Brain Damage

I know I'm mad. I've always been mad.

For the past few weeks I had been keeping the two hits of acid in a small plastic druggie bag that I'd been using to bookmark The Maltese Falcon. Finally, one savagely boring Saturday night, whilst Billy Joel was whining about staying at home and hurkin' it with Captain Jack; I could take no more.

"What would Sam Spade do?" I asked my stuffed Kangaroo, Alberto.

Alberto gave me that blank kangaroo stare he had been perfecting throughout the years.

"Some help you are, pal."

I removed the psychedelic bookmark from page 99 where The Fatman slips Spade a mickey and his gunsel kicks the shit out of Spade.

I dog eared the page and held the bag up to the light. Just two little pieces of nondescript paper dipped in some shit that the government had deemed felonious.

I looked at Alberto and said, "What's the worst that could happen?"

Alberto offered me no counsel.

I whispered my favorite Irish prayer, "Fuck it," and dropped the two pieces of paper onto my tongue. Tasted like... paper? I chewed 'em a minute or two and then swallowed 'em. Billy Joel continued to cry like a little bitch.

"Fuck you, Billy Joel. You make lonely teenage Saturday nights suck double donkey dick."

For the next five minutes I stared at the ceiling waiting for something to happen. Nothing. Bupkiss. Being a man of action I decided to make something happen. I liberated my kosher pickle from my Levis and consulted my mental rolodex.

Flipping through all the girls in my high school class capable of inspiring tumescence I finally settled on a skinny, flat chested Italian girl, sporting coke bottle glasses, named Carmelina and got down to brass tacks.

Just as I was fantasizing about Carmelina, on all fours in the school library stacks, begging me to ram it up her poop shoot, I heard an unfamiliar voice warn, "Cops are coming..."

I craned my neck forward to discover my pickle trying to tell me something.

"Care to repeat that?" I asked.

"I said," my pickle said, looking me right in my baby blues, "the. cops. are. coming."

"You sure about that? Cause I thought we had something going on here...."

"Definitely. Definitely. Cops are coming."

"Put it away, kid," Alberto advised.

I was zipping up when I heard heavy footsteps approach. My bedroom door burst open, threatening to come unhinged, and there my mother, who had been unhinged since time began, stood. I couldn't help but notice she was looking far more deranged than usual.

Another "no knock" warrant successfully executed courtesy of the maternal unit.

"You have to take me to the emergency room! NOW!!!!"

I looked at her quizzically. Her lips were pursed tighter than Lemonhead Jones and she looked rather pasty faced, though it was hard to tell with all the avocado and shit she would slather on that petulant puss of hers each night.

"I think I have brain damage," she said.

"That's what I've been tryin' to tell ya!"

"Take me to the hopsital! Now, you little bastid!"

I looked over at Alberto. Nothing. From within my Levis my pickle said, "Choose your battles. Definitely."

My mother, who was going to school to become a teacher, had been doing some work study thing at some private elementary school. Apparently the monkey bars in their playground had proven too complicated for her and she'd had some sort of accident that afternoon.

From inside my Levis I heard my pickle's muffled voice saying, "Cops are coming. Definitely."

Thirty minutes later my mother and I were seated in the emergency room waiting area. Across from us some guy had his arm wrapped in a bloody towel. He seemed to have been recently crying. The girl seated next to him said, "Next time you wanna flirt with that bitch I'll really give you something to cry about, Hector."

I looked at my mother and said, "Well, I'm gonna go home now."

She grabbed my arm and her face turned green.

Inside my Levis my pickle advised me, "A flood shall come!"

Instinctively, I broke free from her grip, jumping out of my orange plastic seat just as my mother decided to projectile vomit all over the floor, Hector, and his violently jealous girlfriend. Now maybe it was just me, but I could swear I saw miniature Nazis goosestepping through the barf chunks.

"You fuckin' bitch! You puked all over me! And don't be eyeballin' Hector neither! I'll cut you too..."

Hector's girlfriend was having a stellar evening. She stood there admiring my mother's idea of gastronomic performance art whilst apparently considering whether or not to perform emergency surgery on her. The loudspeaker paged my mother to the front desk and I whisked her away before Hector's girlfriend could make up her mind.

Thirty extremely long minutes later a doctor was having her admitted for a concussion.

"Well, I'm gonna go," I said.

"Burn the books," she said.

"Come again?"

"Inside the drawer of my nightstand are three composition books. I want you to put them in the incinerator. You must burn those books!"

"Okey doke," I said.

She grabbed my arm. Her fingernails dug in somewhat painfully.

"Swear to me godammit!"

I thought about calling her a crazy fucking cunt but I didn't think she meant that kind of swearing. I agreed to her request and made my way outta Dodge.

Back home it was just getting to the witching hour. I pulled out a big joint from behind my ear and put some Talking Heads on. I was definitely tripping hard and my normally cacaphonous stream of consciousness was working overtime. I was smoking my big joint and pondering the meaning of life when it all hit me like a depleted uranium bullet right through my cabeza from the book depository (or was it the grassy knoll?).

I could feel myself in the absolute center of an absolute void. There was no time here. Space has ceased to exist. Everything was absolutely perfect yet absolutely boring. This yin/yang of perfection and boredom stretched out infinitely in its impressively absolute nothingness. When non-existence itself could finally take no more, knowing full well the folly of its own recklessness; big bang. That was it. Boredom and the perfection of nothingness versus the chaos of existence.

The meaning of life is that anything is preferable to absolute boredom.

With that existential dilemma finally solved I entered my mother's bedroom.

It was a lonely, almost sterile room. Inside her nightstand I found a dusty diaphragm on top of a stack of composition books. I didn't stop there though. I went through the entire room, and five minutes later when I was done I had found an envelope with $500.00 cash money stuffed in with some papers. I looked at the dead presidents and the one on top said, "A fool and his money, son."

So there I sat at my kitchen table, tripping on acid for the first time, a stack of dead presidents on the table and the Talking Head's singing some shit en francais. I cracked open one of the composition books and found a very bad poem.

I kept flipping through the pages but the poetry did not improve. I could see why she wanted me to burn the shit. Nothing worse than sitting alone in your room writing bad poetry except maybe a Philadelphia lawyer. It wasn't until I got near the end of the third composition book that my fucking jaw dropped and I had my first taste of a bad acid trip.

My grandfather was not my grandfather.

My father was not my father.

My father, who was a retard in his own right, and had flunked out of college, was called up for the 'Nam in the late '60s. My grandfather had made him an offer. Marry my pregnant mother and take a job in his company, or, go fight Charlie on Hamburger Hill.

As I read further into the diary I discovered that Grandpa preferred to keep it all in the family, and by all, I mean his penis, and by the family, I mean my mother's hoochie hole.

Well that fucking explains a lot.

From inside my Levis my pickle said, "Definitely. Definitely explains everything."

I looked in the mirror. Not a good idea when you are tripping, even under the best of circumstances. But, when you have just discovered that your Grandpa Warbucks had been stuffin' your mom with the Hebrew National since she was twelve and that you are the product of some FDA unapproved baby batter well....

Don't look in the mirror.

I checked for signs of retardation, but to tell you the truth, except for some exceptionally large pores in my shnozz, I still looked smarter than your average bear. But, facts is facts and the salient fact appeared to be that I was an inbred Zed. I vaguely wondered if I should take up the banjo.

I was feeling short of breath so I opened the living room window wide and stuck my head out for some fresh air. Four stories below the McGillicutty Boys stood in my courtyard. They were in no particular order: Chucky, Georgie, Freddie and Ralph. They lived one block up from me and had been tormenting me since I was in the first grade. They had thrown rocks at me, beat me up, sat on me, stuck a lit firecracker down my pants, stole my comic books and otherwise humiliated and degraded me for the past decade.

They stood around a radio listening to AC/DC and drinking beer and generally looking inbred; oh shit, wait! I'd have to be exorcising that stereotype from my mental lexicon. From inside my Levis I heard my pickle say, "Sic 'em Pete!"

I went into my kitchen and checked the contents of my fridge. Three minutes later I had a giant plastic Yankees cup filled with, in no particular order, milk, eggs, piss, Elmer's glue, KY Jelly, my mother's diaphragm (where were you when I needed you?), snot, half a turd (it's hard to go on cue), some farm fresh pimple cheese, and finally a big dollop of Cool Whip whipped topping. If only I'd had a cherry, but we all know you can't have everything, where would you put it?

I carried my Yankee cup filled with biohazard back to the open window. I carefully peeked my head out. The McGillicuttys were still holding court, praise be to Allah. I spit on my thumb and stuck it out the window. Then I quickly made some mental calculations, not entirely dissimilar from a complicated pool shot, and launched my bogey. I quickly ducked back in the apartment and slid the window down.

T-Minus 3-2-1

Erm, Houston, we have splashdown.

Meanwhile, from down below, the McGillicutty glee club sang their rendition of...

WhHHHUUuUT THHHHuuHHHh FuHhhcCK?!?!?!?!

I ran into my mother's room and opened her window to survey the McGillicutty situation from a less conspicuous angle. The McGillicuttys were covered in piss, shit, snot, glue, milk, eggs and I could swear I saw my mother's diaphragm on top of Chucky McGillicutty's ratnest of a head, glistening in the sodium haze of the streetlight like some hillbilly yarmulke.

Then, I made what appeared to be an epic blunder.

I started to laugh.

Not just a little wiseguy chuckle but a big mo-fuck-all paroxysm of side splitting lysergically induced madness that would have put Felix The Wonderful Wonderful Cat to shame. The laughter acted like a beacon and the McGillicuttys instantly recognized me.

Ralphie McGillicutty pointed up at me and screamed, "Look! Up there! It's that fuckin' punk, whatshisname!"

It looked like my cover was blown. From inside my Levis my pickle said, "Busted. Definitely busted."

Once again my pickle was on the money because soon thereafter some innerestin' events occurred...

Someone started ringing my bell frantically. Within fifteen minutes about eighty of the McGillicutty clan had congregated en masse in front of my apartment building. My pickle informed me I was in deep shit; definitely. I called my best friend Winston W. and explained the situation best as I could leaving out the part about me being inbred. Winston told me and I quote, "Don't worry, bro. Just sit tight. The cavalry should be coming directly." Five minutes later my other friend Jules called to tell me he was going to be five minutes late as he had to finish his royale with cheese and sharpen his samurai sword.

Well, what I can tell you with tremendous certitude is that there is nothing quite like an 80 on 12 gang fight when you're tripping balls and you've just found out that your crazy mother was lovers with your even crazier (is that possible?) grandpa and that your retarded stoner Dad was only in it for the money.

My boys had come up the back alley and made their way to my roof where we got the drop on the McGillicuttys. My friend Doctor B. was a wizard with his crossbow and got Chucky McGillicutty right in the left butt cheek.

By the time the cops finally made an appearance (see, my fuckin' pickle don't lie), the streets were awash in blood and a little piss, shit, milk, pimple cheese and Cool Whip.

Fortunately, nobody got killed that time, and since Guiliani still had yet to become Mayor, the long on the skinny was the cops strongly suggested everybody beat it or get beat up; officially.

For once my boys and the McGillicutty clan were in agreement. We cheesed it promptly.

I, being grateful to the boys for having my back, cheerfully sprang for hookers, coke and beer with all those dead presidents. We jumped the gun a fair amount partying like it was 1999.

So, I guess you can say that I learned quite a lot on my first acid trip. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that acid might be the least of society's problems, what with the whole never ending war, racism, disease, crime, and economic disparity thing going on; but hey, that's just me.

What I also learned was the power of blackmail.

I had made copies of the composition book, not the ones with the abysmal poetry, but rather the one containing the highly detailed narrative of taboo father/daughter McLovin. I put these in some very trustworthy hands with explicit instructions to go to the cops if anything untoward should happen to me.

Then, shortly thereafter, I had a sit down with my mother (she survived the concussion but the brain damage was permanent), sister, father and grandfather. The three of us had a lot to cover but by the time we were wrapping it up, it had been agreed that my mother/sister would be moving out, and my grandfather/father would be making monthly deposits into an account that I was to enjoy unfettered access to. There was also a will drawn up to which I was named full beneficiary as well as a couple of blind trusts thrown in for good measure.

In fact, things turned out so well that by my seventeenth birthday I had almost become bored with sex, drugs and rock & roll. But, like with the universe, the perfection of stillness was finally interrupted by a big bang; the cosmic joke does repeat.

My grandfather/father's house, where my sister/mother had moved back, (the family that plays together stays together) experienced a gas leak.

The explosion actually blew the roof off the joint. The most eventful thing that happened at the funeral was pseudo dad asked me for a loan as they lowered my mother/sister into her final resting place. I fake sneezed and shoulder checked him. He lost his balance, taking a six foot spill.

Fishing around in the pocket of my trench coat I hooked a lone thin dime. I tossed it down the hole.

I said, "Why don't you call somebody who cares?" and disappeared into the rain.

Originally posted on r/nosleep under the pen name mypumassmellfunky.