The Pisstown Chaos Read online

  The Pisstown Chaos

  A Novel by David Ohle

  Hats off to Lucille. A nod to Roger.

  Table of Contents

  Start

  "We die that we may die no more."

  -Herman Hooker, American Divine (d. 1857)

  One.

  Victims of the Pisstown parasite were thought of as dead, but not enough to bury. Gray haggard, poorly dressed, they lay in gutters, sat rigidly on public benches, floated along canals and drank from rain-filled gutters. City Moon, the Pisstown paper, dubbed them "stinkers. "Had you walked through Hooker Park, where groups of them congregated you would have been wise to hold your breath as long as possible. In the end stage of the parasite's devastation, the body decomposed rapidly starting with the belly. By then internal organs had begun to dissolve. Had you been sitting next to a fourth-stage stinker, perhaps on a pedal bus, when the parasite finished its work, and you didn't move quickly enough, the poor creature might have spattered cadaverine all over your clothing. And the eye-watering odor would never have washed out, not afar a million launderings. Despite these sufferings, complete death for stinkers was long in coming, sometimes taking the better part of a lifetime.

  Those in the third stage of the infestation often fall into lives of murder and mayhem. In Pisstown, two of them recently asked Reverend Hooker for a starch bar, and on being refused set upon him with jackknives, leaving him with a bloodied face and a nicked ear. Then they stopped at the home of Peter Gramlich, a prominent wig, and asked at his back window for crusts, for urpmilk, for a lump of willywhack or an old sock full of urpseed meal, for whatever could be spared. When Gramlich denied them anything, they were on him in a moment, cutting him to death with their knives, burning the wood, frame cottage to a mound of cinder with Gramlich inside.

  This week we celebrate Reverend Hooker's sixtieth birthday Now, more and more facts have come to light about the American Divine: anyone who stepped on his shadow was given what he called a damned Russian punishment. "He had one of his aspirants put to death by garrote because he "looked like a pinhead. " He forbade his pedalers to make left-hand turns and called the left-hand seat of the vehicle behind the pedaler "the death seat" and never sat there. He once bought a sparrow dyed yellow from a grifting stinker who told him it was a canary. He liked to turn his eyelids inside-out and look at himself in the mirror. His overstimulated immune system contributed to psoriatic breakouts that showed themselves in pulsing red patches, some the size of playing cards. They occurred on his face, chest, legs, arms, and once or twice on the penis and scrotum. The patches came and went with time. When one vanished in a shower of white flakes, another sprouted somewhere else. Like clouds, they showed a variety of contours. Sometimes the Reverend could see a face in them. He named them and spoke to them in hushed tones. There are those who have reported seeing the Reverend on downtown pedal buses, whiskery, uncommunicative, aphasic, intoxicated, tugging at his hair, foaming at the mouth, in rumpled clothing, unable to remember his name.

  The departure of a female imp from one of the Heritage Area's most popular parks has left residents in a state of sadness. For the past five years, the imp had been living beside the brackish waters of a small lagoon in Hooker Park, and its presence inspired a devoted following. It was often spotted swimming along the lagoon's edges, munching grass on its banks. In winter, when the grass was gone, it ate the protein-rich scum, spirulina, which floated in foaming islands on the lagoon six months of the year. The imp dragged the scum ashore with its webbed feet, then patted it into little biscuits and let them dry in the sun.

  Last month, in a daylong journeys the imp swam across the lagoon, down a canal and into the Bum Bay Straits. The Reverend's Divine Guard, fearful the animal would wander into ship traffic or be drawn away in an undertow made a successful effort to net her from a barge. Fearful she could wander again into harm's way the Guard resolved not to return her to the lagoon, releasing her instead on the Reverend's Square Island Research and Development Farm. She's a perfect specimen," said Hooker, who had glimpsed the imp twice at the lagoon. "She must be saved for research and development. "

  In keeping with the Reverend's expressed wish, the prison facility on Permanganate Island will soon stand aside as the Island' primaryfeature. Now, a complex of buildings has been constructed near the Island's eastern shore, far from the prison itself devoted entirely to parasite eradication research. A group of the Reverend's researchers has declared its intention to live on the Island and to study the mysterious parasite until the puzzle of its life cycle is solved.

  An incident that took place more than a year ago was reported in today's City Moon. At 12:30 in the morning two Pisstown residents were pedaling down Dunvant Road when the paving stones collapsed beneath them into a pit nearly thirty feet deep. As they struggled to climb out of the subsidence, the two were asphyxiated by a mixture of carbolic and cadaverine gases rising from the disturbed ground. After the vapors had dissipated, curious townfolk began digging deeper, looking fir the source of the horrific odor escaping the hole. In alh seventeen stinkers were found and, from them, over five hundred teeth extracted, yielding a hefty half-pound of tooth gold.

  The stinkers were stacked in a field near the edge of the City. It was supposed that in time, wind, sun, rain and vermin would turn them into dust. But a night watchman at the Palace Orienta, passing the field on his way to work, saw imps feeding on the remains and became alarmed. When he went to the Guard office and reported what he had seen, he was informed that others had filed similar reports, of imps favoring flesh over grass. The Guards had no explanation for the sudden change in feeding habits.

  When the first shifting programs were enacted decades earlier, Mildred Balls, known then as Mildred Vink, was a young woman of twenty-five. Hundreds of thousands of shiftees were on the move in those days, headed for new mates, jobs and living quarters. Shifting orders arrived in the mail without forewarning and relocation assignments had to be carried out within days, sometimes hours.

  One of those in transition at the time, Jacob Balls, had made a living selling Jake powder in cities, settlements and bailiwicks until he was shifted to the waiting camp at Witchy Toe. He had a light-bodied, fast moving pedal coupe and had called on customers over a wide territory. The finely-grained, yellow-tinged powder was of his own invention. In the trunk were gallon tins of it. The powder, when stirred into water or urpmilk, produced an intoxicating beverage. Thus far all his patent and subvention applications had been denied, but he was confident of one day seeing Jake in every tavern, restaurant and home.

  Mildred Vink stood on the roadside in the hot sun as Jacob's coupe came into view. She raised the leg of her rags to the knee, a common way for hitchhikers to advertise their pedaling potential. While she was generally slender in body, her calf muscles were crisply defined and heavily developed. There were two sets of pedals in the coupe, and two pairs of strong legs made traveling at a good clip that much easier.

  Jacob glided to a stop. "Where you headed?"

  "The waiting camp at Witchy Toe. I've been shifted."

  "Put your bag in the trunk. I'm going to the camp, too. That's quite a set of legs you have. They could support a piano."

  Mildred opened the trunk, placed her small bag between boxes of Jake powder, and stepped up into the passenger seat.

  "Can you imagine," she said, "they're sending me to live in a trailer and mate with a man I've never met." She patted a circle of sun blisters on her throat with a medicated sachet and strapped her feet into the passenger's pedals.

  Jacob shook his head. "The Reverend says the whole process is gender neutral, age neutral, all completely random pairing. It's exciting in a way. Things got so dull after that first big chaos."

 
Mildred began to pedal.

  "Slowly at first," Jacob cautioned. "I'm worried about the chain. Let's pedal in reverse a few turns. Unwind the starter spring a little. Then go forward with a light touch. She's a moody machine."

  Their conversation continued as the car sprang forward, then slowed to a steady pace.

  "It's all been tried before," Mildred said. "The shiftings."

  "Has it, now?"

  "By Michael Ratt, one of the last presidents."

  "I don't remember him."

  "The eightieth. Came right after Dorothy Peters. Don't you know any history? He was assassinated by his enemies. They exploded his campaign balloon. He was right under it."

  "Sorry, the only things I really read are the Reverend's writings. What came before them doesn't matter."

  "The Reverend is utterly jackbatty. I'm not a Hookerite. Never will be."

  "He assumed power fairly and squarely," Jacob said. "I'm all for him now, and proudly so. You won't see me complaining. Look, in any culture, when boredom and apathy take hold, the currency is debased and the decline is irreversible. Within the period of peace and prosperity that follows a Chaos lie the seeds of the next Chaos. The Reverend says that all the time. What could be more of a tonic than a random redistribution of the populace? It's fundamental. Hooker has learned a few things from history."

  "The whole scheme is idiotic."

  "I hear the camp isn't all that bad. The trailers are fairly modern. The food is free, and luckily so is the willywhack. One taste of willy and you must have more, they tell me. It makes camp life and all that waiting more tolerable, they say."

  "It leaves me feeling too stiff, half dead, like a stinker. I don't like it. I won't take it."

  "You will take it. It's compulsory."

  "We'll see about that."

  As Jacob shifted into higher gears, Mildred focused on the pedaling. "Well, then, tell me, what did you do before all the shifting started?"

  "I traveled, sold my powder. It's called Jake, a secret formula. You mix a drink out of it that makes you feel a little happy."

  "How interesting," Mildred said. "Isn't it exciting, that so many of us are inventing things these days? What we really need is a faster, lighter machine for getting around in. It could have four sets of pedals. You'd have a triangular frame made of light metal tubing with sets of pedals at the corners and one more at the center of the base. In the middle of the triangle I envision a taut canvas, like a trampoline. As the `quadraped' speeds forward, with air rushing beneath it, a lift is achieved. The pedaling is easier. Even with only two pedaling, it should go at a brisk pace."

  "You seem very smart. And I like the way you look," Jacob said, leaning toward Mildred's shoulder and sniffing her. "No odor at all. Nice. I like that. Listen, I'm looking for a viable mate. I want two children, a boy and a girl."

  Mildred thought it over for a moment. "As far as children go, I wouldn't be a good mother. I'm too distracted by my work."

  "They won't be mothered, or fathered. They'll be raised more or less as house servants. I'm a free-thinker, dear. And in a few years I'll be rich. I'll have thousands. Everyone will be drinking Jake."

  Suddenly, Mildred was convulsed with a sneezing fit. "There's something in the air around here." She raised her chin. The sun blisters had grown into patches of small, fluidfilled pustules scattered over most of her throat and neck in circular configurations. "It isn't the sun doing this. There's an irritant in the air, something caustic."

  "I don't smell a thing," Jacob said. "I do know the camp is administered by Hooker's Guards and is on the Reverend's approval list. It should be reasonably sanitary."

  .When we get there, I'm supposed to meet my new mate at the local Impeteria."

  "Now there's a coincidence. So am I." Jacob angled onto a wide, dirt road.

  A pearly pink powder sifted into the coupe and formed dunes on the dashboard. "That dust," Mildred said. "It isn't normal. Look at the color of it."

  Jacob wet his finger, touched it to the dust, then tasted it. "Sandy, a little salty. It's just road dust."

  "No, it's the residue from something incinerated. Don't you smell it?"

  "That's quite a nose you have. As I said, I smell nothing but the scented oil on my mustache."

  "There must be a stinker crematory somewhere close."

  "You have an excitable imagination, and that makes me want you to bear my children even more."

  The Impeteria appeared around a hairpin turn. "There it is," Mildred said. She unstrapped her feet from the pedals and got out. "I'll give your proposal some thought. We'll find one another in the camp. How big could it be?" She retrieved her bag from the trunk.

  Jacob unstrapped and got out. "Take a tin or two of Jake powder. My compliments."

  "Thank you. I'll try it."

  "Just mix it with eight parts water, or urpmilk, and two parts powder. If you're a slow drinker, you might have to give it a stir every once in a while if it gets too cloudy."

  "I'll remember that." She put two tins in her bag and they entered the Impeteria. A frycook sat alone in a far-back booth, his bloated face deeply inflamed and toadlike. The eyelids drooped and the cheeks sagged pitiably. One of the dim eyes drifted from its focal point, making his gaze disturbing and irritating. His chafed brown shoes and dirty rags were equally unattractive. "Well, now, you two look like a good pair. Hardly ever see that anymore. Yesterday come a six-year-old boy and his baby sister. Whatever that Reverend's plan is, it's way beyond my earthly understanding." His face reddened further, his cheeks puffed out and one jagged tooth sat like a kernel of corn on his lip.

  "I'm meeting a Jacob Balls, out of Bum Bay."

  Jacob did a little dance. "How perfect! Then you're Mildred Vink."

  "I am. I guess we're mates." Of all the possibilities, Mildred considered herself fortunate.

  "Okay, Mildred, before we order us some stew, I want to make one thing clear to you. You're young, you're fine, in your prime, and I can't wait to mate." He leaned across the table. "Nice lips. Let me have a taste. Give me a kiss. It's the law, you know. Compulsory mating."

  "Perhaps, but not compulsory kissing." She held a checkered gingham napkin over her mouth. "It's too intimate. As far as mating goes, I only ask that you take the slow approach."

  She angled forward to sample Jacob's odor. "You don't smell good. This will take time to get used to. Don't hurry me."

  "All right, I'll try to be nice and gentle. We'll just talk awhile. You like Hooker's shifting programs? I sure do. You should have seen me a month ago. A mate that was threefourths stinker, six bad, mixed-breed children, three of them step, and an all-night job polishing marble in the Bum Bay Templex. Now look what I got. I'm a happy man. This is a well-deserved upshift."

  Mildred ordered the stew.

  "We're out," the frycook said. "And I've done warshed the pot. Alls we got is sea slug, pickled."

  "Slug's not bad. I'll have an order," Jacob said.

  "Just a starch bar for me," Mildred said.

  "Something to drink? We got root water that I make myself. It's got gas in it. It bubbles. And we got urpmilk."

  Jacob ordered urpmilk, Mildred the root water. When the frycook returned quickly with the food and drinks, Mildred asked, "What do we do now? What's the routine here? How far is the camp gate?"

  "After you eat, you catch a pedal bus up to the welcome station. They'll tell you what to do from there."

  "I have a car outside."

  "Leave it where it is. They'll come and get it. When your wait's over, you'll get it back. You'll have another one in the camp. They're all painted yellow."

  Mildred's root water was bitter, but thirst-quenching. She ate her starch bar in silence and watched Jacob place chunks of sea slug along the rim of his plate, then one by one cat them, chewing thoroughly before swallowing. "You've got to chew them exactly a hundred times or they'll rot your kidneys." Each chunk was followed by a gulp of urpmilk. "Hey, pretty thing," Jacob said when the last of h
is sea slug had been chewed and swallowed, and laid his heavy hand on Mildred's shoulder. "We'll get along just ducky. I know it."

  When a camp-bound pedal bus stopped outside, Mildred, Jacob, and six or seven other shiftees climbed aboard. A young American male sitting behind Jacob tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, look here. See my new bride? She's fifty years older than me and way too stiff. If I'm lucky she'll go to the crematory pretty quick."

  Mildred turned to see a one-eyed stinker she guessed to be eighty or older, sound asleep, her dentures protruding. "You'd think they would do a better job of pairing people," the American said.

  "They're not even trying to," Jacob said. "That's the whole idea. `It's all random, completely random, and absolutely necessary.' I'm quoting Hooker when I say that."

  Passengers were let off at a barn-like, windowless, rustedmetal Quonset hut. "This is where they check us in and check us out," the young American's aged companion said. "I've been here a lot of times." Her walk was hobbled and she struggled to keep her balance. Mildred took her by the elbow and helped her into the sweltering building through tall, sliding doors, seized by rust in their tracks.

  To one side of the cavernous building were hastily and carelessly framed check-in booths, each curtained with burlap sacks sewn end to end. When a booth became empty, the next shiftee in line went in. Forms were there to be filled out and dropped through a slot, small jars to be filled with urine, labeled, sealed and dropped into another slot. When these tasks were completed, registrants were instructed to see one of the several white-smocked nurses who were sitting at small tables doing anal swipes on the other side of the building.

  Again, Mildred did what she could to help the stinker along. "I sure hope you don't get it as bad as I got it, lady," the stinker said. "You seem to be nice."