The Stream

By Nathan Cook

Conner O’ Brien has lived a hard life, struggling to cope with the death of his father, making it through school, and his job. He tried his hand at writing, coming up with a bestseller he calls The Stream. Fame goes to his head, but will he survive it? Only more writing will show in the adventures of Pocahontas, President Kennedy, and many more stories he crafts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796079319

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Nathan Cook.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019920837

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-7960-7933-3

                Softcover        978-1-7960-7932-6

                eBook             978-1-7960-7931-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/18/2019

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CONTENTS

PART I

A Man Apart

Prologue

Episode I   Compulsion

Episode II   The Exorcist

Episode III   When the Garden Burned

Episode IV   Scenes from Customer Service

Episode V   French Cinema

Episode VI   The Ink of Cthulhu

Episode VII   Tomorrow’s Hellfire

Episode VIII   Binkie

Episode IX   Kemba

Episode X   The Great Cincinnati Hunger Strike

Episode XI   Wemish

Episode XII   Deus Ex Machina

Episode XIII   Redemption

PART II

The Next Great American Novel

Preface

Prologue

Chapter I   I’ve Got All My Sisters with Me

Chapter II   The Hookah Shop

Chapter III   Mr. Peterson’s Opus

Chapter IV   Apocalypse Soon

Chapter V   The Great Chicago Migration

Chapter VI   The Stevie Ray Vaughn Promenade

Chapter VII   60 Minutes Interview

Chapter VIII   Junkietown

Chapter IX   Iman Kabir Comes to the Stream

Chapter X   The Holy Tea Time

Chapter XI   The Tennis Court

Chapter XII   Venison & Jägermeister

Chapter XIII   Camels to Mecca

Chapter XIV   Jahannam

Chapter XV   Flash Flood

Chapter XVI   A Month in the Sahara

Chapter XVII   Mr. Ewing Goes to Washington

Chapter XVIII   The Watermelon Patch

Chapter XIX   Building the Fleet

Chapter XX   The Klingons are Coming

Chapter XXI   Once More Unto the Breach

Chapter XXII   The Final Executive Decision

Chapter XXIII   The Final Countdown

Chapter XXIV   Triple E

Chapter XXV   A New Dawn

PART III

Fame

Chapter I   Vinyl is the Best Medium

Chapter II   The Lakers Game

Chapter III   The Break-in

Chapter IV   Hutter Revisited

Chapter V   The King’s Court

Chapter VI   Parallel Universes

Chapter VII   Eisenhower/Kennedy ‘60

Chapter VIII   Yankees Stadium

Chapter IX   There’s Only One Way This Could End

Chapter X   The Irish Wedding

Chapter XI   Kemba Returns

Chapter XII   A Theatre in the New World

Chapter XIII   Nobody Loves an Albatross

Chapter XIV   A Game of Chess

Chapter XV   A Pink Urn

Chapter XVI   Christmas in San Antonio

Chapter XVII   Tireless Struggle

Chapter XVIII   Snowed in

Chapter XIX   The Art of Failure

Chapter XX   The Seventh Seal

Chapter XXI   Eclipse

Chapter XXII   Goodbye

To La

uren

A poem a day keeps the doctor away

Keeps you from being led astray

Basic meter and rhyme open the heart wide

Byron and Shelley traversing in the wood

Coming upon The Modern Prometheus Frankenstein

O’ captain my captain we lead lives of quiet desperation

I wish I could drop all and go to the wood

Take up my trumpet and axe

Work like a soul inspired until the day is one

The diary of a young man deep in the project

Comes upon a block of the vein and cannot go far

I have to write each day, or I would certainly die

I hate myself so much if I cannot get my anguish on the page

Life is so hard, but what can we do

But reflect on the sadness of the day, the month, and the year

Write inspired about the wind and the willow

The red badge of courage, The leaves of grass

And the Pandora’s box myth of hope

Why I bother anymore I am not sure

Life is so back breaking I don’t know anymore

This is all I have and if I did not type of the captain my captain

I would surely be nevermore

Part I

A Man Apart

Prologue

The Wedding Bomber

April 20th, 1972:

I talk fast and loose so stay with me if you can. I need to vent my problems in a healthier way everyone says, so I’ll start by writing everything down. That’s what you get for dealing with a prod like me, I’m in the avant garde in the art of conversation.

I remember the night sky at midnight more than anything. It’s raining all the fucking time. It was coolish but not cold. You’d think with light pollution on the locale in Belfast I couldn’t see it, but there it was. Jupiter, the Roman god of war, shining like a green haven in the glowing orange heavens. And I remember the Jesus freaks, out in the streets, as sir Elton would say, yes? Grade A mystic shite chopped down to a three-page pamphlet. I’m going to hell, repent and all that jazz; King takes bishop swiftly. The only thing I could think of was at that moment I would never want a repeat of 1972 AD.

My mumma was really sick when I was born, that explains a bit. Step on a crack break your mother’s back that’s my theory. I have brothers and sisters who are not special, they follow punctuation, make their beds, brush their teeth. Hell of a thing ain’t it? Professional swimmer I am. When do I get to meet this special lady my mom always pried. Can’t mom, got to prep for the Olympics. But there was a day, a day I’ll remember fondly for the rest of my life. Gold in the 200-meter butterfly and I met Tess. I saw her from far away, I was on the podium as the speakers blared The Soldiers Song. I was prepared to blast my way through the crowd, out out out of the way give the man some privacy, but I stood there as the flags came down. Israeli team killed the day before, sad isn’t it? One day we’re bound for glory the next we’re shot down like dogs. I’m a spider, at this moment beginning the spinning of a web of a thousand lies. Do I think I could survive five minutes without her I thought at that very moment?

She was on the side of the angels. I knew right then that I was going to marry her, love at first sight and all that drivel. She was dashingly beautiful, petite, and most importantly, obscenely rich. Doing a little sleuthing from there on the victor’s podium I could see by her dress she was swimming in wealth. I had seen her in the tabloids before. It didn’t take me long to match that Tess there was from the Derbyfield monarchy, high positions in British parliament. I knew right then I would be shedding my medal and strip mining it for a crown.

Anyway…what was I thinking? oh yes. The wedding. Well, let’s go back to the night before. She was wearing a rice green bridesmaid dress. The night before I was a naughty, naughty boy. Strip club? No, I was at a pool. When you win the bronze in the Munich Olympics you can very easily get a key. I believe everyone’s an artist in one way or another, that’s what the prod in me thinks. Life is shit but you have art to cauterize the wound. There’s something in culture you enjoy, I bring that, that’s how I’m a national patriot. That’s the thing about being a swimmer, baptized of your sins every breaststroke. Success only comes with hard work, many hours, many days, many weeks, many years. I’ve crossed oceans!

Anyway, Kiss kiss, peck peck, I porked her brains out. Sex is best when done underwater. No one out in the big bad world knew about it.

Flash forward from the Olympics and my soon to be Mrs. Tess O’Brien is she’s dying of cancer. Why would I do that to her, well, it’s not like a fairy tale down under. So many years in love, then the milk turned sour, the blasted butter won’t come, the flies are buzzing and the coyotes are howling. This wedding between Tessie and I is a gesture, solemn and obligatory. I am a comforter and advisor on the final walk of life. Prod I am, I am a chaplain administering last rites. We didn’t meet by chance. Two wounded people both hurt and confused. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a Derbyfield of the Derbyfield dynasty. I usually hate old families but this time I can make an exception. A real golem I am. A titan of swimming, but a rattlesnake in the heart of the Sahara out in society.

Right right, anyway night before our wedding I’m fucking the bridesmaid, just really going to town, her trembling in my arms, our souls leave our bodies, and looking straight up at a bright star that falls into the sky. I’m distracted but I pull out just in time and there’s white on the inside of her dress now you see. It’s so fucking jarring she’s screaming, and I end up wailing too in this horrific moment, its phantasmagoria! Can’t get it out with the best Clorox in the world, no replacements. Tough to hide too. I get her flowers from the shop and she sods off, leave the wreck til’ tomorrow, we’ll see how it goes. Watch your step on the walk of shame.

The truth is I do love Tess. Her parents of course despise my existence, the typical nuclear family they are. Even though I’m an Olympic swimmer I’m also a degenerate. They see me with five vodka martinis at dinner, my sleeves of tats, the blood streaming from my mouth from the rarest of prime rib. But most importantly I’m just another generation of poor prod trash. That’s what they hate the most: The Montagues called for an attack on Oliver Twist, wish wash pish posh. I get home, I start to tell her I have something to confess, then I take out a necklace. My god how beautiful you are or so maybe darling don’t you know I love you so much there’s nothing in this whole wide world I wouldn’t do for you darling. Something like that, it will all be over in a few weeks anyway, my literal angel. She thought I was out for a night at the opera, the theatrical event of the season, a bloody jolly royal revue. And yeah Alexander wept for he had no more worlds to conquer. I have conquered Tess, hobgoblin from the ninth circle of hell I am, but I care not. She thinks I’m a decent man, a quiet man, an understanding man. She thinks this house will survive, no matter how it will, but I don’t have enough to fill a house that big. Paris, Milan, Tokyo, we’d see the world. I could fly from the cheating, it will all be fixed.

That night we watched a period piece, Pride and Prejudice, of which I had certainly both in excess. Can you hear the beating of the drums? Revolution comes tomorrow. The blood is on my hands.

So, I started the morning of the wedding with a fifth of Jack. A literal fire in the belly. Whoever at the corporate hierarchy said Jameson goes down smooth has clearly never met Aiden O’Brien. My alcoholism is hereditary, with professional swimmers like us we need ten thousand calories a day, a thousand of mine comes from Dr. Jack. Assassinating my liver, it is. Any other man would be dead and gone, but it was just a little pick me up at ten AM. I can handle the offspeed pitch better than any other hitter, and this was a hanging curveball. The wedding was at two, let the boy finish. A little blow for the nose and off we go. Houses of the holy it’ll be all hunky dory after the gold rush.

At the Coliseum, that stain was like a scarlet A on the rice green. Only a veteran twelve years in the majors could see it blended in. It looked like a kidney shape, but it was really the telltale heart. Anyway, there’s my Tess, the veil hiding her bald head smelling of peach blossoms and lavender. I peer over the left, see my papa, pride beaming from his eyes like Superman’s lasers. I remember when my mother got killed from the same stomach devouring tumor as Tess is getting kicked by. I stare at Tess, I can’t stop looking over her shoulder, that bloody cunt is the bridesmaid. Cheater cheater pumpkin eater was going off in my 11-year-old mind. I’m a control freak by nature, trying to fit the square peg in a round hole. And here the hole was a perfect circumference.

Vows go normally, I conveniently leave out thine shalt be faithful. The breeze isn’t busy it doesn’t miss a tree. You may kiss the bride, waiting to exhale. Her teeth were chattering but it wasn’t cold. Must be the hair, the head keeps in all the warmth, but poof there it goes. All the damned candles weren’t helping, blasted Fenians and their idolatry. The Imperial Hotel the reception is at; Its Halloween night and I’m the last of the Mohicans. Champagne is flowing, toasts being toasted. Me and my million-dollar baby. Etta James’ At Last and all that sap. It would be the last picture show for her…at last. We have no secrets, time to eat that corn beef hash of a cake. Go home, fill that void. Make the court of Caligula raise their eyebrows. Terms of endearment really, she’s quite fragile. Oh well, the revolution has come, toot the horn.

And then kablam! Typical arrogance to think your nice humble wholesome wedding would not be bombed by the one and only Ulster Volunteer Force. Ears rumbling and rattling, I won’t need plugs for a dip anymore will I, eh? I’m spread eagle I am; I see a little tele set on in the corner. First thought, I must be in shock, but there’s American B-ball, Lakers and Bucks on the tele. I’d love to swim in a lake, but in Los Angeles? They’re all polluted, smoggy and green! I’d like to swim in Minnesota, Minne: Greek for lakes, of which there were thirteen.

And speaking of green, I tried to get up, shaky as all hell, and there it is: the rice green bridesmaid gown with the love stain right in me eyes. Dead as all hell shrapnel in her neck, blood everywhere, but there was the milk. You can’t bend the fabric of space and time, and apparently not the fabric of a dress I wanted to crush it right then, but then Tess, who had seemingly miraculously survived based on her proximity to the blast, turned her head, past the big O Oscar Robertson on the tube. My 700,000-dollar watch rang 9, I remember that moment as her screech, the first in human history to break the sound barrier, blasting what was left of my ears. All coming together now, judging by her face the car bomb was a real jawbreaker. Our marriage is in shambles before we even started to tango. I played her like a zither now the strings had snapped. But it wasn’t half as bad as I feared it would be.

What the bloody fuck am I saying? You’ve got to deal with reality. It was like watching from the balcony. So, what am I to do, move to Senegal, the outskirts of a west African town like a dirty thief? There’s no water there, beware of the water. Leave her alone, just my papa to chaperone her on the road to death. Will he be the bloke to say thou art my sheppard I shall not want, yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death do not fear evil? A moth to the flame.

Marriage changes people they say, but would it have changed me? Would we be the couple in a restaurant that everybody feels sorry for or is jealous of? Be the end of an era of filth? What if there was no stomach cancer? We’d grow old, I’d get in a bout with the colon myself. We’d have a couple kiddos and a bupkis, maybe a cat. Would we be the old couple in a restaurant everyone feels sorry for. A mess of anxiety over the car payment, a phobia of the things to come. Leave it to beaver, but me and my boozing? It would never last, why did I want to get married anyway? Marriage is nothing but a honeymoon then fight fight fight fight death. You can’t have a heart attack if you don’t have a heart. But if I said goodbye I’d waste away. It’s a two-way street though I worship Jack as a deity. Poems that don’t rhyme, Mudslingers on the motor way, I’ll waste away.

Then the news broke out. I was taking daddy to lunch; I spoil him something fierce in the cuisine department. My father was a weak-willed son of a bitch, always telling me to act like a man though his idea of manhood began with and ended with the Protestant Reformation. I remember him always saying if you have an issue just confess it to your invisible deity.

I remember asking for more pate. Arts and culture and all that. The bombing was news, Tess and I, our celebrity marriage ruined by the bloody IRA. Eyes bulging and legs swelling when I saw it, did you hear the disgusting vile things they say about me on the BBC? Those vile swine, it was accurate though, its like Prime Minister Heath himself down at Baker Street had caught me in the act instead of Tess. It felt like Pickett’s charge, all the divisions bearing down on me. Fire coming from all sides. Me just the little drummer boy, beating away, I have no gifts to bring.

I didn’t know what to do I felt I was in the dark. I wanted to fall on my sword and give myself up to almighty god. Instead I ran for the bathroom quick as a terrier, quick sniff of the old brain powder. Do you know what this shit does to kids? Oh well no time to consider, just whiff it in by the palm full. My eyes are scorched, I have to go find me dad. I get back and he has disappeared, where has he gone? Where did you go Mr. Robinson? When I left I was swarmed by the media, mics shoved in my face and all that. Get back you vultures! ‘Snap, snap, oh did you get the shot you shod,’ I heard. Where is Tess I need to get to Tess.

Down to Sandy Row I go, hopped up on snow. Something about snow is it makes you think all the kings horses and all the kings men can in fact put me back together again. All I feel like doing is swimming, paddle paddle paddle, but I can’t right now. No time left for you, distant memories on a sinking ship. What will I say to her when I first see her?

Lovely little village though. I ring the bell, my pa opens the door. It’s like he loves her more than me, I’ll make him bleed I swear it. I see her sitting at a great granite countertop 50 feet long, renovations throughout the kitchen, white plaster and whiter lights. This was going to be our home, raise a couple kids all the live long day. Fuck me, the corn beef Tess would cook, I can smell it now. And looking out back the pond I could swim in every morning a polar plunge at 5:30 AM, and the woods for taking our beast out for pissing. I’m running out of gas, I’ve been up all night in a coke stupor.

Coffee, I ask Tess?

Sod off you prick.

Wine?

You’re a drunk.

Look I can explain.

Don’t bother. I get up to leave, but there’s something more, something else holding me there. There’s a certain liberty I cannot be denied. I might as well have not been baptized, Prod I am, and I can certainly attest those motherfuckers in the IRA, because goddamn me if I do want more. Is it Tess I want, more Olympic medals, or the god of my Irish ancestors? Maybe it’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy, life is but a dream. What’s the frequency?

The god of my ancestors knows my destiny. He knows everything that happens because he exists out of time, that’s what they taught at good ol’ Sunday school. I would not want the power of a god, I wouldn’t want to peep into my future. Tess will be gone, yes, so will my dad and soon I. When so many want you dead, what are you to do but love thine enemies?

What’s the point of this psychotic diatribe? A confession? Did you want to follow me on principle? Fuck that, I’m a prod. I don’t deserve your compassion. And I didn’t fuckin’ ask for it. I’m a boozer, Im a sinner, I’m a cheater, and I’m a deserter. Just because I got a little clipped by the IRA and didn’t get the country clubs on Sundays doesn’t mean I didn’t get what I deserved. I have a rendezvous with Beelzebub in hell, and I don’t need a pamphlet from a jackrabbit for Jesus to tell me so. This is Belfast, a land of inner visions where the lamb lies down on a dead horse lying in the hot sun. There will be no Indian sunset for me; The red sun will just sink at last. So leave now. Ciao bella. What else do you want from me? This story keeps going and only has one ending. What’s the point of seeing The Troubles play out on my home field? Well, fine if you’re going to be that way let’s keep going.

Later that night, I went to, where else, the bar. Started innocuously enough:

O’Brien? Well, you’ve been served. Divorce papers; another titan has fallen. Very brave fellow that bloke, it’s a good thing I’m a swimmer not a boxer or I would have popped him right then and there, furious as I was.

Cut to a year and a half later. Divorce is final, Tess took half. It went to her parents in the will. I couldn’t bear to go to the funeral, her parents watching over me, judging me. From what I heard it was weepy. Everyone loved Tess, I even loved her when she was a living corpse. And I did truly love her, I know you think I’m a mad psycho who can’t feel love. I wish I could say it’s a shame I’m so bloody impulsive I cheated on her on our wedding eve, so sloppy I made a lovestain on her best friend’s dress, so crippled I begged her forgiveness after plowing my nose with cocaine. But that would be giving you what you want, right? That’s just the writer’s block talking, I have nothing to talk about.

I’m living in Dakar like I mentioned. Senegal, the middle of nowhere, new start. Luckily it’s near the Atlantic Ocean, I’ve often thought about paddling out and never turning back. But I pick up here because its October 30th, 1974 the Rumble in the Jungle, I’m outside the 20th of May stadium. Zaire 74, with a little B.B. and Brown. A nice little bit of soul power pre fight. Round one, fight is the most brutal thing I’ve seen since my wedding bombing.

Long story short, old man Ali wins the fight and a lightning bolt strikes almost perfectly at that moment of the knockout, onto me in the audience outside. I was rushed, put into a medically induced coma or so I’m told, don’t worry I survive. You wouldn’t worry about little ol’ me now would you? I floated out of my body, thinking I was on my way to heaven. Lucky me I’d be. I thought I’d punched a one-way train ticket to hell after the Tess incident, whoo whoo. There were no pearly gates or clouds or a man in the sky, but I did hear the voice of something though, whatever god is out there I’m not sure Christ or Krishna. You’d think the prod in me thought it was Jesus, but I heard many other voices, almost like one commune all the dead from all time talking at once and filling my head.

But god asked me a question as I floated higher and higher, do you want to stay or go? And I looked back, don’t look back they told me in bible study always go for the light in the sky. As I started to fly to the outer reaches of our atmosphere, like Yeager must have felt a decade ago in the sound barrier test flights. And then I saw it again, Jupiter, the Roman god of war. This was my god, fighting spirit in me. And I knew at once I had to go back to Earth. Repair my relationship with my father, honor Tess, honor my country. Maybe I’ll get remarried, does the first one count? I’ll definitely consummate this time! That’s the best you’re gonna get.

Episode I

Compulsion

April 20th, 1998

Dear diary It’s hard to be living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I don’t know why my

teachers and peers think it’s just like a quirk that after every period I need to go wash my hands with the bar soap I brought from home home home, if my mom checks my backpack and finds my soap

I brought from home home home she’ll kill me

Summer is almost here. I should thank god I just want to go home and play on my sanitized

Playstation. I want to stay home home home and never leave the house again its

Pretty funny I can take simulated blood but would never stop

Washing my hands if I got my blood or anybody’s

Blood on my hands. My body is a temple

Tap the floor everytime I finish a stanza, one of these OCD stanzas, home home home I need to

Get home, that’s the only place I feel safe, I hate my teachers so much

They yell at us every day I’m so scared to go into