They’ll fire out of the water one after the next … two … three … four … landing chest-down, panting on the bank: a giantfish furry with ich, several microdolphins dripping with seaweed, a manta-tailed manatee stuccoed in algae; five … six … seven … the eighth will sail from the water: an over-sized parrot fish. Just before the parrot fish hits, wings and feathers will spring from its body, causing it to flounder tail over head—no, feet over head—and land awkwardly on two newly grown legs. The other creatures will slap fins against the shore and croak and gargle. The reborn Birdfish will gangle forward, momentum carrying it as it runs, flapping its wings, taking off into the air, skyrocketing, the fish croaking and slapping their fins louder as he does. Suddenly, a nightmare bat will sink from the impervious clouds and scoop Birdfish into a pouch—the pouch opened wide to reveal its prey crucified in a net of hooks—before disappearing upward. The creatures will immediately slide back into the water. The last one, the manta-manatee, will look forlornly skyward for a moment before dropping below the surface without a sound. The whole event will happen so fast, it’ll give him the impression of a mistake that was immediately erased.
Space will contain him without walls without horizon without distance, hold him inside his straightjacket suit, break him into a million puzzle pieces. Thirst will compel him toward the river, but as he nears it a prickly taste will grow on the back of his throat even through the helmet.
The river … water?—glutinous bubbling sludge and burning residues, gobs of mutable plastic in an angry, gurgling chemical stew of gaudy colors, sheared, striated threads struggling upstream like salmon, maggoty corpses breaking the surface before jerking under, and sebaceous air pockets popping and emitting putrid fumes that taste of sewage. Chittering sounds will fill the slimy air that wraps him like an amniotic sac.
“We call it Cyanide River,” will come a voice behind him.
He’ll spin to find himself facing an animal: an upright furry pear with four limbs and a pleasant, puppy-like face … the words must (but how could they?) emanate from this thing robed in dirty-grey curls. This Puppylamb’s arms will be wooly from shoulders to elbows but hairless from its elbows to its small pale white hands—four-fingered and lacking thumbs. Its legs hairless below the knee. Where could it have come from, this thing—what the fuck? What. The. Fuck.
Puppylamb will scrape up a handful of beige roots and amass a little straw pile. Closing its eyes, the creature will hold the roots out toward him. Before he can take the roots, the bundle will change, melt flat, and darken, becoming a clot of deep purple goo.
“Here,” Puppylamb will say, holding it out farther.
He’ll remove his helmet and scoop the mush out of the creature’s hands.
“We can make plenty more of that.”
He’ll shoot his tongue (how could it extend that far?) into the pulp. Cool and sticky. About as filling as phlegm. He’ll lick the last bits off his red glove and feel comforted.
Puppylamb’s eyes will widen with a subtle smile.
“Go out and collect more of those fibers. You should scout out this area and report back to us what you find. We shall stay close but out of sight. If you see anything living, you shall convince it to come back and meet us. Unless it appears too retrograde to communicate or too dangerous, in which case you shall—in that case you shall warn us, you should make a sound like this: PTTHT- PTTHT.” Puppylamb will bleat like a flugelhorn.
“Can you make that sound? You will practice and learn it. The note, when you strike it, should be a B-flat so we may recognize it instantly, and thus it shall also be more difficult to mimic by those who would endeavor to deceive us. You shall have to practice your B-flat. You know the sequence? Here—follow this scale.” It will hum a descending scale. “Now, see this note: hmmh, hmmhh, hmmh. It’s that note, hmmhh. Do it now.”
He’ll notice Puppylamb has another exceptional feature: flipper feet like ridiculous slabs of toast.
“If you don’t do what we say, we won’t make food for you. Now do it. We expect to hear you practicing the alert sound while in our presence exclusively because if you practice it while not in our presence we might mistake it for an emergency warning. When in fact you are just rehearsing. After you generate the warning sound, follow the creature from a distance, and if it comes toward us—if it gets close, within ten arm-lengths, you shall throw yourself upon it and attack it as best you can. Now go! Find us some tubers! However, before you go, you must find ten flat rocks and pile them up over here. Touch your forehead to them and wiggle your arms in the air. Like so …” Puppylamb will brandish one arm as if shaking something off its hand while making a circular gesture with the other as if turning a crank. “Here do it. Damn you, do this motion now! Now, do this motion and practice the sound at the same time, like this: hmmhh … hmmhh.” Puppylamb will waggle its arms and BLAT-BLAT-BLAT.
At some point, it will toss up its hands and sigh. “Your resistance is irritational, but we’ll give you the opportunity to get with it. We will explain your existence, and you will become sensible. Listen to us closely. You have become confused and distracted. You are unable to view behind the curtain. We will clarify for you, and you will follow.
“It all started at a time when an Insect Plague fell upon the land. So many insects, one couldn’t breathe without them filling your lungs. To eliminate the plague, a global chemical sterilization was instituted. Yet, the chemical bonds that broke within the insects’ bodies caused an unexpected disassociative side effect: the development of an ionic resonance. This chromagnetism caused the attraction and repulsion of heretofore unconnected genes. The Transgenic Mathemists Institute was formed in an attempt to understand this effect. We (and we say ‘we’ by the transitive property because, although we probably did not exist at that time—or we may have but were unaware of it—we have become the heir of the Institute), we, with research, were able to tease out the underlying principles of this resonance and unravel the secrets of Avocado’s Law. The ability to manipulate the base matter of life by exuding particular chemicals. These formulae were enshrined in a text, which we inherited, to make or unmake.”
Puppylamb will stop waggling at a splash from the river; they’ll both turn and look to see emerging onto the shore two … five … ten creatures: carbuncular and inflamed; crimson, black, and mud-brown; three-legged, one-legged, and legless; doubled forward and leaning back; flaccid and dense; empty eye-socketed and bulge-eyed; frog-eared, bat-eared, bug antennaed creatures smelling of sickness and corruption. On the shore—the manta-manatee, the ich-encrusted giantfish, the others. Puppylamb will step back, hide behind him.
“Fight them,” Puppylamb will push him. He won’t move; the creatures will limp toward them.
Louder: “You shall fight them. They are evil!”
Within ten paces, muttering and fidgety, one of the river creatures will snarl as if he were already chewing Puppylamb between his teeth, “You … leave … us … BE!”
“Kill them!” Puppylamb will whine.
As they shamble forward, he’ll step aside, but Puppylamb will run around and past them into the river while braying, “Destroy you! All of you!” On top—Puppylamb will run on top of the slow-moving crust of the river, skipping from floe to floe, its big feet bridging the gaps.
“Obey us!”
Puppylamb will run farther out, almost across the river, the fur on its legs turning black, claws curling from its fingertips.
“We will find you and torture you! We will catch you!”
The creatures will hobble back toward the river.
“WE WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER FOR THIS!”
Puppylamb will turn his back and disappear into a cloak of smog as the creatures sink beneath the surface, the last to vanish a fish-faced dog-eared thing like a seaweed fetus.
He’ll abandon the river as fast as he can, clutching his helmet, covering long stretches of desolate, pitted crust. The living vaporized. Drowning in the sky—a roof so low and limp he’ll hunch o
ver, shrinking into himself as he paces forward. After hours or days, the land will transition to a flat zone of reddish clay disturbed only by the occasional stubby red hill like a middle finger flicking an angry brick hue into the atmosphere.
Without thinking, he’ll pee in his suit but remain dry, as the suit will seem to absorb it.
Another object will appear from the foamy air: a sprawling, coral-colored, shapeless mess with small creatures crawling over it: insectoid and spider-like, multi-legged -handed -clawed, chitinous, tubular, spherical, loaf-shaped, beetle-bodied things. One will flip over to divulge a face on its abdomen like a dirty secret. Something that shouldn’t be seen.
He’ll circle around to find on the other side a pile of eyes embedded in the bulk—rancid pink and white and blood-filled, lopsided with mutilated eyelids half-closed and weeping. The insectoids will scuttle back and forth poring over the eyes, poking at them with claws or hooked fingers. Eyes that pop out will be scooped up and eaten. Every time an eye oozes out, they’ll dig up another one: clamp their claws on a fold of flesh and pull it up to exhibit another hidden eye that circles like a drunken gyroscope before focusing … they’re all—all the eyes will focus in one direction. He’ll turn to follow the gaze and:
stop.
The light scratching from the clouds will gum up his eyes and punch around inside his helmet.
A figure against the sharp glare: a pure black silhouette.
Squinting, he’ll make out a slip of a girl looking down at him from atop a column of dirt-encrusted rock.
Shadows will cast down her cheeks like sheets of tears.
Her body, caked in black leaves.
The boulder will quake, and he’ll tumble, fall onto his back as leaves peel off and flutter down around him.
She’ll be above him unwrapped, dirt raining down, a small bouquet in her right hand, his feet flat against the rock, his breath rank in the helmet; the young girl will have no legs, she’ll be joined to the stone at her hips. She’ll end at her torso. He’ll see a fault line running up the boulder to her center … between the thighs she doesn’t have.
Dark lines on the stone: figures moving, alive on the surface, forming a caravan marching from left to right with a large figure at the center like a snail surrounded by many small creatures; the drawings will march on and around the stone, disappearing and returning from the other side.
She’ll tilt her face, eyes downcast, taking him in, leaning farther forward, rocks towering over his head.
“You have crossed the river?” Her voice like candy.
“No. Yes,” he’ll croak.
“Are you tired of running? Come relax with me. Here, this will appease your hunger.”
She’ll release the plant, and it will fall at his feet.
He’ll look at the gift in the scattered leaves then back up at her. Her face will glow, and she’ll look older, not a girl—a spectacular young woman—although difficult to … his eyes will slide off her cheekbones into the darkness behind. The locks of hair across her neck will change from white blond to bright red to berry-brown while her face re-forms from heart-shaped to oval to round-cheeked.
“Consume that,” she’ll say. “You’ll feel better. You’re hungry, poor thing. Empty stomach?”
A clump of grey bits—a fan of slender, sharply pointed leaves like fingers attached to an army-drab stem. His stomach so empty, curled up like a snake.
He’ll look back up at her hair, follow it down to her breasts, which will seem larger … fuller; his mouth dry, aware of his tongue against the roof of his mouth—if he could just touch her, wet her breasts with his tongue. He’ll follow her waist down to the deep fault in the rocks and down to the plant at his feet. He’ll pick up the fern stems, and they’ll fall to pieces in his hands. He’ll twist off his helmet and put the leaves to his nose: nothing. He’ll look up at her smiling at him like love, and the plant will fall to powder in his mouth. He’ll chew crumbling air, gnash squalid lint, and an explosive laugh will burp out of him.
“Good boy.” Her voice meaningful.
Her heartbreaking, metamorphosizing body. Climbing the stones beneath her, foot in the crevice, grabbing a handhold of plant … too slick … falling back.
“Please come and see me any time. I’m here for you to provide sustenance. And I have a friend; you might find yourself in the presence of my friend somewhere ahead of you who can provide you guidance as well. I’m always followed by a dear, dear friend. You’ll recognize him. It will be a divine opportunity, but I suggest you keep your distance.”
The stone monolith pivoting to the side, tectonic thundering, his bones juddering. Walking by her, looking back—perspective warping—a vanishing slit—gone.
Forcing himself to go, stomach hurting, banging for miles across a plain of smooth stone like glazed pottery strewn with burnt thorns. Scooping up a handful, running. Crunchy taste of kindling. Hunger’s hollow rage. Walking on—an indefinite period—tired of nothingness. The sky a bitter harvest, crepuscular light congealed upon the constantly inconstant landscape. A gutter slosh of mud, stumps, dirt, fractured rock, smeared land.
Lying down and awaking dreamless, not a cobweb of a thought.
Shrouds of distance. A vague spot. The spot growing, becoming a large group of creatures moving in black smoke, all moving in one direction; a tall, coursing herd, a vast billowing vortex. Even the sky parting for it, opening a cell of freedom.
Closer. An array of hulking, thudding behemoths, six-legged headless mastodons permitting meager glimpses through the blackness of a moving mountain at the center.
Closer. The thing in the middle resolving: a ten-story-tall octopus head with woobering craters for eyes and multiplying limbs like explosive polyps disgorging and retracting. A head—no head—fluctuating into and out of its body, long octopoid limbs linking it to each of the mastodons, making them indistinguishable as separate beings.
Closer. The black cloak atomizing into an army of insects as big as fists. The central figure pursing its maw like a volcano, inflating itself larger and sucking in a swathe of insects, the lips retreating like a mudslide. Insects continuously flinging themselves against the sides of the Centrality. The approaching processional—still closer—individual insects hovering and clustering above Its limbs and around Its body, dropping and clinging to It or caroming off of It or falling into Its maw.
A putre-faction breaking off from the main body, sweeping out loosely to form a perimeter.
Emerging like a periscope from the back of one of the large insects cruising by: a platinum brain followed by a head dripping amnion—human-like but for a single silver-dollar-sized frog’s eyeball with a silver-nugget iris. The creature gurgling, spitting, retching, whizzing past, circling at ten feet, coughing, dopplering in a high-pitched cartoon mouse voice: “Okayyyyyyyyyyyy. IIIIIIIIIIIIII’m ohhhhhhh-kayyyyyyy! I’m okay! I’m okay! I’m okay! Significant or insignificant? Worship or threat? Significant or insignificant?”
Buzzing, the head rising further out of the insect’s back as if trying to get a better look, its flight becoming more and more erratic, zigzagging up and down. “Not s’okay, not s’okay.” Diving back into the droning hoard … landing on an octopoid arm before disappearing behind fountains of gauzy insects.
The Centrality: flowing fields of powerful attraction. Warping into Its gravity … closer.
The soil blasting angrily upward, spattering dirt in all directions: a suffocating palette of chlorophyll and worms, leather and cat’s breath. The explosion unveiling a creature blocking the route of the Centrality. The intruder: a jackal-headed colossus bristling like a sea urchin with a hundred arms holding boulders and clubs, muscles straining, legs wide as oak trees. Then: a hurdling attack over the entourage onto the Centrality. Disarray, chaos, stones flying, fists pummeling like jackhammers; Centrality engulfing the colossus, behemoths stomping, insects roaring like fire.
Turning, running, running, running.
Tripping, forehead banging
against helmet.
Running. Exhaustion. Minutes. Hours. Days unknowable. Lost time. Lost in time.
Out of nowhere: faces—faces everywhere—all the same faces—black disks with bright orange halos on tall, thick, verdant stalks ranging above his head. A forest of sunflowers with faces like dinner plates. The flowers leaning in ever so slightly. Wandering in a forest of sunflowers. Shortness of breath; the helmet fogging up—the moisture vanishing with a small puff of air inside the helmet. Extending his hands into the crowd of sunflowers. The flowers, not allowing contact, moving away, keeping a distance like magnetic particles repelling from a like charge. Passing through with a ripple, the flowers never touching. Walking through a cascade of living fire.
A wall encrusted with moss. Dense and cool. A treasure chest. Lying down on a mound of moss against the mossy wall, the sunflowers guarding, unable to resist removing the helmet and putting it aside to rest on the—
You open your eyes. The wall is open just above you. A person stands framed in silhouette. Would ayinay like to come in? You have entered a palace.
You realize you’ve left your helmet outside. The door, now closed behind you, is black except for a white snowflake. The room could fit a thousand people, and the ceiling is vaulted higher than the sky outside. At last you can breathe; you stand tall.
The floor is laced with vines sparsely marked with small leaves each shaped like a sparrow’s wing. Sunlight whispers from skylights overhead.
The creature standing before you is ginger-colored with a human face except … short porcelain-white antlers growing from her head. Her or his. Her mildness of aspect suggests female, but her features look somewhat squared-off and masculine, too. Her hands are big, and her chest is smooth. He/she wears a tan vest of interwoven stems open in the front; a short tail curls up behind. Furry paws for feet.
A Greater Monster Page 6