The Disappearance of Johnny Silas

Johnny Silas never intended to just settle down and start living somewhere. Aside from his credibility as being king of the unknown underground being destroyed, the idea of staying in one place for more than a month seemed like a prison sentence. On the other hand, having someone just give you a house was a deal only a fool would reject; or perhaps by a punk with an even greater tenacity and carefree spirit than Johnny had --which was an idea that always haunted him. The house was given to him by Marcus VanVelkenberg III, due to a complicated and fascinating chain of events. Marcus lived in St. Louis, MI, which was the last place Johnny would have to hitch hike, train hop and otherwise just walk fast from before he could claim the property in question.

Marcus had been an exceptionally greedy man (for reasons that weren't completely his fault). He had a complete psycho/ spiritual turn around akin to the movie "A Christmas Carol" about a week after Johnny met him. Johnny liked to think he had played a part in this, but it was more likely due to changes in the greater universe. Marcus had decided to start spending all of his resources helping the entire city of St. Louis become a better place. It was beautiful. Marcus realized having tremendous amounts of money just lying around didn't really mean anything, and would be better spent on someone else. He started funding public works of art, local artists, tradesmen, honest businesses that needed help, upstart companies headed by ambitious young people, schools, churches, music venues and unemployed eccentrics. He started just handing hundred dollar bills to the homeless and anyone else he happened to walk by and he felt feel deserved it. He gave money to an upstart video game company (who would go on to make a masterpiece ten years later). As you can imagine, this didn't go over well with the powers that be. Marcus was hit from every angle with all manner of crooked lawsuits, threats and cease and desist warnings. Johnny knew this because he was crashing on the couch of Marcus's seven million dollar penthouse suite at the time.

The thing that Johnny and Marcus found most perplexing and terrible; was that a lot of the organizations and individuals in the community that seemed to have the same mission as them, were the ones who took the most offense and reacted the most negatively. Johnny's reply to Marcus was "we just can't win, that's why I'm always off the grid."

The two of them felt completely defeated after that. Marcus considered going back to his life of greed and isolation, and Johnny was once again reminded why he liked to always be headed to the next place. Johnny woke up one day on Marcus's couch, to find a property deed that had been left on his sleeping chest. The document was given to him by Marcus, who had singed over complete ownership to a brand new, $250,278 house in the suburbs bordering downtown Milwaukee, WI. Marcus was nowhere to be seen after that. Johnny tried calling numbers in an address book Marcus left behind, but not a single person (whoever they were) knew where he had gone. This left Johnny in what he liked to call a "Chinese finger trap of life." He didn't feel right about abandoning Marcus's gift and leaving the property just sitting there, but neither did he want to settle down in one place. This is how the legendary Johnny Silas disappeared.

Johnny didn't disappear by wandering off into nowhere (which was how he lived in the first place), but by doing the opposite of what everyone expected. Settling down meant putting his life on pause, leading the vast national spiderweb of travelers, hitchhikers, musicians, renegades, traveling kids, crust punks and anyone else in the know, to wonder what had happened to him.

Johnny Silas was the most famous person you have never heard of. In twenty years he had become known as the man who had been everywhere and done everything. In Madison, WI he helped the band "Freebasing Rebecca" finally get out of a rut and produce the perfect album. In Cincinnati, OH he saved a mans life when he was attacked by a dog. In Las Vegas, NV he helped a deeply divided group of crust punks and steam punks mend their differences; which lead to the creation of a masterfully painted network of underground tunnels. In Seattle, WA (as many would tell you) he helped the beginnings of the a new music genre that slowly became known as Stylecore. In many parts of California he made friends with local graffiti artists and influence new styles of spray painting --based on his own secret method-- which he called "the reverse approach." In the southern parts of The United States he was alternately known as "Johnny the Saint" and "Johnny the Breeze." No matter where you went; if there was an underground community of anyone who lived off the grid, they could tell you about the time they met (and got great help from) Johnny Silas.

Why Johnny had this effect on people; and why he was able to move around so easily, was something he didn't actually know. All he knew is that he felt a glow wherever he went; and was always troubled by the feeling that if he sat around for too long it might start to fade away.

It took him only a week to hitchhike and train hop from St. Louis to Milwaukee (which was his second fastest record for that distance). He arrived at his new house just after sunset. The sun looked especially dense and orange as it went down that night. The house was the kind of place an upstart tech innovator in his twenties would buy with borrowed money. It was obvious the moment he entered the city (and the neighborhood) that the dream of making the next big tech innovation had already turned into something else that hadn't been defined yet. Maybe someday Johnny would end up in a house based on that new dream, only to have it already shift to the next thing.

"This place is incredible..." Johnny thought, entering the door with the key Marcus left with the deed, and already dreading what was going to happen to him once he got "comfortable."

The house was three stories tall and recently built. It was designed with the sort of aesthetic you would see in Dutch countries; designed ergonomically for a productive and focused life.

"Someday they will launch people into space in these things," Johnny thought.

The house also had a unique design he couldn't quite define. It was sort of like an attempted renaissance of the "Art Deco" styles of the 20's and 30's, but in an ironic and self aware way. It was hard to describe. The three floors were stacked up unevenly; each one was shifted slightly relative to the one above it, giving it a jagged appearance from the outside. It was mostly made out of an unknown material, which was similar to wood, but definitely not wood. The entire thing was painted either Plaid Turquoise or Celeste, but gave the impression the building materials were already that color before they were added; as if put together like Legos in some new technique. The front of the house had a comically small lawn, about a foot wide, with a sturdy iron gate surrounding the whole place. Although it was in the highly uniform area of the suburbs, the house completely stuck out and was mostly on it's own block, being next to a small park and a five hundred foot ditch with a body of water in it. The front door was also in the style vaguely similar to "Art Deco," and was composed of two giant marble looking doors with vivid designs and giant brass handles.

"Perfect...," Johnny thought.

Johnny traced all three floors and explored all twelve rooms. The whole place was already thoroughly decorated. Marcus hadn't left any information (besides the deed and key) explaining why he had decided to do what he did, and the furniture and decorations didn't provide any clues. There was one single, dilapidated couch on the first floor that was different from all the new furniture; and it was obvious Marcus left it there for Johnny too sleep on.

"Very funny Marcus," Johnny thought.

After nervously scouring the whole place, Johnny found some tools in the basement and nailed his deed right next to the front door, in case any one questioned his ownership. Johnny was a little disappointed the house was so new, as he liked the possibility of ghosts. He was certain there was one in his childhood home (before the fire and the eviction) and he had a list of questions he wanted to ask the undead. Even more profound than meeting a ghost, was the time he accidentally drank someone else's unknown substance when he was couch surfing in Iowa. He saw the goddess of death Kali dance. This experience wasn't anything metaphorical or loosely interpretive; he felt confident that he had gone to another dimension and saw a profound, eternal being right before his eyes. What he always tried to explain to people, was that he had seen the goddess Kali and she looked exactly like the religious illustrations. Why such a divine and eternally beautiful being wanted anything to do with him, he had no idea. He always got derailed, midway explanation by some fool, content on verbally subverting his profound experience into their own loosely conjured spiritual procedural.

"She was just like the paintings and statues," he would always say. "But she was real, realer than I am. I thought I was going to die that night, and go beyond, and I was ready for it."

Johnny always felt a terrible sense of disappointment that he didn't get to see what lied beyond.

He spent a couple days just milling around the house and adjusting the furniture. There were six comfortable beds in the place; but he preferred to sleep on the crash couch every night. The beat up couch had a design similar to the furniture in "The Matrix" movies when Neo first met Morpheus. After three days of having nothing to do, Johnny finally heard a knock on his door. He didn't care who it was at that point, even a solicitor would have been a welcome guest. Whoever was on the other end of the door knocked for two minutes straight without letting up.

"JOHNNY SILAS! I found you!" Said the visitor as Johnny opened the door.

It was a fifteen year old boy, dressed like he was in the "Johnny Silas Fan Club," if there was such a thing (there actually was in Oklahoma City, but Johnny didn't know about it).

"You've got me," Johnny replied, fixing his long, greasy black hair and putting his headband of unknown origin back on. "Have we met before?"

"No...well," continued the boy. "I'm a huge fan. I knew it was you! You've got your famous black jeans! With the Fugazi patches...and your basketball shoes you hitch hiked across the U.S. with!"

"I've had three pairs of these," Johnny explained.

"And you're wearing your famous head band," the boy continued. "Plus your "Women's Soccer Club" shirt from Tennessee, and the the famous patched military jacket with patches from all over the country!"

This wasn't the first time this had happened.

"How did you find me my good lad?" Johnny asked.

"I went on the chat rooms!" The boy explained. "You were not easy to find!"

"Do you want an autograph?"

"No...well yeah, but more. I came to join you. I've been following you my whole life. I don't have any family either."

"You're still a kid."

"I believe in you Johnny Silas...and everything you do. The way you see the world and thirst for freedom. And the way to look at things without limits!"

Johnny hadn't thought about that before.

"Look kid, that's not exactly how it works," Johnny explained. "I'm just a regular guy who likes to get around."

"Come on! Yes it is!" Said the kid. "You're Johnny Silas. I know you're testing my resolve right now."

He thought about signing something for the kid and sending him on his way (like he would usually do in this situation), but the isolation of the house was driving him insane.

"You really don't have any family?" Johnny asked.

"No, I hitchhiked here from Steven's Point."

"You really hitchhiked here from Steven's Point on your own!? That's one hundred a fifty five miles. That's incredible."

"Yeah...come on. Johnny Silas! Make me part of your world."

"Well...what's your name?" Johnny asked, adjusting his head band and looking down at his shoes.

"My name is Roscoe Murphy right now."

"Okay Roscoe," Johnny replied. "You can live here...on what I'm going to call a learners permit. I have to check if you are really cut out for this life. You better be telling the truth too; I don't need two freaked out parents from Steven's Point banging on my door with the cops in three hours."

"I'm telling the truth," Roscoe explained, with noticeable tears of excitement welling up in his eyes.

Johnny let Roscoe in the house and began to show him around the place. Roscoe proceeded to ask him about every single piece of furniture in the house and what Johnny's connection to it was.

"There's no connections," Johnny explained. "Someone just gave me this place."

"Someone just gave you this house!?" Roscoe replied. "You can do anything Johnny Silas."

Roscoe spent the next day assailing Johnny with any and every question linguistically possible.

"How many thousand miles have you traveled?"

"Have you met any famous people?"

"How many bands are you in?"

"How did you unite all the hipsters in Seattle?"

"When do the babes show up?"

"Is the story about you doing karate in Kentucky really true?"

"Are you really seventy years old?"

"Can you fly?"

"Did you really date Charlize Theron?"

"How does your original guitar tuning work?"

Johnny did his best to answer Roscoe's questions, and always told him if something was an exaggeration. For the most part all of it was true.

Roscoe took to living on the top floor of the house and re-arranged all of the furniture into the center of the main room. He told Johnny that he didn't remember having any parents, but he remembered living in a house where all the furniture was like that. Johnny told Roscoe his story about meeting the goddess of death Kali. Roscoe's response was that he didn't believe him.

"The only real goddess' of death are the Norse Valkyries," Roscoe explained. "Everybody knows that."

"I suppose," Johnny said. "It's all real."

Roscoe asked Johnny about the house again, still not believing him.

"I got it from Marcus VanVelkenberg III," Johnny explained. "But he disappeared at the same time. I have no idea what happened to him."

"His name was really Marcus VanVelkenberg III?" Said Roscoe. "That's ridiculous."

After a week of living together, Johnny and Roscoe fell into a pattern of busking (playing guitar for money) and spanging (begging for change) in downtown Milwaukee. Johnny was able to make enough to pay for food and other necessities (as he usually did) and Roscoe caught on fast to Johnny's original method. Johnny's method of busking and spanging was unique, in that he would get a complete layout of the area first, and determine which other buskers (of whatever origin) would be in what spot at what time. He would cross reference that with the peak times of pedestrian traffic, while thoroughly researching the applicable laws. He then used Roscoe as a sub-busker and spanger, placing him in the second best spots at the second best times. They made enough money to eat like kings everyday and even managed to pay off the most successful busker in town (an ancient man named The Green Jacket) for use of his spot on Sundays; which is how they met Cecily and Lillian.

Cecily and Lillian were two "traveling kids" from Massachusetts. They were both nineteen, both had dreadlocks, always smelled like patchouli and always wore earth toned clothing and hiking boats. They were neighbors who came from very rich families, which gave them a giant security net as they hitchhiked across the United States. These kind of traveling kids were often met with cynicism among the hitch hiking, couch surfing and train hopping community; but Johnny didn't mind. "It takes all kinds," was his default response on the matter. After a quick chat at a pet store called "Animal Kingdom" (where they purchased a cat they named "Firebird"), it was decided that Cecily and Lillian could stay with them on the second floor of the house. Roscoe was especially eager for the two attractive and dank smelling young women to move in with them, and Johnny didn't see a reason to say no to anyone at this point.

Cecily and Lillian completely re-arranged the furniture on the second floor of the house in accordance with a book about sacred geometry. They also implemented a book about decorating rooms using the combined readings of the birth horoscopes of everyone in the house. This took several days to do, and Johnny laughed to himself when the room ended up being reset (after three versions of arrangements) to basically how it started. Johnny caught Roscoe trying to spy on them when they were tending to each others dreads while in their underwear.

"Come on man!" Said Roscoe. "I need this."

"Do you want to be like me?" Johnny replied, while smoking a rolled cigarette he had been holding in his hand for an hour.

"Yes!" Roscoe replied, with that misty look in his eyes again.

"The first rule of the road is always be real with the ladies."

Roscoe stopped trying to spy on them after that; which became comically absurd on the days when they both chose to walk around in bathing suits. Lillian took responsibility for Firebird most of the time; which was easy because he fed on the constant supply of mice that were coming from somewhere in the house. The four of them tried all sorts of methods to find the origin of the mice, but nothing seemed to work. Roscoe scoured the entire basement with a flashlight, but the only thing he found was a giant pile of "Wired" magazines from the mid 2000's. Roscoe became completely obsessed with Elon Musk after that. The only thing he would talk about for the next week was how Elon Musk grew up in South Africa and all of his business achievements and innovations.

"I don't like him," said Lillian one day, while brushing Firebird with a hair brush. "He creeps me out."

"You don't need to brush the cat," Johnny interjected, while leaning back in a giant bean bag chair on the third floor, where they all took to hanging out.

Sometimes Cecily would try to sit on his lap, but Johnny always politely told her she was too young and it wouldn't be appropriate.

"Come on man!" She would say. "Who cares."

This is how they typically spent time for the next week, plus their busking and spanging routine, which Johnny was constantly refining and tweaking. They all decided to name the house "Freedom Villa," which won in a three to one vote against Roscoe's idea of "S@#$ Dungeon." It was incredibly easy for Cecily and Lillian to make money while spanging; although they couldn't seem to avoid bringing questionable individuals to the house, and sometimes Johnny would have to kick people out. None of the four of them were addicted to hard drugs or alcohol, which was a complete miracle in Johnny's opinion. He had met more addicts than he could count while living on the road. He himself had spent a short time addicted to heroin, which was something he never talked about. Johnny was happy they had a set way of doing things, and it went that way until the next weekend, when there was a sudden and insistent knock on the front door.

Whoever was at the front door had made a ridiculously loud and even rhythm-ed knock for a solid three minutes before Roscoe got to the door.

"Who the hell knocks like that!?" Roscoe said as he jumped down the stairs, skipping an entire flight (he was practicing how many steps he could jump over). He opened the door wide while saying "what the hell man, this is Johnny Silas's place!"

"Don't tell people that!" Lillian yelled from the kitchen across the hall.

"Never mind that," said a man in his thirties on the other side, wearing a suit and a trench coat and talking mostly to himself.

He pushed past Roscoe and immediately walked into the kitchen while talking to himself in a sort of philosophers dialogue.

"Thursday is better than Friday...if...if I go to the community center...yep..yeah! That's it."

"Ha ha ha! Who is this guy?" Cecily laughed, painting her toenails with her foot on the kitchen table.

The man kept talking to himself

"I need forty seven...no forty eight dollars and..."

"Hello!" Said Cecily.

"Oh yeah!" said the man, becoming alert and talking to everyone. "My name is Stephen Johnston! Thanks for having me over."

"We didn't have you over," said Cecily.

"Well, welcome to the 'Freedom Vila," said Johnny.

Stephen Johnston looked up at the ceiling and appeared to be inspecting it to see if there was any water damage.

"What does he want?" Cecily asked.

Stephen proceeded to resume walking around the kitchen in a manner that looked inspired by the renowned philosophers of old. He started completely ignoring everyone again and talking to himself.

"If I upload on Sunday...then..no...wait. So...sell the old textbooks; go to digital format...yeah, that's perfect. Wait...no. Sell all the coats...and...what about the one from Ursula...no! Screw it...sell all the coats; trade the bus pass...and...and..!Wait, crap."

"Is he insane?" Roscoe asked to everyone else.

"He's fine," said Johnny.

"Can we help you with something sir?" Johnny asked.

Stephen turned back around and stared back at Johnny. He looked like he was going to say something lucid and explanatory, but then continued to stare at Johnny for much longer than normal; it was almost as if he was trying to see through him with x-ray vision.

"Is everything going well today sir?" Johnny continued, looking like he had a smile from seeing an old friend coming up to the surface. "Have we met before?"

"Um..., yeah. I heard Johnny Silas lives here."

Stephen rotated around fast the other direction for an indiscernible reason, which caused Firebird (who was watching Stephen with primordial instincts on the counter next to him) to catch his claws on Stephen's trench coat. The cat began to panic and go into frenzy while scraping his strangely overly developed hind legs against the expensive marble counter top.

"Cat's about to freak out," Cecily announced, still focused on her toenails.

Firebird started to yowell in protest as Stephen jumped away from the counter top in confusion. This only made things worse, as the cat was now dangling from Stephen's trench coat by it's claws.

"What the hell is this?!" Said Stephen.

"You've got a cat stuck to you dude," said Cecily.

"You think you sound cool right now?" Roscoe said to Cecily.

Stephen tried to detach the cat from his coat; which only caused it to panic more and grow even louder.

"You're hurting him!" Said Lillian, rushing into the kitchen from the other room.

Stephen looked like he was on the verge of crashing directly through the double sided, ornate sliding glass door that led to the patio garden outside.

"Do something Johnny!" Said Lillian.

Johnny looked like he was quickly calculating what to do next; and then, to everyone's amazement, did nothing at all. He lifted the Tension Tamer brand tea he was holding in a coffee cup to his lips and took a short sip. Stephen managed to calm down after looking at Johnny and regained his balance; thereby avoiding crashing through the door. The cat (still dangling) hoped up Stephen's side with it's back legs, and then did an almost perfectly orchestrated sideways jump and twist, liberating his claws and falling freely to the floor. The cat ran off briskly as it hit the floor and fled to safety somewhere in the house.

"What just happened?" Said Lillian.

"How the hell did you just do that?" Roscoe asked, getting that look again.

"How'd I do what?" Said Johnny, taking another sip of tea.

"Whatever dude," said Cecily, rolling her eyes. "You know what they were asking."

"Come on!" Said Roscoe.

"Alright," said Johnny, setting his tea on the counter top. "Rule thirty four of the road is: 'when in doubt as to what move to use; make like Bruce Lee and do nothing."

"What could that possibly mean?" Roscoe replied, looking like he was planning to comb through every book and movie about Bruce Lee.

"It's easy," said Cecily. "It means you can flow like water. And if that water comes in contact with anything, you just decide to keep flowing, and you'll be fine."

"That's not it," said Lillian. "It means you can't affect water because it will just flow around you."

"Does it mean...uh...," Roscoe began to say. "Does it mean liquid is the strongest substance?"

"You're all right!" said Johnny.