CHAPTER THREE (1)

But what was going on inside the van was too exciting. A Sublime smile had now formed on Katz’ face as needles poked and prodded him, as chemicals of various kinds were being pushed into his blood.

“What in hell are you giving him!?” Cried Mitzi as he pushed on the gas with his right foot. He made an extreme U-turn out of this fore-saken Ditrict 11, and speeded at the Mark III’s will – as fast as it could go – out of this hell-hole. No more the natives – the bums who had plagued him with their skeletal faces, the men (if you could call them that) with their scruffy faces and dying auras – could locate him in this diseased land. Mitzi, in all of his essences, fled. He fled something as he’s never fled before.

“Morphine, he needs relief. HE NEEDS RELIEF!!!” The doctor said rapidly

Katz was certainly responding to his “relief.” His eyes, those glazed, inhuman bulbs, twirled towards Mitzi, saying “Come on, I need RELIEF.” Whether he did or not, Mitzi couldn’t decide.

“Oh – so you’d give this relief to someone like Katz, but not to a native in dire need. I see…” said Mitzi, who wasn’t really focusing on the life of Katz, but really on the life of himself and vaguely on the life of all the rest in the moving vehicle. He quickly turned towards the enveloping scene in the back, and realized that Katz’s eyes found nothing but his.

The eyeballs were a metallic yellow, pupils looking defiantly into his. Why wouldn’t you let me have relief? You are just like me you piece of foul manure. You couldn’t handle what I’ve learned about the real world, you couldn-

 

CHAPTER THREE: Work and Work

 

Squirley woke to a start. The blinds let in bread-sliced visions of light rays onto his black skin. He fidgeted under his warm oven of covers, and fell back asleep. This would be the right way to go today, the warm oven. Always the warm oven of covers. It was no use now, trying to go back to sleep. Toddy was squirming under his linens on the floor, it was no use, it was just simply no use now. They both had woken under the 2 pm warm sun.

“You gotta be at work in an hour.” Said Ryan, ashe unsheathed himself from the comfotor.

“Says you, the man whose slept on an actual mattress.”

Toddy rose from the floor, his boxers half off. His chest betrayed flabby man-boobs. There was hair showing definitely from the nipples, but no real he-man hair. Despite the fact that he was 30, he had not a real forest grown on his chest. It didn’t really bother him in any way.

“Regardelss, you gotta be at work.”

Toddy reached for his white pressed shirt, or what should have been his white pressed shirt. He swathed himself in it, rolled on his rumpled Dickies and buckled the black belt. He suddenly looked like a half-dressed Ritto. 

CHAPTER TWO (18) Mitzi's dream continued...

The bundle-turned-man broke from Mitzi’s arms and crawled not towards the door to his shack, but to the warehouse behind that was at least 8,000 square feet. The pasty skin clung to his body, fearful of falling off as he crawled. He attempted to stand but in finding that he could do nothing more than scuttle towards what he referred to as his “stores,” he made very slow progress. Everyone watched in bewilderment, in total silence, in complete disgust. Here was a man who hadn’t seen daylight for a thousand years, crawling like a slimy insect in a dark cave back towards his birth.

Unable to comprehend Katz’s strength, Mitzi stood in awe. The heads smiled down on the situation. They spoke to Mitzi: “Why do you bring this back?” He had no idea; maybe because he was told to by NORML. Maybe because he had nothing else to do. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to take all of the native and Mr. Katz in his hands and ring their necks, or join them, or leave them – anything but this. Anything but this.

Meanwhile, a pilgrim had taken it upon himself to run in front of Katz, not touching him, but blocking his path to the store-house. A hissing came from Katz, a hissing so vile that Mitzi stepped back, ready to fly from this scene at any moment. He took a few more steps back and tripped on a collection of re-barb stumps. Bringing him back to his senses, he ran once more to retrieve the man-child.

“You take the legs, I’ll take the arms.” They hoisted him up into the air, suspending his horribly emaciated midsection as if he were a show cat. His eyes had glazed, he was loosing energy (what little he had), and he began to slowly give in. They carried him to the van – this time with success – with the help of the other pilgrims. Dogbert and Vergil – those pissy little wastes of space, thought Matt – cowered among encroaching natives who seemed to be drooling over their thick bodies. Back-to-back, they hurried towards the protection of the van.

“One, two, three!” The pilgrims lifted the man into the van.

“What should we do with the other one?” He pointed over to the homeless man whose face had been blown off by a projectile.

“I dunno – toss him out?” Said another.

“K, I got it.”

The doctor, who would never have shot the man, now carelessly dragged him by the foot, a pool of blood tracing his path, and dragged him to the concrete. Thump. The body lay contorted on the pavement and left. The natives closed around the corpse and left Dogbert and Virgil to claw their way, puling one another in a war to gain the passenger’s front seat, into the security of the Mark III.

Mitzi couldn’t look back, but figured they natives – starving – were tearing apart the dead man bone from bone, joint from joint.

If he had only turned around to witness their humanity…

CHAPTER TWO (17) Mitzi's dream continued...

This – this is what he had come so far for. This thing, this half-man half-changeling creature laying helplessly in bed was what Mitzi had risked his life for? Venturing into uncharted locations along the dreaded Broadway Boulevard? He needed escape, this was all unreal. He couldn’t look at the dying thing in front of him; the long bony arms somehow arranged Christ-like, so heavy though they were so thin nailed to the flimsy, soiled sheets. But he wasn’t Christian, no, he wasn’t anything. His nose was Jewish, without a doubt, and Mitzi figured his last name was that of a Jew’s anyways. But his head was swathed in a mass of blonde hair, and his jaw-line gave him the air of something Nordic. His eyes strangely slanted and stretched, revealing Asian roots. He was a meld of so many ethnicities, there was no qualifying this man; he was them all. But Katz – no, you couldn’t call him Katz anymore – was a wasted and withered swell of fleshy bone that resembled nothing in particular of a race but what is inherently part of every race: the carcass, the bare minimum, the very thing that even after death every race, color, ethnicity came down to: a collection of bones. It was sick, this whole place was sick.

The quilted man broke the silence: “So he is not dead, then?”

“No. He is not dead.” This revelation brought Matt back to the situation at hand: the recovery of Katz. Mitzi effortlessly scooped the bundle – sheets and all – into his arms and rushed him to the occupied stretcher in the back of the Mark III. A crowd had formed outside of Katz’s station. Along with the Pilgrims, Virgil and Dogbert, and the surviving native, there stood before the travelers at least one hundred and fifty homeless men. There were there to see their oppressor off – but they didn’t smile, they didn’t rejoice in his near-death, rather, they stood there amidst the decaying cityscape expressionless as always, each of them as torn and tattered as the next. They parted beneath the smiling decapitated heads looking in on everything, saying ‘I told you this day would come,’ as Mitzi whisked a dying fiend in his arms near their impassive faces. Some would reach out and try to touch the soiled linen, but most just stared onwards.

Meanwhile, Katz had livened and begun to open his eyes. The whites were yellow. Jaundice, Mitzi thought, that means liver failure. He is almost there. From some unknown force, the heap of wiry flesh fought back against Mitzi, clawing with unprecedented strength at the confining linens. Why would a man want to escape earnestly from his savior’s breast?

“Let me go you fool…” came a soft command from the suddenly animated bundle, “I must get back… let go.”

“Mr. Katz – we must take you back to head quarters – “ Mitzi tried to explain. The bundle was now violently trying to free itself, and becoming quite successful. Mitzi dropped to one knee – the man must have weighed no more than 120 pounds at must have been more than seven feet tall, but his drive was staggering. Katz’s nails grasped whatever was fixed into the ground: cement, re-barb, electrical cord, whatever he could clench. The fragile nails broke on any one of this, but he continued mercilessly.

“I must get back to my stores. There is much more to be had!”

CHAPTER TWO (16) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi was expecting a cobweb-ridden, dilapidated, dark room that was stale and acrid. He was expecting a wonderful man sitting in the midst of it all, disgusted by the filth he had to live in, victimized by a company he had given the last decade of his life to. He expected an ominous Katz to come up to him and take him by the hand and somehow force all of his prowess and erudite experience through his pores into Mitzi. He expected to be saved as the quilted man had, for the quilted man had somehow found light in such a world of darkness. This was the defining moment of his journey to the heart of District 11, where all of his expectations were met by a man who would even exceed them…

But it wasn’t like that at all. The quilted man pried the door open to reveal a somewhat organized room. It exuded no smells, was not unkempt, and it did not seem to have a cobweb anywhere in sight. At the right corner of the studio room, there, shielded by soiled blankets lay the body of the infamous Katz. His bony feet hung at least two feet past the end of the mattress, which seemed to be infested with flees. They were uncovered, showing a diaphanous and sinewy skin, much like a newborn’s. The man must have been at least seven-feet-tall, which is why his feet protruded from the sheets and the mattress. His head was faced toward the wall; Katz was either dead, near dead, or sleeping. From what Mitzi had gathered, remembering the words of his commander (“the aim was to get Katz in one piece – and if in one piece, perhaps even alive”), Katz was not in the best condition. Adding that to the quilted man’s experience with Katz, thing were not looking well.

Mitzi’s aim, then, was to gather the giant man up and whisk him away on the battered Mark III.

“Doctor,” he said to the pilgrim, “shall we begin?”

The pilgrim had already rehearsed in those few moments of witnessing the dire Katz, his last rights. But to make sure, he told Mitzi, “You should first relinquish the covers from his face. They may be smothering him.”

Mitzi cautiously walked towards the lump in the sheets. He detected movement, but the lights were so dim that his eyes played tricks on him. He protruded his hand over the body, then hesitated. What if he is dead? Would the wretched bugs have already gotten to him? What was he thinking – bugs didn’t exist in such a dark place. Fuck it…

He pulled back the sheets to reveal a sleeping Katz, serenely sleeping. It was clear that he was emaciated and probably anemic, hence the sinewy, pasty skin. He was stark naked, and on his whole body was only fuzzy hair, nothing like the hair of a man past puberty. He was pre-pubescent, he was juvenile, he reminded Mitzi of an overgrown toddler.   

CHAPTER TWO (15) Mitzi's dream continued...

I have tried to get him somehow back to civilization so that he can restore more normal values. But he is ill now, again gravely ill. I think it is in part due to the fact that NORML has abandoned him, I am sure of it.”

Mitzi had never before confronted a man like this before. Frankly, he was the most frightening thing he’d seen before. He was quite in awe of Katz, but so was Mitzi. Nut this was different: The quilted man could not see through to the misery that Katz was dispersing into this godless land. The man could only see Katz as a hero. This was all very, very scary. A young man like any in America, completely without the comprehension to feel, completely veiled by Katz’s apparent heroism. What a farce, but still, Mitzi was in hideous awe himself. He felt absurd for judging this ridiculous quilted man, but at he same time identified with him. He both loved and despised Katz; they both did.

Suddenly the scenery changed. The rubble had been cleared and around the cleared area was erected a fence of various odds and ends of re-barb, wire, telephone poles, etc. All of the assorted sharp stakes were sticking out from the cleared ground at different angles, and their shadows oddly were cast forward and backward; there was the fading light of station belonging to the quilted man, and from inside the motley fence was a dimming fluorescent light. The scene before Mitzi was horrifying enough, until he saw the heads.

Upon every other sharpened stake, there was jammed a head belonging to a native; or, rather, a head that used to belong to a native. Their bodies were nowhere to be found. As macabre as the whole sick vista before the crew was, none seemed exceedingly aghast. Dogbert and Virgil cowered as they had been since the battle, the Pilgrims seemed to clutch their books in the same way. The quilted man appeared enlivened by the thought of checking on Katz. The only other eyes were the vacant ones embedded in the shrinking heads of the natives, staring from atop their posts. The queerest thing – besides them being heads on a stake – was that all but one was facing inward towards Katz’s dwelling. As the quilted man opened to gate, Mitzi eyed the heads, suspicious of their meaning.

All of them, facing inward or outward, were smiling. Smiling! Their yellow and black teeth still decayed on their thrones, while their hair dangled below their ears in a nappy tangle. Some – the older ones – had skin that looked as if it were dehydrated leather, the more recently murdered still showed dried blood on the stake and around the chin. It was a macabre air that heavily flowed like magma through the makeshift courtyard, and Mitzi was singed incessantly not only by the magma, but by the smiling eyes of the decapitated natives.

Not a word was spoken as the wooden door was pried open.  

CHAPTER TWO (14) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi found the young man with energy an enigma: here he was in the middle of this horrible world with so much enthusiasm and vigor. His smile was constant showing a perfect smile in spite of the situation. There was something amiss in the man, though. He was too keen.

“You are in search of the greatest man I have ever known,” said the quilted man, “He has shown me the way to lead my life. Watch your step…” He hopped effortlessly over a large part of what seemed to be the remainder of a sidewalk, propped on an obtuse angle from the decaying sewer seemed below. The whole train followed behind. “We once spent a night encamped together under a large building which used to be a bank. It was a wretched night – we were backed up two against what musta been a hundred homeless men. Katz did somethin’ to piss ‘em off. Anyways, we were fending them off, and our senses were high – you know? – and I saw the man himself (Katz, that its) come right out of his shell. He had his AR-15 with him and that’s it, and I was lovin’ on this beautiful Desert Eagle Fifty-cal. We must of killed at least twelve of them, and it seemed like they retreate, but, you know, one can never be too sure, so we bunked out in the broken-down bank for the night. He enlarged this very organ that night,” he pointed to his temple and continued, “He told me of love, and death, and especially about business. ‘A man is nothing with out his business. You go to a dinner party, and what is the first thing someone asks you?’”

Mitzi found it ridiculous for someone to be talking about a dinner party is such an atrocious situation, but managed to answer nevertheless, “I dunno. What?”

“Well, they ask you, ‘what do you do?’ In other words, what is your business? How do you make money? I always tell them I’m a young man traveling the United States for some good, wholesome experience. I aim to travel the world when I get out of here. After he enlightened me I felt like I could do anything I wanted. But he went down so quickly with his affliction for weed. He doesn’t smoke it, you know? He just… collects it. He aims to sell it on his own when he gets back to the real world. Anyways, we got outta that bank as fast as we could the next morning, tripping over all of those dead bodies and stuff. My father, a priest for the Russian-Orthodox church in Memphis where I grew up, always told me that a man needs a proper burial, no matter how far from pious he is. But I wasn’t exactly listening to a man a thousand miles away at that moment, if you know what I mean. We just got our hides outta that situation and made a run back to this post; it was silly of us to try to even make a raid into the heart of District 11. I think of that man a lot out here… but anyways, back to the story: we went our separate ways after that. He went to his hub, I went to mine (which is were we met). Well that certainly wasn’t the last time I met him, no-sir-ee. WE crossed paths a couple times. Once I nursed the very Katz back, but I could see after that that he had lost himself of this earth. He was compelled only by the thought of weed, by the thought of selling it. And I knew it. I should have just let him die.”

“Then why did you nurse him back?” Asked Virgil.

            “He’d taught me so much. Man can go awry very quickly, but all it takes is a little bit of convincing to get him back on track. I thought that if I could get him healthy, I could get him sane again. But it obviously didn’t work out that way. He got farther and farther into this delirium. He would go out to the farthest part of our charted maps and find leauges of growers and raid their stores. But he’s not such a bad guy. You just can’t judge him as you would a normal person – he is so… so intense, so – well, he is indefineable really. I have just so much respect for him…”

ChAPTER TWO (13) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi found the young man with energy an enigma: here he was in the middle of this horrible world with so much enthusiasm and vigor. His smile was constant showing a perfect smile in spite of the situation. There was something amiss in the man, though. He was too keen.

“You are in search of the greatest man I have ever known,” said the quilted man, “He has shown me the way to lead my life. Watch your step…” He hopped effortlessly over a large part of what seemed to be the remainder of a sidewalk, propped on an obtuse angle from the decaying sewer seemed below. The whole train followed behind. “We once spent a night encamped together under a large building which used to be a bank. It was a wretched night – we were backed up two against what musta been a hundred homeless men. Katz did somethin’ to piss ‘em off. Anyways, we were fending them off, and our senses were high – you know? – and I saw the man himself (Katz, that its) come right out of his shell. He had his AR-15 with him and that’s it, and I was lovin’ on this beautiful Desert Eagle Fifty-cal. We must of killed at least twelve of them, and it seemed like they retreate, but, you know, one can never be too sure, so we bunked out in the broken-down bank for the night. He enlarged this very organ that night,” he pointed to his temple and continued, “He told me of love, and death, and especially about business. ‘A man is nothing with out his business. You go to a dinner party, and what is the first thing someone asks you?’”

Mitzi found it ridiculous for someone to be talking about a dinner party is such an atrocious situation, but managed to answer nevertheless, “I dunno. What?”

“Well, they ask you, ‘what do you do?’ In other words, what is your business? How do you make money? I always tell them I’m a young man traveling the United States for some good, wholesome experience. I aim to travel the world when I get out of here. After he enlightened me I felt like I could do anything I wanted. But he went down so quickly with his affliction for weed. He doesn’t smoke it, you know? He just… collects it. He aims to sell it on his own when he gets back to the real world. Anyways, we got outta that bank as fast as we could the next morning, tripping over all of those dead bodies and stuff. My father, a priest for the Russian-Orthodox church in Memphis where I grew up, always told me that a man needs a proper burial, no matter how far from pious he is. But I wasn’t exactly listening to a man a thousand miles away at that moment, if you know what I mean. We just got our hides outta that situation and made a run back to this post; it was silly of us to try to even make a raid into the heart of District 11. I think of that man a lot out here… but anyways, back to the story: we went our separate ways after that. He went to his hub, I went to mine (which is were we met).