Mortimer Buer woke with a terrible headache that felt like his head was being split open slowly with a handsaw. I guess that’s what happens when you’re holding a military tactical knife then you slip on the blood of your latest victim, bleeding out in your bathtub. The 17 in. blade was inserted to the hilt and went straight through the jowl area from the underside of his chin impaling itself into his brain. He died instantly and landed here.
Where is here? Here was somewhere and nothing that he had seen before.
The atmosphere was sepia and smelt damp like consistently soaked wet fur. The texture of the ground on which he stood kept shifting like he was in the middle of the Sahara-sized litter box. They weren’t very close growing up, especially after his mother passed, yet it smelt reminiscent of Grandma Shore’s house and her 9 cats, a mixture of ammonia and stale urine. The scent was overwhelming.
Suddenly, he was overcast by a looming shadow. It was a cat. A very imposing two-faced cat looking down at him. Its condition, if he remembered correctly, referred to the Roman two-face god, Janus. This Janus cat was a 35 ft giant with 4 sets of eyes looking directly at him almost with the same wonderment as he was staring up at it. What happened next was even more bizarre than ending up in an afterlife that was more like a litter box staring up at a 35 ft cat with two faces.
The giant two-faced cat spoke, then asked him a question. “Yo, man, who had the best verse on The Symphony?” asked the left side of its face.
Confused. “The Symphony?”
“Yeah, my guy. The Symphony!!!” replied the right side of its face. “Didn’t you just come here from Earth? Don’t you listen to music, dude? Didn’t you hear me? No? OK, listen this time, please. Who had the best verse?”
“Verse? You mean words in a symphony?”
Mortimer wasn’t sure that there were words to a symphony. Surely not in the symphonies that he’d been aware of. True, each orchestra has their own voice when it comes to how each string, wind, percussion, and brass interact with each other, but I couldn’t tell the cat off-hand which one had the best verse.
“Are we talking about chamber music for a smaller group of instruments? Are we discussing a specific sonata or concerto? Bach or Beethoven? Moonlight Sonata? I’m partial to the Moonlight Sonata myself. Chopin, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. This is so very hard to decide. I once met an ever so lovely Buttercup playing a solo piano sonata of Chopin’s Nocture opus 9 no. 2. It was exquisite, let me tell you. So sublime that I made the decision to add her to my collection. I had to have her, you know. So, Chopin, yes, I’ll go with Chopin as my answer. CHOPIN!!!!!!!” he said with conviction.
The eyes of the Janus met each of the two centered eyes somewhere in the middle, serious and stern. They looked back at him and then back at each other.
Hysterically, the Janus burst out laughing from each side of its face. This was non-stop tear-inducing hysterics. The litter underneath Mortimer rumbled as the laughing was so hard. It was also very deafening. Catching a breath trying to compose itself, the left side of its face regained a degree of composure long enough to speak.
“No, mutha fucka. NOT fucking Chopin, dweeb!!! The Juice Crew, mang!! I’m talking about Masta Ace, Craig G, Kool G. Rap, and Big Daddy Kane, produced by Marley Marl on the In Control Volume 1 that came out in 88, The Golden Era, on Cold Chillin’ Records!”
The Right Side - “Yo, Kool G. Rap’s verse is MURDA!!! Without question, kid, he slaughtered that verse. Best lyrics on the whole joint.”
The Left Side - “In the words of Ice Cube on that Del joint, ‘I disagree, homeboy!!’ KANE!!! KANE!!! KANE!!! KANE!!! KANE is the illest!! King Asiatic Nobody Equal!! Man, even in the video Kane is so fly that he didn’t even bother to dress up in those shitty cowboy outfits. Put a quarter in your ass because you played yourself. ‘Whose flattop rules in 89?!!’”
The Right Side - “The Symphony was 88, dufus!!”
The Left Side - “I know, I know and you know I know but you
know what I’m sayin’. Don’t give me a McHard Time and don’t front on Kane. Kane’s that one, mang. I’m telling you, trust.”
Mortimer was out of his element. Abandoned and confused to the thread of the conversation.
The Right Side - “Ahhh, man, that was rich. I needed that right there. Wow, you are a card. With a name like your last name, somebody was dying, right? I mean, you killed like 63 people and don’t even know who Marley Marl is. That’s crazy. I can’t even believe that we’re even engaging in this discourse. Kool G. Rap came the hardest on the whole damn jawn!!!!!
‘Yo, Marley gives the slice, I get nice and my voice is twice as horrifying as Vincent Price goes deep til you fell in a spell of a sleep and while I’m counting the money, you count sheep’”
Ohhh, rap music. Mortimer couldn’t understand it, nor grasp its appeal. Where’s the melody? To him, it’s just a bunch of words thrown together, talking talentless, derivative, and derogatory. The subject matter was materialistic with an overusage of coarse vulgarity. Very juvenile. To Mortimer, it was abysmal. It wasn’t his thing.
He unwisely relayed, with unabashed honesty, how he truly felt about the subject.
Both sides of the cat’s face looked annoyed.
“Keep in mind,” said the right side of the face, “that your answer determines where you end up next. Either you get to start over again in a pleasant way or not. Choose your next words carefully.”