No, I didn’t always think this freaky, as you put it. But I can tell you almost precisely when I began to see the truth of things. I was a callow freshman in college, even callower than most, given my precocious progress. One day something seemed to change in my chemistry, as I like to think of it. It was quite horrible for a while. Eventually, though, I realized that the alteration was from a false chemistry to a true one. Yes, that’s when I decided to pursue the subject as my career, my calling. But that’s a story in itself, and here we are now at your apartment tower.
Please don’t slam the car door the way you were about to. No need to draw attention to our presence. You’re right, there’s really no one around to be attentive anyway. The local street vermin seem to have withdrawn into their holes. Very good: “But their holes are not their vessels,” indeed. Not the hole of man but the whole man is the true vessel, as some pompous sage might have said. And the right vessel is the whole point of the thing, for the best vessel will ultimately take the shape of its contents.
Never mind what I’m talking about. I just like to talk, as you may have noticed. Oops, almost forgot my briefcase. Wouldn’t want to leave it unattended in this neighborhood, isn’t that right? You’re smiling about my briefcase, aren’t you, Maryrose? You think you know something again. Well, go ahead and think that if you like. Everybody likes to think he has inside information. That policeman, for example. You could see how pleased he was to instantly become a man of knowledge, even if it’s only by way of a knowledgeable tip on the stock market. Everybody wants to know the secret truth, scientia arcana, the real dope.
Maybe I do have some dope in my case. Then again, maybe it’s just an empty prop, a leather vessel with a void inside. But you already know that I work for a dope company. You were thinking that, weren’t you? Well, let’s go up to your place and find out.
Cozy little lobby you have here; but I’m afraid the atmosphere is doing strange things to that pot of ferns over there. Of course I know they’re artificial. Which only means that Nature, one of the Great Chemists, made them at one remove, that’s all. Here, this elevator seems to be working, though a little noisily. After you, Lady R. The twenty-second floor if I remember right, and I always do. Uh, I believe there’s to be no smoking in this elevator, if you don’t mind. Thank you. And here we are. I’ll bet your place is down this way. See, I am always right. Isn’t that funny? Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming.
Well, your apartment has a very nice door. No, you’re wrong. There’s no such thing as “just like all the others.” Yours is quite different, can’t you see that? And tonight your door is visibly different from any other time you’ve ever seen it. I’m not just being egoistical about my unique presence at your threshold this evening. Do you see what I mean? Well, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve been lecturing you all night. I was a pedagogue once, which I suppose is obvious. It’s just that there are some important things I must impart to you, my little rosebud, before we’re through. Okay? Now, let’s go in and see what kind of view you have from up here.
Keep the ceiling light off please, so that I don’t have to look at a double of this dour room reflected in your window. One of your dim lamps should give us all the light we need. There, that’s fine. You do have a good view of the city from this height. I think it’s perfect, not too far up. I live in a mere two-story house myself and being up here makes me dizzily realize what I’m missing. From this lofty keep I could nightly observe the city and its constant mutations. A different city every night. Yes, Rosie, I have to say you’re right—sarcastic tone and all—the city is indeed also a vessel. And it’s one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below, look at their lines and interconnections. They’re like a skeleton of something…the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things and risking that they may wake up while doing so. Should that ever happen you can be assured there will be hell to pay.
My imagination? No, I don’t think it’s vivid at all. On the contrary, it’s not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed…extensions. That’s why I’m here with you. You’re smiling again, or rather you’re smirking. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?
Yes, maybe we are wasting too much time. But of course we’ll have to endure just one more delay while I rummage around in my briefcase and remove what you’ve been waiting for. So you hope it’s good dope, eh? Well, you’ll have a chance to find out, since you seem so anxious to become a vessel yourself for my chemicals. No, stay seated just where you are please. There’s no reason for you to glimpse every little secret I’ve got in here. All you’re interested in seeing is one squat little bottle screwed tightly closed with a black cap…and here it is!
Yes, it does look like a bottle of powdered light. That’s very observant. What is it? I thought you would know by now. Here, hold out your hand and you can have a closer look. Just a little powdery mound in the middle of your sweaty palm, about one brainful to be precise. Doesn’t it look like pulverized diamonds? It glitters, yes it does. I don’t blame you for thinking it might be dangerous to snort, or whatever else you imagine you’re supposed to do with it. But by watching your hand very closely you’ll see that you don’t have to do anything at all.
See, it dissolved right into your palm. Disappeared completely, except for a few stray grains. But don’t worry about them. Calm down, the burning will soon go away. There’s no point in trying to rub the drug off your hand. It’s in your system now. And it certainly won’t help to get excited, nor are threats of any use to you. Please remain seated in that chair.
Can you feel any effects yet? I mean besides the fact that you’re no longer able to move your arms or legs. That’s just the beginning of this nightly entertainment. You see my glittering powder has now made possible a very interesting relationship between us. Between you and me, my red red rose. The drug has rendered you fantastically sensitive to the shaping influence of a certain form of energy, namely that which is being generated by me, or rather through me. To put it romantically, I’m now dreaming you. That’s really the only way I can explain it that you might understand. Not dreaming about you, like some old love song. I’m dreaming you. Your arms and legs don’t respond to your brain’s commands because I’m dreaming of someone who is as still as a statue. I hope you can appreciate how remarkable this is.
Damn! I suppose that was your attempt to scream. You really are terrified, aren’t you? Just to be safe, perhaps I’d better dream of someone who hasn’t anything to scream with. There, that should do it. You do look strange, though, like that. But we’ve only just begun. These minor tricks are child’s play and I’m sure don’t impress you in the least. Soon I’ll show you that I can really make an impression, once I put my mind to it.
Is there something in your eyes? Yes, I can see there is. A question. Right now you would like to ask, if only you still had the means to do so, what’s to become of old Rosie? It’s only fair that you should know.
We are presently coming into perfect tune with each other, my dreams and my dream girl. You are about to become the flesh and blood kaleidoscope of my imagination. In the latter stages of this game anything might happen. Your form will know no limits of variety, for now the Great Chemists themselves are working through me. Soon I will put my dreaming in the hands of greater forces, and I’m sure there will be some surprises for both of us. That is one thing which never changes.
Nevertheless, there is still a problem with this process. It’s not really perfect, certainly not marketable, as we say in the pill business. And wouldn’t that be boring if it were perfect? What I mean to say is that under the stress of such diverse and alien metamorphoses, the original structure of the object somehow breaks down in a way even I don’t
understand. The consequence of the thing is simple: you can never be as you once were. I’m very sorry. You’ll have to remain in whatever curious incarnation you take on at the dream’s end. Which should rattle the wits of whoever is unfortunate enough to find you. But don’t worry, you will not live long after I leave here. And by then you will have experienced god-like powers of proteation which I myself cannot hope to know, no matter how intimately I may try.
And now I think we can proceed with what has been your destiny all along. Are you ready? I am entirely ready and by degrees am giving myself over to those forces which, with any luck, I will never completely comprehend. Can you feel us both being caught up in the great web of delirium? Can you feel the fevers of this chemist? The power of my dreaming, my dreaming, my dreaming, my…
Now Rose of madness—Bloom!
DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH LABYRINTHINE EYES
Everyone at the party comments on them. They ask if I had them altered in some way, suggest that I’ve tucked some strange crystallized lenses under my eyelids. I tell them no, that I was born with these singular optic organs; they’re not from some optometrist’s bag of tricks, not the result of surgical mayhem. Of course they find this hard to believe, especially when I tell them I was also born with the full powers of a master hypnotist…and from there I rapidly evolved, advancing into a mesmeric wilderness untrod before or since by any others of my calling. No, I wouldn’t say business or profession, I would have to say calling. What else do you call it when you’re destined from birth, marked by fate’s stigmata? At this point they smile politely, saying that they really enjoyed the show and that I certainly am good at what I do. I tell them how grateful I am for the opportunity to perform for such fancy persons in such a fancy house. Unsure to what extent I’m just kidding them, they nervously twirl the stems of their champagne glasses, the beverage sparkling and the crystal twinkling under a chandelier’s kaleidoscopic blaze. Despite all the beauty, power, and prestige socializing in this rather baroque room tonight, I think they know how basically ordinary they all are. They are very impressed by me and my assistant, who have been asked to mingle with the guests and amuse them in whatever way we can. One gentleman with a flushed face looks across the room at my assistant, guzzling his drink as he does so. “Would you like to meet her,” I ask. “You bet,” he replies. They all do; they all want to know you, my somnambule.
Earlier in the evening we presented our show to these lovely people. I instructed the host of the party to serve no alcohol before our performance, and to arrange the furniture of this wonderfully ornate room in a way that would allow everyone a perfect view of us on our little platform. He complied obediently, of course. He also conceded to my request for payment in advance. Such an agreeable man, giving in to the will of another so readily.
At the start of the show I am alone before a silent audience. All illumination is cancelled except a single spotlight which I have set up on the floor exactly two point two meters from the stage. The spotlight focuses on a pair of metronomes, their batons sweeping back and forth in perfect unison like windshield wipers in the rain: smoothly back and smoothly forth, back and forth, back and forth. And at the tip of each baton is a luminous replica of each of my eyes swaying left and right in full view of everyone, while my voice speaks to them from a shadowy edge of the stage. First I give a brief lecture on hypnosis, its name and nature. After that I say: “Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, please direct your attention to that tall black cabinet with the stunning gold embellishments running riot upon its surface. Within stands the most beautiful creature you have ever laid eyes on. She is everything you can imagine in the way of physical perfection. Everything. And just for you she is already in the deepest trance. You will see her.” There is a dramatic pause during which my eyes fix upon that beast of a congregation, keeping my control. Then I look back toward the cabinet and softly utter the simple but strategic words: “Darling, you may come out now.”
The trick door opens, seemingly of its own will. Suddenly the audience emits a quiet gasp, and for a second I panic. Then there is applause, reassuring me that everything is all right, that they like the thing they see within the cabinet. What they see is standing upright inside, almost as tall as the cabinet itself. She is wearing a tiny outfit entirely of sequins, a vulgar costume whose rampant glitter somehow transcends the cliché, resurrecting its vaudevillian soul. Her gaze is fixed on an infinity slightly above the heads of everyone. “Darling?” I say invitingly. At this pre-arranged signal she begins to totter within the box. Finally she teeters into a forward fall, straight down toward the hard surface of the stage. At the last moment I rush over and catch her rigid and unflinching figure before it hits. There is applause while I restore her to a vertical position.
Now begins the performance proper, which is a regimented array of the usual mesmerian gimmicks. I place the somnambule’s hypnotically stiffened body horizontally between two chairs and ask some behemoth from the audience to come up and sit on her. The man is only too glad to do this. Then I command the somnambule to become inhumanly limp, after which I stuff her into a small box which resembles a coffin. (And inwardly I titter at my tasteless joke.) Next I fire a gun loaded with blanks straight at her, not six inches from her face, and she doesn’t wince one bit. We perform a few other routines in defiance of death and pain, afterward moving on to the memory tricks. In one of them I have everybody in the audience call out in turn his or her full name and birthdate. Then my somnambule repeats this information when requested at random to do so by individual audience members. She gets all the names right—and of course everyone is amazed—but she systematically fails to reply with the right dates. Instead she forecasts a future occasion which never coincides with the birthdate she was given. Some of the years of the dates she offers are in distant posterity and some disturbingly near. I express astonishment at my somnambule’s behavior, explaining to the audience that portentous fortune-telling is not normally part of the show. I apologize for this ominous display of clairvoyance and vow to make it up to them with an unbelievably diverting finale. A blare of heavenly horns would not be inappropriate at this point.
I signal my assistant to move to the precise center of the stage. Here she positions herself with legs outspread to form an upside-down V out of her lower body. Another signal from me, and her arms rise slowly until they are stretched outward to their furthest limit, fingertips tensely straining for that extra millimeter or so. A final signal commands her nodding head to lift fully erect upon the muscle-knotted column of her neck, eyes glaring out at the audience. The eyes beyond the edge of the stage glare back at her with the same gaze. “Now,” I admonish them with poised palm, “there must be total silence. This means no coughs, no sniffs, no clearing of throats.” And they obey this unreasonable command; their bodies are silent, for I am their master. They are a noiseless maze of flesh. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” I continue, “you are about to see something that I need not tout with tawdry preliminaries. My assistant is now in the deepest possible trance. The particles of her being are obeisant to forces beyond mundane existence, beyond life, death, and so on and so forth. At my instruction she will begin an astounding metamorphosis—entirely through the power of hypnotic energy—which will reveal to you one of the multitudinous unseen facets of the human diamond. Nothing more need be said. My dear, you may commence your change of form, code name: Sarah McFinn.”
There she stands—arms, legs, towering head—my five-pointed somnambule: a star. “Already you can see the glowing,” I tell the audience. “She begins to luminesce; she begins to effloresce; and now she approaches such radiance that up here on stage I am nearly blinded. But there is no pain, there is anything but eyesore.” No one in the audience is even squinting, I notice, for the beams from her body—this labyrinth of light!—are dream beams without physical properties. “Keep watching,” I shout at them, pointing to the human luminary. “Are those snow-white wings you see sprouting beyond the horizon of her shoulders? Have the slender
lengths of her arms, her legs, her neck all turned to a quivering, angelified alabaster? Is she not the very image of celestiality discarnate?”
But I cannot sustain the moment. The light fades in the eyes of the audience, growing dimmer by the second, and my assistant collapses back into an earthly incarnation. I am exhausted. What’s worse, all our efforts seem to have been wasted, for the audience answers this spectacle with only perfunctory applause. I can hardly believe it, but the finale fell flat. They don’t understand. They actually like all the mock-death and bogus-pain stuff better. These are what fascinates them. Bah. Double bah.
“Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen,” I say when the lights come back on and the meager applause dies entirely. “I hope my beautiful assistant and I haven’t bored you too much this evening. You do look a little sleepy, as if you’ve been lulled into a trance yourselves. Which is not such a bad feeling, is it? Sinking deep into a downy darkness, resting your souls on pillows stuffed with soft shadows. But our host informs me that things will liven up very soon. Certainly you will awake when a little chime commands you to do so. Remember, it’s wake-up time when you hear the chime,” I repeat. “And now I believe we can prosecute this evening’s festivities.”
I help my assistant down from the platform and we mix with the rest of the partiers. Drinks are served and the noise level in the room rises several decibels. The party’s populus begins to coagulate into groups here and there. I separate myself from a boisterous congregation surrounding my assistant and me, but nobody seems to notice. They are entranced with my sequined somnambule. She dazzles them—a sun at the center of a drab galaxy, her costume catching the light of that monstrous chandelier winking with a thousand eyes. Everyone seems to be trying to command her attention; but she just smiles, so vacant and full of grace, not even sipping the drink some lucky person was allowed to place in her slender hand. They are transfixed, just like lady spiders during the mating ritual. After all, didn’t I tell them that my lanky hypnotizee was their very own vision of fleshly perfection? And perfection is master! Or at least one’s idea of it.
The Nightmare Factory Page 10
