The Concept of Anxiety, American Serial part 16 by Frank Hinton

The lump of meat is warm and juicy and Francis chews on it for a long time. Though he knows the thing to be unhealthy and  fattening, he shows no sign of distress on his face. He chews the kielbasa lovingly and with the innocence of a child gumming some mashed vegetable. Francis closes his eyes and savors the moment. He lets the dead creature’s juices slide down his throat and spread warmth and nourishment throughout his body. It is a delicious barbecue meal.

They sit outside of the concert gates in a small, crowdless pocket within the mass of concert-goers attending the Phish Concert. In the distance the Saratoga Performance Art Center stands like some modern fortress that protects nothing at all.

The sun shines overhead making everyone beneath perspire. It is a beautiful day and a feeling, an energy can be felt. Some faint essence seems to cling to each and every person, an anticipation, a desire. Here is not a place of effort but a place of being. Smiles gather on the faces of most people.

Francis, Bradbury, Joshua and Cherry sit upon the grass picking away at their paper plates, eating with fingers only. They had forgotten to purchase forks and spoons at the grocery store and had to make due without utensils as a medium. No one seems to mind this. A warm, windless haze has spread out around them and allowed for no kind of despair or negativity. They have no chairs, no napkins; only the grass and their plates, their fingers and the meat.

Cherry’s knee touches Francis’ knee and his eyes shoot to the point of their connection. She does not move her knee from his, but instead pushes them together harder. Francis takes this as a sign of flirtation. Francis licks the grease from his fingers and leans forward to Cherry’s cheek. He gives her a kiss with lips covered in the juice of kielbasa. He can not see her eyes, but the expression is one of revulsion. Francis holds his lips upon Cherry’s cheek and gently lets his tongue slip between them. He makes a circle upon Cherry’s cheek with his tongue and then a slurping noise. At last, Cherry can take no more and pulls away from him with an uncomfortable giggle. She puts her hand on his thigh and holds it there, like an anchor staying a ship.

“I can’t get over how beautiful it is outside,” Cherry says wiping her cheek dry.

“Looks like rain,” Francis says and finishes the last of his kielbasa.

Everyone looks at Francis with round and condescending eyes. They can not tell the cause of his strange attitude, they do not understand the sudden confidence. Franicis does not rouse any affect from this. He swallows and looks at his friends. His mouth forms a curious smile and he places a hand on Cherry’s inner thigh. He squeezes. He turns his head to her and holds the curious smile upon her. He licks the circumference of his lips. He leans in to Cherry. Her breath smells like lip gloss and sausage juice. He gives her a kiss. He puts his tongue inside of her mouth and looks for her tongue. Reluctantly, it comes forward. The kiss is full of dead meat and succulent juices. During the kiss, Frank opens his eyes and looks at Cherry. Her eyes squint tightly. She looks the way a child looks when it gets a needle. She looks like a person taking a sharp shit. He releases her mouth from his.

Bradbury and Joshua eat their meals silently. They seem startled by Francis. Cherry drops her unfinished plate of kielbasa onto the grass and stands up.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” she says.

“Good luck,” says Francis. “The wait at the port-o-potties is like an hour. Just go piss in the bushes.”

“Men piss in bushes,” she says.

“Okay, you can go squat in a shit-filled outhouse. Enjoy your ladylike adventure,” he says.

Cherry doesn’t respond to this. She glances at Bradbury for a brief moment and turns to leave.

“Bitch,” Francis says.

It seems Cherry does not hear this. She slips away.

“What? What the fuck is going on?” Bradbury asks. His face assembles an expression of genuine confusion.

“Josh, I have decided that I don’t want to sacrifice my box. I’d like you to give it to me. I shouldn’t have brought it down here. It’s a family heirloom.”

“What?” Joshua says sitting up and then standing up. He wipes his own meat juices from the corners of his mouth.

“I said I decided against giving you my property to sacrifice.”

“I need that box, Frank. Don’t be a fuck.”

“I don’t see what’s so important about it. You need me to sacrifice something? It doesn’t make sense, it compels me toward no end. I have better things to sacrifice than a box my father made me swear to hang on to.”

“I already set it up, I contacted the Magus’ agent. It’s a done deal.”

“Well then I’m breaking the deal. You made it without my consent so I can break it without yours or some Magus.”

Joshua moves toward his bag containing the box. Francis widens his stare.

“Frank, you agreed at the coffee shop,” Bradbury says. “You said he could have it.”

“I changed my mind. Give me a reason Joshua,” Francis says.

Joshua paces around the small encampment they have made in the grass. He scratches at his nose and looks at his friends with vacant eyes.

“His agent is leaving. This might be a chance to gain a client.”

“Who’s agent?” Francis asks.

“The Magus. His agent is leaving and the Magus is looking for a new one. I thought if I brought him something, some object- he is obsessed with sacrificing things that are sacred- that he would consider me a good agent.”

“So you want to use me and the box to get you ahead. You’re tired of representing me and that mime with tourettes?”

“I need out of the bank, Frank. I need to do something more, make some real money. I’m stuck, I’m a cog in a machine made only of cogs.”

There is something pitiful about this speech and it is made stark when uttered amidst the crowd of eager Phish fans. Like all business majors, Joshua wants a magic answer, a cure-all for the disease of immobility in his career. One wonders how Joshua manages to go to work day in and day out, looking at emotionless numbers on a page, converting them into graphs only to hand them on to a higher authority that in turn transforms those graphs back into useful but emotionless numbers. Does he dream every day of finding a more exciting venture, something that not only brings profit, but actual joy? The look he gives Francis seems to suggest just that.

“It’s up to you Frank,” Bradbury says, cutting in to the conversation. “You have a box that was until yesterday worth nothing to you. How long can you hold on to a mystery before it goes sour? I say you either open the box and see what’s inside, or you give it to Joshua to help out a friend.”

“Or both,” Joshua says.

Francis’ eyes narrow. He stands up and brushes a few bits of grass and dirt from his knees. He holds his head as if dizzied by the act of standing and then firms his posture. It is rare to see him stand so straight. His chest pushes forward and his shoulders align. He holds his head high and at some angles his double chin disappears.

“Fuck you,” he says looking at no one in particular.

“What?” Joshua asks.

“Fuck you,” he says to Joshua. “And you.” He moves a pointed finger at both of them.

“What?” Bradbury asks. “Fuck us?”

“This whole thing, this whole trip is just a big fucking lie. Is there even a man with all the answers, Bradbury or did you just make all that up?”

“What? Of course there is.”

“Oh, so it isn’t part of a scheme, it isn’t part of some research project? Or am I just hallucinating all of this on Cherry’s magic tea?”

“Frank, you’re being an idiot,” Joshua says. “No one is using you. We’re here to see Phish, we’re here to help you.”

“No,” Bradbury says. He is the last to stand. His brown, shirtless torso glistens in the sun. He looks down at Francis, his eyes steady and convincing. He takes a step toward his patient. “We are studying you. We are studying the effects of the root on creativity and analytical thinking. You are the subject, Frank. We’re studying you. You’re right.”

“You and Cherry. So what I heard at the gas station was true,” Francis says.

“Yes,” Bradbury says. “Part of the research involves how the subject reacts when interacting with a sexual partner. Most people who use the root isolate themselves and enter a kind of existential cloister. The plan was to keep you in the company of others, to keep you sexually active and study the results.”

“And not tell me.”

“It would ruin the results.”

“And trick me? Make me cheat? So you could write a paper? I don’t get it with you Psyc majors and your ridiculous papers. Why not pick someone who was single? Someone who was more creative and less isolated?”

Bradbury points at Francis a few times. It is a strange, silent gesture.

“We needed someone who was fundamentally unhappy. We needed someone who had rules in their life to break and secrets to keep. When you came to me with the idea of coming down to New York, I contacted Cherry and we had to throw together a plan quickly. We didn’t have time to hire a prostitute or anything like that. She had to step in.”

“So this started after I set the meeting with the man with all the answers?”

“Yes.”

“So is he real?”

“Yes Frank, he is real.”

Francis sits back down onto the grass. He looks down at the shadow cast before him. Eventually, the others sit down.

“I’m so confused,” Francis says.

“I’m sorry Frank,” Bradbury says.

“Sorry,” Joshua adds.

“I don’t know. I thought this trip would change me. I thought I would feel something new or learn something. But I don’t have anything. I don’t feel substantial or whole or changed. I feel less of what I used to. I feel like I’m losing myself. This is just full of lies and pretended sentiments. Fuck. This is fucked.”

Francis reaches into his pocket. He looks ahead to the concert gate.

“Give me my box,” Francis says.

Joshua hesitates. He picks his bag up from the ground and unzips it. He pulls out the small wooden box from the pocket and holds it in his hands. It looks unnaturally heavy. Amidst all of the paper plates, beer cans and hippies, the box looks almost sacred. He holds it out to Francis.

“Please,” Joshua says.

“It’s not up to me,” Francis says. He grabs the box and tucks it under his arm. He pulls the four tickets from his pocket.

“Not up to you?” Bradbury asks.

“No, the transparent man told me about all of this. He warned me about all of you. He told me about the storm.”

“Frank, what the fuck are you talking about?” Joshua asks.

Francis fans the tickets in his hand. He looks at them for a brief moment and then begins to rip them.

“Frank!” Joshua yells.

Bradbury jumps over and tries to grab at the tickets. Francis rolls backwards and continues to rip them. Bradbury claws at his hands but it is too late. In the next moment the tickets are in shreds.

“You mother fucker,” Joshua yells. He is on his feet, he grabs Francis’ collar. Francis chuckles. A drop of of sweat falls from Joshua’s forehead onto Francis’ cheek. It feels like rain. He shakes himself clear of Bradbury and Joshua. He stands up.

“Fuck you and your fucking games,” Francis says. He turns and runs.

Francis weaves his way through the crowd of people. He has no set direction, his aim is to put distance between himself and the others. He pushes people apart and squeezes through the gaps of the bodies. Soon he enters the mass chunk of people collected around the gates for the concert. He comes to the entrance where ticket guards await. The mass of people thickens until Francis can get no further. Everyone is waiting for the gates to open. Francis turns and heads in another direction pushing and prying his way through the crowd.

Eventually, the clusters of people become less and less dense until Francis reaches a small forest area near the outer edge of the concert grounds. Francis grips his fingers onto the wired fence links that partition the concert ground from the forest and peers into strange place ahead. It is filled with tall, crooked black trees laying in a thick copse. An odd blue light pours from behind the gaps in the trees, filling the forest with a kind of haunted luminescence.

“What am I doing?” Francis says.

He takes a deep breath and a terrible smell fills his nostrils. He looks again into the forest and just beyond one of the far trees he thinks he spots something. It doesn’t have a shape or color, but it looks both alive and dead. He inhales again and the terrible smell comes again, something putrid, something rotten. His eyes widen. He starts to climb the fence.

He does not realize the box is still with Bradbury and Joshua until he is over the fence.

“Fuck,” he says to himself and heads into the forest.

© 2009 – 2010, Metazen. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Black Veil Uncertain, American Serial Part 15 by Frank Hinton
2. The Other Side of the Fence, American Serial Part 17 by Frank Hinton
3. Sir Galahad, American Serial Part 18 by Frank Hinton
4. The Sacrifice, American Serial Part 19 by Frank Hinton
5. The Man With All the Answers, American Serial Part 20 (conclusion)

Tags: American Serial

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 4:00 am