by Jeff Noon
Brid was lying on the couch, face covered by the copy of Game Cat. ‘Can I miss this one?’ she asked, in that smoky voice. ‘I’m not up to it, Bee. I’d like to just settle down with Co-operation Street.’
Co-op Street was a real low-level blue Soapvurt. You bought it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It took you to a small Northern terrace, gave you a house to live in, gave you a home and a husband or a wife, and you got to interact with all the famous characters as their epic stories unfolded. Seemed like the whole world was hooked up to it. Except for the Dodos of course; those few poor flightless birds, who could take feathers down to the stomach, and still not feel a flutter. Officially they were known as the Vurtually Immune, but the kids called them Dodos, and it stuck. I had met one years ago and the look of despair in his eyes would never leave me.
‘Nobody misses nothing,’ Beetle said, scrunching the paper from Brid’s face, and then forcing the feather into her mouth. Shit! That was face rape! But I was too weak to do anything. Next he turned to the Thing, feeding the feather into the nearest orifice. The Thing was rolling all over the carpet; I swear I could almost hear him cheering. Then he turned to me.
‘Scribble…’ The Beetle’s voice calling to me, over the years.
‘I’m not into it, Bee,’ I said. ‘I just want to find Voodoo—’
‘Nobody misses out,’ he replied.
‘Desdemona…’
‘We’ll find her.’
‘There’s some Voodoo coming in, tomorrow…Mandy told me. Let’s wait—’
‘Fuck waiting! Take it!’
He forced my mouth wide open; the fingers of one hand squeezing my cheeks, the other hand pushing the feather home, deep, to the back of the throat. I could feel it there, tickling, making me want to gag. And then the Vurt kicked in. And then I was gone. I felt the opening advurts roll, and then the credits. The pad went morphic and my last thoughts were; Why are we doing this? Skull Shit? It’s so low-level, it’s even got advurts in it. We should be going higher, searching for lost love. Instead we were just playing, just playing at—
Screaming down tunnels of brain flesh, putting thoughts together, building words and cries, cries from the heart. Electric impulses, leading me on, the room wallpapered in reds and pinks, blood all flowing down from the ceiling. Brid hiding behind the settee. The Beetle taking Mandy from behind on the Turkish rug. A Thing-from-Outer-Space floating in the air, gently landing on the dining table. Me walking through a swamp of flesh towards the kitchen door, in search of breakfast cereal. Stepping over Beetle and Mandy, finding the kitchen door locked and barred, looking just like a wall of beef. Blood pulsing from the keyhole. Brid coming out from behind the settee, clutching a breadknife. The Thing finding a lump of jam on the table top. Licking at it. I wanted that jam for myself. Jam turning into spunk, apple spunk. Thing licking at it. Me turning to the lovemakers. Brid taking slices out of the Thing’s backside, trying to feed them to me. Me turning my face away from the pink flesh. Didn’t know why. Flower clock reading twenty petals to eleven. Beetle shooting apple cum. It splattered over my poster of Interactive Madonna at Woodstock Seven. Mandy coming with him. Brid turning the blade into Beetle’s neck. Blood flowing from Beetle’s neck. Me licking up the blood. Tasted like apple jam. Tasted like Vurt. Just like a dream. Tasted like a dream. That means…oh shit!
Sudden scream.
Shit! I was getting Haunted! That means…that means we’re in the Vurt!
Now it was the alien making love to Mandy. And the Beetle was on the table covered, head to toe, in that apple jam. Acid jam. Jam was burning him. He was shrieking. I was just watching. Brid was turning the blade inside her wrist. And it was getting to me. Like this is all too much. It can’t be real. Those kind of feelings. The Haunting! There’s another life somewhere. This isn’t the only one!
‘This isn’t real, Bee!’ I think I was shouting. The Beetle just looking at me, his lips covered with apple jam, that smirk on his face—
‘Beetle! Listen to me! We’re in the Vurt! I’m getting the Haunting!’
The Haunting was the feeling you got sometimes, in the Vurt; the real world calling you home. There’s more to life than this. This is just a game.
The Beetle just kept on tasting the jam, rolling it on his tongue. He reached out to stroke Mandy’s arm, as she plunged the knife into her veins. The blood was spraying over Interactive Madonna, mixing with the spunk already plastered there.
I guess that dead star was really interacting now.
And then Mandy had Desdemona’s face, and it was Desdemona doing the screaming. The blood pouring out of her beautiful mouth. It was too much for me. I had to get out of there.
Sudden jerk! Backwards!
Ghost grabbing me, under the armpits, jerking me into reality and then the real world breaking open. A locked door being axed open. Me screaming backwards, into the clock-face. Two fingers of time grabbing me, the hour and the minute hands…
The chair receiving my body like a corpse. Blood seeping back into the closing wounds on the wall. The room a scream of pain. A glass vase, containing flowers picked by Brid, in shatters, broken by the jerk. A voice calling from the mirror on the wall…
‘Who the fuck!’
Beetle’s voice.
‘Who the fuck? Who the fuck jerked out?’
No answers.
Beetle was wide-screening us all, his eyes still covered with layers of flesh, of game-flesh. He had a raging full-on and he was waving it like a flag.
‘Who the fuck! Any answers?’
Nothing.
Brid on the settee, Game Cat torn into shreds. Mandy on the floor, beside the scatter cushion. Two vicious gashes had torn it apart. Feathers floating.
‘I was having a good time in there!’ the Beetle said.
I was trapped in the chair. Through a haze of feathers and flesh, the desperate shapes of Vurt still clinging on to life, I could just about make out the Thing-from-Outer-Space. He was screaming and shaking, watching the cushion feathers fall, waving his feelers in a mad dance, thinking them Vurt feathers. He stuffed a dozen or so into various holes that had opened up in his flesh. Then spat them all out. Man, he was suffering, and I could see the holes in his flesh where the knife had cut. The Thing was always affected badly by Vurt. But the wounds were healing over, regenerating. This was the Thing’s special skill; total flesh replacement. But still he was suffering. Everything goes wrong. Eventually, everything goes wrong. I still couldn’t move, just listening to his keening. The Thing just wanted to be home and peaceful. What the fuck were we going to do with him?
‘Who the fuck pulled out?’
‘Not me, Bee,’ I managed. Lying. Scared.
‘I was having a good fucking time! Nobody takes me out like that! Nobody!’
Silence then. Each of us looking at him. The last glaze of Vurt falling from him, from all of us and the room was suddenly cold, cold and lonely, and full of aftershock.
Pulling out was bad. Real bad. It was a built in-option with low-level theatres but nobody liked doing it. It was like admitting defeat. Like you weren’t strong, not up to it. Who dared admit that? Even worse, you pulled all the other players out with you. And that was painful. That was like being skinned.
‘It was me.’ Brid’s lonely voice. ‘I was scared, Bee.’
‘The fuck you were!’
‘Bee!’
‘That’s the point. Tell me. Isn’t that the point?’
‘That’s the point, Beetle,’ answered Mandy.
‘Scribble?’
‘That’s the point, Bee. That’s the point of Skull Shit. It gets you scared.’
I was ashamed…
Beetle hit Brid right across the lips.
She was crying in the corner now and if I could’ve just got out of that chair, well then, maybe I would have done some good deed for a change. Maybe I would have killed the bastard.
…ashamed at my weakness.
Maybe everything. End up with nothing.
At least one of us would have a good night.
Beetle left us then, slamming his bedroom door behind him. Me, the shadow, the new girl, the alien. And everything going wrong and the far off call of the owl.
If they can remix Madonna after she’s dead, why can’t they remix the night?
Who can answer that one?
GAME CAT
Awake, you know that dreams exist. Inside a dream you think the dream is reality. Inside a dream you have no knowledge of the waking world.
It is the same with Vurt. In the real world we know that Vurt exists. Inside the Vurt we think that Vurt is reality. You have no knowledge of the real world.
THE HAUNTING. This is the bitch incarnate. Once that ghost has got hold of you, you just gotta go with her. Back to life, back to the boredom. That’s how you feel, right? Except that the Haunting isn’t a bad thing. What? What’s that the Cat’s saying? Haunting isn’t bad? Man, the Cat’s losing it! Listen up, kittlings.
Only a chosen few get the Haunting. They are the edge riders. Those strange people who can’t make their minds up; just what am I? This is their question. Vurt or real? The Haunted are of both worlds; they flicker between the two, like fire flies. What are they? Insect or flame? Both! Believe it. The Haunted are special. They just don’t know it yet. The Cat’s advice to them; resist the temptation; don’t jerk out. Jerking out is giving in. Giving up. Giving up on your true vocation.
The Haunting is calling you; come up, come up! Let me take you higher. The Vurt wants you.
The Cat wants you.
SLEEPLESS
I was. I was sleepless. Locked in my room, writing all this up in the ledger of those days. Living up to my name. Scribbling. Trying to make sense of it all, and trying hard to find a way out.
And now I’m looking back and thinking. And the thinking makes me weary. It’s the loss of things that kills us. And of the four humans in that pad that night, only two of us are still living and that’s a bad dream come true. That shouldn’t happen any more. Vurt should have taken all of our bad dreams and turned them into theatre, brilliant theatre.
I was scribbling late into the ledger, listening with half a mind to the creaking bed through the wall. Beetle making love to Brid, to the sleeping Brid. Despite the arguments, I knew this would happen, knowing the score.
And then a soft knock on my bedroom door. I opened it a crack and there was Brid, anyway, standing there, and the noises of love still coming from the next room.
‘Scribble?’ she said, her eyes heavy lidded, voice clogged by smoke.
‘I’m working, Brid,’ was all I could manage, still listening to the noises.
‘Beetle’s with Mandy,’ she said.
‘Sounds like it.’ I was trying my best to be uncaring, it’s just that the shadows in her eyes made me melt.
‘Can I come in?’ she asked and I let her walk past me into the room. She dropped onto the bed and then started to curl up like a flower’s petals when the sun has gone. I went back to my table to carry on with the writing.
Brid was breathing sweetly now, lost in sleep.
I was putting it all down in words, a small desklamp hiding me in a shadow. The glow of my ledger burning softly as I banked up the words, the stories.
‘What are you writing, Scribb?’ I thought she was asleep and when I looked at her she was comatose and happy, eyes shut, curled up in her own shape. I couldn’t see her lips move and then I realised, Brid was dream-talking, putting thoughts into my mind, which is the gift of the Shadows.
Shadows are the thought-readers. They are born with the powers of telepathy and their mind can by-pass the vocal cords, putting words into your brain, and stealing the secrets that you thought were yours alone. Shadowcops are the same, but mixed up with robo, rather than flesh, so they’re not as strong; they can’t go deep down, into the soul. Still pretty scary though, especially when you’re out on a spree. The human Shadow works best when asleep, so that’s how you find them, usually, dreaming their dreams of knowledge.
‘Don’t let it worry you, Scribble,’ Bridget thought.
‘I’m not.’
‘I was just wondering…you’re always writing. What’s it all about?’
‘Everything,’ I answered, out loud.
‘You don’t have to talk,’ she said, except that the words just formed themselves into my mind. I looked at her again, her sleeping face, and I knew what she meant.
‘This is weird,’ I thought. Just thought!
‘What do you mean, everything?’
‘Everything that happens.’
‘Between us?’
‘Sure. The Stash Riders.’
The Beetle called us this, and it stuck. He was making life into a kind of adventure, I guess. Just like a kid, but what’s so wrong with that? That’s the score with Cortex Jammers; they just want to be kids again.
‘It’s our story,’ I thought.
‘That’s nice,’ she answered.
And then a deep silence. Just the sound of her breathing in my head and the soft petals falling off my alarm clock as it shed the minutes away until morning.
I was back to writing but nothing came out, nothing good, so I stopped, took a cigarette, a Napalm filter, and watched the smoke drift for a while. And petals falling from the clock. Stuff like that. All quiet now from the next room.
Brid’s voice coming into my mind again; ‘Is it all right if I sleep here, Scribb?’
‘You’ve got a bed of your own.’
‘Not tonight, Scribb. Not tonight.’
I took another few hard drags whilst forming the words in my mind.
‘That’s all right, Scribb. It’s a pleasure.’
Shit! Some real dirty thoughts about Brid had flickered across my mind. When the shadowgirl was this deep, I had no secrets left.
‘That’s right, Scribb. No secrets.’
‘Give me a chance, Brid!’ I said. Out loud, not thinking.
Brid’s voice in my head again; ‘It just comes in pictures. Pictures and shapes.’
‘I’d rather just talk.’
‘Sure. You don’t mind me sleeping here?’
Why should I? She looked real beautiful in sleep, and the world was waiting for me to climb right on in there, curling up, losing myself in all that drifting smoke.
‘Thank you,’ she thought.
Like I said; no secrets.
‘I just wanted to thank you,’ I told her sleeping face. ‘For taking the rap for me. You know, with the Beetle, in the Skull Shit.’
‘We all jerk out sometimes.’
‘You took the blame, Brid.’
‘I guess I like you.’
‘More than Beetle?’
‘Don’t ask. You’ll get hurt.’
‘I saw Desdemona in there. In the Vurt.’
‘I guessed that.’
‘She was in such pain. I couldn’t stop pulling out. But I couldn’t admit it, not to the Bee.’
‘You like that man too much, Scribble.’
‘So do you.’
‘You’re thinking about her again.’ She meant Desdemona. Bridget’s words floating into my mind, like a mist over the pale shape of Desdemona; ‘Can’t you forget her, Scribble?’
‘We’ve got to find her, Brid!’
‘We will, Scribble,’ said Brid’s voice. ‘You want to sleep next to me?’
It wasn’t a question. Because she knew the answer anyway. And the mist closing it all up, in drifts of blue, and me falling through it into the land of Bridget, which is called the land of Shadows, the land of sleep.
I woke up early, my arms around the shadowgirl; an innocent gesture, for an innocent night. The ledger was still glowing, throwing a blue shade over our shapes. I turned it off and went into the living room.
The Thing-from-Outer-Space was asleep on the rug, with his mouthful of feathers and a grin on his peacef
ul face. ‘How you doing, Big Thing?’ I asked.
‘Xhasy! Xha xha. Xhasy. Xha!’
Looking for a way home. Something like that, I guess.
‘You got anything else from Des, Big Thing?’
‘Xhasy. Xhasy. Xha!’
No.
I watched him for a while, imagining the dreams he was on, and then walked into the kitchen for breakfast. The house was mine at this hour and I made good use of it, spreading apple jam on toast and watching the day begin.
I ate the sweet stuff at the scarred table, all the time keeping a close watch on the door to Beetle’s room. They were making noises again and I couldn’t stop my mind wandering, right on in there, seeing all that pleasure being given and taken, all those jars of Boudoir Vaz being used. Protector, lubricator, contraceptive, inflamer; all in the same jar. The noises were getting to me. It brought back Desdemona, her beautiful body all over mine. Her hands and her lips. The dragon tattoo. Her face coming close to mine, the feel of her skin, the shine in her eyes.
But that was just a memory. And memory was not enough. I wanted her back, for real. In my arms.
I looked over at the Thing again.
Something bad was coming into my mind.
I got up out of the chair and walked over to his sleeping form. Boy, that Thing was ugly! I reached down to tickle his stomach. He sighed contentedly, from the depths of Vurt sleep. There was a loose flap of skin, still not yet fully reformed from the battles of Skull Shit. It broke off easily in my fingers. The Thing didn’t even stir. I brought the greasy lump up to my lips.
Eating Vurt flesh was the direct route to the theatre. It was a potent cocktail of meat and dreams. Highly dangerous. Highly desirable. The Game Cat had talked about it once, in the magazine. I was looking down at more than a King’s ransom of live drugs, street value. We could sell the Thing, and get ourselves right out of here, somewhere good. All except for Desdemona; without the Thing she was lost for ever. But maybe this would lead back to her. Maybe I could take some flesh, just a little bit, see where it lead? The Cat had said that it just took you back to where the Vurt creature came from. I didn’t know where the Thing came from. But maybe from there I could find a door through to Desdemona. Maybe. Game Cat had warned against it, saying it was a sucker’s trip, that it led to wild, uncontrollable games, mutant theatre.
