Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  But the bruises have faded. No permanent disfigurement. That’s something.

  … I hope this all makes sense, and explains my situation. I sense from your last message, Sanjaya, that you’re upset at what has happened to me. This is touching, but I don’t want you to worry about me. In fact, being in that coma was bliss. I mostly lived in the Blue Districts. See, there are different districts in the Coma World. You can travel between them quite easily. They have ships and dirigibles and even a light-rail service. There are Black, White, Blue, Green, Yellow and Red parts. (The warmer parts are best avoided. The Green Districts are nice, though a little nebulous.) There are the Abandoned Parts, the Seas of Oblivion, the Canyons, Venus Beach, the Chasm of Possibilities, and others too numerous to mention. The annoyances are multidimensional beings, and the food. The dangers are that your consciousness can become imprisoned there forever. You’ll also be challenged to games of chance for your soul more times than you’ll think fair. Seems like the only way they like to pass the time down there, aside from wrestling and cockfighting. And these are no ordinary cocks, Sanjaya. Fifteen feet tall, some of them. Some breathe combustible gases. And yes, you live with the chance that someone from the lower demon classes will attack or rape you. I was pregnant with the spawn of a malevolent succubus for a while. But the rules are a lot like regular prison: you just need to align yourself with the right gang and secure their protection. Coma was actually a pleasant place once I escaped the Black Districts. I don’t even like to think of it as a coma. I like to call it my ‘enchantment’. But the enchantment ended. I woke one day and found that time had glued my eyes shut, and that a man with a moustache was about to roughly sponge me.

  … 47. Contrary to the rumours, I am not receiving neuro-therapeutic treatment from an imaginary doctor in my dreams. I am receiving neuro-therapeutic treatment from a real doctor in my dreams. An important distinction, I think. I know Esmeralda’s spiritual beliefs have always made her look unfavourably on treatments of the mind, but I’m finding it very useful. My physician is Doctor Rubin Difflaydermaus, BBDSM. I met him in the Blue Districts. And though his clinical style is often challenging, and his voice is very annoying, our progress together has been satisfactory. Where my former spiritual adviser, Doctor Mirshabak, helped me to comprehend the vastness of the universe, and the overwhelming consequences of my insignificant and ephemeral existence in this sphere of infinite possibility, Doctor Rubin is helping me to reconnect with my self, and to strive to become individualised and whole. Every individual has a path, he says, and a story to tell. When my memories return, I’ll tell mine.

  … I’ve set all this down plainly, Salmander, and now that I have I am sure you can see precisely how the events at the Fair unfolded, and that I am the victim in this, not the perpetrator, and that my decline is the result of poor fortune mixed with incompetent management. We’ll laugh about this in the future, I’m sure. Once my injuries and my reputation have healed. The far future, certainly. I hope we can put all this behind us and focus on the next grand chapter of my life – my visit to Hotel Grand Skies: the Empyrean. Doctor Rubin tells me my invitation will arrive soon. I’ve given everything for this opportunity, and without a moment’s hesitation I’d do it all again.

  … What I’m trying to say, Colette, is that after all we’ve been through, and all the messages we’ve exchanged, you finally have my blessing. I bless you for who you are: a dogged and relentless journalistic adversary who wants to destroy me. I bless your unauthorised biography, which aims to sensationalise the details of my life – my fall from grace, my relationship with my parents, my allegedly incestuous involvement with a childhood friend who might have been my half-sister – in such a way as to make it impossible to live it. But that’s fine. I no longer want my life. You can have it. I’m starting again. We each must forge our own path, but sometimes that path leads back to the beginning. You think you’ve discovered certain ‘truths’ about me. The truth, as I’ve discovered lately, is a nebulous and hostile entity. I sought the truth regarding the existence of a humble hotel. As a consequence, I was led in circles for years. I was in a helicopter crash. I was finally betrayed and gassed. Lost, cast adrift in the Black Districts, where I saw my own true face, and the face of Death, and where I gamed for my soul with a consort of the Lord of Worms, whose skin was the colour of sin, and whose eye sockets were an eyeless, worldless black. I lost everything I had. And when I finally awoke, on an island called despair, and asked if I could see my luggage, use my own toiletries – not the fatty yellow hospital soap they gave us, not the towels so thin you can see the pig-pink skin of your hand through them – they had to tell me I had no luggage. Imagine this. Imagine being taken on a voyage to the limits of suffering. Then imagine they also lost your luggage. This is where the quest for truth can take you. But if you can imagine this then you’ll know nothing you do can hurt me. None of you parasites matter any more, because I’m leaving. So forge ahead, Colette, with your unauthorised account. I authorise it. Your words can’t hurt a man who doesn’t hear them, and you can’t take from a man what he’s already lost. I’ve lost everything, and by losing it I’ve gained the world.

  … To summarise, Sanjaya, I am sorry I tried to dissuade you from becoming a writer when you were younger. I’m so happy that my work inspired someone to become interested in gastronomy. I’m delighted that you’ve had a story published, and I look forward to reading it. I’m so grateful to discover your kind words among the mountains of hate mail I get these days. I’m glad you never let people like me bring you down. Take all the chances in the world while you’re still young. Even if you lose it all, like me, it will have been worth it.

  You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll soon be going to a place which will make all these ordeals worthwhile. This is the end of a long search. Who gets this chance, to start over? Few people. I was anchored to life, but now I’m free to float around like a leaf blown on the wind. This is all I wanted from the very beginning. To go out with nothing, and come home with stories. This was the point of the adventure.

  Happy sweet sixteenth, and all the best for the future.

  Jonathan

  Beast. You’ll have discovered I’m not at the Ivy. I’m sorry I ran off. Again. After all you’ve done for me. You know I owe you the world. But there are certain times when it’s unbearable to be around anyone but strangers. Yes? I’m on Solidad, in a tourist bar which used to be a cafe. It was a pretty good cafe, and now it’s a pretty awful tourist bar. I’m in disguise. I’m dressed as a sailor. I am a sailor now, so I guess it’s not really a disguise. The point is, no one knows who I am. Was. No one knows how many times I came here. No one knows how much happiness was here, and isn’t. What a strange thing to come to a place that is both and isn’t – hold on, now, I’m pretty tight – that both is and isn’t the place it used to be.

  The bar, like the world, has been overrun by children. The girls in the next booth are sipping some bootleg goo from a secret flask and crushing Exocet tablets on the marble tabletop where my parents had their first meal together. They’re speaking endlessly and without content, like malfunctioning automatons, their atomic motors set for an eternity. Their laughs are so shrill it sounds like they’re being tortured with electricity. I’ve heard men tortured with electricity, and they sounded just like these happy girls. Did you ever stop to think about the atom’s-width perceptual distinction between pleasure and pain, Beast? And did you ever stop to think how mad the idea of electricity is? Invisible persuasion. A slow trickle of cosmic violence. And the violence here is strangely no different from what I saw on The Huntress that night. Everyone here is dead, too. They just don’t know it yet.

  But I didn’t come here to be sad. I’m celebrating. They’re demolishing the Fair tonight. Several billion tons of high explosives have been packed inside it. And it’s because of me. Not directly, but I’ll take the credit.

  I’m celebrating, too, because I’ve made a decision about my future. I’ve spent a
lmost a year waiting for my invitation to come. I’ve taken Doctor Rubin at his word when he says it will arrive any day. I’ve endured his endless pop-psychotic blatherings, his tedious mantras, and his terrible book following me to wherever I rest my head. I’m tired of waiting, so I’m going to sea. I’ve signed up for a berth on a cargo vessel. I leave tonight. This might seem like an extreme measure to you, but to me it seems moderate compared to the life I’ve been living. I’ve lived my life by the laws and expectations of others. Now I’m going to live by my own laws. And the laws of the sea, of course.

  You’ll of course do what you always do: try to find me and bring me back. But I should tell you it’s hopeless. I’ve signed up anonymously, using a new alias you don’t know about, and papers I had made in secret. I’ll be using cash, and I won’t be contacting anyone. I’m going out in the clothes I’m wearing, and with what little I have in my pockets. I couldn’t be happier.

  I hope this doesn’t make you sad or angry, Beast. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I have to go on alone. This is my year. It might not seem like it, under the circumstances, but it is. I’ve lost everything, but I don’t need it where I’m going. I must sign off. My boat leaves at midnight, and I have to write one last quick note.

  I know you said not to send any more letters to people. But I couldn’t leave without writing my Exit Letter.

  To Humanity …

  … Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. Thank you for your sub-literate letters and illegible postcards. Thank you for your photos, poems, paintings and sketches. They were all terrible. Thank you for the eulogies. I am not dead. But thank you, also, for ruining my life. Who says that humanity can’t come together and work as one towards a common goal? Thank you for spoiling every place, every experience, every natural wonder, every restaurant and noodle canteen and dive bar and dosshouse I’ve entered from Solidad to the Silver Isles. Thank you for stalking me, beating me, and trying to kill me. Or worse, trying to talk to me. Oh, your boat was delayed so it took an age to reach the Fair? How fascinating. Thank you for sharing that hilarious anecdote with me instead of sending it straight to That’s Life! Now you want me to sign your dogeared, toilet-stained book? You want a photo together? You wonder if I could write a short piece for your periodical, Incoherant Mewlings Digest? You wonder, perhaps, if I’d like to contribute a thoughtful dedication to your own book: Food and Travel for the Tasteless Cunt?

  I would! Here is a multi-purpose dedication you can use for whatever turgid publication you’re compiling:

  This book [INSERT TITLE] is dedicated to you: the Tourist. You clouds of stupid robed in sweaty scrote-pink blubber and synthetic garments. I struggle to think of one place I’ve visited whose beauty wasn’t blotted by your gormless face, shit-stained with mock reverence; those dead, collapsed eyes whose gravity can suck the joy from any destination. You chinless ghouls. You lumbering, mouth-breathing fuck-zombies. You collect experiences to add colour to your colourless lives. You devour books which tell you what to do, and think, where you must sleep, what restaurants you absolutely have to visit. Well, let me tell you what you must do. You must fuck off. But you won’t, because you are the Tourist. You are worse than plague, worse than war, because although those visitations are destructive, they are relatively brief. Your reign of cultural destruction never ends. You are everywhere and you are nothing. And in the end it makes no difference where you go – to the Isles to see the ruins; to the Fair to see the Perisphere; to the High Orient to placate your soul with roasted battery duck and generic fortunes concealed in mass-produced biscuits; to your kitchen to lay a finger on your new chrome-plated cooker; to the bathroom to squeeze out the allantoid remnants of another bad meal – you will always be a Tourist. You are a visitor to the home of creation, one who arrives suddenly, understands nothing, and vanishes having never experienced an original moment. How can the dust of stars impregnated with the Great Cosmic Will produce you undead monsters, you slack-chested, shit-blathering cock-holes?

  It is, as we say on Solidad, ena grandu misteré.

  I have dedicated my life, unfathomably, to you. But now that’s over. I’m leaving. I am done with you. Don’t be sad. This is, after all, not life I’m leaving. In the West we live in life’s shadow. All that was real is lost. We hum a desperate mantra – ‘La-la-la-la-laaaaaaaaaaaaa!’ – to block out the reality of life. We sing a song to dull the truth that we aren’t individually any less replaceable than the replicated garments we wear, or the factory-born livestock whose charred flesh we fatten on, that the universe could not give a cosmological shit whether we live or die, and that our whole existence can be encapsulated in three words typeset on a small sheet of edible paper plucked from an oily and inedible biscuit:

  YOU. ARE. DOOMED.

  So go buy your gadgets – ‘La-la-la-la-laaaaaaaaaaaaa!’ – go buy pacifying treats for your gooey-eyed spawn and tell him the world will still be here tomorrow – ‘La-la-la-la-laAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ – go kiss your husband and tell him you love him, that your lives have meaning, that your trip to the Silver Isles will be magical. Go fuck yourselves, one and all. My home is the sea now. You will never see me again.

  Jonathan Tamberlain

  Location withheld

  … to the Hebrides, Viking, Greenway Bite …

  … to Axion, the Trades, the Forties …

  … to the Faeroes, Fastnet, the West Seas …

  … to Heligoland, Cape Wrath, World’s End, and to the Isles of the Darkened Man …

  … to the Hotel Rivoli …

  J. Tamberlain

  Hotel Rivoli

  Zoraster

  To Ms Colette Pacifique

  Zerona One

  Colette

  How long has it been? I’m back on Zoraster. I’m staring at a hotel room wallpapered in dark silk and hung with a giant portrait of a harlequin. Do you know harlequins? Painted juvenile entertainers. Entertainers of juveniles, I mean. This one is massive, rendered in lurid daubs of quick-dry acrylic, with luminous green eyes which track you across the room, and which seem present even when the lights are off.

  Have been forced to move from the Europa – a fairly good four-star with large rooms and an experimental menu – to the Rivoli – a shabby five-star with a fairly decent cellar. I’ve had to make lifestyle cuts. Think I might have been followed here. A man in a Deermarker hat has been hanging around the lobby since this morning. I don’t have much time, it seems, so let me be blunt. I have hated you. If I’m honest, I’ve hated you more than most people. And if I’m even more honest I still do. And I’m not writing to apologise for that. I’m writing to you because I want you to hear my story. You have established yourself as witness. You’ll have heard all the crazy rumours, I’m sure. That I lost my mind after the incident at the Fair. That I tried to sue a hotel for having fraudulent sunlight. That I became obsessed with horses. That I ran off to sea as a crewman aboard a deep-space cargo vessel. I like horses, yes. And it’s true, I did run off to sea. I have spent seven months aboard a QE-class cargo hulk called Arcturus. The ship’s ‘mess’ was a barn where grey slop was served not on plates, or even trays, but dumped directly on to the rusty iron benches. It was bliss. I had a filthy bunk in a scum-walled cell with nine other people. Although the crew on that boat could hardly be called people. They came out of shadows like curious bears. Their fur was wet with sweat and oil. I had to break a huge man’s nose with my forearm just to show that trying to use me as a punching bag or erotic plaything would come at a high price.

  But that’s all very boring. The point is, I had time to think at sea. I had time to think about all the people who’d passed through my old life. It occurs to me that despite all your faults, you alone among the thousands of people I’ve met – except perhaps my mother – care about the truth. Who I am. Where I’ve been. Where I’m going. And that matters. So I want to persuade you that I’m no terrorist, and no lunatic. I want to tell you my hopes, my dreams, my fears. No. Fears first, the
n dreams, then hopes. Then I want to make you an offer. I’m confident when you hear my story, you’ll be swayed, and when you hear my offer you’ll be powerless to resist.

  You’re still reading, so this isn’t hopeless.

  I came back from sea because a miracle happened. An invitation, one I’d been waiting on for over a year, finally found me. It must have been in the bag of mail waiting for us when we docked at Fortuna. How it got to me is a mystery. But I’ve learned not to question miracles. So I jumped ship and came straight back. I met my agent, Daniel, at the Royal Mystique, still in my rancid sea clothes. I convinced him to take me back. It wasn’t easy. Since then we’ve been moving around from hotel to hotel. And now here I am, at the Rivoli, staring at a painting of a harlequin who looms over the room like a disturbed reflection in the bottom of a haunted bucket.

  But that’s life.

  The Rivoli is a sad little hotel. The fittings have the gritty film you find on old guns, or young dogs. The clerk, Diggity, wears the expression of a vampire who’s been forced to sit through a lesbian poetry showcase. Here is the kind of dialogue I can look forward to on each visit to the lobby.

  ‘Good morning, sir. You slept well?’

  ‘Not at all. I just came to check if there were any messages for me.’

  ‘I should think not.’

  ‘Ah, well, I thank you.’

  ‘Are you staying on, Mr Black?’

  ‘For one more day.’

  ‘Ah. And then you’ll leave us?’

  ‘That’s usually how it’s done.’

  ‘And where are you travelling? Somewhere exciting?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say, Diggity.’

  ‘Grace! … Well, we must all have our secrets.’ A thrombotic twitch of his left eye.