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Dee’s Zine
By Jason Arbogast
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Cow patties.
That’s what I thought Dee was talking about after explaining himself to me. That,
and that he’d found a new way to murder the English language.
Last Wednesday night, Dee and I were sitting down, drinking mochas at one of
Kalamazoo’s few remaining coffee shops, pretending to be yuppies, when he
broke character for an important (for him) announcement.
“I’ve got this zine out on OP Avenue
you’ve gotta see.”
I put my mocha down and just stared at him. “A
sign?” I said levelly. “Of what? The end of the world?”
The image of a chunk of plywood with “Just to let you guys know, the world is
ending next week. Sorry about that.” written in black paint and signed by
Jesus briefly flitted through my head.
“Zine, not sign,” he said, as if expecting this. “You know, a
collection, like in magazine.”
I raised an eyebrow. Dee had come up with
some pretty strange stuff in the time I’d known him, and this one was fairly
typical of him, but it had the promise of being a bit more interesting than his
other ideas. With the possible exception of the Church of Dee that he’d
tried to found the previous January to get tax exempt status. That one
still held a special place in my heart just for the audacity of its moral
turpitude.
I guess Dee could best be summed up by saying that his parents had named him
after Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister, and that he’d more than lived up to the
name.
“How is a magazine a collection of things?” I asked. “Unless maga is
Latin for article or story, I don’t see it.”
Dee waved me off. “An e-zine is a collection of e-stories. It makes
sense.”
“But it’s not pronounced ‘zine.’ It’s pronounced ‘zeen.’”
“Not if it’s by itself. Then it’s
zine. If there’s a silent e at the end of a word, then the vowel is long. Elementary
school stuff, man.”
A breaker tripped in my head as I tried to get through this example of a poor
logic quagmire and I was forced to just look at him for a moment as I attempted
to figure out where to start a counter-argument.
Finally, I said, “It’s not a word, it’s a stem, or a suffix, or something. Normal
rules don’t apply.”
Dee shook his head. “Then if I make up the word I get to say it however I
want. And I say it’s ‘zine,’ and it means a collection of stuff.” He
crossed his arms in triumph.
I forced myself to just give it up and move on. “What’s your collection
of?”
He smiled and I knew what he was going to say. “I have to show you.”
I narrowed my eyes. I knew what was on OP Avenue, and that it could be one
of two things. “This better not be a collection of your favorite cow
patties from the field out there.”
Dee wrinkled his nose. “Ugh. No way in hell I’m touching cow
crap. That’s the reason for the hole in the ozone layer.”
“Cow farts are,” I corrected. “I saw that article.”
This left one option. “I’m not going out to a cemetery, by myself, with
you at night. I’ve read at least as much horror as you have.”
Dee leaned forward a bit. “Oh come on! You’ve got to. I’ll
even let you bring an ax if you’re afraid.”
“Which just means you’ll have a shotgun or something out there,” I said
half-jokingly. You never knew with Dee. “Not going to happen.”
“You’ll love this, though! It’s so cool.”
I shrugged and turned my hands up. “What, are we in sixth grade now? There’s
no way I’m going out there at night.”
“Fine,” he said, deflating a bit. “We can go tomorrow afternoon.”
I hadn’t been expecting this. “Really?” I said doubtfully.
“If you’re going to be that big of a wuss about it.”
I thought about it for moment and then shrugged and said, “Sure. Why not?”
The smile came back to Dee’s face. “Cool. I’ll pick you up at one.”
***
The trip out there took about ten minutes in Dee’s ‘89 red Ford Ranger. I
lived on the other side of town, just off of West Main, but it was easy enough
to just follow it to Westnedge, and then hit Kilgore and follow it into cow
country and 35th Street, which we only had to follow for a few miles out to OP
Avenue. The cemetery was a mile down OP and on the left. A good-sized
river crossed under the road not even fifty feet further down. It being
mid-May, the reek of cows was everywhere.
“You’re gonna love this,” Dee said as we got out of his truck.
“You do know,” I started, hefting my hatchet onto my shoulder just for the
look of the thing, “that after all this build up, if you don’t have a
collection, excuse me, ‘zine,’ of gold coins or dead mimes, I’m going to
be pretty disappointed.”
“Relax. It’s in the back.”
“Of course it is,” I said under my breath.
The tombstones we passed were all deteriorating badly. There had been a couple
of nice, new ones in the front, but the further back we got, the more
disintegrated they became until they were just white or brown chunks of rock
sticking out of the ground.
Except in the very back. In the very back was a crypt. Not just a one
person, “I’m going to be better than the rest of you even after death”
type of crypt, but a “I bet there are catacombs leading to Rome” sort of
crypt. The kind you see in horror movies with vampires using them as day
homes.
I stopped. “Screw this. I’m not going in there.”
Dee stopped and looked at me. “It’s behind the crypt. God you’re
such a wuss.”
He started walking again.
Reluctantly, I continued following him until we were behind the crypt. I
immediately saw his “zine.”
“What are those?” I asked, getting ready to swing my hatchet.
“It’s my egg zine.”
I looked at his eggs, three of them each the size of large poodle and the
coppery color of a new penny. The hair on my arms was standing on end.
“First off, what kind of eggs are those? And
secondly, how is this a zine?” I twitched mentally as I noticed how
quickly Dee’s new word had become part of my vocabulary. “Three eggs
from the same thing don’t make a collection.”
“There’s more than one, so it’s a zine,”
he said matter-of-factly.
I sighed and shook my head, knowing that this wasn’t a fight I could win. So
I went back to the more important issue. “What are they?”
A faint smile played across his face. “Go touch one.”
Abandoning my better judgment, I walked up to the eggs and reached out to one. As
I did so, the hair on my head started standing up. My hand got within an inch of
the egg before a bright, blue spark arced out and shocked me.
“Son of a whore!” I shouted as I jumped back, shaking my hand to get some
feeling back into it.
Dee laughed. “Great, aren’t they?”
I looked at my hatchet pointedly, and then looked at him.
“They’re thunderbird eggs,” he said quickly.
“Cars don’t lay eggs,” I said, still shaking my hand.
“Not the car, the bird it’s named after. The
one in Native American mythology.”
I was going to say something sarcastic to him about believing myths, but the
numbness that was slowly ebbing out of my hand convinced me otherwise. “Okay,
aside from the lightning bolt that just paralyzed my hand, how do you know
that’s what they are? I mean, why would a big, mythological bird lay its
eggs in a cemetery in west Michigan?”
“Well, I come out here sometimes to sit and think.”
I stared at him.
“Really! It’s a great place. There’s
no cars, no pollution, nothing. It’s pretty relaxing. And pretty
safe. I think that’s why their momma laid them here.
“Anyway, you remember the big thunderstorm we had a few weeks ago?”
I nodded.
“Well, I found them here after that. Then
I touched one of them and got zapped. A little on-line research,” he made
typing motions with his fingers, “and I found out about thunderbirds.”
“Refresh my memory. I know they make thunder and lightning, but that’s
about it.”
Dee shrugged. “Not much else. They’re huge, condor looking things
that fight evil spirits and stuff. Some myths out west say they eat
whales.”
I looked at the eggs. They weren’t whale-eating bird big, but they were
still bigger than any eggs I’d ever seen. “Have some whale meat
handy for when they hatch, do you?”
Dee shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think I need any, either. I
didn’t see anything about baby thunderbirds, so I’m hoping that they just
hatch all grown up.”
“And you’re just watching over them until
then?” I said, remembering Dee’s highly questionable past. “You’re
kind of an evil spirit yourself. What makes you think they won’t try to
eat you?”
“’Cause they don’t eat people,” he said. Then, with a lot less
certainty in his voice than I was comfortable with, “At least, I don’t
think they do.”
“What makes you think that electric condors the size of ponies—”
“Horses,” he interrupted.
My eyes got big. “Horses? Even better. Why won’t they eat
you? You’re pretty snack size for them.”
Dee shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t think they will.
They’re supposed to be good, and I don’t think eating people is a good
thing.”
I exhaled loudly and rubbed my temples. “Yeah, but maybe they do.”
“Why are you being such an ass about this?” Dee shouted, causing birds
to fly out of some nearby trees. “I thought you’d get a kick out of
this.”
“It’s not that I don’t think this is cool,” I said reasonably. I
do. It’s like finding Bigfoot in your hedges. But, like I said,
they’re electric condors the size of horses. Forgive me if I’m a
bit leery.”
Dee seemed to relax some. “Oh. No sweat. To tell the truth, I
was scared as hell after the first time I got zapped. Just about peed my
pants.”
I put a hand up. “Way more than I needed to know. But I’m glad
you’ve still got a little common sense in there.”
I walked around the eggs, thinking about them.
“When do you think they’ll hatch?” I
asked Dee after my brief inspection.
“I don’t know. I’m not a bird scientist, a what do you call them?”
“Crap,” I said. I thought about it, snapping my fingers as if trying to
wake up the memory. “Oh, an ornithologist.”
“Yeah, one of those. I found out it takes condors about two months to
hatch, so I’m guessing a little longer. Maybe two and a half or three.”
“What are you going to do when they hatch?”
“Beats me. Probably just watch ‘em fly
off if they come out full grown.”
“And if baby thunderbirds are like baby
pigeons? You know, they have to exist, even if nobody ever sees them?”
Dee scratched his head. “I really haven’t thought about it yet.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility being a daddy,” I said with enough sarcasm
to choke a pony. “I hope you’re up to it.”
“Yeah, well, if I’m the daddy, then you’re the mommy.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough to watch them,” I said flatly.
“You’ve got to,” he pleaded. “I can’t do it alone. I had a
cactus once, and it died. If you don’t help, Larry, Moe, and Curly will
be joining it.”
“You named them after the three stooges? Isn’t that kind of cliché?”
“It was either that or John, Paul, and George.”
“And you couldn’t do that because one might be a girl, right?” I supplied,
knowing how Dee thinks.
He nodded. “Right.”
I sighed. “Either way, I’m not watching a bunch—”
“Zine,” he interrupted.
“Whatever—of baby, whale-eating, electric condors.”
I started walking back to the truck.
“Come on,” he whined.
“No.”
“Please. You’d be helping save an
endangered species.”
“They’re not endangered, they’re mythical.”
“See! That’s even worse!”
“No, I said.”
He eventually wheedled me into helping him after a week of whining.
***
Everything went well until about two months
after Dee showed me his egg zine. That was when the giant snake tried to
eat us.
Dee and I had just gotten to the cemetery when we saw a snake the size of a
maple tree crawling its way towards the eggs. It was a deep black in
color, making it look like it would have been more at home at night, or the
bottom of the ocean or something. I couldn’t see its head from
where we were, but something deep down told me it would be pretty hideous.
“Shit,” Dee swore quietly. “A horned snake.”
I looked at him. “A what?”
“Horned snake. It’s what thunderbirds fight. It must’ve crawled
out of the river. I think it’s what killed the momma.”
“I don’t remember you saying we’d have to fight giant snakes, Dee,” I
said angrily. “I’m pretty sure that would have stuck in my head.”
“I didn’t really think they were real.”
“Says the guy with the thunderbird egg zine,” I mumbled.
“Relax. I’ve got a gun in the truck.” He reached behind the seat and
pulled out a shotgun.
“How’s that going to do anything other than
piss it off?”
“You have a better idea?”
“Yeah. Leave.”
Dee got out of his truck. “You can, but I’ve gotta protect my zine.”
“You run away from football players. What makes you think you won’t
turn around and haul ass back here once that thing sees you?”
But he wasn’t listening. He’d already started to creep up behind the horned
snake, the tail of which was only about ten feet from the front of the truck.
Swearing under my breath the whole time, I got out and put on the gauntlet-like
rubber gloves we’d both started wearing since working with the eggs. I
figured that maybe I could sneak up and get away with one of the eggs while it
was busy eating the other two, or Dee. Whichever.
As I crept alongside the horned snake, I got a chance to look at it more
closely. Aside from its size, the blackness of its skin kept
bothering me. Every time I looked at it, I didn’t see any shine, or
scales, or anything snake-like about it. It was obsidian, soul-sucking
black that let not one bit of light come back out of it. And at the same
time, it gave me the urge to go up and touch it, just to see how smooth it was,
how soft. Then, in the back of my head, some survival instinct that I
didn’t know people still had, added, “How cold.” And I knew it
to be true. Nothing in nature could be that black and be safe for anything
living.
I shook myself out of whatever reverie I had been in just in time to pull my
hand back.
I heard a shotgun blast, and Dee yell, “Take that you biotch!”
The horned snake shuddered and roared. It pulled its head from behind the
crypt and reared up to see what had just struck it. The horns were an
appropriate part of the name, but the head was nothing like a snake’s. It
more closely resembled an elongated human’s face. The first thought that
popped into my mind was the way werewolves looked in movies half-way between
shapes, with that wolf’s muzzle pulling its way out of their face. This one
was like that, but hairless and black. And those two horns were sticking
out of its head where the temples would be on a human head. Horns that
curved back, and
had jagged serrations on the top, perfect for slicing open things from below.
Dee fired again, grazing the thing’s right cheek.
It struck, but apparently missed because Dee was laughing at it.
“That the best you can do? My grandma’s dachshund is more vicious than
you are.”
I ran for the eggs, shucking and jiving my way away from its body as it moved in
an attempt to strike Dee.
When I got to the eggs, I saw that they had been disturbed some, with one egg
out of place, but otherwise okay. I picked up the egg as gently as one can
pick up a giant egg, holding it away from my body some to prevent any unwanted
electrolysis.
“Ah, crap,” I said and quickly put it back down as it started to shake.
I stepped around the corner of the crypt, hopefully out of lightning bolt range.
Overhead, storm clouds were swirling into existence in the formerly clear sky
like black dye added to a whirlpool, getting ready to dump enough lightning on
us to power Kalamazoo for a day, if the rumblings were any indication.
Dee came running around the other corner, out of breath but all right. He
tossed down the shot gun. “No more bullets.”
“Did you actually hurt it, Elmer, or just piss it off?”
“I’m not one of those snake scientists,” he said in between breaths. “How
should I know?”
“Herpetologist,” I said absently. “Where’s it at?”
Electricity arced out from where the eggs were. The horned snake, looking
more pissed off than anything I’ve ever seen, appeared on our other side. It
was about to strike, but then noticed the electricity.
Three bolts of lightning struck, I assumed, the eggs in quick succession,
blinding and deafening Dee and me for a moment and sending us sprawling to the
ground. When I was finally able to see again, the horned snake had
disappeared.
I got up and went to look out at the graveyard. It was there, fighting
three, full-grown thunderbirds, and not doing a very good job of it. Its
body was pretty ripped up with claw marks that were bleeding dark red blood
profusely from many cuts. It seemed to be trying to get back to the river,
but the thunderbirds were having none of that. Every time it moved in that
direction, two of them would dive at it, while the third grabbed it by the tail
and pulled.
“Wow,” Dee said from beside me. “Told you
they came out grown up.”
“Lucky for us.”
The horned snake was now just striking out wildly wherever it could. It
landed a lucky shot on one of the birds with its horns, slicing it just above
the left leg. The bird cried out and thunder echoed back from the sky.
“That bastard hurt Curly!” Dee said angrily.
“How do you know it’s Curly?” I asked.
“He just looks like a Curly.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
The wound incensed the other thunderbirds, who started attacking the snake in
earnest, pecking and clawing whenever there was an opening. It was over
quickly after that. It struck out half-heartedly a few more times, then the
horned snake flopped to the ground, twitched a couple of times, and was still.
“All right!” Dee shouted. “Way to go, guys!” He started walking out
to them.
The thunderbirds landed and started picking at the horned snake, tearing of
giant chunks of meat.
I grabbed Dee’s shoulder. How about we wait
until they’re done eating?”
Dee looked at how ravenously they were eating. “Sure. It’s their first
meal, so they’re probably pretty hungry.”
Within ten minutes nothing was left of the horned snake but a little, green,
wobbly piece of something. They’d even eaten the bones, breaking up the
skull and gulping down the pieces.
Cautiously, Dee and I approached them.
Dee raised his right hand to head level and waved. “Hey, guys.”
It started to rain, with flashes of lightning
and booms of thunder sounding in the distance.
I looked up, and at each flash of lightning, an
after-image of a bird was left.
“I think their family’s here to pick them
up,” I told Dee and pointed to the sky.
He looked up. “Cool.”
The three thunderbirds shrieked in unison. The
shriek trailed out into a loud crash of thunder. More booms sounded from
the sky in response, along with more bolts of lightning.
Dee looked back at the thunderbirds. “Bye
guys. You were the best zine I ever had.”
The thunderbirds began flapping their enormous
wings, sending out clouds of moist, hot air at us. Soon, they flew into the
sky, disappearing into the clouds.
The rain washed away the green, wobbly piece,
leaving nothing.
“You want to get the eggshells?” I asked
Dee.
He shook his head. “Nah, they wouldn’t go with my other zine.”
We started walking toward his truck, both of us
still looking to the sky occasionally. “You have another zine?”
“Wanna see it?”
“It doesn’t involve big birds or snakes, does it?”
“Nope. Just these knights I found in a cave over by Paw Paw.”
I sighed. “You can’t have a zine of
knights. They’re people.”
“So? They’re all asleep. It’s not like they know they’re part
of my zine. Do you want to go or not?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t doing anything else
that day. “Sure, why not?”
____________________
Jason Arbogast currently lives in Charlotte,
NC; Toledo, OH; Kalamazoo, MI; and the all coffee shops in between. Rumors
of him being a teacher are unconfirmed, as he only speaks to children in
Etruscan. He did go to Western Michigan University, and is looking to go to grad
school in the fall for an MA in creative writing.
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