Chemical Gardens

by Gina Ranalli

  “I assume there’s a door.” She replies, somewhat sketchily. “I mean, that’s what knobs are for right? To be attached to doors?”

  “Not necessarily,” Whey says, emerging from his corner. “Think about it: there are knobs all over the place that aren’t attached to doors. Volume knobs on radios, knobs on cabinets—”

  “Knobs on broads,” Dose puts in with a smirk in his voice.

  Whey ignores him. “There are tone knobs on guitars,” he says, gesturing towards Nemesister.

  “You’re a buffoon,” the Metal Priestess tells him. “These are doorknobs. The kind that go on doors.”

  Whey gives her a hurt look, sputtering apologies.

  “Maybe you should be a little more specific,” Pawn tells the Priestess. “Speak plainly, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yeah,” Whey whispers. “Since we’re buffoons and all.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Dose says.

  “If all of you would stop your bickering and shut your mouths for two seconds,” the Priestess snarls, “I might be able to show you exactly what I’m referring to.” When we’re all silent to her satisfaction, she points one metal finger to the ceiling.

  Slowly, the four of us tip our heads back.

  “Whoa,” Dose says quietly.

  The ceiling is covered with all shapes and sizes of doorknobs. Clear glass knobs, brass knobs, steel knobs, silver knobs. Some are round and some are square, some are etched with designs while others are just shiny and smooth, looking as if they’d been polished just this morning.

  “What in the hell…” Whey trails off, his eyes scanning what must be hundreds of doorknobs decorating the ceiling high above us. “Do you collect those or something?” he asks the Priestess.

  She barks a laugh. “They came with the gig.”

  “But, they’re just doorknobs,” Pawn says, still looking up. “They aren’t attached to doors.”

  “You would think that, wouldn’t you?” The Metal Priestess replies. “But, I know that one of them opens the way out of here, the only way out of the Underground there is.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  She gives me a bitter silver smile and gestures at the other members of her band. “We’ve seen it for ourselves. We’ve seen people leave that way.”

  “What way?” Dose is back to sounding snide. “Someone climbed a ladder and screwed a bunch of knobs to the ceiling. Big fucking deal. Nothing magic about that. Just some weirdo’s idea of a collection or some shit.”

  The Priestess’ eyes click over to him. “You’re wrong.”

  “Lady, I know you could probably kill me with your pinky and all, but with all due respect, I am never wrong.”

  I groan loudly while Pawn sighs and Whey cries, “Oh, please!”

  Dose looks around at the three of us. “What? It’s true!”

  I say, “I seem to remember you being the one who wanted to call the band Under Dose.”

  “That would have been a great name!” he says defensively.

  “No, it would have been a terrible name, not to mention the small fact that it’s not your band.”

  Whey steps forward and points a chubby finger in Dose’s face, shouting, “You got vetoed, motherfucker!”

  “You just wait till I have my body back, lard-ass,” Dose says. “I’m gonna show you all about what it’s like being ‘under Dose’.”

  “Ooooh!” Whey waves his hands around. “I’m scared!”

  “Enough!” The Priestess roars. “I’ve never in my entire life seen such a bunch of losers in one band! It’s a miracle you stay together.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  “Hey, fuck you, Ro,” Dose says, his voice sulky.

  I open my mouth to tell him off, even though I know nothing worse than “Poo poo to you” will come out of my mouth, but I never get a chance because the Priestess moves fast between us and somehow shoves Dose aside, despite his being no more than fumes encapsulated in a chalk outline.

  “I want you all to listen to me very carefully,” she says, her voice full of venom. “Do I have your attention?”

  “You have mine,” Whey says quickly.

  Pawn, completely unintimidated, replies mildly: “I’m listening.”

  Neither Dose nor I say anything but watch her with anticipation, which seems to be good enough for the moment.

  “Out of all those knobs on the ceiling,” she says, “only one will open the door that will send you home.”

  Her bass man speaks up then, asking, “Didn’t we already cover this part? I was kinda spacing.”

  Through clenched zipper teeth, the Metal Priestess says, “Shut…up.” To us she says, “The first problem, and the simplest one to solve, is that we aren’t sure which knob it is. As you can see by the number of knobs, discovering the right one will be time consuming but not impossible.”

  “And the second problem?” Pawn asks.

  The Priestess regards her with seriousness. It’s obvious that she thinks Pawn is the only one of Green is the Enemy who is worth wasting breath on. “Obviously, the second problem is that the knob will need the key.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly. “So, where’s the key again?”

  “Pay attention, people!” she screams loud enough to rattle the walls. “I told you! It’s with the one you call Wanda. The demon.”

  “Oh, come on!” Dose blurts. “You’ve gotta be shitting me!”

  “I can assure you, I never shit. It is well known that she carries the key with her wherever she goes. She knows its power and intends to keep it all for herself.”

  “Wait a second,” Pawn says. “If you know she has it and you want it so badly, then why don’t you just go get it yourself?”

  Laughing her thunder laugh, the Priestess says, “Do we look like fools to you, synthetic girl? Confronting the demon is almost surely a guarantee of death.”

  None of us know how to respond to that, but Whey makes a little squeaking sound in his throat. Finally, I say, “Have Molly draw the map.”

  Pawn grabs me by the elbow. “Ro!”

  “She wants my guitar, remember?” I say. “Every time we see her, she’s always yelling about Nemesister. Maybe I can make a trade.” On my back, I feel Nemesister squirm nervously. Or, at least I imagine it’s nervously. “I’ll go alone.”

  “Best idea I’ve heard yet,” Dose says.

  “No!” Pawn protests. “I’m not about to let you face her alone.”

  “She’s right,” the Metal Priestess breaks in. “It’s very noble—if somewhat suicidal—to want to make the trek alone, but you’ll all be required to go.”

  “What?” Dose asks. “Why?”

  “This is the way it has to be,” she tells him calmly. “And the sooner you are all on your way, the sooner you can return here and then be where you’re supposed to be.”

  “Great,” Dose grumbles and moves away from the circle we’ve formed in the middle of the room.

  “Molly,” the Priestess says. “Draw the map.”

  33

  “I can’t believe she lives in a townhouse,” I say, as the four of us travel down what seems to be a suburban street, though there are no people and the houses and lawns seem too immaculate to be real. “I mean, how good can her band be doing? You think she signed with a major label or something?”

  Pawn is studying the map beside me while the guys trail a few steps behind us. “We should be taking a left pretty soon,” she says. “Then another left about a half mile from there.”

  On my back, Nemesister is wiggling around, almost as if she’s trying to free herself from the strap that’s slung over my shoulder. “Gosh darn it all, Nemie, knock it off. I’m not really going to give you to the demon.”

  “You will if it means we can get out of this fucking world,” Dose says.

  I turn around to glare at him and Whey quickly steps between us. “Let me carry Nemesister for a while, Ro,” he says. “Maybe she’s like a dog and can sense your nervousness.”r />
  “Oh,” Dose says to him. “Like you’re not pissing your pants every time the wind blows.”

  I want to tell him to go eff himself, but of course those words don’t come out of me anymore. That might end up being the best part of getting back home: being able to swear my head off again.

  To Whey, I say “Thanks,” and hand him the wriggling guitar. He slings it over his own shoulder, which is considerably larger than mine. “No problem, Ro,” he says and gives Dose a distasteful look. “At least you know chivalry isn’t entirely dead.”

  “This coming from a guy with tits and a mattress between his legs,” says Dose.

  “You know, Dose,” I say. “It wouldn’t be that hard to replace you, especially after we charm those Withering Skin execs.”

  I expect him to tell me to suck him or something, but he says nothing, just falls back a couple of steps and mutters inaudibly at the ground. Whey and I exchange a wan smile and then I hurry to catch up to Pawn.

  We walk in silence, occasionally glancing at the seemingly abandoned houses all around us. The neighborhood is creepy and somehow stale, as if it were nothing more than a movie set where no one ever actually lived and hasn’t seen use in a very long time, while simultaneously someone or perhaps, something has kept the place well-maintained and beautiful.

  I look up and see what we haven’t seen for a while now: blue sky. Except this blue sky isn’t real. It looks real, yes, but there isn’t even the faintest wisp of a cloud or the drone of an engine or a single sparrow flying across it. It feels as though we’re interlopers in someone else’s dream.

  “I don’t think there’s anything alive here,” I say to Pawn.

  She looks at me, about to reply and then we do hear a drone, distant but rapidly getting closer.

  Behind us, Whey says, “What is that?”

  I stop, cock my head and listen. “It sounds like…”

  “Bees,” Pawn says, pointing.

  Our eyes follow her finger and see a black cloud rolling across the fake sky, headed in our direction.

  “Bees!” Dose yells. “I fucking hate bees!”

  “Everyone hates bees,” I say.

  “I don’t,” Pawn replies, her eyes never wavering from the growing cloud. Her face is curious but not even vaguely alarmed.

  “Well, you’re just weird,” I tell her.

  “Maybe we should…” Dose pauses. “I don’t know. Get inside or something?”

  Pawn responds by saying, “Hmm.”

  “This is not good,” Whey says. “This is very bad.”

  “You think this has anything to do with the demon?” I ask Pawn.

  “Of course it does,” she says. “She must know we’re coming.”

  “Oh, come on!” Dose bellows. It’s impossible to not hear the panic in his voice, balanced precariously on a razor’s edge. “How could she know?”

  When Pawn gives no indication that she’s even heard the question, Whey ventures, “Maybe she has a crystal ball.”

  “I’ll give you a fucking crystal ball,” Dose says.

  The black cloud is traveling fast. Much too fast.

  “Guys,” I say. “I think maybe we’d better run.”

  No one needs to be told twice. I bolt for the nearest house and the three of them remain at my heels as I sprint across the front lawn, up the porch steps and slam into the front door, grabbing for the knob, not bothering with knocking since I know no one will be home anyway.

  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find that the door is locked tight. So tight in fact, that the knob doesn’t even turn in my hand. I turn around and the others can read the expression on my face.

  “Break a window,” Whey says.

  Oddly, there are no windows on the porch, so we stumble down the stairs and around to the side of the house. The droning of the bees is almost deafening now and we have to shout at each other to be heard.

  “Use the guitar to smash it,” Dose yells at Whey, pointing to one of the windows.

  “I can’t do that,” Whey protests. “She’s alive! She could get hurt!”

  A shadow falls over us and against my better judgment, I look up.

  The cloud of bees is directly above us and not so much purposely descending as just falling out of the sky and breaking up into smaller groups. The look like tiny kamikaze pilots rushing headlong into their doom.

  Of course, the flames shooting out of them lends quite a bit to this image.

  Whey begins pounding on the glass with his fists, frantically looking skyward every other second. “We’re not gonna get in,” he cries.

  As it turns out, he really has nothing to worry about because it’s not him the bees are after: it’s me.

  Completely ignoring my band mates, the bees—no, wasps, big black terrifying wasps—make a beeline (ha ha) right for me and seeing this, I do what instinct tells me to and run, heading back towards the street again.

  Wasps swoop down on top of me, reversing direction to follow wherever I may lead, until finally they catch up to me, landing on my shoulders and bare arms, tangling themselves in my ringlet pigtails.

  In the distance, I hear Whey yelling, “Stop, drop and roll!”

  I try swatting at the wasps and get not only stung, but burned. Little flames, like those on the head of a match, shoot out their asses along with their stingers. Flaming stingers.

  I’m being attacked by fire wasps.

  Screaming, I do an insane twirling dance in the middle of the street, shaking my head, flailing my arms, kicking my legs. Little patches of my dress are on fire but most are snuffed out quickly by the breeze I’m creating with my dance. Soon my dress is covered with what looks like little cigarette burns and my arms, legs and face are all sprouting fresh blisters from burning stings and my vision starts to fail me. I go on screaming until I swallow one of those flaming missiles and then my voice is gone.

  Wasps climb over my eyes, blocking out any light. They squirm into my ears until all I can hear is their incessant buzzing. Blind, deaf and dumb, I fall to the ground, completely covered, and curl into the fetal position, certain this is the end.

  And then I can’t even feel the ground beneath me. Even the wasps themselves are no longer stinging me, no longer burning. I feel like a feather floating on a gentle breeze and I sigh with relief, knowing my brain has disconnected itself from my body and is trying to convince me that I’m not dying a horrible death at all. I’m just drifting in a cool cloud of space where there is no pain and nothing to fear.

  I manage a slight smile and open my eyes a crack.

  Then I start screaming all over again.

  The wasps, thousands of them, have all hooked themselves into my dress and taken flight once again. I’m a good ten feet off the ground and ascending higher every second. Beneath me, I see what remains of Green is the Enemy, all waving and jumping frantically, yelling things I can’t quite make out.

  Higher and higher, the fire wasps carry me and now I know that I’m really dead. One way or another, I’m toast.

  34

  I go on thinking in this negative manner until I’m flying over a complex of townhouses and then abruptly dropped onto the Post-It-size balcony of one.

  Landing with a thud and a grunt, I barely have time to sit up before the sliding glass door that leads into the townhouse squeaks open and the demon shouts, “Where is the guitar? I told you I wanted the guitar!”

  It takes me a bewildered second before I realize she’s screaming at the retreating wasps and not at me.

  “You fucking nitwits can’t get anything right!” she hollers, shaking her fist at them. Then she glances down at me with pure loathing. “Well, come on in then,” she says and disappears back inside.

  Shakily, I get to my feet and peer over the edge of the balcony, debating on whether or not to just take my chances and jump down to the ground. But then I remember that according to the Metal Priestess, I’m supposed to be here anyway. To get the key. I just got a ride, is all.

 
I steel myself and slip inside the townhouse, expecting I don’t know what. Something bad though.

  The balcony is off a master bedroom, dimly lit, but perfectly normal looking for a punk musician. Various band posters and fliers decorate the walls. The bed is unmade and clothes are strewn about. There is an abundance of candles on every flat surface and the room smells strongly of vanilla incense.

  Wanda slinks back into the room smoking a Pall Mall. “Are you gonna tell me where the guitar is or am I gonna have to kill you?”

  I swallow a hard lump of fear. “The guitar is someplace you’ll never find it.”

  “In other words, your lame-ass friends have it.” Her voice hisses like an angry serpent and smoke plumes out of the slits in her face. Presumably her nostrils.

  A thought strikes me and I give voice to it even before it’s finished in my head. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll give you the guitar and you give me the key. Fair trade, even steven. No one has to get hurt.”

  The demon snickers but her pus-eyes narrow. “Oh, you’re gonna get hurt, Ro. Either way, you’re gonna get hurt. It’s just a matter of when.” She drags deeply on her cigarette, watching me closely. “But, I suppose the hurting doesn’t have to be deadly if you’re willing to cooperate.”

  Wiping my sweating and blistered palms on the front of my dress, I wince and say, “I already told you I’d give you the guitar for the key.”

  “You fucking idiot,” she snarls, taking a step towards me. “The guitar is the key!”

  I stare blankly at her, not comprehending. “But…the Priestess said…”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what the goddamn Priestess said. You are the one with the key and always have been since this ridiculous charade began. And you will give it to me.”

  Stunned, I can only stare at her.

  “But,” she continues, “I can be just as reasonable as the next gal. I’m going to give you some time to think about your options. It can be just you who dies or all of your friends right along with you. Your choice.” She moves over to the scarred dresser and switches on a lava lamp of clear liquid and black lava. It brightens the room not one iota. “Once this baby heats up,” she tells me, “and the lava is really flowing, your time to decide will be up. If you don’t hand over the guitar, I’ll kill each and every one of you in the slowest, most torturous way I can think of. And believe me, I have quite a vivid imagination.”