Damned (23 page)

Encircling us, Hitler and me, the crowd follows his cue until I'm
buried in their laughter. They stand so densely that Archer and his blue Mohawk
hair are lost, walled off behind so many dead bodies.

Climbing to my feet, I brush the loose flakes of sticky dandruff from
my clothes. I open my mouth to tell everyone to be quiet, please. My hands
scrabbling in the layered dermis of greasy dandruff, I feel around in search of
my eyeglasses. Even blind, I beg for silence so I can ridicule their leader,
but the mob merely bellows with sadistic glee, their blurred faces reduced to
their gaping mouths and teeth.

Perhaps it's due to some post-traumatic stress reaction, but in that
instant I'm transported to the afternoon at the Swiss boarding school when the
trio of Miss Slutty Vandersluts took turns choking me to death, mugging with my
eyeglasses and ridiculing me before bringing me back to life. I feel a hand
descend to clutch at my arm, a huge, coarse hand, cold as the mortician's
table; the calloused fingers wrap my elbow, as tightly as a swastika armband,
and something lifts me to my feet. Perhaps it's due to some suppressed memory
of some skeezy undertaker's fondling touch, the reek of formaldehyde and men's
cologne, but I pull backward. The entire thirteen-year-old weight of me falls
backward, pushing my fist and skinny arm forward in a rocketing arc, a pinwheel
swing which connects with something solid. This... something... crunches
against the bony impact of my knuckles. Again, I collapse into the soft carpet
of dandruff flakes, only this time something heavy lands in the dead skin
beside me.

The crowd's laughter goes silent. My hands unearth my glasses. Even through
the dirty lenses, fogged with dead flakes of scalp, I can see Adolf Hitler
crumpled beside me. He moans softly, a purple doughnut of a bruise already
forming around one closed eye.

The ring, the diamond ring which Archer had stolen from a groveling, slobbering,
doomed soul trapped in the cage beside my own grimy cell, this ring around my
finger has collided with Hitler's face. Like a bulbous, seventy-five-carat
brass knuckle, the fat diamond has knocked him cold. My fist vibrates. My wrist
thrums like a tuning fork, so I shake my fingers to regain full feeling in that
hand.

A man's voice shouts. Archer's voice, behind the stunned wall of
onlookers, shouts, "Take a souvenir!"

As Archer would explain later, all great bullies have taken totems or fetish
objects in order to steal the power of the
enemies
they have vanquished. Some warriors took scalps they could display on their
belts. Others took ears, genitals, noses. Archer insists that taking a souvenir
has always been crucial to assuming an enemy's power.

There I stood with Hitler lying prone at my feet. To be honest, I
really didn't want his boots. Nor did I feel the slightest desire to lay claim
to his necktie or silly armband. His belt? His gun? Some little piece of Nazi
costume jewelry, a tin-plate eagle or a skull? No, good taste seemed to
preclude taking any readily apparent portion of his costume.

And, yes, I might be a formerly nicety-nice girl with no qualms about
using the words
preclude
or
qualms,
and no hesitation to coldcock
a fascist tyrant, but I continue to be very particular about the manner in
which I accessorize my very bland wardrobe.

From the far edge of the crowd, Archer's voice shouts, "Don't be a
pussy!" He shouts, "Take the damned mustache!"

Of course, it's the one talisman which bears the entire identity of
this madman. His mustache—a tiny scalp to hang from my belt—it represents
something without which Hitler would no longer be Hitler. Bracing the heel of
one sensible loafer firmly against his neck, I lean over and entwine my fingers
through the
coarse
, pubic-feeling fringe of the tiny
lip hairs. His breathing feels warm and damp against my hands. Even as I brace
myself for one gigantic pull, one herculean yank, Hitler's eyelashes flutter
and his eyes pin me with their focused rage. Stomping my foot into his throat,
I jerk, pulling the short hairs with all of my strength—and Hitler screams.

The crowd recoils, retreating a step.

Once again, I fall backward, my arms pinwheeling but still clutching my
prize.

Adolf Hitler holds his face wrapped in both hands, blood pouring from
between his fingers; his bellowing words sound garbled and choked, the sleeves
of his uniform running with blood, so soaked that the vivid red erases the dull
swastika banded around his arm.

Cupped within the palm of my hand curls the warm little mustache, torn
away, still attached to a pale, thin crescent of upper lip.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. My taste for power continues to
grow, as does my ability to accrue it.

The diamond ring, Archer explained, came from Elizabeth Bathory, a
Hungarian countess who died and has been imprisoned within her own grimy,
hellish cage since 1614. Always a beauty, the Countess Bathory had once struck
a servant girl, who bled from the assault, and where the spilled blood
accidentally splashed on the countess it seemed to rejuvenate her royal skin.
Based on this clearly anecdotal evidence, Elizabeth Bathory went nuts for this
new skin-care ritual, immediately hiring and exsanguinating some six hundred
servant girls at a lightning pace, so that she might continually bathe in their
warm blood. These days, the countess looks terrible; she sits slobbering and
comatose with frustration and denial, unable to transition from a bloodthirsty
Miss Whorey Von Whoreski.

Armed with the ring of vampirish Elizabeth, I could more easily knock
out Adolf Hitler. And now, armed with his tiny fascist mustache, I banished the
Nazi superman. Of course, once someone is sentenced to Hell, it becomes nearly
impossible to discard him further. My solution was to send him someplace where
I myself never planned to venture. My initial selection was the Sea of Insects;
however, with additional consideration I revised my choice to the Swamp of
Partial-birth Abortions. There it is, in the
hell of Hell, that
boggy landscape of nightmares where stewed infants simmer beneath an enormous
movie screen, an inescapable billboard, upon which
The English Patient
plays
in a never-ending Technicolor loop, that's where Herr Hitler resides, shorn of
mustache and identity.

Deprived of their demagogue, Hitler's mindless drones inevitably fell
into step behind Archer and me, traversing the Dandruff Desert in our footsteps
while we continued our journey Of course, I requested they discard their
distasteful armbands, and to underscore my demands I did brandish the tiny
profane mustache.

We'd ventured no farther than the Lake of Tepid Bile— Archer and I and
our band of newfound sycophants—when we encountered a statuesque woman holding
court amid a retinue of bowing, scraping attendants. A great ill-gotten heap of
Almond Joys served as her throne, and the members of her court formed
concentric circles surrounding the hem of her brocaded and embroidered gown.
The woman, while mad with a manic, eye-rolling hysteria, wore a coronet or a
diadem of pearls perched atop the nest of her elaborately plaited hair. Even as
her court kowtowed at her feet, her wan smile fell upon Archer and me and
promptly vanished.

As our traveling party neared this new sight, Archer leaned close to my
ear. His Ramones concert T-shirt pungent with the stench of his perspiration,
he whispered, "Catherine de Medicis..."

If you asked my father for advice he'd tell you, "The secret to
being a successful comedian is to never stop talking until you hear someone
laugh." Meaning: Persevere. Meaning: Be determined. Make just one person
laugh;
then leverage that person and that joke into more
laughter. As some people decide you're funny, increasing numbers of people will
begin to agree.

The tiny Hitler mustache secreted safe within the pocket of my skort, I
listened to Archer's counsel.

"She's some queen of someplace," Archer whispers.

Of Renaissance France, I reply. The consort and queen of Henry II, she
died in 1589. Most likely she's condemned to eternal hellfire for instigating
the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in which Parisian mobs slaughtered thirty
thousand French Huguenots. As we draw nearer and nearer, the queen's eyes
become fixed upon me, perhaps sensing my newfound power and my growing lust for
more. In the same manner that Hitler was trapped in the persona of a ranting
blowhard, and the Countess Bathory was fixated on being a permanent youthful
beauty, Catherine de Medicis seems far too attached to her imperious noble
station of birth.

Stopping, Archer allowed me to continue my approach, my every step
narrowing the distance between me and my new adversary. From behind me,
standing at a safe distance, Archer called, "Go for it, Madison. Kick her
royal candy ass....."

Admittedly, my battle charge might've appeared somewhat crudely
juvenile, consisting of racing full-tilt at the object of my attack, shouting a
litany of playground curses such as, "Prepare to die, dirty butt-face, you
stinky, skuzzy dumb-ass snotty stuck-up wop queen... !" before shoving
Catherine de Medicis's bodily from her candy-bar throne and pummeling her with
a rain of toe kicks, fingernail scratches, hair pulls, savage tickles, and
cruel pinches. Yet
despite this schoolyard barbarism, I did
manage to compel the lofty de Medicis to consume a mouthful of soil after
successfully positioning Her Highness to lie
facedown
upon the ground. Thence, it took only my modest body weight directed through
the point of my crooked elbow, driven between her shoulder blades, to motivate
her royal Cathyness to recite, under duress,
"Si! Si!
I am a skuzzy
Miss Skuzzyski and a Douchey MacDouche Bag and I smell like stale cat
pee......" It goes without saying that neither Catherine nor her parasitic
courtiers could understand a syllable of what she recited, but her compulsory
speech occurred as highly comic to Archer, who erupted in a veritable volcano
of surly guffaws.

Yes, now it's power I want. Not affection. I don't want that kind of
pointless, impotent power, as earlier discussed. Mark my words: Being dead
isn't all sitting around in remorseful reflection and bitter
self-recrimination. Death, like life, is what you make of it.

Fortified with the Hitler mustache and the Bathory diamond, I made
quick, brutal work of this cutthroat religious bigot. Once she's sent packing
to join Adolf in the mucky swamp, I resume my journey with Archer, the coronet
of pearls now balanced upon my own head, and the ragged retinue of Renaissance
ladies and gentlemen fall into step among my growing legion of followers. Traipsing
along behind us, Archer and me, our army swells with Nazi zombies... plus these
de Medicis hangers-on... later, Caligula's camp followers.

You may attribute my new boldness to a sort of placebo effect, but by
carrying the mustache of a loudmouthed despot, my own words began to sound more
eloquent to my ear. My every statement carries the force and authority of a
speech blasted over amplifiers to a rally of goose-stepping, torch-bearing,
book-burning minions. In order to balance the pearl crown of a righteous,
sadistic queen, I'm forced to stand taller, my spine, my bearing, my entire
carriage stretched to a nobler height. Casting aside my sensible Bass Weejun
loafers, I place my feet in the high heels provided by Babette, further
increasing my stature.

Before we reached the next horizon, I'd vanquished yet another foe—Vlad
III, alias Vlad the Impaler, a prince of the Dracul family, who died in 1476
after torturing some hundred thousand people to death—a man who formed the
flesh-and-blood basis of the Dracula vampire legend. From him, I claimed a
jeweled dagger, a dusty clique of corrupt knights, and a treasure chest
brimming with Charleston Chews.

Subsequent to him, I utilize said dagger to obtain the testicles of the
corrupt Roman emperor Caligula. And his mighty cache of Reese's Peanut Butter
Cups.

After we'd resumed walking, at present shadowed by half the obedient
idiots from world history, I ask Archer, "So you're in Hell because you
shoplifted bread?" I say, "How...Jean Valjean."

Archer merely stares at me.

"How Number 24601..." I say, fluttering my hand in a
flourishing Gallic gesture. "How
Les Miserables."

In response, Archer says, "There's more to it than just stealing
bread."

Farther along on our journey, we enter the Thicket of Amputated Limbs,
a grotesque bramble of severed arms and legs, tangled hands and feet, which
filters the smoky, sooty breeze. The path is paved with a litter of disembodied
fingers, all of the limbs and digits lost and separated from their rightful
owners, all the battlefield amputations and hospital leftovers which were
perfunctorily discarded and never arrived at an appropriate grave site. Plus
the ubiquitous, worthless popcorn balls. There, I lay claim to the belt of King
Ethelred II, the English monarch responsible for the deaths of twenty-five
thousand Danes in the St. Brice's Day massacre. It's from this belt that I hang
the dangling, severed testicles; the jeweled dagger; and the tiny scalp of the mustache.
The spoils of my ongoing campaign to prove myself a badass. Soon these
talismans are joined by the ceremonial
rumal, or
handkerchief, used by
cult leader Thug Behram to strangle his 931 victims. This belt, becoming the
grisly charm bracelet that proclaims my progress from nicety-nice
boarding-school girl to way-impolite warrior princess with no regard for
decorum. I am the Anti-Jane Eyre. Barely breaking my stride, I vanquish the
infamous Bluebeard, Gilles de Rais, adding his braquemard—the rod with which
he'd suffocated six hundred children while sodomizing them—to the grotesque
trophies which dangle and sway from my waist. As with each victory, a new troop
of lieutenants falls into step in my shadow.