kagablog

There had always been wrestlers in jungle country. Some came out of the disenfranchised tribes who settled along the dingy river settlements, others drifted down from the big cities in the lowlands. It was difficult to get good gigs and earn decent money in the more developed cities so everyone knew that all the real money was to found in the lawless zones. Wrestling in particular had a perverse attraction for the suffering and alcohol racked. Even the scattered tribes folk seemed to like it better than all the other forlorn forms of entertainment crawling around the zones. Perhaps the colourful outfits and fetishistic masks reminded them of their long departed customs and strange Gods. At any rate it was comforting for the villagers to witness the spectacle of a large ring of banana leaves and candy light bulbs being set up. These rings would be erected with great pomp despite their shabbiness. Patrolled at all times by hired waterfront trash posing as security in sunglasses and handlebar mustachios, they were perhaps accorded more importance than they deserved. In these early days the wrestlers were a simply a raggle-taggle caravan, nothing more than circus performers travelling from village to village staging fights for whoever came. This sideshow existence continued for a long time, until a memorable event changed things for good. A particularly vicious robber baron had begun killing old people in an attempt to extort more goods from a long-suffering tribe. The wrestlers, who were in the area at the time, took umbrage to the treatment of the tribe - who had always been faithful followers of the wrestling phenomenon. They decided to arm their waterfront trash guards with cheap sub-machine guns and machetes and pool their resources in an attempt at a counter-strike. Their strength and strategy in the end was formidable, more formidable than they could have anticipated. Within a day they had taken the robber baron’s compound and mounted his, and many of his closest cohorts heads on stakes. Drunk on victory (as these wrestlers were apt to become upon winning a match), they began to stage a number of successful assaults upon various chieftains and feudal lords in and around the lawless zones. They wrestlers always fought bare-handed as they did in the ring, sweeping down in a multi-coloured blaze once the mustachiod guards had laid waste to the majority of the opposition. They began to gain a tremendous amount of praise and respect from the people along the rivers. Even scattered military emplacements began to defect to the wrestlers, who in truth were far more effective and less corrupt than the government forces. The wrestlers swelled in power, were opposed on several occasions and within time became the recognized law in the lawless zone. The wrestlers themselves had by now become a small elite surrounded by legions of uniformed mustache-men with machine guns. Their masks and costumes became more and more immaculate as a kind of hierarchy began to develop within their numbers. Some speculated that they would stage secret bouts to compete for positions of power. Whatever the case they maintained their original nomadic configuration, moving in heavy convoys through the jungle territories laying down whatever law they saw fit to lay down. They were not unfair, but they were rigid and people soon came to fear as well as respect them. The wrestlers coup de grace was to establish a roving border around the lawless zones; one which flexed and shifted like a membrane. And anything coming in and out had to pass border posts. Posts which, although not entirely corrupt, were amenable to ‘specialty tariffs’ and ‘first veiws’ by speculative smugglers with large amounts of non-traceable cash. To aid mobility, these stations often took the form of specially designed jumping castles, referred to collectively as: The Soft House.

The afternoon had turned sunny and balmy. A soft, gushy sort of sea breeze flecked in off the ocean, rippling up the enormous fields of cane like fingers through hair. Alphonse Guava had the cigar smoking circus midget juice up the old banana coloured jalopy and take him out to The Soft House after cocktails. The clanking jalopy was a turn of the century dinosaur with bicycle wheels. These spindly wheels had undergone extensive balloon tire modifications to handle the rough roads outside the known map of the territory. Alphonse had won the car off a gambler on a steamboat some years ago and kept it in good condition – mostly out of spite. The in-house circus midget, who loved tinkering, managed to track down a manual or two detailing parts and set about making his own replacements in the forge. He had little else to do except smoke those repulsive stogies of his so it became something of a pet project. Alphonse, tickled by his dedication decked the little fellow out in aviator goggles, leather skullcaps and elegant pairs of driving gloves. The car was noisy, difficult to handle and broke down on almost an hourly basis. Yet despite these numerous failings it was utilized far more often than the deluxe finned Caddy or the Starbright V8 or even the speedster. The midget had a large gramaphone welded to the back and tacked it out with gyroscopes so that it could play across almost any terrain. Now as they drove they were listening to old Al Bowlly records and had colourful martinis on hand which they splashed out of shakers. Judas was lying on the backseat with his bloody legs and junk trailing out behind the car like a ‘just married’ motif. Typhoid Mary was also in the back, grinning at nothing, lost in a world of her own. Judas was sulking, staring at the sky through sunglasses, chainsmoking and petulantly ignoring the copious trickles of blood which seeped from his freshly mangled knees. Campbell’s tomato soup cans bounced ridiculously out behind him, constantly threatening to catch in the wheels and jerk him overboard. Alphonse was in the front slowly getting sloshed and having a grand time with the midget. His white suit had in fact already gathered one or two fresh stains.

A checkpoint appeared some distance down the dirt road. Three soldiers with handlebar mustachios and mirrored sunglasses were manning the candy stripe blockade. Bossanova music blared from a tinny radio inside the one-man watchman shack. One of the soldiers paced the road with a machine gun. The other two were a small distance into the cane, viciously beating a purple clown. The clown had been tied to a chair and one of his teeth was bleeding slowly down his violet powdered cheeks. The soldier on the road waved for the jalopy to stop. The midget shifted the cigar in his mouth, gunned the engine and ran over the soldier. There was a crunch, squeal and clatter as they trundled over the figure. This was shortly followed by the sound of the blockade being destroyed by the barreling jalopy. Alphonse barely seemed to register the entire episode so intent was he on refreshing his drink. The two soldiers in the cane paused for a moment to witness the death of their comrade. They observed the car drive off with perplexed expressions before going back to beating the clown.

The jalopy crested the ridge of a sugarcane rise and a huge lime green jumping castle emerged into view. It was nestled upon an open field and it’s translucent bulk quivered like an enormous jelly dessert against the sky. It was at least six stories high and various towers sprouted and swayed in the offshore breezes. The sunlight illuminated it brilliantly, creating a weird beach ball light which embered in its multiform shadows. Figures and furniture could be seen bouncing around inside the castle, moving like protoplasmic motes beneath a microscope. Soldiers performed aerobic exercises in the cane, syncopating to leotard girls on battered television sets.

“You think they would have pillaged enough gold fillings to erect a proper barracks by now,” Judas muttered blackly.

“Small mercies Judas,” Alphonse grinned. “ ‘The Hard House’ would sound a little to bouncy don’t you think?”

“Oh fucking cackle,” Judas barked bitterly as they drew into the front of the quivering castle.

Alphonse hopped out, passing between the two surly mustachio- guards guarding the labial entrance to the lime green structure. The others waited in the car, their gramaphone music clashing uncomfortably with the energetic beats pumping out of the aerobics programs.

Melancholic Bossanova music played throughout the entirety of the Soft House, bleeding from plastic intercoms, warping in the weird metallic acoustics. The lobby had a dreary bureaucratic atmosphere, despite the shiny transparent walls and constant squeaking. A large wooden desk occupied the center of the globular chamber and a wrestler in a waspish black and yellow leather mask was installed behind it. Filing cabinets creaked dangerously against the flexible walls. Sunlight filtered throughout the immense bubble bath of a structure, lighting it up with a sugary luminescence. Audio spillage from adjoining vacoules confused things somewhat. Interrogations were being carried out in plain sight, behind one or two membranes of clear jelly green. Long corridors flexed like the intestinal networks of enormous cartoon animals. Solidiers passed through these passages in a comical, sort of anti-gravity hopping. Some of the chambers had been filled to capacity with water and nasty looking sharks bobbed like goldfish inside them. Huge rubber airlock valves separated these rooms, further intensifying the oversized beach ball motif. The wrestler regarded Alphonse critically, evaluating him in a couple of glances.

“Picking up or dropping off?” The wrestler asked.

“I’ve got a sack waiting for me in customs, tower three,” Alphonse answered in a somewhat drunken, yet well modulated fashion.

“Know the way?” the wrestler queried suspiciously.

“Sure.”

“Carrying any sharp objects? Scissors? Knives? Needles?”

“Only my rapier-like wit,” Alphonse winked.

The wrestler regarded him for several seconds without a trace of amusement.

“We shoot people for that sort of talk you know,” he muttered ominously.

Alphonse withdrew a silencer-tipped pistol and shot the wrestler twice in the face. The yellow and black mask split with red and the heavy wrestler slumped dead across the desk. Alphonse wordlessly replaced the pistol in a cream leather shoulder holster, uncapped the beach ball airlock and quested down a flexible corridor.

Out in the car Judas was leaning off the door smoking his one hundred and fourty sixth cigarette of the day. He watched Alphonse moving through the gelid structure while the midget rolled a joint and Typhoid Mary caught flies.

“He pop him?” The midget asked with a grin.

“Yes fuck it,” Judas barked.

“Don’t worry you can pay me later,” the midget snickered, lighting up off a hula-hula Zippo.

Inside, Alphonse was slowly making his way through the sunlit Soft House. He had to adopt a curious, bouncy knees-bent walk across the bendy see-through floors. The squeaky noises this created slowly amplified themselves to absurd proportions within the shiny plastic tracts. This created an atmosphere of claustrophobia, which contrasted with the lack of view and the sensation of walking on air. The Bossanova music seemed to swell in volume the further he penetrated, reaching a monstrous distorted din towards the center. Sharks navigated the rubber lined cosms beyond the plastic of his corridor at times. At one point he passed a heavy old vending machine. It was heaving dangerously around, rattling with coins and he side-stepped it gingerly. Other rooms passed above and below, viewed through a complexity of translucencies. He ascended a wobbly tower. At the top, in a wildly waving chamber, were a mangle of black sacks. These hermetic sacks had been secured with heavy shipping ropes, which he proceeded to undo with great alacrity. He continued to separate the sacks until he came upon his name typed on a tag around the neck of a particularly large sack. He dragged it free, clinging to the ropes to avoid slipping across the biliously swaying room. He then undid the clasp and peered through the aperture. Inside was the little girl Miss Muppet had delivered. She was sleeping, naked in a foetal form, curled up in an abundance of goose feathers. Alphonse resealed the hermetic sack and heaved it to a rubber valve in the corner of the room. A crazy tubule could be seen beyond the valve, spiraling down through the mazy innards of the Soft House. He popped the valve, pushed the sack in and watched it swirl away through the pipes of the jumping castle. After a few moments he followed the sack, sucking down the tube like a bug down a drain. After several tortuous minutes both popped out a postal chute, almost directly in front of the jalopy, landing in a vast pile of abandoned letters and mail.