Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 5

  Which is where I belong.

  Not swimming at the base of oceanic trenches. Not like all my brothers and sisters who think they’re achieving separate but equal by cowardly hiding. Fuck that noise. I tell them this, and they laugh. They tell me I’m a mutt bastard, and go ahead and see how much Hollywood would love a freak monster with some obvious giant octopus blood in my heritage (full disclosure, they’re correct about the damned octopus. Instead of a tail, I have a giant gelatin hump with three flaccid tentacles that drag behind me like the lace of a wedding gown). But fuck it. I’m amazing from the front.

  I drink the sewage underneath Gold’s Gym in West Hollywood twice a day, and the piss of those dudes has enough Andro to make every muscle (sans my ghetto booty) hard as blood diamonds. Which brings me to my point: Hollywood loves beauty, but the masses, those who stamp the checks of Hollywood execs with their ten dollar tickets and extra-large, extra-buttered tubs of popcorn, they love beauty with a slight flaw. This makes the beauty attainable. This makes it something they can strive both for and towards. This is my in. This is why I’m going to prove every piece of shit I know wrong, show them that in the twenty-first century, the bastard of an ocean-wide coupling can stroll down Sunset Boulevard, the only inconvenience being too many paparazzi trying to get all up in my shit.

  ~

  There’s this girl. There’s always a girl. She’s technically my cousin, but Christ, there’s not too many of us, so hold off on your judgment because a hole’s a hole. Okay, I was trying to sound tough there. Gema isn’t just a hole, far from it; the furthest thing from it. She’s perfection. Like real perfection, not me with my loveable flaws, but beautiful in every conceivable way, her father, a great white that would make Jaws ashamed of his manhood, and her mother, my aunt, both with that sleek reptilian style of amazing. Gema’s the real deal. She’s pure beauty, but that’s not all it is with this girl. Shit no it isn’t. She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s like a guy if a guy wasn’t a dick but just chill, all about binge eating and toying with submarines. I’m not one to toss around the L word, but damn, it’s close with this girl.

  Which made it all the more heartbreaking when I dropped by the underground volcano where she hangs out, and heard this soft moaning (maybe it wasn’t soft). My first thought was of her safety, her wellbeing, her probably being captured and tortured, her needing my help. I wiggled my way through the volcanic rocks. That’s when I saw my sweet Gema reclined against the seabed. Diablo (prick of a Kaiju, cold water type off the coast of Greenland, all about lying low and the procreation of our race) was tucked between her legs giving her fake chow.

  I screamed.

  How could I not?

  Gema chased after me. She kept calling my name, Sweetgrass, Sweetgrass, and I let myself believe these were the calls of the apologetic, of the recently-epiphany-experienced, ready to beg for forgiveness and understanding.

  I finally slowed because she’s faster than me anyway.

  “What the hell were you doing?” she asked.

  “Heard something, thought you were in trouble.”

  Gema’s got these eyelashes long as tarpon, and when they flutter, small white water ripples. She was doing that as she tilted her head at me. She looked a little sorry, but more pitying.

  “He’s…different,” she said.

  “I’m different.”

  I watched Gema’s gaze drop to my stupid gelatin ass and the flaccid tentacles. She smiled the smile of a teacher returning the apple from her grade school student, telling him it was never going to happen.

  “He’s special, and I’m getting older, like my eggs aren’t going to stay fresh forever, and—”

  “I thought we were—”

  “Friends.”

  At that moment, I knew Gema was speaking to me in code, as most girls do. She wasn’t saying I’m in love with that fascist Diablo, I love it when he’s downstairs with his snake-like tongue, and it’s never going to happen between us. Not at all. She was saying I need to see more. I need you to show me that you’re capable of greatness.

  So yeah, that happened. That’s my backstory. That’s why I decided to explore the sewers underneath Hollywood. To get ripped on pissed out steroids. To become bigger than Diablo, both in stature and reputation; bigger than the overhyped Godzilla, him having it wrong with destruction; bigger than Jesus as I soak in a world’s love, me becoming special.

  ~

  I’m not retarded. I know monster movies—hell, any movie where something cool happens—is done with computers. But that doesn’t mean it’s better. No, that means CGI is the only tool available to producers, other than horrible puppets of Japanese past. We’re hypothetical to humans. We’re bedtime stories. We’re ingrained fears. We’re punch lines. We’re gods, more wrathful than any Old Testament exercising of disapproval, but we’re not real.

  And what if we were to become real?

  You think a studio is going to turn down a movie—everything real, mind you—with Sweetgrass as a star? Like maybe it’s an alien movie, and the humans are doomed, completely fucked. They call a special professor who’s a little crazy, some dude who smokes joints and talks conspiracies, and they say, “Are your theories real?” This professor laughs, tells them we’ve been real since Pangaea. He shows them where to find me. I’m all swimming around looking like utter destruction. Favors are asked. I’m tough, like what’s in it for me? And then the President of the United States says, “Our eternal gratitude.” Boom, that’s all I need, Sweetgrass morphing from angry-misunderstood-loner to team player, savior, but fuck that cross because there’s no need for a martyr when I’m angry.

  The answer is no studio would turn that down.

  Which is why right now, at six-thirty a.m. I’m balling up my fists, ready to crack through the thin layer of crust separating me from Hollywood. Me from greatness. Me from the undying love of Gema.

  Yeah, I’m nervous, just like any Midwestern milkmaid who’s boarding a Greyhound to chase her dreams of seeing herself on the silver screen, but fuck it. Fuck my friends who tell me it’s impossible. Fuck Diablo with his oral calisthenics. Fuck my race with their cowardly fear. Fuck movies and their CGI. Fuck them all, because this motherfucker’s coming up.

  ~

  I’ll pay them back for the fifty-foot crater I’ve just put on North Hollywood Way. I’m thinking opening night of Sweetgrass! alone, will be enough to cover any damages ten times over.

  I stroll down the street. I chose this early time for two reasons: I wanted to pitch myself first thing to Warner Brothers, and I didn’t want there to be a scene. The last thing I want is to become a spectacle before I ink that dotted line.

  But maybe people have that shit wrong about New York being the city that never sleeps, because LA’s not too far behind. There’s a decent amount of traffic. A brown UPS truck is coming right at me, then veers right, skidding before it flips. I reach down and rescue this what can brown do for you? (And honestly, am I the only one who thinks that slogan is either a reference to heroin or anal sex?). I snatch the truck mid-flip. I bring it up to my face. A small Hispanic man holds onto the steering wheel. He’s screaming, nearly as loud as Gema had been while Diablo got his slurp on. Then the man stops. His eyes are milky quartz. I wink. He’s feeling me. He’s got to be. He’s got to be realizing there is greatness in this world. That there’s wonder and myths and creatures and gods. He’s realizing it all in his moment of speechlessness.

  But maybe he’s not, because he lets go of the steering wheel and dives a hundred and twenty feet to his death.

  I stare at the little splat of his body. I look around for who may have seen. There are a few other cars on the road, most of them crashed into one another. I stealthily slide my foot over his mushed body and shrug like don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I know I need to get a move on to Warner Brothers. I don’t have time to be messing around with awestruck civilians. I cruise down the street, a little more careful this time not to squash the
dented vans of migrant workers and SUVs of the penile-insecure real estate brokers. My heart nearly kicks through my chest when I see Warner Boulevard. I turn left. Then I see that water tower. I’m going faster. I’m stepping over the literal gates to my destiny. I’m ignoring the brother manning the guard booth, who’s obviously ecstatic at my entrance, shouting into the walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder.

  The sun’s coming up and it feels right; the sun and the warehouses and the water tower, everything coming together like I knew it would. I glance at buildings covered with Superman and Looney Tunes logos. I’m imagining my picture next to them. I’m fantasizing about Sweetgrass toys, Hasbro dedicating an entire line to me—Sweetgrass the Badass, Sweetgrass the Destroyer, Sweetgrass the Savior, Sweetgrass the Giver of Cunnilingus—and about the ensuing cosplay with loveable gelatin humps. All of it. It’s happening. It’s fate. It’s me proving myself down as fuck to Gema. It’s me accomplishing the real American Dream—fuck gold, fuck oil, and fuck middle management, and too-steep mortgages—it’s fame, pure and simple. Fame, the declaration that I’m better than you, I won, I beat the game called American Life.

  I make my way to a sleek looking office building. Obviously, this is where the execs hang out. So I do, too. There are a few people sprinting around the parking lot, which I chuckle at, thinking it’s true what they say about Hollywood people always being in a hurry.

  I wait for maybe five minutes.

  Nothing happens.

  Like I said, I need this shit to happen right away, so I bend down and peer in the window of the office building. I can see women in slutty business suits and dudes who look like the women in slutty business suits. I tap my pinky nail against the window to get somebody’s attention. The window shatters. I put my mouth to the opening, tell them I’m really sorry about the window, feel free to bill me. They’re screaming. A few of the men, who are as pretty as women, faint. My mouth’s right at the window, and I tell them I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but I’m looking for the man in charge of signing the next BFD.

  Everybody’s covering their ears. Most drop to their knees. Somebody throws a minuscule coffee cup at my snout. I tell them again that I’m here to become a star. One girl’s crouched down. She removes her hands from her ears. Each tiny hand is red with blood, which I realize is coming out of her ears. I tell her she might want to get that checked out.

  I straighten back up, and notice, for the first time, I have an audience outside. It isn’t really the audience I want. There are three black sedans, which I make as Warner Brother security. Four cop cars. In the distance, I see a precession of cruisers, cherries blaring. I hear something behind me and spin around to see more cop cars. There’s a very slight sensation radiating in my ghetto booty. I peer once again over my shoulder.

  Fuck.

  During my initial spin-around, one of my embarrassing ED tentacles must’ve caught some air, because it’s lying in a heap of demolished cop cars. I see one officer severed in two, his patrol car making a clean cut just above his utility belt.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  When I get nervous, I apologize. It’s my natural state. Take any sexual encounter in my life, it’s nothing but me groping and begging forgiveness for my inadequacy. Any tension-filled standoff with dudes like Diablo, yup, more of the same. Sorry, you’re right, I am a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to live. And here it is, the most important moment of my life, the proverbial signing day, my coming out party, so of course I’m nervous like a motherfuck—regardless of what I say. I’m insecure, worried about the size of my dick, my fat ass, ashamed of my mutt status because my mom was kind of a slut, terrified of failing at this like everything I’ve ever tried, constantly battling the thought of a solitary life spent along jerking off to my own reflection—and I’m apologizing to each and every one of the gathered people. I’m sorry-ing and I didn’t mean to-ing with increasing volume. But these people evidently don’t want to hear it, because they’re covering their ears, many of them leaking blood.

  “Listen, this is all a huge misunderstanding. Just please, please, get me the head of your studio.”

  Cop cars keep coming.

  I see a helicopter over to my right (fucking paparazzi).

  People sprint away from me. The cop sliced in two crawls.

  I’m thinking what the fuck? How hard is it? I’m here to talk business. I’m here to make you billions of dollars. I’m here as an answer to your prayers for job security and promotions. I’m the antidote to pirated films. I’m the ease of never having to worry about your Christmas release again. Just work with me. Quit running away. Quit bleeding from your pussy-ass ears when I talk. Just treat me with some respect.

  I feel a slight irritation under my thirty-seventh rib. I turn to see a cop blowing the load of his shotgun into the sexy V leading to my crotch.

  I yell at him to knock it the fuck off.

  He keels over, blood gushing from his ears like a pubescent whitehead.

  Then I feel this stinging sensation everywhere. My toes and knees and fingers. I’m being shot at from every direction. A smidgen of my black blood leaks out of the side of my dick head.

  Yet I’m the one apologizing.

  I’m telling them I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I didn’t mean to scare them. I tell them I’m speaking the best way I know how; so sorry your delicate little eardrums can’t seem to handle it.

  I’m a kid apologizing to my mother for asking about my father. I’m hanging out with forced friendships, apologizing for not being more fun. I’m fumbling in the crevasse of a hooker’s snatch, telling her I wished I was better at it all. I’m myself at every stage of my life, every fucking second of my hundred years, wondering what the fuck it is that you all have that I don’t, wondering why it’s easy for you to speak without crippling awkwardness, laugh without it being forced, love without money exchanging hands.

  Call it a moment of clarity.

  Call it an epiphany.

  Call it the acceptance of rock fucking bottom.

  Call it whatever you want, but for the first time in my life, I see myself how everyone else does: a fucking freak.

  And with this realization, something inside me snaps. That internal voice telling me I’d get my shot, that I was destined for greatness, that I’d find love on land that had eluded me in sea is gone. And in its place is something primordial, something way the fuck down on my brainstem. It comes out in the loudest scream I’ve ever let out. Glass explodes and people drop and I keep screaming, grabbing my tentacles in both hands (suddenly makes perfect sense why I have them), bashing everything in my sight, whips cracking pavement, the water tower, bodies like so many gnashed guppies.

  ~

  I don’t stop at Warner Brothers. Why would I? I crush the fuck out of Paramount, Universal, and 20th Century Fox. None of them were going to give me a deal. None of them could even understand what I was saying. None of them had any interest in the actuality of their bullshit movie premises becoming real. They’re happy with their containable computer monsters. They’re happy with their miserable status quo. They want their lives of greed and bleached assholes. They want their punishment to come from wives and withheld calories and synagogues and churches. They want their nightmares to only rule their sleep.

  I’m at Walt Disney. I fucking hate Walt Disney. Everything they do is predictable and trite, easily digestible stories of good versus evil, which seems fucking hilarious given my current circumstance. There’s no good or evil. There are the haves and the have-nots. There are creatures who don’t contemplate killing themselves and there are those that do. There are those who show up to Hollywood and get good breaks by sucking a few dicks, and those who eventually suck those same dicks in dark alleys off the strip in order to feed a habit. It’s a matter of miscommunication. It’s a matter of genetics. It’s nature and nurture and it’s life and its cruelties of bad breaks, not evil, that causes devastation.

  My fists bleed from crushing steel.
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br />   The cops aren’t cops anymore, but Army, Navy, and Marines.

  The irritating shotguns and pistols pinpricks have transformed into throat catching searing pains of RPGs. My black blood floods the fake Harlem Renaissance street set. Helicopters swarm me. I’m a whirling dervish of muscle and whipping tentacles and gnashing teeth. Humans taste like sugar. I’m seeing black and more black, my blood, my mood, cracked asphalt, tanks, machine guns, rage.

  I realize this, in fact, is my moment.

  There are news vans everywhere, choppers, too. They’re filming the impossible. They’re making movies out of reality. True, it’s pro bono work on my part, but it’s still me in the spotlight, and I think about a billion hits on YouTube not being out of the question. And it is here when I realize I’ll give the people what they want, because at my core, I’m still that motherfucker. I’ll battle my way through what’s left of Walt Disney, then crush the indies, then make my way up the hills to that lie of a sign, and it’ll be there where I’ll make one final push, give them hell, let the world see me as an evil embodied—fuck terrorism and Amber alerts and To Catch a Predator—it’ll be me, front and center, the name Sweetgrass synonymous with Lucifer.

  But I’ll let them win.

  I’ll let them upgrade their arsenal to napalm and heat-seeking missiles. I’ll let my blood fall for a nation that’s as hypocritical about its love of shed blood as a Mormon couple soaking while still claiming virginity. I’ll be a martyr for a nation that needs one. I’ll be the narrative of the US prevailing, technology and steadfastness prevailing, good prevailing. They’ll make it a holiday. They’ll recreate my murder in all of the major cities, parades with monsters beaten with sticks, black candies spilling for type-two diabetes-infested children. It will be twice that of the Fourth of July. It will be the bedtime story Americans will tell themselves that everything is still okay, they’re still a superpower, they’re still chosen.