North Luzon Monitor

North Luzon

The Nuthouse (First of Two Parts)

George Babsa-ay Jr.
Latest posts by George Babsa-ay Jr. (see all)

In 2172 B.C., one degree down the equator, an island town’s mass exodus started simmering at dusk.

CCTV Cameras trained on choice spots all over the island town – split into The Ghetto North and The Plush South – played to an underground chamber below a southern mansion. One cam, mounted to an ancient Mahogany tree, played basalt clouds, roiling and crawling under a slick-salmon sky.

Below this shrouding, another played a ceiling fan clunking. Below the clunking, town Mayor Fid, with his blue-strapped flip-flops and tousled blue bow tie, was pacing his office, when the gag reflex did him in, and, toppling over old files stacked in fruit boxes, he lurched for an open window, and retched.

A story below, coffee-and-crackers barf splattered, startling t-shirt hawkers fighting banana cue hawkers over a coveted selling spot.  In no time, with talons unsheathed, both will go at each other’s throats and mesh into a clothed banana pudding.

Another retch.

“And that, officially…is a serious hangover,” remarked a banana cue hawker, eliciting awkward sniggers, but stifled quick. A fight this serious can’t accept silly ads.

“Oh, God, not again…” Mayor Fid rasped, his neck craned, slinky-limp over the window, his knuckles clung white on the window ledge. And again retched.

“Something’s really up.” And winced at hearing himself say it out loud.

What is it?  What’s making us … feral? Damnit!

Gasping for air, and gawking through tears at the skirmish, Mayor Fid sucked in fish-gut stench, roiling in barbecue smoke blown from the alley meters away.

The alley. The alley may yet yield an answer.

But the alley was dumb-as-fuck as its current dusk-drifters. In its stretch of potholes, from a garbage dump at the cul-de-sac to his right, which lugged eastward to the main road – nothing, but tedium. Its two-meter width, a mere muddy mirror of the island town’s great divide.

 What the hell is it?

Help, he prayed, to no one, in particular. Help, please.

Bereft of ancestor-spirits to summon, he tried settling for one of the island’s many gods. And, recalling none yet again, retched for the nth – a mesh of green wig-hair, torn clothing, bananas, blood, and talons – all in a cartoon-cloud, all swirling in a haze – was the last he saw before slumping on the rickety floor.

———

Months back, Mayor Fid strode late into the emergency Town Hall Meeting called by the Council of Elders.

“Crisis? What, crisis?” Mayor Fid yelled at the entrance. “Scrapes…minor scrapes,” he intoned. “Ribbing just gone bad.“

Aping a Flamenco dancer at cierre, he paused, in front of Old-Timer Khum. And, fixing his blue bow tie, flashed his G. Clooney IV grin.

Chair hooves grating on concrete, Old-Timer Khum watched the Elders stand and file out the hall. And, clasping his crutches, he too stood and lumbered for the exit.

At the back rows, two persons with mental issues watched the scene play out with blank stares, their eyes like rabbit eyes under the knife.

 “Mayor, about these loonies?” cried a sprightly lady, lip-pointing. “They’re all over. Flies, are what they are. They’re here, in this Nuthouse. Aren’t you the least con – “

“Tsk, tsk …My dear Adelfa, tell me,” Mayor Fid sing-sang, “you’re not ill, are you? Or, are you, now? Hmmmm …

Now, about that Annual Hula-Hoop Contest…”

—————

There will be no lurid Hula-Hoop Contests this year. Multiple brawls and eight knifing incidents just a week after that fiasco of a meeting made a sorry convert out him.  (Part 2 follows)

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