Chemical Gardens

by Gina Ranalli

  “What kinds of bands play here?” Pawn asks. It seems like a pretty reasonable question to me, but the barkeep laughs loudly and shakes his head like Pawn is the biggest moron he’s ever encountered.

  When it becomes apparent that he has no intention of answering the question, I say, “Maybe this is the wrong place. I mean, if there’s no Metal Priestess here, then obviously—”

  “How do we get to the Chemical Gardens?” Pawn interrupts.

  The guy stops laughing abruptly. “How do you get there?”

  “Is there an echo in here?” Whey mumbles, sounding miserable, his eyes still closed.

  I’m not feeling so great myself. I don’t think being a black and white goody-two-shoes agrees with me. My stomach is queasy and I can feel a headache coming on, not to mention the eight holes in my lower lip are sore as heck. The bar seems to sway a little, back and forth, as if we’re on a ship. Whey groans again and the bartender laughs.

  Pawn seems to be losing her patience with the stranger. She growls, “Enough with the riddles! Just tell us how to get there!”

  Behind the bar, bottles rattle and clank together.

  Whey opens his eyes and lifts his head about an inch off the table. “Oh, shit…”

  An ashtray sails over the surface of the bar, whizzing from one end to the other, but stops just short of flying over the edge and smashing on the floor.

  “An aftershock?” Pawn wonders aloud, studying the jangling bottles.

  I grip the edge of the bar tightly, my lips pressed together against an alarmed yelp. Earthquakes haven’t been very kind to me lately and I’m not particularly enthused about participating in another one. On my back, Nemesister whines like feedback, pulling the strap taut against my shoulder.

  A loud bang startles us and we whirl around to see that a trap door in the floor has burst open behind us. Out marches a bald guy carrying a bass drum, a couple of drum sticks clenched between his teeth. On his heels, stomping up the stairs is a younger guy with spiky brown hair and gray/black tattoo sleeves on his arms. He’s carrying a mic on a stand and several electrical cables.

  The bar continues to rock back and forth and I realize the rocking is too controlled to be an earthquake.

  The two guys who came out of the floor start setting up their equipment on the tiny stage while a few more join them, also carrying musical equipment.

  “Decoy,” Pawn says.

  “Does this seem a little strange to you?” I ask her, but she is too busy watching the band set up to reply. I turn to look back at the bartender only to discover him gone. In his place is a cardboard cut-out of him, frozen in much the same position he was in when I last saw him, dishtowel slung over one shoulder, toothpick poking out from between two firmly set lips, his eyes smugly amused.

  “Pawn,” I say, my voice surprisingly calm.

  The whole place suddenly tilts violently, tossing the three of us off our stools and onto the floor. The bottle containing Dose flies out of Pawn’s hand and shatters against the edge of a table.

  “UUUUCCCCKKKK!” Dose is bellowing furiously. Evidently, he really was swearing in there.

  The band continues to set up their equipment, completely oblivious to the activity around them.

  The bar pitches to the south as if on a large pivot and we all slide that way, heading for the hole in the floor. Whey, on his belly, yells, “Ow! My boobs!” and attempts to shield his chest.

  On the stage, cymbals crash and an amp screeches. The band is launching into their first song but then the music is abruptly cut off in the middle as if someone has pulled a plug. Glancing over my shoulder, I see the band members frozen in position, two guitarists, a singer, a bassist and a drummer, all turned into life-size cardboard, along with their instruments. My eyes widen briefly and then I’m skidding back towards the bar again, this time feet first.

  The three of us—who knows where Dose is—slam into the base of the bar and it bends inward, as do the stools around it. More cardboard. Everything around us is cardboard, mere props on a cheap and cheesy stage.

  That is, everything but us.

  31

  Whey and I share a scream as we careen across the floor towards the open trapdoor, each of us doing our best to scramble away from it, but quickly losing the battle. This place, whatever it is, means to throw us through that hole and down into Lord knows what. I have a mental flash, of some children’s hand-held game—little balls rolling into little holes—and then the floor beneath me bucks, tossing me up into the air a good foot or two and I swear I feel a foot plant itself firmly in the center of my ass and shove.

  Into the hole I go, my feeble attempts to grip the sides and hold on quickly disregarded by whatever it is that wants us down there.

  Falling, falling…through blackness…and absurdly I think that maybe this means it’s over at last. It’s ending just the way it began, with an endless dark hole in the ground and soon I will be back in my old life, on solid ground with my whole body, as well as the bodies of my friends, pretty much intact.

  With Nemesister swung around to my front, I land on a crowd of people, all with their hands under me, supporting my weight and passing me along to the next dozen pairs of hands.

  Immediately, I know this feeling. Having done it about a million times, I know exactly what’s happening.

  Anyone who has ever done a stage-dive knows this feeling well. Trusting the crowd to move you first one way and then the other, hopefully back to the stage itself, but sometimes just to the floor where you are set back on your feet and where you can resume your two-steps, spin-kicks, head-banging, and pogo-ing.

  I fell through the trapdoor and landed on a crowd of concert goers. High above me are the rafters you see in any large stadium, some of them festooned with various colors of spotlights, all doing their own dance, mostly directed at the stage which I can’t yet see from my surfing position.

  I do my best to roll over on the wave, struggling to see who’s playing, because someone sure is. A loud raucous band, with screaming death-metal vocals, aggressive guitars and break-neck drumming.

  Instead of getting a view of the stage though, I see another surfer floating atop the crowd: Whey. I turn my head in the opposite direction to see Pawn, also surfing the waves. The three of us are being brought together by the hands of strangers, drawing closer and closer until we are able touch each other.

  Being the one in the middle, touch them is exactly what I do, spreading my arms wide, reaching over bobbing, thrashing heads to graze my fingertips against their fingertips.

  For whatever reason, the touch seems to do the trick and we are all dropped to the floor simultaneously. Thankfully, having managed to flip myself over most of the way, I land on my belly in a sea of oily black Doc Martens, soles bouncing with the thunderous beat.

  Even with the music and the singing/screaming crowd, I can still hear Whey’s yelp of pain when he hits the floor and is promptly stomped on by no less than half a dozen boots. No one does this maliciously, of course. They’re all just dancing, feeling the band’s vibe and getting lost inside it. I’m sure that knowledge doesn’t ease Whey’s bumps and bruises though.

  I’m still struggling to my feet when I feel a hand grip my arm.

  “Ro!” Pawn shouts in my ear as we’re rocked forward by sweaty bodies pumping fists in the air. “Look!”

  At first I think she’s pointing at the stage so I hop up and down a few times, hoping to get a glimpse of the band. “Who is it?” I yell at her.

  She points more vigorously to the back of a fat guy in front of us. Just a fat guy in a black T-shirt, absolutely nothing remarkable about him at all and I’m about to shout another question at her when my eyes fall on what she’s been pointing at the entire time: the guy’s T-shirt is a concert T, the back of which is decorated in a light-gray cursive script which reads Chemical Gardens. The graphic below the words is of a dark garden, human embryos hanging like ripe fruit from diseased-looking plant stalks. The ground around the stal
ks is covered with syringes and pill bottles, as if these things are the soil the plants grow from.

  Pawn is giving me a meaningful look and shouts, “The band! Chemical Gardens is a band!”

  I look towards the stage again, once more hoping to get a glimpse of them but Pawn is unsatisfied with just looking. She grabs my arm, yelling, “We have to get up there!”

  She starts pushing through the crowd with the expertise of a hardcore punk rocker, leading with her shoulders and shoving with her elbows. I follow behind in the path she creates, dimly aware that Whey is following in our wake as well, though at a much slower speed.

  It takes somewhere around forever to reach the front of the stadium and the foot of the stage but what we see when we get there makes us forget about all the fighting it took to arrive.

  It’s the Metal Priestess stomping around up there, growling into a microphone, standing at least ten feet tall and there can be no questioning why she is called what she is called.

  It is hard to tell if she’s human at all because she is indeed made of metal. Or at least it appears that she is. Her skin is a dull pewter, like pencil shavings, and she moves almost mechanically, as if her joints are actually hinges which may or may not need a dab of oil in their creases.

  Naked, her chest is composed of several metal plates, and two dangerously pointed cones. I can see the heads of screws in several parts of her body, including three on a triangle shaped plate covering her pubic region.

  Her face looks more human than the rest of her body; it has more curves than angles and I can’t see any screws above her neck at all. Her cheeks, nose, chin and forehead are all smooth and gray, without lines of any sort, but her eyes…her eyes are clearly not human at all.

  They look more like robot eyes, perfectly round and slightly bulging. They seem to roll with the direction of her head, never settling on anything in particular, not really seeing at all.

  She screams into the mic, flashing blocky silver teeth and gums and tongue. Her fingers curl around it, tapering down to thin gray daggers. Her hair isn’t hair at all, of course, but long thick ice picks that stick straight up, marching single-file from the top of her forehead and down the back of her head, Mohawk style. A Needlehawk you might say. It is these spikes on top of her head that give the illusion of her being freakishly tall. They stab a good two feet into the air and that, coupled with boots whose soles are a foot if they are an inch, still makes her maybe seven feet tall.

  One look at this creature makes me want to turn tail and run, but I know she is our only hope of getting back to the regular world, so I resist the urge to flee. I glance at Pawn and see that she too is alarmed by the Metal Priestess. Her eyes are wider than I’ve seen them since this whole thing began and her mouth is a thin grim line.

  Whey squeezes his body between us, looks up at the stage with a slack jaw, and then immediately does what I only wish I could do: spins around and starts to head back the way we came. Both Pawn and I are on him before he manages more than a few steps, each of us clasping an arm and dragging him back to the foot of the stage, ignoring his whimpering protests.

  Even Dose, who I can sense is nearby, takes on a new odor. His gasoline smell is now tinged with something else, some underlying bitterness, and I know the sight of the Metal Priestess has given even him—our tough as nails bad boy—pause.

  I know it’s imperative to try to get the Priestess’ attention, so I start jumping up and down, screaming and waving my arms as if I’m some shipwreck victim on a desert island, spying a low-flying airplane for the first time in ten years.

  But, as one would expect during a concert, my screams are lost among all the other screams and the deafening music. I look and sound like just another crazy stoned fan, going mental for my favorite band.

  Into my ear, Pawn shouts, “Stage dive!” She points at a hole in the security line where people are scrambling up onto the stage and then diving off into the crowd. I nod and make my way towards the hole. I have to wait while three others jump before me, but then I’m up and, instead of leaping off into oblivion, I charge across the stage, aiming for the Priestess. I don’t expect to get far; I figure some burly security guy will pluck me off my feet and toss me off the stage, but before I know it, I’m there, standing beside her as she snarls into the mic. She glances at me briefly, then shoves the mic in my face, wanting me to sing along. She’s mistaken me for an over-enthused fan who wants nothing more than to share the stage with her for a few precious seconds.

  She’s eyeing me expectantly and I sense the audience doing the same but I have no idea what the words to the song are or if there are any words to it at all. Improvising, I do my own deathmetal scream, somehow managing to keep the beat. The Metal Priestess starts headbanging, so I do that too while continuing to scream as loud as my lungs and blistered vocal cords will allow.

  Abruptly, the song crashes to an end, but I scream for a few seconds more, surprised that it’s already over and embarrassed that I obviously don’t know it. I expect boos but instead I receive thunderous cheers from the crowd and the Metal Priestess grabs my neck in the crook of one steely arm and howls, stomping her approval.

  Instantly the band slams into the next song and a security guy comes to whisk me away, but the Priestess makes a motion with her long knife-fingered hand and instead of being helped back to the floor, I’m being led backstage.

  Scared, I pull loose and scream into the Neanderthal’s face. “My friends! I’m not going anywhere without my friends!”

  I fully expect an argument, but the guy only nods and yells, “Where?”

  Spotting Whey in the crowd is easy. I just look for the big guy in a tie-dyed tank-top with tears running down his face. Pawn stands beside him, jumping around and waving at me, presumably so I will see her.

  I point them out to the security guy, who then motions to another guy the size of a building. “He’ll bring ‘em!” he yells at me.

  As I’m ushered away, I think about how this seems entirely too easy. Why are we being permitted to go backstage in the first place? It seems strange and I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Instinct is telling me something is up, but I don’t have time to contemplate it because before I know it, I’m backstage, moving rapidly past stagehands and crew, practically being shoved along by the security guy.

  “Where are we going?” I ask nervously.

  “You want to meet her, right?” he says absently, as if he’s used to saying it. “You’re gonna meet her. Just as soon as the show is over.”

  We’re traveling down a long white corridor which is abruptly barren of other people. As if from a great distance, I can still hear the music thudding triumphantly, but by now it’s only bass lines.

  “Where are my friends?” I ask. I try to pull away from him, craning my neck around to see how far we’ve come, but the guy holds fast to my wrist, almost dragging me. “Shouldn’t they be within sight by now?”

  “Don’t worry, they’re right behind us.” The big ape does his best to give me a reassuring smile, but it only makes me more wary. Then: “Look, we’re here already.”

  I face front to see that we’ve stopped in front of two swinging doors with round windows set into the top at a little higher than eye level. They’re the kind of doors that usually lead into the kitchen of a fancy restaurant. “Here where?” I ask.

  “The make up department,” he replies. “You didn’t think you’d be able to see the Metal Priestess looking like that, did you?”

  “Um…”

  “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  These words, shouted from behind us. I turn to see both Whey and Pawn being shuffled along in much the same way I was, Whey protesting every step of the way. “Does the word lawsuit mean anything to you?” he demands angrily.

  I don’t say anything, just watch them come, until they’re stopped beside me, both of them regarding the swinging doors with suspicion. “It’s the makeup department,” I tell them. “We can’t see the Priest
ess looking like this now, can we?”

  “Uh…” Pawn says. “We can’t? Why not?”

  “You’re all a wreck,” my escort tells her. “What are you guys, homeless?”

  I take offense and snap, “No, we’re punk.”

  He looks me up and down. “You don’t look punk to me.”

  “Well, I’m not usually in this plaid dress and my hair is usually spiked. And I’m not usually black-and-white either.”

  The guy makes a face like he doesn’t believe me, but I can’t be bothered to try and convince him. I guess he can’t be bothered with trying to be convinced either because he turns away from me and raps hard on the swinging doors.

  They swing open even before he’s finished his knocking, as if someone was waiting just on the other side of them, crouched low and eavesdropping perhaps.

  The person who pushes the door open is immediately recognizable. It’s the old woman from the Broomstick, the one the bartender had said worked in the makeup department.

  “I knew we’d meet again,” she croaks, wagging a gnarled finger in my face. “Come on, come on, come on. We don’t have all day, you know. Show’s almost over.”

  “Whatever you say, lady,” Dose says from behind us, reeking more than ever. I feel a slight breeze waft by the side of my face as he spins toward the old woman, but she is faster than him. Suddenly, she’s holding a cigarette lighter in her crusty old hand, thumb poised over the wheel. “I wouldn’t, sonny,” she says. “Not if you don’t want your friends blown from here to the Death Star.”

  There is a pause in which none of us breathe and then Dose grunts and says, “Yeah, well, I guess I could be slightly prettier than I am now.”

  “Wise decision, young man,” the old woman says. “Very wise indeed.”

  “I’m confused,” Pawn says carefully. “Exactly why do we need makeup?”

  The old woman regards her with disdain, then clucks loudly, making a show of it. “Well, you can’t be seeing her like that, now can you?”