I have a happy city in my head. This vibrant metropolis has never externalized into the collective reality shared by most people, yet it remains more genuine than the real world could ever be. The aim of it’s existence isn’t perfection, but perfection is inadvertently achieved. Only that which is funny or interesting is allowed within our borders. It’s called Silo City and I’m there now with my wife. We’re sitting on a bench outside of our house which is really a gazebo linked to an inflatable castle. We lean forward and sip psychotropic lemonade out of an unmarked jug. Our furry child is frolicking in the sun a few feet away. I think he’s killed his fill of moles for the day. He’s keeping them in a ten foot pile outside of our house. Once mole hill reaches a mountainous size we’re going to open it to the general public as a ski resort.
As you may have deduced, most of the buildings in Silo City are made of silos. I guess you learn something obvious every day. None of us were willing to put in more than a week of construction, so we stole low-level, mobile silos from several northern Californian farming communities. I’d say that roughly seventy percent of our city is constructed from these storage facilities, though there has been a consistent evolution in our architectural landscape. For instance, we shine blinding lights in the air every night. If we’re lucky, a plane will fall from the sky and we’ll have a new bar by morning. On the southern ridge of town resides a cluster of studio apartments that were once school busses. Those kids never came back from that field trip. One guy tried to build himself a house out of lumber, but we burned it down. That thing was a fucking eyesore. We tied him to a giraffe and banished him to Castroville, CA. He lives among the artichokes now.
Our roads are dug in wavy ten foot patterns of hills and valleys. We were going to pave our single lane highway, but decided it would be more fun to coat the streets in Teflon. Nobody drives cars. Instead, we all ride high powered go karts adorned with spears and knives. Due to the staggering death rate, driving while intoxicated is not only legal, but highly encouraged. It’s rare that a person uses these roads to go somewhere. Most of us use the catapult to get across town. “Kart Jousting” is what the roads are typically used for. The winner of the joust is the person left alive after the midair crash. They’re declared king of the road (for that day) and are awarded a muffin basket.
Pap’s Flaps and Pork Emporium is the only restaurant in town. As advertised, they serve nothing but pancakes and pork products, both of which are deep fried in a vat of butter and candy. Pap built it himself out of rocks and sea shells. He used royal bee jelly to seal and shape it into a two story pheasant. The structure’s in a sitting position, so you enter through it’s open beak. There’s a plywood sign on top of it’s head where, written in crayon, it says “Pap’s Flaps and Pork Emporium - Whites Only.” I feel like I should explain the sign. Don’t take it the wrong way, Pap is as kindhearted as he is barnacle ridden. All races and ethnicities are welcome in his fine establishment. He just happens to call his customers “whites” because they’re doused in cooking oil and flour the moment they step through the beak. This is in case they have a heart attack while eating his culinary masterwork. If someone dies in Pap’s, their body is thrown out back to bake in the sun. Once the corpse is fully breaded, the blue jays will come and feast for days.
All drugs are legal in Silo City except for antibiotics. We don’t want that poison scourging our fair community. Other than that, there are only two rules:
1) No talking loudly.
2) Mind your own business.
Since everyone in Silo City is up to no good and wants to get away with it, we all follow the two commandments voluntarily, eliminating our need for police officers. We don’t have a standing army either. Both positions would require being employed and waking up before 1 p.m. and nobody wants that. Besides, we don’t need a military because we have the Blue Shield. The blue jays that eat breaded corpses behind Pap’s restaurant believe we’re their gods and providers. They would do anything for us. Along with their feverish loyalty, they’ve also acquired a taste for human blood. Birds fight our wars for us. We’ve yet to lose a battle, which is impressive considering that Mongolian acrobats once tried to invade our land. We didn’t even have to walk very far to reach victory. Just toss some crumbs on your enemy, whistle the tune from “Three’s Company” and watch the Blue Shield peck your problems away.
We don’t get many tourists thanks to the sulfuric acid sprinklers we set up outside of the city, but occasionally one or two still get through. Last week a hipster rode into town. He was wearing a shirt with a horse on it even though he was clearly riding a mule. I guess he was trying to be ironic. We killed him. We had to. He kept blathering about Wes Anderson movies, his new iPhone app and how much he wanted a “cuppa.” I won the coin toss, so I got to scalp his overgrown facial hair, which I tied to a bottle rocket and launched into space. After a lengthy trial of finger-pointing and childish name- calling, we took the prisoner out to Trilobite Lake. We dressed him in a veal suit and through him in. After about ten minutes one of the trilobites came on land and vomited a pair of nonprescription glasses. That was a fun day!
Trilobite Lake was formed ten months ago. A meteorite landed on the eastern outskirts of town. The crash left a crater about one hundred feet deep and a mile long. At the bottom of the crater was a strange purple glow that was visible for miles. There was only one logical way of determining if the meteor below would cause us harm - pour soda into the crater and see how much it fizzles. When we did this, not only did the soda fizzle, it shot two hundred feet into the air. Naturally, we were all very concerned and we did intend to do something, but then it started raining, so we all danced and forgot about it. The heavy storm lasted for a month and by the time it was finished the crater was full. Only a faint shimmer of purple glow remained under the leagues of water. We washed our hands and declared the problem solved. A few weeks later I was spending the day drinking wine I had fermented from hallucinogenic berries. I collected a bucket of roaches and force-fed them steroids and amphetamines. When they grew to only twice their original size I was naturally disappointed, so I threw them into the lake. Perhaps it was the lake’s floating spores or maybe it was the roach’s new marine environment coupled with the drugs I gave them. Whatever the cause may be, those insects grew to the size of puppies and took on the features of trilobites. They also grew a taste for flesh. At first we were worried they might come to land and eat us, but then we noticed they had developed gills, so we let them stay in the water. Another problem solved.
Of course, it’s not just natural wonders and architectural achievements that make Silo City a utopia. For one thing, our library is composed of five silos all sitting on top of one another. Each silo houses a different level of interest. The first two are composed of fiction, both regular and unfiltered. Level two houses a plethora of nonfiction and scientific publications. Silo number three is nothing but comic books. Level four contains records and movies. Finally, we have level five. That’s where we take people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and extreme dementia. We tie them to a table and force them to write what they see. It’s estimated that in one to two years we’ll have either the greatest or worst novel of all time. What the library has is worthy of merit, but it’s what it doesn’t have that makes me happy. There’s no Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski or any other self-serving, pseudo-intellectual ego-drip that calls itself art no matter how poorly written and conceived. There are certainly no novels involving vampires going to high school. There is a popcorn machine.
If you’re thinking about starting a family, go somewhere else. Silo City has a zero tolerance policy regarding human children. In the event a human child is found they are immediately dropped into the bottomless pit. Let China worry about them. The only minors we allow are cats, dogs or any other furry little mammals that play all day and look good in little hats. We like to let them roam free throughout the city and do as they please. They also get to vote. Reptiles are tolerated, but they don’t get to vote. We are not a society that believes in equality. Land mammal supremacy! In terms of new humanoid life, we have a hot tub filled with growth hormones and caffeine pills. Also, a witchdoctor place a fertility curse on it’s bubbling insides. Anytime someone dismembers a body part we throw it in the goo and wait four to eight weeks for a new life form to emerge. For instance, there’s this naked frog man that hops around the city. Last year he was hopping on his imaginary lilli pads when his big toe was bitten off by a wily bandicoot. The frog man kept begging us to sew his toe back on, but we wouldn’t allow it. That’s not the way things are done here. Life begins at dismemberment. After an extensive dip in the life-tub a little ball of flesh and puss with the head of an owl flopped into existence. The owl-toe boy now rides on the frog man’s back as they hop to and fro as father and son.
Every year on September 11 Silo City has a festival to honor our good fortune. “Suck Sector 7” is an annual town festival, not a homosexual orgy. We’ve had some issues in the past with people who misinterpreted the flyers, so I just wanted to clear that up. Anyways, a large portion of the city is cleaned of debris and immobile mutants to set up chairs, desks, cash registers, construction sites, computer monitors, classrooms and department stores. We all dress like Mormons and pretend to work and live in a normal city like we did in pre-Silo days. After about fifteen minutes someone will declare “This is fucking stupid!” At this point we all stand up, change out of those stuffy clothes and walk thirty feet north. When we get to the field of dandelions and broken glass we’re all given squirt guns filled with moonshine, 3-D glasses, experimental pharmaceutical pill necklaces and one pot cookie each by the provider, who is made the provider because their name was drawn out of a hat. The world famous bluegrass/industrial/polka/punk/smooth jazz band Candy Yam and the Dump play a twelve hour concert with no interruptions. We build ourselves individual forts out of old mattresses at the start of the show. Once we’re inside the mattresses we consume, fornicate and throw rocks at other forts. When the Suck Sector 7 festival was first conceived we all knew the one flaw every event shared was being around other people without some kind of barrier. I think all social gatherings would be improved by getting rid of all those unnecessary people.
Life here is godly and wonderful. With each passing day I feel myself withdrawing from the collective reality of the outside world and into a secluded land of candy and fire. As I stare down the hole of a trapdoor spider I feel my consciousness drifting down into Silo City. There are no dull moments, no endless debates about things that don’t matter, no passive-aggressive people who live miserable lives; there’s only fun and adventure. Life’s meaning was always a mystery to me, but now I see it was here all along, resting inside my skull and waiting for me to acknowledge it. The outside world has melted away. I no longer answer phone calls, check email or leave my apartment. There’s a growing stack of bills and letters in my mailbox that I’ll never pay or read. I live full-time in Silo City now and this is a place I intend to live in forever.
