Juggernaut

By

Varo Borja

I lay dying in a pool of translucent fear and my hair feels like straw sat upon a worried brow and I am lying by the porcelain altar of Shiva or Set. I feel the paroxysm of my birthright rising within innards of fiery fulsome fright and it comes and I feel better and then I look at the porcelain tile and see a lone dust mite crawling through paths of urine stained freeways and the internecine ride of the Caledonians on my bathroom’s battlefield and my fingers crush the lone ranger upon this funereal floor where only the strong survive and the involutions of my intestinal hellspawn offerings and oblations to the god of wine no longer bring Bacchus to bear on the heretics running loose in my head and I’ve lost the war but at least the bloodletting has stopped and I can go back to bed.

The bed spins through time and space and I smell the feces from the day before and I reach to the bedside and take a long, liverish drink from the Chevas Regal and lie back on the satin pillowcase and breathe asthmatically and crave a cancer stick. Carol Lynn cries in the kitchen and I crawl back to the bathroom past the window where watchers keep their vigilant gaze glued to my stash of cocaine in the chest of drawers. I take a few toots from my stash only for medicinal purposes and then I crawl past Carol Lynn who is frying tofu and eggs for my children’s consumption to the refrigerator for a bottle of Schlitz and then back to the bathroom for more intensive research on the beneficent properties of cool tile on the forehead of a highly developed drunkard like me.

I’ve done too much coke. I know the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, and the Department of Homeland Security are in the cedar woods just outside my bedroom window. I must hide here in my sanctuary where the Virgin Mary lets me rest my tired head on her lily-white feet and escape from the barbarian hordes outside who demand my immediate crucifixion. Jesus must have turned the water into wine on a Friday night because on Saturday I’ve always been too drunk to drink from rhytons filled with seraphimic nectar so I just go for the single malt Scotch straight with a beer chaser. I know they’ve tapped my phone and the satellite signals larrup my fevered brain and I must now have a touch more cocaine because I’ve laved my head in the sacramental holy water and reaped the lenity of my Lord and Savior.

I crawl back to the chest of drawers from the bathroom floor and take another toot for my stomach’s sake and then crawl back into bed, being careful to avoid the view from the window. I try to sleep but Carol Lynn’s unreasonable lists, always lists, keep me awake and I am making a mental grocery spread sheet in my mind and I know we need milk, bread, tempeh, Schlitz, cocaine, toiler paper, and a couple of Blow Pops for the girls because they’re such good girls but they keep playing now in the yard with all those nasty government agents and they insist on screaming and giggling much too loudly for my sensitive ears. I simply MUST have another snort of that delightful white powder that is cut so splendidly with powdered sugar which reminds me that I’m supposed to bake a cake for my daughter’s birthday tomorrow but I just can’t seem to motivate myself so yes I must have another toot and crawl back to the bathroom for more inspiration from the Virgin Mary and her celestial Sesame Street companions.

I’m in hell. I’m in hell. The cool, luxuriant tiles are losing their redemptive powers and there’s blood mixed with the bile that I deposit into the crystal blue waters of my wife’s favorite seat in the house. Where is the new wine? Where is the feast they have promised? Where the fuck did I go wrong after graduation from Harvard with my useless degree in Chaos, Comparative Religion, and Thai Stick that forced me to sell my soul to the Goths of the Guatemalan countryside with their wonderful coca leaves and dusky, manscented pagodas of pleasure where the fleshpots of old Sodom would pale in comparison. Enrico will kill me if I turn state’s evidence on the cartel. I’ll be sporting a Columbian necktie to my funeral in some backwater bilgedump in Baha or Cozumel. Fuck. I simply must straighten out my head from all this fretting and fidgeting and find a solution to my existential crises. Cocaine. Yes, I guess that’s the answer. No. I must fight that white devil-in-waiting that lurks in the bottom of the Ethan Allen chest that my mother in law gave as a Christmas present when Carol Lynn and I were young and had the world by the teeth. I had arrived. Now look at me. Fuck. Fuck.

The cocaine enlivens my spirits and I feel I must go for a walk but not now because I must hide and destroy the mental grocery lists of my beleaguered wife here in our red brick Victorian castle nestled ever so secretly in the Maine woods and away from those pesky bastards with badges and warrants and wire taps and satellites but apparently not far enough because now I am besieged with only about an ounce left of my panacea and about half a half a gallon of Chevas Regal; the most wonderfully cheap Scotch that tastes as if the Lord himself had bequeathed it to we mortals instead of the nasty verdict of guilty, guilty, guilty when I go before his sacrosanct white throne and plead for my soul because I am a good boy and always have been I just got caught up with those despicable Central Americans and their wonderful white powder which I simply must have now or I will die.

The smoke from my cigarette curls in the air; wispy fragments descending upon alabaster counters filled with all the necessities of the modern age: makeup from Neiman Marcus, perfume from Nordstrom’s, Q-tips from Communist China. A virtual cornucopia of sanitary solutions for the sensibilities of the modern woman. Too bad there aren’t any get out of jail free cards amongst my wife’s belongings. I am sitting on the toilet now, rehashing my sins of commission and omission. No, I didn’t take over my father’s printing business. Yes, I slept with our Mexican maid Margherita. No, I didn’t take out the trash. Yes, I did wreck the Mercedes into the lake last year, but didn’t Carol Lynn always say that she would much rather have a Volvo? Volvos are designed with safety in mind, are they not? Besides, a Volvo wouldn’t spin out of control at 135 mph and wreck itself, now would it? My scorecard reads zero. I must offer myself to the waiting servants of justice for trial and excommunication from the Republic for which they stand. Yes. I must.

First, I have to get my courage up. I’m going to jail anyway, so I might as well have one last bump of the good stuff. The cocaine feels like fire flowing through my nostrils and into my extremities and I have a solution. If it is battle that the barbarian hordes seek, they shall have it. By god they will. I open the drawer to the nightstand and sift through the unmentionables (K-Y, various and sundry sex toys, and my wife’s diaphragm) until I find the sword of Allah that will reap the harvest of blood and free me from my oppression: my Daisy semi-automatic air pistol. Yes. I shall have my vengeance. I run through the house in my skivvies and fling open the front door where I am literally blinded by the god of the Mithraists, but I will not be daunted. I run headlong at my assailants, firing from the hip. I am the avenging angel from the book of Revelation. When I am sated with bloodlust, I pause to look around at the carnage. Hmm. It seems I have fired my fiery darts at the innocents of the woodland: squirrels, an old growth hemlock, my wife’s Volvo, and the azure shadows produced by the waning day. Feeling foolish and a little tired, I retire to bed with the assurance of a brighter tomorrow. First, I must consult with my wife, for it seems that aliens have taken up residence in the flower garden and turned the dog into a very large sea monster that resembles the Leviathan of the holy scriptures. Yes, and she simply MUST go to Enrico’s and procure me another bag of that delightful white substance.