Chapter 2 (continued): “Godzilla: Finally” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

 

Note from the author: There are some visual effects in this chapter that are only going to land a certain way on the printed page. Use your imagination. I didn’t have to.

 

If you want to read Chapter 2: Part I, click 🦖 here. Honestly? I’d read this one first.

 

 

 

After my high school junior year, I up and moved to Haiti.

 

I didn’t have a passport. At the time, one only needed a certified birth certificate to enter the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

 

Like most other 16 year olds, I was also flat broke. My father—I refer to him as the man who terror-reared me—let’s call him M.

 

I promised not to use real names in this book other than the dog. But, honestly, that’s the level of respect I have for this human excuse who was divinely charged with my care and wellbeing. He gets one measly letter. Also, “M” makes me think of the wretched killer in Fritz Lang’s classic 1933 film, so seems about right.

 

M. swindled from me a baseball card collection that today would be worth six figures, all for the bounty of $300 plus a similar amount for a round-trip ticket from Minneapolis to Port-au-Prince.

 

As you’ll soon learn, my life has been a cornucopia of con artists.

 

I had every intention of staying in Haiti and never setting foot again in the United States. (Not a lot of rising seniors know about resident visas.) The only thing that could possibly tempt me to hop home on a Pan Am plane was an early-acceptance college scholarship.

 

My father had already forbidden me from attending college: “Don’t be tempted by the evils of universities. Those Greek philosophers were just faggots.” His words, not mine.

 

The irony is I had been accepted into Bethel College, a decidedly conservative, religious institution of higher education, and part of a consortium of likeminded, stone tablets up their ass institutions that included Wheaton College, to which I transferred and graduated.

 

At least going to Bethel would mean not spending one more day of my life in a family home psychologically sandwiched between the Lutz Family Amityville manor and 1428 Elm Street.

 

I’m sure Jesus judges Aristotle and Socrates for doing the nasty much less than M. for presiding over our home like a Spanish Inquisitor.

 

I didn’t know anyone in Haiti other than a translator named Extra whom I had met on several high school mission trips the previous two years.

 

Long story short: As if home life weren’t bad enough, we were members of a crazy charismatic Christian cult. Plus, I attended an only slightly more reasonable private fundamentalist K-12 school.

 

There isn’t enough ink in hell to list every offense against reason my childhood institutions committed. Want an example?

 

When I was 13, I came home from school shocked that my huge collection of Transformers toys had been tossed into the garbage heap. Incensed, I demanded an explanation.

 

Straight-faced, my parents quoted a passage from the Old Testament Book of Joel: “They have the appearance of horses….”

 

I’m no hermeneutics expert. Actually, I am. But I wasn’t then. Or maybe I was. Because I was quite certain that Jehovah’s outrage at the tribes of ancient Palestine had very little to do with the feud between Autobots and Decipticons way over on Cybertron.

 

As I said, we have a bit of a time crunch. We’re late for our date with the George Washington Bridge.

 

Serious. Have an Adderall and a slug or two of Red Bull.

 

We departed Columbia at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 28, 2024, and we have to get Hank; my two petrified emotional support cats, Loki and Porridge; and every earthly possession I own to The Bronx by 9 a.m. tomorrow morning to meet Alex and the movers.

 

Alex said she’d kill me if I’m late, and after what happened with my previous partner, I take threats like that seriously. At some point, I must make time to tell you about Candy.

 

Normally, this would be a 12-hour straight drive. But the total weight of Hank plus U-Haul trailer plus organic beings and worldly possessions tips the scale one ton too many. Even with my CDL experience—I drove round-trip nonstop from South Carolina to Kansas City over Christmas—this is a monumental challenge.

 

I can bench press 300 pounds but can barely manage the steering wheel. Also, I ran out of time to get the brakes replaced before I had to pack like a banshee and escape my Secret Service landlord and the rest of the Palmetto State before any other bewitching befalls.

 

Hold on before I buckle in! You seem like someone who plans things meticulously. Why are you so strapped for time?

 

Okay, the one paragraph version. The previous November, after Candy tried to kill me when I was in Wisconsin convalescing and transitioning my disabled mom to my reunited sister’s care, Candy changed her location on social media from Houston to Columbia, South Carolina. Like I said, she told me she had been a sharpshooter in the Army. I found out everything about her life—including her supposed pending divorce, which wasn’t a divorce because there wasn’t even a marriage—was a lie. She also reached out to every close friend I had—even someone who she thought was my professional therapist—and tried to squeeze information about me from them. She also lied to my sister that I had given her an STD that I didn’t even have nor was a carrier for. How’s that for a medical first! That, plus the attempted “cold hands” murder (that’s for the extended version later), was enough for me to rush the house to market and start over La Vita Nuova somewhere fresh—as if not finding a cure for Chronic Insomnia in South Carolina was enough!

 

Okay, the two paragraph version. From November to March, the house sold, then didn’t sell, then sold again. Then the nuclear fallout with my teenage daughter, and her nanny’s irrevocable betrayal of my trust by stealing my daughter’s controlled medication. How do I know this? The nanny confessed—to me, and to her own mother. Also, I had already been fired from the library for false cause and from Uber for no cause—and after two FMLA stints with Motorola Solutions, I was on thin ice with them too. As South Carolina is a right-to-work state, hey, buddy, you’re triple-fucked.

 

Three paragraphs? I met Alex, who was living in a cardboard box in The Bronx, in January. My house finally sold in early March. My daughter refused to live with me anymore. My mom was now in safe hands in another state. And I had nowhere to live come April. Ergo, I barely had time to sell or give away most of my possessions, buy new stuff for Alex and me, arrange for a lease in New York City, and get the fuck out of Dodge. Oh, and I had adopted 40-plus Muscovy rescue ducks—well, they were really dumped on my property—but I wanted to make sure they were all in a row too.

 

Plus, the reuniting with my sister after three decades exposed me to my childhood trauma like being strung up from a 14,000-volt transmission line. If you think I drank before just to sleep—try tapping that ruthful abyss. The pain and stress were immeasurable. Truly. I also started chain smoking—I had quit a decade prior.

 

Fuck, maybe someday I’ll sleep. It’s been another four days! Hand me a few toothpicks so I can prop open my eyes. Double damnation! Forgot to mention—I have to work Monday. No, that’s not an April Fool’s joke. So buckle the fuck up! Please?

 

I’m as mentally fit as this kit and kaboodle is roadworthy at the speed I’ll need to drive to get to New York on time—serious, let’s roll!

 

Shit, I drank too much Red Bull too fast. Here. Grab the wheel. I’ll pee out the window.

 

Anyway, my freshman year of high school, I was one of four students offered the opportunity to “bring the Gospel” to the island of Hispaniola and use our Christ Almighty superpowers to exorcise evil incarnate from the voodoo-obsessed devil worshiping pagan natives.

 

That was Spring Break 1986. Did I mention one of the most ruthless dictators in world history, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, fled Haiti for France in February 1986?

 

Our little Jesus Justice League team was one of the final authorized flights into Haiti at the time. Why the hell adults would let teenagers travel to an impoverished nation in the middle of a military coup is beyond me. But at least I got to have AK-47s waved in my face and watch hapless folks being burned alive by tire necklaces.

 

Don’t forget the zombies! Yeah, they’re real. Who cares whether it’s tetrodotoxin or deviltry, it’s all the same to a wide-eyed freshman who has been taught demons cause carburetors to malfunction.

 

When I got around to watching The Serpent and the Rainbow, I found it fairly “meh.”

 

I tend to disappear into byzantine margins as a writer, but you’re probably realizing by now that I have not lived a normal life. Whatsoever. I’m doing my best to give you essential facts.

 

Fuck. I have to pee again. Let’s stop here at South of the Border, a borderline racist gas station/amusement park attraction on the I-95 border between South Carolina and North Carolina that you simply must experience to believe.

 

In addition to filling up one’s tank, one can take in the largest indoor reptile display and shoot selfies with snake sombrero statuary.

 

Dammit to hell, I forgot to get water and food for the cats! Okay, let me go inside and—hmm. Maybe I can use slumbering Pedro ceramic ashtrays for food and water dishes. No cat food? I’m sure they’ll love Vienna sausages.

 

Let me just open up the trailer door and—oh, why do I have my cats in the trailer? Trust me, if you ever had to take these two otherwise lovely, peaceable felines to the vet, you’d know why.

 

After Porridge’s last visit to the vet, the clinic banned him. This cute orange runt turns into the Tasmanian Devil when crated. And Loki, well, he’s huge—probably half-Bengal or mountain lion. He gets terrible motion sickness. I’m talking a tsunami of diarrhea.

 

Don’t you agree the driver has enough going on already? Trust me. The beasts are secure in the trailer. And if you knew what was coming, you’d rather be in the dark yourself.

 

Also, fuck the page count at this point. We’ll find it in the rubble eventually.

 

Alex, my love, we’re on the way!

 

Here, let me just call her and give her a GPS update.

 

Oh, nice. She’s turned off her phone. Nothing quite says love like ignoring the man driving all through the night up the East Coast with a treasure trove of IKEA loot that exceeds the budget I told her to spend by roughly the national debt of Djibouti.

 

Alex’s remarkable lack of sympathy for what it took to get to New York ON TIME—she was completely aware of everything above—remains my most bitter resentment about any character in this book.

 

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Haiti.

 

True, Haiti would stand alone on the gold medal platform if destitution were an Olympic event. But it would also take the gold for history at the Pan American Games.

 

Maybe we’ll get lucky and Lin-Manuel Miranda will create a musical based on the life of Touissant L’Ouverture. Back to the road.

 

We’re pressed for time, but finally in Virginia—I think. Goddamn, my knees. And I’m so mind-blisteringly fatigued—I can hardly read. I think that sign said Virgins are for Lovers. Better pop another Adderall—oops, that was Viagra! Don’t go getting any ideas.

 

Listen, if you two pussies don’t stop caterwauling back there, you’re going to wake up you know who from 350 miles away! Shit, I think I just saw a Yeti in a M.A.G.A. hat thumbing it on the interstate.

 

Anyway, I hardly have time to tell you about that summer traveling all over Haiti. I was the Caribbean Kenneth Copeland for several months. Everywhere Extra and I went, we preached to huge crowds nightly. Hell, if saving souls were currency, I would have made up for those Barry Bonds rookie cards I practically gave to M.

 

But I stumbled onto salvation from Evangelical ignorance in City Soleil, a slum outside Port-au-Prince literally built on human refuse. Nestled amongst the tin roof shacks are the remains of infamous Ft. Dimanche Prison, the Auschwitz of Haiti.

 

Legend says that so many Haitians were killed there by the Duvalier regime that the blood routinely flowed like a stream to the sea.

 

There I met a man named Brunel Athis, one of few people to survive imprisonment at Ft. Dimanche. Though defunct, the grounds were still guarded by soldiers due to peasants trying to steal the cement blocks. Gosh, I hate to rush such a moving story, but we better speed things up. Finally—the Jersey Turnpike!

 

Here’s a link to an article I wrote about Brunel and my experience with him touring the Ft. Dimanche ruins.

 

I can’t feel my arms or legs. I’m pulling off to fill up. Stretch. See if the cats are alive. Smoke a whole pack—I reek like a chimney sweep.

 

Puff. Sigh.

 

I’ve been writing three to four hours every day since I was 25. I’m 51.

 

That’s at least 30,000 hours plugging away at the keyboard. For you TikTok tykes, I remember when computers weighed as much as beluga whales and monitors were the size of Uluru. Again, for you TikTokers, that’s a big red rock in Australia.

 

 

Where is Australia? Close to where they filmed The Lord of the Rings.

 

I think I’ve earned a bit of a break. Allow me to steal someone else’s thoughts on mastering the craft of writing—well, all crafts. Malcolm Gladwell sums it best in his book, Outliers, which I’ll paraphrase:

 

“If you toil away for thousands of hours on something, eventually you will become a Jedi Master.” Or some such.

 

Puff.

 

Man, I forgot to include how Alex forced me to paint my sacred cherrywood writing desk black in order to match the new apartment décor!

 

Puff. There.

 

The whole point above was to get around to telling you about when I was most frightened in life before the morning of March 29, 2024—before driving 15 hours straight from the Deep South to the Big Apple, having just shared a tip of the iceberg of all the peculiar and hateful things that have happened to me over the course of a half-century of life, before and after contracting Long COVID.

 

And it wasn’t a waking dream. Wasn’t an alcohol-related hallucination. Wasn’t an incident of childhood abuse. It wasn’t even human-related. It was just real. Very, very real.

 

In other words:

 

You have learned enough about me to know that whatever rises to the top of all this hellscape must be near-preternaturally harrowing.

 

Well, here goes. Before the morning of March 29, 2024, the most frightening thing that ever happened to me was:

 

It occurred during that summer in Haiti. A Haitian dentist and his family in Léogâne had taken me in. He lived on a beautiful plantation close to the sea. He lent me a horse and a motorcycle to travel wherever I wanted. The horse was pregnant—not the motorcycle.

 

 

I spent time reading Haitian history and practicing Creole. Bucolic best describes this rare respite in my already rawboned teenage life. For once, there were no monsters to worry about.

 

Until one day.

 

I walked to the beach. The tide tickled my toes. I leisurely watched airliners carving the sky from Miami to South America.

 

Without warning, the gentle breeze became a hollow, biting wind.

 

I turned. A darkness impenetrable suddenly surged from the horizon toward the shore.

 

The sky was oiling over, becoming as inviolable as a serpent’s eye. The “it” became a “her.” A witch—a bitter, twisted malevolent hag.

 

Hispaniola looks like an alligator snapping turtle. I was standing on a thin strip 20 miles north to south on the turtle’s lower jaw.

 

I had an utter, collapsing sense not just of how insignificant I was, but of the land itself at the whim of the gods of heaven and sea.

 

The entire island was about to be swallowed whole by Void. I ran for cover. For my life. But where could be safe?

 

The firmament erupted in an onomatopoeia of CATACLYSM. I was nearly blinded by a biblical fusillade of purple Dark Side lightning. Words like maelstrom and roiling and churning finally had meaning.

 

The level of fear I felt—whatever shade exists beyond pale, that was the color of my soul.

 

I just gave my literary all to describe the most frightened I’ve felt, to this point, in my entire life. I have already penned the word “horror” several times in this book. I regret it. I will not use it again, other than to say that that surpassing violent Haitian storm was a scintilla compared to the daemon that manifested itself simultaneous to my arrival on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge at 8:55 that morning.

 

Wait, do you see something up ahead?

 

 

I see you’ve turned the page.

 

You have that luxury.

 

I did not.

 

I have regular dreams too. They’re scary, just like yours can be.

 

I spent every Monday night of my childhood at my grandma’s apartment while my parents went to Bible study. Grandma lived in front of the TV—she wasn’t much of a book person.

 

She had a stash of old National Geographic magazines. There was one issue, February 1968, with a feature story on sharks.

 

Filling one’s mind with images of great white sharks at bedtime is kind of asking for a recurring dream on the subject the rest of one’s days. It probably didn’t help that I had also caught a glimpse or two of SNL Land Shark skits.

 

Those were awful nightmares. Still are. The shark always ate me. Still do.

 

I also have recurring dreams of an aircraft blowing up in the sky. 747s. Jets. The Red Baron. Zeppelins. You name it. Honestly, any time I see an airplane overhead, I expect it to go kablooie.

 

Those aren’t nice dreams, either. I understand your nightmares.

 

My private Evangelical elementary school in Minneapolis rented space from a former Catholic school that was still an active parish. To get to the cafeteria, we had to pass a huge statue of Mother Mary near the sanctuary. In my dreams, the Theotokos came alive and chased me. Sometimes joining the shark.

 

At least the space shuttle never exploded while I was being chased by Christ’s mom and her baby’s creation. Instead, Columbia went the way of the dodo the same month I moved there.

 

Again, those are just dreams.

 

Now I will show you waking dreams.

 

You know one thing during a waking dream:

 

You. Are. Awake.

 

There is no protection. No mental buffer of any kind. Also, no sense of absurdity—that this shouldn’t be happening.

 

What’s in front of you, whether a vase of tulips or the King of the Monsters, is REAL.

 

I can’t even begin to put to words what it was like to behold Godzilla emerge from the Hudson River and straddle the middle of the George Washington Bridge.

 

And that roar?

 

Fuuuuuuuuck.

 

I can almost hear you say, “I can’t imagine.”

 

Right. You can’t.

 

Unless you’re a Neuro like me.

 

I mean, exactly like me. Autistic. Sleep-deprived beyond reason. Struggling with your memory from four-plus years of Brain Fog and self-medication. Every bit of your flesh and awareness worn to the quick. Having lost nearly everyone and everything you ever loved. And wondering why the woman who is about to start a new life with you has chosen, of all moments in time, to abandon any communication with you during what is undoubtedly the most difficult physical activity you have ever been asked to endure—in a lifetime filled with impossible workhorse demands.

 

Regardless, the only path to my new life ran between that beast’s legs.

 

“HANK! YOU BLESSED SON OF A BITCH JEEP! PUSH IT!!

LOKI AND PORRIDGE, HOLD ON TO YOUR REMAINING LIVES!!”

 

Ten minutes later, I pulled up to the apartment complex service door. My new home.

 

Alex was standing on the sidewalk with the movers. It was a cold early spring morning. The wind whipped off the Harlem River like a mother.

 

What was I going to tell anyone about what I had just seen?

 

As to my new life, it lasted about—well, it didn’t.

 

We helped with the unloading to save a few bucks. Getting the cats to a safe, empty room was a top priority. I even had 30 seconds to appreciate the view of the Manhattan skyline from the rooftop.

 

But then…

 

U-Haul refused to take back the trailer. I drove around every borough except Staten Island for hours looking for any store that would take it—until I threatened to drop it in the Atlantic Ocean. Then some asshole assistant manager “did me a favor” and arranged for me to drop it off somewhere in Yonkers.

 

Did I mention Alex almost certainly suffers from a variety of OCD that puts the white glove test to shame? I kind of do too. But she’s also completely addicted to SIMS interior design games.

 

We both fell under the spell of working around-the-clock to make everything perfect. For her, it was like one of those Asian kids who dies of malnutrition at the game controller.

 

But that first night in the new place was when Alex dropped the real atom bomb. We had spent nearly three weeks sleeping together previously. And it was lovely—I actually slept well. And I was quietly hopeful of the prospect of sleeping without a doctor’s aid.

 

I have an essential need to cuddle with a partner at night—it’s the only way I can fall asleep without medication. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve paid women to sleep with me—as a sleep partner.

 

There’s a reason Loki and Porridge are my medical emotional support animals. Loki has always curled up with me at night—he seems to have a sense that I need his touch. When he’s stretched paw to paw, he’s practically the size of a person.

 

If you think I was traumatized, imagine those poor animals. We didn’t see Loki or Porridge for weeks. They lived under the bed, in closets, under sink cabinets. They’ve both learned how to open doors and cabinets—sneaky bastards. (By the way, I guess I’m using their real names too. So them and the dog.)

 

That first night, Alex drew a line down the middle of the bed with her finger and informed me that if I crossed that space, I would get physically forced back to “my side.” She meant it—and she did it. I had a number of bruises to prove it.

 

I was devastated. Correction: I was already devastated. I was without hope.

 

I should have just checked myself into the nearest sleep clinic or asylum—or at least pitched a tent in front of a liquor store.

 

I sort of did.

 

Also, remember how I had to go to work that Monday? My job was remote, so at least I could work from home. Except, Verizon didn’t work in our building. I cancelled my service and switched to
T-Mobile, which couldn’t get me up and running for two weeks.

 

As stated above, I had just come off two FMLA paid leave stints at my Fortune 500 employer. My Trump-supporting douchebag manager made it clear what he thought of mental health accommodations, and he already hated me because he had learned I ran for U.S. Congress as a progressive. He never failed to remind me he was the best friend of an ultraconservative house speaker in a Southern state. He also said I had violated company policy by moving from South Carolina to New York without informing the company in advance. The job was bloody remote!

 

Remember that April Fool’s joke? It was on me—only it wasn’t a joke. Fired!

 

There went a great paycheck along with healthcare. So no sleep clinic. No access to my Autism medication, either. Adios, therapy.

 

Did I mention my South Carolina psychiatrist suddenly disappeared without a trace—along with access to my mental health records? We still can’t find her nor my records!

 

Yoohoo! Where are you, Dr. S.?

 

Perhaps I could have figured my way out of some of these jams, if my brain hadn’t already turned into a can of condensed milk.

 

Oh yeah. The Earthquake.

 

For real.

 

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck New York City five days after I moved there. It shook our apartment building so much that I was convinced You Know Who with the laser breath had returned.

 

It was the first significant earthquake to hit the Big Apple in quite some time—the strongest since 1900.

 

Three days after that, our entire apartment complex was evacuated due to a major gas main rupture that also shut down the Major Deegan Expressway.

 

I’m not making this shit up. It’s right there on the Internet.

 

I think you can still find my interview online with a Telemundo reporter. Both reporter and translator laughed when I apologized for bringing Godzilla with me to Metropolis. I wasn’t kidding.

 

Alex threw together a bag of belongings. I already had an emergency getaway duffel bag in Hank’s trunk, so I grabbed a few boxes of my most valuable rare books. We looked around at our dream apartment still under Allen wrench construction, Loki and Porridge nowhere to be seen—and we fled.

 

While we sat in Hank for several hours and pondered our next moves, my mind drifted, when I wasn’t sneaking peeks in the rearview mirror to make sure King Kong wasn’t reaching in to grab Alex from the front passenger seat.

 

Can you blame me for concluding in that moment that, no matter whether what I was experiencing could be seen by others, imaginary Titans were the least of our worries.

 

I was the Monster.

 

Godzilla. Frankenstein’s Creature. Whatever you want to call it.

 

A terrifying being, brutalized by personal history and illness—even beetles and worms (see Chapter 5)—that struck fear in the hearts of everyone.

 

The thing no one understood. Could unravel. Could heal.

 

The thing mislabeled and misread.

 

The thing desperately trying not to break apart a borough—hell, a metropolis—just by being in it.

 

For what it’s worth, there was a total solar eclipse that passed directly over New York three days after the gas pipeline incident.

 

I had long ago traded the signs and wonders of my strange religious upbringing for reason and research. But now I wasn’t so sure.

 

Maybe I was the sign of the apocalypse.

 

Don’t worry.

 

There won’t be any more addenda—

 

Not for this chapter.

 

Not for any chapter.

 

Not for life itself.

 

I’ve passed through Fire.

 

Through the Underworld.

 

Beneath Godzilla’s Scaly Crotch.

 

Here I stand.

 

Here are my words.

 

Read them and weep.

 

CHAPTER 2: EXTINGUISHED.
END TRANSMISSION.

 

xxx

 

To read all “BRONX NIGHTS” excerpts in order, click this link.

 

To listen to Arik Bjorn read excerpts from “BRONX NIGHTS,” visit his YouTube Page.

 

To follow Arik Bjorn on all his pages, please visit his LINKTR.EE 🔗.

 

All of the names have been changed, except for mine, and, you know, ones like Yo-Ya Ma, Nina Simone, etc. 

 

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