Another light lit a puppet man garishly from below. “We play for stakes that are incalculable. We own the machines that write and rewrite history. We define the future of the Provisian super-continent and the planet and the people and all life. We invested in you, a weak and despised man. If you fail us again, it would be better that you be hung up by your intestines from the highest spire while maggots feast upon your gonads as you die. Do not fail us again. Do not fail us again. Do not fail us again. Do not fail us again. Do not…”
A light illuminated one of the other puppets, while the harsh one was still repeating itself. “That’s just something that we’re required to say if a mission has been compromised. We know that you will take this warning seriously. Also keep in mind…”
Another lit up and spoke, joining the chorus. “Wither the mind that comes to know secrets he is not prepared to know. Slither the snake that goes through the valley where the humble fear to go. Drink from the chalice that promise the knowledge of cancer and blackest snow. Think on the question that that baffles the…”
“…not fail us again. Do not fail us again. Do not fail us again. Do not fail us again. Do…”
“…mistakes are part of any man’s ascension through the ranks. We try to help people become better men by allowing them to slowly expand the radius of their intention, the circumference of their realm of action, the…”
“…where the blood beats and swims in your veins. Swallow the pain that engulfs the specter of wind and heat and rain. Challenge the…” The crescendo built to a maddening, contradictory, incomprehensible rant. I could no longer see the puppet men, though the lodge was getting brighter. More lights were opening in space, casting beams that sculpted baffling shadows all around me. The lights spun and counter spun like a disco dance floor. I could feel my limbic system scream in agony as it realized that it would never know peace or balance again. My feet were dancing under me, seemingly of their own volition. Just like the botched mission with Lauren, I was outside of myself again, out of my own control, like a chemical truck with brakes cut barreling out of control at rush hour on the TJSH. I missed a step and found myself sprawled on the ground. It was instantly dark, still, and silent. An unseen force released the clasps of my straightjacket. It took me a half an hour to find my way to the exit.
“How’d it go?” The Creep asked with a grin.
2
I used the key they gave me to open the gates of the Archland Zoo. It was five in the morning, the sun not even considering rising from its bed yet. I had hated this zoo for many years. It was one of the few trips I had gone on with the orphanage. Reverend Burstin had decided to take us here instead of pilfering the allocated funds, which was his usual M.O. We had endured a forced march through the hot, sprawling, and terrifying zoo for what felt like days. Here was a place where Provisia’s genetic engineers were untethered from their usual constraints of profit and common sense. Someone had just told them to make the most fucked-up animals that they could think of. I still had nightmares about an eight-headed leech cobra that sprang up from nowhere and fastened itself to the glass. A blemmybaboon with no head and a monkeyface on each cheek of its swollen buttocks stood out as another childhood phantasm.
Fortunately, it was so early that most of these hideous freaks were still asleep. I pulled my jacket around me as I passed the small arboretum, which seemed to house mostly naturally occurring trees. I saw a Provisian Pine with its black and lethal cones. I stopped to read a plaque by a wyg tree, my interest piqued since I remembered it from the Dry Men seal.
PROVISIAN WYG TREE
FOUND IN THE FORESTS SURROUNDING OILY PEAKS AND RED COVE.
PROVISIAN WYGS ARE SAID TO TAKE THEIR NAME FROM THE HAIR-LIKE WHISPS THAT THEIR BRANCHES PRODUCE AT THE EXTREMITIES. OTHER SOURCES STATE THAT THE NAME COMES FROM THE TENDENCY OF UNRIPE WYG FRUIT TO CAUSE THOSE WHO CONSUME IT TO HAVE BRIEF PSYCHOTIC EPISODES AND ‘WYG OUT.’
WYG TREES ARE NOTEABLE FOR THE TRAITS THAT THEY SHARE WITH THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. THEY HAVE CARNIVOROUS ROOT SYSTEMS THAT EAT THE WORMS THAT REPLENISH THE SOIL. MALE WYG TREES ALSO PRODUCE SEMEN INSTEAD OF POLLEN AND USE VIOLENCE TO DEFEND POTENTIAL MATES.
I couldn’t stand to read more—it was too early to think about the implications of tree violence and plant ejaculate. I sat shivering on a bench. It was one of those uncomfortable times when you can’t tell if you want to be done waiting or if the thing you’re waiting for was the real worry. I had been given no details on my penance save to meet someone here for the first day of it.
A door opened near the vacant concession stand and a man with glasses and a white lab coat approached me. I recognized him as the guy who had signaled the Creep to push me into the lodge for my sentencing.
“What are you in for?” I asked. It seemed by his demeanor that he was being punished in some way, too.
“Look, let’s try not to make this any worse on ourselves than it is already.” He pulled a metallic case from one of his lab coat pockets, and extracted a syringe which he flicked ceremoniously. “I’m supposed to tell you that you’ll be working for the Deserters during the day and the water treatment people at night. Eighteen hours a day for thirty days. Take off your coat.”
“Deserters?”
“Charitable group controlled by the Dry Men. Mostly there for tax deductions and PR. Let me see your arm.” The guy knew his way around anatomy and phlebotomy; he found the vein opposite my elbow, and then he started peeling the bark so that he could insert the syringe.
“OW! That hurts, you son of a bitch!” He piped the green fluid into me and flipped me a pin. It had an emblem with an anthropomorphic cactus wearing a military uniform.
“That’s going to be you. You’re going to be ‘Commodore Cactus,’ the mascot for the Deserters. The shot modifies your enchantment. You’ll probably be the most realistic looking one they’ve ever had.”
“Thanks, Doc. Looking like an asinine cactus has always been one of my life’s ambitions.”
“Your costume’s in here.” He said, nudging a bag towards me with his foot. “You might notice some side effects. It’s supposed to wear off at the end of your day gig, and then the Dry Men will send a van to take you to your night gig. They said to try to remember that it’s only a month.”
I didn’t say anything, and mercifully the little quack made himself scarce. I looked up towards the sky. No sun was visible yet, but some weak light was presaging morning. I could hear assorted mutant animals stirring, as they woke from pleasant dreams in which they had never been created. Dropping my gaze from the sky, I fell from the bench in horror.
Lauren Deadwood was standing before me. “Forrest…” She cooed. She was wearing the same sunglasses and halter top that she wore the night I saved her from being a snuff star. “It looks like you’ve got wood, Forrest. You’ve got it all over your body…” Did she dare to mock me, after I had saved her? I felt searing gallons of hate flowing into my stomach, my chest cavity, my lungs. I would rip her apart with my bare hands. All the better if the surveillance cameras saw it. I’d give those Elephantine corporate fuckers something to watch…
But before I could spring to my feet and scream my battle cry, she was gone. Had I been hallucinating? The rage was gone too; I felt calmer and happier than I had felt in years. What the hell was going on? What had they shot me up with? My whole body felt bloated, numb, and itchy. As I scratched frantically, my bark flaked off and fell to the ground. I tried to scream, but I just bellowed a clumsy, clownish laugh. It was as if all my mental and physical commands had been crossed, and trying to do one thing would make another thing happen. It was the lodge all over again, where I didn’t know where I stood or even how to stand. Even involuntary reactions were backwards and demented. I started sneezing and coughing instead of inhaling and exhaling. I thought that I would suffocate.
My new skin was swollen and green. My vision stretched and changed as my eyes reshaped themselves. One of my best shirts was riddled with holes as I grew spines all along
my forearms, shoulders, and back.
3
That day, I was the center of attention at the most deranged and absurd fundraiser in the history of Provisia. It was as if the real me was incarcerated in a storage locker in the back of my mind. Commodore Cactus did and said things that I would never do or say under any circumstances. Somehow, I knew that this was happening; I understood that I was Commodore Cactus, but I was powerless to stop the charade. I was dimly aware of the swelling and itching from the enchantment modification that had turned me into this hideous monster, but all physical sensations were coarse and crude, like cheap virtual reality.
Deserters were everywhere. They drove ridiculous little cars around the zoo, their fez tassels flapping in the wind. They served up ‘Deserter Desserts’ to all the children. The zoo attendants looked on in dismay while the children flung their treats at increasingly irate unnatural animals. “Commodore Cactus says it’s our mission to raise more money for the children’s narcolepsy ward!” Commodore Cactus had a habit of saying everything in third person, with an exclamation point. I heard myself bellowing peppy orders to everyone, but I had no idea where the words were coming from or what I would say next. I watched the whole world through the eye slits of a swollen mask. It was the worst trip of my entire life, a psychotic backwoods family reunion overseen by a self-aggrandizing cult.
I sang songs that I didn’t know. I was dunked in a dunking booth filled with defanged batgators. I proudly explained my origin, fatuous words bubbling from nowhere. “Commodore Cactus was one of the legendary guides that helped our brave founding fathers to build this great nation of ours! A cactus can go for weeks without water! He can save all the water for his compatriots! He helped establish this here great super-state, with only the pride of a job well-done as thanks! Put money in that there jar, little cadets!”
You don’t think traumatic days like that will ever end, but they do. The sun went down, and so did my swelling. As my green color faded and my skin rebarked, I was given back my hole-riddled clothes and a cold towel. I had not been myself, but every fiber of my being was irreparably frayed by humiliation. The van drivers, Dry Men disguised as zoo personnel, sensed my pain and drove me silently to the water treatment facility. This was a cake walk compared to the day gig. All I had to do was load bags of Provisium sulfide onto a wheel barrow, roll them up a winding path and a series of ramps, and dump them into a water tank at the treatment plant. I had no desire to know why I was doing this or what effects this poison had when dissolved in water. I made a mental note to not drink anything from a public water supply ever again. The guard gave me no difficulties as long as I flashed a laminate that the Dry Men gave me every single time I walked past him. It was backbreaking work, but the night air and absence of children was a mercy.
I was not allowed to go back to the posh flat the Dry Men had given me before I was in the dog house, and instead slept at a Motel 6.16 not unlike the one where I had botched my last mission. The first night I was so exhausted anything but sleep was out of the question, but I knew what I had to do. I stumbled to the apothecary, who was surprised to sell me a calendar instead of being bribed and threatened into forking over a potion to make me sleep and never wake. I must have really looked like hell. But men are visual creatures, and I needed to see the hard time elapse as I completed it. Otherwise, I’d never survive.
4
That was how the time passed during that awful month; nine hours as a cheery and idiotic mascot, nine hours as a common grunt hauling bags of industrial toxin. There were no weekends, and no time to do anything but work and sleep off the day to prepare for the next one. The only thing that changed were the locations of the Deserter gigs.
I led a parade through the sprawling base of the Provisian Organization for Galactic Outreach at Cape Caravan. They gave me a galactonaut suit that day, so I was bubbleheaded both inside and out. I handed out every imaginable party favor, all bearing the legendary POGO logo. There were no mutants to throw the space age treats at, so the children hurled them at me. They were like lightning that would hit the ugliest thing around. And the drug just kept me smiling. The effects were always the same—a hallucination that would flame out my rage in a single burst of unexpressed fury, a loss of control of my actions and reactions, swelling and mutation. Had I been in control of myself, I’d have hotwired one of the POGO vehicles and built a new life for myself on some far-flung planetoid.
I visited the narcoleptic children’s ward, enthusiastically cuddling brats that were fighting to keep awake. You would think that it would be impossible for a desert plant to cuddle a sick child without killing him, but nothing was impossible for Commodore Cactus. Everything was a sing-a-long or a fundraiser or a parade or a photoshoot. Everything was a carnival game of unshed tears and mortification of the flesh and spirit.
As I understood it, the lessons the Dry Men sought to teach me through the penance were threefold. 1) If I ran afoul of them again, there were fates worse than death. I could spend the rest of my life doing this kind of degrading minimum wage work. Writing puff pieces for local newspapers would seem like a dream ticket if they really wanted to punish me. 2) The Dry Men control what people consume. If they can put stuff in the water, they can put stuff in a soft drink or a shot or a pill. It had already been proven to me that they snuck things into television. 3) They had the power to completely make me dissociate from who I was. There is nothing that the wicked ones of the realm cannot take away from you, even you yourself. So don’t fuck with them. I could blame Lauren or the Dry Men all I wanted, but I should have known what I was into from the beginning.
My aunt always used to tell me that I only learned things the hard way, and she was right. That month felt like a doctoral thesis on the hard way. But finally, all the days were crossed off and I came out the other end. I burned the calendar and moved out of the motel and they told me where I had to go for the mission to get my next degree. Soon it was like it had all never happened, like the memories of that time were locked in some tomb deep inside me, sealed with a curse so that they could never be revisited.
5
I was dropped off in the parking lot of the headquarters of the Provisian Pitfighting League. Under other circumstances, spending a day here would have been a dream come true. I still remembered nights when my gang of Bloodhawks would sneak to the only television in the orphanage, deep in the bowels of the haunted basement, and watch hordes of steroidal warriors throw down. If someone had told us that it was fake, we would have beaten the shit out of him. Of course Puppet Pile Driver could get hit by a wrecking ball and climb right back into the octagon to finish beating up Cash-O-Mon and the Jeering Fool. We were in a religious orphanage, but those men were our pantheon.
The building was a sleek block of reflective windows, capped by two pyramids flying the Provisian flag and the corporate logo for the PPL. Inside, I noticed a dazzling display of championship belts, bronzed likeness of legendary fighters, and a pair of gauntlets that looked as if they had been fashioned from barbed wire and the bumper of a monster truck.
An attendant stood at a huge marble desk. “May I help you?” I flashed an ID and my Dry Men ring, just as I had been instructed to do. “Take the elevator on your left. Bottom floor.” Inside, I was surprised to see that the building went further down than it did up. I picked basement floor 5, because that was as low as it could take me. The box dropped into the void. I had been told nothing about this job. I could be facing anything. I could even still have more penance to go, and not know it. A terrifying image of a cage match with a Provisian Pitfighter floated through my mind, the Dry Men puppet masters placing bets on how long it would take my opponent to pull out my ribs like a fish. The fact that they said I was done didn’t mean I was really done. The Dry Men liked to compartmentalize revelations and realities, like the inside of a Kargivian doll. The more you open, the more you find, and just when you think you’ve reached the end, you twist this way or that and the belly splits open and there’s more
inside.
The elevator let me out at the basement, a brown and uninteresting sarcophagus that seemed to sprawl endlessly under the ornate building. I finally found a door with a keypad and punched in the numbers that the Dry Men gave me. It opened, and I found myself in a vast movie set. A fake sky was rigged up with lights and porous sound equipment. I knelt and touched the floor. The grass was a mixture of AstroTurf and extended nylon ribbons to imitate a wild and uncared for look. The dirt was made up of rubber particles.
I was relieved when Mission Creep walked up to me and pumped my hand. It seemed that he might have been reassigned or that he was still sore about me screwing up. It was good to be working with someone competent again, someone who wouldn’t be shooting me up with cactus juice every morning. “Glad t’ see yuh back tuh walkin’ the path o’ the righteous, boy!” He exclaimed. “We’s got tuh make ourselfs a movie.” He tossed me the mission briefing.
I skimmed it. This looked like a pretty easy job, with no rough stuff or things blowing up. Still, I aimed to get this wrapped up and be done with it. I was jumpy from my humbling and punishment. We were to shoot a fake terrorist video that the Dry Men could attribute to KORPSE, the Kargivian Order for Revolution, Peace and Socialism Everlasting. This was one of the countless euphemistically named factions involved in the apocalyptic shit storm that seemed to be constantly raging over there. They were said to worship the Demiurge and his lost titans instead of the Gods. Two years ago, they had burned a hospital to the ground and taken fleeing nurses and children as sex slaves.
Fables of Failure Page 14