The Altonevers

by Frederic Merbe

  “Ahhh,” he sighs after the driver’s side door slams shut.

  “What's the news?” she asks.

  “It's going to be brighter, for the both of us,” he says again, pecking her on the cheek. Shifting the gear and speeding toward a scene rendering the rising sun and all below it into realism with each mile they travel westward. Over and over the horizon lines pass with more and more frequency, spreading dark cold grizzly blacks with barely visible tints of hue hardly distinguishable from the rough charcoal shadows they're creeping out from. Color seeps slowly into the surfaces sculpted by the face of a hot monochrome sun sitting far, far down the bone dry two lane road. Shadows begin reaching each other, binding and adding depth to the distance of the still dreary cool colored desert. A chill ripples through the arid air, drying their eyes and noses. Cider licks his lips repeatedly, as they’re dried out in seconds by hot winds whipping through the open window, and crossing her eyes squinting to see under the suns white light. The eyes of a wayfarer watching her subconscious emerge out of the passing shapes of sand and rock rising, growing from grayscale of charcoal and sloppily spread ink blotches defining into an arid desert.

  By the time they arrive at a dilapidated dive, everything is of damp blue hues and deep ugly shades of brown and black. Every room is permeated with the stink of booze at Juno’s clam saloon, though not quite a saloon, it's more like half a diner and half a bar with horrible servings of either, one that people of the gold rush would likely be in. No one is a cowboy, well one person , but he's talking loudly about being on the set, which no one cares to hear, they all read him correctly as an extra and not a star. The two take their place in the corner with cups of tar black coffee. All the patrons have somber faces, as neverwere's standing just outside the glowing lights of film sets, of the spectrum, and knowing it.

  “You don’t have anything thing else?” Anna asks the server.

  “It's all we serve. It's what the gold miners drank since a long ago,” the well washed tonal waitress says somberly. Who when realizing she’s referencing her own life, bows out of view sadly with a muddied mood to match her grizzly grays. Anna see’s the muddled colors of even the metal of the bar stools are so dull they’re barely able to glint or reflect any light at all. The two sit in the corner, watching the ticking of a small wall clock for almost two hours. Taking turns sipping the horridly thick black tar coffee, and watching the sun hardly rise in hue from a putrid gray to a terribly dim disgusting yellow.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” she asks.

  “Yeah...this is the right place. It’s the only place around.”

  “Are you sure about your friend coming?”

  “Yeah she'll show up, they wouldn’t mess me over, not them,” he says without a doubt his friend will arrive.

  “Are you sure you have friends?” she asks, only half joking.

  “Yes, and the few I do are good ones,” he says waving his spoon at her face as he speaks.

  “Can't wait to see them, they must look like monsters,” she says.

  “Hahaha. Beauty isn't skin deep, but you know that,” he answers. A minute later the rickety front door swings open to a Hellenistic queen of the silver screen sweeps into easily being the brightest thing in the room. Instantly captivating the eyes and drawing the breathes from all people, of any room she walks into. Winking with her large blue always wide open eyes at a smiling shhing Cider with slender fingers over pursed perfectly plump race car red painted lips. Anna spews coffee from her mouth at the beauty of the woman Cider calls his friend, and leers at him suspiciously as he turns and repeats the Shh to Anna.

  The woman of unrelenting salacity strolls through the room, her supple suntanned legs float back and forth under a white sundress strapped over otherwise bare shoulders. She’s beaming shades brighter than anything or anyone else in the dim grizzly hued kerosene lit room. A blonde bombshell exuding such an attractiveness she’s thought of as Aphrodite’s gift to mortals, mesmerizing the primal passions of man and woman alike. Dripping seduction with even the subtlest of movements, an allure making even greatest of beauty queens become recluses just from being in the same room as her for a moment. Her pheromones fill the room she enters with an ambrosial aroma entices the noses of mortals into believing that they have the strength of gods within them. Her mere presence of sexuality embodified silences the room, who're all salivating like starving wolves staring at fresh meat their too weak to hunt. She sits at a table across from a gaunt looking man in a silk black suit. By simply blinking her big blue’s she effectively possess the man with lustful thought desire for her affections. She talks sensually with a voice sounding like each word is whispered into a lover's ear in the dark of a bedroom.

  “It always gets me, a good piece of flesh. The masterful chef and his...knives,” the salacious woman says to the man, biting her lip while lightly and gyrating in her seat, and rubbing her thighs together so he can see her bare legs, “with his hands, sweating in the sweltering heat of the kitchen for hours on end,” she says.

  “So hot,” the usually suave man says, who's now sweating like a pig and loosening the tie from his neck. The women seems to struggle to light a cigarette.

  “Here I'll get that for ya doll.”

  Flick, flick…

  “Thank you”, she says, leaning in to press her bust toward his gaze.

  “Pink flesh dripping with their own juices, searing over a roaring hot flame,” the vixen says, while moving her hands down to her waist line. The man watches with quivering lips and assumptive eyes, anticipation as though he’s about to discover gold, she opens her legs as her fingers sink past her hips.

  “It always get me so...aroused,” she whispers, opening her legs wider and lifting her right knee over the edge of the table. The man is drooling with dropped jaw as she slips her hands under the table, out of the man’s view. The voluptuous woman takes a deep breath of her slender cigarette and lifts her knee higher than the table.

  “Show me, hehehe let me see, hehehe,” the man says like an eager child waiting for a birthday present.

  “I'll show you everything, love,” the vixen says while blowing the man a kiss of smoke. She leans back slowly, arching her back in a way that accentuates her breasts. The enfeebled man leans forward from his chair to see where her hand is touching.

  Pop! pop! pop! sings a sub-machine pistol strapped to her right thigh. The bullets splash through the man’s chest, throat and face, pushing him back and to the left, dropping him dead to the table then the ground. The girl stands completely untroubled, actually seeming to be a bit annoyed.

  “Oh my god, that took forever to shoot. Imbeciles!” she shouts, though the room hasn’t even noticed she'd just killed a man, they're all still hypnotized by the brightly hued big blue movie star eyed seductress strutting easily out of the dull dim cold room. Leaving one dead and the rest stiff as though pillars of salt petrified in perpetual infatuation.

  “That’s Daisy, our ride,” Cider says, already getting up to follow.

  “Her?” Anna asks. He knows that gorgeous woman she thinks, then is immediately jealous of her being close to him.

  “Wait,” she says, and Daisy pops her head through the door saying “Hurry up honey, it’s cold as hell out here” through chattering teeth.

  “Honey?” she asks, though follows Cider and his friend outside to a nineteen fifty eight powder blue saoutchik, with sleek silver trim sparking brightly, beaming through the dim of their surroundings.

  “I can't believe you got me out here in the Drabs. The colors are...horrid,” Daisy says.

  “Hey I didn’t tell ya to come out here, didn’t you have to ace that guy,” he says.

  “Yeah, that hit went out months ago, wonder why no one took it. It's because it’s repulsive and frigid out here. The Drabs, we don’t even dump bodies this far out anymore, you know that?” Daisy says.

  “Well, thanks for the ride,” he says.

  “Sure Apples. What’re friends for
anyways,” Daisy says, getting in the driver’s seat of her sleek blue convertible “Well it's good to see you,” she says slamming her door shut.

  “Yeah you too. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in Sally,” he says.

  “She's been running good,” Daisy says.

  “And how’s business? Good I hope,” he asks.

  “Always good. The auditions are never ending. A couple more rumbles than usual, you know same old stuff. The other studios been getting a bit feisty, but our directors are handling it well enough, and the actors are dying in vain by the day. Ya know, the usual. The Vaudevs got it under control,” she says.

  “Sounds good,” he says.

  “Yeah, better than it sounds out here...ugh, the Drabs. I'm sure she'll be happy to see you though,” Daisy says, lightening his face with a sentiment he doesn’t often feel, that people are missing him.

  “Thanks Daisy,” he says.

  “So who's the bird? red hair, not really your type if I remember right. Is she a hostage,” Daisy asks.

  “Oh no, no, this here is An, ahh Carrots, and she's with me,” he says patting Anna on the knee from the front seat.

  “Carrots,” Daisy says to Cider who’s nodding his head and reaching for Anna’s hand. That she takes, easing her from the insecurity in him being so close to this absolutely lubricious woman.

  “Yes Anna, or Carrots and I'm not the ransom,” she says slightly insulted.

  “I'm sorry honey, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Daisy, supreme starlet of the silver screen. I thought you were his hostage or something. I hadn't known him to ever be the type to have a, partner.”

  “It's okay, it’s nice to meet you too,” she smiles a photogenic smile to match Daisy’s beaming expression.

  “You're too pretty for him, beauty isn't skin deep. You have a nice feel about you. Despite his doggish habits it seems he may have finally stolen something of actual value,” Daisy says.

  “Thank you, but I haven’t been stolen,” she replies smirking at Cider, her bad boy bank robber who’s looking away blushing. Then drawn back into Daisy's gaze, which feels like staring into an open field of spring’s renewing nature.

  “Let’s get going, it's frigid out here. Jeez, the Drabs,” Daisy spits.

  “Is the engine warm?” he asks.

  “Should be, and I ran the heat whole way, and I'll run it until we can see the Brights, at least,” Daisy says starting the car and burning rubber. Every move she makes, no matter how subtle evokes an unquenchable lust in any who see her. She secretes seduction, her pores are sweating a scent of primal sexuality sweet to the noses of any to smell. The three are sailing down the two lane highway in her powder blue convertible Saoutchik, under a blurry blighted yellow sun incrementally rising in warmth and hue from the ugly grisaille grays of the Drabs.

  “Ya got me out here. I’m surprised there’s even solid colors this far out. How in the spectrum did you get way out here, Where you two coming from anyway?” Daisy asks.

  “We're just lucky to be out of the Blanks and past the Bleaks,” Cider says.

  “Yeah, but they can't even keep their muddied colors between the lines, this is not a place to be seen. I wouldn’t be caught dead in these...ehh,” Daisy says shrugging the chill from her shivering shoulders “Drabs,” disgusted “The set designers out here must be starving.”

  Not yet out of the dour dampness of the drabs, a car tails them closely from behind with the blaring sirens of the authorities. The three pull over and wait in silence for the cop to tap on the glass. The cherub faced Daisy rolls down her window and says,

  “What the hell do you want?” while ashing her smoke on the officer’s shirt, his knees buckle with teeth chattering fear.

  “Sorry...I'm er, sorry, carry on,” the officer says.

  “Don't tell me to carry on, get lost,” Daisy shouts at him.

  “Sorry, sorry Ms. Daisy, I...ah I’m a father, I have children, and a wife,” the officer stammers.

  “Away!” Daisy says waving the man off without looking at him. She peels off, leaving the officer on the side of the road in a wave of sand thrown from her tires, and piss in his pants with hat in his hand.

  “You'd think they’d know what their bosses car looks like, huh,” she says shaking her head.

  “Where are we?” Anna asks.

  “We’ll be there soon,” Cider says, and she stretches across the back seat, feeling comfortable and in good company.

  They ride for another hour before leaving achromatism completely in the dust. Now halfway through the Dims, where the sun is soaking up color and slowly lightening into a light yellow. Shade by shade becoming more refined, and defining the curves and contours of the desert with warmer and warmer tones that bleed into the landscape like dye into cotton. The sky is lightening, with cobalt blue seeping around the few silver lined clouds then outward to fill everything bit of above them. The muddy blue ochre of the slopes warm slowly into a sun bleached beige, miles later becoming the colors Anna expects to see in a sandy desert, with its heated and dried air.

  “Where are we?” she asks.

  “Still in the desert dear, thought almost of out the Dims,” Daisy says, batting her lashes rudely to Cider.

  “What?” he says.

  “Not even telling the girl where she's going. In some sort of trouble I bet, always in some sorta’ trouble. I bet he drags you into to it.”

  “He does,” she answers.

  “She has fun,” he says.

  “That, I’m sure of,” Daisy says.

  “Why is it so bright? like an over saturated photo,” she says.

  “Hahahaha,” Daisy laughs “this haha. This is bright to you Carrots? Ha! We’re still in the Dims”

  “The Dims,” she asks.

  “Yeah, were outta the Drabs, thank god for that, in the Dims and getting close to the furthest fringes of the Brights,” Daisy says.

  “The Brights, is that because of the city lights?” she asks.

  “No it’s because everything is well, brighter, and brighter still. More beautiful than even me,” The vixen says.

  “It's going to get brighter than this?” she asks.

  “We’re almost there,” Cider says. The lemoning sun lifts further from flatness into a perfectly round sphere splashing heat and light yellow over the now entirely defined desert surrounding them. The whole scene is rising in tone and temperature, swelling in saturation, continually tinting and enriching in color until the reds of the sand are awash in their own golden erubescence. Contrasting superbly the occasional cactus overwhelming her eyes with their overbearing viridescence, as the atmosphere shifts, tinting to ever deepening, brain cooling blues. Where ever Anna looks is more luscious to her sight then the last, she becomes enamored with the vividness of the scene she's passing through. Keeping her entranced, unable to blink for so long it stings her eyes when she eventually does. She’s enthralled by the hues continuing vision defying intensifying through a greater number of shades than she even thought were real if she hadn't seen them herself.

  Everything becomes so lucidly over saturated and prismatically pristine, so crisply defined, she starts to see everything not as things with names, but as shapes separated by the slightest variance of shade. The scene is suffocating her sense of sight, making her pupils throb through as they’re take gasping breaths while choking on the brightening desert in order to see more of it. The colors are pulsing through her eyes even when behind the black of her closed eyelids. It's as though her eye’s have instantly become addicted to the consumption of the continually enriching hues of everything around her abounding in heightening beauty. Anything she looks at is glowing like it's glazed over glinting chrome, as deeper and deeper shades of cooling cold colors and flaring hot hues gush through her unblinking eyes. Drowning her perception in a soul saturating sense of awe, in disbelief of the colors perpetually ripening, a flood of shades lighter and darker, far more than she can physically perceive. far surpassing past what
she already thought where the bluest blues a sky that there can ever be, and cacti even greener than the greenest spring leaf she can imagine.

  Wavering just over the scorching horizon is a blurring prismatic oasis smeared across the sky, reaching deep into the ether above. Emanating from the eye blistering raw pigmentation of the panchromatic city between the sand and the sea. Radiating for miles with such vividness she can hardly tell if she's awake or lucidly dreaming.

  “Where are we?” Anna murmurs, now dazed by the sight assaulting pristine scene around her. Exhausted by the lung drying wind of the bone baking desert, and it's eye searing rising tonal temperatures. She stares for minutes, seeing a thousand shades of a single grain of sand held in her hand. Then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, then a million magnificently glistening crystalline earth oranges shining in her palm. Each time multiplying by orders of magnitude for as long as she keeps looks, drooling and staring until unbearable and she escapes it brilliant splintering glints. Cider’s wagging his tongue, and panting like a dog, too dried out to even light a smoke.

  “Oh relax dear. We’re only just coming up to the edge of the Brights now,” Daisy says eyeing Anna in the rear view mirror.

  “There’s more?” Anna asks.

  “Hahaha, it's fuuun,” Cider slurs with his head dangling, drooling the last of his parched mouth out the window.

  “Yes of course. It's a bit much if you haven’t been here before. You'll get used to it, I’m sure. We call it dim sickness, gonna have to tough it out kid,” Daisy says then gulping from a wine glass.

  “How? how can it be this bright?” Anna strains to ask. The scorching orange sands are already searing her sight, and staining the backs of her eyelids when her eyes are closed. She blinks while having her hands on her face, and the colors still show a brighter red blur then any red she's ever seen before.

  “How? because of the boss lady of course,” Daisy says.

  “The boss lady?”

  “He didn’t tell you about the boss?” Daisy says sneering at the color struck Cider, as Anna nods no.