Chemical Gardens

by Gina Ranalli

  “Uh…” He stares blankly, then bursts out laughing and points at me. “Right!”

  We shake hands in that funky way ‘dudes’ do and then I’m off, down one of the dark branches and away from my van, Chad, and the creepy little Kreepkins, the black sewer sludge stream trickling to my right over the crumbling cobblestone.

  9

  After walking for at least a mile through dark tunnels large enough to house 747’s, I begin to think I’m no longer in the Seattle Underground at all. Either that or it’s a hell of a lot bigger than they tell you in the tourist brochures.

  Carrying my guitar case has become somewhat of a pain in the ass, so I stop and take the Tooth out, strap it on and discard the case. I hope I can come back for it at some point, since it’s been with me for quite some time and is decorated with dozens of local band stickers. But if I never see it again, it won’t be a complete tragedy either. The guitar, my precious Sweet Tooth, is really my prized possession.

  I remember the day I first saw one in a guitar store, all shiny and new and begging to be plucked by my black-nailed callused fingertips, hanging on the wall like a beautiful dream of everything that is right in the world.

  I knew I had to have one but of course I couldn’t afford it. Even by trading my old Sweet in, a nice but well-loved and dying Thang, I still couldn’t come close to the tag price of the Tooth. Every day, I fantasized about that guitar. Which color would I get? It came in a wide variety: ivory, moss, nicotine-yellow, decaying-brown, rot black and bleeding gums red. I couldn’t decide but I knew it wouldn’t really be a choice for me anyway, as I intended to snatch the first affordable used one I came across, regardless of color.

  It was a whole agonizing year before I finally found one for sale and in my price range: the downside was that it was being sold by Wanda, an ex-friend and rival punker from a band called Pretty Annoying, a band I originally fronted but left due to “creative differences,” (her words, not mine—I say I left because she’s a fucking douche bag). These days, her band and my band, Green is the Enemy, vie for alpha dog in the Seattle punk scene but when I heard she had a Tooth she wanted to get rid of, I set all the discord aside and made her an offer. She wanted more than I could really afford but apparently she needed the money because she agreed to let me pay in installments after giving her the initial lump sum from my pawned Thang.

  The Tooth, body shaped like a human molar, roots and all, (though you can also get the incisor body) is blood red, with matching neck and headstock. I started calling it Nemesister early on. The name seemed fitting somehow.

  I read that next year Sweet will be offering the Tooth in two new colors: gold and silver, which sounds very cool to me, since I’ve always been a fan of glam-rock and at the time of the earthquake was wearing a New York Dolls T-shirt to prove it.

  Unable to resist Nemesister’s charms, I find an old grate to park my butt on and start picking out the opening riff to our newest song “(You Give Me Bullshit) I Give You Death” and I’m really getting into it, completely forgetting where I am, when I see movement out of the corner of my eye.

  Immediately, I stop playing and turn my head but what I’m seeing doesn’t quite register in my brain. I squint harder.

  A figure is approaching me through the gloom and at first I think it must be a ghost. It’s see-through and…well, there is no other word to describe it: it’s shimmering. Virtually featureless and completely colorless, flickering like waves of heat above a highway baking beneath an August sun.

  “Wow.” The word whispers out from between my clenched teeth. Other than that I’m paralyzed, emotions swinging between fear and awe.

  The shimmering figure draws nearer, striding purposefully towards me, head tilted at an angle that suggests curiosity. “Ro?”

  I blink. Did it just say my name?

  “Ro! Thank fucking God! Where are we?”

  My eyes narrow as the figure reaches me. “Dose?”

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “What the fuck happened to your hair? That was easily an 8 pointer, huh? Fucking rock and roll!”

  It seems like a long time before I’m able to reply and when I finally do, it is preceded by a deep sniff. “Do I smell gasoline?”

  10

  I do smell gasoline and that’s because Dose is no longer a man. He is composed mostly of gas fumes now, and while this is peculiar and alarming, I’m much more concerned with what he’s just asked about my hair. I swing my guitar around to my back and touch the top of my head.

  No spikes! Instead, my hair is parted in the middle and hangs in loose ringlets, one pig-tail on each side.

  I feel reality slipping away from me. Dizzy, I look down at myself and see that I’m not wearing the New York Dolls shirt after all. In fact, neither am I wearing the torn jeans or the pink Converse All-Stars I started the night with.

  What I’m wearing is a gray and white plaid dress, a farm girl dress, and plain black, sensible shoes…

  And the dress, which has short, puffy sleeves, reveals that my arms are pasty-white, not a single one of my many colorful tattoos remaining.

  The world around me spins upside down and I never even feel my face hit the ground…

  11

  When I come to, I’m still lying face down beside the sewer sludge stream, Dose’s voice repeating my name. I roll over, sit up and quickly survey my surroundings. Everything is as it was. No dreams here.

  “Gosh,” I mutter, Nemesister nestling in my lap. “This is peculiar.”

  “How do you think I feel?” Dose asks. “At least you still have a body!”

  I stand up and brush my dress off as best I can. “This just makes me want to find that Metal Priestess all the more.”

  “Who?”

  I tell him the whole story about meeting Chad, the Kreepkins, the evil demon version of Wanda and how I’m now on a quest to find a Priestess, who is supposedly the only one who knows how to get out of this godforsaken nowhere-ville nightmare.

  “Well, shit, I’m coming with you!” he says.

  I shrug. “Okay. Chad said it’s dangerous, but whatever. Maybe the Metal Priestess will be able to tell us what happened and give us our old bodies back.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” the shimmering fumes reply.

  “Then it’s settled. Let’s jet.”

  12

  Strolling, strolling.

  The longer we walk—well, I walk; Dose kinda floats—inside all these underground tunnels, the less like tunnels they become. The path widens and the ceilings rise higher, which can only mean one thing: we have been descending deeper. The downward grade is so slight that it’s been undetectable to my feet, but then I look over and notice the black sewer sludge is flowing much faster than it had previously been.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” I say.

  “Blow your bad feeling out your ass! I have no body! How am I gonna play the bass with no fucking body?”

  “Don’t get snippy with me, Dose. You think I’m not suffering? This dress is starched! It’s itchy as all heck.” I scratch an armpit to prove my point. “And these are, like…orthopedic shoes! They’re killing me!”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake! Stop complaining! I’m hungry and I doubt I even have a stomach anymore!”

  “I’m hungry too! And I have blisters on my feet!”

  I know if Dose had fingers he’d be flipping me the bird. He’s done it before. But, he and I have always bickered like ornery old men, so I’m not particularly worried about this little spat. We’re both grumpy from losing our regular bodies and being stuck in this Underground hell. I’m really hoping this Priestess chick will be able to help us out because Dose is right. He won’t be able to play the bass without a body and I just don’t see how Green is the Enemy could continue without him. We’d have to start over from scratch, find a new bassist, etc. What a headache.

  “I wonder what time it is,” he says suddenly.

  “Hmm.” I think we’ve been traveling for a couple hours, but I can�
��t be sure. I’ve never been a watch-wearer. I don’t believe in them. “It’s probably midnight-ish.”

  “I’m gonna be pissed if we don’t get back in time to open for Peroxide,” he says.

  “You and me both.”

  “You really think we had a chance to get signed by Withering Skin?”

  “Had? What the heck is with the past-tense? We’re gonna make it to that show, mosh our brains out and then we’re gonna charm the darn pants off that suit. We’ll be signed to Withering Skin Records by this time tomorrow night!”

  Stunned, I clap a hand over my mouth. Did I just say all that? I have no idea what’s up with my sudden enthusiasm and positive attitude but it’s creeping me out.

  What is happening to me???

  I sense Dose staring at me, though he has no face and certainly no eyes. “What-the-fuck-ever, dude,” he mutters.

  “Or we’re just gonna die down here,” I add in a desperate attempt to save face.

  Dose grunts and I go back to keeping an eye out on our surroundings. We walk for a while longer, until we come to an open area, almost like a park. Only not. There is grass and though it seems to be healthy enough, the blades are a deep chocolate brown color. There are many trees all clustered together, also with brown leaves. The tree bark is silver and crinkled, like aluminum foil, and hanging from various branches are what look like plump white apples, white as freshly fallen snow.

  “Fruit,” I say. “Cool.” I begin to approach one of the trees and Dose lets out a harsh yelp.

  “Stop!” he says. “How do you know they’re not poisonous?”

  I study the fruit for a moment. “They don’t look poisonous. They probably would be some nasty color if they were. Black, or puke-green. Pus-yellow. But definitely not that bright clean white. It looks like something angels would eat.” He makes a skeptical sound despite having no discernible vocal cords, so I try to reassure him. “I’ll be careful. Only a little bite, OK? If it tastes bad, then we’ll know.”

  “I don’t like the look of those trees,” he says. “They look like they could come to life any minute. Probably chase us around.”

  My grumbling stomach tells me to ignore him, so I do. I walk up to one of the trees for a closer look, staring up at the white apples. I don’t see anything unusual, aside from the color and I’m starting to think I’ve actually heard of white apples before, at some point. Maybe in a book or something. After another moment’s hesitation, I reach up and plunk one off the branch, ready to bolt if the tree comes to life, yelling and trying to grab me.

  It doesn’t.

  I turn around and smile at the floating vapors of Dose. “You watch too many movies,” I say.

  The vapors remain silent, shimmering.

  I bring the apple up to my nose and sniff. It smells like an apple, nothing more. Smiling, I bring it to my lips, mouth open, intending to take a big satisfying bite, and then the apple shifts oddly in my hand, and splits itself partway open of its own accord. Before I can even react, I know that a mouth has opened and then the apple is attached to my lower lip, tiny needle teeth sinking deep both inside and out.

  I scream to wake the dead.

  13

  My first instinct is to yank the apple away from my face, but when I attempt to do so, I feel its teeth tearing my lip so I quickly decide that pulling is not an option.

  Thrashing my head, hysterical and blind with terror, I run away from the trees, then back again. I try bashing the apple into a tree-trunk, which only makes it clamp tighter and almost knocks me unconscious. I sink to my knees in the brown grass, tears of pain streaming down my face, blood flowing down my chin onto my new plaid dress. The thing is going to tear my lower lip clean off!

  I try to grip its jaws with my fingers, but only feel more teeth bite into more soft flesh. Squeezing my eyes closed, I feel another faint coming on. How many times have I fainted already? Too many to count, that’s for sure. Not very punk at all.

  “Stand up,” a calm female voice says.

  When I open my eyes, I see Pawn standing before me. Beautiful, precious Pawn, my best friend and constant savior.

  Or maybe I’m just delirious.

  “Ro, stand up,” she says again, reaching down and gripping me under the arms. “The more you struggle, the more damage it will do.”

  I don’t particularly want to stand up, but Pawn lifts me to my feet with relative ease. Once I’m up, she keeps her hand on my shoulders to be certain I won’t fall over before releasing me and grabbing the apple herself. I hear several sickening puncture sounds and know her thumbs and fingers now have holes in them that weren’t there 5 seconds ago.

  Pawn, with a strength I never knew she had, slowly forces the jaws of the apple open until I can pull away, which I do the instant I’m free, clamping both hands to my torn mouth and falling to my knees once more.

  “OH MY GOSH!” I screech, tasting blood. “Nasty bugger!” My curses are garbled but I scream them anyway. “Son of a gun!”

  Somehow Pawn flings the apple-thing away and I watch it hit a tree, bounce to the ground and immediately begin rolling back to us. Rolling with purpose.

  I scream again, trying to backpedal on my knees, but Pawn remains calm and when the apple is within reach, she punts it with her steel-toed combat boot. It flies through the air, lands and once again begins rolling back, jaws snapping audibly.

  Pawn sighs and waits for it. When it arrives, instead of kicking it, she stomps it, crushing it into apple sauce beneath her heel. “Take that, fucker,” she says.

  Sucking blood, swallowing blood, I swoon and flop over onto my side.

  14

  I don’t lose consciousness, but I almost wish I could.

  Pawn is pressing a piece of cloth torn from her shirt to my mouth. The pain is excruciating and her face swims in and out of focus before my eyes.

  There is something different about her, but I can’t quite place what it is.

  She’s talking to Dose, who drifts like fog nearby, hovering just above the ground. She doesn’t seem even slightly surprised to learn that he’s turned into gas vapors.

  They’re talking about the Metal Priestess and how she should be able to help us get out of here if we ever actually make it to the Chemical Gardens.

  “I don’t know,” Pawn says. “It sounds a little ominous.”

  “Ominous or not,” says Dose, “it’s our only chance. We can’t miss that Peroxide show. It could be our big break.”

  Pawn nods her agreement, then asks me to hold the cloth myself. I do and she brings her hands up to examine her own wounds. Blurry vision or not, I can see that both of her thumbs are torn open straight down the pads. The odd thing is that the blood oozing out of the ripped skin is a dark gray. She tilts her head, studying it, and says, “Curious. No pain whatsoever.”

  My own pain forgotten for the moment, I say, “What the heck?”

  With her right hand, she stretches the wound in her left thumb, pulling it open so that the gray blood drools down her wrist and splatters the brown grass. “It appears that I’m no longer human,” she says nonchalantly. She sticks the open thumb under my nose and she’s right: she’s not human. The inside of her thumb contains tiny colored wires woven around a silver bone.

  Dose floats over and says, “Now, that ain’t right.”

  Still tilting her head, fascinated, Pawn says, “I appear to have turned synthetic.”

  My heart sinks. “Oh, great!”

  15

  I thought turning into a dorky farm girl was bad, but my friends have been really screwed and I’m suddenly grateful for the stupid pigtails and itchy dress.

  “I think we need to keep moving,” I tell them. My lip has finally stopped bleeding for the most part, though I now have eight punctures clean through it. I try to look on the bright side: some people pay good money for piercings and I got mine for free. It might look pretty rad to have eight silver rings or studs in a straight line across my lower lip. Way punk…

  The th
ree of us continue on our way, following the black sewer sludge, and I fill Pawn in on everything. She doesn’t say a word, apparently without an opinion or feelings about anything that has happened so far. She just listens, a look of intense concentration on her face, as if she’s running equations through her head.

  The sludge is winding through what can only be orchards, those weird silver trees and their carnivorous fruit. I eye them warily, the cloth Pawn gave me still held to my face.

  “Maybe we should…you know…jog or something,” I suggest.

  “Stop being such a wimp,” Dose says. “The thing bit you ‘cause you tried to bite it first.”

  “Shut up!” I snap.

  Another voice chimes in from above us: “All of you shut up.”

  Simultaneously, we stop and look up. The demon Wanda is perched in one of the trees, crouched on a high branch and smoking a cigarette. “I want that guitar,” she says conversationally. “And my band deserves to be signed more than yours does, so we’ll be the ones to open for Peroxide!”

  I recover quickly from my surprise. “Hogwash! You guys are a pathetic excuse for a punk band. Withering Skin would never sign you!”

  “Well, we’ll just see about that!” She takes a deep haul off her cigarette, exhales the smoke through her nostrils. “I wonder if Withering Skin will sign a band without a bassist?” She grins, flashing those evil fangs, and jerks her face to glare at Dose. “Care for a smoke, Gas Boy?” She cackles maniacally and flicks her cigarette at him.

  He yelps and the cigarette lands in the grass near where his feet would be, if he had feet. Pawn moves in quickly and stomps out the butt.

  “You mean, mean demon!” I scream at Wanda. “You could have killed him!”

  “I will kill him! I’ll kill you all if you don’t give me that fucking guitar! Heed my warning, all of you! Give it up or die!” She leaps off the branch, taking flight, circling above us a few times before moving off and disappearing from sight behind the trees.