kagablog

A golden moon had emerged in the wisps of cloud, painting thousands of trees against the oil deep of night. The light illuminated recessions of pyramids, floating eerily above the moon washed jungle. Their floatation was silent and inexplicable. How such large, monolithic structures of stone could levitate in fixed positions had baffled visitors since time immemorial. The pyramids simply remained where they had been for thousands of years, cutting clean-edged shadows out of the milky spray of stars. There were no machines at work or evidence of quantum disruption as with the symbiotic portal. Whatever system of power held the structures in place was discreet and long lasting. The pyramids hovered at intervals, some larger than others, mapping out an epic swastika-like formation above a vast necropolis of tree-infested ruins. Rope ladders dangled from some of the pyramids, hoisted aloft by enterprising scavengers or passing explorers. Most of these had either rotted or fallen away by now, and those that remained were twined with creepers and colonized by vines. Some rope bridges even connected the pyramids in tentative man-made cobwebs, allowing access to some of the harder to reach constructions. Eroded plazas and broken colonnades sprawled in glimpses between the moon-gold haze of trees, slashed to geometry by the pyramid moon shadows. The highway cut through the necropolis, following the ancient avenues of the cities architecture. Taty watched from the windows as they cruised through the necropolis, passing occasionally into the inky shadows of the pyramids. She would look up then, into the darkness of the passing shapes. They loomed against the stars like the tangram of an ancient jigsaw, filling her mind with an unearthly silence. Uncle Bill had killed all the lights and they drove by the ghostly moon glow, which was vivid and luminescent against the pale stone. She was all packed and ready to step off and tapped her fingers restlessly against the dash, suddenly terrified at the prospect of being left out here alone.

“You sure about this kiddo?” Uncle Bill asked quietly.

She looked at him and saw herself. His expression of concern seemed identical to the one she must have been wearing whilst trying to talk him out of entering the Protoverse. The synchronicity made her giggle with nervous tension and instantly settled any doubts she might have had.

“I gotta,” she smiled in absolute fear.

He nodded grimly and drove on. They stopped presently, beneath an overhang of crumbling arches and Uncle Bill killed the engine. Silence hit them like a wall. He went to fetch something from the back and she cracked the airlock, lugging her case down to the ancient paving of the avenue. Out on the road she could hear the sound of rope ladders squeaking faintly in the hushed breezes. The sound somehow highlighted the unnatural, balloon-like buoyancy of the floating masonry. The usual chorus of night insects and frogs was distant, seething at the edge of perception like white noise on a faraway radio. Creatures seemed to avoid the necropolis, though place resonated with vitality despite its lack of habitation. It was completely unlike the Lost Quarter, which, although paradoxically infested with creatures, felt utterly lifeless and bereft of energy. It was the presence of the god she realized. It haunted these ruins, transmuting their obvious dilapidation into something sacred. The thought of this unseen deity chilled her to the bone and she began to entertain very serious second thoughts about allowing herself to become stranded in the haunted necropolis. Uncle Bill emerged from the cab and climbed down the ladder. He had some parting gifts with him. One was a rolled up thermal sleeping bag and the other was a chromium six-gun in a hip holster. The belt upon which the holster was affixed acted as a bandolier and held up to a hundred bullets. He made her buckle it on and gave her a box of additional ammo, which she tucked under her arm like a carton of pastries. He then shook her hand without expression and climbed wordlessly back up into the cabin. The roar of engines made her jump, and she watched the massive rig rumble off into the immense dreamscape of broken shapes. She watched the truck dwindle, the sound of its engines moving further and further away into the luminous night. She stood there for almost half an hour and could still hear it, grinding like a mosquito in the corner of a room. She saw its lights go on when it passed back into the jungle, a tiny smudge of colour against an enormity of gold-tinted blackness. And then she was alone.

She wandered through the moon-bright ruins, clutching the six-shooter and shaking with fear. She cursed herself, broke down into tears and finally ascended to a numb mental plateau where nothing mattered anymore. The dam wall had broken and she was still alive, swept away but intact. She picked her way across gloomy courtyards and down long creeper infested passages, hung with luminous moonflowers. Damaged platforms and long dry aqueducts drifted by, grainy in the celluloid shimmer of the lunar glow. She began to feel secure that no large predator was going to jump out at her from any shadowy crevice. The necropolis was truly barren of all animal life; a quirk which stood out like a sore thumb in the jungle. She re-holstered the revolver and drifted as though in some dream. Whilst crossing a bridge over a long-dry canal, she stopped to pull her headphones on and press play on the pink tape. Alphonse’s voice blossomed out of that vivid night, still with her like some pesky and troublesome spirit.

“Still alive…Well, if you are hearing this then you must be. Something tells me you will survive. I can’t help feeling optimistic about you. You have that survivor look about you, don’t you…”

The moon passed behind floating structures, creating disorienting shadows and she fumbled for her flashlight, switching the tape off for a moment. She withdrew the map he had given her: an old aerial atlas, scribbled over with lipstick and ballpoint pen. Peculiarly Gnostic doodles converged to create the swastika shape of the scattered pyramids. Over these had been transcribed all but indecipherable notes, cramped together in intricate masses. It was impossible to derive anything but her position from such a document and so she gave up attempting to decode the notes, which she suspected he had placed there simply to confuse and disorient her.

She decided to camp in the lee of a towering statue when her suitcase became too heavy to bear. The wide lap of the giant stone figure was swamped with ghostly vines, the wreaths of which created a small, shielded grotto beneath its thighs. It seemed fine from without, but when she was inside she felt vulnerable and distraught. Eventually she simply disguised her case beneath some vegetation, pulled on her fur and struck out for the nearest rope ladder. She carried the sleeping bag on her back with the intention of camping on one of the floating pyramids. The ladders creaked down from the stars and she felt certain that she would be somehow safer in the structures above. Stopping every now and then to re-orient herself in relation to the statue beneath which she had hidden her things, she took hold of a ladder and began to pull herself up to the hovering mass of stone. As the pyramids went this was one of the smaller ones, only a couple of stories high and suspended on a lower gradient than some of the heftier ones. Even so, it was difficult going and she became overwhelmed by a sensation that the stone pyramid would suddenly drop, squishing her like an ant. She gradually squirmed her way up, getting higher and higher, until she was finally able to take hold of a narrow ledge and pull herself up onto the structure. Below her stretched the spectacle of the moon-drenched city and she climbed carefully up large, moss eaten steps, gazing out into the illuminated night. She came upon dark doorways, which led into the pyramid itself, but was not tempted in the slightest to enter. Instead she climbed steadily on, until she had crested the pinnacle and stood on the narrow platform at the very top. The silence of the city further amplified its inherent sense of dreaminess, and from her vantage point the soft-edged buildings crumbled like nougat in the spectral light, becoming soft and pliable in their paleness. Dark stone cubes hovered in the spaces before her, extending out into aerial distances like the falling dice of giants. And receding into these staggering geometries were the pyramids, breathtakingly grandiose and level, settled on invisible planes as though constructed atop sheets of invisible glass. She thought to sleep there atop the small pyramid, but in the end felt too exposed. She eventually curled up in a niche halfway down the side and snuggled into the depth of her sleeping bag, six-gun close at hand. After lying still for several moments she realized that the pyramid was swaying very slightly. It was not unpleasant, almost like being atop a boat of some kind. She rummaged for the walkie-talkie but again hesitated too long. She simply felt far too ashamed to face the porcelain Madonna. Instead she drew out the Braille card that Alphonse had given her. She studied it by the light of a match for several seconds before setting it alight. When it was halfway burned she released it and watched as tumbled off the edge like some strange, short-lived butterfly of fire. In the darkness she could feel another scrap of paper, buried deep within her pocket. She ran her fingers over the Braille that had been typed upon its surface, in an almost loving fashion. The sensation of stroking it soothed her and she was soon asleep.

She awoke just before dawn and watched a pale sun slowly sweep the shadows from the ruins. The magic of the moon had long since departed and morning found the ruins gloomy and oppressive. She had a strange sense that she was not alone, even though the ruins seemed utterly deserted. She unfurled out of her niche like a fruit bat, rolled up her sleeping bag and slowly inched herself down the rope ladder. Water had collected in the stone carvings and she lapped some of it before retrieving her suitcase. A steamy mist hung in ghostly scarves throughout the citadel remains, drifting in tentacled masses between the broken buildings. She warily navigated this penumbra, unable to shake the feeling of being watched, consulting the lipstick-smeared map on occasion to clarify her bearings. It was around noon when she became aware of a heavy, grinding sound. A sound which she was steadily drawing closer to. The mist had fallen away with the onset of the sun and it had grown humid in the maze of stone. She was passing through a series of sunken, unroofed corridors when she decided to stop for a moment to rest. She sat atop the nearest stone head and chewed on a strip of salt-cured jungle chicken, listening to the mysterious sound, attempting to visualize what might be causing it. It was a dull, shrieking of stone against stone, which came and went, as though something massive were quarrying into a cliff face at regular intervals. The odd skittering of sound of falling rubble also added to this image of a quarry. She pondered on it, and when she felt sufficiently rested, she continued on down the channel, arriving eventually at a wide case of stone steps, leading up to an open space. She emerged onto a large plaza the size of several sports fields and immediately saw the cause of the sound, emanating from across the gulf. A large pyramid loomed like a UFO, above a series of intricate, stepped towers, which clustered at the opposite end of the plaza. This pyramid was skirted by a recession of massive floating cubes, fashioned of some black stone, not unlike obsidian. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, one of the cubes had fallen out of alignment. The disparate levitation had pushed it off kilter by degrees over the centuries. This deviation had eventually caused the cube to collide with the side of the pyramid and gnash into it over the centuries. The weighty structures ground together like teeth, creating disturbing acoustics as they gradually wore away at one another. The continuous attrition had created gaping chasms in the structure of each, and the continuous fall of dust and small chunks of dislodged material tumbled to the towers below, coating them in a millennium of debris, giving them the appearance of stalagmites in a lime cavern. Taty recalled a partially indecipherable note about this pyramid on the map and drew out the tattered document. She spotted the site on the map and quickly realized that the postbox of the god lay just beyond the plaza, somewhere below the encrusted towers.

The area between the closely packed towers was rippled with dunes of powdered stone from the structures above. These rose in creamy scallops, between the ancient buildings, creating the surreal impression of an indoor beach. The shrieking noise above was deafening and created an air of unfathomable tension, as though at any moment everything would come crashing down. This perpetual sense of fear added to the sacrosanct aspect of the area, denoting it as the abode of something sacred and inhuman – a forbidden area. The rotund towers spiraled up above her and she trudged across crumbly dunes into the labyrinthine channels between. The dust had accumulated over hundreds, if not thousands of years and its volume rose steadily as she penetrated further into the matrix of passages. She discovered that the powdery residue in fact formed a large mound almost directly beneath the grinding, contained within a sort of courtyard clearing deep within the tower maze. This accumulation had created a steep hillock in the center of a circular space, bordered on all sides by the rounded bases of towers and shadowed by the movements of the great pyramid. Fine curtains of freshly crushed dust wafted down like ash with each grinding, gathering on everything and coating the area an unnerving uniformity of colour. Everything was grey. And even she was becoming grey beneath the windfall. Specks of falling dust clung like flour to her, making her cough and wipe her eyes. She had read the notes carefully, listened to the tape and knew exactly what to do. She passed like a ghost through this grey place and discovered the colonnaded niche described on the tape. This secluded area had been built aside from the central space, nestled in the shadowy space between large pillars. Bamboo racks had been built within this dark space and skulls placed upon them. The bones were all bleached a spotless white, filigreed with fine metal and mounted with large jungle jewels, one apiece. Alphonse had explained how only children could be sacrificed to the dead god, and that these sacrifices could only be performed by those wishing to send a letter. The process was tricky because the sno-globes of the sacrificial victims had to be concentrated and trapped within the jewels before they were ritually beheaded. The imp’s description of the rituals involved had made her sick and she stopped the tape when he began to get into detail. She looked at all the skulls glowing like moons in the dark and threw up in the dust outside remembering the things he had said. The image of Alphonse doing those things to children only cemented the decision she had made in the dragon rig. She hunted around for the imp’s collection of skulls, which were all neatly labeled, and selected one with a large sapphire affixed to its forehead. She carried the bright skull out into the light, removed her boots and began to scale the hillock of dust barefoot. It was difficult going and she slipped many times, trawling long, sticky runnels back down to the bottom. Alphonse had explained that the interior of the dust cone was hollow, the dust slipping down into a cubic abyss, which sank many hundreds of meters into the subterranean core of the necropolis: the postbox of the lost god. Taty crested the tip of this dust mountain on her stomach, careful not to slip into the volcano-like pit yawning within. Dust was perpetually skirling down the steep sides of this drop, down into the square abyss at the center of the pit. The drain-like shaft dropped into grimy nether regions of darkness, a throat of edged stone reminiscent of the storm pipe leading to the Lost Quarter. Taty peered over the edge before rolling carefully over onto her back. She rested there for a moment, staring up at the drifting underbelly of the pyramid and squinting each time the dust came ghosting down. She was by now hopelessly grey and her bare limbs seemed to blend seamlessly into the dust upon which she lay. She reached into the hip pocket of her denim hot pants and pulled out the white scrap of Braille typed paper. She folded this into the tiny metal case, which had been screwed into the interior of the cranial cavity and hurled the skull over the edge. She turned just in time to see it bounce off the stone edge and down into the hole. It was swallowed instantly. She lay on her back waiting for the sound of impact, but nothing came.

Later she scaled a rickety ladder to the steps of one of the largest pyramids. These grand monoliths were suspended much higher than the others and the ascent was at times frightful. She wasn’t even sure if the ladder would hold, but the gravity of the act she had just committed utterly cauterized her sense of self-worth. She knew if she fell she would be done for, but had somehow ceased to care. Taking a life did that to a person. It made them strong in unholy and irreversible ways. This pyramid was unspeakably grandiose compared to the one she had slept on before. A wide ledge of moss eaten stone dropped at least twenty to thirty meters to the jagged roofing of broken temples. Wide ceremonial steps ascended to the summit, interrupted by yawning portals to inner recesses and gloomy vaults lined with carvings. She glimpsed halls bordered by great pillars and enormous frescoes which caught the dying light as the vast structure turned on some strange axis of energy. She wanted to get mindlessly drunk and fall asleep forever on this floating world of stone. She stopped halfway up the pyramid, resting on a carved ledge as the light faded. The black summit still towered above her, ageless and unmovable against the sky. Her pointless quest had ended in grey dust and the skulls of children. She listened bleakly, to the last few minutes of the pink tape, staring out at a jungle sunset while Alphonse spoke. She had her six-gun out and twice put the barrel in her mouth to finish the job. Yet despite her best intentions, she could do nothing but gag on the metal. She couldn’t even cry anymore. There was nothing left to puke up. She rewound and replayed the tape until it stretched and the words slurred. She hadn’t thought about her brother in ages. It was almost as if she had successfully managed to amputate that part of her life. But like most drowned corpses, the memories had risen, bloated and festering, forever a part of who she was. Alphonse’s voice came to her like his ghost. It was almost like the imp was already dead, even though she knew that he couldn’t be yet. That last, unseen act was till to come, when the god rose from its bower.

“You see, I’m a survivor too cupcake. I’ve been in contact with Dr Dali and have found a way to reverse the symbiotic transmutation. It’s slow and painful, but I am sure I will enjoy it. Once you have done what I have asked, it will only be a matter of time before Mister Sister is screaming at my feet. The pendulum swings both ways dear. Its just something you learn after awhile. The pendulum swings both ways. It’s a tarnished pearl I offer you my dear, but a pearl nonetheless. The god you have summoned will rise from the sleeping city and by secret means bridge the gulf between its haunts and my house. Gods can do these things you know, even dead ones (sniggering). It will come from the jungle and tear delicately into the paralyzed face of Mister Sister with its fluted fingers. But he will remain conscious to witness his dismemberment. He will be forced to observe as this unspeakable jungle deity carves into the fabric of his sno-globe and begins to feast upon the very meat of his soul. They say that the material body is illusory - Imagine then the torment of having your true body consumed, of being sucked down into the throat of an ancient idol like a smoked oyster. The bloated reprobate will awaken inside the lightless soul of the god who never rests, amongst the many other devoured beings. And he will be trapped there until the day of reckoning when all the souls within this god are released as psychic ballast and the prophecies of that ancient and ridiculous people are fulfilled – when the temple rises and the god travels ‘upon a road of souls to the moon’. How much more absurd an end could one wish upon their nemesis? He will digest inside this age-old madness like some broken insect, unable to escape the un-death of his predicament, lost amongst the legions of the devoured, compressed like a fruit cell inside the body of a monster.”

Taty rose and climbed slowly while she listened, determined to reach the summit of the structure before darkness oozed over the shambolic city, saturating everything in the terminus of night. Alphonse continued, like a ghost in her ears.

“But you know that you are killing someone by doing this for me – killing someone bad. You aren’t a stupid cupid. You don’t fool me. I know your brother didn’t just die. You killed him – if you even had a brother to begin with. You killed whatever you left behind, whatever you came into the zone to forget about. You killed it. And now you are killing again. It’s in your blood you see. Deep down, you are a cold little bitch – just like me! (cackling, juicer sounds) I’m going to gloat now cupcake. I doubt you’ll make it out of the necropolis in one piece. Good luck anyway Tatum, I wish you all…”

She switched it off, tore out the tape and hurled it off the edge. She watched it flutter off, a tiny speck of candy against a wilderness of decay. When it had vanished entirely she continued up to the summit, intent on shooting herself when she reached the top.

Darkness came. The moon became stifled by wild cloud, choking the jungle in supernatural blackness. She could see very little beyond the stone balustrades of the upper tier, nestled in her sleeping bag, cuddling her gleaming pistol like it was a teddy bear. A wind brewed out in the galaxy of vines and trees, skirling up through the pyramids like a barrage of spiritual force. It was so long ago that she had lived like a normal girl. She was suddenly remembering her room and her books. She was remembering the cities of the Lowlands and her world. School came into her mind like the re-runs of some old television show. And then there was her little brother and their shortcut home from school, through the downtown area, through the woods. She couldn’t remember what they had argued about that day. It was so petty in fact. It was so sudden and in such anger that she didn’t even think about it until he was lying there like a pile of old washing. She had gotten angry, reached across with her mind and stopped his heart like a clock. It had all been so magical before that, being able to do secret things, perform secret miracles. She had lain in her bed and made things move just by looking at them. She had started fires with her mind. She could do things no one else could. It had always made her feel special, but after what happened to her brother she began to see it as a curse. Nobody knew what had happened to him. Nobody knew that she was the one who had reached in and put a finger on his heart. She didn’t know she was capable of such evil. She had loved him. It was just a stupid fight. And all the people at the funeral crying and feeding her cake and commiserating. Her mother crying in the kitchen, popping pink pills like tic tacs, her father who was never home, drinking with his work colleagues. Everybody knew about the Outzone. Everybody was always talking about it like it was fairyland. They had all read Karolina K-Star’s secret diaries and everybody dreamed of running away and becoming a bounty hunter. It wasn’t hard just vanishing. She just got up one night, packed a bag and walked into a dream. She broke her piggy bank and bought a bus ticket to the zone. She had run into a universe and here she was again, lost and alone, with someone’s blood on her hands.

She awoke in the wild, screaming night and thought she saw the god standing on a distant pyramid.

“I made a wish to my fairy godmother in a hotel room,” she mouthed across the void to it, half-asleep and delirious with dreams.

“I meant every word.”