'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER FIVE

Mike Journal Entry 2

The sound of a small engine car racing past the house awoke me from my daze, that and the crazy, long-haired bastard that was looking down at me.

“Are you real?” he asked.

“Where the fuck am I?” I asked as I was peering around the room that was covered from floor to ceiling and the ceiling itself in tin foil.

“Hey...hey...hey!” he started. “I’m asking the hyperboles!”

So I know my grasp of the English language is suspect at best, but even I knew that was an incorrect sentence.

“Ask away,” I said weakly. I felt marginally better than I had when I fell into the house, but how much better was still in question. If crazy-eyed, long-haired, bearded man attacked right now with more than a plastic spoon I would be done for.

“I’m asking the questions here,” he said, trying to establish his authority.

“You said you were asking the hyperboles?”

“Why the fuck would I say that? That makes absolutely no sense,” he said, scratching his head. “Why you here? Did they send you?”

“Can I get a drink first?” I asked, my throat felt like it was on fire, which I guess wasn’t too far removed from the truth.

“I dance on my bed.”

How do these people find me? It’s like I have a heavy dose of crazy attractant sprayed all over me. “That’s nice,” was all I could think to say in return.

“Scotch okay? I don’t drink water since the government started putting fluoride in it. It makes you dumb,” he said, tapping his finger against his head.

“So how much water did you drink before you realized that?” I asked him.

Bearded Man was already heading into the kitchen; I think he was muttering something about Kelly Clarkson. I could hear the rattle of glasses and then a few of them smashing.

“You alright?” I asked as I tried to sit up.

“Thought I saw bugs,” came his reply.

“What’s with the tin foil?”

“What tin foil?” he said as he came back into the room holding two large glasses filled to the top with an amber colored liquid I could only hope was scotch and not Pine-Sol.

“Need some help?” he asked as he put the glasses down and extended his hand.

I was grateful for the help, but was afraid to touch him lest my burned flesh slough off in his grip.

“Come on, man, I haven’t bitten anyone since that one time in the K-Mart parking lot, and I thought he was an alligator,” he said, seeing my hesitation.

“I’m kind of burned bad, and I’m not sure if my skin will stay on.”

“You’re funny, man! You’re dirty as hell, I’ll give you that, but you ain’t burned. I mean I thought you were when you came in, but the more I looked at you the more convinced I was you were just a dirty bastard.”

I looked down at my hands. There seemed to be some residual burn marks, but it was nothing like what I had been looking at when I was in the roadway. I winced as he grabbed my hand, still half-convinced he would fall backwards with a fair portion of human material stuck in his grasp. My body popped and snapped as I stood, but I felt like a caterpillar shedding its old cocoon and becoming a butterfly. Okay…so that really isn’t a manly enough metaphor, let’s go with a snake shedding its old skin, that works much better and probably a lot closer to the truth considering what I was now. Half, half of what I am. I had to hold onto that other half with everything I had now. I picked up my glass and took a large swallow, the liquid alternating between burning and soothing my throat.

“How did the government know I was here?” Bearded Man asked.

I gripped the edge of a small table as a serious case of vertigo swooned by me. “Whoa, cheap high,” I said, harkening back to a reference I had used since my youth whenever I got light-headed from rising too quickly.

“There is nothing cheap about my highs,” Bearded Man said indignantly.

I thought I had crazy cornered, shit was I wrong. “No one sent me, definitely not the government. I was trying to get away.”

“From her?” he asked.

The swoon struck again, I tried not to let him see it.

Then he moved on. “I once ate a Snickers bar on a dare.”

Who the hell doesn’t like Snickers bars? I thought, and who would ‘dare’ someone to eat one?

“Can we start again?” I asked.

“When did we finish?” he asked back.

How many gods have I pissed off? I wailed internally.

“My name is Michael Talbot,” I said as I extended my hand, thinking he would shake it, then tell me his name. He looked at my proffered hand like it was a claw.

“No way, man,” he said.

I understood not shaking hands; he could be a fellow germaphobe. But that didn’t make any sense considering that he had just helped me to stand.

“Okay,” I said, pulling my hand back in, unconsciously rubbing it against my side. Blue jean material fell way like dried sand. I began to brush my legs. More fried clothing fell to the ground.

“Dude, you’re messing with my high man,” Bearded Man said as he backed up.

I stopped what I was doing, realizing that if I kept it up I would be naked in front of another man real soon. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just isn’t my cup of tea. Okay, so tea doesn’t seem masculine enough, let’s go with lager, yeah it’s not my stein of lager, much better).

“Are you melting?” he asked, still backing up.

“Molting more like it.” I gulped down my apprehension as I began to ask him my next question. “Do you have any clothes I could borrow?” As it was, I had to wash store bought clothes twice before I would ever wear them, and now I was asking this unkempt stranger if I could borrow some of his stuff.

His eyes glazed for half a second then some lucidity popped in for a quick respite. “Sure I’ll be right back.”

What the fuck? I mouthed. This guy was insane…I was just hoping not criminally insane. I can deal with varying degrees of insanity; I’m a Talbot after all.

He came back a few moments later with a heavy woolen poncho, white socks with yellow stripes—I hadn’t seen anything like those since grade school—a pair of pants that looked fashionable during the Nixon era, and some tightie-whities.

I gladly accepted just about everything except the underwear. They could have been brand new, but the mere fact that he had touched them made them soiled in my eyes. And these were far from Inspector Number 5’s hands; the elastic waistband was all stretched and worn out and there was a small hole in the seat.

“I was going to toss those soon,” he said as he watched me looking at the underwear.

“Well I’m glad you found it in your heart to hold onto them until you bequeathed them to me.”

“You’re welcome, want some french fries?”

“Thank you and yes.” What the hell else could I say? Who turns down french fries? Plus, I thought it would give me an opportunity to stash the underwear while he went into the other room to gather the mythical fried spuds.

I manically brushed the remainder of my singed digs off of me as Bearded Man made quite a show of preparing our side dish. The poncho which was scratchy actually felt surprisingly wonderful on my new itchy skin; the polyester pants were on the tight side and about two inches too short, but it beat naked any day. I hid the underwear in the poncho’s oversized front pocket. I was putting on the socks when he came in with a tray of steaming french fries.

“Who are you?” he asked stopping a few feet from me.

At first I thought he was pulling my leg, but he just kept staring at me. “Michael Talbot remember? You just got me some new clothes? And thank you by the way.”

“Oh right, I thought I was imagining you. Whoa french fries!” he exclaimed, like he just realized what he was carrying. He started popping the steaming starch sticks into his mouth. “Mmmmm, these are so good,” he said with his eyes closed. He opened them and peered at me for a moment as if he was sifting through his memory trying to figure out who I was again. When he came up with a satisfactory answer, once more he asked if I wanted some.

He put the tray down and I ate some. They actually had some spices on them and were delicious.

“I used to be chef for a five star resort,” he said as he watched me obviously enjoying his cuisine.

“These are fantastic,” I said as I stuffed some more in my face. Apparently almost dying by fire and meeting God take their toll on one’s appetite.

“Nice poncho I’ve got one just like it, I wish I knew where I’d put it.”

“What’s your name?” I asked again as I sat down, wanting to get closer to the addictive food. Bearded Man seemed to have forgotten about them completely; this was fine with me, I was famished.

“John the Tripper,” he said with a faraway look.

“Excuse me?” I asked almost wrongly swallowing a half chewed potato strip.

“John the Tripper,” he reiterated.

I had to ask, but I already knew the answer. “Because you fall over things?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” he asked back.

“You said John the Tripper.”

“What?”

“John the Tripper.”

“What?”

“Your name.”

“What about it?”

“I figured it might mean you fall over things, apparently not though.”

“I toured for twelve years with the Grateful Dead,” he told me.

“Of course you did. Any chance you filled in some of the down time with some serious karate and weapons training?”

“I watched a Bruce Lee film once, didn’t understand it though.”

“John the Tripper...”

He said “What?” again before I could finish.

“Shit,” I said, rubbing my hand over the top of my head where my hair should have been. “Do you have a mirror?” I asked as I patted down my entire head. I was pretty alarmed at this point.

He pulled open a drawer in the small table that I had used previously to support myself. It was overflowing with handheld mirrors of varying size and shape.

He looked up at me a little sheepishly. “Sometimes I just need to see myself to know that I still exist.”

“I can actually relate,” I told him as he handed me one. My right eyebrow, along with all of the hair on my head was gone, burnt to a crisp much like my clothes had been, three-quarters of my goatee was gone. I looked pretty sketchy to say the least. I’m not sure if I would have gone close enough to this person in the mirror to drop a quarter in a cup. I looked like I was suffering some serious malady. I just hoped it wasn’t catchy.

“Do you have cancer?” he asked as he rubbed my smooth head.

“I hope not, although that would probably be preferable to what ails me,” I told him, eyeing the top of my head with the mirror.

“Does shaving your head keep the evil one out?”

I was so intent on trying to find some vestige of hair on my head that I almost missed his comment. Let’s be honest, most of what the guy says can’t be construed as anything other than crazy and I had just become a Telly Savalas stunt double (Yul Brynner? Does that help as a reference? Okay, how about Doctor Evil.)

“What, John?” I asked finally looking over at him, my neck thankful I had stopped craning it in strange ways.

John the Tripper began to look around wildly. “Who’s John?” he asked me.

“You are. That’s what you told me.”

“My name is John the Tripper.”

“That’s what I said,” I answered, although I hadn’t, I had only called him John now that I reflected on it.

“So there’s nobody else here?” he asked, the concerned look on his face dissipating.

‘Just the voices in your head buddy.’ I wanted to tell him, but I was afraid we would get so far off topic that neither of us would be able to recover. “Nobody else, John...” He was about to ask who John was again “...the Tripper.” That seemed to appease him. This was going to be a pain in the ass if I had to call him by his full man-given name every time I wanted to talk to him.

“Your hair…did you get rid of it because they were acting like tiny antennas?”

John was giving me a headache. His verbal gymnastics was like watching two highly skilled Chinese Ping Pong players playing a game hopped up on Red Bull. I couldn’t keep up, or maybe more like a sure-footed goat on a Nepali Mountain pass, I couldn’t follow his windings.

I shrugged. “John...(his mouth opened)...the Tripper (it closed) I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?”

“You’re hair, man!” he said all wide-eyed. “Did you shave it off so that she couldn’t communicate with you?” And before I could answer he added. “I wished I had thought of that, had to go out about five times to get enough tin foil to wrap the whole house. There are some funky people out there. Did you know that?”

Did he just call zombies ‘funky’ people? Well that was a different slant for sure. This guy didn’t even know we were on the losing end of a zombie apocalypse, I didn’t think I had the patience to explain it to him. And for what purpose? John the Tripper seemed to be making his way just fine through his made up world.

“I mean I toured with the Grateful Dead and even Phish for a while. Smelled some truly funked-out hippies, but those people out there…” he said, pointing through his tin foil-covered window, “…there’s not enough patchouli in the world to cover up their smell.”

“Do you have guns?” I asked him, but the odds were that if he had, he would have converted it into some makeshift bong by now.

In a moment of clear thought he looked at me like I was the one on a twenty-year acid stint. “Do I look like I would own a gun?”

I could hear explosions throughout the city. I would learn later that they were the propane cylinders for heating that were catching fire as the city burned.

I stood and walked over to the window.

“What are you doing, man?” John the Tripper asked, his eyes getting wide.

“I just want to look out the window.”

“Hold on!” he yelled, running into the kitchen. He came out with what looked like two tin foil boats, at least until he put one on his head. “Here,” he said, thrusting the other one at me.

“What do you want me to do with that?” I asked.

“It scrambles the signal.”

“What signal?”

“How have you not heard her?” He tilted his head.

Oh, I heard her plenty, and it was a constant struggle to ‘hide’ myself from her. I could feel her evil oiliness as she swept by trying to locate prey or predator with her thoughts. “What the hell?” I said as I grabbed the hat and placed it on. Well if I wasn’t certifiable before, I had now joined the ranks plunging in with both feet. John the Tripper seemed appeased.

“Okay you can check now,” he said with a waving of his hand.

What I saw just about took my breath away. The city looked like you would envision Hell. The sky was lit up a blazing red, dust and ashes moved down the street in tidal waves. “We can’t stay here,” I said, not able to tear my eyes away from the inferno I was gazing upon.

“Fire, fire on the mountain,” John the Tripper sang the Dead tune as he was staring out the window next to me.

“John, you need to get whatever you think is important and we need to get out of here,” I said. He was too lost in the vision before him to even take note I had not called him by his proper name.

“Get up, get out, get out of the door,” he said still in a sing-song mode.

Good, I thought, he’s on the same page. At least that is what I thought until I realized he was still singing the song. “John!” I said grabbing him by the shoulders. “We need to get the fuck out of here!” I yelled, small flecks of spittle hitting him in the face, he didn’t seem concerned.

“I know that, does John, though?” he asked.

“Probably not. Grab whatever you think is important and can help,” I added. Who knew what he thought was important. For all I knew, he would start ripping out the copper piping down in his basement. “Do you have a car?”

“A car? No,” he answered, I could physically witness his thought process as he was trying to go through the catalog of his possessions.

My heart sank. It was going to suck trying to get out of the city ahead of the zombies and the fire.

“I’ve got a van, though.”

I almost kissed him, until I began to wonder if maybe he was using it as a planter in the backyard or something equally as useless. “Keys?”

“In the ignition,” he said, turning back towards the fire. “I was always losing them and that seemed like the safest place.

“It runs then?” I asked, still keeping my fingers crossed.

“In the garage,” he said pointing. “I grew up a few streets away from here before I became a roadie. I loved being on the road, but there was always a part of me that wanted to come home.” Tears were forming in his eyes. “I heard that you can never go home, but that isn’t true. I did, married my high school sweetheart…she still held a flame for me after all those years I was away. We took some cooking classes because we liked to eat well when we got the eats.” He smiled sideways as he reminisced. “Come to find out, I was something of a protégé in the kitchen and ended up teaching the class the following year. Stephanie never got any better, but she attended just to stay close to me.” He didn’t clarify, but I figured Stephanie was his wife. “We were married for seven of the greatest years of my life.”

“I’m sorry, John the Tripper, I am. What happened?”

“She went to Washington.”

“What?” I figured she had contracted some rare blood disease and died in his arms.

“She got a job offer. She wanted me to move with her, but I had finally come home and I didn’t want to leave again.”

I wanted to berate him for letting the love of his life get away from him, but it was his life to live as he saw fit. Who the hell was I to tell him differently? Shit, I was just some bald guy wearing a poncho and a tin foil hat. I would have been shunned by bums in Detroit. “I’m sorry,” was all I could muster.”

“For what?” he asked, looking at me. I truly think he forgot the entire thread of the conversation we were just having.

“Ah...nothing. Do you have any shoes I could wear?” I asked as I looked down at my yellow-rimmed tube socks.

“You going somewhere? I sure could use some mushrooms.”

“For cooking or eating?”

“Both, what else would I do with them.”

“I was thinking you meant the psychedelic kind.”

“Oh no, those taste like shit. I make sheet acid.”

“Forget I asked. John, I need some shoes if you have them, and you need to go pack some shit up. We need to get out of here.”

“Why would I pack shit up?” he asked.

“Figure of speech.”

“You make no sense, man,” he told me as he headed up his stairs. I really hope it wasn’t for a nap.

“Well this is a first,” I said to the empty room. “I’m not the craziest one in attendance.”

“What size foot do you have?” John the Tripper yelled down.

“Ten!” I yelled back up.

“I’m an eight. Can you fit in those?”

“When I was twelve maybe.”

“Well can you or can’t you then?” he yelled down.

I think I would be better off with socks rather than trying to cram my feet into a shoe two sizes too small.

“You could wear a pair of Stephanie’s that she left behind!”

“I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“She was a women’s thirteen!” he added.

“What are they canoes?” I asked softly, I didn’t think he would have heard me.

“She had a condition.”

“Amazonian?”

“A women’s thirteen is about a men’s eleven-and-a-half. You want them?”

“Sure, bring some extra socks.” Now I just had to get over my phobia of putting on someone else’s shoes. Hadn’t been bowling in over twenty-five years after I once figured out how many nasty-ass feet those things had been donned on. And that little squirt of disinfectant deodorant that the ‘shoe technician’ put in there would do little to overwhelm the hardy microbes that must be breeding vigorously in that germ-rich soup of toe fungus and foot jam. How’s that sound for appealing? Might as well dip your feet in dirty toilet water.

I was still rubbing the unseen germs off of me when John came back down the stairs. He was carrying an armload of socks and quite possibly the brightest pink sneakers I had ever seen in my life. I mean they looked as if they were potentially battery powered.

“You’re kidding right? Please?” I begged.

“I like socks.”

“No the sneakers.”

“No, Stephanie left a bunch of stuff behind. We’re still married. She visits about once every two months…she’s late this time though.”

My mouth opened, he had once again surprised me. I moved on to something I understood.

“Can you shut those off?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the brightness.

“You’re a funny bastard!” he said, handing over the shoes and some socks.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” I said sadly as I went over to the couch to put on my new digs.

John went over to another table in the far corner of the room. He retrieved a large folder that looked thick with paperwork.

“I don’t think you’re going to need to file taxes any time soon,” I said, looking up happily. The sneakers were ugly as hell, but with the added pair of socks, they fit pretty well. Plus, I had the bonus of being able to walk on water if the need arose.

“I’ve never filed taxes,” he said.

“You’re kind of my hero right now,” I told him as I stood, surprised at how well Stephanie’s footwear felt.

“I’m ready to go,” he said, heading towards the kitchen.

“That’s it? That’s all you want to take?” I asked him. “Paperwork?”

“Oh shit, man!” he exclaimed when he turned to me.

“What?” I asked looking around wildly.

“My wife has shoes just like that! How weird is that!”

“Weirder than you know. Let’s get out of here.”

He led the way into the kitchen which had a door to an attached garage, thank God for small favors. The garage was filled with fine soot that was coming in through a partially broken window, but even that did little to obscure the rainbow painted VW van sitting there.

“Did I really expect anything else?” I told the gods of irony.

“Isn’t she a beauty? I bought her brand new back in ‘92.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him they stopped production of his particular model somewhere around the mid-seventies. And beauty was not a word that could be used to describe what rested in his garage. The bright paint did little to hide the various rust holes or the vast number of dings, the van looked like it had been parked on the moon for a few centuries and had suffered a barrage of micro meteor hits.

“It runs?” was all I could ask. It looked too beat up to even be considered a hippie planter.

“Stephanie can’t cook worth a shit,” he said conspiratorially. “Don’t tell her that,” he added as if she were in the next room. “But she has a way with tools like you wouldn’t believe.”

I was now secretly wondering if perhaps Ship-Sized-Shoe-Stephanie, who couldn’t cook but could apparently keep an ancient vehicle finely tuned may or may not be of the feminine persuasion. Again it made absolutely no difference to me, just fodder for my thoughts.

I handed the keys back to John, I wasn’t too particularly thrilled with someone of his mental state driving, but it was still his car.

“Oh shit no, man,” John the Tripper said, pushing the keys back. “I haven’t driven since ‘88 and I just dosed.”

“You’re kidding right?”

“Nope.”

“Besides thinking that right now was a perfect time to drop acid, why would you buy a car if you don’t even drive?”

“The dealer said it fit me.”

I shrugged. “It does, but that still doesn’t make much sense.”

“You feeling anything yet?”

“About what?”

“I put some in your fire water.”