Francis of the Filth Page 13

  Chapter 8

  The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. A curious rectangle of it opened above him, framed by four ominously dark walls. Dirty gray clouds blew quickly from one side of the picture to the other, and the call of seabirds, hungry and fearless, echoed across the skies. He lay in a pile of filth and putrid shallow waters with his face, neck and torso covered in what felt like strands of seaweed. Removing it from his face he could see it was cold instant ramen, buckets of it all over him, and the refuse that he lay among was primarily rotting and fetid foods, spiced with battery acids and human waste.

  He stood quickly and brushed most of the refuse from him, and looked out over the walls of the vessel that held him.

  “What hell am I in now?” he muttered to himself. On three sides he saw nothing but dry empty fields, sparsely covered in grasses, surrounded by waterways. He would automatically have assumed he was on an island but behind him, up against which the lid of the container rested, was a medium sized building, and beyond that, a number of other buildings and structures stood in clusters. The birds continued to hover above and call out their threats. The wind blew in salty gusts.

  Frank jumped from the dumpster and removed most of the remaining dross from his blue shirt, his hair and his nose. He turned to observe the building behind him and from the clanging sounds, smells of soy and miso, and the angry, throaty dialogues coming from within, he discerned he was behind the kitchen of an Asian restaurant. Long having abandoned trust in people, he set off in the opposite direction for the respite of the waters which surrounded the fields.

  He had barely left the smells of the kitchen when the back door swung open aggressively and a red creature with a ‘warning: do not touch’ countenance staggered out. The two locked eyes for a moment before they instantly broke into a sprint: Frank for the safety of the waters and this new nemesis in pursuit. Frank turned mid-stride to observe his attacker. A creepy, corpulent character, tomato-red all over except for the dark-framed glasses which sat pressed into the fat recesses of his face, he ran with astonishing speed given the girth he carried and the clumsy, uncoordinated stride in his gallop. Before Frank was even halfway to the shoreline, the red beast was upon him, diving from several body lengths away and landing right on his shoulders. He set upon Frank, dragging him to the ground as predators do their prey. The Okinawan crumpled beneath him. He began to scream and thrash about, kicking and swinging for his life but he couldn’t overcome the power of the red one.

  “Frank!” he said, pressing Frank’s shoulders to the ground. “Frank!” Frank stopped struggling.

  “How do you know my name? What do you want with me?”

  “Come with me. Quickly.” He stood and pulled Frank from the ground so violently it almost pulled his arm off. He looked around momentarily before darting off toward an apartment complex to the west of the restaurant, the collar of Frank’s shirt firmly in his grip and Frank stumbling and tripping in his effort to keep up.

  On arrival, they stood with their backs to the wall of the complex. “You do not want to be seen here,” the red one said in a half-whisper. “Too many people know you.”

  “They do?”

  “It’s not safe. Everyone wants a piece of you.” He looked about again before tugging Frank into a corridor. “This way.” He led Frank into an elevator and immediately put his hand over the security camera which was staring down from the front corner. Their ride stopped at the sixth floor. The red creature cussed and hid Frank in the front left corner of the elevator. As the doors opened, a young couple moved to step in but were blocked by a grotesque red figure. “Stay out if you want to live,” he said in a deep, accented voice. The couple had no hesitation in withdrawing back into the foyer. The doors closed again and the elevator continued to the twenty-first floor. Once again, Frank was thrust along, this time to a door at the end of a long corridor. The red one knocked firmly twice and then once, and then the door was quickly opened.

  With the door closed behind them, the red guy visibly relaxed and guided Frank into a small, barely furnished room. The curtains were closed, giving the room a heavy, leaden feel. He shut the door behind him but continued to speak in a low voice.

  “My name is Red Dick. I was sent by the dark lord to help facilitate the replenishment of your chromosomes.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Frank asked bitter and weary of being accosted and dragged from place to place like a commodity.

  “Reprieve from the sea of the Wretched.” There was fear in his eyes.

  “What is this place? Am I back on earth?”

  “No, this is Godore. After its creation it was conquered by a peace lord several million chromosomes ago, who modelled a new existence and environment on that of the earth. It’s a failed experiment. Over time it has become nothing but a hovel for mutants and deviants, yet it remains chromosome rich and that is why lord Chin Chin has sent you here. The dark lord himself will be here within days to harvest you and if we don’t deliver then we’re both damned.”

  “How can I possibly replenish my chromosomes in a couple of days? What sort of fertilizer do you use here (although by the smell of things I’m starting to guess).”

  “On your own, you can’t. That’s why I was sent to you. You’re going to win your chromosomes, Frank. It’s been set.”

  Frank was extremely wary. Recollections of deceitful crawfish (though they were his own) and thieving little runts came to mind. “How do I win them?”

  “It’s easy, Frank. You win them just by eating.”

  Frank relaxed a little on hearing this. “Well, I am pretty hungry you know. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a decent feed and all that transporting makes a guy ravenous.”

  “Good boy.” He patted Frank on the back. “In that room,” he said pointing out the door, “are a bunch of demented fruitcakes. They have been especially chosen for this task. They couldn’t find their way out of a bath, not that they’d probably ever had one. But they are chromosome freaks and ready for the taking. Just eat whatever is put in front of you and we will both live to see another day.”

  With that introduction, he opened the door and led Frank into a large open area which functioned as a living room, and introduced him to the kind folk there. Initially, Frank was on the defensive and ready to be accosted, if not violated, but he needn’t have worried. Those present had either no knowledge of Frank and his ability to cross tiers or were without care even if they did know. They sat about like drunken seamen, each placidly acknowledging Frank as he was introduced to them.

  “Frank,” began Red Dick, “This is Trash.” A tall, lean man, bare-breasted and heavy-haired, swayed gingerly in his seat before Frank. He raised a finger in Frank’s direction in acknowledgment but never removed his gaze from the floor. “He is a rare species in that he actually falls between mere mortal and brute beast. He has the appearance of a mortal but the intelligence and constitution of a beast yet for some reason believes himself to be a chimpilla. Try not to provoke him by taking his food or poking him with sharp objects.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Over here,” he said, pointing to a creature that was clearly a sad, genetic mutation of some kind of deer, “is Jingle Balls”. The organism sat back in his chair with his knees behind his ears, exposing his subtleties and rocking gently to an imaginary rhythm. Jingle Balls was as near to a vegetable as a functioning mortal could be, yet he was chromosome rich and ripe for the picking. “Very nice to meet you,” Frank said politely. For a second he was moved to shake the mutant’s hand but that temptation passed very quickly at a second look of his tender regions. He turned to the next entity in the room.

  There, sprawled across a sofa like a king, reclined a young demigod of a man wearing nothing but a pair of rainbow-colored briefs. Herculean in stature and resplendent in appearance with his Roman features and lush blonde hair, unbeknownst to him he was the prize of the event. A chromosomal colossus, he alone could power a city f
or a decade and still have something left over and was, as such, Red Dick’s prime reason for the gathering. He stood to face Frank and, looking down at the hapless rankenfile, introduced himself in a rich, creamy voice. “Prometheus,” he said before repeating it again in a slightly deeper tone - “Prometheus” - to evoke Frank’s fullest admiration. He then broke into a series of very impressive flexes. Frank was actually aroused by this and couldn’t resist reaching over and giving one of his pecs a little squeeze. This was a foolish thing to do (he quickly learned) as the demigod smashed an open hand across his face, knocking out a tooth and cutting his tongue. As he lay on the ground cupping his mouth and feeling the blood run through his fingers, Prometheus picked up the garbage bin from the kitchen and slammed it down hard across Frank’s back. He then returned in a stately fashion to the sofa where he continued to sprawl as if sunbathing. The other characters in the room had no reaction to this violence as though it were as normal a part of their day as smelling fingers.

  It was Red Dick who broke the ice. “Well then, shall we start?” He wheeled a table in from the kitchen upon which five plates sat in a circle. On each plate jiggled a large green mass of what Frank initially thought was the phlegm of a deep sea creature. As it turned out, that would have been preferable. The substance, Red Dick announced, was wasabi, an organic radish grown inside the bowels of horses. The members of this club all gathered around the table and considered the challenge before them. Prometheus did this by rubbing his chin. Jingle Balls played with himself. Trash began some deep nasal picking. Frank dabbed at his lip with a tissue. “Gentlemen,” Red Dick continued, “the rules are simple. Whoever orally consumes their plate of wasabi first shall be the winner and receive the chromosomes of the others, as well as their personal services, if he so desires, for the period of a thousand chromosomes.”

  They each indicated their agreement by standing behind their plate, with Red Dick taking the fifth position behind his plate. “Start when the cane toad hits the wall,” he said holding up one of the amphibians by a leg. After a short pause for dramatic effect, he hurled the creature hard against the wall behind him and when they heard the unmistakable splat, they began their task.

  Red Dick’s strategy was a good one. Prometheus, for all his muscle, was predictably weak when it came to certain spices and Jingle Balls, like Red Dick himself, was hopeless with the green paste. They were all immediately reduced to quivering, teary masses and withdrew from the competition shortly after starting. Frank on the other hand, having been raised on a spicy Okinawan diet, was able to soldier through and make good, if not painful, progress. His primary hindrance was the sting the wasabi made on his cut tongue. The real problem, however, was Trash. Unbeknownst to Red Dick, Trash, being an indeterminate species and physiologically a beast, was immune to isothyocyanates which meant he could eat wasabi like he was eating ice cream. As such, the young afro’d creature finished off his plate in record time and stood in bewilderment wondering what all the fuss was about. Having received all the chromosomes due to him, he wiped his fingers on his pants and walked out the door.

  Frank now had to attend to a bleeding nose, while drinking milk to ease his throbbing throat and dab at his lip at the same time. None of these, of course, were his principle concern. Chin Chin would be arriving in a matter of days to collect his chromosomes and without them, Red Dick and Frank would almost certainly end up in the deep end of the Wretched sea. Red Dick began to run around the apartment in a psychotic rage.

  “Calm down,” Frank said, becoming a bit unstable himself. “We have to get chromosomes. We have to get a lot of chromosomes. We have to get a lot of chromosomes very quickly.” He rocked back and forth in an autistic rhythm as he said this. “There’s only one way. We’ll have to steal them.” As he said this, Red Dick stopped on the spot and looked at Frank.

  “That’s it,” he said. “We’ll have to steal them. And I know how.” Frank looked at Red Dick with great expectation. “We start a new religion,” the Red One said, “and have children and stupid, gullible youth make blood sacrifices to the dark lord. The blood of children is especially potent. We harvest their chromosomes from the blood sacrifices, and present them to Chin Chin when he comes. It’s foolproof!”

  “How long do you think this would take?”

  “About a hundred years.” Red Dick was completely unperturbed by this length of time.

  “Or,” Frank interjected, “we could just break into a children’s hospital and steal all the blood samples from there.” Red Dick looked at Frank with the expression of an idiot just exposed. “Or that,” he conceded.

  They wasted no time. That night, Frank and Red Dick did the very deed. They broke into the local children’s hospital and removed every single blood sample from it. This earned them many more chromosomes than they could possibly have won from the wasabi eating competition. These surplus chromosomes Frank kept for himself, hiding them in his deepest recesses where he hoped Chin Chin, for all his powers, would never find them. Frank had never felt as powerful as he was at that time. What he was unaware of though, was that many of the chromosomes he had procured from the children’s hospital were actually cancerous. They were, after all, the samples of some seriously ill children. Frank was of the belief that he had just won a great victory.

  It was a sultry evening when the presence came. It turned the heavy, balmy air instantly into frigid gusts. Frank and Red Dick went out onto the balcony to watch the phenomena. They knew what was happening. The people outside twenty floors below were not so knowledgeable but they could sense the evil in the air, smell the stench percolating in the breezes and see the turmoil of the skies. They began to scatter about like ants on uppers. Red Dick started to tremble with fear and moved back inside the apartment, wedging himself in between the cushions of the sofa.

  Frank was inexplicably calm. He knew who was coming and he knew the threat that he posed. He was aware of his own ultimate vulnerability. However, for the first time, he knew he had something within him that was of greater value to the omniverse than his demise. Though not defiantly, he watched the changing atmosphere with a sense of willing participation.

  As though by command, the clouds thickened and lowered and amidst a swirl of wind and matter, the dark lord appeared in his own sphere of composure, alighting beside Frank on the balcony of the apartment. Together they looked out over the landscape - the unnaturally colored skies over shadowed buildings and turbulent waterways, the traffic lights and neon signs now rendered dysfunctional, the people peeping out from behind curtains and the dogs howling. “Oh Chin Chin ga daisuki da yo,” he spat in his twitching tones. “All this is mine.” He surveyed it a little longer, proud of his work. The wind continued to moan. “You’ve done well,” he said. “You have proven yourself capable.” He continued to look out over the terrain. “Now give them to me.” After a brief silence he turned and looked at Frank. Frank reached out and placed his hand on Chin Chin’s wrist. They both jumped at the transaction.

  “My, my. So many chromosomes.” The dark lord rolled his neck with satisfaction and blinked his demented eyes several times. “But did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” Suddenly the air turned acrid and Frank was pierced with fear. “You’ve hidden many, many more chromosomes deep within. My, my. So many chromosomes. So many. I’ll take those, too.” He latched onto Frank’s bicep and instantly drained him of strength. Every last chromosome that Frank had taken from the children’s hospital was transfused into the peace lord. Frank crumpled to the ground as the dark lord stooped down and peered into his watery eyes. “Hiding chromosomes from me?,” he growled. There was a tense moment of finality between them. “Good job, Frank. That’s exactly what I would have done. Perhaps there’s a little of me in you.” He then made a heinous throttling sound which Frank suspected was laughter.

  Once more, Chin Chin wrapped his grubby, long-nailed fingers around Frank’s arm. “You’ll need these,” he said and returned some chromosomes to Frank. “I have another li
ttle errand for you. No co-ordinates necessary. This one’s express.” With that he picked Frank up and hurled him from the balcony. Frank fell clutching and screaming into a deep black abyss.

  He never recalled landing. Only feeling the terrain under his back. And seeing the darkness. It was total. Frank reached gingerly about to feel out his surroundings. All about him he felt rich, moist soil and fronds growing in thick bunches. He would have assumed from the texture of the soil that it was compost, except that it didn’t smell. The strands were thin but robust and stood higher than he could reach in a lying position. In the blackness, he was too afraid to move so he just lay there, terrified, and listened for anything that might approach. He heard sounds. Small sounds. The sounds of distant whistles and chirps and calls and bug cries. Occasionally the wind would moan as it rolled over him. Listening to it, he was eventually lulled by it’s sad rhythms before falling into a deep and exhausted sleep.

  When he woke, the sun was high in a pale blue sky and he sat up startled. All about him, as far as the eye could see, were rice fields. He touched his face. It was sore and felt as though it had been lightly lacerated all over by the sheaths of the rice plants. “Welcome to the rice fields,” he said to himself. He stood to see further and noticed to the north a small mountain far off in the distance. It drew him so he began to head off in that direction.

  There was a tranquility and solitariness to this place that Frank actually enjoyed. It seemed so devoid of the perils of previous lands, and the climate was pleasant and calming. Though he missed his friends and felt a twinge of unease without them, there remained a respite from the fears and anxieties caused by the other realms and he walked onward with a sense of ease and adventure.