Rommel and the King, by James Springintveld

In this two-part work of delirious fiction, a contemporary King and his buddy get up to no good

Part 1
The King, dressed in grapes and greenery lounges on a throne decorated with bulls. A bottle of porter overflows and floods the banquet hall. A saturn-eyed Rommel in patch-pants and a ragged Bolt Thrower shirt wades through the beer and kicks open the doors, draining the room. He leads the king to a PzKpfw II painted with snowflakes. They drive down a wooden path and into town looking for a dollar slice. The first place they pass has a sign up in the window saying come back in a few minutes. Rommel looks down the street with a pair of binoculars and sees a glowing sign. In curling red light it spells out Brothers Meats. The King dons his crown and enters. He asks for a slice and slaps a Maria Theresa thaler on the counter. The toothless crone behind the counter slips a dried dog turd into a brown paper bag and smiles. “I love all women, teeth or no teeth” announces the King. 

The King and Rommel pull up in front of Dick’s Sporting Goods. They run in and grab what they can, leaving with pockets full of lead and a fishing pole. A helicopter drone follows them out and pursues them as they rip out of the parking lot. The King is laughing and rolling butts as Rommel drives the tank over a line of yellow taxi cabs. They pick up two young women hitchhikers in red dresses. The King takes the wheel, Rommel puts on a black rubber mask and gets a rub down from the two ladies. They spray him with lavender and the King talks to himself about Pamela Anderson’s tits. “34D, 34DD.”

They park the panzer in front of the ash palace, beside a black skeleton that stretches into the sky. Canines clamp down on a dull white sun and three fingered claws grasp at tree tops. Once inside Rommel and The King recline in twin La-Z-Boys and contemplate a pool overflowing with slugs. Within a few hours The King is pulling the gregarious gastropods from his beard and flicking them into Rommel’s open mouth. A large purple and orange slug lands on his Iron Cross and dissolves, leaving only the smell of mandarins and clove. In the basement I remain wrapped up in a Persian rug, supervised by a small owl made of my right thumb. 

Part 2
On the purple studio wall hang three triptychs. The artist Mikhael Three Eyes, pale and wearing an ink-stained jockstrap, discharges fog from his walrus-like moobs. His two bulbous noses twitch as the sour stench fills them. The four walls of the studio crawl closer to Mikhael on hundreds of small scaly hands. Blinded by his own miasma, Mikhael is unaware of his impending death. In a few days, The King will find his crushed remains, ponder their resemblance to ground beef, pull on his blue beard in hunger and grief, empty a 24oz can of Foster’s on the flesh heap, and look for loose change and copies of Hustler while Rommel waits for him in the tank.   

The King and Rommel sit on burnt and melted plastic chairs beside the train tracks. The King thinks about an overweight and misshapen hooker from the night before. His pink eyes bulge like a teenage erection knocking his Raybans into a cold fire pit. Rommel picks them up, puts them on, and lights the cigarette he was rolling with a Reichsadler Zippo. They are waiting for the late night train from Montreal. As it zooms by, a large duffel bag is thrown from an open box car. It lands with a wet crunch like a Halloween prank. The two of them drag the bag into the woods. They unzip it and remove an aardvark headed woman in a white lace dress. Her tongue is long and wrapped around her mannish arms and legs. “All aboard ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” 

Rommel wrestles a sweet pink mollusk-woman into his canopy bed. He buries his face into her tiger prawn muff. Her golden shell lies in a salty puddle on the floor. The King watches them, licks his lips, and kicks her shell against the wall. A yolky sulfurous flash knocks him into a hazy clearing where he finds himself face-to-face with a floating chimp head. It opens its mouth and he grabs for the head, its jaws clamp down on his hand cutting through his fingers. They fall to the ground and the world dissolves into spiraling red and green circles. Rommel wakes up in a bed of cherry blossoms. Beside him beats a mechanical heart. Artificial intestines coil around the bed and black plastic lungs hang from the ceiling on scabby coat hangers. I walk beside an artificial lake and watch the grey geese congregate. I pick a black obsidian hand axe off the beach and throw it at the birds. They take off flying into the sun. Their burning feathers rain down on serious-faced women and their swaddled children.  

James Springintveld is the nom de guerre of a writer who prefers nothing short of full anonymity

Illustrations:
Collage by Adam Lehrer