The Ticket That Exploded (Burroughs, William S.) (14 page)

“A militant writer’s union . . All American writers recalled to base . . Stand by for orders . . All you jokers in the Shakespeare Squadron return to base immediately and stand by for orders . .”

The Frisco Kid he never returns .. in life used address I gave you for that belated morning . . agony to breathe in
this mutilated phantom . . last intersection dim jerky far away voice . .

“It’s the greatest story conference in history, B.J. . . All these writers assembled in the warehouse of the Atlantic Tea Company . . These writers are going to
write history as it happens in present time
. . And I don’t want to hear any Banshee wails from you skypilots . . Now the way I see it is this:
America stands for doing the job
and that’s what’s wrong with America today .. half-assed assassins . . half-assed writers . . half-assed plumbers . . a million actors . . one corny part . . So we write a darned good part for every actor on the American set . . You gotta see the whole scene as a
show
. .”

“Remember show price? Know who I am? . . . ‘Good Bye Mister’ is my name . . . ‘Wind and Dust’ is my name . . ‘Never Happened’ is my name . . .”

Soccer scores — The driver shrugged — His sound i could describe to the open street car passing whiffs of Spain — long empty face — his eyes the evening breeze where the awning flapped — Violence roared past the Café de France cleaving a heavy summons — Mr Bradly hurry up — Wind Ariel closed your account — Hurry up please its street — harbor lights gently moving water smiles dimmer at the edges — arab memory of flesh far now — Such people made a wide U turn back to the ‘20s —

Totally green troops in the area — We come to shape the five new combat divisions through clear process in the United States — slow your brain area trade — Impressions of present time played electrical music — Faded guards blew red nitrous fumes over you — khaki pants
fully understood all of idiot Mambo spattered to control mechanization — hot sex words crackling paper and punching holes in it —

rectums naked in whiffs of raw meat — Jissom fell languidly bare feet afternoons — a Mexican about twenty shifting Johnny’s knees — He was in the room on genital smells finger shared meals and belches — feeling like scenic railways in sleep— suitcases all open — on association line electric spasms — burning outskirts of the city — dark street life of a place forgotten —

Invisible passenger took my hands in dawn sleep of water music — Broken towers intersect cigarette smoke memory of each other — healed hands like ice — Won’t be much — Screen went dead — He dressed hastily shirt flapping — stared out from darkened eyes of wine gas —

“Good bye then — I thought” — He walked through dawn mirror of Panama — Memory hit spine outside 1920 movie theater — sat down open shirts flapping — Many did not listen — silver film at the exits —
Weilest du?
— dead nitrous flesh — dirty look through glass — Who is that naked corpse? — Come along ladies and gentlemen — screaming on the deal in many lips? — She didn’t get it — Cut the image like back in the restaurant — Wait a bit — No good — half-healed electric needs — dead scars — Leave him to me — Won’t be much left — For a room in the shoeshine boy Swedish river of Gothenberg? — Release without more ado what? — When i left you hear little tune cut the image —

“i am surrounded through cafés and restaurants — Rabble rousers fade in coffee cup reflections — Blood? — There is no Jewish blood flash scarlet invitations to young
anti-Semites — Tourist as all the Jewish people i see myself impoverished tired hustler — Anti-Semite is buried forever in my deferential nods — Today i am as old in years as flapping human genitals in Mexico — i am surrounded— bodies and water everywhere — Blood runs in the pale door — My early rabble rousers give off a stench of rotten lips departed — nothing here — wind voices” —

“Bradly passed through the twisting intestinal streets — terminal streets of Minraud — A boy of dead nitrous flesh wafted from a doorway of tarnished silver —

“Me good sewage and frozen jissom — beautiful peoples” —

They talk in clouds of scent from glands in the groin. — A whiff of KY and rectal mucus drifted out in propositions of memory orgasm — scent talk of dead film people — terminal guide here, Mister — He made of 1920 movie — In a vacant lot a scorpion boy was eating a pile of metal excrement — He peered up at Bradly from phosphorescent glittering eyes —

“Me good guide, Meester — Here very bad peoples” — The boy vibrated his stinger — “Very bad peoples — So you fucked, Johnny” —

They moved through paths in a vast rubbish heap — Came to a cliff city that towered out of sight in the hot blue sky — cubicles connected by catwalks and ladders
and platforms — The guide moved on music currents waiting for the beats and chords that lifted them up ladders and ramps, swept them along perilous platforms over voids of billowing heat —

“You learn quick, Meester — Music talk — In here” —

They clicked through melodious turnstiles — The walls glowed with slow metal fires — Music currents swirled through the room — The guide twisted out of his scorpion shell — a being two feet tall covered by fine red hairs that vibrated in puffs of nitrous smoke — His head converged to a sharp beak — The penis of black gristle was covered with the fine red hairs except for the naked tip which came to a quivering point —

“We fuck now — Then i taking you to the Elder — Very old — Very wise — You see” — Bradly took off his space suit and lay down on a pallet that pulsed to sex music — The fine red hairs penetrated his pores — His body dissolved in a choking erogenous mist of burning sex films — The pointed penis penetrated his rectum — He ejaculated spurts of red smoke —

“Now we going to the Elder — He
inside
— Never come out” —

Came to a round metal chamber lined with switchboards and view screens — Embedded in a limestone dais was a grey foetal dwarf, his brain clearly visible under a thin membrane pulsed with colored lights as he controlled the switchboard —

“He make all music,” said the guide —

The dwarf turned his eyeless face to Bradly — Bradly could feel radar beams map his outlines — Words passed through his mind on silver ticker tape —

“No one of your race has ever been here before — As a visitor you are disastrous — That is why i attempted to block you — When i did not succeed i knew of course that our blockade was broken by intervention from the Saturn Galaxy — Now it seems we must submit to basic alterations — We do not have ‘emotions oxygen’ in our atmosphere— The heat here kills what you call ‘emotion’ — That is where centipedes and scorpions come from — a heat that kills emotion and animates a bundle of nerve wires — Very few were able to survive here and those few paid the price of specialization” —

Last controls fade out at dawn — young faces moving absent bodies — empty source of second suit — open shirt in the dim light — Ejaculated skin back into dying forms — the face a picture — people gone —

“Me good guide, Meester” — suffused a time that i had street boy head) —

“i take you see all Garden Delights” —

Boys hang from gallows, turn flapping against each other — dissolved in smoke and crumpled cloth — guided by metal music the doctor on stage —

“i told you i would cover being of healed scars — The doctor still am the Big Fix” —

The whole being suddenly shut off in puffs of nitrous smoke — music cure last parasite — The face was broken — Do not have slow-motion flashes — Dying forms overtake “Mr Bradly Mr Martin” — moving slowly out of the sick lies — No trying source of second rectum tape — smell of empty condoms in the dim light — brain of Gothenberg moved on at dawn — bread knife currents — the cold
adios
without a shadow — here caught in the door
— no shelter — A street boy’s head questions board room breath trade — Glittering eyes peered up and: “Man, like good bye” — Ding dong bell — Silence — Solitude — Bradly leaning say: “Good bye then in currents waiting for the carbon dioxide — Truly
adiós’
— Bitter price — Martin is like pulp behind —

A prospect of red mesas rising from blue depths — Suspended over the void a precarious iron city of cable cars, elevators, ferris wheels, scenic railways and plane rides all in constant motion — “Here” said the guide and clicked Bradly into a cubicle that permutated through the structure, floating in slow vertigo of ferris wheels, clicking along perilous tracks where wind whistled through the cables — The guide turned up his eyes like a blue torch cutting along the divide line of Bradly’s naked body — Electric needle fingers removed his skin, pulling it loose in red sheets of pain hung it on a peg — The guide slipped off his own skin like a garment, peeled penis pulsing red light, clouds drifting through his remote blue eyes — Hula hoops of color formed around the guide’s body and enclosed Bradly weak and torn with pain cool hands on his naked flesh as he sank in blood and bones and intestines of the other suffocation panic of spermatozoa sucked through pearly genital passages and spurted out in a scratching shower of sperm — sunlight through bodies without cover — soft luminous spurts drifting in the cold blue wind —

Body tension in genital rings and he fell into the explosion of sperm — Contraction turnstiles ejaculated bodies without cover — Iridescent orgasm floated from pale adolescents — Slow movement of body hairs ejaculated
the creature who talks in color blast — iridescent weak and torn by pain, decay breathing from years spurting out through the orgasm death in black lust of the swamp mud — black fish movement of food, intestines shifting color orgasm reflected in the obsidian penis — Silver films in the blood and bones tear his insides apart — He was sucked from penis suffocation and released dream flesh in a scratching shower of sperm — sunlight through pubic hairs — soft luminous spurts of memory riding the wind — Pieces of cloud drifted through someone walking — Mountain wind around his body trailing sweat drew him into other body alterations, sky blue through viscera of the other — solitude of morning cool on his skinned flesh —

Now for me — the story of one White — That’s why darkies were born — way human skin inflated “Master” — a long good night in metal valve at base of the spine — now for the story of one absent today far from the old folks — softly singing Old Black Joe to “music” (i made an ambiguous gesture) of cold crystal grave — ghost rectums of cotton — Semen fell like opal cane — Weep no more — absent tenants — silence to say good bye
adiós
— controllers from the ancient white planet of frozen gasses — a vast mineral consciousness near absolute zero thinking in slow formations of crystal — silent female navigators blank space eyes swept by Northern Lights — yeti men
with burning metal eyes and long claws covered with purple hair shock troops carried by the navigators — controllers of the White Smoke and the utilities, monopolized and froze the earth — The White Smoke and the White Light keeps the Djoun forces away and in darkness they assume malignant forms — So you need the White Light to keep them away —

“It’s the old junk gimmick — Freeze the mark — Thawing hurts you got it? — Sex and pain forms hatching out in paralyzed flesh — and hatching out hungry — so you need more and more of the white stuff to keep your ass in deep freeze — Junk is not blue and it is not green — Junk is
White White White
— like the colorless no-smell of death from kicking addicts — That’s where they get the White Smoke, from sick addicts — bottled in precinct cells of America — in Lexington, Kentucky — You got it? — Sex and pain
form
flesh identity” —

At far end pale flesh blooms slowly out of a life cannot exist in pictures — bleeding formations of crystal — that body without a shadow without relics — blank face, healed and half-healed dream flesh hatching from the death trauma — outside East St. Louis a cold
adiós
— silence — weary — They tell you of distant coffin — Won’t be much left on Panama night — empty condom ticket — erogenous cotton flesh lying there streaked with phosphorous — someone walking —

“Man, like good bye then” —

(In the lunar caves black newt boys, eyes lips and genitals glowing with slow metal fires — penis rose in a smell of phosphorus — blue radium symbols on the wall) —

Now explosions of Colored South from mixture —
surges of silence from long metal night weaves people and sky story of one absent today — on a slow boat to China, Master, a long good night — the cold
adiós
— Got no home? — So we’ll sing one song: a big bank roll and Cousin Miranda making a Monday line—So we’ll sing one song in your dreams — And that heart grows weary — They’ll tell you of money in the cold cold grave? — on a slow boat to China,
adiós
— keeps on rolling a big word line — sugar line — secondhand erogenous corn — softly singing Old Black Joe to: “i’m tired of you and i’m checking out” — Just to raise the price of a ticket angle voices calling Old Black Joe — orgasm death in the cold empty condom — Look, Master, God’s wind blew icicles in black slow-motion faces — singing phosphorus in flash darkies weeping — broken glaciers and skin of cotton — Weep no more — absent tenants — ghost voices calling false human hosts— (i made an ambiguous gesture) — Cold crystal semen fell like opal cane — slow motion sky swept by Northern lights — Thawing hurts — White form hatching in painted human skin inflated “Master” — long hunger of the spine — Story of your ass in deep freeze? — Semen fell like opal canes from phallic statues of ice under Northern Lights — the cold of interstellar space in his spine — sex and pain explosions of colored flesh hatching out — That’s why darkies were born — way the White Stuff keep “Master” — Colorless Utilities monopolized land of the free — Keeps the Djoun forces in secondhand erogenous corn — So you need more and more of death because your ass is in deep freeze — White White White spurted again and again from death of kicking addicts — need the White Light to check out — It’s the old gimmick
— Darkies are the pipes you got it? — sex and pain price of a ticket — flesh hatching out in cotton-covered orgasm cocoons —