TWO: MORNING IN CHIMERICA

My muscles groaned, my pores wept, and my clothes were stuck to my body with a slicker of sweat as I sat bolt upright on my ratty mattress, biting back a scream. So far, so good. But something felt amiss just the same. I couldn’t say what it was – the vein in my forehead kept beating the break from “Funky Drummer” as stalwartly as usual, my nostrils felt like the inside of a kiln like every other morning, and the piece of sandpaper at the base of my mouth was no worse than medium grain. So what was wrong?

I rewound my mental DVR and skipped through the events of the previous evening. Through the pixilation and the occasional picture freeze, I picked out selected highlights: a post-chapter celebration with several of my closest virtual friends at Byte Me, Burntumberland’s most-popular Internet watering hole… one, two, possibly four too many Hipster Douchebags (I guess they weren’t as weak as expected), then ending the evening with a disgusting jumbo plate of Godwin’s Slaw, which never sits well with me… meeting up with that psychotic psychic and watching him permanently damage all the exhibits in the Museum of Cutlery without entering the building… stumbling into that after-hours video shoot and spending two hours watching women in lingerie faking tearful epiphanies, getting away just before the authorities burst in and arrested everyone in sight on an emotional pornography charge… three-am mocktails at Chagrin… a frustrating round of mental masturbation, with coherent ideas stubbornly refusing to come… fashioning a bong out of hemp… hooking up my bootleg satellite dish and squinting at the late-late-night British extreme-comedy block on BBC America Canada, two episodes a piece of There’s a Bleeding Pouf in My Sodding Flat! and Are You Being Severed?... then, somewhere in there, sleep. I pawed blindly at the nightstand, grabbed my dream journal and tried to make out my somnambulant scrawlings:

A dark force rises from the east, asks directions, buys some of my macramé. A rough beast slouches towards Jerusalem, is mocked for his bad posture. In 28 days, the skies will rain blood, then will become partly-scabby for the holiday weekend. The point of it all is…

Can’t read the last word. The enigma of poor penmanship. I groaned and sat up, wiping the blear from my eyes and let my lungs go through their morning spasm. And still something nagged at the base of my brain. I couldn’t understand – as far as I could tell, last night was just like any other night, I had my regular apocalyptic dream visions, and I awoke feeling like the rug in a Deadhead’s microbus the way I’m supposed to. I felt disappointment, shame, self-loathing, twinges of nostalgia for times, people and places I couldn’t bear to be around when they were an ongoing concern. I was certain of nothing but ambivalence, had faith in nothing but agnosticism. Contempt, squashed rage, the omnipresent low-grade anxiety like a low-volume feedback loop, that tinnitus of the soul… all present and accounted for. So what was it?

I grabbed the half-empty bottle of Toothless Dan’s 96-Hour Energy Beverage, snorted the rim, and ruminated. To what did I owe this strange overlay of discomfort? Could it be the initial flash of that new, hot pandemic all the kids are into these days? (Don’t you just love the way they’re all cutting their hair and altering their wardrobes to show off the left halves of their bodies drooping and rotting away?) No, I’ve always been immune to trends. I looked to my stuffed Chill Wills doll (the first installment of my L’il Grizzled collection I ordered in a besotted moment of impulsiveness from QVC one late night – I made a mental note to check the PO box to see if my Dub Taylor’s come in yet) for guidance and advice – none forthcoming. I hand-combed my hair (I can’t say I’m proud of my old crypt-robbing days, but damned if that thing isn’t perfect for my coif), threw a nervous sidelong glance at the mirror (never make eye contact, never make eye contact), padded to the cupboard and began to forage for what little sustenance I had at hand.

Sugar-Crusted Ramen Squares? Ahh, no milk or picante beef flavor packets left – had to pass. Chef Uschi’s Toaster Pasties? No toaster, and besides, too much estrogen. I could always break down and break into that vintage package of gourmet bomb shelter rations I picked up at the consignment store that one time – the market is much worse for antique foodstuffs than I anticipated at the time, and I’m sure that Duck and Cover l’Orange is still edible…

My cell phone went off – it was the custom Xenakis ringtone and not the usual NKOTB/Borbetomagus mashup, so I knew it had to be important. I flipped it open.

“Moooooo. KLOY plays the hits.”

“This is Ferblungit. Look, I know you’ve got to fill space, but it’s getting tedious. Go and open your goddamned curtains and get on with it.”

Ah. So I’m being monitored. But that couldn’t explain it – I’m many things, but paranoid isn’t one of them. Hell, I volunteered to have my phones tapped under the Patriot Act just so I wouldn’t feel so lonely. Best to do what he says, I expect. I pulled the curtain (actually an old Gadsden flag with the first-draft insignia OW! YOU STEPPED ON ME!) aside, looked through the window (actually a woven tapestry of old crack-pipe screens, professionally deresined), winced at the morning sun (which winced back), and slowly focused on the scene in front of me.

Collapsed wrecks of buildings, with feral street urchins peeking out, mole-like, from behind the shattered windows. Stripped-down, overturned, thrice-baked cars. Scorched earth as far as the eye can see. The far-off sounds of crazed vandals, whooping and shrieking. Desolation, as if God himself had laid his thumb down upon this corner of his creation and pushed. Perhaps, from a sufficient height, we could see his thumbprint and finally get a positive ID, but nothing was taking wing today. It looked as if all the life had been violently suctioned from the area, leaving only the aftermath of an unthinkable cataclysm.

I shivered and laid my head mournfully upon the window. (There’ll be a grid pattern on my forehead now, I thought dimly – must make a point of avoiding those crazed crossword-puzzle freaks today.) “It’s not fair, dammit, it’s just not fair,” I moaned. Here I was – Port Winestain, Washington. No matter how hard I tried to escape, I kept getting pulled back. And no matter how hard I strove to avoid it, I knew what had to be done.

It was nine am. Time to go to work.

(11/3/09 9:00 AM)