OPHELIA O | THE KING IN YELLOW

Bobby and Richard were so late for dinner that their mom had to accept that she'd been stood up again.  She cut a slice of ham for herself then cleared the table and reheated her plate in the oven. 

She turned on the TV and had dinner with Johnny Carson.  "We've got to stop meeting like this," she winked at the TV.  After The Tonight Show she got up to change the channel, searching for an interesting movie to take her mind off her wayward boys.

There was nothing on but THE KING IN YELLOW, a grainy foreign film with subtitles. She adjusted the rabbit ears and was about to turn it off when the actress caught her eye.

"Well, I'll be damned," she took a closer look.  It certainly looked like the girl Bobby and Richard were traipsing around the countryside with.

"Camilla, you can't do this," a man in the film grabbed and held her forcibly by the upper arm.

~ To Be Continued ~

OPHELIA OBLONGATA | ALL PATHS ARE PAVED WITH PEYOTE

“What am I listening to?”  Richard asked with his ear pressed on the rock.

“Do you hear thumping?  It gets louder as we approach a certain angle of the sun.  Bobby heard it.  It drove him mad,” The Fly Eater said.

“All I can hear is my own heartbeat. Where is Bobby?  Was there a girl with him?  What do you mean, ‘mad’”, Richard sat up.  He didn’t have the patience for tall tales at the moment.

“He’s running from the wind.  The girl left several hours ago.”

“There is no wind.  Did she say where she was going?

“Lake Arrowhead.  Your bother cast a spell on himself with my adder.  I warned him not to play with my medicine bag.  I can’t fix it until he returns my adder.”

It dawned on Richard that if he had stayed in bed at that morning, he probably would have arrived in Lake Arrowhead at the same time as Annalisa.  Luckily, Carl would be there to answer the phone and let her in.

“Get this wind off of me!”  Bobby’s muffled scream from downstream echoed through the rock formations.

“Is he alright?”

“The white noise wind follows him wherever he goes.  He was complaining that the thumping was tormenting him.  He cannot hear the thumping now but it seems he hates his wind even more.  Some people find it comforting.  I can turn it off when he returns my sacred snake.  He dropped it in the pool and it slipped downstream.”  The Fly Eater explained.

“You’re telling me that my brother has his own private wind circling him?”

“See those trees swaying down there?  That’s Bobby.  Your brother could hear the thumping even better than I can.  I could train him to be a Shaman if he wasn’t so full of mischief.  What a waste.  The world needs his gifts.  You young people sing about the Age of Aquarius as if were a big deal.  There are other things happening. There is something up there changing the way light falls.  The angle of the sun is trying to release demons that have been locked in the earth for eons.”

“Demons?” Richard was hearing that word a lot lately.

“They weren’t always demons.  They were the stolen children of a sky king from a planet with a double sun and hidden in the earth for so long that they went mad”, The Fly Eater explained.

Richard sighed. 

“No one notices the angle of the sun has changed, that it burns the skin worse at sunset than at high noon. The ship of the sky king is up there. You can’t see it but you can feel it burning you skin.” The Fly Eater tossed a bottle of suntan oil to Richard.

“What’s this?”

  “It wards off demons while promoting an even tan. I made it myself.”  The Fly Eater offered Richard a clear brown bottle of suntan oil.

“This is the most famous suntan oil on earth!  You didn’t make this!” Richard protested the obvious lie and tossed the bottle back.

“You can’t get this off the shelf,” The medicine man produced a vial from his bag and poured the contents into the suntan oil and shook it. “Now it’s double strength.”

“What did you put in it?”

“Concentrate of mescal and other natural ingredients.  It’s a secret recipe that is ingested through the skin and makes you one with nature.”

“No thank you.  Tell my brother I’ve gone to Arrowhead to be with my woman,” Richard began the long hike up hill.  Bobby and The Fly Eater were out of their gourds on peyote.  As he turned to wave goodbye, it slowly dawned on him that the rainbows shimmering on the pool he had just gotten out of were caused by a layer of suntan oil.  He slapped his shoulder.  It was oily.  He’d never taken peyote.  He didn’t know what to expect.  Before he let out the big sigh, the medicine man made him gasp again.

“Your woman knows about Squirrel-Man.  He’s following her.  I told her to stay away from the tree of lost souls on the rim of the world, but she’s on autonomic pilot, all medulla oblongata, you can’t argue with that,” the medicine man shouted over the wind which had come up out of nowhere. 

“Squirrel-Man? What the fuck? I don’t have time for this,” Richard kept climbing.

 “Richard!”  Bobby cried out to his brother, waving one arm and holding the Fly Eater’s adder snake in the other.

“I’ll catch you later!  Tell mom I’ll drop in next time.  I have a show!  Bye!” Richard climbed the mountain to the top of the waterfalls as fast as he could.  Every now and then he’d shout out, “Shit!” 

No matter what choices he made, all paths were paved with peyote.

~ To Be Continued ~

OPHELIA OBLONGATA | TRIPPIN' AT DENNY'S DINER

            She never showed in Galveston.  August arrived and Richard waited in a booth with a view of the freeway and the lights of the Los Angeles basin.  Carl was late.  Maybe the absent minded photographer had gotten off at the wrong exit and was waiting for Richard in a different Denny’s Diner.  The troupe was in transit and he shouldn’t have taken this time consuming detour, but he had to have the photos. 

He was beginning to feel like the whole encounter with Annalisa had been a dream.  He needed a photo of her.  Just when Richard gave up hope, Carl appeared and pointed Richard out to the hostess.

            “I’m starving,” Carl announced.

            “What took you so long,” Richard complained.

            “You’re not going to like this,” Carl looked strange.

            “What?” Richard frowned.

            “In every one of these I had to edit out this monstrous looking man in the background,” Carl just spit it out.

            “What are you on, Carl,”

            “I knew you wouldn’t believe it, which is why I brought befores and afters,” Carl picked up the menu.

            “This is not funny.  It’s obvious you added the man.” Richard was annoyed.

           

“It’s quite obvious you don’t know anything about photography.  Anyone can see which photos have been retouched.  You are insulting me for doing you a favor you know I can’t afford.  I’m on a tight budget and you think I’m throwing money away just to mess with your mind,” Carl had enough and started to get up.

            “Sorry, man.  Order the steak and eggs.  I’m buying.  I’ll pay for the photos too.  I know you have money problems and I know you’re not a prankster,” Richard motioned to the waitress that they were ready to order.

            The men ate in silence.  When Carl finished his steak, he pushed his plate away and thanked Richard for the meal.  Then he leaned in to make a comment he didn’t want everyone to hear.

            “This is some satanic shit or Shakespeare’s curse.  At first I thought the image was already on the film or the lens but that would affect the whole roll, not just the shots with Annalisa.  Hell, this play is haunted, right?” Carl sat back and waited for Richard to confirm.

            “No. That’s MACBETH, not HAMLET. Just because a play has ghosts in it doesn’t mean it’s cursed.  A play is only haunted if something comes out of it, follows you home and kills you. There is a play that is really cursed. You’ll die if you read it. It can’t be performed. You can’t touch the script or say the title. If you even talk about it, demons haunt you,” Richard said.

            “Jesus. Then shut up. Ugly guy is probably a demon you summoned,” Carl grimaced.

            The ugly man wore a mustard colored suit and appeared in every photo containing Annalisa, starting with the graveyard scene with Annalisa in the wings.  Carl had been going for the shot where Hamlet contemplates the skull to make an edgy poster advertising the play in Los Angeles. 

The photo Richard would have liked was the one taken in the restaurant booth.  He had his arm around Annalisa.  Even though Carl had removed the image of the man standing behind them, the memory of the man would not leave his mind.  He settled for a close up of Annalisa’s face and ripped up the rest of the photos.

            “Don’t tell me which photo this close up was cropped from.  I wish I hadn’t seen the befores,” Richard grimaced.

            “What if this guy shows up again? You sure you want me to burn the negatives?” Carl asked.

            “Yes.  It’s probably bad luck for me to keep even this one photo, but I’ll keep it for now.  I was beginning to forget.  One thing I could never forget is how she smelled.  She smelled like pears,” Richard put the photo in his wallet, left a tip and paid the cashier.

            In the parking lot Carl took the posters for the next performance of HAMLET from his van.  Richard inspected them before putting them in the compartment on his motorcycle.  Carl had taken a great photo, the classic Hamlet pose with the skull, sans Annalisa in the wings, sans the ugly man.

            “Get some sleep,” Carl suggested.

            “I’m behind schedule.  I have to post these before the troupe arrives.”

            “Hey, maybe monster face is part of a new curse.  Maybe Shakespeare is mad at you for the Miami gig.  Just a thought,” Carl slammed the van door and waved goodbye.

            “There’s more shit in heaven and earth, Carl,” Richard revved his engine and peeled out of the parking lot.

            The rosy fingers of dawn picked pockets of the Los Angeles basin like syrup on a waffle.  Richard plastered the last of the posters on a pole where there was heavy pedestrian traffic.  He decided to get some sleep.  

In addition to the upcoming performances of HAMLET, he had the strange performance in Lake Arrowhead tomorrow.  The same patron who paid a hefty sum for the nude production of HAMLET on Key Biscayne had cherry-picked actors from that and other productions to perform in a mysterious, one evening only event.  Richard didn’t know who the other actors were and he hadn’t been given a script.  They would all be reading their lines from cards held by masked figures in a pit that circled the stage. He’d done theatre of the absurd before and he assumed the patron was trying to impress his wealthy friends by always going a step farther than the latest trend.  He rode his bike towards the mountains and stopped at a motel in the foothills near the turnoff for Lake Arrowhead.

            Richard almost fell asleep but suddenly sat bolt upright and called his mom.  He reasoned that he shouldn’t call her from Lake Arrowhead because she might ask too many questions.

            “What?” he was mortified.

           

“The girl with no last name is here.  She just left with Bobby,” his mom said again.

           

“Where did they go?”

           

“She’s very interested in fruit stands and rocks.  I think Bobby took her to the tubs on Tule River,” Richard’s mom recollected. “He’s you brother, you know, not some serial killer.”

 

~ To Be Continued ~