Novel, A Working Madness, by Ghost War 50
Age of Empires Win 2, Franks 500,000 per drink and smoke
12 cigarettes
Empires, Dawn of the Modern World 100
White Polo Vest 100
By Jacob Malewitz
Act 1: Out on a Trip, A Brother’s Los (t) (s), Working on a Job
Ch.1
They could see me. I mean some of them could. You see the world plays in extremes. This is just a story of that world, one where a small roman god took power, built madness, all in the hopes of finding something.
The doctor isn’t listening. Quentin T; I can sense that. I once heard a voice. I was once a man. I passed through a doorway. “You’re the one.” But it was in a different language, yet I understood. Quentin T. is a different man, perhaps with his voices he’s insane. He speaks regular talk, the kind that that has meaning.
I am Janus, keeper of the gate. This story will chronicle Quentin T., a hero who fought the devil throughout his life, laughing at angels and demons on a regular basis. His is a mad story for me to write about. But I must write it. For in writing you embolden the devil to look away, curiously, giving you one last shot at heaven.
“The door will open, do you reckon I need a key.” Quentin T. puts the cigarette to his mouth—the one he cannot light.
“What do you feel?”
“Like killing you.”
“And what else.”
“I feel I am in an alternate reality where my brother is trapped. Needles too. Cept I don’t know Needles, see? I don’t know him but I will.
“Tell me about your mother.”
“She owes me $700.”
“Good, good, tell me more.”
“I still kinda’ want ta kill ya.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“It makes me feel pretty damn good.
“See, first it’s a dream.” He lights the cigarette, hearing the inhale of breath from the doctor. “And that’s called the first dream, the one Dante saw once.” He takes a drag. “And then I see death and a girl I loved and a whole bunch of my friends. Cept I’m there too. Ya, me too. And someone is watching me. They are all watching me and I can’t make them stop.”
“And how does that make you feel.” The doctor is playing with his pen, adjusting it so he can pull more ink from it, shaking it like a wet rag, doing his best to keep the sketch of a doubtful Judas, or it Brutus?
“It still makes me feel of killing something.”
“Do you think you’re Jesus?
“You see, Jesus is real.”
“Of course—well, that is all perspective.”
“I see Jesus sometimes.” He puts the cigarette out on the couch, reaches for the pen, and the doctor, absent minded, is still looking down. He grabs the pen; the doctor winces when he threatens to stab him in the neck. “Sometimes I see him when I kill stupid doctors. I used to be something!” He puts the pen to the doctor’s neck. I watch him do this, watch his eyes, and there, just the dot on his forehead, is the perfect place.
The doctor was scared. In a way so was I. He puts the pen to his neck and drives a stream of blood through it. “I see a lot!” And his speech is slurred and a few orderlies storm into the room. And he goes back to the couch, lights a cigarette, and smiles. “My mom said I could become a movie star. Said I was good lookin’.” The doctor is choking on his blood; one orderly tries to stop the bleeding. “And I did become a movie star. And I made millions; had sex with women, too many really; and I meant a bunch of interesting people.” One orderly pulls out a small needle, grabs Quentin T.’s arm, and Quentin lets him do it. “But I know I don’t belong here. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe all those years of drugging caught up with me. But what If I’m not crazy? What if something big changed? What if!
“Ah, time to sleep.” His eyes closed for a moment. When the orderly turned his back on him, it was the only chance he needed.
2
The blade was at the doctor’s neck; a mark, a drop of blood. He took his chance. I didn’t realize how smart a man he was; I should’ve known. Quentin T. escaped the psych ward that day; he had a plan. He intended to do something big, to take all the world he had lost away. Bloodied … a killer … a film star—I remembered him so much. To understand the man you must understand his films, and to understand his films is to dance with madness.
I caught him exiting the back of the hospital. I heard all the sirens, saw the guards rushing towards him. How did he escape? There was much to it, as far as I can tell this is the true beginning to the madness, for when you take one madman, just one, and add another, true chaos exists. Back in the days when he knew me, when he was snorting cocaine by the eight ball and screwing woman left and right, when he was doing all these things, I knew it would come to this, an end game of sorts, a last ditch effort for sanity. What I did not expect to happen, what did happen, was this.
A young man in a truck roared into the scene, smacking right into two armed guards, each stun gun flying into the air amidst some screams, and I saw Jeremiah. Jeremiah: brother from hell. One thing about brothers: they often hate each other. Another thing about half brothers—they have a different sort of connection than true blood, some kind of bond which is never broken, and Quentin T and Jeremiah W. had this sort of thing going on. For me to understand them, I had to understand this relationship. For I had a mission, but that was not clear yet. What was to happen?
Quentin T. jumped into the truck, my eyes did show me, and they skirted off toward the exit. When two cops appeared on the scene, it was all bad. Jeremiah pulled out a shotgun and was immediately blasted. Quentin T, looking quite angry, grabbed the shotgun from his brothers’ broken hand and jumped on top of the police cruiser. The police stopped for a second. I could hear them saying, amidst the screams of a madman, what exactly did I get myself into. “He dies! He dies I blow your head off! Got it.”
“Put the gun down. Just put the gun down, kid.” It was just another cop, sure, but he had a family, for sure, and he had a reason to live. “What do you want kid?”
“I want more than you can give me.” He shot the partner, who fell, rolled, and gasped. It took a second for this to click with the other cop—trauma does that—and he slowly put the gun down on the ground. “And I want it now!” He shot the man’s ear off, jumped off the police cruiser, and looked him right in the eye. “And do you really want to know what that is?”
The cop, disturbed, fell to the ground. “Crazy! Crazy.” I thought he would do it. Being a man of Celtic blood—yes Romans can tell the look of a Celt by his actions, by his eyes too—you would expect him to finish off these cops. He went to the car, grabbed a med kit out of the back, and went back to the truck.
“I expect you to remember this day.” I can tell you, from my experience, a man remembers seeing his partner shot with a shotgun and having his ear blown off. It tends to stay with him.
3
“I have a mission for you.”
“I am a movie star.”
Quentin T. didn’t look surprised when I appeared. He merely nodded, the glint of his eye showing the bloodlust hadn’t quite left him, the touch of a smile showing me why women, girls, they just plain liked him. I suppose it was the outlaw renegade feel he had to him. He would have been perfect in a world of war, or a clandestine end of days themed movie … take your pick. It used to be fun watching him in his roles, watching him take a scene and add power to it. It was fun then too, watching him bandage up his brother. I had come to meet them on the backstreets of this small city, called Williamston by some, “just-another-hell” by others; I think every state has a place where the mad hide out.
“I am a movie star.”
“I heard that. Listen—“
“And I will make big bucks.”
“But my mission is about just that: making the big bucks.
“He can give you money right? Shit.” Jeremiah grabbed his shoulder, where a bullet had blown clean through. Quentin T., for all his madness, could have been a doctor. Or maybe he just knew how to treat a wound. Maybe he wasn’t mad. Who knows.
“I have a film.”
“You don’t have it or you wouldn’t be asking me. From what I can remember from my film days it was all drugs-and-chaos, short and sweet, like sex, but like sex there is always something else at play.”
He looked in a way like the modern renegade. The kind you see in just the right film. A more futuristic look, even with his Elvis cheeks, and he could have passed for the next great action star, with his big chin and his bulging muscles. He must have worked out in the psych ward, I had been thinking.
“Cept money comes in spades. Comes big or comes small. We want it big.” Jeremiah pulled out a lighter, tossed it to his brother. Quentin T. pulled out a needle from the back of the truck; my heart beat jumped. “And we want it now,” Jeremiah said, pointing the gun at me. “Or else, you see, I can just make you another dead god. Worlds full of them.”
“Would you send me to hell?”
“Maybe. Suit you wouldn’t it? Dancing with the devil.”
“Do you remember me, Jeremiah? Or do you, Quentin?”
“Names not Quentin anymore, be the king, Quentin the King. Or just T.” His eyes rolled and he started laughing. “Ha-ha. Call me the king! You know the nurses in their called me king.” The sound of sirens echoed through the streets. Quentin’s eyes crossed. I reached out, put my hand on his head. And he put the barrel right into my mouth.
“What you got?”
“Nuka, Needles, Katana, Cube. Anything ring a bell?”
“Doctors say I forgot all the past. Is that what you speakin’ of?”
“Exactly what I’m speaking of.” The barrel lowered from my head. “And I can pay in spades.”
What exactly happened next? Even I’m not sure. They put a needle in me, not telling me exactly what it was, what it could do to me. All that mattered was for a moment I saw into his madness, saw why he did the things he did. Quentin T. was a movie star; made millions; killed a few people; traveled to hell; went crazy. My plan was to send him back to hell again—not in death, but with a mission. Sending a man to hell with a mission is like sending a large cow to figure out a mathematical formula: it asks a lot. But Quentin T. was beyond all those things. He is to this day the most incredible person I have ever met, with a joke for every needle, a mad thought for every blunt of dope. Underneath you get a picture of a man destined for something. And that the cursed built upon him by God, I believe, because the gods of my day would never have asked so much, not even from Caesar, or, for that matter, a mad Nero.
But again, what exactly happened next? As far as I can tell, the dreams began.
“You’re not as crazy as … he is.” I was trying to explain what I needed to Jeremiah. It didn’t work.
“Say again? Say ‘gain cuz this bro just saved my life. Say it again. Please.”
“What mission,” Quentin T. finally said, “Janus?”
I look to the boy—and in a way he was just that: scared and forgotten and hopeful—and I see an understanding , something I cannot let go of quickly. There he was, willing to go for the mission.
“Nuka.”
“Kurosawa?”
“No.”
“Some other divine Shakespeare?”
“More like something a five year old could understand.”
“I am a movie star, you know.”
“Yes,” I responded, “that is why the mission is yours.” And it was his for the taking; my only chance at success was with this man of the mad world, a mad Nero moving through the world … through hell. Sometimes I wondered if he could be a Hitler. Sometimes I worried.
“The film, Nuka,” I let out, “the film Nuka is more to the turn of the century. Perhaps the first real animated film ever. Perhaps the simplest in scope, but it had a message sent to the skies, something which all gods could taste and touch—something big.”
“Cartoon?”
“More than that. A ballad of a fairy tale. A ballad of truth. A man who liked the science of the world, a man who liked to call him Nietzsche 2, a philosopher first, a photographer second. It captured the first death on film. Can you grasp that?”
“A pale horse.”
“Four horses, my bro.”
“Yes, a pale horse and on it …
“Rode the man in black, the man of the end…”
“And the man who influenced the first capture of death.”
“In a cartoon?”
“In a cartoon,” I said, smiling. “And maybe it will show you something about yourself.”
He put the shotgun down, lit a cigarette, and pulled something from his back pocket. A small bag of pills and small needles—smaller than usual. T looked at me. “Want it? You always did. You wouldn’t come to me for sanity. Would you?”
But there was more. Jeremiah, the brother who threatened any living soul. They weren’t even real brothers. They were half brothers; half in body and spirit. I once heard something about a psychic connection between the leagues of brothers. Divorced families spark something different in small boys and girls; good or bad, it’s there.
“And I think you will like it. It must be part of my collection.”
“Just to see a guy in a cartoon die?”
“I heard voices, and I looked, a pale horse, and the man who sat on him,”
“Was death, and hell followed with him.”
Age of Empires Win 2, Franks 500,000 per drink and smoke
12 cigarettes
Empires, Dawn of the Modern World 100
White Polo Vest 100
By Jacob Malewitz
Act 1: Out on a Trip, A Brother’s Los (t) (s), Working on a Job
Ch.1
They could see me. I mean some of them could. You see the world plays in extremes. This is just a story of that world, one where a small roman god took power, built madness, all in the hopes of finding something.
The doctor isn’t listening. Quentin T; I can sense that. I once heard a voice. I was once a man. I passed through a doorway. “You’re the one.” But it was in a different language, yet I understood. Quentin T. is a different man, perhaps with his voices he’s insane. He speaks regular talk, the kind that that has meaning.
I am Janus, keeper of the gate. This story will chronicle Quentin T., a hero who fought the devil throughout his life, laughing at angels and demons on a regular basis. His is a mad story for me to write about. But I must write it. For in writing you embolden the devil to look away, curiously, giving you one last shot at heaven.
“The door will open, do you reckon I need a key.” Quentin T. puts the cigarette to his mouth—the one he cannot light.
“What do you feel?”
“Like killing you.”
“And what else.”
“I feel I am in an alternate reality where my brother is trapped. Needles too. Cept I don’t know Needles, see? I don’t know him but I will.
“Tell me about your mother.”
“She owes me $700.”
“Good, good, tell me more.”
“I still kinda’ want ta kill ya.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“It makes me feel pretty damn good.
“See, first it’s a dream.” He lights the cigarette, hearing the inhale of breath from the doctor. “And that’s called the first dream, the one Dante saw once.” He takes a drag. “And then I see death and a girl I loved and a whole bunch of my friends. Cept I’m there too. Ya, me too. And someone is watching me. They are all watching me and I can’t make them stop.”
“And how does that make you feel.” The doctor is playing with his pen, adjusting it so he can pull more ink from it, shaking it like a wet rag, doing his best to keep the sketch of a doubtful Judas, or it Brutus?
“It still makes me feel of killing something.”
“Do you think you’re Jesus?
“You see, Jesus is real.”
“Of course—well, that is all perspective.”
“I see Jesus sometimes.” He puts the cigarette out on the couch, reaches for the pen, and the doctor, absent minded, is still looking down. He grabs the pen; the doctor winces when he threatens to stab him in the neck. “Sometimes I see him when I kill stupid doctors. I used to be something!” He puts the pen to the doctor’s neck. I watch him do this, watch his eyes, and there, just the dot on his forehead, is the perfect place.
The doctor was scared. In a way so was I. He puts the pen to his neck and drives a stream of blood through it. “I see a lot!” And his speech is slurred and a few orderlies storm into the room. And he goes back to the couch, lights a cigarette, and smiles. “My mom said I could become a movie star. Said I was good lookin’.” The doctor is choking on his blood; one orderly tries to stop the bleeding. “And I did become a movie star. And I made millions; had sex with women, too many really; and I meant a bunch of interesting people.” One orderly pulls out a small needle, grabs Quentin T.’s arm, and Quentin lets him do it. “But I know I don’t belong here. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe all those years of drugging caught up with me. But what If I’m not crazy? What if something big changed? What if!
“Ah, time to sleep.” His eyes closed for a moment. When the orderly turned his back on him, it was the only chance he needed.
2
The blade was at the doctor’s neck; a mark, a drop of blood. He took his chance. I didn’t realize how smart a man he was; I should’ve known. Quentin T. escaped the psych ward that day; he had a plan. He intended to do something big, to take all the world he had lost away. Bloodied … a killer … a film star—I remembered him so much. To understand the man you must understand his films, and to understand his films is to dance with madness.
I caught him exiting the back of the hospital. I heard all the sirens, saw the guards rushing towards him. How did he escape? There was much to it, as far as I can tell this is the true beginning to the madness, for when you take one madman, just one, and add another, true chaos exists. Back in the days when he knew me, when he was snorting cocaine by the eight ball and screwing woman left and right, when he was doing all these things, I knew it would come to this, an end game of sorts, a last ditch effort for sanity. What I did not expect to happen, what did happen, was this.
A young man in a truck roared into the scene, smacking right into two armed guards, each stun gun flying into the air amidst some screams, and I saw Jeremiah. Jeremiah: brother from hell. One thing about brothers: they often hate each other. Another thing about half brothers—they have a different sort of connection than true blood, some kind of bond which is never broken, and Quentin T and Jeremiah W. had this sort of thing going on. For me to understand them, I had to understand this relationship. For I had a mission, but that was not clear yet. What was to happen?
Quentin T. jumped into the truck, my eyes did show me, and they skirted off toward the exit. When two cops appeared on the scene, it was all bad. Jeremiah pulled out a shotgun and was immediately blasted. Quentin T, looking quite angry, grabbed the shotgun from his brothers’ broken hand and jumped on top of the police cruiser. The police stopped for a second. I could hear them saying, amidst the screams of a madman, what exactly did I get myself into. “He dies! He dies I blow your head off! Got it.”
“Put the gun down. Just put the gun down, kid.” It was just another cop, sure, but he had a family, for sure, and he had a reason to live. “What do you want kid?”
“I want more than you can give me.” He shot the partner, who fell, rolled, and gasped. It took a second for this to click with the other cop—trauma does that—and he slowly put the gun down on the ground. “And I want it now!” He shot the man’s ear off, jumped off the police cruiser, and looked him right in the eye. “And do you really want to know what that is?”
The cop, disturbed, fell to the ground. “Crazy! Crazy.” I thought he would do it. Being a man of Celtic blood—yes Romans can tell the look of a Celt by his actions, by his eyes too—you would expect him to finish off these cops. He went to the car, grabbed a med kit out of the back, and went back to the truck.
“I expect you to remember this day.” I can tell you, from my experience, a man remembers seeing his partner shot with a shotgun and having his ear blown off. It tends to stay with him.
3
“I have a mission for you.”
“I am a movie star.”
Quentin T. didn’t look surprised when I appeared. He merely nodded, the glint of his eye showing the bloodlust hadn’t quite left him, the touch of a smile showing me why women, girls, they just plain liked him. I suppose it was the outlaw renegade feel he had to him. He would have been perfect in a world of war, or a clandestine end of days themed movie … take your pick. It used to be fun watching him in his roles, watching him take a scene and add power to it. It was fun then too, watching him bandage up his brother. I had come to meet them on the backstreets of this small city, called Williamston by some, “just-another-hell” by others; I think every state has a place where the mad hide out.
“I am a movie star.”
“I heard that. Listen—“
“And I will make big bucks.”
“But my mission is about just that: making the big bucks.
“He can give you money right? Shit.” Jeremiah grabbed his shoulder, where a bullet had blown clean through. Quentin T., for all his madness, could have been a doctor. Or maybe he just knew how to treat a wound. Maybe he wasn’t mad. Who knows.
“I have a film.”
“You don’t have it or you wouldn’t be asking me. From what I can remember from my film days it was all drugs-and-chaos, short and sweet, like sex, but like sex there is always something else at play.”
He looked in a way like the modern renegade. The kind you see in just the right film. A more futuristic look, even with his Elvis cheeks, and he could have passed for the next great action star, with his big chin and his bulging muscles. He must have worked out in the psych ward, I had been thinking.
“Cept money comes in spades. Comes big or comes small. We want it big.” Jeremiah pulled out a lighter, tossed it to his brother. Quentin T. pulled out a needle from the back of the truck; my heart beat jumped. “And we want it now,” Jeremiah said, pointing the gun at me. “Or else, you see, I can just make you another dead god. Worlds full of them.”
“Would you send me to hell?”
“Maybe. Suit you wouldn’t it? Dancing with the devil.”
“Do you remember me, Jeremiah? Or do you, Quentin?”
“Names not Quentin anymore, be the king, Quentin the King. Or just T.” His eyes rolled and he started laughing. “Ha-ha. Call me the king! You know the nurses in their called me king.” The sound of sirens echoed through the streets. Quentin’s eyes crossed. I reached out, put my hand on his head. And he put the barrel right into my mouth.
“What you got?”
“Nuka, Needles, Katana, Cube. Anything ring a bell?”
“Doctors say I forgot all the past. Is that what you speakin’ of?”
“Exactly what I’m speaking of.” The barrel lowered from my head. “And I can pay in spades.”
What exactly happened next? Even I’m not sure. They put a needle in me, not telling me exactly what it was, what it could do to me. All that mattered was for a moment I saw into his madness, saw why he did the things he did. Quentin T. was a movie star; made millions; killed a few people; traveled to hell; went crazy. My plan was to send him back to hell again—not in death, but with a mission. Sending a man to hell with a mission is like sending a large cow to figure out a mathematical formula: it asks a lot. But Quentin T. was beyond all those things. He is to this day the most incredible person I have ever met, with a joke for every needle, a mad thought for every blunt of dope. Underneath you get a picture of a man destined for something. And that the cursed built upon him by God, I believe, because the gods of my day would never have asked so much, not even from Caesar, or, for that matter, a mad Nero.
But again, what exactly happened next? As far as I can tell, the dreams began.
“You’re not as crazy as … he is.” I was trying to explain what I needed to Jeremiah. It didn’t work.
“Say again? Say ‘gain cuz this bro just saved my life. Say it again. Please.”
“What mission,” Quentin T. finally said, “Janus?”
I look to the boy—and in a way he was just that: scared and forgotten and hopeful—and I see an understanding , something I cannot let go of quickly. There he was, willing to go for the mission.
“Nuka.”
“Kurosawa?”
“No.”
“Some other divine Shakespeare?”
“More like something a five year old could understand.”
“I am a movie star, you know.”
“Yes,” I responded, “that is why the mission is yours.” And it was his for the taking; my only chance at success was with this man of the mad world, a mad Nero moving through the world … through hell. Sometimes I wondered if he could be a Hitler. Sometimes I worried.
“The film, Nuka,” I let out, “the film Nuka is more to the turn of the century. Perhaps the first real animated film ever. Perhaps the simplest in scope, but it had a message sent to the skies, something which all gods could taste and touch—something big.”
“Cartoon?”
“More than that. A ballad of a fairy tale. A ballad of truth. A man who liked the science of the world, a man who liked to call him Nietzsche 2, a philosopher first, a photographer second. It captured the first death on film. Can you grasp that?”
“A pale horse.”
“Four horses, my bro.”
“Yes, a pale horse and on it …
“Rode the man in black, the man of the end…”
“And the man who influenced the first capture of death.”
“In a cartoon?”
“In a cartoon,” I said, smiling. “And maybe it will show you something about yourself.”
He put the shotgun down, lit a cigarette, and pulled something from his back pocket. A small bag of pills and small needles—smaller than usual. T looked at me. “Want it? You always did. You wouldn’t come to me for sanity. Would you?”
But there was more. Jeremiah, the brother who threatened any living soul. They weren’t even real brothers. They were half brothers; half in body and spirit. I once heard something about a psychic connection between the leagues of brothers. Divorced families spark something different in small boys and girls; good or bad, it’s there.
“And I think you will like it. It must be part of my collection.”
“Just to see a guy in a cartoon die?”
“I heard voices, and I looked, a pale horse, and the man who sat on him,”
“Was death, and hell followed with him.”
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