Francis of the Filth Read online

  “Very well. When I leave here it will be with your chromosomes. And I will be transporting you to a secret place far from here where you can replenish your chromosomes in relative peace and quiet and where I can find you anytime I want. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” Frank said solemnly.

  “After I have left, go back down the mountain, your transport will be complete before you get to the bottom.”

  With that, the dark lord Chin Chin crawled back to the pinnacle of the mountain and curled into a ball. The wind picked up once again, thunder and lightning cracked and hail stones the size of limes fell all about them. Dark clouds slowly enveloped him and then he was gone. Very quickly, the clouds dissipated, the weather cleared and the sky returned to its golden glow. The three remaining rankenfiles came together, observed Negi Generation 4’s remains for a while, and then headed back down the mountain.

  Physically, the trek down was somehow more difficult than the one up. Psychologically and spiritually, they were all changed entities for the mountaintop experience, and as they descended, Frank shared with Pink Guy the conversation he had had with Chin Chin. When he had finished, Pink Guy stopped and looked at Frank with a hint of relief on his face. “I wonder…” his voice trailed off there.

  “What?” asked Frank.

  “I can’t be sure…” He thought some more. Frank waited as a gust of wind blew between them. “But I suspect that Chin Chin might not be God,” he said.

  “You could have fooled me,” Frank returned.

  “Oh, he’s powerful. He can control atmospheric conditions and he can take life. But he’s not God.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “What he does is the work of a peace lord. God…” Pink Guy paused to find the right words… “wouldn’t need your chromosomes.”

  Frank wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more anxious at hearing this. Yet the more he thought about it the more it made sense. The further down the mountain they travailed, the better they all felt, until halfway down, when a spirit of utter levity came upon them all. Salamander Man produced his recorder and began to play a spritely tune. Pink Guy actually began to skip along as he played. As they drew nearer to the foothills, just above a series of steep cliffs, there was a sudden and very powerful earthquake. The whole mountain seemed to bend and start cracking.

  Holding on to a sharp rock ledge for dear life, Frank’s forearm was cut from wrist to elbow and then the three of them were tossed from their thin ledge and fell bouncing and flopping down the cliffs. They landed together in a circle of blood, broken and cut and bleeding and torn, groaning and moaning and screaming and cussing. Egg size rocks, and boulders the size of large dinosaurs, fell on them till they were buried under a small mountain that rose from the foothills like an altar to a deity. When the dust had settled, there was nothing left alive in that land higher than a brute beast.

  Chapter 6

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a bunch of guys caught under heavy debris are in a lot of trouble. All Frank was aware of, upon waking up, was the sound of sirens and the thick dust which clogged his nostrils. He was pressed down, trapped under a load of wreckage and flesh, and disturbed by a series of grunts and primal whines. He pushed several layers of plasterboard and broken pieces of concrete from him, removed Pink Guy’s knee from his groin and Salamander Man’s recorder from between his thighs, stood and dusted himself off. “Where the hell are we?” he said. His companions slowly rose from the ruins, complaining of aches and pains, and surveyed their new landscape. They could see little of it.

  Everywhere they looked was concrete. Concrete flooring, concrete walls and concrete pylons. The only thing that wasn’t entirely concrete was the ceiling, which now had a gaping hole in it. It was dark. A lack of windows and a quiet air, still choking with the dust of an explosion, gave them little to see. Clearly, they were in the basement of some sort of building but beyond that, they had no idea where they were or what lay around the corner. Sirens continued to blare periodically and there was a distant sound of bustle.

  “Pink Guy,” said Frank. “Do you have any idea where Chin Chin has sent us?”

  Pink Guy replied with a long demented groan.

  “Yeah, I know buddy. I’m feeling it, too.”

  Frank’s pink friend let out another painfully twisted cry, this time tinged with frustration.

  “Pink Guy!” said Frank. “This is no time to be playing Lemon Man.” He began to shake him by the shoulders. “I need you buddy. Where are we? What’s going on here?”

  Pink Guy shrugged and repeated his sorry whining.

  “Looks like those rocks might have hit you harder in the head than I thought,” Frank said, more to himself than to the others. “Salamander Man, you got it together?” His froggy friend nodded in an impeded way, slowly placed his recorder deep into his left nostril and began to play a slightly gloomy tune. It was clear to Frank that in this realm at least, he would be the leader of his clan.

  “Come on,” he said and led the others across the cold dusty floor to a staircase at the end of the building. They ascended a few flights before stepping out into bright sunshine. It took a while for their eyes to adjust to the brightness but when they did, they were amazed at all the sights and sounds and activity of the place. It was buzzing with life and this gave the three travelers a feeling of excitement and a sense of anxiety. Street after street lined with apartment buildings and shopping complexes spread out in every direction around them. Yellow taxis, trucks and other vehicles thundered up and down the streets completely ignoring the emergency vehicles which rushed from time to time one way or another with their lights flashing and sirens wailing. And then there were the sidewalks. Filled with mere mortals walking, pacing, jogging, sleeping, chatting, spitting and kissing; they were white, yellow, green, blue, black; they were bald and fair and dreadlocked and curly, spiked and slicked and tied and shaved; they were obese and emaciated and fit and flabby, tall and short and crooked and straight; they interacted with each other in a myriad of languages and they avoided each other in a most practiced manner. He had never seen such a bastion of individuality. Brimming with life, of sorts, it was as though every mere mortal of every walk and breath, from every corner of the omniverse, had gathered together in one place.

  “Where on earth is this?” Frank wondered aloud. After assessing the passing pedestrians for a while, Frank ventured to ask. A white middle-aged man dressed casually in an orange shirt and cream colored pants walked toward him. He carried a small dog and a gentle demeanor so Frank approached him. “Excuse me sir, I was wondering if you would be so kind as to tell me where I am?”

  “Fuck off faggot!” came the terse reply. The man never lifted his eyes from the pavement, brushed by Frank, and continued on his way. Frank was stunned by this violent exchange and wondered what on earth he had done to arouse the man’s animosity. It was nothing, of course. “I do believe,” he declared to the others, “that we are in New York.”

  “Bwmmermmergh,” Pink Guy muttered. Though still speaking absolute gibberish, he was somehow becoming comprehensible to Frank.

  “Me, too. I thought he was going to send us to Okinawa.” He thought about that for a while before adding, “Lying fuck”.

  Pink Guy grunted at him again, explaining to Frank that, technically, Chin Chin wasn’t lying as Okinawa and New York were in the same realm. But the vast difference in landscapes led Pink Guy to question Frank’s ability to navigate the place.

  “Not really,” Frank replied. “It’s a far cry from Okinawa - a different kind of jungle - but I think I can get us around. I mean, people are people right? It’ll be fine. I’ll take it from here. Salamander Man, you’d better put your recorder away for now. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.” With that, the Pink Guy, the Salamander Man and Frank, with the filthy, never-washed blue shirt, made their way through the streets of New York City.

  Frank determined that the first thing they needed
to do was find accommodation but, being an academic genius, he had no idea how to go about it. Clearly academic excellence in radiobiology would not necessarily translate into wisdom on the streets of this town. He decided to try his luck and just keep asking people. Surely, he reasoned, someone amongst all these people would be willing to point him in the right direction. He found a young, well-groomed man sitting at a bus stop seemingly with time on his hands. Frank approached him cautiously yet gaily.

  “Excuse me, sir. My friends and I are looking for accommodation. Would you be able to let us know how to secure a premises in this realm?”

  “No home?” the man dryly enquired.

  “Er, no. We, er, just arrived you see, from er, another place.” Pink Guy and Salamander Man braced for recriminations.

  “You know why you don’t have a home?” he said, rousing from his mellow posture.

  Frank just looked at him curiously. “Because I don’t have a job?”

  “Because there is no God, man. Yeah, you heard me. There is no God.” Frank continued to stare at the man, unsure where to take the conversation from this point. “What kind of God, man,” he started to yell, “would create people and leave them without a home?!” Clearly he was incensed by this. “All over the world, every day, there are people starving and homeless and sick, man, sick as a dog and what does God do about it? Nothing! Nothing, man! And you know why?!”

  “Because Chin Chin really couldn’t care less about mere mortals,” he wanted to say. “Er, no,” he replied.

  “Because there is no God! There is no God, man. God is just a made-up character. A figment of people’s imagination. The great boogey man in the sky.”

  “Ah, okay Mr. Atheist,” Frank responded, backing away. “I was just after some information, not a debate.” He turned to walk away. “How do you know for sure, anyway?” he said under his breath.

  “Because there is no God man. There is no justice. No redemption. It’s all mind control.”

  “Just don’t go up the mountain,” Frank called almost out of ear range.

  “Say what?”

  “Don’t go up the mountain!”

  “Clearly a wounded soul,” Frank said, turning to his pink and green friends as they walked away.

  “Nyees,” Salamander Man agreed. A young, black woman screamed when she caught sight of them and ran to the other side of the road.

  “Wonder what she saw?” Frank mused. Pink Guy shrugged.

  The afternoon sun cast long shadows down the busy streets and withdrew its heat from the city sidewalks. Frank pondered who to approach next. A feather-haired madam with a tanned leathery face carried a mouse-sized dog in her arms and crossed in front of them to greet a fruiterer as though he were a long lost relative. Two men in tight black leather shorts paraded arm in arm across from them, and stopped at a small window to consider buying coffee beans. A rotund Latino man, with a very serious expression on his face and a pair of headphones clamped across his cranium, power-walked right through them as though they had no right at all to be where he was walking. Looking dazed and confused, an old white man with a huge mustache and a hideous wig meandered nearby wondering where to eat for dinner and whether he should run for President again this year. An enormous cockroach scurried across in front of them and disappeared down a drain. They all seemed at home here.

  After two misfires with males, Frank felt sure that he could procure a better response from the females of the city. He found one sitting on the steps of an old theater as though waiting for a friend to come, or a homeless visitor to bowl up and ask questions. His confidence was high. “Excuse me,” he began.

  “Yeah?” she returned.

  Well, that was sure a lot better than the ‘fuck you’ I got earlier he thought with a smile. “My friends and I are looking for accommodation and…”

  “Oh, fuck you,” she said with a pained expression. “You men are all the same. What, did you think I was going to just invite you back to my place and have you stay? Where the fuck do you get off? I ought to put your balls in a sling, you sad, creepy, little motherfucking pig molester.”

  “I didn’t want to go back to your place…” Frank tried to get out, but she would have nothing of it.

  “Just piss off will you, you misogynistic little pissant, before I call the cops.”

  Frank tried reason. “I only wanted to ask you a question.”

  “Oh yeah. That’s how it always starts. You men are all the same. It starts with a question and it ends in some back alley with your hand up my crotch while munching on a chicken tortilla and texting your mates.” She stabbed her hand into her bag and pulled out a small can of mace. “Now just back off!” she yelled, thrusting it toward him. “Back off! No means no!”

  Frank slowly stepped away as one would from an escaped lion. “Now hold on, I don’t even find you attractive enough to sleep with. I mean, you’re built like a Super Mario bullet. I’d never want to go home with you.” Her eyes widened with rage. His comrades were way ahead of him, already a block away and still running. He caught up with them eventually and thanked them for their staying power. “This is going to be a lot harder than I thought,” he said, as though that would rally them. “Clearly the people here are not like the locals in Okinawa.” He reflected on that. “A perfect stranger would roll out a futon, give you a meal, a bath and a goodnight rubdown, I tell you.” Pink guy looked aroused. “We might have to try a new strategy.”

  “Nyeess.”

  “Franku.”

  “What if we go where most of the people are and let them come to us!” Frank thought aloud. Salamander Man thought this was worth a try. Pink Guy thought it was the stupidest idea he’d ever heard (and across the realms and dimensions he’d heard many) but didn’t have the heart to say so.

  They followed the lights and general flow of people heading downtown, continuing to observe all the sights and sounds and smells which still remained utterly foreign to them. A young woman with short hair and facial piercings came up to them and greeted them.

  “Well, hello,” Frank said.

  “Are you guys locals or just visiting New York?” she asked.

  “We’re visitors… er, who hope to become locals,” Frank explained. Pink Guy and Salamander Man were impressed with this answer.

  “Are you interested in supporting the war against factory farms and freeing all animals from slavery and suffering?”

  “What?” For a moment there, Frank was unsure what language this lady was speaking.

  “We’re encouraging people to change to a vegan diet for the sake of animal welfare and global sustainability.”

  “Animal welfare?”

  “Every year in the United States, nine billion chickens are killed for human consumption. Doesn’t that disturb you?”

  “Well, not as much as eating them alive,” Frank replied.

  “No, I’m being serious.”

  “Me, too. Have you ever eaten a chicken alive? I tried once in Okinawa. It didn’t end well. Blood and feathers everywhere and I almost got my eye pecked out. I’m all for killing them first.”

  “What the fuck? What planet are you from, man?” she asked with utter disdain.

  “Do you really want to know?” Frank asked her.

  “No. No, I don’t,” she said, and air pushed him away.

  “Does anyone in this place not have a rabid opinion about something?” Frank yelled to his friends and anyone else who might have been passing by. “Seriously, the Okinawan jungle on a bad day was better than this place.” They pressed on toward the thick sea of humanity ahead of them, passing a man at a counter whining incessantly that the price he was charged was $1.89 more than the advertised price, a hot dog vender who was incapable of counting change correctly, a Wall street banker in a tailored suit walking as though there was no-one on the street but him, and a drug dealer passing his ware in a pizza box to his clients. To Frank and his boys, there was little difference between them all. In their passion for self and success, they
had become one and the same: rats scurrying back and forth to create a world from which the ultimate prize was escape.

  They rounded a corner and stood before the largest man-made space they had ever seen. Enormous buildings stared down at them from the peripheries decorated with flashing lights and moving billboards. News reports ran across digital screens and music blared from all directions. Shops rimmed the ground floor of the area, selling everything from miniature statues of liberty to flesh-colored aliens that glow in the dark. And between it all was the most colorful parade of humanity that any of them had ever seen. Tourists, locals, hawkers, characters wearing costumes, characters wearing nothing at all, freaks and oddballs, it was hard to tell where one end of the spectrum ended and another started. The three walked into the middle of it all bewildered, bemused and besotted.

  Even in this neverland of individuality, it didn’t take long for them to gain attention.

  “Excuse me?” came a lady’s voice. “My kids would like to have a photo with you.” She slipped a couple of dollars into Frank’s hand and the two kids stood in front of them and smiled for the camera before any of them had any idea what was going on.

  “Hey man, me next.” It was a tall, dreadlocked man with a Rastafarian beret. He leaned on Frank, took a photo then slipped a bill in his top pocket. “Thanks man,” he said departing. Immediately a young woman stepped forward. “Me and my friend,” she said.

  “Well sure!” Frank replied. He was beginning to enjoy this.

  “No, not you,” she said matter-of-factly. “Just the pink one. Just the pink one.” Pink Guy brushed Frank to the side and stepped forward with tremendous pride. The women took their photos, paid Frank the money and rushed off again. Next it was Salamander Man, then Pink Guy again, then Salamander Man. Sometimes it was all three but usually the other two. Frank didn’t care. All he could see was the money coming in.