I say this to you:
There is a splendiferously saucy tamata tree near the corner of Bloodbeast Boulevard and
St. Jesus Christ Drive. It is a magnificent tree of oranges and reds and ants and crisp barks and
curving features in the trunk that look like the hips of a horny autocar; the kind that growl beside
your butt while drinking bathtub gin in a dirt-scum lot of hipsters and half shirts. It grows
bountifuls of gleamy tamata fruit, glaring so brightly in one’s eyes that they can be mistaken as
very tiny moons or maybe even suns.
Too bad it really isn’t a tree full of suns. God knows the world needs them. Well, at
least one more sun would be nice. The one we have is burning out, draining the world into
bleakness and sad. Everything seems to be covered in a thick film of ugliness that can’t be
removed by washing and scrubbing.
Very few things are left that are still beautiful these days. I’m sure there’s more, hope at
least, but I only know of two: one is this great tamata tree and the other is called vodka.
In the roots of this tamata tree, there lives a tiny elephant that has a skull tattoo and
suction cups for feet. He’s not a very attractive elephant—if anyone can be attractive
anymore— so he’s never had a girlfriend in his life. Some say it’s because he replaced his feet
with suction cups, but I’d say it’s because he’s a loner. And not too many girls like loners, no
matter how nice or good-looking or how shiny their suction cups are.
The little elephant doesn’t go outside too much, staying away from the cold murk of our
civilization. He just likes to sit in his roots, drinking depression and eating boredom. He also
masturbates an awful lot. His doctor tells him if he doesn’t stop masturbating someday his penis
will fall off and get eaten by ants. But it’s hard for him to stop because he never does anything,
nothing at all, and boredom and loneliness get the best of him. At one time, he liked going for
walks in the nicey neighborhood, even after the sun went grey, but the neighborhood isn’t the
same as it was back then. It’s now a place for elf gang-bangers—not the kind found in porno
movies, but rather the ones who have guns and like to beat up on street signs.
I sit with a towel across my lap in a grassy section, hoping not to get harassed by a gang
member or two, and I have a cigar and a martini that I am seducing. Relaxed, I watch the large
tree and look into the roots to see the tiny elephant, who is trying to paint a goldfish and not to
masturbate.
A woman is in the distance, who is a mother and made a living as a professional wrestler
when she should have been in college. The Flying Crowbar I think she was called. Wrestling
made for a good career, fun and fame, but age and children ended all that for her.
I look back at the tamata tree.
The tamata tree only grows green tamatas, which are much better than the Spaniard red
tamatas. The green tamatas have much more spirit in them. They’re juicy and crunchy and
goober great. Especially, the tamatas from this particular tamata tree I tell you. And the
elephant makes sure of that.
The young mother, who seems to be old, walks up the debris walkway on St. Jesus Christ
Drive. She has gatchy clothing, sickening expressions, and thanx the sky as she walks. I give
her a dirty-boy look and smoke my cigar, as she passes me on crumbles of sidewalk and ear
stitches. She’s scarred and English with a Welch husband and has a son and a daughter too.
There is also an Irish wench that came with the husband, who doesn’t like big socks.
Their house is infested with herpes, which isn’t all too uncommon these days, but still
isn’t a place to raise children and carpeting. Their couch has herpes, their refrigerator has
herpes, their kitchen counter has herpes. And with the Irish wench around, there is no mystery
in where all the herpes came from. However, the daughter came a mystery. She came out a few
inches from nowhere. The young-old lady mother hadn’t had sex with her husband since the
seventies, but still became impregnated, and in some months time there she was with a bald
naked mulatto who had long ears and a birthmark in the shape of a bottle of whiskey.
The lady, known as Flippie Stin, walks to the fork of the road, gets raped by an elf who
was hiding behind a bruised street sign, puts her clothes back together, fills her bag with green
tamatas, eats one of them, and drips some juicies onto the ground.
The tiny elephant comes out of the roots and bites Flippie Stin’s ankle.
“What are you doing, tiny elephant?” squawks the young-old woman.
“Eating your leg,” says the elephant.
“You can’t eat my leg,” says the woman.
“Why not?” asks the elephant.
“Because it is mine and not yours.”
“Well,” removing his mouth from her leg, “you ate a tamata from my tree. It doesn’t
belong to you, so I can eat your leg.”
“Look, little elephant, I was just raped. I get raped a lot these days. All I need is to be
short one leg. How would I be able to defend myself then?”
“I don’t know. I’m too hungry to know. Let me eat your leg and maybe I’ll know
afterwards.”
“Don’t make me angry, tiny elephant, or I’ll squash you.”
“Oh, I see,” cries the elephant. “Think you’re tougher than me because I am a miniature
elephant. Well, my ancestor elephants were giants and they could stomp any of you humans.
Do you want me to de-evolve into one and stomp you?”
“Don’t be silly. You can’t de-evolve faster than I can squash. Besides, if you de-evolve I
might accidentally get swept up in the de-evolution and turn into a monkey, and monkeys have
terrible tasting legs.”
“Well, I need to eat something. I need to end this hunger so that I can keep my mind
occupied on painting, because if I don’t paint I’ll masturbate
until my penis falls off and then ants will come and eat it before it can get reattached.”
Flippie Stin hmms, scanning the crossroads. “What about that rock over there?”
“I can’t eat a rock.”
“Why not?”
“I’m vegetarian.”
“Rocks aren’t meat.”
“Well, they aren’t vegetables.”
“If you’re a vegetarian then why’d you want to eat my leg?”
“Well, I’m a recovering carnivore and I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, rocks are in a
completely different food group, like the one that rice cakes and street signs are in, and I just
don’t eat them.”
“Well, eat some grass, eat some street, eat a car.”
“That’s all gross.”
“Well, you’re wasting my time. I’m going home.”
“Can I just eat a little piece of your leg?”
“Sod off.”
And Flippie Stin walks away.
The tiny elephant looks at the rock in the grass and decides to lose the preconception of
its food grouping. I watch him choke it down for awhile, but then I go to follow the woman
back home to her husband, wench, son, and the half-elven child, who are eating breakfast of
milked oats and grains at a woody table. It is odd they are eating breakfast, because it is nearly
five after three and almost dark outside. I guess they all just slept really late into the day to
establish that they are white trash.
I enter the house with my eyeballs, but not my body—two glob-marbles floating above
the television.
The mother walks into the yellow-orange kitchen and sighs rust-like as she puts the bag
onto the tin of the counter, which has herpes.
A small antfarm with an orange sun painted on the side rests awkwardly near the door.
The peppermint ants within are wearing little monster masks and are used as food for the often-
hungry carpeting. However, the carpet prefers cola and dogs over ants. But it will never get its
way, because peppermint ants are cheap and filled with protein, which is all the carpet really
needs.
“Mum, mum,” cries the excited little girl, holding her pet mouse that has Down’s
Syndrome. “Did you find him? Did you find him?”
“No, I’m not bringing him, never. Your allergic to that cat and I’m not gonna let him
claw up your face and my house like he did last time. You got your mouse anyway.”
“I-cat.”
The girl strokes her pet mouse.
“The carpet ate that stupid cat,” says the father.
“Shut up, you. He also ate your couch,” yells the mother and the carpet laughs through
its vagina beard.
“So,” says the wench, petting the carpeting, “you went to the tree again didcha? Crazy
bitch. How many time’s it this time?”
“Only once.”
“Only once?” her voice at the pitch only an Irish wench could make and I like that, “How
can you put only in front of once when talking of being raped? Once is too many times. Crazy,
crazy.”
“Let her be,” says the Welshman, who sits with his son and oaty cereal. “It’s happened
thrice times this weekend and she doesn’t want to hear about it. Let her be and go away. Go in
the room. I’ll be over in a short while.”
The red-haired woman leaves, but it takes her a couple hangover minutes. She’s always
on the drink. On the way, the carpet eats one of her toes, breaking off like a hangnail or a stale
dreadlock, but it is an ugly toe so she doesn’t mind so much.
“What are you bloody doing anyway, getting tamata fruit? I hate it you know,” says
Thaddaeus, her son, whose surname is Lebbaeus.
“Why get the tamatas, mummy?” the softly-tanned child asks.
“These are not normal green tamatas. These are the sacred green tamatas. They worth
getting raped once or twice for.”
“Why, mummy?”
“Because they’re sacred. Years ago, it’s said the saint, Jesus Christ, came and planted
that tamata tree.”
The mother starts making the loud sharpening noises a kitchen mum would make and my
ears begin to scratch and burn. She throws a napkin over the counter’s herpes, while her
husband drinks from the whiskey bottle birthmark on his daughter’s arm.
Thaddaeus gets mad at a fork, so he beats it up.
And she continues, “Christ’s the greatest saint of our time. He was the man who brought
the sacred bottle of vodka to the corpses in the valley and freed them from the bonds of death.
He brought life and future to those who had none. Now zombies are happy and dancing, happy
corpses. Is said Jesus watered that tree with vodka too. That’s why it’s lasted so long. That’s
why the tamatas taste so fresh and pure. Too bad Jesus is a drunk and a disco freak and a bloody
fool because of it.”
“Don’t call them zombies,” says the father in a hunter’s voice.
“What?”
He looks up from his newspaper, “Don’t call them zombies. It’s racist. They don’t like
it.”
She looks down on him and his ogre suit and goes on to her daughter. Fortics is the
politically correct term for zombies.
“Some say that the tree was once a corpse of an infant, who died at birth. Jesus tried to
raise it, but could not. She was too young.”
“What Jesus do, mummy?”
“He planted the child in the ground like a seed, poured the vodka over it,
and in a year there was a tamata tree standing. Tallest in the world. That’s why we named our
street St. Jesus Christ Drive. Many people believe it.”
“Sounds like a lot of bloody bullshit to me,” says Thaddy from under the table.
The father, with his glasses piercing under mounds of skin, chuckles in greasy
stains. Then he drinks more from the little girl’s whiskey bottle birthmark and gasps.
His mum smacks Thad hard on the back, “Damn ya, boy. Ya’ll go to hell.”
“Watcha do that far, ya old bitch!”
The Welshman starts louder.
She screams, “Ya punk rock fuckface! You and your faggot-haired friends! They
probably the ones that rape me everyday, your lady friend too!”
“Bloody anarchy!!!” he says, flipping an anarchy sign at his mum’s face and walking out
the forepart door with a slam.
The father is cackling like a tinker now, I’m not sure why.
“Shut up, pig!” she says to the bastard.
“What do you care so much about the man, Jesus, for anyway?” says Father. “He’s
nothing but a washed up prophet now. Hasn’t been seen in civilization for years. Since the
seventies, I believe. The only man people care about worshipping nowadays is The Head
Honcho Of The Universe.”
“You would think that, wouldn’tcha? If it wasn’t for Jesus you’d probably’ve been eatin’
by the bloodbeast yourself.”
“Shut up and eat your tamatas.”
"Electric Jesus Corpse" by Carlton Mellick III, Copyright 1999
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