Among gallery owners and collectors, Skad is known as The Atrocity Artist for his transgressive paintings depicting zombified people fused with transistors, vacuum tubes, and circuit boards. But his true masterpiece, his ultimate atrocity, has been...
The kitchen table is laid out as if a one player game of poker is taking place. Before the only occupied chair, a hand of silver blister packs lies fanned out and face down. Beyond them are a collection of plastic pill bottles the color of a nauseous sunset, their varying heights play into the illusion of stacks of chips. In the center, sits an odd collection of medications, dumped out of their containers and piled up forming the pot. To the side, in easy reach, the revolver is ready to ensure no one cheats.
Skad has pulled together everything he could. Forty-two capsules held in wait for his sciatica flare-ups. Two months' worth of his daily arthritis pills, intended to reduce inflammation but also effective at numbing his joints. Sixty tabs of diazepam his doctor prescribed after he criticized the fucker for making him wait. "You need to calm down. Here, take this," he said tearing the script off his pad. Skad was insulted and had never filled it until today. Along with these, he's added a couple of boxes of sleeping pills,even though they didn't sell anything over the counter worth shit anymore. Still everything together should bring him to the doors of Hypnos.
The gun would be quicker and more decisive, but it's an ugly way to go. He cannot imagine his last intimate contact on this Earth being Lil' Carol wiping his brains off the wall, then ringing the cloth out in her wash bucket. It's too undignified, even if he wouldn't be there to witness it. But he also has to account for the bigger picture. Simply dying won't bring him to Angeline. For such matters, a certain sense of ritual has to be adhered to. This is the way she did it. And an hour from now they'd be in the same dark lake.
They will find each other by this shared experience.
He pulls a swig from the bottle of Tennessee whiskey he cradles in his lap. The squat square bottle stretches his fingers to their limit. The size of it feels good and right.
With his other hand he grabs a few of the pills from the pile. Another slug. Swallow.
"That's how she did it, you know? Cat? Where are you, cat? Lousy, bastard." He swipes at empty air as though the creature is just out of reach. Much of the whiskey has already been drunk.
"She got a bottle of cruddy gin from one of my stashes and a bunch of pills from her folks' medicine cabinet. God knows what shit they were taking for all their fucking problems. Whatever it was, it did the trick. She swallowed it all and then went for a moonlight swim. Late September. Must have been colder than the hinges of hell in there. Not like tonight. It'll be warm tonight."
Another reach. Another swallow.
"Cat? Where are you, cat? You're not a bad critter. Neither am I. Not really. Marilyn called me a mean son-of-a-bitch. Thought I should have helped raise old Raymond. My boy. But I did them both a favor staying away. Got too much of pops in me. Too much of this place running in my veins. I did them a favor. But did either ever thank me? Hell no."
He grabs an assortment of pills like a rummy at a bar running his grubby fingers through a bowl of peanuts.
"No, no one ever thanks me. Never been a burden on anyone. Never took a hand out in my life. A self-made man, right here." He taps his chest with fingertips dyed a rainbow hue from the dissolving capsule casings. "Sure, I would have been a great father, but that's not the point. The point..."
He has no idea what the point is.
The pot dwindles to a meager ante and his muscles are becoming warm and stiff with the sensitivity of putty.
"I can't believe the bitch went and killed herself carrying my kid. I would've been a great dad. Ask anyone. Had I known, I would have done... Hell, I don't know. I could've sent her a bit of cash to get a place in town. Move her and the brat to Boston when my career got rolling. I know. I know, cat. You think I should have stayed here for her. But that's because you're so much like Ed."
The phone rings. It won't even give him peace in his last moments. Spider webs spin around his nerve endings, soft and taut. Picking up the gun seems to take hours. His head is resting against his arm on the table, ear pressed into his sleeve. Aiming, his tongue slips out in imitation of an eight-year-old at a carnival shooting range.
The pistol goes off in the confines of the small room with a ringing artillery blast. The flesh-tone Bakelite explodes in shards. The dial zips across the kitchen like a UFO and crash-lands in the sink.
On the wall, the viscera hangs, wires so similar to entrails it's a worthy subject for Skad's art. Among the ancient cloth cables, shiny green circuit boards are spliced in. The new technology leeches off old. Toward the bottom of the snarl, a black rubber tube dangles with the obscene similitude of a semi-flaccid penis.
The drugs make this infinitely more funny than it is. Through his gaping smile, drool runs out to pool on the tabletop.
He knows what this gizmo is but it takes a very old clerk a long time sifting through the stacks and filing cabinets in his head before the word can be found.
Antenna.
It's an antenna.
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