58

“Dan?"

Nothing.

"Dan?"

An immense, unforgiving hand picks up an imaginary ice pick and stabs it down into the center of a block of ice exactly the shape of a human brain.

“Danny?"

“Danny are you there?"

“Oh, Danny Boy, the ice, the ice is cracking,” someone sings in a thin, sissified soprano.

“Is anyone home?"

Cracks in the ice cobweb out and complete two perfect hemispheres that now split, revealing an object the shape of an egg, translucent and made of ice, at the center.

"Daniel?"

The egg is at the center of Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski's brain.

“ME me me me me MIMI MIMI MIMI mememememe mememememememememememememe ... mememe memem ... mememememem ... MEMEMEMEMEMEME MEMEMEMEMEMEMEME?"

The question echoes unmercifully and the egg of translucent ice cracks open.

CRUNCH!

A tiny monster with a face familiar to occupant slithers out, a newborn mutant, who squawks in a high voice filled with profound intuitive unsimplemindedness and profoundly intuitive simple Simonizedness, lists dangerously. Argh, matey, she's grocery-listing dangerfieldly to starboard. Fart up the shortarms and jerk off the yardarms you pedagogic poltroonish pusillanimous pussies of quotidian quiddity.

Pedagogic: of or about teaching. Second G is hard J sound.

Poltroonish: characterized by cowardice.

Pusillanimous: lacking courage and resolution. Contemptibly timid.

Quotidian: commonplace, ordinary; daily occurrence.

You forgot Pussies, the computer tells him, chiding him, stabbing down into the hole in his unconsciousness.

A perfectly formed poem slithers out of this same black hole:

The disjointed phrases slither back down into the egg and it seals itself as it is swallowed whole by the black hole, swallowed hole by the black whole, hollowed hole in a holy bowl.

“Daniel? Can you hear me? It's your friend, Dr. Norman.” The tape will repeat many times.

He's visited these sunken cadavers many times before, a part of memory lodged at a particular juncture of the hippo's hippocampus that the drug probes first, a watery world of dead faces wired into his demolition derby for the deceased. He tries to slam the door on it and lacks the strength.

“Occupant is algolagnic,” the doctor told someone once. It was overheard by the beast, who set about to learn the meaning. It proved to be that he took pleasure in inflicting pain. The fat lady on TV said, “Them serial killers get boners hurting and mutilating people.” Well, that was a bit general and imprecise. He could not recall a time when he'd got a boner simply because he was inflicting pain or cutting something off.... Well, come to think of it, yes, there was one ... one time when it made him come to think of it.

A cold wind blows over the black hole that conceals his mass grave of underwater corpses.

“—a particular target that you will wish to dispose of, Daniel. He was a scientist who worked in a research program during World War Two. A dossier is available and we have prepared color slides of some of this man's experiments involving the torture of animals, babies, and young children. I know you will—” Norman's words floating in and out. “Dr. Norman is your friend, Daniel. He deeply regrets that you—” Oneiromancy: divination by means of dreams. “—allows you to have great personal freedom, and—” The voice coloring, the blackest part of the hole puddling now, taking on a new configuration and values, a field of red, the black outline of a cordiform, a black heart, on blood red.

“—dogs and monkeys, which were found like this. These children had also been mutilated while they were still breathing. The apparatus was hooked up to the brain before—” Chaingang would never forget the puppy with the top of its skull off. The infant cadavers, the looks on their helpless faces. The smiling man showing off his experimentation. The lion coughed and twitched, pushing at restraints that were not there.

“Here are more photos from his experimentation program. A mass grave ... one hundred and fifty cats, over eight hundred puppies, three hundred monkeys, an unknown number of...” A wave of nausea, partly from the powerful drug, partly from the subject matter, “Look at this little boy, Daniel. Who does he look like?” It could have been a close-up of Daniel, age eight, fresh from punishment by the Snake Man, his mouth agape in pain and terror, perfectly normal in appearance until one's eyes reached the sawn-open skullcap. Occupant is algolagnic.

“This man is revered by the community of Bayou City, Missouri, where you are currently located. Feel free to destroy him in any manner that gives you pleasure, Daniel. When you're done with him I hope you'll leave that state, and I'd like to suggest you take some time to rest and get your strength back after your accident. I was awfully sorry to learn you were injured. Remember always, Dr. Norman has your best interests at heart. He would never do anything to hurt his friend Daniel.” Norman had begun doing some experimentation of his own. Slowly, he was dropping third-person references when he spoke to Chaingang, although he still referred to himself in the third person about half the time. Bunkowski noted the changes in personal pronoun usage, the familiar you and your, in addition to the use of his first name. One day soon his friend Daniel would dine on that forked tongue.

“Be very careful in dealing with this old man. He is resourceful and has many friends. Young men of a white supremacy organization called the New American-German Enterprise for Reunification and Solidarity, or NEW AGERS, sometimes help protect him.

“Remember, too, for your own good the drug we've employed is extremely powerful, so it will cause a brief period of disorientation as it wears off. You'll appear to return to a fully operational state, but you'll be slightly groggy and may not have total physical control. The grogginess may come and go. In addition to lack of coordination you may notice certain behavioral lapses ... low-key behavior that you'll find irritating when you initially interact with others. This will wear off quickly, so don't be alarmed. Soon you'll be able to behave as you normally do. Take care, my friend,” the voice said, lovingly. Inside the broken ice egg the mutant screamed in rage.