Christopher WunderLee - The Loony - a novella of epic proportions

INTERROGATOR 1: Kind of a part of it is a blurring between fact and fiction.

INTERROGATOR 7: Pop, I said Poppy, a piece of Pop Poppy…

Out-of-room voice 3: Shhhhhh…

Out-of-room voice 6: It’s working too good.

Out-of-room voice 1: The sodium amytal suppository.

LOCHNER: The Cambridge Seven, those were the days.

INTERROGATOR 1: It says you never completed high school.

LOCHNER: On Massachusetts Avenue, only we used to call it mass-of-two-shits.

INTERROGATOR 5: Well, we — you saw it in the commercial for foot powder, she’s so happy she’d got VD, cuddlin’ and ridin’ in the boat.

INTERROGATOR 1: And do you realize Albert where you were?

INTERROGATOR 3: Your true name is Poppy Malloy, of the Jersey Malloy’s, two, two, seven, nine Fitzgerald Street, apartment one eleven, your father was a Nihilist at Stoddard’s Drug Store on Folly Boulevard and your mother, well — you know your mother arranged flowers for painters, up until, up until, well, that nasty accident…

Out-of-room voice 1: Major Tom?

Out-of-room voice 3: Lovely.

(File footage of women smiling in lengthy bathing suits during a beauty pageant)

Out-of-room voice 7: Science fiction stories about space with rockets in the shape of tea saucers and anal probing aliens and look out, LOOK OUT.

LOCHNER: Captain doctor Albert Lochner, number 344 dash 858 dash 10910.

INTERROGATOR 4: And if — and if — right.

Out-of-room voice 11:…they all conspiracies?

INTERROGATOR 1: And if it was beyond our technological capacity to land on the moon, at what point did the fake space program turn into the real space program?

(File footage of the Zeppelin crashing, the first attempts at flight, a man with wooden wings jumping off a barn, a jet)

INTERROGATOR 5: …why she can just kiss and hug and all that, no fear of repercussions, not if she’s smilin’.

INTERROGATOR 1: Well, Albert, I think we’ve made some interesting progress today.

Out-of-room voice 2: Progress of the brain worm…

(File footage of an earthworm burrowing into soil)

INTERROGATOR 4: And if they are burning their rubbish, are they polluting it, the black smoke?

INTERROGATOR 7: Pollute your black smoke.

INTERROGATOR 3: …but she was only disfigured, she still had a juicy cunt and big boobies, put a bag on her head, that’s what the old man used to say Poppy, when he’d nibble on her arse with his pinching fingers.

Out-of-room voice 4: Yes.

Out-of-room voice 2: Good to see YOU again.

Out-of-room voice 1: We’ll be back with more misinformation after you take your nap and your meds.

INTERROGATOR 5, 7, 2, & 4: (Singing) …floating round my tin can… far above the moon…

* * *

Lo and behold, Albert steps over the dead cat carcass delusion in the hallway and comes upon four guys and their maker huddled around the wall. There’s Lolly McGuire, a narcissistic necrophiliac from New Haven with one eye sewn shut and a gaping lobotomy hole in his forehead where a crucifix tattoo used to be; Johnny Changing, a tabescent taphephobe hailing from Omaha who Napoleonically always has his hand stuffed down his trousers and lets everyone know he’s touching himself (“I’m touching myself, I’m touching myself”); Vance Engels, diagnosed with acute kakorrhaphiophobia and present, allegedly, due to his epistemophilic poetry, of which he hands out on paper scraps during evening “free” time to anyone willing to promise him they won’t prejudge it until they’ve conceived of their own misgivings; Ladybirde Matteoto, an effeminate castrophenic with bi-effective demophobia who has a strange nyctophoniac tone during nightly discussion in the card room; and the one and only hyperhedonic, brimborian, and mendaciloquent maritodespot, playing craps and engaged in a heated, rather secretive, hubbub over someone’s roll.

“What are ya playin’” he asks, “for?”

“Redemption, sin, sacrifice, a new covenant, perhaps some wings,” Johnny Changing says, tickling the dice in his semeny palm.

Albert crouches down as if to initiate himself in their little union, but immediately feels as though he’s not wanted. The shooter stops and eyes the new arrival with a holy glare, mutely suggests his annoyance, and rattles the dice over the floor.

“Ohhhh,” the general peal comes, as he’s rolled a niner.

“Damn,” he says under his breath, just loud enough to thunder.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Vance Engels shouts, jumping jacks, and boxer dances. “My nebula now.”

“You’ll get it,” Ladybirde Matteoto promises, fetching the dice and handing them back to the shooter. “Snake eyes, one, two, three…”

“I want in,” Albert tries before the shoot, “I want in.”

The shooter, life-giver and life-taker, the tap dancer of the genesis and the voice of the big bang, blows hard on his cupped hand, sending all five back in a sort of hurricane reel, arms swooping, balance off, gives his arm a good swing, and tosses again.

“Noooo,” they chorus.

“No such luck for the almighty,” Lolly McGuire gags, even snapping his fingers.

“Whose was that, whose was that?” the hermaphrodite asks.

“Mine, all mine,” Vance Engels chimes, “two thousand light years of real estate and eternal life.”

“I want in,” Albert tries again, “can I get in on it — please, please?”

“You gotta ask the bossman,” chuckles Lolly.

“What do you say, I go to church, I’ve read the bible like four times, come on, let a guy have a chance,” Albert pleads to his creator.

The icon head assents to his challenge and dusts off his hands on his toga.

“What’s the bet?” Ladybirde asks, clutching the dice as the mediator.

“I want to be the monarch of the moons, not just this one, but every damn one of them, and I want to have a rose garden and be called the Little Prince, and speak some French, and be omnipotent, and…”

“For?”

“What did you guys play for?” Albert looks about to his fellow crappers.

“A ride in my MG,” Johnny says, “and Ladybirde promised him homemade bran muffins.”

“I got a book about migrating birds he seemed interested in,” Vance explains, “and I threw in my LP collection,” he asides to Albert, “I only got three, but he don’t know that.”

“Baseball cards,” Albert tries, looking excitedly at the divine.

“Need to sweeten it,” Lolly says.

“All right, I got a shoe box full of pez dispensers.”

God agrees.

Its Albert’s turn first, he wipes a little snot, just like the big leaguers, onto the inside of his index finger and thumb, rolls the dice craftily from one finger to the other, and checks their weight, does a few tosses in the air, and finally, rubs them between his hands as though he’s trying to warm up a bit. By now, Jehovah’s gotten a little impatient, so Albert crouches down into shooting position, and lets them fly. Rattle, rattle, rattle… a one and a three. He receives the dice from Johnny, does his whole routine again, before they take them away and give them to god. He twinkles a little with his fingers and tosses unceremoniously. Rattle, rattle, rattle… a four and a five.

“All right then,” Albert meditates, giving the dice a good warm up and spinning his shooting arm before letting loose. Rattle, rattle, rattle… a three and… yes, a three… Monarch of the Moons. “Show you right.”

“Daaammmm,” Vance slurs.

The creator’s not too pleased with himself and gruffly shakes his head and snorts holy water snot, a little of which catches Albert on the chin. He’s 0 for 5 with this crowd. “Bitch,” he whispers earth-quakingly and wanders off dejectedly, his mighty crowned head down and his big winged shoulders hunched forward.