Thad walks down the crusty driveway and gets into his kidnapper van. He is tall with a
skin head, combat boots for kicking your face in, a jacket vest with chains and some anarchy
painted on the back, and a Sid Vicious shirt. A tattoo of a bloody anarchy “A” centers his
forehead and eight letters are tattooed on his knuckles, spelling P-U-N-K R-O-C-K. The van has
the same cunty anarchy symbols and punk rock written on it like bloody hell. It is an old punk
van that always breaks down in bad places and can only start on cold days. The day is a cold
one, as many days are in this gloomy world, so it does start up after a couple tries. Thaddaeus,
who is Lebbaeus, likes the van even in the summer hot, because he can clam bake it with his
friends, Glimey and Dyke.
He takes that old punk van down the rolling and larded road to Glimey’s house and parks
it on the lawn, a yellow stiffness. Dyke also lives there because she has no place else to go,
being kicked out on the streets last week like a bum dyke. She is a good sport about it though
and the only person that one could stand living with, though you can’t get any sex from her.
Now they call Glimey, Glimey, because there is no one more glimey than he and there
are a lot of glimey people in their neighborhood, let alone the world. And they call Dyke, Dyke,
because she is a real butch dyke, the thin red-haired tweaker kind. The three of them are the
definition of punk rock, at least I would say, with colored hair and spikes and home-carved
tattoos and smack scars and old skool punk shirts. They wouldn’t listen to sellout bands or be
trendy ever. They know what punk is all about. Beating stuff up is punk.
They are thieves and vandals and hookers and dealers, but they won’t
admit it. It’s not punk rock to do that anymore. But where else can you get money? Their
neighborhood has very few jobs to offer. Working isn’t punk anyway. Well, having money isn’t
punk either, so there’s no way out for our punk friends. Unless they start listening to Jesus punk
bands or vegan hardcore, but then they’d have to be straight edge and that defeats the purpose.
Thaddaeus knocks on Glimey’s glimey door and yells, “Oi!”
Glimey and Dyke are inside chopping glassy tweak lines and smoking tequila bongs, but
like bastards, don’t move. Glimey, with his stiff orange spikes, yells, “Piss off!”
“Oi! Open the bloody door!”
Dyke passes the tequila-filled bongzilla to Glimey, who drinks from it before smoking
with gobbling sensations. A bongzilla is just like a normal bong, but it is as large as a house and
has a picture of Mr. Clean on the stomach to prove its point.
Glimey births a buzzing feeling on the yarn-like carpet where they sit, orange and yellow
patchwork. A tick crawls near Glimey’s hand and considers kidnaping one of his fingers, but
then it realizes that it can only write in Japanese and Glimey would never be able to read his
ransom note, so the tick eats a pear instead.
Both of the humans and the tick ignore Thad, and sit inside their own worlds to vibrate
with the room and broil.
A parakeet begins to masturbate.
“Open the bloody dooooooor!!!”
“Coming, bloody shitface,” Dyke finally yells, walking about the acid washout in her
head, opening the door with her bony tweaker hands. “What’s yer bloody hurry?”
“Bloody cunt! Why didn’t you open the door? I’ve got extraordinary news.”
“Like what?” she asks in a squeaking voice, turning to sit in a green plastic chair.
Glimey looks up from the bong. “Yeah, what?”
“I found him.”
“Who?” Glimey belches.
“You mean Pud?” Dyke says.
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“By the gates. My mum said she saw him today while she got raped.”
“Let’s go before he leaves,” Glimey says, taking a last hit off the bongzilla.
The multi-colored crew slides into the van and starts off to the end of town by the
highway, where the zombies live. No one usually goes out that way. A large fence keeps all the
live corpses out of the community, away from eating you.
Zombies aren’t restricted everywhere in the country, but this district isn’t very zombie-
patrolled, so the only corpses allowed are the ones that are licensed by their past relatives.
They had a neighbor named Pud, who died two weeks ago in a drive-by shooting. And
he became a legend after his death, because he had all sorts of drugs and cash and sausage on
him that anyone would kill for. Not a person got a hold of it though, because right when the
gang-banger elves turned the corner and the old ladies began spying out the window, pud’s
corpse got up and staggered away.
Since then, everyone on the block has been looking for the walking treasure chest in
hopes to find the famous stash. Storytellers made up tales about the wondrous riches and how
great it would be to get him. They also said that he was carrying the missing copy of the last
Deth Corpse tape.
The mud-colored kidnapper van, brand-name “kidnapper” from the same people that
brought us the best-selling home cremation set, pulls into the deserted lot by the westside gate of
town.
“So my mum says,” Thaddaeus continues, “that Jesus, the saint, has vodka. It’s not like
tequila or gin or rum. It’s better.”
They get out of the car, dust storming against their ankles, Dyke’s short unwashed red
hair trying to blow in the valley’s winds, Glimey rubbing his cotton mouth, and they walk up
piles of rubbish dumped from the town’s antiquity. Some painful tightenings get into their veins
that try to hold them back. Dyke squints her dust-eyes in the sun, gulps a dry cloud.
“Oi, I’d like to try vodka if it’s better than tequila,” Glimey croaks with bitter.
Thad says, “She says that Jesus planted the old tree by the road, the tamata fruit tree. She
also says that Jesus can buzz an entire village with a single bottle of his vodka.”
They walk up and down the mounds, searching for the rancid body of Pud. Glimey
carries a gun in his glimey pants, while holding an icepick, just incase they run into a rampaging
zombie or Pud is rampaging or a group of gang-banging elves turn up looking for Pud too. Dyke
also has a switch blade and Thad has his cutting knife.
“There it is,” Thaddaeus says, pointing. “I knew it would be here.”
The body is at the bottom of a dirt pile and next to spiny bushes. His head is smashed
inward and scattered throughout the scraggy heap. The three punks gather, gaping down upon
its fly-sheathed carcass, sunken flesh within the sky grey, their breaths held tightly within. Then,
after the pause, they lunge into his blood pockets and shovel for the illustrious stash. Searching
rampantly, viciously.
“Where is it?” Glimey exalts, while six hands clash upon each other, growing upon one
another.
Thad and his frustration explode together, “Maybe the bloody elves beat us to him!”
Then Dyke enters, “Maybe he never had a stash at all! Maybe it was a lie. I bet it was all
a big, big lie. Damn it!”
“Oh, it was there all right,” says a knife-sinister voice from behind.
They jolt their heads around, pumping and squeezing their intoxicated heartbeats into a
siege. There is a man, possibly a man, standing ten feet in the air, thirteen including the mound
of bricks he stands upon. The man is as bony as they come, carrying a club and a bombshell
forehead. He has a mask—the yellow smiley face mask which is the symbol of Crawn.
Glimey reaches for his gun, out of fear-frustration, but the spider-like man clubs it away
from him in one swipe, and says, “No need for that.”
“Who the bloody hell are you?” Thaddaeus bludgeons.
The man speaks like he’s Moses himself. No, more like a thespian portraying Moses,
because Moses didn’t have a bad case of Tourette’s Syndrome as this character does.
“I am the gatekeeper. Judas.” He smiles and twitches a fucking-cock-sucking-faggot
under his breath. “I am of the manufactured race called Krellian, created to protect this town
and other towns before this town, from the rampages of the living deceased. Cadavers of
humans, animals, and whatever else that can be infected by the fucking-shit-faced disease,
Forticulus. When a person dies, I track down their corpse and destroy it. Like that one before
you.”
“Hey,” shouts the lesbian, “this one was a good friend of ours.”
“Yeah, what good friends you were. Only caring about what he had on him.” Then he
calls Dyke a stupid-cunt-licking-ungendered-thing.
“Oi!” they shout, “Where is it?”
“You mean the new Deth Corpse tape? It was rubbish. I did the world a favor by
smashing it. Did you know that Krellians can’t get drunk or high?”
Thaddaeus gets into his face. “Oi, what do you have the right to kill anything, bloody old
fuck?”
“I am not an old fuck, you cunt-shit-faggot. I am three hundred years old, but still have
centuries to go. I am Krellian and we don’t age easily. I was listening to you and your talks
about Jesus Christ, the so-called saint, who is so wondrous to all here. I know—”
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Thaddaeus interrupts and they begin to walk away.
“Listen to me you dick-sword-fighting-whores or I’ll bash your skulls in!” he says.
The three stop from leaving and listen to the weird man as he continues, “I know the real
Jesus and he never grew that old tamata tree. It’s always been there. Even before he was born.
Jesus, in disco clothing, came to it once and started taking all the tamatas off and filling his
basket. The care-taker, who lived inside the tree’s roots, chased him away with a shotgun. He
isn’t that old either. He’s only about thirty-two now, I’d say.”
“I knew all that about Jesus was bullshit,” Thaddaeus says.
“No,” Judas says. “No, he still is a powerful man. Many of the legends are true. Sure
there is no reason for there to be a St. Jesus Christ Drive, but he still has the sacred bottle of
vodka. He still can calm a rampaging zombie. He still can turn away the bloodbeasts of the
north. He still can get a woman drunk in less than a minute and take advantage of her in three.
Those are all powers that I would kill for.”
"Electric Jesus Corpse" by Carlton Mellick III, Copyright 1999
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