by Will Madden
The Purple Onion tapped the toe of his slipper on the small puncture in the roof the car.
“I want you to know,” he explained serenely, “the targeter on my zipline grapple can hit this train at speeds in excess of 150 kph. I didn’t have to wait for you to stop to get on.”
“Sure you didn’t,” said Abhoc.
“Please state your names for the record,” the Onion said, calm as the eye of a hurricane. “Pseudonym or criminal monikers are fine. Also, if you would like to register any justification for your nefarious actions, you may do so now.”
The knights looked at each other. Abhoc gestured he would like to begin the killing immediately, but Brum shoved forward Heckley, their most eloquent speaker.
“Who are we, O worthy legume,” began Heckley hesitantly, “but ordinary citizens concerned with our ganglord’s approach to the governance of our fair city?”
“What approach is that?” the Onion asked.
“Well,” said Heckley, “the Consortium’s Archive pillages the people and calls it good government. But we Pestilence pillage and . . . call it good entertainment!”
“So it’s just an aesthetic quibble, then?” asked the Onion. Any intended sarcasm was lost in the computerized enunciation.
Abhoc stroked his chin. “Hadn’t really thought of it like that, but yeah, that’s right, I think.”
“Aye!” said Heckley with enthusiasm. “You see, the Archive dresses in those phony monks’ robes and appropriates your stuff. Whereas we—”
“We, on the other hand,” cried Bubo, “wear totally authentic chivalrous accouterment.”
Heckley nodded. “Passed down to us in an unbroken chain from the time and place of—”
“Of our Lord Harthur’s miraculous conception at Tinkerbell Castle,” said Brum austerely.
“But! What’s really important,” said Heckley, “is that people understand that their labor, their property, and even their very lives belong to a higher . . .”
“A feudal authority,” declared Brum.
“Right,” said Heckley, “We have not only the privilege—”
“Nay,” exclaimed Bubo, “but the responsibility!”
“Responsibility, yes. To use said resources in an arbitrary and negligent manner.”
“Which,” said Abhoc grinning, “wait till you see when we get shithoused tonight!”
“But, yes, Mister Onion,” concluded Heckley, “I believe you are quite correct, it’s chiefly an aesthetic quibble.”
The Onion slumped in disappointment. “I really expected a diatribe about getting revenge for the huge embarrassment of the Reveler’s Crusade ninety years ago.”
Abhoc drew back a punch at the Onion’s face, but Heckley restrained it.
“Blllerrrpt-ter-woot!” said Bubo.
“What Sir Bubo means,” said Heckley, “is market research shows our message plays stronger when we talk about the positive changes we can offer, instead of focusing on how we intend to raze Dodoville to the ground.”
The Purple Onion lay his quarterstaff across his shoulders and scratched his head. “Could you restate the positives again?”
Bubo rolled his eyes and whistled angrily.
Heckley lay a hand reassuringly upon Bubo’s shoulder. “Obviously people don’t want their heads busted open,” he said. “But if it should happen to their neighbors—”
“As undoubtedly it must happen to somebody—what, in this economy!”
“Absolutely, Sir Abhoc,” said Brum. “We’re promising it’ll be in a public forum where everyone can enjoy it, not just the victim’s family and closest friends.”
Heckley pressed his fingertips together for rhetorical effect. “We at the Church of the Knight Errant feel that’s a quality of life improvement, and we have the tools to accomplish it here and now.”
“Aye,” said Brum, indicating his sword.
“Ploot ker-floon!” twittered Bubo, beaming.
The Purple Onion spun his quarterstaff. “Gentlemen, that is some truly magnificent horse manure.”
“Thanks,” said Heckley, “we’ve been workshopping it for while.”
“The truth cannot be workshopped!” yelled the Onion calmly. “And I demand nothing less. You are enslaved to the postures of your own anger, fear, and hatred. But with this staff, I will shatter those chains. With electrical shocks and ferocious bludgeoning, I shall vanquish the barrier between you and your emotional core, so that your innermost truth shall emerge in a whirlwind confession and a storm of tears!” The Onion held the staff above his head, where it flashed and thundered. “Tremble, ye mighty knights, your liberation is at hand!”
Abhoc took a swing at him before he could finish. As the Onion sidestepped, Brum thrust. The staff knocked the sword away, and the Onion’s backswing caught Heckley on the hip as he leaned in to put a gladius in his back.
“Whoa,” cried the Onion, “I thought you would challenge me one at a time. Where’s your chivalrous single combat?”
Abhoc smiled, revealing his broken teeth. “I left it in my other pants.”
The circle around him tightened.
Brum cracked his knuckles. “This time ain’t nobody gonna cry when we cut up an onion.”
The vigilante dragged the butt of his staff across the roof of the car, scratching up a flurry of electricity. His eyes, too, seemed to glow with a spark of their own.
“Fight me then,” he said. “No more love taps.”
The Onion accessed his adversaries: Eight knees in a feline crouch, four gladii glinting vows of dismemberment, one launch one flight into frenzied melee . . .
And one staff to confound them all!
As when a company of lumberjacks resolves to fell the forest’s tallest tree, they surround the venerable trunk in a lethal circle, bearded and dark-flanneled, and lay axes into the bark with all their vim and burl; high above, the synth-a-toned frogs, nesting birds, and far-swinging monkeys cry out in fear for home. But the obdurate heartwood of the ancient giant, having weathered countless winters and stood unwavering through century storms, does not now yield to the blows rained down upon it.
So too the Purple Onion withstood the bitter edge of the Pestilence’s steel.
For a while at least. The electric twirl of the quarterstaff answered all comers, but the heavy weight of blows took their toll. Under Abhoc’s assault, the Purple Onion was forced to his knees. Abhoc leaned on his sword, the unkempt scraggle of his beard one fetid breath away from the Onion’s mask, the two men’s eyes locked in mortal intimacy. If one had slain the other at that moment, the face of the fallen would have seared itself into the survivor’s dreams, just as the vanquished would see his conqueror’s face in his infernal tormentor’s.
Suddenly the Onion raised his head.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, his eyes flaring to life, “but I have this under control.”
Abhoc turned just in time to parry an overhand blow from an antique blunderbuss. The distressed female passenger stood over him in a red-haired rage. The gladius flew from his hand and skittered over the side of the car.
“Choo-toot burrwoing-g-g-g!” said Bubo.
“I didn’t know he had a sidekick either,” said Brum. “This must be the Angry Carrot.”
Heckley tossed Abhoc his own hand cannon.
“This doesn’t even have a trigger, jackass!” Abhoc called back.
Heckley smiled sheepishly. “Shucks, Sir Abhoc, I just wanted to see a gunfight atop a train today. I don’t care if it’s not moving. I don’t even care if you have to swing it like a club. It’s just . . . The heart wants what the heart wants, you know?”
“Ma’am, please return to your seat,” said the Onion, “I cannot protect you in the melee area.”
The woman thumped away at Abhoc, pieces of rust flying off with each blow. “I don’t. Want. Your protection!”
The hand cannon was clumsy for her to swing, but even more awkward for Abhoc to parry with. It didn’t help that the Onion was slapping the ba
cks of his thighs with the prod of his staff.
The beleaguered knight turned to his companions. “Damn it, one of you pass me your sword!”
Brum scratched the back of his neck. “Mm, I’m gonna watch how this one plays out.”
“Stand firm, Sir Abhoc,” cried Heckley with hilarity, “I haveth your back!” He thrust lazily at the Purple Onion, leaving his opponent ample opportunity to zap Abhoc.
“What do we call her?” said Bubo watching from afar. “Red Pepper?”
Brum shook his head, arms crossed over his chest. “Ragin’ Radish.”
Brum and Bubo knocked fists and blew it up.
While the Onion was administering a nasty shock to the back of the knight’s neck, the woman managed to catch Abhoc with an upstroke under the jaw. He collapsed like a sack of dry root vegetables.
“Shit,” muttered Heckley. “Can’t take you nowhere.”
The red-headed woman loomed over her victim. Beads of sweat picked up eyeliner and rouge as they ran down her cheek. “And observe the goddamn speed limit when you operate a quadruped within the city!” she cried.
Heckley scooped up Abhoc and threw him from the side of the train. The body landed like bricks across the saddle, and the booster engine turned over. Heckley climbed down after to his own steed.
“This isn’t settled yet, Onion,” said Brum. “Take the Bratmobile up to Prismton and we’ll finish this there.”
“Bratmobile?” said the Purple Onion.
“That’s what it’s called, isn’t? On account it’s shaped like a sausage?”
“It’s not— I’m the Violet Storm!”
Brum’s heavy hand clasped the Onion on the shoulder. He smiled sadly. “We all tell ourselves the truths we can live with.” He somersaulted from the train car onto his mighty destrier.
“Shaped like something anyway,” said Bubo, making a rude gesture with his hand and tongue. He pinched his nose and fell backward off the roof like a scuba diver. His blue-barded horse caught his weight effortlessly.
“Mush!” yelled Heckley.
The Purple Onion watched the exhaust of four equine engines disappear down the street.
He turned to his rescuer. Her red curls had frizzed up enormously.
“I underestimated your skills, miss. That knight was a deadly warrior. Your ability to hold your own—”
A shriek of anguish interrupted him, intense as he’d seldom heard before. And anguish was kind of his thing.
“Don’t think I knocked out that piece of shit for any reason than to get to you, you pink bastard!” The firing crater of the hand cannon quivered under his chin. “You made my brother Kip cry like a bitch, and then you put it up on the fucking internet!”
“Me?” asked the Onion, innocently.
“Who else but you! Snot streaming into his mouth as he sobbed. About how he wished our momma was still alive!”
The Onion raised his hands above his head in truce. “So, teaming up is a no-go.”
“Team up? I am distressed!” What had seemed like beads of sweat mussing her makeup were clearly tears. “My brother can’t get no work! He’s a laughing-stock. His friends don’t talk to him, and he doesn’t go out. For three months now, I haven’t been able to get him off my couch! Moanin’ and belly-achin’ like he can’t believe he ate the whole thing!”
“Kip? As in, ‘Arsenic’ Kip Butterman? You’re his little sister?”
“Big sister!” she sobbed. “My son won’t even look at him.”
“Kip dumped outdated prescription drugs into the mixer at the baking plant, knowing it’d get sold as cupcakes to school children. Your brother is not just a criminal, he’s a very bad person!”
“We’re all bad people in this town! Some of us just have work! Ain’t no job that don’t steal from someone, humiliate or bully somebody . . .”
“But children, miss. Also, how is that even a business?”
“Who are you? What do you do for a living when you’re not in a full body sock? Nobody out there gets paid for not-crimes. So what do you do, Herr Jalepeño?”
The Onion shrugged. “Nothing. I’m too rich to work. So my conscience is clean, I guess.”
The woman bared a mouthful of gray teeth and tried to stab him with the hand cannon.
The Purple Onion leaped softly from the train and ran to his very sausage-y car.
EPISODE FOUR: The Pouring Tears in Prismton
HIGH IN THE KOLKHEK MOUNTAINS, the Pestilence surveyed the city of Dodoville. Puffs of smoke from steel factories and housing fires hung like commas in the run-on sentence of its history. Under perpetual construction and conflagration, it had shrunk and expanded over the centuries, moving like an amoeba up and down the river, devouring landscape or leaving its mess behind. On any given day, the city froze over or baked in the sun, it starved or glutted, overproduced or stagnated. Always, it suffered.
Here, just below the timberline, the suburb of Prismton measured out time, the sands of every hour and year the same as the years and hours that came before. It enjoyed an ethereal existence, shrouded as often as not in clouds. The aroma of life rose from the city below, the scent of good fat burnt around the marrow-rich bone, with an acrid note of misery and ruin. It wafted into the burghers’ nostrils and they were sated.
Abhoc sat upright in the saddle, a metal collar now protecting the jaw he’d injured on the light rail. It chaffed to wear, looked preposterous, and made it impossible to spit on things, but he bore it stoically.
The Pestilence had gathered outside the willow archway spanning the only road into the township. Among the wisps of bark meandered a delicate vine native to an ecosystem in the Himalayas that no longer existed. Transported to Dodoville at great expense, the exotic creeper blossomed with flowers under extensive daily care from master gardeners. The petals were tiny and green, almost like polyps.
Absolutely hideous, thought Abhoc, any way you looked at them.
“Welcome to Prissytown,” growled Brum from atop his destrier. “The bejeweled buttplug of Dodoville. Down below, people will bear whatever ruin we wreak with patience, for they have accepted their lot and augur nothing in it. But this place, they believe inviolate by divine decree. When we four have laid waste to their little Olympus, I swear by bright Signo they shall bend the knee and repent them of the heresy that the Lord Nazarene ever rode an ass!”
“Hail amen!” replied the rest in unison.
Bubo twisted dials and adjusted the equalizer on his sound system’s control panel. “Enable your audio armor, my good sirs. These beats are gonna rock some blocks. Toot tweet!”
The four riders brushed back flowing tresses from their ears and fitted their heads with a noise-canceling helmet. In Teutonic fashion, a pair of batwings rose above the crown.
Chivalrously, the peers of the realm applied earmuffs to their horses too.
Brum, his arm braced in a leather gauntlet, raised a fist in the air.
“Ready.” He glanced at Bubo, who nodded. “CHOONS!”
Bubo flipped a toggle switch. From his saddle-mounted speakers emerged a noise so aggressive, the trees themselves seemed to step back.
The riders spurred their mounts. The equo-thrusters came to life, launching the horses into a charge. The powerful musculature rippled beneath spider-silk armor as heavy hooves pounded the old cobbled road into town. The Peers rode low across the long bodies, knotting their fingers into wild manes and ululating atop the bright-colored barding: Brumish yellow followed hard by Heckley blue, Abhoc red, and Bubo green. Like a swollen river overspilling its banks, they coursed through the narrow mountain byways. The hedgerows whipped at their passing, the nets on tennis courts set a-quiver.
Mirrors in free-standing private ballet studios began to rattle. Mindfulness classes were mindful only of the god-roar of a castigating wind. In garden fountains, cherubim did spit takes. A child’s pinwheel forest reversed direction.
Mommy continued to drink.
Arnold Fleck sat in his vesper nook, reading
the Post Repast, the Prism’s after dinner newspaper. From a bread plate, he lifted a piece of sprouted wheat sourdough toast with spreadable yak cheese and touch of honey. His glass of elderflower cordial shook pleasantly as the volcanic dome of Mt. Myrtle fulminated peacefully outside.
Until twenty years ago, he had served as a gangland operative amid the dirtiest of Dodoville’s brutality and intrigue. As hard as those times had been, he still felt nostalgia for when having a bed to sleep in at night depended on whether he could eliminate his mark before sundown. In comparison, life here could seem a bit bloodless—not just the gore, of course, but the lust for excitement. Cordial and yak cheese masked only so much tedium.
Living now in this exclusive community, not a day had gone by that he hadn’t felt like a trespasser. Yet he wouldn’t go back for the world.
Here in Prismton, the cauldron of the city’s gang wars would never bubble high enough to imperil his daughter, Morgana. She would never have to learn why Arnold screamed in his sleep or sat up nights polishing his knives in the dark by the kitchen window. She would never discover why once when she was eleven, he woke her at four a.m. and force-marched her nine kilometers into the middle of a swamp where he stopped suddenly and wailed inconsolably for half an hour. Afterward, he’d promised her if she told her mother they’d had a smashing time watching the nesting ritual of the paisley-necked ibis, he would buy her an aluminum racer for her birthday. Otherwise, he’d beat her until she turned colors she never even heard of.
A racer and a pygmy hippopotamus, sure why not.
His glass of cordial shook more violently. This time the crystal chandelier tinkled too.
Arnold perked. That was no volcano. This could be serious.
He stood up and pressed his ear against the wall. In the distance, a deep bass sound.
No one in the Prism ever listened to music over a conversational level. Even when a string quartet performed at your society event, one always kept them a few rooms removed from where guests were gathered. You instructed them to play the lesser works of minor composers, so as not to spoil the evening by making anyone feel something.