* * * *
2/18/92—Last night, I dreamed of a wolf that filled the night sky. But it wasn’t a wolf per se—it had pale hands and stylish eyebrows. I kept watching the right eyebrow move up and down as the wolf talked. I can’t remember what it said. I watched Ingrid’s tape over and over all morning. Every now and then I’d hit pause—they’d stare at me—then play, and they’d look away. Pause. Play. Paws at play.
More hang-up calls.
Mom would never leave a message, but at least she’d grace me with a little sigh before she hung up. I know I should have called her more. But it’s not my fault she killed herself. And it’s not Dad’s fault, even though he wasn’t there (“But then, he was never there,” blah blah blah). She did it all by her widdle self.
* * * *
2/19/92—It’s late. I just got back from the new club Alexis had been going on about. I went with Sam, and he paid for everything. I’m finding out that he can be a real pain when he doesn’t get his way. He’ll fiddle you ’round and ’round— “But why…? How about… But why…? How about…”—until you just give in. You have to, because he’s being nice the whole time. Nice, nice, nice.
So Nice Sam and I went down to the Funk Hole (what kind of a name is that?) and it was this huge, horrible garage, with mannequins in ’70s clothes scattered everywhere. From out of nowhere, Sam handed me a shot of tequila. We’d only been there thirty seconds and already he was oiling my gears.
We started talking to some slim Gothic critters, who kept blowing their clove-cigarette smoke in our faces. They gave us little black cigarettes that had more than cloves in them—more than drugs, too. As I smoked mine down, little bright pebbles fell out of the ashes. I picked one off the floor—a tiny chunk of crystal. We had some more tequila, too, and soon Sam was out on the dance floor, shaking his wiry little body to some unbearable techno-crap.
By then the Gothic wisps had drifted away. I turned to a cute guy next to me and said, “What is this shit?” and he handed me another shot of tequila and said, “It’s dog shit!” and another cute guy said, “Coyote shit!” and yet another guy said, “Wolf shit!” and when I looked at the third guy, I saw he had red hair, and I had to stop myself from looking down for the bulge of that much-vaunted PECKER. All three studs started laughing and putting their big hot hands on me. I might have enjoyed it if their laughter hadn’t sounded so much like howling.
I cut through the crowd, trying to get away from them, though I don’t suppose they wanted to hurt me. I kept knocking over mannequins (and apologizing!). At one point, I fell down and Sam, who by now was reeking-drunk, grabbed me by the foot and dragged me out on the dance floor.
Now everybody was laughing. I was on my back, bone-tired, looking up at all the laughing people. Then I saw something up among the rafters. There she was, naked as sin, sitting crosslegged on a beam, and even from so-very-far-away, I could tell she was applying lipstick.
Before I passed out, I found myself wondering how one would apply lipstick to a harelip.
I woke up on a ratty old couch in a back room. I still had my wallet, so someone must have been watching over me.
* * * *
2/23/92—Lost a few days there, O journal mine. Not that I’ve been busy. On the contrary. I’ve been watching TV. The idiot box has never been more fascinating.
The networks are filled with harelipped announcers. And the coffee in the commercials is filled with hallucinogenic crystals. And the soap opera studs all have red hair, and the cameras dare not shoot below their waists.
More calls but no hang-ups. Just sexy grrrrrowling.
I suppose one of these days, I should zip down to my wee cell down at MetroShock. Check in. See if I have any messages. And my other projects—I still haven’t figured out if I want to do a column for Queenslander, that Australian magazine. Actually, I don’t give a fuck.
*
Later. Loud music.
I was about to pound on the bedroom wall when I realized the noise was coming from my own apartment. I found the slim little Gothics sitting in the living room, smoking their slim little ciggies. They’d turn the stereo all the way up. One turned its head in my direction (was it a boy or a girl?) and said, “It’s Mr. Tequila.”
I turned down the stereo and stared at them. Their pasty faces looked—brittle. Unreal. I noticed that one had a shiny bit of something dangling from out of its shirt. I reached over and pulled at this odd little bit and before I could blink, shiny film came spooling out of the Goth’s belly, spooling and drooling out in coils that gathered at my feet. One of the others shouted, “Now you’ve done it!” and another stage-whispered, “No, you’ve undone it.”
And finally I said, “This is all a dream, isn’t it?”
The disemboweled Goth looked into my eyes with a sad look and suddenly I thought: I know that look! Mom used to have that look all the time! Whenever some guy dumped her! Whenever some damn PECKER dumped her!
“A dream?” the gutless Goth said with a dead little smile. “You wish.”
That’s when I started laughing. Laughing so hard that tears came to my eyes. Laughing at the absurdo-tragedy of the little Goth, my little Mommy, and this crusty little clump of cosmic shit known as the planet Earth. I dried my eyes just in time to watch all the little Goths fade away.
* * * *
2/24/92—I hardly recognized myself in the mirror this morning. The same face, but a new expression. Not guilt. Not sadness. For the first time in a long time: anticipation.
Alexis came by with Nice Sam. Both now have golden eyes, split lips, pale hands. They took me to bed and took me. Nicely. And my flesh is covered with their too-toothy love-bites. They are lounging in the bedroom right now, smoking black cigarettes laced with crystals.
I’m ready for you, Ingrid. I never thought I could feel this way about a woman. I saw you in the park across the street, three huge wolves prowling and weaving around your feet. How I long for your singular beauty. You were right, I do know how to have fun—but for far too long, I was only partying to keep my half-assed little woes and worries at bay. What do I care if everyone and everything gets fucked up, down, all around? At least I’m being provided with quality entertainment!
* * * *
2/25/92—The air is filled with clove smoke, feral musk and the sweet reek of freshly applied nail polish. Alexis and Sam haven’t left yet. They were going to take off for the Funk Hole late last night but then Ingrid and her pets arrived.
Someone rang the bell, but there was no need for me to open the door. A roiling black mist seethed through the woodwork. The mist condensed into four wolf-headed serpents with fur instead of scales. Alexis and Sam howled their salutations. The largest serpent—a red-furred, grinning thing—writhed round and round my body.
Ingrid changed her form many times for me. She became a jungle beast—a deliciously shapeless velvet mass—a cluster of adroit tentacles—a swirling vortex of hot wetness. She can make others change, too. Alexis won’t be needing her sex-change now. Ingrid rearranged everything to everyone’s satisfaction. Sam now has a pelt of long, luxuriant white fur.
Ingrid told me of Hofman’s transgressions. For years, he had prayed to Azu with admirable zeal, and Azu had rewarded him well. But eventually Hofman had taken up with an S & M society in Stockholm. He turned away from the Lord of Fleshy Appetites and began to worship Pain (“How bourgeois!” Ingrid hooted, raising a deftly plucked eyebrow).
But Azu is wise and magnanimous. In the end, He instructed His Priestess to lavish Hofman with all the pain he desired.
My new lover is now stroking my legs with her painted claws. She has told me of the delights to come once I learn to change my shape, my gender, my species, all by myself. I could let her do it, but I want to make her proud. I want to think up new and surprising ways to pleasure her. I want to be sly and inven
tive and reckless and infinitely desirable. I want to play in the clever shadows long after the rest of the world has died whimpering in the stark, stupid daylight. And I will, I will—Oh, but I will.
* * * *
From “Around Town,” the gossip column of The Paperboy (April 1992 issue):
MetroShock recently waved bye-bye to associate editor Cameron Raske, who, after one too many weeks AWOL, turned in a column that weighed in a bit light realitywise (he referred to freaky filmmaker Erik Hofman as “the late documentarist”). Cameron seems to be taking the news well. The once-legendary club fixture has returned to his old stomping grounds with a vengeance, partying like some kind of wild animal. Also, he’s been seen ascloseasthis with a trendy waif in a veiled hat. Hope the mystery lady can give him a few career tips. His life’s gone to the dogs and he simply couldn’t be happier.
THE VOICE OF THE PANGYRICON
I was onboard the Pangyricon when Velasko’s Crane scooped up and deposited its most hideous prize. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie based on the incident—Attack of the Space Zombies. That studio paid me big bucks to act as a consultant for that project, but they didn’t stick with the facts. They had the zombies talking, shooting guns—the creatures didn’t do any of that. The movie didn’t even mention Daniel, which really surprised me.
Let me tell you what really happened.
My name is Leon Sybek, and I was one of two-hundred Care Technicians on space station Pangyricon. Care Technician—a great title, but it only meant that I helped take care of the animals. A glamorized farm-hand.
Before that, I was loading dishes in the washers at SpaceTech Industries. A kitchen goon. So when I found out that Project Hermes needed folks with agricultural experience, I signed up. I grew up on a dairy farm, milking cows and feeding calves. As a child, I’d hated the work because it was so lonely and boring. But I figured, maybe farming would be more interesting in space.
And it was.
Sure, the tasks never changed from day to day. But it was thrilling to be up in space as part of a big mission—that made me feel pretty important, even though I was only tending to livestock. Plus, the other Care Technicians were friendly and liked to talk about all sorts of things, like books and current events and of course, Project Hermes.
Hermes was the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, but I don’t know why the project was named after him. Basically, the goal was to prepare Mars for colonization by Earth. That meant building enclosed work communities on the planet surface, changing the atmosphere, integrating flora and fauna, and thousands of other related objectives. I suppose they chose the name Hermes because we were delivering a message to Mars: Hey, we’re moving in.
Of course, Mars was the Roman name of the Greek war god Ares, so they should’ve called it Project Mercury, since that was the Roman name for Hermes. Maybe they named it Hermes because there was already a planet Mercury—and Earth wasn’t about to colonize that sun-scorched chunk of real estate.
Mars was a dead planet, but a clean one, too. Clean and dry. No lava, no sloppy oceans of liquified poisonous gases. Mars was workable.
The Pangyricon is a revolving space station in orbit around Mars. It’s shaped like a giant wagon-wheel, with a huge spherical hub and five spokes that serve as hallways to the circular outer frame. Us workers lived in the hub and carried out our duties in the frame, where the supplies and animals were housed.
The hub contained a machine known as Velasko’s Crane. I’m not a scientist, so I don’t completely understand how it works. Here’s what I know about the machine and the man who invented it:
There used to be a brilliant man named Daniel Velasko who was like a space-age version of Thomas Edison—always working, rarely sleeping, and coming up with incredible ideas on a regular basis. His greatest invention was the Crane, which made it possible to transport matter across great distances instantaneously. He’d named it after a carnival game he’d enjoyed as a child. The game featured a glass booth with a toy crane surrounded by prizes. The player used a crank and maneuvered the crane’s scoop to grab at the little trinkets.
I once got to play that game at a retro outdoor festival that tried to recreate the old carnival experience. The glass prizes were always the hardest to grab because they were so slippery.
Velasko’s Crane had three parts: a chamber that housed the control panel and power unit, and two rectangular platforms, each as big as a full-size mattress. One platform was set by the chamber and the other was taken to the final transport destination. When something needed to be transported, the item was placed on the platform by the chamber. The operator would make the appropriate calibrations, hit the right buttons and in a flash, the item would disappear and then show up instantly on the other platform, wherever that had been placed. Any platform could send or receive, but it needed a nearby chamber to send. Without the chamber, it could only receive.
I know all that because Daniel told me the details. Or rather, Daniel’s electronic persona. Velasko had been one of the designers of the Pangyricon, and he’d loaded his memories, personality and intellect into its main computer decades ago. These elements had been integrated into the computer’s behavioral programming to create a logical but friendly thinking machine. The space station didn’t have a captain—it had a board of directors back on Earth, but no one person at the helm, symbolic or otherwise. It didn’t need one, with Daniel looking after things.
Daniel was the voice of the Pangyricon, and he used to chat with me while I did my chores. A person could talk to the computer from any point on the station. Unlike a real person, he could talk with hundreds of different people at the same time. He always came across a smart, helpful friend who was both interesting and interested in what you had to say.
I remember the day he told me about the early days of Velasko’s Crane. I was feeding the calves, which hopefully would spend their adult years grazing on the surface of a greener Mars.
“Attention, Daniel,” I said. You had to start any conversation with those words to get the computer’s attention. “How long did it take to come up with the Crane?”
“It only took me a few seconds to ‘come up with’ the idea,” he said in its low, firm voice, which had a very slight metallic buzz. I liked that he acted like he was his own inventor. “It took much longer to actually make it work. Thirty years. With a few mistakes along the way, too. But that’s to be expected.”
“Yeah? What kind of mistakes?”
He laughed. “Where do I begin? Hmmm. Let me put it this way. Some substances transport better than others.”
“You mean like glass?” I then told it about my own experience with the carnival crane game.
“That’s the right idea,” he said. “But it’s easy to transport glass with my Crane. Glass sits still.”
“I suppose any crane works better when the cargo isn’t moving around,” I said.
“Yes! Exactly!” His voice rose a couple notes when he was pleased or excited. “Right now the process of transportation is practically instantaneous. But in the early days, it used to take a few seconds. After if the cargo item was not absolutely still…it would either show up damaged or just not appear at all. Living things usually died—even if they weren’t moving on the outside, their organs were still active on the inside. Like their beating hearts.”
At that point, a few other Care Technicians came by to ask if I wanted to join them for lunch. One of them was Quinn, a young woman who liked me quite a lot. I enjoyed talking with her, but I wasn’t attracted to her because she was very skinny and nervous. She reminded me of a hungry hummingbird in need of a nectar fix. “Gotta run,” I said. “Talk to ya later, Daniel.”
“See ya later, alligator,” he replied. The computer ended most conversations that way. Just like the real Daniel Velasko, I suppose.
Later that week, we were scheduled to receive two new
calves—holsteins, which are black and white and grow to be quite large. The calves already onboard were smaller, yellowish-brown jerseys.
Most of our coworkers were in the main leisure area, watching a broadcast of a baseball game. Quinn and I weren’t big sports fans, so we’d agreed to take care of the livestock transport at that time. The platforms were phenomenally expensive, which was why we only had one onboard. Two or three would have been more convenient—especially in the livestock quarters—but that sort of expense just wasn’t in the budget.
“Why holsteins?” Quinn asked as we stood by the platform. “Holsteins get too big! And they’re not as manageable as jerseys. They’re just big and stupid.”
“They’re only sending two,” I said. “And they’re just calves. It’s probably part of a feasibility study. They do need to consider holsteins—they give more milk, and its low-fat, too. If they don’t work out, they probably won’t send any more. Don’t get all upset about it.”
“I have a right to be upset,” Quinn said. “I grew up on a farm with holsteins on it. That information is in my personal file—I’m well-informed on the matter. I wish somebody had thought to ask me.”
I ruffled her hair. “Well, if I was ran this banana boat, I’d run every major livestock decision your way.”
She gave me a very sweet smile.
“Okay,” said Remson, the Transport Technician. He was in the chamber, speaking over the room’s audio system. “Here they come, fresh from the dewy fields of Earth. Ready?”
“Sure,” I replied. The calves would arrive harnessed within a metal stall, so it wasn’t like we’d have to catch them.
We stood by the platform—but nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” Quinn said.
Through the glass of the control chamber, I could see that Remson was talking on a communicator. Apparently he’d turned off the audio system so we couldn’t hear what was being said.
Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls: Tales of Horror and the Bizarre Page 21
