Chapter 5

                       FEATHERED CACOPHONY

Inside a crumby run down apartment, somewhere in San Francisco's low rent district, four men sat around the room in a tense mood as Hans paced back and forth. His shaved head reflected the glare of a bare bulb overhead, which swinged back and forth in a pendulum gait. His mouth clinched grimly as eyes blazed a burning fuse to some powder keg. He scrutinized the floor and men's faces in turn, who quickly looked away from the deathly glare, as if it were the baleful stare of Medusa. Nerves grated on edge, as they all knew that it was coming, they were due for a big one, and it was just about to blow.

Stubble formed on his chin, and the bushy growth beneath his lip twitched nervously. It was the only hair that he allowed to grow on his haggard head, except for the hairs sticking out of his nose. Hans lit up the last camel from his fourth pack of the day, and took a deep drag and blew O's up and around the swinging bulb that cast rocking shadows on the men. Then the lid popped under the mounting pressure... He turned suddenly and kicked a can of beer squarely, spraying froth over the men as they shielded their face with tattooed arms like cowering dogs. The crumbled can ricocheted off a tattered wall, knocking loose some pealing wallpaper.  

What was it this time? That was the question on every mind. What was the hysterical tirade going to be about this time? Which bystander would get leveled in the blast? Although they hated the timely harangues about the law ... his law, and how he was surrounded by incompetents that impeded his mission ... still they secretly loved all the abuse. It was a great sado-masochist relationship. They worshipped his raw, explosive power, his total control over everything and everybody ... they loved it ... even at the expense of self-dignity. He wielded irresistible power, and he had the vision ... he saw the looming landscape of the future ... he saw the glory of the fourth Reich ... the second coming of the Fuhrer. He stared around the room searching averting eyes, as a silver swastika dangled from his left earlobe.

            "You dogs!" he whispered in a guttural voice. "Time is so short and real men are so few! The great one is coming soon ... and what have we done to prepare? We need armies of men, not a band of jackals!" Sparks crackled around stone gray eyes that shot a penetrating stare around the room. Sweat glands dotted wrinkled foreheads like dew, and little rivers of sweat trickled down grimy temples, washing soot onto throbbing necks.

            "Come on Cory, let's go out for a walk," said Hans, to everyone's relief. Cory got up and they left the room and went down the hall, out into the filthy street. Audible sighs of respite were heard before they closed the door.

            "Getting stuffy in there."

            "Yeah."

            "What's the matter?" asked Cory.

            "Something great is happening. I just can't break it in there with all the dullards ... that would be like throwing pearls to swine. Those new men, they got a lot of proving to do, in my book. Don't know if I can trust them yet. Anyway, you told me about your old Nam buddy, that guy named Harrison..."

            "Yeah, I remember."

            "Well, after I heard that name ... Harrison ... well, you know it hit me like a lark ... yeah, really strange. Some great light bulb went off inside my head. Yeah. Don't know why, just did. Then I had that dream again, last night. The same one, but this time, much clearer. It wasn't just a dream this time ... more like a vision of light so bright, I could hardly see past the glare. And the name Harrison whistled in the air like a cold breeze around some bare tree limbs, you know, like you're standing out somewhere, the night is dark, and tree branches are bending in the wind and there's a big full moon right there, right up there behind the branches, just shining like ... uh, like something ... you know. Ha! I'm a real poet, ain't I?"

            "Yeah Hans, you're great."

            "He's back, Cory, goddammit, he's back! Oh god, I'm so excited!" Hans grabbed Cory's shoulders, his eyes open so wide, and he spoke so close to his face, that Cory felt mists of spittle on his cheek. He didn't really like that, and normally he would have wiped his face in disgust immediately, but he just stood there and took it, because the moment was just too awesome.  

            "Back?"

            "Yeah, BACK! And if he ain't, then I'm a dirty old son-of-a-bitching coon! Ha Ha Ha! You know he never died. No-sir-reee! Who can kill the great one? Why ... he only went to another plane of existence for a while, just to rest up for a while ... until the time was ripe. And it's really ripe now, Cory baby, oh yeah, it's just really ripe for us to go out and pluck the fruit of the world. Big time harvest, yeah! We will be seeing our master very soon, real soon, Cory ole boy!"

                                        *  *  *  *  *

            Everybody was laughing and kidded around in a good mood as Harrison opened the door. Wanda walked in first and stopped stiff, with a jerk of a hand to her mouth, and screamed, "Oh my god!" She fell to her knees in extreme hysterics.

            In a fraction of a moment, her mind shot back in time like a cannon ball, back into a major flashback, back and back ... to a faraway lifetime or so ago. A picture appeared in her mind as plain as a TV screen, a picture of a vivid scene of tortured women and children clutching at each other in the throes of death, and her face flinched as gasoline ignited and exploded into a colossal fireball, and screams and burning flesh singed her nostrils and ears. Her mind reeled in horror at the sight and then blanked out. She fainted and collapsed into Harrison's arms.

            "I'll kill the little S.O.B. for this!" screamed Harrison as he stared at the mess. "I'll blow a hole in 'em big enough to drive a Mack truck through! Where's my A-K? Gawldammit!"

            Jeb rushed in and a mass of feathers assaulted his eyes, "There's something all over the floor," cried Jeb, as Fefe rushed in, “Is it stuffing from a pillow, what is it?"

            "Oh McDuff! McDuff! Oh God! What have they done to you? Oh my God!" screamed Fefe as she stared bug-eyed at the scene.

            "It's that damn cat," ranted Harrison. "The little creep got to McDuff! I'll blow his guts out for this, I swear! Get my rifle boy!"

            "No Dad, it's not McDuff," said Jeb, "These are feathers, but not green ones!" The feathers were scattered all over the living room floor in a zany pattern.

            "Eeeeeew," said Fefe, "there's a string of guts and blood over here! How gross it is!"

            "And there's a severed head and over there! A dead bird body in the hallway!" said Jeb. "How sick ... damn it, it's that jinxed weirdtail cat ... Othello would never do something like this! That sucker's going to pay!"

            "Calm down!" said Fefe. "The cat meant no harm. It's just their way of giving us a present because they like us. That's right! They think this dead carcass is a valuable prize, and they are giving it to us as a gift from them ... because they like us."

            "Yeah sure," said Jeb, "This is the work of a sick mind."

            "Mom! What's happened to mother!" cried Fefe.

            Harrison held her head up and slowly she came around to consciousness and opened her eyes and gave them a disoriented look as he lifted her over onto the couch. Jeb and Fefe went to cleaning the feathers and bird carcass up.

            Wanda came to a little, and let out a whimper and half opened her eyes, then jerked straight up, her eyes bugged out, almost popping out. "They did it! Oh God no!" she moaned, "They did it in our house! Oh God damn them, damn them, damn them, oh God damn them all to hell!"

            Harrison got her to lay back down and tried to calm her, as she twisted and turned in his grip, her head writhed back and forth in anguish and she moaned in a catatonic voice, "the bastards did it again ... killed them ... slaughtered them all like pigs! They fried them! Oh my God!"

            "Wanda dear, calm down ... it's all right, it was just feathers ... dear ... nothing else, it's ok, it's ok."

            "No! It's not ok, damn it, they were butchered like pigs!"

            "No dear, only a dead bird, that's all."

            Then suddenly, Wanda got stiff as a board and levitated off the floor about ten inches or so, like she was doing a sit-up, with her torso straight as an arrow … her face glowed, her eyes stared off in the distance … in a dreamy trace, she spoke in unearthly intonations, “They are here! … they’re here … oh God!!”

            “Who’s here, dear?” asked Harrison.

            “In the woods … oh!! … out there … in the woods!!”

“What are you talking about?” said Harrison.

            “Damn them! God damn them! Murderers!”

            She dropped to the floor, and just as quickly as she hit the floor, she came to, and seemed to say in a perfectly normal, but shaken voice,

            "Oh Harrison, it happened, my dreams, oh horrible! those men, horrible men, they took women and children, old people and burned them alive! Oh God! I saw it in our living room!"

            "No no, dearest, it was only feathers and a dead bird."

            She then looked around the room and seemed to come out of a trance. "Oh, it was only feathers you say?"

            "Yeah, that's right, dear, only feathers. Some cat caught a bird and brought in here and tore it apart."

            "Are you sure?"

            "Yeah, we're sure, don't worry."

            "Harrison, this is really serious. I know what my dream is about now. It's finally clear now. Those horrible men who murdered so many people, that's what I see, oh my God, no, please God, don't let this happen!"

            "There, there dear, don't think about it now, let's get you some tea ... Fefe go make mom some tension tamer tea."

            Then they all heard a strange trolling voice in the kitchen, and Fefe stood up trembling, and entered the kitchen to witness her pet parrot, McDuff, perched on the back of a kitchen chair, with glazed staring eyes, with distorted voice, like he was delirously drunk, chanting words of gibberish, “Foul paw bewicks we downe mate, what sayst a limmer loon? Drede sooth a feeline fronde mate, worthe rue a pitten shoon…” 

            Fefe stood transfixed, staring, breathe suspended in air. She had never, in all her born days of hell-raising metal headbanging, ever heard anything so weird in all her life … and for that reason … she kind of liked it...

                               *  *  *  *  *

          In the middle of the night, Jeb woke up, desperately trying to remember. What was so important? Something weighty transpired. Something way out there ... way out of the ordinary. Some extra-out-of-the-ordinary, momentous happenings ... and Jeb can barely remember it. For what, how long? Its been going on for a week or so, so he thinks.

          Alarms went off in the brain, just under the surface of his skin-tillated mind-pool, something yelling at him, but he's too deaf to hear ... not yet.

          Not just yet.

          Hold on there, Aristotle is giving him this look, this all-knowing dog look ... the canine omniscient, I-know-it-all look, cause-I'm-a-dog-who-knows-all type of look ... that trips off the memory cells in the brain. Oh yes, the scene is coming in ... clear, clear and clearer. It is the beach cliff, and the man sitting there ... who was he? Then all was gone, is he awake?

          Maybe the next dream ... maybe he will remember more. If he only tries harder … to remember...

Then it dawned on him that he wasn’t awake after all, he was still in the dream, dreaming he was awake, actually asleep, but dreaming he was about to wake up … and then suddenly out of the mist a whisper purred,

“I’ll let you be in my dream, if I can be in yours…..”

“Hmmm,” dream-said Jeb, “Dylan.”

But wait a minute … this pipe dream ain’t over yet. Jeb found himself in an old classroom of his recent past, this memory come back and Jeb remembered a speech class from a way back, and now he’s sitting there again in the same chair, but now its in a dream, he’s hearing a speech from the mouth of a tie-die hippie, with a hawk tat on his neck, giving a talk that happened two years ago in a real classroom, and now in an instant replay dream, a speech on the quiet Beatle, George, and all this stuff about a mystic ocean of yogurt or yoga, and what goes around … comes around, and the encore of spent souls into fresh n’ fleshy tabernacles, and all those weird and wacky things George was always singing about.

Jeb dream thought to himself, remembering the real thoughts he was having from the speech, dream muttering “I could only half listen, thinking this was mythola stuff or something, yet I found myself taking a wanderlust walkabout in some ancient world. Popping up in front of my eyes, a mystery-tour yellow submarine re-surfaced from depths of the sub-terra mind-fill. The hatch doors slowly opened and I entered within, and hanging on walls, in the halls, hung hallowed pictures of halo-wreathed monks, visages revered by the wise for ages untold – I cudgeled my wit as to how I’d happened upon such a chamber of myst. It seemed I’d known this all before, in some age, as a warm and fuzzy security-blanket glow filled my being. Thinking again, it struck me as a jester’s ruse, as I don’t invest in hocus-pocus, being aficionado of antiquity philosophers, the acumen contenders, such as Plato, who succulently culled the surface of ideal-surreal, and succinct succeeding philosophers who amassed the culmination of centuries of excruciating thought.” It suddenly faded away. Awake, Jeb lay there as loatheness washed through his being, he wanted to go back … back to that weird and wonderful land, or whatever it was.

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