IN A SHOW OF SELFISHNESS AND APATHY I NOW DEEPLY REGRET, I kept to myself in the run-up to Dodge City’s 2016 Mayoral Election. I figured, as most people I know did, that Professor Dalton was a shoo-in, being, as he was, the only candidate officially running.
The race shaped up this way because Dodge City was empty for awhile after the resurrected Blut Branson led everyone but me back to the Desert.
After a few weeks, however, Nature decided to abhor the vacuum Branson left in his wake and the town re-filled with shitty new people. The populace grew quickly enough that a new Mayoral Regime was deemed necessary, but not so quickly that it produced a candidate to oppose Dalton (who, like me and Big Pharmakos and a few others, turned out never to have left Dodge City behind), so the Election was seen as a formality, a friendly cusp between the Old Era and the New.
I thus felt secure whiling my summer away in thrall to Movies, as I’d whiled away all my summers before it, planning to emerge from my Room just long enough to vote in the Booths set up in the Town Square on November 8, before returning to the comfort of my bed and the security of the knowledge that Dalton would rule the town with fairness and aplomb.
*****
BUT, IN AN HISTORIC TURN NO ONE SAW COMING, something very different transpired instead.
On the night before the Election, a rumbling and a groaning was heard throughout the Dodge City Airspace. I won’t pretend I didn’t hear it too, though I tried my best to tune it out, pressing my pillow over my head and thinking, Well, it’s just something going on out there, and I’m in here, safe and sound, so why worry?
In the morning, however, I could tell that something was off. My stomach was knotted up and my breath tasted foul, like I’d swallowed a family of sandflies in my sleep. I brushed my teeth and drank a pot of coffee, but this did nothing to dull the taste, nor did the box of Orange Tic Tacs I consumed on my way across the Lobby and out of the Hotel.
By the time I made it to the Town Square, I was pink-eyed and gagging as I waited in line with a lot of other people who looked about the same as I felt. I remember going into the Booth, I remember picking up the pen to box in Dalton’s name, and then …
*****
… I’m in the Bar, on a stool beside Big Pharmakos, watching Dodge City’s Cable Access News Station on the wall-mounted TV as someone I vaguely recognize sits at a desk beside someone else I vaguely recognize announcing that the Mayoral Election has gone, by an incredible landslide, to someone or something called Colonel Pussygrab.
Footage appears of an obese green-skinned Satyr, dripping algae and brackish water, dancing in the Town Square with both hands on its erection, pumping it furiously while belching and shouting, “I’m gonna fuck you all! Every last one of you!”
The footage cuts out just as the creature comes, thick greenish gouts spurting from its midsection, its head tilted back in laughter that seems to echo off the surrounding buildings.
“It would appear,” one of the anchors begins as the laughter fades out, “that this creature, which goes by the name Colonel Pussygrab, emerged from the depths of Dead Sir, the brackish swamp out back of Dodge City where we throw all our undesirables, sometime between midnight and two a.m. last night and, in a coup whose nature is still under investigation, managed to add his name to our Mayoral Ballots at the very last minute.”
The anchor beside him nods and cuts in with, “Now, how exactly this entity swayed the Vote of the majority of the Dodge City Populace is another matter entirely. But, yes, at the moment it does appear that Colonel Pussygrab is our new Mayor.”
Whatever else she was about to say is interrupted by the other anchor vomiting onto her lap. The camera zooms in on the steaming pinkish pile before cutting to a photo of Professor Dalton’s face, bruised and streaked with tears in what looks like an enhanced interrogation room.
The atmosphere in the Bar is tense, all of us drinking, none of us making eye contact, while we wait out the commercial break.
*****
“Now, live from the Town Square,” says another anchor after the break, “we bring you Colonel Pussygrab’s Victory Speech.”
“I vow to make Dodge City um, um, um,” the Colonel intones into the microphone he holds with one hand, crushing the head of a kneeling body wearing a Dalton mask against his crotch with the other. “I will … uh … uh … oh God!”
He breaks into frenetic cackling as he ejaculates into the kneeling subject’s mouth. Then he removes the Dalton mask and holds it up so we can see his green snotty semen dripping onto the cobblestones.
The Bar, silent before, is even more silent now. The time for groaning and jeering and perhaps even discussion will come, I assume, but it isn’t here yet and it feels a long way off.
I look at Big Pharmakos beside me, but he won’t turn to meet my gaze, so I look back at the screen as a parade of Satyrs, all green, all naked, all sporting angry erections, marches from the background to stand beside the Colonel on the podium, staring straight at the camera and grunting. They lick their lips and snort through their noses and some of them spit gobs of phlegm at what I can only imagine is the crowd gathered below them, just off-camera.
“I think I’m gonna head back to my Room,” I whisper to Big Pharmakos after I’ve choked down as much of my beer as I can. “Try to relax a little.”
When he doesn’t reply, I show myself out.
*****
CROSSING THE TOWN SQUARE from the Bar to the Hotel is an upsetting interlude. I hurry with my head down, past the cameras and the crowd and the smell of swampwater in the air, through the Lobby where everyone’s transfixed on the same broadcast we were all watching in the Bar — now the Colonel’s shouting, “I’m gonna try it anal! Everybody watch me try it anal!” — and up to my Room, where I lock the door and boot up my MacBook.
As I get online, I find myself torn between a desire for raw escapist entertainment and a desire for cold hard news. On the one hand, I want to be anywhere but here; on the other, I can’t look away from whatever here’s becoming.
To postpone the decision — I have tabs for Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu all open in my browser — I pick up the landline and call for Room Service. “Hi,” I say. “Can you book me three meals a day until further notice? I think I’m gonna be in here awhile.”
The scared-sounding Porter says “sure” and hangs up.
Waiting for dinner to arrive, I lie on my bed and fall into a dream. In the dream, everything’s green and smells like rot and there’s a slurping sound echoing off the walls of … a chamber of some sort? A dungeon? The green’s so thick and the smell so revolting it’s hard to tell, but then, just as the Porter’s knock on my door wakes me, I catch a glimpse of myself hunched over a soggy sheet of paper, crayon in hand, putting a fat wet X beside the name Pussygrab in some hellish simulation of the Dodge City Mayoral Election.
Spluttering, I roll out of bed, open the door, and fall upon my steak and eggs before the Porter’s removed his hand from the tray.
Munching steak and knuckle-skin once the Porter’s extricated himself, I settle back behind my MacBook and press Play on the first option Netflix gives me.
For a minute, the screen boils green. Then the image resolves into what — much as I wish it weren’t — is clearly the Town Square.
In the Square, as this Movie has chosen to represent it, a scale model of Dodge City has been laid out, filling the open space with miniature versions of the buildings we all occupy, including the Hotel I’m watching it in now.
As soon as I’ve recognized this for what it is, the Satyrs descend upon it, romping from building to building, smashing them and tearing them off the their bases and, in some cases, eating them.
One Satyr stabs another in the eye with the radio antenna from the model Cable Access Station and green blood spurts out, covering the screen, and his shrieks are so loud I turn my MacBook’s volume down to zero and run into the shower with my clothes on, holding onto the tiled wall as the whole building shakes when, I assume, the Satyrs rip the model Hotel off its pretend foundation.
A Room in Dodge City, Vol. 3: AmazonNetflixHulu (Life Under Col. Pussygrab) 