The Lord of the Curtain

by Billy Phillips

  Better that I never know what.

  Scarecrow gestured to the cauldron. “Ingredients for the brew. The eyeballs are from eagles.”

  “Why?” Caitlin asked.

  Tin Man said, “Eagle eyes. They help us see.”

  “See what?”

  Scarecrow wagged a finger to emphasize his answer. “To see that negative thoughts and dark impulses are really just the cunning provocations of the Enchanter.”

  “I thought they came from the Red Spectrum.”

  “Same thing. The Enchanter and the Red Spectrum are one. The point is to recognize that any thought that makes you unhappy does not stem from your true essence. When you see this false truth, you won’t adopt it as your own. You’ll be less tempted to follow their marching orders.”

  Caitlin reluctantly leaned over the cauldron and peeked inside. Eagle eyeballs were floating atop the bubbling surface, but quickly melting into the mix.

  Major yuck!

  “How can I tell if a thought comes from my essence or the red spectrum?” she asked.

  “Your own thoughts include other colors. Only the Enchanter’s prompts are strictly red. For instance, Natalie grossly misbehaves.”

  “What else is new?”

  God, I miss her.

  “When I tell you that, you feel the need to reprimand Natalie,” Scarecrow said. “The Enchanter incites pure red anger so that you’ll react blindly to his command. The result is that you lose your temper with your sibling.”

  Caitlin felt a pang of guilt. She longed to hug Girl Wonder again.

  “There is no green color to restrain the anger,” Scarecrow said. “No violet to sweeten your judgment with some compassion and sisterly love.”

  Stellar point. And to think that shameless Dr. J. L. Kyle plagiarized all of this for his own profit. No wonder his book made the bestseller list.

  “How about the livers?” Caitlin asked.

  “From shark and swine,” Scarecrow replied.

  She knew to turn to Tin Man to ask why. He elaborated. “The liver is the seat of all anger. The witch’s brew injects us with a diluted dose of anger to build up our immunities.”

  Caitlin smiled. “Like a vaccination.”

  “Bravo,” Glinda said. “It helps us control rage and resist cannibalistic cravings.”

  “And those disgusting wolf snouts?”

  “Not wolves,” said Scarecrow. “They’re from foxes.”

  Tin Man smiled. “A devilishly sly and cunning creature. Helps us outwit the negative thoughts. Outfox the Lord of the Curtain’s provocations.”

  The Wicked Witch gestured to Glinda.

  “Are you ready?”

  Glinda’s eyes came alive with wild passion.

  Caitlin rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. She could sense some kind of primal urge radiating from Glinda like atomic heat.

  “Look, I’m not gonna chicken out and bail,” Caitlin said, “but will this hurt?”

  “Very much,” the man of straw admitted.

  Truth also hurts.

  Glinda’s eyes throbbed a feverish red as she closed in on Caitlin. She ran her fingers through Caitlin’s auburn hair, brushing away long locks from her neck and shoulders.

  Caitlin’s breath quickened.

  Glinda took Caitlin’s hand and held it warmly, caressing the soft, fleshy part on the backside with her thumb. Glinda was being kind, thoughtful, and doing what she could

  to ease whatever god-awful nasty thing was going to happen next.

  Suddenly Glinda bit into the warm flesh of Caitlin’s neck. A tremor shivered through Caitlin’s body.

  Is she a zombie or a vampire?

  Warm blood trickled down Caitlin’s shoulder and chest. She missed a breath when her heart skipped. She felt a bit panicky. There was no turning back now.

  Glinda opened a bite wound on her own wrist next, and drew blood. She rubbed her glistening red wrist on Caitlin’s neck wound in a circular motion. Caitlin noticed that Glinda’s blood felt cold as it intermingled with her own warm blood.

  “I’m sorry if this hurts,” the Good Witch said, overly contrite. She was obviously trying to disguise the perverse pleasure she took in tasting her friend.

  So far it had been no worse than a shot of Novocain at the dentist—the bite felt like a mere prick of a needle.

  She realized fast that she had jumped to conclusions.

  Her senses initially came alive. At first, she felt a strange, intimate, uncanny connection to every cell in her body.

  Cool!

  But then her insides began heating up as if she were being nuked in a microwave.

  Owww!

  She furiously rubbed at her arms with the palms of her hands. Then she shook her arms vigorously to try to blow off the heat rising to the surface.

  Her skin began to cool again. Then her flesh tingled as a devastating hunger engulfed her. Her growing appetite was devoid of any mercy or compassion.

  The Wicked Witch dipped her ladle into the simmering, stinking cauldron. The hag poured the thick, gooey liquid

  into a ceramic cup. “Drink quickly, dearie, and leave not a drop.”

  Caitlin’s organs burned like molten rock as her eyes welled up with blood. The surface of her skin split and fractured into thin tributaries. Her flesh quickly became as pale as a bleached white bedsheet. It felt like acid was being poured over her cracked skin.

  The thought of tasting pink flesh and fresh blood suddenly became palatable to this ordinary fifteen-year-old girl. Her salivary glands drooled; saliva pooled in her mouth. A moment later, she wanted to attack someone—anyone—and ingest the vital fluid in their veins. Along with the entrails in their belly.

  This is absurd, depraved, grossly immoral. And it’s—

  She was losing control—succumbing to a vile, bottomless pit of hunger. The blistering pain of splitting skin and scarring flesh, however, paled in comparison to the shame of losing her decency.

  Before she lost all her humanity by acting on these abominable new urges, Caitlin chugged down the witch’s brew. Its lumpy texture and gamey taste on her tongue triggered a gag reflex. When she had swallowed half the cup, her body began to heave and retch and sweat profusely. Her heart palpitated against the wall of her chest. She wiped cold perspiration from her brow with the back of her forearm. She squirmed

  and jiggled her arms as gobs of sweat puddled in her underarms.

  Worse than gym class!

  She clutched her abdomen with both hands.

  Ugh.

  She began to rub her stomach with small, circular motions. The abdominal muscles were contracting on their own, preparing to expel the contents of her stomach.

  Worse than the worst-ever stomach flu! Yep, I’m going to royally puke all over the place.

  “If you throw it up, my dearie,” the witch warned, “you’ll need to lap it up again.”

  Harnessing whatever remained of her free choice and mental powers, Caitlin willed the vomit back down her throat, then chased it with another chug of the witch’s brew. She hadn’t noticed until that moment that her left hand had spontaneously snatched poor Glinda by the neck. She was on the verge of strangling and chowing down the fictional Good Witch of the South.

  But, thankfully, her blood-red vision began paling to a soft shade of pink. Her appetite was deescalating, along with the obscene cravings.

  Strange.

  As her hunger subsided, she began feeling something new . . .

  Is the word droll? Tart? Cheeky? Whatever.

  She opened her fist, releasing Glinda from the death grip. She wiped more perspiration from her brow. She desperately wanted to slip her top off to wring out the sweat. But she feared that might produce a tidal wave.

  Lady Glinda was most gracious about it all. She smiled.

 
; “I, like, almost killed you,” Caitlin said, mortified by her homicidal behavior.

  Badass bitch, I am!

  Glinda had the decency to caress her hand and apologize for the discomfort she’d caused by biting her neck.

  “Feeling better, dearie?” asked the old crone of the western horizon.

  “Hell yes!” Caitlin responded, surprised by the newfound zing in her personality and vocab.

  Scarecrow’s manner suddenly became no-nonsense. Stern. He fixed his eyes on the Wicked Witch. “We’re done?”

  “As the day is,” she replied.

  “Good.” A steely-faced Scarecrow looked like a card sharp ready to show his hand. He fixed his scarlet gaze on Caitlin. “Now, a dire warning.”

  I knew it!

  Caitlin glowered. “Outrageously uncool, straw man! You purposely waited till I drank the poison before sounding the warning alarm. Foul play, dude.”

  His head tilted. “You’d rather I not reveal the cosmic secret of how a zombie comes to be?”

  Cosmic secret? Origins of zombies?

  She perked up. “On second thought, you obviously have my best interest at heart. A solid strategy. Now pipe

  up, Scarecrow. Where do zombies come from? From the get-go.”

  The Nataliesque, wannabe-hipster wit warmed Caitlin’s heart as she heard herself say the words. It was as if a small part of Girl Wonder was giggling inside of her, poking at an untouched part of Caitlin’s innermost being.

  Her arms twitched slightly—a response to a phantom limb-type ache, which made her want to lift her arms and hold her sister.

  How ironic.

  In this grotesque state of partial inhumanity, she felt she knew Natalie a little bit better; Girl Wonder’s flippant remarks and attitude aroused resiliency and buoyancy when the heavy waves of pain came crashing down and you needed to stay afloat.

  Scarecrow’s eyes intensified as he responded to Caitlin. “It’s called the Pleasure Effect.”

  “Love it already. What is it?”

  “The mechanism by which one devolves from a normal benign being into an abnormal, ghastly ghoul. I’ll be deftly simplistic in my explanation.”

  “I’m all ears—go.”

  “You desire a penny’s pleasure.”

  “I’ll assume the penny’s only a metaphor and doesn’t take inflation into account. Continue.”

  “You earn a penny, and reap pleasure when you spend it.”

  Caitlin fanned herself. “Oooh—I’m breathless already.”

  “The primary problem concerns the pleasures reaped from the red band of light. There is an aftereffect. An upshot directly related to Red-Spectrum pleasure.”

  “Repercussions,” Caitlin said. “I get it. Break it down.”

  “Pleasures reaped from the red band have a strange effect on one’s previous cravings.”

  “What kind of effect?”

  “Severe inflation.”

  “Like when my stomach bloats due to excess flatulence?”

  Did I just admit that publicly?

  “Yes—but I’m referring to the expansion of one’s original desire.”

  “How big an expansion are we talking about? Big-Bang big, or a small bloat of gas in the belly?”

  “Double the size of the original desire.”

  “Jeez.”

  “It makes you feel half-empty after experiencing pleasure, because the craving has doubled. So you require two pennies to sate your desire.”

  “Your point?”

  “You’re forced to go out and earn two pennies to reap pleasure.”

  “I see where you’re going.”

  “Once again, the pleasure doubles your desire—”

  Caitlin nodded. “And now I’m lusting after four pennies’ worth?”

  “Correct. And the doubling continues. The pleasure quickly becomes quicksand.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Each new round of increased pleasure inflates your desire twofold, leaving you half-empty again.”

  “Like chasing wind on a hamster wheel. Or splurging on a dial-up modem or eight-track cassette player. Waste of time. No scenario where we end up jumping through hoops of happiness.”

  “Except this is not some sort of Sisyphean task,” Scarecrow said.

  Must look up Sisyphean task.

  His tone turned bleak. “It’s far more dangerous than that.”

  Now comes the dire warning!

  “As the doubling continues,” Scarecrow said, “your expanded craving compels you to take increasingly drastic measures to fill it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Your best friend becomes popular. You’re jealous, desperate to ascend the social ladder. You engage in outlandish behavior to fill the craving and steal your best friend’s thunder. It works. You capture the spotlight. But the pleasure you feel eventually wears off, because the pleasure effect has doubled your desire for popularity. Now you feel twice as insecure as you did before, but you don’t understand why.”

  I wonder what his office hours are?

  “You become consumed by a superficial need for fame and celebrity, lost in some illusionary fantasy that has you dreaming about a KFC gig.”

  “Cashiering at Kentucky Fried Chicken?”

  Scarecrow shook his head. “No. A guest spot with Kimmel, Fallon, or Colbert.”

  “That was kewl, Scarecrow.”

  Home sweet home!

  “Thank you; much appreciated.”

  Scarecrow nodded and continued. “This process permeates every part of your existence. Some yearn for wealth. They dedicate their time and effort to stealing away someone else’s business. Then they’re compelled to defraud and embezzle—whatever it takes to fill the void. Some commit murder to usurp a victim’s entire existence, to replace them in this world.”

  “Like some kinda weirdo, homicidal doppelgänger syndrome?”

  “You might say that. And so, to make a long story short—”

  “Too late.”

  “If left unchecked, it does not take long for you to graduate from stealing your best friend’s boyfriend to eating your best friend’s gallbladder. And that’s how a zombie is born.”

  “Totally crackers. Desires gone wild. My math teacher talked about this once. Double a penny each day for thirty days—you wind up with over five million bucks. Exponential growth. The perks of compound interest.”

  Scarecrow wagged a finger. “Think about it, Caitlin. If people react to the red band thirty times in a day . . . therein lies the tragedy. So many of us roaming the various worlds half-empty, half-hollow, half-fulfilled. Eventually, all the kingdoms are overrun with flesh-eaters. The emptiness inside and the futile pursuit of red-band gratification is the cause of it all.”

  “Okay—I want off the hamster wheel.”

  “Resist the lure of the red band—not because it doesn’t arouse pleasure. It does. But because it comes with a cost. The pleasure never lasts. The very pleasure you reap leaves you desiring twice as much as before.”

  “So a pleasureless existence is the life that awaits us?”

  “You forgot.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. When you resist red-band reactions, light from the Violet Spectrum shines. Violet has no side effects. It’s permanent. And it includes solutions to any and all your problems. But the only pathway to the violet band is by resisting the red. Do you now understand the dire warning?”

  She drew a breath, then exhaled long and hard. “Each time I give in to one of my compulsions, they’ll double in strength. One step forward—two steps back. Instant gratification equals double greediness.”

  Scarecrow nodded grimly. “You must remain vigilant at all times. Keep your focus inward. Reaction is now your enemy, as much of one as Janus or the Enchanter.”

 
“How do I manage both?”

  “Mentally, you need to be in two places at the same time. No one ever said life was going to be easy. At least, not in our universe.”

  Tin Man and Glinda smiled poignantly as they gathered beside Scarecrow, shoulder to shoulder, arms around one another.

  “Welcome to our life,” Glinda said.

  Welcome indeed.

  Caitlin was now one of them.

  A half-blood-eyed, half-walking-dead corpse who was half under the hypnotic influence of darkness. And she was really standing in the cookery of a medieval castle belonging to the authentic Wicked Witch of the West. She nearly did in Lady Glinda to boot.

  Certainly not what Caitlin had planned when she had woken up that morning in Glendale, California.

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  Janus caught the scent of his prey straightaway, by detecting the alteration of a human’s blood. He and the six other crowmen congregated on a hillside and homed in on their prey’s location: the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle.

  “She’s ours now,” Janus said.

  The crowmen pressed their black fedoras tightly onto their black-feathered heads. They buttoned their long black coats and rose straight up into the sky, red fire pulsing in the pupils of their bubbling, tar-black, liquid eyes.

  * * *

  Caitlin’s new acute senses detected a sudden vigilance in Scarecrow’s demeanor. His eyes glimmered like a red cherry on an ambulance, confirming that he was worried about something.

  “Wat up now?” she asked.

  He departed the cookery urgently, without responding. Caitlin chased after him. He dashed out of the castle and began to scan the skies, eyes afire.

  His fingers balled into fists, and he began snorting like an angry bull ready to gouge.

  “What’s happening, Straw Man?” she asked. “We need to leave! Now! He found you—they’re coming.”

  “Who’s he? They who?”

  “Janus. The crowmen. I need you to stick two fingers down your throat.”

  “Do what?”

  “You’ll have to vomit up the contents of your stomach after all.”