At
such an early stage of his grief there is still a tipping point, a fragile
balance established between where the alcohol consumed will as he wishes abrade
bereavement’s sharper edges, blur it all out into only the dullest smear of
loss, and where with either further alcohol or even simply accumulant minutes
he finds himself host to a contained rage that consumes him with untold
ferocity, burning his voice from out his head with an intensity preventing him
even from its expression, top and bottom teeth clamped so tight to each other
his whole head vibrates hard enough so that even if he could focus he could
not.
This
afternoon he is staring at those two of his fingers which have patches of his
black hair stuck to their tips; unable to locate the exact environment of pain
upon his scalp, he wonders if this is pulled fresh from his head, or simply
accrued from off the carpet. Examining the backs of his hands reveals each
bubbled with blisters erupting up from matches burnt out onto the flesh.
Too,
he understands his jaw to be working at a dull lump of bubblegum, and to have
been so doing for some time, the wad tasteless, whatever initial essence of
sweetness long lost to this monotonous processing and its chewing now nothing
more than simple momentum. The thought that he might spit it from out his mouth
does not occur, and he gnaws on at it as if compelled.
He
curses the ruined flesh, himself, would curse even also his Jesus had he access
to that language as would allow him so to do; cursing too the deceased: his
lunatic mother and more, ache1 and their unborn both for what he
perceives as the great betrayal, their forsaking him to this ruinous estate, an
abandonment so complete it prompts sober thoughts of whether at this point
there were even degrees of such as might be applied to his existence.
His
mandible crushes on at its impediment, a bland itch only his teeth can scratch.
With
the regulatory times of day now nothing to him, he is at a loss as to whether
those visions he suffers are the product of his active and inebriate
imagination, or mere dreams. Today they pop like television commercials, no
single scene sustained for anything beyond a handful of pulses before it is
complete and supplanted by the next, all ambient in their own artificial
colour; that the hue of his environment is somehow thus heightened, saturated,
serves only to exacerbate his sense of loss.
Two boys are standing in his room, and
as they engage in their quick bursts of dialogue their every audible utterance
seems trailed by an echo he can barely hear, and even less understand.
The one leading them all through this:
white t-shirt, blue jeans, a puff of blond hair framed by the upturned bill of
a baseball cap worn far back on his head, and most striking of all, his right
eye obscured by a black patch. Still chewing and drunk beyond tact, Brother
Skunk concentrates on this one feature, imagining what trauma might have
rendered him half blind.
Noticing this, the boy lifts the
eyepatch and winks at him with the eye underneath, prompting an enquiry from
his companion whose words come barely discernible, muffled as they are by the
red sweater pulled up across the lower half of his face, muting him to damn
near the limit of comprehension.
cog: Say Joe, how come you wear an
eyepatch anyway?
Brother Skunk opts instead to
concentrate on the hair that seems to explode from off the top of his elongated
head.
cog: Because if I wore two of them Mort,
I wouldn’t be able to see where I was going!
#132 FREE SKUNK EAR-RING
Perfect for yourself or that special
girlfriend, take this solid silver little stinker with you wherever you go.
Suitable for pierced ears only.
Send only 75 BAZOOKA comics and no
money, or only 15 cents and 5 BAZOOKA comics to BAZOOKA, Box 10, Dept. 25,
Brooklyn 32, N.Y.
BAZOOKA FORTUNES – He that hath two
coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do
likewise.
with which the pace is set, every few
moments another gag, each absent only the punctuating slick rimshot, or the
muted trumpet’s wawmp wawmp wawmp.
Wincing, Skunk grabs hard at his face
with both hands as a sudden cramp erupts along his jaw. Even in pain, the bones
grind on against each other like clockwork, a mechanism wound up to not ever
wind down. Finally forcing his mouth to his will, he shouts
Skunk: She
stole my child away from me, she stole AWAY my goddamn child
though in his ignorance of even its
gender, the child so obviously less to him than its supposed thief.
They are joined in their bright and
incessant chittering, more colours, voices, and with each of them seeming to
possess that much more actual substance than he ascribes to his own physical
presence, it is easier for Skunk to believe himself more likely an element of their
collective imagination, than the opposite.
This next is overweight, a tiny blue hat
balanced upon the back of his head,
cog: Say Joe, I sure am starving.
cog: Why don’t you eat more of those
Reese’s Pieces, Hungry Herman?
cog: Because they lack the basic
nutrients I need to function, and the absence of those, coupled with the deal
of whiskey I’m drinking, is causing me to suffer hallucinatory episodes and
actual blackouts, not to mention the damage I’m doing to my bowels!
#217 FREE JACK DANIEL’S
70 cl bottle of Old No. 7, Jack’s
finest. Begin the day with a double (or two) of this fine sippin’ whiskey to
both enliven and deaden the senses. Withdraw and blur yourself into
hallucinations based upon episodes from your own or an imagined past. Chat with
Lucy from Peanuts! Ride with the Lone Ranger! Or help Levi Strauss test the
strength of his overalls!
Send only 625 BAZOOKA comics and no
money, or only $1.25 and 10 BAZOOKA comics to BAZOOKA, Box 10, Dept. 25,
Brooklyn 32, N.Y.
BAZOOKA FORTUNES – Exact no more than
that which is appointed you.
Skunk: SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
the root of every tooth in his head
making its presence painfully manifest as his jaws work on.
cog: I’m worried that once these scabs
on my scalp have healed the hair won’t be able to grow back.
cog: You know what they say, Mort: hair
today, gone tomorrow!
#219 FREE SCABBED BALD PATCHES
Bruises, lacerations, and skull scabs.
Terrify your friends and neighbours with these realistic, self-applied wounds.
Ideal for those long summer days when there’s little else to be doing.
Send only 375 BAZOOKA comics and no
money, or only 75 cents and 10 BAZOOKA comics to BAZOOKA, Box 10, Dept. 25,
Brooklyn 32, N.Y.
BAZOOKA FORTUNES – Do violence to no
man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.
Skunk: STOP! STOP THIS! I AM BEGGING
YOU, FOR
cog: Joe, I lost someone so close to me
I don’t know what to do.
cog: Try the bus station, Mort. Plenty
of lost stuff shows up there!
# 218 FREE BEREAVEMENT
Abstract yet all-consuming sensation of
grief predicated upon loss, typically the death of someone to whom you are
emotionally close.
Send only 125 BAZOOKA comics and no
money, or only 25 cents and 5 BAZOOKA comics to BAZOOKA, Box 10, Dept. 25,
Brooklyn 32, N.Y.
BAZOOKA FORTUNES – It is not lawful for
thee to have her.
His teeth crash hard now at the swollen
bubblegum again and again in their increasingly manic attempts to locate within
it some flaw as will allow it to be broken down; he struggles to breathe
through what little space remains to his drying mouth as it suddenly comes
again alive with recognisable flavour, an eruption of sourness akin to bitten
rust.
Frustrated at his inability to find that
frequency as would allow him to participate and effect some outcome, Brother
Skunk actively dismantles whatever curse he has been assembling, the blunt
syllables disintegrate as he attempts formation of some other manner of
retaliation.
Not trusting his upright body’s ability
to get him there, the misaligned bones of his ankle grinding sparks like struck
flints, he crawls across the carpet to retrieve his walking cane, and having
done so rises up to his full height, brandishing it wildly enough to shatter
the unlit overhead bulb in its socket, himself at the sudden mercy of an
unforgiving gravity that pulls him back to the floor.
Having thwarted his every vicious
exertion to crush it to submission, the worked gum is nothing more than a dead
putty swollen inside his desiccate mouth.
He blinks hard to clear the tears
misting his vision, his nose filled with that high taste of the crying in which
he has been engaged unaware, seeing now a much younger child outfitted in
bright yellow cowboy clothes, a pistol at each hip.
cog: Say Joe, can you see what I see?
cog: That depends, Pesty, what can
you see?
cog: I only see things that are there,
Joe, because what I don’t see, ain’t there!
Skunk (screaming): QUIET! QUIET!
He rises again, lashing out at what are
nothing more than phantoms, though the resultant damage itself is very real,
destroying whatever his mother had left of herself on whatever surfaces, and
suddenly and for a moment only finding himself fighting too her wasps, whether
themselves real or ghost he cannot comprehend.
Skunk: HELP ME! HELP ME PLEASE!
With the violence of this plea his eyes
clear, and the room appears to resume its mundane palette.
In place of the boys now stands a bearded
man of indeterminate age and race, as filthy and unkempt as they had been
bright and clean, stooping over his own stick and regarding Brother Skunk with
a bridled placidity so intense as to be utterly un-nerving.
Rising and falling with the tidal heaving
of his breath, the rhythm of his buckled body seems to pervade Skunk with a
similar sense of calm, he finds his own breathing settling over minutes to the
same slow meter. Standing still, sweat seeps from his forehead, dropping from
his face and from his arms, crawling moist from each crease of skin where his
scrotum folds into either thigh.
When the crooked man finally speaks, his
voice serves only to ignite those words already coalescing within Skunk’s
understanding, so that the actual voice forms an odd echo of itself, following
what he has somehow just this moment already heard.
cog: There cometh one mightier than I
after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
Carefully and painfully forming each of
his words through the agony of his still moving jaw, Skunk forces out a
response,
Skunk: He has been, Goddamn him,
he has already been. And he cannot. He cannot.
With his stare still fixed upon Skunk,
the stranger tips his head slightly back and to one side, and then slowly draws
a single finger across the bare neck exposed below the ragged beard.
Casting
his walking stick aside, Skunk again lowers himself to the floor, where it is
only the persistent inability to finally spit from out his mouth what now feels
like a damp flannel that allows him to remember there is no bubblegum, there
has been no bubblegum for weeks, since before she was dead even.
Gnawed
far past a threshold of pain even adjusted for this particular summer, and
numbed utterly beyond sensation, he can no longer even feel the savagely bitten
tongue inside his head, nor prompt that retch as would rid him of the suddenly
understood taste.
Skunk:
He cannot. He cannot.
