Forum Overview :: The Mysterious and Powerful Cran-Grape :: Sko Hunter S.B. Thompson in "Fear & Loathing in Seattle?"

[quote name="Little Crow"][quote name="veronica"] He covered his head with the sheets, and started moaning about "things" that were attacking him, and he had to get his gun (he named a specific weapon of course, I don't recall which one), and motioned as though he was pulling a gun from a rack, and then motioned as if he were shooting the "things". [/quote] I laughed my ass off at this part. It conjured up the crazy image of Johnny Depp screaming down the desert highway in a red convertible, frantically trying to fend off the drug-induced "bats" with a flyswatter. OK, granted, Hunter S. Thompson was a true artist when it came to drug-binging, mixing acid, coke, weed, and raw ether, and Barbie prefers to just get pilled, but still analogous. It only could have been funnier if you'd said before he started "firing" at the specters, he'd had a quick argument with himself about which ammo was best suited to the task... It also reminded me of this one incident from my youth. Walk with me for awhile down this odd little stretch of Memory Lane, won't you? There was this guy on the rez, a great-uncle of one of my good friends. The old coot had no small number of mental problems, but most prominent was a raging case of dementia, which seemed to come and go. Or maybe I should say on some days it was less noticeable, maybe eclipsed by something else that day. But Christ, some days he was a real raving loon. The problem, like most on the rez, was that he was so damn poor. He couldn't afford the meds he needed to treat all the shit, so what the fuck you gonna do? Sometimes he had the meds, but mostly not. So me and some friends were over near his house this one day, and we hear him hollering like hell. Up in the house, you know? Nothing new there. But as we get closer, we can discern that he's yelling for help, and there's a terrible commotion going on in there, sounds like shit getting thrown around. Glass breaking, etc. So we run in, of course, thinking the old fart's in sko real trouble. Well, the place is TRASHED. It looks like a goddamn hurricane went through there. We find him in the kitchen, sitting at the table, just staring off into space. We ask him him if he's all right, what the fuck happened in here, did somebody break in, etc. He doesn't answer for a minute, he just sits there. It's pretty fuckin creepy. Then all of a sudden, the old fucker jumps up, so fast he knocks the chair over, I remember that. He's looking all over, back and forth in the air like he sees something, then he starts yelling about demons and evil spirits in his house and shit. This is where the shit really hits the fan. He charges out of the kitchen, knocking one of my friends down. For an old coot, he's not a small guy, plus he's semi-possessed, you know? He goes into the closet and pulls out his goddamn <i>duck rifle.</i> It's a gorgeous gun, a 10 gauge pump, and he used to use it for deer hunting, too. Why nobody thought to relieve him of that shit as senility set in, I don't know. But there it was, fucking <i>10 gauge,</i> Christ. He runs back into the kitchen (by now we'd all gotten the fuck out of his way, naturally) and he starts <i>blowing the living shit out of his entire kitchen.</i> I'd already hit the deck and was belly-crawling as fast as I could for the front door. <i>Fuck this shit.</i> You can't imagine the unholy volume of that 10 gauge going off in that little house. Old man screaming in Siouan about "TAKE THAT, TRICKSTER!" puntuated with <b>*BLAM!!*</b> Totally surreal. We all made it out OK, and went and got some help for the poor fucker. Not the kind of help he really, truly needed, but we did all we could for him. I don't think he even realized we were there that day. He went to live with some of his kin across the way. I'm pretty sure they took his shotgun away. He's dead now. About 5 years later, he wandered outside in the middle of this one fine winter night. They found him, naked, sitting on the ground with his back against this tree in their front yard. Like he was taking a nap. Frozen hard as a rock, I imagine. I wonder if he did that in a fit, or if he was lucid, and just decided he'd had enough of it all? LC <i>Take 'em if you got 'em...</i>[/quote]