David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

The sound of a jet aircraft overhead. Joe sticks his head out the window and looks up. It’s a clunky old stealth bomber that appears to have been damaged in a crash landing sometime in the past. One of its engines smokes, another works intermittently. A windshield is broken. Holes suck air along the fuselage. A wingtip is missing. Painted crudely on its nose is the plane’s name, Hey Abbott, and a character sketch of “Bud” Abbott and Lou Costello.

Inside the cockpit, from behind the pilot, who is alone in the cockpit, flight control panels blink madly and warning buzzers sound as the Hey Abbott swoops over Witchy Toe. The alien pilot seems unconcerned, yet struggles to keep the craft flying.

The pilot speaks alien words with the caption: Roger Dodger, is Witchy Toe a drop site today?

Alien radio voice in answer, with the caption: Roger. W.T. is a drop site. Over and out.

The alien pilot flips a toggle and says in alien, “Here you go, folks. It’s payday!”

Downtown Witchy Toe. Empty streets, broiling hot, the smokestacks tall against a white-hot sky. A street sign says Arden Boulevard. This part of Witchy Toe resembles a scaled-up model railroad town. It is full size, but looks artificial. Colors are all primary, very little stylistic variation is expressed in the buildings, and each seems to be devoted to a single commodity. One sign says SOAP, another CUTLERY, another MEAT, another FLOUR. One restaurant says DOG, another says FUNGUS, another CARP.

The Hey Abbott’s bomb bay doors open and bundles of yellow money tumble out. The bills flutter to the earth like leaves. The plane makes a wide, banking turn, and heads home.

Shop doors open up and down the street. People materialize from everywhere and gather up the yellow money.

The pedal bus pulls up to a curb, passengers disembark, legs sore, out of breath.

Other passengers, stuffing yellow money in their pockets, board.

Outside, Joe, Sherry and Kenny find plenty of yellow money remaining on the ground. The Mexicans busily gather it, too.

Joe says, “It’s payday. I remember this. Let’s get some. We’ll need it.”

They gather up money and fill their pockets.

Kenny examines one of the bills. “This is money?”

Sherry turns a bill over. “It’s blank on both sides.”

Joe rolls one of the bills rapidly between his palms, then opens them to reveal a ball of what looks like dough with a light yellow tint. He pops the ball into his mouth and chews. “It’s better than money. You can spend it or you can eat it.”

Sherry tries the trick, pops one into her mouth. “Mmmmmm. It’s good. Like a marshmallow.”

Kenny tries it. “Not bad.”

Passengers venture off this way and that, carrying as much money as they can. Soon the streets are empty again.

Sherry says, “What do we do now, Joey?”

“We find a place to stay.”

In another part of town, hours later, Kenny, Sherry and Joe are down at the end of a lonely street, appraising the skid row surroundings: warehouses, lounges, boarded-up storefronts, and a small, dilapidated movie theater called The Terranova. The marquee is dimly lit, but with enough light to make out the feature: The Grotto .

Joe says, “That’s where we stay the first night. It’s not a hotel, but it’s where we stay, where we have to stay.”

A line of new arrivals stands in line outside the Terranova. Kenny, Sherry and Joe join them.

Just across the street is an ice skating rink called The Ice Palace. Lettering on the marquee is bright and clear: SPANKINGS TONIGHT.

Kenny points to the Ice Palace marquee. “What’s that all about?”

Joe doesn’t remember.

Much like a 1950s neighborhood theater, check-in at the Terranova takes place at a glass-enclosed ticket window, only this one is manned by another mechanical alien.

Check-in is accomplished by placing yellow money into the alien’s open palm, where it is rolled into a ball and deposited in the machine’s gaping mouth.

The lobby is very much like a theater lobby, complete with a half-filled popcorn machine and a candy counter with a CLOSED sign. A few new arrivals sit in ratty chairs and tattered sofas reading a newspaper called City Moon .

Sherry approaches the candy counter. “It’s a shame they’re closed. I’m out of gum again.” She looks down through the cloudy glass at old, worm-ridden candy bars and popcorn. “Oh, my Lord.”

Kenny asks Joe, “Where’s our room? They have rooms upstairs or something?”

“No. You don’t get a room.”

Sherry pipes up. “You said it was a hotel.”

“No, I said it was where we stay for the night. I didn’t say it was a hotel.”

In the Terranova’s seating area, new arrivals are scattered in the seats, including Mexican illegals. Some of them are asleep.

Kenny looks around the dim theater. “We just sit here…all night?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“They show movies?”

“Sometimes they do. Maybe. I don’t remember.”

The Terranova’s torn, rat-gnawed curtain rises. With poor sound and film quality, a brief “commercial” is screened, showing a man’s exposed buttocks suddenly struck with a wooden paddle spiked with nails, leaving bloody punctures. A hand reaches in with a cloth and applies iodine solution. A woman’s buttocks appear and the process is repeated. Then the words: JUSTICE IN THE RAW! NIGHTLY AT THE ICE PALACE. Free Admission.

Martial music blares as the vaulted stone entrance to a huge sewer system, much like the fabled one in Paris, appears onscreen.

An invisible, deep-throated narrator speaks above the action: “Witchy Toe’s new punishment facility is a spectacle of enlightenment, so well-maintained that new arrivals can take a boat from the President’s Home to the Ice Palace without fear of fatigue and without stepping in anything unclean.”

Floating on a sewage canal, a pedal-powered, canvas-canopied tour boat glides into view, new arrivals pedaling as they gawk. Other new arrivals, of a low caste, march slowly along a ledge beside the canal, using long sticks to break up clumps of offal. A shower of condensation rains on them from the arched stone ceiling. Their prison tunics are soaking wet.

The tour guide stands at the helm of the tour boat with a megaphone. “Notice the rows of lamps, each provided with a silvered reflector. See how they light up the vaulted gallery and cast their reflections in the black, turgid water at our feet. Don’t the white-robed workers look like so many ghosts? People who have seen everything say this punishment complex is perhaps the most beautiful sight on this side of the world.”

Martial music continues to play as the clip film fades and the screen goes dark.

Joe says, “They’re not showing a movie tonight.”

Kenny says, “Let’s go to the spankings.”

Inside the Ice Palace, the ice skating floor is brightly lit. A sparse crowd shivers in the cold. A queue of new arrivals, nude and on skates, waits in line.

A booming alien voice, speaking English on the P.A. system: “On the ice now we have new arrival, Joseph T. Baker. For petty criminality — breaking wind in a public place.”

Baker, a flabby, aging white male, skates to a booth-like structure in the center of the rink, presses a red button and bends over. Extending from the booth is an oar-like projection about six feet long. From its flattened end, dozens of sharp spikes protrude. A spring-lock mechanism releases and the paddle strikes Baker’s buttocks with terrific force, at the same time spraying the bleeding punctures with iodine solution.

Propelled forward several yards by the force of the blow, Baker cries out in pain, his spluttering farts uncontrollable, driving him ever further on the ice. He weeps with shame and embarrassment. Most of the audience applauds.