The Apple Head Man

Sat in the autumn wreckage, his twelve-bore lay across his lap like a child.

He stared at the apple head man his daughter had made. Browning now, it turned on hazel spindles.

It's creaky twig arms wove as it spoke.

Yes. 

Leave it to me.

The music was on a loop in her empty bedroom. Sailing by Christopher Cross. How she'd left it during summer.

Well, it's not too far to Paradise, just you wait and see.

Leaving all the doors and windows open, he got in his car and cruised the dead ink of the Godless night where ferals teemed in slicks of evil.

Driving along the fateful route a couple of dusk crets tailgated, their pick up bouncing his bumper.

The howled like mandrils rattling in their seats.

At the lights he got out, left his door wide, walked round his engine and took aim.

At point blank range he blew their heads clean off.

His twelve bore rang.

Both barrels. Two heads.

No more howling.

He left them on red and gunned his way down the streets, the jet rift between his lobes.

Parking up to take a pee, listening to a magpie juggle pool balls, a trio of night yobs appeared from nowhere. 

Like escaped chimps they shoved him round. 

You old cunt, give us yer dough fucker!

He pissed his boots.

Staring at them, the mites of delirium crawling cross his eyes, they'd a sense that something wasn't right but carried on the moron coda.

They pinned him down, lowered his pants. Took his wallet. No ID. Tons of cash. The wallet flew like a hungry bat.

Grinning like the children they once were they made their way to the offy. 

Cheap cider. Fuck yeah. Give it some.

He approached slowly. Parked without lights. 

It's not that far to innocence, just you wait to see.

The twin-bore tore through the leader's neck. The jaw flew. His balaclava'd skull teetered and fell.

It lay by the offy window like a bag of muscles spurting fluids. 

The second shot took the other two turning. The blast removed their backs. Ribs powdered. Revealing Midnight on the other side. Straight through their corrupted shells, windowed like tabernacles of blood.

He left the wrecks, casualties of the calamity and motored down the main, elbow out.

Radio rock replays thumping the dash.

Pinbrains on motos whirred around him like mozzy larvae in a pool of slurry. 

What ya listening to you old bastard? Turn on some proppa choons or we'll do it for ya!

He stopped the car as the devil looked in.

This is where it happened. 

They'd been harangued by local scrotes. Urchins on trails bikes. They'd left the road under the streetlamp, it's sacred glow lighting up their crushed faces like beams from Heaven taking them up.

His beloved wife died in the deep sodden ditch, her head severed by the collapsing metal round the windscreen. 

His beautiful daughter passed in the ambulance, her hands in his. 

They were once children Dad. They wore masks. Gorilla masks. Behind are just boys.

Her final words of forgiveness tore at him like mad angels eating his heart.

Those angels can feast later but not now.

Not now.

He thought of the apple stick man she'd made in his reverting garden, it's slow entropy to pure oblivion his map to the sugar-lumped clouds, where his smiling daughter waited, her cherubs and pucci fluffing his pillow beside his wife's.

It's not that far from sanity, just you come and see.

Getting out of his car, his engine still running and Bad Motor Scooter turned up to full, the only song he heard was his daughter's gentle favourite.

Just you wait and see Daddy.

He stared at the gorillas circling him like something out of Planet of the Apes. He smiled at the memory of his own youth watching Galen help the lost astronauts. 

He was a lost astronaut. Alone in a world of ugly orphans parented by the Fallen. Somehow the canvas of childhood had been oiled by hyenas as they slashed on the corpse of his family. They dabbed their brushes into its dripping soul and nuzzled for that true scarlet grue in the heart. 

Beneath the masks were demons. Pentiments. Ghouls in blood.

He raised his rifle from beneath his overcoat. 

The cartridges in his pockets jostled like gravediggers.

The first gorilla's face exploded in a fog of red, the plastic and the flesh a confetti of death.

The second ape roared towards him whirling a machete. The twelve-bore removed his arm, the long knife still flailing like a propeller. The next barrel took away all of his head except the skull facade, which looked on like a derelict church. Gore broke through its door.

The third, the Silverback, got of his bike and removed his mask.

He was face to face with the apple stick man decaying in the autumn pall.

It's not that far to emptiness.

It spoke to him as the blade slivvered his liver. 

He fell on top of the apple head. His bore in its core, he pulled the trigger and said goodbye to his shrivelling friend.

He rolled over and basked in the streetlamp where it had happened. 

The radio's blare morphed into the glissando of Sailing and pulling the lever of his salvation he closed his eyes.

The apple head smiled and mouthed one final phrase before imploding.

It's really not that far now Daddy.

Soon you will be free.