Book Club: I got a question: Why they Hatin' on me?
Book Club: The collective has consumed three novels since it's inception earlier this year. You may have missed it.
You may have lingered, over there, in your fear of Book Club. In your incomprehension at the intangible but binding web of lust that is Book Club.
But Book Club loves and wants you to understand what Book Club has done. You do not know of Nethereland, by Joseph O'neill. You have not tasted of Bandits, by Elmore Leonard. You have not yet sullied yourself with the pretense of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. You have dreamed of but never read the words of The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
But you want Book Club. This, Book Club knows, before you even think it, before the thought makes its way up from the bottom depths of your psyche.
So, Book Club will give you these Books as they have become inside of Book Club.
Book Club helps. Book Club Reveals Below a story for those of you outside of Book Club.
Read it, and Read on. Book Club Presents: The Underground Society of Darker Types Who Do the Crime in a Postmodern Nightmare, by Book Club.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Jack Skillet laughed at the empty concrete streets in front of the corporation. The streets were manufactured by technology, but they were desolate of life.
The boy said "Those streets?"
"Yeah, I reckon."
He took the dusty old Iphone out from his frayed pocket to check the google maps app. It made him think of Juanita, who had showed him the wild side of life, with wondrous fragrances of mate, pisco sour, and Ma Po Doufu. Juanita, who took away the point of his existence, and replaced it with another.
The door to the corporation's office was about several yards in the distance. The clouds overhead had nothing to say to them, in this dark world.
The boy shuffled his feet nervously. "They gonna rape us up somethin' awful, I 'spect."
"They ain't gon' do nothin'"
"They ain't?"
"They ain't."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He went on up the path. The tangles of vines along the walls of the corporation's office twisted all over the place, unable to work out a choerent message,in a world devoid of meaning.
Next to him, he moved the bicycle along the path. His strong hands gripped the handlebars as his long, model-like body moved sinuously towards the door.
Juanita had left him and the boy, left them to keep going down the path. It had been on a cold night, when the camp fire sent smoke up into the godless sky, that answered no prayers.
She had come to him, in a womanly way, with her mocha brown skin fraying his nordic restraint. And after, as they lay in a barren land, listening to the drinking songs of cannibals, as they drank the blood of their children, she had whispered to him.
"Me voy."
"Why?"
"Jewelry heist."
"Who?"
"The guy at the computer company."
"Which one?"
"The one that symolizes the dislocation of modernity."
"How?"
"Loose cannon help. Web of contravening plots."
"Motivation?"
"For who?"
"For you, loose cannon,me."
"Hard to tell."
And that was the way it was. Things were hard to tell, when you got down to it. Things were just hard to tell nowadays.
They proceded along the path. He could make out more detail of the corporation's office now.
There was a click behind him and he froze.
The boy froze too. "That a gun?"
"Uh hunh."
"Somebody hurt me?"
"Nobody hurt you."
The man with the gun asked them to to turn around. Jack Skillet could tell by the sound of the man with the gun's voice that he was crazy and unstable.
As he turned, he thought of his life before the fall, he thought of the big city, all the crazy characters. He was just a futures analyst back them, prioritizing amortization tables for international financiers who dabbled in the funds derivatives assets.
He had been just another tall, stiff, blond, European type. With eyes of blue that expressed no emotion or unpleasant social truth.
Then he had met Juanita. At the top of the empire state building, she had been so excited at her arrival in the land of dreams, as all immigrants were, that she had danced a native, festive dance. He had seen her as she swirled her dress, hoop earrings dangling wildly, with spicy passion.
And she had shown him the other side of the city. A world of hustlers and cheats, dreamers and womanizers. Free of the chains of morality and decency that trapped Jack.
He finished turning and faced the wild eyed man with the gun. There was a look of desperation in his eyes. He was drunk, and his clothes were brown with dirt, and hung in tatters over his skinny shoulders.
"Ain't gon' do it." He told them.
"Ain't gon' what?"
"Ain't gon' steal jewelries first, 'fore Juanita does it."
"Why?"
"'Cause i 'gon' get it."
"How?"
"Point gun, not let you go."
"Who are you?"
"Erasmus Deleterius, part of secret society."
"What it do, sercret society?"
"Can't tell. Read book: Plays of Aeschylus. Go civc center, see performance."
"You gonna shoot me, mister?"
"No."
He motioned for them to move behind him. They did. As they moved behind him, Jack could see the grass clippings on the side of the lawn. Juanita had been a gardener. The clippings lay dead on the dead concrete, cut off from their life, killed for encroaching on the man-made world.
Erasmus Deleterius ran to the door and went inside.
The boy too thought of Juanita. "She my momma?"
"Mm."
"Momma come home?"
"Mm nnh."
Jack knew he had to get to the door and open it up. he would do anything to keep the boy safe, and get back the mother the boy had lost.
He went on up the path and arrived at the door.
From inside there were loud yells and gunshots. He shoved the boy to the side, yanked open the door, and rushed in.
Erasmus Deleterius lay dead. Juanita was on the desk, shot, jibbering in her native tongue, praying to pagan gods.
He looked around the office, a bunch of desks laid out, where people spent most of their lives.
He saw the man with the jewelry. He saw the pirate who had tried to get the jewelry, dead and hung on the wall with his own hooked hand. He felt nothing. He looked atJuanita.
"Get the nekclace."
"No. Help you."
Then the man with the jewelry shot him. The boy came in. The man with the jewelry said "I take care of you?"
The boy said to Jack "You die now?"
"Unh."
"I go with other man?"
"Unh."
Jack skillet a man made by secular philosophy, technology and Sartre, looked up at the ceiling as the dark red pool of blood spread over his chest. The boy had a new dad, but would he do a better job? Was there any progress? Or was it all just decadence.
"Hope good." he said.
"Yeah." Juanita said.
They both died. The man with the jewelry put the necklace over the boy's head and they headed back outside, back down the path.
No comments:
Post a Comment