Heart of Dorkness
By Joseph Conrad and Isaac Kiernan
based on Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness', Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now', and the life of Christian Weston Chandler.
Richmond. God I was still only in Richmond. My hotel room was dark with thick plumes of cigarette smoke still hanging in the air. The Doors were blaring over the radio as I struggled to awake. I don't consider myself a hero by any means, but I feel I must get this story off my chest, as it were. I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally, yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that road to the place where I met the devil himself. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough, too. You see I work for a comics publisher, the biggest publisher in the biz. I was just an inker, a glorified tracer, but I had been talented enough to recieve an audience with the head of our company, and he gave me an important assignment.
It seemed our number one artist, and best source of creative writing had become...stressed. It was my understanding that this fellow had hundreds of pages of comic work ready to go, but no means to transport it back to the hq. I had a vacation coming up, so the company head thought it best to send me out to Ruckersville and see if I could pick up what was sure to be this artist's magnum opus. I am sorry to say I accepted the assignment. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I looked around for a means of transport. The men said "Fuck off!" Then—would you believe it?—I tried the women. I, Clyde Cash, set the women to work—to get a car. jesus. Anyway I got my car, a 1994 Ford Escort fresh from a police auction. It seemed the car was utilized as a murder weapon some years ago. Run down some poor bugger named Micheal Snyder.
Before I left I was called into the company Headquarters for a physical. Apparently another fellow working for our publisher had met quite a grisly end, and so now it was mandatory for a physical before each assignment in order to help better identify the...bodies. Leary, Alec Benson Leary, that was the fellow's name who got himself 86'd. I never did find out why though. The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. "Good, good for Ruckersville," he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. "I always ask, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there," he said. 'And when they come back, too?' I asked. He did not reply, but looked away from me. This was a sign of things to come.
I stepped into my newly purchased escort at 6:00 AM the next morning with Ruckersville in mind. It was a short ninety minute ride from Richmond to Ruckersville, but little did I know the road I had chosen would lead me into the darkest recesses of the human soul. As I prepared to leave a gentleman from our company approached me, smoking a long cigar. I say the fellow was impeccably dressed in a white leisure suit. "Cash," he said, "Good to meet you!" he shook my hand. He invited me to his hotel room. It was the one next to mine. Once inside he began to speak. "Sooner or later," he began, "You are sure to encounter Mr. Chandler." On my asking who Chandler was, he said he was the man whom I was to find; and seeing my disappointment at this information, he added slowly, 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Chandler's artistic talents outweighed anyone else at our company, and his ceasure had plunged our company into chaos. It was very important that no matter what, I bring him back alive. He showed me to the door and set me on my way.
The road to ruckersville was long and hard. Along the way I witnessed a gang war between crips and bloods. They were fighting over a piece of property one of them had been given by a mysterious benefactor. Of note, the item in question boasted the letters CWC embossed in gold. The Crip who claimed ownership had a tattoo of the same CWC on his forehead. Curious. I was almost killed by a bleeding cannibal hitchhiker, who only failed to feast upon me when I kicked the car door open and threw him from the vehicle.
I stopped at a gas station for breakfast and found something rather interesting. I found an issue of Sonichu #0 by Christian Weston Chandler. Was this the same Chandler I was to find somewhere up the road? The book was published by my company. I bought it and read through it. It was a relatively innocent story about a fusion of the Sonic and Pokemon franchises. Indeed this CHandler was a talented man. I read his bio on the back of the book. Born and raised in virginia, long sufferer of online trolling a fascinating bio, to be sure. Hungry for more I picked up Sonichu # 8 off the same rack.
Sonichu 8 was a horrific perversion of all that was set up in issue 0. While the cover advertised a Sonichu spring break special, in actuality it featured Sonichu and Rosechu visiting 4_cent Garbage world headquarters to battle the evil Jason Kendrick Howell. (of note I really met a Jason Kendrick Howell at work several months prior. He had since vanished mysteriously.) The 4_cent Garbage headquarters was comprised of a hellish array of pornographic pictures, racial slurs, and mind bending terror. The issue ended with a sickening sexual display of sonichu and rosechu having horrendously disturbing sexual relations. Something had happened to Mr. Chandler out in ruckersville, of that I was sure.
When I finally arrived at Ruckersville the town was bizarrely empty. All the citizens were clustered in small groups talking among themselves, but there was no hustle, no bustle. I counted maybe 30 or 40 citizens total. Something horrible had happened here. And then I saw it. 14 Branchland Court. Chandler's residence. I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls.
Outside the house he stood. Jason Kendrick Howell. I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. I looked at him, then beyond. It seemed Chandler's residence had become overgrown with wildlife. Flora and fauna choked that diseased cesspool of human misery. He spoke. "He is up there". "Chandler?". He nodded, and spoke again. He had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse Chandler through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some risky feat), but as a rule Chandler wandered alone, far in the depths of the Ruckersville. "Very often coming to this house, I had to wait days and days before he would turn up," he said. "Ah, it was worth waiting for!—sometimes." "What was he doing? exploring or what?" I asked. "Oh, yes, of course"; he had discovered lots of people, a lake, too—he did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much—but mostly his expeditions had been for comic inspiration. "To speak plainly, he raided the country" I said. He nodded. "Not alone, surely!" He muttered something about the surrounding towns. "Chandler got all of Ruckersville to follow him, didn't he?' I asked. He fidgeted a little. "They adored him," he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak of Mr. Chandler. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. "What can you expect?" he burst out; "he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know—and they had never seen anything like it—and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Chandler as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now—just to give you an idea—I don't mind telling you, he wanted to shoot me, too, one day—but I don't judge him."
"They don't want you to take him. They'll try and kill you." I was bewildered at how quickly he had changed topics. "I tell you the man, he's enlarged my mind. I'm a small man, a dumb man to compare me to..." He was trying to make a point. I'm not sure I get his point, even today. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly disappear. "I went a little farther," he said, "then still a little farther—till I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty of time. I can manage. You take Chandler away quick—quick—I tell you." Then I heard it. a voice. his voice. The Voice.
A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart. I ran toward the house to hear him clearer. Then I saw my mistake. Those round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing—food for thought and also for vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen—and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids—a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.
I stepped back cautiously. What hell was this! Then the voice spoke again. "Captain's Log Stardate July 7th, 2014" What was he babbling about? The door to his hovel slammed open and out he struggled. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now—images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. He wore a clownish shirt of red white and blue stripes. His hair was long and greasy, and on his face he wore what must have been his mother's make-up. I knew he was 32 from the bio on the back of Sonichu #0, but in outward appearance he looked at least 47.
"My name is Christian Weston Chandler, I am 32 years old from Ruckersville Virginia!" He said this twice. "Mr. Chandler my name is Clyde Cash I'm here from-" He cut me off. "You know I watched a magcargo crawl along the outside of my pokeball. This was my dream, my nightmare." He gestured to his surroundings. "I came here to write a book you know." I knew. He was far gone. The freedoms he had experienced in this town had spoiled him, ruined him. "Get in the car sir, we have to leave now." He looked at me.
"Are you an assassin?" This question caught me off guard. "No, I'm a comic book inker". "You're neither. You're just a jerk who came to steal all the pretty girls. Because of people like you, Virginia is for Virgins." With this he swung at me. I ducked out of the way, narrowly avoinding the corpse of some poor child he had murdered on a whim. He pulled a pocket knife from his pocket. doing a dramatic glasses removal he stepped toward me. "My name is Christian Weston Chandler" he said, "Not Ian Brannon Something". He lunged with the knife. I caught the knife as he thrusted, and redirected it, stabbing him in the gut.
I half dragged, half carried Chandler back to my car. I had found his manuscript for Sonichu #10, and loaded it into the car first. He was still alive for the time being, but the knife wound, as well as his severe illness had reduced him to a near death state. "I had immense plans," he muttered irresolutely, as I drove. "I was on the threshold of great things," he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. I tried to break the spell—the heavy, mute spell of the Town—that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of humanity, to redneck country, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head—though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too—but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling you what we said—repeating the phrases we pronounced—but what's the good? They were common everyday words—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.
He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
"The humor! The humor!"
He was dead. This man who I had been charged to protect, I had killed. I looked through his manuscript. It was mostly self insertion nonsense as, I came to realize, was most of his work. The final page was blank with only the words "Exterminate all the trolls" written in almost incomprehensible cursive. I can no longer go a day in my life without thinking of sonichu, of ruckersville, of my encounter with death. Knowing that deep down Chandler and I had been cut from the same cloth...but his final words shake me to this day. and I must laugh from the humor. The humor.