kagablog

The house of Alphonse Guava was in a disastrous state. For starters, no-one had cleaned it since the symbiote orgy, and the remains of food and drink had rotted to mulch across all the floors. Most of the bodies had been dragged out and dumped in the trees. Their stench was a constant backdrop the atmosphere of dismal chaos, which now prevailed. Symbs squatted everywhere in advanced forms of transformation. They looked like statues erected at ancient temples, with limbs as thin as beaten metal. They swarmed slowly over the walls; gigantic grasshoppers, involved in absurd, half-remembered human activities. Most simply stood like sculptures in the sun, soaking up the heat like blotting paper. Mister Sister had many of the walls spray painted with red and toxic yellow paint. Almost all the lower floor windows had been destroyed. The lovely atmosphere of the colonial plantation house had been ruined, utterly desecrated. Mister Sister was floating in the pool, on an enormous throne shaped lilo. These days he was almost always grinning in abject satisfaction. His victory over the imp had softened his demeanor and there were less beheadings than his punks had previously known. He had also gained weight, his hairless body taking on the dimensions of a massive baby. To further augment this perverse image, he had his body rubbed daily with talcum powder and perpetually wore a giant diaper, in which he would defecate. He took great pleasure in being changed by his slaves and often bawled for no reason. To further complicate things he had himself injected with hormones, which eventually caused him to lactate. Milk was ceaselessly oozing from his large pink nipples and he loved to have The Sugar Twins snuggle up to him and suckle on his breasts. They lay beside him on the lilo, doing just that, clad in matching spandex swim-suits which showed off their nubile forms to great effect. They seemed to thrive off his milk and needed no coaxing to partake of it. Their fickle shift of loyalties seemed to suit their inhumanity somehow and Taty could not bring herself to hate them, as much as she tried. They simply weren’t human enough to hate. The battle-droid had been parked in the frangipani grove and had not seen any action since that fateful night at the docks. It was blanketed in blossoms and in dire need of a lube job. A half-formed Buddhist punk writhed orgiastically on the pool deck, completing the final stages of his transformation. Taty sat sullenly at the edge of the pool, dangling her legs in the blue, staring at the sun-dappled water in a mesmerized fashion. She was in her habitual bikini, big straw hat and oversized sunglasses. The flowers she wore in her hair were Venus Flytraps. They snapped at passing mosquitoes, making tiny popping noises as they opened and closed. The walkie-talkie, which she now kept with her at all times, was clipped to the elastic of her bikini briefs. She had started smoking cigarettes, a habit picked up from some of the less homicidal Buddhist Punks. One dangled listlessly off her lip as she observed a drowning insect with detached intensity. A machine gun lay beside her, within easy reach. She had found it on one of the corpses and accessorized it with glittery stickers and pictures of kittens. Now it never left her side. One of her favourite pastimes was scavenging the estate for ammunition, and she had built up a substantial stock, which she kept well hidden. Mister Sister was watching her with a lazy smile, his almond eyes screwed up into knife wounds in the sunshine.

“Look at her my little kitties,” Mister Sister sang to the Sugar Twins.

“So many Symbs and still no hump… She must be antidote-girl!”

He burst into high-pitched, somewhat maniacal giggles. Taty glared at him. She threw the cigarette into the pool, grabbed her machine gun and stormed off. She passed through ruined rooms and halls, stopping in the courtyard where she had found Cherry Cola handcuffed all those weeks ago. It was hard thinking of Cherry Cola after what had happened. She could still her screaming when they cut her head off. She tried not to think about it anymore. Baby crocodiles frolicked in the water of the fountain, tangling themselves in the large, half-dead lotus blossoms. She could hear music in the distance, old Les Baxter records trailing out from Alphonse’s high room, a memory of better days. A Symb lurched over the terracotta roofing, dislodging some tiles, which crashed through the shattered skylights. It stopped to leer at her and she recognized it instantly. The symbiotes were all unique, containing the seed of their host’s facial and bodily characteristics. This one she knew and hated. She glared at it until it clambered off like a massive tree frog, disappearing over an antiquated storm gutter. Taty sat down on the edge of the fountain and unclipped the walkie-talkie from her bikini briefs. She switched it on and tuned up with a warble of static.

“Where are you now?” she spoke into it, swinging her legs.

Somewhere in the middle of the ocean, the half-destroyed torso of Number Nun drifted. Sunny tropical blues dappled her. Some tiny fish flickered in her chest cavity while monstrous jellyfish the size of houses wafted below, glittering with refracted light.

“My navigational array is broken,” Number Nun pointed out, vaguely irritated. “I’ve told you this before.”

Taty fiddled with her nails.

“Oh. Yeah. Forgot bout that.”

There was a hiss of open ended static and she could hear the low-fidelity churn of the sea outside Number Nun’s cracked head.

“Whatcha doin?” she asked.

“Childbride, you know very well that I am doing absolutely nothing! Now leave me alone to pray. Go bother somebody else!”

The call cut off abruptly and white noise erupted from the speaker. Taty stared at it for a moment before switching it off. She clipped it back to her briefs and gazed listlessly down at the baby crocodiles. After awhile she wandered off, humming along to the distant music.

Taty owned a stretched tape cassette of ‘Hotel California’. She had edited the song with nail scissors, so that the voiceless intro ran directly into the long guitar solo, creating an instrumental mix. She would listen to this every afternoon in her massive radar earphones, around sunset, when it was time to retreat to the bell tower. A white washed spiral staircase ran up to the belfry, and many small windows had been poked into the walls along its length. These apertures gazed out onto vistas of the steaming jungle, which stretched endlessly out beyond the house. Towering palm trees swayed drunkenly against the galactic cheese-melt of sunset and the silhouettes of monkeys gamboled in the highest branches. Taty was a creature of habit and discovered that some form of routine soothed her immensely. So every afternoon she would scavenge candy bars, green coconuts and bottles of fizz-pop, which she would then carry up to the top of the bell tower. The spiral stairs opened up into an airy space cluttered with junk. She had hidden a foldng ladder behind some crates and used it gain entrance to a trapdoor in the ceiling. This trap led directly into the belfry, a domed chamber which had over the weeks become her lair. She would shoulder her machine-gun and take the packets in her teeth while she climbed, pulling the ladder in after her. The large brass bell had long since fallen, cracking the boards. She would painstakingly roll this gigantic device over the trapdoor to further ensure her privacy. Each of the four walls of the belfry had a large hole cut out of it. These balcony windows afforded expansive views of the house and jungle. From this elevated perspective, Taty could see almost anything coming and the height gave her a sense of security. A sleeping bag lay crumpled in the corner, beside a pile of old fashion magazines and holiday brochures which she had discovered in drawers throughout the house. A bowl of green mangoes lay on the ancient wooden boards. Coconut shells covered the floor, picked clean and filled with bric-a-brac. Candy bar wrappers clustered in one corner, skirled around by the hot breezes. A large box of lollipops took pride of place near the sleeping bag. A picnic hamper of ammunition lay within easy reach.

Taty sat on the whitewashed balustrades of the belfry as she did every evening, bathed in red-gold light, swigging from a bottle of fizz-pop. She would sit watching the sun set behind the jungle and observe the large flocks of flamingoes and parrots squall screaming across the Western skies. She was busy doing this one eve when she spotted the Symb from the rooftop inching slowly up the tower like some monstrous gecko. She hated how it followed her around, like it had some claim to her. She unhitched her machine gun and fired a short burst at it, shattering the silence of dusk. The bullets dislodged the creature and it dropped to the trees below. Michelle, who was poolside, almost directly below the opposite side of the bell tower nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned in exasperation to Mister Sister, who still floated upon his lilo throne, attended to by young male slaves.

“What the fuck does she do up there all night!”

“Oh, who gives a kidney what that little cockroach does,” Mister Sister muttered. “Even the Symb’s won’t touch her anymore – little miss pariah.”

He leaned up off the lilo in a sudden fit of childish anger.

“Pariah!” he bellowed up to the tower. “I should feed you to the crocs! You hear me you little brat?”

Taty heard, but paid no mind, making faces at them when they weren’t looking.

The night was always full of bats, swarming past the tower in high-frequency clouds. Giant, clumsy moths would also always tumble in, like origami constructions, sucking back out into the darkness before she had time to study their ornate wings. The raftered ceiling of the belfry was awash with golden orb spiders. The creatures had decorated the old bell supports with a fairy lace of webs, giving her something magical to gaze at before she fell asleep. She would light candles in glass jars and watch the flames flicker drowsily in the moist breezes rising off the jungle. Sometimes it would rain for days and she would snuggle up in a battered fur jacket, scrounged from the walk-in closets. The white fur had been in a pristine state when she had found it, but after weeks of continuous use, the garment had grown grungy and pelted, like the skin of a stray Persian cat. Now it was the hot season and she would always be in her bikini, day or night. It seemed pointless to wear anything else it was so hot. She sat cross-legged on her sleeping bag gnawing green mangoes, hideously bored, watching the flytraps in her hair eat mosquitoes. Her mind was a blank and she would accentuate this blankness by smoking cigarettes, one after the other. She found she liked tobacco, the way it cured her brain like a hock of smoked ham. She missed marijuana, but was too paranoid to get stoned. Every now and then her mind would drift back to the nightmare of what had happened and she would wake in a shaking sweat, clutching for her machine gun. There had been weird rituals she could barely remember. They had dosed her with drugs and she had woken up in the basement, covered in alien slime. She told herself that she had been too drugged to remember what had happened, but she could still feel the carapace scraping against her back when she slept. The interlocking shells of the Symb had felt like rough, glazed ceramics on her skin, it’s jointed form making creaky bamboo noises when it moved. The sibilant chittering it had made now filled her dreams like an ocean of toads, and she could never completely erase the burned electric wire stench of its body. At least now she could say she lost her virginity to an alien, but who was there to impress? The world was one long heat spell of bad memories and scavenged ammunition. The punks had left her alone after the first rape, waiting for her to change, laughing and teaching her how to smoke cigarettes to ease the pain. She had cried a lot then, but stopped dead when Cherry Cola was executed for spitting Mister Sister’s milk back into his face. She remembered getting very sick the day after having sex with the symbiote. A fever descended and she became delirious, seeing kaleidoscopic visions and glimpsing people’s sno-globes against a backdrop of thrashing energy. They put her in a hammock by the pool and made fun of her while she passed in and out of consciousness. At one point she suffered from severe diarrhea and voided herself every few hours in one of the outside bathrooms. After one of these episodes she found herself feeling inexplicably better. She looked back into the toilet bowl and saw the dead, baby Symb, staring sightlessly up from the soiled water, wearing a mockery of her own face. The second time they tied her to a bed and stood watching, grumbling over their cigarettes, making sure the Symb impregnated her properly. Another fever descended, though this time not so bad. She was rid of the baby symbiote within a day. The Buddhist punks didn’t touch her after that. They thought she was cursed, or somehow special. They stayed out of her way and she was not manhandled like the other girls who had the misfortune of finding themselves trapped in the fallen house of the imp. She kept a low profile and was eventually ignored, the silent household pet with a secret. The symbiotes with whom she had spawned began to follow her around like retarded animals. Their behavior was out of keeping with the general mindlessness of the other Symb’s, and the sight of them disgusted her. When she found the machine gun, some of the punks even gave her ammunition, trying to tempt her into coming out looting with them. But she kept her massive radar headphones on and listened to tapes at full volume, ignoring their calls, keeping out of everyone’s way and stealing candy bars whenever she could.

The nights were rarely quiet. From her tower she would hear the screams and pistol shots. The ruckus of debauched celebration rose up like the stench of the many bodies, choking the night and making it impossible to sleep. Most nights she would stay up smoking, eating coconuts and paging mindlessly through fashion magazines while the world went mad around her. Sometimes she would lean on the balustrade facing the house and look out across the courtyards to the lighted bedchamber of Alphonse Guava. She watched him through binoculars, moving like a green ghost in his ruined room. The chamber was by now an unholy mess. Shattered aquarium glass and the rotting corpses of many reptile pets had destroyed the white shag. A lava lamp threw psychedelic patterns on the walls, illuminating the destruction and decay in twisting enchantments of light. Alphonse himself stood at his desk, gaunt and withered, bent and broken. His skin was a minty shade of green and he had been fighting off transformation for an ungodly amount of time. Yet, even with his impish constitution, the battle for preservation had taken its toll. Antennae drooped over his blackening eyes and his pale hair was a lank and tangled mess. He wore a soiled suit and operated a juicer with slow movements. He was dicing carrots and placing them into the mixer flask. When it was full to capacity he juiced the roots to a frothy orange gunk and withdrew a massive syringe. Taty watched as he filled the syringe up with freshly squeezed carrot juice and tied a silk tie around his arm. He injected the contents of the syringe into his veins and shuddered horribly, grabbing at the desk. His skin flickered like a cuttlefish, shifting from green to orange to ivory. It settled on this pale tint for a few moments before gradually washing back to green again. He would always sit on the edge of the bed after one of these episodes, exuding an air of terrible defeat. It was a painful thing to watch, and Taty would often set down her binoculars at this point, anaesthetizing herself with a barrage of cigarettes.

It was very late and the peculiar stillness of the night hung about the jungle. Some candles still guttered in the belfry, creating swarms of weird shadows, which leapt about playfully. Taty was curled in her sleeping bag staring out at the stars. At some point she lifted her walkie-talkie to her lips.

“Hello?” she whispered.

She waited awhile, just listening to the sea of crackling static and the monumental quietness of the jungle.

“Come in Number Nun…”

She eventually gave up and fell asleep. She woke in the night, as she often did, holding the communications device to her breast and speaking in her sleep.

“Mommy…mommy…”

One day she was sitting in the cinema, watching old cartoons and eating leftover scraps of jungle chicken. She was still wearing the puffy fur jacket and bikini, machine gun across her lap, the walkie-talkie jutting from a pocket. Despite the deafening volume of the maniacal cartoons, she had on her enormous headphones and was frying her brain with witchcraft guitar solos. The cinema had also suffered much abuse. Seats were uprooted and broken champagne bottles lay smashed everywhere. A huge boa constrictor had slithered in from the jungle and was exploring the projectionist’s booth. Michelle suddenly appeared in the doorway. She stared down at Taty for a moment before calling down to her.

“Hay little girl,” she called.

She called another time, louder this time and Taty turned her head. She stared blankly at Michelle.

“Little girl!”

Taty pulled her headphones down around her neck and glared at the crucified girl.

“Yeah you,” Michelle scowled. “Listen, Alphonse told me he wants to see you.”

Taty continued to stare unresponsively.

“Now, you little brat! This is still his house you know.”

Taty slouched up, shouldering her machine gun. She plodded up to the door, kicking debris out of the way.

“Do you have to carry that fucking popgun around everywhere with you?” Michelle muttered. “Mister Sister and his punks might find it cute, but I think its ridiculous the way you shoot at bugs and shit all the time.”

“It’s mine I found it.”

“Oh, whatever.”

Taty brushed past her and headed down the hall. Michelle suddenly hesitated as an idea occurred to her. She turned and called after Taty.

“Listen, little girl…”

Taty glanced over her shoulder to witness Michelle suddenly put on what she considered to be a friendly, how-to-talk-to-a-child-face.

“Listen little girl,” she smiled in a sort of horrific fashion. “I have a whole box of candy, really special candy in my room… And I’ll give it ALL to you if you just tell me what Alphonse says.”

Taty stared blankly at her.

“Well, what do you say huh?” Michelle pushed, struggling to maintain her smile.

“Ok,” Taty answered flatly.

“Good girl,” Michelle beamed, showing all her un-brushed teeth. “You just come up to my room after and I’ll be waiting with all that candy, ok?”

Taty continued to stare at her in suspicious non-comprehension. In the end she simply walked off without a word.

“Ok! Great!” Michelle called after her with all the vim and vigour of a cheerleader.

Alphonse Guava sat at his desk in a ruined white suit and deco pattern breeches. His skin was a sort of pea green, split by intricate patterns. His eyes had swelled to bulbous, globular proportions and were filmed over with silvery cataracts. Feathery antennae sprouted from his forehead like peacock feathers, and these fluttered about of their own accord, touching things. His pointed ears had finally fallen off. The desk at which he sat was a mess of papers and carrot stubs. His well-worn juicer was close at hand. Orange stained syringes overflowed out of a massive black garbage bin, spilling over into the smashed ruin of his precious ‘PERM BANK’. Mister Sister had long since raided it, using the pearly contents of the many glass capsules to butter the croissants he had delivered every day from a baker in Namanga Mori. Upon Alphonse’s bed was placed a veritable mountain of carrots. He never slept anymore anyway. He had thrown the reptile corpses out of the window in order to make the room semi-presentable for visitors, but the stains remained, irreparable and dark, lacing the freshly juice smells of the chamber with an underlying stench of prehistoric morbidity. Alphonse held before him a small card of paper. He pivoted a geometry compass between thumb and forefinger, using the needle to print something across the card in Braille. He had to write in reverse and it took him several minutes, even though it was only one word. When he was finished he placed the card inside a small satchel, within which could be glimpsed neatly folded papers, a brick of cash and a pink tape cassette in a box. It wasn’t long before his private doorbell tinkled, announcing Taty’s arrival. He pressed a small glass button and watched the heavy doors swing open. She stood at the threshold and for a moment they regarded each other in silence. The last time they had exchanged words, the symbiotes had not even existed in their reality. Now they themselves were trapped in another reality, a dimension corrupted by the insinuations of another world. She entered barefoot, glancing at the carrots, avoiding shards of glass.

“That’s one big salad,” she said, leaning her machine gun against a battered filtration system.

Alphonse smiled broadly, despite his wretched state.

“If I take my time it’ll last me to the week-end,” he quipped.

She sidestepped the rotting leg of an iguana, which Alphonse had somehow managed to overlook and slouched on the edge of the bed, spilling a small avalanche of carrots down to the shag.

“So, what’s up Doc?”

She met his gaze evenly and he eventually stood up, hobbling over to the window. He leaned on the sill and lit a slim white cigarette.

“You can’t stay here anymore cupcake,” he finally said.

She stared blankly at him.

“I’m ok,” she mumbled after a few moments of pregnant silence.

He blew a thin cloud and gazed down at the wreckage of his house, still smiling like a jester when he spoke.

“It’s going all the way down baby. And you need to scram before something comes along and eats you up.”

“I tried to run away a few weeks ago, but they stopped me.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll help you to get out. Anyway, I want you to do something for me.”

He was perhaps expecting rebellion, but she answered without hesitation, clear-eyed and sincere.

“Ok.”

“I’m going to give you a card,” he explained carefully. “I want you take this card to the Outer Necropolis and deliver it to a secret postbox within the floating pyramids.”

“You want me to be a postman?”

“Yes, exactly that.”

There was a pause and he examined her expressionless face, unsure, yet somehow sure of her answer.

“Ok,” she answered quietly. “Is that it?”

He regarded her with a sardonic smile, unable to help himself from picking at her passivity as one would pick at a scab.

“You seem angry with me,” he teased.

She looked away, slouched like a bedraggled bird in her mangy fur.

“You let the monsters do things to me,” she eventually said, speaking in an extremely low voice.

“Was it fun?” he grinned.

She blinked at him, unable to grasp his reaction for a moment.

“No, it was horrible,” she replied darkly. “You let Number Nun get shot, everybody is dead because of you.”

He sniggered without the slightest hint of reproach. And it was at times like this that one could clearly understand that he wasn’t at all human, not even in the slightest.

“I suppose,” he admitted. “But at least I had a ball doing it!”

“Look at you!” Taty snapped. “You’re turning green! You have bug-lashes!”

“Yes. I’m en-route to a slimy alien hell. I’m trapped in this decaying body, imprisoned in my own house by my own worst enemy, forced to degrade myself daily with root vegetables. But…My God, you have no idea how pleasurable it all is! Even my worst nightmare is absolute, unquantifiable ecstasy. You just can’t understand. You’re only a little stray.”

“I suppose.”

He hobbled back to the desk and tossed her the satchel. She caught it clumsily, spilling more carrots.

“There’s a secret tunnel that will get you off the grounds,” he told her. “Everything you need to know is on the pink tape – Leave maybe an hour or so before dawn.”

“Ok.”

“And put some clothes on, you won’t be coming back.”

He turned dismissively, busying himself with papers on his desk and she rose. She picked up her machine gun and lingered for a moment beside the door.

“You don’t really care about me, do you?” she asked quietly. “You’re just saving me so I can deliver your letter.”

He burst into raucous chuckles, swinging round madly in his chair.

“Why on earth should I care about you?” he laughed gaily.

She stared uselessly at him, before finally giving up and drifting back down the hall. His eerie laughter followed her through the passages, poking in at her through open windows.

Michelle was waiting for her in one of the courtyards. She loped after her, struggling to balance under the weight of her cross.

“Little girl!” she called.

Taty took one look at her and scampered down the nearest corridor. Michelle raced after her, her cross bobbing hilariously.

“Come back here! Come back you little bitch!”

Taty turned and sprayed machine gun fire along the walls and ceiling, scaring a pair of toucans who flew screaming down the passages. Michelle dove for cover, landing badly because she was unable to use her arms. She wriggled on the tiles like a clubbed seal, thrashing about in a cluster of pot plants.

“Traitor!” she screeched, her round face red and distorted with rage. “Traitorous little skag! I’ll have your head you little cunt! You just wait till my boyfriend hears about this! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”

The screams receded as Taty fled to her tower. She ran and ran, and didn’t stop running, until the big brass bell had been rolled safely over the trap and she could collapse panting.

Afternoon sunlight illuminated The Soft House, filling it with sugary green light. Bronski Glass was in his office on one of the upper floors. A desk, chairs and some brimming filing cabinets bounced around ridiculously. The sound of aerobics programs filtered through the plastic walls, their beats clashing horrendously with the loud Bossanova transmissions. The office next door was filled to capacity with seawater and a trapped Man-O-War wafted about in it, electrocuting goldfish. Other offices were visible, wherein top-level Wrestlers performed menial bureaucratic duties at their desks. Everything was always quaking on the top levels. Bronski Glass wore a pale suit and tie. His skin was almost exactly the same hue as his bloodless suit and gave him a peculiar monochromatic quality. Scar tissue circled his forehead, denoting some form of intense, Frankenstein-like surgery. A dog tag read his name and he was smoking four cigarettes at once. The crucified Michelle was kneeling between his legs, performing fellatio, and her wooden cross bobbed comically about as she moved. He appeared utterly unfazed by her efforts however, staring absently at the jellyfish in the room next door. The fact that the walls were transparent and everyone could see in also didn’t seem to bother him. His eyes had that war veteran glint to them that distinguished those who had seen too much and thought too little. He was now seeing icebergs floating on a dark sea. The masses of glacial ice trembled in the grainy black and white film, drifting like leviathans across icy Northern waves. Michelle looked up in irritation.

“Where the fuck is your mind?” she snapped.

“I have a move projector in my skull,” he answered in a bassy voice, which was utterly devoid of feeling.

“It’s a very small one.”

She stared at him in non-comprehension, squinting in annoyance.

“The only reel it has loaded contains footage of icebergs, and this is constantly projected onto the back of my eyeballs. It’s supposed to ‘nullify’ me.”

“Jesus, what a drag. You think you weren’t getting head.”

“Are you finished down there?”

“Bronski baby, do you have any idea what Mister Sister will do to my bod if he finds out that I’m snitching for you and blowing you into the bargain?”

“But I didn’t ask for the blowjobs - Only information.”

“I…er, that’s a complimentary service. Anyway…Oh Fuck! I’m putting myself in harm’s way for you! Don’t you realize that!”

“No.”

“Fuck! I was going to ask if you have a brain, only to realize that you most certainly do not. I know it isn’t your fault your antennae’s facing west, just don’t make me think it is!”

She returned to her previous task with gusto, bobbing up and down like a jackinabox. His eyes slowly became unfocused and the muted sound of a film projector could be heard leaking out of his ears. Icebergs flickered across black water, bobbing in the swell like mountains of polystyrene. He took the four cigarettes from his lipless mouth and exhaled a great flag of patriotic smoke.

“You reported that Mister Sister has taken up residence in the house of Alphonse Guava?”

Michelle began to speak between mouthfuls, babbling with excitement at all her great and secret plans.

“Oh, its just for a little while, see, ‘cos Mister Sister wants to rub Al’s face in it. Jesus, you should see Alphonse! Sister’s keeping him from greening out by supplying him with endless carrots, but it’s just a matter of time now. When Alphonse is frogged up something supreme, Mister Sister will start getting the ‘noids thinking that everyone is plotting against him, it’s totally inevitable. We’ll wait till he’s ripe to pop and then instigate some shit between his outfit and Daddy Bast, sit back and watch the fireworks! Oh baby! We are in command! Now that the fucking Nun is lost at sea, nothing can stop us. Fuck, I wish could have seen her getting munched by that droid!”

“Who is Daddy Bast again?”

Michelle whipped her head up, speechless for a moment.

“Oh God my Dad above!” she exploded. “You literal numbskull! How many times…I’m sick and tired of blowing guys with no brains! Honestly. Men.”

He stared blankly down at her.

“Could you tell me when you are finished please. Bronski really has to use the head.”

Flaming cars adorned the streets like Christmas decorations. Gangs of looters roamed the wreckage, pecking at things like carrion birds. Party music thumped from the Dead Duck and drunken strangers were dancing in the streets. A group of sailors were harassing a grinning Symb, kicking it out across the road and jeering at it. The Symb was still swaddled in the remnants of Buddhist robes and possessed a vaguely human face, now disfigured by greenness and insect-like appendages. Its body was a deep emerald, split by carapace joints and crab-like casing. It smiled stupidly with a mouth full of loose human teeth, its newly formed mandibles flicking out from caved-in cheeks. Romeo the Dealer was approaching from the inner city, eyeing the gang warily. He was talking on his army-issue walkie-talkie, raygun dangling within easy reach.

“Romeo Delta Tango Foxtrot,” he signed, scanning this way and that. “It’s out on the midnight wire – Number Nun gunned down at the docks.”

“I think you should maybe blow town babe,” Karolina K-Star answered from a safe location.

The sailors had placed a generic red and white lifesaver around the Symb’s neck and were dousing it with diesel. He watched coldly as they set it on fire.

“No, I’m going to stick around for awhile,” he answered.

The Symb was miraculously unaffected by the flames. Its remaining human parts crisped up like bacon, but the symbiote formations remained, impervious to the heat. The lifesaver warped and the robes went up in flames. Yawning spaces appeared in its green body as the organic burned away, revealing a spindly, inhuman frame fraught with distortions. The would-be lynch mob had gone suddenly silent, backing away as the Symb turned to face them. It was fondling its ovipositor with a clumsy affection, flaming like a torch. It began to wander about, grinning insanely, accidently setting fire to things. The lynch mob dissolved in a disturbed fashion while the Symb clattered down a nearby alley, lighting up the all the walls.

“How could I leave when things are just starting to get interesting,” Romeo said before signing off.

The lobby of the Shell Sea was in a dire state. The clerk hefted an AK-47, listening to an old wireless splutter out panicky news reports about the burgeoning chaos. Stragglers in seersucker suits argued with hobos in the corridors. Some partially developed symbiote-sufferers were writhing in the pot plants, kicking over things and spilling abandoned bottles of grog. A fully developed Symb clung to the ceiling, licking at the light bulb with a long human tongue. Romeo paid very little attention to all of this and went straight up to the thirteenth floor. He kept an apartment beyond the backstage area, and it could only be reached via a secret doorway sequestered in the back of a musty old closet. He pushed past the dusty old stage costumes, cranked open the door and ascended into a dim space illuminated by giant bay windows. Bright blue and yellow neon throbbed rhythmically through the glass, illuminating a ludicrous clutter of equipment. Parrots and Toucans chittered in giant wicker cages, creating a constant burble of conversation. The irregular flashes just barely illuminated a coated figure hidden in the shadows. A large pistol gleamed in its trembling, malformed hands. Romeo bustled about, talking to himself, oblivious to the stranger.

“One…and then another…then…” he muttered, switching on a coloured lamp.

The kaleidoscopic light illuminated the half-insect face of Judas, trembling in the depth of a movie director’s canvas chair. Antennae flickered sickeningly in the half-light causing Romeo to recoil.

“Fuck me Mary,” Romeo whispered, shocked by Judas’s transmutation.

The scrap metal had been stripped from him and he was dressed in a shabby raincoat and a pair of striped pajama pants. Metal bracing lined his legs, but it was obvious that his transformation into an alien being had temporarily restored his ability to walk. He smiled sheepishly at Romeo.

“Out selling pleasure to little boys in spike heels?” he giggled conversationally, leveling the oversized blaster at the Dealer.

“Weren’t you?” Romeo replied, regaining his stride and lighting up a black cigarette.

Judas slouched, squirming slightly with discomfort. His broken skin was greenish and frog-like in its slickness. He was also creamy with sweat; a perspiration which caught in the many fine facets of his newly forming carapace. His goatee still remained though, stained a hideous orange from excessive carrot consumption. Romeo could just make out his eyes, which had turned the shiny black of an insect’s.

“Where’s my money Judas?” Romeo asked, leaning against a bank of hardware.

“Ah!” Judas smiled, displaying a set of emerging mandibles. “As you may have noticed, I hold in my hand a pistol.”

“Really? I thought it was a cigarette lighter.”

“Oh it is no ordinary gun I can assure you,” Judas slurped. “It is a Soul Gun and it fires cloud bullets; etheric projectiles which injure not the body but the sno-globe. Why even after the body is gone, the cloud bullets ensure that the soul is damaged for a good many incarnations.”

“Quite,” Romeo smoked, unimpressed.

“It’s quite strange really,” Judas mused, trailing off for a moment.

“You know…my predicament,” he hinted lasciviously.

“I thought that I had achieved some sort of sexual nirvana – which, of course I had! Endless heaven…Oh how I longed for some human pain after the first day.”

He paused for a moment, scratching at the base of one of his flickering antennae. A piece of his scalp fell off, like cheese from a pizza. He looked at it with disgust, brushing it beneath a chair with his foot before rambling on.

“When the pain came though…Ah, even the pain was joy. Tears spilled in utter and absolute pleasure. All above were the stars, each one an angel with a permanent erection. The night was a slavering cunt, wide open, cold and quivering. Each tear was drool…Sex sweat Sundays…”

He seemed to trail off again, not quite sure of himself, lost in the thrill of confession. Romeo observed with icy interest as he spoke.

“Now of course it becomes the antithesis. An agony. It wrenches apart my collarbones. It rearranges my ribcage. I look in the mirror and see it sliding barbed wire tongues into my mouth. This was my first experience of pain! Why, even as I speak to you now, I am shaking with ecstasy.”

He seemed to gather himself, holding up the shiny gun with renewed vigour.

“Need I say more?” he smiled. “Now give me a fucking carrot before I ventilate your soul.”

Romeo the Dealer stubbed out the black cigarette and folded his arms.

“I’m sorry Judas, but you should have done your homework. I’m a Canaanite, one of the last of the Painbreed. I don’t have a soul, so that hairdryer is useless.”

There was a long, awkward silence before Judas slumped down, panting wetly. The Soul Gun sank uselessly to his lap.

“Typical,” he muttered with an all-consuming bitterness.

“Really Judas, you should have come to me as a friend.” the Dealer smirked. “I could give you a couple of carrots, but tell me, will it really make a difference to your ‘predicament’?”

“Yes.”

“Junkie mentality.”

With incredible swiftness, Romeo snagged a carrot from a shelf and tossed it to the wooden floorboards. Judas lost all composure in a heartbeat, descending upon the root vegetable with an almost predatory savagery. He devoured it in seconds and Romeo the Dealer watched as the green in his shelled skin paled and flickered momentarily toward a flesh tone of sorts. A moment of human clarity descended upon him and he seemed to suddenly realize the depth of his affliction, as though for the first time. Romeo watched him with a sort of dead interest, lighting up another black cigarette. They exchanged a glance in which Judas conceded that Romeo had made his point. He began to drag himself painfully off the floor and back into the chair. By the time he he was seated, he was green again.

“You guys are finished you know,” Romeo announced blithely. “Too revolutionary, always wanting to corner the market.”

He cracked a can of cola and took a swig, flopping into a nearby dentist’s chair.

“Take me,” he bantered on. “Supply and demand, its best. Besides, The Soft House has had enough of this extraterrestrial vice shit. They’ve assigned a special project to you from the military strike force outside the zone. His name is Bronski Glass.”

“We’ll just…bribe him I guess?”

“Sorry. No pleasure center. He’s had his brain amputated.”

“Amputated? Does he like Mozart?”

“It’s like a bad joke,” Romeo swigged.

“No wait…it IS a bad joke,” he added with deadpan alacrity.

“He’s also been working with a mole, slowly scoping out the imp’s weaknesses.”

“What!” Judas exclaimed. “Who sold us out!”

“Michelle of course,” Romeo smoked. “I think it was even her idea to approach Mister Sister and sticky-tape some sort of alliance between the Buddha and Bronski Glass. Why, I’m pretty sure it was her who even gave them the bright idea of offering frogfuck freebies to you boys, to get you all roped and soaped.”

“If that wench wasn’t already crucified!” Judas gritted. “Maybe she really is God’s daughter…Traitor, runs in the family I suppose…”

“Mister Sister may be unaware of the extent of her dealings with Bronski Glass. I think she is going to play the Big Buddha the same way. Might be some leverage, if you looking to get square for the greenies.”

Judas sighed phlegmishly and stared out at the neon. Membranes licked over his oversized eyes, catching in the pellucid light.

“Getting square isn’t going to change the fact that I’m completely frogged up,” he admitted miserably.

Something like a smile twisted his stained goatee.

“I suppose you have to admire Michelle’s gall bladder,” he sniggered. “She’s the little crucifixion that could.”

“So what will you do?” Romeo asked.

“I’m running out of track,” Judas flumped. “Maybe I’ll head down to the beach, work on my moon tan. What else is there?”

“Not much I suppose.”

“Oh well.”

Judas raised the Soul Gun to the side of his head and smiled blackly.

“Pow,” he said, pulling the trigger.

Kenzo Cold-Eyes was listening to mix-tapes, watching the men huddle around the fire. They had stripped the massive fish down to its bones and were now throwing scraps of its head to the laughing hyenas. There was a spot of blood on one of his pristine, white leather loafers and he wondered where it came from. He was about to remove it when all of sudden the men seemed to freeze, pricking their ears in accord. One of them doused the fire with a bucket. As the light went out, Kenzo Cold-Eyes noticed distant glimmerings at the entrance to the pier. The hyenas became excited, sensing danger. They began frothing in the darkness, tugging at their chains like angry bulls. The men fanned out silently, their beads and machetes glinting in the moonlight. Kenzo Cold-Eyes killed the tape deck, fumbling for the telescopic night goggles which The Pink Samurai had accidentally left behind. He found the apparatus and quickly buckled it over his sunglasses (which he never removed). He pulled his white fedora low and focused in. He sighted a line of backlit Buddhist Punks, advancing up the pier like gunslingers, swords drawn. Behind this unbroken advance he could make out a gaudy palanquin festooned with colourful paper lanterns. Mister Sister reclined on the many cushions of the palanquin, absently playing with several, severed heads. Kenzo Cold-Eyes zoomed in closer to discover that one of the heads belonged to Typhoid Mary.

“Oh my dog…” he flustered.

The detective disembarked quickly, raygun in hand, goggles glinting, skirting round to crouch behind the trunk of his cruiser. He extracted his walkie-talkie and held it close to his face, radioing in to the ship.

Number Nun bore the unconscious Cherry Cola along a passage while Taty trailed behind, now vaguely fascinated by the goings on in the surgery ship. The Sugar Twins brought up the rear, having appeared out of nowhere. They were all close to the upper deck when they heard the voice of Kenzo Cold-Eyes crackling from deep within the folds of the nun’s cassock. The android immediately set Cherry Cola down upon the flower garlands of a nearby wooden altar, rifling around for the communications device.

“What’s the matter?” she answered.

“Big Buddha!” came the garbled transmission. “Head of Typhoid Mary on his lap!”

“Jump off the end of the pier,” Number Nun told him after a microsecond of deliberation. “I’m on my way up.”

Kenzo Cold-Eyes squinted at the approaching mob. He calculated his chances before fleeing toward the distant end of the pier, his grey trenchoat flapping comically behind him as he clutched onto his hat. Number Nun slid the walkie-talkie past sensors in her head until a tiny light flashed green. She then took Taty’s hand and knelt down to face her.

“Listen to me now Childbride,” she told her seriously. “I have scanned this walkie-talkie’s frequency so that you will be able to communicate with me via my internal communications array. I want you to keep it, wait here and listen for my holy instruction.”

Taty began to protest but Number Nun quieted her with a wave of her hand.

“Ok fine,” Taty sulked.

Number Nun nodded briskly before marching up a nearby flight of stairs. She activated her internal voice-system and called Kenzo Cold-Eyes.

“Are you wet yet?” she mind-asked without moving her lips.

Kenzo Cold-Eyes stood before broken rails, poised gingerly above the end of the pier. Rotting timbers formed a sheer drop of several meters, down to a boiling crash of greasy waves wherein milkshaked a myriad of fish skeletons, trash and broken tires.

“My eyes may like the cold, but my trenchcoat doesn’t,” he replied nervously.

“I have enough little girls to look after,” she snipped. “Jump and I will come find you.”

The detective cast one last loving look at his distant car before re-holstering his raygun and withdrawing a pair of cute red nose-plugs. The armed mass was almost at the ship now and there was clearly no turning back. He plugged his nose and leapt out into space, his flailing form vanishing instantly into the maelstrom of waves.

Number Nun emerged onto the upper deck and skirted to the ocean side of the ship. Some nurses and men with machetes clustered at the opposite railings facing out onto the pier. There was a buzz in the air and figures skittered about, preparing the ship for some form of attack. Number Nun glimpsed the approaching mob, made some calculations and then gazed out beyond the far railings. The ship faced into sullen seas. Spiked buoys drifted amongst the wreckage of long beached vessels. Some small rocky islands receded, speckled with evil looking birds. She stripped off her cassock and the light of her unclothed body illuminated the deck around her in a bluish glow. She flipped neatly off the side and entered the swell like a crossbow bolt, lighting up the oily water around her. She swam lithely through the murk, skirting drifting pillars of bone-tangled weed and the jumbled husks of fallen boats and cars. The monolithic architecture of the old pier stretched off into gloomy distances and so she finned down, catching a ride in the riptides which swept alongside it and out to sea.

“Well Mister Kenzo Cold-Eyes,” she spoke in mind-radio. “Have you drowned yet?”

Kenzo Cold-Eyes had by now managed to pull himself from the filthy froth. He was clinging to slimy columns of rotten wood like a wharf rat while breakers pounded to and fro. The network of pier supports created a necrotic cathedral behind him, funneling wind and spray in erratic, lukewarm blasts which kept threatening to dislodge him from his perch. He had managed to hold onto the walkie-talkie and was now yelling into it above the crash of the waters.

“Hear tell tales - enormous tadpoles eat falling fishermen!”

Number Nun weaved in and out of the dark supports, lighting up the gloom like a phosphorescent jellyfish. She noticed large clouds of dense jelly clustered around the sediment caked bottoms of some of the supports. Monstrous, comma shaped tadpole creatures spawned in this ooze, flickering like microscopic bacteria amongst partially digested human skeletons and scuba gear. The jelly was in fact a veritable tapioca of lost fishing gear and body parts, denoting the gruesome end for many a drunken sailor. Number Nun changed frequencies.

“Childbride?” she called.

A crackling transmission emitted in her head, followed by Taty’s excited voice.

“There are nurses with spearguns!”

“Don’t irritate anybody Childbride. I’m going to kill the Buddha and his men. Soon we’ll be back in church.”

“I hate going to church.”

“You are an atrocious little sinner Childbride, but my programming compels me to protect and nurture you. Try to make an effort now.”

“Jesus can eat my…”

Number Nun disengaged the transmission before any serious blasphemies were committed. In doing so she noticed a pair of tadpoles swimming shark-ishly in her wake. She paused to electrocute them before continuing on to the end of the pier.

The ranks of Buddhist Punks stopped just before the surgery ship. A line of armed guards flanked the entrance to the gangplank, restraining their hyenas and waiting for a signal to attack. The palanquin began to be jostled to the front, crawling over the heads of the punks like an enormous, gaudy beetle. Mister Sister leered down benevolently from this cushiony platform, his hands bloodied from the heads on his lap. He gazed down mawkishly, addressing the many beaded men who protected the ship.

“Oh my beautiful black bucks!” he crowed to them. “You cord-muscled remnants of a savage South! I wish you or your Big Daddy no harm, not that a poor, fat deity such as myself could ever…”

He was cut off by the amplified whisper of Daddy Bast, who had appeared on an upper deck, a microphone stand held delicately before him by a nubile slave. Several leather-bound nurses strained murderously against the leashes he had coiled in his paws, their vampire fangs bared like Dobermans.

“Come now, you are nothing but a perfumed thug!” the cat priest smiled. “A sodomite with galactic leanings and genocidal intent. What could you possibly wish from Daddy Bast? A cure for your foolish infection of reality?”

“Oh gosh never!” Mister Sister chuckled uproariously. “I want to see it all frogged up and fancy-free! I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your mumbo-jumbs…Why, I’ll even feed you victims to fiddle with! I don’t want a cure, I just want to see it all turn to slime…”

“Very noble,” Daddy Bast interrupted again. “But you still haven’t told me what it is that you want.”

“Well…there is that troublesome Number Nun. I think she means to gut me for castrating her Lord and Master. My spies tell me she is onboard?”

Number Nun had meanwhile ascended into the thrashing breakers at the end of the pier. She rose from the dirty foam like a glowing skittle, scanning for the detective amongst the dismal colonnades of support beams. She located him and knifed through the surge, crab-climbing up slippery concrete to where he clung. The tips of her breasts had unplugged, revealing nipple-shaped mouthpieces, through which she could redirect any number of nourishing substances, including air. Devices realigned within her glassy chest cavity, unfurling clear tubing, piping airflow from her internal oxygen supply to bladders contained within her translucent breasts. She peeled the Kenzo Cold-Eyes from the slippery timber and pushed his gagging mouth to her scuba nipples before launching back into the heaving surf. She swam back along the side of the old pier with the detective clutched to her bosom like an overgrown baby, his torrential bubbles whirling away in their spiral slipstream.

“We are all rather fond of Number Nun here,” Daddy Bast spoke into the microphone, his whispery voice echoing down to the pier from a bank of converted foghorns.

“She performed most benevolent missionary work in the jungle before that imp reprogrammed her dogma drive for carnal interface.”

“Oh come now let me squash her!” Mister Sister squealed petulantly. “I won’t be able to sleep peacefully until she’s rusting in a ditch! I don’t want a war with you Big Daddy, I would hate to exterminate such beautiful bodyguards and rape all your patients…”

Daddy Bast paused to consider the intolerable tenacity of the faux Buddha and his minions. He summoned a kneeling nurse with a flick of his claw.

“Fetch me Number Nun and her brood.”

The nurse licked his hand and scampered down a trapdoor like a little spider.

Rusted ‘DANGER KILLER TADPOLES’ signs creaked along the trash strewn beach while racks of barbed wire receded like monstrous tapeworms. Weathered deckchairs were scattered down the strand, occupied by spooky, hairless sunbathers. These pale, bloated figures, for some unfathomable reason, only emerged to sunbathe at night. They sprawled out on filthy towels amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the contaminated shore, blinking at one another like brain-damaged molluscs. A faint glow appeared in the sluggish lap of waves, coagulating slowly into the form of Number Nun. She strode out of the surf, dragging a coughing and spluttering Kenzo Cold-Eyes across the sand. She deposited him unceremoniously on a rickety deckchair and watched as he vomited a large quantity of radioactive seawater.

“I’ll be along shortly,” she snipped. “And remember heathen, you now owe your life to the Blessed Virgin.”

He waved his arm in irritation as she stalked off across the shoreline. The sonambulistic sunbathers observed their exchange with poached egg eyes, oblivious to what had just taken place. Like slugs, they seemed to exist in slower dimension of time, unaware of events that had transpired too quickly. Number Nun flicked her head as she crossed the beach, powering down her internal lighting. She became instantly shadowy and insubstantial in her crystalline nudity, barely visible in the muggy darkness of the beach. Only her eyes gleamed faintly, like tiny quicksilver almonds. Cloaked thusly in lightlessness, she padded soundlessly back toward the massive structures of the pier, preparing herself for a violent confrontation.

A pair of nurses herded Taty and The Sugar Twins onto the deck at knifepoint. Another dragged the comatose figure of Cherry Cola up a flight of constricted stairs. They presented the four of them to the cat and then sank back to their knees.

“Little one say Number Nun is in the sea,” the nurses whispered to Daddy Bast.

“Is that true, my little pup?” The cat smiled toothily down at her.

Taty wordlessly extended the walkie-talkie and Daddy Bast scooped it up.

Number Nun entered into the maze of crates, which cluttered the dockyards leading up to the pier. She slunk like a glass ghost, past rusted cranes and winches, along the narrow channels created by closely packed metal containers. A tinny voice came through her head.

“Blessed be the bored my pretty little appliance,” Daddy Bast spoke directly into her electronic radio mind.

Number Nun’s face remained lightless, soundless and expressionless as she answered, more of a mannequin than ever.

“God made every screw in this body,” she replied dryly. “Even now he watches over your shoulder, like a parrot in a pirate movie.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with transsexuals. They have given you bad karma. Now the Buddha wants your diamond ass.”

Mister Sister had by now grown thoroughly impatient. He smashed Typhoid Mary’s head against the swirled pillars of the palanquin like a sulky child.

“What’s going on up there!” he ranted. “I want that toy Nun or I’ll slaughter you all!”

“Did you hear that?” Daddy Bast purred with amusement. “His worship appears to be throwing some form of tyrannical tantrum!”

“It’s a rather strange effect hearing him across the pier and through the walkie-talkie,” Number Nun answered snidely. “I can calculate the delay in transmission down to 0.02 seconds; very high quality piece of equipment.”

She moved past a large dumpster and the car-sized hulk of folded machinery which lay beside it. The open pier stretched out before her and she crept up to the railing. She was feeling somewhat handicapped by her newly acquired inability to scan for peripheral hardware and resolved to fix the damaged circuitry as soon as she was back at the Nebula Shell Sea. Romeo the Dealer would have the necessary parts and a quick installation would take up very little time.

“I’m not sure I want to sacrifice my ship for an appliance,” the cat man confided to her. “Even though our time in the jungle was very special for me.”

A tiny red LED lit up in the depths of the car-sized hulk of folded machinery, which now lay behind her. The light illuminated a dingy decal for Oriental vanilla milk, which one of the Buddhist monks had planted upon the battle-robot in a fit of childish sentimentality. The folded robot scanned the area before it in a sort of antiquated video game vision comprised of saturated, shadow-less shapes. The statuesque form of the nude Number Nun was clearly visible amongst the boxes and bins, painted a pixellated white-blue against the surrounding red-black of inert forms. A cartoonish target blinked on, settling instantly over her and sticking like glue.

“I’ve never felt less like a jaguar than I did then,” Daddy Bast admitted with uncharacteristic sentimentality.

“You are a filthy sinner and in need of spiritual cleansing,” Number Nun stated matter-of-factly.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Kenzo Cold-Eyes was listening in from the beach, his dripping walkie-talkie clasped to his ear. He shook his wet head, covered the mouthpiece and turned to one of the sunbathing slug-people.

“Robot bitch!” he muttered conversationally, eliciting many drooling, non-comprehensive stares.

Mister Sister had meanwhile received a transmission from his camouflaged battle-droid. A garble of digital noise erupted quietly from an electronic earring, causing his pudgy face to light up with an almost gastronomic bliss. He raised an ornamental flower, which was in fact a communications device, to his lips.

“Do you have the Nun?” he breathed wetly into the petals.

“Target acquired,” came the monosyllabic, bass-heavy video game voice.

“It is a shame that you are so rude,” Daddy Bast said. “One day you will meet your match.”

“Not today,” Number Nun replied curtly.

The battle robot suddenly activated without warning. It burst apart with a loud hissing and clanking, unfolding like industrial origami. Floodlights lit up along its front, lighting up Number Nun and her surrounding area in a harsh white glare. She was bathed in vicious machine fire before she even had time to turn. Her arms shattered like glass and a leg was instantly severed. The rain of metal riddles her face and torso, hurling her against the metal railing. The rate of fire intensified and she was cut in half. Her head and upper torso spun over the twisted railing and out into the dark waves below and the firing ceased. A haze of smoke drifted, glowing supernaturally in the vivid floodlights. The giant robot clumped over to where her leg and hips spasmed weakly on the bullet pocked concrete. It squashed these like bugs, throwing vast pillars of blinding light around when it moved. Down on the pier Mister Sister was squealing with delight, clapping his fat, blood-crusted hands together like a demonic toddler. Taty had of course seen the lights suddenly illuminate the pier and ocean in an arc of whiteness. And, like everybody else aboard, she had also heard the thunder of the machine guns. She had watched Number Nun being torn apart with a numb fascination of horror, the feeling of being caught in a dream from which she would soon wake. Now of course she did wake and began to scream. But her screams died abruptly, cutting short as though someone had pulled her plug. She stood staring out into nothing, paralyzed with shock. Daddy Bast lifted the walkie-talkie to his face again.

“Well, I hate to say I told you so,” he smirked.

The ravaged, limbless torso of Number Nun had been caught in the riptides and was now being trawled out to sea. A vaguely annoyed expression haunted her cracked face.

“I don’t think you hate to say it at all,” she replied tartly.

Taty flicked her tear streaked face up to the cat in tragic helplessness. He eyed her with a little smile and a wink and she wasn’t sure how to react to at all.

“Religion is the devil’s greatest triumph my little broken doll,” He announced theatrically. “Perhaps you could convert some lobsters while you mull that statement over – meanwhile, I bid you adieu.”

He handed the walkie-talkie to Taty who began weeping into it, barely forming sentences she was so distraught.

“Oh stop crying Childbride,” Number Nun snapped. “It’s so undignified.”

“Who’s going to take care of me now…” Taty sobbed.

“Life is uncertain, death is sure – sin is the cause, Christ is the cure.”

Down on the beach, the eavesdropping Kenzo Cold-Eyes could restrain himself no longer.

“What kind comfort is that to give to abandoned child!” he protested.

Daddy Bast squatted down, staring into Taty’s wet face with his Halloween orange eyes. She began sobbing again, terrified by the enormous, slitted orbs. He extended a paw to her and opened it, palm up. A bright orange pill lay on the hard, calloused pads of his black hand.

“Eat this,” he gruffed. “It will lock your spinal corridor and kill any parasites before they get a chance to climb.”

“No please!” she pleaded. “I don’t want to get with the monster boy! Please!”

Daddy Bast pressed the pill into her trembling hands and then rose. He drifted toward a hatch, dragging his nurses behind him like dogs.

“Throw these kittens to Mister Sister,” he muttered over his shoulder. “I have no place for strays on my ship.”

Taty began screaming, clutching the walkie-talkie to her breast as she was dragged forcibly down the gangplank. Cherry Cola was also manhandled in the same way, tugged down the ramps like a sack of rice. The Sugar Twins sauntered down ahead, unmolested by the ship’s crew. They slunk aboard the palanquin and cuddled up to Mister Sister, who stroked them in triumph, utterly delighted with himself. Taty was hefted onto the gory cushions at his painted feet while Cherry Cola was deposited in a heap beside her. The punks began to relax and chatter as the confrontational energy dissipated. The lantern-heavy palanquin turned and they all drifted back toward the darkness of the docks, escorted by the massive killer robot. Down on the beach, Kenzo Cold-Eyes slumped into a deckchair and watched the floodlight pillars play across a galaxy of decrepit crates. He observed the distant caravan of punks with utter glumness, swigging from a hip flask, which he had the good sense to carry with him at all times.

“You make me jump off a pier for this,” he spat into the walkie-talkie. “Those poor girls!”

Deep below the seething waves, Number Nun had begun to glow again. She swirled out to sea like a glowing skittle, oblivious to the world above.

“I’m busy praying,” she replied testily. “Go away.”

With that she cut transmission and submitted entirely to the great surge of water, which would now deliver her to the measureless expanses of the ocean. Kenzo Cold-Eyes slouched fatalistically amongst the mollusc bathers, too depressed to call Taty, for he could certainly offer her no assistance now. He tried not to think of the helpless little girl curled in a foetal ball at the ogre’s feet, now lost to a world of panic. Taty clutched the walkie-talkie close to her racing heart as the palanquin lurched like a boat, quickly eating the orange pill, which the cat priest had bequeathed to her as a parting gift. The future had suddenly died and she was now trapped inside its unimaginable corpse. She began to cry again and found that she could not stop.

Kenzo Cold-Eyes drove a souped up space-cruiser with a blue glitter paint-job and Stingray fins. You could see him coming a mile away any time of the day. The car had a massive carrying capacity and the back cabin had been fitted with a semi-circular white couch, mini-bar and television. He would occasionally supplement his income by hiring himself out as a limo service for those who could afford it. Everybody knew Kenzo Cold-Eyes in the big party circuit and he was often hired to follow errant spouses with telephoto lens and a notepad. When he finally arrived at the house he had The Pink Samurai with him. Number Nun tried the television but the channel reception was fried. As much as they tuned about for news, all they could pick up was a soap opera broadcast on every public access channels. The soapie itself was a 24 hours default, screened only in times of trouble. The characters spoke an indecipherable language and the whole thing was shot on ancient video equipment to dismal effect. A mirror ball spun a tactless party shimmer over the grim passengers huddled in the back while Kenzo-Cold-Eyes gunned the car down a dark jungle road. Foliage swept ghostly blurs through the yellow headlights, catching in the eyes of animals. The occasional grass hut flashed past, but these structures grew sparse as the jungle became denser and more uninhabited. The front section of the cruiser sported two luxurious cream couches, well spaced. Kenzo Cold-Eyes had the wheel of course, blasting indecipherable arcade game jingles into his loopy cigarette smoke. The Pink Samurai had shotgun, an enormous pair of military issue night-vision goggles obscuring half his swarthy face. He scanned the darkness outside in drunken sweeps, the light glinting off his gold teeth and candy coloured armor. Number Nun occupied the back, along with Taty, Cherry Cola and the twins. Cherry Cola was sobbing hard, her head on Taty’s lap, refusing to speak about her experiences in the house. Subdued strip lighting illuminated them from below in muted aquarium shimmer, creating a chic cocktail bar effect that was by now thoroughly out of place. Number Nun was attempting to retune the television with optically projected infrared beams. In times of crises the wrestlers were known to jam all transmission, so the TV blackout was not entirely unexpected. Yet despite all odds, Number Nun still persisted in the hopes of uncovering rebel transmissions hidden within the noise.

“Not far now we hit outer Necropolis like bang on in,” Kenzo Cold-Eyes announced. “Via Pyramid Quarter, the jungle deep - City not safe man, three day total chaos! Everbody frogfucking!”

Cherry Cola let out a pitiful whine when she heard this. Taty clutched onto her, terrified.

“They made me do it with the green boy,” she whimpered from the depths of Taty’s arms.

Number Nun snapped to attention, instantly activating her eye filters. She scanned the girls with her spectral vision and quickly noticed an anomaly at the base of Cherry Cola’s spine. A baby Symbiote was hiding like a child, behind the tree stump of her coccyx. It noticed Number Nun and stared back at her through the shifting bone and glassy layers of flesh, its face already beginning to mimic the roller skating waitress’s like a crudely manufactured finger puppet.

“There’s one of those things inside you,” Number Nun mentioned.

Cherry Cola began to panic and scream, begging the android to remove it.

“Leave her alone!” Taty shouted. “Stop frightening her!”

Number Nun turned to Kenzo Cold-Eyes, adopting a confidential tone

“We need to head back into the city,” she muttered. “We have to get her to Daddy Bast’s chop-chop and slice this thing out of her.”

“Daddy Bast central zone number one,” Kenzo Cold-Eyes squinted fatalistically. “Ground zero-zero.”

“According to my estimations, it will take five hours for the parasite to reach her brainstem,” Number Nun insisted. “We have to try to save her.”

Taty’s attempts to restrain and comfort Cherry Cola fell apart without warning. The afflicted girl began screaming uncontrollably, thrashing about like an injured animal. Taty clung to the bucking maniac, pale and terrified. Number Nun flipped back the tip of her right index finger, revealing a hypodermic needle. She jabbed it into Cherry Cola’s neck and the roller skating waitress fell immediately limp, cluttering to the carpet like a mannequin. Kenzo Cold-Eyes slowed, pulling over onto a muddy verge. He cut the engine and the arcade game music died, leaving them with the ragged sound of Taty’s frantic breathing.

“What did you do to her!” she shrieked, regarding the fallen form in horror.

Number Nun brandished the syringe in irritation.

“Quiet Childbride, or I will put you to sleep as well.”

Taty shrunk to the far end of the cabin, squatting numbly beside Cherry Cola’s inert form.

“We die maybe we turn back,” Kenzo Cold-Eyes stated matter-of-factly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Number Nun tut-tutted.

The detective lit a fresh cigarette while The Pink Samurai scanned the trees outside. Soon they had turned around and were heading back into the city.

Upturned cars lay burning in the streets. The inner quadrants had transformed overnight into a sort of deserted war zone, bristling with craters and pockets of flaming debris. The passengers scanned furtively about whilst driving. Kenzo Cold-Eyes had his raygun out on the dash and The Pink Samurai was anxiously fingering the hilt of a rhinestone shotgun. Distant gunfire followed them around every street corner. The esplanade was less altered than they had anticipated. Despite the rubble and the damage, stragglers still loitered on the strip. Lights burned in the windows of the Nebula Shell Sea and there were people on the street. Some of the windows of the Dead Duck had been obliterated, but music still jangled from the juke creating an unexpected atmosphere of festivity amongst the patrons on the sidewalk. Cherry Cola had woken up and was leaning groggily against the sill, cuddled up in Taty’s arms, watching the lights with narcoleptic fascination.

“Thank fuck the duck is still diving,” she slurred with pride.

“Not so bad as imagined seems,” Kenzo Cold-Eyes reported pointlessly.

“Its just a power shift,” Number Nun stated. “Things will resume a sort of normality very soon.”

“Is the big Buddha taking over?” Taty asked, still morbid about the demise of Alphonse.

“It looks that way,” the android confirmed.

The Pink Samurai unexpectedly jumped from the slow moving vehicle, slamming the door behind him. They watched him stagger into the Dead Duck like a big pink cockroach.

“Don’t stop till we reach Daddy Bast’s,” Number Nun said to Kenzo Cold-Eyes. “We need to find Romeo The Dealer when we are done – he’s the only one who can get us out of town.”

The entrance to the wharves was a region of cluttered shanty shacks housing all manner of disenfranchised zone-sters and maritime drek. Massive, rotten warehouses loomed and receded in the headlights. Sailor types mingled with ebony skinned jungle hoodlums, clogging up doorways, smoking space-spice and playing antique games of chance with bird bones and hood ornaments. Strange orchestras of organ grinders drifted like lepers, emitting a haunting xylophonic ruckus wherever they went. They reached the inner dockyards where monstrous piers reached into the seething breakers. Decrepit vessels and abandoned freighters clung to these ghostly structures, harking back to a time when the town was still a thriving and legitimate seaport. The farthest and longest pier was shipless, save for a vintage cruise liner anchored about halfway down. The ship was monumental, a rusted hulk twinkling with many, tiny pinpricks of light and topped by triple funnels which loomed like fins against the gloomy cloudbanks. They passed through a small maze of crates and through the wreckage of a barricade, passing peasant women in shawls and limping, sickly men. The drive down the pier beyond was however, smooth and unobstructed. A wide, metal gangplank creaked against the stone of the pier, watched over by oil-dark men in beaded gowns. The men huddled beside the water, toasting bizarre fish in the fire of a garbage can. Their knives glinted in the oncoming headlights, creating long shadows against the barnacled flanks of the old ship. And it was only when they drew closer that Taty noticed the many mangy hyenas, all tethered to leashes like monstrous children, licking at human bones. Some had patterns shaved into their scrawny flanks, while the fur of others had been bleached and dyed improbable colours. A sign above the gangplank read: DADDY BAST’S VOODOO SURGERY in hand-scrawled script. They came to a halt and Number Nun exited the cruiser, addressing the guards in a sibilant jungle tongue. They seemed to recognize her and smiled big white toothy grins out of the half-dark. She exchanged pleasantries with them before leaning back in through the window.

“Daddy Bast will cure you,” she assured Cherry Cola.

She then opened the door and scooped out the drugged roller-skating waitress as though she were a flimsy toy. Too inebriated to protest, the usually feisty girl simply clung on as she was ferried up the plank toward a gaping hatch. Taty went with, clinging to Number Nun’s garments, too afraid to remain in the car. The Sugar Twins also followed suit, trailing like dazed pets. Kenzo Cold-Eyes wasn’t particularly happy at being left alone to wait in the car, but his good conscience kept him from voicing his displeasure. He simply watched them swallow into the side of the wounded ship, neurotically checking his watch and the dwindling charge status of his blaster.

The interior of the surgery ship was dim, encrusted with innumerable shrines to inconceivable deities. Candles glowed out of the darkness illuminating sacrificial chickens and wooden effigies of cigarette smoking Gods and lamb’s hearts festooned with nails and personal tokens. Patients were clustered throughout the constricted metal passages, either dying on makeshift gurneys or leaning against bulkheads, their limbs and faces obscured by leaf fiber bandages. Neon tubes flickered at intervals, illuminating some terrible biological catastrophe or another. Everywhere could be discerned the tinny sound of chanting and drumming. The nurses were also peculiar, clad in tight, shiny leathers and dehumanizing fetish gear, their faces deleted by suffocating rubber masks and tubes. Their doll-like, erotic nature seemed at odds with their roles as nurses and they limped painfully through the darkness on extended needle heels and metal pony hooves like a legion of afflicted insects. Some dragged trolleys of stained medical equipment through dripping holds while others engaged in sexual intercourse with the more seriously injured patients. The metallic, ringing wails of the wounded penetrated deeply into Taty, causing her to grit her teeth and clap her palms over her ears in anguish. She stumbled through this ophidian realm on a sort of autopilot, terrified at the prospect of being separated from the others. The small caravan clattered down iron stairwells and along unilluminated shafts until a dismal sort of reception area eventually loomed out of the darkness. It was a flame-licked niche, swathed in flower garlands and carvings of jungle spirits. A nurse was stationed in the dingy area, locked into a face-brace and collared cruelly to a post. She was sorting through a pile of severed limbs, her bare limbs spotted with all manner of blood and biological secretions. A drip was attached to her inner thigh slowly feeding phosphorescent green fluid into her veins. She smiled when she saw Number Nun though, instantly losing some of her previous inhumanity.

“Haven’t seen you down in the soup for awhile,” she giggled through stainless steel facial clasps.

“Where’s Big Daddy Sabrina? I have a waitress with some sort of alien internal parasite.”

“Fucking symbiotes,” the nurse spat left and right. “Nothing but symbiotes for the last few days, Daddy told us Mister Sister’s introduced some form of inter-dimensional contagion into the city.”

She peered at Cherry Cola, her face distorted by the punishing brace.

“Has it taken over her yet?” she enquired in a clinical manner entirely incongruous with her dreadful, slave-like appearance.

“Still crawling up inside the lower spine, eating out pain arrays, virtually undetectable.”

“Yeah, Big Daddy will wanna see her. We’ve only been getting Vickie-victims in the late stages so this could help. Take Cinderella down to the wait-pit and I’ll get the panther on the horn.”

The wait-pit was a long mess room that had been converted into a waiting area. Taty and Number Nun sat on uncomfortable seats for some time with Cherry Cola lying across their laps. The twins had drifted back to the deck somewhere along the way. All around the wait-pit, men in beads restrained hunch-ridden symbiote-sufferers in various stages of transformation. Their pitiful sounds were utterly abhorrent and fluid covered the floor, seeping through grilles into unspeakable gutters.

“So what’s up with the nurses?” Taty asked Number Nun, her nose clamped firmly shut. “Why they got up all pony style?”

“Daddy Bast enslaves and breaks those who seek to study beneath him, its part of his culture,” Number Nun recited, as though from an encyclopedia. “If they are subservient enough he slowly transforms their bodies and bequeathes powers unto them so that they may help him in his work.”

“What a creep,” Taty muttered.

“Oh, he’s not like that at all,” Number Nun replied quietly.

A pale skinned nurse in lace-up stilletoes and cruelly fastened straps approached them through all the blood and broken bodies. Clutched in her hand was the head of a flamingo, its serpentine neck twined about her bony arm like a fat rope.

“Big Daddy will grace you now,” she rasped, anointing each of their foreheads with a smear of bird blood.

The ‘operating theatre’ was sealed with a large, circular hatch in the floor. A metal ladder descended into the bowels of the vessel and the nurse and Number Nun preceded Taty down into stygian gloom. Cherry Cola was lowered in on a gurney, through a separate trapdoor. The chamber had originally been a storage area for liquid cargo and the interior walls were smooth and heavily bolted. It was very dark within and tiny lamps guttered sporadically. The floor was littered with human organs and the stench that arose from them was obscene in its intensity. Shark sized tadpoles hung upside down from the ceiling, suspended from meat hooks imbedded in their whiplash tails. Some of these beasts been slit open and their whitish entrails butterflied down to the metal surfaces in intricate arrays. A butcher’s block took center stage, illuminated by infrared bulbs. They could see Cherry Cola cranking down like a radioactive angel, alighting neatly upon this chopping block. The chains holding her gurney released and then slithered back up into darkness. The light caught like quicksilver in the eyes of an enormous cat. The monstrous apparition was lurking beside the table, observing them as they descended. Taty was almost too frightened to carry on once she has seen the creature, but Number Nun reassured her with a touch of her hand. Together they all approached the pool of red light, slipping and sliding in long puddles of coagulating blood. As they drew nearer the panther seemed to rise on its hind legs, attaining the height of a tall man. Large eyes glistened and glinted, lamp yellow above a semi-humanoid face. The cat man was smiling, long whiskers draped like an elegant mustache, the light absorbing disorientingly into his sleek black fur. He drew on a heavy velvet cape, swaddling his body up in its regal folds. This item of clothing further enhanced his manly dimensions, making one almost forget that he was in fact a cat. The nurse with the flamingo head preceded them, kneeling in supplication before the cat man, her forehead pressed into the cold blood at his feet. They watched as he withdrew a leash, attaching it to the slim collar around her throat. He pulled the leash gruffly and she jerked up to her knees, remaining at his side like a docile pet.

“It’s been forever since I’ve seen you in the confessional booth,” Number Nun said in an almost friendly fashion, her face and hands glowing like ice in the darkness.

“You are such a charming appliance,” the cat smiled back. “Even brought us a baby symbiote to play with – come up to the dining table and watch Daddy get his hands dirty.”

They clustered around the chopping block where Cherry Cola lay on her stomach. The girl was shaking with fright and internal trauma, her skin lathered over in a creamy layer of sweat. Daddy Bast leaned his heavy triangular head over her and sniffed deeply several times. The muscles in his thick neck rippled as he moved and Taty could easily discern the glint of heavy ivory teeth protruding from between cleft lips.

“Can you smell it?” Number Nun asked quietly.

The catman glanced up at her and winked unnervingly.

“Yes,” he purred. “Nurse, anaesthetize her.”

The nurse suddenly lurched up, baring needle-like fangs, which she then sank into Cherry Cola’s thigh. Cherry Cola screamed, spasmed and lay still. Taty let out a sharp yell and rushed reflexively to her aid, only to be firmly restrained by Number Nun. The nurse withdrew her fangs, licked venom from the wound and then sank languidly back to her bruised knees. Taty observed as she then reached beneath the butcher’s block to fetch a rope-bound bottle for the cat man. Number Nun meanwhile, had leaned over and was unbuttoning Cherry Cola’s uniform, slowly baring her slick back and defiled cotton panties. A tattoo of crossed cola bottles beneath a heart-shaped red cherry adorned her lower hips, creating an amusing parody of the classic skull and crossbones. Daddy Bast uncorked the bottle, releasing a stygian cloud of noxious green fumes. He took a mouthful, gargled deeply and then spewed it all over Cherry Cola’s exposed back. Taty grimaced in disgust, hiding behind Number Nun as the cat man began to undergo some form of suppressed fit, his large yellow eyes rolling back to show intricately veined undersides. His heavy paws sank down onto the skin above the tattoo, their fur becoming instantly matted by the fluid. Translucent claws retracted and elongated in syncopation with his deep bass purring. He began kneading and massaging her flesh in slow, heavy strokes, growling pleasurably. At one point his clawed fingers seemed to slide and fold bloodlessly into her wet skin. They trawled around the tattoo, sinking inexplicably deeper into her body. He began to probe sickeningly around her insides, hissing and spitting to himself. After a moment he froze, almost as though his claws had snagged on something. Taty became rigid with discomfort, imagining one of those barbed claws tagging on tender muscles or some vulnerable organ. The cat man tensed and began to gradually pull the symbiote out of the tattoo. The little green monstrosity arose cleanly through the skin, emerging from the red cherry and crossed cola bottles like some cheap special effect. It was hissing and spitting from its tiny, malformed Cherry Cola face, throwing up lewd finger gestures and scuttling helplessly in the claw grip of Daddy Bast. Cherry Cola was raised up from the hips as the things attempted to hold onto her spine with its twisted feet. But then, with a final yank it was extricated and thrust into a large jam jar. Cherry Cola fell back, her skin miraculously unbroken. A palpable sensation of physical relief seemed to breathe off her prone body and this instantly reassured Taty, causing her to view the monstrous cat in an entirely different light. She gazed up in awe as he raised the jam jar into the light. He shook it around playfully, grinning at the mandibled homunculous with a mouthful of tusk-like teeth. Number Nun also began to examine the creature, flicking her eye-modes to and fro, performing various forms of visual analysis.

“What is it exactly?” she asked the cat.

“Some sort of thing no doubt,” he answered flippantly.

“They say these parasites are transmitted through inter-dimensional intercourse,” Number Nun said. “Spread from a single source; some anomaly Dr Dali brought through from beyond.”

“That was the situation about three days ago, yes,” he replied, placing the jam jar on the butcher’s block.

“What do you mean?”

“After three days the host begins to change. The original personality is absorbed and replaced with that of a foreign hive-mind. The physical body begins to alter to match the make-up of the symbiote and we are left with grotesque, personalized mutant; a caricature of the former self, imbued with an alien consciousness. At the end of the third day the host is transformed entirely into a large version of this thing here. These newly formed hybrids can reproduce in the same manner as the original symbiote.”

“Can anything stop the transformation?”

“Large doses of carrot juice halt the process for an indefinite period of time, triggering all manner of chemical imbalances in the brain. Transformation is inevitable though.”

“You mean…”

“Yes. Dr Dali, in his infinite capacity for perverse annihilation has succeeded in raping the future. A now unstoppable epidemic blossoms amongst the sodomites and whore-folk of this town. Soon they will all be green and rubbery monstrosities, rubbing themselves up against the barge pole of their former existence. They will cry out for satisfaction from satisfaction itself, until all the slum regions and luxury villas are eaten alive and stripped of their populace by these appetite sick deviants. Until we are all drowning in the filth of another world.”

He let loose a stream of slippery coughing chuckles before skulking back onto all fours, padding into the far shadows of the echoing chamber. The velvet cape trawled off, soaking into the ooze which guttered all around. The nurse followed, crawling after him on all fours, her abandoned leash trailing behind like a tail. They both quickly vanished into darkness. Number Nun buttoned up Cherry Cola and hoisted her over a shoulder.

“Lets get back to the Shell Sea,” she announced decisively. “We need to find Romeo the Dealer and then leave town.”

There was a small chapel on the grounds of Alphonse Guava. It was a part of the old estate and the imp maintained it purely for aesthetic reasons. He enjoyed the quietude of the place in the afternoons, and the degradation of Number Nun upon its altar. He even liked the light beneath the quaint stainglass. The blasphemous episodes within the chapel troubled Number Nun greatly, but she was of course powerless to stop them and endured their torments in the name of her synthetic saviour. In the late afternoons, the sun would strike the chapel from the left side, throwing shafts of dusty, honey light across the altar and into the shadowy nave, illuminating the structure like the hull of an old galleon.

The deactivated body of Number Nun lay, half naked upon the antique altar, a puppet with hacked strings. Her inert form was suffused with late afternoon sunshine, lower half exposed, the inner glow of her parts and clockwork mechanisms dim and still. She appeared in fact, for all intents and purposes, dead. The android’s operating systems had been shut down and now showed no more life than a mannequin, yet another life-size effigy of the blessed Virgin. The sunlight lit her glassy hips and highs, illuminating her inner workings and the messy residues caught within her somewhat mangled synthetic genitalia. Many people had evidently been at her in the night and the playflesh was ruined beyond repair. The soft-feel pads hung in shreds, and the entire mechanism was dire need of replacement. The Sugar Twins were draped like cats along the aisle. One was sleeping and the other was on its stomach, purring. They wore matching red velvet jumpsuits, which complimented perfectly the crimson lines around their metallic eyes. The sleeping twin had bundled itself into a heavy white cape, coiled like a fallen white eagle upon the wine red carpet. The twin who was awake studied floating, glowing dust motes with feline attention, moving its head very slowly back and forth. The chapel was a mess of champagne bottles and cigarette butts. Broken things gleamed in and amongst the heaps of confetti. Soiled party streamers were tangled across sacred imagery, dangling down into space like Christmas decorations. A window had been smashed and coloured glass twinkled across overturned pews. The lucid twin stopped moving its head suddenly. A small object had caught its attention. It lay discarded in the darkness beneath the lectern, flashing intermittently. The twin flipped up fluidly, padding over to the lectern on long, pale feet. It went down, reached under and scooped out the thing it had seen, tasting it quickly. The object was about the size of a small key and resembled a translucent, mechanical baby squid. Tiny see-through tendrils flopped pathetically about, questing this way and that. They were adjoined to a glassy central node, within which pulsed a faint, but steady red light. It was obviously some vital part of Number Nun that had either been removed or come loose before, during or after her rape. The Sugar Twin stroked the part lightly with its finger and the tendrils flayed delicately against the crescent of the nail, much like a minute anemone. The twin picked up the object and sauntered over to the prone figure of Number Nun, who lay propped on her back, legs apart like a glass spider. Her crystalline head hung back, off the edge of the altar, caught in the heavy light. Little rainbows flickered throughout her cranial networks, and from this perspective it was easy to see the tiny aperture which lay just above and between her blank eyes, glittering like the vacant socket of a third eye. The Sugar Twin loitered, dreamily observing the tiny mechanical octopoid wriggle accross its palm. Finally the twin tweaked up the mechanism and plugged it back into Number Nun’s forehead. The tendrils immediately extended, slithering throughout the translucent skull as the device clicked itself snugly into place. The red pulsing switched to blue and all of a sudden, her internal mechanisms began powering, charging the silent air with a delicate hum. Lights flickered on throughout her body and her eyes began to iris open. She sat up in shock, scanning about her.

“How long have I been deactivated?” she asked reflexively. The sound of her electronic default voice disturbed the silence of the chapel, frightening some birds from the rafters.

The sleeping twin awoke instantly and they both regarded her like passive animals, or even sleepwalkers. Number Nun arose and began reviewing her memory core. She was shocked to find that certain areas had been tampered with, creating fuzzy grey holes in her perception of reality. Almost two days were missing from her memory. She performed a quick internal scan and discovered that a small hole had been drilled into her skull.

Number Nun stalked furiously up to the house with the Sugar Twins trailing in her wake like manta rays. They became distracted by something in the grove at one point and loitered in the sunshine while she moved on across the savaged lawn. The wake of orgiastic celebrations had utterly defiled the grounds. She saw a white limousine crushed like a menthol cigarette into an old fig tree. Tables and couches had been overturned throughout the lawns and party detritus was strewn everywhere, blotching the greenery with flotsam and jetsam. There were inert figures lurking in the flowerbeds, some still moving slowly against each other. The sound of an electric guitar thrashed and wailed from somewhere inside the house.

The interior of the villa was even more of an unspeakable catastrophe. Broken vases and mangled furniture cascaded across vast expanses of ruined carpeting. Crockery lay crushed amongst rotting food whilst iguanas and insects drank from the fallen bowls of punch. A trio of unconscious go-go girls had been stuffed into a closet in the pantry. She passed a Buddhist Punk in the hall. The youth was writhing and gibbering feverishly on the stone tiles. He kept banging his limbs sickeningly against the walls with his exertions, drenched in greasy sweat and all tangled up in his robes. A massy, greenish hump jutted from the nape of his neck like a tumour, and this seemed to be the primary source of his physical grief. Number Nun moved away, performing a quick audio scan, scrubbing under the distant, insistent noise of the electric guitar. She discovered the sound of a film being projected in the private cinema and delved toward it.

Michelle sat in the cinema with the house lights up, muttering into a barely noticeable headset. She was running her favourite reel while she chattered away: A heavily solarized and hand-tinted cut-up of Cecil.B.DeMille’s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Whoever had desecrated the celluloid had done a choice job, creating little obscene animations throughout the film using glowing scratch marks and dosing all the characters with flickering slashes of digital colour. The footage had been so pixellated with 8-bit tones that it sometimes resembled snippets of an old Atari videogame. A couple of refugees from the previous night’s chaos were doing unspeakable things to one another in one of the back rows, but Michelle ignored them. The distant overdrive guitar was much more discernable in the cinema, sifting down from one of the upstairs rooms. Number Nun appeared in the entranceway and called down to Michelle.

“Have you seen Judas?” she demanded.

Michelle ignored her, remaining frozen in place, crucified against the kaleidoscopic mess of the screen.

“What happened last night?” Number Nun snapped. “Was Mister Sister here? Why was I unplugged?”

Michelle ground her teeth, desperately wishing that Number Nun would leave her alone. A small sheen of sweat had broken out across her forehead as she surreptitiously turned the volume of the film up whilst hissing quietly into the tiny mic.

“No! I’ve been crucified you idiot!” she whispered ferociously whilst trying not to move her lips. “I can’t just hide the communications device! I knocked out her periphery tracer with the dentists drill last night so she can’t scan for any hardware and electronics in her vicinity, I couldn’t do more, she has safety mechanisms…Fuck she might see I move now…wait…Wait!”

“Well?” Number Nun called from the door.

Michelle remained frozen and unresponsive, too nerve racked to even turn her head.

“Never mind, you filthy heathen,” Number Nun muttered, sweeping up a flight of stairs. She passed through opulent, trashed surrounds; courtyards cluttered with comatose bodies and pilfered mattresses, ivy trellised koi-ponds poisoned with rum coco and bodily fluids. Marble statues had been spray-painted black and a leopard lay dead in one of the bedrooms. She saw screened gazeboes charred beyond repair by accidental fires and a bathtub full of cocktail scampi. At one point she passed another anguished Buddhist punk who was struggling with a hump on his back. This one was crawling painfully across a large rug, puking carrots at irregular intervals. Number Nun passed other random survivors, all writhing in exhausted but somehow orgiastic pleasure. And it seemed to her as though their pleasure centers could not be deactivated, despite the obvious fatigue of their bodies. More greenish humps disfigured these Boschean figures. Some of the figures seemed to be somehow greener than the others, the green of their humps leeching into their flesh. Their bodies of these advanced cases were all slightly warped at the joints and limbs. Faceted, insect-like patterns were developing within their clammy flesh, altering them subtly. The solid wall of discordant guitar noise had by now intensified, and Number Nun could easily pinpoint its source of origin. She moved up stairs and down corridors toward it, pausing outside the disused dance studio. A familiar sound of breathing had caught the attention of her spectrograph sensor and she tuned into it, entering the long, dusty dance studio. Large windows flooded the room in the cold glow of late afternoon. The half-light was reflected in the expansive ballet mirrors lining the far wall of the chamber. A large, gloomy pavilion brooded in the darkest corner. It seemed part of some long abandoned carnival float, the relic of long-forgotten mardi gras. A large crocodile waddled around the base, gurgling up at something on the roof of the structure.

“Childbride!” Number Nun called. “Come down from there at once.”

There was a scuffling and after a few seconds Taty’s bewildered face emerged over the edge of the roof. She was scruffy and dirty, still wearing the tattered remains of the cheap flannel nightgown, wrapped in some old stage cloth she had discovered atop the pavilion.

“Where have you been!” Taty screeched, bursting into tears.

“Childbride, stop sniffling and come down from there at once.”

“But the monster will eat me!”

Number Nun deftly approached the crocodile and grabbed it by the tail. She swung it aside one-handedly, as though it were nothing more than a teddy bear. The surprised reptile tumbled and skidded across the room, crashing into a large ballet mirror. It hissed and spat but did not come any closer. Number Nun stood directly beneath Taty.

“Jump,” Number Nun commanded.

Taty hesitated, struggling out of the stage cloth. She gripped the edge of the float, faltered and then dropped neatly into Number Nun’s outstretched arms. The android was about to set her down but Taty clung fast, refusing to be released, sobbing into the black cassock. Number Nun crossed back into the corridors with her as though carrying a doll. She bore Taty up through the house and the screaming noise of the guitar grew steadily louder.

“I couldn’t find Cherry Cola,” Taty sniffed.

“Cherry Cola?” Number Nun frowned. “The waitress from the Dead Duck? What is she doing here? What happened these last two nights Childbride?”

Taty started crying again, blowing her nose in her nightgown. Number Nun paused, realizing that a detour would be necessary.

“We are near your room,” she said. “We might as well get you some fresh clothes.”

The room had survived surprisingly unscathed and Number Nun was finally able to detach Taty from her and get her out of the wretched nightgown.

“Cherry Cola brought me here from town,” Taty snivelled, wriggling into a pair of skinny white jeans. “But when we got here it was just terrible!”

She rummaged around for a t-shirt and her favorite black jersey while guitar noise thrashed and fed far off in the background.

“The carrot stealing monks were here with the Big Buddha and this green alien boy who…it was so disgusting.”

She paused to breathe deeply, shaking on the edge of the bed. Number Nun wet a towel with warm water and began to wipe the grime off her face and neck with it.

“There were these rituals they were doing…” Taty whispered, her eyes all red and unfocused. “They were wearing robes with black candles and people’s heads were…their heads were just lying there. On the floor! Like cabbages! And there were all these funny patterns drawn on the floors in white paint and rat poison…They were all…they were all getting with the monster boy! And then they caught us and they wanted me to make it with him too. But I ran away, into the secret passages…Then the crocodiles got loose.”

She buried her head in Number Nun’s robes breathing raggedly.

“Where was Romeo the Dealer?” Number Nun asked.

“He was out filming with K-Star…I didn’t see them after,” came Taty’s muffled voice.

Number Nun took her firmly by the shoulders.

“Listen Childbride, it’s not safe here anymore,” She said. “Put some shoes on and lets get moving now.”

Taty nodded and Number Nun could see that the muscles all along her neck were tense and bunched. She helped her dress and then led her by the hand, up the stairs, to the master chamber of Alphonse Guava.

The white and gold bunker doors were firmly shut. The shrieking instrument emanated from within, along with an inhuman jabbering and screaming. Taty was hiding behind Number Nun, trying to pull her back.

“Don’t go in there…” she kept whispering frantically.

Number Nun ignored her and began hammering on the lead reinforced double doors.

“Alphonse!” she called in an electronically amplified voice which cut instantly through the guitar’s frequencies and caused Taty to clap her hands to her ears.

“That hurt!” she squealed.

Number Nun calculated her options for a nano-second before extending her left hand and microwaving the lock’s electronics. The door began to open on its auto-hinge and the scene within was slowly revealed. A mess of broken tanks littered the soiled white shag. Pipes spurted liquid from smashed life support systems while reptiles roamed free, antagonizing one another. The noise was immense, staggering. All the glass was rattling violently. Some of the windows had even shattered. Alphonse was on the sheet twisted satin of the bed, clad in the ruins of a pink suit. He was writhing and gibbering in a paroxysm of ecstatic agony, an emerald hump surfacing from his torn collar. Taty stared in horror as Alphonse gorged himself on the small mountains of baby carrots around him. After each spluttered swallow he seemed to calm slightly, only to surge back into palsy only moments later. A massive arena quality sound stack had been moved into the room. It occupied an uncomfortable amount of space with its black bulk and cables, making the room seem so much more constricted than before. A haggard youth in a torn green jumper, black skeleton tights and a plastic Mickey Mouse ear cap stood before the tunnel-like woofers. He was wired for sound, slashing mindlessly at a shiny pink telecaster, making the whole world shake with each frantic emission. Taty watched him sway recklessly in the stereo field, palms pressed desperately to her ears. The output was such that his lank, straw-coloured hair fluffed out each time the speakers belched. The shouts of Number Nun were barely discernable within this sonic chaos, despite her frequency cutters. Her appeals to Alphonse quickly ran dry when she realized just how far gone he was. She muted her sonic input and shifted to spectral vision. Reptile energy bodies mangled like frogspawn in the waves of sound. She tuned her vision to Alphonse’s writhing form, focusing in on the odious hump that plagued him so. The X-Ray aspect of her vision detected a miniature Symb, straddling Alphonse Guava’s upper spine. The little green homunculus was even clutching at the tendons attached to his skull like reins as it attempted to settle against his bone. Somehow the creature seemed to realize that it was being observed and turned to face Number Nun through the ghostly layers of flesh. Alphonse’s head mirrored its reaction in delay, turning to face her. She was disturbed to see how many of Alphonse’s facial characteristics the Symbiote had adopted, creating a nightmarish little caricature of him, blemished by antennae and mandible extrusions. An obscene little biological self portrait which he now carried beneath his skin and close to his bones. His own face was a distorted wreck, drooling and sightless. Number Nun gathered Taty up like a rag doll and strode back out through the aftermath, carrying her close to her breast.

“We have to find Romeo the Dealer,” Number Nun told her when the guitar noise had faded sufficiently so that she could hear her speak.

“He’s the only one who can get us out of jungle country.”

A hot pink raygun bolt unexpectedly ate a glowing hole out of a nearby Doric column. The blast momentarily lit everything the colour of watermelons in the sun and Taty saw electric blue retinal mirages flicker in the aftermath.

“Stay away!” shouted a ragged voice - a voice to which Taty immediately responded.

“Cherry Cola!” she called, scrabbling from Number Nun’s bosom. She ran down into the white marble courtyard beyond the pillars. The sunken square into which she stumbled was bright, lushly illuminated by glass skylights. Potted palms saturated the corners in leafiness. A fountain dominated the center and a statue of the Venus De Milo (perversely depicted with arms) occupied the center of it, gushing water from its headless neck. Cherry Cola was splashing in the water, handcuffed wrist to wrist with the statue. She had been badly beaten and sported a succulent purple eye as well as various bruises. Her candy uniform was torn at the shoulder and she clutched a walkie-talkie in her upraised, handcuffed fist. Her other hand brandished an oversized chrome raygun, still smoking from its latest emission. The courtyard was strewn with the remains of crocodiles, Buddhist punks and party-harder’s who had attempted to approach her during the night. Some still flailed limply, leaking alien fluids and greenish malformations. It was impossible to say how long Cherry Cola had been cuffed to the statue, but she looked to be in bad shape. She started crying dry, heaving sobs when she saw Taty and the pair of them embraced violently in the lukewarm ankle deep water. Number Nun swooped down, snapping off the Venus’s stone hand at the wrist, freeing Cherry Cola’s upraised arm instantly. The roller skating waitress collapsed into the water, clutching her purplish wrist while Number Nun pincered off the cuffs with her laser fingernails.

“We need to leave this house immediately,” Number Nun re-iterated.

Cherry Cola nodded as Taty helped her up and out of the fountain.

“I got this walkie-talkie off a dead man,” she coughed. “I managed to find Kenzo Cold-Eyes frequency about an hour or two ago.”

“Is he coming?” Number Nun asked.

“He said he’d be here by nightfall,” she winced, leaning on the android for support as they limped through desecrated boudoirs and partially flooded conservatories.

“Lets wait for him in the frangipani grove,” Number Nun suggested. “That way we can see things coming.”

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.”

Mister Sister occupied an old, abandoned seaside resort beside a wild stretch of coastland, a rundown property he had added to and developed over the years. Rows of ornamental palms had gone completely wild, ballooning between tangled mango trees like the heads of distraught women. A white walled, tinted window comfort zone had been erected on a cliff facing the sea. At one time this complex must have been chic and breezy, with its spacious atriums, glassy balcony’s and rambling kidney-shaped terraces. Now hundreds of rooms stagnated in the stale wedding cake buildings. Their walls extended into the nearby mangroves, festering with ruin. You had to enter the complex through a white tile mezzanine arched over with broken pavilions of filthy, tinted glass. Everything had long since fallen into disrepair. Cheap brick walls had been constructed where modifications were necessary, or on chaotic whims, lending the place a shabby, patchwork atmosphere. Piles of disused bricks lay in stacks. An abandoned cement mixer housed a small nest of quails. Mister Sister’s ‘Buddhist Punks’ haunted the hotel; slim gutter psychopaths perversely clad in the robes of monks, sporting spiked or intricately shaved heads and hefting machine guns. They slunk around the stained corridors, metal accessories glinting in their sour faces, sharpening kukri knives against bannisters or smoking hashish through the cured finger bones of their many victims. Tattered pennants fluttered from holiday poster palm trees, catching against the severed heads which dangled from them like rotting coconuts. The filleted corpses of giant lizards were suspended upside down above guttering fires, undergoing preparation for the smoked jungle chicken stores. A wide procession of stairs led up to the main piazza, where a decaying arch gave way to wide air-conditioned passages hung with oversized photographic prints and large canvases. Mister Sister liked to think of himself as something of an art collector, and his ruined luxury resort was a maze of cluttered sculpture gardens and storage areas. A wide variety of bad paintings overloaded the curving walls, plundered from museums and galleries throughout the lowlands. A large mirrored elevator ferried visitors up past the extensive sex slave suites where the resort earned its keep, past living quarters and lounges to the pool deck. Alphonse, Judas and Typhoid Mary followed a topless girl in a grass hula-hula skirt out of this elevator, onto the expansive top level of the hotel complex. The girl had attempted to place flower garlands around their neck at the gate but Alphonse had refused coldly. Judas also squabbled in irritation, but Mary did not even seem to notice as the woven frangipani flowers were draped around her stitched throat. A recent disagreement had rewarded Judas with splints and bandages on all his fingers. The legend: I AM A PRUNE had been scrawled onto his forehead with lumo paint. Unable to remove it, he sulked like some strange seal, dragging his cargo of junk behind him, avoiding his reflection. He batted about in this manner; a maligned platypus, ignoring his wounds and cursing each and every thing that tickled his wrath – of which there were many.

The most overwhelming feature of the pool deck was obviously the pool: a flat, ice-cube blue expanse, which melted into the horizon as part of an elaborate architectural illusion; a recent addition by Mister Sister. The overall effect in relation to the ruined resort was however tacky, and unavoidably nouveau riche - an accessory mined from the unreality of a glossy periodical and transplanted into a fecund nightmare. There was a sound of heavy machinery clanking as a large guard robot swiveled noisily to scan the visitors. It stood about eight feet and was easily as wide as a small car, balanced on a pair of girder-heavy hydraulic legs. Its parts were stained, rusted and bullet-pocked, yet all the internal mechanisms seemed to be in operation. Yellow and red panels flaked, hinting at an original paint job now plastered over with ornamental insignias, innumerable stickers and graffiti. Painted flames decorated the lower casing of its legs while fighter jet shark teeth ornamented the long, snout-like chassis. The clanks and squeals of its motors were dangerously loud, indicating that certain mechanisms were in dire need of lubrication. Machine guns and multiple rocket launchers spiked in pods from the heavy plating while scanners and cameras roved in a paranoid fashion beneath its hood. Behind the robot was a deckchair upon which was berthed an obese Samoan in Bermuda shorts, straw hat and a floral print shirt. He drank pineapple beer behind aviator sunglasses, a samurai sword balanced across his belly within easy reach. Across the pool was another grotesquely corpulent character, the fat man himself, Mister Sister. Mister Sister had an Asian physiology and bore the uncanny likeness to those laughing Buddha’s one often spied in the niches of seedy Chinese restaurants. It was a resemblance he exploited, by dressing in richly brocaded Oriental robes and a Mandarin’s cap. Even his ears had been stretched to match the image of a fat, jolly Buddha. Yet, there was something recklessly off-kilter about this image, something in the eyes and mouth; a gluttonous disregard for social propriety which bred a sort of repugnance. He was the kind of character who was always invading an individual’s personal space, someone who could never breathe quietly.

“The imp itself!” Mister Sister squealed in falsetto, air-kissing the immobile cheeks of Alphonse Guava.

“What the fuck do you want?” Alphonse smiled politely.

Mister Sister threw his hands up dramatically, smiling smarmily across at the pale, impish countenance.

“Now now,” he chided. “Claws in, tits out wot wot! No need to be uncivil on such a sunny day, some watermelon?”

“I warned you not to bother me again,” Alphonse announced silkily. “Now I’m going to have to get Typhoid Mary to fillet you.”

Mister Sister ignored this display of aggression, glancing down at Judas.

“Nice doggie…I mean prune,” he coochi-cooed.

“Don’t look to me for sympathy,” Judas muttered, glaring at the pool in barely contained disgust.

“Kill him Mary,” Alphonse ordered.

Typhoid Mary slung out her sledgehammer and the various Buddhist punks reached for their machine-guns as the robot went into attack mode. Mister Sister batted his long, false eyelashes and pressed his hands together in an attitude of mock pleading. He even went down on one knee.

“Fine minutes grace?” he play-begged with a lascivious smile.

Alphonse beamed emptily down at the kneeling Buddha while everyone waited to kill each other.

“Only for your grandmother’s sake,” he relented diplomatically. “She was such a wonderful specimen.”

“I’m going to fucking cry!” Judas screeched.

Typhoid Mary replaced her hammer, deftly snagging a wasp out of the air and pressing it to her sealed lips. It stung her sewn lips several times before she once again realized that she was unable to open her mouth. She crushed it as Mister Sister led them around the ostentatious pool, toward a series of tables laden with metal trays of watermelon. Saffron robed Buddhist Punks in sunglasses lounged around, oiling themselves and their guns, jockeying vast cockatoo Mohawks which rippled colourfully in the breeze.

“See,” Mister Sister began in a conversational tone. “Dr Dali has been busy tinkering with the concept of a holistic interconnectedness between clocks and quasi-dimensional reality…”

“We could just eat him,” Judas offered helpfully.

“…Apparently he’s discovered something quite remarkable,” the fat little caricature prattled on, completely unfazed. “According to his calculations there exists between nano-seconds, an infinitely tiny space, a vacuole which acts as a loop-hole to different dimensions.”

“Same pimp, different holes,” Judas barked. “Break his kneecaps for a change!”

“I’m sorry Sister,” Alphonse broke in as they reached the tables. “I should have warned you beforehand of my intense prejudice against pseudo-scientific monologues, you see, my mother died in a particularly incoherent one…Mary?”

“The point being,” Mister Sister interjected, ignoring the ominous hissing of Typhoid Mary. “Is that Dr Dali, in his infinite schism of wisdom, has devised a sort of inter-dimensional Venus Flytrap which enables him to capture foreign specimens…”

“Foriegn specimens?” Judas repeated with a look of utter disbelief.

“Inter-dimensional foreign specimens,” Mister Sister winked coyly. “And I have one that should put you out of business double quick.”

He swished theatrically around on his pointed slippers, pointing up at the ancient life-guard station which rose above the pool area like a dismal erection. It was an imposing, decayed tower, topped by a bulbous dome of fractured glass and overrun by flowering fruit vines, yet it was what was clinging to the dome that drew their attention.

“I give you…the Symbiote!” Mister Sister intoned melodramatically.

A figure crawled and crept like a gekko along the outer walls of the lifeguard station. It resembled a lanky teenage boy, except that it was possessed of slick, green skin, similar to that of a tree frog. The amphibious resemblance did not stop there. The arms and legs of the being were double, if not triple jointed and possessed of a rubbery flexibility. An extra elbow and knee joint lent the legs and arms a vaguely ‘z’ shape when they flexed. When the creature stopped moving, these limbs folded up like wet origami and it assumed sickening sort of yogic position, not unlike a grasshopper. Another dramatic feature of the thing were its long antennae, which quivered in spasms upon its head. The antennae themselves were gigantic and feathery, like a moth’s, fluttering spastically against surfaces like peacock feathers. The eyes of the Symbiote were also disproportionate, bulbous and reflective. Nictitating membranes licked across their surfaces while complex sets of mandibles operated below. Someone had dressed the thing in loud neon surf shorts, whether for a joke or modesty it was hard to tell. Mister Sister clapped his hands together twice and the Symbiote responded by leaping nimbly down to the deck. It landed gelatinously and scuttled over to the faux deity, squatting on the edge of the water while the fat man petted it grotesquely. The nearby Buddhist Punks found much amusement in the antics of the creature. One even ran up and placed a cheap pair of mirrored orange sunglasses on its unspeakable insect face. The Symbiote twitched, spat and chittered mindlessly in the ludicrous eyewear, eliciting uncontrollable giggling from the gun toting youths. Judas, who had flinched wildly at the landing of the Symbiote, now stared at the thing in disbelief.

“What the fuck is that and how do we kill it!” he called out.

“This is my Symb,” Mister Sister explained,with churlish satisfaction. “A rare bird indeed, even its native reality, for despite the rather froggy façade, our friend here can evoke a sensual bliss unparalleled on this plane.”

He attempted to pinch the non-existent cheek of the alien, only to cause it to flutter and gibber in panic. Perhaps it thought that he was attempting to injure its eyes for it reacted in fear, flapping into the pool like some monstrous bird, where it sank like a stone. It lay unmoving at the bottom of the deep end, an exotic and hideous statue, blinking its huge eyes occasionally up at them.

“Aside from tapping the sensory pits to create life-like illusions and slave-driving the pleasure cortex,” Mister Sister continued smugly. “The Symb can also deliver a state of almost perpetual orgasm.”

“So?” Judas spat. “We have plenty auntie-empaths and ghost girls who can also butter the toast without coming off like a Billy Burroughs vomit comet…is that ectoplasm it’s oozing! Jesus!”

“True true, “ Mister Sister cooed. “But all of your rather, lets face it, archaic modus operandi’s depend on troublesome staging and require many players working simultaneously off each other.”

He drifted to a table, hacking thoughtlessly at a bright red melon while he spoke. Alphonse had meanwhile stepped to the pool’s edge and was regarding the monstrosity at the bottom. The pool-cleaning device chugged around and the Symbiote batted at it as one does a fly.

“The Symb here is a one bug show,” Mister Sister continued, sucking at ragged slivers of watermelon. “It jockeys an ovipositor instead of a cock rocket because it isn’t quite male, more a sort of aphid.”

“An ectoplasmic aphid with an egg-dick!” Judas chortled. “And you expect this to sell?”

Mister Sister shrugged school-girlishly.

“It’s true,” he giggled. “Getting it on with buddy buggy can’t be all tea roses and peach flambés…I mean all that ooze and what not, disgusting!”

He paused dramatically, spitting some seeds out of his smile before approaching Alphonse to deliver what he considered the coup de grace.

“But its worth every froggy pump my fine feathered philanderers,” he hissed in grandiose fashion. “Because every time the Symb gets down and doggy, he ejaculates a tiny sentient symbiote into his partner; a tiny little baby Symb which bonds with the host – symbiotically of course…”

Alphonse glanced up from the pool, reaching for his cigarettes.

“Internal parasites don’t make for very good cherries on top,” he quipped, lighting up a menthol as slim as a chopstick.

“Au contraire Alphonse! Au contraire,” Mister Sister leered slyly.

He placed his hand softly on Alphonse’s shoulder and leaned in close to the pointed ear of the imp.

“You see when the baby Symb has crawled up the spine and nestled at the base of the skull, it begins to grow,” he whispered in an exaggerated mockery of confidence.

“Not as big as its daddy here of course, but just as potent, “ he smirked. “And when the Symbiote locks in, everything becomes intensely sexual for the lucky host. Something about the way the bug interfaces with the spinal and cortex systems. The host can orgasm just by tasting something yummy…like strawberry ice cream for example. Can you imagine it? Even the bad things will become good! An orgasm a lifetime long!”

“How much…did you say?” Judas eye-browed.

The Symb abruptly surfaced, took hold of the pool’s edge and launched itself acrobatically into the air. They watched as it sailed over their heads, landing clumsily on the lifeguard dome and scuttling around it like a bewildered insect. The robot tracked it like a giant, noisy toy, it’s guns adjusting and fixing on the Symbiote with many hums and whirrs.

“We love you, you housefly from heaven you!” Judas yoo-hooed.

“So what’s the drawback?” Alphonse asked.

Mister Sister removed his hand from Alphonse’s shoulder and backed away a few steps, clearing his throat.

“Um, well yes the drawback,” he coughed. “There is always one isn’t there! What price perfection as that poet said…”

They all watched as he procrastinated.

“Well the host has to eat a minimum of a hundred and thirty carrots a day,” he let slip as encouragingly as he could.

“But…why?” Judas asked in something like amazement.

“Oh I don’t know,” Mister Sister flustered. “I suppose there must be some unknown carrot-y nutrient which the little buggers desperately need! We’ve tried other orange vegetables and extracts and things but it seems like only those will do…Carrots have secrets too!”

“Oh please,” Alphonse snapped. “This is like some sort of absurd attempt to justify health food franchises. I think we should just perform a little pest control and just annihilate you all now.”

“Lets not be too hasty…” Judas piped up.

Mister Sister smiled poutily, not at all taken in by Alphonse’s aggressive posturing.

“Oh Al you are such a doll,” he smooched. “You may fool the help, but as one skin trader to another, I know that you are just fizzing up with curiosity!”

He leaned in closer, running a pudgy finger quickly down one of Alphonse’s scalpel cheekbones.

“You want to see how the green boy operates,” he teased. “Say it ain’t so…”

Alphonse remained silent, meeting Mister Sister’s gaze for a moment before staring back up at the alien. A low chuckle bubbled up from somewhere in the depths of Mister Sister. It built to an extended smear of mockery which utterly defaced the air between them.

“I could just dance!” Mister Sister exclaimed, turning away from Alphonse in a vaguely dismissive way.

“Music my little Buddhist Punks!” he trilled.

Some of the nearby Mohawks began firing their machine guns into the air, creating a dismal racket. Mister Sister danced away through the gun-smoke. He activated an enormous rhinestone ghetto blaster, which began vomiting chaotic native pop songs into the air. Some of the Buddhist punks began dancing alongside him, firing their guns in time with the hard beats pumping out of the woofers. Alphonse stalked away wordlessly. Typhoid Mary followed him to the elevator, spooked and panicked by the gunfire. She clutched her hammer and dragged Alphonse along with a free hand, lugging him as effortlessly as though he were a cooler bag of beer. They piled into the elevator, slammed the door and descended quickly, leaving the noise behind.

“Why didn’t you just kill them all and take the bug!” Judas exploded.

“The big Buddha has a point,” Alphonse murmured. “He’s shown an enormous amount of initiative and will no doubt corner a huge market.”

The imp sighed sharply, pulling out a small silver six gun and polishing it on his jacket as though sorry that he was unable to put it to immediate use.

“I can’t just kill him now,” he muttered. “I have to out-do him first, my delicate sensibilities just won’t have it any other way.”

“You and your fucking sensibilities!” Judas belched sarcastically. “Did you SEE that thing?”

Alphonse leaned back against the wall of the elevator, ignoring Judas entirely, withdrawn and lost in thought. He remained like that all the way home.

Number Nun’s porcelain body also was modeled on the statuary and paintings of the Renaissance period. The forms of these android Madonna’s were designed with Botticelli’s Venus as a primary physical reference, in order to create an angelic appearance. The beauty of a sentient and spiritually virtuous statue of course attracted unwarranted attention from the upper echelons of the various sex trades. Rogue scientists were employed to devise methods to capture said robots, and the enslavement of a Missionary Model became something of a status symbol amongst the more eclectic and resourceful degenerates on the planet. When Alphonse first heard about a Religio-Robot being deployed to minister to the lost cat tribes he set his mind to adding the metal Madonna to his collection of stolen treasures. He hired the best robo-wreckers on the river to capture the android in specially designed containment fields before trucking her off to a rogue weapons developer for reprogramming. An underground chop shop on the waterfront was able to fit her with synthetic genitalia and program in certain pleasure modes copied from synth-geisha models. Thusly was Number Nun corrupted and adapted for the amusement of the imp who often employed her for his own personal and perverse indulgences.

The bedchamber of Alphonse Guava was spacious, globular and dominated by curved, tinted windows, which arced up from the floor to create an expansive bubble skylight. This greenish glass encapsulated three quarters of the room and overlooked central courtyards, sun bleached terracotta roofing and the missionary bell tower, which stood adjacent to the chamber across a wide gulf. A crescent balcony splayed out beyond the large observation windows, overflowing with tropical blossoms in large ceramic urns. Vines seethed out of these pots, crawling up the walls and lacing the glass in a meshwork of greenery, which attracted and housed all manner of insects. It was an intentional feature and made perfect sense when one considered the contents of the bedchamber. Some of the windows were chinked and a warm, fragrant breeze breathed in over the heavy vines. The room inside was hot and humid, the muggy air thick with the stench of chlorophyll and reptiles; conditions which seemed not to bother the imp in the slightest. Alphonse in fact seemed to thrive off the claustrophobic heat and fecal intimacy of the jungle. The walls that were left between the monumental windows of the room had been papered in a lush photographic leaf print, blending out into the vistas beyond the glass. The furnishings were sparse and of black wood. Large vivariums and aquarium tanks were stacked around the periphery of the chamber and many translucent pipes and life support systems ran out of them, chugging and bubbling quietly away to themselves. Some of the glass enclosures contained large orchids, but most housed various specimens of rare reptiles. Fat dwarf pythons and iguanas explored the shaggy cream coloured carpet in spastic convolutions. Giant chameleons roosted in the manner of gargoyles, their prehensile tongues occasionally darting down like fleshy lightening, as they supped upon the many bugs clustered around the windows of the balcony garden. Providing feed for the many reptiles was in fact the primary reason for attracting such a large number of insects. Alphonse had cultivated specific blooms, which, aside from their ornamental functions, served to draw large iridescent beetles, succulent night moths and bumblebees in droves. The tanks were all left open and the many creatures would leave their enclosures when they chose to feed, hiding amongst the blooms of the balcony, growing fat on the bounty which was provided for them. A large, sunken circular bed occupied the center of the chamber and it faced a large white and gold writing bureau. This ornate piece of furniture stood on a small elevation, facing a tinted jungle view. An oval monitor was attached the desk top, beside a vanity mirror of equal proportions. Many papers, cosmetics and a selection of small, luxurious pistols were disarrayed upon the surface of the bureau. Number Nun and Alphonse were on the bed. She was unclothed, balanced on her hands and knees while Alphonse grappled her from behind, engaging in intercourse with her newly installed genitalia. The sunlight refracted through her translucent skin casing, blurrily illuminating the clockwork parts which operated within her in a golden haze. Faintly glowing mechanisms ran in seams along her internal structure, giving her form a holographic, jellyfish quality when she turned in the heavy sunlight. Yet despite the vigorous thrusting of the imp, she seemed rather bored and disenchanted by the entire event; which truth be told, were something of a regular pastime for Alphonse who enjoyed immensely the desecration of the Madonna’s image.

“So how is my new Tinkerbell working out?” he panted at one point.

“She’s the business all right,” Number Nun replied over her shoulder.

“Well that’s just peachy,” Alphonse grinned, returning to his exertions with renewed alacrity.

“There is another matter which I need to bring to your attention,” she mentioned.

“My psychic intuition tells me that it concerns Mister Sister,” he breathed raggedly.

“Yes,” she answered. “Right again.”

Her midriff abruptly split along a seam. The seam was hermetically sealed and circled her naturalistically, following the line of her hips and abdomen. Her glassy vertebrae expanded and the spinal column unfurled telescopically, like a geometric snake. Her upper half moved at the tip of this extension, drifting to the bureau like the head of an anthropomorphic plastic flower. Her lower half remained where it was while the rest of her busied itself at the desk. Alphonse, by now accustomed to the secretarial flightiness of Number Nun, gripped the disembodied hips and continued to thrust into the kneeling lower half. Her torso wafted over the surface of the bureau with a low hydraulic hum while she sorted through a pile of letters. She eventually located a violet scented, violet coloured envelope and extracted the sheet of paper sequestered within.

“Apparently Mister Sister has acquired something from Dr Dali,” she said, scanning the florid quill scrawls with an amusing impersonal detachment.

“It’s something which he claims will put you out of business,” she added. “He’s invited you over to gloat.”

“Ah Dr Dali and his fabulous Clock Shop!” Alphonse thrusted mercilessly. “What new and terrible joy has the good doctor birthed into this black world…”

“Shall I RSVP?” she asked, swiveling in the air to face him.

Alphonse ejaculated dramatically and fell backward across the sheet twisted bed, accidently crushing a blue-headed gekko beneath a carving knife of a shoulder blade. In the drowsy light, naked and glazed with tropical perspiration, it was possible to witness his inhumanity a little more clearly than usual. His powder white skin gleamed like ivory under the gold glare and tiny spiracles gleamed in the fashion of tiny navels along the sides of his torso, quivering open and closed as he breathed. His genitalia were also unusually formed and he carried no scrotum or testicles. His member seemed rather to extend from his girlish hips like a threatening, barbed tentacle. The rose-thorn barbs along the edges of his sexual organ were legendary of course, and it was widely known that he could not indulge in sexual congress without irreparably damaging the other party. There were stories of course, of lovers he had torn apart, but these were rare. Despite his various wicked streaks he was not particularly fond of mutilating people in acts of lust. Perhaps it was the crudity of the screaming, the baseness of accidental bleeding and general physical resistance which failed to appeal to his delicate sensibilities. Alphonse after all favoured slow spiritual corruption over casual annihilation when it came to love-play, and it was a peccadillo which caused him much sexual frustration. In this matter Number Nun, saw it as her duty to appease the physical needs of the imp and thus avoid the rare, but occasional mutilation of waifs and strays. He could not damage her bulletproof porcelain body and her pirate programming would allow her to satisfy his alien appetites to no end. She watched him slip out of her with a clinical disinterest as her lower half rose and walked across the chamber to rejoin the rest of her body. After clicking smoothly back into cohesion, a small glassy capsule of fluid could be glimpsed, moving through the tubes of her pelvic region. Various robotic relays and devices manipulated the capsule upward, into her frosted glass belly. A navel port irised open, and the capsule was delivered smoothly into the palm of her hand. Number Nun knelt down and opened a small metallic fridge, upon which was printed the legend” ‘PERM BANK’. A gush of icy gas flooded out, creating a small silvery cloud for an instant. She placed the capsule amongst other similar capsules and sealed the airlock. Alphonse lay like a speared marlin, staring at a progression of livid white ants along the ceiling. He clicked his fingers and Number Nun placed a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it with one of her laser fingernails.

“Well why not,” he exhaled thoughtfully. “Tell the fat man that Judas, Mary and I will join him for cocktails by the pool.”

Number Nun had by now crossed to the edge of the room and was buttoning herself back into the long, black cassock which she habitually donned. She nodded to him and an autodial sound emitted from the communications array in her face. Mister Sister was on the line within moments.

Meanwhile in another dimension, the Clock Shop hovered against a glacial space. The wasteland upon which it stood resembled a gassy tundra, which seemed to flutter constantly into celluloid insubstantiality. The nullifying scape lay between, and somehow outside, the idea of night and day, as though bathed in the effulgence of an alien star. The dense skies were pure white, and images would occasionally flash across them, like a television screen. Static rimmed holes carouseled in the air, sucking nearby cloud-like formations of drifting milky liquid into themselves. Gelatinous creatures creaked across these skies, inverting occasionally, in the manner of stop motion seedpods, bursting fast-forward storm showers of tentacles and tendrils everywhere before they snapping inside out again.

The Clock Shop itself was constructed in the style of a cozy Swiss Chalet. It had been designed and erected in this forlorn and desolate dimension by Dr Dali, functioning as a sanctuary where the good doctor could allow himself to indulge the more catastrophic of his experiments. He was of course supervised closely by the envoys of certain power structures, who retained vested interests in the potential devastating effects of many of his projects. The structure cast a lonely, nostalgic silhouette against an unfathomable horizon; a line which constantly distorted like the melting wax of a lava lamp, warping one’s sense of distance continuously. A quaint, wooden signpost had been spiked into the soft crystalline substance before the chalet. It read: ‘The Clock Shop’, in hand chiseled calligraphy.

The interior of the Clock Shop was disproportionate to the petite Swiss chalet glimpsed from the glassy waste. It was a quirk of this particular reality; inversion of displaced masses - an alien aspect which Doctor Dali had been able to masterfully incorporate into his design. Nobody could ever say for certain how many hidey-holes an individual like Doctor Dali had stashed throughout his personal subway of realities. The man shuffled universes like playing cards. His motives were unknown, his brilliance disturbing. Various powerful organizations consulted with him and hired him for clandestine tasks. He was an easy man to reach despite his secrecy. He displayed an interest in the world, perhaps as much as he displayed for other worlds. Who could even say which world he even came from in the final solution?

Dr Dali sat, legs crossed, in a vast vault. The cavernous chamber was set with gigantic machines and resonant with a deep humming. The metal juggernauts closely resembled the turbines used to draw power from large, antiquated dams. These titanic machines stood at intervals of several hundred meters, disappearing into a receding perspective on either side. The ceiling could not be seen and the walls arched up into a void of lunar darkness. Pylons crackled with bluish electricity between the machines while distant pistons clanged endlessly in the void. The table at which Dr Dali sat had been set with a smoked glass chessboard and a game was in progress. A high spotlight lit the table, distinguishing it from its Industrial surroundings. In appearance Dr Dali was slim, small and wiry. He wore a lab coat stained with luminescent residue and various splatters. He sported a well tailored green tweed suit beneath. The odd thing about the doctor however was the condition of his head and face. Due to some unimaginable accident, his cranium had phased into a mode of existence which lay somewhere beyond the three-dimensional. His quasi-dimensioned head bore a vague resemblance to certain Cubist paintings, except that it was a shifting, unfixed fugue of features. These unmoored fragments fluxed and repositioned themselves according to some unfathomable alien logic. His perceptive faculties had not changed with the accident though, and when questioned about his predicament he would sigh and explain that his head had simply begun to function in a state of reality which most eyes would perceive as ‘conceptual’. Beyond this he would not go and was sometimes known to wear scarves, hats and bulging sunglasses at meetings, accessories which seemed to float and skim on a Rubick’s Cube of eyes, eyebrows, nasal profiles and tidal cheekbones. But in the sanctity of the Clock Shop his head was uncovered, and the ghost of a smile quivered and slunk, across and over and through his amorphous cloud of a skull. Opposite him, across the chessboard, was a squat ginger haired man attired in the manner of a ‘Dad’ from a nineteen fifties television sitcom. He smoked a pipe, wore a cardigan and even sported golf shoes. A nametag on his chest read MR MILLION NO 789678367. In the background could be glimpsed other Mister Million’s, all identical save for their attire which differed according to their various tasks. Some wore lab coats and worked at consoles embedded into the titanic machines. Others were dressed in engineer’s overalls, like garage attendants or Formula One racing mechanics. They all roved like clones, attending to various activities. The chess game was not going well for Mister Million – if that was even his real name.

“This will be the quintillionth time I’ve won,” Dr Dali quipped outrageously, his voice emerging from a mouth which swam like a fish into a fluttering nostril. The nostril submerged beneath a hairline, and the hairline broke like a wave into the area where his chin should have been. An eye drifted, moon-like, over this, turning flat abruptly, like an image on a television screen. Staring at his face, one often got the impression that it had become flat and two dimensional, like something printed onto paper. But this visual quirk did not ever last long and holographic effects were often known to occur soon after this perception. People were known to suffer intense migraines after speaking to the doctor for longer than a few minutes. Mister Million, however, was made of sterner stuff. When he spoke, all the other Mister Million’s spoke too. The reality of a numberless mass of identical figures speaking the same words at once often created staggering choruses. Mister Million often spoke in a quiet whisper, which was amplified by his multitudinous existence.

“I’m sure you exaggerate Doctor,” the army of ginger haired figures replied synchronously.

The gargantuan space created a phased delay in their speech, so that although the sentence was uttered at the same instant, it became fractured subtly in its delivery, mushy at the edges, frayed like an old rag doll. Dr Dali had pondered fixing this little sonic problem only to discover that he perversely enjoyed the dissonance. The presence of Mister Million in his sanctuary was against his wishes. He was there as an agent of outside powers, and it was a presence the Doctor tolerated for various reasons, though it was clear that he preferred his own company. Mister Million wasn’t a bad sort, for an inter-dimensional agent of mysterious origin, and offered his plural services as a private staff (no doubt to also learn as much as possible about the Doctor’s devices from first-hand experience). The Doctor set him to work on various devices, limiting his access and challenging him to countless games of chess in an attempt to belittle him. Mister Million took it all in his stride(s) and the pair evolved into the protagonists of their own private and rather absurd buddy movie.

The chess game progressed rapidly, approaching another bloodthirsty finale. The rhythm of it was howevere rudely interrupted by the sudden clanking and booming of one of the titanic machines. Green light flashed and flickered behind a porthole set into the black metal as a curtain of emerald electricity discharged from the glass. It illuminated several nearby Mister Million’s in a charge of blinding colour, incinerating one of them in an instant. The cloud of fizzing energy billowed about the vault like a flock of hysterical hummingbirds, dissipating into the bluish lightning of the pylons. The enormous mechanism abruptly powered down, rather like a washing machine, which had just completed some arduous and unfathomable cycle. A distant egg timer pinged and a big red light shifted to green. Doctor Dali had turned to observe the action over his shoulder and it seemed that he was smiling, though it was difficult to tell.

“Has the inter-dimensional flytrap caught something?” Mister Million asked in a million voices.

Some of the more damaged Mister Millions nearby spoke in smoke scorched hisses, which added a rather gravelly undertone to the sentence. Doctor Dali swiveled in his seat and this time it was clear that he was smiling.

“Well that is the thing with deep-sea fishing, isn’t it old chap?” the Doctor sniggered. “It’s all in the wrist.”

Mister Million, by now used to Doctor Dali’s absurd deflections, simply nodded, realizing that he wasn’t going to get much more out of him. To his surprise the Doctor began to elucidate upon the occurrence.

“Be a good chap and telephone Mister Sister,” he asked his opponent, moving a rook across the board.

In a distant office cubicle within the hive of the Clock Shop a suited Mister Million began placing a telephone call on an antique rotary dialer.

“It’s an order for the good fellow,” The Doctor continued, slyly placing the enemy king in check.

“Vice is nice,” Mister Million muttered in a wave of sonic interference. “I wasn’t aware that you were undertaking consignments for petty criminals.”

“Oh we all have our vices,” Doctor Dali sneered.

He observed as Mister Million countered his check before quickly snapping him up into a neat little checkmate. Mister Million sighed, a sound reminiscent of a low-tide ocean, leaning back into his chair.

“What should I tell Mister Sister?” He asked, lighting up his pipe.

“Why, tell him his Symbiote is all done and ready of course,” the Doctor smiled enigmatically.

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.

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.

Three battered manta ray kites billowed against a turbulent grey sky. A monsoon was threatening to break over the port and the air was juicy with ionic interference. Three men in black polo necks and sunglasses smoked bananadine roll-ups on the dingy rooftops of the Nebula Shell Sea hotel. They had the kites rigged up to the little fingers of their left hands, reciting incantations to each other in dead languages while they tangled up the sky. The corpse of a zebra had been strung up on the television aerials some weeks ago but the parrots had pecked it to pieces. Now it’s guts hung like laundry, fluttering down the bricks of the old hotel, gathering flies, moths and inexplicably large beetles, which the natives ground up for medicine. The hotel itself was an ancient dinosaur of the downtown waterfront district. It was located in the septic end of the city where grimy warrens of microwave tenements cascaded drearily down to a gutted boardwalk. The streetlights gleamed like vulture stripped ribs while neon soaked in hazy pockets along the strip. Fast food clotted up the air vents. Rotting piers lay like skeletal remains in the hot, heaving sea. Jungle vagrants stalked these labyrinthine piers relentlessly, with spears and spiritual disorders, sometimes moving in packs like starving hyenas. The air was pierced by the ceaseless ululations of paranoid schizophrenics caught in torment beneath the boardwalk supports. The sky was rancid with rising effluvium and the sound of waves seethed like an electric storm along the waterfront. Its drone muffled the buzz of the city chaos, strangling it down to a barely acceptable ruckus. The decaying hulk of the Nebula Shell Sea stood overlooking this grim beachfront, looming like a tombstone; all sallow light, death-trap elevators, stringers in crash helmets hanging off fire escapes, ancient telephone booths, filthy checkerboard floors and stained walls. Enormous, electric blue monitor lizards nested in the tangle of wild palms outside the entrance. You had to watch for them at night as they sometimes made dashes for anyone they felt they could drag up into the trees. Children and skinny working girls were especially vulnerable to attack. Their corpses were at times found, bundled like filthy washing amongst the leaves and coconuts. Bones clustered in the gutters and dropped to the sidewalk at odd times. Above the portico of the hotel was a beaten, retro-chic sign from another era. It read: SHELL SEA HOTEL in carved stone. Above this legend, formed out of lurid green neon tubing, was the word NEBULA. The neon pulsed with a hallucinogenic throbbing, making the hotel easy to find no matter what high you happened to be on at the time. It pulsed like a beacon for the vagrants of the strip, shining over the dingy streets like a lighthouse for all the animals and sinking people.

Romeo the Dealer was leaning lean in the hallway of the Shell Sea. He was his usual razor-thin silhouette, zipped up into tight shiny leathers, corded muscles shifting like mercury beneath his fish-pale skin. He had a doughy complexion, glazed with light perspiration from the tropical heat. His short peroxide hair was spiky with static. Enormous bug-eye shades disguised half his clean-shaven face. He had never been seen to smile and had no lips to speak of in any case. His mouth was a postal slit from which words dropped like glass. He was waiting, checking his rubberized wristwatch at intervals. Movements which afforded rapid glimpses of the raygun he jockeyed, in a nylon fast-grab shoulder holster. A bandolier of loaded syringes hung close beneath his opposing arm. He tapped bright white tennis shoes on the pavement and clenched studded black cut-off gloves, seldom shifting position, but always somehow animated, never still. Somewhere within Romeo was an internal dynamo that was spinning so fast it was hardly seen to move. This made him exude a certain cold charge, a gravitational field, which caused most people to steer clear of him. Many weren’t sure if he was even human. He shifted position after a few minutes of watch checking, pulling out a yo-yo to kill time whilst waiting for the midget.

The midget meanwhile had just pulled off the jungle flyover and entered the bridge-stricken streets of the warehouse district. The long black sedan was his car of choice when visiting the city, and he wore a miniature chauffeur’s uniform with brass buttons when driving it. An old melancholic number by Ishida Ayumi was blaring out of the sound system. The speaker system was rich with analog crackling while she sang out the words ‘Blue Light Yokohama’ over and over. Number Nun had the front passenger seat, her faintly glowing face reflected against the windscreen in a ghostly play of light. Taty had the backseat all to herself because the Sugar Twins were in the trunk. They were curled up on a very cramped mattress, the bones of their hips dovetailed like a car and a caravan, watching cartoons on a tiny television. The greenish glow of the tube illuminated the cramped and bucking insides of the trunk. It caught like oil on their matching gold lamé catsuits, ermine jackets and platinum Cleopatra wigs. It also caught in their dazed silver eyes, in which were reflected the crazed antics of animated cats and mice. Back on the backseat, Taty was adjusting her skirt,. She was perpetually stealing glimpses of her reflection in the shiny windows, quite proud of the ensemble she had managed to put together for the evening. Alphonse had let her run riot in the walk-in wardrobes because he was throwing a poll party and couldn’t have her looking like ‘a stray’. She set about prettying up something supreme for the party, and more importantly, for her first jaunt as a ghost girl. After much deliberation she had picked out a Paisley print one-piece polyester mini with long puffed sleeves, high collar and low cuffs. The patterning was faded gold with emerald highlights and copper trim. It fitted her like a glove and Number Nun had her hair treated and blow-waved to neaten her up for business hours. She had chosen gold heel-less slip-ons and huge tan sunglasses to complete the ensemble. The smooth metallic soles flapped lightly against her feet when she walked, and she loved the bird-like sound they made. A slim gold ankle bracelet glittered in the shadows beneath the seat and she would occasionally lift up her foot to study it. Her face was so pancaked she felt like a boiled sweet or a character in a Japanese play. Metallic green eye shadow caught her reflection each time she turned her head and the car was filled with the scent of the rich perfume she had selected. She had been at the house for a week now, living in one of the high bedrooms, avoiding crocodiles and watching cartoon reels in the private cinema. They gave her vanilla ice-cream on demand and twice a night she was made to go for treatments in the psychic generator. This was a huge old machine which resembled a tanning bed and was said to boost one’s psychic abilities. Copper pipes ran out of it, and it was covered in flashing lights. Alphonse said he got it wholesale off Doctor Dali when the mad scientist went underground. But that meant diddley-squat to Taty who hated the thing with a passion. She came out of the Genny each night with a bulging headache and the tingly feeling of being fried lightly in oil. Her dreams thereafter were wild and cluttered with visions of psychedelic, talking panthers and mountains of candyfloss. Nobody spoke to her and she ate a lot of popcorn. Come Friday they got her Barbie-d up and she was down at the pool with the others when the guests started crawling out of the woodwork. She was introduced to strange men with damp handshakes; tuxedo vipers who whispered things in Alphonse’s pointy ears without taking their eyes off her. Introductions were also made to some musicians and a trio of thin tribe girls with stringy jungle braids, but Taty could sense that she was the wafer in the sundae. She managed to escape at one point, sneaking behind one of the ice sculptures with an hors d’oeuvres platter before Number Nun sniffed her out and told her it was time to get to work. Within minutes she was in the back of a sedan heading for her first appointment.

“Is it true that the Shell Sea Hotel is made entirely of sea shells?” Taty yelled over the blaring song.

Number Nun glanced disapprovingly at her via the rear-view mirror.

“Not entirely my little sinner,” the Nun replied in her smoothly robotic and somehow overtly merciful voice.

Taty went back to examining the shadow-infested warehouses and low, dingy buildings. They flashed beyond the tinted glass, describing an immensity of desolation which numbed her somewhere deep inside. The monsoon broke as they entered the boardwalk districts. Storm gutters vomited and the gleaming tarmac steamed through its oil painting colours. Figures staggered like puppets in the solid sheets of roaring water. Sugary neon lit up the wet, clustered air and drunken sailors screamed like monkeys from high red windows. Taty saw cannibals with bones in their noses crouching beneath umbrellas and roving pods of mustachio’d soldiers in mirrored sunglasses. Giant rusted billboards heaved past, glowing in the rain, gilded with moth choked bulbs and swirly script. The midget eventually started laughing at something no-one else understood. He lit up a cigar which doused the cabin with bluish smoke. You could hear the Sugar Twins being tossed around each time they cornered.

The monsoon stopped abruptly. The sedan pulled up into the palm-infested courtyard of the Nebula Shell Sea and the whole world looked like it had just stepped out of a washing machine. The neon of the hotel was especially vivid and fizzy in Taty’s eyes. Romeo detached like a bat and swooped down out of the shadows, popping the trunk. Number Nun stepped out imperiously, lifting her habit above the wet tar, her naked porcelain feet lighting up the puddles like cheap religious paintings. She let Taty out while Romeo hefted the twins from the back. They hung lasciviously off him as he approached Taty to introduce himself.

“I’m Romeo…”

“…The Dealer!” the midget butted in, finishing his sentence with a cackling cough.

“I’m…” Taty began.

“Working,” Number Nun interjected primly. “Now hush Childbride.”

Romeo regarded her seriously and Taty could see that he was almost always serious, even with the Sugar Twins draped like absurd fur coats around his lean shoulders.

“Well sisters,” he announced expressionlessly. “Lets get it on.”

It must have looked comical, seeing them all squeezed together into the rat-trap elevator. Romeo cut the mechanism between floors and jerked aside the rusted grate. He uncapped a hidden airlock and they disembarked on a high and secret floor, entering into a maze of dingy red velvet corridors. Some of the hotel doors were chinked and Taty caught glimpses of strange scenes. One of the rooms was piled high with acoustic guitars. The broken instruments made dunes of themselves in the otherwise barren space. Another room saw men in scuba gear, berets and white goatees paying ferocious games of ping pong against one another. Yellowed paperbacks lay everywhere along the corridors and sometime just walking through the hotel was like pushing your nose into a sun faded second-hand novel. One room even saw tribal figures in grass skirts dancing around a fire of paperbacks. They had on oversized Tiki masks and fed cheap novels to the flames without pause. Number Nun put a firm hand on Taty’s shoulder, nudging her on each time loitered to look.

Romeo unlocked a sliding metal shutter and ushered them into a spacious concrete chamber. The lights were down and outlandish costume racks clustered, cattle-like in the spaces. The backstage atmosphere was further enhanced by the many props and stacked racks of lighting equipment. Taty immediately sensed that she should be quiet, as though a performance were being enacted just beyond a nearby, as yet unseen curtain. And as she tiptoed deeper in, following after the soundless gliding figure of Number Nun, she eventually saw the illuminated ‘stage’. It was the only light source in the ambiguous chamber; a long aquarium window, which looked into a dingy, yet well lit hotel room. Number Nun ghosted close toward the one-way glass, speaking to Romeo in hushed tones.

“Is that an astronaut?” Taty heard her ask.

She drew alongside Number Nun and peered into a faded red room hung with framed prints of tropical flowers. Old wallpaper bulged with damp, sagging from the upper areas along the ceiling skirting. A tactless bed had been dropped in the corner, beneath a tiny window. A formica topped dresser brooded in the opposite corner, decked with a large beaded lampshade. Two diffuse spotlights had been placed on either side of the mirror glass, on the inside the room. They faced in and washed the space with a surgical glare. The hotel room had the staged, tableau-like look of an old record cover. Dust roved; a thousand stars in the light, orbiting the incongruous figure of an astronaut. The astronaut himself stood beside the bed, clad in a bulky spacesuit befitted with many snug straps and attachments. The suit had once been white but now appeared seedy, soiled by the city. Parts of it were singed by what must have been an immensity of heat. A gold visor disguised the face of the astronaut and pipes ran from the heavy helmet to a back-borne life-support system. Despite the worn quality of the suit, its holistic integrity appeared to be intact and the astronaut functioned as a visitor on an alien world.

“He told Martha he piloted a lunar module around the moon,” Romeo whispered to Number Nun, plugging in a series of cables.

“Now I think he just plays chess in the park.”

He moved quietly toward a bank of levers, leaving the light of the window.

“He still wears the suit?” Number Nun muttered drily after him.

The Sugar Twins had by now slunk up to the window. They nuzzled the glass like cats, the plastic strands of their wigs trailing in the foggy areas their breath created. The mechanical corneas of Number Nun’s eyes flowered open with a subdued hum. A quicksilver patina gleamed within her porcelain skull, punctuated by the internalized flickering of many, tiny glowing panels. Her spectral filter activated, shifting her vision. It caused the room beyond the glass to appear all of a sudden translucent and wavy to her. Objects were encased in a sort of X-ray jelly, rendering them gelatinous and somewhat immaterial. The skeletal system of the astronaut flexed like a crab beneath a glassy chrysalis of suit and flesh. The internal structure of the bed shone like an undersea sponge. But the X-ray quality of her vision lacked the crispness of airport detector units. It was instead cellular and microbial. Each image quivered, flickering like the flaws on old celluloid. A parade of quasi-bacterial forms suddenly crossed her line of sight, passing through the room as though it were just one bubble within a vast matrix of bubbles. Energy signatures fluttered like tapeworms, flexing and freezing in the air. A ghost was even discernable beside the tiny bathroom’s entrance. It sat heavy as damage; the shade of some elderly gentleman in a vintage suit, repeating movements like old video tape, phasing in and out of existence. Number Nun ignored all these extraneous details, focusing instead on the astronaut. A sno-globe of swirling emanations encapsuled his gelid form, forming an entrancing sphere. The energies at work in this sphere were more than just unique to the astronaut. In effect they were the astronaut; fizzing in filaments, flooding rivulets about his body mirage like sap through vines. Various bulges of colour and textured energy build-ups mirrored shifting emotional states, slicking around him like oil on water. Number Nun’s vision locked into a portion of the sno-globe running parallel to the astronaut’s lower back. Sensory data fluttered and collapsed like a thousand butterflies in her artificial mind, causing her to zoom in on a strange ganglion of energy which throbbed and pulsated behind the astronauts spine.

“I see his trip-switch,” she announced to the Sugar Twins.

Taty glanced at the twins, realizing that they served some mysterious function other than ornamentation. She wondered what this was, observing with interest.

“It’s in the lower spinal atmosphere,” Number Nun informed them. “Four and a quarter fingers west of the ventral narthex, adjoined to his sum-jism by a tiny clutch of diamond ecto.”

Number Nun turned to face the twns, who stared rapturously in at the astronaut.

“Do you see how to trip it?” she asked.

Taty craned closer, hanging onto Number Nun’s robes like a nervous child. She saw that the twin’s eyes had milked over and that their bodies were convulsing lightly. Their vision had also apparently altered, though the processes at work were chemical and the outward effects more dramatic than those of Number Nun. There was in fact a marked difference in the way they saw the room, attuned as they were to a different set of spectral frequencies. There was also an X-ray quality to their vision, though the resolution was far sharper than Number Nun’s. The objects in the scope of their vision were diamond-edged and candy-like. They appeared to shimmer with neon aura hazes and internal structures glowed, as though viewed through packages of garish syrup and crystallized sugar. Instead of the ghostly microbial forms which clotted Number Nun’s synthetic filters, the twins saw bursts of fibrous electricity and fast forward time reflections cascading like chimes throughout space. Their perception of the astronaut’s sno-globe was also glittery and constellated; a gravitational spinning of tightly meshed and idiosyncratic energies. The Sugar Twins moved their heads in a synchronized fashion, bee-stung lips leaking milky drool, focusing on the area Number Nun had indicated. After a while they seemed to find what it was she was describing and took several moments to study the anomaly, nodding their heads in response to supernatural stimulus. Then suddenly, without warning, their eyes became silvery again and they stopped shaking. Number Nun daubed at their mouths with a napkin whilst they flexed their waists. Taty saw the jutting bones of their hips dislodge with a slippery click. They fell apart and immediately flanked Romeo. One began to whisper intently into his left ear while the other whispered into his right. Taty couldn’t make out what it was they were saying but it sounded inhuman; the rushed twittering of birds or snakes. Romeo nodded every so often, ballpointing notes onto stack of lumo post-its. When the twins had ceased their sibilant whispering they seemed to somehow deactivate, lapsing back into the luxuriant aloofness which seemed their natural state. They drifted to the door, bumping into things, huddled in their ermine furs. Romeo thumbed through the pad of scribbled notes and turned to Number Nun.

“You can take them down to the diner for a milkshake and fries,” he announced in a tone of confirmation. “I’ve got it gift-wrapped.”

Number Nun shot Taty a sharp look and gently dislodged her clutched fingers from her cassock.

“Back in a tic-tic,” she said before sweeping off.

She ushered the Sugar Twins into the corridor outside and Taty watched the metal shutter close, feeling suddenly abandoned and unsure of her situation. She fidgeted with her dress in the darkness, clicking the heels of her slip-ons together. Romeo was too busy rummaging in drawers and arranging things to notice her nervous tics, but he seemed to sense her discomfort. He put a cold hand on her shoulder at one point.

“Don’t fret cupcake,” he whispered supportively. “It’s a little like drowning goldfish – everything you need is already there, all you got to do is shake it up.”

Taty nodded nervously while he returned to his preparations, her eyes glued to the astronaut in the other room.

you can suck on it here

The weighty twilight of the jungle was just beginning to glaze the house of Alphonse Guava. The mauve of the sky deepened like fluid, lashed by stripes of vivid, dying yellow. Many of the lights had not been turned on yet and the majority of the house was sunk in a sort of subaqueous gloom. The light was particularly dim in one of the quiet bedchambers in the upper west wing. There was an overdone quality to the decorative features of the chamber; lace curtains, porcelain knickknacks, heavy mahogany furniture and sepia floral print wallpaper. The overall mood of the room was spooky and cloying, the inescapability of a grandmother’s attic. A long French window was the only light source, and this was overgrown with creepers. The tendrils meshed tightly beyond the lightly frosted glass, emitting a pellucid, underwater light into the chamber. Like sunshine seen from below the surface of a still pond. The air was also still, almost pressurized. A Victorian rocking horse grinned beside one of the walls, facing into the cool green light. The only discernable sound was the faint regular breathing of a young girl sleeping, and very distant birds. Vintage dolls littered the floor. The farthest, dimmest end of the room was literally a wall of dolls. This overwhelming collection stretched from floor to ceiling and hundreds of glass eyes could be glimpsed, glinting in the wan light. A curtained four-poster bed had been placed in the center of the room and Taty lay asleep in it. Someone had dressed her in a vintage white nightgown and only her head and neck were visible above the old linen coverings. In the dimness of the far end, just below the wall of dolls, it was possible to vaguely discern the form of a large crocodile. The reptile lay comatose, its nictitating lids licking slowly together and apart in the half-light. Alphonse Guava was seated in a high backed chair just below the tall window. His hands were steepled and he watched Taty sleep, patiently waiting for her to stir. The light faded gradually, creating antiquated purple shadows and an atmosphere of gathering oppression. Taty began to awaken slowly in this dimness.

“Mommy…” she found herself mumbling.

She turned her head, blinking her eyes in the greenish light, gazing dreamily at the silhouette of Alphonse.

“Am I swimming into focus yet?” Alphonse smiled.

“Is this heaven?” slurred Taty, thinking she was perhaps dead.

“Depends,” he smirked.

“I’m so sleepy…”

“You should be, Miss Muppet drugged you.”

Taty frowned and then yawned like a kitten.

“I liked her,” she tut-tutted.

“She emits a certain pheromone,” Alphonse explained. “ It makes her impossible to dislike.”

“Oh,” she goggled. “ Kind of like a bug?”

“Exactly like a bug.”

Taty shifted under covers. She attempted to raise her arm only to find it attached to one of the posts by means of a rusty chain. She wiggled a bare foot to discover that it too had been secured.

“I’m tied to this bed,” she announced blankly.

“Chained cupcake, chained.”

“I like the rough stuff,” she joked, flicking at the chain.

“We all do,” he replied quietly.

She stared at him, unsure of her ground. He rose slowly out of the chair and circled slowly toward the bed. The crocodile, sensing movement reacted slightly. Taty did not even notice it, so intent was she on the approach of the dark figure.

“Are you going to rape me now?” she asked in an unreal, dreamy fashion.

“No,” he replied seriously. “Actually I need you for some things.”

“I…I don’t fuck well,” she stammered quietly. “I’m virginal…”

“It works better if you are a virgin,” he whispered, his face swamped by shadows. He was quite close to her now and she could smell the tea and alcohol on his soiled suit. She peered deep into the shadow of his face, attempting to understand his intentions. A flicker of movement caught her eye and she noticed the crocodile. As with everything, she reacted with slow fascination rather than fear – as though it were all a dream. She glanced back at him as he lingered beside a bedpost, somehow distracted.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked with an intense, child-like curiousity.

Alphonse seemed to wake from his momentary reverie, realizing suddenly that she was there. He drifted to the far end of the bed, his voice taking on a business-like tone.

“I want you to come work for me,” he began. “I pay well, can give you a bed, toys, whatever…I’ll even feed you, you look like you could use some food.”

“What do I have to do exactly?” she pressed.

“It’s…complex,” he sighed, wandering over to the rocking horse.

She watched as he mounted the horse, facing the window, his back to her. He was much too large for the child’s toy and it creaked dangerously. Despite this he continued to rock back and forth, staring out of the window in something of a trance. When he finally did speak, his voice carried an almost religious fervour.

“You see awhile ago some people rediscovered their souls,” he mused, staring into the light, haloed by illuminated dust motes.

“They brought them out of the cupboard, so to speak,” he continued. “Shook them around and began to see their envelopes; the sno-globes which encase us all, our invisibilities…”

He rocked faster, clearly inspired by whatever it was he was spouting.

“Some saw fantastic colours and intricate, shifting formations within the sno-globes,” he rambled. “A doctor, Doctor Dali, discovered that these sno-globes were something like our emotions, sensations and mental emanations rendered visible – he saw people as paintings of light!”

“So you’re saying I’m a sno-globe?” she frowned.

He turned to peer at her over his shoulder.

“Not just any sno-globe my little sweetmeat,” he grinned toothily. “Tinkerbell’s like you are rare as rubies.”

He dismounted and rocked sideways, staring at her.

“See when most people are receptors, you are in fact a transmitter…”

“I’m like a radio?” she asked blankly.

He got up and minced over to her like a cat.

“You double stereo psychic television baby,” he giggled. “You can be tuned to create specific sensations and emotions within people – why just the sight of you playing tennis in the right colour skirt, if amplified correctly, could be enough to kill a person!”

“I can’t play tennis.”

He brushed aside her remark and continued, circumnavigating the bed.

“Each pigeon will be different my dear,” he elucidated. “For one happy Frank it may simply be tennis in a peach ballgown, for another you might be called upon to, oh I don’t know…weld red screws to the underside of an antique unicycle at midnight…upside down!”

He cackled a little at his flight of fancy while she just stared expressionlessly at him, tugging at her chains like a puppy.

“Each person reacts differently to different stimuli,” he continued. “Each has their own private path to paradise…we find it and you just lead them up it – for a nominal fee of course.”

He leaned in close to her at this point and rubbed his cold nose against hers. She flinched slightly from the clamminess of it but was otherwise unafraid.

“You can be taught to kindle soul-pleasure more intense than a thousand orgasms…” he hissed brutally, before pulling back and retracting like a squid into the shadows.

She gazed up at him while he allowed for a dramatic pause.

“But if I can do anything…” she mused thoughtfully. “ Why just use me for pleasure?”

“My business is pleasure,” he uttered in a rehearsed fashion.

“A little limiting don’t you think?” she taunted.

“Limitation is a limitless source of amusement to me,” he grinned snappily.

They stared at one another sensing a possible friendship. Something in her was drawn to the flightiness of the living joker card she saw smiling in the darkness before her. And whatever it was, it seemed far more concrete than the endless existentialist vistas she had witnessed on the highways.

“Think of the wonderful, wonderful degradation,” he teased exasperatingly.

She found herself mirroring his ridiculous smile.

“Okay,” she acquiesced, to be sporting.

“But I want a lollipop,” she added, with a playful laugh.

He clapped his hands together in glee. And in the darkness beyond, the crocodile stirred, crossing the room in three giant strides.

There had always been wrestlers in jungle country. Some came out of the disenfranchised tribes who settled along the dingy river settlements, others drifted down from the big cities in the lowlands. It was difficult to get good gigs and earn decent money in the more developed cities so everyone knew that all the real money was to found in the lawless zones. Wrestling in particular had a perverse attraction for the suffering and alcohol racked. Even the scattered tribes folk seemed to like it better than all the other forlorn forms of entertainment crawling around the zones. Perhaps the colourful outfits and fetishistic masks reminded them of their long departed customs and strange Gods. At any rate it was comforting for the villagers to witness the spectacle of a large ring of banana leaves and candy light bulbs being set up. These rings would be erected with great pomp despite their shabbiness. Patrolled at all times by hired waterfront trash posing as security in sunglasses and handlebar mustachios, they were perhaps accorded more importance than they deserved. In these early days the wrestlers were a simply a raggle-taggle caravan, nothing more than circus performers travelling from village to village staging fights for whoever came. This sideshow existence continued for a long time, until a memorable event changed things for good. A particularly vicious robber baron had begun killing old people in an attempt to extort more goods from a long-suffering tribe. The wrestlers, who were in the area at the time, took umbrage to the treatment of the tribe - who had always been faithful followers of the wrestling phenomenon. They decided to arm their waterfront trash guards with cheap sub-machine guns and machetes and pool their resources in an attempt at a counter-strike. Their strength and strategy in the end was formidable, more formidable than they could have anticipated. Within a day they had taken the robber baron’s compound and mounted his, and many of his closest cohorts heads on stakes. Drunk on victory (as these wrestlers were apt to become upon winning a match), they began to stage a number of successful assaults upon various chieftains and feudal lords in and around the lawless zones. They wrestlers always fought bare-handed as they did in the ring, sweeping down in a multi-coloured blaze once the mustachiod guards had laid waste to the majority of the opposition. They began to gain a tremendous amount of praise and respect from the people along the rivers. Even scattered military emplacements began to defect to the wrestlers, who in truth were far more effective and less corrupt than the government forces. The wrestlers swelled in power, were opposed on several occasions and within time became the recognized law in the lawless zone. The wrestlers themselves had by now become a small elite surrounded by legions of uniformed mustache-men with machine guns. Their masks and costumes became more and more immaculate as a kind of hierarchy began to develop within their numbers. Some speculated that they would stage secret bouts to compete for positions of power. Whatever the case they maintained their original nomadic configuration, moving in heavy convoys through the jungle territories laying down whatever law they saw fit to lay down. They were not unfair, but they were rigid and people soon came to fear as well as respect them. The wrestlers coup de grace was to establish a roving border around the lawless zones; one which flexed and shifted like a membrane. And anything coming in and out had to pass border posts. Posts which, although not entirely corrupt, were amenable to ‘specialty tariffs’ and ‘first veiws’ by speculative smugglers with large amounts of non-traceable cash. To aid mobility, these stations often took the form of specially designed jumping castles, referred to collectively as: The Soft House.

The afternoon had turned sunny and balmy. A soft, gushy sort of sea breeze flecked in off the ocean, rippling up the enormous fields of cane like fingers through hair. Alphonse Guava had the cigar smoking circus midget juice up the old banana coloured jalopy and take him out to The Soft House after cocktails. The clanking jalopy was a turn of the century dinosaur with bicycle wheels. These spindly wheels had undergone extensive balloon tire modifications to handle the rough roads outside the known map of the territory. Alphonse had won the car off a gambler on a steamboat some years ago and kept it in good condition – mostly out of spite. The in-house circus midget, who loved tinkering, managed to track down a manual or two detailing parts and set about making his own replacements in the forge. He had little else to do except smoke those repulsive stogies of his so it became something of a pet project. Alphonse, tickled by his dedication decked the little fellow out in aviator goggles, leather skullcaps and elegant pairs of driving gloves. The car was noisy, difficult to handle and broke down on almost an hourly basis. Yet despite these numerous failings it was utilized far more often than the deluxe finned Caddy or the Starbright V8 or even the speedster. The midget had a large gramaphone welded to the back and tacked it out with gyroscopes so that it could play across almost any terrain. Now as they drove they were listening to old Al Bowlly records and had colourful martinis on hand which they splashed out of shakers. Judas was lying on the backseat with his bloody legs and junk trailing out behind the car like a ‘just married’ motif. Typhoid Mary was also in the back, grinning at nothing, lost in a world of her own. Judas was sulking, staring at the sky through sunglasses, chainsmoking and petulantly ignoring the copious trickles of blood which seeped from his freshly mangled knees. Campbell’s tomato soup cans bounced ridiculously out behind him, constantly threatening to catch in the wheels and jerk him overboard. Alphonse was in the front slowly getting sloshed and having a grand time with the midget. His white suit had in fact already gathered one or two fresh stains.

A checkpoint appeared some distance down the dirt road. Three soldiers with handlebar mustachios and mirrored sunglasses were manning the candy stripe blockade. Bossanova music blared from a tinny radio inside the one-man watchman shack. One of the soldiers paced the road with a machine gun. The other two were a small distance into the cane, viciously beating a purple clown. The clown had been tied to a chair and one of his teeth was bleeding slowly down his violet powdered cheeks. The soldier on the road waved for the jalopy to stop. The midget shifted the cigar in his mouth, gunned the engine and ran over the soldier. There was a crunch, squeal and clatter as they trundled over the figure. This was shortly followed by the sound of the blockade being destroyed by the barreling jalopy. Alphonse barely seemed to register the entire episode so intent was he on refreshing his drink. The two soldiers in the cane paused for a moment to witness the death of their comrade. They observed the car drive off with perplexed expressions before going back to beating the clown.

The jalopy crested the ridge of a sugarcane rise and a huge lime green jumping castle emerged into view. It was nestled upon an open field and it’s translucent bulk quivered like an enormous jelly dessert against the sky. It was at least six stories high and various towers sprouted and swayed in the offshore breezes. The sunlight illuminated it brilliantly, creating a weird beach ball light which embered in its multiform shadows. Figures and furniture could be seen bouncing around inside the castle, moving like protoplasmic motes beneath a microscope. Soldiers performed aerobic exercises in the cane, syncopating to leotard girls on battered television sets.

“You think they would have pillaged enough gold fillings to erect a proper barracks by now,” Judas muttered blackly.

“Small mercies Judas,” Alphonse grinned. “ ‘The Hard House’ would sound a little to bouncy don’t you think?”

“Oh fucking cackle,” Judas barked bitterly as they drew into the front of the quivering castle.

Alphonse hopped out, passing between the two surly mustachio- guards guarding the labial entrance to the lime green structure. The others waited in the car, their gramaphone music clashing uncomfortably with the energetic beats pumping out of the aerobics programs.

Melancholic Bossanova music played throughout the entirety of the Soft House, bleeding from plastic intercoms, warping in the weird metallic acoustics. The lobby had a dreary bureaucratic atmosphere, despite the shiny transparent walls and constant squeaking. A large wooden desk occupied the center of the globular chamber and a wrestler in a waspish black and yellow leather mask was installed behind it. Filing cabinets creaked dangerously against the flexible walls. Sunlight filtered throughout the immense bubble bath of a structure, lighting it up with a sugary luminescence. Audio spillage from adjoining vacoules confused things somewhat. Interrogations were being carried out in plain sight, behind one or two membranes of clear jelly green. Long corridors flexed like the intestinal networks of enormous cartoon animals. Solidiers passed through these passages in a comical, sort of anti-gravity hopping. Some of the chambers had been filled to capacity with water and nasty looking sharks bobbed like goldfish inside them. Huge rubber airlock valves separated these rooms, further intensifying the oversized beach ball motif. The wrestler regarded Alphonse critically, evaluating him in a couple of glances.

“Picking up or dropping off?” The wrestler asked.

“I’ve got a sack waiting for me in customs, tower three,” Alphonse answered in a somewhat drunken, yet well modulated fashion.

“Know the way?” the wrestler queried suspiciously.

“Sure.”

“Carrying any sharp objects? Scissors? Knives? Needles?”

“Only my rapier-like wit,” Alphonse winked.

The wrestler regarded him for several seconds without a trace of amusement.

“We shoot people for that sort of talk you know,” he muttered ominously.

Alphonse withdrew a silencer-tipped pistol and shot the wrestler twice in the face. The yellow and black mask split with red and the heavy wrestler slumped dead across the desk. Alphonse wordlessly replaced the pistol in a cream leather shoulder holster, uncapped the beach ball airlock and quested down a flexible corridor.

Out in the car Judas was leaning off the door smoking his one hundred and fourty sixth cigarette of the day. He watched Alphonse moving through the gelid structure while the midget rolled a joint and Typhoid Mary caught flies.

“He pop him?” The midget asked with a grin.

“Yes fuck it,” Judas barked.

“Don’t worry you can pay me later,” the midget snickered, lighting up off a hula-hula Zippo.

Inside, Alphonse was slowly making his way through the sunlit Soft House. He had to adopt a curious, bouncy knees-bent walk across the bendy see-through floors. The squeaky noises this created slowly amplified themselves to absurd proportions within the shiny plastic tracts. This created an atmosphere of claustrophobia, which contrasted with the lack of view and the sensation of walking on air. The Bossanova music seemed to swell in volume the further he penetrated, reaching a monstrous distorted din towards the center. Sharks navigated the rubber lined cosms beyond the plastic of his corridor at times. At one point he passed a heavy old vending machine. It was heaving dangerously around, rattling with coins and he side-stepped it gingerly. Other rooms passed above and below, viewed through a complexity of translucencies. He ascended a wobbly tower. At the top, in a wildly waving chamber, were a mangle of black sacks. These hermetic sacks had been secured with heavy shipping ropes, which he proceeded to undo with great alacrity. He continued to separate the sacks until he came upon his name typed on a tag around the neck of a particularly large sack. He dragged it free, clinging to the ropes to avoid slipping across the biliously swaying room. He then undid the clasp and peered through the aperture. Inside was the little girl Miss Muppet had delivered. She was sleeping, naked in a foetal form, curled up in an abundance of goose feathers. Alphonse resealed the hermetic sack and heaved it to a rubber valve in the corner of the room. A crazy tubule could be seen beyond the valve, spiraling down through the mazy innards of the Soft House. He popped the valve, pushed the sack in and watched it swirl away through the pipes of the jumping castle. After a few moments he followed the sack, sucking down the tube like a bug down a drain. After several tortuous minutes both popped out a postal chute, almost directly in front of the jalopy, landing in a vast pile of abandoned letters and mail.

Number Nun stood at the foot of the four-poster bed staring down at the dead girl. After awhile she stripped the corpse and carried it down to the graveyard at the back of the house. Her robotic strength allowed her to complete the burial in just under fifteen minutes. Number Nun had in fact been specially programmed to complete emergency burials in the field and was able to link the titanium knuckles of her porcelain fingers together to create effective spades. In appearance Number Nun was a saturnine figure, cloaked in a habitual black habit which swirled in her wake like an oilslick. Her towering body buzzed beneath this garment with a barely perceptible electronic humming. Like all Religio-Robots in her range she had been sculpted to closely resemble the Virgin Mary of classic Renaissance portraiture. Faint seams ran the length of her translucent porcelain body, flexing soundlessly as she moved. Clockwork machineries could at all times be seen operating below the surface of her shell-like skin. Glowing cells lit her from within, casting her in a perpetual halo of transcendental illumination. She had been airdropped into the jungle some years ago to perform missionary work with the lost cat-tribes. Work she did with great zeal and efficiency after locating their secret settlements in cave systems below an enormous waterfall. Number Nun’s body and programming were such that she could survive the ravages of any wilderness for great periods of time. A nuclear cell gave her a shelf life of over two thousand years and she was possessed of incredible strength and fortitude. She had done her good work without interruption until Alphonse Guava the imp pimp had her captured and rewired her control circuits. Now she haunted the imp’s house of ill repute constantly attempting to fulfill her original programming, hopelessly hampered by ceaseless parade of freakish tenants and the whims of her new master. The new programming allowed for all manner of obscenities and she suffered dreadfully beneath the infernal yoke of Alphonse Guava, perpetually scanning for some method of release from her bondage. Number Nun had in fact just completed the burial when her internal communications system alerted her to an incoming summons. It was evidently time for the monthly group portrait and all pertinent members of the house were being called down to the frangipani grove to assume their various positions behind the imp. Number Nun duly adjusted her course and glided toward the sprawling gardens collaring the façade of the old colonial villa.

They had hired the usual vintage equipment. The photographer himself appeared to be a relic from some nineteenth century sideshow. He was hunched in britches beneath his black cape, adjusting antiquated fixtures and complex light meters. It was a bright, bustling afternoon and the gelid, honey light seeped like liquid through the flowering trees, congealing in enormous golden slabs across the lawn. The buttery light illuminated the rotting mulch of fallen blooms and the chaotic flight of many clumsy butterflies. The decaying colonial splendor of the house was at its peak when viewed from the perspective of the frangipani grove. The large sagging mass rose in a sequence of cream coloured planes, much distorted by the unchecked growth of Spanish Moss. Un-nameable jungle creepers further disguised the true shape and breadth of the house. The fact that the house was so deep within the jungle further added its atmosphere of desolation. Wild fruit had invaded the walls like a sexual disease. Granadilla blossoms formed tiny starbursts of complexity along the high vines, dangling ripe hand grenades in a suggestive way. Banana trees lurked like hoboes beneath the French windows. An atmosphere of languid, yet vintage torpidity rose off the many rooftops, dissolving all emotion in a slow heat.

A set had been constructed beside the enormous leaf choked pool. Baby crocodiles lay like arrows in the lukewarm water, snapping at bugs and fallen cupcakes. Magnolias littered the surroundings. Heavy Moroccan rugs cascaded drearily, supporting a plethora of tiny wrought iron tables. These were laden with English crockery and a nauseating assortment of cakes. Ashtrays overflowed between bulbous wicker bird cages. Yet the cages were all open, and murderous, hatchet-beaked tropical birds minced like waiters through all the confectionary. The place was alive with ants and beetles. Black candles guttered in an unimpressive way, constantly threatening to set fire to the lurid Japanese parasols. In the center of this vortex was placed a throne. And upon this throne was coiled the slender, suited form of the imp Alphonse Guava. He wore a perfectly tailored white suit, stained with tea with trimmed with pale yellow silk. In fact, the only thing which gave him away were his pointed ears, which tapered up to mischievous peaks above his sun bleached, flaxen hair. That and perhaps the unwholesome smile, which fermented constantly across his knife edge cheekbones, shifting and changing but never completely disappearing. His entourage milled and crowded around him; a pack of suspect flamingoes. There was of course the zombie Typhoid Mary, who was possessed of a skinny Frankenstein charm despite the many flies and vaguely cured appearance of her sloppily stitched skin. Her mouth had been sewn tight with red thread, but still she smiled like a reptile. With her head shaved institution style, her hobnail boots and her long filthy coat she brooded and hissed to herself, constantly seeming to threaten violence. Someone had painted her name on the back of the coat in fire-engine red enamel paint, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes had, in any case been replaced by tiny pink kewpie doll heads. She mostly found her way around by smell or by some unfathomable zombie sense. It was a widely known fact that Alphonse was fond of creating zombies. Many refused his cocktails on that premise. One or two people knew the story of Typhoid Mary before the fall, but it was a subject no one ever brought up. Now it was all shrouded in mystery, she was seen simply as the muscle of the house. A red sledgehammer protruded from her coat in testament to this. It was an implement she wielded with considerable venom, and at Alphonse’s smallest whim, so she was understandably given a wide berth at all times. The Sugar Twins were also to be seen, twining around in the rotting flowers like a pair of honey-skinned pythons. They were a pair of ‘Detachable Siamese’ and their nubile gender was impossible to pinpoint. They were joined at the hip by some very kinky adjuncts of bone, which dovetailed together and separated according to their own mysterious fancies. Their almond eyes were a milky white, filmed by membranous eyelids. They lounged semi-naked, like angular cats, pecking lazily at fallen sweetmeats, stroked occasionally by the wingtip heel of the enthroned Alphonse. Number Nun was often to be found tut-tutting over the pair, feeding and draping them with blankets when they fell asleep in the trees of the garden. Number Nun’s diametric opposite; Michelle was to be found at the far end of the gathering. Ever the outsider, Michelle was an overweight girl, in her late teens and clad in beach tongs, vest and dingy surf shorts. She was nailed to a large wooden cross, which she dragged around with her everywhere she went. This situation was unavoidable as her palms and wrists were nailed very solidly to the wood. Some leather was lashed about her throat to help support the weight of the central beam, but still the stigmata seeped whenever she strayed too far from her basic position. The uncomfortable posture had resulted in unexpected weight gain and back problems. But she bore these deformations stoically, in the true manner of a self-afflicted martyr. Her lifeless hair was drawn back into a tasteless ponytail and she was often to be found in an inexpressibly foul mood – probably from being perpetually crucified. The heavy cross rested upon her calloused calves, and she shuffled around like some enormous, cynical hamster, muttering about things, usually Number Nun (her arch-enemy). The characters began arranging themselves as the photographer made his final preparations. Several small zeppelins were tethered to posts and one could see them gusting like fat dogs above the trees. Pennants had been attached to these and they littered down like gaudy fishing lines, catching on teapots and things. Stagehands were present, smoking cigarettes off camera, ready to take action if any last minute items needed arranging. The photographer had in fact just climbed under his black shroud when Number Nun detected a despondent voice calling from the house.

“Alphonse?” she murmured in her well modulated analog voice.

“Hmm?”

“Judas is coming.”

Alphonse glanced over to the house where a small Mulatto figure could be seen crawling desperately toward the gathering. His name was Judas, aide-de-camp to Alphonse, secretary of the house and general punching bag. His upper half was battered and his progress further impeded by the junk casing his lower half. Pipes and pig-iron scraps dragged from his twisted spine like an industrial wedding train. Nails protruded from his hips and back, catching in the lawn dragging Campbell’s soup cans in a pitiful fashion. Yet despite all this Judas was always to be found turned out in a spotless white vest, his beard immaculately shaved into a Moorish goatee, his head neatly sheared. Pride tokens dangled from his neck. You could smell his aftershave from several kilometers away.

“Aaaaaaaaalphonse!” he called repeatedly. “Wait for me! Wait for me!”

“Should we wait?” Number Nun asked.

“Have we ever?” smirked the imp.

He waved his hand petulantly at the photographer. A moment of tenseness ensued, followed by the dramatic eruption of the antique flashboard. Magnesium sparks vomited. Some passing butterflies went up in flames.

“Clickety click!” grinned the photographer, emerging from his cape. “A real Kodak moment.”

Everyone was already relaxing out of their poses when Judas finally arrived. Bulky laborers in dungarees and sailor caps had emerged from the woodwork, disassembling the previously unseen film lighting, rigging and backdrops. A stone fountain was carried off, now proven to be cardboard. Sailor types began to sweep away the fallen blossoms, revealing a pristine lawn beneath the artful decay. Rugs began to be rolled as the principal characters moved aside, dodging flurrying birds.

“Thanks for the non-existent effort to alert the photographer to my meager presence Alphonse,” Judas scowled.

Alphonse raised a hand in a princely, somehow utterly unreadable gesture.

“Miss Muppet and the Goo Crew have netted another childbride,” Judas continued unabated.

“Look…What exactly are the Goo Crew?” he frowned as though sucking something sour.

“Little monster babies,” Michelle spat.

“They are authentic Cupids,” Alphonse explained haughtily. “Can sniff out a ghost girl at a thousand clicks.”

“Expensive little loaves though,” he continued, lighting up a slim white cigarillo. “Need constant life-support outside their natural habitat.”

“That being?” Judas pressed.

“Clouds.”

“Oh.”

“Always liked Miss Muppet,” Michelle nodded sagely. “Always knew she was the best.”

“Oh please Michelle,” Number Nun snapped haughtily, attempting to dress one of the Sugar Twins in some dungarees. “ Yesterday it was the Purple Clown you were praising – You are utterly backward my child.”

“You fucking nun!” Michelle exploded. “If I wasn’t nailed to this cross I’d rip your tits off!”

“Really Michelle,” Alphonse drawled. “You must learn to control your temper – have a pina colada.”

He deftly snagged a colourful cocktail from a passing props tray and passed it to her. She took it with comic difficulty, finding it impossible to drink. There was a sort of catholic-slapstick dynamic at work which caused Judas to flutter into a smile.

“Well what do you expect from someone who thinks she’s God’s illegitimate daughter,” Number Nun muttered dryly.

“Concubine!” Michelle spluttered. “And he really liked me!”

“Oh shaddup,” Judas threw up.

Alphonse leaned down to Judas as though addressing a dog.

“This little thing Miss Muppet found on the side of the road,” he mentioned. “Is it yummy?”

“Like a French postcard…I think…”

“You mean you don’t know.”

“Don’t patronize me!” Judas wailed.

“Miss Muppet does bring in the Juicy Lucy’s,” Michelle nodded, spilling her cocktail.

“I prefer the Purple Clown,” Number Nun smiled.

“Fucking robot,” Michelle spat back.

“Oh please shaddup!” Judas practically screeched.

“Is she even a she?” Alphonse quizzed.

“Er…yes, of course, what else?”

“A he.”

“Shaddup!”

“Cow,” Michelle hissed, still glowering at Number Nun.

“So where is it?” Alphonse smoked conversationally.

“The Soft House,” Judas explained in the somewhat official tone he employed for house affairs. “Customs you know…”

“Are you sure?” Alphonse teased relentlessly.

“Don’t patronize me!” Judas shouted, almost in tears. “I’m very sensitive!”

“Sensitive?” Michelle ejaculated. “You can’t even feel pain!”

“That’s the WHOLE point Michelle,” Judas explained tediously. “As you know my brain can’t receive any pain signals, but it compensates by…You’re not listening to me are you?”

Typhoid Mary caught a fly between thumb and forefinger and attempted to eat it on some reflexive impulse. Once again she realized that her lips had been sewn shut.

“Well we’ve all heard it before Judas,” Alphonse smiled, blowing a triple succession of near perfect smoke rings.

“Ad nauseum,” he added with a cruel twist to his pale womanly lips.

“But…I’m…sensitive…”Judas gritted through gnashing teeth.

“Come to Christ,” Number Nun muttered.

“…You!” Judas blithered, wracked by in incommunicable fury.

“Methinks the little pup would rather come in Christ,” Michelle snickered, taking Number Nun’s side in a rare show of complicity.

“Trolls!” Judas bellowed, purple as a grape.

“Judas,” Alphonse waved down in a tut-tut fashion. “Make yourself useful, fetch me a glass of prune juice from the house.”

“Get it yourself you menshevic…” Judas clattered.

“Now what was that I just heard you just say?” Alphonse grinned, pleased as punch at having elicited a hostile response.

“Nothing!” Judas flinched, sensing imminent disaster.

Alphonse clicked his fingers at Typhoid Mary,

“Break his kneecaps again.”

Out came the sledgehammer.

“This is getting…monotonous,” Judas murmured wearily, traversed momentarily by the shadow of the falling hammer.

Scenic vistas of foliage reeled past claustrophobically. Glimpses of sullen seas revealed themselves through flashing rifts. Taty had leaned herself out into the slipstream like a puppy, staring melancholically up at endless recessions of turbulent cumulonimbus formations. Bipolar music blared out of the bass-heavy speaker system. The crucifix was the first thing she had noticed upon entering the car. It dangled heavily from the rear view, swinging like a pendulum. The face of the Jesus figure had been broken off, replaced by the severed head of a large jungle insect. It was a comical, though inexpressibly perverse image.

Later they were sitting in a lapsed silence, rocketing through the pre-dusk dimness.

“My brother…” Taty faltered. “ He died.”

“That’s nice” the driver smiled.

“What is it you do?” enquired Taty.

“We collect,” came the deft answer.

Taty glanced sidelong at the fantastic moonscape of the woman’s shadow drenched profile. A long cigarette dangled off the glossy black doll’s lips, coiling out a blur of smoke. This blur extended like an octopus smudging the entire world in places.

“Miss Muppet’s the name sister” the woman added quietly.

Taty fell asleep watching at the crucifix. It’s swaying lulled her while the world blackened. She awoke in a daze, somewhere in the night. Miss Muppet sat like an ancient statue, fixed behind the wheel, underlit and bathed in violent music. Taty scuffed off her sneakers, crawled over onto the vast backseat and slid instantly into a troubled sleep.

She awoke again, deeper into the muggy wash of the tropical night. They had stopped on the side of the road at some point, and a troubling stillness filled the ambiguous cavern of the car. A dim glinting along the metal of the windows cut slim shapes out of the blackness. She could hear the rumble of the sea and the close clicking of a palm tree. Warmth swelled in shapes, above and beside her. She found herself drifting in and out of sleep, pondering the proximity of this alien heat. It was almost too hot to breathe. Something heavy and pale shifted beside her in the blackness. She found herself mumbling something once or twice. She realized that the word she was slurring was ‘Mommy.’ This surprised her in a vague and distant way. But sleep poured over her too quickly to fully contemplate the full import of this repeated word. It washed down like the sound of the sea, drowning her quickly in its warmed up honey.

She sat up abruptly to find herself alone in the bright white light of morning. She noticed immediately that the crucifix had disappeared. Fresh sea air knifed in through the open windows, gusting her hair into her eyes. She scuffed it away and glanced around. The jungle had fallen away to reveal a vast, barren seascape. The highway had elevated, straddling the edge of a bony cliff. This precipice overlooked the wild, dark sea. She rubbed her eyes and crawled blearily out onto the windy tarmac. Miss Muppet was nowhere to be seen. She peered around before walking to the edge of the cliff and gazing down at the distant rind of the beach. After a moment or two she could clearly discern a tiny black blot on the grand arc of sand.

There was a path leading to the beach and Taty followed it down into the enormous, featureless dunes. She could see the faraway figure of Miss Muppet, standing with her back to her and staring out at the sea. The motionless figure would disappear for a moment or two each time Taty went down a depression, only to reappear when she rose, a little larger than before. For some reason she kept expecting the figure to vanish each time she crested the dune. But it never did, in fact it didn’t move at all. Taty drew close to see that Miss Muppet was carrying things in her hands. The object in her right hand was sleek and black and turned out to be a long six-shooter shotgun with a dangling shoulder strap. Her other hand clutched loosely at a couple of dead seagulls she had nailed. Their splattered wings fluttered dismally in the wind, staining her fat knuckles with blood. A bandolier was slung like a chain over her round shoulder. She was smoking contemplatively and watching the waves from behind her dark sunglasses. Talon tipped toes flexed slowly in the sand, like bird claws. Bobbing in the light surf, some meters before her, was the carcass of a great white shark. It floated belly up, punctured by a bullet wound. The entry wound had torn opened in the trawl and its guts spilled out into the water, trailing like ribbons through the foam. The water lapped at the blood, sucking back out toward the deep. Taty noticed that the insect Christ was attached to the wooden butt of the gun. It whipped around in the wind at the end of its beaded string. Taty jammed her hands into her pockets and stood beside Miss Muppet. Together they regarded the corpse of the shark.

“Shot a shark,” Miss Muppet announced.

Taty nodded in assent.

“Saw the fin, took a shot,” Miss Muppet expanded. “Tide washed him in.”

“I see said the blind man, how can it be? My eyes are blind but I can see.” Taty parroted.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” Taty murmured. “Just something my brother and I used to say.”

Miss Muppet finished her cigarette in silence. When she was done she tossed it into the wind.

“Taty?” she asked quietly.

Taty looked up at her.

“Close your eyes.”

Taty did as she was bade. Miss Muppet raised the fist she was using to hold the gulls. She smashed her bloody knuckles into Taty’s face, knocking her instantly unconscious. Up on the cliff something began to knock repeatedly against the inside of the car’s trunk. It was a frantic hammering, the sound of something wanting to be let out. Miss Muppet watched as Taty crumpled to the sand just like one of the seagulls. Some loose feathers followed her cigarette butt down the beach.

Miss Muppet crossed slowly back over the dunes and up to the car. She flipped up the rusted back plate to reveal a complex keypad lock. The knocking immediately ceased as whatever lay inside realized that the trunk was being opened. Hydraulics clanked as pressure seals were released. A steam of icy haze fizzed out into the turgid sea wind, dispelling quickly. Kinky Hawaain music wafted out from the inside. Miss Muppet cranked up the heavy lid to reveal a mess of piping and hardware. Ancient monitors winked and hummed inside nests of sparking Scooby wire. A pair of small candy striped deck chairs stood in the center of the cramped space separated by a miniscule coffee table. Two Rococo cupids sprawled across the dirty canvas of the chairs lacerated by IV’s and nasal tubes. Various cumbersome life support machines blinked and beeped around them. A pair of large colourful cocktails balanced precariously between the bald babies. One leered in a slovenly fashion, picking at its nose with a baby’s finger, evidently the idiot of the two. The other cupid smiled lasciviously behind enormous electronic goggles, thoughtfully fondling Maraschino cherries, paper umbrellas and pineapple slices. Both seemed magnificently drunk.

“Okay! Okay! Okay!” belched the goggled Cupid. “Another fishie fishie fishie…Or is it a pretty birdy?”

“I’m not sure,” Miss Muppet smiled.

“Birdy birdy birdy,” bleebled the second Cupid, in a clearly retrarded fashion.

“Its so good to be right,” muttered the other in a self satisfied tone.

“…Again,” finished his companion in a surprisingly erudite fashion.

“Yes, yes again,” sighed the goggled Cupid. “Tie it up then, toss it in here with us.”

“Pretty birdy,” the other one meeped.

Miss Muppet got out a black sack and some ropes. She lit a cigarette before strolling back toward the beach path.

“Count to four hundred and fourty four,” she threw over her shoulder.

The lazy Hawaain slide guitar trailed after her like smoke.

The piggy bank bought her a bus ticket to nowhere fast. But it felt like nowhere slow. When Taty was on the coach, staring out at an unreeling landscape, everything seemed pre-recorded. She was reminded of films she had seen as an infant.

It was claustrophobic aboard the yellow windowed liner, surrounded by strangers in the chugging dimness. The insides were dim, heavy with the stench of sweat and jungle chicken. She held her nose most the way, disembarking at the edge of the jungle on a whim. She found herself on the verge, where the route left the lowlands, gazing out at the distant rises of greenery. She watched the liner slug away down the highway. To the left of her, foliage choked valleys winked like hazy eyes within the distant dips and swells. To her right flexed the long golden biceps of the beach. A warm, dark sea seethed and retracted beyond the blurry shore, fuzzing up the air with haze. Fields of rushes shimmered within the curtain of this obscurity, clinging to the edges of the tiny lagoons and estuaries like a hairline.

She followed the main road into jungle land until it got dark and slept in the wreck of an old car. It was a busted up shell of a thing, crouched in on itself like the husk of a beetle. The night was stuffy and sticky. She could at all times hear the sea. A lull of singing insects carried in immense waves through the dense black heart of the mangrove. Already she was starting to erase things, tapes and memories, tiny little lines of pencil. But erasure came easily to her and she didn’t give it much thought. She had recently turned sixteen and things were shifting radically. She was stepping lightly into the framework of a brand new universe without so much as looking back. And there was a kind of special kind of strength in this. Out in the jungle, strange birds called. Their calls looped out into space and she imagined that they were speaking to her in an ancient, long forgotten language. Calling to her from just beyond the tree line.

Taty awoke before dawn and watched the sun split like a ripe melon over the world. She was listening to tapes on her Walkman when light started creeping its syrup through the meshwork of densely knitted trees. And she felt quiet and still within that spectral light. She clawed off her heavy metal headphones, cut the tape and listened to the immensity of space and all the sounds of solitude. But very soon she was out on the road again.

By late afternoon the charm of adventure had drained like a sink and fatigue lay heavy upon her. She had been walking for almost two days now. And in that time she had only seen two vehicles pass. One was an overloaded chicken rig, bustling with feathers and belching smoke. A man with a painted face was driving and he barely glanced at her as he passed. The other vehicle was battered beyond description and almost ran her over. Nobody else seemed to want to enter the jungle. And the road gleamed before her, a sanitary incision across the flank of some sleeping behemoth.

It was getting near late afternoon when Taty heard the sound of a car. The light was by now heavy and orange. The sound of the sea had dulled out to a distant ebb. Taty stopped on the whistling highway and glanced back over her shoulder. Heat waves had become disturbed by passage of the distant car. These oiled around against the embering light, distorting the sun in their churn. A mounting bass hum suggested that the car was moving fast. Taty stopped and stood, observing the noisy speck approach in a heat-drunk fashion. She was too tired to move, or perhaps she assumed the car would simply barrel by like the others. The hum swelled to a roar of engines and the car didn’t so much as slow as it did stop on a dime. It screeched to a neat, contained halt, its massive bulk vibrating gruffly beside her. The displaced air jilted around her and she quivered comically, like a pot plant in a sharp wind. She found herself staring at the hot wall of a towering chassis. Black once-shiny paint flaked in parts. The weathering showed sea rust and bullet pocked metal. Barbed wire had been twined around the heavy bumpers, left to oxidise and catch on things. A sharp-nosed teddy bear was tangled up in it like a kooky kamikaze.

“Where you going sugarplum?” a smoky voice enquired.

Taty glanced up to see a plump, pale woman smiling slyly down at her from the driver’s window. One of the woman’s hands was draped over the sill and Taty noticed that it was large and paw-like. The fat fingers terminated in black bird-like claws which stroked around constantly, dislodging tiny fragments of paint in slow circulations. Taty gazed back down the highway, lifted an arm in response and pointed. Her finger seemed to describe an area where the chalky highway tapered out into invisibility, becoming gradually swallowed by the looming masses of the jungle.

“That way,” Taty answered.

The woman brushed a knife-like fringe of bottle black hair from her kohl rimmed eyes, revealing an intricate tattoo. The shocking patterning sprawled out over her rounded cheek and forehead, radiating from her staring eye, completely dominating the entire left side of her doll’s face. There was a strangely captivating quality to the tattoo, which was difficult to immediately place. It captivated one’s attention so effectively as to allow the woman a moment’s grace to inspect whatever was before her without distraction. The woman exhaled a cloud of smoke while she studied the little girl.

“Death is very quick,” the woman smiled. “She is also very quiet.”

She breathed out more smoke, her statement somehow drawing the various sounds of the jungle into focus; clicking and whirring, distant calls of birds and the rummaging of animals.

“If we come by this road later, will you still be walking?”

Taty considered this, the dream of her day suddenly intruded upon by the unforeseen gauze of reality.

“I…I don’t know,” Taty murmured.

The passenger door popped open a moment or two later, almost of its own accord. Yet Taty lingered for long seconds, observing the unspoken offer of a ride in a dreamy state of indifference. She and the massive motorcar formed an unmoving tableau against the darkening jungle. Frozen, as though within a film still.

nikhil singh’s new artblog is here

nikhil singh has a new website

As the road unwound through the night, I found my mind returning to Soledad and the unusual circumstances of our first meeting. I had been performing a Sunday recital in the white pavilions along the Corniche. In fact, the pavilion in which I had been scheduled to play was a the end of the boardwalk and flanked by small seaside rides and amusement park sideshows. I was due to perform a recital of several sixteenth century madrigals, following a string quartet of dubious reputation. In fact, the string quartet carried with them a reputation of wild onstage antics and sometimes their recitals were often known to end in sheer chaos, with people stripping and leaping about whilst chairs were thrown through windows into the street. It was difficult to understand the effect they seemed to have on audiences, particularly since their entire repertoire consisted of Schubert. Nevertheless, the quartet seemed primed to throw the entire boardwalk into disarray with their latest interpretation of ‘Death and the Maiden’. I was therefore understandably surprised when they elected to play a piece from Tchaikofsky’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’, a piece which had been originally written for an orchestra no less. They seemed to have gone to great pains to adapt the score to sit comfortably with their four instruments. Nevertheless, it was as if some element of previous vitality had become lost in the translation, and their performance emerged muddled and jarring. Perhaps it was their need to be experimental that led them to obsess over the technicalities of the piece. That overwhelming need to shrug off and rise above the typecasting that inevitably comes with any form of success. Whatever the urge was, it had evidently led them further and further away from the kernel of intensity that was firing their music from the very beginning. Perhaps they would have naturally weaned themselves off Schubert, eventually, with time and grace, but now it was apparent that a winning formula had been irreparably tampered with. The eager crowds of young street punks sat waiting for the music that had inspired them so, but it never came. The cellist gesticulated just as wildly before with his glittery pink instrument, but no amount of hip gyration and glitter could save them from the slow spiral down into mediocrity. The spiky pink and black haired audience of young, wild teens began to almost visibly deflate, like a helium balloon after a few days in captivity. What was once bright, vivid and colourful was now flaccid and boring. The young punks drifted off into the seaside rides in dribs and drabs, kicking popcorn at the occasional seagull. Very soon the audience consisted of only three old ladies, a dwarf from one of the sideshow tents, evidently on a smoke break, and a young girl in the back row. She sat slightly stooped and wore chunky black sunglasses behind a long fall of straight, nut coloured hair. Something in her manner suggested a young fawn among trees, inquisitive and alert, able to dash away at the slightest disturbance. She sat with her coffee coloured legs crossed, an air of distraction about her, staring out to sea as her hair gusted uncontrollably in the breezes. It was a marvellous day as I recall. Bright bottle-green surf broke against the pier in fresh flashes of spray while speckled dolphins sported amongst the breakers. The sunlight was dappling in vivid patterns through the funfair rides and along the striped awnings of ice-cream vendors while gulls ducked and wheeled, squabbling over fishermen’s scraps. Behind the audience, passers-by shot at rows of motorised ducks and threw coconuts at tin bulls-eyes. The quartet finished up with a half-hearted flourish, gazing dismally out at the empty seats. One of the old women began to clap in a lacklustre fashion. But the sound was barely audible above the cries of the gulls and the general hubbub. I felt a stab of sympathy for the viola player as he furiously wiped the dramatic white and black stage paint from his weeping face. Within minutes they had vacated the stage and a bald man in a white suit had stepped up to the lectern to announce me. I noticed the girl snap to attention as my name was spoken over the loudspeaker and realised with a start that she had come to see me perform. I was surprised that anyone had even been aware of my performance, as my name was not even on the bill. I had, in fact, only taken the gig in order to be photographed on the Corniche by the well known photographer, Ishioko Onda. Genevieve had dealt with the booking arrangements and had suppressed the fact that I was playing in accordance to the photographer’s wish to have the audience minimal and accidental. My following was quite strong in the city and Ishioko wanted to present an unusual perspective on my usual performance style. Perhaps this was the reason why she had instructed me to wear a polar bear suit. I had resisted at first, but Genevieve plied me with numerous magazine articles citing Ishioko’s world renown genius until I finally relented. The fact that none of my regular audience would see me in the ridiculous get-up had finally helped me to make my decision. Now, as I watched the girl settle into her seat in preparation for my performance, I began to feel self conscious and slightly uncomfortable in the soft, white fur. I looked up to see Ishioko waving maniacally from the top of the Ferris Wheel. She had set up her equipment in one of the flowerbud shaped capsules and bribed the operator to keep her at the top of the Wheel until I was well into my piece. I began to regret the whole venture, but decided to simply forge ahead since it was too late to alter the events as they stood. I shrugged off Hans, who clambered into my velvet lined guitar case to wait for me. I shot him a painful look as I checked the tuning on my instrument. He merely chewed languidly on a banana, looking back at me as if to say; ‘Just what is the sound of one hand clapping?’ I gathered up my fortitude and took to the stage. I heard muted applause and looked up to see the girl clapping softly. One or two if the duck shooters had also recognized me and were also smiling and pointing. I soberly took my seat and breathed in deeply, allowing my training to wash over me. I remembered the words of my teacher, the great Don Mox Riviera; ‘Become your audience, and then become the stage, let their passions shape your own until the entire theatre is of one single, unified passion.’ I let my mind flow out into the sea and the carnival rides and began to realise in fact, how appropriate my polar bear apparel was. I closed my eyes, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze and let my consciousness flow outwards into the eternal. Then I began to play. The intricate, flowering arabesques of music coiled upward from the strings, rising into the microphone like some delicate fragrance, to be magnified luminescently into the air via the enormous public address system. I felt myself relaxing into the dense, stately atmospheres of the first piece, my fingers exploring the outer reaches of vast celestial emotions, tantalizingly glimpsed through the lacy veil of graceful and repetitive time signatures. I was well into the second stanza when the coconut struck my head. I was so shocked by the blow that I rose, dropping my instrument and clawing at the white furry ears of my mask. I staggered backward into the stage cloth in agony as a whine of feedback erupted through the speaker systems. Unfortunately the drapery at the back of the stage was merely there in order to block off the sea view. And as the stage was raised, there was nothing whatsoever to prevent me from toppling off the end of the pier and into the ocean. I felt a brief moment of vertigo before plunging into the icy emerald surge. I opened my eyes to a salty blur as noise dubbed out into a muted crashing. The sound briefly re-instated itself as my head was tossed above the chop of the waterline. I glimpsed the flurry of many faces along the promenade, bending over the rails to witness my plight. The sun hazed white and I caught a flash of a figure leaping gracefully into the swell. Then I was plunged underwater again. The coconut had dazed me sufficiently so that I was unable to function properly, my arms flapping white, blurry fur as I struggled against the riptide. As I sank, I felt a slender arm wrap around my shoulders and my face was wreathed in a silky blossom of brown hair. The hair lulled me into momentary blindness and I felt a powerful kick toward the glittering membrane of light which marbled down from above. We rose quickly, emerging on the back of a long green curve. The arm relaxed somewhat and I felt a leg curl quickly around my waist. An enthusiastic cheer had gone up somewhere in the world above and my shaking vision crashed around the edge of the pier. People blurred in and out of focus. I even glimpsed the tiny figure of Ishioko Onda, standing at the pinnacle of the Ferris Wheel’s arch, snapping away frantically. The curve of water began to flex like a bicep, trawling us heavily upward. I craned myself around to look upon the face of my rescuer and found my nose snubbing against the girl’s. Her nut coloured hair was plastered back to reveal eyes the exact same hue and intensity of the water. She was laughing against the bright cadence of refracted light, the sun dancing in flecks along her small teeth. A vague smattering of pale freckles, made visible only by our close proximity danced along the bridge of her nose. Her body was pliant in my arms, and it moved comfortably with the water, eel-like in its supple muscularity.

“How destiny moves us all in it’s great game of chess!” she exclaimed happily.

“Yes,” I coughed through a mouthful of brine. “But who is destiny playing chess against?”

We abruptly reached the crest of the wave and I became aware of the fact that we were towering precariously over a churning trough. I felt the girl’s arms and legs tighten around me and prepared to hold my breath against the forthcoming plunge. Just then a dolphin’s tail flicked out of the spume and knocked me unconscious.

I awoke muzzilly in the back of a speeding van. I was lying on a stretcher and a bald woman in a white nurse’s uniform was taking a blood sample from my arm while the van jumped and rattled. There was something strange, even untoward about the nurse’s uniform and I tried to put my finger on what it was. I soon realised that the uniform was plastic, a cheap costume from some disreputable shop. I tried to sit up but then realised that I was being held down by an enormous tattooed man in a black poloneck and mirrored sunglasses. I was about to panic when I glimpsed the girl who had rescued me, sitting against the side of the van, wrapped in a towel. She saw that I was awake and came up to me with a warm smile.

“How are you feeling?” she asked softly, taking my hand.

“I’m…I’m feeling…I’m…fine,” I replied woozily. “What’s going on?”

“We were lucky that this ambulance was loitering near the pier,” the girl said. “They are checking you for shock and cranial damage.”

I noticed that the ‘nurse’ was massaging my kidneys with a look of spidery intensity. I looked up at the enormous tattooed man and then turned to the girl.

“This doesn’t look like an ambulance?” I whispered to her.

“Oh don’t worry,” the girl reassured me. “This is the private ambulance of a reclusive millionaire who happened to be on the esplanade when you fell. He recognised you when we were washed up on the beach and graciously ordered his staff to transport you to the clinic.”

“Ah, I see,” I said.

The girl squeezed my fingers and smiled sweetly down on me. I stared up into her sparkling green eyes and suddenly felt a familiar and horrifying paralysis beginning to settle down on me.

‘Oh God no!’ I thought to myself desperately. ‘Please God not now! Not like this!’

But it was too late, I could feel the terrible smile fixing across my face as the girl frowned at me in bewildered concern. I could feel my back and legs stiffening like an ironing board, my eyes flicking from side to side.

“He’s going into shock!” the nurse cried in a strange accent.

I suddenly felt the enormous man’s hands release me and tear open my polar bear suit as the nurse placed two cold, jelly covered metal instruments over my clenched chest. Within moments I was being electrocuted savagely. My debilitation must have received some inordinate shock, because when the current left my body, I could feel the muscles along my entire length beginning to miraculously relax. There was a brief moment when I felt control returning to me, then the girl once again took my hand and I looked up into her eyes and felt the affliction returning with a vengeance. The nurse suddenly came into view, waving large syringe filled with blue liquid.

‘Muscle relaxant!’ she yelled in her curiously baritone voice, plunging the needle deep into my thigh. Once again, I felt my infernal condition reel under this medical onslaught. But the smile, that horrible lingering rictus, still remained, attatched to my face like a parasite. Once again, I felt all hands leave me and the cold steel press to my chest. The current passed through me in violent networks, scouring the last vestiges of neurological trauma from me in a blaze of fiery glory. I stuttered my eyes open in amazement and the horrific smile melted from my face like candy beneath a blowtorch. The deluge passed and I was blinking up into the girl’s eyes in glorious freedom.

“I’m cured..” I rasped to her.

She began to smile as my recovery became obvious. The woman in the nurse uniform gave me a small plastic cup of water and I sucked it down. As soon as I was done, the enormous man once again restrained me. I turned my head to face him.

“I’m fine now thank you,” I said into his mirrored sunglasses.

Curiously, he looked to the girl as though she were in command of this entire situation. I saw her nod affirmatively to him in response to his questioning look. The man released me as the bald woman passed a huge beeping instrument over my face and chest, scanning for something.

“I’m really allright now,” I said to her as she moved the blinking instrument back and forth over my prostrate form. “Could you take us back to the Corniche please?”

She also looked up at the girl for confirmation of my request. The girl brushed wet locks of hair from her face and replied to the nurse in some foreign language.

“Are you diabetic?” the nurse asked me suddenly.

“No, but I’m really worried about my iguana…Could we..”

“Do you smoke?”

“No, I don’t smoke..”

“Suffer from high cholesterol? Neurological dysfunctions? Candida? Haemophilia? Porphyries?”

“No! No, nothing. I’m quite healthy.”

She nodded, transcribing everything onto tiny computer which hummed beneath the stretcher. I sat up shakily and saw that the floor of the van was covered, ankle deep, in plastic lobsters. The van was slowing now and very soon, we had come to a complete standstill. The huge man moved to the back of the van and threw open the doors. Sunlight gushed in, and I was suddenly aware of how dark it had been in the back. The girl walked into the bright glare, pulling me by the hand. I followed, stumbling slightly in my sodden polar bear costume. We emerged into a dingy alleyway, crowded with garbage dumpsters and similar detritus. I looked at the girl whose hand I held, and for a moment couldn’t believe what was happening. It was as if the poles had miraculously swapped. I was cured of my paralysing affliction! In her long, white toga-like towel, the girl had the appearance of some flighty goddess from mythology. I even saw that she wore long, strappy Grecian sandals which effectively completed this image. I was about to ask her name when the black van screeched off down the alley, spilling plastic lobsters in every direction.

“My name is Soledad Evora,” she said with a smile.

“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,” I replied. “I’m…”

“Oh, I know who you are,” she beamed, leading me out of the alleyway and into the sunshine. We emerged onto a crowded thoroughfare and were suddenly were engulfed by pedestrians, pushing and shoving in every possible direction. I looked up and saw that we were merely a stone’s throw away from the Corniche. Soledad pulled me off the curb and we hurriedly crossed a busy tramline as cars whizzed noisily past us. People were staring at my wet polar outfit in outrage.

“Ignore them!” Soledad called over her shoulder. “Fashion is the front-line of tyranny.”

I stumbled in her wake as she pulled me down a flight of stairs. Within moments I found myself comfortably installed in a small seaside cafe while Soledad ordered two espressos. When the portly waiter had left, she leaned back in her cane chair and observed me, her head framed against the backdrop of the sunny waves.

“I never realised that dolphins could be so clumsy,” she chuckled.

“People often stereotype dolphins as these man-loving cartoon creatures,” I nodded. “When really they are savage creatures who have been known to attack sharks.”

“A friend of mine had once swum too far out to sea,” she mused, gazing introspectively out at the horizon. “A current had pulled her uncontrollably out, until the land was not visible to her anymore. She was understandably panicked and began screaming and crying out there in the blue. A pack of dolphins came, encircled her protectively and then guided her gently back to shore. These are not the actions of insensitive creatures.”

“Don’t armed guards escort you off private property at gunpoint?”

She laughed outrageously and two steaming espresso’s materialized, almost by magic.

“This cynicism does not fit the luminous melodies you so pour casually out of your instrument,” she smiled slyly.

“The cynicism will fade with the bruise.”

I suddenly noticed the delicious aroma of the coffee and lifted the small white china cup

between thumb and forefinger. I savoured the sharp shafts of scalding steam and allowed myself a tiny sip. Satisfaction blossomed immediately against the sodden pain.

“Tell me Miss Evora,” I began.

“I pulled you out of the sea,” She reminded me graciously. “The least you can do is call me Soledad,”

She wasn’t aware of it, but she had pulled me out of far more than that. I struggled not to show my buoyant sense of jubilation at the death of my affliction, fearful that my disproportionate exuberance might seem strange and inexplicable to her.

“Thank you Soledad,” I said most sincerely, then paused, returning to my original tack.

“Did you perhaps happen to notice who threw that coconut?”

“Actually, no,” she frowned. “It simply seemed to sail out of the funfair rides.”

“I see,” I murmured, taking another draught of the revitalizing espresso.

“But why bother with such unfortunate details,” she said, lifting her small white cup to her lips. “The culprit was probably some inebriated oaf, best to forget about the whole thing.”

“You’re probably right,” I concurred. “Still, it is somewhat of a mystery.”

“Mystery is our only defence against mediocrity,” she said keenly.

I raised an eyebrow, struck by the thought processes which would lead to such a remark.

“You seem to be very sure of your ground,” I said. “Are you perhaps studying Philosophy under the legendary Professor Mongholla?”

“No, I’m a waitress at the Heartstring Noodle Bar,”

I must have looked perplexed, for she continued in earnest.

“You see, I view most institutes of higher learning as rather intricate and expensive slaughterhouses.”

“Slaughterhouses!” I replied, befuddled. “Why, what is it that is being slaughtered?”

“One’s soul of course,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“One’s mind is curtailed and slowly, within set parameters, manufactured into a cog,” she explained patiently. “A cog made to standards, built to fit the machinations of what people call society.”

“What about the one’s who refuse to be shaped, the one’s who rebel?” I asked, thinking of Federico.

“They are simply cogs of a different sort,” she answered. “You will find that society is often defined most clearly by those who seek to uproot it.”

“…Anti-cogs?”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, but our society, for example, is in such turmoil following the recent coup, surely all the qualities learned in such institutions will come to the fore in reshaping our conditions after the storm has passed?”

“Yes, they will re-shape it,” she answered matter-of-factly. “They will re-shape it into an upgraded version of what came before, because that corrupted model of existence is all they ever dared to know. And it will lead to all too familiar dysfunctions. Voids will occur in the fabric of society, voids which will be filled by the same old problems, leading to the same old coup de tat’s.”

“So you are a revolutionary!”

“Revolution indicates a full circle,” she smiled behind her cup. “And what use is a serpent which eats its own tail?”

“You astonish me Soledad,” I stated rather blatantly.

She leaned back, holding her cup with all her fingers, as though cradling an egg.

“That is a good start.” she replied seriously.

I watched as she drained her espresso in one swift gulp, and suddenly remembered that I ought to be returning to the pier sometime soon. Ishioko would no doubt be arguing with fairground officials and telephoning Genevieve with all sorts of garbled stories. The event organisers would be informing the coastguard. All manner of strange hell might have already broken loose. And what of poor Hans? I looked up, reluctant to part with Soledad but mindful of my responsibilities. I was about to say something when Soledad spoke.

“I really would like to stay longer, even stroll back to the pavilion with you,” she said. “But I’m afraid, I really must be getting back to my work now.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Is it close by? Would you be requiring a cab?”

She glanced up at me at these questions, a strange and unfathomable look surfacing in her eyes. Then her cheerful demeanour reasserted itself, erasing all traces of the former distance.

“No, that’s allright,” she smiled.

A quizzical frown suddenly struck her face as she quested in the depths of her towel.

“Oh dear,” she murmured. “I seem to have lost my purse in the ocean.”

“Don’t worry,” I said pleasantly, happy to be able to do something for her. “It will be my pleasure.”

But when I withdrew my dripping wallet, I found that all my money had transformed into a briny, slushy paste.

“Oh dear,” I echoed.

I signalled the waiter over and was about to explain our situation when the maitre de, a short, red faced man, scuttled over to our table. He brushed the waiter aside as if he were a spot of lint, and smiled sickeningly down at us.

“Monsieur /////,” he oozed. “On behalf, of the establishment, we would like to welcome you. I can assure you that we are all avid admirers of the flamenco tradition and see you as a notable addition to such a distinguished legacy of music.”

I bowed my head graciously to the red jowled gentleman, attempting to appear as formal as one could in a wet polar bear suit. I could see the waiters all smiling and whispering amongst themselves in the background.

“Thank you,” I said solemnly. “Though unfortunately I must bring to your attention the fact that…”

“Pardon me for interrupting Monsieur////,” the maitre de cut in nervously. “But before you go on, might I add that I have come here with a request from all the staff.”

I paused, slightly annoyed for having been interrupted during such an embarrassing admittal.

“And what might that be? ” I asked.

“Well, we were wondering if you might not consider taking the stage and performing a short rendition of Carulli’s Overture?” he paused and cleared his throat. “We would of course be willing to waive your bill.”

I looked at Soledad, who raised her eyebrows.

“I would like to oblige you, ” I replied in earnest. “But am I to take it that you would like me to perform what is essentially a complete sonata movement, without having practiced it for several months and without my instrument?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” he grinned bashfully, indicating a weatherbeaten stage in the darkest corner of the cafe.

“But I cannot possibly perform without an instrument,” I protested.

I observed as one of the waiters produced a lime green ukulele and waved it encouragingly in my direction.

“You see sir,” the maitre de flourished. “We have thought of everything.”

I rose unsteadily and accepted the proffered instrument to a small flurry of applause.

“Could I interest you instead in a short study by Carcassi?” I ventured helplessly.

Once upon a time, in a distant land, lived the much feared and majestic Spider God. It’s abode was a towering glass castle which overlooked an ancient forest. This vast and dark woodland bordered the edge of a land of glaciers. None had ventured far into this barren territory and next to nothing was known of it’s chartless ice. The glass castle itself was completely transparent. In fact it was possible for passers by to look upon it and see the Spider God moving within it’s many towers and chambers - like a drop of ink within a bottle. A small hamlet lay in the wood. This village was within feudal boundaries of the castle and the villagers paid tribute to the Spider as a God. in return the Spider God protected the village, upheld law and order and devoured any predators who might diminish the woodland game.

In appearance the Spider God’s girth comparable to that of an elephant, although it’s multitudinous arms gave it a much greater span. In addition to it’s formidable size it also boasted two enormous white angel’s wings and a crystal crown to mark it’s sovereignty. It was in fact not uncommon, whilst wandering the woods, to glance up every now and then and glimpse the Spider God swooping over the trees, carrying out inexplicable personal errands in the deep forest.

In terms of tributes to the strange God, the most taxing by far was the bi-annual offering of a specially selected village maiden to the Spider God. Needless to say, none of the maidens were all to keen to be offered up and many fled into the woods before they came of age. These girls were sometimes hunted for sport by the villagers who saw their betrayal of tradition as heresy, something which would bring bad fortune if allowed. As a result, many young girls were treated with suspicion and contempt until they had passed their first selection trial, which happened at the age of eighteen. The girls would be tested for fitness and then made to draw lots out of a sacred tree stump. One would be singled out and held in a special enclosure built into the top of a towering, ancient tree. At sunset on the appointed day of tribute, the Spider God would come flying out of it’s glass castle and swoop low over the trees. It would flap mightily above the tree, it’s great white wings billowing and buffeting the foliage while the village elders wailed and moaned in supplication. After the ceremony the Spider God would nimbly gather up the girl in it’s furry, black legs and return to the transparent towers of its abode. The young maiden would then be put to work as a maid and ordered to clean the glass castle. She would be placed in a strict hierarchy, under the instruction of a descending lineage of former maids. The maiden would be paid for her toil in silver and allocated a chamber in the basement quarters of the castle. The more maids would be well cared for. Especially the elder ones who were given comfortable lodgings in cottages outside the crystalline border walls. It was said that these elderly ladies were regularly visited by travelers and respectful villagers seeking counsel for a variety of minor ailments. This tradition of maids and maidens had continued for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. No-one in living memory could even recall mention of a time when the Spider God was not among them. It was simply understood to be the way things were. The villagers themselves saw the maiden arrangement as agreeable. Families were in fact more than willing to offer up their daughters into service, as a position in the crystal realm of the Spider God was looked upon as a great honour. Some of the young girls who were taken to the castle agreed with this. Others rebelled and attempted to escape into the forested regions. The escapees were ruthlessly hunted and accused of the highest possible heresy. If apprehended these escapees were ritually maimed and exiled into the land of glaciers. The Spider God itself played no further role in the tradition, other than it’s biannual collection of fresh maidens. There was after all, no shortage of service, and therefore no reason to intervene.

Now something came to happen which forever altered the arrangement of the villagers and the Spider God. It was announced that the God would be taking a bride. This was reported via the speaker of the Spider God; an ex maid turned vizier who purportedly conversed with the God and had thusly assumed an oracular function. The response to her announcement was that of enormous shock. After all, who would consent to marry such a being - a deity at that? The answer came as a surprise. The vizier let it become known that in one of it’s many long distance journeys, the Spider God had discovered a kingdom hidden deep within the land of glaciers. This secret kingdom was unknown to even the oldest of the forest dwellers. Nothing of it existed in history, memory or fable. The vizier in fact reported that none but the God itself had journeyed to this place from the forest regions. From her communications with the Spider God it was gleaned that the structures of the kingdom were carved completely from ice. The centre point of this frozen metropolis was a vast palace, fashioned out of a glacial peak, similar in appearance to the glass castle. Perhaps this synchronicity was one of the reasons why the Spider God had deigned to marry a princess of the icy keep. No-one knew of how or why the marriage came to be arranged and many tales and rumours circulated. Yet despite this gossip, preparations were carried out. And on the appointed day, the Spider God flew into the land of glaciers to fetch his bride. The God was absent for over three months and it became obvious to the village folk just how deep within the waste the kingdom of ice lay. When the Spider God eventually returned it carried beneath it a traveling cage, fashioned of gold and lined with plush white velvet. Within this structure, enthroned upon a soft couch was a pale fur laden woman with slanted violet eyes.

The Spider Queen turned out to be a terrifying mistress. After the wedding she took up quarters in the topmost tower and experienced regular conjugal visits by the Spider God. Purple velvet was hung so that none may disturb the privacy of their couplings. In appearance, the Spider Queen was extremely tall and lean. Yet despite her slenderness she was possessed of terrible strength. She was never seen to smile and her face seemed mask-like. Her skin was glassy and pale. Her slanted inhuman eyes gave one the impression of being lit by internal fires of the queerest lavender hue. Her straight black hair always hung down like a flag, making a pale stripe of her face. She would beat maids for no apparent reason. One she threw from a window on a whim. This poor girl was lacerated beyond description after striking so many of the glass rooftops throughout her descent. Her decimated corpse left crimson trails along the outer walls which were very difficult to remove. Birds and insects collected at the stains, lending them an even more gruesome aspect. The maids and maidens looked upon these markings with fear and dread whenever they passed. The Spider God seemed oblivious to his bride’s ill treatment of the castle staff. It’s inhumanity seemed to suddenly stand out, in harsh contrast to the ways of the village. All the previous nobility associated with it now lay in question - especially when placed in the context of the Ice Queen. There were mutterings and there were murmurs. When the third maid died, the Queen was already pregnant with the heir of the Spider God. None spoke of the couplings in the tower, practices which seemed incredibly unnatural and violent. The belly of the Queen swelled to such an abominable size that she had to be carried about in a palanquin hefted by six strong lads. She took to drinking blood to assuage her maternal cravings. Many animals were caught and delivered alive to her for consumption. Children began to disappear from the outlying areas of the village and more and more chambers became obscured behind luscious purple curtains. By now the rumors had reached a pitch of extreme virulence. It was decided that something had to be done.

Now amongst the various duties of the castle staff were several positions which were avoided at all costs. One of these odious tasks involved the regular milking of the Spider God’s mandibles. It was known that the venom of the Spider God had a vast array of practical and medicinal applications. It was also known that the God produced an excess of venom, the surfeit of which was gathered by the appointed milkmaid and distributed to all the elderly ladies outside the castle walls. Very few of these matrons were directly involved in the conspiracy which was brewing. The conspiracy against the Ice Queen had been maintained within a tiny circle of village elders and key members of the castle staff. These members included a quantity of maids who were not in favour of the Queen and actively sought her downfall. Many of the maids, particularly the elderly ones, felt that to plot against the Queen was an act of heresy against their God. It was only the brutality of the Queen and the disappearance of the children that kept them silent. Their faith tortured them and some even took their own lives or escaped quietly into the forest, never to return. It was in this climate of dissent and trouble that a plan was hatched to do away with the tyrannical Monarch.

The milkmaid at the time was a middle aged woman who was fiercely opposed to the Queen. Much of this had to do with the disappearance of one of her little nieces. It was she who came up with the idea to poison the Queen with a dose of the Spider God’s venom. So one afternoon, in the large, circular milking chamber, she prepared the bath of strange salts which promoted the activity of the Spider God’s poison glands. She donned the bizarre, all-covering habit of woven and oiled Spider’s silk which prevented exposure to the viscous fluid and awaited the arrival of the God. It was conjectured that the Spider, being a God, would suspect devious activity and smite the milkmaid before she could act. But this in fact was not the case. The Spider God simply squatted in it’s bath, as mindlessly as it always had, while the maid rubbed and massaged it’s mouthparts, carefully collecting the greenish white secretions which issued forth in great cupfuls.

Delivery of the poison into the body of the Queen was the first major obstacle to greet the conspirators. Her pregnancy diet was by now a carefully maintained secret. Even her devouring of live animals had ceased dramatically since the children had begun to disappear. The conspirators were at an impasse until one day a woodcutter was apprehended in the act of seizing a wandering child. The kidnapper was immediately taken to a secluded mill and subjected to strenuous questioning. Under pressure he confessed to the villagers that he was in the employ of the Queen’s handmaid. He was ordered to steal a child every two weeks or face the seizure and subsequent death of his entire family. Out of love for his wife and children he had done the bidding of the Ice Queen and kept his terrible secret. Now, freed of his terrible burden this burly man broke down and wept like all the terrified little ones he had stolen. The conspirators offered the woodcutter an option: offer his youngest child to the Queen and be pardoned, or witness the death of his family at the hands of the Queen once her bidding was seen to be ignored. Left with no choice, the woodcutter consented to this terrible price.

The next problem was to introduce the poison into the hapless infant. This had to be done so that the child was unaffected and the power of the venom undiminished. It was vital that the poison pass into the Queen in an untampered form. It was the baker who seized upon an idea. He claimed to know an old sweet maker who at one stage had been so adept at creating candies and confection that his wares were voraciously sought after by the traveling merchants. These exquisite creations fetched exorbitant prices in the distant cities which the merchants spoke of. The sweet maker had by now grown old and retired to a cottage in the deep wood. Despite his reclusive nature he was aware of the plight of the village children and had pledged to help, even if it meant the sacrifice of another little one. The task was put to him to contain a large quantity of the poison within several candy capsules and determine the exact rate of the sweet’s dissolution. The shell’s rate of digestion would allow the conspirators to know exactly when the poison would be released. The milk-maid surreptitiously delivered the venom to the sweet maker one night in the woods. She asked him not to touch the liquid and provided him with a pair of mittens fashioned out of the Spider God’s web. These, she explained, would allow him to handle the liquid without fear of poisoning.

When the sweets had been prepared the woodcutter was asked to feed them to his child and deliver the young one to crystal castle. The woeful woodcutter fed the candies to his child under the watchful supervision of the conspirators. A sleeping potion was then administered to the child. The woodcutter then carried the doomed infant to the crystal keep as the sun was sinking low. He came back some hours later shaking and trembling. He reported that the work was done and that he had seen the Queen devour the child before his very eyes. He broke down completely and thereafter collapsed into a sleep which lasted two whole days and nights.

In the hours of pre-dawn screams were heard issuing from the Queen’s high tower. These horrifying utterances were followed by great chaos in the castle. The Spider God could be seen scaling the side of the tower in an effort to reach it’s bride as hastily as possible. It was flapping its wings like some wounded bird, scrabbling and chittering. The terrible screaming was punctuated by enormous blows against the glass of the Queen’s chamber. In her agonies she beat the walls so that they cracked and clouded. Maids rushed about like terrified ants as the villagers waited breathlessly for news. The Queen was reported dead in the late afternoon. Some say that before her death she endured a forced birth and that her inhuman child was taken into the wasteland by some of the Spider God’s closest priestesses. It was said that the priestesses were attempting to return the offspring to the city in the ice. The castle itself was thrown into tumult as the Spider God went mad with grief. It destroyed the tower and scuttled about the castle emitting high pitched shrieks and whistles. The population watched in fear as their deity behaved in an increasingly insane fashion, smashing itself against walls and clumsily crushing any who stood in its path. It soon became obvious that the Spider God blamed itself for the death of the Queen. Perhaps it felt that it had accidently bitten her in its sleep. Whatever the case the God seemed inconsolable. A night of terror passed which saw mass destruction and fires. By dawn the Spider God was seen to be knitting a haphazard nest of webs at the top of the topmost tower. It appeared to have reverted entirely to an animal state. Towards noon it tumbled from the tower, purposefully tangled in it’s own web. The strands were gathered around it’s head. These caught tightly halfway down the side of the battlements, breaking the connection between its head and thorax. The hanged God dangled from its own castle, quivering and leaking. After a few hours it lay still and was not seen to move again.

For some days the villagers watched the massive carcass swing in the winds, expecting some form of unholy resurrection. But after a few weeks, when flies and scavengers had thoroughly plundered the corpse it was soon understood that the Spider God was truly dead and gone. An atmosphere of drunken celebration entered into the villagers. They felt freed from a yoke which had bound them for longer than any could remember. All order broke down as the merriments ensued. Duties were forgotten and a sort of chaos reigned. The villagers swarmed the castle and invaded each room, ransacking what was formerly seen as sacred. The dancing and drinking continued for many days beneath the body of the hanged God, degenerating into utter lawlessness.

After a year the body of the Spider God was hollowed out entirely, leaving a glassy husk. The wings were severed and the feathers and bones sold to passing merchants. The translucent shell of the God, freed of the burden of its wings, rattled in the winds. It rustled against the castle in a rotted cradle of web. The villagers had by now occupied the castle. Their disorder could be seen clogging the once pristine chambers, turning the translucency of the keep brown with grime and overpopulation. The former maids were enslaved, raped and used as labour. A dingy shantytown now collared the battlements, spilling out recklessly into the woods. Without the rulings of the Spider God, the forest for many leagues was quickly damaged by the effluvium of the settlement. The governing of the villagers had fallen to a handful of robber barons who imposed strange taxes and demands upon the rapidly growing population. Disease and violence ran rife in and around the fallen house of the Spider God. Sordid carnivals of poverty and vice were enacted daily within it’s halls. And every day, more people died.

After several years the bounty of the surrounding woods was almost entirely depleted. Trash and squalor extended far into the ravaged woodland. The population gradually left the damaged and derelict castle. They departed in straggling caravans, settling in a not too distant valley. The glass castle was left in ruins, surrounded by barren desecration and overhung by the translucent shell of its previous tenant. The glaciers were said to reclaim it all when the age of great blizzards increased the borders of the ice. The forest was eventually covered in an impenetrable blanket of snow. This stretched from horizon to horizon in unbroken vistas of whiteness.