The Bad Magician & the Tomb of the Multi-limbed Soldier

The Bad Magician* wakes up in the car, in the backseat, next to the empty vials and worm husks and dirty children. Star-kissed satellites attack the lunar roof: who is driving? Behind this carriage, the siren is a pack of hyenas insisting on death; the lights spin ellipses in the driver's eyes. Pull over and over, red rover, red rover. The tires spit dirt and rubber epistles in shards of bone at the side of a penultimate highway. Carefully, the crickets empty their purses and vanish. This road is very soon no more.

The stuffed militant Priest drops his kickstand and digs his boot into petri dust. With a new doctrine in his teeth he approaches my wino driver: two pairs of hands on the wheel become one, four legs on the pedals wiggle out of the alignment. Behind the wheel, the President giggles and squints. A passenger in theory only, the Vice President retracts his legs and arms, a symphony of limbs for such a fractured gasping moment. The Priest prepares his electrifier, but is grabbed by two deadly serious claws: Dick Cheney turns the taser love on his own cavity and writhes like a tongue riding a seizure wave. "It's alive! It's alive!" cries Dick, leaving a puddle of love on his seat. The President laughs, his foaming mouth a series of Roman columns that sway and buckle: dissent is unheard of.

The Priest smiles. God hath bade the bastard boys take the keys and drive into hell. Drive, He said. They drove.

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By the time that marks us all, the Priest was said to be carved into a pumpkin lantern and left to guard the abyss. The Vice President manifested his Hindu limbs and once again grabbed the wheel, sticking his ass out the window to moon a car of suspected cannibals. His legs were crooked and too many, and the highway began to lurch and buck. George glanced out of his eyeballs, then squeezed his crispy fingers into a cup of latent summer ice. "You drive, Dick," said George. "I'm in Finland."

The Bad Magician never dies inside this car. No one spills their coffee on his mask, or pretends to insurrect his visage. The Witness waits.

George tries to climb into the back seat but Dick hot-glues him to the steering column. "You're the President! You have to stay while I am the President who has to not stay," bellows Dick, his arms a series of rings around an undiscovered planet. "Attack! Attack!"

"We need the Multi-limbed soldiers! IED! Blow this off and that off!" Who said it? Hint: they both did.

"Truck-truck-truck-truculent!" the VP spits his four-poster anthems, four legs shoved into the dash, his knees like rocks in a river of thread. "I have the wicks, I have the tricks, it's time to screw and then get sick!" The Bad Magician has of late transcended the upholstery and is fast approaching carpet. "The sky's the bitterest!" cries Cheney. Drive, drive, drive. Where are the multi-limbed soldiers, who can take a severing and keep on endeavoring?

Up ahead the Dead Priest pretends he is remaining in a regarded pose, and draws a circle in the air. "No, no!" cries Dick. "I determine the Demise of Geometry around here! Fuck him!" Cheney extrapolates his reach to jerk the wheel, to mash the gas pedal, and the great Time Bomb skids along like hoppity-hop-hop bunnies of cement and anger. President Bush begins his talent of vanishing into the dashboard, his head protruding backwards as his torso devolves into glass and vapors, the pistons wrenching blood cells into fire.

"You stay here!" cries the Great Terror Wrist. The Bad Magician absolves the vinyl and maintains a buffalo for its hide and robust odor. Cheney shoots out his door and staggers with a small group of errant crabs. "What is that?" cries Cheney, the Old West pouring out of his shoes, his shirt, his hair. "Bellows! I am the God of Jets!" assures the manic man. Bombs explode on his forehead, shrapnel tears off two, three, four limbs: he adjusts his attitude and makes blood his partner. Turning, the lights on him as for surgery, he lumbers back and invades the rig.

He climbs inside through every window, his ass swinging wide as it opens up and accepts his beggar friend, the once and future bling. George tries to come up with a nickname for such an occasion but vanishes in the vast clenches of the unfortunate and steamy hollow: Dick has swallowed their Trust. The Hummer-Nuke Express, with ten thousand limbs protruding, snapping towels and breaking handles, stops inside a glowing bubble and exhales. Where are the fucking multi-limbed soldiers? Can't you see they will solve everything? The dirty children leap from the Hummer-Nuke Express. They wave and they laugh as they run like glowing embers, borne across the highway in the warming desert wind. They are always running away, running away. Their laughter is like hope.

The Cemetery despises toll roads. The great tomb of the multi-limbed soldier was crawling towards the moon. Let them in free of charge! Free of charge! Let them in free of charge!

"Holy shit" echoes forth from Cheney's rotten chamber. "Holy shit," echoes the Priest, who bleeds out a ticket that is placed on Holy Rood. "You are ordered to appear" said the Priest, who then vanished. A sense of humor is vital, don't you think? However, with so many limbs punching holes in the floor, the bottom of the world gave way, and the Vice President fell out of his own story. After paying too close attention, the colder things shuddered.

The Bad Magician must leave this road. He makes a leap to metal, to glass, to the night. He climbs the roof, feels the breeze that is unseen and perfect, and arranges a quid pro quo that precipitates breathing and perfusion. The Bad Magician thusly corrects his stance, arrives as a constant, and manages an artful walk into a cafe at the side of this one-size-fits-all wobbler of a dream.

A seat, a menu, a waitress. "Coffee, please," said the Bad Magician, adding, "...and a piece of whatever kind of pie that meets your standards." The waitress smirked, and returned with a stunning piece of miracle pie, as her seven other limbs balanced the plates and bowls and saucers of her trade. It's nice work if you can get it.

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*The Bad Magician first crept out of the crepuscular shadows and made strange noises over at Corrente. You can waste your time reading more tales from The Bad Magician here and here.

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