Chicken Monkey

Chicken Monkey

By: Evolvist

Sometimes even the smell of fish in the desert is enough to bring you around again.
         Dean rested his head on the Cadillac’s steering wheel and listened carefully. Sure, he heard Joe and Cleveland babbling like two fucking monkeys out by the trunk. He even heard the low desert wind buffeting the car gently, gently…steady as she goes Captain. However, above everything else, he heard that damned song by the Byrds, bouncing like the Energizer Bunny around the inside of his skull…
         (…going and going and going…)
         …Not “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but that other one—the one called “So You Want To Be A Rock and Roll Star.” Yeah, that was the name of it! And not the song about the seasons, either…
         (…turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn…)
         …No, that song was cool. The Byrds really had their shit together when they wrote that number. But, that song about being a Rock and Roll star…well, that was a horse of a different color; that song was way too close to the kill zone for Dean. If you ever had a song stuck in your head—plaguing you all day long—then multiply that by the distance to Pluto, then you would know what it is like to be inside Dean’s mind. The song was a constant loop: gyrating like the hips of The King, pulsating like the bass of Bootsy Collins, and nagging like a good slice of Mick Jagger.
         Because, the simple fact of the matter was, Dean Harvard no longer wanted to be a rock and roll star. Not in a magazine. Not in a limousine. And definitely not in the middle of the fucking desert.
         “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am.”
         And, now there was this sorry fiasco with Cleveland and Joe—arguing like debate team captains outside the car, and making Dean’s head throb even louder (right below the jingle jangle harmonies of Rodger McGuinn and David Crosby).
         Dean suspected the worse from Joe and Cleveland, anyway. That much was true. I mean, how much worse could it actually get? Not only was Dean receiving interstellar hippie transmissions, but he was also losing too much sleep—smoking three packs a day, cola and coffee, eyes like two piss holes in the snow; and still there was Edgar, with his All-American quarterback grin—his own special way of sticking to your synapses and making them fire off in Edgar Luck’s patented order. But, Edgar was not on this trip to the desert, was he? No…not on this trip at all—only tripping Dean’s memory circuits by remote control.
         (…going and going and going…)
         Edgar was nowhere near Nevada.
         And still, Dean couldn’t sleep.
         These days Dean lay awake at night thinking about burning families trapped in their homes. (This is a literal type of burning—and it disturbed him quite a bit.) He could imagine their smoke clogged faces belching soot, their frantic fingers clawing at the walls revealing the sheetrock beneath the paper, the man of the house trying to pull those damned burglar-bars out of the windows. They are terrified. And they are about to die. Children, infants, Ma and Pa, the grandmother that shits in a diaper, all about to peter out by means of incineration. Incredibly hot!
         This is what rock stars, who no longer want to be rock stars, think about when they are not being rock stars.
         First, the unfortunate families will breath in enough noxious fumes to slow them down to a stupor. Cyanide gas, resulting from burning plastics, and those cheap Taiwanese stereo combo units, will mix with carbon monoxide to produce a concoction that will not only sear their nose hairs, but will bond with the blood’s hemoglobin, as well. The net result is asphyxiation. First, the children will drop off—as if they are narcoleptics—then the frailer adults might fall to the floor and convulse. Before the tears can evaporate off the faces of Mother and Father, they will have witnessed their loved ones pass out; Mother drops to her knees and cradles the babies—damage to the heart, and the damage to the lungs. Then, Mother and Father will bite the bullet.
         (Did I say, “bullet?”—Well, that’s the way Edgar would have phrased it, anyway.)
         Next, is the scorching: The burning; wherever there is fire there is a realignment off atoms; matter is never destroyed, it only changes form: Water to ice, stone to sand, flesh to carbon; cracked and black.
         It is fortunate that the whole family is either dead or dying from smoke inhalation, because it does not take long to cook a body down to its basic constituents. If you could witness the blisters exploding on the surface of the skin, and smell the fat liquefying, turning into creamed corn on what’s left of the carpet, you would never look at your family barbeques the same. Never. Because every member of the roasted family is now engulfed in flames. This is where the muscles constrict and draw up in knots because of the heat—turning heads back, lips into sinister grins, and everybody folds into fetal position. Ready? 1, 2, 3—Fold!
         When the coroner arrives at the scene, he will tag every corpse according to size. There are no males or females, babies or grandmothers, because the only ways by which to identify them are through their dental records. So, keep your teeth clean; but please remember to never toss your oral records (no matter how ashamed you might be of your latest root canal). Everything is so strange, and Dean never thought that this could happen in his fucked up brain-hotel.
         But, shortly before the sun comes cracking through the motel room’s window—in whatever rat’s nest Dean might be staying in for the night—Dean falls asleep; and there is Edgar waiting for him: Sitting on a chard timber, reclining by a skeleton of an old burnt out house—one tear running down Edgar’s face and a half melted child’s doll, trembling in one hand. Edgar turns his head and looks up at Dean, speaking.
         Dean can never hear what Edgar is saying, but he doesn’t have to; for Dean has heard these words a million times. No, a trillion times! And that is when Dean wakes up from the sleep that is not sleep, and realizes that it is time to hit the road again. Another day. Another week. Another fuckin’ millennium.
         Nobody knows but Joe and Cleveland where Dean is—not his manager, not his record company, not his mother and father, or his silly-ass press agent. Nobody. Dean left his home in Houston one day, bought a brand new Cadillac, and then got the fuck out of Dodge as fast as his heart could move him. Everybody wave bye. Dean doesn’t even know why he picked up Cleveland and Joe on his way out—but he did. Now (God help us all) he is starting to regret every damned bit of his stupid need for companionship. Furthermore, if whatever is in the Cadillac’s trunk turns out to be Dean’s newest worse nightmare—if Dean’s suspicions are correct—he is gonna leave both Cleveland and Joe in the middle of Nevada’s hottest spot; who cares if they crisp up and blow away in the wind? He thinks he should just go ahead and kick Cleveland’s ass in the process—maybe (it might not cure his Sleep Deficit Syndrome, but it sure as hell might make him feel a whole lot better).
         And that is when Dean’s sense of smell punched in:
         Fish in the desert.
         As if he were pushing a stone pillar with the side of his head—an effort that took way too much energy for such a simple task—Dean rolled his cheek on the Cadillac’s steering wheel and gazed into the passenger’s seat.
         Fucking Cleveland, Dean thought. “Follow your nose; it always knows!”
         In the passenger’s seat, baking on the black leather upholstery, was the source of the fishy smell that stopped the dead hippie band from rolling around upstairs. It was Cleveland’s half-eaten fish sandwich from Burger King, perfectly content with merely sunbathing and letting Dean know that it was time to wake the fuck up and smell the goddamn tuna fish (or whatever kind of fish they put in those things. For all Dean knew, it could have been shark meat; because at that point in time it was really biting Dean’s lily white ass).
         Don’t look now; here comes trouble!
         Sitting upright, Dean looked over his shoulder where he could see Joe and Cleveland through the back glass of the Cadillac. They were still milling around by the trunk, looking God-awful miserable, if the truth be known. It must have been at least 115 degrees outside—although Dean had no idea that it was probably ten degrees hotter, cloistered up in the car.
         “Fuck!” Dean reached under the seat and grabbed the crowbar that he had placed there. He jerked the Cadillac’s door opened—pissed off as all hell—and a great tidal wave of sun and energy engulfed his body as he stepped out onto the desert hardpan.
         Cleveland looked up and took a step back when he saw Dean bolt out of the car.
         Nobody noticed the look on Dean’s face except for Cleveland (Joe was looking down at his feet, making crop circles in the sand), but Dean looked the way jackals appear when the are making whoopee: Damn mean and Darn happy to be that way!
         If Cleveland’s head would have been a mirror, even Dean would have stopped clean in his sneakers and thought about make a dash for it. However, as it was, Cleveland was the deer stuck in the proverbial headlights; Cleveland had the saucer eyes, which somehow lent Dean some sick satisfaction.
         Listen as the king holds court:
         “OK assholes,” Dean said, “Joe? Cleveland? I’m getting sick and fucking tired—”
         “—Wait a minute, Dean,” Cleveland spoke up, looking anxious as hell; he had his hands out in front of him like a school crossing-guard, “I…I mean, I don’t know what Joe told you man, but like I said before, it’s a goddamn lie! Dean, ya gotta believe me Dean! This is the truth, man!”
          “Joe?” Dean barked.
         Joe didn’t look up from his feet, but he mumbled something under his breath.
         “What was that, Joe?”—Dean cocked his head like the RCA Victor dog.
         “Dean, just look in the trunk, OK?”
         “OK! I will look in the fuckin trunk! And if what Joe says is true I promise you, Cleveland, that I will rack your fuckin brains with this.” He held the crowbar up like the statue of liberty.
         “No, Dean! Wait , man!” Cleveland came a little closer (but not close enough for Dean to make a rowboat out of his melon). “Just wait a sec, OK?”
         Dean paused:
         “OK? Speak the fuck up!”
         Maybe Dean was waiting for a confession. Maybe. Dean didn’t know. They were standing out in the middle of a friggin’ desert, eerily like the flaming family; but the difference was, their burning home was a world on fire—something that takes a lot more yanking to get free of than burglar-bars.
         Two nights before, all three of them stayed at the LazyShade Motel, just off of route 30. The LazyShade Motel was about as close as one could get to the armpit of overnight lodging facilities: a few blood spots on the carpet (what carpet there was), cum streaks on the bed, and the bathroom smelt like feet-cheese, or worse.
         Cleveland really got a kick out of the Groove-O-Matic vibrating bed.
         And, shortly after 3:00 A.M, Joe woke up with the feeling of uncertainty: uncertain of where he was, or what the hell he was doing. Do you know what’s going on?
         To Joe, his legs felt like two limp sausages; his penis hard, yet there was nothing at all to be aroused by (it was what all the kiddies like to call a “pee-hard,” nothing more.) What’s more, the sudden urge to get out of that scabby room felt so appealing and very necessary. If he could only get his legs together he might be able to actually launch himself out of the bed.
         Meet Joe Asian:
         Dean’s whole “grand adventure” trip still held out a bit of charm for Joe. All the way from Texas to San Francisco, the three of them had traveled; and now they were headed to the East coast (not like they had never been there before—all three of them had probably been there too damn much). Dean also called the journey “therapy,” but Joe wasn’t needing any of Dean’s psychobabble rot at the moment. The fact is, Joe was merely turned on by playing Jack Kerouac…and getting as far away from Cindy as he possibly could.
         Meet Joe Asian:
         Nobody ever thought Joe would ever marry. Joe’s personality was so withdrawn, if the truth be known, that if they had made up a category in his High School yearbook: Most Likely To Hang Himself, Joe would have been the number one candidate. But that does not mean that Joe was suicidal. No. Far from suicidal. It’s just that some people give off an I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass attitude so well, that people are almost forced to draw hasty conclusions like that. Joe always cared; however, in his humble opinion his body was only a life support system for his brain—nothing more. That meant that Joe was quiet; he rarely smiled, seldom spoke, but he played the guitar so well that before he turned 18 he had already recorded an album with Phil Collins.
         So, when Joe married Cindy, everyone was shocked.
         When Joe and Cindy had a baby girl, Lynda, then everyone was hammered and nailed to the floor. For most people it was like double chocolate icing—it tasted good; nevertheless, it was sensory overload. (And everybody loves a good mystery.)
         Nevertheless, true to Joe’s sullen nature, he had to get the fuck away. Cindy left her tampons in the bathroom’s wastebasket. Cindy left the spigot up on the bottle of dishwashing soap (not that she ever washed the dishes). Cindy left the mustard jar open on the kitchen counter. And, heaven forbid, Cindy actually used the goddamn ashtray in the Volvo! In other words, nothing pissed Joe off more than untidiness. Cindy wasn’t messy, but in Joe’s mind anything but a mopped and scrubbed world was sanitarily blasphemous. You only stacked socks two-deep in the sock drawer. Never less than 96% fat in his burger meat, and never, never, throw your clothes on the bed.
         But, even with all of Joe’s anal and constipated fancies, nevertheless, he was a pretty good guy; extremely comical, if you chose to view it that way. And, of course, Joe would never dream of leaving Cindy. It’s just that he sometimes felt that he had to get away from her world of empty ketchup bottles left in the frig, and toenail clippings forgotten in the tub. Even locking himself up in is basement studio was not good enough.
         So, when Dean called up Joe to take the trip, it didn’t take him long to make up his mind, and strike at the bait.
         However, Joe didn’t know that Cleveland’s ass would be piled up in the car with Dean when they came to pick him up.
         But didn’t it all make sense in a Dean Harvard way? Didn’t it make sense that there was three of them—not two, and not four, but three guys about to take a trip to God knows where. Pack your bags—it’s gonna be a re-run. 1983, wasn’t it? Doesn’t matter. That was Edgar and Dean’s trip (and some kid named Hamil, or Jamel, or something like that). But, no, Joe was never on that trip. Right now Joe was in Nevada, and Joe was jonesin’ for a cigarette.
         Meet Joe Asian:
         Outside the Lazy Shade, the night was lit up by a sick green halo emanating from an almost wasted neon sign. Evidently the good proprietors of the Lazy Shade considered vertigo a proper perk for staying at their establishment. Compliments of the house. Joe shivered in the cool Nevada night, cupping his naked biceps with his crossed arms, and wondering whether the Lazy Shade marquee would make up its damned mind and just stick to one subject. Blink, blink…fzzzzzzzz…blink—the sign showed Vacant, then No Vacancy, then back again every few seconds.
         An extra pack of smokes would be in the glove box of the Cadillac. Joe didn’t light up very often, but he figured that he needed something to clear his head, and maybe a good ol’ coffin nail might do the trick.
         His bare feet felt like two Eskimo Pies on the gravely parking lot, for the ground was also cold (it didn’t take long after dark for everything to change alien and chilled in the desert. It was like two worlds in one—two for the price of one). And every other step, Joe made little anguished hops when a tiny jagged rock bit at his foot, causing him to curse.
         Joe pulled the keys out of his jean pocket and opened the Cadillac’s door; he was the last to drive the car. Nope. No cigarettes in the glove box. He felt in the floorboard, blindly, only to feel the stickiness of a spilt soft drink and a small colony of pebbles attached to its residue. So much for that, as well.
         The trunk? Maybe. All of them kept a bunch of their shit in the trunk, perhaps Cleveland had left a carton in there or something.
         Standing at the rear of the car, Joe all of a sudden caught a good whiff of ozone coming from the east. It made his spine feel a little bit like Bill Cosby’s Jell-O; and then in the distance a razor thin knife of lightning sliced through the sky, inaudible but there, nonetheless.
         He waited for the boom that never came, lost in some sort of silly thought like what would happen if he was struck by lightning? Would they only find his blue jeans and the car keys in the morning? What would they tell his wife? And, how about his baby daughter? Joe kind of smiled his best Billy Idol smile at that one (at least he looked about as much like Billy Idol as an Asian possibly could), because of course they would not tell his daughter shit—she was way too young, and Joe was way too stupid for thinking such crazy thought about getting struck by lighting that didn’t make a sound.
         Just open the trunk and get some smokes, for Christ’s sake!
         Flash! Talk about delayed reaction: Another small streak of electric-sky, but this time accompanied by an economy-sized peal of thunder. And just as the trunk lid was coming open, Joe jumped, and hit his head on the lid, almost falling face down into what would end up changing all of their lives forever—Dean, Cleveland…all of them.
         Forever.
         Needless to say, what Joe saw in the trunk cut off his engine for the whole day to follow. It was not until the second day that Joe finally spoke up and told Dean what he had witnessed under the green neon glow.
         Dean was hearing rock and roll stars, Joe was seeing lightning, and Cleveland was wondering why they were now traveling without the radio on, even at a whisper.
         For the first fifty or so miles after Joe told Dean about what was in the trunk, Dean was looking for the right spot to pull the car over and confront Cleveland about the whole thing. The next fifty miles were worse: Dean was battling the Byrds for a space in his skull. And by the time they hit the most desolate place Dean could think of, he had realized that there was no “perfect” spot to pull over, moreover, rock and roll was here to stay.
         Dean pushed the steering wheel hard right—kicking up a huge cloud of dust in their wake—and the car slammed to a halt on a little desert trail, a few yards away from a newly painted Holiday Inn sign.
         “Fuck, Dean! What the hell’s wrong with you!” Cleveland bellowed.
         You could only hear a deep sigh from Joe, but all of their heads were on a swivel—shaken up like warm cans of Schlitz.
         “What the hell’s wrong with him, Joe?” Cleveland said again, with his best mentally ill voice.
         But, Dean could not contain himself any longer; he grabbed Cleveland by his tee shirt and pulled him close with a tight jerk. “You,” Dean growled at Cleveland, “and you,” Dean pointed towards Joe, “get the fuck out of the car right now!”
         Cleveland was about to bitch about something, but, “NO…don’t say a fucking thing, Cleveland! Just get the hell out of the GODDAMN CAR!”

I just want to touch the dream before I wake up


....Never to be continued