Pounding Drumsticks

At four o'clock in the morning, just as the bars were closing, a car drove north on Manhattan's West Side Highway. The traffic was light on this particular spring Thursday, and the potholes were kind to the aging suspension of this rusting '77 Chevy Nova wearing New York plates. A cool breeze blew off the Hudson River into the open driver's side window, carrying with it the scent of fresh marine air lightly seasoned with diesel oil fumes. The clicking of the engine valves slowed as the car decelerated onto the 96th Street exit ramp. Not a soul could be seen on this landscape of late-night urban desolation. The car slowly idled eastward, past a burned out wreck that had been in the same charred spot on the grass since summer the year before.

The old two door sedan came to rest inside the tunnel of an overpass. The shift lever was delicately worked out of the drive position and into the park position of the loose steering column. The amplified engine noise reverberated in the semicircular cross section of the fifty foot-long crumbling cement and steel-girder cavity. The passenger door opened, and the body was kicked out onto the broken glass and litter covering the urine-soaked sidewalk. As the car rolled away, the body lay there lifelessly, slumped over a curb on its back, arms outstretched, legs spread wide.

Moments later, the arms moved, because this white male body was not dead. The anesthetic was simply beginning to wear off. While he didn't know it yet, the man had been unconscious for the past two weeks. The outside stimuli of the world slowly crept into his heavily medicated brain, which fought its way back to consciousness. His legs moved. His left arm slid through the shards of glass. He emitted a squeaky noise through his nose. He was beginning to exit the dream state, which was the closest to consciousness he'd been since he last walked about on the streets, almost like a normal person, doing the things normal people do, almost.

Ramon and his younger brother Julio were both pushing .4 percent blood alcohol level. Julio's divorce had just gone through, and Ramon had taken him out to celebrate his freedom from the bitch by poisoning him with cheap whiskey. Like real men, they downed their shots after last call while laughing themselves nearly to the point of tears. They still had some energy, so they decided to mosey on down to the river and blow a joint before calling it a night. They stumbled west on 96th Street laughing and slurring their speech. As they told and retold the same stories, they approached the overpass and saw the silhouette of a figure moving in the tunnel.

"Dat dude drunker den we are, Man," Ramon told his brother while still laughing. "Look at dat dude."

The figure in the tunnel began flailing its arms wildly. It smashed down on a hubcap, and the loud metallic noise startled the approaching brothers, and they froze in their tracks while watching from the other side of the street.

"Shit," Julio said. "He all fucked up. Look at dem arms ..."

The man was now fully conscious, but still on his back. He held his arms up in front of his face, and what he saw horrified him beyond anything he'd ever imagined could be possible. He screamed maniacally through his nose. With every exhaled breath he screamed the screams of gurgling panic mixed with the frantic sobbing of horror - the horror of acknowledging something radically different about his body. He violently shook his head from side to side. He screamed as if his mouth had been taped shut. He banged the back of his head on the broken glass of the pavement - up and down - up and down - pulverizing shards into slivers. He spasmodically rolled into the street as if he were being electrocuted from within. His screaming terrified the two drunk brothers who watched helplessly from twenty feet away. The man rolled onto his stomach and rose to his knees, shaking his arms in the air like a grizzly bear. His face puffed out like Dizzy Gillespie, and his eyes bulged as he emitted as much noise through his nose as he could.

"Shit man!" Ramon yelled. "He ain' got no mouth! Julio! Get da fuck outta here!"

The mouthless man rose to his feet, became dizzy, then fell back to the ground. He was still heavily sedated, and would be for quite some time. He crawled in circles, howling like a wounded beast. Then he instinctively crawled eastward, toward civilization, whimpering in his own personal nightmare.

The usual number of belligerent homeless people had to be thrown out of the all night deli on Broadway, just south of 96th Street. Other than that, things had actually been calmer than average until something very strange stumbled through the doors. Mr. Barsto had seen a lot of strange things stumble through those doors over the years, but he'd never seen anything quite like this. He watched curiously, because he'd never seen such a facial deformity. The man had both a wild and glazed look in his eyes, and chilling, blood-curdling noises radiated from his head. Mr. Barsto moved closer to the telephone because it looked like trouble. It sounded like trouble. It was trouble.

The man raved and gurgled out of control. Mucous dribbled from a hole on the left side of his cheek. It oozed through his short beard, down his chin, and onto the floor. The crazy man pounded his arms on the counter as spit and viscous fluids sprayed from the hole in his face. His jaw moved up and down as if he were chewing something, and it produced an unnatural disgusting sucking sound. Then he pounded the counter more violently, and raved unintelligible, horrible, panicky sounds.

Mr. Barsto now knew it was time to dial 911. He tried to stay outside the direct line of sight as he whispered to have the police please hurry. He hoped this monster would leave his store without seeing his face. The crazy man waved his arms in the air and pounded the merchandise displays, sending things flying to the floor.

"Get out of here!" Barsto yelled. "Get the fuck out of here! I just called the cops! Now go! GO!!! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!!"

The man with the dripping hole on the side of his face became even more frantic. He trumpeted, spit, sucked, and pounded the counter until the glass broke. And then he continued to pound the shattered counter with his bleeding partially-healed stumps - the stumps where only two weeks earlier his hands used to be.