Seven Threads

by Jason Fischer

  Sliding the Funny Tape into the machine, Nameless howled. Raoul had replaced his precious memories with an aerobics programme, and an infomercial for a fruit juicer.

  #

  Raoul appeared on the deck of The Cheerful Misogynist. The ship was the size of a city, a party boat mounted on wheels and rollers and treads. It was driven by sail, fans, balloons and oars, and rumour had it that a FTL drive could be found deep in its innards.

  There was a girl here, Imogen, under his protection.

  As could be expected from his entrance, there was a fuss. The sudden appearance of a minotaur can hardly factor into the average fetish, and most of the debauchery stopped wherever he passed.

  There wasn’t a crew as such, but there were those who liked to think they served the ship, hauling on ropes and scrubbing at the ancient decking when someone yelled at them. The Captain himself appeared, straightening his epaulettes and setting his cap level.

  “Milord,” he said, offering a lazy salute. “Captain Aurora Luca, if you please.”

  He wasn’t in charge the last time Raoul visited, but the position seemed to be up for grabs whenever the predecessor got bored with it.

  “I seek my ward,” Raoul said, and for a moment Captain Luca was confused. But the ship itself filled him in and understanding dawned in his eyes.

  “Young Imogen,” he said, fingering his salt-and-pepper beard. “She’s belowdecks, and well cared for.”

  “I would see her,” the minotaur told the man, who shrugged, leading him to a hatch. It was a tight squeeze but the minotaur climbed down the ladder, following the Captain along a cramped passage. When his horns scraped the ceiling beams the ship grudgingly grew to a more reasonable dimension.

  “Not welcome, Raoul,” Luca said suddenly, now as the voice of the ship. “Do your business and go.”

  They passed a thousand fantasies, every kind of fetish and whim, hearing the low sobs of those who were meant to cry. Raoul had spent his mandatory season on board The Cheerful Misogynist and had no wish to open any of these doors.

  Luca led him into an elevator, the clanky old kind with levers and a sliding cage door. After a gut-twisting descent, the door opened onto the Hieronymous Bosch wing, acre upon acre of purgatory. There were other horned beasts here, and he was barely noticed. Luca took them through the yawning mouth of a fat slavering worm.

  After a moment of darkness and intense heat, they were climbing a set of stone steps. There was a crude wooden door, and Imogen was behind it.

  “Raoul,” she said, throwing her arms around the minotaur’s waist. She was filthy, her hair matted into thick dreadlocks. “I want to leave this horrible place.”

  Raoul looked down at Captain Luca, who held up his hands, shrugged.

  “She didn’t like our games, didn’t want to join in,” he said. “Her greatest desire was to be left alone, we only gave her what she wanted.”

  They’d been keeping her in solitary confinement, halfway between a monk’s cell and an oubliette. There was a rotten straw pallet with one ragged blanket, and a toilet bucket tipped over in the far corner. They’d nailed a banner to the damp stone wall, higher than she can reach. It read SUIT YOURSELF, YOU STUCK-UP BITCH.

  “I’m not happy,” Raoul rumbled. “Our agreement was quite clear.”

  “Keep her safe,” Luca said, speaking as the ship. “Keep her hidden from her old lover. That is all.”

  “Splitter of hairs,” Raoul said. “You have wronged me. The girl did not want this.”

  “You forget, Raoul,” said the ship through the man. “Your precious free will does not apply onboard us. We generate our own laws here.”

  “I’m leaving with the girl. Be glad I take this no further.”

  “Of course. Still, there is the – simple matter – of our bargain,” Luca’s lips moved. “You owe us, little cow-god. We want your horns.”

  Luca blocked the doorway. He was no threat on his own, but Raoul could feel the presence of the ship in him, the weight of centuries of malice. True, he himself still had some power here, but would it be enough?

  “You want these?” Raoul said, reaching up and touching the tips of his horns. Luca nodded for yes.

  “A deal is a deal,” and then the minotaur was upon Luca, goring him and flinging him about like a floppy toy. Imogen was screaming at him, telling him to stop, but he had the rage in him. He cast the broken man to the floor and became all feet and fists, before sense returned, the knowing that the ship would now do its best to destroy them. He heard the stones moving, felt the ship flexing and ready to bear down upon them.

  “Get the Captain’s hat,” he ordered the terrified girl, and the stone wall opened before his horns as if it were paper. They were through and running, even as her prison became fire and wrath and unmaking.

  Raoul snatched Imogen under one arm, the better to charge through the walls. The ship was squeezing like a fist, trying to trap them, but Raoul outpaced the changes, ran through desert and castle and future metropolis. Perverts scattered in terror from the roaring bull-man.

  Finally they reached the hull, a curving mountain of fitted planks that stretched upwards into a false sky. The hull didn’t give for Raoul on the first go, so he set Imogen down on the floor. Taking a few steps back, he charged at the wall, his horns lodging deep. Gouging and twisting he pierced all the way through, till a tiny hole let the daylight inside. Thrusting both hands into the hole, the minotaur stretched out the edges like clay. It was a great wound in the belly of the ship, one that wouldn’t mend easily.

  “Be ready!” he told Imogen, sliding his bulk through the tear. He was out and hit the ground with bone-breaking speed, rolling to one side as an enormous wheel missed him by inches.

  The city-ship was powering along at a terrifying rate, crushing a suburb into rubble. Raoul kept pace and snatched the plummeting Imogen before she could break upon the ground. A hundred hatches opened along the side of The Cheerful Misogynist and there was a barrage of cannons, even a trebuchet swinging its great lazy arm. Death rained all around them.

  The minotaur veered from the ship’s destructive path, legs burning as he cleared white-picket fences and vaulted over cars in drive-ways. When Raoul escaped the shadow of the looming boat he entered far-travel, charting an impossible distance.

  #

  “I made a mistake,” Raoul said. “It was wrong to leave you with the ship.”

  They were standing in his squalid living room, both covered in dust and scratches. Raoul was panting like his lungs were about to pop.

  “You killed him,” Imogen whispered, shaking. “You killed Luca.”

  “Hush, love.” Raoul held her gently, aware that his furry hands were caked with the Captain’s blood. “It takes a great deal of effort to kill someone these days. I doubt that he is dead.”

  He steered her over to the formica dining table, sat her down on a battered art deco chair. She wouldn’t look at him, so he busied himself with boiling water on the gas-ring.

  “I don’t understand you, Raoul,” Imogen finally said. “There’s rumours about you, about what you are. Yet you choose to live here.”

  He knew it was a pig-sty. He liked the piles of dirty dishes, the stacks of mouldy books lining the walls. He went to great pains to collect this clutter and arrange it just so.

  “It really smells in here,” she emphasised, and the minotaur smiled. He put a warm cup of instant coffee on the table, next to Captain Luca’s hat.

  “We are defined by our ephemera,” he said. “Without clutter and junk, we aren’t really alive.”

  “Raoul, this place is a disaster. At least Nameless has an excuse for hoarding rubbish.” She played with the hat, and went to put it on her head.

  “Don’t,” Raoul warned. “Do not put that on.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you will become the Captain of The Cheerful Misogynist, and you will bring that murderous boat into my house.”

  Raoul found an empty shoe-box somewhere
under all the junk, and jammed the hat into it. He wrapped it up with an entire roll of sticky tape and tied an extension cord around the whole mess. It went deep into his pocket.

  “Why did you come for me? I thought you’d arranged to hide me on the boat for exactly one century. What’s going on, Raoul?”

  “I need you, Imogen. Not for that,” he snorted as she rolled her eyes. “I need your help with something.”

  He pulled the rumpled year-book page out of his pocket, flattened it out in front of her. He pointed at the class photo.

  “One of these people invaded my home. Found where it was for starters, and got past everything I’ve thought of to keep people out. No doubting in my mind, he knows the old ways.”

  “Hmm.” Imogen stared at the photo. With free will restored she’d already changed her hair from ratty to natty, and her outfit flickered between a slinky dress and a power-suit.

  “You have to try harder,” Raoul said, and gently licking her forehead he passed over the thread of thought that he took from Nameless. “You were one of the last ones to leave the One-Way-World. Can you feel anything in this photo?”

  “Quick, gimme a pen,” she said, finally settling for khaki pants, Docs and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. She drew a biro outline around one of the boys.

  “Oh. It’s just Nameless,” she said.

  “As always, he thinks of nothing but himself, his past. What a waste of time.”

  #

  There was a letter in the mail-box, marked “RAOUL MITHRAS”. The envelope was marked “card only”, and Raoul sniffed it cautiously. Deciding it was safe he slit it open with a thumbnail.

  “SHH, IT’S A SPEAKEASY!” the card cried out loud, a cut-out in the shape of a wine barrel. A muted jazz riot could be heard blasting out of the card when he opened it. Imogen could see the reflections of a turning mirror ball on the minotaur’s face.

  ““You and a friend are invited to Madam Lune’s top secret party,”“ Raoul read. ““Don’t tell the law.”“

  “Fun!” Imogen said.

  “I don’t know. Lune and I are having – problems.”

  “What have you done now?” Imogen said, exasperated. Raoul scowled but didn’t answer.

  “I leave you alone for five minutes. Sheesh. Well, I’m going. I’ve been stuck on that boat for ages.”

  “This is a bad idea,” Raoul rumbled, but he stepped into a zoot suit, with a trilby that sat nicely in between his horns. Imogen wolf-whistled.

  “You look snappy.”

  She dreamt up a flapper outfit, with her make-up caked on and a bob hair-cut to match her laddish physique. She had a cigarette holder and a fur stole.

  “Well aren’t we the cat’s pyjamas?” she purred, and they leapt into the card.

  Lune was famous for her parties. The last one she threw was the Egyptian Extravaganza, and it went for two hundred years. The Cheerful Misogynist turned up and forced its passengers to build her a scale model of the Great Pyramid. By hand.

  This one was an amazing replica of a speakeasy, if the entire city of prohibition-era Chicago had been a boozy party held openly. It was an art deco nightmare, and Raoul shook his head at Lune’s twisted take on history. There was an army of federal agents splitting barrels of moonshine over the gutters, but only so that the guests could dip their cups into a ready supply of booze.

  “Let’s boogie,” Raoul said, over the music of the nearest big band. They did the Lindy Hop, the Bunny Hug, the Charleston. For a man-bull hybrid, Raoul was light on his feet and Imogen floated around him like a butterfly.

  “Raoul! Darling!” and Lune was there, draped all over the surprised minotaur. Even though she was Aphrodite and Gaia and everything else femme, Lune managed to look cheap. She had too many feather boas and a carafe of gin clenched in one hand, with one of her stockings unstuck and sagging around her ankle. She bumped Imogen aside, covering Raoul’s snout with sloppy kisses.

  “Lune, it’s good to see you,” he lied, gently peeling her off. “You remember my ward, Imogen?”

  “Not really,” she said, turning from Imogen’s death-stare. “So, who was your visitor?”

  “No-one. A friend,” Raoul started, but Lune laughed, a short sharp bark. There was something of her Durga aspect in the sound and he knew he needed to tread carefully. For all their sakes.

  “Bullshit from the bullman. Here I thought you were a gentleman. No, I’ve had to invent a chevalier, all on my ownsome.”

  Lune stuck two fingers in her mouth and let rip with a world-shaking whistle, so loud that her costumed guests clutched their heads in pain. A man came trotting to her side, and for a moment Raoul tensed up, nostrils flaring. He could swear that the man had a blurry face, until he realised that the man has no face at all. In fact it was a mannequin given motion, with a judge’s wig sliding around on its head. She’d dressed it in robes befitting the judiciary, and Raoul understood the irony. The only guest likely enough to obey the prohibition should symbolise the “law”.

  “This is King James,” Lune said. “Say hello.”

  “Open your hearts to us,” the dummy said, in a rumbling baritone. Where its mouth should be, the moulded lips tried to move. “We have wronged no one; we have corrupted no one, we have cheated no one.”

  “Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians,” Lune said, a drunk’s grin plastered across her face. “I made him and he always knows what to say.”

  “It’s madness is what it is,” Imogen said. “Don’t tell me you fed a bloody Bible into that thing.”

  “Let us walk honestly,” King James said, “as in the day – not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife or envying.”

  “Well, he’s got your measure,” Raoul said. “Maybe you should have fed it some Henry Miller or something.”

  Everything shifted, and Raoul was knocked onto his side. A couple of the faux buildings toppled, and screaming and terror from those who shouldn’t fear anything.

  It was the blurry man. He’d busted into Lune’s party, taking gate-crashing to a new level. He was walking towards Raoul, then running, and with every step great cracks opened in Lune’s pocket-world. People were falling into the holes and Raoul knew that they would fall forever.

  “Foul little cow,” the blur yelled, and they met with a crash, grappling and rolling through the wreckage. Raoul was strong even back in the One-Way-World, but this stranger matched him. A blurry hand gripped one horn, shaking his head back and forth till he feared his mighty neck would snap.

  Then the intruder gasped and froze up with pain, so Raoul picked him up, threw him as far as he could. It felt like he was hurling a mountain. The blurry man landed just shy of a nothing-hole, curled up and screaming. A bright silver arrow pierced his side.

  Lune wore her Diana aspect and stood as tall as a tree, her bow held steady. She was pulling back on the second arrow when the man made a run for it.

  “Where’s your bloody invite?” she laughed, but her joviality was short-lived when the man slipped through the only door and took it with him.

  #

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Lune said, and Imogen mimicked her silently. Like everyone else they were crowded to the very edge of the pocket-world; everything in the middle being eaten up by the spreading doughnut-hole of nothing. Every minute or so another building collapsed, and the roads and sidewalks were being drawn in like strands of spaghetti.

  “Well, this is some party,” Raoul said, and got grief from all directions. “What?”

  Lune was shifting in between Diana and Durga aspects, which had the minotaur quite nervous. She even had a bit of Bast going on, and her cat tail flicked angrily underneath her chiffon dress.

  “All I’m saying is that it’s always a bad idea to suspend free will.” Raoul raised his hands, tempting fate.

  “It was for authenticity,” Lune sulked. “I didn’t want people changing into robots and dragons when they got bored.”

  She was the only one
who could change in any way, but all she could do was flick through her aspects, impotent and furious. Everyone else was stuck in their period clothing, and there was no reaching outside.

  Lune padded over to the edge of the abyss, to where the blurry man fell. There was a spot of blood there, and kneeling she dabbed at it with Bast’s cat tongue.

  “I know this one,” she said. “Yon gate-crasher has the taint of YHWH upon him.”

  “Yahweh,” Raoul said. He’d brought her up to speed with the events of late. “It makes sense I guess. He had the most to lose from the closing of the One-Way-World.”

  “Yes.” Lune nodded sagely. “He was most bitter, where everyone else was eager.”

  The pocket-world gave a great shudder. There wasn’t much time left before the bottom fell out completely.

  “Raoul, the hat,” Imogen said. “What about Luca’s hat?”

  He dug the box out of his pocket, squashed flat and wrapped tightly. It fluttered around in his hands, and he unwrapped in nervously.

  The hat made a leap for his head, and he snatched it out of the air. It twitched and shook with frustration, and Raoul was tempted to lob the thing into the nearest pit.

  “It’s a really, really bad idea to wear this hat,” he said. “But if anything can break into this place, it’s The Cheerful Misogynist.”

  “Don’t,” Imogen said. “I’ll do it. It’ll hurt you, Raoul.” She made to take the peaked cap but he lifted his hands up so high that she couldn’t reach.

  “No bloody way, josé,” he said, taking off his trilby. “You are not going back on that ship and that’s final. I’ll become the Captain.”

  “I believe I have a better suggestion, much as it pains me to dream it up,” Lune said. “What about King James?”

  They all looked at the mannequin, puttering around in the rubble and soliloquising about meekness and inheriting the earth. Raoul jammed the hat onto James” head.

  “Remember Sodom and Gomorrah,” King James rumbled, and a moment later the prow of The Cheerful Misogynist breached the pocket-world.

  #

  “What crime is Nameless being punished for?” Imogen asked. Raoul brought her in close, wary of the passengers and crew. The Cheerful Misogynist was tolerating them as a necessary evil, but only for now.