Transmatic

by Chris Kelso

  Asta’s face was a portrait of disappointment and betrayal. She jerked away from Samuel. The Ortegians started to murmur in discontent.

  - Has she rejected the male?

  - Because he is black in the skin?

  - No, she told us she likes them that colour!

  - Then what’s the problem?

  Un stood nervously, watching the awful scene unfold. He had to do something. Desperately clambering to the podium above the herd of miners, Un coughed into a mic to get everyone’s attention.

  - Ok everyone, let’s give these two some privacy. We need controlled circumstances. Even humans don’t fuck in front of a crowd you know. Let’s move it along!

  Un could tell that Asta was furious to the point of violence. She had already torn free her brassiere and breechcloth and was advancing on the male. Samuel was cowering in the corner of the cell, the burning neon beams inches from the bare flesh of his back. She had her hands around his throat, squeezing with the superhuman strength of emotional rejection. Samuel grabbed the girl by the wrist, managed to shift her power. The girl went careening across the cell into a hay stack. Asta lay motionless in the wet dirt. Samuel looked out at the alien race looking in. He caught the stare of Un who suddenly filled up with piercing guilt, not for the first time.

  Moog appeared beside Un on the podium.

  - What do you think the Earthlings would do if they realised they are our creators?

  Un kept his stare locked on the male Earthling in the cage.

  - I imagine their heads would explode.

  Moog gave a hideous cackle then abruptly stopped when he noticed the despair in Un’s countenance.

  - Why are you so upset? The Galactic Council have been very understanding about our predicament, you know that. They don’t hold anything against us. We tried our best, they will not punish us greatly for this failure.

  - There is always sadness when one supersedes their own God, especially in the cruel way we went about achieving superiority.

  - The Radon was an accident!

  - Was it?

  Moog ignored the moroseness of his secretary and addressed the miners who were both confused and disturbed by the events.

  - It seems, good Ortegians that God is dead. Let us mourn.

  TEN

  FOR A WHILE THERE WAS SILENCE…

  - It zigzags, watch…

  Ellis lit the fuse and took a leap back. The rocket sent a spiral arm into the starless sky. When it reached a certain point in the atmosphere it exploded, dispersing fiery shards of light over the valley.

  - Pretty neat – decided Isabella.

  - I was thinking of using them for the Slave State Festival tomorrow.

  Ellis was desperate to impress her. She was kind, beautiful, talented and scarred through to her very soul - he’d never met anyone quite like her. Of course, there were other benefits to dating Isabella. She was an actress and therefor immune to Slave State conscription.

  - D’you know any neat tricks? I know a few card tricks.

  She thought for a moment.

  - When I was 16 I first learned how to pull off the curse of the blinding worm.

  - What’s that? – Ellis sat up eagerly. Isabella started reciting.

  - Needle in thread

  Needle in bread

  Eye in needle

  Needle in eye

  Bury the bread deep in a sty

  Ellis tried not to laugh in Isabella’s face.

  - You don’t believe I can do it, do you?

  - I do, really I do!

  - You’d take a clump of mouldy bread, run a needle through it and bury the bread under the fence of a pigsty. If you chanted the spell properly the worm materialised behind the accursed’s eyeball, blinding them instantly – curse of the blinding worm.

  - That is neat…

  - My mother taught many of today’s leading sorcerers the ways of malevolent magical practice, from Himmlue to Zazapeechwa. In Virginia the underground war was fought almost entirely with necromancy. I’m not a part of that world anymore, don’t worry.

  - So you became an actress?

  - I became a ghost.

  No one fell in love anymore, if the Slave State motto’s were to be believed anyway.

  *True love is dead and YOU have killed him!*

  ….for the longest time Ellis sincerely believed that. This was just the way of it - except he had fallen in love, intensely in love, with Isabella. They sat until the night started to show glimmers of sun-up. Ellis collected his novelty fireworks and walked Isabella back into Shell County. The scorched star pushed through, the ground would soon be blistered by it.

  The howls of agony came and didn’t stop, like a wolf baying at the moon. The first days of the festival had begun. Shell County had loin-cloth clad slaves by the hundred. Men were chained together, forced to march down the street while being whipped by their slave-master. He worked them like devils, especially in preparation for the festival. Ellis watched on, counting his blessings. He couldn’t handle life in the mining enclaves. He wasn’t made of strong enough stuff.

  The master’s whip was a substitute for food - it never lost its virtue. Some of the men were covered in sores from dragging the shafts of the rickshaw all day long. They were allowed to moan in discomfort, but nothing too theatrical or disruptive. Most had been enslaved so long they had come to believe they actually needed the State. If they returned to free, civilised society they wouldn’t be able to cope. Of course, the best jobs for a slave involved working for officials rolling pats of butter, boiling Baroness Un’s eggs, pounding ice or grinding coffee. However the majority found themselves down the mine shafts.

  Isabella made her way through the marching band of captives. They barely registered her presence. Ellis watched Isabella disappear into the crush of ogling spectators, unable to know for sure if he’d ever see her again.

  Pig-faced children scuffled hard in the silvery streets, troughs piling high, awful slander spoken in barbed oinking. Trash cans overflow/Wednesday summer heat send lines of reeking flesh up into the swirling vortex-hole where the sun used to be before it fell out of the sky and into the ocean. Women wept the eternal ballad, histrionic moans - sounds of nightmare trains rumbling on the distant track of thinking…

  Scientologist promises. A troupe of youths carrying their slave master atop his throne down the tormented street to pigs puffing pan-pipe soundtrack…

  One of the boys, dark hair, simple doughy features, says to his friend, blonde and tall, ill-looking.

  - The master has put on weight.

  The tall blonde nauseous kid shushes, sends spit all over his raised, erect index. He’s scared the master will hear.

  - He can’t hear us – reassures the dark haired kid – he’s too wrapped up in all the attention.

  Ellis joined the onlookers, some of whom had taken to hurling rotten fruit at the children. He saw a child, the dark haired boy, and recognised him. A distant familiarity: a son-a brother-a cousin-another? He thought about the worm wriggling behind the milky cornea. It was the recent, profound rumblings of love knotting his gut into a vice-tight noose that made him think clearly about the slave-children. Instead of simple gratitude (that he had avoided the shackles of slavery himself), Ellis felt something real for the boy, an emotion humanity almost forgot. Then Ellis remembered that “True love was dead” and HE had killed him….

  He went to the store to buy some more novelty fireworks.

  For a while more there would be silence…

  PART THREE

  ELEVEN

  Ellis

  FOLLOW THE SOUND OF GRINDING MOLARS AND MOANING DRUGGIES….

  ….an Italian straight off the sidewalk, a professional gambler (most likely) with a big thuggish outward show came into the apartment, brought out a clear bag with some of his own private stuff from his back pocket and sat cross-legged in the circle of other junkies. He put some in a tablespoon, tamped it with a wet finger-tip and held it over a flame until it bubble
d and cracked. Ignius Ellis sat right across from the thuggish Italian. He was a curious looking junkie, noted Ellis, strong shouldered with good skin and oily hair. There was a macho bulge in the crotch of his faded jeans that was the antithesis of a drained and sex-starved addict. Mysterious eyes rebounded off each face in the circle. He didn’t reveal his name until prompted 20 minutes into the communal experience.

  - Gio – he said softly, dreamily.

  Ignius’s first impression was that he might be good to score from. Gio had the look of a man people rarely fucked with. He was struck by how healthy the big Italian seemed.

  - What’s yer secret pal?

  - Huh? What?

  - You cooking sleeping tablets over there?

  - Nah man, this is my own shit.

  Ignius’s feeling about Gio suddenly changed. It was apparent upon closer scrutiny that a soul radiated healthily from his young face. There was no way he was a Jammer.

  - Can we try some? It’s all about sharing in this joint…

  Gio gave an uncertain look. Ellis gave a laugh and told him to relax.

  - I wouldn’t take your shit mate, I’m just kiddin’ on. It’d be insane to expect a Jammer like yourself to share his own personal stash. Say, you’re a right handsome fella.

  - Why you sassin’ me?

  - Am I sassing you?

  - You keep lookin at me funny, what’s the matter?

  - I’m just lookin mate…

  - Well why you lookin all untrusting?

  - Because the druggies in this building are brothers and sisters, one big family. We respond only to the overtures of our fellow addicts, not a filthy informant…

  - Hey man, I ain’t no narc!

  Ellis rolled up his shirt sleeve and Gio initially thought he was about engage him in a fist-fight, but Ignius just pricked himself with a 30-gauge spike and exhaled.

  - I beg to differ. Now don’t worry. I’m a fair man, in fact we’re all fair people here. It’s actually a frequent misconception that all Jammers are hostile and self-serving. We’re very amiable, made that way in no small part to the Jam-Caps themselves. So here’s how it’ll go…

  The Italian’s petulance was revealing. Jammers weren’t paranoid or indignant. Gio’s arms shot around all over the place.

  - Hey man, fuck you ok, I can stay and shoot up if I want. I got let in at the door, I got my own shit and just wanna hit off the streets…

  Ellis shared a glance with the other junkies in the users circle.

  - Did you know I’ve killed men before, hmm, did you know that Gio?

  - Yeah? Big woop! – The Italian put on his best snot-nosed face.

  - Most of the people in this circle have killed men before. The Jam-Caps keep us nice and affable, but you know the tendency for old habits to creep back up on a man?

  - Oh yeah, who you killed?

  - Before I came to the State I was a hitman, before that I was a hooligan back home in Scotland.

  - Yeah?

  - The man next to you has killed before, haven’t you Roy?

  A stick-insect man with long braided hair and a baggy blue shirt open at his chest jutted to attention. He had an eye missing.

  - Sure, I mean, I killed a girl once. I shot her in the back of the head. It wasn’t nothin personal. I just wanted to try it out, yano? Felt pretty good, no Jam-Cap high but I could kill again for a kick.

  Gio stood up, his mask of coolness slipping right away to reveal a scared kid. Ellis stood up and faced him.

  - You’re out yer depth big man. Take your sleepin’ pills and tell the State to go fuck their ugly, extra-terrestrial mothers. Now scram…

  ****

  Despite the warmth of the jungle, there was such a prominent coldness in the ditch of Ignius Ellis’s soul that it made his breath freeze into a solid funnel of ice. The tumult of river and rocks in perpetual conflict were all around him. Blood coursed through his skull in chorus with the rapids. A mirror image of Ignius came out from the thickets - a version free of the awful knowledge of the Slave State. He was afraid to go near it for fear of corrupting it somehow, as if the truth were contagious and deadly to peaceful, ignorant animals.

  Staring

  Staring back

  The crashing elementals in his ears spiral duct. Then the smells - a floppy slab of flesh skewered and rotating above the glowing coals of a fire. He reached out with his hand to touch himself and felt the chisel-cold skin. His mirror image went to the river’s edge and waded his bare feet in the surge of brawling water.

  He woke up in a bed in a strange room. He didn’t know if he was still in the jungle or if it’d all been a dream and he was back in his own, much more familiar, urban nightmare.

  The pleasant warmth of black coffee on the inside of his throat and its bitter aftertaste on his tongue

  His temples throbbed.

  - Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, ye hear me? – Ignius’ father said in a serious tone, telling his son what to do. Ignius listened and nodded to confirm that he wouldn’t do what anyone told him – except his father, of course!

  - I want to punch you in the personality… - he mumbled to himself, thinking of his father.

  Ellis pushed his fingers into his eyes to nurse the headache somehow, the veins on the inside of his lids lit up like fractures of lightening.

  In hell they cover your head over

  So you can’t see what’s going on

  As if they want to hide the atrocities of the burning metropolis

  So they can really relish the expression on your face upon the big unveiling

  You’re bundled into the back of a vehicle

  It takes off at breakneck speed and all you can hear is the skidding and the clumsy shifting of gears

  And all you can see is life inside a paper bag.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chris Kelso is a writer, illustrator, editor, librarian and journalist from Scotland. Along with Garret Cook he is the co-creator/editor of anti-New Yorker zine “Imperial Youth Review”.

  He has yet to make any actual money from his shitty books….

  Other works also by the author –

  Novellas

  A Message from the Slave State

  Moosejaw Frontier

  Transmatic

  Short-story collections

  Schadenfreude

  Novels

  The Dissolving Zinc Theatre

  The Black Dog Eats the City

  Magazines (Garrett Cook)

  Imperial Youth Review issue 1

  Imperial Youth Review issue 2

  Comics

  The New Animal Liberation Front

  Anthologies

  Caledonia Dreamin’ – Strange Fiction of Scottish Descent (ed. With Hal Duncan)

  Terror Scribes (ed. With Adam

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  THAT'S THE LAST TIME SHE GETS THE BIGGER WORM... Once their flesh flakes away the angels collapse into puddles of hissing goop and withered petals blow into them hurried along by unseen winds. My spit looses its sweet taste to the black flavor of ash. The glowing birds in the bright orange sky burst into small sparkly novas. The sky itself weeps and tears, streaking down like a ruined painting as the dismal gray of life wheezes back before my eyes. I don't blink; praying silently for one last desperate sensation of the high. Lila feels it too. S
he writhes on the mattress next to me; her moans of ecstasy warping into groans that capture the hollowness of our souls. Tears form in her eyes and I can almost feel the lump in her throat. It's gone and she wants to cry. I'd rather chase down more Worms than cry about it but everybody reacts to the Worms differently. I slip away to my own neon colored utopia where things with wings fan me and comfort me when the living neon worm dissolves under my skin. Lila told me once they wrap around her like a giant fuzzy neon hug. I imagine her high shedding off her like snake skin and flaking to the filthy floor next to the mattress. Her high sounds better than mine. More Fun. That's the last time she gets the bigger worm.

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