Trashland a Go-Go (4 page)

Coco plodded along behind Rudy for some time. The ground finally became level.

The plastic wrapping around Coco’s feet was tattered. She stopped to rest and strapped on her stilettos. Coco felt suddenly much more secure. She fished through a pile of trash. She was so hungry. She hoped there would be something she could eat without getting too ill. Like a Twinkie. Those things lasted forever. She knew she probably wouldn’t be that blessed.

The longer Coco wandered the wasteland, and the more she got to know Rudy, the less she believed she was dreaming. Her dreams had never been this vivid or detailed. She couldn’t recall ever having smelled a dream. Just as Coco began to weigh the possibility of having completely lost her mind, she unearthed a half eaten bag of trail mix from what appeared to be a crumpled mess of someone’s study notes. She examined the bag briefly before tilting her head back and pouring the mix into her mouth. It tasted vaguely of rubbish. She was so hungry she hardly noticed it.

Rudy buzzed around Coco’s head, exhausted. He landed in the mess of her hair, burrowed in and made himself a little nest of a bed.

Reclining and relaxing in her hair, Rudy said, “A little ways up, there is a hut. They may even let us stay the night. From there we can start fresh in the morning. Shouldn’t be much farther now.”

Normally Coco would find the mere thought of an insect making itself at home in her hair utterly repugnant. In this case, given that she had annihilated his home and he had still been so kind as to escort her to some kind of civilization, she made an exception. Besides, her hair was a mess already—stiff and fried from the electrocution. It had also begun to collect bits of paper, lint, and anything else the wind might have blown into it. Maybe this hut place would have a shower?

Excited by the prospect of cleanliness, Coco jumped to her feet and started off.

“Do you mind if I just take a nap here?” Rudy wheezed from her matted hair.

“Just don’t lay any eggs in there.” Coco cringed.

“I’m not making any promises.” Rudy yawned and rolled over.

As Coco walked she could hear the faint sound of his teeny, tiny snoring.

Coco didn’t notice that Rudy was awake until he landed on her nose. She could almost hear his small fuzzy smile as he said “Something smells exquisite!”

She wanted to believe him. He sounded so pleased with what he smelled. Whatever was creeping into her
own
nostrils made her eyes water. It smelled like the alley behind the club where Coco danced—the one that was shared with a butcher shop. She was glad, more than glad—relieved—that it was nearing dusk. She could only imagine what it must smell like around here at high-noon.

Coco stopped in her tracks. “What
is
that smell?”

Rudy pressed on, salivating. “We must be close to the Oracle now.”

“The who?”

“This old woman. She can read your fortune. She’s a strange old bat, but they say she sees things. Then they happen.” Rudy shrugged four shoulders. “But they say a lot of things, don’t they? For all I know she’s just an old lady in a meat hut.”

“MEAT hut?”

“She might be able to help you. It’s worth a shot. Maybe we could even spend the night there!” Rudy’s already globular eyes widened. He drooled.

“I don’t know that I want to stay in anything called a
meat hut
.” Coco winced.

Rudy looked back at her as he followed the enticing stench. “Said the stripper who did
what
exactly with sausage?”

“Brautwurst.” Coco scowled. She knew she shouldn’t have told him that.

She followed him reluctantly, feeling insulted. As they neared the Oracle, Coco continued to ponder what in the hell a meat hut could possibly be. And the stench got stronger.

By the time they could see the hut, the smell was unbearable. Coco’s stomach lurched. Rudy was leaving an alarmingly obvious trail of slobber in his wake. It dropped into the air after him and landed like a fine mist across Coco’s forearm as she walked behind him. She kept trying to switch sides, or just walk a bit slower or faster, but Rudy never flew in a straight line. He made loops and swirls and zig-zags, all the while intoxicated by the vile aroma.

Coco and Rudy stopped in front of the house. Coco tried to pinch her nose to avoid smelling it, but breathing through her mouth she could almost TASTE it; rotting meat. She cupped a hand over her nose and mouth in an attempt to find some happy medium and walked up to the front door.

The hut was a small aluminum structure bent into a roundish shape and bound with baling wire. The roof of the hut was shingled with thick slabs of decaying meat, writhing and squirming with maggots. There were black patches vibrating with the buzz of flies.

Rudy quickly scanned the crowd and ducked back into Coco’s mangled mane.

“Friends? Enemies? Ex-lovers?” Coco laughed as she shook a finger through her tangled hair where Rudy hid, mocking him.

“Shut up.” Rudy hissed.

“Why not go say hello?” Coco pried.

“I don’t want them to know that I am dying. They can’t know how sick I am,” he whispered.

“This illness you have,” Coco said, through her fingers “It isn’t contagious, is it?”

“I don’t think so. When the Queen banished the flies, we all came here. I slipped inside to visit the Oracle one day. She took one look at me and said ‘You’re going to die in a week.’ When I asked her what kind of illness I had, or what was going to happen to me, all she said was ‘This is the way these things happen.’”

“Great.” Coco dropped the subject as Rudy had already been living in her hair and on parts of her face for the bulk of the day.

Coco reached the front step and gagged. In place of a door was a curtain made from the intestines of some small animal. They were nailed to the wooden door frame, and hung like a beaded curtain—only instead of beads, ropes of thick, vein-riddled, rotting guts swayed in the putrid wind. Coco’s stomach lurched.

Coco knocked on the wooden door frame with her free hand. The wood was soft and damp with rotting intestinal fluid that had rubbed into the wood. She smeared her hand against the side of her leg trying to wipe away the wetness. Since her dress was made of plastic bags, most of the gunk just smeared across the back of her hand and wrist.

“Ugh. Hello?” Coco called through her hands. She heard the creak of a chair shifting underneath someone’s weight, followed by soft shuffling footsteps.

Knobby skeleton fingers wrapped in thin, paper-white skin slid through the gut curtain. They curled around a piece of the draped entrails and pulled it aside, leaving a gap barely large enough for someone to peer outside. Only the hand could be seen beyond the shadows of the meat hut.

“What?” croaked a voice through the stench.

Coco was not sure how much more of the odor she could tolerate. She tried to breathe through the gaps between her fingers to filter the smell, but when she inhaled it attacked her senses full force. “I seem to be lost,” Coco said, trying not to gag.

“Seems so,” croaked the voice, “no one comes around here on purpose.”

“I can see why.”

“But folks end up here for a reason. So you may as well come in. I’ll see what they have to say about you.”

Coco was confused. “They?”

“Come on in. I’ll make some tea.” Bony fingers curled under stained shirt-sleeves, hanging like potato sacks around dainty, frail wrists, gesturing for her to come inside.

Coco could only imagine what could possibly be inside the meat hut. The stench was tremendously appalling outside, even at a distance. She’d already nearly vomited at least three times.
Inside
the hut? She thought she might revisit the trail mix she’d eaten. And it wasn’t exactly delectable the first time.

The hand disappeared inside. The voice said, “Please, come in. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Coco heard slow, shambling footsteps drifting deeper inside the hut. She stood on the porch and breathed into the palm of her hand repeatedly. She stared at the curtain but did not make a move to enter.

“It’s not solid,” the voice said, “you can just walk right through. It’ll move.”

Coco could not figure a way of entering the hut without touching the intestines. She took a deep breath for courage and immediately regretted it.

She slowly reached for the gut-curtain. As her hand got closer, she realized she was really going to have to walk through the intestines.
Just think of it like the car wash
. She closed her eyes and slid her hand between two slick strips. They felt spongy and moist against her arm.
Just like the car wash
, she thought. She tried to picture her favorite car wash back home. Soapy. Sudsy. Clean. She played these images to herself like a movie behind closed eyelids as she stepped forward.

Holding the innards to one side, away from her face, Coco jumped into the meat hut. A long, pink intestinal tendril slipped around her outstretched hand and slapped her across the face. It left viscous goo clinging to her skin. She gasped, trying not to scream, so as to not offend her hostess. Even if the old woman lived in a rotting meat hut, Coco still believed in manners. The possibility of vomiting also struck Coco as rude. She wondered how the Oracle managed to live like this.

Coco looked around the hut. Most of the light in the small room came from the sun shining between gaps in its aluminum walls, though a few small candles on a table across the room provided some. The fire under the kettle mostly just made shadows on the bumpy aluminum. Coco figured it was probably for the best that it was fairly dark. With too much light, she might be forced to focus on the ceiling—which was clearly made of meat.

She could hear blood and bits of meat drip to the floor. Now and then, a small drop would splash on her arm. It was at this point that she ruled out all possibility of taking a shower. Perhaps it should have occurred to her sooner, but with a snoutful of rotting flesh, it was difficult to focus.

The old woman shuffled around some small glass jars near the kettle. Each one was filled with different colored herbs, liquids, or strange gelatinous blobs. Something squirmy shifted in a few of them when the firelight caused shadows to stretch and undulate. The contents of those jars seemed to hunger for the dark, pressing to the blackest glass.

Her hostess ambled around the table. She set tea for two: two tea cups, each a different color—one a solid slate gray and the other white with tiny peach-colored roses lining the rim. Both of the cups were chipped. The grey one had a moderately visible crack that stretched from its base all around the handle.

The saucers for each cup were robin’s egg blue with a delicate daisy hand-painted in the center. The woman set out a bowl of sugar cubes which looked pretty normal. While the Oracle was making their tea, Rudy darted from his hiding place in Coco’s hair and landed in the sugar bowl. When he took flight again at least three cubes were missing.