It is downtown in the deserted city, and a long-haired man drags himself across the plaza in the early Sunday snowfall. He has corkscrew curls, a full head of them, but they are slightly greying, and he wears washed-out yet youthful clothes: black jeans, an old Frank Zappa t-shirt (two sizes too small), a fringed mocha jacket and leather boots with eagle wings engraved. If we were to guess his profession, we would probably say a rock musician on the slide – he’s hardly rich or successful, but doubtlessly a man of experience. If we zoom into his head, leaving aside the question of whether this is a worthwhile idea, then these are his gloomy thoughts on this bitterly cold morning.
Modern Man Freezing
Gotta find the Scarecrow. Damn, the wind blows straight through me. The wind is a swarm of imps, bound in arrows, that bores through living tissue. This icy wind kills cells. They don’t die instantly, extinguishing with a snap but gradually, as everything falls apart. That’s how it goes, and cells are never reborn, they say. Oy vey, as my old friend Sol used to say, to wake up this morning… Why am I still alive? I hate this perverted magic.
How much can a pair of ears withstand? Frozen blue. Don’t touch them! They’ll shatter like porcelain and fall off in shards if anyone even taps them lightly now. Shards. As the imps desire. They freeze your mind into a catatonic state and then make you bend over and eat your lost body parts, like we once made our children eat their vomit. All for educational purposes. Don’t waste your food, and don’t lose your body parts, or you will have to eat them. Porcelain shards to chew on. Until the mouth boils with blood.
Modernity is Communism’s Mother
These awful modern cities. The communists painted everything grey. Warm colours did not align with their politics. Their grand illusion. They mistook windswept apathy for freedom and monochrome squareness for beauty. Half a century later, when the rosy glasses of progress have cracked, nothing can soothe the eyesore that is modern architecture. Not this blistering snowstorm, not the dying Christmas cult with its digitalised glitter drowning in the sludge.
How I hate this grey Gehenna. They call it the world of the living, but behind the scenery lies hell, a void we move through like ghosts, and we leave our traces along the path, sticky threads of ectoplasm hanging like cobwebs in the air. No, this can’t go on. I must have my colours back. Purple and gold. Give me colour or death.
The Scarecrow ought to be there, on the other side. I want to see everything illuminated. Come, happy hour of this death cult. Ding-a-Ling the Christmas Bell. Light up my way, for I am in the dark. If not a blinding supernova, then at least let a thin streak of sunlight leak in from the gap underneath the door, but I need something to inflate my punctured soul. I once knew how to live this life to the fullest. I was the wizard behind the secret concoctions of happiness. Me, not him. Not the fucking Scarecrow.
A Master at His Craft
When it came to mixing drugs, I was close to a god. You should have seen me in my glory days. You would be watching a sacred, well-rehearsed ritual where I snapped my fingers as a magician and then, gold dust rained down, out of thin air, like tears from the sun. I’d mix it at my movable station, ma petite table poudreuse, always with the purest quality, refined, chalk-white bonemeal from prepubescent virgins. I’d use decoctions of fly agaric and gallow grass for the kick, a thick paste of pregnant cochineal bugs for the colour, a bit of syrup for consistency and then, for the taste and potability, a generous swig of fine Cognac, aged ten years or more. As usual, there are additional ingredients that I am not at liberty to disclose.
To round off, three drops of menstrual blood from a noble woman. The higher the born, the better. Preferably a queen, but at least a princess. Such ingredients were not easy to get hold of, but I had my sources. That completed the magic.
This particular concoction was my Redgold Spirit, a drug for a more sophisticated time. Lord, did it make your eyes sparkle, and your heart soar up among the clouds! Serve in small glasses. Do not overdose. Can lead to insanity, liver failure, bleeding from all orifices and occasionally, death.
The Immortal Wisdom of Fu: The Content of a Man
Master Fu once told me that we must never let the wind out of our behinds because air is one of the fundamental elements of existence. The spirit is made up of air, and we are all given a finite amount of it. Flatulence depletes this content. Therefore, we must try to keep it in. When we let it out, we shrink the spirit, little by little. Once it is emptied of its ration of air, we lose ourselves, and we can no longer reach nirvana. In this circumstance, it will be hell for us. There will be no bliss of extinction.
This was one of the most baffling lessons he ever taught me, and it made no sense, no matter how hard I meditated on it. I was eagerly waiting to ask him for more guidance the next time he condescended to speak to me. To my disappointment, he admitted that it had been a jest from his side.
– Of course, I was yanking your chain. When did I ever tell you to believe everything I say? You silly little pig snout.
– No, master, you tell me not to trust anything presented to me as the truth, but then, can I trust my senses?
– Try thinking with another body part than the ass. That might help! (The Master laughed at me in his croaky falsetto). When something sounds too absurd, too good, or too bad to be true, then it is most likely untrue. We need not complicate these matters.
– But Master. How do we proceed in those rare cases when we have reason to suspect that the absurd could be the truth?
– You must realise that there is that which is both true and false and that which is neither true nor false.
– What is my cause of action, then?
– You spit the absurdity in the eye and get on with your chores, and your chores right now, worm, are to fetch your Master some firewood for the night.
– And some beer, Master?
– Always some beer, maggot.
– Master, do you have a lesson for me to meditate on until our next session?
– Here is what I want you to practice: holding your breath for as long as humanly possible, ideally until you faint.
– If I can learn to do that, will it get me closer to enlightenment?
– It will get you nowhere, Puppy Dog, but it will be funny to me if you can do it.
A Sordid Devil
I can see the Scarecrow in his usual corner, lurking in the narrow arcade next to the ridiculous makeshift police station that is never manned. The skinny devil is shivering in the cold because the drugs have eaten the body fat off his bones. His faded camouflage cap has a stripe of snow on the brim, and it is growing.
– Ah, the Umbrella Man! Welcome, Signore. Here to buy?
– It isn’t a social call.
– Aha. What’ll be your poison today?
– What have you got?
– Nothing heavy. Mostly kids’ stuff, but I got the basics. Bash, Pop and some Benzo downers. I got some uppers too, but it’s just Kiddy Coke. Yeah, that’s all I’m afraid. I was at a rave, so I was up all night, you know.
– Is that really all?
– Shit’s sake. It is Sunday morning! What do you want from me?
I recognise his demon nature, but he is of a low rank. He is a fallen spirit, living out his pseudo-existence perpetually high, with drug-induced brain rot, speaking nonsense in spurts with a devilish vocal fry; his breath reeks of putrefaction. His yellow stubble for teeth and his excremental stench add to the unpleasantness of our encounter.
– What do I want? Let me first declare that I am speaking to you from a higher stratum. Realise, oh pitiful one, that I used to excel in the art that you defile with your ugly grin, your dirty mitts and your unpleasant odour. Now: I want a potent, orange-flavoured opium marmalade sprinkled with roasted poppy seeds. Spread it on a biscuit!
– Jesus, man, no need to rub it in. You’re a funny one, Signore. But the bash is good. Moroccan.
– Well, how much then?
– One fifty for a G.
– What a hell of a price!
– 7-Eleven.
– What?
– I’m 7-Eleven today, and everything costs a fortune at 7-Eleven.
– Well, give me for a hundred, then.
– One fifty, amico. I have no smaller cuts.
– So split them!
– I can’t split these, dammit! Do you want it or not?
– I don’t know… What is “Pop”?
– Oh, that. It’s liquid gold, man. You drink it, and you get high subito. The kids love it. They dance all night on that shit. It’s two-fifty a bottle.
– I used to blend drinkables. They were something else, you know.
The Good Old Centuries
Bringing up old times was a bad idea. The Scarecrow is talkative today, and now I have to endure his sentimental drivel while I ponder my options.
– Umbrella Man, man! Remember the seventeenth century? Our kind, blending with the crème de la crème; we had them eating out of our hands. You were a legend, cruising between the private lodges at the opera houses, providing them with everything they could ask for! High-class courtesans, male, female or castratos even, concoctions that shone of silver and gold and made the heart beat like crazy, or a round of Macao, for those bitten by the gambling bug. Back then, your pockets were lined with gold. You were un signore moito comodo who didn’t even think about the money! You had too much! You bathed in champagne. Fuck me, where did they go, the golden days?
I shrug my shoulders. How time flies. A century is nothing.
– And damnit, Count G! Look at us now, standing here in the snow dissecting tiny pieces of bash, hell if I’m not right! They say these are our times, but God damn! It ain’t so. These are the times of nothingness. We are stuck in this hellhole with nothing to show for it. The river is dry, so we can’t even drown ourselves in it…
– Yeah… Just give me the bash.
The Scarecrow sneaks me a matchbox with a tiny cube of hashish in it. I shake the box to appreciate what I got.
– So they’re that small. How long will this last me?
-Well, smoke Zip – Marleys.
(The one hundred and fifty changes hands.)
– What?
– Do small hits. A pinch of bash and a little bit of tobacco to light it. That will make it last longer.
– Do I look like a hippie to you?
– No comment, but we all know how you spent the sixties.
– Oh, please cease to exist. Do not be here next time I come around. Just go extinct. Like the dodo.
– I’ll do my best, and I wish you the same, Signore.
The Scarecrow bows courtly, and with that, the transaction is completed. The corkscrew hair retreats across the plaza to wherever he came from.
image sources
- Road Covered by Snow Near Vehicle Traveling at Daytime: Filips Bunkens on Unsplash, Unsplash Lience | Public Domain Mark 1.0
- Redgold Spirit: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved
- Opium Pipe: Rama, via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported
- Demon Drugdealer: fagend.xyz | All Rights Reserved