Takitawah Part 5

By: A.B. Thomas

The past couple of years had been rough for Club, he had seen all of his favourite dives being torn down or converted to special housing units run by religious organizations in order to help those who would have frequented the bars they had once been, and now to save his ears from the assault of either dance music or country music, or cutesy lounges that catered to some stereotype of what English pubs are supposed to be, he drank at the only place that had the character of the old places, the lounge in the downtown “Albert’s”. He had been enjoying a rare week off of chasing after rogue mythological creatures or overzealous celestial beings by firmly planting his butt on one of the stools at the lounge in his more comfortable of outer wear, a pale blue fedora and tan trench coat, when a familiar face had come in and sat beside him. There had been the usual small talk and shallow banter as drinks were drunk, but for some reason that Club would never figure out, his cheeriness drained and a darkness settled over him even in the giddy lightness that surrounded him.
“I don’t know, doc, usually I can shake things like this off, but lately I can’t help feelin’ like shit,” Club said as he peered intently at the sliver of scotch left in the short squat glass he held partially tilted in his hand.

His companion, who sat on the stool to Club’s right at the long chipped mahogany bar in the sparsely populated lounge, grunted. Club shot an annoyed look at the taller of the two. Doctor Phal, Jared knew, was one who was always slow to respond, weighing his thoughts carefully, but he wasn’t looking for a professional answer from the five foot five phallic shaped psychologist, just a reassuring, “shut up and drink”. Dr Phal took a long sip of his triple Alabama Slammer and set it back down on the top of the bar. He straightened out the narrow black leather tie he wore with his stubby four fingers then flattened out his favourite bright yellow long sleeved shirt so that the creases ran straight into the belted one legged denim pants custom made to fit snug yet with some breathing room for the large scrotum that doubled has his legs and feet. He thought that he may have to order another pair of “Dr. Scholl’s”- his balls were getting a might sore, though it could be that they had not jettisoned their production quota in a while and may have built up a slight reserve, which the doctor thought could be a reasonable the usual black tinge to the soles had taken a decidedly blue hue.

Club had met the doctor only a few months before, the doctor seeking out his aid for a mental health case with a supernatural angle he was working on, but they had found they had something in common that bonded them in friendship: forced twenty first century social normalcy. The very nature of Club’s work with beings that were based on belief and legend meant that in being truthful, he was seen as someone who was “special” and therefore humored. Whatever rehabilitation clinic or detox centre he had wandered away from, it would not be long before his “buddy” would find Club and take him back for an intense and deep group therapy session where he would receive a thorough talking to about leaving the premises without his medication. Club had found it odd; his job was to protect mortals from discovering the truth about the Heavens and Hells and he was able to do so by being truthful about their existence.

Doctor Phal, the only known mutant penis with independence in thought, spirit and physicality, was accepted by mainstream society because society had deemed that a five foot something talking penis with two arms, two large semi-ovular eyes and a wide mouth below those eyes instead of on the very tip of the penile head was a trick of an overworked mind. What the doctor was, since obviously one could carry on a conversation with him, was just a poor man who had overcome some genetic dysfunction, like Elephantitis that gave the man the appearance of being a talking penis. Of course, society wouldn’t say that he looked like a penis because it would reflect poorly on society’s state of mind – or where it mind was. It was a win-win situation for the doctor; men wouldn’t say anything about his appearance in fear of being seen as a homosexual in denial on the verge of coming out which was manifesting itself in seeing a giant cock that he found interesting and women wouldn’t say anything in fear of being seen as a nymphomaniac with cock on the brain. The result, though a walking penis, others suspended their own belief in what visual information they were receiving and altered it to allow the doctor to walk down the street, shop, eat, or drink in relative anonymity. Both men realized that they were victims of good timing: if they had been out in public being who they were fifty, hell, both realized, even twenty five years prior, they would have at best been beaten or institutionalized, or at worse murdered by government scientists to be studied through autopsies. Not that Club would admit he felt a kinship with the doctor, if pushed he would say he hung around the doctor because he knew a cash mook when he saw one. While doctor Phal loved to play poker, he was a poor card player – every time the doctor had a good hand, he would leak pre-cum down his head. Club could simply fold or go all in and come out of the game ahead.

“Jared, it is perfectly acceptable to feel like that,” the doctor finally answered, his large semi ovular eyes taking the professional look of half closed eyelids to give the impression of semi-indifference as if this was the last appointment before a two o’clock tee time. A slight tinge of purple colored the edges of the doctor’s head as he was slightly excited over being asked something actually substantive by the man who claimed to work as a bounty hunter for the gods.

“Yeah?”

Doctor Phal took another drink before he continued on, his throat parched by the prospect that the conversation for once was not just a volley back and forth of penis jokes.

“Look, you’ve been thrown into tar, burning off the majority of your body, and then buried half-alive in the grounds of Eden that then fused with the charred and no doubt oozing ends of the damaged parts,” the psychologist answered flatly. “It’s only reasonable to assume of Eden, being eons old, that the animal residents would have to defecate at some point, quite often in fact, and it is highly likely that the ground you were entombed within would have the remnants or at least the by-product of natural composting, of that fecal matter ingrained into the soil. Therefore it is only logical to assume that it was not only the soil but the by-processes of biological functions that are trapped within your healed skin, bone, muscle and other tissues.”

“Huh?”

“You feel like a piece of shit because there’s a good chance that you have animal poop running amok in your body,” Dr. Phal answered with a disappointed tone in having to redirect his answer. Club shot back the remains of his scotch.

“I think you’re the one full of shit,” Club retorted in a snarl.

 Doctor Phal was nonplussed, quite used to the bounty hunter’s demeanor, shrugged his foreskin. Disappointed that he didn’t get some sort of barb aimed right back at him, Club mused aloud, “What gets me is why the hell Lucifer would try to make me immortal? From what I sense, the dude doesn’t even like me.”

“Perhaps that’s it – self preservation,” the doctor answered as he motioned for another round to be brought for the two. “The Big Bad has tried to off you, what, three times?”

Club nodded.

“The guy has failed every time, obviously, unless I’m drinking with a ghost, so it would make only sense that if he can’t kill you, he might as rein you in by keeping you alive – as insurance for his continued survival.” Club did not look convinced, so the doctor continued his explanation. “If the Devil wants you dead, he must think that you somehow have the power to kill, or at least usurp him. By imbuing you with the associated properties of the earth of Eden as propagated by Genesis, you have become a symbol of the eternalistic ideal of Eden, thereby pulling you into the mythos of the story of Genesis. As Lucifer is an integral part of the Genesis myth, you cannot kill him without annulling the credibility of Genesis, which then would make you vulnerable as you are part of Genesis.”

Club stared at the garishly clad penis blankly. The doctor sighed, took a long sip of the new drink before him.

“Think of it in political terms,” Phal advised Club. “What’s the best way to keep a member of parliament quiet about questionable policies? – make him a cabinet minister. Not that it matters – If I recall correctly, didn’t some sort of goddess tell you that you’d be human until your soul decided you weren’t human anymore?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it then, or now, for that matter,” Club admitted.

“Think of it this way, Jared – Just north of town two years ago you couldn’t shoot a coyote without facing a heavy fine from Fish and Wildlife, this year you can shoot as many coyotes as you please, and get compensation for it if you bring in its paws, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Why the change of heart by Fish and Wildlife?”

“There’s concern that they’re starting to hunt around the new area that’s being developed for about 350 single family housing units. From what I’ve read some of them have really mangy coats and are quite skinny. I suppose Fish and Wildlife are concerned about the diseased coyotes infecting the healthy ones”

“So the ecological system isn’t able to support the coyote population anymore. Two years ago that area was what?”

“Farm land and marsh.”

“Did the coyotes decide en masse to dramatically alter their lifestyle?”

“Get serious, doc.” Club admonished, “Coyotes do what coyotes do, and they don’t suddenly choose to do something else.”

“I am being serious, Jared,” Phal insisted. “If the coyotes didn’t change, what changed their environment?”

Club shrugged his shoulders, and then said cautiously, “The land developers?”

Phal nodded. “So the developers clear fall and level the area, taking away the food sources for the coyotes, who in turn then begin to get sick. In order to protect coyotes that are still healthy, Fish and Wildlife opts to thin the line out a bit.”

“Sounds right,” Club agreed.

It would seem that the problem of the health of those coyotes began with the eradication of their natural ecosystem,” the doctor hypothesized, “So if the ecosystem had been kept intact, there should not be any health issues now, would there.” Club agreed. “If the concern is for the health of the coyote population, why not simply execute x amount of men, women and children that would reside in the development, thereby annulling the need to infringe on the coyote’s ecosystem?”

Club stared at the doctor for a moment before he answered. “Uh, because that would be wrong.”

“Okay, so why not let the coyotes go about their business in the residential area, then?”

“Are you nuts, doc? They’d most certainly kill any dog or cat, or at least pass on the mange to those animals, and worst case scenario, they may get desperate to attack someone.”

“So?”

Club was taken aback. “So, you just can’t let people live in fear, you gotta make sure their safe, right?”

The doctor smiled. “To be human, Jared is to see a coyote with a broken leg on the side of the road and take it to a rehabilitation centre so it can be healed, but then if you see a coyote off in the distance, you get out your rifle and shoot it. To be human is to rationalize what should be over what simply is.”

“And you’re so better, doc?” Club sneered at his friend.

“Humanity has a wise adage: a cock has no memory- or conscience,” the doctor commented as he shrugged his foreskin. “The only difference between you and I is that when I blow my load, I don’t pretend that I did it for no other purpose because I wanted to.”

Club began to ponder what the doctor had said when he was distracted by an insect sized bright yellow glow that zipped and hovered momentarily over the bridge of his nose before shooting off. Club’s eyes followed the yellow light as it sped across the bar and out the lounge’s single door. He stood up, throwing three twenties onto the bar.

“Gotta go, doc, thanks keeping in character and being just a friggin’ total prick and giving advice that really didn’t do shit for me.”

“No problem, Jared,” the doctor replied, lifting his glass. “What’s up?”

“Dunno,” Club said with a shrug, “A little fairy apparently wants a word with me.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Here I thought that guy in the corner was making “come hither” eyes at me,” Doctor Phal answered.

“Doc, there’s only one asshole big enough to accommodate you,” Club answered coyly, “But the Prime Minister is a married man.”

“So’s Travolta, but according to the rags, that hasn’t stopped him,” Phal retorted.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get such a swelled head, you ain’t that impressive. Catch ya on the flip side, doc,” Club said with a smile as he walked towards the door. He didn’t feel too bad about ditching the doctor, the guy had a way of not being alone for too long. Club hadn’t even made it two steps away when he heard a feminine voice ask if Phal knew her, he seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite place him.

“Honey, from the looks of you, I hardly think that you were that inexperienced not to know where to place me,” the doctor’s voice answered. The woman must have decided not to contemplate the meaning, Club decided as she continued talking to the giant penis.

“Do you come here often?”

“Nah, I’m more of a Southern boy at heart, around the vagina way.”

“Virginia?”

“Babe, buy me a drink and we can play “Swedish sex teacher and the inexperienced student” all you want”….

Yep, the doctor wasn’t the type to be the wall flower, Club thought with a smile. He was tempted to sit back down but a sprite taking the chance to fly in a public area meant that whatever it wanted, it wasn’t something to be ignored. Once out into the darkness, it was easy to spot where the sprite hovered, bobbing and weaving with an air of impatience.

“Could you be any slower?” a feminine voice that seemed liltingly cute even in its harshness. “The tag on the errant Takitawah just went nuclear.”

“Takitawah?” Club said with more than a hint of confusion.

 “Oh, you men – you just make me – ohhh,” the fairy fumed, her entire naked body shaking violently. “You issued a request to watch for a Takitawah power surge in an urban area a while back – it’s happened, so your request has been honored, so now are you going to do something about it or was it just something to do until something better came along?”
Club’s brain was sifting through memories that corresponded with the word “Takitawah”; the several glasses of scotch was not aiding in the fleetness of mental foot. The fairy mistook Club’s silence for disinterest.

 “You men are all such ass wipes, you know that?” she huffed. There was a small explosion of pixie dust over the bounty hunter’s head as the blonde haired gave him the middle finger salute.

“Nice attitude!” Club snarled loudly into the sky though he could understand the fairy’s general disdain for him – after all, he was just another man. She hadn’t always been spite filled sprite; but she had fallen in love with a boy who had refused to grow up. She and he had spent many a platonic day and night together, with the fairy hoping that one day the boy would grow up just enough to appreciate her for more than just a buddy. Unfortunately though through the years while the boy did eventually learn to appreciate the opposite sex, he had turned his attention to mortal girl who he would go visit for a single night once a year. Running around a magical land filled with pirates, pixies and fairies with a bunch of other boys that refused to grow up did not do much for the boy’s social maturation around girls who would then grow to be women – and that’s just what happened. The girl he visited turned into a woman and on the last night the sprite would see the object of her affections, the girl who became a woman had also developed a smoking habit, which she wished to desperately break. Turns out it wasn’t the nicotine that the woman craved as much as it was a latent oral fixation. To make matters worse, the woman detested the habit of chewing gum, and to be fair, the name Peter is sexually suggestive when one is in the right frame of mind. The boy who didn’t want to grow up suddenly, well, a part of him, grew and he decided that maybe being a grown up wasn’t so bad after all.

Club was about to walk back into the lounge and apologize to the doctor for the false alarm when his memory bank made a withdrawal of the information filed under “Takitawah”. Club’s heart raced, the puppy – it would be almost full grown by now; the power of its sonic voice would have at least quadrupled with that maturation! He looked around frantically, but was unable to spot a mouse or even a stray cat in the alley behind the restaurant and lounge. He looked around once more; double checking to ensure there were no crack-heads partially aware of their surroundings curled up against the dumpsters for warmth then flicked his left wrist back sharply. There was a faint click and a dagger shot from its hidden sheath into his hand.