Free Brainquake by Samuel Fuller

the fridge. His arm kept the door from closing.
    Removing a loose brick from the wall, Paul took out the key, unlocked the door, went in, closed the door, pulled the blind down, checked the body. Johnson was still alive. Paul swiftly pulled out the tray of ice cubes, pulled down Johnson’s trousers and shorts, packed ice cubes on Johnson’s balls, pulled out a bottle of milk, poured it down Johnson’s throat. Johnson coughed, gagged.
    Paul spotted the pipe on the floor, smashed it with his foot, flushed the ball of gummy opium down the toilet. Johnson opened his bleary eyes, watched Paul transfer the bundles of cash into a big cardboard box labeled PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER . Paul put the cover back on the box, phoned the Boss.
    “Mail delivered. Pirate, but he crashed.”
    “You okay?”
    “Yes.”
    “Pirate dead?”
    “Yes.
    “Get a photo of him?”
    “Cremated.”
    “His wheels, too?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is Johnson back on opium?”
    “Drinking milk.”
    “Don’t forget Dr. Adson in the morning. Get some sleep. Good night, Paul.”
    Paul put the phone down, closed his bag.
    “I owe you again, Paul,” Johnson mumbled.
    Paul left. Johnson packed more ice cubes on his balls.

12
    Paul’s headlights swept past a big cat caterwauling in the graveyard. His beams flooded the clapboard shed as he drove in, switched off the motor. He sat and thought about his attack.
    His father’s dying words, “Red explosion,” came back to him, and an icicle slowly ran through him. In this last brainquake, the pink smoke did look a little red.
    Paul never had the chance to ask his father how red that explosion was. It could’ve been light red or blood red.
    “The race was fixed against us, Paul,” Barney once said when he learned of Paul’s pink brainquakes. “Nobody can climb into our brain and repair the damage.”
    The caterwauling got louder. It hurt inside his head, but he knew it wasn’t the noise. It was that red in pink, screaming that his sickness was getting worse. He climbed out of the taxi with his empty bag and loaded gun and slowly headed toward the shack.
    Paul walked past the four sentries that guarded the shack, remembered the way Barney had told him about them when he was small…
    A pile of shattered stone. “
Meet Backfire, Paul. One of the guards. That rubble was under cannons that blew up their own gun crews in the American Revolution.
”
    A pile of rotted beams over a deep pit.
    “
Rathole is the second guard, Paul. In that pit the first gangs of New York used to hide.
”
    Paul turned toward the half-collapsed warehouse beside the shack.
    “
Hijack is the third guard, Paul. Your grandfather used to stock his hijacked bootlegged whiskey in that warehouse.
”
    Paul’s eyes shifted to the remains of the graveyard.
    “
Skullyard is the fourth guard, Paul. Used to be a very popular cemetery only people with dough could afford. It died when Thomas Jefferson got to be President.
”
    Paul had learned to find his way home by those guards. He felt safe surrounded by them.
    Safe from the thousands of window lights of skyscrapers where night workers were cleaning up thousands of offices and vacuuming thousands of carpets and waxing thousands of corridors in the tallest giants in the world. They weren’t tall enough to stop the moonlight from hitting the lawn chair on the little square of dirt behind the shack. He sat down by the small table. On it, a half-filled bottle of orange soda was attacked by flies and mosquitoes. Next to the bottle was Paul’s pad and pencil.
    He remembered one day when he was nine his father sitting him down in the chair and telling him that although they owned the lot and shack, inherited from his grandpa, now some people were talking about buying it to put up another one of those giant buildings. His father knew nobody in City Hall to stop them from forcing him to sell. Their shack stood in the way of big business’ progress.
    Paul remembered the sickness that filled him. His