Francis of the Filth Page 10

  “Lord Chin Chin will no doubt have his minions keeping an eye on you. Once he finds out you’re involved in illegal crawfish racing, it’s all over.”

  “So what’s the point of all this then?”

  “Papa Franku. It means you go in disguise! Ha ha ha!”

  Frank loved this idea. “Yes! I could dress up as a flute playing, folk dancing goblin! Or maybe an obese, bearded lady with haemorrhoids; or how about one of those cute, large-breasted, mini-skirted, boggle-eyed girls in Japanese anime!” He was getting really excited as he said this. Safari Man, Pink Guy and Salamander Man looked at him with a hint of disgust.

  “What’s happened to you?” asked Pink Guy.

  Safari Man broke the moment of tension. “Ha ha ha! I was thinking you could wear a World War One flying cap, some weird sunglasses and a happi coat and call yourself ‘Kamikaze Failure Frank’. Chin Chin and his minions will be after someone who looks intelligent. It’s the perfect disguise! Ha ha ha!” This was met with boisterous laughter, back slapping and the raucous passing of wind. They celebrated Safari Man’s plan until late into the evening, singing and dancing and passing out from excessive alcohol consumption.

  That Saturday evening they returned to the apartment in ragged excitement. The plan, though not without its oversights, had gone splendidly. Each of the characters had turned up and on time, except for Alpha Centurion who always liked to make a late entrance. The betting was fierce and the stakes grew high. While Frank was not able to fool all of the entrants with his micey crawfish, by the time they realized, it was too late and he had absconded with all the money.

  Yet not all had gone to plan. While Frank raked in all the money, Alpha Centurion, crafty little fellow that he is, stole all the chromosomes and set off across the park at full speed. Fortunately, Alpha Centurion at full speed is no faster than a sea cucumber on dry land and Frank was armed with Drone, who rounded him up in no time. Frank cut a deal with Alpha. He would swap all the monetary takings of the day for all the chromosomes that Alpha had taken during the illegal crawfish racing event. The runt, having lost his job with the banning of dwarf throwing, was in agreement and the swap was made. Alpha Centurion provided Frank with all the chromosomes (allowing him to keep one thousand as a goodwill gesture) and Frank, having quickly learned the ethics of this town, handed over half the money taken that day. His little friend had no idea and was wholly pleased with the outcome. He was so pleased, in fact, that he followed Frank back to his apartment and joined in their evening festivities. Their little friend endeared himself to them so much in fact that they allowed him to stay and join their growing posse of unlikely rankenfiles. The fact that Alpha Centurion had nowhere else to stay was lost on them, possible due to the excessive alcohol that they had consumed.

  “There is one more matter to be settled before we retire for the evening,” Frank said with a flushed face. He turned to Safari Man. “I believe we had a little wager going ourselves.”

  Safari Man replied in the only way he knew how. “Ha ha ha.” Only this chortle was noticeably less jovial than those he had previously released.

  “You bet, Safari Man, that I would make at least two million chromosomes from the illegal crawfish racing.”

  Safari Man looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Papa Franku…”

  “Unfortunately, I was only able to get 1,999,000 chromosomes. A solid amount but clearly not the required amount.” He looked at Safari Man with a wholly unconvincing look of sorrow. “I’m afraid I will have to take the keys to your apartment.”

  “But Frank!” cried Alpha Centurion. “You gave…”

  “Shut up, you little butt plug!” he snapped. “I gave you your fair share of the money. Are you one of those people who comes back for more after a deal is made?”

  Alpha Centurion, despite being a consummate potty-mouth himself, was not used to being scolded like that. He waddled over to the cupboard, climbed in and closed the door. Safari Man morbidly handed over the keys of his apartment to Frank who received them graciously. They were now his.

  “Safari Man,” said Frank. “I like you. You’re like a brother to me.” He turned to all of them. “You’re all like brothers to me. We are family. The keys to this apartment are mine. But the apartment is for all of us. We will share it equally and fairly until I tell you to get the fuck out. What do you say?” Enormously buoyed by these words, they all came in for a group hug. Even Alpha Centurion fell out of the cupboard and came over to join them. They sang and danced and picked the lint from their navels until deep in the night.

  Chapter 7

  In a hole in the ground there lived a negi. And a rather nasty, dirty, wet hole it was too, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, unlike those dry, warm, sandy holes with divans to sit on and smorgasbords to eat from: it was a negi-hole, and that primarily means misery. Negis were roots who tended not to have names as such, but rather went by groupings and numbers. This particular negi’s identification was ‘Negi Generation 1’. The ‘1’ suggests that he was the first in his particular grouping (the ‘Generations’ as this group were known). He was directly related to Negi Generation 4 (who was his nephew, in fact) who had earlier come to a grisly demise in a foreign land. All of the Generation Negis had come to know of it and most of the other negi groupings knew of it, too. Much was said of his wandering off like that to distant realms and dimensions, so poorly prepared and ill-equipped, and of the dark lord who had not only dismembered him but (it was widely believed) also orchestrated the whole sorry affair from beginning to end.

  Negi Generation 1 rose from his soggy hole one dim morning and made his way, for reasons which entirely eluded him, to the top of a nearby hill. There he fossicked and picked about, wandering this way and that, but staying at the top of the hill and wondering what to eat for breakfast. There was a purpose in the air that morning, a calling as it were, yet he could not put his finger on it in any precise sort of way. He just knew he needed to be on the top of that hill looking out over the fields below.

  Though their worlds were soon to come together, at this point in our story, Frank and his friends remained in New York City, sleeping heavily after a night of merriment. It was Safari Man who brought the dawn.

  “Psst!”

  Frank turned in his bed with a head pain that was so bad he felt as though he had been struck with an anvil .

  “Psst!” Safari Man said again.

  “What?” he croaked.

  “We have to go now.” Frank wasn’t used to Safari Man whispering. It gave a freaky ‘alternate universe’ feel to his waking.

  “Why?” he asked. “And what is that awful smell?”

  “Ah, ha ha ha,” he whispered again. “Probably your breath, Franku. But no time for that now. We have to go. We have the chromosomes and I suspect Chin Chin knows that you have them.

  “Why would you suspect that?”

  “It’s the air. The smell in the air. There is a tinge of sulfur in the air and that often means that he is on his way. We can’t waste any time. We must go now.”

  Frank roused Pink Guy, Salamander Man, Alpha Centurion and Drone and the six of them, still scratching their heads and backs and pimply buttocks, silently filed out of the apartment and down onto the street. None of them, save for Safari Man, had bathed for epochs. Pink Guy groaned at Frank.

  “We don't want to make a mess of the apartment, Pink Guy. You know how messy these transports can be. We might need the apartment to come back to at a later time.” He turned to Safari Man. “Where to?”

  Safari Man ran off toward the subway.

  They were a sight early in the morning. A Japanese man wearing a safari hat and a Hawaiian shirt muttering ‘ha ha ha’, followed by a German/Japanese man wearing a badly stained blue shirt, sunglasses and a WWII flying cap, followed by a pink guy holding a ukulele and running with a hobble, followed by a green salamander-looking entity twisting his nipples as he ran, followed by a drone in flight, followed by a shirtless runt speaking purely in
cuss words as his friends moved further and further ahead of him down the street.

  Even in the early hours of the morning, the city was bustling. There were no public places that maintained any sense of privacy. Safari Man looked about him, increasingly frustrated and anxious. “We have to go,” he kept muttering. “We have to go. He could be here any moment.” The others followed closely behind him and shared his growing nervousness. “Underground. We have to go underground.”

  “Plenty of people in the subway already,” Frank assured him.

  “Not the subway. Underground. Underground. Here,” he said, moving to the edge of a side street right outside a Planned Parenthood Center. “This manhole. This will take us underground. I have the coordinates. We’ll make the move down there.” The only problem was, none of them could remove the cover. “We need something to stick into the openings to use as leverage,” Frank instructed. They looked about but saw nothing that could be used.

  Spurred on by Safari Man’s nervous whining, Frank turned to Salamander Man. “Your recorder, my friend. We can use your recorder to lift the lid off the manhole.” Salamander adamantly shook his head. “Nyeeesssss!” he insisted. “Nyyessss,” he said again, assuring Frank that the cover would only break his recorder and then they would have neither the protection of being underground nor the comfort of his music. “It’s a risk we have to take, Salamander Man. Chin Chin could be here at any moment. Please.” With the forlornness of one handing over a child, he placed his recorder in Frank’s hands. And with that instrument alone they succeeded in lifting the cover off the manhole and, with many hands helping, were able to return the recorder more or less intact to Salamander Man’s possession. The beauty of that moment was not lost on any of them. They paused to reflect on it before suddenly jumping down the hole.

  Safari Man led the way. He was followed by Alpha Centurion, then Salamander Man and Drone, Pink Guy and finally Frank. Yet just as Pink Guy climbed in, a passing patrol car pulled over with the customary screech of tires and squeal of a siren. A fat white officer jumped out and ran over to the opening just as Frank was disappearing down it.

  “What the hell is going on down there?” he bellowed. His pistol was drawn. Frank, now loaded with chromosomes, just managed to pull the cover back in place before jumping to the bottom of the hole. He could hear more officers gathering around and calling for back up to come and remove the cover.

  It was with great disappointment that each of them realized, one by one, that they had not entered an electrical manhole, nor a manhole for telephone lines or gasworks. They had entered a sewer tunnel. And though the cracks in the pipes were small, the stench they released was intolerable and as they moved along the tunnel, the pipes crumbled away to nothing and they found themselves wading through fetid, ankle-deep waters of urine and faeces. Each of them were caused to vomit at least once. It became clear that the risk of disease from this hole in the ground was greater than any risk they might face from a bullet.

  “Now, Franku,” Safari Man said.

  “You’ve got the coordinates?”

  “I think so.”

  “I hate it when people say ‘I think so’. We’re not going on a holiday, you know. I don’t want to end up in some hellhole on the other side of the omniverse.”

  “I have the coordinates,” he said but his voice was wholly unconvincing.

  They huddled together, all six of them. Despite the squalid environment, Alpha Centurion had never known such affection and found the intimacy very comforting. “This is nice,” he said. The others looked at him with tremendous concern. Then ignoring him, Frank removed a small piece of broken glass that he kept in his pocket, made a gash at the base of his left palm and moved around his five tightly gripped friends, sprinkling a circle of blood into the foul waters now at their knees. Safari Man began to recite the co-ordinates. Frank continued circling his friends and dripping the life source around them.

  Pink Guy groaned.

  “Sulfur?” Frank asked. “You smell sulfur? Over this stench you’re able to smell sulfur?”

  “Yes, that is definitely sulfur,” said Safari Man. “When you eat as much ass as me you learn to smell what you want to smell.” Then a tear dropped from his eye.

  “If you ever need to talk, Safari Man, I’m here,” Frank counseled warmly.

  “Thanks. My dad can be a real dick sometimes.”

  Safari Man began to call out the co-ordinates with greater speed and fervor.

  “I smell it, too, Frank!” shouted Alpha Centurion. “It’s overpowering the reek of the sewer! Chin Chin must be close!” He began to wail as he said this. Frank circled a little more quickly and Safari Man began to call the co-ordinates with a fresh desperation. Even Frank now, as he worked his way around and around the group, could distinctly detect the sulfurous odor. Pink Guy and Salamander Man began to shout and scream. Alpha Centurion muzzled hard into Pink Guy’s thighs. “Come on, Safari Man!” yelled Frank. The sulfur was so pungent now there was no longer any scent of bodily waste. Safari Man started calling the co-ordinates so zealously it became unclear what language he was speaking.

  At that moment, three things happened simultaneously. The ground dropped beneath them; a flashlight shone from one direction; and a small orange flame appeared at some distance in the other direction, licking and flicking in an ominous manner. The ground they were standing on dropped again. The five friends found themselves standing up to their necks in the thick malodorous soup (except for Alpha Centurion who was clinging to Salamander Man, and Drone who was hovering above). They stuck together tightly. The flashlight slowly drew nearer. “NYPD!” came the call. From the other side, the orange flame took form, silently morphing from the outline of one creature into another.

  The ground dropped again and all six of them were under water. Though they became frantic in their inability to breathe, they remained tightly held to each other. They kicked and bucked in the filthy solution, desperate for air and repulsed to their core as the torrent of effluent flushed about them. It was Alpha Centurion who gave in first. He inhaled and took a full measure of the soiled waters into his lungs. There was a moment of tremendous shock and then the life was gone from him. This experience was then quickly shared by Salamander Man. Pink Guy held on for longer but it was of no benefit. He opened his mouth and the brown river flowed in. He convulsed for a few short seconds before falling lifeless and taking Drone with him. Frank looked over at Safari Man who was smiling back with two thumbs up. He was swishing the stuff around in his mouth and gargling and giggling. “When you’ve eaten as much ass as I have you learn to taste what you want to taste. Right now I can imagine tasting cheap soil.” “How is that any better?” asked Frank.

  A tremendous explosion then collapsed the tunnel and punched a hole right through to the road above. It shattered the Planned Parenthood Centre and left glass and debris all over the remains of the street. “Hmm…” said Frank as everything began falling in upon him. “’Planned…Parenthood’? Seems like a nice place.” Two policemen were caught in the explosion, one killed and the other critically wounded. The wounded policeman, a black man, fell in on top of Frank. Frank, seeing he had a hand in his pocket, began to beat him furiously. Other police on the scene began to deal with the fallout, help the injured and cordon off the area. The officer who had seen Frank enter the manhole provided his description to a sketch artist and soon Kamikaze Frank’s mug appeared on all news bulletins as one wanted in connection to a terrorist attack.

  Frank looked up through the fetid waters and wreckage to see a huge menacing orange flame hover above him. He gave a mighty gasp and felt the pulpy waste flood into his mouth, swirl around his teeth and tongue, and fill his lungs. He vomited but it was returned, washed straight back into him with the tide of filth. His last recollection was of a flaming hand reaching down through the waters toward him but not before the dark covers closed above him.

  ~

  Negi Generation 1 stood on the peak of a large hill, moist
from heavy rainfall and lush with green foliage. He peered out over the landscape. Aside from the greenery which dotted the countryside in hilly clumps, it was a decidedly gray and brown outlook, the sort that would immediately make one want to go back to bed and curl up for the day under blankets, if indeed one were fortunate enough to have a bed and some blankets. Negi Generation 1 didn’t so he remained on the top of the hill pondering what mysterious force had led him up there.

  Before the overcast sky had lightened, he noticed the muddy ground under his feet becoming more sodden and slippery, as though affected by a great deluge. Only there was no deluge. There was nothing in the air but a cool and gentle breeze. Underneath him though, in a circle about five meters from side to side, the ground continued to soften and liquify. He tried to step out from it but only slipped before sinking into it. Panic set in as he was swallowed deep into the mire. He grasped for his life, digging and clawing at the softening clay but to no avail. The more he struggled the more he was sucked further down until his feet found support in a mesh of branches and sprigs beneath him. These stoked his relief (in keeping him from sinking further) and his curiosity for he could feel the branches moving, wriggling and twisting. They were rising up from under him and as they rose, so did he. The boughs, he began to make out, were colored - pink and blue and red and green and white and brown - and they soon found voice, initially with the moans of a tree bending under the force of a hurricane, then with the screams of one in utter torment, but eventually in utterances that distinctly resembled intelligent language.

  “Get the fuck off me!”

  “Get your foot out of my mouth.”