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Ptim Callan |
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Kill Somebody with an Axe They stopped me at the border for carrying contraband. "Obscene or immoral materials" if I recall correctly. I was carrying home a stack of Dutch nudie books for Greg, and the customs guys leafed through them to make sure they weren't a little too hot. Turns out one of the girls had pierced her genitals about a half dozen times. In Canada they don't care too much for labial jewelry. So a couple mounties threw me onto the ground and knelt on my head while they cuffed me. One of them got a little enthusiastic and snapped my left arm. I think maybe he did it because his tall beaver hat fell off his head when he put his knee into my collar bone. That might have pissed him off. So anyway they dragged me out to a paddy wagon they had waiting by the curb. They threw a sack over my head so I couldn't see where we were going and screamed away to a blare of sirens. We drove for what seemed like hours, but that might have been because my arm was hurting pretty badly at that point and aggravating itself every time we hit a bump in the road. When they pulled me out of the van, there was a babble of voices in a dozen languages I didn't understand. The cackle of the chickens and the braying sounds of the llamas. They dragged me up some stairs and tossed me back into one of those wooden chairs. The lamp was already shining in my face when they took the sack off my head. You can bet it wasn't fun in there. After about ten hours of interrogation, they pretty much knew everything of interest I had to say, and a whole lot more. I told them everything I could think of. I told them about the time I cheated on my girlfriend. I told them about my brief flirtation with acid. I told them that I often retained my underwear long after there were holes in it. I told them that I routinely and remorselessly exceeded the speed limit. I told them that when I was in high school, I let a guy pay me five hundred dollars to take the SAT for him. I told them how often I whacked off, and where, and who I thought about when I did. While they were interrogating me, they leafed through the nudie books looking for the best pictures to pass around. With bruises all over my body, cigarette burns up and down my arm, and various consciousness-altering substances coursing through my veins, they dragged me out and dropped me on the sidewalk. Someone came out a little later with my clothes and left them in a stack on my chest. No sign of my luggage. Getting dressed was difficult and painful with the broken arm and all, but I knew the blinding, white sun would burn me badly if I didn't. So I scooped up my clothes and went behind a display of pickled pigs' heads where I struggled into them. Now that I was free and dressed, I had to worry about food, drink, shelter, and medical attention. I sold my watch to a man who spoke no language I recognized and stuffed a fistful of zloti into my pocket. I bought some cats' brains from one of the street vendors and a sweet, whitish liquid to go with it. Between my pidgin versions of a half dozen tongues and a lot of pointing at my arm, I managed to gradually navigate my way to a local healer. He occupied the cool lower level of one of the tall adobe buildings. He wore loose white robes and sat crosslegged on a rough rug to keep the whites away from the dirt of the floor. He was an old man with a lot of hair and a lot of beard. He smiled up at me in a not-quite-seeing way. The man who had brought me (Nagesh, I believe he was called) led me by the good arm up to the old man. I knelt in the dirt in front of him. The old man stretched his arms out until they gently touched my swollen, flopping, yellowing arm. It hurt like a bastard, but I held myself from shying away. He began to hum. Not from his mouth; his whole body began to emit a humming noise. I was just thinking, "Now this is the damnedest thing I ever. . ." when all of the sudden my arm felt real goddamn good. I stood and moved it, swung it in circles. Good as new. Perfect. I clapped my guide on the shoulder. Now I had to figure out where I was and where I wanted to go. It was December, which meant the sun only went down for a couple of hours a night in these parts. That would be helpful. As I turned to leave, my guide pointed at his palm, indicating that it was traditional to leave a gift in appreciation for the service I had just received. So I pulled my glass eye out of its socket and dropped it in the healer's hand, but not before tripping the hidden switch in the back. I knew that in about twelve hours agents would be kicking in his door looking for my distress signal. But by then I'd be long gone. |