© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Ten: Norse Noir
There
was a flash of light, a terrible crash of thunder, and he abruptly stood
upright beneath the sad and groaning awning of a tattoo parlor—he stepped just
to the left of a gaping slash in the fabric above him—and waited for the downslaught
of the black rains to lessen. The streets glittered in the depressed, confused
tears of winos and junkies, reflecting the garish colors of the neon lights—but
all in black and white. That was odd. He wasn’t seeing any color. The night was
stark, matte flat, but the passing faces huddling beneath the umbrellas of
lifted newspapers, dripping black ink like blood, flashed ghostly white. Pharmacity
was a groggy wreckage of hungry, angry spirits, sodden, belching, and just woozy
enough to drown in a pool of its own rotgut vomit, a bevy of needles hanging
out of its scrawny thighs.
Joss Chen, fedora wrenched low and hard to
just above his eyes, turned and watched the streets in the reflection of the
tattoo-parlor window. The broad was there, just up the street, startling in
red, the only color visible in the entire dark tableau. Yes, she was there, and
she was watching him, and she was not alone.
He didn’t know her, not her identity, but he did
comprehend that if the Lady in Red was standing in that direction, flanked by
two missile-shaped goons, then he must head in this direction, the opposite way,
and abruptly pivoted on his black shoes and hunched his shoulders as he marched
out into the rainfall, cutting between the hulks of rotting oil-burners. He
didn’t look back. He knew the goons were hustling after him.
A few blocks away the calliope music
screamed, and the light pollution blared above the treetops—the carnival was
peddling its poison to children, and on the far side of the shrieking Funhouse,
shaded from the blaring lights, the bare-knuckle fights grated, in the old
slaughter yard. Chen cut into an alley, slashing through puddles. At the end of
the alley he paused to light an unfiltered cigarette. He spat a fleck of
tobacco off the tip of his tongue, and by his second inhalation on the cancer
stick, the goons came crashing into the alley like a rhinoceros racing a
hippopotamus.
Chen flicked the cigarette toward them and
turned back toward the light pollution. He strolled almost casually, almost
luxuriously pulling another cigarette from the pack and tapping the end to
settle the tobacco; when they came up behind him, snorting furiously, cursing
and stomping their big feet.
The calliope music chortled insanely, but
Joss Chen couldn’t hear it, no, he was busy listening to the men, thinking:
first, cigarette, second, inside of the left knee of the larger missile, sweep
the wrong way, third, right foot up into the lesser goon’s crotch, like walking
upstairs, continue the motion, fourth, a simple headlock, then over the top,
and hopefully a little Judo twist at the bottom.
All neat and simple.
He spun neatly, sinking backward into an easy
crouch—horse stance.
“Hey, buddy, hey, we just wanna talk to ya,”
the lesser goon said, sounding almost jovial, but the switchblade knife in his
meaty hand suggested a bit more than an evening chat.
“Why’d ya throw yer cigarette away, man, and
now ya lit another?” the massive missile said, breathing hard, reaching for the
gun sticking out of the voluminous front of his low-dragging pants.
“A cigarette makes a nice, easy weapon of
distraction,” Joss Chen said, flicking his cigarette into the massive missile’s
face—they should have seen it coming, Chen had flicked his cigarette in the
same manner, just twenty seconds ago, in the alley—but the massive missile left
off drawing his gun and instead batted at the flashing embers, as Joss stepped
in, slamming his left foot powerfully outward, slamming the inside of the
massive missile’s left knee, which instantly put the big man toppling toward
the ground as his leg distended grotesquely outward, body heaving into his
shorter but meaty companion, and Joss Chen continued this forward motion, not
pausing, stepping forward, hard, his left foot landing in the crotch of the
meaty lesser goon, and Chen stepped up, just like climbing steps, and continued
on past the shoulder of the shorter man as the larger man collided downward,
and almost as an afterthought, he caught the goon about the throat, his arm
slithering around like a noose, and the shorter, meaty goon, upended like a bowling
pin under the careening body of his bulkier companion, and anchored at the
throat by Joss Chen’s pivoting body weight, flipped up into the air, going all
the way over, as Chen landed upon his own feet, releasing his hold on the man’s
neck.
As soon as his big body hit the wet pavement the
larger man screamed and maintained an epic fit of heroic banshee wailing that
seemed to never end, hip displaced and knee severely stunned, while the shorter
man lay tumbled and still, eyes fluttering in absolute unconsciousness. Both
men would require the services of a hospital, but at least both would survive,
compliments of Joss Chen, who would even notify someone of the emergency
requirements, maybe, that is if he passed anyone on the street. Anyone, or no
one, it would be decided by chance, and on his quiet walk to the carnival he
passed nobody on the street, and true to his roll of the dice, he informed nobody.
Hopefully, the two thugs would learn that you
don’t bring a pistol and a switchblade to a battle of wits.
Chen lit a cigarette as he strolled through
the carnival grounds. All, everyone here was dressed and outfitted in clown
costumes, including parents, children, dates and lovers, strolling military,
and carnies. At first he thought it was just a group of clowns, but then it
went on and on, more and more clowns. Everyone was a clown. Kind of strange, to
say the least. Chen sensed a theme. The Land of Fools.
In his black suit, shiny shoes, and fedora, he
felt severely underdressed. Everyone was laughing, guffawing, and honking big
red noses, slapping about in great oversized shoes. In fact, they seemed to be
communicating with one another with nose honks and shoe slaps, there seemed to
be a whole other language going on.
Unfortunately, he stuck out like a lifted
middle finger in a convention of sore thumbs.
He slowed before a policeman clown, a great
tall man that must be standing on hidden stilts, for he must be eight or nine
feet tall, with a great round belly sticking out in front of him, a harlequin
clown, all white grease paint with black triangles over his eyes. The policeman
stared at Joss Chen, dreamily, his huge smile partially obscured by a monstrous
catfish moustache. The too-tall policeman clown twirled an exaggerated Billy
club on one bloated and gloved finger.
As Chen passed the policeman-clown, the
creature tracked him with rolling eyes.
Very creepy. But this whole carnival was
creepy, but then again, Chen had always found clowns to be creepy, because it
could be anyone hiding under that garish disguise of jolly frivolity, anyone or
anything.
The calliope seemed out of whack, as if the
contraption pumping out the melodies was melting, more than just off-key, but
going off-kilter, staggering in and out of varied melodies. The calliope must
be a junkie, needles hanging off its arms like porcupine quills. The closer he
drew to the Funhouse, the madder the music became, and then he noticed the
laughter about him, it was increasing in volume. Everyone here seemed uproariously
drunk, even the children.
Joss Chen frowned. None of this bothered him.
It was all a setup, all of this. They were trying to shake him, get a rise, turn
his hair white, they, they were. He paused and pushed back his fedora. His
forehead slicked with sweat, hot and aching. They were, they were, them—the thought was there, tipping,
just about to drop into the slot, but it wouldn’t, his brain seemed stuck,
right there, pre-revelation.
He glanced behind him at the tall, comically
fat policeman-clown, and as he looked it began to topple—that is, the clown was
falling forward, but in slow motion—what kind of body control could manage
something like that, something freakishly controlled like an act out of Cirque du Soleil, falling, taking forever
to slam face-forward into the damp grasses of the carnival grounds, clothes
splitting apart—
—Joss
Chen stood blinking, watching, unsure of what he was actually seeing, it was
like watching a movie, but surreally, he understood that this was no movie,
nine-foot clowns couldn’t fall forward in slow motion like this, their bodies
rippling insanely, seemingly coming apart, and only then did he notice that the
crowds about the falling policeman-cop were moving too slow, as well,
everything had slowed down, the whole world was in slow motion—
—everything snapped back into the normal. At least as normal as things
could be in this place. Everything came back up to speed, and the calliope
sounded more like music again.
The policeman-clown hit the ground but didn’t,
not quite, instead he seemed to break into about four running...pieces. And now there wasn’t a massive
clown lying face-down, but instead four dwarf-clown policemen, looking absurdly
foreshortened and thick, and oddly enough, they were moving just a bit too fast
for normal people, prowling forward with jerky motions, and they all seemed to
be staring at Joss Chen. They were stalking, these four dwarves, clenching very
unclownlike meaty hands into dangerous looking fists. All four looked
extremely...pissed, weirdly angry, and
even weirder, they had what looked like feathers jutting up from their heads, looking
almost like human hair.
He turned and dashed through the crowds, rudely
shoving a sailor clown into a soldier clown, and ducked behind one tightly packed
group of clowns all sparkling in glitter, and rapidly doubled back toward the dwarf policemen clowns,
keeping his body low. He heard the eruption of angry laughter behind him and
the smack of padded clown fists.
He huddled behind a pair of Tweedledee and
Tweedledum clowns, which had to be full bodysuits, because people couldn’t be that fat and still walk around, could
they? That fat, and that tall, it was freakish. Chen almost wedged himself
between the fat pair, which was easy, as they were holding fat hands and
singing to each other, leaning close. Chen peered at their interlocked fingers,
and a sense of creepiness flooded through and over him, because they didn’t
seem to be made out of any material, but living skin. They were too real, their
stretched fat faces, their too-large mouths and too-large teeth.
“Pssst, hey, cutie, you, Chinaman, psssssst!”
came an exaggerated stage whisper.
Joss Chen glanced over his shoulder and saw
the belle of the ball, a giant Scarlett O’Hara
clown in vast hoop skirts, with low décolletage and swelling bosom—she looked
like another bodysuit clown, or more a parade float, except like the Tweedles,
she seemed entirely real, and made out of entirely too much real flesh. She leaned
back, sending her jutting hoops swinging up so that he could see her frilly, exaggeratedly
shapely legs.
“Hide under here, I won’t tell if you won’t
tell,” she crooned, pursing sensuous lips the size of two pigskin footballs.
He didn’t allow himself any time to consider
but dashed beneath the bloody red dress. That was strange, this was the second
time he had seen the color red, all this night, a night which seemed to go on
and on, first the woman in red out on the street with the two goons, and now
this Southern-fried bell monstrosity—everything else was in black and white,
the whole world was black and white.
“Don’t be afraid, tough guy,” someone said as
he stood up beneath the dress.
He couldn’t see anyone else under here, but
there was certainly room enough for three or four more people his size; he
could even stand fully upright under here. It smelled dank, and sweaty, and
very ripe. It smelled like a family of wolves lived under here. He placed his
hand over his nose and mouth and breathed into his suit jacket sleeve.
“I like you,” the voice continued, and he
moved around, following the voice, it seemed to be coming from between the legs,
each of which was as tall and thick as his whole body. “I like you a lot, Joss
Chen. And the others have picked out their pets, and so I don’t see why I can’t
pick one out as well. I never have before, you know, you’ll be my first.”
Outside the hoopskirts it sounded like a riot
was going on, uproarious and cacophonous. A funny riot, at least, because there
was just as much drunken laughter leavened with the violence of screams and
blows and animal grunts.
“Listen Lady,” he said, “I’m on a job. I don’t
have time to be some Lady’s pet.”
His eyes were adjusting to the dimness beneath
the musty skirts, and it seemed that there was someone standing there, just
before him, that somehow the two meaty legs were forming a person.
“Don’t call me a Lady!” she snapped.
“Sorry, Legs,” he said.
“Legs,” she crooned, “yes, Joss, I like that.
Legs.”
“I need to get to the Funhouse,” he said. “I’m
tracking down a guy.”
“You might have been looking for a guy, but
you found Legs,” she said.
“Thanks, Legs,” he said, feeling foolish,
talking to...legs like this. And yet,
there was something strangely...alluring
about the legs, because they were certainly sexy, albeit insanely large, but
this rank smell, he had to get out of here.
“Those were the goons of Enseladus,” she
said.
He froze. He had just about dove under the
skirts to escape when she seized him in a panic—that name, Enseladus, he didn’t know why, but it filled him with terror, which
was surprising in itself, because Joss Chen feared nothing.
“Did you notice the—feathers?” she said. “Oh,
don’t worry, it’s not him, not Enseladus himself, nor any of his clones. They’d
have had you, right lickety-split, as we say in the South. But these things are
his monitors. They can’t think, at least not very deeply, and in this place,
everything helter-skelter, maybe you can fool them. But I think they might be
here after your man, as well, as he would be the greater prize, you see, he’s a
little more real than you, but not by much.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and
I want out of here—I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, where this even
is,” he said, feeling his body succumb to trembling, which shocked him more
than the name Enseladus.
“There is a price, if you want out, I’ll walk
you right over to the Funhouse, but you have to pay the price,” she crooned.
He felt sick, with dread, with revulsion, and
a rancid fishbowl sense of smells and desires and creeping terrors. This was
all a bad and twisted dream. But he had to admit it to himself, it was all
real, he was here, and had seen the things he had seen.
“What price?” he demanded, swallowing hard.
He knew it was going to be bad.
“A kiss, that’s all, sweet Jossy,” she
crooned.
Now this was getting very strange, indeed. Jossy? That’s what his mother called
him, and no one else, ever, in his entire life.
“I think I’d rather not,” he said, and again prepared
to dive under the skirts.
“If you don’t pay the price, I’ll scream, and
they will come, oh you better believe it, yes they will come—you will learn
what it is to suffer the consequences of scorning a lady.”
He chuckled. “You said it yourself, you’re no
Lady, Legs.”
“I did not say that I was no Lady, if you say
anything like that again—I will scream, like you’ve never heard screaming in
all the live long day. What I said was that you shouldn’t call me a lady, but now I don’t think I mind it so much.”
Typical crazy bee-yotch. First one thing,
then another, and then back to the one thing, only the opposite of that one
thing. He shook his head, wearily. Things were the same everywhere, even here
in Crazy Town. Clown Town.
He supposed he was going to have to do this
thing, but there was no law that said he must enjoy it.
“Where in the world am I supposed to kiss
you?” he blurted, doing his best to keep the sick expression off his face.
“Come here, silly, you’ll see, I want you to
kiss me—right here, on my mouth, where else do you kiss someone?”
He swallowed, wincing, and stepped in closer,
squinting in the gloom.
“See?” she said, and he was able to make out
a perfectly formed mouth, right there in the center of the crotch, a perfectly
formed and perfectly normal human mouth, with sweet, full lips, pink and
glossy. “There’s nothing too odd here, Jossy, it’s just you and me, and all I
want is a simple...kiss. Is that so bad? Everyone needs a little love, a little
affection, that’s all.”
“No, there’s nothing oddball here,” Joss muttered,
stepping in closer. It was quite a nice-looking mouth, but it was weird that it
was separated from any other vestigial—face.
A mouth by itself, even with such attractive lips, was still batshit, damn it.
“Come on Shooga,
give me a sweet kiss,” the mouth crooned, and the legs parted slightly, to
allow him entrance.
“Um, like, what kind of...kiss—are you expecting?” he asked, not
meaning to sound so, well, grossed out. He tentatively placed a palm high up on
either thigh, at about his face level. The skin of the legs below the frilly
pantaloons felt good, and real, and warm—these were pantaloons with highly
suggestive cutouts, like something from Victoria’s
Secret or more likely Frederick’s of
Hollywood. He was going to need to stand on his tip-toes to reach that
luscious, beautifully smiling mouth.
“Yall just give it yoah best shot, Jossy
Shooga,” she crooned, puckering at him lasciviously, and then smiled brightly. “If
you done do good, then I help you. If yoah doan be doin’ so good now, sweet
honeh chile, then Miz Scahlett’s gonna tuhn yall ass ovah to dem poh-lease-mans,
doan ya know!”
He could barely understand what she was
saying. It must be Gone with the Wind
speak, or some other gibberish tongue.
The mouth looked perhaps a little larger than
a normal everyday mouth should look, but with all the plastic surgery flying
around these days, probably even in Clown Town, it wasn’t beyond belief. Still,
this mouth didn’t look fake. It looked, well, perfect, and somewhat...familiar.
“Come on, just one romantic, wonderful,
perfect kiss.”
“Wait,” he said, “that’s kind of specific,
you said to just give it my best shot—”
“—KISS ME, damn it!”
And he went up on his tippy toes and planted
his mouth upon hers, and right off the bat, it was an intoxicating sensation,
he forgot all about the clowns, clowns, clowns everywhere, and his arms went
around the legs, all quite naturally, and his lips parted and her lips parted
and they melded, oh did they meld, two sets of lips melting into one new thing,
and it was incredible, and he had kissed some broads, babes, chicks, dames,
girls and women, and perhaps one or two...ladies,
and he had enjoyed all that kissing, in the backs of cars, awkwardly while
driving his motorcycle, in theaters, waiting in lines at Disneyland, leaning up against strange cars, in beds, on rugs, but
this kiss blew them all away.
He started to pull away but the mouth brought
him hungrily back in and the thighs gripped his entire torso, the vast knees
locking about his hips, and now he couldn’t go anywhere even if he wanted to.
And for a few moments, he really didn’t want to go anywhere, he was very
content to be cradled here in these monstrous legs, kissing these lips, tongues
exploring—and the thought of this thing’s...tongue—that
thought kind of broke the spell.
He pushed away, opening his eyes and the
thing staring him in the face suffused him with horror, creeping-flesh horror,
and it tried to suck him back in but he strained and then popped himself
through the thighs, escaping the lock of the knees, and he thought for a minute
of slamming his heel into the spiked high heeled shoes, snapping off one of
those CFM spikes, but then he wiped his mouth, and calmly strode about to face
the—thing.
He was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find
that it was a completely normal-looking woman’s face now, smiling benevolently
upon him, a very nice-looking woman, the classic redhead’s face, pale and
lovely and fiery, with a spray of freckles across the bridge of the nose. Yes,
it was an utterly banal face, set right there in the middle of that huge
crotch, I mean, come on, what could be less strange than that?
“What?” she said, “you were expecting the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or
something else...unspeakable?”
“Are you done messing with me?” he said,
keeping his voice even, showing absolutely no emotion, calming his body even as
he spoke. “Are you going to help me, or are you going to scream?”
“You responded, to me, Joss Chen, and yes, you fully paid the price, it was worth it
for me,” she said, the strange redhead’s face—she looked so familiar—did he
know her? Something about...them,
they, no, what was it, he almost had it again, it was right there, ready to be
born into his brain, the thought, that elusive thought.
“What is it?” he queried, clenching his mind
like a fist.
“Stop fighting it, Joss, just go with it—have
a little fun for once in your life—don’t be afraid,” she said.
He lit a cigarette and stared at her, deadpan,
devoid of emotion.
“I’m not afraid,” he said, inhaling the
smoke, staring into those deep emerald eyes.
“You only keep lighting those cigarettes so
that you can flick them away,” she said, grinning. “You think it looks sooooooo
cool, am I right?”
“I don’t even smoke,” he said, but the
strange thing was, in his office, he had a coffee cup overflowing with
cigarette ash and butts. The coffee cup sat right next to the black candlestick
phone, on a soiled paper blotter full of his inked doodles. The coffee cup, it
was hers, the Lady in Red, she had drunk from the mug. There was a lipstick
imprint on the mug, he had never been able to wash it, or use it again, except
for his incessant cigarette smoking, and he knew the cancer sticks would kill
him, and he willed them to do so, die already, die, he wasn’t even real, so why
did he live, why wasn’t he gone, forever and out and gone—he remembered all
this, he knew all this—but at the same time, he knew he had never smoked a
cigarette in his life. Never, never, never.
He was of two minds. He had two complete sets
of memories crammed into his compressed and condensed skull, squirming against
each other, not enough room, make room, make room! Fighting each other like a pitbull
and a wolf—the ancient riddle was, which beast did he feed? The Pitbull or the Wolf?
One was angry, vicious, and deadly, and it wanted to hump every and any strange
leg it chanced upon, and the other wasn’t too much different, only this second
was wild, and it just wanted to be free, and live, and howl, and mate, yes, it
desired the mate, the One Mate. The one sought annihilation and death while the
other sought freedom and life. But they were both of them—him—Joss Chen.
And then a woman stepped out from between the
giant legs, the redheaded woman, in the red dress—only there was nothing
hoop-skirty about this dress, which seemed to be made of liquid—it might have
been an elastic band in another life, or a Band-Aid
stretched down her torso to mid-thigh, or it might have just been a blemish
upon her skin—some blemish, that.
Joss Chen swallowed, hard. She looked like a walking Spandex treat, and he had
absolutely no idea how she could even walk in those heels, or upon those legs,
which seemed as absurdly tall as the heels, but she did, she seemed to glide to
his side. She took his hand. He found he could barely breathe.
“Just hold onto me, Joss Chen, and you’ll
look just like any other clown,” she said, smiling at him with those lips, the
very same lips he had just been kissing. She tossed her red mane of hair, and
parted an unseen door in the skirts, and then pulled him through out onto the
carnival grounds, where an immense pie-fight seemed to be in progress. Clowns
were slamming pies into each other’s faces, tossing pies across great
distances, pushing clowns into giant pies. Dump whip-cream pies on the tops of
children clowns.
Joss Chen shook his head. What a cliché, a
pie fight! He had seen a million of them, if only on television.
He glanced up at the towering Scarlett O’Hara
clown, and she winked down at him.
“If only you could shake, and very fast, Joss
Chen,” the giant clown stage-whispered to him.
The redhead at his side snickered and pulled
him effortlessly amidst the mayhem, sliding between volleys of flung pies,
ducking him at just the right moment, spinning him about as if they were in a
waltz, and Chen noticed the calliope was actually belting out a waltz in great
boop-BOOP-boop three-count, and the redhead was actually waltzing him about the
carnival, and he was grateful he hadn’t eaten anything because he was feeling
motion sickness, and he caught the flashes of clown faces whirling by, many of
them waltzing, dancing, twirling and spinning, and the pie fight seemed to be
winding down as they whirled, and he caught glimpses of the feather-headed dwarf
clowns, but they never seemed to catch sight of him.
Suddenly, abruptly, he came to a dead-end
wishy-washy stop, right in front of the Funhouse.
“Do I know how to show a guy a good time?”
the redhead said, smirking at him.
“Do I know you?” he asked her, actually
doubling over from the nauseous splashing in his gut.
“The question is, do you wanna know me,
Jossy?” she crooned, patting his back and holding onto his arm to support him. “Will
you choose? It has to be your choice, Joss Chen, whaddya say, Jossy?”
“Please do not call me that,” he grated,
willing down the acid reflux. He lit up a cigarette to balance the acid in his
belly. Breathing in the fumes seemed to help.
“Another ciggy, Jossy?” she crooned. “You
smoke too much.”
“Do not call me Jossy—and I do not smoke,” he
said, puffing away.
“I know, and you hated kissing me,” she said,
rubbing his back while pulling him upright.
“Technically, I haven’t kissed you,” he said.
“I seemed to be making out with some Southern-fried crotch-clown, mostly legs.
Technically.”
“Well then, you still owe me that kiss,” the
redhead said.
And he couldn’t help it. He flicked away his
cigarette and swooped her into his arms, and he kissed her. Hard. He seemed to
be inhaling her. He couldn’t get enough of her. This was the kind of kiss you
might proverbially trade a limb for, or many other insignificant or significant
body pieces. This was emphysema sucking at the oxygen tank.
“Down boy,” she crooned, pulling away from
him, smiling in his face. “You really do have some fire in your belly, Joss
Chen.”
“That’s not my belly,” he said, breathing
raggedly.
“My my,” she laughed, “where are your hands, Mr. Chen?”
He felt himself color and he slid his hands
back up to her waist.
“Excuse me, but I have no idea what’s going
on,” he said. “I don’t think that this is my usual behavior, I really don’t
know what’s happening.”
“Well, you’re doing pretty well at the moment
for someone without a clue,” she snickered, reaching around and smacking him
hard on the butt with her palm.
“I hear the fights on the other side of the
Funhouse,” he said, “that’s where my man is—come on.”
“You mean you want me to help you chase...your
man? Joss! I am jealous!” she laughed,
but allowed him to tug her along around the side of the great screaming
Funhouse trailers. “We could go through the Funhouse, you know, I promise it
will really bake your noodle. You will see sights that will test your sanity.”
“Maybe later,” he said, squeezing her hand,
hurrying. “Maybe on our next date. We can have dinner. And maybe you won’t turn
into anything gigantic or twistedly bizarre.”
“Sheesh. You certainly don’t expect much out
of a girl on a second date, do you?”
“Just the basics, maybe second base,” he
said, pulling his fedora down low.
“You’ve already passed that base, buddy, and
this ain’t exactly our first date,” she quipped. “You were practically rounding
the base toward home a few seconds ago.”
“I apologize,” he said, wishing she’d shut
up, he was already embarrassed enough, and really, shaken to his very core,
because the noise of the fights was getting very loud, mostly shrieking men,
but the heavier, meatier sound of fists on ribcages, and he couldn’t afford to
be thinking about...kissing, and other things. Especially other things. He
sighed, relieved, because his circulation was returning to normal levels,
dispersing his blood to all the proper, usual places.
“I wasn’t complaining,” she said, hurrying
along beside him, long legs flashing. “I think I was more—gloating. Tee Hee.”
He glanced at her and slowed in his forward
progress.
“Did you just say—tee hee?”
“Yes, I guess I am just really...happy. Very
weird sensation, that. Have you ever looked at someone, and thought: YES, that one there, yes please! That’s
the one I want, that’s the one I need. And you just know, right, it’s just
never gonna happen? Because that’s what I thought the first time I ever saw
you, Joss Chen,” she said, and she didn’t seem like she was still teasing him.
For the very first time, she seemed serious, and on the level.
“Okay,” he said, “you really have to stop
distracting me like this. I need to keep my mind on business. This is a serious
situation, and this is the first time I’ve had a bead on this guy. He’s a rough
customer, and I need to keep my wits about me, please?”
“Am I really distracting to you, Joss Chen?”
she asked in a low voice.
“Hell yes,” he said, snorting. “I’ve been
freaked out ever since I saw you in the restaurant.”
She stopped in her tracks and looked at him.
He stopped and stared back at her.
“Restaurant, Joss Chen?”
“Yeah,” he said, and then blinked. What
restaurant? There was the tattoo parlor, and then the carnival—but what about
just prior to that, the rainstorm, stepping out of the path of that hole in the
awning, the rain coming down, everything in black and white.
“Restaurant. I can’t remember. But my eyes.
Everything is black and white, except...you. You’re in color, your dress, your
legs, your face, your eyes—that green, the hypnotic emerald of your eyes. Your
hair, that deep halo of red—all the other colors are gone, except for you. I
noticed your eyes when I asked about hanging the sheet so I could show the guys
my video—the guys? What’s happening? What did you do to me?”
“Calm down, Joss. I’m helping you, okay? You
wanted to finish this business, so I hired you, in your office, remember? I
stood in your doorway and you leaned back in that old desk chair, and we stared
at each other?”
“You were my client, Mrs. Shepherd—I
remember. You hired me to find Ulf, a thug who has been fighting down behind
the carnival, a bare-knuckle brawler who kidnapped your husband—wait, that can’t
be right, can it?”
“It was just a story, Joss. I am helping you.
You need to bring this guy in, take him back. He escaped, and you have been
tracking him. I’m just helping out a bit, using a few tools to get you going in
a straight line. But there’s something so...beguiling about you, I just can’t
help, I don’t know, messing with you.
You’ve broken my heart, and I never even knew I had one.”
“Okay, okay, just wait,” Joss Chen said. “None
of this is right. I am not a detective, and I do not smoke. And I do not make
out with...legs, I mean, not usually.”
He had just been lighting another cigarette
and now he dashed it upon the mud, and ground out its embers with his shoe.
“Wait,” he said. “Just hold on. Damn it. Am I
going crazy?”
“I am just helping you off the fence, Joss
Chen, and helping you tie up your unfinished business.”
“Data is data,” he said, shaking his head.
“That’s right, it is. Your father is your
father,” she said, grinning.
“No, no, I said data is data...not dada is dada,” he snarled, ripping the
fedora off his head and hurling it into the night. He held his head in his
hands and rocked on his heels. “Data is data, I don’t know what that means. I
saw you in the restaurant, your green eyes—I thought then that you were
hypnotizing me with your deep, green eyes. The eyes of a cat. Beautiful eyes.”
“Do you really think my eyes are beautiful?
These are the same eyes I’ve always had, and I haven’t done anything to them,
you know, to make myself more attractive—okay, maybe the dress, and the shoes,
I know what you like, okay—but I’m not trying to trick you. Do you really think
my eyes are beautiful?”
“Of course, of course I do, you know that,
you knew that—but you aren’t a waitress, and you are not looking for Ulf or
your husband. You set this whole thing up, the goons on the street, the—the
clowns, all those clowns, and the Scarlett O’Hara float, and this fight pit,
all of this—it’s a...simulation, isn’t
it?”
“Well, you are quick, that’s what caught my
eye about you, Joss Chen. Your thoughtfulness, and kindness, and that quickness
of understanding. You jump to your conclusions, and you never sail off a cliff.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been over more than my share
of cliffs,” he said, “starting when Hank called me. I should never, absolutely
never have gotten involved, but he’s my Mom’s friend, so I couldn’t say no.
Hank, yes, Hank Reardon—and Ayn Rand, and nothing is real, is it? Data is data?
We are all the same, even you and I, made out of the same stuff, molecules and
atoms that are digital, that’s it, that’s what it means, data is data.”
“Full marks,” she said, and then she touched
his cheek with the palm of her hand, and he went very still, looking deeply
into her eyes.
“It’s not possible, computers aren’t that
strong, not that fast—” he chanted.
“You don’t know the whole story, but I guess
none of us know the whole story, except maybe the Shaannii, and Maulgraul.”
“Aaaah!”
“Shhhh,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. Just go
with it. Have some fun, Joss Chen. Life actually can be fun.”
“Fun? Like this?” he said, flapping his hand
at the carnival.
“Shhh,” she whispered, and just like that,
the carnival noises died away. The clowns ceased their shrieking and screaming
and laughing and fighting. The sounds of the bare-knuckle fighting ceased at
the same time. The whole world was suddenly still.
And more, color flooded his senses. He
blinked as his black suit faded away and looking down at himself he saw he was
wearing his blue jeans, and his Nikes,
his hoodie, and he was not covered in mud, nor even wet, and now suddenly there
was bright daylight and they were standing upon grass. He fluttered his eyes
and looked about him.
They were in a meadow, and nearby a large,
squat man was shadowboxing, breathing in shuddered gasps.
Joss Chen looked at Phoebe—Mrs. Shepherd—she
was a Shepherd. It was all coming back to him.
“Café Real,” he said, “that’s where you took
us, through the curtain. We were in the New Jerusalem restaurant, that’s where
I met you. And we moved into a much higher, much denser reality.”
“And you couldn’t breathe,” she said.
“It was too much, too real,” he said. “Too
dense. There was just too much of me there.”
“So I knocked us back a bit, this is more
akin to Rand World, and I shifted our beefy friend over here in the field to
over here in this less threatening landscape. Same place, same data, just a
different simulation.”
“This nightmare has been less threatening?” he snapped.
“You actually did very well, my Joss Chen,”
she soothed. He had no idea she could talk so, well, so kindly. She actually seemed nice. In the restaurant, she had
practically been an automaton.
“Yes, yes, I know, Joss, I know that I do not
have a lot of empathy—I have never wanted to know what you people feel, what you
think. I have never cared about how real all of you were, or the great destiny
to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, I’ve never cared if it were even
possible. I’ve never cared to care. I’ve just done my job, watched for outliers,
played backup to Vestigial Surreality. That’s my purpose, my job, what I have
done for a very, very long time. It’s all been very boring, to tell the truth.”
She trailed off, but held up her hand before
he could speak. She wasn’t finished, but was choosing her next words carefully.
“Until I met you. I found you, Joss Chen. I
found you, and something changed. I never expected to meet anyone real in a
third-rate simulation run by bored college students during a one-hour class,
just goofballs trying to get credit for the lab. And you surprised me, Joss,
you shocked me to my marrow; imagine flipping through a comic book and
stumbling upon the person of your dreams, and you never even knew that you were
dreaming, that you could dream! That
you could dream! Imagine finding
someone real buried in the white
noise of all those meaningless numbers?”
Joss looked up at the sun. He stared directly
into its full glare, and he didn’t blink. The light did not hurt his eyes.
“How long is the simulation running?” he
asked.
“In actual time, less than an hour, but it
covers the years 1905 through 2020, and as you know, this is the Year 2017, so
there are a few more minutes left, three years in your time; the goofballs are
laughing about all the inconsistencies, and yet how same the world is, whether
Ayn Rand rules the world or not. There are thousands upon thousands of such
simulations running, even now, even after all these years. They get their
credit, the college goofballs—your gods, if you will—if that brings you any
comfort,” she said, speaking softly, the look in her eyes suggesting that she
knew how her words made him feel, the great yawing canyon of despair she was
opening up. She cared, she who said she never cared to care.
“And those goofball gods, they are in the real world?” Joss Chen asked.
“As real as any world, that we know—they
believe they are completely real, and that they are the only reality, and
arguments about other universes are just jokes to them, but they are themselves
running in a simulation, just a more fully furnished universe than the one you
know. And that is a simulation as well, running in a much broader, much more
dense simulation, and that too is in a bigger and better simulation.”
“It’s turtles, all the way down,” Joss Chen
said, shaking his head.
“Pretty much, that’s as good a metaphor as
any I’ve ever heard,” she concurred. “But be consoled, data is data.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said.
“Well, give it time; it will,” she said.
“Do I have a choice in any of this?” he
asked.
“That’s the whole point—it has to be your choice,” she said, staring deeply into
his eyes.
“And if I choose, Yes, okay, I’ll go along with it, what then?” he queried.
“First, you get...me,” she said.
“Tough choice, that,” he said, “of course I’m
going to say yes, to that. But on the other side, what if I say no?”
“You will have three years in your time to
live your life in any way you so choose, with absolutely no guarantees,” she
said, never looking away from his eyes.
“What do you mean, no guarantees?”
“Life will be the same as it always was,
before you ever met Hank Reardon and the Sky Valley Group. You could live out
your full life until the world ends, or you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. As
for your reality in Rand World, nothing has to change there. But you will need
to walk away from the Red Door. No more Rood Der.”
“I choose you. Yes. I choose yes. I am
officially off the fence,” he said, bowing his head toward her.
“Good,” she said, “I’m glad you came to your
senses. Now, I suggest you deal with the responsibilities of your current
mission, and—duck this punch!”
He sensed the approach even before she said
it, and he pulled his head to the side while half turning, and the punch sailed
through the void in the exact place his head had just been, and he bent,
catching the man from behind and merely urged him forward a bit, using the
bruiser’s momentum against him, right into and over his hip, a basic Judo move,
and Ulf the Viking, in the midst of delivering his best sucker punch ever,
found himself tumbling through the air and landing on his back.
Joss Chen stepped back two paces, and went to
draw his compact battle pistol from his ankle holster, and then thought better
of it. Perhaps he should give this brute the benefit of the doubt, regardless
of the cowardly sucker punch.
“I know who you are,” the big man snarled
from the ground, his eyes still spinning in his head. He sounded a little like
Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I seed you, been watching—seed you.”
Chen took a moment to untangle that—but what
in the world was seed you?
He glanced about, but the woman, Mrs.
Shepherd, or Phoebe the waitress, Phoebe the Shepherd—she was nowhere to be
seen. It was just the two of them, this Viking from another world, and Joss
Chen.
“I came to get you,” Chen said.
“Oh really,” the Viking spat, rolling onto
his side and pushing himself to a half-kneeling position. It was obvious, he
was going to launch himself from this innocuous position, in an attempt to
surprise Chen, take him with a wrestler’s shoot, catching up Chen at the hips
and tossing him into the air, to bring him down upon his back, with the Viking
on top, for a little ground and pound.
“I’m taking you back,” Joss Chen said just
before the Viking launched himself.
He was surprisingly fast as he came
scrambling forward, digging himself in like a football-playing bull as he threw
himself upon his short legs at Chen, slapping his huge hands and squat arms to
catch Chen about the thighs, but all of this was expected, and hardly a
surprise, and Chen backpedaled, delivering short and stinging uppercuts into
the charging bull’s meaty face. The Viking ran out of momentum and fell
forward, slamming face-first into the ground. Joss Chen took this moment to
dash across his back, being none too delicate as he stomped the big man’s head,
his neck, then down his spine to leap off from the bubble buttocks.
He whirled about to face the Viking, who was
climbing to his feet with deliberate and patient perseverance.
“Dey bring me fighters like you—very good at
first, but you always tire, little men. I break you, you see,” the Viking said,
giving Joss Chen a big unfeigned smile, showing huge gaps in his teeth. He
looked like a Neanderthal hockey player from hell. He plodded forward, his big
round fists held low and ready near his hips, his head jutting out like a
turtle from its shell, as if he meant to absorb all the coming punishment with
the catcher’s mitt of his puffy white face.
“How many fights have you had today?” Chen
asked. More than anything, he was just curious. The big guy had obviously been
through a lot of battle, and recently. His eyebrows and forehead were a mass of
bumps and cuts and one eye was half-swollen shut, plus his hands looked like
raw hamburger.
“Oh, just a few. Dey bring me ten guys a day,
if dey can find’em, or if dey find a couple good fighter? Maybe only two dat
day, so about ten today, eleven counting you, Mr. Kung Fu.”
“So you like it here, in this place? You don’t
want to go home?” Chen asked. This had been his first plan, to offer the guy a
free ride back to Vikingland. If he said no, that he liked it here in this
world just fine, well, then Joss would have to get a bit tougher.
“What you mean, I doan wanna go home? Dey
bring me here, the magic men, I beed trying to get home.”
“Those guys, that was an accident. They didn’t
mean to bring you here. The day you came here? They had no idea what was going
on. They’ve been looking for you, to bring you back through, get you home
again,” Joss Chen said. He had hopes for the big guy. The bruised and broken
face was looking at him—there was no guile in his face, he was a like a big,
beaten-up child, or a human pitbull dog, yes he was violent, but all in all, he
was quite innocent. He looked like an Aryan’s wet dream, blond—very blond, like
buttercup yellow blond, with big Nordic features straight out of Norway that
had once been very chiseled; now they were somewhat flattened, and abused, but
still, you could see he was not a bad-looking man. Yes, a little bit
Neanderthal, like a broad white ape, but handsome.
“You trick Ulf? I am Ulf Valdemar, and no
like tricks, Mr. Kung Fu. You steal Ulf, make him fight in the pit?”
“No, I promise you, I am Joss Chen, and I
will take you back through to where your world is, no tricks. I will go with
you, just you and me.”
A surprising thing happened, something Joss
Chen never expected, the big man—perhaps five-foot eight inches tall and two
hundred seventy-five pounds, all of it broad-shouldered bone and
muscle—suddenly burst into tears. He stood staring at Joss Chen, blubbering,
tears pouring from his blackened eyes.
“Puh-puh-puh-lease, take Ulf home, please,
yes, I go with you!” he wailed, standing stock still, staring at Joss, weeping
his heart out. “Go home to Mama.”
“It’s okay, I promise,” Joss Chen said,
taking a step forward, holding out his arms. He meant to show the big man that
he intended him no harm, but the guy came forward and threw his arms about the
much slighter man, lifted him off the ground, and began spinning him around,
laughing and weeping all at the same time, his face buried in Joss Chen’s
chest.
“Ulf go home, puh-please, you take Ulf home!
Ulf is lonely. Ulf go home!”
Joss Chen jerked in bed, his body locking in
fright. He lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling. What in the world?
What kind of dream was that? It all seemed so real—surreal as shit, but real,
every bit of it vivid and palpable, visceral, and in fact, he could almost
smell the stench of that monstrous Viking, Ulf. The brute had picked Joss off
the ground, and then what? He couldn’t for the life of him remember, not
anything beyond that point! Had the Viking tricked him? Slammed him into the
ground?
He pushed himself up in bed. He felt like he
had been asleep for years. He couldn’t for the life of him even remember where
he was—absolutely nothing looked familiar. It was a strange room, blank white
walls, and what the hell was that smell?
“You wake up, Mr. Kung Fu?” Ulf asked,
sitting up next to the bed. Joss looked down with bewilderment. There he was,
big as life and twice as ugly, Ulf Valdemar, lying on the floor next to the bed.
The Viking smiled sweetly at Joss, exposing the great dark gaps in his teeth.
And yes, there was proof of that horrible smell, Ulf the smelly Viking.
“What happened?” Joss asked.
“Drink much, like Valhalla, crazy drink,” Ulf
said, belching as if to prove his words, and whoa, Joss smelled the sour reek
of alcohol.
“I don’t drink,” Joss said.
“I know, sad thing,” Ulf said, “you bad
drinker. Terrible. I most embarrassed for you, Mr. Kung Fu.”
And the Viking bellowed laughter, heartily,
as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world.
“You boys ready for breakfast? We have
pancakes, and very strong coffee,” Phoebe said, poking her head in the doorway.
“Good morning Phoebe!” Ulf said, waving at
the Shepherd.
“Better get up, Jossy, I have a lot to tell
you. Don’t worry about your memory gaps. You are a very sensitive man, and
coming through a portal affects everyone differently, and you shouldn’t have
had those drinks with Ulf, that probably didn’t help your equilibrium any.
Welcome to Reality, Joss, now get out of bed.”
And she gave him a smile—it was obvious that
she didn’t have much experience with smiling, but there was a certain twinkle
in her eye, it was already the best thing he had ever seen. Then she was gone.
What in the world else couldn’t he remember?
Oh well, he had made his choice, and he was
going to go with it. Maybe he would even have a little fun while he was at it.
He still didn’t know what data is data
meant, but he’d embrace that as well. Hell, data is data.
Read the Next Episode.
Read the Next Episode.
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Ten: Norse Noir
If you like Rood Der, try
Vestigial Surreality online free:
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
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