Balls Capone

The Boneyard - by P.N. Neville

I was living in the hold house I once lived at back in 2002 on the corner of 8^th South and 4^th East in Salt Lake City.  Back then I lived with many friends, but this time it was just me, like I had always lived there by myself.  It was sparse, but cleaner than it used to be and was decent place to hang your hat, it was still beat up and run down, but hey, it was home.  It still stunk of stale cigarettes and you could see places on the walls where pictures and posters once hung, ghostly shapes etched into the walls from a time long gone.  There was a was old red couch, a coffee table and a TV set up against the western wall like we had it set up back in the day.  The light from the TV was the only light source in the room, it seemed to me that the lights in the house no longer functioned and I lived a lot of my time in the dark using flashlights and old oil lamps to get around.  It felt very archaic, like a different time, back when this house was fist built years before the Titanic went down.  Yet I had a TV, so it couldn’t be.  The air was moist and stuffy, like a room filled with large amounts of wet soil.  I walked around the house looking for the source of this smell, but there was nothing to be found.

As I peaked out the back door between the houses I noticed a really pretty girl, sitting on the ground crosslegged smoking a cigarette.  Her name was Wendy, she lived next door that was a good friend of mine, we would talk all the time on the porch and chat,.I had all the memories of a good friendship in my mind. We were pretty solid, but she always seemed sad.  She was dating this douche bag of a dude who gave me the creeps. He had almost grey looking skin and strange dead eyes.  His name was Raycin, he drove a bright red motor cycle that was louder than anything in the world and I could always hear it when he pulled up to her house.  She would quickly get up and rush into the house in fear, because Raycin had certain expectations that must be met upon his arrival.

Then they would fight, I could hear them screaming obscenities at each other in the house next door, I always hated this.  I couldn’t stand the way he treated her, but nothing ever seemed to change no matter what I said or did, so I would just go and shut the kitchen window, hoping one day for a better outcome for her.. It wasn't an unusual occurrence, but this time there was an awful feeling in the air, it was musty, cold, and uncomfortable,  everything felt wrong.

I was sitting on the old dingy couch watching TV when I noticed there was no more screaming, just silence.  That's odd, they usually go at it for hours.  Suddenly, a knock on my front door, I got up and opened it and it was him, Raycin standing there on my porch looking very pleased with himself.  He had this little smirk on his face and is one of those douche bags that's always overly friendly and insincere, but he said he needed my help and to come next door quickly.

I walked into the neighboring house where my friend lived and Raycin slammed the door shut behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder in that creepy controlling manner and led me to the bathroom.  There, slumped over on her knees with her head in the toilet was Wendy, to my horror, he had drown her in a diarrhea filled toilet.  The scene was so shocking, I had to turn around and unload a large volley of colorful groceries upon the floor. 

“What the fuck, dude?  Is she Dead?”, I gasped between heaves of vomit.

Raycin turned to me and said,

"She deserved it, dude", "It was her time to become the grime, we had a deal, remember?"

I was horrified and turned to run from the grizzly scene, but Raycin grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me and said in a laughing manner,

"Hey, man, look, I understand. It'll be okay",

“You got this!”,

"I know how you're feeling, I know you don't understand who you are yet”,

“It’s always the same way with you, man.  You think you’re one of them, ever damn time.”, he said while chuckling  to himself.

“Now why don't you come out and help me skeletonize her remains?”

“You'll feel much better once you see her bones.  Come on, buddy, you know how much you love the bones”, continued Raycin with a sly smile as he playfully punched me in the belly repeatedly.

“WHAT?  What are you talking about?  I would never do anything like this”, I said in a terrified manner.

But inside of me, I knew that wasn’t true, suddenly it was like remembering the name of that one person who was in that movie that you’ve been trying to think of all night.  It just popped in there and for some crazy reason I just followed him out to the back yard.

There in the center of the driveway was a large black machine, it was about the size of a small car.  It resembled a yard waste shredder.  It had a conveyer belt that lead into one side and a rusty metal slide on the other side where whatever results were produced slid out.

.

“Help me get the boiler going”, said Raycin.

It seems this machine is steam powered.  It was very steam punk, boilers, steam, gauges, water level glass, etc.  As I helped to stoke the fire, it was becoming more and more clear, this machine was used to skeletonize the remains.  The heat from the fire was intense, but it seemed to call to me, the heat and pressure made me smile, a rush flashed through my body like the feeling of the first feelings from a powerful psychedelic, large and fantastic body rush.

Raycin immediately noticed and said,

“See, I told you you’d come around, you always do.”, as he shook his head like this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Finally, with a loud metal clank, the machine sprung to life and belts and cranks began to turn, hissing and blasting steam, streams of brownish gross wastewater being ejected from the bottom, disappearing into the gravel driveway, slowly, the wheels and parts moving ever faster.

“Put her in, come on, hurry, let’s get this done.  I’m hungry.  Where do you want to do go to dinner?”, said Raycin in a snappy tone.

I got the ankles and he got the wrists as we loaded her onto the feed conveyer and watched as her pretty slender body vanished into the black maw of this machine.  I thought I’d feel sad, or at least some kind of emotion.  But no, I was blank, still trying to understand and process the ever growing senses inside of me.  A bitter darkness that felt like home.  It seemed to welcome me back and I just started to giggle.

Raycin noticed and began to laugh along with me, soon we were both standing there in the drive cackling like old crones, it was all just so funny.  Why was I even worried?  Raycin was right, he always is.  I don’t know why I even resist.  Oh, silly me.

The machine slowly ground to a halt and the sound of hard items sliding down the rusty exit ramp of the machine.  It was her bones, just there in a nice little heap, perfectly clean and white.  The sight was so very satisfying.  I really did feel better after gazing upon her bones.  Then Raycin and I put her clothes back on the skeleton bones and had ourselves a little puppet show, we drank beer, laughed hysterically, and had an overall great time. It no longer mattered, it was all in good fun.  Whatever.  I knew who I was now.

“Do you remember your name?”, asked Raycin.

“Labididous!”, I bellowed into the night!

“YES!  My Brother!”, returned Raycin with much excitement.

“Let it begin!”, bellowed Raycin as he flung his head back and arms to the sky.

I felt a power like I’ve never felt before, a pure driving force of confidence and knowledge.  I was so happy, I was finally part of something, something big, something real, something that was unquestionable, and I was an important player.  I was no longer alone stumbling through life wondering who and what I am, all of that was gone, replaced with utter surety.  The time had come.  I walked back home to my dark house where I noticed that I was no longer a merry fellow, my skin had all turned grey and my eyes they glowed yellow.  I felt great, I felt powerful.  So I hung one of Wendy’s leg bones over my door where I could always remember the day I woke up to my true being and purpose.  I brushed my hand over the bone and it began to glow blue like a neon sign.  There, that’s it, perfect.  It lit up the entry way of my house with a creepy blue glow that was also extremely satisfying for me to gaze upon.

What were we?  Well, you could call us many names, daemons, goblins, spooks, specters, ghosts, the unseen, shadow folk, eye people, etc.  We were created for mischief and havoc, I knew that for certain.  The two of us, Raycin and Labididous were created as a matched pair, like expensive microphones, you can use them separately but work best together.  We would be born at random into a world, there we would grow as normal children, well maybe not normal, but always feeling the pull of the other, slowly unconsciously drawing closer and closer throughout life until the day we finally meet.  Then, we wake each other up to what and who we are for real, and then all hell breaks loose. 

There were worlds and times that were spared our torturous abuse due to the random chance that we never actually were able to meet.  Those lives were lived as semi-normal lives as unremarkable people.  It didn’t happen often, but those whom were we were always cursed with an unfulfilled life, an empty void that could never be filled, something always missing, lacking the ability to truly love, never complete, filled with eternal sadness and longing for something that would never come.

I crept through the darkness of my house, now just a shadow in the dark of my former self, my glowing yellow eyes the only thing giving away my position.  I was more limber, I was lighter, I could jump to the ceiling, possibly even up to the roof, I had the agility to climb buildings and trees with ease.  I experimented in the dark of my house, jumping onto high cabinets and on top of the fridge like a cat would, I could traverse flights of stairs in a second, I had great speed along with agility.  I could easily avoid the eye of normal people if I needed to.  As I went from room to room in my house, my abilities grew and grew.  I could also control the intensity of the glow of my eyes like you would a flashlight.  I could see in the dark as if I had night vision goggles on.  My transformation was nearly complete and I never felt better.  There I sat against the wall on my trash strew kitchen floor, there alone in the darkness even inanimate objects seemed to fear me.  Wrappers would float away and old beer cans would seem to roll away from me on their own, even the very walls seemed to contract in my presence.  This was pleasing to me.  I spent the entire night  learning my new form and honing my abilities.  I was ready for what would come next.

Raycin arrived at the twilight of the new day.  As I walked out of my door I could feel the connection and when we stood together my belly felt like exploding from the power that was building within us.

“You ready?”, asked Raycin, his eyes also pulsing with power.

“Let’s do this”, I said as we walked out onto the sidewalk.

Our destination?  The City/County Building in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City.  That building was going to be ours, that was to be our fortress, our new castle.  Along the way we stopped at a gun shop, we were able to morph and slide through the small crack under the door.  It was early yet, so there was no one here yet.  That was good, because no one would have wanted to face us at that moment.  We gathered many weapons and ammo and continued on our path of destruction.  Along the way we would just randomly blow people away for the sheer joy of it.  After being taken by us, they would also become shadow beings now under our control.  They would be our army of darkness that would follow us and help to skeletonize the dead.

The carnage was massive, we went door to door in the building doing the worst things possible while cackling in pure joy.  More and more shadows ran the halls killing in our name and adding ever more to the ever growing army of shadow.  At one point I jumped down from the ceiling in front of a security guard and used my new catch phrase on him,

“You wanna little bit a dis?”, I said before turning his head into a fine red mist.  Get it?  Labididous?  A little bit a dis?  Oh it was terrible, what a terrible thing to have to hear right before you die.

“Due, I LOVE IT!”, screamed Raycin as he was finishing off a few in a back office.

“I want a cool catch phrase too!”, he said in jealous manner.

“Don’t be jelly, dude”, “It takes a special kind.”, I said in self pleased egotistical manner.

Oh, I was a jerk, my ego was growing ever bigger with each shadow I collected.  Soon the building was ours and we stood victorious upon the top of the tower, surrounded by an army of shadows that was now ours forever.  The darkness would spread like weeds, growing ever further from the center, taking more and more territory.  They could not fight us, they could not find us, were were the unseen.  All factions would fall before us, we were now the Dark Kings of the land of the Salty Lake and all would cower in our reign that would last for over a thousand years.

But eventually we became so powerful that it would be our undoing, we eventually morphed into nothing but the power itself, our physical forms dissolved and removed, our very being now like that of electricity which was eventually consumed and absorbed by the very earth itself.

The nightmare was over, the people could start again, the Dark Kings had defeated all that could be defeated until they defeated their very selves.

They had returned to the great unknowns and there they would wait until being born yet again in some poor unsuspecting world where the cycle would begin all over again.