Aloha from Hell

He’s practically swimming when he reaches the corner. Goddammit. He gets close enough to grab a couple of my fingers. I close my hand around his and pull. It’s the very least I can do. I’m amazed and a little pissed off when he swings a leg onto the sidewalk. I let go and let him get out the rest of the way on his own. I look over at the celebrity-center bushes where the asylum refugees have been passed out. They took off. They’re crazy. Not stupid. The street was sinking. I lean back against the low wall around the mall and look up at the black boiling sky. Are you explaining to Candy for the five-hundredth time what an asshole I am, Kasabian? Is she pissed at me for saving this walking, talking piece of shit? Candy wouldn’t have done it. She’d have put her boot on Jack’s head and helped him down under the muck. And I would have loved her for it.

Panting and stinking like sewage and rotten fish, Jack pulls himself onto the sidewalk and collapses. I light a Maledic thht a Mation.

“Stay over there, Jack. You smell like what comes out of Moby-Dick after a truck-stop burrito.”

He just lies there gasping and trembling like a trout tossed on land by a passing boat.

I smoke for a couple of minutes, until Jack stops shaking.

“You scared off all my crazies, you know. I was going to get them to take me to the asylum. Now they’re gone. Do you know where it is? Be very careful how you answer. If you lie, I’ll know it and I’m going to feed you back into the muck face-first.”

He points to a dome on top of a hill that’s mostly mud and dead grass. Huts and lean-tos made of scrap lumber, flattened aluminum cans, and drywall from the asylum flow from the top of the hill and down the sides like junkyard lava. Looks like a lot of the crazies had it together enough to escape, but not enough to cut the apron strings and leave home.

I shake my head. I smoke.

Maybe this jigsaw-puzzle L.A. is God’s payback for burning Eden. In the old days, when I was killing for Azazel down here, I hardly ever thought about the guy. Now I can’t get him out of my head. He’s like the high school sweetheart you moan about whenever you’ve had a few too many highballs. You don’t want to think about her. In fact, you never think about her until you’ve poisoned your brain with umbrella drinks. Then she’s one big whiny question mark in your life. Where did it all go wrong, baby?

Only God and I never went steady. I barely thought of him in the world and only thought of him Downtown because in the brief time Mom sent me to Sunday school, they taught me that he was a God of love and forgiveness. Just what the doctor ordered. Forgive me for all the scams and games and shenanigans and rain down that love on me or at least call me a cab. Even Hitler got to die before climbing into the coal cart. Nothing. Nada. Turns out when I reached into the hat, I didn’t pull out the shiny happy Sunday school God of Love. I got the Old Testament God of wrath. Cities turned to salt. Newborns killed in their cribs. Twin Peaks canceled when it was getting good again. No one came to save my charbroiled ass. Just like Mason. But ever since then I think the big man has had his eye on me, slipping me a rubber cigar every now and then. Like right now.

Where Jack is pointing is the Griffith Park Observatory. James Dean shot part of Rebel Without a Cause there. Any tourist with cab fare can visit the damn place. Back home it would take me an hour to get there and back to the hotel, where Candy and I could break more furniture. But no. I have to dodge sinkholes, earthquakes, Hellions, and serial killers to get somewhere that in any sane universe I could take the bus to. I wish I could say, “No more Mr. Nice Guy,” but the boat sailed on that one a long time ago.

I take a drag on the Malediction.

“Hey, Jack. What were you before you became a monster?”

He pushes himself onto his knees, stands, and tries to wipe the mud and blood off his clothes.

“An upholsterer,” he says.

“Seriously?”

He looks at me.

“Yes.”

“I guess ‘Ripper’ sounds better in the papers than ‘Jack the Ottoman Repairman.’ ”

He ignores me, knocking mud off his feet until you can see his shoes. Maybe he’s right. Who needs Heaven when Hell makes so much more sense?

“Okay, Jack. This is where we part ways. I’m heading straight up that hill. You can go anywhere you like, but I’d stay out of Pandemonium for a while. They’ll have probably noticed they’re down one general.”

“You can’t just abandon me here.”

“I think I just did. You’re in paradise. It’s a world of shit, but it’s better than being in a sardine can for the next million years, isn’t it?”

“Can I at least come with you? You won’t have to take care of me.”

“I just saved you a second time. I don’t care what you do. You want to follow? It’s no skin off my ass, but get in my way once, and I’ll kill you just like I’d kill any Hellion.”

He says, “Understood,” but I’m already moving.

Aloha from Hell