All American Horror of the 21st Century

Big Rock Candy Mountain. Weston Ochse-1

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN

by Weston Ochse

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain,

it’s a land that’s fair and bright,

the handouts grow on bushes,

and you sleep out every night.

–Old Folk Song

Jethro James tapped the last rock into his crack pipe and smoked it. The memories of his third grade field trip to the Natural History Museum in Omaha and his first s****l experience with his third cousin Alice at the age of twelve sizzled, popped and extinguished as the drug took hold of his nervous system and turned him into a human disco ball. But that was okay, because smoking crack was his job; at least it was ever since the nice government men had gotten hold of him.

The van roared away, leaving him alone on the street. Old buildings, some reaching seven stories, huddled together and swayed as the warm Santa Anna winds threatened to blow them away. Graffiti covered every surface as unreadable as the small print on a drug bottle. The smell of urine and garbage mingled to become a recognizable uptown aroma. Cars sped by, driven by wild-eyed suburban drivers holding the steering wheels with double-handed, white-knuckled grips, afraid of those few who braved the urban walks.

Ventura, California. Once known as the Porn Capital of the World, was now just another Los Angeles suburb where malls and prefab houses sprouted overnight like mushrooms on a s**t pile. Who knew that the end of the 1980s meant the decline of hair metal, the Soviet Union, and pornography as a capitalistic way of life? Sure, remnants of all three still existed. Ratt still performed in Northern Pennsylvanian VFWs to long tables of retired soldiers who remembered partying when Reagan was president. Russian government officials still had their dachas and dreamed of the return of a society where everyone was equal, and they were just a little more equal. The internet resurrected the world’s wet dreams allowing one-click viewing of anything and everything, in all time zones, and any position. And for those who desired a more permanent solution, videos could be rushed to their door in nondescript brown wrappers. But gone were the blockbuster porn movies. Gone were the triple-X theaters with thousand-bulb marquees illuminating the darkness like nightlights for the perverse.

Porn in Ventura had been as common as corn in Iowa.

Porn and corn.

Jethro liked the way the two words sounded together.

Corn.

Porn.

Corn.

Porn.

The porn fields of Iowa.

He broke into giggles as he imagined Ma and Pa Iowa harvesting fields of Ron Jeremies.

And in the Kingdom of Ventura, there was a time when Jethro had been king. He’d starred in one hundred and twenty seven movies and videos. He’d had every woman in the industry at least twice. Men wanted to be him. Woman wanted to be done by him.

But no more.

Crack was now his life.

The juicy rush as the raw smoke shot past his gums, terra-forming the surface of his lungs, exciting the vessels to turbo-charge the drug through his system and into his brain, until even his vision sizzled was better than anything life could give him. Like now, normal sight had been replaced by a fusion of colors, gyrating in three dimensions like an epileptic kaleidoscope. His glistening eyes revealed the world as a chaos of Crayola. A poodle and an elm tree could glow pink as easily as not. Cars shown blue, their reflections in storefront windows bright yellow. Ochre streets ran beneath an umber-colored sky. Purple and violet buildings cast green shadows from an orange sun. Telephone wires and power lines pulsed red like the veins of a great beast. People moved about, their solid colors random by assignment, yet vibrant with their mystery.

But it was one specific color that Jethro James sought. He swayed, the effects of the drug as it clenched tighter causing him to stumble. He steadied himself on a golden parking meter, and noticed off-hand that the time had expired. After fumbling in his pocket for a moment, he thunked down a dime, then pushed himself away from the meter like a boat casting off.

And then he saw it, a single white presence. Dressed as a postman, the Nephilim strode down the sidewalk, as unaware of its stalkers as the surrounding pedestrians were of the true form of the postman. Jethro squinted past the brightness enough to make out that the Nephilim was a middle aged black woman. Her forward-leaning gait, combined with the uniform of a postal worker, lent an inculcated officiousness that deterred people from bothering her.

Jethro began to giggle.

“J-Dog, this is Asylum. Cut out the chatter,” the voice came through his earpiece.

Jethro continued to giggle.

“J-Dog, have you spotted a target?”

Jethro managed to enunciate enough so that they knew he’d seen one.

“I think he’s crazy,” a voice said.

“That may be, but that crackerhead hasn’t failed us yet. Return to Asylum, Jethro.” And to the others the voice said, “Establish triple canopy surveillance. I want to know everyone she touches and everywhere she goes.”

“So you really think she’s one of them?” asked a voice.

“Definitely. You should get ready, because if we’re lucky we’ll find their hive before nightfall.”

“Then I’ll finally get to see one?”

“Just like in the f*****g Bible.”

* * *

Jethro had been seeing them for months now. He’d thought they were his own personal versions of pink elephants. He’d never known they were real until the day he was scooped up in the government net.

Nearly two dozen of his fellow crackheads were blindfolded and taken to an underground classroom. He reasoned it had to be the abandoned Skunkworks. Not far from Ventura, the old top secret military installation was the crucible from which the SR-71 spy plane had been born.

Twenty-one wooden chairs filled the room. Twenty faced forward in four rows of five. A single empty chair had been placed in the front of the classroom facing the rear. Upon each of the twenty chairs sat an addict in different stages of withdrawal. They’d been held in separate cells for at least forty-eight hours, so some were already shaking uncontrollably, yellow bile seeping from between cracked lips as they herked and jerked against the chains that bound them.

Jethro felt his teeth growing. His heart beat tom toms through his eyes. He’d been focusing on the smell of his index finger for an hour and swore it reminded him of cotton candy.

Glancing at the others in the room depressed Jethro. Part of him wanted to be away from these rejects. Gaunt faces. Malnourished bodies. Ruined and rank clothing. But then another, less kind part of his Samaritan psyche reminded him that he looked just like them. When he was high he could trick himself into believing that everything was cool. But he wasn’t high now. He was sober and ashamed to be among them.

He began to notice a sulfur smell. It took a few moments, but he finally detected the narrow ribbon of brimstone circling the empty chair in the front. The smell and the brimstone reminded him of a movie he’d done with Dirk Dong and Mulva Darling where he and Dirk had been traveling exorcists and Mulva was a poor misunderstood succubus. She’d been trapped in a circle of brimstone and it was up to them to save her soul. And as was the norm in his chosen profession, salvation came from f*****g, front, back, top, bottom and sideways.

Before he could return to the mystery of the brimstone, his attention was stolen when a fight broke out between a Filipino He-She and a man Jethro recognized as having once been a fellow actor. Sean was his first name, but he’d gone by the name Snake Foreskin, his oddly thin and impossibly long member propelling him through celluloid hits like Escape from New Jack Off City and Escape from Lost Ambulance. Sean had been what they’d termed a geek in the industry. For the most part he’d done intros and extros like on the set of Ali Baba and the Forty Knees, the film had opened with him blowing on a flute like a snake charmer, his p***s rising as a nearly invisible monofilament line pulled it into the air as if it were alive and hypnotized by the music. But now the He-She had Snake’s head in both hands, bouncing it off the floor as he-she screamed over and over, “You no touchee me!”

Government men in black jumpsuits, helmets with face shields and rubber gloves rushed into the room and separated the pair. Within moments they’d rearranged the addicts so that Snake and his adversary sat at opposite ends of the room, breathing heavily, and sweat dripping from their brows. They looked pathetic. They needed some of their dignity back. They needed some crack.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind when six government stooges wearing orange hazmat suits entered the room. Two carried trays like h*******t butlers, the remaining four held sub-machine guns and arrayed themselves in the corners, their reason for being stunningly clear.

“Welcome to the Skunkworks,” a voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. “You all have been invited to participate in a brand new program to save the world.”

The proclamation was met with giggles and a few groans, but nothing more.

“My assistants will be passing out crack pipes for your smoking pleasure. Please accept them in an orderly manner. No pushing or shoving will be allowed.”

Suddenly all eyes snapped to the men with trays as they began to pass out small unadorned pipes. Each was accepted by greedy shaking hands. Many of the men wept openly, effusive with gratitude as they cupped the pipes in their hands. A hair-lipped Hispanic with wiry arms and collapsed veins barked his impatience as he leapt past an old war vet. Two of the orange-clad government men opened fire, twin three round bursts stitching the man in place. He spun, then collapsed, his arms and legs folding in upon themselves like those of a dead spider.

“Please stay in your seats.” The calm voice was pure Mr. Rogers. “We won’t allow disorder.”

Jethro glanced around recognizing the barely contained glee in everyone’s eyes as their dreams came true. All their midnight prayers and begging had finally delivered to them what they so desperately craved. His eyes lingered once more on the empty chair amidst the brimstone circle. Was it for one of them? What did one have to do to sit there?

A sticky net of melancholy entrapped him as he realized how far he’d traveled from his life in Iowa. He could have stayed with his family, he could have been part of a heritage first ground into the soil two hundred years ago, but instead he’d followed a dream fueled by rock music, porn mags, and impossibly long-legged girls. He’d found happiness and fame for a time between their legs, but when the industry had crumbled beneath the enlightenment of the 1990s, he’d nowhere to go. He couldn’t go home. For him Iowa was a clean place, a place where his family had grown for generations, and a place where people rarely even kissed in public, much less ...

He didn’t want to finish the thought. At least he had the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Unspoiled and unpopulated, it was his heaven and a place that even his sordid history could not spoil.

Two orange-clad men entered the room from the door at the rear, and drug the body away. A third mopped up the blood trail, backing out the door so that the only evidence that something had gone wrong was the empty seat.

When the drug tray came to Jethro he tried to be cool, but couldn’t stop his hands from shaking with anticipation. Putting the pipe to his lips, he inhaled deeply, tasting the unlit crystal resting in the bowl as he hummed a string of song- There’s a lake of gin, and we can both jump in, and the handouts grow on bushes.

“In just a moment, we will be passing out lighters. Please take your time and enjoy the product. Thank you for your cooperation.”

The addicts fumbled with the lighters when they came, their excitement making the simple procedure complex beyond quantum physical standards. Still, they managed to light their pipes, the flare of red, then blue, then acrid smoke shot through their lungs. Almost as quickly they sagged in their desks, legs askew, backs arching and relaxing as the drug pumped through their systems. Eyes rolled madly, sometimes nothing but white.