Delicious ice cream! And the failing glammer of normalcy.
Jun 15, 2017 1:55:15 GMT -5
The Anarchist likes this
Post by Sicko on Jun 15, 2017 1:55:15 GMT -5
"No way, I'm not goin' near it," sneered Connor. The baking Scottsdale sun was beating down on the three boys, but he still brought up the rear, trying despite his bravado to edge as much distance between him and the shape sitting by the curb. It had teeth.
Tyler gulped as he looked at it. He couldn't help it. Your eye was always drawn to the box van. It's paint was chipped and scored, and some of the yellow sticker adverts on it's side had faded to white and scratched over years of abuse. On the surface it seemed like just any ice cream truck. The kind that drove through neighborhoods at twenty miles an hour, and were usually captained by felons (at least, so his dad said, when he'd asked about it...) It seemed like a run down, battered, broken hunk that squeaked when it ran. But only when you looked at it straight on. Tyler had dreams of himself some nights, he was running down an apocalyptic negative-self cul de sac, the sky was red, and he heard the familiar jingle, the one he couldn't place? Da-na-nana, na-na, na-na, nananana-nananaaa... Something like that... He gazed around him at the black houses and the black sun in the sky, chest heaving in terror, and that sound he'd heard reverberating through his neighborhoods at the craziest hours, often-times the dead of night, would sound... Danana-nana, nana... Only the beast that crawled around the corner of that nightmare scape and roared it's throttle, spinning it's wheels was black. And it had tentacles, barbed suckers that protruded from it... and red eyes instead of headlights...
And teeth.
And teeth.
And here it was during the day, and looking at it from a straight angle, Tyler reasoned that there didn't SEEM to be anything to fear, but he still stood astrode his bike, switching from foot to foot, petrified to move forward, and the two boys behind him were looking at each other, sniggering that their friend had truly pussied out.
"Well I'm hungry," Davey whined. He was very fat. The kind of kid that their mom lets them have an entire bag of Doritos in their room, kind of fat, with a rasping aspiration of breath and a red face. He was always hungry, and furthermore, he was always complaining. About the heat, about the distance they rode on their bikes, about them never going where he wanted in the afternoon. "And it's hot. I want to see if they have any Chillies."
"Dude, what?" Connor said with his usual ratty laugh. Connor had a very slim face compared to Davey, but his eyes were always dark and hooded and he usually had a way of making fun of people that Tyler didn't know if he liked. There were only a few kids from his grade in his area, though, and he'd known Connor since they were five. When Davey demonstrated with a push-up motion, Connor pushed him, only borderline bullying, "You fat turd, you mean push up pops,"
"I've heard them called Otter pops," Tyler put in, easily, trying to put the bickering at ease. Davey cut his eyes to him thankfully. Tyler was always playing peacekeeper. "Some things can be called a lot of different names... but they're the same thing once you take off the wrapper..."
"Look at you, nerd, trying to sound fake deep," said Connor, the most infuriating eleven year old. He sighed, and shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand, looking up into the baking heat of the sun. "Fine, fuckwads, let's go get fatty boom-tits his Push Up Pops," with emphasis on the last, and he pushed off on his foot to get his bike in gear. Tyler held out his hand, wanting to yell wait, because he felt as if his friend was diving into shark infested waters, but he couldn't put his finger on why. If he was pressed for a reason, he'd tell his friends that it was because well maybe it was closed. But he couldn't shake the feeling that if you looked at the box van out of the corner of your eye you'd see something different.
There was more and more of that going on on this street, he thought to himself. People were on edge. You'd see a neighbor you've waved at from a bus stop a million times going to school outside, and they'd look the same, but when you caught a cross glance of them their face distorted, became something with a beak, or a rat's face. More than once, he thought he would be going crazy, but he couldn't bring it up to mom or the doctor she'd had him seeing since dad went away. It just felt like a growing, spreading wrongness. He, of course, was much too young to know the importance of words like the failing glammer of normalcy breaking down, or madness infecting people like a cancer, but if those concepts were explained to him, he'd light right up, knowing them exactly.
Yeah, pretty sure the ice cream truck is closed, he assured himself. It was off, abandoned by the curb.
"What were you pussies scared of?" Connor boasted, having gotten there first, and puffing himself out like he wasn't the first to refuse to go near it. "Buncha pussies, little fat cucks, you -"
As Davey and he pedaled closer, the van sprung to life. The emergency and back up lights started flashing, as did the swinging stop sign on the side, and that merry tune began cranking up deep from within it. Meant to sound merry and jingly, but instead sounding hollow, as if it was coming from faraway down a tin pipe. He still couldn't think of the name... Da na nana, na-na, na-na... Nanananana-na-na-na.....
From the side of the van, the sliding panel shot up with a clatter, The most massive man in all the world came looming up out of the interior of the truck, plopping his thick, corded arms onto the metal counter of the sales area. His grin peeled back so broadly that it seemed like he was all jagged, yellowed teeth... and that his grin would just keep going, meeting at the back of his head.
"It's the Turkey In The Straw," he said, as if it was apropos of nothing much, but his gaze pounded right into Tyler for a long beat and it was like he was answering a question that Tyler had not asked.
All three boys goggled at the giant man. Tyler had never felt more like a rabbit in the headlights than at that moment. He felt his dreams come back to him in that moment, he felt the dark van running him down, flooring it's gas with a monstrous roar... "Uh..."
"'The Turkey In The Straw' is one of the most well none ice cream truck jingles, right up there with the original, Mister Softee jingle," the giant elaborated, continuing a casual conversation out there in the heat of the day. "But Turkey in the Straw is possibly more synonymous with the van, because of it's simple, tinkling melody. It came up in it's first form in the early 1820's, based on an old traditional Irish ballad, 'The Old Rose Tree'... where it was adapted, and used in minstrel shows... white men painted themselves up with black face, to make themselves look like something hokey or ridiculous."
Tyler didn't know why, but the deadpan delivery of that, made him look at the bright, yet damaged paint of the ice cream truck. He shivered.
"Wait, I know this truck..." Connor said, in his most bratty, disbelieving voice. "I saw this on Youtube... This truck was at the Last Chance Battle Royale thing on PCW's Youtube Channel... some big fat clown was driving it..."
He turns away, now, wiping chocolate and cherry sauce containers down with an old rag, but he chuckles. "Ah, I believe I know what truck you're talking about, and , well, you won't find any clowns here..."
"Bullshit, you're the Sicko," Connor said, sounding more and more antagonistic. "You're that freak, yeah," He pointed at the big man's tummy, "You're either that, or Davey here's daddy, haha!" He turned to poke his friend in the stomach, "Isn't that right fatso? Do you think that he gave it to your mom? Ooh, maybe he was eating her ass wearing a clown nose, and every time he pushed in it made a squeak. Do you? Do you think the big clown was your daddy?" He pinched at Davey's pudgy chest and sides, teasing.
The big man slammed his hands down so hard on the metal panel that it resounded like a gunshot.
"Now, boy... IF... I was Sicko, then I want you to think about that. To think about what kind of ppperson, goes from driving a truck like this, for no reason except to give people something to make them happy. What kind of person does that? But in their other job, this person may once have been, VERY violent. This person may have hurt people more than contractually obligated, and, loved, Every. Second. Now, I know in that alleged person's line of work, that's a common symptom. That biz trades on sadism, and surely he wasn't deluded enough to think that he was the first person to put on facepaint and camo and come out there hitting people until they stopped moving. But that didn't matter to him. Because THAT PERSON, little boy, THAT PERSON, did it so much that he began giving away the pieces of himself that made him who he was. Began giving away the kindness that would allow him a happy, carefree job just handing people ice cream. I don't know... maybe I want to speculate, but perhaps the more that Sicko, person, gave in to it, the worse he felt, and now he wants to feel like a man again."
He's looming out of the panel of the van, nearly nose to nose with Connor, who is looking close to shitting himself. The man is sweating profusely, his eyes little pinholes staring out of a stormy brow, his teeth gritted.
"Now imagine further that maybe deep down that person thinks -fears, that that humanity was a mask. A glammer, a white ice cream vendor's uniform you put on in a suburban neighborhood while you walk out and get the paper... and underneath it is the truth. So what's the lie, and what's the glammer. Do you understand?"
"No?" said Connor, but he said it in such a reedy little voice that was unlike his usual bluster.
The intensity dripped out of the ice cream man's face, and he went back to his smile, "I'll tell you kids what, have a Freeze Pop, on me. It's hot today."
"Freeze pops!" Davey exhulted, beaming a smug look at Connor, who was well and truly shook. "Knew there was a name for 'em..."
"All hypothetical, of course, because I just sell ice cream," he was positively jovial as he brought out three plastic sleeves with flavored ice in them out of a cooler.
"But if it wasn't hypothetical," Tyler ventured, "Then wouldn't it be like blackface? One mean spirited, bad thing posing as something happy and funny?"
The ice cream man seemed to want to say something, but he just held his finger out in a gesture at Tyler, as he turned back to cleaning off his topping containers. His grin widened.
"If you were Sicko," said Davey, smacking his fat lips, his ruddy complexion and fat face in heaven as he sucked on a green sleeve of shaved ice, "What would you want to do about PCW? Keep showing up? They have some Battlebowl trophy, um, you can win and it'll get you a lot of money, because all you have to do is win a match earlier in the night, and, um, then maybe they'll add you in? It's not clear."
He sighs, and his shoulders sag a little. "If I was this person, a trophy wouldn't matter to me... prize money wouldn't either... See kids, the kind of person the clown was, he didn't care about titles. He just wanted to break people. And, according to your, Youtube, Sicko did that quiet effectively the last time he showed up, in the Last Chance Battle Royale. He eliminated three people, wasted potential all of them. He squared up against the biggest and strongest member of the roster and handed him his ass. He was such a come from nowhere, force of destruction in that match that even the winner, Non Compos Mentis, barely squeaked by on a technicality of them both being knocked out of the ring, but Sicko landing first. Sicko raised so much hell in that match and beat so many people down, that there were some that were hoping that it slaked his thirst. That he had had his fill of hurting people. Maybe he even wanted it to feel like that. That he had satisfied the beast in his soul and he could go back to being a man again. But the beast Sicko's feeding isn't just for him... maybe he sees this. Maybe if he wants to be a happy man, happy family, little suburban life, he would have to... feed the beast pain. It'll make him happy. It'll make his wife happy. Who knew how long it would last."
He looked back at them with raised eyebrows. His grin. "Hypothetically."
He craned his neck out of the opening on the side. "Clouds coming in, looks like a cloudburst. You kids better get inside. Go on, now. No charge for the ice cream."
Connor was only too happy to hop on his bike. His face was white as a sheet. "I'm gonna see you guys later..." he muttered, giving a sketched out look to the big man behind the counter. Davey, however, looked at him curiously, almost with awe.
"I believe you can be that man again, mister, you just gotta work hard at it," He says. The giant ice cream man, absurdly, is touched. "You know, I'll pass that along to the clown in the truck, maybe if he does this enough, he'll satisfy her..."
Distant heat lightning cracks in the sky, as the once white-hot summer day begins clouding over.
Tyler wanted to ask about her. But the rain started coming down hard, and, with a friendly wave, the giant man was closing the sliding panel.
Rain started coming down in sheets. Tyler cursed. Davey, ice cream forgotten, was already well up the street, but he had yet to get going. The ice cream truck started it's engine, turning it's headlights on. Tyler looked at it, from every angle he could, there in the pouring rain... but it remained an ice cream truck, albeit a very creepy and sinister looking one.
He pushed off and splashed through a forming puddle, leaving it behind, as it creaked and groaned on it's axles and turned down the opposite side of the street.
Neither Tyler nor the occupant of the ice cream truck noticed the black Cadillac pulling up to an address just down the street. It was the address of a duplex we've visited before. The occupant, is a small, fastidious man wearing all black, and a black Trilby. He's got a carpet bag on the passenger seat of his big Caddy. As he looks through rain-slicked windows at the duplex just across the street from him, his mouth forms a frown line. He reaches a precise hand into his bag and daintily picks out with two fingers a tape recorder. "Daily notes #1723, Diane - have found the address of Mariah and Ephrain Ortiz. Further investigation is needed, since Mariah's whereabouts have been unknown since the day of his release. Will reconnoiter the duplex. Entry ends." And he pushes the stop button.
And if Tyler had been there to see the Cadillac, and the glammer had failed at that moment, would he have attributed it to his dreams, or to some trick of the mind played on him by the rain? Well, we won't know.
He exits the car door with a slam.
Tyler gulped as he looked at it. He couldn't help it. Your eye was always drawn to the box van. It's paint was chipped and scored, and some of the yellow sticker adverts on it's side had faded to white and scratched over years of abuse. On the surface it seemed like just any ice cream truck. The kind that drove through neighborhoods at twenty miles an hour, and were usually captained by felons (at least, so his dad said, when he'd asked about it...) It seemed like a run down, battered, broken hunk that squeaked when it ran. But only when you looked at it straight on. Tyler had dreams of himself some nights, he was running down an apocalyptic negative-self cul de sac, the sky was red, and he heard the familiar jingle, the one he couldn't place? Da-na-nana, na-na, na-na, nananana-nananaaa... Something like that... He gazed around him at the black houses and the black sun in the sky, chest heaving in terror, and that sound he'd heard reverberating through his neighborhoods at the craziest hours, often-times the dead of night, would sound... Danana-nana, nana... Only the beast that crawled around the corner of that nightmare scape and roared it's throttle, spinning it's wheels was black. And it had tentacles, barbed suckers that protruded from it... and red eyes instead of headlights...
And teeth.
And teeth.
And here it was during the day, and looking at it from a straight angle, Tyler reasoned that there didn't SEEM to be anything to fear, but he still stood astrode his bike, switching from foot to foot, petrified to move forward, and the two boys behind him were looking at each other, sniggering that their friend had truly pussied out.
"Well I'm hungry," Davey whined. He was very fat. The kind of kid that their mom lets them have an entire bag of Doritos in their room, kind of fat, with a rasping aspiration of breath and a red face. He was always hungry, and furthermore, he was always complaining. About the heat, about the distance they rode on their bikes, about them never going where he wanted in the afternoon. "And it's hot. I want to see if they have any Chillies."
"Dude, what?" Connor said with his usual ratty laugh. Connor had a very slim face compared to Davey, but his eyes were always dark and hooded and he usually had a way of making fun of people that Tyler didn't know if he liked. There were only a few kids from his grade in his area, though, and he'd known Connor since they were five. When Davey demonstrated with a push-up motion, Connor pushed him, only borderline bullying, "You fat turd, you mean push up pops,"
"I've heard them called Otter pops," Tyler put in, easily, trying to put the bickering at ease. Davey cut his eyes to him thankfully. Tyler was always playing peacekeeper. "Some things can be called a lot of different names... but they're the same thing once you take off the wrapper..."
"Look at you, nerd, trying to sound fake deep," said Connor, the most infuriating eleven year old. He sighed, and shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand, looking up into the baking heat of the sun. "Fine, fuckwads, let's go get fatty boom-tits his Push Up Pops," with emphasis on the last, and he pushed off on his foot to get his bike in gear. Tyler held out his hand, wanting to yell wait, because he felt as if his friend was diving into shark infested waters, but he couldn't put his finger on why. If he was pressed for a reason, he'd tell his friends that it was because well maybe it was closed. But he couldn't shake the feeling that if you looked at the box van out of the corner of your eye you'd see something different.
There was more and more of that going on on this street, he thought to himself. People were on edge. You'd see a neighbor you've waved at from a bus stop a million times going to school outside, and they'd look the same, but when you caught a cross glance of them their face distorted, became something with a beak, or a rat's face. More than once, he thought he would be going crazy, but he couldn't bring it up to mom or the doctor she'd had him seeing since dad went away. It just felt like a growing, spreading wrongness. He, of course, was much too young to know the importance of words like the failing glammer of normalcy breaking down, or madness infecting people like a cancer, but if those concepts were explained to him, he'd light right up, knowing them exactly.
Yeah, pretty sure the ice cream truck is closed, he assured himself. It was off, abandoned by the curb.
"What were you pussies scared of?" Connor boasted, having gotten there first, and puffing himself out like he wasn't the first to refuse to go near it. "Buncha pussies, little fat cucks, you -"
As Davey and he pedaled closer, the van sprung to life. The emergency and back up lights started flashing, as did the swinging stop sign on the side, and that merry tune began cranking up deep from within it. Meant to sound merry and jingly, but instead sounding hollow, as if it was coming from faraway down a tin pipe. He still couldn't think of the name... Da na nana, na-na, na-na... Nanananana-na-na-na.....
From the side of the van, the sliding panel shot up with a clatter, The most massive man in all the world came looming up out of the interior of the truck, plopping his thick, corded arms onto the metal counter of the sales area. His grin peeled back so broadly that it seemed like he was all jagged, yellowed teeth... and that his grin would just keep going, meeting at the back of his head.
"It's the Turkey In The Straw," he said, as if it was apropos of nothing much, but his gaze pounded right into Tyler for a long beat and it was like he was answering a question that Tyler had not asked.
All three boys goggled at the giant man. Tyler had never felt more like a rabbit in the headlights than at that moment. He felt his dreams come back to him in that moment, he felt the dark van running him down, flooring it's gas with a monstrous roar... "Uh..."
"'The Turkey In The Straw' is one of the most well none ice cream truck jingles, right up there with the original, Mister Softee jingle," the giant elaborated, continuing a casual conversation out there in the heat of the day. "But Turkey in the Straw is possibly more synonymous with the van, because of it's simple, tinkling melody. It came up in it's first form in the early 1820's, based on an old traditional Irish ballad, 'The Old Rose Tree'... where it was adapted, and used in minstrel shows... white men painted themselves up with black face, to make themselves look like something hokey or ridiculous."
Tyler didn't know why, but the deadpan delivery of that, made him look at the bright, yet damaged paint of the ice cream truck. He shivered.
"Wait, I know this truck..." Connor said, in his most bratty, disbelieving voice. "I saw this on Youtube... This truck was at the Last Chance Battle Royale thing on PCW's Youtube Channel... some big fat clown was driving it..."
He turns away, now, wiping chocolate and cherry sauce containers down with an old rag, but he chuckles. "Ah, I believe I know what truck you're talking about, and , well, you won't find any clowns here..."
"Bullshit, you're the Sicko," Connor said, sounding more and more antagonistic. "You're that freak, yeah," He pointed at the big man's tummy, "You're either that, or Davey here's daddy, haha!" He turned to poke his friend in the stomach, "Isn't that right fatso? Do you think that he gave it to your mom? Ooh, maybe he was eating her ass wearing a clown nose, and every time he pushed in it made a squeak. Do you? Do you think the big clown was your daddy?" He pinched at Davey's pudgy chest and sides, teasing.
The big man slammed his hands down so hard on the metal panel that it resounded like a gunshot.
"Now, boy... IF... I was Sicko, then I want you to think about that. To think about what kind of ppperson, goes from driving a truck like this, for no reason except to give people something to make them happy. What kind of person does that? But in their other job, this person may once have been, VERY violent. This person may have hurt people more than contractually obligated, and, loved, Every. Second. Now, I know in that alleged person's line of work, that's a common symptom. That biz trades on sadism, and surely he wasn't deluded enough to think that he was the first person to put on facepaint and camo and come out there hitting people until they stopped moving. But that didn't matter to him. Because THAT PERSON, little boy, THAT PERSON, did it so much that he began giving away the pieces of himself that made him who he was. Began giving away the kindness that would allow him a happy, carefree job just handing people ice cream. I don't know... maybe I want to speculate, but perhaps the more that Sicko, person, gave in to it, the worse he felt, and now he wants to feel like a man again."
He's looming out of the panel of the van, nearly nose to nose with Connor, who is looking close to shitting himself. The man is sweating profusely, his eyes little pinholes staring out of a stormy brow, his teeth gritted.
"Now imagine further that maybe deep down that person thinks -fears, that that humanity was a mask. A glammer, a white ice cream vendor's uniform you put on in a suburban neighborhood while you walk out and get the paper... and underneath it is the truth. So what's the lie, and what's the glammer. Do you understand?"
"No?" said Connor, but he said it in such a reedy little voice that was unlike his usual bluster.
The intensity dripped out of the ice cream man's face, and he went back to his smile, "I'll tell you kids what, have a Freeze Pop, on me. It's hot today."
"Freeze pops!" Davey exhulted, beaming a smug look at Connor, who was well and truly shook. "Knew there was a name for 'em..."
"All hypothetical, of course, because I just sell ice cream," he was positively jovial as he brought out three plastic sleeves with flavored ice in them out of a cooler.
"But if it wasn't hypothetical," Tyler ventured, "Then wouldn't it be like blackface? One mean spirited, bad thing posing as something happy and funny?"
The ice cream man seemed to want to say something, but he just held his finger out in a gesture at Tyler, as he turned back to cleaning off his topping containers. His grin widened.
"If you were Sicko," said Davey, smacking his fat lips, his ruddy complexion and fat face in heaven as he sucked on a green sleeve of shaved ice, "What would you want to do about PCW? Keep showing up? They have some Battlebowl trophy, um, you can win and it'll get you a lot of money, because all you have to do is win a match earlier in the night, and, um, then maybe they'll add you in? It's not clear."
He sighs, and his shoulders sag a little. "If I was this person, a trophy wouldn't matter to me... prize money wouldn't either... See kids, the kind of person the clown was, he didn't care about titles. He just wanted to break people. And, according to your, Youtube, Sicko did that quiet effectively the last time he showed up, in the Last Chance Battle Royale. He eliminated three people, wasted potential all of them. He squared up against the biggest and strongest member of the roster and handed him his ass. He was such a come from nowhere, force of destruction in that match that even the winner, Non Compos Mentis, barely squeaked by on a technicality of them both being knocked out of the ring, but Sicko landing first. Sicko raised so much hell in that match and beat so many people down, that there were some that were hoping that it slaked his thirst. That he had had his fill of hurting people. Maybe he even wanted it to feel like that. That he had satisfied the beast in his soul and he could go back to being a man again. But the beast Sicko's feeding isn't just for him... maybe he sees this. Maybe if he wants to be a happy man, happy family, little suburban life, he would have to... feed the beast pain. It'll make him happy. It'll make his wife happy. Who knew how long it would last."
He looked back at them with raised eyebrows. His grin. "Hypothetically."
He craned his neck out of the opening on the side. "Clouds coming in, looks like a cloudburst. You kids better get inside. Go on, now. No charge for the ice cream."
Connor was only too happy to hop on his bike. His face was white as a sheet. "I'm gonna see you guys later..." he muttered, giving a sketched out look to the big man behind the counter. Davey, however, looked at him curiously, almost with awe.
"I believe you can be that man again, mister, you just gotta work hard at it," He says. The giant ice cream man, absurdly, is touched. "You know, I'll pass that along to the clown in the truck, maybe if he does this enough, he'll satisfy her..."
Distant heat lightning cracks in the sky, as the once white-hot summer day begins clouding over.
Tyler wanted to ask about her. But the rain started coming down hard, and, with a friendly wave, the giant man was closing the sliding panel.
Rain started coming down in sheets. Tyler cursed. Davey, ice cream forgotten, was already well up the street, but he had yet to get going. The ice cream truck started it's engine, turning it's headlights on. Tyler looked at it, from every angle he could, there in the pouring rain... but it remained an ice cream truck, albeit a very creepy and sinister looking one.
He pushed off and splashed through a forming puddle, leaving it behind, as it creaked and groaned on it's axles and turned down the opposite side of the street.
Neither Tyler nor the occupant of the ice cream truck noticed the black Cadillac pulling up to an address just down the street. It was the address of a duplex we've visited before. The occupant, is a small, fastidious man wearing all black, and a black Trilby. He's got a carpet bag on the passenger seat of his big Caddy. As he looks through rain-slicked windows at the duplex just across the street from him, his mouth forms a frown line. He reaches a precise hand into his bag and daintily picks out with two fingers a tape recorder. "Daily notes #1723, Diane - have found the address of Mariah and Ephrain Ortiz. Further investigation is needed, since Mariah's whereabouts have been unknown since the day of his release. Will reconnoiter the duplex. Entry ends." And he pushes the stop button.
And if Tyler had been there to see the Cadillac, and the glammer had failed at that moment, would he have attributed it to his dreams, or to some trick of the mind played on him by the rain? Well, we won't know.
He exits the car door with a slam.
