As For Lynch

I received a call from dispatch: Joey Goodfray was down on the boardwalk causing some kind of commotion, but when I arrived at the harbor trail he was sitting on a bench, smoking, looking like crap, like he’d a had a few too many brewskis. I told him to put out the cigarette which he did by flicking it off the boardwalk and into the ocean, which ticked me off, but I let it go. Joey and I graduated from the same high school, a few years apart, but our paths had diverged. Cops and robbers from the same hood. He had a good heart, but he did stupid things, hung out with a bad crowd, even got arrested in Nevada for some kind of petty theft, drugs, then came back home with the tail between his legs, and now he’s just a nuisance around town.

“Joey, you gotta shape up, buddy!”, I said, standing over him, “I’m hearing all kinds of stories, about how you caused a fight at Myrtle’s”, I’m checking his breath, his eyes, “I heard you were throwing beer glasses and pool balls around, trashing the place as some kind of prank. Roland was furious, came down to our offices, wanted you arrested! We talked him out of it, but it was a close thing”.

“It wasn’t a prank, Officer Lynch!”, said Joey, agitated, “It was a miracle. A fuckin miracle I tell you”, he was slurring his words. “I’m sitting at the bar, when Old Terry tells me that he can bend spoons just by thinking about them. I’m shit-faced, and he tells me to try… to fix my mind on stuff… and– poof!”, he flared his open hands as if mimicking a fireworks explosion, “things are elevating, zipping around like flies, smashing into the walls, smashing through the window, nearly crowned Jessie and Norm”, he squinted at the ocean, at a seagull that was swooping back and forth in the breeze, “like I’m Jesus, or a Genie, or…”

“Joey, you’re talking like a loon. It weren’t a miracle, it was foolishness.”

“I swear it was a miracle. Mind over matter”, he was getting upset, “Terry looks like he’s seen a ghost, ups and ran out of that place as fast as his old legs would carry him”. He looks me in the eye with an intensity that makes me double-take, “It’s real I tell you”, he squinted again, and in that instant, I felt something shift, like there was a fault line in the universe, like reality split in two.

“Do you want me to give you a lift home, in the cruiser? So, you can sleep this off?”, I reached down to grab his arm, help him to his feet, but he recoiled.

“I’ll prove it”, he shouted. Joey leapt to his feet, scrunched up his red and raw face real hard, and stared intently at something in the distance, and when I looked around – poof! – the seagull suddenly stopped in mid-air, hung for an instant in suspended animation, then exploded, blood, guts and feathers flying in every direction, a red mist descended into the sea.

My jaw unhinged, my legs were unsteady, I was a bit freaked. I didn’t mean to shout, but I was shocked, “Joey, stop this now!”, I held a finger aloft and waved it at him and he looked cowed, he looked angry, he looked squinty-eyed, “Now, I tell you – “

I was still waving my finger, but everything else had changed. Joey was gone! The boardwalk by the harbor was gone! The harbor itself, the ocean, everything, all gone! Instead, I was standing in a large cave with orange and red light flickering against monstrous rock formations that seemed to stretch in every direction. Besides me a black oozing river, which divided up ahead, and the other side of the river stood a bearded man dressed in a flowing silver robe, a staff in one hand, and the other firmly gripping a metal chain that clanked. I reached for the gun in my holster. The chain moved, metal dragged on rock, and a great gray beast, a three-headed dog rose from the shadows. Hades! Cerberus! Joey had sent me to the underworld! 

Hand on gun, I'm scared, there's a trembling in my voice, “I am Officer Lynch, Seth Lynch, City of Wreckland Police. I do not belong here. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I am not supposed to be here". Did squinty-eyed Joey do this? I grasp that straw. "I am here against my will, I have been transported here by a degenerate, by a crazy, by some kind of transcendent force", I'm spewing gibberish, "Help me!".

Hades appeared unmoved on the other side of the river, the river Styx I supposed. He thumped the dull end of the staff, a bronze bident, against the rock. “You are not dead, so why have you come to this place?”,

I do go about things without fear. I am strong and healthy. I can muscle down men twice my size. I am unafraid of the evil mothers on the waterfront, the fentanyl dealers, the wife-beaters and drunks, but I trembled at the sound of this stern voice, echoing in the cavernous hollows. I fell to the ground, tearing my uniform pants and trousers on the rough and sharp ledge, I tumbled painfully down a slope toward a fiery river, a tributary, contact with which caused my clothing to alight with flame, my gun discharged. I rolled in dirt to extinguish the fire, scrambled back to my feet, back up the slope, back to the bank of the other river, Styx, opposite Hades, opposite Cerberus. A shady-looking fellow that I took to be the ferryman seemed to be waiting for me.

“It is an injustice! A man called Joey, lives in the Gomshott, in Wreckland, patron of Myrtle’s public house and a dishwasher at the Long Dragon. It’s his fault”, I was beginning to blather, “He friggin messed with nature, somehow magicked stuff into the air, made a seagull explode, teleported me to this place”. Hades face was blank, my explanation fell short, “I encountered him - Joey - on the harbor, on the boardwalk, drunk and disorderly, then he started on his trickery and poof… here I am!”

“Poof?” asked Hades, grimly.

“Poof!”, I replied.

It was resolved that I would stay on the earthly side of the river Styx, while the melancholy-countenance considered my fate. Apparently undead others - Heracles, Theseus, Sisyphus, Orpheus included - had arrived in a similar undead state, uninvited and unready – so precedence existed. My fate was to be decided in the morning, in a manner that fit an uninterrupted elegiac. I was given food, a resting place, and though I was severely agitated by this dramatic turn of events, I eventually fell asleep to the sound of weeping paupers and the wailing friendless dead, but stranded on this side of the Styx, unable and unwilling to pay the ferryman. I dreamt of seagulls exploding in the sky on July 4^th, of swimming in lava, of lying in a gutter.

“Are you hungry?”, said someone and I awoke from a nap, from a slumber, from a deep sleep, I don’t know which, but it was from an oblivion that I awoke, and in daylight. Shocked, disorientated to an extreme, I leapt to my feet, and encountered a young man in a white Jesus Saves T-shirt, red-haired earnest-looking, carrying a clip board. Next to him is a young woman, the same T-shirt, also very curious and solicitous, carrying a bag from which she removed a shrink-wrapped sandwich and a bottle of water, handed it to me, “What happened friend?”, she asked. Jesus Freaks.

I look around. One moment I’m in Hades, or dreaming I am, and the next I’m standing in the gutter and next to the vent of a big concrete building on a busy street, it’s sunny but cool, cars moving on three lanes in either direction, foot bridges, a monorail overhead, and huge flashing digital displays. “The Osmonds, Live at the Sands”. I’m in Vegas!  

My clothes are ragged and torn, my pants and shoes singed and charred. My belt, my gun, they’re gone, my badge is scratched and mangled, my pockets are empty, my radio and phone are gone. I see my reflection in a shop window, and I am barely recognizable. I look like a down-and-out no-hoper, like a derelict … like Joey Goodfray! Goodfray again1

This is Vegas?”, I ask, incredulous.

The Jesus Freaks laughed! “You are in Vegas, friend.”

I was parched, hungry, and I tore at the sandwich wrapper and consumed its contents, grabbed at and gulped down the water. I felt desperate.  “I’m a cop, Officer Seth Lynch. You’ve gotta help me! I’m not supposed to be here”.

More laughter, “Nobody’s supposed to be here”, said the earnest young man, pointing to my left and right. I’m in some kind of dead-beat zone, druggies and drunks, homeless and sick, camped out in this quiet alley, just off the Las Vegas strip. “We are all lost sheep” he added, unhelpfully. “Do you have family? Someone we can call for you?”

My sister and brother-in-law were useless. Friends from college were scattered, unable to really help.  Sophie, a recent girlfriend… an intern at the local Hospital… maybe her? But we’d recently broken up. “Yeah, phone this number, I wrote a number on the clip board that the freak was carrying, he’ll help. It’s the City of Wreckland Police Chief!”. More laughter, and I wonder if it's because they don't believe me, or because they do. 

“We’ll look into it, but for now, we need to make sure you are safe”, patronizing, “do you need somewhere to stay?”, said the young freak-woman.

This I don't need. I push them aside and start walking toward a crowded area of the strip. There has to a police officer to whom I can appeal, someone that can get me back to Wreckland as quickly as possible, someone who can help me figure out what is going on? I look at my reflection in the window of a drug store, I look like I’ve been through hell… or Hades… My mind is reeling. Could it have been real? Did Goodfray make this happen? Did he magic me to Hell, and now to Vegas, like I’m some kind of plaything in an insane game of his invention?

All sense of certainty, apprehension of probabilities and everyday causality… is lost. but of one thing I am sure, Joey, that failure of a man, is somehow the cause of my predicament and distress. No mere conjurer, the man stumbled into some kind of dark art, and has become mystically empowered. He dispatched me to hell, and in a fit of remorse – who knows – he transports me to another hell, this Las Vegas, two thousand miles from my home. 

First, I walk, then I start running down the strip, in search of a cop, or a phone booth, when, poof!

My clothing is restored, my blue shirt, my badge, my belt, holster and gun. I look exactly as I did the moment I encountered Joey, as I did at the exact point in time when, finger poised, I was about to …

I stop running and I am scared. Fearful, of a sudden. If, just by the power of thought, Joey can transport me from this world to the underworld, from Wreckland to Las Vegas, there is no limit to what he can do to me, including tearing my limbs from my body, turning me inside out.  He might make things really bad for me, just with a squint, but, then again, he might not. Joey may be mad, he may be powerful, but he has a conscience, he might even be regretful at how he treated me – sending me to hell in a fit of petulance. Perhaps Vegas is an act of remorse? He could just as easily magic me back home, so what’s the angle? I need to get back home, find the sun-of-a-bitch before it’s too late.

Poof!

I’m in a dully lit, utilitarian room somewhere, there’s a bed, a shower and toilet, a small desk and chair. One of those wall-to-wall brown carpets that hide the dirt. It feels like a flop house or a budget room in a motel. When I look out the grimy window, I can see the Vegas Strip in the distance. This must have been where Joey stayed when he was in Vegas. He seems to be working his magic using material from experience. There’s a phone on the bedside table, I punch in a number, the police chief in Wreckland, but all I get is a beeping noise.

Poof!

There’s a big pile of money on the table, there’s six packs of beer, smokes, some cannabis vapes and a couple of white paper takeout boxes; Chinese food, chop suey, and General Tso’s chicken, from Long Dragon. I count the money, neat bundles of hundred-dollar bills, $10,000 a bundle, there’s six bundles. Why only send six bundles? Why send any bundles at all. I’m beginning to think…

Poof

I’m in the dully lit, utilitarian room again, only there are subtle changes, the wallcovering is gold, no longer yellow, the carpet has a pattern, the bed, shower and toilet have all been upgraded in a tacky sort of way, like Vegas meets Trump, tasteless but expensive. Like Joey decided to give me an upgrade. I look in the mirror, I’m dressed in some kind of powder-blue leisure suit, I’m wearing platform shoes, my hair is permed and wavy, I feel like a fucking pimp! No, this cannot be happening! There are hundreds of piles of $100 bills on the table, on the floor, on the bed, in the bathroom, stacked up against the walls, must be millions. There’s bottles of whisky, beer, and gin. Smokes, cartons of smokes. When I look out the window, there’s a Mustang, a green Mustang, just like the one that Roland drives, only it’s got spoilers, go-faster stripes, and it looks barely street legal.

Poof!

There’s a girl, she’s wearing tassels on her nipples, a thong bikini, fishnet tights, standing in stilettos and wearing a big feathery green and gold plumed headdress, she stands nearly seven foot high, the plume is pressing up against the popcorn-spackled ceiling. She introduces herself as Dinah, she’s from Texas, and she’s ready to party. When she sees the money, she drops to her knees and buries here hands into it, smells it, looks at me, “Hey Mister, are you some kind of dealer? Some kind of…”

Poof!

It's night, I fly out the window of the hotel room at an astonishing speed, and as I fly through the air in a constellation of broken glass, I see Vegas rip from its foundations, the buildings snap, cars spin into the air, the nearby purple mountains shake, crack and dissemble into a hail of boulders. Suddenly we are hurtling toward the ocean and toward a giant wall of water that is a thousand feet high, I see trees flying through the air and aircraft spiraling into the sky, disintegrating on impact with aerial rubble caught in the terrible maelstrom. Utter destruction, as if the earth had been stopped on its axis and I am flying at a thousand miles per hour like a piece of trash caught in an ocean hurricane, through the sky to my certain fate, I will be engulfed by the giant wave and I will…

Poof!

My finger extended in front of my face, pointing at Joey upon that path, down on the boardwalk, down by the ocean, back home. The Underworld was an aberration of the mind, exile in Vegas a horrible dream, the end of the world was a mere premonition, but in my powder blue pocket there is a pimp-roll of $100 bills, and next to me, towering over me and Joey, is Dinah, the showgirl. She has ginger hair, and she is wearing bright red lipstick. I worry that her heels might catch in the seams between the transverse decking of the boardwalk.

I turn to Joey, and he looks woeful. "What I have done is contrary to the course of nature”, he exclaims. He doesn’t look at all good. I notice that his hands are shaking, that the end of his nose is red and lumpy, rosacea. “I am so sorry for what I did to you!", he seems on the verge of tears, "I am cursed”, he says, “I made the world stop and I destroyed everything with my stupidity. You cannot imagine what devastation I caused, what horrors I witnessed!”.

I flip through the dollar bills. “Come Joey, I will treat you to a pint at Myrtles. If Roland is there, we can give him some of this money?” Dinah seems unsure what to do, so I take her hand, “and then we can have a slap-up meal at Long Dragon”. 

With my other hand I grab Joey by the arm, and we start walking along the boardwalk, toward town, Joey, Dinah and me. I need to keep Joey distracted until I can figure a way out of this mess.