That’s right – Welsh Losser is still driving Anti Olifko. Where and when and how will this all end?
Well, that’s precisely the point, for here we indeed come to the END of our episodic “Losser Drives Olifko” adventure. And yet, this is but the trumpet call of things to come, for this is not all, as there will be ever-changing more. But for a new curtain to go up, this one must finally come down; and, lo, you are warmly bidden, fair reader, to enjoy the show…
Losser gains on the truck, which does not see him, and then suddenly, Losser is practically under the truck’s front wheels on its left, blowing the horn…
“Nyugits, get out of the way, you fucking lumbering obstacle to my dreams – nyug…”
The truck’s driver suddenly hears Losser. He looks and his heart jumps out of his mouth. Now Losser, banging Anti Olifko’s head against the dashboard, begins to drive into the truck in sharp repeated jerks of the wheel…
“Nyug nyaaaooow, nyug nyaaaooow nyug nyaaaooow!!!”
Correctly, the driver is in the right lane, but that’s also the outermost curve of the Helix, which has ascended to its highest point. Like a rollercoaster, the Helix has no barrier, but The Devil himself dreamed up its construction to realize your worst nightmares.
In his panic and utter terror, the driver loses control together with any semblance of notion where he is. Trying desperately to brake, he skids and swerves wildly away from Losser.
The 18-wheeler swings to jackknife and in unstoppable momentum flips over the Helix’s edge, plunging to destruction. There is an explosion and an infernal ball of flame rises to engulf a cross-section of the Helix before the storm batters and stamps it down.
The Cadillac’s trunk breaks open from a final swipe of the trailer before it flies over the Helix and The Wife flies out, crashing headfirst into the road – and we will never know if she is alive or dead…
But wait, look, there in the storm, awesome and terrifying, a pale humanlike figure that looks like… a lizard, no… a dragon! has folded its scaly wings on the Helix and moves toward the tape-bound figure as though in rescue…
Meanwhile, “nyug nyag nyaaaooow…,” says Losser, as he clutches a helpless Olifko by the scruff of his neck and barrels down I-495, now on its straight stretch, pressing ever harder on the gas.
Up in the distance in the Cadillac’s headlights obscured by walls of rain, standing in the road is a man in 18th century colonial garb holding his own head; no, it’s an extremely old priest, his blind eyes intensely illumined by prophetic vision, wearing a cassock and bearing a cross in one hand while swinging a censer with the other; no, it’s actually just some regular Joe, and he’s not standing in the road but on the shoulder trying to wave down some help as his wife and little baby wait in their broken-down hatchback…
“Not anymore, nyug,” Losser says as he runs him down, swerving into the man and back onto the freeway again, unhinging the Cadillac’s trunk lid, causing it to fly off.
“Nyug nyaaaooow…”
Losser takes the Kennedy Boulevard exit, and as much as he’d been due south on Boulevard East, he was now due north again through Hudson County.
“You once said you’d fuck me, you’d FUCK ME, Olifko, but who’s fucking whom, now, harg, you stupid fucking Lemko… WHO’S FUCKING WHOM…???!!!”
Losser covers more than 40 blocks in but minutes, running all lights, forcing more mayhem and pileup crashes – bloody disasters and human suffering, horrifically flooded and drowned in the fantastical rain.
By now, law enforcement APBs swarm the frequencies with a variety of other alerts from organized community action groups and concerned citizens throughout the county, the state of New Jersey, and even the entire country, including neighboring Canada, with barricades going up at major exchanges and intersections (yeah, like that’s really going to help). In the torrential downpour, patrols crisscross Hudson County neighborhoods megaphone-warning the populace to not take their cars out and remain inside, while the major channels broadcast the same on TV.
Starting from lower elevations in Jersey City, cliffs, which are part of the same geological formation as the Hudson River Palisades, rise and stretch north for miles, creating a long spine of high elevation that runs through a large swathe of the county. As a result, entire dense residential areas were built on long steep streets reminiscent, perhaps, of San Francisco, and for a good stretch through the county, Kennedy Boulevard runs along the spine, just above the precipitous drop.
Losser turns left onto 76th Street at North Bergen High and floors the gas, laughing maniacally, for the gradient below the car is incredibly steep and long… and invisible in the raging storm.
Olifko is throwing up so much he has nothing left to puke with. Out of his nose and mouth green bile spews, with what looks to be a portion of his stomach. Losser is on top of the cars before him, battering them from behind, forcing them to crash into parked cars and homes lining the walks.
At the hill’s bottom, the Cadillac hits the major cross street, Route 1&9, known locally as Tonnelle Avenue, an old narrow road of two claustrophobic lanes on either side separated much of the time by a concrete divider.
The car bottoms out so hard, Losser’s and Olifko’s heads are pile-driven into the roof, Losser, guffawing and cackling, Olifko – shattered teeth shake out; blood flows from his nose and pours from his guts or lungs out his mouth in convulsive spouts.
Sparking flames, the car’s bottom-scraping dislodges the muffler and other undocumented parts, as Losser cuts across traffic oncoming along Tonnelle from both sides, sending more cars into poles and their doom. Now roaring like a jet engine, the car from Hell, the Cadillac flies into the adjacent Pathmark parking lot, where Losser turns, sideswiping more parked cars, and screeches back onto Tonnelle Avenue, due south yet again, through the bottom of North Bergen going the other way, toward Jersey City.
Losser laughs and laughs as he punches Olifko in the face to half knock him out, and as he comes to, Losser digs into the food out of the 7-Eleven bag fallen off Olifko’s lap and with his unwieldy fat fingers scrapes the remaining spilled contents from the floor.
“Here you go, Olifko – your very last meal, nyugs… If you ever wondered what it would be, I’m about to feed it to you…”
Losser takes the Bacon, Egg, Cheese and Potato Taquito and pushes it into Olifko’s face, then he does the same with the Jalapeno and Cream Cheese Taquito and the Monterey Jack and Chicken Taquito.
“… but you can thank me later – nyaaaooow…”
He takes one Ramona’s Chili Relleno Burrito after another and holding Olifko’s nose and jaw, forces it into his mouth and down his throat, manipulating the jaw with his powerful hand to force Olifko to chew, and swallow, and chew, and swallow, and…
“That’s right, Olifko, that’s a good boy… shame to have all that good food go to waste, so EAT AND FUCKING ENJOY!!!”
Losser mashes the 7-Eleven food into Olifko’s face and smashes and pounds it with his knuckles and fist down his throat. The car is all but completely out of control, driving up onto curbs or into the concrete divider, as Losser keeps the digit of but one finger on the wheel as he mauls Olifko.
Somehow, the AM radio has been switched on:
Muskrat muskrat candlelight
Doin’ the town and doin’ it right
In the evenin’
It’s pretty pleasin’
Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam
Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land
And they shimmy
And Sammy’s so skinny
…
Ignoring signs that the four-lane bridge-causeway is out, Losser crashes barrier after barrier and races onto the onramp for the Pulaski Skyway, a long, low eerie disturbing gargoylesque structure of gothic darkness, an uneven steely black monster that spans several miles over mud, swamp and two murky rivers into Essex County and Newark, New Jersey…
Newark, New Jersey!?!
Speeding into the skyway, nothing is visible; it is a headlong careening into utter blackness – darkness visible as John Milton wrote in a famous inversion – and desolation, and Losser decides to make a joke.
“Hey, Olifko: What’s the last thing a fly sees before it hits the windshield?”
Olifko doesn’t answer and Losser’s not having it. As he floors the accelerator he abandons the steering wheel and uses both hands to manipulate Olifko’s mouth and jaw, in a grotesque imitation of a ventriloquist controlling his wooden dummy.
“I don’t know, Welsh… What is the last thing a fly sees before it hits the windshield,” Losser says in a high Mickey Mouse voice meant to be Olifko’s, moving Olifko’s blood and puke covered mug parts to create the illusion Olifko is speaking.
“Well, that’s much better,” Losser says. “I’ll tell you what the last thing is a fly sees before it hits the windshield, Olifko…”
“What’s that, what’s that,” Losser says in the voice again, moving Olifko’s jaw and mouth…
“His ASS!!! AH-HAR-HARG-HAR-HA-HAAARRR…!!! AND THAT’S THE LAST FUCKING THING YOU’RE GOING TO SEE, OLIFKO – YOUR ASS!!!”
Pride, anger, indignation, and rage spark life back into Anti Olifko. ‘This is not going to happen,’ he thinks, ‘this is simply not going to fucking happen…’
He grabs Welsh Losser’s forearm in a desperate attempt to pry his hand off his head, but the force or Losser’s fingers is so great, that even now, with two hands pulling down as hard as they can on the forearm, Olifko still can’t break free of Losser, who is now actually cracking Olifko’s jawbone.
Losser comments: “Ah, nyug, yeah, real interesting, Olifko – nyaaoow…”
Olifko goes nuts.
Suddenly, he is wildly flailing and punching and loosens Losser’s grip. He beats Losser’s fat pig head, inflicting damage, and Losser rages indignant in the midst of confidence diminished.
The radio dial is moved to another frequency – ‘killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song, telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his –’
Now they go punch for punch, Losser’s punches nearly knocking Olifko out, but Olifko’s rage and will have grown so strong that he shakes it off, ready for everything, ready to die, and absolutely determined his death won’t be on Losser’s terms.
The dial changes again – ‘Nobody does it better, makes me feel sad for the rest. Nobody does it half as good as you. Baby you’re the be-e-e-e-est…’
And again – ‘Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me… Twice on the pipe if the answer is no, oh my sweetness…’
Losser is increasingly disturbed by this show of strength and that Olifko’s will is now matching his.
Yes, now it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Losser’s old cowardice is returning and he does not want to die.
But no, his pride comes back too, and his anger, and his rage, and his indignation, and like Olifko he says to himself there is no way any of this is going to be on Olifko’s terms, even if that does mean… death.
The rain comes down in thunderous waves and the Cadillac hurtles blindly down the Pulaski Skyway.
‘Do you hear the drums Fernando…’
Olifko and Losser trade punch for punch and now Olifko rises in his seat, piss and Slurpee soaked, chili and puke covered, blood and shit smeared, an absolute crazed madman, a complete lunatic, bereft of any semblance of his humanity, his conscience, and his consciousness, and his soul. He is pure savagery and animal derangement, with not the slightest notion of mercy or compassion or remorse or morality, nor knowing his own strength… He’s no longer in possession of his capacity to think, but is like a wild beast, the closest analogy in human terms perhaps being like a loosed inmate from an insane asylum, which had once been said in this very book… of Losser…
… ‘Billy, don’t be a hero, don’t be a fool with your life…’; ‘Do that to me one more time, once is never enough with a man like you…’ ‘Love, love will keep us together…’
[Narrator’s Note: Apparently, lots of Captain and Tenille.]
The car races toward its annihilation…
… And now Olifko is finally getting the better of Losser – with his nails and sharpened shattered jagged teeth he’s tearing the flesh from his fat fucking Losser face…
‘Oh, god, oh, god, finally, fucking finally… heh heh heh he-e-e-e-ehhh…’
Losser rages; he didn’t get his way; he screams…
The AM dial stops on the final station before the drop and, consequently, the final words…
Down around the corner, half a mile from here
See them long trains run, and you watch them disappear
Without love, where would you be now
Without lo-o-o-ove
You know I saw Miss Lucy down along the tracks
She lost her home and her family and she won’t be coming back
Without love, where would you be right now
Without lo-o-o-ove
…
As the rain suddenly subsides, this infernal night sees, just barely if peered at through a glass darkly, the faint outline of three figures crouching high amid the towering black steel trusses of Pulaski Skyway, as they watch a ’71 Cadillac Eldorado plummet into the waiting abyss.
Filed by JS, August 19, 2015