Roadkill Bender: 1
Piere Vidal, the living ghost of a 16th century romantic troubadour, spends his time moping a 21st century beac while contemplating his own suicide at the bottom of a cliff.
He's busied himself shoplifting bottles of wine and drinking until exhaustion overcame him, waking with a wretching hangover, shoplifting a bag of frozen french fries and eating them cold before going off to steal more wine.
At night, he wanders into a Catholic monastery, collapses in the pews after drinking what he mistook to be wine. He wakes up with a terrible grape juice hangover. The abbot is gazing lovingly over his dusty ghost-body. At this point, Piere is used to being seen by some.
The abbot offers an ear for his troubles so Piere lays it on him, the whole thing. Several centuries' worth of sarcasm, shame, fear, subversive poetic rape, pillage, plunder under guise of being upstanding & reputable, a facade of unconditional love, selling his soul a song at a time to the highest benefactor, gradually becoming a puppet on strings of his own making, brutally cut loose by the hand of a scorned deity, his essence contained in a bottle where he lasted an eternity, going fully and entirely mad. The bottle is all he knows now. An institutional case like any other.
The abbot never reacts, never goes pale to Piere's stories of witchcraft and ritual sex and poetic hereticism. He merely shakes his head after the four hour confession and says,
"Me too." The abbot says as he produces a ceremonial dagger from beneath his robes and with a calm hand sinks it between his ribs. Like yesterday's newspaper tossed into the rain, the abbot leaves a remorseful corpse bleeding out on the churchhouse floor.
Piere is horified, having found no answers and afraid that he'll be somehow busted & tried for murder by the GhostRustlers, leaves the monastery after a brief hail mary.
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Shitbird doesn't eat for six days, only drinking rainwater. He sits there whittling. All the sweat, blood, tears, hair... an offering. To what? What the fuck is this ritual?
Hanging myself won't work, he thinks. What if I hang the parts of myself that crave death? He ponders and whittles. What if killing these sad parts destroys my inspiration? What if misery is my best muse?
I don't give a fuck, he whispers. Anything is better than this.
Shitbird would give up all his ghosts along any inspiration that comes between liberation and misery. Take it away, he thinks.
He keeps whittling, using his hatchet and knife. The log he's working becomes a torso. The torso gains legs. He fashions a neck and head. Days go by, only drinking morning dew and rainwater on the side of the road. Cars whiz past. Few people stop to offer help. Shitbird ignores them.
He sleeps when he's completely exhausted for a little while. His hands become blistered. His concentration is beyond living, beyond dying. He's in a trance, feeling at ease in moments, nearly empty except for this dollop of concentrated despair, a type of black misery that hoists flags and slits throats. It's the same type of bleak sadness that drove Edward Teach to his own oblivion, the kind of pure misery that makes men fall onto swords, disembowel their stomachs, swallow entire prescriptions bottles, vertical inciscions on their wrists while sitting in lukewarm bathtubs listening to Eliot Smith albums. The type of weary emptiness that fades into its own shadow, has neither strength nor resilience to grow beyond the call to a thoughtless void.
In whittling, Shitbird meets the child of his own affliction, holding it like a dead log. He learns its knots and curves, understand what it's made from. Together they remember countless lifetimes. Holding this child as himself and his own, he cannot unsee where he's been.
He was a melancholy dog laying in the highway. They were a colony of ants eating an exterminator's bread, birds flying into closed windows 'til unconscious. They'd leapt from buildings, carried toaster ovens into kiddie pools.
Shitbird pulls cattail from a nearby swamp, splitting fibers end over end, weaving together cordage along with understanding, clarity, a story, and some kindness toward this misery. It's nobody's fault. It simply is and it wants to die, deserves to die. I will put misery out of itself. No more company; this wooden doll will hang and maybe death will die. Perhaps we can finally rest, Shitbird hopes.
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Laying on the beach as the surf comes in, stung by jellyfish and not reacting, Piere belts old ballads and songs, realizing something,
There's no art worth producing that perpetuates misery, no art worth birthing that captivates love nor conqours & tames the terrain of hearts.
"I cannot contain nor be contained but by my own mind!" He shouts at the sea. A ballad is a falling leaf, not a genie in a bottle, not a means for production and patronage. Heartbreak should not strive to be avoided! It is inevitable! Endless summer is a lie!
I've written volumes lamenting & reinforcing heartache. This is the creation of my own ghosts, living in retrospect, too scared or else too crazy to remain present. Too scared to truly die and let go in love.
On this lonesome beach, the tidal waters of his blood call to the moon, in reflective cacophony, while solar war gods beat and bleed over their drums into man-made time & man-made eternalism. Sweet moon, you've always been there carrying me, he whispers. With you, I've never needed forgiveness. I've never needed reassurance.
Piere lets the tides carry him, deeper, and deeper still.
He no longer holds a mirror to the world. Piere becomes a mirror, becomes a moon, floating on his back, fighting the current no longer.
He sees a man in the distance fighting to pass the break, tossed continually back to shore.
"The ocean won't have him today." Piere remarks to a nearby shark. "Perhaps she will have me." He places some cotton into his ears and crosses his arms, closes his eyes, taking a deep breath.
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On the night of the Strawberry moon, in the year of the Wooden Dragon, Shitbird finishes a cattail noose. The figure is complete. The specs are decent. Into the wooden man, Shitbird adds coal from his grandmother's ashes for eyes, a tooth he lost while starting a fight in Louisiana, a rusty nail that punctured his foot while walking the interstate, a black hat given to him by a Werewolf. He burned three precious love letters, recited aloud three painful breakup letters, drew thirteen sigils to thirteen realms of inspiration, finally adorning this wooden man with three hairs from a childhood teddy bear.
With any luck, this would be the last suicide note Shitbird writes. Everything in him that separates peace from misery will die, regardless of attachment to artistic production.
Shitbird lights a tallow candle rendered from raccoon fat and offers his own being to whatever wise gods may be watching and listening.
Finding a ledge along the highway overlooking the ocean, he fastens the man to a boulder and stands him up, and with a kiss and a hug, sends him over. The cord goes taught and the neck cracks. Shitbird feels his own tether tighten and snap, in a flash he recalls being born, hearing the sound of wings, the sound of firewood off a steep and jagged ledge. All goes dark.
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The salty swell of sea, sunshine pulling eyelids open. Smooth sand, coarse across the scalp and thighs.
Really? It can't be. Another fucking day? he asks nobody in particular.
Piere roll overs face down in the waves but can't fall asleep. Wishing for eternal slumber is exhausting, he thinks. What happened?
Piere remembers feeling bliss. He drowned, surely.
On some rocky shore, he hears no siren song, no gospel choir, no rowboats along a stinking Styx River, no creaky gates admiting & denying souls, not even a fucking skeletons collecting alms.
Splinters across bruised ribs, he assesses welts across his body. Looking skyward, he notices a ghastly wooden man with one tooth, two coal eyes, a hollow nose like a skull, a hand-woven noose around his neck, a black salt-crusted hat atop his head held down by a long rusty nail.
Piere flinches when the wooden man moves.
"What in the name of Pinnochio fucked Frosty the Snowman is this?!" Piere shrieks.
Shitbird groans in the distance.
They're all upset that they woke up again.
"Who the fuck are you?" Piere adresses the wooden man.
The wooden man shrugs,
"Got a cigarette?" His voice sounds like hollow reeds and smashed particle board babies silently sharting sawdust.
Piere rolls his eyes, looks at Shitbird who's searching his pockets. He throws a plastic bag of ashtray cigarettes and a lighter toward the wooden man. They slap against his chest and hit the sand. He clumsily grabs the bag, crushing all but one smoke.
"Could you help me out?" The wooden man gestures toward Shitbird, who jumps to attention and fixes a cigarette into his mouth, using a clothespin and a finish nail from his cargo shorts.
They all sit and smoke for awhile. They look around, seems like they're on an island.
"Pretty fucked up." The wooden man says.
"Yep." Shitbird grunts.
"Mhmm." Piere mutters.
"I saved both your asses from drowning." The wooden man says.
"Why?!" They both exclaim sharply.
"I dunno. Just did. That cat tail noose umbilical cord snapped me back to life." The wooden man coughs a cloud of sawdust and salt falling onto his chest. He attempts to wipe it off with a clubbed hand,
"You-" pointing at Shitbird, "Fell off a cliff and somehow didn't take any damage. Don't ask me."
"And you-" He points to Piere, "Smell like shit and were three-quarters drowned 'til I gave you CPR. I didn't think a ghost-man could drown so I guess you're more man than ghost."
This would explain a lot, including the splinters in Piere's tongue. How is this puppet thing able to smell and breathe?
Piere and Shitbird scratch their chins, catching each other's eyes. Spontaneous magic, maybe.
"Anyone able to see where we are?" The wooden man asks.
"You're blind?" Piere asks, surprised.
"Yeah numbnuts, coal don't see too great. Try coral next time. Fuckin' amateur animist wizards. I would've stayed a kidneystone in your bladder 'til you pissed blood..." The wooden man mutters.
"Who are you?!" Shitbird yells.
"What do you call a pit of despair fashioned into an olive grove? What do you make when Oblivion gets baptized by a drunken priest? What happens when a flag is waving in the wind- what's moving?" He asks.
"Wait, I think I know this one..." Piere searches himself.
"Paradox? Parody? Purgatory? Am I dead?" Shitbird asks.
"Some unholy fuckin' mess we're in..." The wood man mumbles. "This hurts like a bastard, you know. This is the reason people knock on wood. Did you knock on wood before you cast that spell? Nope. Sure didn't." The wooden man wags his arm in disapproval.
"Quit talking in riddles man, are you a goddamn Wood Troll or what?" Piere shouts, clearly hungover and exhausted. "And why didn't you just let me drown?"
"'Cus misery loves company. 'Cus you'd come back as a pimple on some messiah's ass." He answers. "Name's Parcelsus. I was a beehive for awhile and came back as Shitbird's kidney stone."
"Para- You invented laudanum! Thanks for that, Doctor." Piere nods and claps.
"Para-what?" Shitbird asks.
"This guy was an alchemist." Piere exclaims, excited, "He also said, 'Universities don't teach everything. It's important to learn from crones, gypsies, witches, wizards, wandering monks, outlaws. A doctor must be a traveller.' Did I get that right?" Piere gestures toward the wooden man. The wooden man bows.
"Hmm..." Shitbird scratches his head. I was trying to cast out my misery, he thinks. I do feel lighter. My heart feels better and I can piss straighter, that's for sure.
"So you can reincarnate as a kidney stone? Is Paracelsus is your original nature?" Shitbird asks.
"No. My original nature is probably a lilly pad..." Paracelsus pauses, "But you can be anything. I died and remembered I was a planet, I was a beetle crawling across your skin, I was a kidney stone passing slowly, painfully. I was a ghost, a god, and I was nothing.
Just call me Para."
"Paracord?" Shitbird chirps.
"Parakeet?" Piere grins.
"Parabolic?"
"Parachute?"
"Paranoid?"
"Pararenal!" Para shouts, pointing his stump at Piere who howls in sudden agony, jumps and tries to urinate, screaming, and crying, blood trickling onto his hands.
"Ha! With great power comes great volatility!" Para cackles like a chalky clown juggling woodchips.
The power to create kidneystones, how terrible, Shitbird muses. He blows on his hands to administer a sort of abdominal heimlich to Piere, using the healing hand to dispel the rock.
Piere sighs in relief, dark brown urine mixing with tidal blues.
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A selection from “Roadkill Bender", a work-in-progress written by our dear Reverend here at the RWG.
