The Road to Astroworld, an Excerpt (End of the line for a Villain)

END OF THE LINE

 excerpt from the Road to Astroworld

Pete had driven for miles in the same circle. His eyes burned like fire. He hadn’t slept. The cops were after him. He was like a rat in a maze. He needed to steal a car. He needed to eat. He needed to shit. But first he needed to ditch this piece of shit car. Stealing license plates was only going to take him so far. The radio kept spitting out the make and model and color of his car.  1976 Lincoln Continental Dark blue. License Plate number FGH 775.  Right car wrong plates. It was an old Lincoln—a hand me down from his family’s Mortuary business which his Brother was running. It’s blue-black shell blended into the night. However, the morning sun was going to rise soon. A rat needed a place to lay low in daylight hours. Pete avoided lighted avenues and boulevards and drove down dark rutted roads.  He wasn’t sure where he was going. Where could a hunted man go, he wondered? He saw scenes from the TV show Wild Kingdom and Pete imagined himself as an ape running with the hot gaping jaws of lions right behind him.  He laughed at the thought of the ape’s blue and red ass.  For a moment he had the crazy notion to paint his ass and run down the street naked.  A helicopter buzzed over Pete’s car. Sweat dotted his forehead. He was a hunted man and delirious with fear. He peeped through his windshield like a man peering through a dirty pool of water.  The helicopter buzzed away. Pete sighed. He pushed a button and the radio lit up.  The news announced that the Leaky Eye had been identified as a forty-four year old Metro bus driver named Pete Chesterfield suspected in dozens of attacks on women.  Button after button spat his name or something about his crime. He had attacked a little girl on his bus. He killed a young cheerleader in his home. He may be armed and is considered dangerous. Armed with what Pete wondered--a tire iron in the trunk? 

A peculiar chill ran down his spine as he heard his name called over and over.  “I’m famous,” he said to himself before red flashing lights ahead made him veer right down a dark street.  He stopped and looked at the radio as it chattered about him, cut away to a song, and in a sultry voice extolled the pleasures of drinking Malt Liquor.  He hit another button and there was another announcer speaking Spanish and through the chatter his name “Pete Chesterfield” oozed over the airwaves as if the announcer was singing it.  Pete started his car as mournful Spanish guitars strummed.   Up ahead a little whitish dog was in the street. Pete hated dogs. Even being a hunted man didn’t mute his rage of seeing a stray dog and wanting to kill it.  Pete gunned the motor of his car.  There was a terrible yelping and then a scream.  Pete stopped and got out. He walked back and looked at the tangle of white fur and blood lying in the street.  It reminded him of a body his Uncle had wrenched from a wrecked car. The body soot colored, had only part of a nose on what was left of its face and its brains seeped through a head of nappy hair.

“Look at it, boy. Death is an ugly son of a bitch,” his Uncle had hollered.

“Look at death,” Pete said looking down at the mess of animal.  He didn’t notice her at first but a soft whimper caught his ear. He looked up and a white woman with short blond hair was crying on the sidewalk.  An empty leash hung by her side.  The chain twinkled under the moonlight. Her yellow housecoat bunched around her neck. Her knees stuck out like small yellowish potatoes.  Pete’s eye itched and he stepped toward the woman working his mouth as if he was an actor in a silent movie.  She stared at Pete. Her eyes sparkled with fear and rage. They looked like blue sapphires.  She stood perfectly still as if she had been turned to a statue.  Far off a siren wailed.  The heat from the woman’s body warmed Pete’s face.  The siren grew louder.

“You lucky bitch,” Pete said as he turned and trotted to his car.  “You know I’m famous don’t you?” Pete shouted back at her as he slammed his door.

Pete found himself easing past a patch of weeds near the Bus Barn. He killed his headlights. From the distance he spied some of his fellow bus Drivers standing under bright fluorescent lights. In their whites shirts and black pants, the resembled large moths.  Empty buses stood like large patient animals waiting to be told what to do. One bus was parked away from the others. It stood alone as if being punished. Plastic yellow tape draped across the bus’ front door as if it had won a prize ribbon. Pete knew it was police tape. He saw police cars parked next to the big opened door of the depot.  He knew they had scoured the bus for evidence.  He drove on past. All of the roads he took were dark and unfamiliar. His car’s lights dimmed as he drove. The motor in the old Lincoln was giving out. In a moment, the motor sputtered and the car stopped.  He turned the key.  The car lurched a couple of feet before it finally died.  Pete looked at the dash. The temperature needle rose high above the H mark.

“End of the road, nigger,” Pete said to himself.  He got out of the car and found himself walking in a ditch. Steel girders rose in the distance and some swayed. Pete wondered if he was near the docks. If he was, he could slip onto a boat that was sailing to Jamaica or better yet, Africa. He stilled his breathing and listened for water lapping and ship horns. All he heard was silence interrupted by a frog croaking.  He crouched low in a ditch. It felt like he was in a grave.  He got down on all fours and crawled away from his car. He crawled toward the steel girders. His hands and knees sunk in gooey mud. His eyes blazed with heat and he could barely see. He thought of the story of Christ healing the blind man by making a mud paste and rubbing it all over his eyes. Would cool sticky mud heal his eyes? And would that balm heal his heart? Pete grabbed fistfuls of mud and smacked his eyes. The mud was cool. He sat still and the cool mud seemed to help. He found a puddle of muddy water and washed his eyes. The stinging and burning was gone. He blinked three times at the moon.

  He leaned back into the soft earth.  The road rose high in front of him. Pete sat for a long time.  He wondered if there was some switch somewhere in the world that could turn off daylight and allow him to lie in the ditch forever—lie in the cool earth with his new eyes. He took off his clothes and rolled himself in the soft dirt. Anyone passing would have mistaken him for a bear rolling and scratching his back.  A siren wailed off in the distance. He sighed, closed his eyes, and then opened them. When he opened the sky was purple as if dawn was about to break. He caught sight of the top of a huge silver and blue wheel across the road.  Seats were suspended from the wheel.  Pete looked at the Ferris wheel.  It occurred to him that he had never ridden a Ferris wheel. No one had ever taken him to a circus or a carnival.  As he was thinking this, he heard car doors slam far away.  He peeped up out of the ditch and saw a swarm of policemen around his car.  Their lights shined through his car. It glowed like the hollow carcass of a beast.  Soon those lights would be shining all over his nakedness—soaking into his back, his thighs, and deep into his eyes heating up the deep pools of water that ran from them.  Pete scooped out a large hole with his hands and buried his white shirt. He spied a culvert pipe that ran under the road from the ditch to the carnival graveyard on the other side.  Pete put back on his pants and crept through the pipe.  When he climbed out of the hole, he was on the grounds of the abandoned park.  A Ferris wheel rose above him. Parts of it had fallen off and its steel girders littered the ground like bones. What was left looked like a half-moon on a stick.

He cocked his head and listened to hounds baying.  He reached up and caught hold of an iron bar. He pulled himself up, and his feet found their way from girder to girder. A few seats were still left on the wheel. Pete settled in the highest seat beyond the reach of spotlights.  From his perch he could see the lights from the police cars flashing red and blue.  A pack of dogs strained at a chain as they sniffed around his car.  He saw them licking the front bumper and a man jerk them away. Someone bent toward the car with a flashlight. Pete guessed the dog had found the blood of the mongrel he had run over.  A helicopter hovered over the policemen’s heads.  Its searchlight blazed a washtub-sized light toward the ditch.  Soon the men were following the dog’s noses. Pete knew that in a matter of time the dogs would be clawing at his shirt.  He stood and tested the beams that held the gondola. A fat one would need too much of the belt. One too small and weak might snap and send him tumbling onto the sharp rusty spikes below. He looked up and saw what looked like the end of an alligator’s tail. He reached up and grabbed the pipe. It was ridged with tiny spikes. The end of it was bolted to a larger beam with four screws with heads the size of a big toe. Pete took off his belt. In the distance he saw the cops waving something that looked like a white fag. They had found his shirt. The dogs had a fresh scent.  The helicopter buzzed louder. The light’s beam danced over the abandoned rollercoaster tracks turning them into gold and brass bars like coffin handles. He knew it was only a matter of minutes before the light found him stuck amongst the beams like an insect. He took off his belt. Attached to the belt was the silver hole-punch used for punching the destinations on transfer tickets. He shoved it in his pocket. The belt was new and the scent of fresh leather hit his nostrils. It would hold tight and not snap. Pete sniffed at it for a moment before he looped the buckle end around his neck. He tied the other end around the beam. Because the belt was new he struggled with the knot. When it was secured, he looked down at his feet. He hadn’t paid any attention to the seat, but now he saw how wide it was. He jumped and leaped forward, but could not get his heels past the edge of the seat. He felt the heat of the lamp sweep across his face. Again he jumped and bucked. He raised one foot off the seat and then the other like a puppet dancing. He jumped with both feet in the air, but could not hold himself suspended. His feet thundered onto the metal chair. Suddenly his face burned hot. The light was unyielding and did not move as he turned his face left and right. They had found him. Hoots and shouts echoed from the helicopter’s crackling radio. He looked down. Red and blue lights swept over the amusement park. A voice called from the helicopter for him to raise his hands. Pete jumped again for the edge of the grate. The helicopter hovered close. The wind whipped his face and his trousers. Soon there were voices below and dogs baying at the bottom of the Ferris wheel. Flashlights below him flickered like candles.

“Sir, put your hands in the air!” The voice was nasally and sharp from the Helicopter. Sweat drenched his face. It burned his eyes. He absently reached in his pocket as if it was a summer day and he was searching for a tissue to wipe his brow. He caressed the metal punch. He pulled it out and aimed it like a gun. The voice shouted into a radio and the helicopter jumped away. In the dim light Pete saw the officers below scurrying behind whatever they could use for cover. Voices shouted through bullhorns for him to drop his weapon. He aimed the punch below. The next sound he heard was a loud ping next to his ear. Then a blast of fire tore into his throat. Pete gasped for air. Fiery knives pierced his body. He felt himself lurch forward. He stopped midway on buckled knees. The punch fell out of his hand. For a moment he thought it was music as it hit the metal bars below on its way to the ground. By the time the cops had shimmied up the grates and catwalks and shined their lights on him, his neck was stretched like a chicken’s.  A grayish thick matter from his bulging eyes ran down his face and his pants had fallen around his knees.

Read other samples on this blog for The Road to Astroworld.
Promise's Letters
Video Trailer
The Road to Astroworld - A short story on Amazon

Author's Website Link

The Power Plant

An Excerpt from the Short Story,

 The Power Plant

Bells ring in my head.  It’s my Mother phoning the Power Plant late into the night, to inquire why haven’t I come home.  I know what time the night Operator is supposed to make his rounds to read the meters.  But he will sleep half the night under the narcotic hum of the big chillers and fudge the numbers on the meter sheets.  He’ll eat his lunch in the control room up front by the big gaping door of the plant.  He’ll piss through the grate rather than come toward the tool room to go to the toilet.  There’s a side door that’s always unlocked because the lock’s broken.  It’s a good way for someone to get into the power plant unnoticed and into the tool room if they have a key, like Hawkins has a key.  I know Hawkins knows these things too.  Because now he’s looking at me and the ropes and pulleys hanging from the ceiling.  He breathes hard and his hand digs deeper between his legs.  He moves the door back and forth.

###

Now Everywhere!

Amazon Click for more details.

April is Poetry Month!

Library Study Time

Don’t go there.

Don’t talk to those

giggling girls.

Come here

where it’s quiet

as standing water,

where poems

are swimming.

Come here, boy.

Bring the moon’s face

to this side of

the study aisle.

Charles Harvey

Americana--poems by Charles Harvey

Free on Smashwords and iTunes iBookstore

Also by Harvey

The Last Supper

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Bark Too

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Promise's Letters--from The Road to Astroworld

From the upcoming novel The Road to Astroworld.
Letters from Promise to her best friend Lakeisha Ann written from the insane asylum Rust Hills.
________________________________________________________________________________

Dear LaKeisha Ann:

I feel as if I’ve been in a valley of silence for a long time.  Yesterday morning I found myself lying in the palm of a gigantic hand and being lifted up.  I saw myself rising up to meet a brown skinny girl who had wings.  The girl had a face like my dead brother Jonathan’s.  I realized then I was going to meet myself.  I heard myself thinking.  The voices in my head were loud as the engines of one hundred roaring buses.  Pictures tumbled in front of my eyes.  You were in one of the pictures--black and skinny limbed.

I’m in some kind of a Hospital.  I’m sure you read the papers and saw my pictures all covered with red.  The red is supposed to be blood.  But I was cooking that day the picture was taken, so I’m sure the “blood” is food coloring. 
I think I have missed two years.  My tongue is so thick it fills my mouth and blocks my speech.  I see nothing but shadows.  I’m a bird in a cage and am very aware of the cage.  You should see some of the other birds here who are oblivious to the cage.  They walk in circles until the attendants herd them to the dinner hall.  After dinner, the birds walk some more.  They’re in constant motion until they’re strapped to their cots at night.  Even then, some of them move their legs as if walking until they finally fall asleep.
Evidently, I was not a walker.  I was a sitter.  My ass is as flat as a chair.  Dr. Bacon the psychiatrist here told me that nothing reached me.  Not the ice baths, electric shocks, nothing.  What woke me up was some man’s fingers up my snatch.  Those fingers traveled through my womb and tugged at my vocal cords.  The fingers propped open my eyes.  Someone inside me screamed for two solid days at monsters.
Child, the visions were something else.  A small boy in a gold suit lay in a casket.  His head was bashed in.  Blood gushed like a spring from his ear.  Headless singers in blood red robes swayed back and forth as if caught in a spell.  A man with legs thin as broomsticks slept in the middle of a big bed.  His penis was erect and large as a long barrelled pistol.  A white woman offered me strawberries from her breasts.  I bit into one and it was rotten and bitter.  But yet I yearned for more.  I was lured by the redness.  And then there were buses.  They were driven by drivers who bled from holes in their temples.  They drove toward me at high speeds as if they were trying to crush me.  But the buses went through me as if I were air.  The woman inside me screamed as if death was coming at her.  And there was not a Christ anywhere to save me.  Not a christ anywhere to save me from this torment.  But I’m so much better now.
Please come and visit me.  They say this place is called Rust Hills.  The trees are orange and red.  The grass is green as seaweed.  I’m sure from an airplane, this place looks like a nice salad.  It’s in a valley.  I can see cows beyond the fence.  The cows have more life than the zombies inside the fence.  The staff has stamped their motto everywhere: “Confront and cure.”  “Confront and cure” on the walls, on the dishes, on the bottom of your glass after you’ve drank your milk.
A man did come and see me yesterday.  He called himself my husband.  He acted as if he hadn’t seen me in a hundred years.  He grabbed my hands and kissed them all over.  I guess my silence had locked him out too.  I offered him myself.  But he said no. 
Now what kind of husband is that?  I’m standing on the table with my gown hiked over my ass and he says no.  But maybe I didn’t smell very good as a wife.  However the man with the far reaching fingers didn’t mind my smell.
Dr. Bacon, the woman who runs this place thought it would be good for me to write you.  They want me to remember things--go back in time and come up to the day I was found covered with the red stuff.  What can you do?  I don’t know.  I heard that you do have an education now.  Perhaps the plan is to surround me with an educated triad--you, Dr. Bacon, and the man who calls himself my husband.
I hope I have your correct address.  If and when you do come, don’t take the bus.  The belly of the bus like the belly of the whale, is full of rot.   As women and as my friend we’ll smell bad together if we have to.

Love,

Promise

PS.  Bring my child too.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Charlie:

 Why do I keep seeing our son as a corpse?  His head lies on a tiny satin pillow.  Why is he wearing a hat?  I’m ready for answers.  Am I not a good Mother? 

Regards,

Promise

__________________________________________________________________________________

Dear LaKeisha Ann:

Oh, child!  Green, green, green.  At first the scheme of things here was all blue.  Then I assume voices revealed to Dr. Bacon that green is better for a nuthouse.  So now everything in this place is green, green like the puke that ran out of Jonathan when he died.  I don’t blame you for not coming to visit.  You couldn’t find me anyway.  My green gown blends me in with the puke colored walls.  And the puke colored walls blend in with the green vegetable mush they feed us here.  All of this green dissolves into green shit we shit into the green water in the green toilets.  Then the green flies dance in this effluence.

So you see, girl, you cannot see me because I’m blended in to the green.  But if you see a green fly crawling on your pink silk curtains, don’t kill it.  You see it might be carrying parts of me on it’s feet.  And I’m not ready to die yet.

Love,

Promise

__________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Lakeisha Ann:

Hey, girl, what are you doing right now?  Listen at me sounding as if we are on the telephone.  I just got through watching some kind of political debate on the TV.  What a way to spend a Friday night--watching a man and a woman both with as much personality as biscuits talking about how they would ensure world peace.  Neither one of them mentioned lobotomy or castration.  Well that’s my proposal--"docilize" the masses.  After the debate, the host came on and said the usual spiel, “We would like to take this opportunity . . .”  and the word “opportunity leaped out at me.  I began to think about it.  And it seems to me that the pursuit of opportunity is what rules the world.  Civilizations have rose up, died, and gone to hell in the pursuit of the opportunity to grab land, wenches, or both.

A woman meets a man and sees opportunity for a movie and a cheap bottle of perfume.  (He sees a quick fuck.)If you’re real lucky, your “opportunity” might set you up with a million in mutual funds, a multi-layered house on River Oaks Boulevard, and platinum charge cards.
If you’re a simple woman, then a chicken dinner and twenty dollars is enough opportunity for you.
Opportunity.  All a little girl wanted was the opportunity to go to AstroWorld.  She relied on a man to drive her.  She did not want to be made afraid of the rain.

The rain.  Lord have mercy.  She did not want the rain to make her bash her doll into the side of a silver bus.  All she wanted to do was go to AstroWorld.

Love,

Promise

PS.  Pray for me and kiss those grand babies.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Dear LaKeisha Ann:

I’m bored.  I dream of nothing but body parts:  Nancy’s leg, my drooping breasts, other women’s breasts.  I wish we didn’t have these open showers.  Our bodies are so ugly.  The school girls we once knew are nestled in fat.  Stomachs stick out.  Backs are hunched.  All that we have left from our girl days are our fingernails.  You dab a little red on the tips and polish them until they look like a ruby crowns.  They’re there when needed to scratch an itch or keep time to a rhythm when you feel groovy.  Suddenly one day you look at your finger and there’s this ugly gray tumor growing underneath to your finger’s ruby crown.  In fact it’s pushing the crown away and taking over the whole head of the finger.  The finger takes over your whole train of thought.  It’s a new baby.  You poke it, suck it, wrap it in pure white gauze.  Your finger becomes a mystic man in a turban.  You ask it questions like why is a baboons ass like the rainbow.  Then ol’ Doc gets involved with you and your finger.  Here comes his needle.  You hold your breath.  Your lungs tighten like drums.  You scream like it’s the first time you got fucked.  Here comes, through a whole in your finger, nine months of yellow corruption, black thoughts of murder and suicide, and some little

child with his head bashed in.  When you’re drained you feel good.  You hum a little tune and stroke the Doc’s latex hands.  You look at your finger turbanned and mystical and healing.   You fall in love with it all over again.

  Love,

Promise

PS congrats on your third grandchild.

##########################################################

Please enjoy other excerpts from the Road to Astroworld on this blog and also free on iBooks, Smashwords, and Barnes&Noble. Your feedback is welcome and ecouraged. We hope to debut this exciting novel in early June.

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THE ROAD TO ASTROWORLD
The Video Story Click Here

The woman had come up to his car and leaned in the window. It was still daylight but the sky was going from light blue to cerulean. Her breath smelled of peppermints and shit. Pete had had to pull his face away from hers. In the distance, cars scurried along the freeway like mice. But in the “Bottoms” winding through the narrow streets below the freeway, men crept in circles in their cars, eyeing the girls who strolled and mingled next to the ruins of abandoned shacks near the projects. Pete had made several circles looking. His eyes were silvery and catlike. A misty rain covered his windshield and his eyes started to burn. He stopped his car and dug into the glove compartment for his pills and the drops. He found the drops but not the pills. The drops would calm his eyes, but he needed the pills to calm the whining in his head. He squirted the drops in his eyes and sat trying to blink away the haze that was blotting out the sky. Then she was there, all teeth, shining through the haze looking at him. Sometimes it was eyes, teeth or a thin chain around a feminine neck that caught his attention.

See The Novel Exclusively on Amazon
Warning: Graphic Language

Is There Room For the Literary Writer on the eReader?

  

I was reading someone’s “how to” blog recently. The subject was of course how to be successful (meaning $$) as a writer. The crux of the advice was write what people want to read. Well what do people want to read? Paranormal? Romance? Murder Mystery? Erotica? Thrillers? Vampire Stories? Science Fiction? Urban Lit? Chick Lit? YA Lit? Literary Lit? Oh oh, what’s Literary Lit?

I consider myself a writer whose work touches many of the above genres, but not in their purest forms. I find myself amazed at what Smashwords and a few other retailers categorize as African American Literature. The online stores blaze with glaring covers of us holding guns and cradling a big booty chick under such monikers as “Revenge on a Cheater” or “Getting The Man Before I Get Got.” Well these titles may be facetious, but you get my drift. I even have a couple of stories that fall near that genre..Betty’s House and My Manhood is Very Important to Me. I like earthy language and sex like anyone else. I just hope someone finds a little more to bite into when they read my stories. I admit my short stories receive very little readership. Maybe it’s the genre. Full length books do a lot better.

However there is more to literature (African-American or so-called mainstream) than genre fiction. For us African American writers and readers and to the retailers, I ask where are our new Toni Morrisons, James Baldwins, Ralph Ellisons or Richard Wrights? Why isn’t the digital atmosphere being lit up with modern day Kerouacs and Allen Ginsbergs? How would Updike or William Styron fare? Is there room on the eReader for the literary writer? My guess is in these troubled times the only concern for Black Folk is our no good cheating better halves. And the the mainstream readers, it’s all about a suave vampire who lives in the kingdom of Yawnyore and shape shifts.

“Discovery” is a big catchphrase is “new era” (another catchphrase) of publishing. A good portion of writers have decided they are not going to wait until near death to be found by agents and publishers. They are taking their writing lives in their hands and going forward to kindle kingdom. Many genre writers are doing quite well: Amanda Hocking, E.L. James, Darcie Chan, Joe Konrath and the list can go on. But what if you’re the kind of writer who decides his/her vampire character should do more navel gazing (introspection) than neck biting? What if your description reads “Blood burst from his neck in splatters of ruby exclamations marks” rather than “red blood shot from his neck”? Do you stand a chance of being discovered?

There are many men adrift and homeless these days. But what? No modern day “Of Mice and Men?” Sure plenty men are doing women wrong. But don’t we want to delve deeper and find out why? I’m not sure how it happened, but somebody had to discover our literary greats. Well I do know there were a lot more “little magazines” back in the day. So there were more Editors to discover and give a platform to say a Charles Dickens or a Charles Bukowski. But how does a Charles Harvey get discovered? Excuse my self-indulgence for a moment. In the mid nineties I had an Agent to shop around my novel and in doing so she shopped around some short stories. The stories found a place in some anthologies and a popular literary publication called Story. Well the Agent is gone now and Story is no longer published. I’m out here winging it in the sea of vampires and damsels (strong willed of course) getting swept off their feet. Wish me luck on my upcoming novel, The Road to Astroworld. There’s a serial miscreant in it but no vampire. You can read a few excerpts on the blog. And don’t let the discussion end here. Feel free to refute and dispute and point to your own or someone else’s success as a literary writer.

 

Charles Harvey

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Cheeseburger (an award winning literary short)

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