Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (38 page)

“Yeah, I see it, too,” Skip says. “Cool!”

“I think I’m gonna be sick…” Twinker moans when D.H. passes the joint to her. “What kind of
loco
weed is this?”

“I think it might be laced with angel dust,” D.H. says, starting to sound like HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey
. “I’ve lost all contact with my body. It’s like I’m floating in a tin can with Major Tom.”

“Ground contwoh to Maja Tom,” Hideous quips, catching the song reference. David Bowie isn’t exactly punk rock, but he’s out-there enough to be interesting.

As Skip takes the joint back from Twinker, he says, “If this is what angel dust feels like, then I
like
it!”

“Whoa.
Dusted!”
Jimmy says the word like the lead singer in a heavy metal band introducing their biggest hit at a sold-out concert. “What d’you think, Gordon?”

“How should I know? I’ve only been high one other time, and that didn’t work out so well.”

“It did for me.”

“Yeah, that was very studly of you–boning the girl I jumped off a cliff for, because I wanted her so bad.”

“If you’d wanted her that bad, I guess you shouldn’t have thrown up on her.”

“Just shut up and watch the movie, dickhead.”

Gordon is still a little sore about what happened with Francesca, even after three years. He still thinks of her as his one and only shot at true love. She just disappeared on the day after the tent episode. That unprincipled slinking dog Jimmy didn’t even try to stay in touch with her. Maybe she was embarrassed by what she’d done.

They watch Ted explore the empty mansion. There’s a stilled grandfather clock in a corner and the mounted head of a jaguar baring its fangs on the far wall near a window. The brunette is nowhere to be found. Ted decides to go outside and get back into his car. As he’s driving away, he sees a trailer parked on the grounds by a small lake. He stops in to ask for a bandage for his arm. A young English couple, camping there overnight, offers Ted coffee and a disinfectant. He thanks them for their hospitality. While he’s getting bandaged up, he asks them for the proper time, complaining that his watch has stopped. The film cuts to a broken watch on a bloody arm being pulled from the wreckage of a little blue car. Is it Ted’s? (No one’s quite sure….) Back at the trailer, as Ted gets up to leave, the young woman asks him, “Does anyone live in that house?” Ted stops in the doorway and replies: “That’s a question I asked myself earlier. And I still haven’t found an answer.”

“I just figured it out,” Gordon says. “Ted’s dead, but he doesn’t know it yet.”

“No way!” scoffs Jimmy and Skip.

“Yeah, look… it makes perfect sense,” D.H. jumps in. “Ted was the homophobic guy who shot the two lesbians at the start of the film. Then he returned to the scene of the crime, like killers always do. Ten years have gone by, but the souls of the two lesbians are still there, haunting the place–only instead of ghosts, they’ve become vampires. Last night the brunette lesbian sucked Ted’s blood to get revenge. So now Ted’s dead, but the world looks pretty much the same to him–only weirder–because without knowing it he’s turned into a vampire, too.”

“What if that’s all death is?” Gordon speculates. “Just a little shift in perspective. How would we know if it happened to us? Like, what if I died when I jumped off that cliff at Dinkey Creek? How would I know? What if each time you die the world just gets more like a dream, but nothing really changes?”

“That’s so
deep
…” Jimmy says, mocking him.

“Maybe it’s close to the truth,” Twinker says. “But I don’t think we necessarily become vampires. Think about reincarnation. Maybe we get more psychic and soul-wise with each death–more like angels. Maybe that’s how we evolve.”

“Oh
please
, bitch….”

“Obviously, James, you haven’t died even once yet. But you might get the chance if you ever call me bitch again.”

“But I meant bitch in a good way.”

“Just shut up and watch the movie, dickhead.”

Ted has driven back to the mansion and spent the whole day sitting there in his car, waiting for the brunette’s return. She finally shows up after dark, getting out of a car driven by a man named Rupert. The pretty Scandinavian blonde is with them.

It occurs to Gordon that the blonde bears an uncanny resemblance to his own mother in her wedding pictures. Could Cynthia have moonlighted as a lesbian vampire actress in her freewheeling single days?
No, that’s impossible….
The pot must be severely messing with his head to make him even think that.

A few minutes later, an old Native American man walks up to Hideous’ truck carrying a pizza box. He looks like the actor from the “Keep America Beautiful” commercial about pollution–that sensitive Indian chief who cries a single tear after he sees a river full of oil sludge, discarded Clorox bottles, and dead carp. He leans the fringed sleeves of his deerskin jacket on the edge of the pick-up next to where Gordon is sitting and he says in his whispery old Indian voice: “There was no angel dust in your smoke. That was Diviner Sage–ancient plant-spirit, wisdom teacher of the shamans. You are not your body. There’s a part of you that’s immortal. But you must go deeper into the physical, and be tempered by its onslaughts, before you reach your eternal apotheosis. So now you know…. How ‘bout some pizza?”

The old man opens the pizza box and gives Gordon a mystic slice of pepperoni with extra cheese. He offers slices to D.H. and Twinker, too. Then he pulls his hands across his solar plexus, like opening a curtain, and shows them a mystery. In a burst of brilliant white vaporous light, he disappears.

“That was weird,” says Gordon. His ears are ringing from the shaman’s words.

“That old woman was so nice to give us her pizza,” says Twinker.

“I feel like I just got off the octopus ride at the County Fair,” says D.H., scarfing down his slice, “but
dang
this is good.”

“Hey, where’d you guys get the pizza?” asks Skip.

“I thought an Indian shaman gave it to us, but Twinker says he was an old woman.”

“She was so sweet.”

“Did you save any for us?” Jimmy wants to know.

“We only got three slices,” D.H. says. “They came down from the sky like manna from heaven.”

“At least they weren’t handed to you by an alien,” Skip jokes.

“That, too,” D.H. says, chewing. “I don’t know why I’m so calm about it. He was this tall, bug-eyed guy. Gray skin. Real skinny. But super friendly.”

“Gordon saw an Indian,” Twinker informs everyone, as if they didn’t hear him the first time.

“I’m thinking all three of us might’ve been hallucinating,” Gordon admits.

“Going fucking batshit is more like it,” Jimmy says.

“Yeah,” D.H. says contentedly, “but the pizza’s real.”

“Smells gud,” says Hideous. “I go buy more.” Everyone digs in their pockets for money to finance the pizza trip. While Hideous waits to collect it, he says, “I saw bright wight, then pizza. I not think only haw-wucination.”

“Thanks for sticking up for us, Hideous,” Gordon says.

“No pwobwum.”

“I think an orgone monster might’ve just passed through here,” Skip theorizes. “Or maybe Mooney’s is sitting on a massive geological fault line and your brains just had an electromagnetic freakout.”

“I think someone here is majorly full of shit,” says Jimmy. “Maybe even more than one person.”

“Let’s just drop it,” Gordon says, not unkindly. The experience feels precious to him–like received wisdom from a vision quest–and he doesn’t want to diminish it by analyzing it to death.

“By the way, I’ve never been so high in my whole entire life. Except for that one time with acid. Okay, maybe two or three times with acid. And once on mushrooms. But I just wanted you to know that I am so fucking out of it right now….” Skip can’t seem to stop running his mouth off. Twinker reaches over and puts a finger to his lips, shushing him. Skip tenderly kisses her fingertips and she leaves them there, liking it.

While Hideous is away on his errand, everyone’s attention drifts back to the movie. Rupert and the blonde go down the stairs to visit the wine cellar, taking a wax-dripping candelabrum with them to light the way. Meanwhile, Ted and the brunette have retired to the bedroom, where they’re violently making love again. Ted has another monumental orgasm and falls back on the pillows like a spent monster. After he drops into a deep, post-coital sleep, the brunette crawls over his chest and starts licking at the bloody gash in Ted’s arm like a cat lapping up milk. Ted stirs and the brunette lewdly kisses him while he dreams, smearing his mouth with his own blood.

“Holy shit! That’s kinky…” says Jimmy.

“Don’t you think that brunette looks a little like my mom?” Skip asks him.

“Dude, your mom’s even better looking. You have the coolest mom of any of us.”

It’s true. Skip’s mother is a stunning beauty, even in her late-thirties–a sultry brunette hairdresser with a shape that’s almost a cartoon of the idealized woman. She’s also incredibly funny and sweet. Ever since she divorced Skip’s dad about six years ago, she’s devoted herself to being a stellar single mom. She never goes out with other men, she always has dinner ready at seven unless Skip says he’s going to be home late, and she generally takes care of Skip’s every need while treating him like her best friend.

How could Skip complain?

“Which do you think is worse?” Skip asks. “Having a mom like Gordon’s, who’s an ass-chewing shrew and just, in general, a total bitch on wheels? Or having a mom like mine, who smothers you with love?”

“What kind of a question is that?” asks Gordon. “Are you nuts? I’d take your mom, any day.”

Up on the screen, the brunette leaves Ted passed out in the bedroom and goes into the hallway, where she finds the blonde in a sort of fugue state, leaning against a moonlit window with blood dripping from the corners of her lips. The brunette grabs the blonde’s hands–which are covered in blood–and shakes her awake. The two of them rush into the blonde’s bedroom, where Rupert is convulsing and gurgling on top of a mattress with arterial blood spray spattering everywhere. He’s been stabbed multiple times.

“See? That’s just like something my mom would do,” says Gordon, identifying his mother with the blonde perhaps a little too strongly.

The blonde and the brunette leap onto the bed and start licking the blood from Rupert’s face and neck. It’s obscene. Orgiastic. The blood isn’t coming fast enough for them, so the brunette gets the walrus penis bone knife off the dresser and plunges it deep into Rupert’s back. His foot kicks at the iron bed railing in his final death spasms. The women slurp up more blood, nipping flesh. Then they drag Rupert’s corpse down the stairs and blithely wash all the blood off their naked bodies in a steamy lesbian shower scene.

“See? Brunettes can have fun, too,” Skip says, elbowing Gordon. “My mom has plenty–that’s for sure.” He tries to sound casual when he says: “Would you guys think it was weird if I told you my mom had been hitting on me?”

“That’s definitely weird,” Jimmy says. “But if your mom had been hitting on
me
, I would’ve had to bone her, no question. How’d it go for you?”

“I’m not saying anything happened,” Skip backpedals.

“Well, did she, or didn’t she? Inquiring minds want to know,” D.H. says.

“You don’t have to tell them anything, Skip,” Twinker says, a little out of breath. She looks as if she’s just been punched in the diaphragm.

“Fuck it,” Skip says. “She did, okay? My mom came on to me.”

“How’d it happen?” Gordon asks.

“I got home late from that Monty Python festival we went to around a month ago. Remember? I was kind of wasted.”

“Two cases of beer and a pint of Jack Daniel’s snuck in under our clothes. A new record for indoor movie theaters!” D.H. recalls with pride. “Good thing it was a cold night.”

“My mom was waiting up for me. She knew I’d been drinking, even though I was trying to be cool about it. She must’ve smelled it on me. When she got up from the couch she was wearing this kind of sexy black nightie and I could see her nipples right through it. I’m not saying that was bad or anything…. I mean, I’ve seen her tits before, on accident–but this was different. It was like I was seeing her the way another guy might see her.”

“And she is
fox-ayyy!”
Jimmy says, displaying his usual insensitivity.

“She is,” Skip says. It’s just a statement of fact. “Anyway, my mom said, ‘Skip, I’m really disappointed that you’ve been drinking. And I’m even more disappointed that you didn’t take me with you.’ Then she was like, ‘I’ve just been sitting here all alone all night, feeling really bored and horny.’ And that was when I realized she was drunk, too.”

“Oh shit,” says D.H., “what’d you do?”

“Well, the short version is:
I fucked her.”

“Holy crap! You’re kidding!” D.H. shouts.

“Awesome!” Jimmy cackles.

“Jesus, Skip,” says Gordon. Twinker voices the same words with more concern.

“I fucked my own mom,” Skip says, as if he needs to repeat it. “And I’m not proud of it. But man, she was hot!”

“I guess from here on out whenever we say the word ‘motherfucker’ it’ll seem a lot more literal,” D.H. says, trying to follow along with Skip’s moods.

“So tell us about it…” Jimmy says. “Was her pussy really wet?”

“James, don’t be gross!” Twinker slaps the back of his head.

“Ow! Well, was it?”

“Let me put it this way,” Skip says. “All the sex I’ve had before was just with girls. But my mom is a real woman.”

“Well, yeah…” Gordon says, “I mean, she gave birth to you, after all. Doesn’t it bother you that you’re sticking your dick in the same hole that your head once came out of? I mean, I know your mom’s a total babe and all, but still….”

“Let me ask you something, Gordon. Have you ever been laid?”

“Does a handjob count?”

“No. How about you, D.H.?”

“My mom’s still holdin’ out on me. I think she’s waiting until I can buy her a Porsche.”

“Okay. Ha-ha…. But look, my point is that neither of you guys have the right to be raggin’ on me. You can’t understand what I’m going through. Sex is a hugely powerful thing. And my mom is really good at it. Some nights I can’t wait to get home and rip the clothes off her.”