Brazen, a novel

By Jason Silva

Just because you are paranoid and have an over-active imagination, doesn't mean that you won't be drugged and forced to take part in bizzare, ritualistic sex acts with rodents. Or maybe it does. This is the tale of Brennan Frick, an intelligent young man who decides to leave everything behind for a fresh start as a reporter in Biloxi, Mississippi. Along the way he befriends Les, a man who is...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason Silva
• Release date: May 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452443034

Book preview

PROLOGUE: Kentucky Fried Dream

Last night I dreamt. An old Manor off of I-65. A sweeping Kentucky landscape with a prim lawn of Kentucky bluegrass. Four stout columns flanking a sitting porch worthy of Rome. Original hand-woven wicker rocking chairs. A circular driveway surrounding a water fountain. Some faraway cock crowed the hour of morn as I walked barefoot up the lawn. I wore denim overalls and a straw hat. I felt giddy and at ease, unnaturally so, walking up the grass, with fresh dew-soaked clippings atop my feet. The only thought I could muster was that this day sure was gonna be a purty one. Somehow, the setting affected my speech, put a twang right in there.

Again, the cock sounded, and at once the shutters on the second-story swung open and clapped the old oak façade. A face appeared; it was not a happy one.

Boy!

He had the look of a stage actor dressed for the civil war era, but the pointy goatee and silver mustache gave him the look of Colonel Sanders, and, by God, that’s because it was Colonel Sanders.

Boy! he shouted again. What in sam hell are you smiling for?

He went into a tirade about how my presence was unsettling the place. Would I leave soon, he wanted to know. In fact, he would pay a small fee in the interest of the estate if I might consider it seriously. I stood in a stupor watching. He had complicated my mood. Unsatisfied with my silence, he did away with niceties. He stooped out of sight. When he returned, his torso protruded from the window. He held a large club and waved it in the air.

I was bewildered. What atrocity might I have committed against the Sanders family?

The Colonel left his platform. His shouts bellowed from the home. A second voice shrieked, this one softer, more feminine. A glass broke. I stood frozen, watching. The front door flung open, and I understood everything. It was not Colonel Sanders this time.

Jenny! Jenny, get back here! the Colonel boomed from inside.

Jenny staggered across the pristine Kentucky bluegrass in a blaze of tears. She was swaddled in her undergarments, and her long golden hair streamed behind her. She gathered herself for one moment and looked my direction, her gaze full of longing, love, and loss, but then erupted into sobs. The Colonel was close behind. Jenny, stop this instant! For a man of his age, he really moved.

But the chase wore on him. He paused near the fountain, heaving, and faced my direction.

His sleeping gown draped from his shoulders in sweeping folds of cotton. His skin was red and swollen. After spending a moment to catch his breath, he turned fully toward me; Jenny had gone far from view by now. He looked like a bull the way his eyes zeroed in on me. His face was full of rage. He meant to charge.

His first step was slow. But with the respectable weight and girth of a man who as a youth owned the football field he steadily acquired a freight-train momentum, mounting a full sprint towards me. He raised the club—he still had it with him, by God. But wait. What I had mistaken for a club was really a double-barrel Smith & Wesson. Not a gun meant for precision, a real messy power shooter.

When a man of such size rushes at you full-speed, you can never take him straight on—not if you want to survive, not if your quibble involves his daughter. What you do is: you go lateral. Pivoting 90 degrees and planting my foot in the plush grass, I waited. He was right on me. I could smell the noxious odor of his sweat and the monstrously bad breath of a failing pyloric valve. He was coming like a loose freighter, gun raised. Rather than shoot, he meant to bring the barrel down on my head. In the final moment, my welling panic gave way to adrenaline.

I exploded out of my position. The Colonel reacted. A long, gargantuan roar filled the air. In the wet grass, he had hyper-extended his knee. I began to look back and witness his defeat with pride, when a granite blur wiped out my vision. Sudden pain rocketed through my cranium.

I was out.

In the dream, I was out. But not quite out of the dream just yet. Blackness. Like lying in a coffin. The scene had blipped out, and I had transported to this darkness, feeling numb all over. The numbness subsided, and what used to be my jaw was a bloody mush of gums and teeth.

I awoke in a panic.

When my cousin Robert celebrated his first birthday, he had a thing for inserting his entire fist into the mouths of smiling aunts. It was with this same intimacy and urgency that I groped the contours and edges of my own mouth, performing a manual count of each tooth and swabbing my gums with my index finger to see if there was blood. I had awakened from a gruesome nightmare and, as is a psychological depravity of mine, could not be sure the dream had in fact been just that.

The logical brain took charge. I recalled Colonel Sanders’ face, Jenny in her absurd undergarments, the overalls I’d been wearing. And I calmed down. Of course it was a dream. The fist still lodged in my mouth, I smiled. That was awful!

But, no, I couldn’t continue to smile like that. The hand should never have been in there. I pulled it out, and a strand of saliva stretched across my shirt.

Paranoia lingered. Something was wrong. The dream meant something. Dreams are symbolic. I recounted the major points. Obliterated mouth, missing teeth, bloody stumps—deception was in the air. A warning?

Oh, Brennan, I assured myself. You are a piece of work.

With thoughts of coffee, I rocked forward in bed.

A horrible pain shot through my legs, sending me back flat, crying out. Tears streamed out of me. I craned my neck to observe the lower extremities and experienced a wave of sheer horror.

I was in shock. My feet throbbed in the circulating air of the ceiling fan. Rising in a crescendo of pain, the sensation overwhelmed me. But still I looked at them again.

The nightmare had followed me into waking life. Ropes bound the legs to the bed. The feet stuck out past the edge of the blankets, and kerchiefs had been tied around both arches. They glistened maroon. I bit hard into my lip in an attempt to shake the advancing cold of shock. Trembling, with my vision blurred by tears, I ran the inventory.

Four on the right foot; four on the left. I lost feeling in my arms, my spine. In a chill, I flopped back onto the pillows. But the image was burned into my brain. I studied it in my mind, unavoidable, and felt the urge to puke. The large toe on each foot had been removed. Blood-soaked kerchiefs were keeping me alive. Kerchiefs tied and secured with rubber bands.

The image flickered. I couldn’t swallow. Something filled my mouth, suffocating me. My arms felt like they’d been replaced with heavy prosthetic likenesses. The sensation progressed to my neck. I choked, unable to breathe.

I was going to die.

My mind screamed, but only a rubbery gurgle ushered forth. I realized: I am choking on my own tongue.

This was no way to go. Breathe. Just breathe. You have got to relax and just breathe.

The faraway circles of a tunnel closed in. My finish line. Just breathe, I told myself.

Above, the fan circled round in lethargic whoooomps! I timed my breathing to it. Whoomp…whoomp…whoomp…

Sharp pain filled my eyes. It then spread in a lurid, tingling sensation across my face. But I continued to focus on that fan. Focus on the fan. My breathing slowed. A stale chill touched my forehead. The whoomp faded to a whine. Hope.

I could move my tongue. The tingling spread down my arms, and I could wiggle my shoulders. The feet remained numb, but I could begin to bend my knees, my elbows.

The immediate trauma subsided. The terrible spot of gray that had filled my mind’s eye shifted to the image of a man—my punisher—Father Mihoney. He was responsible for this atrocity. But why?

I had to stand, despite the toes. I could start with my heels, and maybe put one leg forward, then the other.

I unfastened the ropes holding me down. I turned and squared my heels on the floor. With the support of the bed, I shakily propelled upright. Vision faltered and blipped back leaving a sprinkling of stars. The tiny sparks darted in and out of view. I steadied on my heels, one hand balancing on the mattress. Just six steps to the bureau where I kept a telephone.

I staggered across the room in true Romero fashion, weight back, knees locked, hands outstretched. I picked up the handset. Success.

Hello, I said. Hello?

I hung up. What if the phones had been tapped?

Of course! It all made sense. Who was I kidding? No sadist would be content with a mere two toes. Not Father Mihoney. Not his henchmen. They were toying with me. All this was part of their plan. It’s all a mind game with these psycho types.

I reached over to the yellow curtain on the apartment window and gazed out. No apparent signs. No white van in the street. No black town car. Whatever their vehicle of choice, it wasn’t visible from here.

It was possible they were taking a lunch break. Or I was just being paranoid.

I let the curtain fall back, but caught sight of something and pulled it open again. Nothing. It had moved, quickly, like a shadow, and was now gone.

A loud knock on the door in the other room. They were here. My heart rate skyrocketed.

Another knock. The walls in this place were paper-thin.

I had to get out. Right away, at all costs. I went for my coat and my efforts were halted. As I leaned forward on my right leg, pain bolted into the groin. I collapsed in a rigid curl, holding in the scream, whimpering. I would be doubly tortured if they saw me like this.

Another knock. No, not a knock. This was louder, harder, with the sound of wood cracking—they meant to kick the door in. I heard voices and ceased whimpering. No sense giving myself over to them.

Somewhere between listening through the floorboards and glancing feverishly about the room for a hiding place, an idea occurred: I could hang from the window and drop to the ground. A second-story jump was not very intimidating to the average young male. The feet did pose a problem, however.

The floorboards creaked. They were inside.

Enough! I had to move. I stood and leaned against the windowsill. Without a sound, I slid the curtain over and stared out. I would have to take the dive. Just do my best to land on my heels and roll. Ninjas did this sort of thing all the time.

I slung the window open. It was noisy, but there was no other option. I examined the fall: about 15 feet onto hard-pack. The voices neared, positively on the other side of the bedroom door. No more time. The doorknob turned. I managed to get my left leg through the opening. My head protruded over the drop. I braced myself in the window frame and slowly brought the other leg round. Then—a snag.

The material of my sweatpants caught a vicious shard of peeled paint, gripping it like a nail. I instinctively reached for it, but my position was wrong. My torso cast forward into the air.

A long rip preceded the fall, my pants shredding in half, and on the way down, the kerchief-bound foot smacked the windowsill.

Oof! I uttered.

If only I had blacked out on impact. That would have been some piece of luck. But there is nothing lucky about me.

The shoulder hit first, dislocating. The clear snapping sound had been the collarbone. Numbness took hold, except for a throbbing on the right side of my jaw. I licked at the blood filling my mouth. A few teeth rolled over the back of my tongue. The rest is patchy. Somewhere, a woman screamed. Hands grabbed my ankles. And a backlit figure stood hovered over me with a flashy grin.

Mihoney? I uttered through the delirium. But the tunnel swallowed me whole. In dreams and in life—no rest for the weary.

CHAPTER ONE: Meanwhile, One Year Earlier and Far From Home

Beach Blvd. 2:00 PM. Biloxi, Mississippi. The old Toyota was caked in squirrel resin and insect sinew, baking in the sun. This was the result of a 600-mile exodus from Louisville, which also included one breakdown, a run-in with seven savage homosexuals, and a string of encounters with large rat people in Cadillacs. All to arrive here, the location of my new life. My fresh start.

Car horns blared. Exhaust filled the air like cigarette smoke in a small bar. I was stuck, bumper to glorious bumper, in a phantom rush hour. No accident. No construction. This was the new Biloxi.

The old Biloxi of my childhood summers was nowhere to be found. The once sleepy beach resort town had clearly blossomed in my absence. A red Viper in front of me exploded forward then screeched to a halt ten feet farther. The driver was a real son of a bitch—blond, flowing hair, pink cardigan, gold tan. The woman beside him laughed drunkenly as she hung around his neck kissing and urging him on. I advanced in my whirring, knocking, wimpy car, stopping viciously close to that shiny fender, so I wouldn’t have to lay eyes upon his plates, which read: FNRICH. I considered revving the engine, rousing all the horsepower I could summon from the beat-up engine, and flooring it the next time I had some room. Only, I wouldn’t brake. I would crash right into that immaculate, scientifically engineered rear fender—all the while grinning maniacally and holding up my pinky as if to say, Cheers!

And if things got hairy, if the guy got out of the car with a gun, I could always toss a match into the gas tank and disappear into the ocean.

Who was I kidding? Things would definitely get hairy. Supercops would dispatch, tracking me down as far as Cuba if necessary. The air was thick with it. Something sick and twisted had moved into town—a new power with infinite wealth. For even now, their constructions stood tall on the horizon, gleaming dark and insidious. And I’m not talking about 135-foot statues of Jesus Christ. No, these were casinos. Lots of casinos.

I sat in traffic, moving a few feet per minute. Einstein believed that, on a simple level, acceleration is time travel. Movement is progress. The bane of my exodus from Louisville had been to seek a future, to flee the immobility I felt in a small town lacking opportunity. In this instant, in the traffic, baking in the sun, I wondered if I’d traveled all that way to find the same immobility, but in a different setting.

I did progress down Beach Blvd. By the odometer, I had gone three miles down the boulevard, and if memory served, my uncle lived not five blocks farther in a shoddy white town home. All recollection, of course. My confidence resided in the ripped-out Yellow Pages scrap I’d heisted from a gas station some miles back. E. Howard Esolen. 4526 Beach Blvd. Uncle Epps.

I was his only great nephew, and I had spent most of my childhood summers in his stead. It was a zany time for the family unit. Mother took full advantage of the summer excursions, careening around the Gulf with a skipper friend she’d met while on business in Tuscaloosa. And father, well…he had already been long gone. The last I heard from him was the late ‘90s. He’d telephoned from Guam to say he’d gone back to his ancestral fishing roots and chartered a vessel out of some obscure port. Some family. And then there was my uncle.

Being old, Epps was prone to grumpiness and liver spots. I was under strict rule to refrain from referring to him as Old Speckled Head, at least in his presence. Epps wasn’t particularly good with kids. His candy supply was all he had going for him, and it remained less than sufficient. He replenished it once each decade, and it garnered only those rock-hard pigmented candies that consistently tasted like medicine. His television was outdated. The picture tube required a half-hour advance powering before fizzling in a grainy semblance of a reception. To watch a show with audio meant keeping one hand on the bow-tie antenna. I was a lonely kid. And I liked it that way. I outgrew obsessive television watching and, like my mother, acquired an overwhelming nostalgia for the beach and sun and seemingly infinite Gulf. I bided my time building sand castles, collecting seashells, and body surfing in the subdued Gulf waves. Epps spoke little and took to daylong marathons of Solitaire, for that was all, thus late in life, he required.

My memory of him remained, but recalling his general ancientness from my childhood years, I wondered about his condition now. I turned into a sand-swept lot and parked. This was the 4500 block, but the numbers had eroded off the mailboxes. I sat there baking and sweating. I needed to get out of this car, but my conscience held me back. This just wasn’t right. I studied the row of rickety beach shacks in disillusionment. The house was gone.

Not so much as a splinter. Had I really been so lost in the ebb and flow of life? Had my late teens and early twenties gone by so fast as in a flash of light, at first brilliant, then fleeting? And life. Is it really so cruel? I got out of the car.

Epps, I said. Great uncle.

A seagull cawed and then vanished.

I walked past the row of shacks to a newer development. I looked at it for a moment, and something gave way inside. A clean, shiny 4526 Beach Blvd stood out. My Uncle’s address.

No longer the shoddy white beach front home of my youth—in its place was an obnoxious tourist shop outfitted with two thousand pounds of plaster in the form of a monstrous, gaping shark mouth. Through it, brightly colored, shopping bag wielding tourists passed in great number. Just below a flank of frightening white teeth, a neon sign announced: TED’S SEA APPAREL AND SPORTING GOODS. Suddenly, a horn blared.

It blared again.

I turned, woeful and disimpassioned, to confront a twelve-passenger church van stuffed with sixteen children—all wearing gaudy sunglasses and matching multi-colored wide-brim hats. The driver—balding, tan, and angry—rolled down his window and leaned out into the hot air.

Move your ass!

I might have ripped his body from safety via the large commercial window and proceeded to wipe up all the sand in the parking lot with his face. Any other time would have warranted it. But now, in the heat, sad and spiritually downtrodden, I felt something far more humiliating than spite: compassion.

He blared the horn again, screaming. I simply smiled and stepped back, whereupon he immediately squealed off at full speed. The rear tire jumped the curb and exploded with a loud pop. I watched in mild bemusement as the guy lumbered out of the van and investigated the damage.

I turned and went for a walk, leaving my car in the lot up the block. I’d come here for a reason. I figured it was time to get re-acclimated.

CHAPTER TWO: Biloxi and the Boulevard

The boulevard teemed with life. It had become a tourist hotspot featuring the best of the mediocre local fare. Fish places run by Vietnamese, scattered French cafes, and numerous gift shops beckoning travelers. Minivans and rented SUVs crammed the tight parking lots. An occasional bar jutted from the strip, where the unsuspecting gambler celebrated his winnings, or the frequent loser tried to forget his losses. In addition to tourists, the burgeoning town hosted a new wave of locals. It was a diverse mix. Biloxi businessmen wore linen or a casual blazer with shorts, their legs and necks tanned dark brown. Streams of cadets from Kiesler Air Force Base proliferated the scene in crisp, neat uniforms.

I walked along the establishments and among the people and noticed stretches of the boulevard where there was nothing. What remained were vast cement lots eroded to gravelly and sand-swept deserts, where the sun and heat created phantoms of undulating waves. Beyond that was the sparkling blue Gulf.

I crossed over to the edge of a vacant beach. Farther along the coast, the beaches were nice and clean and pure white. Here they were littered with broken glass and sediment. But I watched from the beach’s edge and marveled at the splendor of the wide Gulf. Its beauty had a transporting effect. Gulls shrieked and cawed. The wind rustled. Gentle waves lulled and broke along the shore. I knew why I had come.

At dinnertime, I stepped into a dark bar a few blocks off the strip—the Tortuga Tavern. The bartender was young and pretty. One of her parents must have been Vietnamese; she had the cheekbones and olive skin. The place was dead. She had a book opened up on the bar, a hefty tome thicker than the bible. She was so engrossed she didn’t look up as I sat across from her. Still nothing. I leaned over the book and glimpsed the contents.

Excuse me, I said. But are you reading Shakespeare for pleasure?

She looked up but did not acknowledge me in words. Here was a girl who spent her mornings reading Dr. Faustus.

I said, "I just recently finished reading The Rape of Lucrece myself."

You know there are a thousand other bars on the strip, she said.

Her tone was condescending and tired, as if she reserved her words for much more intellectual and erudite debates. She scribbled furiously in the margins of Troilus and Cressida.

I cleared my throat, gazed into the background, and whimsically opened my hand to the room. Then, in my most daring brogue, I said, "Beauty is Truth; Truth, Beauty."

That’s Keats, she quipped.

I looked confused. Is it?

Who knows why, other than to say magic, but she laughed, and her beautiful smile sparkled in the dark bar. She folded over the corner of her page to mark her place in the book then set it down before a row of assorted vodkas.

I can already tell you are going to be a big pain in my ass if I even entertain a real conversation with you, she said.

That, I said, Is a promise.

Her name was Mary, and she’d lived in Gulfport all her life. Her father, a Vietnamese fisherman, had sold his business six years ago to a large fishing company with over three hundred boats. With the money, he had set aside a fund for his daughter to go to college, paid off his outstanding debts, and used the remainder to take over the Tortuga Tavern from a retiring Frenchman. Her mother, a Southern Baptist, had converted to Catholicism at the advent of her marriage to her father and now ran the bar. Mary, meanwhile, bartended during the day, saving her money so that she could move out to Northern California and start her own vineyard.

Wine is the only real art for me, she said. Grapes need the same proper care as children; it’s a beautiful thing.

True, I said. But how do you stand all that whining.

She laughed at my little pun—God knows why.

For the next hour I charmed her