kagablog

Taty snuck out to the abandoned planter’s shack in the late afternoon. She wandered barefoot through the ruined plantations, listening to ‘Pammy’s on a Bummer’ on repeat in her oversized headphones while the heavy gold light played in the fuzzy heads of distant trees. The door of the shack was ajar and a dreary little fire spluttered some distance into the banana groves. An old jungle Indian she often saw down in the plantations was boiling a can of beans in the coals. She threw him a little unreciprocated wave and went into the shack. She found Judas babbling to himself about little green men and feverishly packing dirt-crusted carrots into old fruit crates. He was struggling to hide these crates beneath a table and had chewed off his splints to aid his endeavors. He was using his fingers, despite the horrible fact that some were definitely bending the wrong way and swollen shapelessly. The neon words on his forehead were by now hopelessly smeared. Taty rolled a fat joint, lay on the banana leaves and proceeded to get intensely stoned. She was desperately trying to listen to her psychedelic Hammond organ mix-tape, but the pitch of Judas’s ravings had attained some form of crescendo. It became a raucous din, which quickly invaded the heavy casing and overtaxed volume of her radar headphones. Now that she thought of it, his maniacal attitude seemed to fit perfectly into the charged atmosphere of the house that day. Final preparations were underway for some massive party and she remembered being grateful that she would be in town, even though the prospect of another night working the dingy underworld of the Shell Sea had depressed her intensely. It was the first time she began to seriously court the idea of leaving. She had some cash and knew her way about. She had even made one or two friends who would help her get out of town. But the lassitude of the house had her under its heavy, sugar-blanket spell. It was just all so easy on the estate, money routines, comfort and food on demand. She had a nice room she had gotten used to, a cinema that no one seemed to exploit and the pool, to which she had become hopelessly attached. Sure there were the weirdoes, crazy parties and the crocodiles, but the prospect of the road seemed raw and intense in comparison. She snuggled down into the leaves, trying to relax, but a niggling feeling of doubt had infected her mind, growing to absurd proportions beneath the lens of marijuana and Judas’s insane raving.

She left when she couldn’t take it anymore and headed back to the house in a luminescent daze. Number Nun would be scanning around for her soon in any case. Dusk smoldered in the abandoned plantations and the evening trees were alive with the din of birds, frogs and insects. It was dark by the time she reached the frangipani grove, that sullen, claustrophobic immensity of darkness which drowns the jungle at night. Servants were stringing paper lanterns up in the lawns and cars were already starting to arrive, swooping up the long drive like barracudas. The pool lights had been switched on and they threw kaleidoscopic water patterns against the flank of the mission bell tower. She glimpsed Michelle sneaking through this swirling light, across the poolside patio. She appeared to be talking to herself in a secretive and surreptitious way that was entirely out of character. It was only when Taty emerged into the light that she saw she was on a communications headset of some sort. Taty waved in a drunken fashion but Michelle seemed agitated beyond belief to be caught talking on the set. She scuttled off like a hermit crab, dragging her cross into the watery shadows like a shell, vanishing down a half-lit passage. Taty frowned in the gathering gloom of the tree line. Something was definitely afoot.

During her first week at the house she had discovered a large bathroom on the fourth floor. It was used infrequently by the denizens of the house and was quite grimy in the corners. The large chamber had a short tiled corridor cul-de-sac, which had been fitted with a shower head and drain. A large vine-eaten window gazed out into the blackness of the back gardens. The room was in the old part of the house and there were still no light fittings in place. She had to carry up one of the hurricane lanterns from the pool area when she wanted to shower. Sometimes she would sit in the tiled cul-de-sac for hours, obliterating the rest of the world in a never-ending gush of steamy, recycled water. She wanted to escape into this private shower zone of hers for a little while before Number Nun found her, but there were too many people in the corridors. A spotlight from a chamber down the passage was throwing white light into the bathroom, destroying its feeling of isolation and solitude. She bathed in one of the en suites, pulled on her green jeans ran into Number Nun on her way back to her room.

“Childbride, I’ve been scanning for you,” Number Nun said, taking her aside as one or two inebriated guests drifted past.

“What’s going on?” Taty asked. “These people are everywhere.”

“I’m not exactly sure myself,” Number Nun frowned. “I think it has something to do with Mister Sister, though I can’t say for certain. In any case I can’t come with you to town, I have some things to do here.”

On any other night, this announcement would have given Taty a sense of liberation, but tonight the presence of Number Nun would have been a reassurance. She took hold of Number Nun’s sleeve and yanked it like a small animal.

“Please come,” she whined.

“Stop it Childbride,” Number Nun chided, removing her hand. “And don’t think I can’t tell that you are loaded on reefer.”

“It was just a little J!” Taty complained, now sulky at the prospect of going into town alone.

“Pull yourself together now,” Number Nun ordered. “The car will pick you up in half an hour, so just do your job and then wait for me in the Dead Duck.”

Taty glanced around, sensing some deeper disturbance in the fabric of the house.

“Is this even a party?” she asked nervously.

“I’ve told you already, I don’t know what’s happening,” Number Nun re-iterated. “Nobody seems to know except Alphonse and he isn’t anywhere to be found.”

She bundled Taty off after giving her precise instructions about where and when to meet the midget. Taty complied uneasily, feeling more and more unsettled by the way the night was progressing. Outside, finned cars were beginning to clutter up the drive as a drunken stranger began to scream obscenities from the lightless flower groves. She dressed to the sound of distant thumping music, feeling depression descend upon her like white noise, fuzzing everything else out behind its static.

The midget was unusually surly on the ride into town. Taty had taken the Number Nun’s usual place in the front seat and insisted that they listen to her tapes while they zoomed down the long, foliage -choked road into town. She had already played ‘California Dreaming’ three times in a row and you could tell it was starting to get on his nerves. He chewed his cigar aggressively at each chorus, cornering like a maniac. She watched the undergrowth flurry by in the headlights, dissolving out into the primordial darkness of the jungle.

“So do you know what’s going down back at the house or what?” Taty asked halfway in.

The midget glanced sideways at her before finally ejecting her tape and loading in some smoky overdrive blues.

“Boss got a bee in the bonnet,” the midget muttered enigmatically.

Taty stared blankly at him.

“A bee?” she muttered in irritation.

“Alien honey for alien bees!” he snapped back, turning the volume all the way up and thus eradicating the possibility of any further conversation.

He deposited her on the drive of the Nebula Shell Sea and screeched off into the night before the door was even closed. She scuttled briskly up the front steps, terrified by stories of the girl-snatching monitor lizards in the palm trees. The sallow light in the stained marble arcades of the hotel seemed to further intensify her mood of depression. She avoided the scary rattrap elevator, as per usual, and headed for the stairs. She passed by the vagrants, junkies and scuba-gear beatniks with her headphones at full volume. Some waved to her, shouting ‘Hay Taty! Hay little ghost!’ and she would waved back without smiling. She had become a Shell Sea regular now and the thought added lead sinkers to her each time she crossed the dirty checkerboard floors into the cigarette burned carpets of the corridors. She could feel the weight of the place dragging her down into a dingy ocean. The fact that she was on a stoner comedown didn’t help and further amplified the sense of cosmic inertia, causing her to slouch and bump against things in a clumsy manner. Some crazy deep sea fisherman had left a dead swordfish in one of the fire escapes and it smelled like death itself; the end of times finally come.

She ran into Romeo exiting an elevator. He was with Karolina K-Star the war correspondent. Karolina was used to be a ghost girl with Alphonse till she landed several journalist gigs with glossies in the lowlands. She used to spend hours in the Dead Duck with her little dog Gizmo, writing diaries in tattered notebooks. Romeo was able to hook her books up with an underground press group who circulated subversive pamphlets, and the ‘Life on Planet K-Star’ diaries went into print. They sold like hotcakes in the distant lowland cities, especially amongst teenage girls who wanted to know everything about what it was like to be a ghostie in the lawless zone. Pretty soon Karolina had landed a dime-novel publisher and a film crew was deployed to the zone to shoot a television movie of her diaries. The crew was robbed blind in the first week and shooting cancelled when the wrestlers ‘confiscated’ all their equipment. Glossies still ran her columns though and dubbed her a teenage war correspondent because she chose to stay and ‘report’ from the lawless areas. In actual fact it was the only place she knew and felt uncomfortable out in civilized society. She and Taty had met at one of Alphonse’s uncontrollable parties. They’d shared a joint behind the orchid house and spent an hour or two snapping Polaroid’s of sleeping peacocks in the dim glare of hand-held flashlights. They hugged hello outside the elevator and Taty noticed that the pair were both dressed in black and carrying video equipment.

“So what’s going down?” Taty fished curiously.

“Listen cupcake,” Romeo said. “I have to help K-Star shoot a deployment of soldiers for a news network, I left your costume backstage.”

“But what do I have to do to jump the trigger?” Taty frowned, annoyed that all the regular routines of her day had been turned so completely upside down.

“The pigeon’s a regular,” Romeo answered briskly. “She’ll explain what you need to do – listen, I’m sorry but we have to split if we want to catch these ‘staches in the act.”

“So is something going down in the jungle or what?” Taty pressed.

“I think there’s some new glue in the stew,” K-Star confided after a moment’s hesitation. “Massive deployments all over the city and big bad bubbles on the vice vine.”

“Hectic electric,” Taty muttered.

“Yeah, so me and Romeo are gonna go grab some eye-candy and get it out on the wire before the boil blows.”

“Can I come with!” Taty asked brightly.

K-Star shot Romeo a look and Romeo placed a cold palm on Taty’s shoulder.

“Not tonight,” Romeo answered flatly. “Alphonse still has you on contract, so best go upstairs and get your sno-globe on.”

“Besides its dangerous,” K-Star shrugged.

“Danger is my middle name!” Taty protested, practically stamping her foot.

“You middle name is munchkin,” Karolina winked, pinching her cheek. “Later alligator.”

They swept off down the passage like a couple of ninjas leaving Taty feeling despondent and useless, like she was missing all the fun.

Taty unrolled the metal shutter leading to the backstage area. The sullen glow of the other room outlined props and cables in sallow highlights, amplifying the shadowy recesses of the chamber. A cheap flannel nightgown had been draped over a canvas chair along with a printout, a pink plastic hairbrush and a quarter cup of olive oil. The nightgown was powder blue, with a smiling teddy bear embossed on the front; one of throwaway those items of clothing you could imagine skid row mothers picking up at charity shops. The message on the printout read: ‘Grease your hair with oil – not too much - so that it appears to have not been washed for several days / carry hairbrush but do not use / enter barefoot / wear nightgown nothing else– pigeon will tell you what to do’. Taty sighed miserably, wandering over to the long mirror window to survey the scene. Inside the room, the halogen spotlights lay in darkness and the only illumination came from an amber reading light on the bedside table. The lamp created a cozy glow that seemed somehow out of place in the shabby hotel room. A woman in her mid to late fifties was seated on the bed, clutching a wand with a tinfoil star at its end, staring sadly into the light through a pair of thick spectacles. She was dressed in a sort of shabby peach ballgown, topped off by a tarnished tiara. Her hair was a premature white and everyday clothes could be glimpsed, tucked under the bed along with a handbag. Taty left the glass, and greased her hair in the large dormitory bathrooms adjoining the backstage area. She disobeyed the note however, and kept her underwear on beneath the gown.

Taty entered the room, dangling the tacky hairbrush between her oily fingers. The woman started, staring at Taty over her shoulder as though she were a burglar.

“Romeo the Dealer say’s you’re a regular,” Taty announced. “He said you’ll tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

The woman continued to glare at her through her thick spectacles, as though dealing with a foreign waiter whose language she could not properly understand.

“Are you all right?” the woman finally enquired.

“You seem distracted,” she added when Taty didn’t answer immediately.

“Huh? Oh sorry,” Taty mumbled, subconsciously counting the pulses of the neon sign outside the window.

“I guess I’m a little tired,” she sighed, dragging her eyes away from the window and back to the matter at hand.

“You look exhausted,” the woman said. “Why don’t you sit down for a moment before we begin.”

A clatter of distant gunfire came out of the night, echoing down the dark streets and filtering through the half-chinked window.

“Sounds like machine guns,” Taty observed, perking up slightly

“They seem very far away,” the woman responded off-handedly. “Why don’t you sit down?”

It was clear that the woman wanted her to sit on the bed beside her, but Taty, feeling rebellious, took the small plastic chair beside the window. She slouched against the wall, swinging the chair recklessly back on its hind legs and staring morosely down at the city. Cars screeched across a nearby alley, escaping like birds into the night. There was another speckling of gunshots over the waterfront. The woman turned to face her, and they sat for a moment listening to the city.

“So what’s the matter?” The woman asked, in a not unfriendly fashion. “Why don’t you talk to me about it, I don’t mind a little talk.”

Taty studied her for a moment. The woman had apparently relaxed and was now fiddling with her wand. In the cosy light, with her tiara and ball gown she had acquired a benign, children’s story aspect. Except for the thick glasses of course, which lent her a vaguely unreadable character. Taty rubbed her eyes and frowned.

“I’m just tired of all this I guess,” she moped. “I mean, you’re a regular sno-glober, you know what I do.”

The woman nodded patiently, staring into the lampshade while Taty continued unabated.

“I’ve been up and at it for almost two months now!” she complained, flicking specks of grime out at the rooftops. “Every day, in and out of this crummy hotel, all these berets, all these lollipops, I need a holiday…”

“Did you run away from home?”

“No, I walked away,” Taty muttered confrontationally.

“I see,” the woman replied.

“No-one noticed,” Taty murmured, turning back to the light punctured night, lost in thought.

“You see, my brother, he died…” she mentioned quietly, almost to herself.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman said.

“He wasn’t supposed to die, it was…we were…Anyway I left and then Alphonse Guava found me and set me up with this job.”

“Do you like your job?”

“I don’t know,” Taty replied after awhile. “It’s changing something…Something inside me.”

She cleared her throat, frowning down at her stomach, as though seeing something within it.

“It’s milk-shaking,” she said. “It feels like a milkshake, like how a milkshake looks, you know, when it’s mixing. That’s how it feels, in my tummy. Like a dream of something…I don’t know.”

She swung her bare feet in weary irritation, tapping a repetitive beat against the sill with the handle of the hairbrush.

“So what’s your deal?” Taty asked, changing the subject. “What’s with the wand?”

“I’m your fairy godmother,” the woman answered quite seriously.

Taty’s swinging feet skipped a beat as she tried to decide whether or not she was supposed to play along.

“If I could grant you a wish, what would you wish for?” the woman asked suggestively.

After so many weeks, Taty had grown tired of the games the people in the hotel played, all the secret games with all the rules that she was somehow expected to know. Tonight felt different though. There was all the chaos in the street and no Romeo in the booth to tell her what script to stick to.

“I wish I could destroy the world!” Taty snapped.

The woman surprised her by waving her wand three times in the air and muttering some sort of incantation. Somehow this infuriated her even more and she could begin to feel tears of frustration welling up behind her eyes.

“Look what do you want from me!” Taty gritted. “If you don’t want anything then I want to go!”

“Don’t cry little baby,” the woman hushed sympathetically.

“Don’t pretend to be nice to me,” Taty protested, a hot tear of anger spilling down her cheek. “Just tell me what you want!”

The woman now seemed quite embarrassed that she was not being indulged. She shifted uncomfortably on the bed, adjusting her tiara in a nonplussed way, smoothing down her shabby gown.

“What do you want!” Taty squealed, now standing and pawing tears from her face.

“I only wanted you to take off that nightgown and brush your hair…” the woman faltered in a small, broken voice.

Taty stared at her for a moment before bursting into tears. She screamed with rage, flung the hairbrush at the woman and stormed out.

She jangled down the fire escape in a sort of dream of rage. Out in the night she could hear more gunshots. All of a sudden the sordid reality of what she had been doing for the last two months seemed to occur to her, and without Number Nun to cushion the blow she felt lost and abandoned. She passed barefoot through the flytrap lobby and fled across many monsoon puddles, too upset to deal with the threat of girl-stealing monitor lizards. She crossed wet streets and ran all the way to the Dead Duck. Kenzo Cold-Eyes the private-eye, was at the Duck’s cigarette vending machine and saw Taty coming across the pavement in a tizzy. He was a Dead Duck regular and knew Taty from around the diner. Needless to say he was concerned to see her in such a state and decided to find out what the matter was and whether he could be of any assistance. In appearance, Kenzo Cold-Eyes dressed the part of an airbrushed, low-budget Phillip Marlowe; a caricature lifted from the soft cover of a cheap science fiction novel; trenchcoat, neon-rimmed sunglasses and white fedora. His personality was much the same and he seemed a refugee from the film of his own private life now cast adrift on the ugly shore of reality. He cut through the crowd of wet-neon freaks and low-lighters as Taty entered the Dead Duck. She collapsed into a nearby booth and put her forehead onto the counter top, breathing raggedly from her exertions. The detective sat opposite her and knocked on the tabletop to get her attention.

“Miss Taty!” he called above the fleshy jukebox electro-grind and raucous babble of voices. “Miss Taty how you ok!”

He had an almost indecipherable accent and often spoke in broken English, which lent him a comical aspect; a characteristic accentuated by the Chandler-esque image he cut.

“I can’t breathe with all these sno-globes!” Taty sobbed, her face buried in her hands.

He put a worried hand on her shaky shoulder and then patted her back, unsure of how to soothe her.

“Calm down Miss Taty! Everything A-ok! You want I should call Romeo the Dealer?”

She shook off his hand and sat with her face on the table. He shrugged to himself, looking around, unsure of how to proceed. Just then Cherry Cola the roller-skating waitress skidded to a halt beside them, cartoon-like in her tiny, candy-pink uniform. A cachou-coloured Marylin wig floated like a dream around her lip-gloss face and she was blowing big pink bubbles in the middle of it. She set down a massive strawberry milkshake and slid in next to Taty, wrapping an arm around her.

“You chill out now cookie and drink this shake,” Cherry Cola popped and chewed.

Taty snuggled into her friend, calming down a little, staring at the galactic swirls of syrup in the shake, thinking of her sno-globe and similar patterning she had seen within herself.

“That fucking motel Mister Kenzo Cold-Eyes!” Cherry Cola bitched, stroking Taty’s head with her fake flamingo coloured nails. “I tell you it’s a beatnik rat-trap filled with carny-narcs, tax collectors and alien sex fiends!”

Kenzo Cold-Eyes nodded sadly in reciprocation, energetically chewing on a plastic toothpick.

“Last week only I see’s a fucking astronaut pissing on the dumpster outside!” she continued with wide eyes. “This district is turning to custard and trifle I swear…”

At that moment a gang of five Buddhist Punks exploded into the diner firing machine guns into the air. The bullets tore the ceiling to shreds and bits of mildewed plaster rained down on everyone. There was the sound of neon signs shattering and chrome denting as people ducked for cover. Cherry Cola hugged herself over Taty while Kenzo Cold-Eyes went for the snub-nosed raygun he kept under his coat. He drew it, quickly concealing it beneath a napkin just as the firing ceased. Three of the Buddhist Punks mounted tables, kicking condiments everywhere and shrieking with their tongues out. They brandished firearms to the blaring jukebox music, staring down some of the harder customers who probably also had weapons ready under their napkins.

“Give us all your carrot cake!” one of them commanded the counter girl in a strange jungle twang.

The counter girl, Sunshine, exchanged a befuddled look with Raoul the fry-chef. Another Buddhist Punk lugged a massive old suitcase onto the counter, scattering plates every which way.

“I said give us all your carrot cake!” the one on the table repeated viciously.

“You sure you don’t want the chocolate cheesecake?” Raoul piped up from behind the stoves. “It’s much fresher.”

The one with the suitcase raised his machine gun and blew a few holes in Raoul. Sunshine screamed and hugged herself into a corner as the kitchen was suddenly redecorated with blood. Nobody liked Raoul much; he was a cheapskate and a pervert, but this was really taking things a bit far. You could see certain customers getting ready to square off with the Buddhists on general principles. Cherry Cola was muttering abuse under her breath and Taty could see hands going for guns under tables. Sunshine glanced at the corpse in the kitchen, came to her senses and grabbed the glass-bubbled carrot cake off its pedestal. She hurled it venomously into the open suitcase and hovered, red eyed and chest heaving while the Punks raided the muffin counter.

“Carrot cake?” Cherry Cola mouthed at Kenzo Cold-Eyes. “Like what the fuck?”

Kenzo Cold-Eyes leaned in over the table.

“Whole week this been happening,” he hissed. “All downtown and in the jungle border settlements, Big Buddha, he go loco in Acapulco taking all carrot and carrot related products! He closing off cold storage!”

“Like I said: custard and trifle,” Cherry Cola whispered back bitterly.

“Now give us all your carrot juice!” the Buddhist Punk on the table demanded, kicking a syrup dispenser into the wall for added effect.

“We look like the kind of joint serves carrot juice!” Sunshine shouted back.

“Well what other carrot dishes you got on the menu?” the one with the suitcase slurred all low and disinterested.

Sunshine was about to answer when a black van screeched around the corner, skidding to halt across the street. The doors slammed open and five mustachio soldiers swarmed out, followed by a pair of Wrestlers in colourful masks and costumes. One wore a cape of Ostrich feathers and the other was braced into a skin-tight get-up of pads and electric blue spandex. The Buddhist punks went for the door while everyone in the joint rushed to the windows for ringside seats. Well everyone except Taty, who curled up under the table with her head on her knees. The soldiers took down the first out the door with their rifle butts but the second came out shooting. Two of the soldiers caught it and you could see their mirrored sunglasses fly up into the streetlight glare while they jerked around like puppets. One of the Buddhist Punks saw an opening and cut down the street, sucking into an alleyway while the soldiers fired short sub-machine gun bursts in after him. The remaining pair of Punks had taken cover behind a copper Buick and were firing around the sides. It seemed as though they were well and truly pinned though and were forced to fire blind. Some of the patrons of the Dead Duck were laughing and throwing ketchup bottles out the door at them while the soldiers took up offensive positions across the street. Somebody pumped up the jukebox volume and you could see the Wrestlers flexing their biceps in the van, oiling up for the final takedown when the Buddhist Punks finally exhausted their ammo. For a verse or two off the juke it looked like it was tickets for the Punks, until a deafening clamping was heard approaching from the esplanade off ramp. Mister Sister’s military robot abruptly sailed through the air, having hopped several meters from the shadows. It landed so hard that it cracked the tarmac and rattled all the cars. Some windows even broke. Gun-pods locked along its flanks and it discharged a volley that utterly annihilated the armored van and the Wrestlers inside. The rate of fire was so intense that blue cones of swirling flame could be seen butterfly-ing out of the ventilated barrels as the van was chewed up like an old beer can and mangled into the wall of bricks behind it. The soldiers had started running but another short volley popped them all over the street like water balloons. The Buddhist Punks were laughing on the pavement, shooting into the air for kicks while the van wreck caught flame. Some plate glass shop fronts collapsed in on themselves and someone started yelling that the Buick’s tank might blow. The Buddhist Punks scampered up the robot’s legs, crawling atop its bullet-pocked blast shields like cats. They found the cushioned quad of soldier niches and buckled up. This accomplished, they screeched victoriously, holding onto the stirrups as the gaudy machine crouched in on its powerful hydraulics like some terrible carnival ride. Within moments the robot had launched itself into the air like a many tonned grasshopper. It sailed over several streetlights and crunched half a car on landing. The wiry drugged up Punks were miraculously not thrown off, and they rode the lurching robot off a bridge as sirens began to wail down the street. Cherry Cola skated back over broken crockery and spilled shakes to find Taty still crying under the table. Kenzo Cold-Eyes was at the window, re-holstering his raygun. You could see his mind racing with mental calculations.

“Come on baby,” Cherry Cola cooed, helping Taty up. “I’m gonna get you a ride back out to the jungle.”

“Very bad show this,” Kenzo Cold-Eyes clucked to her, shaking his head like a schoolteacher while he surveyed the damage.

“Time to blow town almost I think,” he nodded, lighting up a cigarette.

He offered the soft-pack pack to the girls and Cherry Cola took one while Taty shook her down-turned head, clinging to Cherry Cola’s arm like a bushbaby.

“Custard and trifle can only mean one thing Mister Kenzo Cold-Eyes,” Cherry Cola puffed, unlacing her skates. “Party time.”

“Party time you saying?”

“Party time number one baby.”