AIN'T THE TOWN FAYRE ROUND HERE

It went through the windscreen of Delia's Datsun and straight out the rear window clean as a whistle. No detours, took the head and all of the left shoulder with it. Farewell Delia. They held a small memorial service down by the river. She always liked it there, especially after what happened to her sister.
And then Larry went down to the cemetary five-days later to lay a bouquet he'd stolen from the drug store – and there wasn't even a plot. He told me this sitting in the cemetary picking the petals from the flowers . . . told me that I could believe it or fucking not but there wasn't even a FUCKING GRAVE MAN and how the FUCK could that be and don't fucking say she was CREE-MATED because he knew for a gooddamned fact she hadn't been. I never saw Larry again. His line was dead.
Craven, the truck driver, who got wiped out on Highway 4 three-months previously, after something shot through his windscreen and took everything down to the belt, didn't have a grave either. Lou Ellen found that out, because she works in the library. After she told me that, and swore me to secrecy, I went to meet her down at River and Blackwood and all I found there were shadows. You couldn't fucking drive anywhere, if you had a brain and wanted to keep it where it was. Bess and Ryan Jenkins had hitched, out through Anderson, over the old postal track cum lovers lane, and they didn't just walk out of town, they walked right out of existence. People stopped driving, in or out, even the authorities. They sent a chopper in two-days ago to drop supplies, it smashed into Jeb Manner's hay loft and there weren't no body and it hadn't been FUCKING IN-SIN-ERATED! So don't tell me it had.
People stay indoors. They brick up fireplaces and board the windows, slat the door at night, because whatever it is comes through . . . the holes. Up at the hikking hut on the Last Pass four kids, three of whom I knew, spent eleven-hours having something small but invisible hit them until the youngest, nine-year old Braden Lurkey got hit so hard his spleen burst. Only two of the kids came back and one of them Jordan David he's in ICU in a room with the windows steel-barred – while there's still a hospital to be I suppose. People are getting hit all the time in here, in this vacuum, and a lot are going crazy. Sempkins shot his neighbour of thirty-three years dead the day before yesterday . . . claimed it was an offering.

Whatever it is goes clean through. Or if it's smaller it just hits you. It FUCKING hurts when it hits you and Dwight says it's bad souls but Lewis says fuck that man it's super-fucking-UNNATURAL, and Lewis was most likely right because he died this morning when something shot up out of his toilet bowl and took most of his jaw with it to wherever it was on it's way to. You can't live inside you can't go outside and you can't fucking RUN and you can't fucking DRIVE.
We got no tv now either. Like we, or the rest, don't even exist. School's closed, library too, even the drug store. Main Street is empty bar the things that howl up and down it most nights from dusk until dawn sounding like the tearaway kids used to when they dragged cars up and down it on a saturday night. All the tearaways got torn way to some place else. The cars are still here, those left won't even dare sit in any of them. Bits of houses are going missing too, like the whole FUCKING town is made of LEGO and something's taking whole chunks for it's own collection. The church and bakery have almost already gone. Cemetary went a good while back, just a field now, hospital too and the David kid right along with it. What the FUCK is happening here and why isn't anyone doing something to fucking HELP us? The less of us there are left and what with the buildings going and Main Street possessed to all hell the more likely it is I'll go soon. Only I ain't never been hit yet – I just heard from others that it hurt like FUCK. I think I'm the only one who's seen them too because everyone else says they're invisible but they're FUCKING not! I see them ripping up and down Main Street and they look like folks in those old depression photographs they used to have down at the museum only that's all but gone now to . . . old timers . . . and too young timers . . .

They stop and stare at me and holler only the holler is silent. But I KNOW why they're FUCKING hollering only I can't tell no one because there ain't hardly anyone here TO TELL. So I'll tell you. They're hollering at me because they can't hit me and that's making them madder than all hell. That's what I thought two-days ago anyhow, until it suddenly dawned on me when I was down in all that was left of the library rummaging through old sepia photographs of this damned town when I found a photo of a picnic and I was in the fucking PHOTO-GRAPH sitting on a tree stump smiling at whoever took it with a REAL BAD SMILE.
That was when I realized why they're hollering at me – because I won't play their games with them. And ain't no one coming to help because ain't no one can help, because anyone who tries sometime just gets hit and hollered at or just plain left out of all the games. That's always been the way they've been, as I recall it now – ANGRY.

Note: this is a rejected story - ha!

An Interview With Klaus Barbi

Location: 'die endgültige Lösung' Ranch, 125 Clicks NW of La Paz
Weather: Stinking Hot


Note: To simplify matters, I have taken the liberty of removing German phraseology, and, at Herr Barbi's insistance many names have either been changed, or simply initialed, Herr Barbi is not the kind of man who would rat out his friends or goose a passing peasant boy just for fun. The comments in this interview are not necessarily those of the interviewer, publisher or any other loosely associated third party. Herr Barbi's rights remain in the Bolivian jungle until the day he is finally extradited to Paris on trumped up charges and paraded before a kangaroo court of lesser specimens.


TLK: Herr Barbi . . .
KB: Herr Altman.
TLK: Yes all apologies, Herr Altman, thank you for your time & hospitality today . . .
KB: Huh, I have all of the time in the world, & then some my foolish friend.
TLK: Of course, now, if I might begin . . .
KB: No no, first we must talk of the sex change.
TLK: What?
KB: It was Herr, uh, ah fuck it, the Angel, yes, it was Herr Angel's research & procedural techniques that permits you to sit there in front of me today pushing our your titties, are they real?
TLK: Uh, yes, but . . .
KB: Could I feel them, for verification purposes?
TLK: Maybe later, but first . . .
KB: Who did this work to you?
TLK: What work?
KB: Come come my cherub, no need to be shy around uncle Klaus, we are both men of the world, ha, my apologies of course dear frauline.
TLK: No problemo, but look, I think we ought to address more pertinent matters than anatomical parts . . .
KB: But my child, there are few more beautiful things than how you say . . . pointy, no, perky, yes! Like the pigs eh? You know the pigs?
TLK: What?
KB: The pink swine, they sing you know, and dance too, yes, dancing pigs!
TLK: No, I don't know them, are they some kind of secret police?
KB: The pigs? Ha! No, although now you come to mention it, your breasts have a wonderful curvature to them.
TLK: Well thanks again, is there a woman in your life Herr B---------- Altman?
KB: NEVER! Women are the sporn of Satan, no, no women in uncle Klaus's life.
TLK: A boy?
KB: WHAT! How dare you, as if a former high-ranking official of the n . . .
TLK: Nazi party?
KB: I know nothing of this organization, nothing I tell you goddamnit!
TLK: My apologies Herr Altman, I did not mean to insinuate.
KB: Have they done your bottoms too?
TLK: My bottoms?
KB: Yes yes, you know, your wurst eh?
TLK: My wurst?
KB: Goddamn this incessant heat is intolerable, yes, your, what you say in gringo, your doodle eh, your sausagemeat?
TLK: Oh, that. Well, I think that's my business Herr Altman don't you.
KB: In the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, vacation camps, many tried to cut off their own doodles & some doodles got cut off, that's the thing about doodles.
TLK: The vacation camps?
KB: I saw about them on discovery, no wait, history channel, vicious bastards those Germans, eh?
TLK: You're not German?
KB: Never! I am a citizen of Bolivia, always have been, yes, I pay my goddamned taxes & abide by the law, such as it is.
TLK: Are the laws tough here?
KB: No, no laws, but the police are swine.
TLK: They harrass you?
KB: Constantly, for currency.
TLK: Extortion?
KB: Uhm, execution?
TLK: They try to execute you?
KB: They could never do it, I have influence, now, about your doodle eh, show me it dear girl, show uncle Klaus your doodle, perhaps I can help, I know many idle surgeons eh?
TLK: That's very kind of you Herr Altman, although I think the state of my doodle is my business, don't you?
KB: Why no! You are a fascinating creature, the world should see your doodle, it will make many old men from Ber---- Budapest very happy!
TLK: Budapest is in Hungary.
KB: From when?
TLK: Uh, from about ever.
KB: The swine!
TLK: Who?
KB: Whoever put it there goddamn them all to hell, & my god, this heat is merciless.
TLK: But you would be acclimatized to it no, being Bolivian?
KB: Ah! Yes, of course of course, but it is still merciless, the heat, and Budapest.
TLK: Budapest is merciless?
KB: Why yes, it always was, as I recollect.
TLK: So you've journeyed Herr Altman?
KB: Indeed indeed, for many years, many many years, yes, like uylesses.
TLK: Very interesting. Where have you traveled?
KB: Nowhere, of course, I have never left Bolivia, home sweet home eh? Home home on the range, where the drugs & the drugbarons roam eh!
TLK: You know of this, drugs?
KB: I know nothing of it beautiful frauline, come, show uncle Klaus your perky titties eh?
TLK: That would be the final solution then?
KB: WHAT! How dare you mention that filth in my home, I know nothing of it.
TLK: Not from Budapest?
KB: What is this fucking shit with Budapest? Who cares about it, where it is, where it was, where the fuck it went in-between eh?
TLK: It didn't go anywhere Herr Altman.
KB: So you say, indeed, and Berlin?
TLK: That never went anywhere either, apart from to shit.
KB: Sad sad times, for some, I presume.
TLK: Is that a pistol in your hand Herr Altman?
KB: Or in my pants eh! This? Yes, this was a gift from Herr . . .
TLK: Hitler?
KB: That filthly little Austrian peasant hah! I spit on him, phew.
TLK: Can you stop waving the gun around Herr Altman, you're making me nervous.
KB: Or excited yes? The nipples never lie my sweet honeynest.
TLK: Pot.
KB: What?
TLK: Honeypot, not honeynest.
KB: Well yes, if you insist, now, the titties eh?
TLK: Uh, please don't point that pistol at me Herr Altman, or that either thanks.
KB: But the heat, the itching, the sweat, dear god.
TLK: Is that loaded?
KB: This, or this?
TLK: Both.
KB: Oh yes, only an imbecile would wave an unloaded gun about, eh?
TLK: It is rather warm actually, & oh my, look at the time I really must . . .
KB: But first I think, you have a little something for uncle Klaus huh?
TLK: Uh, no.
KB: But I insist, you see, I am a man of simple pleasures frauline, as you will learn, and now, if you don't mind . . .