kagablog

The Dead Duck Diner capsuled a corner just two fingers short of the waterfront. It gleamed like the wet fin of some imaginary car, all sleazy chrome against the fast-forward decay of the esplanade. Festooned with rotisserie jungle chicken, pink on green neon and loud checkerboard trim, it bubbled with all the indigestible traffic off the strip. You name the parasite and their umbilical leavings would be smeared along the linoleum counter tops; robo-jox, the bitchdoctors, all the sailor drek, cyborg love bunnies, bible jerk jumpers, jewel shifters, soldier camp dropouts, alien trannies, cannibal hobo freakshows, keyboard cowboys, jungle mummy’s, the whole carnival sucked through the place like a vacuum cleaner and gathered like gunk in the filters. The Dead Duck never closed. It was a shower drain for clandestine information, functioning as a sort of dysfunctional, somewhat diseased nerve center. All the little grapevines had their roots in the milk booths, and everyone on the knock came by at some point, to bleed their personal underground for the latest word on the wall. The spacious cartoon booths clustered around the space-age windows, upholstered in bright lime and banana coloured leather. Cherry red formica tables radiated out from a central grill and milk bar, sucked as sweets between the puffy lips of the leather booths while ghettotech grind squirted like poisonous toothpaste from the glowing jukebox. It scratched a nerve-hop beneath the psychotic veins of conversation, creating an atmosphere of noise and dysfunction. Number Nun had taken Taty to a powder blue booth at the far end, where the Sugar Twins were already installed, picking at fries with purple ketchup. Taty was wrapped in a huge cachou pink towel, still in her swimming costume and marbled irreparably in lurid paint. Rainbow flakes of colour chipped off her bare limbs and feet each time she moved while her wet hair dripped down onto the counter creating contaminated puddles out of the spilled ketchup. She slouched on the massive crescent booth, staring wistfully into a glass of napkins. Roller skating waitresses whizzed past at breakneck speed, shattering her reverie at times. Some nearby sailors were pawing the Sugar Twins, cat-calling incessantly and buying round after round of milkshakes which they proceeded to hurl at the wall. A poor little nervous wreck of a redhead was mopping at a heart-wrenching rate, but nothing she could do would calm the storm. Cherries, chocolate syrup and double mint cream covered the wall behind her like modern art. The Sugar Twins didn’t seem to notice the commotion or the hands on them and pecked up fry after fry like an assembly line. Taty glanced up at one point and noticed that Number Nun was studying her thoughtfully.

“So how was it for you?” the robot Madonna asked quietly.

Taty sighed indifferently.

“I feel like I drank a whole bottle of peach shampoo,” she replied monosyllabically.

“Good girl,” Number Nun nodded.

She reached into her cassock and withdrew an electric blue lollipop, which she then handed ceremoniously to Taty.

“You’ve earned it,” Number Nun smiled, patting Taty’s head.

“Are you being serious?” Taty frowned, staring blankly at the garish lollipop in her fingers.

Number Nun seemed confused.

“Alphonse told me that it was what you wanted,” she flustered.

“Don’t be such a robot,” Taty muttered, unwrapping the lollipop and jamming it into her cheek.

“I’m afraid I can’t help it,” Number Nun answered quite primly.

Taty glanced sideways at her as another bowl of fries arrived. A fresh volley of milkshakes exploded against the wall, eliciting a wail from the cleaner and a chorus of raucous laughter from the sailors.

“Forget it, its yummy,” Taty slurped, tugging at Number Nun’s sleeve.

Her lips had already to turn bright blue from the sucker. She sighed, curled her paint smeared legs up on the couch and plonked her head onto Number Nun’s lap.

“This sno-globing is hard work!” Taty exclaimed, staring up, past the edge of the table at Number Nun’s chin. Number Nun peered down at her.

“They programmed me to prevent you from escaping,” Number Nun said. “But I can deactivate myself if you want to run away.”

Taty cracked the lollipop between her teeth, feeling the sherbet fizz up in her mouth.

“But this is all so much fun, why would I want to escape?” she lisped through a mouth full of sherbet.

Number Nun raised an eyebrow in an exasperated fashion.

“You are very stupid childbride,” she muttered, turning her head away.

“Hay I’m not stupid!” Taty yelled up at her.

Number Nun ignored the commotion on her lap, fussing over some aspect of the Sugar Twin’s behaviour or appearance.

Taty sullenly sucked at the candy, feeling it dissolve like plastic. She bared her teeth up at Number Nun’s chin, imagining them to be a blinding cobalt blue. After a while she settled down, twiddling her rainbow scaled feet in the air.

“I just don’t have anywhere to go now,” she mouthed soundlessly to herself.

“Why don’t you just go home,” Number Nun snipped, passing down a napkin for her stained mouth.

“How did you hear…what….oh,” Taty trailed off, pushing aside the proffered serviette.

She glared at all the mould, cutlery graffiti and ancient bubblegum fossilized beneath the diner table, irritated that Number Nun had overheard her talking to herself.

“Wherever you go there you are!” Taty snapped up at the porcelain chin.

Number Nun ignored her until it was time to leave.

They returned to the Nebula Shell Sea hotel every night after that, getting into the groove of what was soon to become a strenuous grind. Taty would wake up around noon and wander down to the pool, where she would wake up slowly, listening to tapes on her walkman. There would always be leftover breakfast in the kitchens, usually paper thin jungle chicken steaks, fresh purple cornbread and bowls and bowls of weird fruit gathered from the surrounding jungle. Sometimes there would be other people at the pool, house regulars or strangers who had stayed because they were too inebriated to leave the night before. Yet despite this traffic, nobody ever really ever spoke to Taty except Number Nun. She barely even saw Alphonse, though when she did, they would chat amiably and he would show her some new and secret part of his kingdom which she had not seen before. He seemed to be busy almost all the time though and not particularly interested in spending time with ‘the stray’ as he had begun to call her. Sometimes the house would hold a dysfunctional high tea in the frangipani grove and the silent servants would set out table after table of pastries. People would drift from the villa like sleepwalkers, drowsily nibbling cakes in the syrupy sunshine while an old record player fuzzed out antique LP’s. The days were a blur. Taty would gestate in the pool or watch cartoons in the private cinema till Number Nun found her, usually in the late afternoon. The android Madonna would take her down to the basement and stick her in the Genny where she would spend about an hour getting baked and seeing funny lights and colours fizz before her eyes. She was always woozy afterwards, vomiting and passing out every few seconds. But these effects would soon pass. Number Nun would carry her up to one of the big bathrooms and bathe her in cool water to get her back ‘into herself’. She would brew Taty medicinal tea from local plants, before hosing her down with bizarre solutions which glowed in the dark. Taty would then get dressed for the evening. If there was a party or some event she would ritz it up in the labyrinthine walk-in closets upstairs. But more often than not it was just a ghost-girl session in the Shell Sea and her work would depend on the costume required. Romeo would dress her according to what the Sugar Twins had ‘seen’ in the pigeon’s sno-globe and each night was different. Some of the outfits were utterly outlandish; green ballgowns made entirely of balloons, full-body gelatine casing, other times she would be called upon to play a role like a librarian or an air hostess. Romeo seemed to have a never-ending supply of costumes and props and displayed an inhuman ability to improvise under pressure. Somehow, however absurd the requirements, he would always manage to her spruced up so she would be able to juice the pigeon’s trip-switch. He told her that it was easy with her though, because she had so much natural ability it made stage management ‘glaze on a cake that already been baked’. After a while it became a mind numbing routine and she would beg for a day off. They would often grant her that and she would spend the day listlessly wandering around the house or nagging the midget for a ride into town.

Judas smoked a particularly strong strain of marijuana and it was he who got Taty stoned for the first time. It was an attempt at corruption on his part and Number Nun became particularly annoyed with him, banning Taty from smoking. Taty would however manage to sneak down to the old plantation area on occasion, where Judas would hotbox an old greenhouse in the middle of the night. They would get plastered and Judas would bitch about everyone in the house, the city and the universe in general. Taty spaced out during these bitch-sessions, lying on the piles of leaves, staring out at the dark banana trees, listening to scratchy Susan Christie and Sybille Baer tapes at high volume. It was obvious that Judas disliked her, though his was the type that required an audience and anyone would do in a pinch. He prattled on for hours, spilling secret information like a sinking ship. His legs were mangled beyond repair but he seemed to not notice. Alphonse, Michelle and the midget would tie junk to him when he slept and his bridal train of soup cans and metal parts got bigger everyday. Number Nun would occasionally take pity on him and slice off some of the heavier items with her laser fingernails. Taty eventually ended up locked in her room when Number Nun found out she was smoking semi-regularly. She threw a tantrum and Number Nun explained that marijuana conflicted with the Genny sessions and that it was in her programming to maximize the effects of the treatment. When Taty was finally allowed out she would sulk by the flower clotted pool, getting more and more bored as the days began to run into each other like melting cheese. Each night would see her drinking milkshakes at the Dead Duck with Number Nun and the Sugar Twins, recovering from her latest escapade in psychic theatricality. They would sometimes wait for Romeo. He would join them after arranging an army of maids to clean up whatever mess was left in the rooms. He had become somewhat renown for finding impeccable cleaning ladies and ran a small cleaning agency on the side, which catered to all manner of businesses down the strip. Romeo the Dealer had a lot of things going on the side. He and Number Nun would talk shop whenever he came to the Dead Duck, arranging the week ahead in schedules. It would take hours to leave the Dead Duck. They would often reach the house just before daybreak, as it was some distance outside of the city, in a secluded jungle location. It all bored Taty stiff and she would chat to the safer denizens of the diner, becoming known as a regular, ordering round after round of milkshakes. She liked to mix discordant flavours; bubblegum and vanilla or chocolate and lemon sorbet. Once she asked Cherry Cola, her favourite rollerskating waitress, to have a whole slice of banana cream pie blended into a pineapple shake. Whenever she thought back on that period in later years, it was often the milkshakes she remembered best.