Harlan Ellison - Approaching Oblivion - Road Signs On the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow

Inside the Cathedral of the Church of the Apostates, the smell. Like a million popped pincercrushers. I almost went over on my face from that smell.

It took three hands to hold all of my nose, a little whiff shouldn't slip through.

I started reeling around, hitting the strings they called walls. Fortunately, I rolled around near the entrance, and I stretched my nose a couple of feet outside, and I took a very deep breath, and snapped my nose back, and held it, and looked around.

There were still half a dozen of them who hadn't run off to Kasrilevka, all down on their stomachs, their feet winding up and unwinding, very fast, their faces down in the mud and crap in front of the altar, doing what I suppose they call praying. To that idol of theirs, Seymour, or Simon, or Shtumie, whatever they call it. I should know the name of a heathen idol, you bet your life never, better I should know the Latin name of a miserable worm that stinks first, let me tell you.

So there they were, and let me assure you it pained me in several more than a couple of ways to have to go over to them, but…I'm looking for Kadak.

“Hey,” I said to one of them. A terrific look at his tuchis I got. Such a perfect tuchis, if ever there was one, for a pincercrusher to come and chomp!

Nothing. “Hey!” I yelled it a second time. No attention. Crazy with their faces down in the crap. “Listen, hey!” I yelled at the top of my voice, which isn't such a soft niceness when I'm suffocating holding my nose with three hands and I want to get out of that place already.

So I gave him a zetz in the tuchis. I wound up every foot on the left side, and I let it unwind right where a pincercrusher would have brunch.

Then the dummy looked up.

A sight you could become very ill with. A nose covered with crap from the floor, a bunch of eyes filled with blue jelly, a mouth from out of which could only come heathen hosannahs to a dummy idol called Shaygets or something.

“You kicked me,” he said.

“All by yourself you figured that out, eh?”

He looked at me with six, and blinked, and started to fall over on his punim again, and I started to wind up I'd give him such a zetz I'd kick him into a better life.

“We don't accept violence,” he said.

“That's a terrific saying,” I told him. “Meanwhile, I don't accept an unobstructed view of your tuchis. So if you want I should go away and stop kicking you, so you can go root around in the dreck some more, what you'd better do is come up here a minute and talk to me.”

He kept looking. I wound up tighter. You could hear my sockets creaking. I'm not such a young one any more. He got up.

“What do you want? I'm worshipping to Seymool.”

Seymool. That's a name for a God. I wouldn't even hire something called a Seymool.

“You'll worship later. That buhbie isn't going anywhere.”

“But Zsouchmuhn is.”

“Very correct. Which is the same reason I got to talk to you now. Time is a thing I got very little of, if you catch my meaning here.”

“Well, what is it you want, precisely?”

Oy, a Talmudic scholar, no less. Precisely. “Well, Mr. Precisely, I'll tell you what it is precisely I want. You know where it is I can find a no-good snuffier called Kadak?”

He stared at me with six, then blinked rapidly, in sequence — two and four, three and five, one and six — then went back in reverse order. “you have a nauseating sense of humor. May Seymool forgive you.”

Then he fell back on his face, his legs up winding and unwinding, his nose deep in dreck. “I say Kadak, he says Seymool. I'll give you a Seymool!”

I started to wind up for a kick would put that momzer in the next time-zone, when a voice stopped me. From over the side of that stinking Cathedral-and you can bet I was turning yellow from not breathing-a woman said, “Come outside. I'll tell you about your friend Kadak.”

I turned to look, and there was this shikseh, all dolled up in such a pile of colored shmatehs and baubles and bangles and crap from the floor, I thought to myself, Gevalt! this turn I should never have crawled out of the burrow.

So anyhow I followed her outside, thank God, and let my nose extend to its full length and breathed such a deep one my cheek-sacs puffed up like I had a pair of bialies stuffed in. So now this bummerkeh, this floozie, this painted hussy says to me, “What do you want with Kadak?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “I'll get upwind from you, meaning no offense, lady, but you smell like your Church.” I rolled around her and got a little away, and when it was possible to breathe like a person, I said, “What I want is to go join my lust-mates on Kas-, on Bromios, but what I got to do, is I got to find Kadak. We need him for a very sacred religious service, you'll excuse me for saying this, dear lady, but you being Gentile, you wouldn't understand what it is.”

She batted four eyelids and flapped phony eyelashes on three of them. Oy, a nafkeh, a lady of easy virtue, a courtesan of the byways, a bummerkeh. “Would you contribute to a worthy charity to find this Kadak?”

I knew it. I knew somewhere on that damned looking for Kadak it would cost me a little something out of pocket. She was looking directly at my pouch. “You'll take a couple of coins, is that right?”

“It isn't exactly what I was thinking of,” she said, still looking at my pouch, and I suddenly realized with what I'll tell you honestly was a chill, that she was cross-eyed in four of her front six. She was staring at my pupik. What? I'm trying to tell you, butterfly, that she wasn't staring at my pouch which was hanging to the left side of my stomach. She was staring with that cockeye four at my cute little pupik. What? You'll forgive me, Mr. Silent-Butterfly-With-the-Very-Dumb-Expression, I should know that butterflies don't have pupiks? A navel. A belly button. Now you understand what it is a pupik? What? Maybe I should get gross and explain to a butterfly that shtups flowers, that we have sex through our pupiks. The female puts her long middle finger of the bottom arm on the right side, straight into the pupik and goes moofky-foofky, and that's how we shtup. You needed that, is that right? You needed to know how we do it. A filth you are, butterfly; a very dirty mind.

But not as dirty as that nafkeh, that saucy baggage, that whore of Babylon. “Listen,” I said, “meaning no offense, lady, but I'm not that kind of a person. I'm saving myself for my lust-mates. I'm sure you'll understand. Besides, meaning no offense, I don't shtup with strangers. It wouldn't be such a good thing for you, either, believe me. Everybody says Evsise is a rotten shtup. I got very little feeling in my pupik, you wouldn't like it, not even a little. Why don't I give you a few nice coins, you could use them on Kasri-on Bromios. You could maybe set yourself up in business there, a pretty lady such as yourself.” God shouldn't strike me down with a bolt of lightning in the tuchis for telling this filthy-mind cockeye heathen nafkeh what a cutie she was.

“You want to find this Kadak?” she asked, staring straight at two things at the same time.

“Please, lady,” I said. My nose started running.

“Don't cry,” she said. “Seymool is my God, I trust in Seymool.”

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

“We are the last of the Faithful of the Church. We plan to stay on Zsouchmuhn when they Relocate it. Seymool has decreed it. I have no hope of living through it. I understand cataclysms are commonplace when they pull a planet out of orbit.”