Julian thoroughly visualized his repetitive dismemberment, decapitation, disembowelment, blinding, deafening, castration, and evisceration, and put himself into such a state that he shivered uncontrollably, when the guard stepped back out of his booth, shuffled to the Fleetline, and handed the paperwork through the window. Julian took the documents from Blue, and opened the visa form, which now featured seven separate stamps in different colors that authorized his extended stay in Bamboo Duo for a duration of seven years. Julian exhaled loudly and cradled the visa to his chest.
Blue extended her left arm out of the car window; the mirrored head bent over the gravings on her forearm, and the creature passed a gloved hand over it slowly, all the while producing that chilling inhuman clicking. The guard’s head rose slightly, and Julian could see that his eyes were closed, in concentration or in ecstasy he could not tell, the sound intensifying, magnifying until it filled the interior of the car, and then, abruptly, cutting off altogether. The red eyes opened again, and the guard nodded once, stepping back. The wooden gate swiveled upward of its own accord.
“See?” Blue said, rolling up her window again. “No worries.” She gunned the accelerator, and the car bolted forward. Just ahead, although Julian had not seen it from the other side of the checkpoint, a hazy distortion rent the air just above the roadway, as though it were a heat mirage that continuously shifted and contorted and folded in upon itself—and Blue was racing directly toward it. “Just to prepare you,” she said, “this will feel a bit ... strange.”
As the Fleetline passed through the distortion, Julian was overcome with the highly disturbing impression that his skin was peeling backward one rapid layer at a time, then subcutaneous fat, then muscles and ligaments and cartilage and nerves and blood vessels and osseous tissue and marrow until his physical form was completely stripped away, leaving behind seven glowing lotuses at the chakra points of what used to be his corporeal body, each jeweled flower embedded with an infinitude of fractal iteracy reflecting eons of rebirth stretching all the way back to the formation of consciousness in the known universe so that Julian could detect the incomparably long chain of his karma that had begun with his very first incarnation, the terrible knowledge revealing an endless accounting of his faults, from one form to the next, each of his actions affecting both the method of each subsequent rebirth and determining how long he would continue to remain in cyclic existence—
And then, just as suddenly, he was back in his own body, wearing clothing, resting in the bucket seat of a technomantically-augmented Fleetline Coupe, sucking air into his lungs, small and enclosed once again. He brought his hands up to his face, the whorls of his fingertips echoing the spinning galactic perception he had just experienced; his left palm was no longer purple.
Blue was peering at him, sunglasses removed from her face, her normal smile reduced to a tight horizontal line. “Welcome to Bamboo Duo,” she said.
~
They stopped that night at a motorists’ inn just off the freeway. The day had passed completely without incident, the blasted landscape of the interstice quickly becoming monotonous at the realization that it rarely changed from the scrubland prairie that extended in all directions, the only stops occurring at uninhabited rest areas where they could stretch and avail themselves of the toilets and full-meal vending machines. The freeway seemed to be Bamboo Duo’s sole road, although to Julian’s surprise, they encountered not a single other vehicle traveling in either direction. Blue assured him that they would once they neared cityCityCITY, but he valued the solitude. After the laying bare of his consciousness, he’d spent the ride largely in silence, gazing into the distance or swiping through his æ-reader, lost in his thoughts. The return from that cosmic disintegration into the limited fragility of his human mind meant that he could not recall the majority of it, but he had been left with three or four lifetimes worth of memories from the most immediate previous incarnations. He felt simultaneously insignificant and drastically important.
Blue maneuvered the Fleetline into a parking space and shut off the engine. Aside from the ranch-style motel, the area was deserted, absent any other buildings, or houses, or signs of life, as if the inn had been constructed for the sole purpose of catering to people like Julian and Blue, those making the journey from the human border to cityCityCITY. And at this, Julian began to feel ill at ease, as if they were walking into some sort of trap. Blue, however, appeared to have no such compunctions, merrily striding toward the lobby door; she certainly had far more confidence than him, and he had long ago surmised that she had made this trip many times previously, although she only looked to be in her early thirties.
Inside the lobby, above the front counter, hovered a large, perfectly spherical, disembodied head, a head that was, at that precise moment, asleep. Its surface was cratered and rocky, like a miniature asteroid or moon, with a large jagged crack torn down the left side of its face that glowed orange from some internal source and oozed this radiating material like a suppurating wound to drip into a metal bucket beneath. The face was remarkable in its ugliness, the eyes (currently closed) asymmetrically set far apart, the nose large and bulbous and pitted (briefly reminding Julian of the border town hostel manager), the mouth set in a tight sneer even in sleep. It radiated hatred, even its current state, and Julian was about to ask Blue if they might continue driving and find someplace else when she reached forward and loudly dinged the bell on the counter.
The eyes snapped open, jaundiced and bloodshot, strabismusally straining in two different directions, neither of which focused on Julian or Blue. “Scum! Scum!” shrieked the cracked moon. “You piece of shit! You bucket of seething offensive fecal matter! You blisteringly disgusting repulsive garbage! Ngaaaaah!”
Julian quickly retreated to the door, but Blue simply held herself more erect and ignored the verbal assault. “We require service. Two rooms for the night, if you please.”
“Don’t dare explain! You’re no authority! Putrescence!”
“Fine. One room with two beds will then suffice.” Then, to Julian: “You may want to take three steps to your right.”
He did so, pushing himself into the corner of the lobby, his breath coming in short sips as he tried to anticipate what would come next. The cracked moon puffed its cheeks out and began to rotate clockwise about a tilted axis, slowly at first, then increasing in speed until its hideous features became a blur, emitting all the while a horrific prolonged retching sound, as if his old neighbor Mrs Huang were clearing the “demons” from her throat and then amplifying the sound through an ætheric bullhorn, the repulsive noise making Julian wince and clutch to the wall, building and building until at its climax the cracked moon abruptly halted its rotation, opened its mouth wide, revealing spaced-apart teeth coated with a patina of corrupt brown grime, and vomited forth a gushing stream of lumpy yellowish bile that splashed against the front door in the exact spot in which Julian had just been standing. It seemed as if the choleric eruption would never end, a venomous fountain of odium, a revolting stench-laden execration, a physical manifestation of all the hate and enmity and rancor in all the three realms, but then, just as suddenly, the great gaping maw closed again, leaving only the sound of bilious dripping, and a long metal object in the middle of the slowly spreading puddle.
“Julian,” said Blue, her voice startling him out of his shock, “please be a dear and pick up our room key.”
The motel room smelled of mildew and dust and the faintest hint of peppermint, causing rapid repetitive sneezing in forceful bursts of three, and featured no amenities Julian could see, just the two twin beds, a squat bureau with three drawers (all of which were stuck closed), and a small but functional water closet. Between the sneezing and the slight dampness of the sheets, and his proximity to Blue’s supine form, he hoped he’d be able to sleep at all.
As he rummaged in his duffel for his paijama trousers, Blue turned her back and quickly stripped to her undergarments: brassiere and panties in matching shades of na
vy blue. Her lack of shame led him to quickly turn his head, but not before catching a peek at her backside. He cleared his throat and poured all of his attention into the search for his sleepwear.
“You aren’t offended, I hope?” Blue said to the back of his head.
“Not at all, Lady— Blue.”
“You say so, but I can see the blush on your neck and ears. You have been with a woman before, scholar?”
“I have,” Julian said, clearing his æsophagus again, suddenly dehydrated. “Several. But it is not my place to see a woman of your standing in such a way.”
“Hmm,” Blue said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. Had the room been this hot when they’d entered? “Suit yourself, then.” He heard the snap of an undone brassiere, and a rumple of blankets and sheets; when he dared to turn around again, she had already settled into her own bed, covers drawn up to her chin. He at last found his paijama trousers, and then quickly entered the candlelit water closet and shut the door so as to change in privacy. The solitary candle flickered in the dim space, throwing his shadow against the walls and lending his reflection an ephemeral impression, as though he were a spirit or a shade. His brief glimpse at the true nature of reality at the border crossing came back to him then, the sense that the mundane world was but a mirage, a false realm of sensation that imprisoned his consciousness as long as he refused to acknowledge the truth.
But then the feeling receded; he washed his hands in the sink several more times, then blew out the candle and stepped back into the bedroom. Blue’s eyes were closed, a serene expression on her face. Julian softly stepped around her bed and over to the gas lamp next to the door, dialing the methane down to its minimum output, dimming the room almost to darkness. He climbed into his own bed, convinced that he’d be plagued by insomnia until morning, and instead dropped immediately into a deep slumber.
Julian normally never remembered his dreams, but that night he was given over to oneiric intensity so overwhelmingly real that it utterly convinced his dream-self of its veracity. His first impression was of drowning, of the urgent panic that came with being unable to draw breath as he sank deeper and deeper into an unearthly lake. His lungs burned and his vision darkened with amorphous splotches, and he knew absolutely that he was dying, but in that moment of realization, he found himself able to breathe after all, despite his continued immersion in the water. A figure appeared before him, a beautiful woman clad entirely in white robes, her hair as brilliantly pale as her clothing. It was Blue. No, not Blue, but a woman who looked so similar as to be her sister, and his heart ached with desire.
Without transition, he and the lady in white strode the path around a lake, the same lake in which he had just been drowning, his clothes dry (had they ever been wet?), his right hand clasped in Lady White’s left, and her smile was a never-ending supernova encapsulating the entire world, and he felt as if he could die a happy man after the gift of being in the presence of such incredible beauty. An umbrella materialized in his hand; he raised it to cover them both and it began to rain, a gentle downpour that plunked against the fabric of the umbrella with light musical tones and then repelled, forced back into the sky with abrupt velocity, not an umbrella but an unbrella, and keeping step behind them was Lady Blue, holding her own unbrella, her eyes cast downward.
Then Julian stood bodily facing Lady White inside a Shakyamunian temple, holding her smooth hands in his, both their heads turned toward an abbot who was placing the ceremonial sash of binding over their wrists and pronouncing them husband and wife. In that moment of dreamtime, Julian could not recall ever feeling so happy or contented, as if his entire existence, all his previous incarnations, had led him to this precise moment of bliss. To Lady White’s side stood Blue, her maid-in-waiting, her face twisted into knots of jealousy, although he could not tell whether she was jealous of White or of him.
The air surrounding Blue then rippled and wavered, and her form appeared to stretch lengthwise in both directions, as though pulled through a pasta flattener, longer and longer until the noodle of her being resembled a great blue snake. The abbot and White had vanished during this transformation, and the temple as well, and Julian now lay on his back in a damp-smelling bed within a damp-smelling room as the gigantic blue snake rose above him and flicked at his body with its tongue, the light sensation like moth wings beating softly against his face, his chest, his groin. He was not scared, and lay perfectly still as the snake bent down and coiled itself around him, an embrace rather than strangulation, and although he was left with a nagging feeling that he was supposed to be elsewhere, he hugged Blue’s smooth scales, receiving the warmth that radiated from within her as a gift, the damp bed and the lady in white forgotten in the cool euphoria of sinuous love.
~
Julian awoke in the Fleetline, already in motion, not sure at first whether he had truly wakened or whether this was yet another dream. His head rested against the passenger-side window, slowly rocking with the automobile’s movement, a dull pain beginning to form on his skull from where it made contact with the glass. His clothes had been changed into clean garments from his duffel. He lifted his head, a weight like a cinderblock, his neck sore from the position in which he’d slept. The wind howled outside the car, filled with reddish dust and sand which occasionally battered itself against the doors and front fascia, emitting an unearthly howl each time it made contact. Tornadic dervishes whirled within the dust storm, and Julian questioned whether the remnants of his dream were imposing patterns on the exterior chaos.
“Good morning,” Blue said, her eyes firmly focused on a spot directly in front of the obscured windscreen, as if she could penetrate the dust and sand through the force of her gaze alone. She was clothed once again in the same half-cheongsam, trousers, and bolero, but sans the filmi shades. “Just some dust devils, nothing to worry about. The Fleetline’s protections are warding them off. They’ll give up once they realize they can’t reach us inside.”
“How did I get here?” Julian said, his mouth gummy. He rubbed absently at his right eye.
“I apologize for that, but I was unable to wake you. That sometimes happens when humans enter Bamboo Duo for the first time; the realm itself feeds on its inhabitants’ dreams, and sometimes gets a mite greedy. I’ll show you a technique to wake yourself up from even the deepest of dreams.”
“So you ... carried me?”
Blue’s eyes remained fixed on the road in front of her, or wherever the road might be beyond the cloud of attacking dust devils, but she smiled widely. “I’m stronger than I appear. Does that bother you?”
“No,” Julian said quickly, flinching as a shrieking dust devil hurled itself against the glass near his right ear. “But it does surprise me.”
“You should never make assumptions about women,” she said, turning her head slightly in his direction.
“I, um, I mean I never, uh—”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Lesson learned, eh?”
Julian’s ears grew hot, and he held his tongue; his sudden realization that she had dressed him as well, seeing him at his most vulnerable, caught in the back of his throat. With a startled shock, he frantically patted at the area around his groin, knowing as he did so that the jade elephant was gone, the mineral weight absent from his pants, and as he turned to Blue to confront her with the theft, the indignation rising in his chest that she would bother to steal her fare before delivering him all the way to his destination, he then felt the familiar shape in his pants pocket instead, snapping his mouth closed with shame at his foolishness.
“Everything all right?” Blue asked.
“Y-Yes, fine.”
They drove on, and after another fifteen anxious minutes, the dust cloud dissipated and cleared, and the howling wind dropped behind them, the demons within moving off to search for easier prey. Julian let out a slow breath and rolled his trapezius muscles to loosen the tension in his shoulders and neck. Blue visibly relaxed next to him as well, the movement belying her normal
ly impervious façade of ineffable calm and confidence.
“See?” she said. “No worries.”
The landscape quickly became monotonous once again with the absence of such excitement, and Julian found himself zoning out into an unthinking state for long periods. After an indeterminate amount of time, from far ahead, a fork in the endlessly straight roadway drew closer and closer, and as it approached, Blue nudged the Fleetline to the right and exited onto the new thoroughfare. Julian was hesitant to comment—Blue clearly knew their route, while he did not—but something felt off about this change in direction, as if they now traversed a detour.
“We’re making a short side trip,” she said after several minutes of palpable silence and Julian’s fidgeting body language. “It won’t add but an hour or two to the voyage. I’ll still get you to cityCityCITY with plenty of time to spare.”
“Where,” Julian had to clear his throat from disuse. “Where are we going?”
Blue did not reply, and Julian didn’t press the question; he would soon find out for himself.
The detoured roadway steadily curved to the right in an ever-decreasing angle, and before long Julian saw that they were tracing the path of a gigantic spiral. Blue slowed the vehicle’s velocity as the turn tightened, but even so, Julian was forced to grip the door handle so as to avoid ending up in her lap. After only a few minutes, they completed the spiral, and Blue stopped the Fleetline at its center, setting the emergency brake with a ratcheted series of metallic clicks, and then switching off the engine. The quiet roared in his ears.
The Alchemy of Happiness: Three Stories and a Hybrid-Essay Page 6