The scientheocrats had chased me through the streets of Austin, Texas. I wish I knew what they wanted. It's as if they fed on a piece of drugged up brain tissue. I watched as they harvested freaks for their chaos.
Somewhere along the way, I had slipped them. They just sort of gave up. But they had my electroencephalogram signature on file and could be certain to find me wherever I go. The area I ran to looked a little wild. I was looking a little wild myself, cut up, dirty, clothes like a knot of rags. People out there had rusting cars in front of their houses, and what looked like chicken coops. I hoped to spend the night in one of those without too many problems.
Too tired to even walk straight, I tried to climb through the window of one those little coop houses, but fell back down into a scrap wood pile.
"Who's that out there?" I stopped moving for a second. I knew whoever it was would find me eventually. And I couldn't run anymore. I figured it would be best to just offer myself to his mercy and hope he wasn't as twisted as he heaps of garbage strewn around his property.
"Uh, sorry about the noise. Hope I didn't wake you. I was just looking for a place to sleep for a few hours. I swear I wasn't trying to steal anything."
"There ain't nothin to steal. C'mon out here so I can look at ye." He voice was ancient but had a singsongy quality like a backwoods preacher.
"I'll try my best." I managed to get back through the low window and into the light filtered through an old streetlight nearby, the kind you never see anymore. I could see an old man on the back porch, must've been over 80.
"You don't look too threatening. Step inside this house." I thought, here was a man with less to lose than me.
"My name's Henry."
"I'm Roky."
"That wouldn't be R-O-K-Y."
"It would be."
"Naw. It couldn't be."
"Well, it might."
"I thought you were dead."
"Yea, a lot of people think so. what do they say? 'The rumors of my death are exagerated.'" He laughed.
"You must be like 200 hundred years old."
"Naw, not even close." He led me through a maze of old humming electronic equipment. He had multiple broadcasts playing from various station, barking voices and sound effects.
"So the cryptoscientists are after you?"
"How did you know?"
"You'd be surprised how many people seek refuge here. I think there's some kind of instinctual navigation at work. I set up a clear area out here that harmonically neutralizes some of the more curious bands in the electromagnetic spectrum."
"Ok."
"You look like you're going to shake apart. Concentrate on that deep wubwub sound. It'll relax you."
I left my body behind for a moment. The very scene came into focus in my mind's eye, a little play made from my exhaustion and joyous paranoia. The strange confluence that allowed me to meet Roky Erikson, a gentle madman, a gnome of noise, an alien with a glowing box of Satan snacks. There in the sweet spot of Texas, the swampy shroom crecent of Willie Nelson's pituitary. The release of the first evening's bats almost hits you in the head as you pass by the houses that stand like the minds of the owners empty and cold, warm and glowing. And my lonely soul, ghostlike, pretending gnostic secrets chased for my bad decisions and spurious felonies as the sympathetic semen magic works its serpentine way back through bad trip Austin Texas bang 'em up skinhead holidays. More than likely, a stranger finds a target in my skull. Roky spoke to me of all the hearts beating against county lockup and halfway houses, to a release day party of wood sparks and Mesquite arson from mezcal cowboys. Three eyed and four years later, released from crazy prison, he lost hippypants utopia and firetruck monkeys. He gave us instead a Charleyfirehorse of cartoon creepies. Roky had been whispering. When I looked back up at him, he smiled.
"You can sleep in the Orgone Accumulator. That should calm you down." He led the way out of the maze of his house to a small shack off on its own. "Don't worry. Their science is crap. They won't find you here."
"Tell me something. I know you probably get this all the time. But did you really go crazy after they locked you up?"
He looked at me for a thoughtful second. "They tried to damage my equipment, but as you can see, I've extended myself in other ways. The satanism, that was just to sell records. And scare away the weirdos."