kagablog

The astronaut loitered in the corner of the room. His reflective visor regarded the long mirror, which he knew to be a window. An infinity mirror was created between his visor and the one-way glass, but nobody was around to see it. Although the spotlights faced him directly, his visor cut the bite out of them. It allowed him to face into the bright white glare. The room was stifling from the heat of the lights but a climate control unit in his suit eradicated any discomfort he might have experienced. The sound of the astronauts breathing emanated from a low-fidelity speaker on his chest plate. A vintage radio also crackled in the corner of the room. The room had been professionally soundproofed so that these were the only sounds. They were magnified and drawn into focus by a magnetic echo-proof field, creating a sense of staged tension. The sudden sound of a door mechanism broke the pregnant stillness. The astronaut turned heavily to see a sturdy white fire-door swing open. Taty entered the room as cautiously as a deer, peeking around the jamb before tip-toeing in. She wore a navy blue Olympic swimming costume with a matching swimming cap. She was also drenched and breathing heavily, as though she had just swum a lengthy marathon. Romeo had quickly improvised this illusion by hosing her down with lukewarm water whilst forcing her to jog on the spot. Impenetrable blue goggles and a flesh-tone nose plug completed her ensemble. It was obvious that she was nervous, switching weight from foot to foot as though she needed the bathroom. The movement created puddles everywhere, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her bare legs were goose-pimpled despite the heat of the room. The astronaut observed her with an unreadable and intense stillness. His measured mechanical breathing filled the sound dampened hotel room like a robot, creating an ominous atmosphere. She clumsily daubed her finger to a concealed earpiece, checking that it was in place. A tiny wire ran from this tiny device to a miniature radio-pack at the small of her back. Romeo suddenly appeared in the doorway. He pushed a massive airport cargo trolley over the threshold. A vintage fridge had been loaded onto the cargo trolley. It clinked heavily as he navigated past obstructions to the center of the room. An outdated golf bag was slung over his shoulder. He handed this to Taty before deftly depositing the heavily loaded fridge onto the floor. Once this task was accomplished he wheeled the trolley out, locking the door behind him. Taty and the astronaut once again left alone to regard one another like mismatched gladiators. Her fingers were clenching and unclenching on the golf bag’s strap as his distorted breathing quickened slightly.

Romeo got backstage to find Number Nun already at the one-way glass, surveying the proceedings. Her eyes had irised open and she was once again employing her spectral filter. Romeo took his place at a bank of controls and removed an intercom from a tiny wall bracket. He thumbed the device on and winced as a wash of feedback whined from a small speaker. Taty jumped in the harsh lights, slapping her hand reflexively to her ear. Romeo muttered something to himself, quickly adjusting the sound levels to a comfortable volume.

“Sorry about that,” Romeo’s small telephonic voice spoke into her ear.

Taty nodded in the general direction of the mirror.

“Ok, show the spaceman what’s in the fridge,” Romeo commanded.

Taty set the golf bag down on the wet linoleum floor and padded over to the fridge. The astronaut’s helmet swiveled, following her across the room. She opened the fridge to reveal an interior stacked to capacity with unmarked milk bottles. A cold white light ratcheted on inside and the astronaut saw that each bottle had been filled with a different type of paint. There were many bright colours, each held separately in the gleaming glass bottles. The loaded rainbow of them all reflected hungrily in the astronaut’s visor.

“Right,” Romeo’s voice crackled in her ear. “Now close the door and get the axe out of the golf bag.”

Taty shut the heavy fridge door and walked over to where she had dropped the golf bag. She withdrew a bright red fire-axe from the bag without taking her goggled eyes from the stationary figure of the spaceman.

In the darkness of the observation chamber, Romeo shot a glance at Number Nun and deactivated the microphone.

“Her readouts are tipping the scales,” he mentioned quietly. “Where did you find her?”

“They found her out on the road,” Number Nun replied thoughtfully. “I don’t know where she comes from.”

Romeo thumbed the line open and spoke quietly into the intercom.

“Now when you hear the music, do like I said,” he ordered.

He glanced up to see Taty nod beyond the mirror.

She was clutching the axe with slippery fingers, water dripping off her chin and wrists, chewing her lips in nervous anticipation. Number Nun surveyed the scene in spectral mode. Taty’s sno-globe was radically different to the energy body of the astronaut. It had a weirdly mutable shape which altered textures and colours like a cuttlefish, spiking with occasional geometric peaks and swelling to three times its size in irregular pulses. These swellings continually interfered with the energy fields and ghostly forms around her, creating strange disturbances.

“Her globe’s responded rather incredibly to the Genny,” Number Nun mentioned.

Romeo tapped a counter with a pale finger, his face under-lit by tiny green LED’s.

“I can see that,” he nodded. “We ready to get it on?”

Number Nun nodded slowly without taking her eyes from the unfolding scene beyond the glass. Romeo reached down and started up an antique Nagra tape machine. The buttery hiss and crackle of analog tape spooled out into the room. It blared from submerged speaker systems creating a din within the bright room. Taty flinched as a burst of maniacal cartoon music jangled alarmingly into the hotel room at a deafening volme.

“Lets go,” Romeo’s voice snapped in her ear.

Taty hesitated for a moment before crossing the room and swinging the axe wildly at the fridge. Her first blow was mistimed and it glanced off clumsily, scraping a lashing of white paint from the metal. Her second strike was more pronounced and the entire fridge clattered and shook. She could sense the astronaut’s breathing gathering in intensity as she heaved blow after blow at the denting surface of the appliance. The crash of the axe must have been loud, but it was dissolved in the torrent of sound. As the music gathered in feverish intensity she began to hack at the fridge with all her might, feeling the casing begin to buckle and split. Behind the mirror Number Nun was focusing in on the energy formation she had pointed out to the twins; the ganglion-like ‘trip-switch’ in the lower spinal area of the astronaut’s sno-globe. The trip-switch had begun to swell and shine in response to Taty’s actions. It throbbed with an eerie internal light. The astronaut had subconsciously begun to sway in time with this throbbing. His motions indicated that he was entering into some form of trance brought about by the stage management of the scene. He clutched the edge of the bed at one point, seeming to almost fall. Taty’s energy body had also started to morph in response to her actions. Several emanations began to soften as they spiked out from her sno-globe. These energies exuded themselves, transmuting into long filaments of questing energy. These tendrils reached magnetically out of her, seeking the peculiar light which emanated from the astronaut’s trip-switch. As Taty’s hacking became more brutal, the filaments intertwined, lacing together to create a crackling tentacle which waved blindly in the air between them. Romeo was watching Number Nun closely, waiting for a signal. And when Number Nun saw that the tentacle was fully formed, she nodded to Romeo who quickly grabbed the intercom.

“Open the fridge,” he commanded.

Taty dropped the axe, nearly severing one of her toes before jerking open the damaged door. A river of multicoloured paint ejaculated out of the half-destroyed fridge. At this moment of climax Number Nun observed Taty’s tentacle of ghostly energy flicker like a muscular snake. It swirled in the air before arrowing deep into the sno-globe of the astronaut. There it wrapped deftly around the trip-switch and squeezed, leeching the strange light from trip-switch as though pulping a ripe fruit. The action produced dramatic consequences. Number Nun observed as the entire sno-globe of the astronaut bloated like a rapidly inflated balloon. A mechanical scream shrieked from the chest speaker of the spaceman and he collapsed heavily to the floor. The theft of the astronaut’s trip-switch light seemed to settle Taty’s energy body. It ebbed heavily back into cohesion like a globule of coloured oil in water, soothed.

Taty froze in panic, staring at the fallen figure. Sweat and chlorinated water glistened on her as the vivid paint flowed out around her bare feet. She tore the goggles off and splashed through the rainbow tide, falling to her knees in front of the astronaut. The cartoon music died in an abrupt garble of tape, leaving in its wake the nullified hiss of powerful speakers.

“Are you alive!” Taty shouted at her reflection in the gold visor.

The astronaut moved weakly in the paint and she tried to assist him. Lashes of green, purple, yellow and red splashed over her arms and legs as they slipped about, settling heavily against the bed. After a moment, the astronaut’s voice emerged from his chest, amidst convulsive electronic respiration. And while he spoke she sought his face, only to find her own distraught and distorted image caught in the visor. Fluid dripped off her and onto the heatproof mirror-glass as she breathed jaggedly and he spoke.

“When you pass into the shadow of the moon you see a darkness that no man can truly imagine,” he rasped quietly to her. “Out there, in the outer darkness the stars are like white fire shot-gunned across infinity…And you finally know how alone you truly are, and how far you have gone from the world.”

The door crashed open and Romeo entered, followed by the swooping figure of Number Nun.

“Get her out of here,” Romeo muttered, surveying the damage.

Number Nun pulled the struggling, paint-smeared girl off the astronaut and then dragged her, kicking and screaming, out of the room.