by Chris Kelso
Month - ?
Year -
I recall that there was so much information out there. In fact, I can still feel it consuming everything and everyone right now. The beast never stops.
In the censored-city, our only access to the outside is through the cloud. Sometimes I feel safer here, with all the screeds of data smog and oversaturated pop culture references condensed to their basic minimum. I mean, the sheer amount of input to our system has long since exceeded our processing capacity. We all felt the same way. Spam and social media had taken over everything. I remember it, clear as day. The journalism of assertion, I remember it well too. We had all the information in the world at our fingertips, yet nobody knew anything. About as much as we know today.
People were beginning to shut down, retreat into themselves. Blogs and writing, music and films were everywhere – every-fuckin’-where. There was too much of everything. It killed art in the end. We started sinking in the mire of a bloated inbox, choking on its relentless glut. Fuck, we did it to ourselves.
A pertinent quote from a French philosopher drifts by –
- Of course it does…
‘As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.’
The beast, it’s comprised from all this data, its DNA is drenched in it. If things went back to the way they were before, before the filters, we’d be overwhelmed by it, overloaded. The beast comes from the outside world. It ruled the old world. We let it rule. We fed it and encouraged it to take our souls. In truth, the infobesity of the old world terrifies me today. I don’t ever want to go back. But Kad does…that’s what matters.
Four -
‘You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy.’
- John Zorn
Christ…
I stare at my claw in the beatific moonshadow. My 5 o’clock shadow has come in heavy, I look a little like Captain Nemo. I feel duty bound to protect Kad. To get her out of this cul-de-sac city.
It never ends. Bodies contour the streets, their faces twisted into a Halloween-mask imitation of the saviour. I take in the street and see Ursula the teenage witch in her frock, standing awkwardly with both feet crushed into tight stilettos. Her hair cascades in whorls, eyes gaping like looking fish, black blood smeared all over her crooked little mouth like treacle.
. . . She looks older now. As if I needed a reminder that people change.
Ursula is in the middle of a group of zombies. They’re waiting outside a truck sat on its axles. Inside are several humanoid morsels crying and praying for mercy, dark dwellers. Ursula looks like she’s relishing it all and there’s a middle-aged man dumb with fright. I keep expecting to wake up . . .
. . . Slide out of bed on a trail of my own sweat . . .
. . . Grope around for a switch to beat away the hideous light that’s been cast across the face of the world . . .
But I never do wake up. No one loves me. I didn’t realise how tough it was to be unloved in the world until I tasted love for myself and wanted nothing more than to give it.
Sometimes, when I think of Kad’s face, of her perfect oval with its keen features, I see the ubiquitous Miles Dunwoody staring back at me instead. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. I’m so used to seeing his appearance, I see it in the mirrors of my dreams. All I know is that this paranoia is a ravening limpet.
I’ve got to hold onto what I know. I can’t forget who I am, who Kad is. I can’t forget what we’ve been through together. She saved my life so many times.
Dunwoody is a psychotic. He is sick and wants us all to touch his devouring madness. I just need to remember, I just need to keep it in my head that none of us have to accept the same virus which has distorted his reality into our own lives. That would be insanity. Plus, Kad is here. She can give me some much-needed perspective.
I look back, see Ursula and the others lunge at their human feast, knocking over garbage cans and making some of the obscenest chewing noises I think I’ve ever heard. I can only see a bare human leg sticking out, calf flexed, and ankle drawn tight. A teardrop of semen unexplainably bleeds from the eye of my penis.
We hear something trying to connect, radio static carrying god. Dunwoody’s frequency travels along the crests of waves.
The corrosion-resistant skyscraper kills the night and bends, transmits and absorbs the light around me. There is no escape. I feel the strain of my journey, a map of terror and estrangement I must surely, by now, wear well.
Kad and I are running through the streets, dodging the light cast in between as much as possible. Our feet splash over puddles of black tar. I don’t bother to blink. My eyes are burning on the vista, my brain melted and rotted to mulch in my skull.
There seem to be no more deranged animals screaming at the sky - in fact, the night is so quiet and black that it hums. I catch a reflection of Kad and me at a wide angle, distorted in the black ponds. Our quantum bodies are on the run here but could be convulsing in a laboratory cage somewhere else.
No.
That’s Dunwoody talking.
I have no idea where we’re going. I just follow. I’m good at following it appears. A vision of the kid’s oozing veil makes me shudder.
Kad makes a sharp turn into the aluminium glass pavilion of the old PLATO’S GATE motel. The front entrance to the building swings open with a mechanical screech. Everyone in the lobby is dead or having spasms like capsized turtles.
‘I already inserted my own data into the hotels biometric security system. Before we do anything, we’ll have to take a retinal scan and that’ll give you admission to the bridal suite. If you try and enter the room without permitted access, then the alarm system will sound and our cover will be blown.’
‘Okay, you lead the way.’
We head to an elevator ceilinged with a crystalline honeycomb of mirrored panels. The light reflects and refracts our bodies like a giant kaleidoscope. We catch our breath. Look at each other and communicate initially through relieved smiles.
‘I thought I’d never see you again.’ – I eventually let out. She touches the side of my cheek and grazes me with her elongated fingernails. I feel a sensation of static electricity bind us in its charge. She smells of lemongrass and old books. My shadow-shrouded doppelganger looks on greedily from behind his blanket.
‘You should be so lucky.’
‘Listen, I got this.’ – I hand Kad the brass glove that Ursula the witch gave me back in the alleyway. A paroxysm of laughter escapes from her that seems inappropriately timed. I see a harvest moon, burning orange, come into view above the transmission tower.
Is Kad just a tactile illusion? Wouldn’t that be just my luck?
‘It’s almost convenient you’d find something like that. You always were good at coming across good luck.’
- I was?
‘I guess the biggest stroke of luck I had was finding you. At least with this glove I can keep up with you now.’- Kad looks embarrassed but forces a grateful smile. Her jaw clenches in the wake of receiving my compliment.
‘No hard feelings about throwing you out?’ – She asks.
‘Huh? No, none at all. None. I understand.’
‘Well, I guess I felt bad or something, that’s why I came back for you. Turns out the Aerial Hotel had an escape chute all along.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, the evacuation slide took me right down to the foundation level of the building. That’s how the zombie got in, he tore through the fabric. Had to fight a whole bunch of them off in the end and make my way back through the city streets. We would’ve been sitting ducks in that place, I guess we got lucky. Anyway, you didn’t leave the hatchway open. I wanted to tell you and…apol
ogise.’ – This isn’t easy for her. It’s quite something to have to admit such a mistake when survival is so dependent on complete self-belief.
‘Forget about it.’ – I feel the weight of indignity and guilt lift from my shoulders. The elevator pings and the access opens to a floor of seemingly infinite doors.
‘Come on, I’m hiding out in the bridal suite. The People haven’t bothered me there so far. I think it’s because the lights are busted.’
She leads me through the halls and stops at a door numbered 295.
‘This is it.’
Kad leans into the biometric device and a beam of blue light scans the length of her left iris. The metal profile cylinder clicks, and the door opens. I do the same and am relieved to hear the cylinder click in acceptance. Inside the bridal suite there are four planks of wood zigzagged across the French doors. The mirrors all have a riveted, antique silver frame.
Kad is right, all the light has been gobbled up by shadow.
‘I know we’re hardly honeymooners but at least it’s halfway classy. No hatchways or escape chutes to worry about.’
- I wish…wish we were honeymooners.
‘It’s perfect.’
‘Glad you like it.’
I grab the hook of her arm and turn her towards me. She panics, I can tell she thinks I’m going to kiss her. But...
‘Kad…do you ever dream?’ – I ask, not even sure why.
‘What kind of question is that?’
‘A perfectly reasonable one I thought.’
Kad takes a moment. At first, I think she’s chosen to dismiss the question entirely. But then she looks at me with an earnest expression.
‘Nowadays I dream of nothing. I remember before, I dreamt about…acid.’
‘Acid?’
- Better than dreaming of fucking mirrors constantly.
‘All the time, like a recurring nightmare. I dreamt about being forced to take an acid bath by these guys in lab coats. I dream of my body being stuffed into a 40-gallon drum and having concentrated sulphuric acid or Sodium hydroxide poured over me. By the end, I’m only identifiable by my gallstone and dentures. I wake up screaming and nursing these phantom chemical burns’ - Kad sits on the edge of the elegant four-post bed, rubs her knuckles a little self-consciously.
‘Scientists?’
Kad looks at me and gives a convicting smirk.
‘Unbelievable.’
‘What?’ – I ask all defensive.
‘You’re buying into Dunwoody’s bullshit.’
‘I’m not!’
- I totally am.
‘You are…’
- I am.
‘I’m not! All I’m saying is that you can’t prove either way, really. Can you? I like to think of myself as agnostic on the subject.’
‘Jesus…Hell is empty.’ - For some people imagination is the greatest weapon against reality, Kad finds denial much more effective.
‘I want to dream of a young boy, me, before I became a man, curled up by the inglenook. Stars bursting in the sky like scintillas of light.’
‘This isn’t a poem. Life isn’t a poem.’ – she snarls. Her eyes bleed through the cosy penumbra like chatoyant jewels.
‘Maybe if I describe it in a poetic enough way then life will become a poem?’
‘I sincerely doubt that.’
- Ouch.
‘How do you explain the people vomiting black tar? How do you explain Dunwoody’s demonic possession of that kid? And your dreams about the guys in lab-coats? Why can’t I remember my own fucking name? Why do you think you can’t remember…?’
‘Hey, I remember just fine. And your name is Kurt.’
‘Kurt? I don’t…I’m not sure that that is my name.’
‘Sure it is. You were wearing a nametag when we first met.’
‘I was?’
‘Jesus, you don’t remember?’
- NO!
‘Um…no, I don’t.’
‘So what do you dream of?’
- Ha! Here we go. Good luck not sounding crazy here Kurtis.
I take a deep breath, try to fix the words in my head and arrange them into speech.
‘I think I dream of mirrors. Every night. Then I wake up and all I see is my forlorn reflection mirrored at me from this shimmering city. It’s like I’m being forced to evaluate my own appearance with every waking moment - browbeaten into introspection. The only other option would be to cut out my own eyes or just fucking kill myself. That said, even with my constant image projected back at me all the time, I still don’t think I have any definable characteristics.’
- Fucking mirrors.
‘Well…you’re handsome and rather pathetic.’
- Pathetic, great.
‘Thank you.’
Kad looks at me fondly, maybe for the first time in our relationship.
A noise comes from the bathroom of the bridal suite. Panic shoots through me instantly and I throw myself against the back wall. I see Kad grin, amused by the reaction.
‘Still skittish as ever I see?’
‘What’s that noise? You did hear that?’
A woman appears in the doorway, dark skinned, mid-thirties with hair wound into ringlets. It occurs to me straightaway that she is very beautiful, glamourous even, and there is an elicited lurching in my loins that feels profound and unfamiliar.
‘This is Ailsa. We met just after I evacuated the Aerial Hotel. An ex-writer I believe? She’s a dark dweller like us. Thinks Miles Dunwoody is the living incarnation of evil. She can handle herself too.’
I extend a greeting to Ailsa and she meets me with a firm clasp that cracks the bone around my hand, the good hand.
‘Pleased to meet you...?’ - Ailsa’s cockiness sticks in my chest, dissolves into an angry warm resentment and dribbles down to my belly.
‘Kurt…I think?’
‘You think?’ – she bulges her big cartoon eyes out at me.
‘We’re still kind of unclear about the specifics of my identity.’
- That sounds ridiculous. I sound ridiculous.
Ailsa raises her eyebrows and takes a seat next to Kad on the four-post bed.
‘Good to have you on board. I like the hand-gear.’ – Ailsa motions to the brass claw.
‘A witch called Ursula gave it to me.’
- Talk about witches. That’ll make you seem less ridiculous.
‘A witch huh? Sometimes I think we have bigger nutjobs to worry about than Dunwoody.’
I offer Ailsa a smile, but her dismissiveness bothers me. How does she know witchcraft is such nonsense? Is it any dumber than how we’ve chosen to live our lives? Not just this, but seeing Ursula as a child of the light, consuming the flesh of her cynics still sits on the edge of my gut like a sick dog with worms.
‘I’m sure glad I stumbled across this little firecracker.’ – She says, addressing Kad and nudging her in the shoulder.
- Wait…firecracker?
‘What?’
‘What? What did I say?’
‘What did you just call her?’
‘I dunno…a firecracker? Guess I’ve been listening to The People too much, but hey, haven’t we all? She is though. This girl is ballsy and mean as fuck. Those insects don’t stand a chance.’ – She bats her artificially long eyelashes.
- What’s this talk about insects suddenly? This girl bears watching. Not just because she’s gorgeous.
‘Right…no argument there.’
My sexual awakening changes to abject confusion. This doesn’t fit. There’s something about Ailsa, something artificial.
I mean, she’s wearing an immaculately pressed high waistline crop top that exposes a laminate of stiff abs, hardly suitable post-apocalypse attire if you ask me.
Camouflage leggings too? Moisturized and perfumed. This girl looks ready for a night on the fucking tiles, hardly a writer or a fighter. She certainly doesn’t appear to have seen the same horrors Kad and I have lay witness to. If she had she wouldn’t be so fucking upbeat.
- Her happiness isn’t real.
Ailsa reminds me of the scantily clad femme fetale you’d find in a male-chauvinist melodrama about the walking dead. She isn’t realistic. I just, I don’t know – I just don’t trust her physical form at all. In fact, I would ridicule her creator for their lack of imagination.
But for now, with Kad’s contentment resting on Ailsa and me getting on, I’ll reserve my judgement.
I look at Kad and meet her gaze, a gaze that holds our universe together. I wish she knew she inspired my dreams so.
- Go on. Tell her.
‘You know Dunwoody says you’re just a cat brain wired to a reality simulator?’
‘He mentioned me? By name?’
‘He did.’
‘Wow. I can’t believe he knows my name.’ – Kad almost…blushes.
‘You sound more than a little flattered by this acknowledgment. You like that he notices you?’
She scoffs, juts her head back in a gesture of disregard.
‘No way. He represents everything I hate about men. I’m just, I dunno, surprised I guess.’
‘Is that so?’
- You’re in love with him you bitch.
The room goes quiet and we are left in the kind of silence only humans can create – a human silence, with tense breathing and squirming scalps and fabric pressing against the angles of our flesh-buried bones. Outside, screams play like bum notes from a blind musician.
‘There’s always tomorrow. A new day. There are no mistakes waiting for us tomorrow.’
- Just the aftermath of the mistakes we create in the present.
RULES OF THE PEOPLE
THREE
The People place restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, prohibiting it during peacetime.
***
Ailsa has fallen asleep peacefully coiled up in a ball on the floor. She reminds me of a family pet from another life. Maybe I was the family pet?
Kad approaches me with an empty rucksack in her hand. Her look is of confounded irritation.