Fanged JFK

by Odious

This is Chapter 20 of King of Spain, the serialized text art that is being channeled to me by a future version of myself called HeirMax98. It's a story about four strangers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who discover that they are trapped in some sort of simulation haunted by a strange entity they call, "The Curator".

In Chapter 20, Dean finds a way to write down all the things he remembers after Casper takes off with the notes and paper, leaving him with only a pen.

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Paid subscribers can read Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here , Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 here, Chapter 5 here, Chapter 6 here , Chapter 7 here , Chapter 8 here, Chapter 9 here, Chapter 10 here , Chapter 11 here , Chapter 12, here , Chapter 13 here , Chapter 14 is here, Chapter 15 is here, Chapter 16 is here, Chapter 17 is here and Chapter 18 is here, and Chapter 19 is here.

[Dean]

I’ve always been here. I wait and I watch. I don’t move. I barely breathe. Bits and pieces come through the static, snippets of songs, cut and paste feelings that flutter about. Who am l? This is the essential question, the one that must be made obsolete. Fake Brooklyn is waiting, with its fake bike riders and fake soccer players, faces glitching wide open like hungry animals. The river is waiting, unfolding onto a painted horizon. The women in front of me are waiting. My skin is covered with words written in pen ink. So many, line after line, written top to bottom, side to side, in different sizes, overlapping, taking up all the space. I read a story on my left leg about a group called The Last in which I seem to have been the leader. There were three of us and then four and then three again because someone left and took the precious pages of our history with him: “He came and went, like a ghost.” It seems familiar, it makes me upset so I read a different part, this one inscribed across my abdomen in big letters: “A play within a play. U R JFK! We don’t go 4ward we rewind. U must be killed the right way this time.” 

The woman who is not lying on the ground has her back to me. She wears clear high heeled boots and a black cape with fake mannequin arms sticking out the back. She has on a wig of black puffy hair that brings to mind a name. “Jackie O,” I whisper. She is bent over, I can see the back of her thighs.  She is dabbing the bottom of the cape on the bleeding body of the woman lying on the ground. Is this other woman playing the part of the murderer? The assassin? The stage blood looks good. Ketchup mixed with something else. Jackie O has covered the other woman’s chest and torso with the shirt that was in the grass when we woke up. I can’t see either one of the women’s faces, but I know they’re both beautiful. Like angels. I must love them both. I can feel it. Jackie O is shaking, the fake arms bounce up and down and come together, clapping and then staying pressed together as though praying. Later I will find out she’s crying. The exposed skin of the other woman is covered with layer upon layer of special effects meant to resemble scratch marks that I will come to realize form letters and words. Just like me except she’s cut to shreds. Sentences carved on top of one another, making them nearly impossible to read. She has short blonde hair and is thick and strong looking.  I have to figure it out. There are more words written on my arms, stomach and chest but the ink is faded and rubbed off so it’s hard to read. I can make out, “Find others”, “Enter, fleeing,” and “Driving in a big black car. Prez Suprstar.” But I don’t know. It all means something but I don’t know what. All I know is the dabbing and shaking will go on and I will go on watching until I make a move and play the part I’m supposed to play.

More stage blood covers my hands. They’re sticky with it. There’s a pen lying by my feet. 

Was I ever different? Was I ever brand new, with too-big Nike high tops and coat pockets stuffed with candy I traded for other candy? Or have I always been here exactly as I am, sitting, waiting–lost from myself?  

Later when I reach into my pants I see two more notes just above my cock, secret messages from me to me. These are spaced apart and easier to read:

“Memries not real.”

And

“Take a look in yr photo book, I’m not there anymore.”

We’re high. No, that can’t be right, we’re just kids. At least we are when we start out. We climb over seats to get all the way up against the wall but I stop when I see the projector. It’s a giant black ball covered with holes. I tell the others to keep going and I get a seat by myself a few rows behind it, close but not too close. It’s a monster, a metal insect. A few of them want to sit with me but I wave them away. I want to be alone to watch what happens. And you know, it doesn’t disappoint. The lights dim and it unfolds its spindly legs. Its belly rises up and casts beams of light in every direction, covering the walls and the domed ceiling with stars. The narrator announces that this is our sky right now–today, tonight–but without the haze and light pollution. It’s the one I always dreamed of seeing. It’s even better than the real thing. I could look up forever. But then the stars recede and a movie starts. I’m already entranced, and the way I’m sitting with my head tilted up gives me no choice but to be focussed and suck in all the information. It’s about the sun, how it was born and how it sucked things to it and how someday it’s going to die. This is the part that gets me. I’d never considered that it wouldn’t last forever. It is, in fact, already middle aged and beginning its slow decline. The movie depicts its death throes, how for millions of years it will expand as it burns up the energy at its core, overheating the solar system and extinguishing all life on Earth. It’s not a big enough star to go supernova, but it will still get so bloated it will swallow Mercury and maybe even Venus as our blue beauty of a planet becomes a hellscape.

After staying like this for another million years the withering old sun will start to sink back, collapsing onto itself and giving out its last gasps of energy. The earth will be cloaked in darkness. Eventually gravity itself gives way and one by one the planets spin off into space. 

I am shocked and saddened. Everything that ever had been or ever would be on Earth will be gone, all memory, all events–each sacred monument and gilded gallery, past and future ruins, every iron safe along with all its contents–burned, melted, turned not even into ash but vapor, a wind disappearing into a vacuum. 

The movie ends. The dark projector tilts again, it cranks and whirls and the night sky returns. Its beauty now fills me with disgust–it will be here through it all, looking down pitilessly as we get snuffed out. We get up to leave. I say something to someone holy fuck, man, the sun is going to die and they shrug and say yeah but not for millions of years. Still. Nothing matters in the face of this irrevocable event. There is nothing known that matters. All books, all languages, all math and science. What I wanted was to be there, to know what it felt like: the abyss, the angelic heights of pure emptiness. My sneakers slide across the stone floor. I keep dropping my phone. 

This is why I love the medicine. It reveals the real reality behind the stupid fake gray safety of the everyday world cluttered with all the things I never wanted but still felt bad about not having. A career, a wife, a house. During the bathroom break I put water on my face. We don’t splash it on patients but instead we ring out a washcloth and place it warm and wet on top of their head to help bring them back into the room. 

The womb/room as Maestro calls it…you can feel it spinning in space, the spirits gather at the edges and sometimes move across. Their faces light up like trees in flashes of lightning. It’s an image I can’t hold. Maybe it’s not a real one, just a placeholder put there by my mind.

They line us up two by two with our partners, mine has yellow hair. A yellow haired warrior. Her hands are warm and she laughs at everything I say. We are the same, she says. It’s a secret, they didn’t know it when they put us together. But today she is sick so my hands are free. She is lying down and won’t get up. I want to do the same but the black insect machine is still back there spinning loops of sticky white light so I have to play the part.