Sky Joust- The Purple Onion vs The Pestilence

by Will Madden

  The knights’ weaponry intimidated no one; in fact, many revelers had to return to the nine-to-five grind of the gang wars in the morning. But when the Pestilence’s engines propelled them in synchronized bursts, tripling their speed as they looped around the revelers, few could say for sure whether machine or animal had manufactured the blue flare from the tail ends.

  What were these impossible creatures? The elongated head, the huge iris-less eyes, the way they shook the floor with their step. If one had breathed fire at that moment, nobody would have been surprised.

  Without warning, Abhoc caught a man in a gray sports coat behind the ear with a mace. The crowd saw his silhouette on the wall as his limp body sailed like a kite toward the neon chandelier. The strobe lights seemed to freeze the gobbets of blood midair.

  DJ Bubo Skymole caught the dying man’s image on a closed-circuit camera and, punching stills through various digital filters, posted them to screens around the room. He interspliced a two-second clip of the body striking the ground, boomeranging it forward and reverse, then spun a picture centered on the broken head bleeding out. These images kaleidoscoped upon the walls in an 80s love bubble style, backed by the noodly whine of synthesizers.

  So many times in movies, a gunshot rings out in a club and everyone who’s having a good time screams and stampedes the door. None of those movies took place in Dodoville, Heckley observed.

  One by one, women in sleek evening dresses knelt around the broken head in a semicircle, like the halo of a martyr. They tossed their hair; their upper bodies contorted and shook.

  In other times and places, dance simulates war or sex. Here, a death rattle.

  Elbows rigid, fingers splayed. Shaka-ka-kaka-ka-ka!

  At the base of a volcano, Dodoville stood always at the precipice of annihilation. The earth grumbled, the body flailed and floundered but you didn’t go over the edge, the fear remained inside you like a thing waiting to be born. When you saw a broken body, split open and pouring out the essence of life, you leaned closer so your death-fear might escape with the fallen’s breath and soul.

  They did not dance but flung their bodies at the music. They battered it down like a door with a ram. In. The blows thunderous, the boom giant and hollow. In.

  They pressed toward the center of the room. In. Toward the holy icon splayed on the floor.

  Pray pray pray pray pray.

  The quadrupeds galloped, the clustered four beat suspended in silence as all four limbs left the ground, bearing four riders and harbingers of the end. In. Missiles of horse flesh clung to their arcs around the maelstrom swirling down into the center of the room.

  The vortex of death drew them all in.

  Mandi stared down at the brained man in the gray jacket and corduroy Converse. With one brutal gesture, he had gone from the evening’s participant to its decor. An ornament of death, she thought, the way most people keep their grandfather’s skull on the mantelpiece.

  Whoever he had been, nobody was interested now.

  A year ago, some other gesture—she’d never know what—had transformed Sven from the horizon in her life to someone’s material inconvenience. Had that blow been this quick, this indifferent?

  Mandi did not scream, she did not cry. She danced. The heels of her palms pressed hard on her knees. She snaked her spine and tossed her hair.

  The knights circled the room, Dark Age armaments jangling from their saddles, Teutonic helmets atop naked torsos streaked with war paint. Now the horses were the music, the rhythm. From walk to canter to trot, their pace quickened. As they circled, she felt a pull drawing her closer and closer to the shallow-breathing man whose essence was escaping. Over the sound system, the staccato crash of the drum machine crackled out the time: her three-inch heel struck the floor like flint on steel, trying to coax out a spark to catch on the pageantry of the bacchanalia around her, to spread to every level of this edifice of perverse illusion, devouring the whole tower circle by circle in famished conflagration.

  She had a recurring dream—she was remembering it only now—of a plague of locusts descending on Dodoville, but instead of crops, they devoured buildings and roads and statues, until they had consumed all the city’s eccentric history, its bizarre culture, its pernicious but sometimes charming impulses. Then the winged pests flew right at her, they crawled inside her skull and gorged themselves on everything she had ever done, or been, or suffered. Now her face was like any other, it spoke the words other faces spoke, and only when it lay broken open in ruin could you see it ever had the potential to be anything else.

  Behold these dreams made flesh. Horseflesh.

  Nightmares. Physical embodiments of psychic terrors.

  It was impossible for the slender legs of those beats to carry the bulk of body and rider, while still moving like grace itself.

  Was this the breed that turned you to stone? Or the kind whose eyes robbed you of sanity?

  At first, the vibration seemed to come from the subwoofers. The revelers heard the roar of the approaching fighter jet before they understood it.

  The explosion shook the building at its foundation.

  As if this were a signal, Heckley’s heavy leather boot kicked open the double doors to the outside and let the night in. A flash of purple rent the sky, a ball of rolling fire.

  A young woman in a Cyndi Lauper riot of skirts, beads, hair, and headbands, watched in awe as the mulberry light struck the garage across the street. Like an ancient monarch who did not expect the prophets’ words fulfilled in her lifetime, she gazed up with a thrill of joy tinged with fear. Gingerly she leaned on the threshold to the dance hall. Neon-orange fingerless gloves.

  Brum lanced her through the temple at a charge. As it passed behind her eyes, the metal shaft extinguished their light and erupted above her far ear. Spurring his horse, Brum hoisted her childlike body above his head, her jaw agape in a mockery of a scream, and swiveled her around to the back where she slid off the end of the lance.

  If before the crowd had been indifferent to the murder of one of their number, with the jet’s war scream and the exploding missile, they now panicked and ran for the door. Some pushed others forward to shield them from the horses. The three circling knights beat these back like a sadistic revolving door. Brum smashed with his hammer; Abhoc sliced with his sword; Heckley simply garroted them and dragged them out of the way. Clamped between the fear of being trapped in here and fear of pushing their way out, the crowd began to tear itself apart.

  Mandi continued to dance. She elbowed and reveled as others fought and died. Belinda Carlisle made heaven a place on earth. Bon Jovi gave love a bad name. Oh whoa whoa, what?

  Once again, an engine. An ostentatious roar from the garage across the street, a single headlight shining in on them.

  The horses stopped, the body press ceased. A hazy purple glow peered in on them, casting the silhouette of the vigilante’s insignia against the far wall. A dark storm cloud.

  Anyone might mistake it for an onion.

  In the parking garage across the street, the vigilante hoisted his makeshift lance, a golden staff with sparks crackling from the finial. Thrusting upward to indicate the roof, he kicked his bike into gear and rode up the ramp.

  DJ Skymole cut the music and put up the houselights as he and his companions readied themselves to accept the challenge.

  “About goddamn time,” said Abhoc. “Another minute of that fucking noise, I might have had to hurt somebody.”

  “It’s solid construction. A perfect incline, optimal takeoff angle. If your bike doesn’t make the jump, fault the rider, not the ramp.”

  The tailgate DJ pointed at the structure behind him, six meters long rising gradually to meet the top of the retaining wall.

  Although made of diverse materials, everything from an ironing board to a magician’s teleportation box, the joints were seamless, as if made by design.

  “Everything looks satisfactory,” said the Onion. “Thank you.”

  The DJ really expect
ed him to be more impressed.

  The vigilante was tinkering inside his chopper, splicing cables in a way that didn’t seem entirely safe.

  “From equipment I had on hand,” the DJ added. “Plus stuff people happened to have in their cars. If I yanked the sewing machine and the sushi kit, the whole thing would collapse.”

  “I believe that.” Smoke rose from a soldering iron. The Onion did not look up from his work.

  “I even added purple running lights, so it would look cool. Because I get it, you know. The need for aesthetics.”

  “As I said, good job.”

  The DJ’s frustration started coming through.

  “I’m a retired army corps engineer. I moved Soviet tanks through the Chalian swamps during the Zahzian War. You were about to hurl yourself off a building on whatever the DJ could cobble together at the last moment. Do you know how many guys who do this job sprinkle donuts during the day?”

  The Onion stopped his modifications and stood to face the man.

  “Sir, you have my sincere gratitude. Now if you don’t mind, I need to coax enough thrust out of this engine, else I won’t clear the gap. Do you realize how foolish that would make me look?”

  “Foolish?” the DJ cried in exasperation. “Don’t you even want to inspect the ramp I built?”

  Across the street at Club Towers, fanfare announced the Pestilence, who were emerging onto the roof in full tournament dress. A throng of dancers advanced before them, laughing and crying out their noble names.

  “I trust you,” the Onion said.

  “You trust me?” The DJ raised both palms, recoiling like he’d be spat on. “All right, man. Try not to die.” He turned away in disgust.

  The Onion spun the man back around by the shoulder. He was more slender but a full head taller than the DJ. It can only have been an illusion, all the glitz and sparkle of a Dodoville night, but as the DJ looked beyond the mask into the vigilante’s eyes, two golden pinpricks seemed to shine from the depths of his pupils, as if he were not a man at all—either something higher or more infernal.

  The Onion’s voice was eerily calm.

  “I flew in here on a motorcycle riding a missile detonation. Death and I have a bargain. Do you think you have the power to alter the terms?”

  For a long moment, the DJ was silent.

  “I’ve seen too much to believe in magic powers,” the man said, removing the vigilante’s hand from his shoulder. “In this city, even the gods are mortal. So respect the grave. It won’t respect you.” Once again, he walked away.

  The Onion kick-started his chopper and rode it up the ramp to the top of the retaining wall. Across the gap, Brum, Heckley, and Adhoc faced him upon on their steeds. They stood in chevron formation, lances held upright. The gleaming tips scraped the sky as it passed overhead, incising the night like shooting stars.

  Bubo was off to one side, flying the colors and playing The Chemical Brothers from his saddle speakers.

  The crowd of revelers stood about in silent expectation. Death riders in their midst, block-rocking beats pooling in their limbs, ready to unleash some yet undecided action.

  To whose banner would they rally?

  The Onion hoisted his quarterstaff, the golden finial cascading sparks on either side of his head, illuminating him like an angel.

  It was time to win them over with an astonishing display of arms. It was time to pick a fight.

  Abhoc saw the Onion appear atop the far wall. Black jumpsuit with highlights of orange and yellow, the helmet in his hand a deep purple. The caption of the photo in tomorrow’s Spyhole would read “Arrogant Prick, Moments from Death.” Well, get on it then, he thought. Abhoc enjoyed a sky joust as much as anyone, but he was eager to get back to his regular evening of binge drinking and murder.

  “I’m going to make the jump,” called the Onion beneath the mask. Tranquil as a spaceship computer before it goes rogue and seizes functions. “Unless one of you gallants has the courage and skill to unhorse me.”

  Brum’s voice ground like a stone mill.

  “We have both the skills and the high ground.” The snapping of the Pestilence’s banner in the wind filled the silences. “We have the favor of His Divine Majesty Harthur of Christwall. We have proper equipment too. I don’t recommend jousting with a lance not weighted for the task. Why don’t you come down and show your ID at the door like everyone else?”

  Abhoc shared a quick smile with Heckley. A government issued driver’s license. Onion comma Purple.

  From the quarterstaff’s spearhead finial sputtered another cascade of sparks.

  Like blond hair churned by a putrid south wind. Like an impressionist haystack ravaged with lust for its first cousin. A seriously extravagant display of light.

  “Choose your champion,” cried the Onion, “so the earth which ye have blighted with evil, that man may cleanse with the storm of his tears!”

  That was his cue. Abhoc’s charger stepped forward. Heckley’s too. The space-age horseshoes struck the surface of the roof with a clang.

  Abhoc gazed back at Bubo, who with the shell of his headphones pressed to his ear was oblivious to the world. He threw a dirty rag at the beat-bobbing face. Bubo startled. Abhoc snarled, and Bubo also ordered his horse forward.

  “Let it be me, Lord Brum,” said Heckley, stately as a cathedral. “Among the Peers of the Realm, you know my lance to be without peer.”

  That braggart always has to let everyone know, thought Abhoc. As if he doesn’t get twice the practice time of anyone else.

  “Choose me, Lord Brum,” growled Abhoc. “To no danger’s daunt shall I ever yield.”

  Danger's daunt? mouthed Heckley back at him. Abhoc shrugged.

  “Um, charge me, Lord Brum,” said Bubo feebly, “to do the, uh, air-charging. A-horse.”

  The knight commander allowed Bubo a pregnant moment to feel stupid.

  “Sir Heckleham of Newarkshire!” Brum then bellowed. “Summon your strength and ready your arms. For the High King Harthur prefers his clubs without onions.”

  The revelers oooohed the sick burn.

  “I’m no sandwich technician,” said Abhoc (although that was totally his day job), “but I say onions don’t belong on clubs at all.”

  Like an arrow, Brum fired his burning gaze across the gap, striking the Pestilence’s greatest pest between the eyes. A smoldering countenance answered him, fire-for-fire.

  “They sure don’t,” Brum scowled.

  “But you don’t have a ramp,” someone called from the crowd.

  “We don’t need a ramp,” answered Brum. “Heckley’s horse can clear it.”

  “M’lord,” said Heckley quietly, “it is unchivalrous not to prepare a landing zone for thy opponent in the sky joust.”

  “Then don’t let him live long enough to land!” barked Brum.

  “M’Lord,” repeated Heckley, disapprovingly.

  Spewing a volley of Middle German that would have made a fair damsel blush, Brum slipped down from his saddle. From under his Teutonic helm, hair flowed and fell to his shoulders. “Laser shield,” he said. A pentagon of blue light appeared on his leather bracer. Tattooed across his shoulders sprawled the portrait of a lion, the wild mane encircling its regal head like a halo, the noble snout tinged with blood. The musculature of man and beast alike was lean and powerful.

  The knight commander set himself, crouching slightly. The lion seemed to roar as Brum exploded toward the wall, leading with his shoulder. His hips snapped forward, bringing the shield hard to bear against the stone. Brum pushed, the sinew in his neck straining, the might of his calves and quads driving him like a wedge between tower and turret, until the century-old masonry, having withstood sieges and engines of war, groaned like a dying elephant. The mortar surrendered. As continents split, driven apart by tectonic forces, so too the old stones fractured and fell, ringing one against the other as they tumbled from the battlement, nine stories to the moat below. Only a foot of rubble remained.

  The laser
shield on Brum’s wrist flickered and died, its power depleted.

  As the stones splashed in the murky water, Heckley’s mare, sensing what was about to happen, began to shy.

  Her rider, about to swear up a blue streak, took a deep breath instead.

  “Oh, don’t be that way, Potato Chip,” Heckley said, cooing in her ear. “You’re a brave girl! Look at you, not afraid of heights. You’re not afraid of the cwazy purple man’s sizzle stick neither! No. So a little water’s not going to spook you now. Is it, my pretty pegasus?”

  Abhoc removed his helmet and scratched his head bashfully.

  “Sometimes I ask myself why we didn’t just build a supertank,” he admitted to the crowd.

  This got a bit of a laugh.

  “Easy now, m’Lady To-Chip.” Heckley had dismounted to pet his mare’s cheek.

  Sensing what was going on, the crowd began to murmur. Abhoc decided to entertain the masses during the delay. He switched to his mountain accent, which city folk found so charming.

  “When we first trained ourselves of chivalry ‘n what, horses came scarce, so we rode on what came. A year ago, we singled on mares. Ask why. A stallion won’t let a turbo thruster anywhere near his, y’know, netherworld. Nor care to fly! The ladies braver, s’true. But myself I sympathize with the gentlemen’s point of view. Not all ches’nuts want an open fire.”

  A few of the party-goers smiled woodenly, fearful that the big show may have ended before it started.

  “Listen, don’t get me wrong. ‘Tween Hoofmary here and my own wife, this one’s got the more ‘greeable temperament. But afore we set ourselves on all this techin’, I says to Brum, what if we just build ourselves death-cycles. Just call ‘em destriers or chargers. Name bikes for horses, like they do with cars. Paint ‘em with checkerboards and chess pieces. People’ll see how’s we’re Horselords on the rise again. Only but now for an age of machines. No feed bags, no dung heaps. We can even make ‘em electrical. Ecological, ya know? Quiet. No bad smells at all. Best of all, death-cycles ain’t shy of no damn water.”