Being a Serial in Four Parts
It was, then, with some anxiousness that I set out from my apartment on the following night, with records in hand. Betraying my general custom, I left on time.
My friend met me at his door. Again, this was anomalous behavior, as his customary manner of greeting guests involved wordlessly triggering the electronic buzzing of the intercom device that opened the outer door, before leaving the door to his apartment ajar, whilst he resumed whatever activity he had been enjoying before his visitors arrived. But tonight he cordially said hello, both through his intercom system and at the threshold of his apartment door, where I found him, even paler and sweatier then the last time we had met, waiting for me, as I ascended the aged rattling staircase that lie in his building. When taken in concert, his gasping open-mouthed breathing along with his bulging, unblinking eyes, lent to him a vaguely unpleasant thalassic aspect.
I was ushered into his living room, the familiar untidiness of which was comforting to me. At least that had not changed. I was offered a seat on the very same sofa where the wager, which had seemed to cause so many strange and troubling events to occur, and found it as moth-eaten as ever. I was asked for, and produced, the bootlegged recordings.
“Ah yes… You’ve brought the bootlegs then. Did you make show sure not to tell anyone about this as I asked you? Good. I hope you’ll forgive me foh what might seem like paranoid foibles on my part—and for all off the other weird shite recently. Eet’s been rather a buggah off a time here with all of this. But you’ll understand soon. But first let me put one off these things on. And go get yoself a be-ah. Got some microbrewery swill. ‘Sposed to actually be good. Oh no, I won’t be having any at the moment. Still recovering from last night. Go on and try one of those ‘tho.”
I found the kitchen as grimy as ever, but strangely enough, the refrigerator bore an apparently untouched case of some curiously unfamiliar micro-brew. I found myself fortunate that its label did not say anything about mention the use of extra hops in brewing. While that trend has been interesting and produced some fine libations, it has also led to unfortunate and unimaginative abuses. Here, however, was a stout. I glanced more carefully at the label, trying to remember the name of the brewery for future reference. It contained the word ”mouth” Unfortunately, other more horrific memories seemed to have driven what remains of its name from my memory.
When I returned, I found him huddled over the stack of compact disks I’d brought w/ me. He clutched at one jewel case and then placed the disk carefully in the player, as ‘tho it were of great value, (and I did, in fact, spend more money on it than was warranted). Immediately, shockingly alien droning issued from the speakers of his stereo. He smiled at me with a strange ecstasy.
“There now. Isn’t that nice?”
He motioned for me to sit and then joined me at the other side of the couch.
“Well then, I think you know something of hypnomonotony? Let’s start there… Through the channeling of certain forces facilitated by the use of immensely potent opiates, musical adepts have been able to warp the structure of reality itself—most notably Peter Kember and Jason Pierce. And yet, some listeners still find Spacemen 3 repellent and/or boring, as does the music journalism establishment. But what did Spacemen 3 do that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible … Mouth-breathers, monstrosities, star-spawn—whatever they had been, they were men!
“Of cose sum who pursue musical esoterica, can feel the pull of certain droning gulfs beyond the senses of humankind. (Except, obviously, they can be heard. Guess I fucked up mate harhar har!) Just remember that their chalky pallor and fungoid teeth aren’t really terrible. They only seem that way to us.
Here—light that joint there would you? Quite suspect you’ll enjoy it. No, none for me. I had too much earlier, don’t you know? Gonna wait a lil’ bit)
“What can one say of the majesty of ancient Rugby, the name-giver of The Sport? Or of the wonders of many-terraced Bl’ak-glur’k, where the Ten Thousandth High Priest sacrifices 69 souls each year, by live burning and colostomies, to the Ancient Elder Outer Godlike Ones, where Sonic Boom sometimes hallucinates he is after smoking opium? God! Their grasp of music is infinitely beyond that of most rock bands. Do you know that they came to America before Slowdive? You remember what is said of the split Mudhoney/Spacemen 3 single? Sonic Boom’s rage against Mudhoney’s cover of “Revolution?” (That’s right. Toke away. Don’t be so self-conscious, you git! Alright? Alright.)”
The cannabis to me still tasted somewhat sour, but given my friend’s admonishments for me to enjoy it, I followed the example of our former leader Bill Clinton in only pretending to inhale as he spoke. As such, I noticed few effects, aside from a mild headache and a vague drowsiness.
“I have learned how certain drones, channeled at specific frequencies, thus stirring the pineal gland. It is then touched by cosmotrippyish waves that awaken the third-eye of said brain, allowing its owner to view ineffable visions that can guide he/she to Dream-Gates of Narm-Nark. One must pass certain, charnel pits containing Blekkity-Blook-Blekks. What monstrosities! Wait till you see one… Yes, Steve, I would like you to accompany me on a trip very soon. It is quite safe—the only dangers, really, being less-than-mortal—they are only a threat to the mind, but then I feel you are ready, given you appreciation of Spacemen 3, ‘tho I think you see differently now, when you hear some of their more obscure disks that I have managed to find by searching through the mind-numbing depths of eBay…”
And so he went on, and as we sat, playing those cursed Spacemen 3 bootlegs, for the next 3 hours, I was immersed in a black bog of madness. I learned many secrets that I shall never speak of, though I fear that many of them may be known soon to all. The sciences and record companies each, in their own way, have directed the evolution of sane human civilization toward a lighthouse of oblivion—or worse. But I shall not hasten the progress of humankind along this precipitous ledge, with Stygian abysses all around it. When I complete this log I will bury it, ‘tho not until it is checked for spelling and grammar.
I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But my life may not be long. I know too much, and the cult of Spacemen 3 fans still lives.
But I must continue this narrative to its end. My friend was speaking further of the journey he would make with the guidance of the visionaries Kember and Pierce, and of similar later trips that he hoped I might take part in, when, quite thankfully, the chain of his revelations broke.
“Wait uh sec then. I gotta use the loo. Might be gone a minute. Think a big shite might be cummin’ outta me bum. Right?”
Uncertain if I should assent to such an assertion, I simply nodded with downturned eyes.
“Glad to see you’ve finished that fag o’ Mary Jane, incidentally. (As we Brits call it! I mean, Brit-o-philes! I mean Anglophiles! Whutta malapropism, right?)”
And then he was gone.
I crushed the roach into the ashtray—having smoked virtually none of it, despite my polite puffing—and shivered—not just at the cosmic weirdness to which I had been made privy, but also to the appearance of another hazily ominous verbal tic exhibited by my friend.
I was stunned, uncertain of the benefit or plausibility of escape. All around me damnable, ineffable dread rose up. I was grateful then for my friend’s momentary departure, as allowed, not just for an of escape from these revelations of horror, but for a chance to plot some sort of leave-taking that would not seem neither frenzied, nor impolite. (‘Tho traditionally rudeness had been a hallmark of our relationship, it seemed now to be proscribed against, except in the lamest of Anglophilliac manners.) And it was then, just as I was plotting my escape that I heard that faint, that damnable sound: a scratching in the hallway.
Something in its nature—and in its location—down the hallway, past the restroom in which my friend now lurked—drew me so that, inexplicably, I found myself wandering in that direction. As I drew closer to the source, a certain scratching element, suggestive of fingernails near the bottom of the door, grew apparent within it. I found myself leaning down to consider it more closely and heard an even more fearsome whimpering.
I hesitated for a moment at the threshold of that bedroom door. An abysmal fear led me to consider leaving without explanation or further discussion. Brushing aside other more trivial concerns, ( e.g. the possibility that a person behind the door might be in need of help,) another part of my mind reasoned that such a course of action would withhold final knowledge of the damnable forces at work in my friend’s life and within the hateful music of Spacemen 3—forces to which I had provided access to the sane world around me. It was clear to me then that I must open the door—to move further into the shrieking gulfs of awareness of what I had conceived of the wager and of my taste in music—in hopes of dispelling the intelligences I had stirred.
Beyond that door I found what the police have chosen to ignore. They have accused me of an unmotivated killing—the killing of a close friend—and yet they cannot explain the abomination found in that accursed bedroom! The payment of my bail has liberated me for the moment from these false charges. Legal threats await me still, but far worse than simple murder are the horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range. Kember—Sonic Boom—that devil called them in, and they engulfed my friend as they are engulfing me.
Can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the physical form. Another friend of mine, an attorney, (despite his sorta high character,) has, thus far, used his professional connections to throw suspicion away from me, though it was, of course, my revolver that brought this horror down—for my friend’s sake, and for the world’s sake, but can I be sure till he is cremated? They are keeping his body for some silly autopsies by different doctors—but I say he must be cremated. He must be cremated. I shall go mad if he is not, for I may be the next. But my will is not weak—and I shall not let it be undermined by the terrors I know are seething around it. One life—Pete Kember—Sonic Boom, and my friend—who now? I will not be driven out of my body… I will not change souls with that snaggle-toothed lich in the city morgue!
But let me try to tell coherently of that final horror. I will not speak of what the police persistently ignored—the tales of that grotesque, malodorous, Britannic thing in the bedroom—I will only describe what it, with its tremulous stupefacient hand, analgesically extended from that withered body, left as it had been in opiate befuddlement for untold days or weeks, and bearing that foetid, unspeakable, undulate, sweaty visage known to all of us who have too many Spacemen-3 records!
And yet the evident, monstrous weakness of the figure in front of me, sprawled amongst dirty laundry on the floor, combined with its piteous, imploring expression combined so as to cause me to refrain from retreating, but rather to reach forward and accept what was a grimy scrap of paper. On it, a panicky, almost illegible scrawl read:
“Kill it dude. It’s not me. Exterminate it. It’s got me—it’s Sonic Boom—and his career has been dead for 15 years… …God knows what they—the Spacemen 3 fans—will do.
At first, I just thought my mind had been numbed by all that feedback and endless purposeless droning. But I felt the tugging at my brain. I knew what it was. A soul like Kember’s—or Sonic Boom’s—is half-detached, and keeps right on after people stop buying its new records, as long as the body lasts. The drugs were wearing him out, and he couldn’t go on, but somehow when I began listening to so much Spacemen 3—so damnably much—I gave him a way in. He was getting me—making me change bodies with him—seizing my body and putting me in that horribly pale, clammy corpse body of his.
I knew what was coming—that’s why I snapped and the night you came to pick me up at the Empty Bottle. Then it came—I found myself choked in the dark—in this reeking room in a perpetual opiate daze.
I heard it planning and talking to you on the phone. I know you’re coming over tonight, but it’s no use. It watches me too closely, and I’m too far gone to talk to you anyway—but I can still write and bring you this last word of warning. Kill that fiend if you value the peace and comfort of the world. See that it is cremated. If you don’t, it will live on, body to body forever, despite the horrible somnolence of its musical fortunes.
Keep clear of droning meandery guitar music, Steve, it’s the devil’s business.
Tell the police whatever they’ll believe—and I hope you’re fuckin’ sorry you dragged me into all this. That music—how does it work? It’s crappy, but still you can't git away - draws ya - ya know sumthin’s comin' but tain't no use –But I’ll be at peace before long—this thing won’t hold together much more. Hope you can read this. And kill that thing—kill it.”
It was only when I shudderingly lowered the sheet of paper that I saw that that which had been Sonic Boom, and later my friend, was dead.
What more can I say of my behavior thereafter? The police record states it: I went to my coat and removed the firearm that, as a private investigator, I always bear. Then I waited outside the restroom, while that which appeared to be my friend—all too convincingly as far as the law is concerned—moved its bowels, and then I shot it in its face. Six or seven times. (Did I say only six before? Guess I lost count…) Then I changed clips and blew his head off some more. I blew his head off a lot, going through several clips. I went on for about 3 hours—by this time I was mostly just shooting a puddle of gore that lined some crisp burnt carpet on the hallway floor—and but I woulda kept going anyway, but some asshole had called the cops, who'd actually been there for a while, watching, cuzz, you know, whitish-reddish sludge fulla powdery brain fragments flying into the air and then plopping and running along the floor is sorta compelling somehow, but now it was gettin' sorta played out, and they decided to arrest me for murdering my friend, which I think, was sorta overreacting on their part.
The last sounds I heard in that hateful, unclean apartment were the thudding footsteps of the police officers and myself as we trod gloomily down the hallway toward the warped, ill-carpeted staircase, and into the Stygian night—that focus of transcosmic horror—amidst the lonely, quiet, and half-gentrified condos—and the nearby, curse-muttering traffic of a spectral street ahead.
I had lost a sorta OK but not esp. good friend, and with an awesome dread, I now understood the horrors encroaching all around us. On the plus side ‘tho, I got to keep my Strat…
