Читать книгу The House of Frogs - Richard Cook - Страница 8

Existence became half heaven, half hell. Stifling days spent in the regimented drudgery of a prison asylum; an endless routine of psychiatric evaluations, therapy groups, plastic dinners, TV and lights out. Lights out; that magical moment when the door of my cell slammed shut and the automatic lock slid smoothly into place. Each night we journeyed to remote, desolate places of breathtaking natural splendour. That first evening found us lost in the bleak beauty of Africa’s skeleton coast. Sitting amongst windswept dunes, wrapped in our Anu cloaks, we felt no extremes of heat or cold.

“Mr Ameazak’s gone hasn’t he? Flipped out; done a bunk?”

“Yes, Daniel he’s gone; but you’ve got me now.”

“Deceitful douchebag said he’d take me.”

“Yes, he lied Daniel. He lied about a lot of things.”

“Yeah, dam right he did! So, why you here?”

“Guilt I suppose Daniel. I am after all the reason you’re incarcerated.”

“Yeah; guess so. But hey! I don’t blame you Juan. See, I ain’t grinding no axe. Just don’t leave me Juan.”

“No Daniel, I’m not going to leave you.”

“But you’re not gonna take me with you either?”

“Perhaps later Daniel; when you’re feeling a little better.”

“That’ll be a while then; I’ve never felt so frazzlefried in my life!”

“You went to Anu didn’t you Daniel?”

“Yeah, I went to Anu. Just for a peak; before I gave the Kallu Hum to Mr Ameazak.”

“And?”

“Its like a barnacles one eyed trouser snake; way too big!”

“A barnacles what?”

“Beef bayonet! Those John Holmes got the biggest tadgers in the natural world. Relatively speaking of course. Shish! You know, if we had love truncheons the size of a barnacle, they’d be thirty-six feet in length!”

“Oh I see. Yes, I begin to see the analogy; Anu is a little big to grasp.”

“Course it is! You went there too! How come you’re not foaming at the mouth and skipping along to loony tunes?”

“They helped me Daniel, helped me come to terms with it; to adjust.”

“Adjust! How the hell do you ever adjust to Anu? Shittatrip! Like licking a thousand Colorado River Toads!”

“Colorado River Toads?”

“Yeah; they’re psychoactive toads used for getting blunted by the Church of the Toad of Light.”

“Who on earth are the Church of the Toad of Light?”

“God-dam hippy sect. Crazy mothers lick those toads like nympho rug munchers and get higher than a giraffe’s nuts. Cane Toads got the same effect. Hey! You know they even got junky dogs in Australia addicted to those wide mouthed mothers.”

“No, I can’t say I did Daniel.”

“Shish! Become a major a problem. Dogs find em in the backyard, lick em like their balls and next thing they know they’re spark out, chasing purple rabbits through doggy whackoville!”

“You must be joking.”

“Wish I was Juan. Governments had to set up cold turkey kennels for repeat offenders. Anyways, point I’m making; Anu likes that, cep’t a god-dam zillion times more! Holy amped! Even the night sky makes you want to sit and stare at it for ever. You can even forget to eat or drink in that place. I friggin did!”

“Do you have to swear Daniel?”

“Yeah, I do! Fuckenomenal! Only word comes close to explaining that surreal heaven.”

“Try a more literate approach Daniel. You are after all a writer.”

“Yeah right? Well, its like happily living your whole life in a dark shoe box. Then one day someone lifts the lid and you realise the shoe box is actually sitting amidst a magical tropical garden. You can’t make sense of the dazzling colours, the sublime scents and rhapsody of sounds; could never have imagined such exquisite, divine beauty exists. And as you’re craning your neck, gazing in mesmeric, catatonic awe at the majestic nirvana above you; some vindictive bugger puts the lid back on. So you stand there in heart pounding terror, blinking myopically at the familiar black ceiling for a few moments before sinking slowly to your knees onto the damp, rotten cardboard floor; your whole life irreparably fuckfried! Cause now you know! Have unequivocally grasped the desolate, bleak, inescapable truth; you’re living in a shoe box.”

“Well, it’s certainly a better description than you first attempt Daniel.”

“Yeah, but still light years from the gob-smacking reality; right? That place performed a temporal lobectomy, sucked out my brains, fried them on a red hot griddle, then crammed them back in no particular order.”

“Are you managing to avoid your medication Daniel?”

“Yeah; cept those blue hexagonal torpedoes. Can’t hide those mothers under your tongue. Like trying to swallow a pencil box!”

“Good Daniel; those drugs sedate you. It makes it difficult for me to visit.”

“Yeah, figured that.”

“So, Mr Ameazak obviously knew you went to Anu?”

“Well, obviously! I re-materialised like a psychedelic, tripped out zombie beside the dead body of Detective Sinclair.”

“Banged to rights then?”

“Oh you banged me to rights Juan. Good and proper!”