Escape from Rodeo Burger—Chapter 7

"When they have you, they have you. Squirm as you might. Fool yourself as you may. Simply because you escape your cage doesn't mean you are free. It is a cage within a cage. A caged rat can run all day long. He might run on his wheel, or not. Drink his water, or not. Eat his food, or not. He can go left or right, or nowhere at all. He can even turn back around and do it all over again many times over. But none of that negates the fact that he is still in a cage at the whim of his captor—and his freedom is only illusionary."

My father said those words to me at bedtime with no expression on his pale face. In place of a story, I suppose—Dr. Seuss or Amelia Bedelia, that sort of thing—I got analogies about rats and illusionary freedom. I thought of those words, prophetic as they were, while Esther and I stood there deciding what to do after having fallen 100 stories and gently floating to the ground below. We stood there as though we knew something. As though we weren't the rats my father described.

My father was a sad-looking man to me. I suppose he was handsome in some way. But all the life appeared bled from him, and he never appeared to be anything besides empty to me, which made me dread the prospect of adulthood.

Some plans are better than others. Having no plan can hardly be construed as having a plan but, nonetheless, no plan is a plan. I didn't have anything when we finally hit the ground after what felt like a half hour or so of falling through the warm heavy air. So when Esther asked me, "Now what?" when our feet hit the black puddled streets in the pink glow of Kalgon City at night, I didn't know what to say.

"Now, we run," I offered in place of absolutely nothing.

I knew of only one thing—that our hope to get out of here lied in stowing away on an empty transport ship to get a ride back to Pseudo and tumble out of that ship through the same door in which we were previously swallowed, far-fetched as that might be. Then to avoid being swallowed again, somehow. To run as fast as we could when we fell out. But how would we find such a specific ship in such a large and busy city when we didn't speak the language or know where to begin to look? I don't know.

I thought of the time I had been left at the zoo by my parents. I was six or seven and didn't worry too much because it was something I had been through many times before beginning at age of three when they left me at the post office which was only a few blocks from home. I knew to stay calm and walk as though I knew where I was going. You lose it when you panic.

So I told Esther not to run and we walked, instead—which might have saved us. The streets were littered with people and creatures, dead or dying, who seemed to exist in a reactive sort of violent reality and who had nefarious eyes.

I carefully ripped the red tunic I had packed in two parts and gave Esther half and tied the other around my head. We covered our faces so that no one could see us—particularly our noses and ears, which would be a dead giveaway of who we were. I imagined there would be wanted posters all over the place of us, which made me think about the cow who got out of the County Fair when I was a kid.

That cow somehow wondered through the entire fair and made her way out of the gate and across the street to a park. Once in the park, she made her way up the backside of a large hill that overlooked the fairgrounds. And there she stood, looking out onto the fairgrounds and the town like she was a person, a sight-seer, until someone finally came and got her, dragging her back to reality. It was almost as though she looked up at that hill from the dairy barn and told herself she was going to go up there when she got the chance—just for one look. To see what life is like looking down rather than looking up—before they impregnated her and used her for all the milk they could get out of her and slit her throat to grind her into hamburger and dog food. It is a cruel world when the people above you haven't the capacity for mercy or compassion.

The city was pulsating. It was a giant bleeding tumor. Like a living organism rich with parasites oozing out of every puss-filled pore. Ominious music clashed against cheerful music. Shouting voices were drowned out by raucous laughter and vice versa. It was a vibrant and conflicting chasm between all those behemoth towers. Sinister and benign. Baleful and propitious. Penumbral and luminous. What flowed through it was violence and pain and benevolence was drowned. The streets were chaos and seemed as full with anarchy as they were starved of boredom. It felt like it was in a constant state of upheaval, that, at any moment, something terrible would happen or something exciting. It was Russian roulette, as they say. Nothing that might happen would surprise me. It wouldn't have surprised me if the street ripped open and everyone fell in or if the entire city simply burned.

But the pink glow that permeated everything seemed to control the pulse of the city and the emotions of all that existed within—regulating the anarchy and anger artificially and directly for a purpose to which I did not understand. But someone, somewhere, had his finger on the dial, I was sure.   

It was unlike anything I had ever seen in pictures or in actual life. Chicago did not even compare. It wasn't cold nor was it hot. It felt like there was no temperature at all. It was hard to breathe and the air smelled polluted with a sulphuric-like odor that I couldn't identify but which seemed to exude from the sewers. 

There were cars in the streets—not exactly like the cars of Pseudo, but somewhat similar. Like the food, they were slightly off. But I didn't know what cars looked like on Earth, so maybe they were those, considering that Earth outpaced Pseudo by 60 years or so, according to Gus. Maybe this is what Chicago looks like on Earth now. Maybe it was dying and I just didn't know any better. The only excitement I ever knew was the bowling alley or a movie at the drive-in theater. I missed that sort of peace. I missed the azure skies of Texas I'd gaze at in the long lulls between customers at Donut World.

Esther stuck close to me and she clutched the straps of her backpack to protect the Stradavarius like it were a baby she carried. I must admit that I felt a tinge of jealousy, which was silly. The streets buzzed with some sort of vibration, perhaps an energy source that powered the lights. I swiped two pair of sunglasses from a street vendor and we wore them to protect our eyes. Surely, Kalgon had some sort of retinal scanning to identify people, which I read about in one of my science-fiction magazines. They also had floating cars, and bicycles, and for some reason, there were bubbles everywhere.

The people of Kalgon, if I can call them that, were of all sorts of appearances. There were people that looked like disgusting lizards. There were attractive women who had red skin and yellow hair, but otherwise looked human with noses and ears just like ours. There were rat people with greasy fur who worked the kitchens of the restaurants and the food trucks with their tails coiled up like garden hoses behind them. There were others who looked like they were made of rocks, or diamonds, or coal—lumpy, fat, skinny—in every shape and form imaginable. I am certain that I was propositioned by a prostitute who had a beak and feathers, but I couldn't understand what she was quacked to me, so I ignored her and hurried on. 

"I think we can take off our disguises," I told Esther. "But it's probably best to leave the glasses on."

"We look suspicious wearing sunglasses at night," she noted.

"Yeah. You're right. We sort of do. But I think we also look suspicious scurrying around like rats the way we are. So, perhaps, less scurrying."

"We are tourists, Victor. Pilgrims in an unholy land."

She smiled then tapped me on the shoulder and pointed up at a large holographic bilboard. And there I was. On back of Duke, the palomino from Wildwood, who was standing on his back two legs with his mane blowing in the wind. I was holding the cowboy hat, looking like a natural cowboy. It was an advertisement for Rodeo Burger. There were words, but we couldn't read them. Their written language was a wiggly linear line that sort of resembled the reading of an electrocardiogram.

"Handsome," Esther razzed. "Ever think you'd be on a bilboard on another planet?"

"No. Ever think you'd be on another planet?" I replied.

She shook her head and smiled. We weren't safe, but we were naive and felt safe in our naivety. We felt much safer to be on the run than locked in that penthouse, trapped as we were. But how would we eat? We had no money. We couldn't speak the language. And, surely, the authorities would be looking for us. Or would they, I wondered. Would Rodeo Burger tell anyone that we had escaped—or would that be bad publicity?

There were hundreds, maybe thousands of holographic bilboards. And they appeared anywhere and everywhere at random. Sometimes they were just above our heads. Other times we walked right through them. We were swallowed up in advertising for everything you could imagine from puppy food to prosthetics. From electric shavers to soothing anal creams. The one commonality amongst the diverse inhabitants of Kalgon City, I quickly learned, was that they all had assholes and they all were hustlers. They all were seemingly on some kind of drugs and prone to parasites. And they were all idiots.

The stupidity of the population, despite me not being able to speak the language, was painfully obvious. What I observed in a short amount of time from that collective left me dumbfounded and disappointed. But they all served a general purpose and in that purpose they seemed content. Even the pick-pockets and thieves. Even the whores and the scalpers. Even the small rodents that darted in and out of feet that resembled deranged armadillos.

It was amazing to me the difference in view. How before—from the patio above—Kalgon City looked pristine and the buildings so sleek and elegant. But how from the street upon which we stood those same buildings were clealry built upon rot, decay, and shambles. They were simply the jagged teeth of an animal that was between meals.

I expected that the aliens would be some sort of advanced species, and better for it, but I soon learned that I was woefully mistaken. They were primal and debased. I thought they'd float and be made of gas or some unknown element. Or they would communicate telepathically and have powers of telekinesis. But in reality, they weren't much different than humans. They were just as disappointing, perhaps, more so because of my logical expectations that those with more intelligence would also be more virtuous.  But their society was clearly one of a stringent and efficient social hierarchy—the haves above—and the have nots below. 

There were no traces of churches. No museums. No libraries or parks. And civility and chivalry didn't seem to exist. And what filled that sentimental social vacuum was rabid decadence and a level of degeneracy and stupidity I knew not to exist. Gambling, exotic pet shops, drugs of sorts one couldn't even imagine, brutal barenuckle brawls, pleasure saloons, rape parlors, sex fiends in fetish lounges, and worst of all, plenty of kitschy souvenir shops full of absurd snowglobes, keychains, and t-shirts. My parents went to Kalgon City and all I got was this lousy shirt.

And last but not least, there were oodles of fast food restaurants, including dozens of Rodeo Burgers. The bronking horse and cowboy in neon burning through the pink powdery night. 

Most of the businesses were either bars or strip clubs and brothels. Wild animals, creatures, people, aliens, things were having sex or fighting anywhere the space afforded them. There were gun fights and seedy motels with neon sorts of lights with odd couples spilling out of them and vagrants and panhandlers and cops of some sort who could only be identified by their horse faces and red metal suits and sirens they wore on their heads that were always flashing. There were degenerates dragging babies around by their arms, those flying flags of some feeble, meaningless resistance denoting their sexual orientation, and burning things to protest something they were told by someone to passionately dislike. There were androgynous women and men, nasty creatures, wearing next to nothing. Walking whales, flabby skin, dirty faces, and bubbles popping everywhere. Most everyone was obese and filthy. They stunk with a level of stench I had never experienced. There was a series of sophisticated conveyor belts that transported people and things around, which ran above our heads.

We were likely to get shot if we touched anything we weren't supposed to touch or do anything we weren't supposed to do. They had lasers, but also guns like on Earth and Pseudo with actual metal or rubber bullets. We didn't know any of the customs, or how to speak to anyone, or where to begin, so we kept to ourselves and just kept walking as though we knew where we were going until we saw something that might help us get home.

Then a small squirrelly
man—a human who was missing his nose like the Sphinx was missing its nose—approached us. He was also missing both his ears and hair as a matter of fact.

"Come with me if you want to live," he offered.

It was against my better judgment to follow him, but we did. He spoke perfect English and wore a New York Yankees ballcap like my father. It appeared he suffered serious burns the way that his eyelids appeared melted. He was painful to look at with his deformities. Without a nose. With a black cavernous void in the middle of his melted face. With his burns and lack of ears and hair. He seemed to sense my sense of shock, or else he was gifted in telepathy.

"The mooks cut'er off," he said. "I had a remarkable nose—a perfect nose. Like Indiana Jones. But those terrible sonsofbitches, they cut 'er off. Damn near twelve years ago now. It's hell without a nose," he went on. "Let me tell ya. I'm Gregor Kafka."

"Victor Von Gogh."

"Esther Brahm"

Esther and I shook his hand which was calloused, greasy, and small like a rodents. It was misshapened, sort of like a doll's hand. They were scarred and burned and he didn't have fingernails. He said they took those, too. He guided us between buildings through a narrow crevice and back into a dark alley and then through several tunnels you wouldn't know to exist if you didn't know of them. I had never felt more like a rat in my life than I did in that moment. He said the armadillo-looking things we saw everywhere were armored rats. Highly-intelligent, organized, and potentially deadly.

"They carry the bubonic plague," he said, "but everyone here is immune. Those rats got tired of takin' shit. Some scientist who loves rats named Jeworm, or something like that, Jewworm, Jewwom, Jew-somethin' made 'em. Took a common rat and put armor on it, encoded it in their DNA, and now they all breed like that. And they're immune to most fuckin' poisons, so you gotta blast the lil fuckers to oblivion."

"Why would anyone do that?" Esther asked.

"You mean, blast 'em? Or make them into little panzer tanks?"

"Um. Either," Esther said.

"Well, this Jewworm fella was one of them mad scientists. Made a love gun, too. You shoot someone you love and they love ya back. Hell of a thing. He also made that Intergalactic Love Machine ship matchmakin' thingy—like the love boat of space or somethin.' You know, the loooooove boat!"

We looked at Gregor with clueless eyes and he gave up discouraged by our lack of pop-culture knowledge. He led us back to a small room that resembled a library and it was quite obvious by the decor on the walls and the mess that he resided there. There was a large mattress in a broken-down gutted black Cadillac—a rusted-out El Dorado with fins and not much else. He took his red leather jacket off and his white shirt was covered in grease stains. Nothing came easy, by the looks of him. He offered us a place to sit around a table made from the hood of that El Dorado.

We sat on two wobbly barstools and didn't accept the drinks he offered until they came in a bottle. It felt like we could wake up missing a kidney, or our eyeballs. There were glass jars all over on various shelves in the room that were all full of such curious things. Body parts. Pool balls. Eyes. Tongues. Frogs. Brains. Screws. Marbles. Gregor was a hoarder and there was a staircase to the tall ceiling made of crates and stacks of papers, books, microwaves, and user manuals to things he likely didn't possess. There were phone books from Earths, places like San Bernardino, California, and other forgotten books galore. No one in Kalgon reads, he told us. It is an illiterate planet.

"You mean y'all haven't heard of the Love Boat?" he went on. "Ain't ya from Earth?"

"No. We're from Pseudo," I replied.

"Oh. Well, that explains it then. Well, I'm from Earth. And Love Boat was a TV show from 1977 to—um—1986 on my planet where—well, never mind all that. A lot of love and stuff, if ya catch my drift. Y'all haven't got there yet, have ya?"

"No," I answered. His attention suddenly shifted to Esther, whose beauty seemed suddenly to consume him.

"Darling, ya sure are a pretty thing. You can fetch a fair price here in Wonderworld. Or you can be the queen of my humble kingdom. Live this life of luxury—and unabashed freedom."

"I think I'll pass," Esther replied rather ungraciously. I believe her tone hurt his feelings.

"We're wasting our time," I told her. "He can't help us. Let's just go."

"Now hold on a minute! Just hold on! I was only playin' with ya. I want to be a hero. All my life, I just wanted to be a hero of some sort so maybe I can help y'all. And honestly, I ain't got no dick, either. The mooks took that, too. They prolly put it in some jar. So I'm as harmless as a fly. But let me just clue ya'll in on where exactly you are.

"The whole place, Lower Kalgon City, or Wonderworld, as it's called, is run by the Mooks, in a quasi-mafia style hierarchy. The upper echelon, the Orbs, up their in them big bougie-ass buildings ain't got nothin' to do with anythin' or anyone down here. They just give us the scraps and float above us. Ain't no reason for then to come down here. Ain't no reason for us to go up there. Plain and simple."

"If you're human then why—"

"Have they not turned me into a rodeo burger? Well, I got rejected. Guess I ain't what they'd call Grade-A beef. They kicked me down here with the damn sodomites and vermin. So I've scraped by on what I can. You see in Wonderworld, there ain't no law—only law is the law of survival. There's only the mooks and everyone else. Big fish, small fish. You ever seen any of them ocean shows where the sharks got those little fish swimming around 'em? That's how it is here. I'm one of those little fish that swims around the sharks."

I looked at Esther, unsure about all of it. My intuitive trust in Gregor was fast waning. I was unsure of his ability to get us out of here. But we had no choice. It was the streetwise Gregor or it was no one at all. Barbie Swoon wasn't coming down here anytime soon, and we weren't going back up. We were lost amongst the muck and chaos. Dead for all they knew if they even knew we were missing—if it even mattered at all.

"Gregor, can you get us to a transport ship? One going back to Pseudo?" I asked bluntly.

"Of course, I can. But I don't recommend a transporter. That's too damn risky. I can get ya aboard the Intergalactic Love Machine and ya'll can go see the universe in style and faboozle—"

"We just want to get home," I interrupted. "We don't want to go on a space cruise."

"Well, okay then, Cap'n Killjoy. I can help ya out. There are pirate ships that go to Earth all the time. I don't know about Pseudo, though. That's a feeder planet and the only reason they go there is to get their meat. There's no other reason for them to go there."

"We can go to Earth," Esther interjected. "Please, Victor! I mean, as long as we are together, right?"

I never thought of it—to get off the feeder planet and to live in freedom. But now I was forced to consider it, standing there as they both looked at me. Perhaps, I could go to Kilgore, Texas on Earth. Maybe it would be alright. It couldn't be worse than here.

"Why don't you go?" I asked Gregor. "I mean, if you can get us back, then why wouldn't you go yourself? Why are you still here?"

"There ain't nothin' for me on Earth, Victor. I never fit in there. Ever since I was a boy, I didn't belong. I was a misfit, you might say. Parents were so poor they had to get rid of me. Got taken when I ran away from the orphanage. But here, I belong, because we're all misfits here—we're galaxy junk. I got everythin' a man could ever want right here in this room. It's a paradise for the likes of me. I couldn't want for anythin' more."

Gregor delivered that pellucid, heartfelt response with the solemnity of a monk. And with it, his genuineness was apparent, thus, he assuaged any doubts I had in him that arose due to peculiarities which he had aplenty. 

It can be learned that people without any obvious foibles, those who are stridently normal, are much more likely to be serial killers. Or their hidden peculiarities are of the macabre sort. The wise would do well to beware of the obdurate. I was at ease with Gregor from there forward, his colloquial candor convinced me, or I simply was unable to believe him capable of anything villainous.

My father read me John Milton's "Paradise Lost" when I was a child—a free verse poem in twelve books—over ten thousand lines. In it, Milton details Satan's fall, as well as Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden and the downfall of humanity. It wasn't an easy poem to understand. And I never understood it when he read it to me, and I am not sure I understood it much better when I read it again in high school, or even now. But every so often, a line from it occurs to me. 

Solitude is sometimes best society.

But still in my mind Milton's words often toil and I cannot help but to think that my father read it to me for a reason that I don't quite understand. That he wrote Escape from Rodeo Burger, from his personal journal, to give me direction. I was starting to believe that everything my father did was calculated and for a reason—including abandoning me several times away from home.

I had been lost, and now we existed in chaos. Gregor offered us some food—a feast of crackers, a few scraps of stale bread, and some vegemite—which he said the pirates brought him from Earth as though to talk them up to us because in his mind we might believe him to be trying to barter us to them for some more Earth junk which he had more than he knew what to do with. Perhaps, they would harvest and sell our organs, or grind our bones up for medicine on some distant planet. Maybe our bone marrow was some sort of aphrodisiac needed to save some planet from extinction.

He mentioned the pirates often when referring to various things he had in his humble abode, which almost all came from Earth. He set us a grand table on the hood of that busted-up Cadillac with candles and two warm Budweiser beers in bottles which he opened for us like champagne. I had a beer once with Bob, the donut baker—obviously before I knew he was an alien. Clean water was hard to come by, Gregor explained.

He apologized for not having meat—at the very least Spam—saying it was hard to come by, but I told him not to worry about it because I was a vegetarian, which he seemed not to understand. He said he ate anything and added that rodeo burger wasn't bad. There was nothing I could think to say to that so I kept quiet.

Then he turned on what he called a "karaoke machine" and "strobe lights," and he talked about how he was in love with someone named Punky Brewster on Earth. I thought it was an odd name for a woman, but so be it. And then he danced with himself and sung a slow song he said was called "Eyes Without a Face" by someone named Billy Idol, who he said he looked alike in some sort of way when he had a nose, ears, and hair. We were only to imagine.

Then, as the evening waned, as what I would assume was a heartfelt thank you for the hospitality, Esther played the song he sang for him, note for note on her Stradivarius. Gregor cried because he said it reminded him of his mother, who was the only person in the universe who ever loved him. But she died when he was six or seven and that was that, he resolved. Esther then consoled him for quite some time as I looked through his eclectic apartment which was like a bizarre Earth museum. It felt as though we were inside a crackerjack box.

Gregor said it was too dangerous to travel at night because all the worst mooks were out and we wouldn't make it 100 yards, so we shouldn't go anywhere. We were safe in his cluttered studio-like apartment, the domed ceilings of which were thirty feet or so high. There were granite pillars that held up the ceiling. Although, I worried that I shouldn't trust him, on the advice of my father whose credo was to never trust anyone, I did. We couldn't do it without him, I resolved, and I had faith in him and faith that God sent him to me until the idea became absurd and dissipated in my mind–the idea that God does anything for people being that so many suffer so terribly. There was something good about Gregor, despite his rugged appearance and quirks and whatever he ate. Helping us escape from Rodeo Burger seemed to be of great importance to him. I believed he wanted to be a hero, as he said, and this was his opportunity.

Gregor gave us a hammock that looked clean and unused, and we tied it to a hook on the wall which had no apparent other purpose, and across to a pole in front of a makeshift shelf of books that towered to the ceiling, which Gregor said he climbed frequently because he was an avid reader at the expense of the accomplishment of anything tangible. Esther and I burrowed into that hammock like two animals and she slept in my arms soundly. 

In the morning we ventured out. The city was dead and that pink light was more like a vapor that hung over the city. All that remained of what we saw the night before was trash, which was being eaten by large hairy elephant-like creatures with two trunks that had incredibly droopy eyes and looked sad as they strode through the muck and debris. Some little men rode on their backs and guided them as to which way to go. They ate pretty much anything that was on the ground, including what I assumed were dead bodies or lesser creatures, including Dr. Jeworm's armadillo rats, that had mostly been smashed in traffic.

Gregor was a small man, but he moved with absurd confidence and speed and we struggled to keep up with him. He told us to get into a small beat-up silver car that we found along the way and we did just before one of those cops with the red metal suits and siren helmets passed by. He told us to keep down and explained that the cops would arrest us, or kill us, because we weren't suppose to be out during the day because of the curfew—though it's not illegal because nothing is illegal.

"Only authorized personnel are allowed out during the day," he explained. "Food workers, sanitation people, repairman, those types. The rest they kill or arrest. Better to be killed. If they arrest you, there is no trial and they'll torture you for fun. Especially you, Esther. They'd prolly sex you to death or sell ya into sex slavery or send ya back to the breeders so all your kids can grow up to be rodeo burgers. So if it comes to it, I'll shoot you before I let'em get ya. Promise you that."

"Gee, thanks," she said.

"You betcha," he replied.

With that, Gregor flashed a silver handgun and grinned as though to inspire confidence. Before that grin, I hadn't realized he was missing some teeth, which he kept hidden under the curl of his scabby upper lip. I had to remind myself that death wasn't to him what it was to us. Death was everyday to Gregor. It was mundane. Routine. It was nothing to write home about. It was to him what eating breakfast was to us. Or having a cold. Or passing gas. Or taking out the trash. It was, as they say, just one of those things. One of those inevitable things that one must grin and bear. That one must tolerate and accept. And from which, one must ultimately move on.

It brought Gregor significant joy to realize that the car he had stolen had what he called a "tape deck" in it. And he reached into his breast pocket of his red-leather jacket and pulled out what he called a cassette tape. Then music played as I watched Gregor grip the wheel and speed through the city like a bat out of hell. He said the song was appropriately called "Home Sweet Home" and was by a band called Motley Crew, or something like that. It was loud and there were screaming guitars and a strong drumbeat.

He sang louder than the radio as Esther and I slouched in the backseat at his suggestion so that we couldn't be seen. But as the song played, sirens blared and police began to pursue us which Gregor announced by saying, "Oh, shit," in such a parlous and despairing way I knew meant that we were likely doomed and the situation hopeless. Yet, after verbalizing that bleak exclamation, Gregor went right back to singing the song and tossed another handgun into the backseat for me, which bounced on the cushion by my head.

"You're gonna need that," he said. "But don't you worry. They ain't real. They're just androids. Like Black Bart and Willa. So blow their fuckin' brains out if you gotta."

I didn't realize Gregor had seen that episode of my life played out in Wildwood. But I suppose he had like million of others via some sort of TV or projector. It made me wonder if Esther knew, if she had seen me frolicking around with Willa in the field where we made love, or in the saloon, or in the hotel. The others I could excuse to necessity, but Willa was something else.

Though it hardly mattered, in all this perilous chaos, how could I be thinking of something like that? Something as meaningless as sex. Sex is only meaningful when it is not meaningless. It made me wonder if in times of absolute upheaval and danger, is it normal to think of other trivial things. Is it the way the brain operates? I wondered if we made it home to Pseudo or Earth, if Esther would be interested in me—I mean, truly interested in me. When our nerves settled and there were options and no panic. When every day was not our last. If we made it back, I ought to say, because it was looking less likely by the second that we would. Was she only interested because we were in an utterly dire predicament, and the isolation and delicate nature of our unfortunate condition spawned in her a romantic inclination to supplant that which life might never otherwise afford her. Was it, in the words of Elvis—now or never?

"Is there anything I can do?" Esther cried with her hands over her head like a kid in a tornado drill as the engine droned and the tires periodically squealed.

"Pray to God,  Esther!" Gregor shouted. "Pray to the Good Lord in Heaven that He should see us through!"

I think she did pray as Gregor continued to sing along with the song. He ran over something, but didn't lose control of the car. The sirens caterwauled louder as they closed in. Then the car was walloped with a blast which I presumed to be some sort of sophisticated laser. The back passenger door flew off and flames licked the passenger side of the car.

"I'm losing them!" Gregor proclaimed triumphantly. "We're losing them! Fuckin' horse people! Goddamn Kentucky Derby runnin,' oat and hay-eatin' sonsofbitches! Ooooooh, I'm on my wayyyyyy! Just set me freeeee! Hoooome sweet hoooooome! Yeah! Yeah! Tonight! Tonight! I'm on my way! Just set me free..."

Esther was nervously tapping her fingers looking at me crouched down in the back floorboards. I looked at her with the dreadful feeling it might be the last time I did. This might be it. I wondered if a person knows when it shall come before it does. If there is a sick sense.

"We're almost there!" Gregor shouted madly.

I couldn't see anything outside of the car to know what he was talking about. The car was riddled with holes from the lasers which sounded like knives being jabbed into the metal and pulled back out again leaving gaps the pink light filtered through. Lasers shattered the back glass and the front windshield. The tires began to hum differently and thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump over some hollow-sounding surface. My curiosity got the best of me and I breached the safety of my crouched position and was able to see that we were driving on a sort of dock. And at the end of the dock there was a large black cargo ship. I lifted up and fired out the back window towards the police cars, striking one which swerved and crashed into another much to Gregor's satisfaction, though he kept singing "Home Sweet Home" as the guitar wailed until a soft piano outro finished it.

And while those invisible fingers played that invisible piano, we shot through the air off the end of the dock and were suspended by some sort of beam of light that came from the ship, which I assumed was our target. The last police car slammed on its breaks and stopped short of jumping the way we did, but we continued to take fire and glass shattered and was everywhere, even in our hair. The ship fired back and the police car was incinerated, but not before the final shot, which proved to be its most lethal. The ship brought us down softly on its deck, and the music played out.

After the car was parked by the beam, we spilled out onto the deck of that ship to a bunch of men standing around looking at us who all looked like the creature from the Black Lagoon. They spoke some sort of garbled language, which sounded like they were drowning. Esther was okay—as was her Stradivarius. But there on that cold black deck, Gregor Kafka took his last breaths where, presumably, many a fish took theirs. The water the ship floated on was a giant pink sea and gentle waves rippled across it like lace.

These strange fishmen were dressed in only navy-blue pants. Though they were hideously ugly with gills flapping on the side of their heads, they were all in remarkable shape, and every muscle of their torsos were impeccably defined. They were quick to tend to Gregor as he lied there on the deck and died—the source of his mortal wound obvious from the blood that haloed his resting head. His eyes were open as he looked up to the sky and smiled, oddly. He said something to two of the fishmen, who turned and looked at Esther and I, who stood there on the deck watching on, helplessly, nodding their heads.

"All is not lost; the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield," Gregor said last directly to me, grinning and holding on to one of those fishmen's hands who smiled at him.

It was a quote from Milton's "Paradise Lost." That which a defiant Satan said to his followers of fallen angels following their defeat and banishment from Heaven, urging them to continue their fight against God, even against the most overwhelming of odds.

"I gave a copy of 'Paradise Lost' to your father, Ulysses, when he escaped from Rodeo Burger," Gregor said weakly. "He was able to escape because he was willing to sacrifice everything to do so. And you must do the same."

Those were his last words—words of advice. We had escaped Kalgon City, but not yet the planet, at the dear expense of a friend—a man who had waited all his life to be a hero, and died as such there on that boat deck. What he meant by what he said last, quoting Satan and invoking my father, and mentioning that I would have to sacrifice everything, I did not know. He left me to wonder, as my father made no mention of Gregor in his journal, nor of any sacrifice he made to escape.