Climbing Up The Walls - Radiohead
Sixty-one kilometers later--outside the southeast border of Metro City, in some pit the signs called Terre Haute--the car coasted to a full stop. Decker sat in the driver seat cyclically breathing in and out, caressing the steering wheel with his fingers. He snapped into a vice grip and jerked himself violently back and forth in the seat. It boiled up into a throat splitting F-Bomb from the pit of Decker’s fragmented hope, punctuated by car horn exclamation points.
Hunched over, tired, suspecting he actually died back in the wreck and was now in some sort of living hell, Decker gathered his things. Sol was high in the sky and only going to get higher. Decker expected Metro City autumns to be colder. With a frustrated slam of the door, Decker left the radio playing. It’d be the last song he was going to hear for a while. With the smell of a foreign man with the loneliest of feelings, Decker started walking.
nothing
Thumb cocked into the highway and Sol at the back of his head. Decker’s first, real, attempt at hitchhiking was going nowhere slow on an Unnamed Road.
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers
It didn’t register at first. Jacket off and in the pocket bag, bottle of water from “The REAL Last Gas Station In Texas” 11/16ths empty, sun addled brain, maybe a tab of MeX tossed in for good measure; Decker thought he was hearing things. But no, there really was a Pontiac Fiero cruising through the wastes with the radio blasting “And I would walk 500 miles.” If Decker thought he wanted to commit ritualistic suicide on the WolfPack™, now was even more enticing. He stuck his thumb out regardless.
The Fiero stopped in a cloud of dust. Decker leaned on the passenger side and peeked inside the window crack. The driver was an apple cheeked Metro City guy in an ancient car that barely fit him. He wore a shirt with some lumpy faced brown furred creature named ALF and had a metal pipe in the shape of a sandwich in one hand. He exhaled a blast of smoke out the window, “Hey der. What brings a gent like you out to the wastes?”
Decker’s throat stuck to itself, “Heading east, Trying to get to Ocean City.”
“You got a ways there, friend,” ALF took a cosmic toke.
“Where you headed?”
“The happiest place on Earth, my good man.”
“Dude, D-Land went rogue and holed itself off. I don’t know how much history they teach in these parts, but the world kinda went to pot when the Ice Shelf fell.”
“No, guy. The Clean Sheets Hotel.”
Decker didn’t bother to waste time navel gazing on someplace that sounded legit, “Sounds like my kind of place.” Decker tried the door handle.
“Oh, skag, sorry,” The driver reached over the passenger seat and popped the lock. Decker slid into his seat. The Midwestern goober extended a hand the size of a catchers mitt, “Name’s Josh. Friends call me Marshall.” They shook hands. Decker’s shoulder jiggled in the socket. “After the HIMYM character.” Decker attempted a clarification of what him-yim meant but was cut short, “I’m super into oldmedia. Love that old nostalgic stuff, man. Love it. Things were so better in the old days.” Josh took another hit, “Want some?”
“Sure,” Decker took the bowl. At the very least the herb would speed up his MeX peak. Josh gave a deep hoot, revved the Fiero’s engine and sped off down the highway, singing, “DA-DA-DAT-DAH! DA-DA-DAT-DAH! DAH-DulundallalundDAHllalun- DALLalunnd,” at the top of his half baked lungs.
They listened to the same song for the whole five hour drive. The sky was littered with stars. Decker forgot to breathe when he looked up after exiting Marshall’s Fiero. He remembered again after seeing the flickering neon sign attempt to say, The Clean Sheets Hotel.
While sort of a creepo (this was a brothel they ended up outside of) Decker grew to know Josh as Marshall over the trek after he joined in on the eighteenth replay of the Edinburgher Twins hit. Marshall embodied the concept of ‘Never Break Character’. While they weren’t going to be pen pals or anything, he was an eccentric yet pleasant enough companion on the road. Yet, for the life of him, Decker couldn’t imagine what kind of trim Marshall was going to choose at this brick mansion in the middle of a bombed out former city.
Girl U Want (Devo Cover) - フォクシーレディース
A heavy-lidded, balding, farmer-looking guy, dressed in a white rhinestone studded suit, reclined with his boots on the front desk. He snored like a bear in deep hibernation. The lobby smelled like a pizza parlor that matched the bar glass lamps hung about. A pretty faced trick stepped in to greet Marshall and Decker.
“Welcome to The Clean Sheets Hotel. What’s your pleasure?”
Marshall’s ears glowed hot red. He high-pitched giggled as the hostess looked to Decker for a cue. Decker shook his head, “I’m only here because he is. How much for a room?”
“Would you like a line up for your guest or would you prefer to pick from the floor show?”
“All this and a floor show?” Decker couldn’t resist a snigger.
“Yes,” The hostess was not amused, “rooms go from 1500-5000 depending upon request. Guests can have personal fees applied to the room total up to their discretion.”
“Uh, can I get a room without a, ‘guest’?”
“I’m sorry sir, we’re not that kind of hotel.”
The Rhinestone Cowboy sprang to life and over the desk. His Midwest/Russian accent was thick as his waistline, “What kind of dadfragging yokel establishment you think I run here, surfer дурак? You come in, you get whore, you frag and I get paid. You don’t like?” Rhinestone Cowboy pulled out a comically sized revolver, “You get the frag out before I blow your cakehole through your fragging teeth, don’t cha know.”
Master and Servant - Depeche Mode
Decker turned to leave. Marshall was already past the musty velvet curtains leading to the floor show. The Rhinestone Cowboy gave a sharp wolf whistle. “Oh, да. That is what I am dadfragging talking about.”
Decker felt cheaper than being cuffed to a filthy mattress. His face went hot, his heart beat like trying to sleep coming down from JumpUp. Decker turned to face a grin with more teeth than a shark.
“Tell you what my bronze beauty, show me your cheeks and I got deal for you. I put you up for the night.”
“What the frag kinda deal is that?” The wheels in Decker’s head spun on stripped gears “You want me to moon you?”
“I want to know if I’m right about the bronze beauties I know are beneath those baggy pants of yours. Let’s see that tanned задница.”
“So all I have to do to get a room is show a member of the Church of Elvis my ass?”
“We’ll see how good your задница is first,” The Cowboy’s eyes were inkwells of pupil.
Decker sighed with his whole self. All he wanted to wash up and slump his body into somewhere soft. He still didn’t want to sleep, but after all that walking it didn’t matter what he wanted as far as his body was concerned. With some grumbling, Decker turned around and pulled down his pants for the Russian Cowboy.
No one wants to hear boisterous laughter when they expose a part of their flesh. The Cowboy’s drowned out the sound of the other room. Decker’s ass was slapped, “Pull up, kid. What kind of fragging yokel joint you think this is?” Decker fixed his pants and avoided eye contact.
“What do they call you?”
“Decker.”
His name was met with sounds of choking and dying, “That name does not moisten the panties. We need to give you name that will make ladies slide off their seats.”
“Well what’s your fragging name? Then I can tell you how unsexy it is.”
That question bust the Cowboy’s gut, “My sexy fragging name is Troy. But you, you will be, ‘The Mysterious Wanderer from the South.”
“South? I’m from Hollywood.”
“You want a fragging room or not, Mysterious Wanderer?”
Decker sighed again, face in his hands, “I suppose I’ll be in the floor show tonight?”
“Yo
u can shake that красивые задницы of yours, да?”
“Don’t ‘cha know it?”
“Then come with me, товарищ,” Troy dropped a nuke on Decker in the form of a pat on the back, “We’re gonna make you a fragging star.”
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea - The Cure
Decker stood with his bag slung over his shoulder at the bus depot. The nights events were a wash of lights and excitement fueled by the social effervescence of a room full of screaming men and women. It was the most fun he’d had the whole journey, and now it was over. In the dressing room, the guys and dolls of The Clean Sheets pointed Decker towards their “personal” Bus Stop. It sat two klicks from the brothel, officially a rest stop between Ocean and Metro Cities. It’s what kept The Clean Sheets in fresh creds, proving location is everything.
Decker gave one last look northward towards the speck on the horizon that was The Clean Sheets. A Metroliner pulled up with a hiss of air brakes. Decker walked around to the open door, shifting his pocket bag over his thoroughly shaken задница. He climbed the steps, pressed his thumbprint to the scanner a couple times until it dinged in confirmation, scanned the mostly empty carriage, and took his aisle seat in 23C.
Doors closed, ass in seat, and pocket bag riding comfortable in 23D, Decker closed his eyes and settled into the less ravaged seating. He didn’t sleep last night, no time to. But the Xodeines he popped for the final leg of this whole debacle ensured a well deserved rest.
Decker opened his eyes from a dreamless slumber. The lights of Ocean City shone like a diamond in the night.
zero
Afterwards
[CA2015CE]
Well, here we are. The end. We made it. This is the first outing. The next project coming your way, By Starlight - Before Sunrise, will tie in with Das Komplex, Johnny Marko and his dream girl, Tressie Unknown. Following that will be Trip & Decker's big adventure across New America in To Slice the Sky.
Stay tuned for the rest of this wave of reading material. If you'll come along for the ride ahead of us, I promise to make it as fun-filled and awesome as possible. Good times and good luck.
- Follow me on Twitter for updates, announcements, and attempts at wit: @soyrobo
- More of the same on Facebook: facebook.com/LilimChronicler
- Follow me on Google+ as well
- For further glimpses behind the veil and release announcements visit https://www.lilimchronicler.com/
About the Author
Chris B. Bollweg resides in the Beautiful San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, CA, with his equally cynical significant other and their super snuggly pit bull. He grew up on a steady diet of ’80s/‘90s cartoons, heavy metal, gangsta rap, violent video games, R-rated movies, role playing games and comic books. He is everything your parents warned you about.
Chris is the sole member of CiRCLE no.5, plays percussion and oddball instruments in the experimental group Doctors Without Borders, as well as rhythm guitar in the apocalyptic blues band The Gentlemen. He also takes pictures of food he makes and posts it online with absurd captions because it makes him laugh.
He writes about folkloric monsters existing in our world from pre-history to the approaching future in the Lilim Chronicles.
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