J♢nua☈y | 2022 ☆ iSsuE ★ 31

 

Jud Roth in his VW Rüstung Jumpsuit falling off the face of the Earth (image by S. Lawton) 

     Welcome to the thirty-first issue of my blog, the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Begun nearly thirteen years ago, back in the summer of 2009, when I was a regular on the (now defunct) dark echo hosted John Shirley message board ("the Board with a Nail in It") and came up with the idea of doing a free digital fanzine, like they did back in the 60s and 70s (Cosmicology, Weirdom Illustrated, Fantastic Fanzine, Squa Tront--to name just a few), and here we are, nearly thirteen years later, going stronger than ever. 

   That's because in the beginning, I did well putting out an issue every other month, for six issues a year, for the first few years.  Things began slowing down a bit, until fewer and fewer issues were being released, until last year, while in the midst of the worldwide pandemic, I found myself beginning to push the pedal to the metal, and have since committed myself to releasing an issue every month, if at all possible, from here on out. 

   So that's exactly what I've done since last September.  Issues 27 through 31 have all come out every month, as planned, and long time faithful followers of the Freezine may have noticed that in a sense, we are now more streamlined, for one by having focused on presenting micro-fictions by long time regular contributors A. A. Attanasio and John Shirley, over the course of a few months, presented along with some of the missives I've been receiving from the mysterious benefactors from the future, that is to say the nanoFleet or bloodHost, as they've been often referred to throughout this webzine's extensive history of editorial comments, which incidentally traditionally appear on the final day of whatever month has been running an issue.  

   So here we arrive once again on the final day of the month, which happens to be January, so now we're embarking on yet another calendar year by which I and my cohorts can continue producing quality prose, poetry and artwork for our loyal cadre of followers to read and admire. In this issue, the Freezine has featured the writing of Philip K. Dick, Vincent Daemon, and Shaun Lawton accompanied by a rogue's gallery of carefully selected source images altered by our resident artist Charles Carter, along with some contributions from myself.  Thanks to Vincent for providing his entertaining story Survivor Guilt. He and I tried our best to get represented in an anthology years ago, which has yet to come out, and which never officially accepted our stories for publication, so we decided together that they should appear here and now in this, the latest issue of the Freezine.  

   Without further ado, here's this issue's  TOC [just click on the story image to read it]: 

SECOND VARIETY

by Philip K. Dick

SURVIVAL GUILT

by Vincent Daemon

SPEED DEMON

by Shaun Lawton

P.S. 

     And that's a wrap, for the 31st issue of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  For those readers and followers who are fans of the late, great Philip K. Dick, this post-script is being written for you.   If you're wondering how we acquired the rights to publish Phil's 1953 story, the reason is because no one ever renewed the copyright and therefore it's fallen into the public domain for many years, now.  

     The good people over at Project Gutenberg have made the text available for all to read, copy & paste into their own documents, or whatever floats their boat.  I've noticed there are several fly-by-night presses which offer Second Variety (put out by CreateSpace and other independent publishing platforms crawling for the chance to make a buck from the indiscriminate browsers surfing the world wide web from every conceivable demographic direction) so it occurred to me, "This belongs in the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction." 

     Furthermore, I realized that I could curate a batch of made-to-order images, culled from the original source material (Space Science Fiction, May 1953 issue) as well as a variety of other pulp science fiction magazines that ran the story throughout the sixties and seventies, and also stills could be modified from the 1995 movie adaptation Screamers (starring Peter Weller) which many of you today may not have seen, but which a few of us did, and can assure you while it may not have been the best PKD cinematic adaptation, it wasn't too shabby in its own special way, either. (It's been long enough for me to consider a re-watch, if I can track it down on Amazon Prime or whatnot.)

    I have long considered Philip K. Dick to be not only a patron Saint for the science fiction field in general, but certainly for our fanzine here, the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. So it's with great satisfaction that I got to present one of his short stories replete with AI-assisted modified digital art for the eight part serialization.  Thanks to Charles Carter for tirelessly conjuring fantastical iterations for our viewing pleasure. I knew he'd be perfect to run those source images from Space Science Fiction and Screamers through his VQGAN + CLIP art iteration renderings and come up with something just right for our own serialized adaptation, and as always he did not disappoint. 

     I'd like to take this moment to give a shout-out to one of our own Freezine veterans, the writer and activist David Agranoff, for having made available on a regular basis over the past few years his Dickheads Podcast, which also has hyperlinks over on the YouTube platform.  Be sure to follow these links and check it out and descend deeper into the hyperkinetic reality of one of science fiction's most erudite and mind altering writers, Philip Kindred Dick.  RIP 

    

Stay tuned for more 

transmissions coming 

next month 

exclusive to

the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science

Fiction 

   

Speed Demon

 

by Shaun Lawton

                                    digital art by Shaun Lawton

     I’dchii K’riccian dwelled along the rippled dunes of an evaporated sea on the small world of a triple star system not very far from Earth. In their raspy dialect, Kiriick is the closest human approximation to what they have named their home planet.

    Kiriickians are a bird like humanoid species located within the habitable zone of a star too dim for humans to have taken much interest in.  They have been observing our own globe for generations.  I’dchii K’riccian has been analyzing data about our planet Undraada for the last nineteen revolutions of his life.

      He is the sole proprietor of what most on his planet consider to be the best crafted astronomical lens engineered in their drawn out history.  Kiriickians belong to a subset of beings whose primary characteristic has been guided by what Earthlings might term anarchy, but which may be attributed to a variety of forces, among which nestles a very well developed magnetoception.  This among other aspects allows the avian race to rely on the assembly of a committee on only the most special occasions. It becomes necessary during unusual territorial disputes and other unexpected circumstances. In general, the azentia enjoy a relatively free society in the thin exosphere of Kiriick. 

    Kiriickians do not think or behave like human beings. Equipped with a sharp sense of echolocation, they parse their surroundings and their relation to each other, monitoring and tracking their various clades across the expanse of their world in accordance to how much room is left to populate. Competition among their clans for wider or more desirable spaces becomes fierce in vigorous rites, with ritual etiquette dating back to antiquity. The human approach to war, for example, remains inconceivable to the tall, rapt bipeds of Kiriick.

    While many Kiriickians enjoy spending their time roosting in cliff grottos and soaring on winds, I’dchii K’riccian could mostly be seen stargazing through the pellucid lens of his crystal scope. He had it trained on a particular solar system that while not the brightest in the kiznickos, was in fact the nearest to their own trinary system.  He’d been studying this colony for a long time, enough to have determined it had an even arrangement of eight planets: four inner terrestrial and four outer gas giants. The corresponding Kiznickian alignment presented periodic opportunities for studying each of these planetary masses. As time and motion continued along synchronized trajectories, the various orbital bodies caught about this neighboring star came into Kiriickian view on certain occasions. Right now the crystal scope was trained dead center on the starside of the sixth crietz from the outermost frozen blue gas giant.

    I’dchii exclaimed to his sidghier, “These unorthodox fledglings regulate their ecological affairs in a manner which altogether escapes my determinations.” 

    His sidghier took this in without so much as a chirp nor a rustle of his neck feathers, but rather, kept dusting the floor free of its accumulation of crietzdanner. This fine effluvium settled windblown on their communities from the Cardinal Desert, and would often get whisked up into an irritating haze. It was of such a refined grain that if left to its own accord, would work its way into everything. Sidghiers were bound and determined to keep this particulate matter at bay, as much as the winds of Aldunol allowed. 

    “They are currently in the midst of a noneccentric phase of their orbit”, quipped I’dchii.  “From the apparent profusion of effluvium and endemic miasma saturating their ecology, I have gathered they have succeeded in exacerbating conditions nominally reserved for obliquity and orbital forcing effects.”

    The sidghier chirped to indicate the sensibility of this proclamation.

    “By the looks of this toxicity, which appears to have infiltrated a great portion of their alduneroshal and mareozhea, I’d be hard-pressed to imagine this species escaping stillbirth—”

    The sidghier continued dusting off the nesting dais’s spare furnishings, using his left wingtip as was customary, without so much as emitting another peep. This was a tired old subject altogether devoid of resonance with him.  

     I’dchii continued to speak, either unaware of or unfazed by his aeriekeeper’s disdain. “I infer they behave as if fixated on their maturation having fully developed, without suspecting otherwise.  My cephenziic studies have shown this to be more common throughout the kiznickos than we may have anticipated. I’m perturbed.” He glanced up for his aeriekeeper’s reaction, but the sidghier had already departed the nesting dais without a sound.  

    Every twenty-six thousand Earth years, the human’s planet which was I’dchii’s station to observe, named Undraada by the Assembly of Pinions, completes one precessional movement of its axis. This remains in accordance with the Law of Orbital Eccentricity familiar to all planetary bodies within the kiznickos. At this time the Undraadan orbital cycle appeared to be in its least eccentric form, completing almost a perfect circle about their solitary star.

    “Abrogate these runtchicks, I aver!  They appear to be downyfaced.”  The thought bothered I’dchii. A trilling sound which approximated a thin, reedy vibrato began to escape from his chitinous beak.   “We may have to send another enaryscin and hope for the best.”

    Just then, an orchinsian burst through the fiberwoven portal of the azentian dwelling.  “Inseriance protohabitation imminent, Eskariad—in six wingbeats or less.”

    I’dchii K’riccian became still.  Without wasting a further moment, he stretched out his eighteen foot wingspan and pitched off the western balcony, nictitating membranes sliding across his twinned pupils to polarize the setting starlight streaming in, as he tilted and banked up into a strong arriving wind. There was no way he would stick around for the inseriance covey; he could never tolerate their methodical, inquisitive audits, thereby preferring to allow his aeriekeeper to deal with them.

    Once he attained a sufficient height in the halo crowned alduneroshal, I’dchii’s keen eyesight spotted the small inseriance covey arriving to his aerie far below. He imagined they would complete their inspection of the superstructure within three twentieths of a revolution.  Just enough time to stretch his wings for some much needed exercise and sightseeing.  He’d already forgotten about the downyfaced fledglings circling the foreign star.  Perhaps a clearing of his encephalon was all he needed to put the Undraadan’s extraordinary predicament into clearer perspective.

    The time of Magnetospheric Convergence was about to fall upon them once again like a deleterious gloaming. The complex mandate of the Assembly of Pinions would not allow for any deviance from mass introspection during this phase of kiznickian alignment. If any member of the azentian clades refrained from participating in this meditative liturgy, it could lead to a convocation of the Assembly of Pinions. I’dchii had trouble releasing himself from concentrating on the stellar neighbors and the baneful condition of their world. Its sinister implication of a parallel potential for their own crietz was disturbing. With a concentrated effort, I’dchii suppressed visualizing the outsiders for the moment. The Confluence of Reveries was about to commence. 

    Theirs was an ancient and serene culture having long ago forged an armistice with the kiznickos itself. The very notion of transcelestial contamination had long ago been forgotten. Only certain exalted members of the Assembly of Pinions even knew such a thing had ever existed. Despite this, a kernel of the idea was beginning to take root and manifest among certain individuals in the populace. I’dchii was one of these savants, having devoted himself to the study of extrasolar phenomena with the crystal lensing experience granted him by his bloodline. Coupled with his devotion to cephenziia, this forged a heady brew in his cranium.  

      After gliding relaxed outstretched upon steady breezes, I’dchii swooped down and bulleted back to his podium atop the rostrum he called home. He applied his eagle vision to the eyepiece of his crystal scope. It was a venerated heirloom handed down over generations from his lineage until it was at last presented to him. It was the focal point about which his entire life revolved. His great-grandfather had told him its impeccable design went all the way back to the Archangelus Khirityn. He was the first enaryscin sent to the neighboring crietz thousands of revolutions ago. 

    The kiznin scope was aimed dead center on the crietz Undraada.  I’dchii spent another twentieth of a revolution staring at the bizarre planet. Its opalescent glimmer in the dark medium of kiznin fascinated him. There was something not right about the sight during its days, which showed themselves at specific intervals, whenever the kiznickian alignment allowed. The times it showed its night face revealed a magnificent glittering of uncanny bright lights peppered across its land masses. It was during the first observation of its nocturnal side that I’dchii had deduced this was a crietz inhabited by some remarkably advanced yet afflicted civilization. Once again the eerie, subliminal trilling could just be felt as it displaced the air in the nesting platform.  

                               *** 

 

   Jud Roth stared through the windshield into the pouring rain at the onrushing road.  The wipers sloshed the water aside to and fro with the timed consistency of a metronome. The vehicle he drove was an old refurbished Dodge Challenger, original year unknown. It was a bright shade of metallic green when he bought it used in Salt Lake City three years ago. He liked it that color and had kept the vintage machine running fine ever since. He was a fifty-one year old throwback to the nineties living in the year 2032. All he wanted at the moment was another cup of coffee. He was running a tad late to work his grave shift—on the way to his usual Jump Point up the canyon. The good thing about Jumpsuits these days was that you could pretty much launch yourself from anywhere.  

    He thumbed on the wireless receiver and twisted the volume knob almost as high as it would go. With his pinky finger hovering over the seek button, he skipped stations through a series of intolerable tunes until his trained ear caught the signature sound of good old rock'n'roll. A golden oldie erupted into the car’s cabin loudly from 40 watt speakers—Alice In Chains Them Bones.  Jud eased back into his seat. This was music he could drive to.  He kept the rhythm by drumming his thumbs along the leather-wrapped steering wheel, relaxed and navigating the road at forty mph while singing along in a croaky voice, “I feel so alone...gonna end up a big ol’ pile of them bones.” 

    With the mountainside appearing to pass by on his left, the rain started easing down a bit. He took another sip from his Delta-9 soda. The curving road ahead constantly slipped under the hood, as if being eaten. He imagined himself at the helm of a mecha-cobra consuming the blacktop like so much ticker-tape. Raindrops slid across the windows’ exteriors, elongating into webbed strands on either side of him. The blurred form of a large raven swooped by his driver’s window, missing the car by a feather’s edge.  His spinning tires drifted to the left over the white sideline for a moment before Jud maneuvered back into his lane. 

    Storm clouds leveled out over the mountains ahead, blending thick and gray across the horizon. The rain was on the verge of changing to snow. He could feel the chill of the higher elevation. He cranked the heat up a notch and hit the rear and forward defrost buttons.  He shut the wipers off. The music on the radio switched to some mainstream crap. Jud pressed the seek button until a better sound met his ears.  

    The Dodge Challenger rolled along a paved blacktop road that snaked its way up Mill Creek Canyon.  So long as he could burn rubber and gasoline Jud felt he was contributing his share to the post-war effort. He was hell-bent on doing his part burning through the reservoirs of fossil fuel on Earth. Jud’s foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, accelerating his run up the canyon.  

    After shifting into lower gear to help maneuver a sudden curve, Jud rolled his window down and hocked up a loogie. We couldn’t just leave well enough alone—he spat phlegm out into the crosswind, where it disappeared into the slipstream—just like us, he thought to himself.  For some reason mankind could not kick the oil habit. Anyone can learn to quit, but not the whole tribe. The world is a vampire…. Jud reached over to the vibrating cup holder for another sip of his Delta-9. He was cruising at an easy thirty mph. He touched the receiver panel and cycled through the bandwidth again. Nothing decent came up so he shut it off. He welcomed the ensuing silence. 

    Jud was getting sick and tired of this all-too-easily triggered world. He missed the days when all you had was one or two decent radio stations. He glanced into the rear view mirror. The empty road receded in diminishing curves behind him.  It was getting late. If he didn’t make it to Terraces soon, he’d find himself in a blizzard.  He already glimpsed snowflakes flashing by his windows. Just ahead he spotted the four empty parking spaces on the left shoulder of the road. This was where the Terraces hiking trail entrance was located. It was the perfect Jump Point because there was usually nobody there. 

       While the car’s engine cooled off with ticking sounds, Jud’s mind turned to the past. When he was a kid he played the game of looking for hidden cameras. Little did he suspect then that the panopticon would become so integrated and pervasive. During his teens, he loved to skate. He’d mastered all the moves on his board back then. There was a raw sort of invulnerability to those days. It was survival by sheer defiance. Or maybe it was just dumb luck. Jud didn’t know anymore. 

      His Volkswagen Rüstung was stashed in the trunk of his car. After changing into it and locking down the pressure clips of the polarized visor on his helmet, he powered the Jumpsuit on for the green GO signal. He walked to the first bend in the trail, where there were no tree branches above.  Then he executed the command and dropped off the face of the landscape. Immediately he was rendered into a faraway pin point—then just disappeared from view. He traveled in an arc until he was thirty-three miles up into the atmosphere while the Jumpsuit’s GPS targeted his destination and routed him back down. It took an extra several minutes sailing through the stratopause before beginning the dizzying plunge toward the blurring landscape below. The Jumpsuit's O2 reserves and state of the art sound system made it a much better ride.  

    Jud arrived to work in the nick of time. He began his shift taking readings of the boilers and going through his service engineering routine. It was just another beautiful night up an undisclosed ravine hidden in the Alaskan wilderness. 

*** 

  “The ferromagnetic core of all crietz sustains us,” I’dchii ruminated on the uppermost ledge of the nesting dais. It was a good spot to remove himself from everything and concentrate on the stars. “The first coronal mass-release strong enough to spark ignition signals the stage for life to emerge.” I’dchii knew this as well as any Kiriickian.

    All the clades comprehended the spatial configuration of their planetary magnetic field to somewhat resemble the outline of a nareozhean behemoth.  Their legends told of astral ketozhia, who travel in pods, each carrying the most precious jewel in their mouths. They would journey across the depths of oblivion to the far side of the kiznickos—toward an unimaginable destiny.

    I’dchii understood this jewel was the planet itself, the very crietz they dwelled upon.  Not all Kiriickians upheld this conviction. A portion of them believed a venerable fable insisting this rare gem to be an asteroid carried in the jaws of an approaching leviathan. It bothered I’dchii to contemplate this misnomer. “How could the Clades of Kiriick hold stock in such tales? Was the truth not as plain as the stars in the firmament?” 

    To make matters worse, some offshoots believed the jewel to be possessed of healing properties—viewing it as a vehicle for their imminent salvation—whereas others believed it to be an avenging hammer of destruction come to purge their world of overpopulation. As far as I’dchii was concerned, these were witless interpretations. They must have been contrived generations ago in order to control the clades.

    He had to admit these tales made a certain kind of sense. Yet he still didn’t understand how it was that so many missed the obvious. Their planet itself was the jewel. Their crietz was being carried through the kiznickos in a fashion whose innate properties remained a complete mystery. I’dchii was forced to wonder if the anneluzhia under the sand ever questioned these matters. He suspected there was no chance of it. In a manner of speaking, azentia such as himself—ever winged prideful—revealed their base ignorance when contemplating philosophical matters. An amused trilling escaped his throat just thinking about it.  

    I’dchii’s tremulous intonation diminished after a few measures, to be replaced by the sighing of the wind outside. He stepped away from the eyepiece of his kiznin scope, and glanced down at his clawed feet. Something about that planet was not right. For one, its magneto-plumage appeared sickened. It seemed tangled with intermittent vulnerabilities. Yet the body of the planet itself gleamed like a beautiful jewel in the depths of kiznin. 

   The tall, lean azentian peered through his telescope again at the magnified crietz. There was a subtlety to its merging blues, whites, browns and greens that troubled I’dchii, an underlying tint. Not to mention the mystifying, crystal-like intensity of its nocturnal lights. They did not reflect the warm tones of fire-gleam or the muted calm of their own lezariidis. The question of what powered this magnificent nocturnal display haunted the Kiriickian’s mind. He stepped away from the focal eyepiece. It was getting late. Time to roost for the evening. He would repose on it. New insights would form after a diurnal rest. At the arrival of dawn he may awaken to a fresh discernment. In the meantime he kept his crystal scope aimed at the marvelous planet. 

                                                                       ***

 

   Jud Roth liked his job. Working the grave shift suited him just fine. After hanging in there many years, he felt damn lucky to have this new position. He never would have made it to this beautiful Alaskan outpost without the five year seniority. He felt certain his attendance record and lack of write-ups helped seal the deal.

    Jumpsuits made travel across long distances easy as a breeze. Despite now working at a covert private owned complex all the way up in Alaska, he wouldn’t have to move out of his apartment on the fringes of the metropolitan Salt Lake City valley grid. Not with his Jumpsuit that could get him anywhere on the continent in less than an hour. 

    His service engineering job paid just enough to keep him in his thousand dollar-a-month, nine by nine studio, pay the utilities, groceries, car and Jumpsuit bill, and still allow him to set aside a bit of extra credit every so often. Jud’s penchant for collecting vintage comic books interfered with his budgeting as did his genuine coffee habit. He settled for nothing less than real fresh ground organic fair-trade coffee beans, which was one reason he could only afford a single tattoo. He’d sprung for a high quality tattoo four years ago. It was of a Zap Comix style skate punk with red veined eyes bugging out of his head and drooling tongue lolling out of his mouth, wearing spiked leather pants while riding a skateboard into a spinning vortex. He had it inked right between his shoulder blades. 

      Jud Roth was a daydreamer. The grave yard shift helped. He was the solitary building service engineer for VAT 227. The facility he worked in was owned by a private conglomerate with an annual revenue of over half a trillion dollars. It had been around for ninety-five years. He was stationed at an undisclosed satellite company which belonged to a subsidiary devoted to optical fiber connectors. The interesting thing was the facility which he worked at was nestled in an unknown location within a wooded canyon in northern Alaska. Unknown, because the compound he worked in was a secret kept under contract between the private conglomerate and certain invested government officials.

    Jud figured this out from the weird non-disclosure agreement he signed in order to accept the job. When he tried to find it on Amazon Earth, all that came up was many square miles of blocky wilderness. The closest thing that registered on the virtual map was Lake Kaniksrac. The Face on Earth, as he liked to think of it. It was apparent his supervisor didn't believe Jud understood what he was signing. This was fine by him, preferring to remain silent and impassive in the workplace.  Three weeks ago he passed his obligatory six month probation period. He was settled into the routine of his job, and he enjoyed it very much.

    At the present moment, Jud was standing in his favorite spot, three stories up on the steel balcony on the roof of the administration building. He vaped from a glass nasal snifter. Upon reaching middle age, his metabolism was already slowing down. He’d gotten much better at regulating his intake. When the aurora borealis was out in force, he wanted an enhancement. It had been three weeks since the last display. The green translucent curtains had spread out in slow undulation over the next mountain range, scintillating with shades of violet and emerald. The stunning vista had obscured a good portion of the starry view above. 

    Tonight it was a little overcast and chilly. Jud inhaled the cool infused vapor into his nostrils.  His eyeballs seemed to protrude slightly from their sockets, like hard boiled eggs. From this vantage point he could look down into the interior of VAT 227. What he saw resembled a contained pond of boiling vomit. It was plastic being melted down with chemicals and reprocessed into an almost biodegradable form. This in turn was shipped to another secret waste facility that continued processing the degradation of the material into a genetically-modified paste claimed to be biodegradable.  This by-product was repackaged and sold as fertilizer for cow feed in the ever expanding slaughter house of the beef industry.

    Just thinking of the chemical compounded process required to make plastic waste biodegradable made Jud a little nauseous. The runoff alone from these chemicals made fracking look attractive. He shuddered, his right hand on the frozen steel rail, his left pocketing the mini glass vaper.  It was time for a Jump. Jud made his way back into the building, then headed down six flights of metal stairs until he arrived to his locker, #19. After keying the combination, the locker’s cover panel slid upward, revealing his standard issue RAD-Chemical Pressure suit and his Volkswagen Jumpsuit, hanging from aluminum hooks.  It was his last scheduled fifteen minute break. Time to fly.

    Stepping into his Rüstung Jumpsuit and zipping up, he powered it on. It was eighty-three percent charged. Its stitched-in antigrav pads rendered it the perfect means of conveyance. Jud raced back up the flights of stairs and out onto the deck. The constellations visible above were focused so bright they resembled an epic field of scattered pinballs reflecting each other. Odd how they seemed to represent every color of the rainbow, he mused. Each remarkable hue spoke its own silent song of the electromagnetic wavelength, evolving into proximity here through visible light, before diminishing away into ultraviolet… X-rays… gamma… and beyond. "Into the inimitable light," Jud whispered to himself as the evening stars awaited. He never thought of the stars as being “above” or “out” there. It was obvious to him they were in there—residing among the inner core of the expanding cosmos. The very astral engine of creation. Observing the sprawling constellations sometimes felt as if he were looking at the shadow of his reflection in a giant mirror.   

    Jud’s intuition of relativity formed his own sort of paradoxical religion. His private quantum reality was a state of mind cultivated over many years with exacting care. When he needed to, he had a knack for hitting the off switch with thinking. He could be real Zen like that. Gazing out over the mountainous region north of the factory, Jud’s ears perked for any wild sounds of invitation. The wind sighed through the frozen trees. He took a step forward, checking that his suit pockets were zipped and latched shut, then just fell off the wooden slats of the porch toward a point above the horizon. He dropped up like a stone over the cold steel rail—to wink out into the starry night.

    Twelve minutes later, Jud returned. His arrival was as sudden as his departure. His Jumpsuit retrogravved at the last moment, settling him gently back onto the porch.   The suit powered off, and he trotted back down the six flights of stairs to his locker. It was time to wrap up his shift.  

     An hour later, after punching out in the early dawn, Jud was back into his Rüstung Jumpsuit, helm visor polarized to a mirrored gold. This time he fell off the Earth arcing toward the south east. Over the snowcapped mountain  tops he dropped, until arriving near Salt Lake City, over three thousand miles away, falling down through the clouds to his parked car by the Terraces hiking trail. The flight lasted all of thirty five minutes. His descent was controlled by the antigrav pads in the suit. He’d modified their programming with the daunting task of adding the code that represented the value of the gravity well of the planet. His original idea being that if it were possible to cancel out all of the stars’ gravitational forces, one could arrange to fall out of this galaxy entirely—and disappear into the universe. He would need to save up more money to upgrade his VW’s processing memory.  The thought had kept Jud occupied during his many hours of down time on the grave shift. He’d always wondered what the aurora borealis looked like from above, but had never been able to escape the upper mesosphere to see for himself. How high did the Northern lights go?  There was one way to try and find out. 

                                                                            ***

 

   It was two weeks later when the aurora borealis came out in full force. That evening, Jud felt a sickening sensation begin in the pit of his stomach. This was going to be the night. When it came time for his break, Jud returned to his locker and put on his RAD chemical pressure suit on first. Then he stepped into his VW Jumpsuit and just managed to zip and clamp it up tight. A few quick adjustments to his settings and he was ready for the green GO command. He walked up the six flights of stairs to the landing terrace a little slower than usual. The air was cold and the aurora borealis tantalized him. By his calculation, he should make it through the thermosphere and just into the exosphere, five hundred miles up. He wouldn’t even make it a tenth of the way through the exosphere. For one thing, any higher than that and the solar winds might interfere with the Jumpsuit’s electromagnetic tracking system. But he’d make it just high enough to look down at the curvature of the Earth and see the Northern lights as few ever had—before dropping back down.  

         Jud took a deep breath before executing the sequence. Then he fell off the face of the Earth. Up through the mesosphere, past the thermosphere and into the exosphere—where for one glorious flash-capped instant, he pivoted over the marvel of the Northern lights undulating below him like so many unfurled streamers of some planetary jellyfish—and then the moon shrank to a pebble at his feet and disappeared into the black.  

          Jud Roth plummeted like a runaway cannonball and was shocked he could see at all. The thought flashed through his mind that he should be dead. But the vision that passed before his eyes alarmed him into a state of consciousness that made him unsure if what he were seeing were not the province of a dream.  As if equipped with vision that penetrated the ultraviolet, he perceived an extremely tall hallway that he appeared to be falling through until passing into or approaching an incrementally distinguished vertical horizon whose sheer scale against the parallax of the vanishing point made it seem as if he were slipping amidst striated muscle tissue at particular moments—reflected in the manner of film frames interpenetrating as they rolled by at variegating velocities—creating the illusion that sometimes the walls to either side of him remained parallel as he passed between them even as they were discernible to meet far ahead at an endless distance into the region where Jud now helplessly plummeted. Then he understood this was already far beyond the point which most people would survive if they were to have somehow escaped Earth's gravity. Jud plunged with a quickness like some ripe heavy dried up human plumb bob dropped down the deepest well and straight into oblivion’s tracks until the rapid shuttering effect on either side of his tucked in head finally eased up and began flowing in a reverse slowed down oscillation thereby causing the unaccountable illusion that he was no longer falling but instead floating almost motionless in between winged angelic walls of vivid striations blossoming into colorful kaleidoscopic chromatophores.  Jud knew then with a certainty he had never experienced that his mind was over-processing and approaching maximum capacity as he slipped into the nearest star cluster’s gravity well and for one absurd moment he didn’t fret about needing a CPU fan to cool him off because the absolute vacuum he plunged through did the trick in what seemed to be the time it took to hold his breath — an involuntary reaction that seized and trapped a lungful of ionized oxygen before escaping the Earth’s plasmasphere when cryogenic preservation threatened to set in — followed by an elongated period of eccentric spiraling slungshot about the Sun until he was suddenly flung outward directly toward a single low burning reddish dwarf star appearing dead ahead at a curled over tilting clockwise blurred intersection — like a bright galvanized mineral-laden thumbtack — a nail head by slow degrees enlarging into what looked like a chromatic doorknob emitting plumes of electromagnetic energy — inviting the preserved cryptobiotic homo sapien to be planted upon the surface of another planet like some carbon tipped needle point meteorite injection, something that would heat up in Earth’s atmosphere past the critical threshold of his capacity to survive but in the thin presence of an exosphere wouldn’t generate enough friction was Jud’s last thought before losing consciousness in the starry void.       

      Meanwhile, I’dchii spied through the eyepiece of his lucent telescope. He spotted an odd bright dot—a pinpoint mica chip flash—heading in their direction at a clip indicating an interstellar drop. The alien’s impeccable vision amplified through the crystal lens of his kiznin scope identified what looked like a mummified bipedal creature falling through the kiznickos. The azentian’s focus had zeroed in on this peculiar meteorite headed toward Kiriick. It had an unusual elongated shape, close to the bird men’s in proportion, but shorter in stature. This was most peculiar, for the meteoroids he was accustomed to viewing through his scope were more or less spheroid in shape. The trilling sound began emanating from his throat. He must contact the Nictualier at once. There was still time to capture the incoming object in one of their nets for study. It was of a most intriguing shape. Its bipedal appearance sent a thrill coursing through I’dchii’s six-chambered heart. The bird man’s trilling continued. Its vibrations grew stronger the more he stared at the singular incoming object. Pivoting on his clawed feet, he tilted into a gust of wind that swept across the viewing terrace, then keeled off toward the Nictualier’s base of operations.  They would intercept this rogue solar object and bring it home for further study. I’dchii hoped it originated from the Undraadan system. It would hold a motherlode of revelations for their scientists. 

   

***

 

   Jud arose from deep sleep into lavender hued light and blinked at the strange sight coming into focus around him. He was surrounded by very tall birdmen in some sort of polished chamber. There were no other familiar objects or details, just rows of standing birdmen scowling at him with impenetrable eyes. His brain seemed to vibrate. Amid the sensation he could pick out a dimpling of energy corresponding with one of the birdmen standing next to him to the right. When he turned toward the tall being a feeling of supermagnetic connection disrupted his thoughts until a soft stroking sensation upon his brow brought him out of it. Jud realized the birdman was petting him with its extended left wingtip. He looked over and saw the birdman’s face clearly for the first time. The dark orbs of its eyes bore down on him beneath arched brows and white feathered tufts. A strong consolatory sensation emanated from those eyes, relaxing Jud into closing his own. As soon as his eyelids were sealed, he could hear the approximation of a voice hushing him to listen with his praajda.  “You’ve arisen from your slumbering fall. Welcome to Kiirick. I am I’dchii, your benefactor. You have been captured by our elite guard, the Nictualier. You find yourself on this pivot-cycle before the Assembly of Pinions. Indicate you understand by responding in your own dialect.” The tall bird man continued stroking Jud’s head. 

   “I understand,” Jud replied without knowing how he could have done so. The silence didn’t seem total as there appeared to be a subharmonic humming just below the human audial threshold. Jud could feel it vibrating inside the marrow of his bones. It was like the constant hum of a refrigerator. He had a feeling it never shut off. It must be connected to the bird city they were in. The crackling of its electrical circuit grid.

      “Our councilmembers are conferring on the matter of what is to become of you. We have deduced that you arrived from our neighboring crietz of Undraada. Our genetic recombinant surgeons may choose to induce meiosis and by a process of gamete manipulation bestow a zygote in you with a new gestation period.” Expressionless, I’dchii stared at Jud. 

   “Are you telling me you guys are deciding whether to clone me or something?” Jud asked, looking around the smooth, cream-colored chamber. Something about the bird man’s proposition implied an alternative that made him uneasy. 

   I’dchii’s fricative voice invaded in hushed tones. “Or the council may call for your exile in dannerzhea. It depends on whether the majority here find you wanting.” It seemed as if a long time passed then. The lack of movement and incidence interfered with Jud’s ability to measure it. His head swam with the thought that, after having jumped off the Earth, he’d arrived on some alien world.  The RAD chem-pressure suit protected me. My Jumpsuit’s antigrav modification worked a little too well—I slipped through space until I was captured by birdmen.  

    Jud’s musing was interrupted by I’dchii’s proclamation. “The Assembly of Pinions has reached its conclusion. We have determined the genetic helical code of your species remains corrupted. This mutation has affected the outcome of your home planet to the point of ecocide. We, the parliament of Azentia, cannot risk our home world to this pathogen. We call for its immanent excision from our immaculate order.” There was a spreading reverberation throughout the chamber that could be described as the most beautiful microtones.  Jud marveled to himself as four birdmen stepped forth and seized him. Their touch was both unrelenting and merciful.  Jud Roth allowed himself to relax as the tall, slender birdmen of Kiriick carried him out of the council chamber to their execution block. Jud looked at the unfamiliar constellations overhead. The stars above had never appeared so clear or in focus. 

      

  

 ~ fin ~

 

 

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Fiction  

Survivor Guilt

 by Vincent Daemon 

                                                                            digital image by Charles Carter

           11 pm

Rumors had been circulating throughout the chemical underground about the mythical LSD-666 for quite some time, and its sketchy availability (if it even existed), when Serg and Adam had finally been hit with the urge (as they had so innocuously termed so many of their odd pharmaceutical-related cravings) to test it themselves and see what all the hullabaloo was about. So hastily they decided to go out on a late-night winter hunt for this legendary (and extremely localized) alleged beast of a mind-altering experience.

For Sergio, the urge was just another reckless party.

For Adam, the urge replaced temporarily the chronic dysthymia that affected him so harshly; those chemicals cut the numb of the incessant and lonely alienation that he felt forever plagued him. He hated it as much as he loved it, this urge, and was fairly aware it was nothing more than a replacement for the warm embrace of a “dream lover” that most likely did not exist. And if she did, he believed himself to be wholly unlovable. The truth was quite the opposite, just never really experienced or accepted by Adam to any real capacity.

The LSD-666 was supposed to be unlike any other hallucinogen ever conceived, pissing on the usually well-intentioned theories of the McKenna’s and John C. Lily’s, among so many others, of the possibilities and helpful knowledge to be found; this was by and far beyond any other drug experience imaginable. It was supposed to open physically tangible doorways ordinarily thought of as not existing, and pull one into the deepest realms of the body-mind-soul as one cellular collective...but also known for occasionally dragging one down to the most base reptilian depths and blackest of pits forever gouged in that very soul. This was the evocative invitation to a much darker place. 

Some would find an eternal paradise, supposedly. Truth is, though, many, if not most, never really came back. At least that’s what the urban legends and PSA pamphlets declared. But just as “Alice” (title character from the initially alleged-to-be-true 1971 anti-drug cautionary book of lies Go Ask Alice) never really existed, and just as a spider never actually lays eggs in anyone's ear, this had to be a blown-out-of-proportion falsehood as well. At least that was Serg and Adam’s feeling on the issue. To them it would just be another trip for the brain, a new way to temporarily abate certain doldrums of old thought and feeling (or, at least in Serg’s case, lack thereof) in which they felt forever mired. Everything else to them seemed beat. Coke was boring (without girlfriends, anyway). The dope (of which they’d already indulged in a good bit of) was weak. They were tired of the standard booze-n-benzos. They both craved something more, something faster. Not some garbage like speed, or bath salts or Robitussin, but something to activate their minds, something out-of-body, something truly hallucinogenic. And being no strangers to all manner of altered realities, this LSD-666 just felt like something they needed to experience. 

It was rumored this exceptional chemical compound came in the form of a Hell-red gelatin tab, which contained in its center the hideously pinpointed and forever glaring eye of a praying mantis. Supposedly one particular and solitary breed of praying mantis, isolated and virtually unheard of, accidentally discovered and subsequently worshipped for many millennia by some rare, cannibalistic Peruvian super-civilization, fallen and lost long ago. But this breed of mantis, according to the urban legends, was kept, passed down over thousands of years, only to be exploited in the international network of illicit drug trafficking, once this ancient secret ritual was discovered by the wrong semi-sociopathic post-grad chemist. The eyes of this strange breed of praying mantis had certain properties that made the unreal all too tangible, and supposedly brought things from the Other Side into this world. 

Admittedly, they both agreed, it all sounded pretty hokey, so of course Serg and Adam thought it was all bullshit. Intelligent, and even universally wise as they could sometimes be, despite how reckless they were, this all seemed like drummed-up superstition and too many over-exaggerated bad-trip experiences. 

However, they were both of the same mind that certain curiosities cannot be killed until the proverbial cat has been flayed well enough, so to speak. Both felt a constant and pervasive nothingness ruling their lives, almost like they had been cursed to some surreal existence that forever called and culled them away from this reality. Like they were incorporeal, didn’t even belong here. There were inconceivable circumstances, situations, loneliness and betrayals, as well as tragedies which had long plagued them both, albeit in different ways, that had brought them to their seemingly ill-fated and Twilight Zone-like lives.

All of that had brought them to this night. 

Serg had heard through the long-withering grapevine, much to his surprise and delight, that an old friend, nay, acquaintance, of theirs was back in town. He was the only bastard to know the formula, really know how to make it, supposedly. He bred the mantises. His name was Mok, a hulking beast of a man with a flowing mane of golden Viking hair and greying-blonde beard to match. His eyes were a forever pinned marbled blue and his pupils were like dilated black holes. He was of a strange temperament, believing himself to be some Aleister Crowley-type cult figure, always subtly belittling, glaring, and speaking in odd riddles and put downs. Truth be told, he was a very scary, unsane individual, whose grip on reality seemed to have slipped long ago. Something about his soul and mind seemed rotten. But Mok was their only source. 

Mok was also known to have walked people through various kinds of trips and rides as well, always for cash of course, though (again quite possibly due to the rumor mill) most of his clients seemed to end up in sanitariums or dead. Or perhaps stuck someplace in between...the worst place of all to be. The man had his fair share of run-ins with law enforcement, but always played the collected charmer, somehow easing the cops out of his space with double-speak and some bizarre homemade alteration of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He often proclaimed with self pride and wisdom how the successful went on to fulfill their lives with great prosperity, and that he knew how to capture and keep attentions just long enough to get them to believe anything, to feel it, to forget all else.  

Whenever asked about the flip side of his mystical lysergic coin, be it by other mad-chemists, the curious, or even law enforcement, he’d simply smirk and scoff, “They said they could handle it...guess they were wrong,” whilst deliberately making sarcastic handwashing gestures, like some kind of vulgar, oversized Pontius Pilate. Then he would tend to his tanks of the strange luminous Peruvian mantises. 

 

1 am

“Tonight’s the night, my brother!” Serg exclaimed like some excited wolf, bellowing over Cancerslug’s Beast With Two Backs album, up at full volume, as they sped carelessly down the empty black-iced night roads towards the Homefield A Go-Go strip-club to meet up with Mok. Serg passed Adam a large joint, after Adam had asked him to slow down. “Light this, fucker. Relax.” Adam could see the decidedly raunchy mood of Serg as he lit the joint, the flames from the lighter reflecting and flickering madly in his wide eyes. Serg wanted a party; he wanted an out of control night chock full of bad. He wanted to cause trouble. He was on a mission.

Adam was slightly more reserved, and leaned his head against the half-open window while exhaling the sweet smoke of the good weed. He enjoyed the feeling of the cold night air blowing against his overheated face. He always felt like “The Passenger” (the invisible title character who sees all from the Iggy Pop classic) and gazed at the full moon above. The piercing glow of her brightness seemed to almost block out the stars; Mother Moon hanging alone and watching down from Her throne in the sky. It was beautiful, relaxing. 

Going to the Homefield was not. It was uncomfortable enough, being the strange strip-club/whorehouse it was, with its singular reputation. And seeing Mok furtively terrified him, filling him with dreadful anxiety. He considered taking a Xannie Bar, but knew that would counteract the effects of the LSD-666. They had to meet the brute there, then follow him to his house. 

They met in the lot quickly (Adam somewhat relieved they didn’t have to go in), and followed Mok steadfastly to his dwelling. It was a small cottage, up a loose-graveled driveway, faraway from the main roads. 

Adam’s reasons for being leery of Mok were justifiable. At one point many years ago Mok had been Adam’s mentor, as such, in the more questionable aspects of the dark arts, until the self-professed High Wizard’s heroin addiction overtook him completely, and the man disappeared from the face of the earth, along with Adam’s girl, leaving Adam confounded and festering with anger, feeling psycho-spiritually fractured for a bit. It also left Adam with this strange thing he could never shake, like an invocation that could not be banished, a wrath-fish hooked deep in his mind and tugging at him no matter where he went, what he did, who he was with, that seemed perpetually there, and not entirely his. For that alone, Adam could never trust the man again.

Both Serg and Adam had assumed Mok dead for years, as did most, and were both quite surprised to find out the human behemoth was still alive, let alone now living in some form of nefarious luxury. 

They followed Mok quietly into his cottage, shadowed by haunted trees reaching for them in the moonlight. It was a smallish place, but more than enough for Mok. The main room was candle-lit, and reeked of thick incense, opium, and high grade cannabis. The walls were painted floor-to-ceiling glossy black, covered with a wide array of occultist symbols and sigils in stark white patterns. 

Mok sat on his deep and fluffy violet couch, flanked by a slithery-pale, intensely beautiful dark-haired female. Together they looked like some bizarre, spooked-out Frazetta painting brought to life. “Gentlemen,” he finally spoke in his low, monotone and gravelly voice. He loved to try and sound wise and sinister, both Adept and Apex. 

There was certainly a curious tension musing darkly about the room, much like the fog from the various smokes, if not practically thicker. 

“Hey buddy, how you been,” Adam finally broke, almost involuntarily reaching out his hand to clasp the giant's warm and clammy paw, the tension stomach-churning to withstand.  

Serg chimed in then, after deliberately letting Adam break the tension, coward that he was. “What up, Mok? Long time, no see, man.” He tried to be his usual hyper-jovial self, but his greeting came out flat and forced, the apprehension affecting even his chemically numbed dimness.  

“Adam, my neophyte no more,” said Mok as he arose, giving Adam a tight hug, then peered deep into Adam’s grey eyes. “You’ve grown, my friend.”

“Well, it’s been a long, rough while,” was all Adam could muster in the flummoxing strangeness of the moment. 

“Have a seat, gentlemen. This is Josephine, my current Scarlet Woman, if you will.” Serg looked her luxurious frame over quickly, not wanting to disrespect Mok in any way, especially when appreciating his woman.

But not Adam. One glance and he suddenly felt enraptured. She was petite and perfectly curved, dressed in a very tight black tube-top and a long, low-cut black skirt. Her lengthy dark brown hair swaddled gently over smooth alabaster shoulders, and her face was like that of a classical, finely cut sculpture of Renaissance art, from which two brown-as-ebony eyes peered back into him. She was in there, reading him, he could feel it. She smiled sweetly at him, and would not break her stare.

“Let’s get down to business, then,” Mok motioned them over to the violet-velveteen couch. “What do you know of ‘The Beast’?”

Adam loathed the tone. Serg was obviously nervous, and quite impatient. “Just that it sounds like a lotta urban folklore bullshit. Where’s it at?”

Mok was not fond of impatience. “In a moment, Sergio. I want to make sure you both know exactly what you’re getting into. This is no joke. I’m dealing with enough heat already, heh.” Something was so very off about that last sentence, Adam had noticed, or rather felt...something...soul-chilling and off about his...soulless tone.

Silence, but for the sizzle of Josephine lighting her opiated-hash ball.

“This will change you. It is different for every person. It will permanently open doors to worlds you never dreamed of, and will close other doors that once got you through day-to-day reality. You can kiss that goodbye once you’ve seen through the Mantis eye. That is reality.” Classic Mok form: deathly serious, humorless, and with that deliberate, caustic vagueness, eliciting within Adam a deep, slow burn as he listened. This was no different than Mok’s standard rhetoric from years ago. It was a tired old show. He just sounded like some over-tripped, burned out post-hippie. The 13th Floor Elevators crackled away on an old record player in the background, not helping to lessen that vibe in the least.

Adam’s attentions were far more drawn to Josephine, who wordlessly offered the pipe, which he gladly did partake in, while watching her fidget with her silver-ringed toes, each tipped with a chrome-magenta polish, the same as her fingertips. Adam could care less if Mok saw him appreciating this heavenly creature before him.

“Both of you–fucking pay attention to what I am saying–I made this. In the traditional style. Josephine taught me, her bloodline being that of the Peruvian Keepers Of The Manti...Idolamantis Diabolica; that cryptozoological insect of ancient legend and folklore. Also known as the delicate and beautiful Devil’s Flower Mantis. They did exist–both the insect, and her people–and they still do. She taught me how to cultivate them, how to create the concoction, for its original, intended purpose from countless aeons ago. It is not like LSD, DMT, MXE, or anything else you may have tried. Come,” he stood, motioning for all to follow.

Mok took them to the kitchen, just as dimly lit as the rest of the dwelling, with candles of all shapes, faiths, sizes and forms with strange waxen faces half melted, surrounding them. The table was littered in an organized chaos of beakers, tubes, and burners, all with multicolored and fluids of altering viscosity in them. It almost looked like the silly lab from the old Bugs Bunny and Gossamer cartoons. 

There were objects in some of the beakers, small monstrosities, but neither Serg nor Adam could make out quite what they were. There were also a multitude of handwritten and leather-bound, archaic texts lying about everywhere. They were led through a labyrinth of counters adorned with chemistry glass to a fifty-gallon aquarium filled with nothing but finely removed mantis eyes. 

It was a rather freakish sight to behold, that much was certain.  

“Alchemy now?” Adam blurted mockingly.

“Something like that.” Mok was quick to distance himself from the query. Instead, he held out a handful of the finished product: little red translucent squares with something eye-like in the center. 

Adam, by now pissing all respect to the wind, asked “Seriously? Why the eyeball, Mok?”

Stone-cold earnest he replied “Because these will give you BUG EYES. And the Mantises are perfect.” He laughed to himself, guttural, sinister, agitated, his eyes glaring with barely hidden malice at Josephine. “You won’t get it, man. Not until you do it. Then you will cease to be you and the real you shall appear, at last.”

Serg and Adam had enough. “Ok, how much?” Mok laid out a discount rate for his old friends and sold them a small handful. Josephine was slinking around Adam soundlessly like a liquid flesh ghost. She brushed against him, feeling more vaporous than human. It was an uncanny sensation, both caring and cold. Another one of the things Adam hated about being anywhere near Mok–it activated all his natural “magnetisms” from the Other Side–always against his will. 

The deal was done. Mok regarded them balefully. “Now go. Opposite way you came. Don’t come back. I’m only passing through, won’t be here. And leave her wherever she ends up. I’m done with that too. My needs have been met.” His barely audible, sinister chuckle continued as the three exited the inexplicably dimming cottage which had suddenly taken on very dark and bad vibrations. 

“One last thing!” Mok bellowed out the door of the clouding over cottage. He was quite loud, determined to be heard. “There WILL come a moment when reality and that drug blur, and ALL becomes one. I suggest at that moment you choose...because it IS a choice...choose your side of the fence wisely. Good luck, fuckers. Have fun!” And he slammed the now black-as-pitch cottage door as hard as he could.

3 am

Serg peeled out of the loosely packed gravel driveway with a fury. “Take it yet?” he asked Adam, his words somewhat garbled and clunky while he grappled with the wheel.

“No.” Adam held the little gel tab, red as the blood in his veins, up to the moonlight and inspected it. A strangely bright yellow pinpointed insect eye stared back at him from that small tab of LSD-666. He got the creepy feeling it was looking into him, just as Josephine had done earlier, with that same sort of intense and unblinking gaze she'd bored into him back inside Mok’s cottage of discomfort. “Did you?” Adam asked cautiously, already knowing the answer.

“Sure as fuck did–and it hit instantly, man–you gotta try this!” Serg turned to Josephine in the back, as she was lightly running her slender artisan fingers through Adam's long brown hair. “You good babe? Where you gotta go? Wanna gel?”

She merely smiled coyly and said nothing, as she had done all night, and continued to run her fingers through Adams hair.

“I think Josephine's fine right where she’s at, Serg,” Adam snapped back, enjoying to no end the feeling of her scarlet nails rubbing lightly on his scalp. He also decided fuck it and popped the one tab he’d been inspecting. 

Serg was right. Within half a cigarette this concoction was doing something exceptional. Adam could feel it first on his scalp, within the fingers shuffling so gently through his hair. They felt more like the gentlest of lightly-scratching flesh-combs now, and that intense feeling of such simple physical pleasure began to course and wrap around the entire aura of his being. He felt as though his soul was enveloped in the softest and most tender grasp of the most gloriously beautiful creature alive. 

Adam turned his head and looked up again at the gleaming moon, so large. A supermoon apparently, tonight. She appeared as beautiful as Josephine with her extremities running through his spirit. The moon then became Josephine. She appeared beautifully curled in on herself, in a fetal position, then began melting her glowing moon-flesh down the deep blue midnight sky. Her luminescent alabaster tissues cascaded in yellowing-white streams down to the earth, streams that congealed on the dead winter treetops like old milk, but reformed in the backseat as the silent beauty still stroking his hair. 

In that same instant Serg also saw the moon dripping, but much differently. He saw the moon ripping open from the center and swallowing itself whole, taking the entirety of the night sky with it, leaving nothing but an empty, starless, all-consuming abyss. In that moment, Serg felt a pang of true nothingness explode deep inside his solar-plexus. Looking down to the road ahead, the endless black ice covering the blacktop had become the frightening grey slop that Serg saw sluice down from the no longer present moon. He pushed down harder on the gas pedal, believing that he was feeling the viscous moon-goo slowing up the mobility of his car.  

The vehicle made a highly uncomfortable jolt as it seemed to take on a life of its own upon the sticky smear of black ice and the ever blinding moon glow that seemed to be rising into a streaming flood into Serg’s new reality.

A deluge which Serg had become completely fascinated with and horrified by, as he took in the entirety of his worthless life of scamming and scheming, of deceit and destruction of self, loved ones, and the very nature of not just earth but certain fabrics of the cosmos altogether. It played before him on the same order of the deathlike silent blast of the Tsar Bomba flash explosion, very quickly; and it played slowly like a grainy old film of every wrong he’d ever done, throughout every current of this torrential downpour, with his whole life caught flash frozen in the moment before his twisting, bleeding eyes. 

It had been unnoticeable to Adam (who himself was altogether enjoying a much more pleasant bequeathing of these strange knowledges, for to him that is exactly what they were) until the hydroplaning swerve of the car pulled him suddenly out of the moon...out of Josephine...and Josephine out of him. 

“Serg, pay attention, man!” Adam barked, Josephine's serpentine fingers pulling slowly back from Adam’s head. Adam, feeling an almost unnatural rejection of sorts from Josephine, due to the rather noticeable change in Serg’s gross demeanor, did not like what he was now feeling. Adam kept looking at his friend, watching Serg’s features become something ugly, physically devolving while simultaneously quite rapidly aging. Serg had substantially taken on the strange and ghastly features of a malformed Progeria child. Adam watched as Serg’s eyes sunk back, his face became withered and gaunt, and an encephalitis-like bulbous growth protruded from his cranium becoming at least three sizes larger, not unlike some misshapen and hairy watermelon. 

In a panic, Adam pulled down the passenger side sun visor and checked his own features in the mirror. He touched his face, felt his lips, eyes, cheeks, pulling roughly at his skin...he was fine, at least objectively. Mentally, spiritually, and emotionally the wondrous feelings of a long-needed simple pleasure had gone. The sorrow that had always plagued Adam’s soul had returned, roaring with confusion, and was all that remained. Perhaps, all that ever was. It was a dreadful, sickening feeling of disgust, resentment, and caustic self-loathing. 

The moon was now no more than a charcoal grey and crackling ball in the sky, the beauteous streaming glow of otherworldly flow Adam had witnessed only moments ago was now raining down like mostly hardened plaster and chunks of chalky drywall. In fact, inside the vehicle, the general feeling of adventurous fun and excitement had passed. Now it felt like a seething, slow-burning madness, as Adam too saw the flood in the road, and began pleading with the giggling, crying and deformed Serg, vile to behold in this new bodily countenance of his veracious humanity, to stop the car. 

It seemed like Serg was desperately trying to answer Adam, but his voice was far from anything the human range of vocal sounds was ordinarily capable of. Blood was streaming down Serg’s ever-expanding cranium as the skin was beginning to split, tear and fall away like thinly thawed beige portions of Steak-Um. A stench of rancid decay accompanied the prevalent feeling of unstoppable doom overtaking the now predominantly moribund atmosphere. 

Adam looked over to Josephine, desperately wanting her fingers back in his hair, just to feel that brief, strange and eternal bliss that gave him the will to come back. It made him feel alive, better, human...it felt so much like what he deeply longed for. 

But she was now curled up in the back seat, her face covered. It seemed she was sobbing, shaking. Adam mustered the faculty to call out, “Are...you okay...”, finding difficulty within his own capacity to use language, odd chitters emanating from his lips, but not the words he was trying to say. 

Josephine said nothing, made not a sound, but seemed to understand him nonetheless. Without looking up, she handed her opiated hash pipe to Adam, who took it, anticipating the sweet smokes contained within, and inhaled a deep, heavy toke, soothing his wracked and confused nerves slightly, but not enough to bring him back to... 

Then it hit him. The Xanax, in his pocket, is recognized for easing bad trips and moderating the effects of LSD. He popped both bars, roughly 4mgs of the strong benzodiazepine sedative. But this was not really LSD. This was something absolutely different, and the Alprazolam would do nothing to abate this in any way.

It felt like time had stopped, and so had the car. The Alprazolam was having no effect on Adam’s trip. He stepped out of the car and into the flood of the ruinations of lives that swirled dryly around his shins. He could feel a mist of images, icy cold, the vaguest of sensations. He could sense the Current. This was real. 

Adam watched as Serg hobbled out of the car, his body gaunt, streamlets of blood seeping in crimson rivulets down the entirety of his misshapen, horrendous figure. Serg leaned against his car for balance, his equilibrium off, and his cranium now so physically heavy as for him to have trouble holding it upright, an ungainly sight with his head lolling around involuntarily, in apparent pain. 

Adam slipped down to his knees, trying to cling to the car hood as tightly as possible. It was like he was being dragged down by the Current of his own envisioned mists. They were nowhere near as nefarious as Serg's, yet they weren't especially pleasant, either. 

Adam waded through the alternating viscosity of his own mists, aware of his own new reality-convergence taking place. Mok's paraphrased caveats, “Some doors open that never close, and some close forever–make your choice wisely,” roiled around in what was left of Adam’s logical, rational mind and his former perception of this reality. He felt as if his own equilibrium were slipping even as he found the translucent cinematography of the grainy-grey Current sweeping him under as well. 

This was the moment when two worlds became one. This was the Veil, the Otherside, and Adam knew he was caught there, perhaps always had been. He could no longer watch Serg as he glossled horrible sounds and continued mutating, altering, and deforming. Serg never knew his own soul, or if he did, it was not a good one, nor ever had been, and he lived that to the hilt.

But they both became very aware once the back door of the car opened. 

A sublime feminine figure stepped out; first a picture-perfect leg, followed by the other, wholly sensual and magnetic to the eye and mind. As Josephine stood revealed before them, she was wrapped in something that resembled a reflective brown cloak under the light of the supermoon. In one forceful flex of her body, this cloak crumbled away like the cheapest of Halloween plastics...it disintegrated just as the moon had in Adam’s bleary, disoriented eyes.

She stood before them, Idolamantis Diabolica, and she was real, physically tangible. This was indeed the Queen of the Manti, a being having survived for aeons untold. Legend of almost lost folklores, hidden away, enslaved to this world, largely against her will. Her beauty in this form, to Adam, was even more so than that of her once human skin. She glowed phosphorescent hues of purples, indigos, and blues that made him weep, for having inherited the beauty of all things incarnate. He could read the eternal pain in her glowing pink, neon Mantis Queen eyes. Adam full well knew he was beholden to a true, ancient Goddess.

Serg saw a monster, however, with a horrific green praying mantis head, not unlike that from some b-grade horror flick, yet a beast so hideous and maddening to behold as to cause him to let go of the car hood and be swept away in the turbulence of his own personal river Styx, comprised of a lifetime of nightmare mists, until he was forever lost, flesh stretching into a grey, 2D, doughy and endlessly looped nightmare hell. 

Sergio had indeed chosen his side. He had chosen it a long time ago. 

But Adam’s choice in this new reality of his was to crawl against the rough-flow Current of his mists, filled with not his friend's cruelties and deceits, but the sorrows and fears of a confounding and circumstantial life. 

He fought through a legacy of brutality to crawl and tear asunder his own monsters of the mist, rushing and gnashing at him like the vaporous celluloid nightmare they were, through a lifetime trapped inside the bleak and eternal night of a lost yet ancient soul, and into the ever comforting Eye of the Queen. Reaching out for and grabbing gently her pupil, and stretching it like a loose rubber gasket with the viscosity of Silly Putty, he opened wide the fabric of all there is, and allowed himself to be swallowed into this new eternity.

As the hours passed and the most ravishing of pink winter dawns arose, Josephine watched from the woods as rescue vehicles filled with confounded workers looked upon an empty old car, with three open doors, and one of the most nightmarish, grotesquely mutilated corpses they had ever seen; a veritable monstrosity. The local law enforcement knew exactly what this was, but never why or how. Not their business. Ancient local legends and folklore they’d long known of told them better. Stay away.

She watched, then turned, so sad and mortified, to return once again to her own cruelly invoked existence into this world. Sorrowful at what she had witnessed, at what she had done, what she would have to do again. Mournful that she had never asked for this. A Goddess turned whore. The Queen of the Manti.

She wasn’t a carrier of the bloodline, she was the bloodline. She was the Mantis Queen, The living Idol Of The Dark Mantis, having witnessed with ancient eyes all manner of human horrors and monstrosities for what felt like endless aeons. It was not her choice to be here. Back to a madman, like most seemed to be, she went.

Josephine walked away, wondering if she would ever encounter a human being able to withstand the soul of an insect. Deep down, however, she truly believed that Adam had chosen wisely.

 

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SPEED DEMON

by Shaun Lawton

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