Chapter 1
COOL BLUE AND GLOOM

What was he doing in that tank in that place so hot hot hot and world of slime? No fingertip holds there in the nothingness of his whitehot brain -- globs of thought sponge stuffed into his ears to hold in the liquid putrid jive jizz spunk pouring from the ruptured membrane of his memory sac, shot through with whitehot thoughts until the dura covering evaporated in a steam spray of vibrant agony. Thump thump thump went the piledriver piston pumping up through the purple psychotic madness of his mind pistole and out the flowerstem stalk top part of homegrown dumbass called in his frame of reference "Bioblowback," but known to the doers and shakers who controlled the handle to the air supply in his nest as "Quasijizzomatic-repulsion" -- a sick thought to those who had experienced it, like the feeling of soul shits pouring down the spirit's pantleg in spurts of mindwringing sureness, as if aimed by the gods who aimed moonbeams in a different place and time. Yes, he knew that once in a different tank and in a different time, but all the same the location and time having been retrogressed or moved forward at the whim of those who controlled the handle --those sorry bastards with leghair noses and breaths fouler than a toilet sucker's in the scuz morning! -- O, (he thought) screw the mad morning world in all its asshole cornflakes agony and stiff mustaches covered with rancid starch!

The tankfield is where you belong. Grovener, that mindless toadsucking geek with eyes like a dead ferret and bristling blackhair hands like yellow tallow and dead gum tree roots, mellow madness in his approach toward finality. Up in the tankfields with the rest of 'em, Johnny Boy!" All the while his shoestrings whistling concertos from believe it or not and bopping cadence with the sound of thump thump thump coming from Johnny's Boy's pistol packing pistol, as it were.

Holy fuckin' shit! cried Texas Bill Garver, a downhome laidback cowfuckinsumbitch from the plains of Amarillo nowhere where the buffalo roam or did before Big Buffalo Bill backed them all up to plastic stumps and broke them, a Texas shitkicker with a 100 gallon hat and size 99 boots, feet bigger'n Lubbock and a set of balls like two Sherman tanks tossed in a gunny sack, what a wild prick!

I'm atakin' over the goddamn place! Texas Bill was heard to scream one bright night as he transferred to manureland from the realm of new clothes -- it is always daylight in the tankfield and especially at night when the sun has died and gone to somewhere or the far side of New Jersey, whichever comes first. My eyes are like granite and my grandmammy jacks off dogs, Texas Bill screamed out to a Senator who had wandered off the beaten path in search of extra bucks and chanced strictly by chance across Emerald Shitland.

Grovener the hairnose toadsucker blew a fresh toad's head and conducted the legislator around the muckpits and shitsuctions and up past the locked vaults where the broken-faced ballbusters sat in geometric symbols and hummed the top 20 tunes to the accompaniment of a wet board applied across the face of the Holy One. . . .Just some final truth on the way, Johnny Boy!

What'n hell's goin' on here? the Senator had the gall to ask mired as he was ankle deep in shitland refuse pumped up from the overflow valves up past the North 40 to the world of old shit and dead dreams. Somethin' mighty fishy here!

Grovener spits out the toad's head, looks upwind toward the cavehole where Miranda his toadwife orgasm machine lives and twitches his hairleg nose in the tuna wind there in the afternoon of midnight and says, That's my wife's pussy, sir.

Well, pardon me all to hell for bringin' up something so uncomfortable to you!

Forget it sir.

Like hell I will! A case of fresh cupleg tree frogs should undo the damage, shouldn't it? I'll have a box sent right up!

"Thank you, sir, you're more than kind.

"Bahmotherfuckinhumbug!"

"Yes you are sir don't deny it.

"Well if you insist young man, I suppose I am.

What Grovener can't know is that the legislator's memory circuits have been sucked dry by carcinomatic outlaw cells getting ready to kick some big ass inside his pointed and bald gourd and no sooner does the promise escape through his lying pussysucking lips than it is forgotten along with all the other jive the noble man of government has been laying down on the public for the past umpteen days. What Grovener doesn't realize is that within sooner or before the good Senator will be laid out like yesterday's haddock with plastic eyes beneath the dome of the capitol building and the masses will file by and piss upon his remains for the crook he was and became and lynch several people who dared speak kinds words of him, including his mother. Grovener doesn't know all this but Johnny Boy and Texas Bill found the handle to that interesting bit of information clinging to the walls of Slime Tank #2 or was it #3 and they decided to make good use of it for what it was worth.

I feel like a stoned mamahuncher! Texas Bill said, high as he was on shitfilm fumes and stagnant nitro wafting up from the nether droppings. Boy that frog sucker is flat fucked!

Johnny Boy is still quaint in some ways, never pulls his brainstem or squats in dim corners and makes foul breeze like some of the cruder immigrants to Emerald, some there who wouldn't have sense enough to come in out of a pissrain or shitstorm. I don't know, Texas Bill Garver, if that's such a good idea.

'Course you don't boy, that's what makes it such a good idea can't you see the reasoning to that Johnny Boy? Texas Bill has a way of putting things crystal clear even if Johnny Boy doesn't understand what they mean.

Yeah, so what are we going to do?

"Shitstorm boy, shitstorm!

Johnny Boy knows what happens when two turds collide and it's worse than the scuz lining on Slime Tank #4 with its green funk moss and sticky death stench. Johnny Boy packs a pawful of high-grade Essence Three up his hairless nose and at once feels the sides of his brain swapping places crawling and slithering, the dura and the cortex and all the gray jelly swirling around inside the bonepan like British gin in a blender. Figures leap and dart across his shattered brain field like psychotic ballet dancers doing Swan Lake on a stage of jagged cans razor blades broken bottles dried and stiff condoms, holy Moses! Nubile young dream lasses jump up and smear his lips with non-existent hairless cunts, laugh with eyeless sockets, make breeze with non-assholes. . .Johnny Boy lurches and leaps among them giving off a smell of onions and dead shit, screaming and moaning and crying in the dead fuck night. Hold that fuckin' tiger boy! he hears Texas Bill Garver scream from somewhere offstage right, and Texas Bill jumps into the mental fray boogying like an escapee from shitsuction section 8 -- I got my mojo workin'!

Johnny Boy leapfrogs up a purple back all the while dragging his balls across wartskin and his hands become feet in the twilight of cuntsmell and hard dick. Come to the church in the wildwood! Texas Bill cries, at the same time grabbing a leering skullhead and sousing his semi-hemi balls deep into a gaping eyesocket. You've heard of fuckin' face son, well this here is how you go about it!

Johnny Boy wipes green cunt juice from his childlips and worries for Texas Bill's immortal soul there in the funk steam. . .a rotten way to go, caught up in the flying fucks and fart flackfunk - not the way a real man would choose to go so long as his balls were hanging low and from where he stood Texas Bill was OK in that department, it would take a lowdown dwarf to walk unharmed beneath Tex's flopping scrotum. By god Johnny Boy this is the life!

A vision in damp burlap dances by Johnny Boy. . .long skinny fingers wiggle at him.. . long skinny fingers push up pert melon tits toward his boylips. . .long skinny fingers slip between ghostly thighs and come up covered with green liquid cuntstarch. . . long skinny fingers wave this beneath his nose. He grabs them and licks like a popsickle on dying flesh, drops to his knees and is straddled across the face, smells honey and almond drippings in his hairless nose, runs his century long tongue up into a claypit of molten sunlight in asbestos-lined cuntwalls and is reborn somewhere within the hellhole cavern of his fermenting brain. . .

That's it son, you got the handle now! Texas Bill cries to him, but his words are sucked up in a thermal fartwind of cuntwall funk and lost to the bright night sky. Above the tankhole skimming clouds like fat meadow muffins rimmed with spraycan heavy cream skip through the pissyellow wail of shitstorm freefall.

What Texas Bill doesn't realize is that Johnny Boy is in the beginning state of Bioblowback which will lead to proper Quasijizzomatic-repulsion brought on by glitterfuck. . . that's when the shit hits the fan! Tank dreams swarm up our of his tortured cortex and deep brain wrinkles and boogie like mindless sailors with nerve tissue that terminates near the rectal muscles causing, as it were, shitstorm bloody flux, which is the first downwind stage of Bioblowback. . . God knows it gets rough!

Shitsuction tanks suck! Texas Bill yells and laughs at his own joke even if it's not funny in light of the cuntwall funk freefall shitstorm. I ought to be on TV Johnny Boy I am so fuckin' funny!

Johnny Boy jerks his face away from the greenslime cuntdrippings feast and looks up into the smiling face of Freefall Death and feels the bloody flux flush in one mighty surge out his fundament and across the bottom of the slimpepit tank.

Freefall Death takes him by the ears, dragging him through the slime and his cries and pleas fall on deaf ears. . .Texas Bill Garver is much too busy pushing dead and rotting brains out bone earholes with his long slimy Texas donkey dick to hear or care. Up up up Johnny Boy goes, up through the blowing howling shitstorm up up past eternal daylight to night, up to a place with no green cuntstarch and twisting tornado fuckwinds, up up up to a peaceful tank where the slime is cool blue and the days come in two parts, bright and dark and warm and cool, quiet and loud. There and not there.

Johnny Boy is happy for a moment even if he does miss Texas Bill.

Even as he was balls deep in eyesocket skull Texas Bill was surprised and shocked to see young Johnny Boy succumb to the bluefunk explosion of glitterfuck.

And who in hell can a man trust anymore and especially up in the shitlines with a toadsucker like Grovener in command? And it's a crying fucking shame when the wartlips fuck with the Essence Three causing terminal megalomania and bluefunk explosion without even a legal hearing, fer Christ's sake!

Get that motherfuckin' frog outta yer mouth and talk like a goddamn man! said Texas Bill to the wartlip toadsucker in command of Shitsuction Tankfarm #3 or was it #4. Fuckin' with a man's passport to pleasure ain't no way to get a relationship off on the right foot, frogface!

I suspect you are referring to the problem with the high-grade Essence Three, Grovener said around the frog's ears.

You can bet your sweet ass I am!

No need to get upset, Tex, spat through wartlips. After all, you were a great hero of the Caustic Wars if I'm not sadly mistaken and I seldom am I'll have to admit.

Son, I been in 9 world wars and caused three of the motherfuckers myself! I led the shitstorm on Mexico City and I got a line of ribbons that reach from my capbill to the bottom of my big Texas bullbag and every one of them says the same thing --Texas Bill Garver is a mean mamahuncher and may be hazardous to your health! Think you can deal with that?

I may have to confer with command on that one, from froglips.

Where'n hell you been, feller, command went up in a pisshail some time back, the doings if I'm not mistaken of a Ruskie by the name of Fydor Jakoffski who runs a little tankfarm on the sub-tropic fringes of Sibera. . . A wild sumbitch that Jackoffski!

Grovener the toadsucker is taken aback by this news . . .It seems command never sees fit to confide in their own trusted souls!

Well Tex I'll have to check into the validity of that information as you can see the memo must have slipped past, someone in the lower echelons, fucked up as it were I suppose.

Texas Bill Garver wrinkled up his face in a sneer that brought to mind death rictus in a chimp's anal muscle, put the forefinger of his right hand against the side of his nose and blew a string of shiny snot and residue of Essence Three (high-grade and fucked with) across the blue gloom.

I've heard all that shit before in a different time and place and it don't mean diddly shit to me. . .just a way to put a man off! I want some goddamn action on this and I want it now, so I do!

No need to get upset Tex, channels, we must go through channels in light of the way things are done.

Can't you get it through that fuckin' thick wartskin, there ain't no fuckin' channels! There ain't no command left! Jackoffski, remember?

Well Tex that's just a rumor at this point, we have to maintain the illusion of chain of command even if there is no command, surely you can see that.

Hide this shit from my granite eyes! Texas Bill Garver screamed in disgust, and beat big feet (size 99) back to Tank #2 or was it #4, thoroughly pissed with jabber about non-existent chains of command. Hoofing back he met the old space ranger P. Paul Purvis leaning on his skimming hose and gazing off into the blue funk twilight, one hand cupped across his forehead like an Indian scout on a spotted pony looking for settlers to fuck with.

May be pisshail in them clouds, don't look good back yonder and all we need's a shitcyclone to just about do in this place for good and always! said P. Paul.

Don't fret about the weather, we got other problems. . . Johnny Boy's in Bioblowback through glitterfuck, the handle is in danger and command is fucked! Tex advised him.

You don't say? Ain't life a bitch sometimes!

You ain't takin' this serious enough, P. Paul, this could spell big trouble.

Nobody knows the troubles I've seen, son, the old wrinkled space ranger said. I've lived through shitstorms and pisshails and blowbacks and suckdowns and glitterfucks and celestial scuzwind and bloody flux and even universe collapse. Ain't too much bothers me anymore.

Holy shit! Universe collapse?

Damn straight son, and that's a bad scene, one of the baddest of the bad if you know what I mean and I think you do, being as you are a decorated hero of several flareups of your own.

I've gotta go somewhere and think this over! said Texas Bill. He crawled up under a pump piston unit on Tank #1 or was it #2 and stuck his massive feet into the air to get a funk tan on the soles while he mulled over all the latest info blasting into his brainpan.

And where he wondered was Melody J. J. Badbox, his main queen bottom lady from another era who had sworn eternal liking and promised to never share her badbox with anyone but the long-dicked Texan with a faceful of hero medals?

Just like a goddamn female splittail to split like a rotten board when the going got tough! Couldn't be counted on in a clutch! Probably straddling a shitscooper's face in a minority tankfield somewhere, the worthless bitch!

Two hours later (if time had existed) with blue tanned feet soles Texas Bill Garver was called to the domain of the toadsucker and given the goodbad news.

New souls by the name of Melody J. J. Badbox coming on line in the p.m. Tex, Grovener spat around a fresh cuplegs. Claims you are an old friend from the other and demands to see you post haste upon arrival, eh what. What say old boy?

I say you ought to lay of 'em fuckin' English frogs, Grove. But that's cool.

Good enough! I shall inform the young lady forthwith!

Texas Bill was knocking the hockeydoodie off his freshly tanned kicks with a highpressure pisshose when he heard the warning whistle and saw the blue jelly falling in from the east like a turd dropping from a tall cow's ass and said to himself: hotdamn a feller ain't got time to get hisself presentable what with all the hustle and bustle of a shitsuction tankfarm!

Melody J. J. crawled out of the splattered jelly mass and shook the glowslime off her hairtips and looked around, her violet eyes coming to rest on the hulking form of her former lover, that big-dicked Texas bullballed wildman by the name of Texas Bill Garver.

Lord fuck a duck and it's you, you big prick mothersticker! she cried, sprinting across the slime field full tilt with a 1000 watt smile blowing neon from her lovely chops, her mighty fine jugs bouncing in the funk breeze like a frog's haunches on a long hop. Tongue my cunthole you horny old bastard! she squealed, doing a half cartwheel and flinging herself upon Texas Bill, her long smooth thighs slapping around his ears and clamping down until the sounds of the shitpumps melted from his head, while her own knowing lips assaulted his differential.

Quite a greeting, J. J. m'girl, Texas Bill said, spitting out a dab of blue jelly.

It ain't like we don't know each other, she replied. Let's grab an empty tank and pump some puddin' big boy!

Later baby right now we gotta check in with the frogsucker that runs this shitfarm get you settled in you know.

Well OK, but the fact is I've been dreamin' long and hard 'bout that mamapacker in your jeans big Texas Bill, you heroic sumbitch!

That was used to be not now, I'm just a common shitskimmer like all the rest in this place, he answered. That notion took some getting used to even for him.

Big boy there ain't too many common shitskimmer hung like you are, don't try to shit an old sharecropper!

Sitting with his balls awash in mellow warm saltwater somewhere in the bluetank gloom, Johnny Boy commenced to wonder and began to think of what had transpired since the hairleg nose toadsucker had consigned him to the depths of depravity or the heights of magnificence in which he now found himself, as it were.

And where was Texas Bill that wild shithead shitskimmer in this newer and bluer realm? he might ask. And where was the odor of blowhoses and pressure pumpers and funk skim? he could think if so willing.

As a matter of fact and of fiction it had been longer than forever since Johnny Boy truly had one inkling as to what was really going on, and even longer since he had truly given a damn. It was one thing to be one place and then the other, or this place and that to put it a different same way, if he were so inclined and might add if bothering to make the comment in the first place, which was probably the second place anyway.

Scuzfumes rose from the surface of the blue neon water and climbed like psychotic panda bears up the hairless tunnel of his facenose. They were not unpleasant and would have reminded Johnny Boy of the thick sweet smell of fermenting shad lying on a flood retaining wall near Cairo, Illinois on a hot July day in another frame of reference, had he ever heard of the place or cavorted there in the Mississippi geenlight days. Unheard of, scuzfumes sweet as rotting fish!

Well what was the place, and where, that was the question or the answer to another question not yet raised. Johnny Boy began to recall the concerto played by Grovener's shoestrings and heard the tune come out airless through his twitlips and hairless facenose. . . little peeps of tweet tweet toot toot and beep beep. . . left eyeball green-brown and blue speckled blinking counterpoint. . . left earlobe twitching rhythm. . . balls marching waltz time in warm blue heavywater. . . a caccaphonic parade of pieces and parts strutting with some barbecue to a brassankle band playing death boogie. . . the back of his neck smiled with ivory teeth and waved a trumpet with mouthpiece bloody. . . wiped its brow with a dirty snotrag. . .slowly did a slidestep in spitshined kicks. . .peeked through the keyhole of his mind and made notes on the fracas within. . . flipped the bird to a passing sparrow tweetybird and eagle and received one in return.

Yeah, song is madness Johnny Boy decided, gloom blue and cool as he was. The sounds of shitsuction hoses and the suck of feet in fecal muck were more to his liking, he decided. Back in the land of Texas Bill Garver, back before the shitstorm and the other shoe dropping, no laces to whistle faceless tunes.

No hairnoses around here. No nothing or so it would seem although obviously there had to be someone or something, he thought he decided -- such decision were hard to make in bluefunk heavywater gloom with an Essence Three hangover peeling the toenails back from blueskinned feet.

Johnny Boy squinted down and rolled his eyes up and counted dust motes on his eyelashes like he had done back then when such things still mattered. One two three four five. . . there comes another one. When he tired of this he had the option of watching flicks on the backsides of his eyelids --maybe pack his hairless nose with a pawful of Three (popcorn with mindmovies!) Hold that butter and salt, causes sclerosis of the brainstem don't you know son! Sounds like Texas Bill that will bullball shitskimmer, that good ole cowboy sumbitch! What a man! What a dream in somebody's mind! What a turdtapper!

Well hell, cool it for a while and enjoy the funk gloom. . .never know when things will change. Too many changes too fast too often and mostly too silly. . .who gave a good shit anyway?

Johnny Boy closed his motepeepers and slipped into a dream of the other place while visions of furtrappers galloped the soft flesh and tearjuice on the backsides of his peeper covers. Whatever it was, it was good, or bad, but it was it.