Fuck it, I need a better visual, he thought, and he did the pants-down shuffle over to the TV/VCR combination. He pushed in “Big Jugg Mistresses.” The top loader accepted the tape with an exasperated whine and lowered it down to be engaged by its aging mechanisms. The screen went bright blue, and then a blonde woman clad only in short shorts and suspenders appeared, bouncing on a trampoline, grinning inanely. Her breasts were clearly fake; they went up and down like strapped-on basketballs.
“That’s more like it,” Marshall said out loud.
A bearded man joined her on the trampoline, jumping in from the right, clad only in a purple striped tank-top. His junk bounced grotesquely, like a mesh bag of malformed grapes. Marshall grunted and aimed his vision at the left half of the screen while the alien beings wound themselves around his taut legs. His toes spread and stiffened as something wet tongued at his bottom.
Another girl jumped onto the trampoline, a brunette in pigtails. Marshall refocused on the full screen as the trio bounced off of the trampoline and onto a bed conveniently placed right next to it.
Then it all went wrong.
One of the grotesque alien thingies swam to the television, the glowing light expanding and revealing its horrible features —eyeballs wound in green veins, pustules and blisters pulsing in its many groins. It reached in with coiled arms and pulled the blonde by her hair out of the television and into Marshall’s living room. As she came through the TV screen, her skin pulled apart in great gashes, revealing a kaleidoscopic glistening mess of intertwined intestines and purple-pink organs. Blood spilled onto the Berber carpet. Her teeth elongated, becoming fence posts, pushing at her lips until she looked like some awful grinning clown, and then bursting through them. Lip shrapnel and blood hit Marshall in the neck as he scrambled to pull up his pants. The teeth sliced into the ceiling and into the floor, forming bars that blocked Marshall from the door out.
Then another horror reached into the screen, green, eight-fingered hands that grabbed the tank-top clad man and pulled him out by his toes. His genitals appeared to be stopped briefly by the barrier of the TV screen. They flattened and spread like pancake batter. His toes became fleshy strings that wound around the ghastly green arms that pulled at them. Then he came through with a wet POP, his genitals exploding, his intestines flying out through his mouth, grabbing a lamp and squeezing it until it broke, shards flying into everything, into Marshall, into the walls, into the alien beings, into the other porn actors.
Marshall leapt up and beat it for the window, pulling shards from his chest and neck as he ran. The pigtailed brunette flew from the screen and landed on her hands in front of him. Her breasts became strings, her legs elongated and blackened until they were spiders’ legs. The legs went to work, wrapping Marshall in pink breast strings like a cocoon, as quickly as you please. They lifted him to the ceiling. His mouth was forced open and invaded by a million writhing snakes.
Somewhere in there, he orgasmed hard. Then he felt himself being spun, spinning, spinning, spinning. The snakes in Marshall’s throat expanded and he burst in the cocoon like an overripe pimple.
The Tillinghast Masturbator continued to hum. The humming went louder, higher in pitch. Then there was a pop, a flash of bright, bright light, and a sound like bacon frying. The little glass bulbs shattered, releasing a twisting column of black smoke. The room returned to darkness. All was quiet.
Murray Shackle, the manager of the Leeds Staples, store 404, most profitable in the district, thank you very much, looked at his watch, then at the wall clock. “Either way you look at it, Marshall’s late. Again.”
Anne O’Glass, the assistant manager, typing in her password, not looking up, said, “He’s probably whacking off.”
“Bah ha ha,” said Murray. “Whatever he’s doing, he is most certainly fucking fired.”
PARASITOSIS
Lyndsey Holder
“I don’t know what to tell you, Ainsley. All your tests have come back normal. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Doctor Sanders bit her bottom lip and thumbed through the thick stack of papers on the battered wooden clipboard she carried, as though this time she would be able to deduce the cause of my illness.
I’d been trying to be kind, but anger welled up in my throat. I’d fallen into a terrible kind of love with her, a depraved dependence. The pedestal I’d put her on stretched higher than the clouds. I hated myself for how I felt about her. It was so obvious, so cliché, and yet I couldn’t stop myself. I’d filled three notebooks with sketches of her: as a Valkyrie, as a Roman gladiator, as a soldier, as the captain of a spaceship, as a pirate, as whatever kind of hero I needed that particular day. In all, she was armed with a weapon—a ray gun, a sword, a bow, whatever—and was fighting back against the darkness.
Marjorie was her private name, forbidden to me as her patient. I dutifully called her Doctor Sanders, never letting myself cross the line of familiarity. Never letting myself imagine how her generous lips would feel pressed to mine, what it would taste like to kiss the nape of her neck, what it would be like to run my fingers through her long, maple-syrup coloured hair...at least, not in her presence.
I took a deep breath. It didn’t help that Marjorie—Doctor Sanders, rather—seemed to take it personally every time a test came back frustratingly clear. “There has to be something wrong, though. Maybe there’s another test you could run?”
“Ainsley,” she said, and it was hot summer sun overhead and running through fields of wheat in summer sundresses with sandals on. I’d been trying so hard to tune it out, I was always trying so damn hard, but fuck it. Fuck it. Now I was going to roll with it, let the sun hit me, let the warmth caress my skin. Smile. “Have you ever thought that maybe this is your normal? Maybe this is just how you are.”
I laughed. “Doctor Sanders,” I began, but then stopped. She’s given up, I realized. She’s given up and now she’s throwing me out to pasture. Rage built up in my stomach, thick and yellow. She was abandoning me. How dare she abandon me? I didn’t owe her politeness anymore. Fuck this formality.
“Marjorie,” I corrected myself, letting the green-ness of the name roll around on my tongue. Tasting its new-leaf flavour. “Marjorie, did you know that your name is brilliant green? Bubbles of emerald green, with lime at the edges. And it tastes like leaves that have just been picked. How is this normal, Marjorie? How is any of this normal?”
Doctor Sanders’—Marjorie’s—eyes narrowed. “I understand that you’re frustrated, Ainsley. I know you really wanted a cure for this, but you’re looking to me for answers that medical science can’t give you right now. I think what you have is synaesthesia—”
I tried to laugh again, but it came out hollow and dusty, dead leaves rattling around inside a rotten stump. “Marjorie.” I couldn’t stop myself. I was drunk on the deliciously effervescent green. “It’s not synaesthesia. Do synesthetes see vignettes while people talk to them?”
Marjorie stared at me blankly.
“You know, little movies, like—”
Her eyes narrowed again, this time so tightly her eyes became inscrutable, mascara-lined slits. “I know what vignettes are, Ainsley.” Rosebushes with dead, black roses and five-inch thorns. She was angry.
“When you talk sometimes, it’s like I’m a little kid running through a wheat field. And I can feel the sun, and it’s beautiful.” I spoke softly, head bowed. I couldn’t meet her eyes when I wasn’t pretending to be a badass.
I could feel her looking at me. Rainbows poured from her. She bathed me in each colour in turn, trying to see which one fit. She shuffled through my file again and sighed. “Maybe you should see a psychologist.”
“I’m not delusional,” I said firmly, raising my head up again, putting my asshole cape back on.
Marjorie sighed again, deeper and more resigned. Pink light radiated from her. “I’ve done every test I could think of. I don’t know what else to do.” Her voice was quiet, sad.
“I’m not making this up.
I’m not hallucinating. It’s the Babylon Engine. It’s made this happen to me, and I thought I could do something, I thought I could use it to change the world, but the things that it does are pointless and there’s no evidence, there’s no proof.”
Orange and yellow spikes, like beaks, all pointed at me. Shit. I said too much. “Wait.” Marjorie tilted her head, eyes sharp, birdlike. “Babylon Engine? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” But the spikes were multiplying and sharpening and dripping with sticky venom and I knew that there was no way I was getting out of this.
“Are you doing drugs?”
“Drugs?” I snorted. “You think I’m some kind of plebeian who needs drugs to be special?”
“I understand that you’re upset, Ainsley.” Rage had taken root inside me, a great tree of fury with gnarled branches on which flowers bloomed at each of her simpering words. I hated it when people said stupid things like that, things that really meant nothing. She wasn’t going to help me, she wasn’t even sorry that she was acting like a fool. She only understood that her uselessness was upsetting me because I was getting shirty with her.
“Of course I’m fucking upset. I’m trying to make the discovery of the century—something that will really fucking matter—and not only are you being of absolutely no help, you’re accusing me of being some kind of two-bit, backstreet addict. I’m not doing drugs, you idiot. I’ve made a machine – I made it – and it’s going to cause a huge, global awakening, like, like...like a massive expanding of consciousness! It’ll turn everyone into one of those skinny enlightened assholes on a mountaintop. All I need is for you to actually do your fucking job and help me prove that it works.”
Marjorie said some smarmy aquamarine chiffon things I didn’t pay attention to. I hadn’t wanted to tell her about it, but I couldn’t stop myself now. I’d opened the floodgates and let loose a torrent of thick, yellow, ego-fuelled vitriol that couldn’t be slowed, let alone stopped, even if I’d wanted to.
“I built that thing all by myself. Sure, I had some help, and I’d read some books, but I built it. Me. And it works, it does things. It’s making me see. And taste, and feel sometimes too. But what’s the point, Marjorie? What’s the fucking point? Who gives a shit if your name is green? Am I going to get money in research grants because of that? No, of course not. And I’ve got no proof that there’s any difference, because every fucking test is fucking normal. Normal! What kind of bullshit is that? How am I going to convince anyone of what I’ve done when every goddamned test is normal? They’ll look at me the way you do, like I’m some crackhead loony.” I felt so damned amazing saying this. I was smooth orange, soft and leathery and warm and spicy.
“Now Ainsley,” Marjorie began, but I was on a big fucking roll, smashing every brick of logic and reason in my way, and her sweetness, her beautiful face, her kissable lips and warm brown eyes were not half enough to stop me this time.
“No. I’m done. I don’t give a shit anymore. I don’t care. Your science,” I brought my face close to hers, close enough to breathe in her sweet, lavender scent, “your science is bullshit.”
I stood up, turned on my heel and walked out of there on a cloud of my own self-importance, puffed up like an angry chicken. I slammed all the doors on my way out for good measure.
I can’t handle the streets in daytime. The tentacles of conversations pull at me, dragging me into oceans and deserts and minefields. A woman was yelling into her cellphone and it was black and green and thick and awful. My feet got stuck in the oppressive tar of her rage, and when I’d finally freed myself, I was assailed by a man trying so hard to romance a woman that the ground was covered with a thick, orange-red slime, which formed into humanoid shapes that slipped and ground against each other. My mouth filled with the sour taste of bile. Gagging, I closed my eyes and stumbled home as quickly as I could.
We’re always so concerned about our garbage, all the shit we’re throwing away, but what about all of the words we carelessly toss around? They turn into feral things, worming into the ears of passersby, gnawing away at their brainstems. I would rather walk a street devoid of people yet full of refuse, flies riding like surfers on waves of putrescence so thick you can taste it, than have my senses constantly assaulted by careless chatting.
Back in the sanctuary of my apartment, I fussed over the strange form of the Babylon Engine, removing old vacuum tubes and replacing them with new ones. I never threw the spent ones away. The spent ones would somehow collect a thick layer of powder at the bottom. I was certain this powder was important, and when I had enough evidence to get a research grant, I would send them off to a lab for an intense analysis. For now, I labelled them with a number that corresponded to an entry in one of my many journals that detailed the experiences I’d had while under the influence of the Engine. I then wrapped them in old newspapers and put them in boxes. I had forty new tubes left, enough for a solid two weeks of experimentation.
I turned up the amplitude, put on some ambient music and sunk into a dreamy softness. The visions were getting stronger. Either that or reality was getting weaker. It was difficult to be certain.
It was dark, cool and damp in the forest. The moss-covered ground was spongy beneath my bare feet. Trees taller than skyscrapers, with the circumference of city blocks towered around me. Ferns the size of apartment buildings grew at their feet, rustling gently in the quiet midnight breeze. The solitude empowered me. Finally I could think, finally I wasn’t being held hostage by the ramblings of strangers.
Was it midnight? I wondered. Even when I craned my neck, I couldn’t see through the thick canopy of tree branches to tell what colour the sky was. Perhaps it was mid-afternoon, or even morning. Perhaps there wasn’t a morning in this place and it was perpetually dark and cool.
I wandered along, enjoying the solitude and the earthy scent of the forest, when suddenly I was struck by the feeling that I wasn’t alone. I’d never seen anyone before, not once in the dozens of times I’d come here. It wasn’t just people. Other than the vegetation, I hadn’t seen anything alive, ever. The thick branches were empty of raucous birds, the air devoid of the insistent thrumming of bees. No bears, tigers or panthers lurked ready to strike in the dark brush. The shimmering lakes held no fish, their surfaces unbroken by errant dragonflies.
The complete isolation was the reason I came here. I was addicted to it. It was the reason why the worsening side effects of hearing and seeing and feeling all of the world’s detritus when I was outside of this was worth it, because I knew that a place of delicious seclusion awaited me.
And yet, someone else was here. Someone—or something—was watching me, stalking me. I didn’t know how I knew, I’d seen no movement nor had I heard any sound, but I knew. Synapses were firing, my body was screaming at me, preparing me to run, run, run.
My heart convulsing, my legs pinwheeled underneath me, taking me somewhere, anywhere but here.
My mouth sandpaper, I ran ran ran but it was still there, it was always there. I darted behind a tree, then zigzagged to another, but my stalker’s oppressive presence was waiting for me when I arrived.
My fingernails were digging into the palms of my clenched fists, my breath coming hot and jagged, lungs full of knives and broken glass. I pressed my back to a tree, sliding down slowly, quietly, as though that would help, as though anything would help. I became a ball, a fetus, played possum.
My mind was wrenched open, brutally, into hyperawareness. I could feel it, the thing, all around me. I could see it too, a sentient fog of yellow, making the air thick and toxic. I couldn’t run from it any more than I could run away from the sky or the air or the ground. I couldn’t find it anywhere because it was everywhere and I was inside of it, stumbling around in its putrescent miasma. As I struggled to inhale the too-thick air, I watched the yellowness in front of me condense into a large orb, around half a meter in diameter. A dark oval formed in its center, black beyond black, the colour of space between stars, the colour of voi
d.
It blinked.
The world convulsed and the fog thickened, tightening around me, choking me.
The eye swirled around me, perhaps assessing me, though I had the distinct feeling that it already knew everything it needed to.
There you are.
The words pierced into my head and directly embedded themselves into my brain, hurting with a sharp, surgical intensity.
I convulsed, hacking, my lungs refusing the dense air, gasping for breath. A dry, scraping sound filled my ears, getting louder and louder until it consumed me entirely, until it became everything everywhere.
It was laughing, I realized. It was laughing at me.
I’d heard that oxygen deprivation is a pretty good way to die, all things considered. There’s a sort of euphoria that you experience. I’d read that in a book somewhere. People fight off their rescuers sometimes, not wanting to leave the blissful state of comfortable near-death.
I understood that now. Life seemed far too banal and messy. Death was rational, a math equation I had finally solved. All that living meant was that I’d need to go back to the real world, the hard world, the world that was too loud and too aggravating and too full of stupid people with their insistent bullshit. I let go, relaxing into the welcoming arms of the abyss.
It smiled. The thing, it didn’t have a mouth, just an eye, and I can’t explain how it smiled, but it did. It was a cruel smile, the kind that’s all teeth and no lips, the kind of smile that sharks and tigers have before they casually rip into you. It smiled with a force that thundered into my solar plexus. It would have knocked the breath out of me, had I any breath left to lose. This must be what getting hit by a freight train feels like, I thought as I flew backwards.
Resonator: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond Page 11
