Justin Achilli

There’s a dude outside washing his Ford Mustang.

You can wash it all day, guy, but it’s still going to be a Mustang when you’re done.

“The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.

“Today, I call upon the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states for ratification an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife. “

– George W. Bush

Thanks, George. It’s good to know that in a country that takes its wedding vows so seriously that over half of the couples married today will divorce at some time in their lives, we won’t let those filthy homos disgrace our sacred institution. I mean, how can two loving, devoted, monogamous people who just happen to be of the same sex hope to hold candle to the vaunted and sincere expressions of love expressed by Britney on her 55-hour debauch-cum-annulment or Liza and David’s nuptial celebration of the highs and lows of vodka (in which it’s okay if a gay man marries… so long as it’s a woman, by God!).

I know I don’t normally copyright junk I put up here, but that’s not the case this time. This belongs to me, as I’m still working on it.

Jackie O. blasted across the alkali plains in the back seat of a chop-topped ’42 Merc, the wind whipping through her Bride-of-Frankenstein hairdo as her lean muscles twitched with the recoil of the submachine gun. I saw it happen. I was the driver.

***

History: You don’t know the half of it. John F. Kennedy didn’t die in 1963, but rather in 1956, just a few weeks after learning that he hadn’t clinched the Dems’ Vice-presidential nomination. When I say he “died,” that’s less a lie than it is misleading — an auto accident claimed his “life,” but the person with whom he had the accident saved what was left of JFK and put it in a saline tank. The body died. The brain (and eyes, and the top third or so of the spine) survived. I know this, too. I wear the rig with JFK’s brain in it.

You see, John Kennedy had the bad luck to run into Rance Dancescu, a mad scientist in the truest of the Old World idioms who was, at that time, on the lam from the stubborn post-Bolshevik secret police who searched for him in his homeland. To be fair, I don’t think Dancescu had malice on his mind, either when he hit Kennedy’s car or when he peeled the remains off the inside of the black sedan. In fact, I think Dancescu thought, “Oh, shit!” when he realized what he’d done and took the remains in hopes of reanimating them and slipping the resurrected Kennedy back into Kennebunkport.

The thing was, Rance probably would have succeeded, were it not for more vestiges of the Old World turning up to haunt him. Dancescu hadn’t made many friends back home. As you might expect, mad scientists have their own rivals, and Dancescu’s came in the form of a sorcerer: Gerwazy Kinserdal, a German-Polish dealer with the dead. Through the aid of a floating, arcane eye that Kinserdal used to constantly monitor the movements of his nefarious rival, the sorcerer knew the moment the accident occurred. Using a chemical rocket, he shot a robotic ape into the Kennedy compound, which promptly abducted Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy from her comfortable home, dragging her to his wretched lair.

Dancescu failed to revive Kennedy completely. He succeeded in creating an automaton that did manage to fool the American public (and, by extension, the world), but eventually the ruse wore thin and certain people — certain bad people — caught on. By that point, the Kennedy-robot was drinking a gallon of Texas crude every day. For a time the real Kennedy, or the key parts of his nervous system, at least, floated in Dancescu’s saline tank built in the bowels of a craggy castle in Maine.

Yes, Maine. It’s a well-hidden castle.

Rance needed a way to move Kennedy from laboratory to laboratory, so he devised the rig that would serve as JFK’s vehicle and prison to this very day. Simultaneously, Gerwazy Kinserdal planned to either expose his rival as the killer of The Man Who Would Be King or capture the vital remains and use them toward his own ends. That’s why he shanghaied Jackie O.: He planned to use her to leverage Dancescu.
That’s where I come in. My name’s Mike Runnells, and I was a heater and air-conditioner repairman back in’56. As it so happens, it’s hard to cool a castle, and Rance Dancescu called me to drop in and see what
was wrong with his cooling unit (a Servel All-Year that came off the line in 1941).

I drove my truck up the long, narrow, curving driveway and parked. A bolt of lightning tore across the sky. I rolled my eyes.

Rance Dancescu answered the door after I knocked, miffed that I was there until he remembered that he was the one who called me in the first place. He waved me in, pointed vaguely in the direction of the cooling unit, and, I guess, made his way back toward his laboratory. I kicked the Servel a few times, had a cup of coffee and went to give the guy his bill. That’s when I saw the brain.

Actually, I saw the eyes — they peered at me from their saline suspension as I stepped into the lab and called out for Dancescu. Plaintively, they peered, in fact. So plaintively that I took their peering to mean, “Hey, grease-monkey, I’m most of the central nervous system of a man who was supposed to one day be president of this great country, so do me a favor and get me out of this crackpot’s dungeon.”

What choice did I have? As Dancescu bent over his desk to write his check, I bashed him on the dome with a crescent wrench. JFK’s brain then suggested that I cobble together a makeshift sling for his saline tank out of the seat belts in my service truck. It was a good idea. I’d have come to it eventually, but the brain was in a greater state of agitation than I was, and necessity is the mother of invention.
We made our escape post haste, his brain slung over my shoulder.

“Thanks,” JFK’s brain said to me.

“How are you talking?” I replied.

“Don’t question my powers.”

“I’m going to get in trouble, aren’t I?” I wondered.

“Why ask me? I’m telepathic, not prescient.”

“Fine. What next?”

“I have to rescue my wife.”

Listen!

Also, I have a sore throat.

The proper answer was “Go out to the discos and dance the Batusi to Britney’s ‘Toxic.’” Also, two-fisting Budweiser is key.

What I need is some sort of break from the overwhelming sameness of days. It’s Saturday but that doesn’t even mean anything. I went out Thursday night and got all assy, wielding a butterknife in the bathroom of a diner against some filthy emo kid with giant rocks of dandruff. That was different, but I was sluggish all day at work on Friday. My malaise is boundless; my ennui infinite. I’m so bored, I’m of half a mind to start and AOL webpage with a spinning skull animated GIF and a bunch of bad poetry.

The only thing worse than being virulently bored is letting everyone else know how bored I am. I think I’ll go get an oil change.

Help me out here. What’s the change of pace that’ll do me best?

This was in my batch of morning crap mail today.

The monkey nods his head and moves his mouth back and forth, meaning they were talking. Hello. You are talking to a machine. I am capable of receiving messages. My owners do not need siding, windows, or a hot tub, and their carpets are clean. They give to charity through the office and don’t need their picture taken. If you’re still with me, leave your name and number and they will get back to you.

Of course, it was paired with

ribbebeen bothrops nudipes edward entero

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so it wasn’t all as amusing, but the effort was there. Somewhere.

I had too much to drink this weekend.

Now that I’m no longer a spring chicken, I’ve been trying to cut back on the booze consumption. It’s a good program and I usually feel pretty good. The downside is that occasional lapses tend to really stick out and leave me feeling really guilty afterward.

This weekend was the Camarilla’s recruitment award game. Those members of the club who recruited the most members all had their names put in a raffle and we picked 13 to come play in a story specifically designed for them that served to kick of the group’s Year of Fire, the initiation of the Time of Judgment for the live-action venue. I played Jan Pieterzoon. Mike Tinney played Beckett. Chad, Fred and Phil played ghouls, but Phil was treacherous and got all murdered.

After the game concluded we had some wine and sort of relaxed. By “relaxed,” of course, I mean “boozed like college kids.” It was dumb fun but it ran amok. Beer. Whiskey. Malt liquor. Wine. Banana schnapps (mixed in with leftover pasta salad). A recipe for disaster, indeed.

I climbed inside the laundry cart, which various pushers attempted to get airborne, sailing it off the stairs at the end of the deck. As a result I have glass in my hand and scabs on my elbows and knees. My clothes ended up muddy as all hell because there was a huge mud-bar at the bottom of the stairs.

An impromptu, free-form D&D game broke out, run by drunk Mike. I was some kind of monk-cleric. Another dude was an assassin, but I thought he was a dwarf. Some other guy was dead. A fourth guy got unruly and his character died because he ate either “bad poop” or “mad poop,” I can’t remember which because I don’t think I heard it well enough.

I convinced myself that the two circular wall adornments made out of animal fur were actually Stevie Nicks‘ flayed skin, so I climbed up on a desk and tried to pull them down with a pair of fireplace tongs. Someone wouldn’t let me do that, so I climbed down and hit stuff with a fireplace poker — and the poker broke.

I finally wound down after knocking the couch over in an ill attempt at hurdling it. I also saw about 12 minutes of Tron and 11 seconds of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Man, I hate The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Man, is it cold in here. Thermostat says 64. Heat pump’s busted and was frozen solid in a block of ice until five this evening. Fireplace is busted, too — pilot light’s gone out and the gas line’s all screwed up. I spent all day shivering. I ate oatmeal twice. Twice, that’s how cold it was. Granted, I know 64 isn’t very cold, but I’m inside. It should be, like, 72. That’s an eight-degree difference, Professor Science. And you don’t have to be a professor to know that eight is pretty cold as far as temperature is concerned.

Serpentime (1.2M) — Wrist to forehead. Can you tell I’m and old Cure, Lush and Cocteau Twins fan?

Limousine Party (6.1M) — Then again, it can’t all be cloves, black turtlenecks and crying in the rain. Well, it can, but that’s no fun. This song’s about riding in a limo from one adventurous escapade to another. There aren’t any lyrics in it because I can’t sing for shit, but I’ll get them put down at some point. Maybe I’ll just distort the hell out of them Miss Kittin-style. If I wanted to be completely derivative, that is.