Author: Carlton Mellick Iii
Date: 2012-01-02 11:44:22+00:00

Fist World

Jesus Christ finds the process of going to the bathroom exhilarating.

He didnt before his crucifixion, mind you, when going to the bathroom was far-far from pleasurable and toilet paper did not consist of soft-softness as it does today, if there was any toilet paper at all back then. Was there? No, I think they would just use shreds of vegetation, or their sleeve, or possibly the skin of lower class citizens. No, Jesus didnt enjoy it in those days one itty bit. And if the Jesus Christ didnt enjoy it, you could imagine how bad it was for all the non-messiahs. Or did Jesus perform a miracle when going to the bathroom? Maybe God would come down and clean his soiled bottom with heavenly cloth so that Jesus would not scrape himself on anything uncomfortable. Maybe this was why everyone during that era was so irritable besides Jesus and his followers. But who really knows? The authors of the bible didnt mention anything of the sort. Or did they? No, Im pretty sure theyd send you to the lions for taking interest in that sort of thing. Perversions were probably illegal. Does this mean that Jesus is a pervert? Well, it is quite strange how the son of God is fascinated by bathroom activities, but I dont want to call him a pervert.

Now that hes dead, Jesus can spy on you all he wants while you are unaware. It is not a sin to be a peeping tom when you are a ghost, so he does not think twice about it. However, there are some people (like me) who know all about his little game and are scared to go to the bathroom because of it.

I sense him in the bathroom with me right now, his raping eyes from behind or below me. I try to ignore him, stare-locked at the splinter-wood wall, my bare toes rubbing against the moist-smoothed surface of an apple core, covering my pubic hairs and gritty shank. I know hes around. The guy at the gas station told methe guy with the metal-wire beard and the six-inch nails for eyes. He works down there in his dust-croaked suit and talks all about how Jesus, the dead messiah, haunts my home.

Sometimes I will go down there for gas and he will not let me leave until I pet his dog that has mutated into a fish-like thing. He keeps it in a refrigerator that is on its back filled with green water, grit-slimy gravel on the bottom, and it smells a lot like sausage gravy. The fish/dog flaps thin tentacles that protrude from its belly, wiggling them throughout the thick liquid like they are keeping it afloat. It cannot bark anymore, but sometimes it will let out a growl, a bubbling of water and a deep rumble through the sides of the refrigerator. The gas station man is proud of his pet, admiring it with his twisting eyes and soggy grins. He brings my palm to its scaly back sometimes and rubs it along the globby hairs or some tentacles. I always cringe and pretend I am back home.

He tells me, “You know, Jesus Christ is staring at you from the bottom of the toilet water while you are sitting there, looking up at your feces as it creeps slowly out of you.”

I just nod and try not to smell his seaweed/anchovy breaths, or look directly into his pointy eyes. He says he can see things very keenly with his eyes. He can even see the ghosts that wander our world between dimensions, even Jesus ghost. He says Jesus has dark skin, bushy eyebrows, and a crooked nose. He says that he keeps to himself mostly, hardly ever seen walking with any of the other ghosts. “They dont seem interested in the messiah. Maybe they are disappointed that he is not as great as the bible says.”

I wipe myself and pull my pants up really quick. I stare into the toilet to see if his reflection is shimmering in the water there. Nothing. Not even a crucifix. I flush it away, click-swirling down. If he had been there, his spirit would have been pulled through millions of plastic pipes across the landscape and into a monster septic tank that lives over the gloom-bitter mountain. Hed have to walk all day and most of the night to get back here. He probably wouldnt even bother.

I know I wouldnt bother. Ive taken that hard blistering journey over the mountain, to the city of black machines that growl and sweat high into the cloud world, miles of motion, coughing churning, scream-steaming, a monster train that never departs. The walk is so long that your eyeballs puss over before you arrive, a greasy film that hazes you. Your pores bleed, your whole body shivers with weakness, and the thin windy air seems to sweep away strips of your skin.

Sometimes Ill go there to make sure the beasts are not broken down. Just making sure. I always shake my head once I get there, sit down, gasping, shaking my head. Its like checking to make sure the sky is still in the air. Such a long walk to prove myself an idiot. I usually contemplate putting my head into the teeth of one of those hungry beasts, allowing it to tear through my neck and unfold the skull into strings of red meat. But I never do it. The thought of meeting Jesus ghost after my death continuously alters my suicide plans.

I step out of the bathroom, hoping Jesus isnt stalking behind me, to the droopy frizzle-crinky room which is the rest of my house. It squeezes around me, creeps its closeness into the pit of my brain.

I leave. Dart out of the door to the front porch, and it gives a sigh as I sit into it, ooze into the log made rocking chair. A splinter bites my thigh, but I allow it. The relaxation is pleasing, decent. A bottle of watermelon juice goes straight to my lips as I dream of a beautiful truck driver and her slender-curvy flesh parts.

My eyes go into the landscape:

Bland fields stretching miles in the black-grass valley. They are beneath a pink-speckled quivering sky, which seems to hang a little too close above me, like I am finely printed words that it is trying to read.

The fields grow a single year-round crop: hands.

Human beings have evolved to a point where hands are like the tails of lizards, just a little jerk in the right nerve and they pop off at the wrist. Just like that. But unlike the tails of lizards, human hands do not grow back. Evolution is strange how it goes sometimes. One day a man will make a living as a professional boxer, and the next his hands are falling off from doing too many pullups. It is quite irritating, even dangerous at times. But you can get new hands for a small amount of money. They sell them at supermarkets everywhere in the bigcity, right between the creamed socks and pickled candles, and the supermarkets get them from hand farmers like me.

The truck driver comes every other Thursday and picks up a load. She always smiles at me when she comes with BIG green-painted lips, twirling locks of her crazy-grass hair.

“Theyre always in demand,” she says, but I hardly hear her. I am too busy picturing the two of us on a stroll in the fields, wrapped around each other without talk, or I think of awaking one night to find her in my bed, on top of me, channeling through my insides with her cherry eyeballs.

She doesnt talk to me about the bigcity, not even when I ask. I havent seen it in years and wish she would take me there with her, see what has become of it, but she never tells me. Im not sure it exists anymore.

Supposedly, there have been many changes. The man at the gas station says that beings from Saturn live among us now. He says they came in a ship resembling a dollar bill and now fill up ghettos along the west coast. I never talk to the gas station man. He tells me things, but I never tell him things. He is the only person for miles and I still dont tell him things. He tells me how the world has gone flat again, how people decided not to like Columbus anymore and so they cut the surface off the planet and flattened it out. It orbits the sun like a piece of paper these days, just beside the bald sphere. I am confused about which one we call Earth. When I dig, I am scared that I might go too far and create a BIG hole in the planet. I might even fall through and go tumbling forever.

I ask the truck driver if what the gas station man says is true and she smiles at me and blows bubbles with her raisin-flavored chewing gum. She is so exquisite with her looks, but she sometimes reminds me of an endless flight of stairs. Thats what the gas station man calls me: an endless flight of stairs.

I wish the truck driver was here with me right now. She always cheers me up with her smile and eyeballs. She told me she would come early this week, but she has yet to show. I hope I have the courage to ask her to eat dinner with me this time. I have been planning out what I will say and have cleaned my house too. Well, mostly. Maybe I will just wait until next week.

I open a book. It is BIG and has lots of words in it. I take a chewed pen to it and draw a square around a paragraph. I color it in, ripping the paper slightly, and put flowers around the sides. I draw the sun with a scraggy beard and ears. I sometimes try putting the truck driver, but I can never her draw her as beautiful as she really is. Actually, I cant even draw her to look human. The gas station man says that the ghosts dont like my drawings. They think my art looks childish and he makes me so mad that I run away from him and throw rocks at plants.

However, I can draw parts of the truck driver. Her hair especially. I swirl lines on the page to and it looks just like her wild hair, and I can almost see her eyes underneath those hairs winking at me.

Then I notice a breath hitting the back of my neck.

I pause.

I dont turn around, joints stiff. Jesus Christ must be behind me. Hes probably trying to look down my shirt to see my chest hairs.

I ignore him and continue with drawing. Cautiously, nerves twitching in my collar bone, I adjust my shirt flat to blind him from my torso skin. Immediately, I sense his disappointment in the air.

Looking to the distant mountain that blocks the machine world from visibility, I become inspired. I decide to draw it next to the truck drivers hair on the bundle of words, smiling and sipping watermelon juice as I go, thinking about drawing the machines on the next page.

“The machines run the world,” the gas station man says.

He told me that they control the weather and the temperature of the planet. He also said that they control gravity and if the machines ever break down, we will float off the planet into space. The world would end if we didnt have them. Sometimes I get so worried about the machines breaking down that I cant sleep at night. I have to go check up on them. Take that long walk across the plain to see if they are okay.

I shriek as a breeze flushes through my pant leg, quickly slapping it shut. It must have been Jesus trying to feel up my leg. Jerk-standing, dropping my book to the dirt, I go into the fields to pace.

The man at the gas station says that sometimes Jesus is physically attracted to men, but is not actually gay. He will kiss you on the lips, but not in a sexual manner. Jesus is above sex. Or is Jesus sexually confused? I cover my mouth, just in case. I couldnt imagine having the saviors tongue slip into my lips when I am unaware.

I stomp my bare feet through rows of hands growing from the soil. The hands are almost fully ripe now. They are tight fists, raised in pride or maybe anger, thousands of them roaring, a crowd to a tyrant. Stampering the field, not turning around to my ugliness-home, knowing Jesus Christ is behind me.

The sky sinks lower, just a short distance from my head. It is trying to crush me, suffocate me. The man at the gas station says that the sky used to be a giant ocean, but the water got stretched out for miles-miles wide/high until it became a gas. He also says that someday it will compress back into an ocean and drown us all. I look up a lot these days.

I kick a growing fist off of its roots, then stomp it into the soil until I separate some fingers with my heel. My lungs break down to harsh whispers. I pause. My eyes go forward, imagining Jesus Christ masturbating with one of the hands in front of me, probably fantasizing my image as he does it. My throat goes sick, tendons stretching the neck skin.

I run away. Out of the field, down the road that knows the gas station and the highway. I dont go quickly, my bare feet slicing against the sharp gravel, blood trickling, a bruise under a toenail.

Rocks crash-scurry behind me, sounding as if coming to hit me. I think Jesus is throwing them, angered that I am leaving him. I dont turn around, moving faster despite the feet suffering. The noises continue, clinking rocks against one another behind me. I keep moving until the noise fades, Jesus giving up.

Ten minutes.

I find myself at the gas station and freeze.

Look back.

My house has disappeared from my sight, only a line of field can be seen from this distance. I turn to the gas station, then back to my house. Which is the lesser of two evils? The perverted ghost of Christ or the man with the mutated dog? I choose the gas station man, hiking up to his tiny shack at the highway.

All along the sides of the road, I see white-painted animals frozen-posed at random. The gas station man enjoys capturing small animals and spray painting them until they go hard, then he places them around the outside of his house like lawn ornaments. They can be found all over the highway: rabbits, lizards, birds. It is his hobby. He is a very decorative man.

I approach him from behind as he empties gasoline onto the pavement and highway, his red flannel shirt flickering in the shatter-breeze. My sight goes to the street, down the wavy worm to the mountains, huge blues bulging from thunderclouds. The sky seems to be popping in places, sizzling, churkling, like it has a short circuit somewhere.

The gas station man hears me coming. “I havent seen you in awhile,” he says to me.

“Ive been busy,” I say, staring at the gas splashing on the street, but my voice was mumbled and he probably didnt hear me.

“Doing what? Watching the fists grow around you?”

I nod and look at the horizon that meets the road. It is purple and marble-swirly, whispering.

“Is Jesus behind me?” I ask, soft-trembling.

He turns to me with his needle eye-spins, clicking sounds, and looks over my shoulder, piercing into the other world. Then he goes back to his work.

“No,” he answers. “Theres no one behind you.” He bites at a bumblebee circle-flying the gas stream. “Is Jesus bothering you?”

“The whole world is bothering me.” My voice surprisingly loud.

“You know what I do when something is bothering me?” he asks.

I look at the dirt under my fingernails.

“Thats right,” he said. “I get rid of it.”

A breeze scurry-swarms under my skin, nerves crawling, ticking.

“See,” says the gas station man, “this highways been giving me trouble lately. No one ever drives it anymore. Im gettin put out of business.” He spits an oil-goo at my feet. “So Ive decided to burn it down.”

I nod at him, wandering my eyes across the terrain. I see a truck parked off the side of the road by the gas station. The truck drivers truck, muddy with a flat tire, black paint on the side with crude designs. But she is nowhere to be found.

“Where is she?” I ask the gas station man.

“Who?”

I clear my throat and speak louder, “The truck driver. Where is she?”

“Her truck broke down,” the gas station man says with sincerity, shaking his head.

“Where is she?”

The gas station mans gas stream dies away, so he takes a hose from the next pump and continues.

“Shes an interesting girl, isnt she?” he says.

I glance at the blood on my toes.

“Green hair, green lips, blood-red eyes.” The gas station man licks his lips within wiry beard hair.

Pressure builds on my eyeballs, fists clenching.

“Blood red eyes,” he says, smiling at me and nodding his head. “Bloody, blood red.”

He laughs and sprays the gas like a sprinkler.

“What have you done with her?” I crack-scream at him.

The gas station man stares deep at me.

I say, Where is she?

Then he jumps, pointing over my shoulder and yelling, “Look, Jesus is behind you!”

I jerk around to see nothing, just open landscape and white animals.

“Hes got his hand in your pants!” he screams at me.

“Quick, stop him!”

I throw my fists about, lunging away in squeals.

“Hes under your shirt! Get him out of there!”

I run, fleeing the ghost. The gas station man is laughing at me as I go. His laugh scrapes the top of the mountain, screeching, driving blood to swell my brain.

Charging into his home, my feet too torn and raw to make it all the way to my own house. I slam the door shut and put my weight against it so that the Jesus ghost will not come inside.

The gas station man continues screeching his laughs from the highway. Through the window, I peek at him walking down the median, emptying a bucket of gas over his shoulders in the distance.

My standing grows tired so I slide down the crumbly door, turning to a tiny room without furniture. It is all white, rough white. A single blanket is on the wood floor in the corner, his bed, and there is a cage of rabbits, prairie dogs, turtles that are ready for spray painting. Under my black toes: wetness. I find a trickle-trail of blood there which leads across the room and disappears underneath a door.

I get to my sour feet—the gas station mans wild laugh persisting—step across the room to the door and open. Another blank white room. I didnt expect the gas station mans home to be so bland.

The blood is sprinkled to another room, also empty, and ends at a manhole in the center of the wood floor. I go to the rim and peer down. Inside of the hole: electric dark. Sparks twitching within. I descend to a crowd of television sets, no, computer screens, all around me. Their faces squeeze me in the shivering black, and as I look upon them, they show me familiar sights. I gasp, nearly fall to the ground.

Fists.

I see thousands of fists. My fists. Each computer screen shows a different angle of my field … and my porch, my house, inside my house.

I hold my breath inside of me, trying to calm. There have been little cameras hiding around my property this whole time, hiding within fists and within cracks of wood. Spying, keeping an eye on me.

From across the darkness, a splash of electricity lights the corner, sparks popping, blistering. Then a womans cry bursting at me. It whines for a moment, then slides away.

I step closer, my eyes focusing into the dimness. A figure stands there, squirming, tied up maybe.

“What has he been doing to you?” I say.

It cries again, her voice gurgling, trying to form words.

When I step closer, I recognize a large sheet of glass separates us. A window.

“Ill get you out,” I tell her, grabbing a computer and spinning it around to shine light on the glass, and she brightens.

The truck driver is naked in front of me, white skin swollen behind the glass, floating. She is in water, submerged within a tank of water. Her green hair waving in the thick liquid, green lips open to me. All of her is green now, tinted skin, turning scale-slimy. Tentacles are growing from her stomach and breasts, snaking through the fluid, just like the gas station mans dog. She is attached at the belly to a large cord, connected to a black machine beside her water tank.

A jolt of electricity hits her again, sparks flame-showering from the machine. She erupts from the water gargle-splashing, squawking at the pain, her naked body rubbing against the glass. Our eyes meet, her cherry-red eyes glowing into mine as she gasps for air, but nothing enters her lungs.

She fades down into the liquid, still gleaming into my eyes. Gills open up on her neck to breathe the waters air. Staring, just staring at me. Then she closes her eyes and feigns sleep. The tentacles flutter her until she turns around to expose a thin lump growing down her back, preparing to be a large ugly fin. My face contorts with disgust.

I explode from the house and into the red-smoky landscape. The highway is on fire. From horizon to horizon, the long highway has been set ablaze, demons dancing across the wind. I yell at it, rage at it, but it overpowers me, squeezes me into a ball.

I go to the gas station mans tool shed, fighting off the color red, screaming. I rip open the door and find a pickax under a wheelbarrow, then tear it out of the mess.

My hand falls off.

It pops off at the wrist as the pickax catches on a hose, and now it twitches spidery on the ground. I grab the fallen member with the surviving hand and toss it at the fire-highway, screaming redness, pounding my forehead into the metal shed.

I look for the gas station man, but I am alone. My second hand carefully pulls the pickax from the hose-knots and rests it on my shoulder, and I scan the landscape for him, screaming his name, craving to put him in a tank of electric water until he turns into a fish.

The demons within the wind open tar-mouths at me, moaning for escape as if prisoners within the smoke. My mind is chaotic, searching for the gas station man with sharp jerks of my vision.

There he is:

A bundle of blackness within the flames, burning like a tire. I run up to him, swinging the pickax inside the flames to get at him, but I cannot reach. The smoke burns my eyes closed and forces me back.

“Why?” I yell at the gas station man, tear-frustrated that I cannot hurt him. “Why, why, why?”

And my anger sends me charging away from the highway. I take the road back to my house, the flames following on my left, eating up the crop, running through the crowd of fists raised in my direction. As the fire reaches them, the fists open up to fry and melt. I lace boots onto my swollen feet and fit myself up for a new hand, a strong one that will hold.

The pickax in both of my fists and flames churkle-dancing the horizons, I turn away from the fields and the gas station, still screaming with rage but the screams have grown deeper like growls. And I start the long hike over the mountain. To the land of helpless black machines … to get rid of whats been bothering me.