Flautist's Green: Four - Conclusion
Day 7 +
Day 7-Dawn
I shot out of the shitting bed like a rocket. Head like mush, mouth full of kitty litter. Can you get a fucking coffee in this town?
Nope.
I’d cut off my left hand for a Dunkin’. Brown water and sipping tea, that’s all they got. Just the thought of it made me want to puke. What was I talking about last night? Minds gone… One week? That’s all I can make it?
Is it me, right?
I am the one who fucked this whole thing up. Bored out of my mind in the backwards-ass village. Goddamn it. I could have read a book, built a fucking puzzle, but no, I get drunk and fool around with some local sharp-toothed teddy boy. I get lost in purple fish and wooden coins.
STAND ON YOUR FEET, BOY!
Like I have never had a hangover before. Like I’ve never been thrown out of a bar. I am so sick. Too sick. I remember my last bender; I drank until I had pancreatitis. I couldn’t keep down water. I feel worse now. Maybe that’s just the whole forgetting pain thing.
Anxiety hangover, that’s what this is.
I am gonna walk. As I said, I am gonna walk; sweat this poison out. Walk until I puke, and I am lost in those fucking dunes or whatever they are. Walk until my feet burn enough to wash the taste of cat turd out of my mouth. What do I care? So what if I die? What am I even doing here? How do I face these idiots?
I gotta clear the cobwebs. I gotta stay sober. I gotta make a plan. Go somewhere else. I burnt this bridge in 6 days—6 days!!
Fucking Christ on a cracker.
I was dry heaving and sipping water at the start. They always recommend hydration, but it feels pointless. Hair of the dog is the only real cure. I went seven years on the hair of the dog. Maybe that’s why the hangovers are so bad now. Maybe the old liver here is a teetotaler forever—even if I am not. I don’t hold it against him, though.
Is there a joke in there? If I told you that you had a nice liver, would you hold it against me?
I am getting punchy, but it is better than being sick.
My stomach is on fire, though. Bubble guts, I call it. I tried to soak up all that bile with some bread, but it never works that way. It makes the upchucks harder to get through my esophagus.
I found a good stick though.
Right as the little wood path opened up to this flat area, it was like a little John staff, gnarled at the end; the head of a snake, hsss!
I always wanted to be little John: burly, good, simple. Instead I am a twisted mess; too much horseshit in my head and not enough at the same time.
Neuropathy kicks in before brain damage.
Apparently, sorosis does too.
It’s a good stick; I sat down to write about it, so it must be good.
I am gonna push on. I am gonna walk right down to those waterlogged mines. Maybe I’ll club myself in the head with this stick and let those pandos choke on my rotten corpse. I’ve eaten enough of them. Maybe they can eat me up. Circle of life.
Day 7 – Mid morning
Collapsing wooden towers and lush green fields blend, aided by seams of rocky ridge-like intrusions and small huddling boulder formations. The walking stick is jabbing into the ground. It propels me forward through this dreamscape. I have sweated out the worst of the hangover, but I don’t remember this much space. I mean I remember it, but not with so much open nothingness and gruelling sunbeams.
My brow is scorched.
I can feel the squinting wriggles of its flesh trying to avoid touching even itself. The dream-like qualities that this scape held during my earlier fishing trip have been replaced by a bitter acrid loathing. Although the decaying industrial artifices never struck me as majestic, and in truth served more as a reminder of capitalist and imperialist folly, last time, I was able to divorce myself from the greater burden of my cynicism. Now all that was left in my heart was rotten breath and a hopeless idleness. Over a final barren dune-like hill, the deep drop was visible. I don’t think this is exactly the place where I first lost my…directional…temporal…consciousness? It is close enough. Close enough to where I stumble down to those tin mines, you know the ones, “up over Kenidjack way.” Nary a day was I given to get the shifting soil betwixt my toes, or however such nonsense be puked out by these fucking townies. Where I come from, a townie is an insult.
A bad thing.
It means you never went anywhere. It means you have never done anything. It means your mom still washes the skids out of your panties. In some places it means a good thing. It means roots, stability.
Roots huh? Roots of a tree. They go way down into the earth. Down into the mines even. Squirming around down there looking for water or food. Whatever it is these pasties eat. They eat fish. Right? They gobble up rotten purple fish that swim around in toxic water. Dead miners, piss, cannibals. Cannibal fish. Eating the slop at the bottom of the pool.
Feed the men who fall into the pits and drown; they sink to the bottom. They become the slop that the fish ate. The pandos, and their “PAH PAH PAH!”
All the time calling for their dinner. Crying and whining... PAH PAH, Papa more!
Sow the seeds of sustenance in the next generation.
This stick jabs into the ground. I can hear the pipe’s thin whining lilt. I know that Ewan is down there waiting for me; whistling in his jaunty hat. He’s probably got a beer for me. I can see him with a little cooler, hairy feet in the stream. Not whistling Dixie, but Jerusalem or God Save the Queen. Paper cup gaping wide, waiting for a wooden token. They say you don’t accept gifts from the gentry. I gave and accepted it all: food, tokens, drink, a tongue in my mouth. I’ve taken all the gifts.
Is Ewan head of the gentry? Head Fairy? Down I go, I suppose.
Down to the pits and the waters that are neither green nor brown.
Follow the vine to the stump.
The vine to the crux of his tree.
Note—Here the handwriting in the journal shifts dramatically. The letters are formed perfectly, and the penmanship is not my own.
Ewan’s back was to me. I could see a thick ridge of curly hair stretching from the nape of his neck down past his waist. I did not follow the trail any further as it stopped at the waterline. He was partially submerged in the pool; too stationary to be swimming or treading water. I don’t know what he was standing on.
He addressed me without looking in my direction. He turned his head slightly, and I could see the day’s light reflecting a glint off his cuspids. He was grimacing or smiling—straining unnaturally.
He said, “Are you thirsty now?
Are you still thirsty?
Or are you hungry? Are you hungry now?
With these words, he let out an exaggerated grunt, the noises of which blended with a bleating screech, a thin fluting whine. The words and the vocal ejaculations echoed and reverberated off the seeming nothingness of the tin mine’s corpse. Vibrations plunged into the depths of the crater pools and shot back upwards at a pace far too rapid to be natural. There was no flow to it
—staccato—rapid—spitfire.
I was shocked into inaction by the aural assault. I dropped my stick.
The clamor faded and gave way to the sound of dripping water. Ewan was rising from his suspended position. Heavy rivulets fell from his back and waist. As more of him became visible, I began to see his hindquarters and legs; they were not human. The legs were still unguligrade, but the angle at which his legs rose gave the impression of a backwards bend or a hock joint.
The legs continued to stretch several feet in the air. They were already too long, and as this realization dawned on me, I was expected to finally see a foot break through the surface of the water; I expected to see Ewan levitating, but instead a second joint articulation rose. The first knee I had seen was only the beginning of this odd shape, and soon Ewan was towering nearly fifteen feet above the water’s surface.
He still had his back towards me, but between the gap of his legs I could see a steady rush of pandos falling from his body and into the greenish-brown water. A chorus of PAH PAH PAH rang out and mixed with hundreds of splashes.
Ewan began to turn towards me.
“Oh Gentleman, it is always your kind who think that access is granted without cost. You believe it is always mine to offer, and always yours to accept. Be it a location or some other imagined trinket.
I will always offer, as an indulgence. I will always have enough. I will always be, because I will always be.
Your kind, the gentleman, the traveller, the newcomer, will assume welcome, and will accept. This act might be deemed as selfish, but it is not. This act of acceptance is your nature.
You take, and I will give.
I give to you these pandos. I give to you these fish, as you see them. I give to you these symbols of fish; this idolatry and iconography. And you will sup, and you will assimilate to the only way there ever was. Not the symbol of Pisces, mind you, but Capricorn.
I will forever be, and forever plot, and you will forever eat, and drink, and die.
Mine is to plan, and yours is to drink fish piss and eat fish flesh. I aspire above, and you aspire below.
When we are face-to-face, I will share, and you will take.
You, and I will always exist in this way. Take these. Take until you can take no more.
THE GREAT GOD PAN IS NOT DEAD! THE GREAT GOD PAN HAS PREPARED AN ENDLESS FEAST.
AS I ALWAYS WILL, AND YOU WILL ALWAYS EAT!”
With this, Ewan was now facing me directly, and the crux of his tall goatlike legs hovered above my head. I looked up and into the opening between his legs. This opening pulsated and teemed with pandos. Silver-purple flesh, vacant slit-like eyes, soft gaping mouths crying out, “PAH, PAH, PAH.”
A deluge of pandos rained down on me. Hundreds of pulpy fish smacking and slamming into my head and body. I grabbed them as quickly as I could. My fingers squished through their flesh, coating the joints of my hands with thick grey viscera. I bit and gnawed at the air, reaching up with one hand and cramming whatever live pandos I caught into my mouth. I gorged and supped as quickly as I could. I needed all those fish in me. I needed them in my body. I needed what Ewan gave to me. I needed it more than I have ever needed anything.
Baptized in fish, covered inside and out with pandos. Father Ewan completed the cycle. I consumed and was consumed by what I was.
Like most things in life, the trick is to get on with it; everything else is just anxiety.
I had moved to another country. I was trying to find my way. Reading the journal now, several months later, I can see that I had some difficulty transitioning. It was a lot of overthinking. I turned myself into the protagonist of a story, but in reality, I am a bit part.
I’ve found my footing here. I help out at the Flautist now. I prepare the meals and change the kegs.
Life is simple.
I know how to live now. Ewan comes and goes, as is his way. I consume, and I feed as is my way. I leave the story up to those of more import. I am one fucking man. That is it.
Who am I to question these ways? To resist an overrapport is folly. To fight nature, time, and the gods is for a hero, and I am no hero.
I am the symbol of fish. I am the PAH PAH PAH of a croaking rotted cannibal need.
I am septic. I am just. I am a resident of Saint Just.
Some meat. Some meat.
MORE MEAT! MORE MEAT!
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PAH PAH PAH is going to become a mantra. Love your stuff, man. Never disappoints.