by Travis Borne
“It could be worse,” Baldarn mumbled. He thought of the previous nightmare: Jerry. A cold world, nothing but ice and billions of frozen carcasses, waiting to decompose for a billion years; through transference all received his imagery.
“I think we should choose someone randomly,” Patrick suggested. He shook what was left of his head to dislodge Baldarn’s vivid recollection. Pat was red, skinless, but for some reason, less macerated than the other humans. “Besides, Joey, you are too young to go.”
“And that, Pat,” Crisp argued, “is exactly why it has to be him. He’s young. Joey hasn't been corrupted by the world. He’s a virgin.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry, Joey,” Crisp came back, “but we must be honest here. Our fate rests on you being pure of heart, not that it matters if you are a virgin or not, but, well, it might. You are not filled with animosity toward humanity, or the world. You're innocent.”
“I already volunteered and it is me who is going. And yes, I am a virgin. There, it’s out there.” They shared the first laugh in what seemed years, more likely a decade. Even Joey laughed. “Anyway, I don’t think I’ll die. I think I’ll merge with him, or maybe, he’ll spit me out.” He tried to laugh again but what was left of his jaw fell off.
“None of us know the end result,” Ivy said, “but with all I know about psychology, and instinctual behavior, combined with what we all feel, we know that it should work. The missing part of Boron, an intelligence lost like a city boy in a jungle the size of a universe, will receive the key it needs to evolve. Joey—” Ivy stood up. She dragged her innards and lobbed her encrusting self toward Joey. “—you are the key, our way out, and whatever happens, thank you.” They hugged. Two globs of mostly digested human beings shared a moment. Then each of the others took a turn, lastly the beasts who hardly had as much as a second-degree burn. They thanked Joey for his soon-to-be sacrifice.
Really, they didn’t know how they knew, but they did, having gone through whatever it was. They were relieved of at least that, although they’d be digested for what seemed lifetimes, then discombobulated after that. Boron would take just the one, an untarnished mind into his subconscious and this time his subconscious would not have a choice. It would get Joey, and Joey knew exactly what to do.
They waited, and eventually, after fifty or so years, the dinosaur skull they’d purposed as an island dissolved. Julio and Baldarn took it best, having been built to exist in hell, and Patrick managed to quash the pain, mostly, yet the others released haunting screams like that of whales. Upon surfacing into an occasional gas bubble, they unleashed sharp cries which became little more than muffled moans, ignored grumbles from the dyspeptic abdomen of a beast unknown. They bathed in hydrochloric acid, were drowned in bile, and enjoyed a relative breather once in a while—in bog pockets that smelled like compressed farts with a pungency strong enough to perpetuate the lunacy that had become their sloshing reality. And finally, into the bowels, and they became brown. And the compression was equivalent to living in the back of a garbage truck—its hydraulics in a constant state of overload. Then, Lion, a nightmare worthy of Hell’s first-place ribbon for creativity, shit them out.
89. Superheroes
Jake yelled, “Joey, run!”
“Now, get him!” Crisp exploded.
They put themselves together as best as six recovering lunatics could, and tackled Lion. Like a drunken rookie, Joey wobbled his way up the path, back toward the source.
“You cannot stop me,” Lion roared, and he grew, and his arms exploded like a grenade’s shrapnel. His clothes were shredded and his skin was countless victims screaming, crying, throats slit, beheaded, limbless, smashed and chopped, starved and burnt, all pushing out like nightmares.
One-two punches nailed the chests of Baldarn and Julio. The punishing bolts of energy sent the two flying. Baldarn was a cannonball; he went off the cliff and disappeared into the fog below. Julio struck the Griffonizor, still parked where they’d left it; he crushed it in like an elk to a flower-power van doing 45 mph, then fell limp, bleeding.
“I’m going to enjoy this. Now bend over, take my seed!” Lion’s voice was deep, sinister, and the cries from those pushing out on his skin were shrill, felt not heard, souls being stretched in torture machines.
“Go, Joey!” Ivy yelled. “Go!” Her globe of a red head wobbled as if she was drunk.
Lion saw, and he noticed sneaky looks on six conspiring faces. His putty-colored, blotchy-pink skin reddened on his cheeks and forehead. He disregarded the others and headed straight for the lanky, staggering security guard—then something caught his ankle. With an arm stretched out like a bungee cord Patrick caught his leg and jerked. He sent the morphing abomination back, tossing him up and over the Griffonizor and fifty feet beyond the moon buggy. Lion slid off the cliff’s edge, barely managing to hold on. The beast he was becoming, like Jerry and Kim, was getting fat; he was now bloated and became pale as if out of shape. The misshapen person who used to be Lion let out a perverted grunt, throaty like a teen overdosing on puberty. With a few flabby-armed lunges he managed to pull himself up and back onto the rocky path.
“Joey made it!” Ivy called out.
Then, Baldarn returned. He was flying and hovered in the air, still bald and ugly as hell, but empowered by a new sense of sobriety. Like a deformed chicken’s, uneven wings unfolded from his back; within the course of ten seconds he became symmetrical, slime dried and where once had been his burnt-toast bubbly skin, scales glistened like rubies. The beautiful dragon he became exhaled fire at Lion. But Lion pushed through with merely a tan on his now cadaverous-looking shell. Smoking, his yellow hair melted onto his head like a German WWII helmet, he pressed on; truculent he was, a bully who could win because of his obesity.
The others transformed likewise. Julio rose to his feet and grew and grew; his horny self was an upright triceratops on roids and he kicked the dirt as if ready to bow and charge. And Pat’s arms and legs became a webbed wall, sinuating like Medusa’s snakes. He blocked the road to the source. Ivy was herself, mostly, but her red hair became a glowing orb; it emitted static charges as if she was a rubber capacitor who’d just traveled through a wormhole edged in 70s shag. As Lion pounded their way like a moribund glutton, on the rocky ground giving way like memory foam, Ivy sent a red charge of electricity that halted the newly minted officer in his tracks. Then Crisp took a turn.
As Baldarn rose into the sky, sucking a new breath for his flame, Crisp morphed into the being he’d contrived during their hundreds of years within the bowels of the nightmare that was Lion. He became brown, and wooden tumors sprouted from his body as if he’d swallowed a magic bean. A tree! He took to the sky until under its own weight, his limbs fell like an umbrella taking a gravity surge. Each wooden tentacle stabbed then buried itself into the ground, entrapping both vehicles, Lion, and the determined ones hellbent on keeping him caged—until the plan was complete. And they went to war with Lion using their invented fabrications, and they did so as if they were a single mind with the prescience of God, for they had planned every move.
The dragon delivered more fire until Lion was sunburnt. Julio charged, impaling him. Ivy’s red globe recharged and discharged. Pat grabbed and held Lion with a muddy bog’s glut of sticky, worm-like arms. And Jake, the magnificent red and yellow superhero, pounced once more. The Blaze was back! Just liked he’d done to Rex and Rolfe—pain, pain, good, good pain. All the while Crisp’s wooden jungle gym kept the abomination imprisoned.
The plan didn’t come easy, amid the sloth of crushing agony, but by sharing a mental bridge, and rarely, by talking, it evolved as the singularity of their purpose. Time was an hourglass without a cap, and as if being sadistic on purpose, Lion was a child at the beach who kept refilling the sand; it was the one thing they couldn’t figure out: why did it have to be such a long fucking nightmare? It was pointless to wonder, though, yet they wondered anyway—what else to do? They’d surmised being caught between worlds, where time
ticked at a different rate, in a dreamland where beings were locked to a certain frequency. And they had no choice but to endure the nightmare like atoms lingering in space, mere neurons floating around within a massive brain.
And it was bad, really bad: mucous like rotten mustard at the back of their throats, bitter bile kept them permanently emulsified and extra sensitive, and a toxicity that filled lungs as if methane had become a solid. But before crossing into what they assumed to be the lower intestines, they had enjoyed the largest, longest-lasting pocket of respite yet, together. They went over the plan one last time using everything they’d learned: Baldarn and Patrick having existed in Midtown and the underworld for what had been hundreds of years, and Joey, Crisp, Ivy, Jake, and Julio during a relatively short, yet enlightening time period—and it was enough; none were the same slumbering zombies they had once been. And it was simple yet they elaborated over every detail: after being blown from the ass of the beast unknown, back again and the nightmare would be over—they were sure of at least that. Then, use the flexibility of the world as it was near the source—pliable, malleable, transmutable—to fight Lion, to win at any cost. They had to restrain the newly-minted officer using any and all means possible until Joey could successfully merge with Boron. They went over and over and over every minute detail and it was decided to be imperative, that first and foremost, they would need to conquer the discombobulation they knew they’d receive. Jake described how he felt the first time, with Jerry, and they would combat that lobotomized state of mind with a mental high-octane workout. And, each of them contrived a unique method of transformation which could aid them in the battle against Lion. They knew he would be a formidable rival.
It was working, and, something was happening! Lion began to shrink and then regained his faculties. The wooden chamber Crisp had become grew in reverse and Ivy’s red globe coalesced into her normal, bright-red hair. The stretched web of snakes, like a hundred jelly arms, went as straight as a starburst then returned into Patrick like a doll’s hair being yanked from the inside. Baldarn went from the most magnificent dragon, back to the ugly beast from Hell, but he kept changing. Within a minute he was a short bald man in a pressed black suit; he resembled a banker. And Julio shrank, his multitude of horns were teeth in a universe where time ran backward, and he became Julio the pizza man once again; he even wore the same uniform he’d had on in Jewel City, and it was immaculately clean!
The distance between the ground and their feet became a blur, and within another minute they were staring at each other, smiling big, and on a glass platform. The sky became white, and their wondrous smiles too, save for being in slow motion.
“Time!” Pat exclaimed. His voice was low, as if he’d sucked a can of freon. And he moved his arms about. It was as if the motions were slow, then jerky. Slow, then a fast jerk. Slow, then another faster jerk.
“Joey must’ve done it!” Ivy said. Her first word was low, subsequent ones were higher in pitch, and distorted as if her head was being placed inside a helium balloon. And all of them laughed joyously, and their cackles rode the steps of time. The light increased. Ivy jumped Crisp, who stood next to her, and squeezed him tight, and Baldarn the banker shook the hand of a humble pizza cook wearing an apron. Happy feelings went round and the light got brighter, and brighter, and brighter until only a white substance as compact as a diamond existed. They tasted nothing, felt nothing, saw and heard nothing—but nothing, was everything. A paradox! It was as if they had just fallen into a white hole on the flip side of the known universe.
90. Inflation
He inflated.
Jerry looked down at his hands. They were the same shape as he remembered, and so were his legs, even his feet. But he was the color of kelp with a texture like that of a tightly woven canvas, and he had fine teal lines with glowing dots. Like ants the specks used the network enwrapping him as their racetrack. A glistening teal energy danced between his fingers as he wriggled them in front of his face.
“I—” He tried to speak. “What—am I?” The sound came from his lower left side which tingled to the syllables. He tried again, “Ahhh, ah, aaaahhhh, ahh,” and the speaker moved up and along his chest. “Ahhh—eh. What—is—this?” With each experimental word he moved the output until it came from at least somewhere on his face.
He lifted his arm and touched it. Shock! Jolt! White lightning was a branching network infecting his brain in a bizarre, but good, purely nascent way. “My face!” It had the same shape but was not at all the same; the input filtered in and he realized how to use the new body to feel—and everything was hypersensitive and much was coming at him quickly, but he learned, absorbing all of it as if his mind was a dry sponge meeting liquid for the first time.
The sensation of touch could be turned up or down. He reached to the top of his head: it wasn’t hair but had the exact shape of his curly wig. “My hair!” It was solid no different than a pin cushion. And he turned down his controls pertaining to the sensation of touch.
Learning at light speed he managed his visuals, too. He looked about: behind at the massive ship with an open ramp door, inside at what looked like a locker room in its bay area, then to a sky of swirling purples and pinks, like soap, he thought, and to a city slapped onto the cliffside before him, as well four towering buildings that stood before it like gleaming silver gatekeepers, and, to the thing currently inflating beside him. Jerry looked around without moving his head or body. He could see through his toes and sample the cream-colored marble-like ground. Eyes weren’t in any particular place. He could see multi-dimensionally from underarms to ass and look out from any and all places on his new body. This skin, he thought, is one giant eye! One sensor! Distorted visions came as he toyed with it and things got weird. Clarity came quickly, memories were easy to access.
Jerry thought of Herald, back in Club Subterranean. He remembered when Herald had zoned out, when he was taking in the lights and sounds as if he was tripping, when the weird, shocked look coated his thin ghost of a face like a wet sheet. Jerry remembered dancing with Leti and having the most excellent time with Jon and Jodi—and glancing up at Herald. And he remembered Herald’s description of the acid trip he had experienced, how he had said it was like having the wires of his mind connected into the wrong sockets. And Jerry realized just then, although he’d thought up all of it within a fraction of a fraction of a second, that he could do the same, now. He had full control over every aspect of his mind and could plug and unplug—if he should so want to. “Fucking weird,” he said.
Like a balloon, the being on the other side of the open ramp finished inflating, then looked at him and said, “Jerry?”
“Who are you?” Jerry replied. The balloon man shrank a little then morphed into a new shape. Its form resembled a worker he knew well: almost ridiculous receding hair line, round puffy hair like a flattened mohawk, suit with bow tie, even the worker’s distinctively wide-set eyes. It was all however, only included in the shape. “Bart, is that you?” The teal energy whipped around the new seaweed-green man like a mini tornado, then snapped into place.
“It is I, but, where are we?” Bart looked about. It was quiet save for a dither of commotion to their left, while a few more of the same, unshapely green balloons in which the two now found themselves, mottled the area like deflated bags. Then, a large archway door opened. Confused utterances, mumbling, and snippets of howls flooded out. Employing their brand-new bodies, Jerry and Bart took their first steps. It was a good distance and they glanced at each other, walking hesitantly—at first. A smile formed on their faces and they took off running. Jerry leapt twenty feet into the air and like a cheetah in the Sub-Saharan, his follow-up sprint was a nuclear blast of liberation.
“We’re free!”
91. White Hole
The second building. He saw hundreds of naked people while standing under the archway looking in, and more were on the way. The clear network of tubes above delivered body after body into a shallow pool. Wormy fingers like that
of pink sea anemones oriented the slimed, comatose individuals onto a conveyor through what could be described smack-to-the-face simply, as a car wash. Each passed like limp sausages in a meat factory. Through station after station the clockwork journey meandered, into small tunnels of light, positioning them this way and that, bending them over and—needless to say it was as weird as it was invasive, a full clean out, as if they were dolls getting new stuffing; countless humans went round. They ended up in a glass box the size of a warehouse and mechanical arms unbent them, stood them up, and wiped off the weird slime they’d been coated with; coat after variously colored coat that’d just been applied like a full-body facial mask, was wiped clean. Then a small boot shocked their rear in a last gesture of disrespect. Eyes popped wide open.
Each newly awakened zombie of a person stumbled forward by random chance like blind mice in a maze—as if they had to relearn how to walk. Babbling was conversation in a 2020 coffee shop melded with a psych-ward’s random outburst; some howled like wolves, others pontificated like an auctioneer possessed by a preacher. The incoherent people, that Jerry did recognize, mostly, save for being bald and nude, stumbled their way through the maze. Colorful laser curtains separated sections which seemingly, were rewards; like crash-test dummies experiencing an orgasm, faces grimaced as if bungee bead after bead was being plucked, and the animating individuals looked forward to each subsequent light with more alacrity. The varying sections delivered coherence as if scarecrows were earning brains. And murmurs and moaning turned to real conversation. The exit to the maze was still a ways off—this is going to take a while. Then Jerry thought of Carmen. He mumbled out loud, “Car—”
“Hello, Jerry,” a robot said, taking a place next to him. Jerry jolted; Bart looked over nonchalantly. The robot was small in comparison to Jerry, the 6-foot-9 towering woodsman, and it had a large dangling penis with a reluctant-to-decay, spotty layer of dark-brown latex, and, there was a hand on the end where normally would exist Mr. Helmet Head.
