniform. Hunter summed up the situation. 12 guage shotgun on his back, with 10 extra 10-round clips on the sides of his kevlar vest. Custom-made Glock .44 with 8 extra 15-round clips on his belt and strapped to his leg. There were 7 rounds in the clip that was resting in his pistol. Two tactical combat knives in his boots plus one extra Glock .44 in the small of his back that had a full clip in it. All that plus one sword he had picked up off of a fallen attacker some three days ago attached to the robe. He didn't think he'd need it so it would stay in his robe. The wizard raised his hands and Hunter prepared himself for the fight sure to come in the next few seconds. The wizard didn't wait at all and lightning danced on his fingertips and shot towards Hunter. hunter lunged to the left drawing his pistol and squeezing off two rounds in the mystic's general direction. Enough to make the mystic drop to the ground. Hunter rolled into a kneeling position and fired twice more. Mentally he told himself that there were only three rounds in the clip left and that he would have to make an emergency reload and quick. The mystic dodged the two bullets and flung another bolt at Hunter. Hunter, using all his considerable agility and strength that one gained from years of hard training, jumped, arching himself backwards over the bolt, and landed on his hands to spring himself back up to a standing position. Adrenaline pumped through his system making him alert and ready. The mystic nodded to him as if to give credit to the move Hunter had just accomplished. The nod was brief and he sent a fireball streaking toward Hunter. Hunter was gone from that spot when it got there, but only by inches. Hunter ran hard up the hill trying to get a good firing position to finish this battle once and for all. he saw the mystics hands light up and he pumped the remaining 3 rounds at him. The mystic hit the ground and didnt send the fireball at Hunter. Hunter released the magazine's catch and it fell to the ground. The clip didnt even reach the ground before Hunter slammed another one home and was firing again. One bullet grazed the agile mystic's shoulder and he gasped in pain and shock.blood dribbled down his arm as he ran. Hunter couldnt hit the fleeting form and his bullets managed to fly behind the mystic. He heard the hammer click dry and he reloaded as fast as he could. The mystic sent a flurry of bolts at him that Hunter barely managed to evade. They danced this fatal dance for what seemed like hours but were only minutes until Hunter reached down even though knew he was out of magazines fopr both shotgun and pistol. The mystic recognized this with glee. "I have beaten you Hunter! Your magic is spent! No more thunderrods for you I'm afraid!" As the mystic laughed he raised his hands once more and they lit up once more. His haunting laugh filled the air. Suddenly all trace of happiness left his face and was replaced by hatred. "Now you die Hunter!! It is over and I will be victorious!! You dont live up to your name Hunter!! It is I who hunted you!! Now you will now eternal darkness!!" The angry mystic seethed. the mystic began laughing but as the sound filled the air... BLAM BLAM BLAM!!! The back-up Glock roared in Hunters hand in rapid succession. Each bullet found its mark which was right between the mystic's eyes. The mystics head disappeared in a bloody red gush. The lifeless body slumped to the ground. Hunter dropped to his knees in exhaustion. As he did he saw a small dark cloud seep out of the mystics body and hovered in the air above him. it swam gracefully in the air and then seemed to see Hunter. So exhausted was Hunter, he had no strength or will to dodge the cloud as it seeped into his body. He thought this would be his end, here on this unheard of and foreign land, so far from his birthplace and home but as he felt the power rise and awaken in his body he knew that the dark mystics magic was in him. It gave itself to the killer of its magic. It wasnt evil or even dark, no magic could be said to be either. It was the master who decided that. Hunter sensed the power and allowed it to flow into him and become one with him. He closed his eyes. When he opened them he knew how to control it and became a mystic himself. Hunter raised his arms and a bright blue energy snapped and crackled the air around them as he summoned a portal. When it was completed and he took in the view of this strange but beautiful land, he stepped through the portal. Matthew Jonathan Hunter went home. | |