|
k |
kkkkkkkkkkkk |
k |
|
k k k k k k k k k |
BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 21 FRIDAY the SEVENTH - 11:32 AM By
midmorning, the six-man holding cell that Andy Morrison languished in held
thirteen prisoners. Dirty foam slabs and rumpled rectangles of stained,
reeking Mylar covered most of the floor; an ancient Perry Mason rerun
flickered on the television mounted high up on the wall... sound on, unlike
that on Jefferson Street... seven times every minute a red light on the box
beneath blinked, allowing deputies an opportunity to watch the prisoners
watch Raymond Burr dispatch another hapless witness. Until
two deputies marched another
scrawny, twitchy wraith to the door. |
k k k k k k k k k |
"Yo', my man," one of
the unlucky thirteen challenged... a relative newcomer himself, having been
tossed in at six in the morning... "do we get out for recreation after
lunch?"
"Not today,"
Deputy Dawg smiled, jangling his keys. "Lockdown."
"Whuffo?"
"Guy hanged himself
yesterday, down in fifth floor isolation. Your sorts stop killing yourselves
and each other here before the government gets to do it, you get the recreation
back."
"People never get
out for recreation," the moax persisted,
"all they can do is
suicide."
"Life sucks,"
the deputy summed up as the twitching man, scratching at real or imagined bugs
crawling across the base of his neck, was shoved across the threshold.
"And then, for you, it gets worse. In you go, Tweaky! Watch out for this one,
likely to shit the floor..."
"You stink, man!" recoiled the prisoner
in the Cleveland Browns shirt. "Get away from me!" Others took up the
complaint, the skinny hype bouncing from corner to corner like an infected
pinball.
"Hey... Andy!"
the freak recognized, "long time, no see. Kin I sit down with you?"
"Over by the
facility, Tweaks," Andy lifted a finger, pointing towards the sole
unoccupied space by the clogged toilet with a reeking plastic bucket perched
upon its lid for overflow. "Don't come any closer."
"S'cool. Hey man I don't need this, I'm clean,"
he began babbling. "They want s’mother guy. Wouldna’ happened if I coulda
stayed at the Sanctuary..."
"Stuff it!"
Andy cut him off, loud enough to be heard over the QualMart
commercial. "You got thrown out for the same reason nobody here wants you
round... you stink. And steal! What did happen to Izzy's shoes, lose 'em?"
"Wasn't me took
them, musta been s’mother
dude. I don't need this shit, you know? I went to the U. We been in school
together. I's a Professional..."
"Professional crap
artist. Keep it shut. You're making everybody miss their show."
"He walks. They
always walk on Perry Mason, thing is... there ain't
no Perry Mason, man, jus' like there ain't no Santa
Claus. Hey... my life matters, I matter!
I'm somebody. I am
somebody!" he repeated, staggering upwards... the only reply being that
someone bouncing a crumpled styrofoam cup left over
from breakfast off his leg. "I was an imporrant...
once. Me 'n Andy, we were tight wit' Mark Cobb. The famous rad’cal
killer? Close persn'l frens!"
One of the few prisoners
old enough to care spat out through the bars into the corridor.
"The famous
asshole," he said. "Siddown, shut up and
stop movin'. Stinks less when you ain't
movin' around."
Tweaky tried to sidle
towards Andy and sit down, but Andy kicked out again, knocking him back towards
the toilet.
"Wha'd I do? You're fucked. Fuckin’ racist, like the rest of
you, all but Cobb. He was for the people..."
"Yeah, like that
chick he cut up..." the old jailbird spat again.
"He was framed! By
the system!
He's a hero, rev'lusionry hero, not a bum, like you
or me. You so smart, how come you're
in here?"
The spitter turned away,
nobody else answered. By and by Perry Mason wrapped his case and, through a
haze of pop-ups for investment schemes and miracle drugs, lawyers seeking
class-action clients for lawsuits against miracle drugmakers and public service
messages against drinking, smoking, the war in Moldova and latest Coronavirus
miracle “cure” and smuggling prescription cancer medications, the noon news
wafted through the cell.
"I'm Celia
Morrow," said the thin, hungry-looking anchorwoman, "with Benny Takajima, Dennis Monroe with Eleven Weather, and this is
News at Noon. Police Chief Ahearne, this morning, defended the city's
"quick arrest" policy that has filled local jails and unspecified
auxiliary facilities with outside agitators, homeless and transients protesting
the Coalition for a New Consensus..."
A chorus of groans,
Styrofoam missiles and curses greeted the image of the Police Chief. "We
have given people every opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights
and they've responded violently. But they'll be made to adjust, very quickly,
and lives will be saved. It's a clear test of our police minds," Ahearne
declared, tapping his balding brow, “and we always
prevail.”
"Inside Masty Hall," continued Morrow, "almost two
thousand delegates and guests continue meeting, searching for a common vision
that, said keynote speaker Congressman Morton Scow, may... or may not..."
"I doubled my
investment in twenty one days!" a full-screened, peppy real-estate
foreclosure specialist popped up...
"...existing
parties. Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, Florida, doctors are weighing the decision
whether to perform life-saving surgery on Baby Claire Hoskins, after assurances
that her parents' dramatic appeal for funds has raised over seven hundred
thousand dollars online to date. Details after these messages..."
But, before the answer
could be revealed, the Sheriff's deputies returned... one pointing at Andy.
"You! Over
here..."
Andy rose on sleepy,
tingling feet, taking a visible deep breath as soon as he'd passed through the
door and put six feet of distance between himself and Tweaky. Two floor rats
scampered for his bunk as the cell door slammed shut again, one of the deputies
pointing the way towards the small, black door at the end of the
corridor…Tweaky shouting after him…
"He's danj’rous! We killed lotsa cops together, me an' Andy... and Mark Cobb. Come back! Can't run
away from the past! Asshole! You can't run away from your past!"
Andy, hoping the
deputies were too young to process the druggie's ranting, let them march him
round a corner or two, then down an unfamiliar corridor. The deputies stopped
before an unmarked, barred metal door.
"You'll bunk here,
cop-killer," one told him.
“Somebody got plans for
you. Proud Boy, Pantie Fah or Oaf
Killer?”
“Diff’rent
what the fuck,” Andy shrugged.
The room was windowless,
furnitureless and, once the door slammed shut, pitch
black. He felt his way around the floor, determined which corner was driest,
then lay on his back upon the concrete... looking upwards into the nothing,
hovering between sleep and wakefulness, not merely exposed to but...
actually... welcoming the phantoms of his memory that descended from the
ceiling like a blanket of mosquitoes.
|
kkkkkkkkkkkkkk |
SUNDAY the NINTH - 10:03 PM
Dannie, the kid with the
earring foisted on Nelson by station management and his father, the big time
advertiser, was not quite so dumb as he appeared.
Figuring any good local riot footage that people wouldn’t remember and so draw
the conclusion upon that it was faked and would have to have come from years
before, and probably would have been saved... if at all... on tape or even film
stock (difficult to convert, and more than likely to explode) he'd taken down
the oldest logbook and skimmed through to the section: ANNIVERSARIES &
COMMEMORATIVE PROGRAMS, 1995-2000 which was, fortunately, indexed. Quickly,
he'd located an hourlong documentary from 2008: "STUDENT PROTEST and RACE
RIOTS: 1968 to 1983, THE QUARTER-CENTURY BEFORE THE FIRES", located and
vetted the tape, then ran it up from Archives to Nelson.
The
news director didn't exactly thank him, but he did take the wet cigar out of
his mouth. "Jeezus, I remember this shit," feeding the tape
into the number two monitor, "used it for our fiftieth, a while back; got
OK stuff on it... stores burning, gas. Little over the top long as we don’t show
too many old cars, old stores or people in disco clothes, but it'll do if Bill
doesn't move his ass back here. Thank Pinhead that the fuckin’ South End never
changes." He fast-forwarded the video.
Faces flew past... burning buildings and flags, police horses and more
faces. Lots of faces.
"Look
the fuck at that
one!" he pointed, freezing the video as a cameraman, probably dead
now or, at least, retired, circled round a figure at a podium outdoors at the
U., showing a tall youth with the droopy black moustache, modishly long hair
and those multicoloured polyester threads that had
come into style just as the hippies were fading away and disco fashions had
ascended to rule the roost. "Mark, fuckin' Cobb!"
"Who?"
Danny scratched his earring.
"Our
own answer to the MicroTime plane bomber,"
Nelson whistled and, when the expression on Dannie's face remained unchanging,
added, "...like the Oklahoma people? Abbie Hoffman, Patty Hearst – Osama
bin Laden or Jonny fuckin' Walker. The
Brotherhood? ISIS, Your Anus? Terrorists! Nine-eleven. One-six.
Like the Costa Rica protesters, the Unabomber, guy in Washington with
the horns on his helmet, Parliss, George Metesky... ah, what the fuck! History is wasted on you
young people!"
"Did
he blow something up?" Dannie said, squinting at the old image.
"Naw, talked a lot of bull, but never did shit. Then he
fucked up one day, big time!" Nelson smirked. "Some bum tells me he’s
a Buddhist now, only Buddhist on Death Row.
Fuhggeddaboudit! I don't need footage with any
faces somebody can recognize like this, just go through as much as you need to
and mark down where there's long shots... buildings, gas, cops. Get some police
horses if you can… in color, please… but no cars, people look at this, they see
all the cars are old and we're screwed!" Nelson held the cigar up and, for
a moment, Dannie thought he might thank him, even tell him he'd done a good
job, but the news director curled his lip and plugged his face with the stogie.
Dannie
took up a pencil and one of the writing pads with the Eleven logo, unfreezing
the monitor and then speeding up the tape, keeping the sound low so its
chittering would not disturb the rest of the working newspeople
in the Eleven at Eleven studio. Faces flew by, crowds and buildings – stern,
unseen voices narrating stories of travails and tribulations. Sometimes he'd see a scene that could have
come from anywhere in space and time, he'd stop the tape and write down its
location, then speed up again.
Flashbacks of flashbacks of flashbacks.
Faces... cops and people with hair holding signs: Vietnam, fires,
political and ethnic races, Ho Ho Ho
Chi Minh, the Jackson Five, President Reagan, Iranians and Chairman Mao...
Immortalized...
in image, iron oxide, if not flesh...
Yesterdays!
"Because
fuckin' Bill isn't back!"
he heard Nelson chewing out the anchorman with wavy hair... Bobby Weeks, that
was him. "I'll get you copy based on what we have, five minutes to eleven.
Riots and fires, somebody getting killed, I hear. An' callers, sayin' Unapissers got in the
middle of it and got their asses kicked, the way they always do. Serves 'em
right! Don't sweat it, Bobby, you're the man! I got the new kid workin' on it... he'll get you something to run with. An'
if we hit awkward spots, we'll just paste it over with pop-ups. Cover ass and
make the station money at the same time!"
"Yeah,"
Dannie said to himself, I'll save your asses. More faces flew by, more yesterdays.
I'll be the one saving all your asses, Dannie fancied.
|
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk |
k |
RETURN to "BLACK HELICOPTERS" directory
VIEW CURRENT
COLUMN by JACK "CATFISH" PARNELL... "ENTROPY and RENAISSANCE"
HAVE A GLANCE at the current episode of our occult serial,
wherein a young American encounters bizarre foreign artists and occultists –
from Aleister Crowley and William Yeats to Alfred Jarry and a young, feral Adolph Hitler…
SQUIRM! as strange,
frequently dispirited policemen in the Sanitary Republic of Barataria
battle occult New Plastic criminals for possession of that most valuable treasure
in the hygienic dictatorship of 2035 AD… the huge, white death-turd of Elvis Presley!… in...
And FOLLOW! a ragged gang of starship bloopers from a galactic Skid Row
centuries into the future and far, far away as they rehab a derelict boneship and drive it towards the white hole at the center of
the Milky Way in a reckless quest for a forbidden truth… (and
money!)...