American Monsters Page 6

You walk John Doe the DJ to the front door, and wave as he drives off in his Volkswagen Rabbit. You turn around and are engulfed by the wide door mouth of the mansion. It smirks nastily as your body disappears through it.

  ―EXHIBIT NO 17―

  DJ FETISH

  What an odd bird, you think, as you drive away from the notorious Motel Chain Mansion. It was your first time being there, and it was a sign of Mr. Motel Chain’s oddness that he didn’t even bother to give you a proper tour. Never mind, you’ll see the whole thing soon enough. As you glance into your rearview mirror at the looming mansion, you notice how much the facade looks like a face. You almost swerve off the road when you catch the house winking at you. You figure it was probably a window being shut or the curtains being drawn. How bizarre. You feel an odd sense of relief as you drive away from the Mansion. There is something off with that building. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something felt strange. Well, you’re being paid a million bucks to kill a whole slew of kids, that should be enough to weird anyone out. But maybe not you, though.

  Your mind wanders back to your ex-girlfriend. Well, she’s not really an ex-girlfriend because you two never broke up, really. You killed her, but it was an accident. And you haven’t been with anyone since, so who knows what that makes you. Probably nothing. A murderer. That is why you don’t do drugs anymore, because you were fucked up the night your girlfriend died, and she died because you suffocated her with love.

  You remember what a nice time you two were having on ecstasy: hugging and talking. You both decided to go for a walk to the park down the street from your house and somewhere in there you two started hugging again, and you were holding her so tight, so tight, and then, you don’t even really know when she died but when you broke from the hug she just tumbled to the ground. You don’t know how you could hug someone to death, it’s just way too Othello for real life, but it happened and there you were. Rolling on ecstasy in a park with your dead girlfriend at your feet.

  You didn’t know what to do so you dragged her body and threw it into a manhole that you pried open with difficulty. You walked home. There was a big stink about her going missing. Her parents, the police, everyone knew about her, and everyone was keeping an eye out. She never turned up, and her parents still haven’t had a funeral for her. They will not let go of the chance that she is still alive. You haven’t told them because who are you, really, to burst their bubble?

  You did decide that you would never do drugs again. You have made it part of your purpose as a DJ to advocate abstinence from drugs, an attempt to take the rave back to its roots. The people that attend parties now aren’t even real party kids, they are just going because everything is commoditized and fetishized to the point where all meaning is lost. You remember the days when parties were about hearing and appreciating great music, meeting loads of people and as an enhancement of these two key points, getting fucked up. Now, it’s all gone to shit. Nobody has anything to do with the scene except for the drugs. The peace, love, friendship and respect that used to exist within the party scene has been commercialized. You used to be able to pay five bucks for a great party. Now, you can’t even find a party whose cover charge is less than thirty dollars.

  You had actually planned to give up the whole DJ thing, but when Mr. Motel Chain offered you the job, you took it as a last public statement. It’s time to get a real job and stop being so concerned with the bullshit politics of party kids. You’re over that, or at least will be once you’ve helped teach a lesson to the trendy flocks of sheep that will wait, like lemmings, to jump to their deaths. Yes, the metaphors are mixed, but you know what you are talking about. This scene is dead. It should start acting that way. After you’re done with it, it will be like your girlfriend’s body in the sewer, rotting away to nothing. Who will even care enough to remember?

  ―EXHIBIT NO. 18―

  CONSOLE

  You are in a wet, dripping, dark place. The walls are soft and squishy and warm. There are two other people with you, somehow you’ve been sucked inside something. You remember opening a door, and then there was this warm wetness all around you. You’ve lost the two comrades. You are sliding down a tunnel. There is nothing to grab onto. You can see light up ahead. You shoot with incredible force towards the light, only to emerge out of what seems like a cave being guarded by a huge bloody fanged mouth. The other two shoot out beside you, and stare at the fangs until they move sharply closer to bite... There is fire all around, you are covered in blood―

  You wake up. Sweating and confused.

  Your online name is Console-Cowgirl and something really bizarre has been happening to you lately.

  About a month ago, you scratched the cornea of your left eye and had to have laser surgery. After a week of being in complete darkness in order for your eye to heal, you began to see things. It started with odd images in the corners of your eyes, peripheral glimpses of faces and buildings that disappear as soon as you turn your head. It is unsettling, like a bad acid trip that lingers around the margins of your vision. But you’ve never done acid. You’ve never been into that. Your online life is enough of an escape for you to not look elsewhere for altered states of being. At the same time, these images recur, have been recurring since the operation and since you’ve started wearing special contact lenses to protect your corneas. The dream you just woke from is among many that you’ve had in the last month and it carries with it a sense of foreshadowing that you can’t understand. What does this mean?

  Bright white light exploding all around you. You grab the nearest wall but it seems like elastic, like it wants to pull you into the structure of the building. You see bodies lying on the floor, lots of bodies, they aren’t moving, they have trickles of blood seeping from their ears. Some of it has pooled on the rocking floor. It is so loud, so loud you don’t know how you can see anything. Your eyes are dry and aching from the smoke in the air, bright lights explode all around you, then nothing.

  Wracked with the latest series of psychotic visions, you climb out of bed and head to the bathroom. While peeing, you wonder what changed. These dream-like interludes are disturbing and they happen at random moments, like somehow your brain is hardwired into some cybernetic matrix and trips up every once in a while with metaphysical information that surfaces when least expected.

  What you don’t know is that the combination of hours upon hours staring into cyber-dimensions, combined with the laser surgery and contact lenses, has altered the hard-wiring of your brain. The dreams and images are a product of a Cassandra mutation, one that causes your eyes to emit light instead of absorbing it, putting you in touch with astral information doled out in synaptic bursts. If someone were to catch your blind visionary gaze they would be sucked into cyberspace, trapped in a matrix of memory and collective unconscious, lost in your mind.

  The incredible amount of déjà vu you have been experiencing is related to some change in your physical form. You wonder if you can catch telepathy from someone. You don’t know how else you could be able to read into people’s heads so easily. You’ve been avoiding crowds, spending more and more time online, chatting with random people, not worrying about what grotesque image will surface next in their twisted minds. It’s too early to be awake, and you decide a few more hours' sleep is worth the freakish dreams that are sure to follow. You count the flying windows until you fall back to sleep.

  ―EXHIBIT NO. 19―

  KALEANATHI: THE SMOG GODDESS

  You are the daughter of Athena and Kali’s unholy union. Your incarnation: The warrior goddess of destruction. Their gift to you. You float in the essences above the concrete jungle. Your bird’s eye view of the city allows you to feed whenever necessary. The smog is your cover.

  You were summoned when Los Angeles lost its humanity. When corporations built the freeways and did away with public transportation. When water was being stolen from the north to feed the concrete mouth. Even further back, when the missions dug up the bones of the ancestors and threw t
hem into the water, disconnecting history from the present forever.

  The rave has been the newest way to corporatize the values of peace, love, unity, and respect. You feel poisoned by the imbalances embodied by these Angelenos. Tonight is the night to avenge the blasphemy.

  You’ve been sensing a change. The energies are communing over Hollywood. Halloween is on its way, the night of the living and the dead, where darkness is a harbor for spirits coming in to dock. You wander through the skies, looking for the place where the energy consolidates. This energy is chemically induced, made for predation. You are the mother of predators, you are the avenger of wounded cunts, you feed off the collective. You watch them while they sleep, and you have been waiting for your sacrifice. You feel them gathering in your palace on the hill. You feel them walking around inside of you, wandering your tunnels and the labyrinth of your insides. They don’t know what they are looking for, but you know you are looking for them. You’ve been waiting.

  You will bring all of your children back to your womb. They are already beginning to arrive. They drive up your spirit-forested path, they giddily stomp up to the door. They think this is just another night. You are calling them home. Your wings of smog tuck themselves around the Motel Chain Mansion. The fog will birth a brave new world as the last rays of the sun are eaten by the carnivorous rabbit in the moon.

  VOLUME 2:

  THE PHANTASTIC CARNIVAL

  CAST OF CHARACTERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

  Katie Hernandez: Channel 5 News.

  Kaleanathi: The Smog Goddess

  The Motel Chain Mansion: Therein lies the rub.

  Barren: She with the deadly vomit.

  Dioxin: She with a lethal toxin.

  Saline: She with the breast implant tentacles.

  Habanilla: She with the fiery hands.

  Party Kids: They with lots of drugs.

  Console: She with the Cassandran visions.

  Trip: She who sells hallucinogens.

  Skreem: She who lost a daughter.

  Gaze: She who died in the 7-11 bathroom.

  Dentata: She with the vagina where penises go to die.

  Uteri: She with the pheromones.

  Wake: She with a detachable vagina.

  Parking Attendant One: He with the creepy leer.

  Lily: She with the Gorgon eye.

  NRG: She who spits metal.

  Secrete: She with poisonous orchid skin.

  Chamelia: She who can shift shape.

  Parking Attendant Two and Three: They being more creepy men.

  Security Guards 1-4: They being even more creepy men.

  Slash: He with the Debbie fixation.

  The Vikings 1-4: They the Neo-Nazi rapists: Dirk Diggler, Reed Rothschild, Jack Horner and Buck Swope.

  “Rollergirl”: She who is abused and abandoned.

  The Firebirds: They the three bird-girls who sell bloodweed: Galactic Canary, Cherry Thrush and Cerulean Amazon.

  Chaos: She of the penis-eating.

  Glamour: She of the blending in.

  Mr. Motel Chain: He of the bitter vengeance.

  DJ Fetish: He of the disillusionment.

  Jade & Sandalwood: They being the telepathic DJs.

  Ichor: He being the menstrual-blood drinking vampire.

  Random Raver Girl: She who is an idiot, and Mr. Motel Chain’s daughter.

  DJ Rogue: He who is the hot DJ.

  The Random Guy: He being a lurker, and Mr. Motel Chain’s son.

  Stoners 1-4: They of the party, wandering.

  Marines 1-4: They also of the party, wandering.

  Security Guards 5-6: They of the trouble.

  Jim: He of the lack of vital importance.

  The Hyena Men: They of the pack mentality.

  The Driver: He who changes everything.

  The Caller: He of the confirmation.

  9:00 P.M.

  OCTOBER 31, 2000

  The camera zooms into the white smile of the news announcer.

  Katie Hernandez:

  Good evening and welcome to Channel 5 News. This balmy night we are following an ongoing car chase on the 5, as well as a gruesome car-jacking in Hollywood, and the murder of a celebrity debutante. But first, stay tuned for the weather.

  The camera pulls away from her bleached teeth up into the red sky where Kaleanathi, the smog goddess, roils in anticipation. Clouds are forming, localized around one particular hill. Her cauldron is the city as it begins to boil with life for the night. The bubbles venture their way to her gathering. The white tendrils wrap their way around trees and houses as they travel to the designated location, The Motel Chain Mansion.

  A quick cut to the inside of a young woman’s car. The driver is Barren. She chain smokes cigarettes as she heads down the freeway.

  Barren:

  I love that you guys force me to go out and then make me drive. What is that?

  Barren rolls her eyes and puffs on her cigarette. When she exhales, the smoke shifts into the shape of a uterus. It dissolves as the camera watches it. She’s with Dioxin and Saline, two of her closest friends. Dioxin is dressed as a bloody tampon, string and all, and Saline is identifiable by her oversized, unreal breasts. The two of them have been trying to get Barren out to a rave for ages, and found the perfect time when she developed severe gynecological problems. Barren’s been depressed and withdrawn, and both Saline and Dioxin agreed that a party and some ecstasy would at least temporarily ease her mind. This night will be the first time that Barren has ever done the drug.

  Saline:

  Stop griping. We both know the only reason you are pissy is for things that have absolutely nothing to do with tonight, so just relax. We are going to have so much fun, you just don’t even know.

  Barren:

  I don’t know about E though. I don’t usually do things like that. What if I get too fucked up? What if I can’t snap out of it or get really sick or something?

  Dioxin:

  Seriously sweetie, don’t even worry about it. You are just going to feel really good and want to hug everyone. It’ll be a blast.

  Saline:

  And it is so much fun to dance! So much! Oh and wait until you taste a lollipop: It’s unbelievable. You’ll just love it.

  Barren:

  Whatever. Okay.

  Dioxin:

  No whatever. We’re going to have such a good night. Girls time, you know. Just smile and say you’ll relax and have fun.

  Barren (smiling, sort of, and smoking):

  Okay, I’ll relax and try to have a good time.

  Saline:

  No, you will have a good time.

  Barren:

  All right, Jeez. I’ll definitely have a good time, ‘kay?

  Saline:

  Just give me one of those cigarettes.

  Barren passes a cigarette and lighter to Saline. Barren drifts into her own worries about the night. She sighs and lights up another cigarette. She gets off the freeway and heads into Hollywood. She drives for a few minutes while Dioxin and Saline sing along to Madonna’s new song on the radio. Then, traffic slows. Saline quiets down and looks at the flier for the address.

  Saline:

  Oh, it’s not that far from here. I bet this is the traffic for the party.

  Dioxin:

  Does it say on there how many tickets they would have? This is a fucking lot of cars.

  Saline:

  Um... oh, weird. It’s unlimited. Have you ever heard of that before?

  Dioxin:

  No, but maybe it's a really big place. Maybe no amount of people could be a fire hazard there.

  Barren:

  Any people is a fire hazard.

  Saline:

  Thanks, ray of sunshine. Turn the music up, we’ll be here for a while.

  As Barren reaches for the volume button, the camera squeezes out of the half-open passenger window. It drifts above the line of cars turtling their way down Hollywood Boulevard.

  9:30 P.M.

  A block ahead of
Barren, Saline, and Dioxin, a car makes a left turn. It too holds party kids on the way to FULL LUNACY, The Motel Chain Party. They're looking for a short-cut. The moon above is full and ringed with red, a sign of trouble. An orange and green monster truck shaped like a habanero pepper that was behind the raver car follows it down the street.

  The Party Kids think the person behind them is also trying to get to the party a bit faster. Plus it's a really cool truck, they must be good people. They drive around for a few minutes, decide they are lost and pull into an AMPM parking lot. The truck follows and parks next to them. Habanilla steps out of her truck and goes around to their driver’s window.

  Habanilla, putting her finger to the driver’s temple:

  Give me your wallets or I’m going to kill you.

  The driver looks confused. Kill him with what? She doesn’t have a weapon. Habanilla places her hand against the side of his head. Her skin exudes a fiery hot spice, habanero-esque: the hottest and most potent pepper in the world. His skin begins smoking and he slumps over onto the front passenger seat.

  Habanilla:

  Give me your wallets. NOW. Or the rest of you bitches are gonna get it.

  She is handed three wallets. She hears the girls begin screaming as she walks away. She gets into her truck and drives off. As she drives she finds a ticket for a rave. It is very close by, actually: the street she was just on earlier. She decides to go. Those three had almost $300 between them, for the party probably. It’s always the same. Whenever there is a party in the ghetto, the rich white kids come down and flaunt their green. You can tell them by their stupid fuzzy clothes and big baggy pants. Tonight is Halloween, so they are dressed even worse.

  Habanilla, voice over:

  What the fuck is wrong with white people?

  Habanilla has robbed many people going to or coming from raves, but she has never actually been to one. She could never afford the hefty thirty or so dollars for a ticket. The money she stole always went towards crystal meth and every so often food, if she remembered.