The man who went berserk!


It was like wonderland out here. Cars and buses were moving their passengers about in half-speed while the air itself seemed strangely thick. The milky glare from headlights moving and lampposts posing,
cast an eerie glow on the town.

It felt in a strange way, as though I were evolving too quickly and my
body was slowly beginning to break down. All my faculties were operating normally, in the sense that I could still differentiate between good and bad, right and wrong, where to walk and what not to touch. The outside world was like a lost city that had suddenly come alive, and right now it seemed to have a hunger for souls.

Emotions no longer your own become chastised in dismay as you stare
in disillusionment at your own deluded perception gone terribly awry. When the mind's chemistry is disrupted, everything you grew to understand throughout your whole life will be changed. It takes a human being a lifetime to absorb everything he or she knows but only minutes
to turn it all into jumbled up, meaningless nonsense. So dramatic is this change that it alters your very existence, in terms of your emotions, personality, mind-set, etc. It's almost as if you've come to a full circle. Standing inside it, you realize it's going in ten different directions, and the only way to get out of that circle is to go in ten different directions. . . At the same time. The only way to do this is to not get hung up on anything.

Just think of being in a big sideshow, where the world around you is the main attraction. It is there you will then become familiar with the workings of elastic confusion; where wonder sets in. Only then can we can appreciate the world of the disturbed and unusual. Watch as a typical ordinary room magically transforms itself into the devil's playground.
See everything old come alive in a new way filled with meaning! Here, everything can be splendid indeed! How wonderful is the place where chairs dance and bedroom dressers offer up some sound advise?
Life is cast with joy in the land where pleasures abound.

Here you may feel like a king, but you're the king's jester.
The man who became the fool. . .
Don't be fooled!

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As I passed Mackie's deli, a tenebrious shadow of a swaying branch
cast itself ominously against the building's side in the still light! How
eager it all seemed to await me, as if imploring me to move forward.

I couldn't help but notice one of the bright orange containers situated alongside the building. As I walked over to it slowly, I immediately saw
a hungry hippo eating what appeared to look like a huge domino! I read the words aloud, V. Marangi carting corporation. John started laughing and said ecstatically, "he's eatin' one of his own containers!" That's
what he's eating? I asked excitedly. "That's what he's eatin'!!!"

A few blocks down from the station was our friend Richie's house.
No one wanted to ring the doorbell for the lateness of the hour was
upon us, so we lingered on the street and enjoyed the calm sedative
feel that the night brought.

I sat myself down on the curb beside a small mound of dirt and ran my finger through it making a primordial design. Before long, I began to pick out and crumble each little ball of earthen soil, rubbing it into a fine powder and then watching it as it fell from my fingertips like pulverized ash. I would then clean my hands by rubbing the brown dust on my pants. Again and again, I would repeat this action for nearly twenty minutes. When I finally came to the realization of what I had been doing this whole time, I was mortified! I tried to grasp hold of why I had gone out of my way to look like a disgusting homeless beggar and wondered if I was, in fact, sabotaging the train. I soon began to think of myself as a bum. Since I was currently unemployed. Had no car, girlfriend and very little money, what else could I be? Not to mention that I looked as if I had just crawled out of a foxhole in some third world country! Aside from this dilemma,
I kept thinking if it rained now, I would be magically transformed into
a hideous mud monster. The beast who leaves a trail of castaneous
mire in his wake, while scouting frantically for a place to hide!

It was right at this point that Pete became inflamed at passing cars. . .

"Keep beepin' that horn you mother fuckin' scumbag bastard,
and I'll twist ya into a pretzel!"

"I'll snap your neck like a twig, you piece-a-shit!"

"Go faster, maybe you'll hit a fucking pole!"

John was too busy laughing at Pete's antics to concern himself with anything else, while I, was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe!

I then began to perceive this awkward fellow in a strange new light. A man prone to maniacal outbursts and seething rants. A fellow who has no jurisdiction to lead, even himself. A person who's gone completely aloof and is hanging by a single disparaging thread! A character who is most certainly in need of all his marbles, but we find, all too many are missing!

The more we laughed, the more Pete went off on his tirade.

"Yeah look at me from your window, maybe you'll go blind."

"There's so many people on this fucking island it's gonna sink!"

"Stick your neck out that window one more time,
you nosey son of a fucking bitch, and I'm gonna
go up there and chop it off. . . Boom!!!"

He screamed out, while slamming the imaginary window
down upon the invisible neighbor's neck!

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I was now gasping for air with my stomach tied in knots when John's knees gave out, and he fell helplessly to the ground like a wet paper bag loses groceries! Pete's face was now contorted to that of a snarling
dwarf, and his contentiousness was far from becoming evanescent!

He finally calmed down, for about nineteen seconds!

There was no doubt about it, Peter was becoming more irascible by
the minute and neither of us could predict when that next outburst would come flying out. Anything at all now could trigger his psychosis,
and so we waited for the inevitable to happen.

Then the dam broke!!!

A rickety old truck passes, clattering like it had palsy and for some reason, deemed it necessary to slam down on the horn. Well, that was the final straw! Peter's brain must have exploded inside his head for he grabbed hold of the steel stop sign post and began to swing it back and forth with such a fervor, that I feared he would pull it from the ground! He was now screaming even louder than before, and it sounded a lot like
"Ah-ah-ah-uh-uh-uh!!!"

Then John exclaims, barely able to catch his breath, "Remember, one flew over the cuckoo's nest? Call nurse Ratched, cause it's medication time!" Pete then contests while sneering, Fuck you, Fatman!!! John then began
to slap his leg as he broke into a fit of deep and uproarious laughter! "Charles, I'm tellin' ya, he's got some rare form of predisposed mental illness!!!" Pete immediately chimes in, You really don't know what the
hell you're talking about do you? What are you a fucking attorney now? You got the lingo down? You think you're so smart. You shit-head!
I exploded like a can of old sardines at the insidious remark,
spewing my laughter at houses near and far!

I was so incapacitated by this laughter, I wasn't sure if I was going to remember how to inhale again! But nothing else seemed to matter, and I really didn't care. I just had to try and keep myself from falling headlong into the street! John held onto the neighbor's fence as he bellowed aloud into the night. Very soon after this Pete calms down, somewhat.

Richie exits through the front door and sees us hanging out on the side
of his house. He then comes over to greet us. "What are you guys doing?"
he asked happily. He tells us he just smoked a joint of Buddha and could barely talk!!!" I'm really high, he says while laughing and drooling.
He then begins to point at the adjoining houses across the street.

"There's the Hass-e-nuffes!
There's-the Jay-cobbs!"

This half-singing maniac was now laughing, if not more than we were! Pete asked Rich if he had any weed left and when Rich said he didn't,
I could see Peter's face starting to manifest again!

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A car turns left and proceeds to drive up the street. From a distance,
I can see an exhaust pipe blowing endless clouds of smoke into the air, enveloping us in its haze. Hey look, it's the Alice B. Toklas car!

"Fuck that smoky piece-a-shit box!"
"I hope it bursts into flames on the expressway!!!"

He then began picking up small stones and hurled them down
the street with pure indignation! An old man came out of his house
with what looked like a walking stick and proceeded to sit down in
an old wooden rocking chair. As he watched us from his porch,
he began to rock back and forth in it.

"Look at that fuc-king old man." Pete then begins to mimic the voice of Leo Gorcey, or was it James Cagney? No, I believe it was Edward G. Robinson, and as he began to speak, his upper teeth remained firmly positioned upon his lower teeth! "I'm just gonna sit here all night and watch those kids on my street. Those sick bunch-a-bastards, they don't look right to me. I may be almost two hundred years old, but my mind works fine, so I'm just gonna sit here. Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh!"

Pete then turns his back on the old timer
and begins shouting in his regular voice.

"Please tell me this old-fossil is not gonna sit there all-night!!!"

After the laughter subsided, John wiped his eyes and said to Rich,
"You gotta do me a favor." John was holding back laughter, and I knew
he was about to open a folder of sarcasm. Richie just looked at him with those dead eyes, like he was looking at a town, through the window of a plane from 40,000 feet. He appeared as though he wanted to speak,
but his mind it would seem did not let him.

"I need you to call Bellevue and tell them they're missing a patient!"

"Tell them to bring a reinforced straight jacket
and a double shot of Thorazine!!!"

I clutched my stomach, and we roared like thieves!

Pete stepped forward with a gremlin face and retorted, "Keep it up!
Keep it up you fat fucking scumbag and I'll roll you down the
block like an oil drum! You always have something to say.
Eat a fucking candy-bar and shut up!"

Every single bit of air that was now in my lungs was suddenly blown out!!! I struggled terribly to maintain my balance but couldn't hold my legs up, so I fell to the grass and screamed but nothing came out. I was on the last breath following the last breath, yet I could take in no air! Desperately wanting to gasp, I remained frozen in time for what seemed like years,
not able to inhale or exhale a single atom. Pete then looked down at me
as I was finally able to grasp, a much needed lung full of air. His tone appeared defeated as he said, "You guys are too much." We soon
said farewell to Rich and were on our way. Since neither of us knew
where to go, we walked around the Huguenot area in circles,
like three dogs in search of their missing tails.

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