“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 117: target

Larry Winchester,* master of montage if not meaning, now returns to the embarrassing plight of that villain we love to hate, Captain Alexis J. Pym of the Unites States Navy’s mysterious “Q Section”, last seen (in Episode 114) buried up to his chin in quicksand beneath a mesa in the atomic bomb-blasted desert several miles outside of a town called Disdain, NM, on a September night in 1969...

(This episode rated EL for excessively lurid prose. Click here to read our previous chapter, or go here to see how the whole damned epic started.)

*”The working stiff’s John Updike” -- Harold Bloom

The motorcyclists had drawn up their bikes to the curving bank of the sinkhole and their headlights lit it brightly.

The only flaw in its smooth silvery surface was the head of Pym, still wearing his tan naval officer’s cap.

“Who dat?” asked one fellow.

“It’s a head,” replied another.

“What’s a head doin’ in there?”

Pym spoke:

“What do you think I’m doing?”

The Motorpsychos were stumped, silent but for the purring of their idling motors.

“You fools,” added Pym.

“Let’s shoot the head,” yelled one of the Motorpsychos.

Another of the gang obligingly took a shot with his Luger but missed by several yards.

“Ha! You suck, Pigmind.”

“Fuck you!” yelled Pigmind, and he fired several more shots, all misses, until the gun was empty.

All the other Motorpsychos laughed.

“I am a United States naval officer!” called Pym.

“Sailors suck dick,” yelled back one of the Motorpsychos, and all of them laughed.

Pym had no reply for this. It was true, some sailors did suck dick. Not all, but some. It was a tradition among seamen that probably went back to the first long voyages of the Phoenicians. Men needed an outlet on long sea voyages in cramped quarters with no women. Undoubtedly even those paragons of masculinity the Vikings had availed themselves of their own hearty brand of rough-and-tumble homosexual sport --

“Let’s take turns shootin’ at him,” suggested one Motorpsycho.

“Good idea,” said another.

This was not a good way to die. A fitting way to die perhaps, but nonetheless…

One fellow on the far left raised a long-barreled revolver and began cracking off shots in the direction of Pym’s head.

Pym tried to think of some suitable terminal thought, but thought of nothing.

Which is what I soon shall be, he thought.

Which thought seemed suitable enough.

And having thought this last thought he was now as ready as he would ever be, which was not very ready, not very ready at all.

But it would have to do.

(Continued here. Be sure to pick up your complimentary “Town Called Disdain"™ lunchbox with the purchase of ten hot dogs with sauerkraut at any Kresge’s 5&10 lunch counter, while supplies last.)