Zephyr VI

by Warren Hately

  I totter on my stupid heels into the unlit corporate suite. Now some measure of safety’s assured me, my teetering pile of unaddressed emotions collapses with me beneath them. I cuss and growl prettily as I wrestle off the above-the-knee boots and hurl one, then the other across the half-empty office, catching sight of myself reflected in the darkened windows with mascara running down my cheeks and Cusp’s wickedly peaked cat-mask dangling beneath my trembling lip as I sob, finding vinyl above-the-elbow gloves aren’t a great absorbent when it comes to tears and drool, not sure I can blame my new hormones alone for the outpouring that soon sees me kneeling prostate in the middle of the too-new-to-be-scuffed carpet, green hair like spider-web clinging to my shoulders and arms, chest heaving as I cry at the fresh tidal wave of loss flooding out all the other tragedies it dislodges to the surface.

  Holland did not deserve this – and nor do I. Or at least I don’t believe I do. Yet for now my thoughts are with the bright, buxom, breath-taking beauty I knew whose essence I now know was snuffed out by Matrioshka without a second thought. And I also have to accept those heady moments of the past few days were just yet more fiction to throw on the bonfire of my vanity as I accept whatever spark lingered between Holland and I, it was expunged along with her life-force back in Afghanistan. There was no late-in-the-day resurgence of the spark of passion I thought was between us when we met again, powerless and lost in the city the year before.

  The woman I knew is gone, and so to that landless grave goes another who could have and should have marked my life with growth and goodness and joy. It is not the world which is poorer for that loss, but my soul which seems to darken yet further with the implied karmic blame for yet another life transfigured by disaster.

  After a time, the sadness gives way to anger and I look around at the empty shell of a life that now lacks a body to inhabit it and the loathing and scorn and anger and humiliation and the out-and-out powerlessness of the situation overwhelms me, and then pretty much everything is cactus as I smash anything and everything I can, and what evades me I use to destroy anything else left.

  Finally spent, I drop to my knees again, wracked by sobs and white-hot tears, my right arm clothed to the shoulder in living darkness.

  And it occurs to me I am yet to see any light.

  *

  LATER, I TURN the bar fridge upright and dig out the last few pop tarts and eat them cold, crouched in the ruins of my life up until this point, a feral child making do in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I pull off the ridiculous gloves and the mask, leaving me in what resembles a one-piece swimsuit designed by a cabal of pornographers working to specs from the Spanish Inquisition. Exhausted, I collapse on the bed and twist myself in the sheets that still smell of the sex it’s clear now I had with myself.

  Zephyr 20.9 “Into This Crawling Chaos”

  DAYLIGHT AND THE palpitations of the city echoing through the lonely corporate office wake me, the black plastic cover to my hideaway flapping loose like the flag of an S&M pirate ship in the strong easterly gale that pelts the morning outside with hail and about ten inches of rain. Exhausted still and groggy, I am numb even to the disorientation that comes with having swapped bodies, any sort of nascent dream-wishes from during the night that I might awaken to find this was all a bad dream or has mysteriously reversed now not even rising from the depths of my unconscious as I stare at the shambles I have wrought with an alcoholic’s gaze, however much it might fall from a supermodel’s face.

  I can hear a panicked policeman on a loudhailer somewhere beyond, though I can’t make out the words and periodically it is bleeped out like by censors as the sirens and honking horns of emergency response vehicles move past. The animal-in-distress vibe of the living city continues, but my heart feels dead to it – like a wrung-out sponge gaffer-taped within my chest, no more capable of feeling or even acting on it than a still life or a yellowing Polaroid stuck there with the imprint of a child’s thumb.

  For the longest time I sit on the bed’s edge forlorn, staring out robotically, unmoving, barely really thinking except letting the waves of nothingness lap at the edge of my consciousness and slowly erode my anti-Zen state. The destruction of my private sanctum is metaphoric – hell, metonymic – of my entire existence, and whatever passion fueled my inner tornado the night before and made such hedonism worthwhile, it is a vanished ghost come morning. I sit with my depressing ravens slowly coming home to roost as I sort through the bones of the latest massacre and understand just how genuinely distraught I am for myself.

  I really cannot imagine going on.

  And for the first time I then realize I need to pee.

  *

  AT HEART, I am a dude, and the brief walk to the bathroom reawakens a perhaps never truly dormant comprehension that whatever else ails me – and remembering I am alive, and still breathing air, and have powers of a sort – I am trapped in the body of one of the hottest women alive. That short walk is a non-verbal confirmation as I tune out the misery of the past hours and the insistence of Holland’s bladder and listen instead to the delicate algebra of her sashaying hips, her padded footfalls on the crisp boardroom carpet, the heft and sway of her breasts as I maneuver her like a bomber pilot taking one last mission in an unexpected test drive from the open plan bedchamber into the small but well-appointed bathroom designed for the CEO of this company that never bore fruit or maybe it was just lemons.

  The fluorescent light blinks on, somehow flattering against all probability as I take in Holland’s bruised lips and sore eyes, the gossamer strands of light green hair a halo with the light reflecting off the faux titanium fixtures.

  All I’m wearing again is the PVC cat suit, and with one glance at the mirror and a lazy hand gesture to turn the pressure sensitive shower spray on, I return my enthralled gaze to the vision reflected back at me and eye up the ridiculous yet fantasy-induced costume, chip-nailed fingertips hesitating a moment before confirmed in their purpose.

  As steam fills the chamber, I finish the job started the night before and undress.

  *

  HOURS LATER, IT is time to get dressed, but the intervening hours haven’t thrown up any solution to the barely sensed conundrum of how to appropriately garb this ridiculous body. I cannot say with any authority why a woman of the grace, forthrightness, intelligence and clitoral sensitivity as Holland would willingly squeeze herself into a costume that quite literally crushes her breasts together like a tit-fuck just waiting to happen, but with half a lifetime in the superhero business and now finding myself on the weird-ass end of this eschatological travesty, I am damned if I’m going to let myself be ogled and eye-fucked by any of the masks I know.

  That said, Zephyr’s apartment doesn’t exactly lend itself to alternatives.

  I wreck the joint all over again in my search, coming up with nothing except a pair of Night Angel’s tiny briefs. With great reluctance I squeeze back into the one-piece and retrieve the long gloves and boots, sitting on the bed’s edge even longer moments contemplating the quantum levels of irony at work here and wondering what gods or spirits or life forms or overseers are jostling into each other to bear first witness to this seemingly never-ending self-imposed ridicule. And then I put the fucking boots on and stand, managing with about an eighty-five per cent success rate to extinguish from my gait the look of still having testicles as I practice pacing the grey carpet like a foal getting in its legs.

  It is night beyond. I heard explosions earlier and now the high rises to the west are back-lit by the glow of some new catastrophe that will frankly have to get in the fucking queue right now as this ongoing wardrobe malfunction that is my life takes precedence. As I said, there’s no way in hell I will tack towards Twilight’s island in this state, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely out of options

  Thoughts of Tessa re-enter my head for the first time and I nearly disappear into the crazy laugh as I guess we’re both lesbians now. Like father, like daughter. The reality by now is Tessa must be locked away in som
e FBI holding tank, Siren and God knows who else picking over her – and I don’t even know why. Clearly something is catastrophically amiss in Atlantic City, and between my competing urgent and pressing needs, the wellbeing of the city must be considered too.

  I slip through the black plastic and launch into the cold night air, focusing to muster whatever this strange diurnal force that Cusp commands to propel me through the sky in the direction of my daughter’s apartment.

  *

  A SHORT TIME later I land direct on the metal fire escape and clamber through into the unlit living room still much the same as we left it two days earlier except Syzygy now sits by candle light eating a bowl of ramen.

  “Oh wow,” she says as she stands up. “I was starting to think no one else was going to show. Where the heck is Tessa’s dad?”

  You’d think I would be prepared for this moment, but no. And in the best tradition of deadbeats everywhere, I choose to fudge the answer, giving the black-haired, coltish girl my best indecisive hum.

  “I don’t suppose Windsong got away?”

  “Are you joking?” Syzygy looks livid, though it’s hard to tell by the weak light. “The government have her. I . . . I freaked. I ran. I really blew it. Do you think she’ll forgive me?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  The rebuke is a perhaps much-needed slap to the face, and Syzygy pulls up short and regards me a moment, her expression slowly becoming one I momentarily find hard to read until I realize she is checking me over on the sly.

  “What?” I say and show her my vinyl-clad palms.

  “I’m sorry, you’re just . . . so beautiful. And I didn’t even know I was into girls until . . . you know, Windsong.”

  “OK, stop,” I say. “This is getting weird. I mean, it’s way past weird already. A million fucking light years past weird, but I have to explain some shit to you honey and you’re probably going to blow a fuse or something along the way, OK?”

  “Wow, you sound a heck of a lot like Tessa’s dad.”

  My jaw – or should I say Holland’s jaw – clacks shut for a millisecond and this astute gesture is followed by reluctant nodding that eventually jackhammers into a resounding yes.

  “That’s because I am.”

  “What?”

  “I’m Zephyr.”

  “No, you’re Cusp. It was Cusp, right?”

  “This is Cusp’s body. I got . . . I don’t know how to explain it shorthand, but yeah, the shorthand is I’ve been body-jacked.”

  “Whoa. What?”

  Syzygy holds up a hand and clutches her forehead like she’s about to sneeze. It takes me a moment to realize that wild, wholly inappropriate tittering laughter is welling up somewhere deep within her girlish frame, and when it breaks loose all I can really do is stand there and be the butt of her hilarity, thoroughly pwned, as the kids on the internet used to say. And as the laughter dies away and then returns a few times, my rueful look transcends into one of impatience and finally I just fucking walk out of the room.

  It takes her a few seconds to regain her composure, but my daughter’s fuck buddy follows me into the kitchen to find me finishing off the pickles from the jar.

  “I believe you,” Syzygy says.

  “Of course you believe me. Why wouldn’t you believe me?”

  “Well, it’s a pretty wild tale.”

  “Yeah, well . . . we’re superheroes. It’s our stock in trade.”

  “You must have a heap of stories you could tell.”

  “If we were around the camp fire singing Koom-by-whatever-that-fucking-song is, then maybe yes, but right now we have much bigger things in front of us.”

  “But you’re . . . you’re Zephyr,” Syzygy says, star-struck or something, and also ignoring everything I just said. “You fought Ill-Centurion to a standstill, saved president Bush from his own clones. Heck, didn’t I read somewhere you met God or something once?”

  “You say ‘heck’ a lot. Where the fuck are you from?”

  “– Didn’t you meet God? Is that true?”

  “Well, sorta,” I say reluctantly.

  At Syzygy’s look I add, “Me and the Sentinels – I guess I should say the Old Sentinels – ran into this crawling chaos-type that we think is the primary creative force in the cosmos people think of when they think of, you know, the Almighty. Or, you know, maybe not. Fuck, I dunno. It was a long time ago.”

  “How did you even live to tell the tale?”

  Begrudgingly I admit it’s a pretty outlandish story.

  “A guy on my team called Skyhawk convinced us the only way to bring this omnipotent power down to our level was to explain he was never going to understand humanity while having all that power, so he or she or whatever the hell you want to call it should, you know, ‘give up the mantle’ and walk a mile in humanity’s shoes or whatever.”

  “Skyhawk? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Yeah, well the Almighty didn’t exactly take the suggestion kindly.”

  Syzygy raises an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. He got erased from history.”

  “Harsh,” she says. “How did you escape?”

  “Well, we were pretty much doomed, you know, and if the Almighty’s wife didn’t turn up right at that moment I think he was having second thoughts about his support for the existence of organic life, at least in this quadrant of the universe, so. . . .”

  “His wife?”

  “The things they don’t tell you in the bible, huh?”

  “Spoilers or . . . yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, Zephyr,” Syzygy says and moves closer. “I can’t shake knowing you’re this, you know, veteran mask, with all this experience and all these stories, and here you are in the . . . the body . . . of this smoking babe, and I –”

  “Stop whatever Being John Malkovich moment you’re having right there, Syzygy or whatever your real name is –”

  “It’s Joan.”

  “OK, Joan. Cut the crap, OK? Do you care about my daughter?”

  “Of course I do. I just feel so powerless –”

  “I don’t think you’re going to do much good hitting on her old man whether he is or isn’t actually technically a male lesbian or whatever he, I mean I am right now, got it?”

  “I thought you’d be cool with it.”

  “Well, you know, ordinarily, yes I probably would be . . . but not with my daughter’s girlfriend. Have a little . . . fuck . . . fidelity or something, will ya?”

  “Jeez, you really do sound like a straight middle-aged white guy.”

  “Look, I came for some help.”

  Syzygy calms down and nods.

  “You tell me what I can do,” she says.

  I start pulling off my gloves.

  “I need an outfit.”

  Zephyr 20.10 (Coda)

  THE GOOD NEWS, if there is any, is that this city-wide collapse is exactly that. As she and I dig through hers and Tessa’s clothes – which is to say we walk into the bedroom they share and just start picking up random garments off the floor – Syzygy relates how she flew as far as the Canadian border before regaining phone reception and seeing the lights on in that Disneyland of the north, Toronto.

  “Makes me kind of wonder why the fuck the cavalry isn’t charging in,” I say as I pick up and discard a sequined halter top.

  “You know, it’s really hot when you cuss like that.”

  “Cuss?”

  I stare at the girl and don’t really know where to go from there, so I just keep staring and sigh loudly like she’s a TV commercial I am wishing would end. See? I can do hot girl easy. Joan gets the picture (no pun intended) and retrieves a pair of Tessa’s leather pants.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s this goddamned . . . cuirass . . . that’s worrying me,” I say.

  “Queer-ass?”

  “Cuirass. Like a . . . piece of armor or . . . fuck, just forget about it.”

  I take the pants and scan around and shrug an
d kick off these ridiculous boots while Syzygy gives me a couple of lingering looks and then comes back with a pair of pointy-toed Ariadne Ross black leather boots with buckles down the sides. I shuck into the leather pants inadvertently putting on a little wiggly dance show of my own as I try to squirm Cusp’s curvaceous hips and ass into my daughter’s otherwise quite welcoming pants.

  There’s a dyke pun in there somewhere, but I’ll leave it there like a literary Where’s Waldo.

  Syzygy – or Joan, as she keeps insisting I call her – gives a look like a pervert at a pet show, and at one point I think I see her actually wipe drool from her chin. Tessa’s pants fit well enough in the hips, but they’re about ten inches too short for Holland’s long legs.

  “That shouldn’t really matter once you wear those boots,” Syzygy says.

  And true to that, once the boots are on I feel slightly more reasonably dressed despite the top of the cat suit persisting to squeeze her/my/our tits together like a Subway sandwich. Once again I catch Syzygy looking and I give her a ribald “what?” shrug.

  “Can I touch them?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Your . . . boobs. They’re . . . awesome.”

  I sigh. “Yes, they are pretty awesome.”

  “So . . . can I?”

  “What, like a . . . science experiment?”

  “Totally.”

  “I need another shower anyway,” I say.

  “How long does that take you?”

  “. . . about six hours.”

  And true to my word, some time around the next sunrise it’s time to kick into action and see what the fuck has happened to my city.