Milky Way Marmalade

by Mike DiCerto

  "This place spreads far, wide, deep and dark,” the child answered, using an unsettling combination of words for one so young. “And rather strange, too. In order to get out, one must position oneself to the forefront of my father's thoughts and then hope for a lapse of concentration on his part wherein an anomalous portal may open."

  "Can you show me how?"

  "Perchance later,” answered the boy enigmatically, letting a blob of spittle fall from his mouth into the spinning black hole.

  The saliva ball sparkled and dissolved into its atomic structure as it wound down and around into the tiny singularity. Caffrey closed his eyes and shivered.

  "Isn't that interesting?” the boy said, allowing spittle to fall again. “Would you like to drip a lugie into my cosmic whirlpool?"

  "This kid creeps me out,” Caffrey whispered.

  "He shouldn't,” Poe 33 whispered back. “I haven't figured him out completely, but he is an ambi-dimensional, trans-frequency being. He is a memory, of sorts, but one with such far-reaching connections it's as if he can crumble or recreate the very fabric of this dimensional sphere."

  "Young man,” Angie coaxed, “we really need to get out. We need to get to the solid place and help some people who are in trouble."

  The boy ignored her and studied Caffrey a moment. “Are you a musician, sir?"

  "Yes."

  "Would you like to see my grand collection of musical instruments?"

  If the offer had been to pummel the boy with a tuba, Caffrey might have jumped at the chance; yet as he locked eyes with him, he found himself agreeing to the offer. There was a sparkling fire in the boy's eyes that froze his marrow. Caffrey nodded.

  "Come on, then!"

  * * * *

  "I have to keep it locked,” the boy explained as he slipped his hand into the material of the solid steel door.

  A click sounded from within and the door opened silently. Caffrey watched as the boy's hand emerged from the body of the door as though he were a ghost. The two entered the narrow but very long room, lined from ceiling to floor with musical instruments ranging from the simple to the exotic. The boy immediately picked up a spiraling instrument that looked as if it were formed from liquid.

  "This is amongst my favorite string instruments. It once belonged to Sepilon Soy."

  Caffrey studied the reddish-brown surface and plucked one of the twenty-four crystal strings. “I met Sepilon Soy."

  "Really?"

  "Yes. He played at a wedding I attended.” Caffrey recaptured the memory.

  The child's eyes drifted away to the rows of instruments. “They are the memories of my father. He was surrounded by much music when my mother was alive. I found these scattered about his mind and stored them away, before they vanished with all the memories of her he wants to forget."

  "Can you play all of these?"

  "No—but they can all play me."

  "Why does your father allow it?"

  "My father used to love music. When my mother died he thought the galaxy sounded awful. So, he started thinking of ways to redo it. Without music. He believed no one could write music like she did."

  Caffrey studied the boy with a deepening curiosity. “What are you?"

  "I was an idea they had. They would sit out on the porch and imagine a child they would want to have if they had their druthers. So, my mother wrote a symphony about the lad. It was called The Creamery Child. My mother conducted it for the first time at the Grand Hall of the Truffledites. It was a great hit. My father was seated in the front row beside the Premiere Truffledite and her husband. They were so impressed by the music they used their influence in the elite musical circles to get her on the list to conduct the grand Reylinkus Orchestra. She did."

  "And?"

  "Do you know anything about Reylinkus Orchestras?” the boy asked, fixing Caffrey with a pompous gaze.

  "Yeah. They last as long as the conductor does."

  "Worse than that. Once you begin you can only stop if you die. If you stop without death you are killed. That part kind of slipped their minds."

  "She stopped?"

  The boy nodded. “My presence in his mind is the source of much pain."

  Caffrey turned and left.

  * * * *

  Poe 33 sat quietly atop a hyper-cube toy box, studying the Earth. Caffrey stepped up behind him, followed by The Creamery Child.

  "The kid is a song."

  "Is he?” Poe 33 seemed surprised.

  "He's a composition written by Nefarious's wife before she died. The Creamery Child."

  "So, this child is linked to millions of memories,” Poe 33 deduced, eyeing The Creamery Child as he rummaged in one of the boxes.

  "The proverbial song you can't get out of your head."

  "No wonder Nefarious fears your blood."

  "What do you mean?” Caffrey couldn't see the connection. The Creamery Child, bored by the exchange, wandered off down a corridor.

  Poe began to explain. “He snatched me when you put your blood into my system. He feared my power, my virility with your blood. You have a pure heart."

  Caffrey almost gagged.

  "You do, Quark Caffrey! You care. You love. You are selfless. Passionate—especially about music. Music is what he wants to forget. Yours are qualities reminding Nefarious he once was a living, breathing being. A being who also loved music. You can completely destabilize this mental sanctuary he has constructed."

  "We need the kid to show us how to get to the forefront of Nefarious's mind."

  "I'll get him,” volunteered Angie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Karn Evil 9

  If you follow me, there's a specialty.

  Some tears for you to see. Misery, misery.

  Roll up! Roll up! Roll up! See the show!

  Emerson, Lake & Palmer

  Yin watched as the light of morning trudged across the world. He filled his lungs with the crisp fresh air, peed with the wind and watched the sunlight illuminate a large boulder sitting before him.

  It was covered with writing, dusty words written in block print with the burnt tip of twig. The words were neatly presented in stanzas on the face of the large gray stone.

  Yin had worked all night on his song; and he reread the lyrics with a coy smirk, twisting his whiskers from time to time with his forepaw. A twig snapped, and Violet stepped up.

  "Good morning, Yin."

  "Good morning, Commander Leer. Trust you slept well?"

  "Not really.” Violet yawned. “I kept dreaming Poe was my uncle and wanted to give me pony rides."

  "Ah-ha.” Yin didn't care to hear more. “I've finished my taunting tribute to Nefarious Wretch. In mere moments, thousands of voices will aim these words skyward. It's gonna piss the paint off that cretin."

  Violet took a few moments to focus her morning eyes on the words. She mumbled them from a mouth seeking hot coffee and fresh doughnuts.

  Of all the nuts in the cosmic soup,

  There is but one with a soul of goop;

  With an ear of tin and a heart of stone,

  I wouldn't lick him if he were a bone.

  "Now the chorus! Read the chorus, you're gonna love it!” Yin wagged his tail furiously, as if she were tossing him doggie treats.

  Violet gave him an odd look then continued with the chorus.

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep!

  A big fat creep! A big fat creep!

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep!

  And he smells like rancid coolie!

  "Continue!” pleaded Yin, barely able to maintain his own composure. Violet considered him for a few seconds then took a deep breath.

  He's as smart as a rock, as cute as a sock,

  And his mind is really too sick.

  He's hated by all. He's going to fall,

  Because only a jerk hates music.

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep!

  A big fat creep! A big fat creep!

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep! />
  And he smells like rancid coolie!"

  Violet shook her head, embarrassed. “Rancid coolie?"

  Yin laughed and pumped his paw into the air, spun around and shook his little buttocks. “Isn't that horribly insulting? To have one's body odor be compared to that of some rotted and moldy backside?"

  "You're real proud of yourself, huh?"

  "Wouldn't you be?"

  "Up all night writing this, huh?"

  "Most. It was worth it. When he hears this he'll capture this world into his dimension so fast you'll have to look again to miss it twice. Then we'll have him. In his own home."

  "When this is all said and done, I hope you have no delusions of quitting your day job."

  "Don't be ludicrous. Now. Let's gather the commanders and sound the Horn of Harmony. We'll practice the dirty ditty a few times with the flyers."

  * * * *

  The Creamery Child led Caffrey, Angie and Poe 33 through oddly desolate corridors of featureless floors with impossibly high ceilings. They crossed landscapes that seemed to serve no purpose but to add space between the here and there.

  With each step, the barren walls filled with distorted images and abstract shapes. Caffrey kept his gaze on the back of The Creamery Child's head because, unexplainably, some of the misshapen forms were disturbing to the eye. The hallways grew ever narrower, squeezing the haunting images into barely recognizable outlines. There were faces of agony. Mad clowns. Sites of bloody massacres, and seas of faces looking skyward in horror.

  It was all rather cliché as scary images go, but haunting nonetheless.

  Then, quite unexpectedly, Caffrey heard music. It was quite far off but came to his ears on the wings of an echo traveling through the tunnels and chambers of Nefarious's mind. The first few notes to hit his ears tasted like cotton candy. It was the unmistakable whimsy of a carnival band, filled with sour-cherry brass, sharp cinnamon cymbals, fizzy grape organ blasts and a creamy nougat center of nutty bacchanalia.

  Yet, as the merry melody poured forth, the intensity of its mirth went past mere innocent circus fun, looming sickeningly into the soundtrack of madness. Pure, unadulterated, flaky-in-the-pastry, inky-in-the-bookmark, flying-out-of-control-on-icy-freeways lunacy. It froze him in his tracks, and he felt sweat bead on his brow. Mushrooms sprouted in his stomach and little angry birdies flew around his head, chirping in discordant indifference.

  "What is that?” Caffrey was desperately trying to understand the music's intent.

  "The crazy place,” voiced the boy as he continued on.

  "The crazy place,” agreed Angie in a whisper that mirrored her own concern.

  * * * *

  After a few minutes they came to a wide hallway leading to a fanciful door decorated with giant, rat-faced roses, thick salamander ribbons and can-can-dancer tongues of fire. The music was pushing against the doors like a frenetic, loopy mob. Caffrey felt his feet freeze to the ground.

  "Are you okay, my goosey gander?"

  "Come on, Quark Caffrey.” Poe 33 smiled. “I feel this jocularity should be quite entertaining."

  Caffrey took a deep breath, and they entered through a tidal wave of sensory overload. It would have taken even the greatest galactic minds a lifetime and a day to fully comprehend the totality of what lay before them.

  It was an arena the size of Madison Square Garden, Caffrey figured, but capped with a dome of twisted silk rags of every imaginable color plus seven. Across the arena, facing the entry, stood the source of the music: a six-story calliope shimmering with a waterfall of mother-of-pearl liquid marble, crumbled vegetable chrome and candy cane-mirrored barber poles. Strings of knitted silver castanets the size of pizzas clapped along with dancing funky monkeys made of seashells and neon bowling balls. An immense player-piano roller turned amidst a steady leak of jellied musical notes and fountains of sugared crystal hammers of many flavors. Giant phalluses and large-nippled breasts colored like animal-skin prints square-danced atop the gargantuan instrument beneath a steady fall of snow and plums.

  The arena held about ten thousand cheering beings—peculiar, tumor-like growths that had sprung from the tartan seat cushions with waving arms and ecstatically screaming wide mouths. Their skin flickered with soft imagery projected from within, each a memory more horrid than the next.

  "My,” Poe 33 concluded.

  Caffrey was stunned silent. He let his eyes drift along the walls of the coliseum and soon discovered that every inch was wallpapered with images of such vibrant colors he feared his mind would explode. Reds were like volcanoes and yellows the sun. Greens were impossible forests and blues like a childhood memory of summer skies.

  "It's pure misery disguised as contentment. Denial illustrated in glorious Technicolor,” decided Angie.

  The Creamery Child spoke up. “That is exactly the truth."

  "I can honestly say that I, the great and wondrous Poe 33, have never before witnessed such colorful bedlam."

  There were mating marble screams and multi-colored desires pounding their heads against blocks of stone regret. Lost dreams did back-flips over stacks of procrastinated ideas bubbling and melting like cheese on coals. Companies of phobias flew circles around shivering towers of repressed wants. Huge origami wishes laughed as they emulated themselves in green-and-brown fires of hopelessness.

  Centered amidst it all was a large cabin trunk inside a gilded cage hanging from a single, crystal thread no thicker than a human hair. The trunk was wrapped in chains, giant padlocks and leather straps and hung over a pit whose cookie-cutter opening was in the shape of a small boy. The hole burped steam and the rosy smoke of wishful thinking.

  Caffrey garnered his nerve to move and tapped the boy on the shoulder. “What's the point of this?"

  "This is the central core of his being."

  "What about the music?"

  "It plays on and drives his madness. The only way he can silence it is to shove me into that pit. That would seal it and protect his mind from ever being invaded by the contents of the trunk."

  "What's in it?"

  "Stuff he thinks he should forget."

  "Your mother?"

  "Yes. The pit leads to his entire mind. The crystal thread can be shattered."

  "By what? Maybe by a feeling he has not felt in many, many years?"

  The boy nodded. A voice sounded above the music. “Nefarious has inquired, oh, limpid lemon ones, what are you doing?"

  "Don't answer him. He is speaking for my father. An alter ego. Don't let him hear your voice!” the boy whispered urgently.

  The voice called again, “This young chap is a myth. Don't listen to such a pathetic waif. He does not exist. He is just flavorful taradiddle. He is an apparition of lies and deception!"

  Their perspective suddenly rotated as if the entire arena were on a lazy Susan.

  "Kill the runt for Nefarious and you can have this!"

  A beautiful Fender Stratocaster appeared from nowhere. It zipped through the air alongside them, leaving behind a comet-like tail of wondrous colors and textures.

  "You'd have to do better than that,” retorted Caffrey under his breath.

  The boy gave him a dirty look and put a firm finger to his lips.

  The voice tried another tack. “Then how does your groin-mind react to this?"

  A huge rotating bed appeared upon which lay twenty naked human forms, gyrating and moaning, obviously in need of physical gratification. However, they were incomplete projections of Caffrey's preferred female form and, as a result, were rather repulsive. He looked away, and a trumpet sounded amidst the vile whimsy.

  "A trumpet!” cried the voice. “Nefarious wonders who dares sound an instrument!"

  A series of pulsing holes of pitch-black emptiness flickered around the place and were gone just as fast as they'd appeared.

  "Did you see those black holes?” the boy whispered.

  Caffrey nodded.

  "They were the portals of lapses and distraction—the way out."

 
; Voices, at first distant, began intruding upon the fiesta. They were in unison. They were filled with commitment rather that sounding as if they should be committed. And they grew louder, louder, punching through the mesmerizing colored walls as liquid fish, electric fruit and rubbery frogs. Words became distinct, mocking lyrics.

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep!

  A big fat creep! A big fat creep!

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep!

  And he smells like rancid coolie!

  * * * *

  Across the field, thousands of voices shouted to the sky. Yin, leading them in song like a maddened conductor, stood on a rock—the rock on which he'd written the verses—like a tongue-in-cheeky god from some long-forgotten testament.

  Nefarious Wretch is a big fat creep

  And he smells like rancid coolie!

  "Again!” the Bopple shouted through his megaphone. “Let this be the judgment day of Nefarious Wretch and all of O.D.O.R!"

  The gathered flyers started the song from the top. Violet looked around, hoping to see some sign of the world being extracted.

  Perhaps after another chorus...

  * * * *

  "Look before you, Caffrey!” the voice ordered.

  A giant fist emblazoned with purple mistrust jack-in-the-boxed up. The fist opened to reveal magazine photo cutouts of his band-mates. Caffrey smiled despite it all. He felt better seeing something familiar. He was at once saddened, angered and overjoyed.

  "You can have your friends back. Just throw that horrid child into the pit. Or your friends will be made ash-wise!"

  "Don't believe him, Mr. Caffrey!” whined The Creamery Child.

  "Just do the act, and your Fab Four and yourself will be given the most special of privileges! You will be used as the back-up band to Nefarious's disharmony!"

  "That's tantamount to being Quigmo Digmo's personal tush cleaner!"

  Flames laughed around Caffrey's friends. The lumpy crowd was going mad, banging their heads on the backs of their seats, letting little bubbles of seltzer fly free.

  "Either the boy is destroyed or they are!"

  "Why can't Nefarious just destroy the boy himself? Afraid?"

  "Nefarious is certainly not frightened of such a creamery runt!"

  "Then toss his milky butt into the pit yourself!"