Sequela

by Cleland Smith

  The ad space alternated between a collage of logos and giant versions of individual logos. They came up so large that you couldn't really see them, but the more established ones were so engrained in the people's consciousness that they would recognise them from just a corner, the turn of a ribbon or swirl, from two colours set one against the other. Occasionally, where the company identifier was the building itself, this led to one building being projected onto another, life-sized, pictured against a blue sky on a clear day, a view which could never really be had of any building in its entirety. This created the illusion that the square opened onto a desert containing only the sponsor's building, inducing a vertiginous feeling which heightened the excitement of the audience.

  The fourth side of the square was the V building itself. In front of it was the stage, split into three sections. A catwalk stretched from the central podium right to the middle of the square and ended in a circular platform above the fountain-come-exchange hub. The backdrop to the stage was a giant screen flanked by velvet swathes, in reality a high-definition image of velvet grain projected onto more silk panels.

  The images on the screen shifted, alternating pictures of the audience, close-ups of celebrities in the VIP strips, stills of the models and, every now and again, a shadowy image of Kester. There he stood, legs wide, hands in pockets, on V's glass outcrop, the dying streetlamps of the suburbs stretching out a net of glowing nodes before him, the sun a bubble of molten glass swelling and spilling light at the horizon.

  Watching the display on his dressing room display, Kester felt a buzz in his throat, pressure at the base of his skull. It was about to begin.

  'There you are, Kester,' said Alexis, as his picture appeared on the big screen.

  She draped her long arms around his neck and rested her chin on his shoulder. He could see her face reflected in the mirror portion of the display: feline satisfaction.

  Kester's chest swelled. Yes, there he was. There he was, standing on top of the tallest building in the City. There he was, pictured as a dark hero, rock star to the rock stars, creator.

  'The man who made destruction creative. We've done it. You've done it, Kester. You've recreated fashion.'

  'Will they go for it?'

  'Kester, look at the crowd. Those people out there are rock stars, politicians, top lawyers, sports heroes. They are standing there, waiting to see you. They've already gone for it. They're hungry because they've been kept waiting. Believe me Kester, they're wet as teenagers.'

  'To see what the viruses can do.'

  'To see you in the flesh. This is going to be big. They're going to want to touch you. They'll want to have you. They'll want the personal treatment.'

  Alexis' grip on his shoulders loosened and she stood up. Kester could no longer see her face in the mirror.

  'You think?'

  'I know. That list I showed you earlier. Hot prospects for the business.'

  'What about them?'

  'Like I said, they're going to want you.'

  Alexis was drawing away from him. Her limp arms dragged back across his shoulders until only her hands were touching him. Then, lightly, they lifted as if she had dissolved. He watched her in the mirror as she walked to the stand behind him and started rummaging through a jewellery box.

  'And I guess I'm expected to give them what they want. For the good of the business?'

  'If you don't like it, you're welcome to speak to Chen.'

  It wasn't entirely unexpected. Kester had known for a while that the models would be exchanging with the VIPs. He had supposed that he should be as OK with it as they were, if it came to the crunch. But he wasn't.

  'It's a one-off. It'll be worth your while to suck it up for this one show, maybe the next one.'

  'I don't even wear. I'm not even supposed to wear. Talk to my image consultant.'

  'You're wearing now,' Alexis said.

  Kester frowned. She had asked him to put on Touché the week before because she wanted to paint him – she had agreed to do it in private and all below the neckline. Her designs had since faded, but she had persuaded him to keep the virus in his system. And here was the real reason.

  'That was different, Alexis. That was just for you.'

  'Well now it's for one VIP of your choosing.' Alexis finally found a pair of earrings she was satisfied with and pinned them through her ears with liquid precision. 'Just one – exclusivity is the key. That way you stay more…less…attainable. It's just a routine exchange.'

  'Routine,' Kester said, half to himself.

  He stood and turned so he was facing her, watched as she swivelled side-to-side, posing for him. She had said her gown was like a pair of chaps and now he saw what she meant. From small shoulder seams, it clung down her body in two parallel red velvet strips, mirroring the curtains in the setup outside. The gap between them was a long V, the two strips only coming together just above the bikini-shaped bottoms. The legs were slit right up the sides, in her distinctive style. It had been designed with her in mind, for sure, and for the viruses she was wearing. She had her hair slicked on either side of her head and shaped on top into a Spartan crest. The gown was backless, revealing how the spine of blonde hair continued down her back. The designs Kester had painted on her body were centred and framed by the V cut front which stopped below her navel.

  The sight of Alexis garbed in his viruses made Kester feel strong, made him pulse all over. She fastened a chiffon collar round her neck and tucked in the panels of fabric that hung front and back. Then she turned to face him. She was wearing Persona too – he could see it shining subtly through her thick stage makeup, only noticeable if you knew what you were looking for.

  'I wanted to be the first to wear all of them together,' she said, putting a hand over the chiffon. 'I want to wear them all first from now on.'

  Kester laughed and looked down at his chest. 'You'd better keep it quiet. My boss is a monster. She'd have my balls if she thought I'd put my mistress before the client.'

  'Mistress?' Alexis smirked at the old-fashioned term. 'They're playing your song.' She drew in close and looked over his shoulder at the display.

  The music started. Fashion. First, in came the bass, steady as a heartbeat, a measured catwalk footstep, then the siren horns.

  Kester pushed a kiss onto Alexis' lips, his heart racketing in his chest. With a triumphant smile, she slid past him and strode out into the corridor, her dress flowing after her, fawning over her body. He took one last look in the mirror and then followed her.

  Backstage, Kester watched on the monitor as Alexis walked onto the catwalk. She was a cartoon character, the lights swimming green and red across her skin. The roar of the crowd came in squalls, each wave of excitement threatening to spill into violence, collapsing, and then building anew. Trapped in the square by glass and metal, the cacophony churned in on itself, a maelstrom of noise, vibrating the air. Kester imagined Alexis ripping off her cravat, overcome with excitement, but she stopped and stood still as a mannequin at the end of the catwalk, above the exchange booths. Her stillness and focus bled into the crowd until all eyes were on her and the noise had fallen to a steady hubbub.

  'This, ladies and gentlemen…' she said, stamping her stilettoed foot three times on the platform that covered the fountain. 'This, ladies and gentlemen…' The noise fell to a tense mumble as she cast her steel gaze across the audience, turning smoothly on her heel. 'This…' she pointed above her head at the storeys-high image of Kester. 'This is why we are here tonight.' The audience screamed. She crouched and smiled, waiting for the noise to fall again. 'So you've come to see the future of viruses?' The crowd cheered. She came up until she was half standing, arms out towards them. 'You've come to see the future of fashion?' A louder roar. She stood straight and pointed at them. 'You've come to see the future of sex?' It seemed they couldn't get any louder. 'Well, ladies and gentlemen, let's not get too excited. Every man should be judged by his works, should he not?' She turned and walked back down the catwalk. 'I give
you…' she said, halfway down, ratcheting up the cheers with her arms. 'I give you…' again, to louder cheers. 'I give you…' she was shouting now. 'I give you KL01 – Corona!'

  Alexis disappeared backstage. The music stopped. The square fell dark. The crowd was silent, waiting. The celebrities down the sides of the catwalk and around the fountain squirmed in their seats. Across the square, the sea of close-packed faces glistened in the ambient light, softened with sweat. Just as their eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, all the spotlights in the square hit the catwalk entrance full beam. Five models were standing there, as still as cut-outs, swathed in black, only their eyes visible through the slits in their black hoods. Still silence.

  As the first model's foot hit the catwalk, the music blared out – Fashion again, this time a brilliantly unhinged live version played by The Itch. The crowd was bedlam as they tried to figure out what they were looking at. Then, when the first model stopped at the end of the catwalk, her face appeared on the big screens and on both sides of the square, stories high. And there they were, eyes encircled with gold. The crowd roared as she blinked. Four other pairs of eyes bobbed down the catwalk behind her, then posed in formation, each a different metallic hue: silver, livid rust, ruby, acid green.

  Kester watched as one-by-one the models did their two runs of the catwalk, paused, milked the crowd, and then disappeared down onto the VIP strip. The models walked up and down the side of the catwalk, flirting with the celebrities. Then one of them took someone by the hand – Bo Omotoye, the heavyweight champion. The crowd watched the big screen above as she led him down towards the front edge of the catwalk and into an exchange booth. Its door lit up red to indicate that it was engaged. The crowd erupted. One by one the other models found themselves partners and disappeared into the remaining booths. Sweaty noises filled the square for a moment, the sounds from the miked-up booths mixed together, booming out. The crowd fizzed.

  When the doors were all engaged, it was time for The Itch to do their part. The curtain rose on their stage to the side of the catwalk. Their price had been high. They had resisted 'selling out' at first but now that they had acquiesced, they were doing it in style. There was no fabric to the three members' outfits except the ads, each of them a ragged commercial collage. Gregor was sweating attractively in a full suit, while his female guitarist Zelda wore a bikini of logos. All that was visible of the drummer was his naked shoulders, but his bass drum was plastered with bastardised logos. All three wore a variation on Gregor's blue tidal wave Mohawk. While the exchanges were taking place, they blasted the excited crowd with their latest release.

  When the song ended, the lights fell again. The lit doors of the exchange booths switched off as their occupants left and returned to their seats. One by one, the models glided up the VIP strip and disappeared backstage.

  Kester found himself on the edge of his seat. He knew that each virus set would follow the same format, but somehow it was tense. Next up was Lanugo-go, then Persona, featuring a guest appearance from Latin Rap Superstar Pera Pera. Kester felt the evening slipping past him and snatched at the details with his senses, snapshots to remember. He felt as though he were running fast through a fairground.

  Already it was time for Luminescence. Alexis announced it, wove nimbly through the backstage staff to where Kester sat and perched next to him. She didn't say anything, just stared wide-eyed at the monitor.

  'You're doing great,' Kester said and her lips twitched.

  This time, the lights stayed low, with the exception of a thin line of muted LEDs down either side of the catwalk. The models were in place, their nodes glowing dimly through their shrouds. The audience started to mumble amongst themselves, pointing and straining in the dark. Then, as the band started up again, five stage hands whipped off the shrouds and they were off, Hera first, Kester guessed from the height. The sound of the band disappeared into the crowd's hysteria. Kester and Alexis watched together as the luminous bodies hip-swinged their way up and down the catwalk, and ultimately into the VIP pit.

  'Wait,' Kester said. 'Look – Hera.'

  'What?'

  'There – she's up on the barrier.' The camera had zoomed in on her, standing like a glowing goddess on the security barrier at the front of the pit. 'Is this part of it?'

  Kester grabbed Alexis' wrist as Hera plunged forward in a crowd-dive, sailed across the dark sea of hands for about ten metres and then was engulfed. There was a dip in the darkness of the crowd, a vortex, as the crowd tried to get at her.

  'What the fuck?' Kester said, then looked around, as if to get help.

  'Wait,' Alexis said.

  The frenzy lasted a few minutes, then there was a crack and a bright, pale flare fizzed into life in the centre of the struggle. The circle of people pulled back like water from an oil droplet, save for two frozen in the act. The two audience members crowded Hera's legs and hips like beggars, filthy with clothes, faces turned up to the light, mouths slack as gaping pockets. From their grubbing pile thrust Hera's torso, naked flesh marble white in the harsh light, blonde hair wild as a maenad's, her whole form focused upwards to where she held the flare above her head.

  'Yes!' Alexis said. 'Go on, Hera! You didn't think I'd send her in there without some kind of protection did you?'

  'You sent her…'

  'Now watch this.' Alexis pointed at the top of the monitor.

  From up above, one of the line police lowered down and picked Hera up from the ground, lifting her onto his lap where she pretended to hump him as they ascended to the safety wire.

  'OK,' said Alexis, 'that wasn't part of the plan but she does like to improvise.'

  The light went off on the two of them but it was clear some kind of wrestling was going on. Then Hera's form began to move in a familiar rhythm. The crowd were pointing and yelling.

  'That's my girl.' Alexis punched the palm of her hand.

  'She's crazy.'

  'Complete looney tunes. It was her idea.'

  The carnage below continued until all of the remaining models had disappeared into the booths. The Itch were once more in the spotlight.

  In minutes, the song was over and Alexis was back at the side of the stage, announcing the finale: Touché. The models were congregating backstage. When Kester saw them, an involuntary laugh escaped his chest. They were all done up in labcoats. They had their hair scraped back in pony tails, or slicked back if it was short, and they wore safety goggles over their made-up eyes.

  The labcoats drew a laugh from the audience too and either the models were too professional to react, or they really didn't see the funny side of it, which made it even funnier. Again, the music started with the first foot down. The models took up position evenly down the stage, facing alternate directions. On cue, they began a slow strip-tease, aimed partly at the VIPs, and partly at the rest of the crowd via to-camera winks and pouts. Considering they didn't have very much to strip out of, they did an amazing job, ending up in the modest white knickers they wore in the lab. By the time Alexis joined Kester again, he was in kinks. He hadn't known about the labcoats.

  'Thought you might appreciate this,' she said into his ear, laying an arm across his shoulders and kissing him firmly on the cheek. 'You have no idea how much training it took to get catwalk models to act like that.'

  When they had stripped down to their knickers, they still looked completely clean. Kester had been doubtful about the timings, but Alexis had been adamant it would work. They had done three trial runs and they seemed stable.

  There it was: slowly but surely the Touché patterns were appearing on the models, drawing staggered bouts of cheering and whistling from the crowd as they realised what was happening.

  'You've calmed down,' Kester hollered over the noise.

  'We're almost there. But you're up next, baby.'

  Kester had almost forgotten that he was a part of it. Alexis dragged him to his feet and took him over to wardrobe check, where a team of stylists ruffled his hair carefully and adjusted hi
s clothes to make sure they were hanging right. He was wearing broken-down jeans, a yellow t-shirt with a faded logo for some B-movie that no-one had ever heard of – 'Pandemic!' Alexis handed him his labcoat to finish the outfit.

  'They're really sending me out there in my labcoat?' he asked as he put it on.

  'Kester, you look hot,' she replied with her spitting K and walked off towards the stage, hips swinging.

  Kester walked to the wings where he could see her geeing up the crowd one last time. As she exited, she put her lips to his ear.

  'You're theirs for tonight,' she said, then pushed him forward to stand at the catwalk entrance, ready for his cue.

  When the lights came up, Kester couldn't see. They had warned him against the urge to lift his arm to shield his eyes, but he forgot all his coaching and did it anyway. He walked out in exactly the way the show director had told him not to, as if he was walking out of a spaceship that had landed on another planet.

  The crowd went wild. He was from another planet – why shouldn't he act this way? As he worked his way down the catwalk, he began to enjoy himself and ceased fighting the adrenaline. He gave a few small bows and waves, then he laughed, buoyed up by the crowd's energy. He looked at the faces. He was on stage at a rock concert. Thousands of pairs of eyes were on him, wishing him well. Voices were calling out his name, clamouring into one big swell of excited shouts. Arms reached up amongst the smiles; hands flexed, desperate to get inches closer to him. The smiles filled him with a frantic energy – he grabbed the edges of his labcoat, held it out like a cape and did a lap of honour up and down the catwalk to a cacophony of screams. At the end he jumped right to the edge of the fountain platform, whisked off his labcoat and whirled it off out across the VIPs and into the crowd. He laughed, waving and bowing again, as it was ripped to pieces.