24/07/2024
As requested by Brad Weston, here is the tale of my visit to the Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota:
My drifting was accompanied by an up and down lilt. My limp body suspended in the air and bouncing as it chased the fingers of scent on the breeze, I floated in a bug-eyed and tongue out Tex Avery daze of a dizzy spell that dragged me towards main street like a cartoon street dog following the scent of a freshly baked pie sitting on a windowsill. Arms limp at my side and knees bent, toes pointing straight behind me, and all of me three feet off the ground, I bobbed and weaved my way through the small town of Mitchell, South Dakota, and landed, suspended motionless in a chamber of light who’s source I could not perceive over the faint sound of wind chimes in my ears, square in front of it; The Mitchell Corn Palace. Absolutely straight out of Lynch, a skinny and acromegaly’ed tuxedo wearing giant half smirked as he opened the door. I floated past him and into darkness, a smell of popping corn tugging hissing pricks at the back of my throat. It seized with excitement at the astringent flavor, almost coughing up the jar of farmer’s huckleberry preserves I’d devoured just before in Pierre. I forced the acidic blend of my stomach’s contents and the throat corn back down into my abdomen and prepared my spirit for what would occur once I’d made my way into the corn palace of Mitchell South Dakota.
I half knew what I was in store for, I’d heard the screams and the moans from blocks away. Passing the gift shop, my eyes adjusting to the glare of the old and still functioning Edison bulbs hanging in the gymnasium, with their brownish heat glinting every which way off the nearly century old prison tile floor, I made my way into the amphitheater; the home of the Giant Corn Murals.
I couldn't see them, though. Not through the smoke, not through the feast of Bacchus all about, and not through the all the abundant and violent ancient ceremony. The whole town was there, masked and wrapped in ivy and in a pulsating o**y who’s heaves and moans brought back memories of my Quich’ua guide in Ecuador, nearly 20 years before, and the massive palm grub upon which we feasted together at the Amazon river’s edge, just after hunting down and slaughtering a young German tourist and his Austrian bride, while tropical birds traipsed the edges of the river bank and hunted for salt deposits in the rocky crags along the shore. First sight I caught, first human shape I could discern in this, what I can only call a s*x blob, for that is what it was, was the town librarian. A librarian like any other; she was small and wrinkled, bookish, hunched back, had a love for sweet and home baked things, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the minutiae of the small town’s pre-war history, and a gift for needle and thread. A kind bespectacled bibliophile who had happy hello to all visitors and passers by of the small and checkered curtained county book bank and a ready assist for figuring out the sharp turns and blind curves of the dewey decimal system. All this she was, but now with the addition of being fully naked and bleeding profusely from every hole. And all holes were visible, were spread wide open and on proud display. My eyes traced all the complexities of her withered body. I couldn't decipher what were wrinkles and what were scars, they all seemed to weave in and out of each others tracks in some profane symphony of age and pain... not that there’s any difference between either of those things- age and pain. Age and pain, who knows which increases which or who forces upon the unyielding-ness of the other. That is not for me to know, I only perceive the scar and I can only listen to its moan. The well worn grooves were telling some story in old tongue and guttural moan that, typically, but for this night of feast; only the dark one could hear and decipher. The lines criss crossed her bent and haggard body and were interrupted from time to time by some random piercing or muddled tattoo. The piercings weren’t “piercings” in the classical sense. No stainless steel rings or plugs in statement of fashion or counter culture identity; the most commonly present element here in her flesh holes was rusted barbed wire. I assume this wire was harvested from the remnants of the fence that must’ve wound its way around her parents or her parents’ parents’ property; the land that she was born into and raised upon. The thorny and rustic barrier which meant to keep children in as much as it was to keep the wolves out. Surely she was raised in the time of the seventh son of a seventh son, the time where fences were not only there to keep out manifestations of the physical but also for the vaporous things that wailed in the dark. Her cloudy and tired eyes carried still, on this night, the mark of witness; of staring down ancient curse delivered three-fold upon this land that was Mitchell, South Dakota. Curse as was foretold, as prepared for by her father and her fathers father, curse of their years upon years of labor and toil in the darkness of the root cellar to work their fingers to the bone at crafting the heinous and profane altar that was too disgusting, too unholy to even dare to describe here (lest I be choked to death as I write its unspeakable name), which sat at the center of this room that was, as of yet, untouched by the demon force that would soon be called into manifest at the nadir of the mix of their heinous and profane blood and s*x energy. A shame they did not live to see the altar’ use, these old and forgotten men, that they could not live to see it come into play, but they had been devoured many years before.
The blood covering her body was congealed and scabbed over and bits of it placed about her skeletal frame were shaped into flower motifs by the many jello molds stacked in her kitchen, mini marshmallows and peeled grapes floating in the iron hued aspic, and she was moaning in pain and joy. I watched as she was lifted up by some unseen force and carried above this throng, this toast to Pan, this reverie that would bring flush of shame to even the cheeks of Dionysus and I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. She was slowly rotating as she went up; singing some old world song in the Gaelic or Germanic, I couldn't tell which, and she was grinding the torn and bloodied carcass of some small furred creature in between her teeth. I believe it was the local and endemic, to the black hills region, endangered black footed ferret.
Through the smoke, she saw me. Her eyes were two pricks of green light. She snapped her head around almost a full 360 degrees, her eyes fixed upon me no matter how much that unseen force twisted and turned the rest of her body in the air, and her laser beam stare matched with mine. A positive and negative feedback loop of shamanic energy resisted by my cold and calculated logic and atheism erupted from our matched gaze. We were locked into each others sight and, all about, was the sound of white noise and, buried behind it, some old timey tube radio crackling of the songs of the Carter Family; as though plucked out of some broadcast from the past. Were we listening through time? We’re we connected to that other place?? She didn’t so much smile at me insomuch that she struggled and pulled at the corners of her mouth so as to open them into an image befitting a smile. Well, she didn’t pull at the corners of her mouth; her servants did. Two young men hung upside-down from the ceiling by their own intestines. They were bleeding and dying, yet focused and full of pride at completing their accursed task with accuracy and humility. I couldn't quite make out the words scrawled on the signs hanging around their necks, due to the erratic and unfocusable movement of their heavy and labored breathing, but it seemed like one said “the scythe” and the other read “the ear”. Both signs were written with f***s, I am sure of this because of the distinctive odor.
As the two servant/slaves drew their last breath and died together in a moaning delight, and as she used her own dwindling strength to force the now unaided “smile” to remain in place; she spit out the dead rodent and choked out her ancient demon speak to me. “B’aal gra’a’th, lilt mespoken, c’rist peck cht’SKRAAAAAAAAAAALL!!”
And that was when the town ceased in o**y, heads bobbed up from whatever filth their mouths were busying at, met their eyes to mine, and set upon me.
The hardware store manager, his name tag bisecting his bloodied and erect p***s, was the first to come at me. It was easy to strike him down, he was even older and more withered than the librarian, and he fell quick with the first blow from my tenth century Hungarian battle hatchet. His body shattered into a million shards of sharp and dry fragments, like a ceramic plate broken by a hammer, when it hit the ground and this served as momentary distraction for the hungry crowd; a sign of demon meat coming in contact with a cursed blade. I breathed in twice. Grabbed next by some kind of fused and sewn together amalgamation of a 6 armed and three headed being which was comprised of the prom queen, the sheriff, and the guy who owned the ice cream stand that all garbled together in a thick paste of dried urine and beef jerky and was held up and together by cleverly placed trusses and a crutch with which they used to walk; the shattering of the hardware store manager distracted them. They let me go and hungrily leapt towards the brittle, cursed, morsels scattered all over the gymnasium floor. The gym coach, who’s arm was an exaggerated and oversized machine gun straight out of some Geiger influenced Manga commissioned by film students who still think steampunk is cool, gunned them down and seasoned the bits and pieces of hardware store manager with their blood.
By now, everyone was eager for a taste. The lady who ran the dance studio, the antique store clerk, and two nondescript farmers grabbed what chunks off the ground they could hold and, in their bound and practically fingerless hands, dragged the sharp pieces of hardware store manager up and down their torsos and they screamed with delight. With every wound that was opened up by the shards, clouds of black insects clawed their way out from their internment inside these small town folks’ torsos and, upon their exodus, were then followed by a steady and consistent stream of hot sand that poured onto the floor, steaming and belching as it left their host bodies to be nothing more than withered husks of skin and coveralls made into piles for later gathering as kindling for the chimneys’ of the towns’ modest country homes. Of the stinging variety, the freed insects set upon the crowd. I saw these throngs of simple, midwestern, folk in a hedonistic symphony of every body piece and part stuffed in every or***ce imaginable and more enveloped by a buzzing matte of black insects like straight from the books of Moses. The insects abdomens cracked open and barbed stingers rose out, covered with goo and emitting modest electrical sparks, and I knew instantly that they were hungry for the eyes. Blinding everyone permanently, this only seemed to excite the f**k even more. Eye juice sprayed everywhere as fists entered anuses and feet were rammed up urethra, the orgiastic crowd screaming “corn, corn is in season!” In unison.
They writhed and stuffed and moaned and erupted all together to a finish in creamy delight. A glowing substance emerged from the center of their s*x pile. Not ej*****te, this was some kind of spiritual byproduct of the ecstasy and pain of the s*x and stinging bugs and demon’s blessing made life by the presence of their invisible dark lord; the lord for who this feast was performed in their unknowable name. Perfectly spherical, and wavering between white and eggshell in its glow, it pushed the people apart and made its way towards me. The altar began to throb.
I was not in good shape. I was just about to succumb to the melee attacks of the portly gas station attendant who was still wearing his COVID mask. But the orb wanted me for its own. Throwing the attendant up against the wall, by means of what I can only guess was telekinesis, he was pounded into jelly the instant he struck the 1965 corn mural of Sitting Bull. His spray dousing the librarian, she stared at me with those green laser eyes and cackled as I witnessed her call forth the spirits of the two now dead attendants whom had been her distended and chained smile bearers but minutes before, who had just passed over to the other side. Glowing the same green as her eyes and levitated in a wispy ectoplasm, they looked at me with their dead eyes and mouthed to me silently; “freed, we are finally freed!!” How could i hear them? Their voices rang through every corner of my head. The librarian pulled an ancient stone hammer, crafted by some forgotten king of the nascent days the kingdom that would become Babylon, from out of her va**na and set upon beating their corpses’ dried intestines with it and forged the charred and blackened organ meat into spiritual chains which were then slung about the ghost’s translucent necks as dwarvish runes glowed on the hammer and a far off trumpet blared. Those two boys would be bound to her for what was left of her natural life and well into the beyond.
The glowing orb turned to me in silence and my perception of all the pain and the feast of blood of the room was blackened into darkness. There was only orb, orb and I. I saw my reflection in it. Staring back at me, I looked into my own eyes. In my pupil I saw a reflection; the head of a stag.
Now I was standing alone in a vast and empty plain. It was winter, the grass dry and yellow and frozen in place and the earth as hard as stone. The cold wind didn’t bother me at all, my thick coat and mane protected me from it. Every breath I took was heavy and strong, steam pouring from my nostrils with such heat and vigor as to melt the little bit of snow hanging from the branch next to me of a single tree standing atop the single hill in this infinitely flat and cold landscape that was mine to roam. That was mine.
My heart was pounding in my chest. It burned, like a furnace. I had to run! My four legs beat to the rhythm in my chest, clods of dirt upturned with every step. I ran, I ran fast and hard and the earth became such a blur that I could not discern between the ground or the sky. There was only running, the steam of my breath and the beating in my chest. I saw the edge of the hunter’s bow poking out from behind a bluff. He tried for me but failed, his arrow glancing off my shoulder and barely taking any meat. Ripe with fire and energy and lust, I performed a physics defying u turn at top speed on the icy ground and set upon him. Goring him with my antlers, he was almost cut in two as i tossed him into the air. I heard the peppery sound of the beads of his now broken necklace fall everywhere onto the hard earth and i heard him take his last breath; it was devoted to a short and gasping prayer of safe passage to his ancestors’ sleepy realm. Watching me, watching my quick and easy battle won, I perceived a doe on the horizon. Her eyes a slit, her fur downy soft, and her white tail spastically jumping up and about. I had to have her. I ran to her, I increased my speed well beyond any of my normal limits. But I seemed to get nowhere. As i ran, the ground stretched longer and longer beneath my hooves. The higher my speed, the greater the distance between us became. But, no matter how far away and no matter the distance, I could still see her every detail. I could feel her, I could smell her, her scent all around me and driving me mad! I had been running so fast and for so far it felt as my heart were about to burst. I felt pain up and down my legs, my hooves splintering on the rocks that were poking up from the soil. I could taste blood, blood coming from my nostrils and from my ears and from my lips. The pain was increasing, the blood flowing strongly, the pounding of my heart in my ears; and her smell everywhere. Pounding, pounding, pounding; the land stretched and the horizon narrowed. All in my periphery was lines of speed and flashes of light, all in my chest was burning and heaving breath, all in the sky was made into hyper focus and I could make out the very craters of the moon. I pushed on, I refused to bend to this strange magic, I kept focused on her eyes and her intoxicating scent. The ground became blurry, the sky became blurry, still I could see her; still I had to have her. Spinning. Spinning. Spinning.
I awoke outside. It was noon, barely 5 minutes had passed since my arrival. I had in my left hand a brochure explaining the history of the corn palace and in my right a jar of locally made corn cob jam.
I had done it. I had seen and survived the Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota.
Full time road dog
