Fletcher's Descent

It was altogether blissfully insane in its catatonic impotence, like trying to explain abstract thought with metal shavings and a magnet. Another wave of the beasts swarmed me in a fury of howls and cackles. They were bats, or some other form of winged rodents, all with great long turkey necks and heads. Man can create his vicious monsters, but there is no greater dread than the angry visage of a mutant turkey-bat barreling down from above. The sick, limp, red mass of flesh that hung from their beaks would brush my face as they passed. I felt like I had fallen into a cave, or rather like I had been dropped in, as a portion of food, for a mother’s starving litter. How long had I been here? Why was I not devoured? Some lost section in my innermost self longed to finally be broken down and passed through their bowels, forever to rest as a stalagmite monument in a dank, black cell.

“Walter… come on Walter…”

I was slowly going insane, but she wouldn’t believe me. When we married, I was already matured and established, while she was but a child. While showing her a life of ease and luxury, she had turned hollow and clueless somewhere in the process. It’s my fault. I cannot deny that.

“Walter… we’ll be late darling… hurry up…”

I straightened my tie and wiped the blood from my lips. The heat was beginning to get to me and the air was awkwardly tepid, like smoked sausage at a bar mitzvah. Walking out of the bathroom, I could hear the final screams as I left part of myself to die in blackness and decay. I closed the door with a slight shudder and closed my eyes to wipe the cursed memory from my soiled plate.

“Walter… your tie is crooked… here…” she said and curled her talons around my collar.

When she was finished my head felt as if it were on the losing end of Chinese fingercuffs. I fought for a breath and then I pleaded once more.

“Honey… I don’t quite feel up to this tonight… I… I think I’m going mad…”

“Did you remember to turn my curlers off?” She rolled her eyes. “Of course you didn’t… if it wasn’t for me you would burn the house down, do you realize that?” She started for the bathroom door, but I lunged at her, grabbing her arm.

“I remembered… I did, they’re off… but honey… about tonight…”

“Are you sure? I’d better check just in case because…”

“I’m sure.” My grasp tightened.

“Well… if you’re sure…” She said, and for just a second, just a brief moment of promise, I thought I could see the concern in her eyes, the look you give someone in my state. Acknowledgment of my disease is all I craved, and at that moment I could have sworn she felt the wrongness in my voice, the irrational trepidation in my eyes and the vice like maniacal clutch I held her in.

The doorbell rang.

“It’s Ann… I’ll get it.” she said and gracefully pulled herself from me and walked to the door.

I leaned against the wall in defeat. It kissed my cheek and then licked it. Recoiling in disgust, I braced myself, and followed my wife into another agonizing night among the mentally deficient and socially leprous. I walked a plane separate from that of my esteemed primates, holding the key to the box containing what insects whisper under our feet. I could feel the dust mites squirming in my jacket pockets and so I thrust my hands deep inside, letting them gorge on my fingertips, salted by the days crimes.

“Good evening Walter… looking handsome as ever…”

“I’m going insane Ann… I might break down before we reach the restaurant… if not, then after we’re seated.”

“And did you forget to turn Lindsey’s curlers off?”

“He swears up and down he did.” Said my wife. “I told him to let me check, but nooo… I must have insulted his manhood or something… you know how self conscious they get at his age.” She nudged me with her elbow and chuckled with Ann.

“Well, we had better get going. The reservations are for 7:30 and Carl has to stop for gas.”

“We’re ready…” Lindsey took my arm and led me out the door. “Is Carl sporting the new Jag?”

“Oh, you knew he just had to show it off… he’s probably down there now polishing the hubcaps with his handkerchief… men are such children about their cars.”

When we reached the garage, Carl was curled up in the trunk. Somehow he opened it from within and sprang out. In his loud obnoxious manner he grabbed my hand, pulling my chest to his, administering one of his “man” hugs that I detest. His wide false teeth gleamed in the sick fluorescent light of the parking structure, and smelled of cherry tobacco.

“Is she a beauty, or what?” he beamed like a proud father. “Straight from their custom shop in Europe… This model won’t even be out until next year.”

The metal dragon glanced at me, and realizing I could smell her, she decided to hate me. Carl didn’t notice, but her door opened without him jerking the handle. He ushered me into the back seat and made sure I caught glimpse of the hand carved basswood ashtrays. The seatbelts slithered around my waist and latched with a musical click of metal against murderous metal. There was no way I was going to escape the pit of her belly, so I fell into a mild coma to spare myself the terror. Of course, I had only traded one nightmare for another.

I stood in the hallway of grandfather clock military time. A backdrop of vertigo, supplied by a swirling array of pollen and stirred by the demon hornets of dementia, spun in perfect synchronization to the ticking of the gears. It was a countdown. Every second closer I fell, every heartbeat faster, until my heart began transforming the blood it pumped into mustard. The stale vinegar burned as it coursed my veins and filled my arteries. My vision turned yellow and I coughed out torrents of thick murky bile. Falling to my knees, I could feel the puddle I was creating engulf me like a kiddy pool of sulfuric acid, with fleshless corpses floating weightless in its depth. Surely this was the end. Please… let this just be the end…

“Walter, wake up… we’re here.”

Vomited back into reality, or at least what reality had become, I felt soaked and insisted I change my clothes, but Lindsey only laughed at me and led me into the inner sanctum of the carnivorous. Everywhere, the beasts dined on dead flesh upon a platter. Some snarled up at me as I passed, hunching their shoulders, as if I would steal their bounty. Drenched to the bone, I was dripping all over the hand-stitched Persian carpet, but the maitre d ignored it. When one has poured as much revenue as I have into a place so exclusive, they are given free run. I was tempted to pull off his hairpiece and run into the kitchen, immersing it into the soup du jour. For a while I believe I did.

The tablecloth was crushed velvet, like the miniskirt of a Vatican prostitute. I resisted the temptation to look underneath the table, but I was sure a venereal disease ridden nun was curled up, naked and bruised at our feet. Every few minutes I could hear her whimper the rosary and then cough out phlegm.

“And what can I bring you to drink tonight, Mr. Fletcher?” said the shorthaired waitress, who had never served me, but knew my name nevertheless.

“I’m going mad and I’m surrounded by delirious buffoons, can you bring me a gun so I can put myself out of my misery?”

“Of course,” she said, with her most hospitable smile, and went on to take my wife’s order.

My particular brand of corruption did not mix with the swine filled atmosphere. As it goes, when two opposable vapors mingle, the air was thick with a foul stench and an ominous humidity. The room felt like the damp sauna of a dung beetle. I closed my eyes as the rodents nibbled their platters and absorbed the toxins, from the murderous fecal spa. In the void of my meditation, I could see only black, sweet and untainted nothing filling my entire field of vision. I fancied death might be as pleasant. I opened my eyes to see the fly that had landed on my wine glass. I hated that fly ever since he was a maggot. Sensing my malice, he shot his cold insect glower my way, and then dropped a microscopic deposit into my Chardonnay.

“Go back… you never really came, and you hate it here…” said the insect, feverishly rubbing his two front legs against each other.

“It was a final memento, vermin… this was my wife and closest friends, but I wouldn’t expect a creature with a three day life span to understand.” I replied.

“It’s your bedlam…” it shrugged. “And your fly’s open.” It proceeded to peel back its wings, exposing the black hole of nullity and escape. I had to look away, to prevent being swallowed.

What had been the proverbial straw to weaken this camel to his breaking point? The nights drudgery of repetition was agonizing, even without my embellishment of delirium, but could mere futility drive a man so far beyond the thresholds of sanity’s beloved gate? Perhaps this was simply the product of an aging mind and too many preservatives coursing my bloodstream, from many a fine product offered by our paradise of Americana. Or perhaps I had always been a madman, but too stubborn to admit it until now.

After what felt like the lifetime of a Greek god, we were finally in the car and en route to my penthouse. I had patched things up with the Jaguar and she even aided me in my rancor. Carl pounded his fists inside her trunk and Ann lay in the passenger seat, pouring her blood into the leather upholstery. As we pulled up to the building, it was in full glory. The flames danced against the night like the twinkle in a killer’s eye. Lindsey looked at me with a frown.

“I knew you left my curlers plugged in!”

As she spoke, the flesh on her face began to melt. I watched, unmerciful, as her rosy cheeks dissolved into turbid molasses. Slowly she shrank, spreading out onto the ground. She quibbled at me until her body was nothing more than an oozing mass of burnt carnage. I sat on the curb and waited. I imagined the police would come, along with the fire department…the paramedics…

No remorse resides in my heart for such heinous crimes. The only guilt I feel is over you, dear reader. I led you through my homicidal romp in the most appropriate way for a man in my state. Our flawless judicial system gives special account to cases like mine, and could you disagree? Old age is a progression of incline. Madness is a descent. Somewhere they meet and offer an exit. A tired vagrant such as myself finds this most inviting. Only when the clutches of the mind's darkest recesses entangle your heart, do you realize that you went too far. Forgive me… please…