Inside the Mind of Jurgen Slinde

Inside the Mind of Jurgen Slinde

By Donald W. Catchings, Jr.

I’m an old soul. I drink my coffee black, though I’m only eleven and a half. Up at six every morning, I sit at the breakfast table and read a newspaper. My mother thinks I’m peculiar. My dad calls me Pops—says I remind him of his grandfather. Anyway, I brought you here to tell you about something more entertaining than my daily life. You are here so I can tell you about the craziest thing that ever happened to me, the reason why I read the newspaper every day, the reason I drink black coffee, the reason I am an old soul.

My eleventh birthday was an unusual Saturday morning. I woke up at six and couldn’t get back to sleep. A strange yearning came over me to drink black coffee and read the newspaper. Don’t ask why because I don’t know; I just followed my impulse.

After figuring out how to use the Keurig (not an easy task) and filling my dad’s mug with his usual dark roast, I realized I didn’t know what else to do. So I decided I would just drink it like that. I sat with my steaming cup and opened yesterday’s paper. A full-page spread advertisement for a theme park caught my eye. JURGEN SLINDE’S COASTER RIDES, the headline read. The picture in the center was a clown’s face: its hair, that typical three-point, triangular fluff sticking out past each ear and the top of its head; its tongue stretched out past its chin and took the shape of a staircase that led right up to its ball nose; the central feature was the freakiest googly eyes which seemed to be swirling. I’d never heard of the place. As a rollercoaster aficionado, I couldn’t help but be drawn in. For the location, it simply read, “Inside the mind of….” I didn’t understand.

I put the steaming cup to my lips and burned them with the hot liquid. I jerked the cup away, causing me to spill on the paper in the right eye of the clown. As the wetness soaked into the swirling eye, words began to appear—I remember them perfectly.

Inside the mind of Jurgen Slinde

there are twists and turns galore.

Ups and downs,

dragons and clowns,

it never is a bore.

So come and see what you will find

in Jurgen Slinde’s slippery mind.

Now is the time.

Only $9.99!!!

As I read the words, clown laughter echoed down the hallway and bounced around the breakfast room. “Hello! Who’s there?” I called—only laughter in reply. I went to stand from my chair when I felt large hands grab my shoulders. I looked down and saw white-gloved fingers. “Mom! Dad!” I screamed. The hands gripping my shoulders pulled me at an angle that made the chair sit on one leg, then spun me into a tornado spin. I closed my eyes. “Wake up. Wake up,” I cried, hoping to wake from the nightmare. The laughter only got louder and felt as if it were digging into my brain.

Suddenly, I stopped spinning and felt something like slithering ropes strap my body to the seat. I opened my eyes to see that I was hundreds of feet above some kind of carnival, flashing and flickering lights of neon everywhere. At the far end of the park was a Ferris wheel spinning at mach speed, the hair-raising sobs of children melting into a single voice as they poured from it. In front of this were large, zombie looking creatures bringing mjolnir mallets down on the heads of the Ferris wheel children’s parents as they ducked and dodged, scurrying desperately about in an inescapable hedge maze—some psychotic form of that game where you have to bring down a rubber hammer on groundhog heads at the randomly pop up from their burrows. Across from this hellish scene was a carousel where the theme was not circus animals or fairy creatures. Frankenstein himself must have had a hand in the grotesquely sown together pieces of cats and dogs being ridden by children so somber they made the children of the corn look like wild banshees. Beyond these, in the center of the park, was the clown head from the advertisement. Happy families, smiling and carrying on, were being corralled from every end of the park by circus clowns of varying size, shape, and design and droved up the tongue steps where a grandmaster animatedly sang in the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel:

“Come one, come all, the tall and the small, Jurgen Slinde is deadly.

Enter in his rolling mind, IF you think you’re ready.

Come in! Come in! Enjoy the spin of Jurgen Slinde’s medley.

He’ll break your back, tear off your skin, AND take your heady.

Come all, come in, the fat and the thin, dive in ‘cuz Jurgen’s ready.

He’ll eat your brains and wear your skin, THEN dance a dandy.”

With the last stomach-turning verse, the grandmaster slowed to half pace, making for a grand crescendo before…

“Last call to all you batty ones who dare enter Jurgen’s mind.

Forever your soul will be his…………”

As the grandmaster held out this note, I felt a jerk at my seat. For the first time, I looked down and saw that I was tied into a chair that was dangling over a massive burning chasm whose flames roared like dragon’s breath and were stoked by the lifting and resetting of a giant top hat over the hole. The hand holding the top hat was one of the same white-gloved hands that sent me here. Smoke rose up to my feet, as did the wail of tortured souls. Grandmaster still holding his note. I knew what this ride was. I knew what was about to happen. I knew there would be an unexpected release, then weightlessness and plunging down, down, down. All I was waiting for was…

“POP!”

“OH, GOD! HELP! HELP! MOMMY! DADDY! HELP………….” I screamed all the way down into the depths of Jurgen Slinde’s burning mind. Faster than the speed of light, I shot into the abyss. My clothes tore at my skin. My skin tore at my flesh. My flesh tore at my bones. I thought it would never end when, all of a sudden—BAM!

***

“How long has he been in this catatonic state?” the doctor asked the parents of the young boy lying on the bed.

“Six months, now. His eleventh birthday,” answered the mother.

“We came downstairs and he was lying on the ground in a puddle of black coffee,” said the father. “We just don’t know what happened.

“Well, I specialize in cases like this. I think I can help,” said the doctor, examining the boy closely and humming an old-fashioned tune.

The parents shook his hand in turn. “Thank you, Dr. Slinde.”

“My pleasure.”