The Crux of the Matter in lieu of Hard Evidence

Loincloth wasn't exactly thrilled with the treatment he had received from the female schoolies at R'Daria's flat. Being the seasoned twenty-year-old former track and field champion specialising in the high jump that he was, he felt certain that he had matured beyond caring about what "puerile skank clams", a term coined by his close friend and fellow ragamuffin roughrider Dafidd, thought of him. It was evident to even him as he crunched his way into fourth gear that even the most seasoned of all seasoned twenty-year-olds was susceptible to be sorely mistaken.

Loincloth was ropable: the way calf muscles were ropable following exposure to several hundred kilometres on a bicycle; the way bees were ropable when their pollen sacks exceeded maximum density and the word according to reality was read to them like the riot act following the stark realisation that they had somehow transgressed to the other hemisphere and were seconds away from succumbing to gravity.

Something was causing Loincloth's body to react abnormally. Perhaps it was the shot of adrenalin. Perhaps it was the tainted ganga he had purchased from Wycliffe Funk, a hardened garden landscaper with friends in "the biz".

Loincloth had been a responsible driver since the third occasion in which he had lost consciousness from the effects of recreational drugs. He had accidentally driven into the front of a parked car in a neighbourhood he had never previously been to, and lived to recount events that he couldn't remember to the local and national media representatives. By the third of the three separate yet brutal occasions in which he had come across imaginary yet real gangs, wolves and runaway heavy machinery, the number of parties interested in covering the groundbreaking story had shrunk to two; a man, forming a strategic part of the city's dedicated ten-thousand homeless who had been plucked from the street by a surly sub-editor, and his insatiable dog.

Loincloth's innate ability to deflect danger and fault simultaneously ebbed like sweat inside an overweight actor's hat.

'F*#k you I won't do what you tell me!' Loincloth screamed time and time again as his biscuit coloured Datsun Sunny negated inner city street corners like a shabbily constructed death missile built by inebriated vagrants in a park downstream of a hazardous waste dump; controlling its direction was as reliable as stacking your chips on red, but the metallic beast's power-to-weight thrust was off the radar thanks to some minor modifications that Loincloth's older brother Bentfeather had made following a month of mechanics classes at the local YMCA as a compulsory service to his local community.

And then everything changed in an instant.

He knew what was happening (he'd seen it before in his work experience at Seven Deals School for the Extra Special) but was powerless to help it, stop it, understand it - he was ticking, but not like a bomb, though he knew there was potential for explosion. His jaw was locked into a prime-time-comedy rictus of the Saturday Night Variety, his shoulders were beginning to rotate into a late-Saturday-night masturbatory scrunch. His eyes were being drawn left with the inevitability of an electromagnet dragging itself towards a hard disk.

Like a WAG through a bank account, the Datsun accounted for the barrier on the banking. As he twisted and soared over the playground in his Japanese biscuit-coloured message of death, Loincloth examined the climbing frame he was certain would be his final resting place. "Kids nowadays," he grunted through locked teeth, "have everything." A construction of rope and steel, the fractal plaything pointed an accusatory member to the heavens. In the remaining second before he hit, when he was almost certain he was going to end on the central spire, he allowed himself a smile, points for style. Locked out of his body as he was, all that manifested was a manic gleam of the eye. Daffid always said I'd look better on a spike.

Held into his bucket seat by a web of nylon rope, he was now doubly unable to move, imprisoned within his body within his car. For the first time he knew what it was to be a company man. The reflection in the window showed him two things to further exacerbate his sketchiness. There was foam on his chin, reminiscent of his insignificant other just that forenoon, post-copulation. The car was impaled on the triangular peak of the climbing frame, entering through the roof and terminating in the transmission shaft. "Shafted," he though with half of his brain. The other half rebelled.

Looking inward, things were as he had feared. His brain had polarised, like a bear. The one side, the word "left" floated by, was ugly, bloated, rancid with caffeine. That was normal. The ursine side was a snarling mess. It had claws, fur, a musty smell, a desire to piss in the woods. Where the two met, the battle was done. Synapses flared, roared, died and were digested while Loincloth, pinned into his inverted automobile, watched his hockey stick gently sway in the breeze. It had ended there after tumbling from the boot on impact. As it swung back and forth it mirrored the battle within.

It was a critical stage. The war on drugs was the war on nature was the war on nerve matter. As the two hemispheres separated, Loincloth felt a searing in the middle of his head. The bear and the drug fiend had gone their separate ways, cutting all diplomatic and physical ties. The war on drugs could not be won, nature could not be held back. Ambassadors were sent via the spinal cord, home of the reflexive jerk. Overtures were made, tentative steps towards a plan of action. For the two to survive, they must master the body. Common ground was found both internally and below the car. Agreement was reached and for a brief second control was gained.

A primordial scream erupted from the bloodless lips of the highjumper, half psychotic, half animal, all fear. As the first rubber neck toting mass arrived, a geyser of urine trickled down his chest, along his neck and down his face. As the concerned face looked up, stupid question beckoning, the first drops pattered from mo to gawping nonsense-hole.

Once more, concordance: Loincloth snarled.





- This has been another Kaufman & Under The Radar experience.