Hey, I wonder what happens next…???!!! Try catching the nightmare ride – if your dare…
Read, as dark family histories are opened and psychological closet skeletons are revealed. Also, the narrator’s own tormented childhood is not left unturned. The past catches up with the present, and the present collapses into the past. Painful memories break out precisely at the moment of one’s greatest living nightmare. Welsh Losser terrifies and utterly overpowers Anti Olifko, taking him on what looks like may be his last ride
Ladies and gentlemen, right this way, please… For everything’s changed…
Back in memory, back when the mom asked her kid to hop up to Nungessers for a loaf of bread, there were times when the mom gave the kid an extra couple of bucks so’s on his way home from the bakery he could stop by the little shack that was DePalma’s Pizzeria, up on a hump off the old concrete overpass of Bergen Boulevard overlooking Fairview Cemetery, for a couple of slices.
So he’d go in there and they’d know him and he’d say, ‘Two-a slice-a,’ not being some asshole or dick or anything, but speaking their ginzo English to make it easier for them, fucking scrawny little ape-haired jackal-twisted dagos.
They’d nod and chuckle, using Latin or demotic Italian, maybe finding the gawky Pollack-looking kid odd and amusing – tall and hunch-shouldered, blonde-haired and long-headed, buck-toothed and underdeveloped jaw – or brushing over the unfolding drama with censorable glosses under their breaths and out the sides of their mouths as they hacked the rolling blade into the pie and tossed the kid’s order into the oven. Or maybe, as guineas are wont to do after you give them your money, they put the Sicilian Curse on you soon as your back’s turned. I think that’s probably what they did.
Flies buzzing on the counter, the Formica-topped tables – there, with the grated parmesan cheese and large pepper shakers, landing on his legs and arms; flicking them off, over and over, and all the heat of the ovens and the sun trapped in the little Italian pizza joint, with the smell of heat, rising up around him, and he’d watch the beads of sweat form on his thighs and trickle and drip off and lines of gray dirt curl out of his pores, and he was happy.
Ten, he was then, and 11, and 12, and these were the long and endless days of summer, and this, a book of the generations.
And when he was 13, he had his pizza slices in DePalma’s before hurrying off to see the great sailing of vessels up the Hudson from the harbor, July 4, 1976, the 200-year anniversary of America’s Independence Day. He was a good runner then and getting faster and stronger. He cut through North Hudson Park, and bounding out onto Boulevard East with its high winding cliff-crowning promenades… there they were below, hundreds but hundreds of them, boats, yachts, ships, lazily throttling or leisurely unfurling their sails up the Hudson River, joyful, slow, proud, glistening in the sun.
What did and what could this working-class kid, the son of an uneducated immigrant father, a truck mechanic, a self-described grease monkey, and an immigrant factory worker mother even less educated than the father, living in Fairview, New Jersey, know of some pretentious little prick lacking imagination and nearly a decade younger than himself, growing up in suburban Connecticut, growing up thinking himself a writer, growing up insisting on defining his reason for being within the delusion of being a real writer, his mind harboring itself within that delusion. And how could he know that many years later their paths would cross, in, of all places, Kyiv, Ukraine, and that this kid would come to suffer at the hands of this monster, younger than he, in a way that would change him forever.
Today, 40 years later, the one who was that kid can’t answer whether it’s a good thing to instill a child with confidence and a sense of his own self-worth, or not, because what if you do, and what if doing so changes that child into Anti Olifko? And if you don’t – well, then he’ll end up like the kid.
I’m so sick of writing about you fucking clowns – but somebody’s got to do it.
***
The freezing Slurpee drips off Anti Olifko’s face and soaks his t-shirt and pants. He is not only shocked, humiliated, and in one fell swoop out of the blue made into Welsh Losser’s sissy meat, but befuddled – Welsh Losser, Welsh Losser… how possible?; where, how guts, nerve, power, coward, pussy, deformity, cripple, walleyed freak… how, how, how?!?
Welsh Losser ends 79th Street and screeches right, onto Boulevard East, laughing in a demonic gravelly rasp.
The sharp curves of Boulevard East come up so fast under the Cadillac’s headlights and hood, there is nothing but the story of Olifko’s life racing through his brain and the holy terror of the imminent and fatal crash. Oh, he just can’t believe this is happening! – to him!!!
“HOOOWWW,” he screams… “FUCKING HOOOOOWWW…???!!!”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Olifko, you’re annoying me – nyug…”
The large bag of food, also soaked with the Slurpee, shakes on Olifko’s lap – oh, how foolish he feels, how foolish. He feels he is about to die – the death coming any second with the inevitable crash, and he can do nothing about it – nothing!
The world has suddenly become deranged, he is a victim at the hands of Welsh Losser – of all the fucking freaks in the world, of all the losers he’s wielded power over, hell, of all the fucking freaks and losers he’s fired… Losser… fucking Losser!!! And The Wife dead, too. THE WIFE???!!! –
“Where’s… what did you do with…?!?”
“Don’t worry about her, Olifko. She’s tied up back in Economy Class, while you’re up here in the cockpit with the pilot and captain of this ship – what a special treat for you! So sit back and enjoy your flight!!! Nyuggi nyaaa…”
Anti Olifko not only feels like an idiot, but strangely weak before Welsh Losser, and completely helpless – physically weak, like in a nightmare when we face a terrifying and relentless foe we cannot escape as they catch us by our feet, which take us nowhere as we struggle and strain to get one rubbery numb limb in front of the other, and they twist our arms back and break our legs and we feel the inexpressible pain of our ribs and spines being crushed that shuts down our minds, or they stab us, stab us with a knife in the back, over and over, and we feel it, feel the sharpness going in, slicing, carving in, and they twist it and twist it, and we writhe under it, the flesh of our backs spurting and leaping out in pieces and gobs, like soft wood pulp under a hand drill, our bodies, now barely conscious corpses skewered to the ground like an insect by a pin, and we know, we feel ourselves dying, and a massive powerful hand we cannot resist suffocates us with ludicrous ease.
Except this is no bad dream, Olifko, this is real. Ha, ha, Anti Olifko, how does it feel?; for you are not in control. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? – control. That’s what it’s always been about, as long as you were the one who had it. You had it, and now it’s gone – taken by… Losser!!!
Anti Olifko looks at the dark barrel-suited pile of fat-weighted gout behind the wheel, a degenerate, a mental case, a hunched shoulder rolling up and then down as the hands almost randomly turn the steering wheel, the foot keeps pressing harder on the gas, the head turns mockingly sideways to give the terrified passenger a glimpse of the laughing leering profile – “nyug, nyoag, nya… nyug, nyag, nyaow…” and Olifko thinks, ‘what the fuck… what the fuck…’, those fucking infuriating walleyes, those pink shining ice cream man child sex offender cheeks, a vomiting smell rising from the mouth… Olifko sees gridlines of aqua fill the dark space between them like in some comic cartoon panel, while the lights zooming by overhead deliver death into the car in orange and pink; Losser’s deformed small yellow teeth grind insanely in a wide grin of mouth snarling to fiendish endpoints under a feather-banded fedora and maniacal rolling walleyes. The ears grow pointed. He looks like a fucking evil pig.
The vomit turns out to be his own. Anti Olifko has lost all physical and emotional control as his vicious mind collapses into a blubbering mass of billions and billions of unnerved brain cells… He hears a pounding in the trunk!
“Aaahh, dag-nyuggets, Olifko, now you went and smelled up the whole car! What am I going to do with you? Turns out I can’t take you anywhere, nyug, so I guess this’ll be the last ride – nyugga nyaaaooo…!!!”
Welsh Losser is truly enjoying himself; he’s happy like some baby; he convulses as wave after shuddering wave of pure bliss washes over him – the detached wonderment of unselfconscious id, freedom in joy soaring unchained in his head like a narcotic high the likes of which he’s never had.
No one is pointing out his shortcomings, emphasizing his complexes, laughing at his disfigurements. No one is inhibiting him, taking away his confidence or what little self-esteem he might have managed to muster inside his feeble loser self from some small achievement on his part that had actually gone right. No one’s pouring guilt on him, telling him not to lie or make things up on his resume, or making him embarrassingly self-conscious.
[Narrator’s Note: While terrified by the sudden and unexpected presence in Kyiv of his overbearing and superior bully brother, Welsh Losser, visiting from Seattle, Welsh Losser is nevertheless moved by the good opinions and high regard expressed by Boss Lard and others for the older sibling with the similar name, and, conversely, utterly incensed by word in the street that Anti Olifko has disparaged him, calling him rude names and treating him with contempt and disdain. Some say it is this, which now drives Welsh Losser with seething and implacable rage to avenge, at all costs, his brother’s honor, dignity, and name. Even so, it’s been reported that the brother, Welsh Losser, who has victimized, terrorized, and bullied his younger brother Welsh Losser for the latter’s entire life, mocked his efforts before he left for the portal.]
In his terror and loss of body functions, Anti Olifko sees Welsh Losser is completely oblivious to the death he is courting, indeed, yearning for, beckoning to, with a deranged smile like some kid with lower intelligence and learning disabilities who accidently discovers a sweet liberation from all the shit he realizes he’s been taking his entire life. He sees Losser’s mental state and self-conscious fatalism have endowed him with demonic will and possibly superhuman strength, liked a loosed inmate from an insane asylum.
Losser gives the car ever-greater maniacal speed down sharp-curving Boulevard East high on the Hudson River Palisades.
“This is insane, IT’S FUCKING INSAAAAANE – aaahh AAAAAAAHHH…!!!”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say, Olifko: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions – nyugets har haaaaarrr…”
As Anti Olifko’s mind races to somehow stop this, this… impossibility… and kill fucking Welsh Losser, just kill the motherfucker, finally end the miserable fucking life, which has insinuated itself into the world and insisted on its place in it, insisted on… on… LIVING!!!, the Cadillac careens almost on its own, down, down, down the twisting nail-sharp turns of Boulevard East, faster and faster and faster – on the wrong side of the road, other cars, buses, swerving to the other side, colliding with oncoming others and into the curb-parked cars – crash after crash after crash; Welsh Losser laughing and laughing. Welsh Losser not even steering, but turning to Anti Olifko to make some sick fucking joke, merely pressing a fat raised left knee against the wheel. He laughs into Olifko’s terror-stricken mug like a fucking insane clown – “Nyug, nyuk, nyukee, nya-nay-nya…” They can go flying off a turn and plunging into the cliffs beneath them at any… at any…
… And there’s the pounding in the trunk! The rage wells up in Anti Olifko. He’s not dead yet… Something, some miracle, has kept him alive. Now he realizes – there’s no way he’s going to let Losser do this! In some crazy manner, the laws of nature have been reversed, and now Anti Olifko is going to reverse them again – back to what they’re supposed to be.
He’s got nothing to lose, he realizes – NOTHING TO FUCKING LOSE!!! Death’s the worst that can happen, and it looks like that’s going to happen anyway. In addition to the Slurpee, his pants are now sodden with piss, his gruelly shit is smeared across his ass, caulking the crack, matting and sticking his hairy butt cheeks together, burning his asshole.
Losser, depraved, completely demented, keeps saying, “Mr. Know-it-all, nyug, Mr. Fucking All the Answers, nyug…”
Suddenly, there appears to be a lull in Welsh Losser’s lunacy, Anti Olifko feels the car slow as Losser goes into some kind of trance… now… now’s his chance!
Olifko throws himself on the steering wheel and Losser’s right arm to steer the car into a parked-car crash and shut off the engine, punching Losser in the face with all his might, and he is already mentally braced for his head possibly hitting the windshield and other injuries.
But Losser’s grip on the wheel is vice-like, his arm can’t be budged, his trance turns out to be a ruse, to trick Olifko into trying exactly what he’s just tried.
Losser’s face lights up and his pink cheeks shine with joy, his mouth goes into its endpoint derangement as he grabs and clutches Olifko by his scruff, digging his fingers into his neck and slamming his head.
“Nyugets – and I always wondered why they called it a ‘DASH’ board… nyugga nyu nyaaaoow!”
Welsh Losser’s strength is so wildly incomprehensible and impossible-seeming that it absolutely pisses Olifko off, he saying to himself, ‘no way, NO FUCKING WAY!!!,’ and so he tries to go at Losser again, but Losser just laughs and grabs Olifko by the back of his t-shirt, gathering a handful of fabric and lifting Olifko up by his back as the shirt cuts up into his armpits. With this loose swinging leverage he controls Olifko like a puppet or ragdoll and, throwing weight behind his fat forearm, slams Olifko’s face into the dashboard again and again…
“Nyug nyaaaoow…”
Losser is violent, determined, and incredibly strong.
Still holding and controlling Olifko, Losser floors the gas, and racing to the bottom of Boulevard East, makes the turn under Interstate 495 and the great Weehawken Helix to the Lincoln Tunnel.
Now, a storm of awesome proportions the day has been waiting for finally gathers out of the hellish humidity; the electrified night of the Greater Metropolitan Area lights up the massive black clouds moving in. Crashing, a satanic carnival of lightning explodes and thunders down the atmosphere, bolts striking the waters.
“Say, Olifko, I remember you telling me back at the Kyiv Poster, just before you fired me, that everything I touched turned to shit… Judging by you, it seems you were right… nyug-nyaaaooow…!!!”
Olifko’s head looks down and bounces, as under Losser’s grip it has no choice. His mouth hangs open and he is absolutely dumbfounded, his mind speechless in its complete disbelief. He is thoroughly humiliated and helpless, unable to move and at this nightmare’s total mercy, of which there is none.
The way Losser holds him, Anti Olifko’s father used to march him around the house like this all the time when he was a kid, humiliated, terrified, his head bouncing down, his mouth open, and he helpless, lifted up by his father’s right hand, by his shirt and scruff of his neck, at his father’s mercy, the father controlling his walking, the steps he was taking, forward or back or side to side, to make fun of him, like a comic routine, to give himself a laugh, and then hitting him, at will, where he wanted and how hard he wanted, until one day, when he was 17, Anti Olifko said no way and slammed his fist into his father’s head, the back of which hit the wall and the father collapsed, and the mother lost it, screaming and screaming…
And Olifko thinks, why was that?; this was his mother, and she saw the constant abuse but she is so hysterically and absurdly on the old man’s side that he might as well conclude that all these years she’d been a party to the abuse, as indeed she was… and, therefore, never truly loved him.
At the tunnel, Losser runs the toll without stopping.
“Nyug nyaaooow – Manhattan… that’s just what you’d like, isn’t it, Olifko? Nothin’ doin’…”
The few cop cars stationed there race toward Losser, but now he cuts a hard left across the lanes just before the tunnel’s mouth and jumps onto the gigantic rising loop known as the Weehawken Helix, I-495, forcing the few vehicles that have sleepily trickled at this hour out of Manhattan bound for their homes in New Jersey to crash into the tunnel exit’s high cliff wall.
Stormwise, the heavy heated smell of earth, dirt, and asphalt rises, and now the first walls of rain sweep down in sheets, wetting the road.
Losser devours the 495 loop upward without braking, forcing others he is passing wildly in deadly alternating trajectories to swerve in horror and sudden panic away from him on the slickness. Some go into uncontrollable tailspins and pile into a crash, bringing outbound tunnel traffic behind Losser to a halt.
The police lights flash and their sirens wail, the cops hard on Losser’s tail despite the many crashes left in his wake.
But now, great darkness descends and the storm breaks in all its evil and fury and Losser is lost to his pursuers, whom he leaves in the blinding downpour and his wheels’ dirt-white spray, racing up the Weehawken Helix, still clutching a helpless twisting Olifko by the scruff, like some puppy dog or the way a cat carries her kittens in her teeth, the lightning crashing and the skies blasting a-thunder, the rain pouring down in malevolent waves, an 18-wheeler up ahead on Losser’s right and the outside edge of the loop, suspended high in the air and desperate simply to make the greater safety of the freeway’s straight stretch, where he can pull over and wait this thing out… and visibility… zero…
“Nyug nyaaooow…”
You’ve not seen anything until you’ve read… Episode 4: Coming to a live Kyiv Unedited portal near you – soon!!!
Filed by JS, August 16, 2015