Deep inside the gaudy halls of Baritone, Palace of Thieves, brigands ward off boredom by scheming, deciding which brazen affair will shape the proceedings of the evening. In hollow chambers of moldering alloys, entombed by the cavernous craw of a discarded saxophone, the Butter Boys mingle, inhabiting their secret lair. Within their warren of brass, the city-sized instrument left unloved and unattended in the mud, they live in lavish squalor; dirt and grime and half-eaten meals growing mildew amid gold coins and precious gems. Open to the evening air, moonlight seeps into the frog-mouth bell of a woodwind instrument jettisoned by the dying God of Romantic Jazz, its cathedral maw yawning up at the stars. Here, the grand entrance to the BBHQ—the Alcázar of Alchemy—and the bubbling scum within.
“What do you want to do tonight, Faceless Tom?”
Tom doesn’t smile, for he has no lips to veil his dentition. But there is a gleam in the vacant pits where men of flesh have eyes, a malachite shimmer like liquor store neon twinkling on a venom-coated switchblade. He rubs his phalanges together, his many bejeweled rings clanging against their golden bands, echoing in the leviathan throat of his tunneled hideaway.
“You tell me, Kenny G-Spot.”
“Plunder?” Kenny appears hopeful through his lion mane of golden curls, grooming his forearm with a long and luxuriant bristled tongue.
“Again?” Faceless Tom sighs, picking at the naked knife-edge of his exposed vomer—a graceless habit. “Haven’t we got enough booty?”
Kenny G-Spot shakes his head, sedately bludgeoning a Labrador-sized lizard into a plum-colored pulp. His brutish violence germinates fear in loitering creatures, ushering geckos and tree frogs to disperse across the cavern walls, and flying foxes to vacate their hovering perches, abandoning the cavern in wild fits of erratic flight. “They call me the Ass Man, Tom. Hell no, you can never have enough booty.”
“I ain’t chatting ass, Kenny. I’m chatting gold.”
“You chatter too much, that’s what you chatter.” Kenny bares his fangs in disapproval but calms quickly, laughing and lighting up a Winston. “You want one?”
“Yeah, okay.”
So there they are, two Butter Boys smoking in the night, sitting on the rim of a saxophone bowl the size of an inverted stadium dome. Kenny’s leonine forelegs and tasseled tail swish among the open air, swaying to the rhythm of jazz on the beaks of primordial night birds, casting tiny shadows on the mudflats and shantytown sprawling below the crest of Baritone, the immaculate fort. Behind him, pacing in agitation on tibiae and fibulae with neither skin nor muscle, puffing like a magic dragon on his cigarette, attacking it with his lipless snarl, Faceless Tom grins without humor as if the Jolly Roger come to life. Suddenly, he stops, eyes wide (for he has no lids with which to narrow his gaze), delighted by an impulsive and exhilarating whim.
“Tell me, Butter Brother,” he flicks his butt to the skittering crabs a mile below, “have you heard of the Moon Grail? The liquid pearl cocktail within?”
“Speak, Butter Lover, for you have roused my soul to garner this strange lore.”
“It is said that the Witch of the Western Glen, the Goldenrod Crone, cries each moonlit night into a cup so holy that symphonies in heaven are written with the sound of its salty splashes.”
“So?”
“So? Did you say So? You fool!” Faceless Tom does not show anger, for he has no brow to angle downward to exhibit the rage that he feels. “So, eternal life! That’s what’s so!”
“But you’re dead, are you not?”
“Exactly, man. You think I want to stay that way?”
“Faceless Tom, you wouldn’t know what to do with a life if it walked through the front door and played your ribs like the marimbas.”
“Shut your bazoo, bozo.” Faceless Tom’s eyeholes ignite with Saint Elmo’s fire. “Meanwhile, go fetch the Butter Boys. We ride within the hour, while the bunny yet nestles in the night pearl.”
***
Although the Butter Boys designated no official leader among them, if one were to be considered chief, it might be Bedivere of the Perfect Sinew, whose terrific strength and terrible temper make him an imposing figure, despite only having one hand.
Seagull shit hits his lower lip like a dainty slap from a lady’s lace glove. Kenny G-Spot laughs at Bedivere’s expense, who grapples his Butter Brother into submission, forcefully kissing the bird shit in a lip-to-lip transfer between them. Then, throwing the leonine misfit into the knee-deep slurry of high tide among the mud flats, the Perfect Sinew looms over his brother in arms, casting the great shadow of his girth over trembling Kenny, who cannot even meow, let alone roar in defiance of the better man among them.
Sir Bedivere removes his single gauntlet, the size of a fattened Yorkshire pig, and, tucking it under his ironwood bicep, offers a helping hand to the wounded lion sniveling in the pooled mire at his feet. Kenny does not risk his forepaw being crushed in a cruel but deserving grasp of decimating punishment. He averts his feline eyes from the mountainous knight.
“I would sooner feed a rabid hyena my fingers than offer you my paw, you freakish dreaded sentinel.” Kenny does what he can to salvage his dignity. He stands without the aid of his fellow Butter Brother. He wrings out the mud and crab eggs from his golden braids. He scowls, showing his formidable canines, yet beneath his empty show of defiance, there are tears in his soft, wheat-colored eyes. “Lead on,” he submits to Bedivere in the end, but it’s Faceless Tom who knows the way.
“No more squabbling among ye, Butter Lovers.” Faceless Tom urges his companions westward, across the crab-laden bogs. “We have a witch to burn, and tears of pearl to sate the dry gullet of our souls.”
“Fuck off with the poetry, Tom.” Sir Bedivere is not to be denied. “Now move your bony ass! The final Boy awaits our advent. To the rendezvous, make haste!”
“The only tree in a featureless vale…” Faceless Tom is dangerously close to poetic expression, so he allows his words to trail off into silence. In wordless contempt, he leads his brothers across the miserable miles of sludge.
***
At the appointed rendezvous, at the only tree in the featureless vale—a maidenhair whose leaves are luminous gold, brighter even than sheaves of legal pads flush against a halogen bulb—the lone ginkgo radiates against a backdrop of anemic sun that cowers like a beggar behind its drab cloak of stratus. Here, the Butter Boys join the final member of their nefarious club: Komodo, lizard kin drifter, drug baron, and cold-blooded killer, the Lord of Toxic Rot. True to any monitor lizard or self-respecting member of his clade, Komodo keeps his talons sexy-long and needle-sharp. His fangs gleam, serrated, steaming from an unhinged jaw, ready to slice and serve, devouring his adversaries like meat pies. A Satanic gland secretes its infernal juices, coating his bite in proteins that inflict muscular paralysis, blood loss, and systemic shock. With a forked tongue and forked penis, it is perhaps ironic to learn that Komodo is devoutly abstinent from sex. At his side, one mount per boy, four saddled terror birds stand tethered to a low sweeping branch of the solitary ginkgo.
From a cast iron Dutch oven worn like a bass drum in a brass band, Komodo unplugs its cork, allowing the melted butter to lather his hands and thighs, igniting his scales with verdant resplendence. “Lube up, Boys, for we ride at the first crow of the cock.”
“Why not the first cock of the crow?” Kenny G-Spot laughs, but he does so alone.
“Shut your mouth,” The Perfect Sinew warns his brother. “Lest I feel entitled to break your face, and with it, your mischievous spirit.”
“Easy on the poetry.” Faceless Tom cannot help but deposit his two cents. “For was it not ye who said so?”
Bedivere scowls, grinding his teeth, sparks ejecting from between his lips.
“Enough squabbling, Butter Brothers.” Komodo slaps the sides of his mighty canister. “Anoint yourself, and be silent while you do so. And if you’d like to know how you can butter up to me, you can butter up yourself.” It was his priestly way to weave a riddle when roused by emotion. What Komodo means is simply this: lube your legs and loins with butter, for at this very moment we ride to seek the moon cup vessel, to drain and scour the witch of her pearly brew.
And indeed, as prescribed, the cock crow fills the silent desolation around them, echoing its command of imminent departure. The terror birds answer, and their hideous call is redolent with dread.
The boys run their hands (or in the case of Bedivere, his single hand) under the flow of lurid butter, cupping palm-fulls to grease their saddles, their limbs, their joints, aiming to reduce the chafing while riding on their terror bird mounts. The butter has other uses, too. The brothers cook with it, sculpt with it, and use it in prayer. Without the butter, there is no defense or means to placate a demonic menace that takes the vague form of a rose-tinted cloud. The Consuming Cloud, sometimes known as Mauve, a sentient mist that demands rich sustenance to appease its hunger, deigns to close its portal only when sated on generous portions of rich foodstuffs. The Butter Boys are wardens of the known world, knights of cosmic order, whose churning closes the gate to the Netherrealm, a twisted dark hell that only butter can dispel from reality. It’s true, they may be brigands and malingerers, but the BB’s are heroes, too, smooth as jazz, safeguarding sanity from the greedy grips of chaos.
And lo! Mauve coalesces, arriving on a sour wind from the west, a rosy dust cloud summoned by the Witch of the Western Glen, the Goldenrod Crone. From the Consuming Cloud comes a wild ejaculation of lightning, strange songs, and all manner of unlikely or impossible items. Unrealities seep like drugged mirages from the cloud’s darkest folds and contours; hallucinogenic weather, surreal storms, and vibrant, sometimes violent visions.
Mosquitoes the size of pigeons and pigeons the size of ponies…
Ladybugs wearing poodle skirts flutter in droves like copper shavings of shamanic dream dust. Observed through a looking glass, one would discover they wear eyeliner and lipstick, not to mention strawberry-patterned panties.
Sadly, these baffling phantasms are the least of it, for other absurd and random afflictions take shape from nothing to haunt those who cling to the weakening strands of sanity. Look here! A shaved gorilla masterfully rides its uncanny steed, a tapir with a glass stomach like a window into a nest of writhing snakes, cantering through the navel-deep slurry—escapees, perhaps, from a pharmaceutical laboratory or a demented circus…
“Enough!” Komodo shouts above the din of mischief, venom frothing at the corners of his razored maw. “Disperse, ye treacherous fog of doom. Pacify your urges with helpings of butter.” And with a wave of his clawed hand and swish of his long tail, the Butter Boys answer Komodo’s call.
Bedivere leads the charge, employing his perfect sinew to heave the heavy contents of the lizard’s Dutch oven into the inkblot center of Mauve. Faceless Tom, bellicose to the marrow, feeds the doom cloud many sticks of butter, and Kenny G-Spot roars, cheering on his fellows, ready with tubs of potent ghee if butter hits the fan.
Their efforts earn them victory; the mist of insanity is soothed by the excess poundage of butter. Mauve withers away, diffusing into nothing, and far across the wastes of the vale a saxophone blares in triumphant revelry. In the east, Baritone blasts its smooth sermons of jazz, defiance to chaos that looms over all. Notes of C and G interchange in highs and lows—a fanfare to rouse the boys—igniting tempered souls to molten steel.
“The Fathers of Jazz honor us with their music.” Bedivere kneels, lowering his gigantic head.
“Blessed be the Mighty Sax,” they say in unison in tones of C and G to mimic the blessing of their Lord.
A cloud of shrikes coalesces to veil the ashen sky, calling out in shrill renditions of Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady.”
“Come then, Boys,” Komodo urges his brethren. “A witch awaits our plundering and fury.”
“Let’s make it a smash-and-grab.” Kenny grins against the wind, his lion locks like airborne rivers of gold.
“We ride westward.” Bedivere grips the reins to his mount, his perfect sinew tighter than knotted wood.
“To eternity,” Faceless Tom whispers, no expression to be shared. “We ride to life everlasting.”
As if in agreement with their riders, the four terror birds raise their digger-bucket maws, exposing the downward spiral of their terrible gizzards, croaking in an ear-bleeding primordial anthem, kicking up the mud with their westward strides.
***
The boys push their mounts, devoid of compassion, riding them without rest until they expire beneath them. The knights invoke the motivation of their beasts with meat—bog herons tied by their long necks on supple lances, held just beyond the range of the terror birds’ savage gnashing. Their birdbrains bypass any warning that their hearts might burst, allowing their cravings for flesh to dictate their impulses. And so, with great speed, but at the cost of the terror birds’ lives, the Butter Boys cross the putrid vale, no longer far from the witch they mean to pillage (and probably slay), nor the Moon Grail, with its salty sips of life everlasting.
Two more hours of dredging their boots through the sludge find the knights on the doorstep of their quarry, the Goldenrod Crone, whose whereabouts they found by trailing the demon cloud when it had fled, butter-infused and lethargic. Now, here she stands, pale and naked, indeterminate of age, in turns hideous and beautiful, like a dull crystal catching the light, refracting glorious rainbows, then suddenly not, revealing crude and weathered surfaces with little to salvage but the prospect of meat suitable to feed dogs or swine. She sways, unafraid, possibly drunk, certainly deranged, cackling and drooling, and playing with her navel as if a child or dullard with a bad habit. Yet as she speaks, those familiar rainbows return to enchant the squalor of her miserable garden and simple, willow-thatched hovel. As if a spell—certainly a spell—her intoxicating diction transforms her wrinkled brow and hooked nose into the fair features of a fresh and sultry nymphet. The shitty little shack at her back mends itself into a white and shining homestead, morphing into a mansion, then a castle, whose graceful turrets multiply like the Hydra beheaded over and over. Where moments ago an old and ugly woman greeted the boys outside her disreputable hut, now stands a lady at the entrance to a lavish palace, flaunting her unimpeachable charms, showcasing her exquisite youth with sex appeal to upstage Aphrodite.
Kenny G-Spot drops his truncheon in the mud, fumbling at the buttons of his trousers. His purpose has fled him, replaced by a need to make sweet love to the woman who weaves intoxication like a hairnet over his golden mane. His demeanor, never altogether sharp, dulls to a simplicity worthy of the dumbest of fools. This, and the fact that his cock is out and up, alerts the remaining Butter Boys that one among their own has been beguiled by magic.
Faceless Tom, who stands closest to Kenny, slaps him hard across the jaw, and only then does the leonine knight blink away his stupor, amazed and confused by his own erection, unsheathed and held high.
“Be wary of her wicked spells, my Butter Brothers,” Bedivere warns, grinding his teeth in a tenuously suppressed tantrum. “Thump her and thwart her—the only good witch is a dead witch.”
Komodo slithers his agreement, priming his glands to stew his noxious venom. “Ignore the lust and illusions. Beneath this vixen’s cloak of supple breasts is a sagging fiend who would sup on our souls and feed our flesh to her familiars.”
“Beware the demon cloud,” Faceless Tom chimes in. “We are low on butter. Do not let the crone evoke the repugnance of Mauve.”
And so the boys descend on the old woman, who, pitted against the might of their cudgels, yields to their advance, offering the Moon Grail, which she knows her attackers will take regardless of fight or compliance. Though she bears the air of disgraceful defeat, there is a beacon of cunning sparkling in the far horizon of her eye.
“Thou hast the bearing of a leader,” the crone says to Komodo, “a lizard of nobility, with scales that outshine the unveiled stars.”
“Flattery is wasted on the noble, vile wench.” But clearly it is not, for it is flattery that sways the lizard man to drink without further thought. When he sips from the witch’s cup, which is unadorned with gold or jewels—a simple wooden vessel carved from the branch of a maidenhair, the solitary tree amid a vast desolation—the “noble” lizard unwittingly poisons the cocktail within, his oral toxins tainting the tears, turning that which would grant eternal life into a beverage that would take it away.
“Very good, my sterling knight.” The witch applauds Komodo. “Now share thy chalice of infinite tears with thy noble brothers, and ye shall walk eternal.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” says Kenny, who takes the moon chalice and drinks his allotted portion. Next, Faceless Tom lays hold of the cup and drinks it as well as he can—without lips or a tongue, no throat with which to swallow, he elects to splash the brackish fluid on his shriveled heart, a jerky husk encased in bare ribs. Last among them, certainly not least, Bedivere grips the grail with his solitary arm and perfect sinew. With no one to follow, he downs the remains of the witch’s tears. Then, licking his lips, he tosses the cup at the hag’s filthy feet, wiping his lantern jaw with the back of a fist that could pulverize a stone plinth to fine-grain sand.
The Butter Boy’s satisfaction is limitless in scope, but insubstantial in its tremendous brevity. For upon the very moment of their eternal vigor, they are smote with the affliction of their companion’s chemical drool. Yet just as the toxin is fatal, its hosts are also unable to die, having been made immortal by the pearlescent cocktail of tears. In unthinkable agony, three of the Butter Boys writhe in despair, disabled by the venom that pollutes them.
And now, with the odds made even, the Goldenrod Crone takes up a nearby bundle of branches, dried flowers the color of butter, and intones a secret wrath while waving her talisman. From its desiccated buds, the flowers vomit forth mephitic vapor, coalescing and swirling, a growing vagueness the color of mauve.
Immortal, though helpless, Komodo suffers the gentle onslaught of demon mist. Without so much as a knob of butter to spread across a slice of toast, the last of the knights among the Sons of Jazz flails uselessly against the formless spirit that enshrouds him, and, filling his lungs with the essence of its evil, Komodo is defeated, rendered by Mauve to thralldom, slave to the Witch of the Western Glen.
As the witch’s servant, Komodo skillfully performs his duties, maintaining the daily application of his venom to the vitals of his undying brothers. Meanwhile, the Goldenrod Crone cries amid the moonlight, for among her arcane knowledge, she knows what few people do: the moon is the pate of her pale lover, Nocturne, God of Shadows, whose cranium drifts dead within the orbit of Earth. Her grief is endless, and so are her tears, as she secretes her sorrow, drop after drop, collecting them in her chalice of infinite woe.
And so the seasons are fated to transpire, century after century, eternal life and eternal death, time as meaningless as butter in a crock fermenting in the core of a faraway star. Komodo, besieged by Mauve, has become the crone’s cupbearer—nothing more and nothing less. Until the expiration of time, he will administer the vicious proteins of his vile glands, keeping his comrades in their perfect state of agony.
***
Far away, somber notes in minor keys cry from a saxophone the size of Long Island. Baritone weeps amid the vapors of its pungent decoctions, the steam from extractions brewing brand new souls for a very old war. Ancient is the struggle, and infinite are the tears. The moon turns a city of brass into silver. In its cold light, the Fathers of Jazz mourn for their sons.
— James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His collection, Those Who Remain Quiet, is available from Anxiety Press.