Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories

by John Robert Colombo

  At the start of the first section, an aging yet still vigorous Jameson and his girlfriend, Victoria Shepherd, a private detective, arrive at the eponymous Vermilion Beach, a new gated community for the ultra-rich located on one of Venera’s outer islands. They have bought a unit there, as a vacation home. The climate is especially clement, and the beach is stunningly beautiful. Also, the open sky provides a calming change from the dense urban settings of either central Venera (Jameson’s home) or downtown London (Shepherd’s home). The resort community is a boon to Venera’s economy. Jameson jokes to Victoria that the elite, egocentric colonists have no idea that the “gate” is mostly there to keep them out of Venera itself, while the city-state gorges on their money.

  The couple is soon befriended by the resort’s administrator, Colin Harper, a charismatic figure who sees in Vermilion Beach the key to humanity’s future, the template for life in the 21st century and beyond. In his utopian dream, everyone will live in ever-increasing isolation from the distractions of both society and the natural world. This isolation will accelerate the evolution of human consciousness as everyone will eventually achieve full self-knowledge. A skilled rhetorician, Harper deftly evades Jameson’s pert socialist objections (“What about the serving staff?” etc.). Jameson finds Harper’s elitist fabulations ridiculous, even offensive, but cannot deny the man’s aggressive charm. Attentive readers will notice that Harper is a similar figure to that of Raphael Marcus in Motorcrash, albeit more refined and subtle in character.

  There is a death announced on the couple’s second morning there. But the deceased was elderly, and a natural passing is assumed. In the coming weeks, the deaths pile up, and eventually Harper hires Shepherd to look into the case.

  Victoria’s personality undergoes a progressive change in the course of her investigation. She becomes increasingly apathetic, parroting Harper’s rhetoric in listless tones, accepting each new murder as inevitable, even necessary.

  Soon, she is permanently entrenched in her beach chair, shielded from the sun by a parasol. When Jameson prods her on the progress of the investigation, she claims that she is solving this case in a manner appropriate to the facts: by submerging herself in her own mind. She ignores Jameson’s scoffs and concerns.

  Jameson takes up the case, but, whenever he attempts to question anyone, Harper is there, subtly but surely blocking Jameson’s investigation.

  The death toll keeps increasing. Every day, someone dies. Yet, no one leaves. Jameson decides to grab Victoria and escape before Vermilion Beach becomes fatal for either of them. But he can’t find her. Finally, he confronts Harper, who admits that Shepherd now lives with him; he even lets Jameson see her, but she refuses to leave. “Why should I?” she says. “I think I’m finally understanding this place. I’m understanding myself. It’s the same thing.” Heartbroken and enraged, Jameson seeks to escape Vermilion Beach, but the ferry service has been shut down. At the pier, he steals a sailboat and leaves the doomed resort behind.

  The abrupt closure of Venera’s short-lived Vermilion Beach resort community, amid rumors of mass suicide, was mentioned in the news in 2000. London private investigator Victoria Shepherd was listed among the deceased at Vermilion Beach.

  The second part of Millennium Nights occurs over one night, during Tito Bronze’s notorious Millennium Bacchanal, held at his Venera mansion, the Velvet Bronzemine. But the orgy that ensues is not of the expected sexual kind.

  Early on in the evening the internationally bestselling thriller writer Magus Amore gathers a number of party guests into a circle at the center of the Bronzemine’s banquet hall, inviting them to participate in a rebirthing rite to welcome the new millennium. He strips, revealing that his tall, thin, scarecrow-like body is covered in tattoos of sigils and lizards. He speaks a few ritual phrases in a language that sounds inhuman. Then, in English, he invites his audience to shed their own clothes, and most of them do.

  Amore chants, and his tattoos glow. The assembled partygoers gawk at the writer-priest, enraptured by this strange spectacle. Luminous, ethereal snakes ripple out of Amore’s body. The snakes converge on another of the guests: Bram Jameson. They orbit around him, ever more rapidly, creating the illusion of an iridescent whirlpool. Throughout all this, an odd serenity spreads through Jameson and through the rest of Amore’s congregation. Jameson remains calm even when some of the snakes bind him and others slither into his body via his facial orifices. As the binding serpents drop away, Jameson starts to tear at his own flesh: emerging from inside his own decaying body is a rejuvenated version of himself in the prime of adulthood. Soon, all of his old body has been shed. The viscous gore of his discarded self covers the new skin of the reborn Jameson.

  Amore gestures theatrically toward another mesmerized congregant, but then a look of panic etches itself on the writer’s face. He convulses uncontrollably; his eyes become vacant. Dreadful monsters emerge from Amore’s shimmering body. Soon the mansion is overrun with these beasts, who slaughter not only each other but also anyone within their reach. Only the reborn Jameson laughs through it all; bare-handed he rips apart every monster in his path, eating their otherworldly flesh, their gore mingling with his own on his naked flesh. But there are too many beasts for this lone man to deal with; and, anyway, he seems unconcerned, even amused, by the carnage around him. More monsters pour out of Amore by the second.

  Meanwhile, Bronze wonders if he should shoot and kill Amore, but he worries it might make matters worse. Instead, not really knowing what else to do and miraculously sidestepping the barrage of deadly supernatural creatures, he blows several grams’ worth of vermilion up Amore’s nose. There’s a blinding flash of light, and then all goes quiet. Reality has been restored. Only the rejuvenated Jameson and the strewn, dismembered corpses of most of Bronze’s guests remain as evidence of the weirdness that occurred. As for Amore, his mind is all but wiped clean, either by his own spell or by the vermilion overdose, or perhaps by the combination of both. (In 2000 Magus Amore dropped from public view amid rumors of insanity just as his latest, and last, thriller, The Best Americans, hit the international bestseller lists.)

  Supermall was the name of the luxury “retail sanctuary” financed by an international development consortium, set to open for the Christmas shopping rush of 2001. It was built on an artificial island just outside of Venera’s territorial waters. The Veneran government was not happy at this intrusion, but all their efforts to halt construction failed. Supermall’s inauguration attracted thousands of shoppers, but it was shut down on the very day it opened, with no further comment from the consortium, which disbanded soon after.

  According to part three of Millennium Nights, Jameson was among the patrons on Supermall’s opening day. In this section, the text fetishistically deploys brand names and lingers voyeuristically on detailed descriptions of designer fashions and other luxury consumer products.

  At noon an alarm sounds, and a loudspeaker announcement proclaims that Supermall has been locked down. The director of the mall, Marilyn Danvers, has been found dead in her office, and security wants to question all three thousand people at Supermall in relation to the presumed murder. But, although no one is allowed to leave, no investigation is instigated.

  After several days, Jameson confronts Rex Danvers, the head of security. Danvers makes a show of listening to Jameson’s concerns: already, there have been instances of looting and outbreaks of minor violence among the imprisoned shoppers. But Danvers appears unworried. When Jameson inquires whether he was related to the deceased director, the security chief answers, “Yes, she was my wife…”

  As the weeks roll on in the artificially controlled environment of Supermall, time loses meaning. Danvers’ megalomania becomes increasingly overt, as he encourages tribal rivalries among the shoppers, whose devotion to consumer goods lead them to create new rituals, to forge alliances based on allegiances to popular consumer brands. The abandoned stores become the
temples of this new atavism. Wars break out between the faithful of different branded sects.

  Again, Jameson confronts Danvers, who answers, “But people adore consumer goods. I’m allowing them to live out their passions to the fullest, to accept their true religion…”

  Jameson is grabbed by a group of Danvers’ men. They are five in number, and they match the descriptions of the pirates from Jameson’s first book, of the quintets of scientists from the first three sections of The Great Disasters, of the five men in Jameson’s Skyscraper team, and of the astronauts in Nostalgia of Futures Past. Are these all the same men? Similarly, the captain from Pirates to Nowhere, Raphael Marcus from Motorcrash, the villains in various Skyscraper adventures, Mike Walters from Hello Venera, the meddling producer from Empire of the Self, Colin Harper from Vermilion Beach, and Danvers all appear to be different iterations of the same character. And what of Jameson’s repeated motifs, such as getting lost, cannibalism, atavistic rituals, vehicles, escape, capitalist development projects, vermilion, and Venera itself? What of the books that stray from his typical scenario? Which are more factual, and which are more fictional? Can these enigmas be solved, to reveal the primal Jamesonian ur-story hiding behind these bizarre phantasmagorias, to understand the life of this author? What is Jameson, if he indeed exists, struggling to reveal or trying to conceal?

  Back to Millennium Nights: in a Supermall office, the captured Jameson is tortured by Danvers and his men. When they release him, Jameson’s perceptions are altered. The meaning of Supermall and its inhabitants is reduced to their geometrical shapes. Within these shapes lies the path to his escape. His mind engages in arcane calculations as he wanders through increasingly abstract landscapes … until he finds himself in a whirlpool of light. He steps out of the whirlpool and into a garden. Readers will recognize it as the same garden previously encountered in Jameson’s first book, Pirates to Nowhere.

  Jameson reaches out toward a vine, snaps off a leaf, and smells it. His gaze returns to the luminous whirlpool as he starts to chew on the leaf. The end.

  12. The Terminal Dream (2010)

  From the back cover of The Terminal Dream: “Bram Jameson (1930-2009) was one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers. This revelatory memoir spans the entirety of Jameson’s remarkable life: his birth in Canada; his childhood in Nazi-occupied Venera; his young adulthood in Manitoba and England; his first-hand testimony to the great, sweeping changes of the twentieth century; his involvement with many of the most mysterious and emblematic events of the last century; and his meetings with some of the world’s most provocative figures. With incisive precision, Jameson recalls the experiences that would fundamentally shape his writing, while simultaneously providing a lucid perspective on the latter decades of the twentieth century. The Terminal Dream is the captivating and definitive account of the uncommon life of an extraordinary human being.” Thus I learned of the death of this enigmatic author.

  The Terminal Dream is a handsome volume, the cover featuring a grainy black-and-white photograph of a very young boy, certainly Jameson, playing in the snow (presumably in northern Manitoba, before his family moved to Venera). The image evokes palpable nostalgia. Is Jameson’s oeuvre a strange coded yearning for a return to that state of innocence, an attempt to map out a surreal or mythic path that might lead to his personal nirvana?

  I have carefully read and reread The Terminal Dream many times. I treasure it with deep affection, even reverence. That it has engaged my imagination more profoundly than anything else I have ever encountered is a risible understatement. But … it has yet to help me finally discern truth from fiction in the author’s baffling body of work, or regarding his mysterious life. Every one of The Terminal Dream’s pages is written in a cipher that has so far resisted all my efforts at decryption, no matter how much vermilion I consume…

  Sometimes, I think the drug allows me to see a whirlpool of light. But when I reach for it the illusion is always shattered.

  Near the Ends of Things

  Three Poems by Michelle Barker

  Fire

  If my life were set on fire

  and I could stand aside

  to watch it burn

  I’d toss in sickness

  dark winter mornings

  harsh words over breakfast

  and breakfast

  which often burns anyway

  I’d burn loneliness

  and nightmares

  and, for your sake,

  the monsters that live upstairs

  to my years in high school

  I’d add gasoline

  stand back at the burst of flame

  give a silent cheer

  I’d burn all the things

  I didn’t do

  I’d burn bridges

  and not stand

  forlornly at one end

  mourning lost passages

  I’d add headaches

  and in-grown toenails to the flames

  nights spent tossing and turning

  would give off an acrid

  burnt-hair smell

  which I wouldn’t mind

  regrets would melt

  like plastic dolls’ heads

  long eyes oozing

  into frowning mouths

  until they looked ridiculous and mushy

  which they were all along

  but you—

  you I would tuck into my pocket

  you I would hold

  like the memory of a good dream

  I keep wanting

  to have again.

  Onwards and Upwards

  dying is this journey they make you take, only you don’t know where you’re going and you’re not allowed suitcases and the pilot is blind and the dog that comes with you won’t tell you what’s going on, only it seems happy enough sitting there panting with its long sly snout-smile

  and you get on this conveyor with a line of people all headed in the same direction like one of those walking sidewalks they have at the airport only this one is going up and everyone is walking with such a purpose except you so you stop someone and ask them, where are we going? and they look at you like, don’t you know?

  and you feel as if you’re in the wrong movie or maybe you spent the last five years in a closet because someone hasn’t filled you in, you’ve come to the conference with the wrong files, and you’d like to complain only no one around here seems to be in charge and you’re not quite sure what you’d complain about

  and everything is moving onward and upward and the pilot is laughing and the dog is laughing and the people around you are laughing and it sweeps you up in its embrace, all this laughter and movement

  and you don’t understand it but it doesn’t matter because suddenly you feel lucky and you catch yourself because you want to say, lucky to be alive, but that’s not it—

  that’s not it at all.

  The Door

  Say death is just a door

  that opens onto the next place

  only it’s locked

  and the guard stands there

  impassive

  unarmed, but for an impressive moustache

  expecting that you already know

  how to get through

  since this is something

  you were supposed to figure out

  in your lifetime.

  You had years, after all.

  What is your excuse

  for arriving here

  without the secret code?

  How could you have wasted

  all that time?

  Everyone hopes the guard

  will have mercy

  and whisper the password to them

  on the sly

 
until they see

  he has no mouth.

  Ghosts, Monsters, Superheros and Scientists

  Eight Poems by David Clink

  The Monster at our Door

  Monster

  Monster and the woman

  The monster at our door: the global threat of avian flu

  Monster by moonlight

  Monster/beauty: building the body of love

  The monster from earth’s end

  Monster from out of time

  The monster in the machine: magic, medicine, and the marvelous in the time of the scientific revolution

  Monster of God: the man-eating predator in the jungles of history and the mind

  The monster that ate Hollywood

  The monster that is history: history, violence, and fictional writing in twentieth-century China

  Monster: the autobiography of an L.A. gang member

  The monstered self: narratives of death and performance in Latin American fiction

  Monsters

  Monsters and grotesques in medieval manuscripts

  Monsters and other lovers

  The Monsters emerge

  Monsters with iron teeth.

  The Monster Home

  The monster home, when it was just a child, was found abandoned at the door of the Church of St. Francis. It smelled as if it were a part of the rain, had the taste of a withered old dog, and was rough as a wire brush growling in the January wind. Father Lachine said, “Grabbing it by the scruff of the neck was like embracing courage, listening to the color of urine.”

  I visited the home, and daydreamed that I entered all the rooms at once, and Nicky, who was born without a jaw, lit a candle in the drawing room. The covered furniture was stoic in those times of uncertainty. The unhappy caterpillars landscaped the backyard. Paint cans covered memories and recalled the time a wounded wolf came this way to rest its weary eyelids. The candlestick watched Nicholas and three other generations crawl back into the ground, as the houses on the hills bent under their own weight like tombstones.