Jarvis is woken by the bizarrely loud music permeating the bedroom. The music is The Delta Rhythm Boys’ version of the song ‘Dem Bones’ by brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson, which the group released under the name ‘Dry Bones’ in 1950.
Ezekiel cried dem, dry bones
Ezekiel cried dem, dry bones
Ezekiel cried dem, dry bones
Now I hear the word of the Lord
He does not remember at all having left the music on last night, even less having left it on playing anything even remotely related to this. On top of the audio onslaught, every visible square inch of the bedroom is blinding him with daylight. He curses himself under his breath for having forgotten to activate the natural light control override so that the exterior rolling shutters would not automatically slide up just before daybreak, as they’re programmed to do on the weekends. And we all know how loud sound and bright light are like kryptonite to the recovering hung over and wasted. Rubbing his eyes with his left thumb and forefinger, he reaches across with his other hand for his wristwatch, which is placed on the corner of the bedside table on the left side of the bed. He looks at the time: 10:34 A.M. He drags himself to the edge of the bed, and places both bare feet on the pleasantly-cool-to-the-touch grey tile stoneware floor. Where the hell is my cell phone? Forget about the rollers for now. He needed to turn that music off.
Ezekiel connected dem, dry bones
Ezekiel connected dem, dry bones
Ezekiel connected dem, dry bones
Now I hear the word of the Lord
He stands up, a puffy countenance in his wrinkled light blue cotton boxers and avant-gardish, just-up-from-bed ‘do, and stammers his skeleton over to the closed bedroom door.
Well, your toe bone connected to your, foot bone
Your foot bone connected to your, heel bone
Your heel bone connected to your, ankle bone
Your ankle bone connected to your, leg bone
He opens the bedroom door and the music is now instantly, unfathomably, much, much louder. What the hell? He walks out of the room into the corridor and to the right toward the living area, guessing his phone would be either on the kitchen island or in the living room, and as he gets to the end of the corridor where it opens up into the kitchen and the foyer, he stops suddenly in his tracks. He’s just seen that to his left toward the front door, just beyond the kitchen, is a man, seemingly frozen in mid-stride, by the foot of the stairway, wearing an oversize 40’s style suit. He’s oriented away from Jarvis, maybe thirty feet away, seemingly headed toward the front door. Scared, voice shaky, Jarvis yells at him, “Hey!” Then from the living room across from the kitchen comes in a woman, maybe fifteen feet ahead of petrified Jarvis. She’s wearing a knee-high dress with red vertical stripes, brown leather belt and leather oxfords. Her skin is white and her hair is black, her exaggerated smile fixed on her face, slightly forced even, like a mad doll’s. But more unsettling is the fact that she’s moving at like 10x speed. She’s doing everything as if someone were fast-forwarding her on the scene on an old VCR. She’s now at the kitchen, with a glass baking tray in her hands, repeatedly attempting, and failing, to store it away on a top shelf, never letting go of the tray, never letting go of the smile, at ten-speed.
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A dem bones, dem bones gonna, walk around
A dem bones, dem bones, gonna, walk around
A dem bones, dem bones, gonna, walk around
I hear the word of the Lord
Frank has made very little progress in his stride. Maybe moved a whole inch forward this whole time, as if he were operating a hundred times slower than Adrian, at around 0.1x speed. Then suddenly another woman who looks exactly like the first and also at ten-speed but with no smile and with profuse acne and with hair like an old broom and wearing grey sweats, rushes out of the living room and into the kitchen, appears to get into an argument with Adrian; and then suddenly, seemingly even faster than ten, shoots straight over to Jarvis, stopping a half foot away from his face and Jarvis yells, startled, terrorized, jumping away from her back, against the corridor wall, open palms pressed against it… and in a millisecond she’s right in front of him again, staring at him head on, wide-eyed, her horribly textured and scarred skin oily and slick, but it’s her eyes, these gleaming black round stones that punctuate her delicious features, expressionless, but intense. As quickly as she came then she jets off, disappearing inside the living room. All of a sudden now the man returns to normal speed, almost as if someone had just released the pause button on the old VCR, and he reassumes his calm stride and walks toward the front door, opens it, and exits the apartment, closing the door behind him. The women also exit, first Adrian and then Skylark right behind her, all still in fast mode, also shutting the door behind them. He’s alone again, but panting, wild-eyed with fear. Still pressed against the wall and with eyes glued to the front door, he starts to inch his way back to the bedroom, phone or no phone. Then a horrible stench hits him. It’s like the smell of a hundred rotting corpses piled up in front of him. He hears a creak from upstairs, and turns his gaze to the stairs. Crawling down them and fast, his gigantic body taking up the entire available space in the staircase and looking right at Jarvis, glowering at him, skin tone light blue and dark purple veins netted across his entire body, is the Heir-Apparent Newborn Son, plodding down on all fours, even in that position at least a foot taller that Jarvis, and he charges right at Jarvis, who yells in what seems like utter, unrestrained terror, and runs back toward the bedroom; and but the giant, blue, rotting, scowling infant is already too close, he’s gaining on him, breathing death down his neck, squashing his sanity through sheer horror and Jarvis’ legs just keep moving as if controlled remotely, autonomically, they just keep moving and taking him down to the end of the corridor and to the floor-to-ceiling French window with the shallow arch on top – he hadn’t before made the connection -- and crashing him into it, and he goes through it, and falls to the tiled floor two stories below on the open-air terrace someone –- thankfully, in retrospect, or in further retrospect, not? -- thought to place in that spot ninety years ago, with the building still in its drawing-board stages of development.
And Jarvis lays on this floor below in his light-blue undies, a wildly contorted and sorry, broken, late action figure some kid has just tossed away and left to rot, forgotten, on the floor, in some pathetic corner. Jarvis may not know it now, but he will regain consciousness, and he will be in the world, and he will live past his life expectancy. He may not know it now, but many of the bones in both his upper and lower extremities are broken. He may not know it now, but he’ll recover from those injuries.
Disconnect dem bones, dem, dry bones
Disconnect dem bones, dem, dry bones
Disconnect dem bones, dem, dry bones
I hear the word of the Lord
Jarvis may not know it now either, but he also sustained an injury to his second cervical vertebrae, which… disconnected from his first cervical vertebrae. He may not know it now either, but he’s now a quadriplegic. Bravo Uno.
Well, your head bone connected from your, neck bone
Your neck bone connected from your, shoulder bone
Your shoulder bone connected from your, back bone
Now I hear the word of the Lord