The story is shaved as close to the skin of the chase as the skill of this left-handed craftsman allows him
Episode 4 left uncut because it is all action!!!
The summer night is clear but strenuously muggy. The flesh is sweaty, gritty. Life is unfair. If you don’t love it, it will oppress you, because here that’s how it always is.
For we are in the northern stretches of County Henry, New Channel Isle: the smallest county in the-itself-diminutive Eden State, bundle-tied in great highway ribbons, but among the most densely populated and culturally diverse areas in the Great States of the Americas, and historic as hell…
In the balmy heat of this dripping night in the Summer of ‘15, obnoxiously idling astride several parking spaces at the 7 Elves convenience store on the corner of Bergenlane Avenue and 550th Street in the city of West New Amsterdam is a ‘71 two-door olive-colored and vinyl-topped Cardillak Coupe de Villaine; a 14-cylinder battle tank gas guzzler originating illegal car pollution the likes of which the Metropolitan and Greater Quint-State Area centered on New Amsterdam – the Greatest City in the World – has not known for the better part of 40 years.
Seated in the front passenger seat of this car is Onte Alifka himself, who cannot drive, and in the driver’s seat alongside him is his longtime raggedy female companion he likes to refer to as ‘The Wife’, who revs the big engine from behind the wheel. Soot pours out of the exhaust, engulfing the 7 Elves. The Wife revels in the power.
As Onte Alifka rummages around in the 7 Elves thinking how he simply must be a better writer than John Updike-Irving, back out in the car, The Mate closes her eyes with relief and rests her head back against the seat, still, of course, running the engine. In just a few blessed moments she will finally have some food in her stomach.
A fireplug-shaped figure in a dark barrel-shaped suit and fedora with a feather opens her door.
Wels Losher wraps a fat right hand around her mouth and presses her head hard to his flabby gut, preventing her from seeing the assailant. In her shock and terror, all she hears is something like, “Nyugets…”
In panic, her hands reach automatically for his forearm, but they are way too weak to break his steely grip. He laughs at her pathetic squeaky little gurgles [Note: original had the words “squeaky little essay”, which makes no sense in this context, since an “essay” is something you write].
Impatiently, yet quickly and deftly, with his dominant left hand, he takes a large roll of wide black tape out of his left jacket pocket and begins wrapping it around her radish-colored skull and mouth as he keeps her sticklike hands wrenched and clamped behind her, then does the same to her wrists behind her back, and finally, pushing her down, winds the tape around her ankles.
He removes the keys from the ignition [Note: original contained the notion of popping open the trunk from the salon, which option Losher does not see, but this option simply did not exist back in ’71 Cardillaks, and one had no choice but to use a key], drags her out the car by the feet along the rough asphalt, bruising and tearing her face, opens the trunk with a key, lifts and throws her in, facedown, and slams the trunk shut.
He then gets in the car, shuts the door, adjusts the seat back, and keys the ignition.
While Wels Losher could never drive before, being a walleyed deformity, in this world he can.
He moves the car up into a darker spot, out from under a lamppost and the 7 Elves’ glaring lights.
He waits.
Momentarily, Onte Alifka approaches the car, his arms full with two large bags.
“Open the fucking door,” he yells in his most pleasant voice, trying to imitate a sort of good-natured jovial singing.
Losher leans over and obliges and Onte Alifka scrunches in, turns without looking at Losser to place one of the bags on the back floor while keeping the other bag he plans to start eating from on his lap, and closes his door.
“Why the fuck did you move the car?!”
Using an indistinct high girly voice, Losher says something that sounds like words and titters stupidly – “hee-hee-hee…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Alifka says, too hungry to pay any attention or to take note, despite the similarity of the voice’s pitch to The Mate’s, of its suddenly strange raspy quality.
“Okay,” Alifka now says, husking up his own voice in jocular singsong manner, happy he’s about to eat, “first I got this Fruit Juicy Purple Volcano Cold Crusher – for me, heh-heh, and this Gonzo Max Guzzle for you – hope that’s okay…”
“Oh, thank you,” Losher says in the high voice and in his darkness as Alifka hands him the Gonzo Max Guzzle, still without looking.
And for eats, I got aaaaa…:
Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Bagel with Spicy Deep-Fried Potato Skins
Jalapeno and Cream Cheese Bagel
Monterey Jack and Chicken Bagel, for later
an All-Americas Nuclear Sub
a Traditional Red-Pack Commie Salad
a Kilo-Mouthful Footer
a Chorizo, Egg and Cheese Matzo Bomb
and some of Rubenstein’s Chili Relento Vorachas…”
“Oh, that’s great,” Losher says in the voice.
“And for the snacks I got:
Natural Nacho Crisps
some Wheat-Flavored Finger-Fat Honey-Haired Pretzel Sticks
S&M Chip Cookies
and some Chunky All-Choco Chunk Cookies, too…
“And for later:
Iced Peaches and Cream Latte, for you
and Mocha Frozen Coffee – for me…”
“Oh, ooohh…”
But Losher can’t take it anymore. He puts the car in ‘Drive’ and steps on it, screeching out of the lot. The car jumps the curb into the street, northbound on Bergenlane, picking up speed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa-WHOOOAAA!!! Heeeeeeey!!!”
As the street lights go by faster and faster, Onte Alifka finally looks over at the figure they’re illuminating. He is horrified.
Just a few seconds ago they were on Bergenlane and 550th, but now they were fast approaching Northside Park, up in the 880s…
Losher laughs and rolls down his window through which he flings the Gonzo Max Guzzle Alifka just gave him.
“Hey, Alifka, I came here for the Early Bird Special, and ended up catching a worm – nyaaaag aaah nyaaaooow…!!!”
With no braking or letting his foot up, Losher turns the car on a dime into 779th Street, the Cardillak’s massive backend first swiping a car parked on the left, then on the right as he spins the wheel to straighten the heap out and plunge it headlong into the night of their destruction.
As he speeds down the unlighted southern edge of Northside Park, he reaches over with his right hand and crushes the Fruit Juicy Purple Volcano Cold Crusher into Alifka’s vulture face…
“So, nyugashee,” Losher says, “what was that you said about my brother?”
Likely Episode break here (as in original)
Likely new Episode (as in original)
The freezing Cold Crusher drips off Onte Alifka’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 Wels Losher’s sissy meat, but befuddled – Wels Losher, Wels Losher… how possible?; where, how guts, nerve, power, coward, pussy, deformity, cripple, walleyed freak… how, how, how?!?
Wels Losher ends 779th Street and screeches right, onto Eastern Boulevard, laughing in a demonic gravelly rasp.
The sharp curves of Eastern Boulevard come up so fast under the Cardillak’s headlights and hood, there is nothing but the story of Alifka’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!!!
“HOOOOOWWW,” he screams… “HOOOOOWWW…!!!”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Alifka, you’re annoying me – nyug…”
The large bag of food, also soaked with the Cold Crusher, shakes on Alifka’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 Wels Losher – 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… Losher… fucking Losher!!! And His Woman dead, too. THE MATE???!!! –
“Where’s… what did you do with…?!?”
“Don’t worry about her, Alifka. 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…”
Onte Alifka 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 Alifka 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… Alifka 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; Losher’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. Onte Alifka 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, Alifka, 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…!!!”
Losher gives the car ever-greater maniacal speed down sharp-curving Eastern Boulevard high on the Henry River Palisades.
“This is insane, IT’S FUCKING INSAAAAANE – aaahh AAAAAAAHHH…!!!”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say, Alifka: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions – nyugets har haaaaarrr…”
As Onte Alifka’s mind races to somehow stop this, this… impossibility… and kill fucking Wels Losher, 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 living, the Cardillak careens almost on its own, down, down, down the twisting nail-sharp turns of Eastern Boulevard, 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; Wels Losher laughing and laughing. Wels Losher not even steering, but turning to Onte Alifka to make some sick fucking joke, merely pressing a fat raised left knee against the wheel. He laughs into Alifka’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 Onte Alifka. He’s not dead yet… Something, some miracle, has kept him alive. Now he realizes – there’s no way he’s going to let Losher do this! In some crazy manner, the laws of nature have been reversed, and now Onte Alifka 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 Crusher, 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.
Losher, depraved, completely demented, keeps saying, “Mr. Know-it-all, nyug, Mr. Fucking All the Answers, nyug…”
Suddenly, there appears to be a lull in Wels Losher’s lunacy, Onte Alifka feels the car slow as Losher goes into some kind of trance… now… now’s his chance!
Alifka throws himself on the steering wheel and Losher’s right arm to steer the car into a parked-car crash and shut off the engine, punching Losher in the face with all his might, and he is already mentally braced for the head possibly hitting the windshield and other injuries.
But Losher’s grip on the wheel is vice-like, his arm can’t be budged, his trance turns out to be a ruse, to trick Alifka into trying exactly what he’s just tried.
Losher’s face lights up and his pink cheeks shine with joy, his mouth goes into its endpoint derangement as he grabs and clutches Alifka 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!”
Wels Losher’s strength is so wildly incomprehensible and impossible-seeming that it absolutely pisses Alifka off, he saying to himself, ‘no way, NO FUCKING WAY!!!,’ and so he tries to go at Losher again, but Losher just laughs and grabs Alifka by the back of his t-shirt, gathering a handful of fabric and lifting Alifka up by his back as the shirt cuts up into his armpits. With this loose swinging leverage he controls Alifka like a puppet or ragdoll and, throwing weight behind his fat forearm, slams Alifka’s face into the dashboard again and again…
“Nyug nyaaaoow…”
Still holding and controlling Alifka, Losher floors the gas, and racing to the bottom of Eastern Boulevard, makes the turn under Outerstate 4095 and the Great Wicksoxen Spiral to the Washington 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, Alifka, I remember you telling me back in the Kiev Post-It, just before you fired me, that everything I touched turned to shit… Judging by you, it seems you were right… nyug-nyaaaooow…!!!”
Alifka’s head looks down and bounces, as under Losher’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.
At the tunnel, Losher runs the toll without stopping.
“Nyug nyaaooow – New Amsterdam… that’s just what you’d like, isn’t it, Alifka? Nothin’ doin’…”
The few cop cars stationed there race toward Losher, 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 Wicksoxen Spiral, O-4095, forcing the few vehicles that have sleepily trickled at this hour out of New Amsterdam bound for their homes in New Channel Isle 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.
Losher devours the 4095 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 Losher to a halt.
The police lights flash and their sirens wail, the cops hard on Losher’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 Losher is lost to his pursuers, whom he leaves in the blinding downpour and his wheels’ dirty-white spray, racing up the Wicksoxen Spiral, still clutching a helpless twisting Alifka 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 on Losher’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…”
Here, Episode 4 follows in full and uncut, as it is pure action of the olden Commix kind…
End of abridged version, minus Episode 4 – project abandoned
Filed August 21, 2015