Meet Me in the Strange

by Leander Watts

  After it was over, we sat there a long time, looking out at the city: brightness and blackness perfectly combined. The Duce’s Dome might’ve been where travelers to this world had landed and set up their base. A spire beyond glowed in cool, pearly light. It was the great steeple on Our Lady, The Queen of Heaven. But it stood up like a rocket ship readying for takeoff.

  FIFTY-TWO

  “So what did you think?” I asked her.

  “It was okay. But I like the early ones better. Black and white—very cool. Shades of silver—nothing looks better. Did you ever see Bride of Frankenstein? That’s my fave. Elsa Lanchester was the bride, and she plays Mary Shelly, the writer, too. A double role. And did you ever think that Django was like Frankenstein? I mean the doctor and the creature, both of them at the same time. He found the lost manuscripts and did the secret experiments, and he made himself into something new. Django made himself, you understand?”

  “Not really,” I said, feeling a buzz and a blur in my head.

  “He’s the creator and the creature at the same time. He took some of this and some of that, stole some riffs, and copied some moves. And once in an interview, he claimed that he was a genius because he let himself get zapped by lightning at midnight. In an abandoned graveyard. Naked.”

  “He said a lot of things. I read in a story by T.V. Geist that he—”

  Anna Z cut off me. The words were coming stronger now, like a train building up steam, picking up speed. “He created himself and came up with another name. Then he let it loose, the brand new sound, just like the Bride of Frankenstein’s first scream. There’s nothing wilder or sexier in the whole world than her, than Elsa Lanchester in that movie, screaming with the white lightning-bolt in her beehive hairdo. It’s like Tarzan’s wild-man yodeling in the movies. You think that’s just one guy making all that sound? No, that’s a Frankenstein yell. It’s a lion roaring played backward, and steam whistles blasting in slo-mo, and the scream of the west wind on New Year’s Eve, all mixed together like body parts to make a monster.

  “Sometimes, I think Mary Shelley’s the really amazing one. Not Frankenstein himself or the creature. Can you believe that she was only seventeen when she ran off with a famous poet, who was already married, and wrote the book? No job. No real money. No family. Do you have any idea what people thought about her for doing that, going away with him? But she did it, and they went to the mountains to be free, and that’s where she wrote Frankenstein. The book was written by a girl. That’s what everybody forgets. A teenager. Not some old hag-lady, but a girl the same age as me.

  “I read Frankenstein about a hundred times, looking for the good parts, piecing together the secrets, digging into the lost world where I knew the truth could be found. It’s mostly overheated feelings, more romance than gore and gross-out. There’s loving and loathing and losing. The words are stiff sometimes, way too big and complicated. ‘To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.’ That kind of thing. ‘Do you share my madness?’ Dr. Frankenstein says all sorts of stuff like that. So the story is mostly hidden between the lines. I had to look close to see the real story. Lightning and body parts, ugliness and lust, a killer creature, ice fields in the far north. That’s all in there. I got that, but I knew there had to be more. And I was right.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Then she was quiet. That late, the city and the hotel too were hushed. We sat together a long time, saying nothing. The moon was reflected in her glasses, two smears of pale white light.

  “Loving and loathing and losing,” she’d said. “Do you share my madness?” Were those just pretty words from a book or something that was true and really mattered? How would I ever know? I loved to listen. When she talked it was like walls and curtains and veils fell, and I could see what was real behind them. As soon as the words stopped, though, everything was hidden again.

  The silence flowed in, and what I was sure of, again, was danger, somewhere beyond my sight. Django might be telling us amazing secrets. The Alien Drift might really slide through me like sunbeams through glass. But Anna Z’s brother was still out there in the city. Lukas was real flesh and blood. He knew who I was and where I lived. And he wanted Anna Z back.

  I said maybe I should stay with her that night. She shook her head and said, “That wouldn’t be a good idea. I’ll be fine.” The door locks were solid. Nobody had a clue that she up was there anyway. And she was right: it would be better to keep things normal. If anyone noticed I hadn’t been in my room, like Sabina or one of the maids, they might wonder what was going on and start asking questions. This made sense. Until we had a better plan, I should act as though nothing had changed.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Except, of course, everything had changed. When I got back to my room, I found Carlos there, smoking in the darkness. The end of his cigarette pulsed, almost died, then pulsed again back to brightness. The moon’s milky glimmer stretched across the carpeted floor. I shut the door and said, “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  Away from Sabina, he was different. The way he spoke, the way he looked at me and pushed questions at me were all colored by a feeling of threat. He started talking about my sister and me. He called her “Sabby,” which sounded wrong, and he called me “Little Davi,” making my name into a sneer. A match broke into sudden flame, and another cigarette began to glow. “You two are spoiled brats, with no idea how the real world works.” Poking the bright orange ember at me, he said, “You’re messing with people who can make life really hard.”

  He lit another match and tossed it at me. The little flame died in midair. “Your friend Lukas came around tonight. I was down at The Red Angel. Sabby hates that place. Too many low-lifes for her. I go there by myself. And Lukas found me. He’s not in a good mood, and he has a lot to say. He thinks you know where his sister is.”

  He smoked in silence for a while, letting those last words hang in the air. Then he said, “I lied a little bit earlier. I didn’t want Sabby getting worried. Of course I know Lukas. If you run with a certain crowd, you can’t help but know him. You were right. He’s very intense. And there is something wrong with him in the head. He’s got very peculiar ideas about his sister. And he thinks you’re up to no good. Spending a little too much time with her. Doing things you shouldn’t be doing.”

  Carlos leaned toward me, and I saw a faint glimmer of a smile. “I can see why you like Anna Z. I like her too, a lot. I wouldn’t mind if she—”

  “Shut up,” I told him. “Just stop talking about her, okay?” The thought of Carlos sleazing up to Anna Z made me sick.

  “Fine. Fine. We don’t need to say any more about her. You understand what I’m talking about. So what’s it going to be, Davi?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can get on the phone right now and have a little talk with Lukas. I can tell him you’ve been asking the wrong kind of questions about the wrong girl. So what’s it going to be? A big complicated mess or a simple transfer of funds? Meeting up with Lukas again or moving a little cash my way?” He said how much he wanted, and he told me exactly how to get the money to him without anyone else, especially Sabina, knowing about it. I didn’t argue. There wasn’t any point.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  After he’d left, I went to stand in the wash of moonglow. I could feel it. I know it’s not possible, but I could feel the rays reflecting off the moon and down to where I stood. Two hundred thousand miles across emptiness, from the moon’s cold surface to me, through the windowpanes, and onto my bare face and arms. I felt it the way I’ve felt wind on my skin. Cool and smooth as a breeze. I was a secret citizen now of Radiation Nation. Just like Django put it in the song. Just like Anna Z said it to me. I was glowing, right there in my room, glowing pale, lunar white. I took off my shirt and my pants and everything and stood there a long time, soaking up the rays and giving them back, just like the moon.

  What else could I do? That’s what I asked myself, and there was no good answer. Call my fat
her and tell him everything? That truly was impossible. I couldn’t say the words and he couldn’t hear them. Talk to Hermann, maybe offer him some money on the side to get his men together and take care of Lukas once and for all? That wasn’t an absurd idea. He’d cleaned up messes before. I doubted, though, that he’d be willing to risk his position by breaking the law that way for me. Should I contact the Guardia? Or even the Archbishop’s people? None of these would work. So instead, I went to the light.

  Of course, I should have been freaking out. Or at least moving quickly to fight back against Carlos and Anna Z’s brother. And I suppose part of me was in panic. In my mind somewhere, a voice shouted at me to Do Something! Move, Make a Plan, Counterattack! A much stronger voice said that I was already doing exactly the right thing.

  Standing in the light. Being the light. Homo lux, bright stars like Django Conn and the Albino Reptiles from Dimension X. Like V-Rocket and the Witch-Babies. That was us, Anna Z and me. We had what almost no one could even imagine. We got the music—the sound and light—the way only a few other silver-golden souls could get it. And so there had to be another way, our way, to get free and stay that way.

  FIFTY-SIX

  The next day, I asked her straight up, “What exactly does your brother want from you? Why is getting you back so important?” Sure, I understood about brothers and their sister. Genes and protoplasm, family lines, growing up together, having things in common that nobody else in the whole world could share. “I have a sister. I get it, chromosomes are forever.” But she hated her brother. Or at least she feared him all the way to hate. She’d run away three times. She’d sworn that she could never go back.

  I was ready to put everything I had into making this happen. It was like I was living in two worlds, though. There was one where the real hardcore danger moved around in the shadows: thug-brothers and blackmailing slimes like Carlos. In the other world, the real things were sky vapor, bodiless voices, ethereal light and sound. I had to live and do what was needed in both worlds. That was clear to me now, eating with Anna Z up in the secret suite. Scrambled eggs, fresh black bread, and oranges to fill up our stomachs. Sweet coffee that went right to my head: strong caffeine and sugar.

  Why, I needed to know, was Lukas so dead set on getting her back? She shrugged. Sometimes the words flooded out and sometimes they barely came in a trickle. I figured that was how it would be then.

  “He’s horrible. But I still love him too. He’s my brother, right? He took care of me since I was little and there’s always been a special thing between us.” She looked away from me.

  After a while, she said he made her sick too. Really deep-inside-her-body sick, like the plague. “If I stayed there anymore, I’d die. This is for real. It’s the truth. I’d really and truly die if I stayed there anymore.”

  She poured sugar on her tongue and let it lie there, glistening, slowly dissolving in the afternoon light. She sprinkled on a little salt and the crystals mingled, bright white going to pure sun-gleam. Then something changed in her. Something like a wall broke and the words came pouring out.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  “He uses me. That’s what this is all about, Davi. He uses me, and if I’m not there to use then he might as well be dead. Like a light bulb uses electricity. Without it, what do you have? Some glass, some wires, and that twisty metal socket thing at the bottom. It’s useless, right? It does nothing without the current. But when the electricity goes through it, you’re not sitting there alone in the dark anymore. That’s the way it is with me and my brother. Or like an instrument, a bassoon or clarinet maybe. Without the player’s breath going into it, what do you have? Some wooden tubes and metal keys and contraptions that go up and down and it’s totally useless. With the breath pouring through, it turns into beautiful music. You understand, Davi? He uses me and he has since before I can remember. I know it sounds like I’m in control if I’m the breath or the electricity. But that’s not how it feels.

  “He uses me. Like the master uses the slaves to pull on the oars and make the ship go skimming through the sea. You’ve seen those old galley ships, right? There’s one in the Archbishop’s museum from the ancient Empire days. With the battering ram in front for crashing into other warships and two eyes painted on the front, like the ship had a face and was alive. Fifty benches for the slaves to sit at, and they pulled those huge oars day and night to make the boat move. Just like your heart: never stopping, day and night, going all the time. Your body uses your heart, Davi. Without it, you’re dead. And without me, my brother is dead. Or at least that’s how it feels to him.

  “He uses me. And he needs me to stay alive. That’s what Lukas always said: every minute we were apart was like torture to him. He told me I was so important to him that every day I was away, when I ran off those other times, he could feel himself dying. So he must be already getting desperate. Not getting weaker, not for a while. But stronger, with that freak-out energy you get when you think you’re going to die. Like somebody drowning in the sea, thrashing around and grabbing crazy, because they know it’s going to end and if they don’t get what they need, real fast, then it’s over, really over. That must be how it feels.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  I tried to make sense of this. At first it sounded like Lukas was a vampire, taking her blood to stay alive. Her words had such a dizzying effect on me that I even gave a quick glance at her neck, looking for marks. But she wasn’t talking about glamorous fairy tales or brand-new big budget movies. And even though I was convinced that the two of us truly were mutations—Homo lux—I still knew the difference between film stars and real flesh and blood.

  Was all this he-uses-me talk just a complicated way of saying how it felt? I asked her that. She just shrugged and poured another line of sugar onto her tongue. Her words came and her words went, like a faucet being turned off and on. Was all her talk about electricity and breath and slave-ships just a way of not really telling me what was true? It seemed like she’d been going round and round and not giving me the most important facts.

  “What will do if he catches you, if he catches us together?”

  “That can’t happen. There’s nothing more to it. It just can’t.”

  “Look, you can stay here at the Angelus for a while longer,” I told her. “But with Carlos skulking around, and Herman’s not going to stop him, soon enough he’ll find you out.” Carlos would sell her back to her brother if he didn’t get enough money from me. Knowing how slimy he was, maybe he’d do both.

  I was thinking of going straight to Lukas and trying to finish it. Maybe I could make a deal, I thought. Not with cash. I knew that was wrong, out of the question. But maybe I could trade or give him a substitute. Or if I really understood what he wanted, and why, maybe I could get Anna Z free some other way. I knew he might kill me. That part was for sure. But for the first time in my life, it hit me that there were worse things in the world than being dead. So getting up my nerve, I asked Anna Z to explain it to me one more time.

  FIFTY-NINE

  “You were right, before. It really was like being emptied out completely and filled up. With Django, at the show, I mean. When you saw me at the Maxima, I didn’t know what my name was, where I’d been, or where I was going. They were doing ‘She’s the Hype,’ I think, when it really hit me. My name and what I looked like, where I was and who I was. It all just vanished out of me. Did you ever see anybody playing with dry ice? It goes straight from solid to gas. That’s called sublimation, going sublime. You take it out of the freezer and it vanishes into a white puff. Whhffff! And that’s what it felt like when Rudy went into his solo and Django came out right to the edge of the stage and looked me in the eyes. I went sublime.

  “Django was holding out his hand. Remember? Like he wanted everybody in the whole Maxima to touch him. Some of the girls were reaching for him. He had a purple scarf or a big fluttery ribbon. It went out over the crowd. Remember? The girls were stretching up for it. But not me, because I didn’t need to. I was alrea
dy with him, filled up as fast as I went sublime. Everything turned to vapor and whooshed away, and then everything rushed back inside me. Cosmic rays, the sound of Rudy’s solo, Django’s voice turned to light, the power and the gleam, and the alien specters passing through us all.

  “I don’t care anymore if something is possible or not. I just know what I saw and felt. The light went all silvery-gold. Electrum light, just like you saw this morning. And my body didn’t weigh anything. There was nothing solid for gravity to grab onto and hold down. Solid, liquid, vapor and pure energy. The x-rays from a million miles away went streaming through me and through the whole world too.

  “You know in ‘The Man in the Moon in the Man’ how Django says that something can be inside and outside at the same time? You look up at the moon and there’s that face, right? Like right now. Look up there, Davi. Look. See? There’s the face. But supposedly it’s just craters and shadows, and the Apollonauts walked around there. But we make it into a face because we want everything to be human. You get that? Otherwise, it’s like we can’t even see it. So the Man in the Moon is really inside us. It’s just something we make in our heads, and then we see it out there, up there, in the sky. I think maybe that’s how it is with the Alien Drift. We want to see it in a way that makes some kind of sense. You said it looked like bombs falling, then angels, then spears. I don’t think it’s really any of that. And neither do you, right?

  “It’s like in ‘Radiation Nation’ on the second album. I never understood all the science and mythology in the verses. The chorus is what I love. It was what really got me and pulled me into the whole Django thing to start with.