Grasslands

by Andrew McEwan

  24 - KITCHEN RINK

  The alcohol flowed freely and the bodies thronged, seemingly doubling every half hour. Like amoebas they reproduced by fission, just as Almeric's hydrogen bomb should, although it had other ends in mind.

  Vern emptied all the containers, metal and plastic, he could lay his hands on. The rooms he entered took on a surreal quality not in the least displeasing, reminding him of home. Once, he imagined he saw Edgar, but it turned out to be another amorphous form, a man whose eyes and mouth opened and shut in unison.

  ‘Where's the toilet?’ the man asked him, blinking rapidly.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Vern answered. It was a guess, but he felt pretty sure of himself.

  Almeric brushed past, steering a female towards the kitchen from where excited shouts emanated.

  A person emerged covered in cream. Their tongue darted in and out pinkly, gooey.

  Vern fell over an outstretched limb. It protruded from a dark cupboard under the stairs. It was rubber. Curious, he folded it inwards, crawling deeper as the appendage wound like a cool snake or thick coil of plaited hair.

  What was at its other end? he wondered. Rapunzel? He heard giggling, soft and muted. The cupboard door closed beneath the weight of tidal bodies. Vern could see nothing.

  He crouched further, stumbled drunkenly and collapsed in a heap. He was unable to feel where his legs were. They had become one with the rubber limb.

  ‘It looks like space,’ he murmured.

  ‘Would you like to see some stars?’

  ‘Yeah, stars would be nice.’

  He saw stars. Tiny lights flew around him, fading as they cooled in the blackness, vanishing from sight.

  ‘Welcome to the cave of the vacuums. What is your name?’

  ‘Vern,’ said Vern, drinking.

  ‘Welcome, Vern.’

  Something moved against him, hard and plastic. A fixture, he knew instinctively, an attachment.

  ‘We have waited for your coming. Your life is troubled.’

  Vern nodded agreement.

  The fixture bobbed before his unseeing eyes as if to hypnotize him. The plaited coils shifted below his loose body.

  ‘Hey, that tickles!’

  ‘Be at peace. Your time is nigh. Do you see a light?’

  ‘Yeah, I see a green light.’

  ‘It is a button. A magic button. If you press the button all your troubles will cease. You will be sucked away. There is a better place.’

  ‘Really?’ Vern liked the sound of a better place. ‘What if I don't press the button?’ he questioned, sorely tempted.

  ‘If you should decline, it may be pressed for you.’

  He didn't like the sound of that so much.

  ‘This is the cave of the vacuums. The vacuums' demesne is void of choice.’

  That neither. Vern was aware of silence. The light had turned amber. He had to act fast.

  It was impossible to tell where the cupboard door was. Vern had the impression of a far larger space. The light switched to red and a roaring noise filled the air, its suction tugging at his skin as he flailed madly, spitting beer, emptying his lungs the rubber limb alive, attacking him.

  He grabbed its flexible throat and squeezed, but it was no good, the limb braced with steel rings, strong cartilage. He wrestled with the toughened appendage as it grew in power, adhered to his stricken face. He was lost, deformed as the vacuum sucked him down, threatening to rip him apart if it could not swallow him whole. But Vern wasn't finished.

  He sucked back. With a strength he hadn't known he possessed Vern fought the vacuum, duelled with it, theirs a contest of lungs, motorized bellows, determined hearts, a combat to the grisly finish. And he was winning - sucking the very guts out of the writhing monster, its rubber limb moaning as Vern drew material up through its hose like a straw.

  It was the kiss of death, and Vernon Planes proved the victor, the supercharged vanquisher of vacuums, a sucker amongst suckers whose mouth and lips were the envy of attachment designers across the planet, their feeble efforts no match for his multi-purpose organ; the device, the implement, the gadget, the tool of his most justifiable pride.

  Vern's was truly a gob to be reckoned with.

  He slapped his chest like Tarzan and shouldered out through the now clearly visible door.

  Yes, Vern was appliance-supreme!

  He went in search of another beer.

  Someone had spilt milk on the kitchen floor, which accounted for the chaos. Bodies skidded between fridge and cooker. Others were less graceful and lost their footing. A pile of lifeless shapes mounted under the table from where vino and yellow-foamy beverages drained, adding to the floor's slickness.

  Almeric sat on a work-bench with his female. He was trying to weigh her breasts, one at a time, when Vern walked in, cool as you like, and glided over.

  ‘The right one's heavier,’ he told Almeric.

  ‘Your right of hers?’

  ‘Hers of course,’ Vern said. ‘I don't have a right.’

  ‘Neither do I, but she's made no objection. So...’ He finally calibrated each breast.

  ‘Well?’ said Vern, knowing the answer.

  ‘You're right,’ admitted Almeric.

  ‘What do I win?’ Vern deftly plucked a flying can of ale out of the smoky air. It had been aimed at his head.

  ‘An all-expenses-paid trip of a lifetime,’ said Almeric. He allowed his female to slide to the floor where her momentum carried her below the table.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Vern, casually pulling the can's ring. The contents didn't even fountain. They were afraid to.

  Almeric's eyebrows rose. ‘The living-room,’ he said.

  They left the skaters to it.

  In the living-room the music was loudest. A beaten stereo blasted uncontrollably, its speakers crackling with static and the heavy bass strains of Led Zeppelin. The volume knob was missing, so it couldn't be turned down; and someone, perhaps the same someone who'd spilt milk on the kitchen floor, had snapped the door from the cassette-deck, making it inoperable.

  A competing ghetto-blaster was wedged tight behind the curved settee, screaming Bob Marley hits.

  Vern and Almeric stood in the centre of the room beneath the broken lampshade.

  They said things to each other, but neither could hear what they were.

  Everywhere bodies groped and collided.

 

  The city on wheels does not slow. It is too late to save the many lives. A man with strong lungs would be needed just to give the order to retreat, such is the clamour. I can be in two places at once, but have failed in my mission...

  25 - CHIEF PLANTER

  Lucy opens the door and enters with myself and Harriot close behind. The mouse clings to the triple string of beads about my neck. For the present I am entire and pink.

  It is easy to recognize parallels between worlds, for inside and out, within brick walls or on the blood-spattered grass, the sounds are all alike.

  We are quickly separated in the crush...

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘Vern?’

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘Somewhere else. I even brought a bottle, and Harriot, and this strange man.’

  ‘Thing?’ finished Vern. ‘Was he a thing?’

  ‘A what thing?’

  Vern waved the conversation aside. ‘Never mind,’ he said, a strength in his voice that surprised her. ‘At least they released you from your bonds.’

  ‘They?’ queried Lucy. ‘My bonds?’

  ‘You were tied up,’ Vern told her. ‘Almeric saw you rescued by the firemen.’

  ‘Oh.’ She hugged the borrowed coat around her, produced a wan smile and a cigarette, which she pressed between red lips. ‘Have you got a light?’

  Vern grabbed the first person that passed and shook them till a box of matches fell to the floor.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lucy, reappraising.

  ‘No problem
.’

  ‘You tore your shirt.’

  ‘I had a fight,’ said Vern, pushing out his chest. ‘Where's the bottle?’

  She reached inside the coat and uncovered a litre of gin. It flashed greenly. Lucy handed it to Vern who took a swig. Jostled from behind he nearly choked.

  ‘Let's move,’ Lucy said, ‘away from the door.’

  ‘What door?’ Vern asked, squinting in the dim light.

  ‘The one we're standing in.’ She motioned him towards the foot of the stairs. ‘Up,’ she said. ‘Up, up, up.’

  Vern stepped over lifeless shapes and towed Lucy behind like a mountain-guide.

  Halfway up the bumped into Al.

  ‘Which way are you going?’ said Vern.

  ‘I forgot,’ said Almeric. ‘Either that or I hadn't decided, and so stopped half-way.’ He leaned out as if preparing to abseil down the side of the stairs.

  ‘You'll fall,’ Lucy told him, winking.

  A descending body obliged with a shove and Almeric tumbled over the polished rail, yelling, ‘No chute! No chute!’

  ‘What's he mean?’ the body inquired of Vern, scooping hair from its sweaty lineaments.

  ‘No chute,’ Vern answered. ‘He means no chute.’

  The body's head nodded sagely. ‘I get it. No chute! Right...’

  Vern couldn't decide whether it were male or female. It shrank past, reeking of perfume and Pernod.

  ‘Up,’ Lucy said again. ‘Up, up:’

  They stood on hands and faces as they climbed.

 

  The world had turned upside-down for Almeric. He stared at boots and shoes, socks and ankles, calves and knees, thighs and crotches. His skull ached, as if a great weight rested on it.

  ‘My skull aches,’ he complained.

  None of the aforementioned replied.

  ‘I can't walk.’ He moved his feet but nothing happened. It was like walking in air.

  He sneezed. His screwdriver dropped out of his pocket and hit his chin, struck his brow before rolling off into the blue and white and chaotic kitchen.

  His nostrils filled with ash. He sneezed again, and this time displaced his inverted mass through the wavering kitchen door. Momentarily blinded, Almeric was oblivious of the tangled forms he slid past, aware solely of the adjoining utility room towards which he sped, into which he crashed.

  ‘Your head's in the tumble-dryer,’ a kind voice told him.

  It was silver and wonderful, cold and metallic.

  ‘Are you stuck?’

  He was sad to leave the hall of mirrors.

  She was arranging peanuts on the concrete floor.

  ‘Did you see a screwdriver?’ said Almeric, dazed, bedazzled, abuzz.

  ‘Yes,’ she responded. ‘It destroyed a whole column.’

  ‘And?’ The peanuts, he thought, looked good enough to eat. So he ate some.

  She scowled. ‘That was half a cavalry regiment.’

  ‘Tastes nice.’

  ‘You just scoffed a general and two captains,’ she said, offering chagrin.

  ‘Sorry,’ Almeric said. ‘The screwdriver?’

  ‘Went that way.’ She pointed behind him.

  He looked. It shone like a beacon, bright amongst floor-cleaner and bleach, a plastic bucket.

  ‘What're you doing?’ he said, returning his attention to the woman.

  ‘Planning my strategy.’

  ‘Using peanuts?’

  ‘They're all I could find.’ She manoeuvred a division of salty conscripts to a new position.

  Almeric reckoned she must have arrived early to have found peanuts. It was uncanny. ‘How can you tell the two sides apart?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘The enemy's dry-roasted,’ she explained.

  ‘0h, yeah.’ He leaned closer. ‘Who's winning?’

  ‘I hadn't decided.’

  ‘You'd better hurry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can see your watch,’ said Almeric, ‘and Mickey says the world is only fifteen minutes from ending.’

  ‘That's silly,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Almeric came back; ‘this is silly.’ He grabbed a handful of unsuspecting infantrymen and tossed them in the air, catching as many as he could in his mouth while stretching out an arm and plucking the screwdriver from its nest of rags, its fortress of detergent bottles.

  She rocked back on her heels, disgusted.

  ‘KP or Big D?’ asked Almeric.

  ‘Planters,’ said the strategist, eyeing him shrewdly.

  Almeric had a premonition. She grinned broadly. He was quickly sick.

  ‘You shouldn't be so greedy,’ she said, coy. ‘Or do you like rabbit shit and pepper?’

  Almeric turned first green, second purple.

  ‘Any room?’ said Vern.

  ‘No,’ chorused the bodies in the airing-cupboard, ‘try the attic.’

 

  Outside was warm and electric. Almeric smelled the night, happy at its bubbling. The cloudy spaceships were blue-black and omnipresent.

  ‘Yaaaa-eeeeay!’ A figure cast gnomes at the greenhouse in the next garden.

  ‘Haaaa-hooooo!’ Another kicked over garden furniture and pots and vases.

  ‘Wooo-wahhh-gggga!’ A third mutilated growing things, stripping them of leaves and flowers.

  Almeric recognized the bikers and suppressed the urge to dance and whistle.

  An engine roared. Wheels cut up the grass.

  He ventured back inside.

 

  In an upstairs bedroom Harriot is taking bets on the outcome of an arm-wrestling match between two male bodies, their eyes bulging like their muscles, the winner to collect a bored young dark-haired girl whose near unconscious self is glued to a video, miming in turn its silent dialogue. There have already been three such contests, the lucky heroes each nursing severed lips and bruised testicles.

  The girls split fifty-fifty. I sit on a chest of drawers and wonder at my profession. In another world I tend the wounded; in this I applaud their bleeding.

  Soon it will be time to bury the dead and number the living amongst the fortunate...

  26 - SECRET

  It was foolish to think of using fire as a weapon, for the city dwellers simply replied in kind.

  The trees give off an acrid smoke as they burn...

  ‘Let's try in here,’ suggested Vern.

  ‘It's a balcony,’ said Lucy.

  ‘It's full,’ said Vern. He breathed fresh air a moment, head spinning.

  The balcony was actually the garage roof. ‘It smells of tar,’ Lucy remarked.

  ‘And mustard,’ Vern added.

  ‘French or English?’

  ‘Ukrainian.’

  ‘I hate mustard,’ said Lucy.

  ‘There's no way up to the attic,’ Vern said again.

  ‘You already said that,’ admonished Lucy. ‘When we were stood beneath the hatch, remember?’

  ‘I should've got a chair to stand on.’

  ‘You did; it broke.’

  ‘I could've given you a hand up.’

  ‘You tried, and dropped me,’ Lucy stated. ‘There's a bump on my head.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Come on.’ She yanked his arm.

  ‘Where?’ The empty gin bottle clattered from his grip and rang off the stair-rail.

  ‘In here.’ Lucy elbowed aside sodden carcasses. A crescendo of noise greeted them.

  ‘Hey, Harry!’

  Vern entered the room in time to see a male body writhing in contorted agony.

  ‘Baby sis!’

  A dark-haired girl pressed her bare heel into his stomach with practised cruelty.

  ‘That looks like fun,’ said Lucy to no one in particular.

  ‘It's an art,’ Harriot told her.

  Vern slumped on the bed, causing others to fall off it. They groaned beyond the blankets' colourful horizon, lost souls in a deep well,
cast down by the avenging angels.

  His mouse appeared, white and pink on his weird shirt as if it had grown from the pattern. Vern stroked it, careful not to stick his clumsy fingers in its face, lest Hugget bite him.

  He wondered how it had escaped the flames. Or had the mouse risen like some rodent phoenix from the ashes?

  ‘Twelve minutes to twelve!’ said Almeric as he rebounded inwards. ‘Vern!’

  Vern was quiet.

  ‘Guess who?’

  ‘Almeric Jones,’ Vern guessed, breaking his silence.

  ‘What? No.’ Almeric knelt, whispered, ‘In the garden.’

  ‘Is that a hint?’

  Almeric nodded. He took a swig from a bottle whose label was a skull-and-crossbones, and grimaced.

  ‘I give up,’ said Vern. ‘Who?’

  ‘Eh...’

  ‘In the garden...’ Hugget clambered over him and disappeared down the back of the bed.

  ‘Our friends from this afternoon,’ confided Almeric. ‘Or was it this morning?’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘I'm afraid so.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. But don't worry, there's no time; not to die.’ He rose and swaggered in a directionless manner.

  Vern sat up, feeling like a rusty hinge.

  ‘Hurray!’

  ‘Hurray, hurray!’

  ‘Hurray, hurray, hurray!’

  The dark-haired girl interrupted her viewing once more. Her fifth victim's head grazed the ceiling. She leant on one hip and smiled at him.

  ‘It's her boyfriend,’ somebody said.

  ‘That's not fair,’ said another.

  The mass of bodies agreed. They wanted pain and violence and blood and entertaining.

  One threw a pillow. It might have had little effect, but the case was stuffed with empty glass receptacles.

  ‘Hur-rrrray!’ the bodies cheered, hiding, falling over each other in their attempts to elude the wrathful giant.

  His laughter was deadly.

  Almeric made it to the window and peered upwards at the sky, his head resting on the crowded sill.

  Lightning flashed, followed a few seconds later by thunder. A bird struck the glass and vanished. Almeric's screwdriver rotated on his upturned palm like the needle of a compass.

  Vern crawled from the bed and joined him. ‘What do you know that I don't, Al?’

  ‘The distance and orbital placement of Venus.’

  Vern stuck his finger in his ear in a reflex of bafflement. ‘What else?’

  ‘The pink guy on the chest of drawers is from another world, an alternate plane of existence,’ Almeric said, concentrating on the dark heavens, the broiling clouds, the imminent storm.