The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

For late winter in southern Spain, you couldn't ask for a better day on the beach. They spent a time in silence, holding hands looking down at the long shadows cast by the sunset of a day they spent in the sky.

  "What time zone are we in?" she asked over the roar of the sea.

  "The Awesome Time Zone."

  They spent the day living as everyone on earth should, but only a few are cunning, lucky, or passionate enough to. Moony learned that remembering how to ride a horse is not hard if you’re a natural.

  Deb and Perry kept to themselves, happily working on some sort of strategy and offering to present their plan to Moony once it was more fully formed.

  When the phone rang early the next morning, Celia answered it.

  "My lady."

  "Excuse me? Is this --" She looked over at Moony, who was still sleeping. She did not expect to hear The Gypsy's voice on the other end. "How did you know this number?" Celia pictured the figure on the other end of the phone hunched over in a phone booth in the rain.

  "Look," the Gypsy said. Celia actually looked around the room -- out the window, a gardener raked leaves -- "I appreciate what you're doing."

  "What are we doing?"

  "Work in Spirit Realm. I'll see you there."

  "Wow, OK."

  "Perfect."

  After hanging up, Celia went into the bathroom to do a few lines. Cocaine in the morning is an irresponsible choice. She realized that later, but not until putting a song on the bedroom sound system: Dillinger's "Cocaine in my Brain." This woke Moony up from a dream where he chased moths at midnight with Kitty using butterfly nets that moved like propellers under the room's only light source which revealed itself to be an oncoming train, or a snail.

  "Unh?"

  "Rise and shine, Bacon.”

  "OK."

  "Wakey-wakey, morning hanky-panky."

  "OK."

  "Let's do work in the spirit realm."

  "Mmn."

  "Let's get married." Moony thought for a moment. Celia danced.

  "We should get married." It could work.

  "I was just kidding!"

  "Oh. I wasn't, so that's a problem." Moony slumped forward, breathing in the musty smell of their comforter.

  "Now I feel bad, Moony-O."

  "Mmn."

  "I don't know if I'm marriage material." She ran to the bathroom for a cry and another line.

  *

  "Deb and I," Perry said over breakfast, "We came up with a plan. It's solid, and we're ready to run it by you. Tentatively we are calling this Plan A." He was spooning bits of scrambled egg into his mouth. Most of the bits made it into his mouth. Some of the bits fell back onto his plate and the rest found a new home somewhere in the convolutions of his beard.

  Deb walked into the dining room and plopped a file folder onto the old wooden table in front of Moony and Celia.

  Perry began to outline their plan. "We figure, the way to best your opponent is to think like your opponent. To really know what your enemy wants. The Gypsy wants buy-in for her new space computer, right?"

  "I don’t know about any space computer. What I know is that she seeks world domination for her dark master."

  "Exactly, and first things first. She expects us to help give her buy-in. Popularity. We can give her that just by showing up at her performance and following along... until we reveal our kapow."

  "Our gizmo," Deb said. "Our secret weapon."

  "You ready for this? You ready?"

  Moony didn't react. He knew he probably wasn't ready.

  Perry opened the file folder. Inside was a small hand-drawn map and an 8x10 matte photograph of Fred Rogers, of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood fame.

  Moony frowned.

  Perry took out the map and quickly shut the file folder.

  Celia's eyes widened. She slapped the table in front of the file folder. "Wait, what was that?"

  "That's our gizmo," Deb said. "We'll surprise her with it and it'll give us that couple of seconds of vulnerability so the jellies can swoop her away."

  "Was that a picture of Mr. Rogers?"

  "Hey," Perry objected. "You're spoiling our delivery. We thought long and hard on this. And as a matter of fact, yes it is a picture of Mr. Rogers. I'll have you know that wasn't easy to find out here. I had to trade the last of your cocaine to get that photo."

  "You traded what?" Moony asked.

  "It's OK," Celia said. "I have more. I brought some in my carry on, too."

  Moony wanted to return to the matter at hand. "So you're going to distract her?"

  "Yeah, with this photo. The last thing she'd expect. Guaranteed to bring her into a state of reverie. Maybe just for a fraction of a second, but guaranteed. He's the closest thing to a bonafide Jesus as we can get these days. He's easily at least 50% Jesus."

  Moony took a long deep breath. "That's it?"

  Deb looked at Moony and Celia and nodded. Yes. That was it.

  "That's the plan?"

  "That's Plan A. It's perfect, right? We offer her a drink, show her a picture of Mr. Rogers, and wham, the jellies have their opportunity."

  "I mean who could possibly suspect that these actions would have the result they are going to have? What's more innocuous than Mr. Rogers, and what's more of an honest friendly gesture than to offer a glass of aged cognac? We found some in the cellar. I figure we should offer some from that bottle."

  "Next thing she knows, it'll be WHOOSH, like that. The jellies'll have her."

  "We can do our party dance for all to see." Deb said, raising her hands and wiggling her middle to music that only she could hear. Her movements made it clear that she could hear this Deb-only soundtrack with exceptional clarity.

  Moony felt like an old man surrounded by stoned teenagers. He took a long deep breath and did his best to take them all seriously.

  The weird thing --- or, anyway, the weirdest thing --- was, Plan A could maybe work. They didn't need some psychoanalytical session to get her to soften. This was a sneak attack. The Gypsy would not be on the guard against a portrait of Mr. Rogers.

  "OK. So, let's break this down one step at a time. What if she doesn't want to drink?"

  "Who can refuse 100 year old cognac?"

  Moony got up and pulled out a cigarette from his pack. He only had three left. "Do we even know for sure that she drinks alcohol?"

  "Dude, what am I? I don't have spies, man. I don't have any intel on her that you don't have, too. I figure, it's top shelf stuff, so she'd have a splash. Odds are good. If not, no biggie. We can still proceed with the picture. And anyway, the cognac is just supposed to be a boost, something to make the second part easier. If she refuses, then maybe it will mean Mr. Rogers will blindside her even more. All we need is to get her to be nostalgic. All we need is a second of it. It's surgically impossible to be face to face with Mr. Rogers and not feel at least a twinge of nostalgia. Don't think of pink elephants. What're you going to do?"

  "Yeah, think of pink elephants. Except we're dealing with a telepathic mastermind who can and will drain the neural functionality of her enemies."

  "She can't drain people with neuro-firewalls. Like you told us, she can't drain Heath."

  Moony sat back down. "Heath. Huh. Yeah, you’re right. We could enlist Heath in this. I don’t know if I have enough faith in him to stake everything on him."

  "This isn't your thing, dude. It's our thing. We're in this together, you self-centered ass."

  Perry handed him a lighter and Moony lit up his cigarette right there at the table. A few puffs into it, he remembered his manners, and he offered Perry one. Perry wasn't interested, but Deb took one.

  Fortunately for Celia, the dining room was huge, its vaulted brick ceiling high and accommodating, and the smoke rose more or less away from the four of them.

  Moony traced a few thoughtful circles on the tabletop. "I’m trying to think of what motivates him. He apparently likes art. He likes Qualids. What could I offer that he would want as a reward for helping us and betraying the Gypsy?"


  Perry's eyes lit up. "Maybe we don't have anything, but I bet the jellies do.

  Deb looked revolted. "The jellies? Those disgusting creeps?"

  "I think we could barter with the jellies," Perry said.

  Moony was doubtful. "We can barely trust them to carry on a conversation for two minutes without offering to digest our brains."

  "Yeah, they... have their own ideas about things. I'll grant that."

  "Hmm. I think I know something that Heath would want. He's not an alien, but he wishes he has our abilities. He wants to know something of our life, our world. The Qualids can take him on the journey of a lifetime. Show him places, teach him things. It'd be artful. It might do him a lot of good, actually. Better than that Shadrack he's always hanging around."

  "The Qualids," Perry said, "They say they're watching everything, right?"

  Deb looked down at her cigarette.

  Perry raised his arms out to the sides, making himself large, speaking in a raised voice, addressing his words to some smoky entity in the distance. "So we can just make it known to them now that this is what we need for our plan to work. "I'm saying right here and now that these are our terms, this is the way it has to be. Take Heath along with the Gypsy, offer him a trip to the alien homeworld. Just on a tourist visa. Show him around, and --- and bring him back."

  A few moments of silence.

  "OK then," Celia said. "Let's hope they heard you."

  As if in answer, Moony's crystal flickered with light.

  "A single clear blink. I'll take that as a positive sign that they heard us." He snuffed out the butt of his cigarette and gestured at Perry's file folder. "OK, so do it to me. Let's try out Plan A."

  Perry opened the file folder and held the portrait like he was holding a mirror in front of the face of medusa.

  Moony wanted to object that they hadn't done this properly, that he first wanted his glass of cognac, but he got lost in what he saw.

  The soulful eyes. A heart that shone from his smile. Purity of essence. A sense of levity and uncomplicated joy. Moony had to admit, it made him want to sing. It made him feel like a child again.

  Perry lowered the picture and the nostalgia faded.

  "See? Dude, seriously, you have to admit. It's impossible to look at that and not go there for at least a split second."

  Celia smiled, not convinced. "What's plan B?"

  Deb patted a bulge on her inner thigh, Moony recognized, where she had the Magnum. "Plan B. One way to take down someone's neural defense net is to blow a few holes in them."

  Celia dropped her jaw.

  "They didn't expressly say anything about taking her nonviolently," Deb said.

  "Yeah," Perry added. "We'll try our best, and if it doesn't work, we'll go out guns blazing."

  Moony thought for a moment, then gulped. Who had they become, that shooting people was their dinner table discussion? "OK, so it's possible that we might need to go with plan B. If it has to happen this way, then I would say, let's go for pain, but not real lasting damage. Maybe pain could create the emotional vulnerability the jellies need. But if we blow her brains out... not so much."

  "Good thinking, Moonlord," Deb said, clearly stoked about the whole endeavor. "That is a very important point."

  "And what if that doesn't work?" Celia asked, even less impressed than she had been with plan A. "What about a plan C?"

  A long pause.

  "Shooting someone is pretty low on my list," Moony said. "So I'm opting for a nice, clean plan A. I don't have any idea what plan C might look like."

  Perry shook his head. "Dunno. Maybe rig the place with explosives."

  Deb and Moony nodded their heads slowly, pensively.

  "All right, then it's settled," Celia said. "You're all officially insane."

  Nobody seemed especially bothered by the criticism of their sanity. They were still thinking about whether explosives could do it.

  "No, I've got it. Plan C," Perry said, "It would be like, we hightail it out of there, regroup, and live to fight another day."

  Silently, Moony inwardly reached out to the Sphinx for advice about the Gypsy.

  [New Bookmark Added]

  He sighed, disappointed that this bookmark was another Bible verse.

  2 Samuel 22:12-13

  He made darkness his canopy around him—

  the dark rain clouds of the sky.

  Out of the brightness of his presence

  bolts of lightning blazed forth.

  That one was a head-scratcher, no mistake. It also sounded like a tall order, if he was the one who was supposed to blaze lightning forth from his very presence. He was no good at riddles. Or Bible comprehension.

  He looked down at the table, at the manilla folder containing their secret weapon, then across at his co-conspirators. Perry and Deb were amped for this. He detected no doubt that this was the best they could come up with. And Moony, as you know, could contribute no greater ideas.

  Celia definitely looked unimpressed, but also charmed. It was a paradoxical facial expression she knew just how to make.

  *

  Driving to The Spirit World meant an hour-long squint through late-night torrential rain. Moony drove his small white two-seater rental car down curvy roads much faster than Celia would have approved, but she was sleeping soundly, even making occasional gasps, snorts and snores anyone in their right mind would find endearing. Something about this triggered in him a change which was not profound. He had decided he would retire from playing video games. Real life could give him thrills if he resolved to spend more time there. What a deal.

  As for thrills, there was a lot to be said about these curving Spanish roads and highways. The engine of the car he had rented from Ali Alejandro felt underpowered by American standards, but its five-speed manual transmission made the whole act of driving so much more engaging compared with, say, sitting behind the boat-sized steering wheel of his father's RV going 70 miles an hour down a very flat, very straight Interstate. The car took each bump in the road really hard, as if each bump was a personal insult, and it impressed Moony that Celia was able to remain asleep through it all. The engine whined and the suspension moaned and hiccupped as he negotiated turns and hit the little expansion joints beneath sections of asphalt in the road. It surprised him just how many bridges there were in this countryside. The start and stop of each bridge was announced by the car's tires with a thwack. It felt very much like a toy car, its every strain exaggerated and prolonged.

  Added to the rambunctious clatter and engine whine was the snare drum solo on the roof and windshield from the heavy rain. Even though the windshield wipers were going at maximum velocity, the view was hazed over with the sheets of water outside. He found it thrilling to navigate this curvy new world in what felt to him like an exotic miniature spaceship.

  Because he and Celia had been locked in the throes of lovemaking for most of the day and on into the evening, Perry and Deb had left in their own small two-seater rental car with almost an hour's head start on him, though Moony was pretty sure that at his current pace he would be closing the distance between them.

  And then, about a half hour into the fun, the car’s headlights went out, shrouding them in complete darkness. He tried clicking the lever to get them to turn back on, but nothing helped. Whatever invisible witchery had caused the lights to turn off had been definitive, and it wasn't going to argue with him about it.

  There weren't city lights for miles. Nothing more than distant porch lights or light spilling from opened windows, barely more than orange-hued dots on distant hilltops.

  He decided to drive slow and keep it safe. When he discovered that using the hazard lights would provide some light both to drive by and to warn oncoming cars (there weren't many), he once more sped up to a comfortably unsafe speed and had a good time with negotiating how the lights made him dizzy, until he passed uncomfortably close to an oncoming bicyclist as he rounded a blind corner.

  What an unlucky rider, he
thought to himself, and slowed to a stop on the narrow shoulder. In this rain?

  Remarking to himself, he looked over at Celia for one of her "I mean, how crazy do you have to be?" looks, but she had only just barely opened her eyes and had no clue what was happening outside.

  Moony cautiously stepped out of the car to wave the bicyclist to his side of the road. After mere seconds being outside, the rain had managed to soak his clothes entirely through.

  Headlights shone brightly from around the corner.

  An immense grain truck rumbled forward on the slick road with the high mass and inevitability of a grain truck. Its current angle of approach would send it right into the bike and then Moony's car. Moony himself shouted a warning at the bicyclist before he hopped back into the car and slammed it into reverse. The truck's tires sent sheets of water high overhead as it braked and hydroplaned, veering sharply off the edge of the road. Its trailer jack-knifed in the middle of the road and flung itself like a shell ejected from a firing rifle, and as soon as it began to tip over, a tarp tore loose from the top, and the truck dumped hundreds of bushels of wheat all across the road, the biker and Moony's car. In the rain, it clung to these objects as if they had been tarred and feathered.

  The biker was caught very much in the middle of the fiasco. Still on atop her bike, she flew toward Moony's car on a wave of grain not unlike like an unwilling surfer propelled upwards by the froth of a high pipe. She made contact wheels-first with the hood of the white rental car and finally herself came to a full stop on the roof of the car, leaving a definitive indentation there that would definitely not make Ali Alejandro happy when Moony returned it to him.

  For a moment, all was relatively still in the roar of the rain. To Celia, groggy in the late night from her nap, it was as beautiful as the Vincent Gallo lyrics she had been humming in her sleep:

  I’m always sad, when I’m lonely; I’m always sad, sad. . . It could be so nice, so nice, nice. . .

  Moony went outside to survey the carnage. He found the bicyclist, an older woman, on the hood. She coughed and sat up. Moony himself was fighting to extricate wheat from his eyes and nose. He thought back of one of the few times his father took enough vacation time to go on family trips when they had gone to the Great Sand Dunes.