Thirteen - The Red Satin
A series of melodramatic conflicts and encounters featuring a talking fish, a man in a satin hood, a mechanical bed, flying sharks, a recluse octogenarian, an overweight magician and a cast of thousands.
Musical score by the Agoraphobic Orchestra.
Cinematography by a creature composed of children’s nightmares.
“Let ‘weirdness’ by thy catch-cry!!” - Red Satin Manifesto, 8067 AD.
Introduction
Molopod reached out delicately with one of her several hundred tentacles and carefully tucked the four bestial faces of her amalgamated childling into the soft folds of its sentient sheets.
“But mamma,” the fanged upper left hand face of her amalgamated child cried, “how do you expect us to sleep if we haven’t had a story!!?”
“A story,” Molopod sighed, “come now my pseudo childling, surely the combination of your disparately spliced genetic growth material places your internal body chemistry at a temporal development much beyond that of any lifeform that would require a story before bed.”
“But you promised,” growled the serpentine detachment in the lower part of the childling’s head, “you signed a contract.”
“You agreed to all terms and conditions,” continued the fanged upper part emphatically.
“And you signed it in blood,” came the high pitched squeal of the bat like face from the upper right hand part of the creature’s head.
“Not my own blood,” Molopod argued persuasively.
“The blood of a dismembered virgin corpse is just as legally binding as your own,” piped in the fourth face of the amalgamated childling, a little wolf visage with wide red eyes and jet black hair. Against that logic there was very little Molopod could do but concede.
“Very well,” she acquiesced, smiling slightly as her admission induced the response of an excited panting from her childling. “Alright then, so, why don’t you tell me what story you would like to hear.”
“Read to us about The Clockwork Men,” cried the wolf face with abounding enthusiasm.
“No,” came the serpentine reply, “I want to hear The Tales of Stranggore.”
“Chronicles in Black,” cried the bat face emphatically. “Chronicles in Black.”
But it was the voice of the fanged face that decided the argument for all.
“I want to hear about the Red Satin,” came the voice, “can we hear some more about him?” And with the suggestion came silence from the others, a silence followed quickly by cries of ‘oh yes’ and ‘yes please’ and ‘let’s indeed’. Secretly Molopod was glad at this, for the Red Satin was her favourite too, and this way the story reading would not be so much of a chore to her after all.
“It just so happens,” Molopod smiled, “that I procured for us a new Red Satin adventure earlier today, transliterated straight from the entrails of the human pie we ate for dinner.”
“Yaay,” the childling cried, “read us the story, read us the story!!”
“Very well,” Molopod replied, gathering the bloodstained words up with her several hundred tentacles and preparing to regurgitate them out over her spawn.
“This story is called The Glass Menagerie. We begin with Part One – The Great Fish Heist…”
*
Part One
The Great Fish Heist
The snaking tendril seemed to have a life all of its own, green shoots waving back and forth as the serrated edge of the pod opened and closed hungrily. One might imagine that it was not a sweet and sticky sap substance which oozed from the opening, but rather the threads of hungry saliva. A soft purring sound came from the direction of the plant, as though it could sense its prey nearby and was readying itself to feed. Walter Geoffries eyed the thing nervously and for the fourth time in as many minutes asked himself what he’d ever done to deserve this.
“Now my good man, one might think that the inherently reasonable nature of my request should not prove so taxing upon your soul, and yet I sense a certain consternation behind your watery gaze. I shall ask you but one more time, sir, and if the answer is not forthcoming you may consider yourself reassigned in life to the position of plant fertilizer rather earlier than I’m sure you might have otherwise intended.”
The voice of the speaker was slightly muffled by the hood that the man wore, a red satin hood which hung loosely over the contours of his face. There were no openings in the material, no eye holes to see by, but Walter had discovered quickly enough that the stranger had no trouble in knowing exactly where he was and what he was doing. The tuxedo the stranger wore might have seemed almost normal if it were not for the long blood red cape that draped over it. And then, of course, there was always the plant on his lapel. Walter had often seen a variety of characters dressed to the nines with a flower decoratively positioned in a convenient buttonhole. This fellow had gone in for a new fashion statement, however, opting instead for the ugly green of the Venus flytrap, and a rather nasty and active strain of the plant at that. It swayed and snapped from its position on his lapel, searching this way and that with its slavering jaws, pausing only at those moments when the hooded man rapped his ornate cane upon the ground, the metallic thud operating as punctuation to his over-wieldy sentences. One could only begin to wonder at what secrets might be hid behind this man’s satin hood.
“So, my good man, if you please, tell me where they took the fish, hmmm.”
Walter began, very quietly, to gibber out all he knew.
*
Interview Extract Number One
MF: So you’re, what, some sort of investigator then?
RS: A psychic investigator, yes, but one well versed in the deadly arts of woodwork and horticulture as well.
MF: Horticulture?
RS: Please, let us not dwell on such dark things here. I am, after all, here to enact a rescue upon your person.
MF: A rescue?
RS: But of course. The Glass Menagerie has, some have claimed, lost the decadent beauty of its overwhelming charm since your person was spirited away from its glorious confines. I have been sent to fetch you homeward.
MF: Look, you’re giving me a headache here, did you bring any aspirin with you?
RS: Alas no, but I believe there might well be a lint covered barley sugar in my lower left pocket, would that suffice?
MF: No.
RS: Just as well, for I now find that it is not a barley sugar after all, but instead the dried skin of an eviscerated field mouse. I say we save that for supper, hmmm?
End interview extract
*
The leather bonds cut tightly into the wrists of Madam Decoupage in what she found to be a most delightful way. She formed a smile of perfect pleasure on her painted red lips and rubbed her legs against each other with a moan. She was well aware that her dark and studded attire was not the fashion domain of all, but could, none-the-less, not refrain from attempting, whenever possible, to sell the benefits of her dress sense to all and sundry.
“Come now darlink, did you not know ze tuxedo is of yesterday? I have a spare set of leathers in my cupboard that would be just ze perfect fit for your form. Yes, I have ze zippered mask and all. Why not come out of ze dark ages darlink and dress like a modern man?”
The red cloth of his satin hood rustled slightly as he turned to face Madam Decoupage, his features hidden but the reprimanding tone evident in the sound of his voice.
“Your sense of fashion is, I fear, utterly at odds with that of my own. Your attempts to persuade me of the benefits of your peculiar brand of sartorial perversity are akin to having one’s evil twin from an alternate dimension offering them a shirt for Christmas. I fear the size will never fit in an instance such as this and the conclusion that should most swiftly be reached and assumed for the benefit of all is, quite simply, that we are creatures both dissimilar and unalike. Let us celebrate our differences and leave it at that, hmmmm?”
Madam Decoupage stretched luxuriously (or at least, as far as she could considering the constriction of her leather bindings) and gave a cat like yawn.
“As you wish darlink. So, to what do I owe zis pleasure?”
With a resounding thud the man rapped his ornate cane upon the ground in front of the prone woman, leaning forward to examine her more closely through the obscuring gauze of his red hood. She was clad in skin-tight leather, arrayed across a large bed to which she was ingeniously tied with a number of leather straps. But this was no ordinary bed. It was Madam Decoupage’s famous bed of fancy, an ornate mechanical appliance which combined all the modern conveniences with a devilish array of engines both of pleasure and torture (and there are those who claimed that Madam Decoupage could not tell the difference between the two). The story went that it was from within this bed of fancy that the leather clad Madam ruled over her entire criminal organization. There were those who claimed that she had not left the bed since she crafted it five years ago, not even when her minions came in to clean the sheets. Of course, the hooded man knew all of this already, and he also knew of the fatal flaw that was this woman’s undoing.
“I have heard tell,” he whispered, “that this bed of yours combines the sacred arts of pain and pleasure in such an exquisite way that none can savour of its delicacy without their heart exploding from sheer excitement. I have heard tell that in matters of suicide the bed of fancy is the most sought after method due to its reputation as the ‘ultimate way to go’. I also know that you, my dear Decoupage, are the only person ever to have survived its complex mechanical embrace, that indeed, you have survived it for over five years with no sign of stopping.”
Madam Decoupage gave a sultry smile and licked her red lips.
“It is ze truth darlink. Why do you not join me here and find out for yourself?”
“An intriguing notion,” the man hissed, “but I do have a better one. Why don’t I see what happens if I turn the wretched thing off, hmmmm?”
And with a flick of his ornate cane the satin clad stranger knocked the power cord from its socket and saw the bed of fancy shiver into silence. The effect on Madam Decoupage was instantaneous.
“No,” she fretted urgently, “no, the painful pleasure. It has stopped. Please, you must plug it back in. Please darlink, I can’t stand it!!”
Once more the ornate cane rapped down, and the red hood leaned low over the distressed lady’s face.
“Indeed. I encountered one of your henchmen earlier, a fellow by the name of Walter Geoffries. He was most helpful in outlining to me the latest dastardly scheme that you’d cooked up, and where I might find you.” The snaking tendrils on the man’s lapel seemed to form into the shape of smiles. “I could not help but be uncertain about some of the aspects of this operation, and certainly I felt somewhat bewildered that even you would stoop so low. Certainly a more lengthy explanation invoking the reasoning behind your inexplicable actions would be greatly appreciated, but there is one question above all others for which I must press you most firmly for an answer.”
“Please, anything,” quivered the lady, “please, what do you want to know?”
“Just where on earth did you take that fish, hmmmm?”
*
Interview Extract Number Two
RS: There are a total of four separate stories dealing with my origin. The first is simple, direct and to the point, a feasible notion involving the combination of a lightning strike and a chemical spill. The believability of the notion, however, does in all probability preclude the assumption that it could in any way possibly be true. The second involves the dark arts and leaves the suggestion that I am either a man in the guise of a demon or a demon in the guise of a man. For myself I might add that clothes make the man, so as long as I remain sartorially balanced I’d say neither option need be quite so frightful. The third story, even more terrible than the second, paints me as a metaphysical embodiment of the human subconscious, a by-product of dreaming minds, the shared union of many sleeper’s dreams bringing forth the creature of their slumber into the waking world. An intriguing notion.
MF: And the fourth story?
RS: The fourth theory states that I do not exist at all, that I am in fact merely a character in some third rate work of fiction. It seems the least likely scenario, which means that, most likely, it is true.
MF: Where does that leave me then?
RS: Why, it leaves you as you’ve always been, good sir, a fish out of water. Now then, my plant needs watering, so how about martini’s all round, hmmm?
End interview extract
*
The sword sliced through the air like a song, narrowly missing the edge of the red cloak as the satin hooded man dodged to the side. He thrust his cane out sideways as he did so, lightly parrying the edge of his adversary’s blade as he balanced his feet carefully and prepared for the next attack.
“It is a pity, I find, that the better class of villain is no longer content to give contest through the gentle arts of metaphor and hyperbole. In my hey-day I would often partake in the most breath-taking of linguistic battles, eviscerating my adversaries with nothing more than my sharp tongue and rapier wit.”
The sword once more sliced towards him, but this time the satin hooded stranger was ready for it, blocking with a twist of his cane and unbalancing his opponent. He watched, unmoving, as the swordsman teetered on the edge of the tightrope on which they both balanced so precariously. The swordsman windmilled his arms desperately as he tried to regain his footing.
“I say, those crocodiles below certainly do look peckish. I hope someone has had the foresight to give them a decent dinner, else I fear the poor beasts might well be hoping for some snack to… drop in, hmmm?”
The Venus flytrap on his lapel snapped hungrily as the collection of crocodiles arranged far beneath the tightrope looked up hopefully at the unstable swordsman.
“I understand your predicament good sir, really I do,” came the muffled voice from beneath the red hood, “but Madam Decoupage sold you out readily enough so I don’t see why you should be willing to risk your own neck to see her plan to completion, hmmm.”
“You don’t understand,” the swordsman cried as he flailed wildly upon the rope, arms still swinging for balance, “it wasn’t her plan, it was never her plan. It was merely convenient to let her think it was.”
“Then who? Who is behind this diabolical enterprise? Just why has somebody gone to all this trouble? And where the devil is that fish, hmmm?”
“Don’t you see,” the swordsman screamed, “it really is quite obvious, the whole thing is just an enormous smokescreen, a daring cover for the…” But it was then that, typically, the swordsman lost his balance and tumbled screaming into the waiting jaws of the crocodiles so far below. The Venus flytrap looked rather disappointed, its green hue a definite shade of envy as it watched the ravenous reptiles gorging themselves on their monstrous meal.
“Intriguing,” came the voice from beneath the satin hood, “now, just how do I get down from here, hmmm?”
*
Interview Extract Number Three
MF: So what you’re saying here is that you came all this way to… what? Take me back to the Glass Menagerie?
RS: The Glass Menagerie, unless I am greatly mistaken, is your home. To restore you to your proper place of residence would seem to be the correct procedure, not to say a welcome relocation on your part.
MF: And what is it, exactly, that you know about the Glass Menagerie?
RS: Not over much, just the standard rumours and folk stories. And, of course, a big fat cheque from the proprietor hiring my services to track you down and rescue you.
MF: I’m sorry to say this, but I think you’ve been set up.
RS: Curses. I hate it when that happens. Are you going to drink that martini? If not I’ll give it to my plant.
End interview extract
*
The sound of an ornate cane rapping rhythmically upon the ground was the only indication that a living thing existed anywhere in the great golden valley of the sun. Yellow sand and yellow stones shone golden beneath the yellow beams of a yellow sun. Across the bleak landscape was scattered a trail of breadcrumbs which, dutifully and diligently, a man was following. He tapped his cane upon the ground as he walked, his long red cape billowing out behind him in the slight breeze, still wearing his satin hood despite the heat and the inhospitable terrain. As he came to each breadcrumb he delicately scooped it up, brushed the sand from it and fed it to the ravenous plant which hung wilting from his lapel.
“Not really our ideal form of locality is it? Nor would I have said a yellow desert was the most likely place to find a fish either, but the trail leads here so I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see, hmmmm?”
The snapping jaws of the Venus flytrap whispered a reply, but whatever it might have been was lost on the wind as the man stepped over a rise and found himself face to face with a vast building. Nestled into the lee of a vast yellow cliff face, the building was instantly recognizable due to its colour, a deep and vibrant blue unlike anything else in that land of scorching sun.
“Well now, this looks more like the sort of place where our quarry might be located.”
Above the vast blue building hung a sign written in an ornate script and decorated with elegant swirls. It read simply ‘Aquarium’. The hooded stranger followed the crumbed trail downward and into the building.
*
Interview Extract Number Four
MF: If you truly are interested in my origin you can find it in that book there beside you.
RS: The Bible?
MF: Indeed. Just open it up to that page I’ve marked and read what it says.
RS: Very well. Ahem… “And on that day that the animals were made flesh and given to the world the Lord’s Word sculpted another creature, a special creature, and he called the beast Fish. ‘Ye shall never age nor wither but shall live from this dawn of ages until the end of days’, spake the Lord, ‘and ye shall witness much and all that ye witness shall ye remember like a sponge that drinks oceans and still keeps absorbing. Ye shall be the memory of the world and ye shall be called the Memory Fish.’ So spake the Lord and the fish looked up at him and said: ‘Eh?’.”
MF: And that is how I came to be.
RS: Hmmmm. Intriguing.
MF: You find my origin intriguing?
RS: No, I find it intriguing that the bit about you has been written into the margin of the book. In crayon.
MF: Ah. Well. I couldn’t find a pen.
End interview extract
*
The snapping jaws of the beast sliced past his shoulder as the satin hooded stranger threw himself to the floor and sneezed vigorously.
“Great heaven,” he cried in consternation, “as if I don’t have enough to contend with in dodging the circling jaws of death, it now becomes apparent to me that I must also be allergic to sharks.”
If this revelation meant anything to the plant upon the man’s lapel it gave no indication, preferring instead to keep its twisted tendrils focused upon the circling mass of flying sharks that glided through the air in the auditorium above them. The hooded man dodged again as another of the beasts sailed by, a little too close for comfort, jaws snapping wildly as its multiple rows of jagged teeth glinted with a hungry glow. With a single swift motion, hampered only by a stifled sneeze, the mysterious hooded individual removed his cloak and threw if deftly over one of the monstrous creatures. He watched, satisfied, as the beast blindly collided with two others of its kind, taking all three into a devastating spin which saw them crashing most forcefully into the curved rim of a distant wall.
“I find such displays most satisfying indeed,” the hooded fellow guffawed with good humour as he thumped an approaching shark on the nose with the end of his cane. “And now (achoo!) at last to assail our quarry with a well-timed entrance and politically correct rescue, hmmmm.” Dramatically rolling across the expanse of the floor, dodging snapping jaws all the way, the tuxedo clad man sailed theatrically out of the flying shark room, slamming the auditorium door firmly closed behind him.
*
Interview Extract Number Five
RS: So what you’re saying is… no.
MF: I never said that.
RS: You never said yes either.
MF: All I’m saying is, you’ve been set up. This whole thing is the zoo-keeper’s idea of a con.
RS: Indeed, which is why I would suggest a counter con. Let’s give the old buzzard what for, hmmmm?
MF: You’re suggesting that we join forces?
RS: Why not? What have we got to lose?
MF: Our lives?
RS: Ah well, I lost mine ages ago, but I’m sure it’ll turn up again, probably at the back of the fridge or under the sofa. But in the meantime, why don’t we just get on with it and go storm the bastille, hmmm?
End interview extract
*
The hooded man leaned over the spherical bowl of glass and mused at the creature inside. A twisted, ancient thing of gills and scales, big eyes wide and staring from out of the shallow depths of its fishbowl. The primal majesty of the beast was lessened somewhat by the small plastic castle situated beneath it on the base of the tank.
“Greetings,” the hooded man bellowed into the water, “you must be the Memory Fish. I am known as the Red Satin and this green fellow on my lapel is my sidekick, Toby the Mystereon. I’m a psychic investigator. I’ve been sent here to rescue you.”
The great fish turned its ancient eyes upward to take in the sight above it, the strange looming bulk of the Red Satin. Bubbles escaped from its mouth as it worked its lips together, forming the only word that was truly appropriate for this most unlikely of circumstances.
“Eh?” it said, and beneath his hood the Red Satin smiled.
What followed was a garbled and confusing conversation, a few martini’s, and a brief nibble on an eviscerated mouse carcass. What resulted was the following set of conclusions.
The Red Satin had been sent to rescue a kidnapped fish that belonged in the Glass Menagerie.
The Memory Fish had never even been to the Glass Menagerie.
The Red Satin was ready to take the fish home.
The fish already was home, having been happily ensconced in the desert-based Aquarium for some fourteen centuries.
Only one conclusion was possible – the Red Satin had been had, duped by false clues, lame villains, a big cheque and a trail of breadcrumbs into almost kidnapping an innocent fish.
“Then we are agreed,” the Red Satin smiled, watching Toby the Mystereon swallowing the rest of the mouse skin he’d found in his pocket. “We’ll join forces and put a stop to the kidnapping of innocent creatures. We’ll march out from here for liberty and justice. Together, we’ll destroy the monstrosity that is the Glass Menagerie once and for all.”
“Absolutely,” burbled the fish in reply.
“Excellent,” the hooded man replied. “But before we do, I think I’ll bank that cheque.”
End of Part One.
*
“And that,” Molopod sighed, “is the end of Part One. We shall leave it there and continue with the next part tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!!” screamed the four faces of her childling in unison. “We cannot wait until tomorrow to discover what happens next, we must know now!!”
“There is no way to know now,” Molopod stated firmly, “I only had enough entrails to transliterate the first portion of the piece, and there are no more dead bodies in our pantry. You must wait until tomorrow when I pick some more up from the shop.”
“Now now now,” cried the childling, “now now now.”
“If you are good and quiet you can come with me to the shop tomorrow,” came the mother’s calm reply, “and if you’re very good I’ll even get you some fingers to gnaw on.”
“Now now now,” cried the childling, “now now now.”
“Stop that at once,” Molopod cried in consternation, “there will be no eyeballs for breakfast for any of your faces if you keep up with that behaviour.”
“Want to know now,” the childling cried fiercely, bat voice and snake voice and fanged voice and dog voice now joined together in their ragged anger and fierce determination. “Need to know now!!”
“I already told you,” Molopod cried, “there are no more entrails!! Without more entrails I can’t summon up the rest of the story.”
“Then we must get some more entrails,” the fanged face snarled. “We must get more entrails now!!”
“Tomorrow,” Molopod muttered, fear creeping into her voice as she backed away from her amalgamated childling, “tomorrow I say!!” But she saw that it was no good, there was no way to reason with her story-obsessed spawn. She should have known better, once it scented even the title to a book nothing could sate the beast’s hunger for it. The only thing that would sedate her childling would be the completion of the tale, and she knew it. Unless she could distract it somehow.
“How about we all play a board game?” Molopod suggested desperately. “Who’s for Hungry, hungry Hippologetic-cadavisors?”
Mention of the board game was enough to give the childling pause for a moment, which was all the distraction that Molopod needed. She sent a swift signal to her childling’s sentient sheets, a signal with very specific instructions. Molopod’s fourteen hearts began to slow their frantic rate as she watched the sheet spread out over her childling and pin it to the bed.
“There now,” she crooned softly, “off to sleep my dear, there’s a good complex biological lifeform.”
But as she watched the sheet began to stretch, the brute force of her offspring tensing against its surface, straining the interwoven DNA strands that formed the starched white fabric creature. The sheet made a high-pitched keening cry as its surface bulged and buckled against the childling’s rampant rage. Molopod was turning to run when she heard the sheet shred behind her and the malevolent four-faced monster that was her child leapt from the nursery bed and launched itself at her throat. Her throat being composed mostly of a complex ideological concept rather than biological matter made it difficult for the creature to get a grip on it, but the childling was nothing if not tenaciously persistent.
“Please,” Molopod stuttered, “I’ve already told you, I can’t give you another story tonight – there aren’t any more entrails…”
“Don’t worry mother,” the fanged face grinned.
“We believed you when you told us that before,” the bat face continued.
“No entrails there are, we know, we know,” the dog face growled.
“But we can always make more of those,” came the serpentine hiss of the final face. Molopod barely had a chance to scream as her childling dug its claws into her belly and began to rip her insides out…
Soon the gutted corpse of the creature’s mother lay strewn across the expanse of the nursery floor. The occasional tentacle still twitched spasmodically, but there was no doubt about it, Molopod was most certainly dead. The four faces of her childling watched eagerly as her entrails twined out from the hole in her stomach. They steamed a green mist as they plopped upon the floor, something which made the childling’s group smile even wider.
Quickly it set to work, twisting and turning and spinning and twining, working the entrails with dexterous fingers until they began to take a shape, to show a pattern.
“Here,” one of the faces cried, “it is here, Part Two. I have found it!!”
Eagerly the childling knelt beside the steaming entrails, watching with wide eyes as words began to form before them and the story continued.
*
Part Two
The Magician’s Muse
The Magnificent Martuk ran one hand absently over his potbelly while the other tilted a can of beer up to his thirsty lips. For the eighth time that day he wondered how he had gotten so fat, wondered at how he had gotten so old, wondered at how he had ended up here, on some forgotten asteroid in a lost spiral of the cosmos. He could have left of course, could have hauled up his magic cabinets, his wands and mirrors, his smoke and glitter, could have sauntered off in search of a better place, somewhere to re-launch his career, to once again cement the name of Martuk the Magnificent as the universe’s greatest magician. He mused on it while he had another sip of beer. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe he should start exercising too, a few sit-ups to take the edge off his rotundity. Yeah. Tomorrow. Exercise and a new location. He’d soon be great again, soon be reintroduced to the universe at large as the greatest spellsmith of all time. Tomorrow. He’d do it all tomorrow. Satisfied with his procrastination Martuk the Mellow leaned back ever further in his reclining chair, sucking back ever more of his alcohol as he looked up to the star-studded sky above, wistfully watching as comets chased their own tails and stars exploded in wondrous shades of magenta and puce. He had started to doze, his eyes easing shut, when the sound of a large thud brought him back to full consciousness.
There was a large pink bunny standing before him, and she had just dumped a large suitcase to the ground, causing the noise that had so rudely awakened him. In his slightly befuddled state of mind it took Martuk a moment or two to take in the tableau before him, uncertainty crossing his features as he looked at the rabbit and muttered: “Sarah?”
“I’ve had enough,” the rabbit exploded in a high-pitched voice. “You just sit there, day after day, drinking all the time. I can’t take it any more Marty, I just can’t. I’m going back to my mother.”
“What!!” Martuk the Mighty thundered his surprise. “What are you talking about Sarah? What are you saying exactly? You’re saying you’re leaving me?!!”
Sarah cast her eyes at the ground and twitched her nose nervously.
“This is hard for me too Marty,” she whispered, “do you think it could ever be easy to make a decision like this? But I know it’s the right thing, for both of us.”
“No, no you can’t. I… what about the act Sarah? How can I perform the act on my own?”
“Ha,” Sarah threw her ears back haughtily, “what act? We haven’t performed the act in over a year Marty. No-one comes here – you know that no-one comes here!! That’s why you stay here, because you’re afraid to perform. Ever since you turned that child into a condom by mistake you’ve never…”
“I told you never to mention that!!!” came the angered reply.
“Fine. I won’t. I won’t mention anything ever again – because I’m leaving!!”
Martuk the Misty-eyed thought back to the early years, the feel of Sarah’s soft fur against his hand as he pulled her from the folds of his silk top hat. That magical night they’d spent together on Spartok Eleven, dinner by candlelight, Sarah’s tail twitching as he leaned over to kiss her… How could it all end like this?
“Sarah please, I love you baby, you know I do, please, don’t leave me, not like this…”
He saw the hurt in her eyes, but beneath it was a strength of resolve that he could not sway. A tear trickled down her furry cheek as she turned from him.
“You know where I’ll be. If you want me back all you have to do is follow me.” She hoisted up the suitcase, a choked sob emanating from her. “I love you too Marty,” she whispered. Then, quickly, she hopped away. And he was alone. Alone. Martuk the Miserable.
He sat there, for a day and a night, unmoving. He should go after her. He wanted to. But how could he? How could he leave, just like that? These things took time. Planning. Exercise. Practice. He couldn’t do anything until tomorrow, he’d just have to wait until tomorrow. But he knew it was just an excuse. Knew that Sarah had been right, that his tomorrow would never come. Knew that he had to do something to change this life that he had fallen into. He would go after her, woo her back and reclaim his place as the greatest magician the universe had ever seen. He would do it, and not tomorrow, he’d do it right now – today!! With a sudden strength and defiance Martuk the Maligned got to his feet, ready to right wrongs and fix faults. He’d pack the rocket today, right now. He’d follow after Sarah, in hyperdrive he might even catch her hopper before she reached her mother’s place. Yes, that was what he would do, and he knew in his heart that everything would be alright now, for finally, at last, something was happening.
It was at that moment that a gigantic mechanical spider fell on his head with a resounding crash.
“Ghhharrghhhhooommmeooarghhhhh!!!” Martuk the Molested screamed incoherently. He was rather surprised, however, when in response the spider made a sloshing noise and said: “Bugger.”
“Myself I always manage to land upon my feet, but then I only have the two of them to worry about while you seem to have accrued a solid eight, hmmmm.” The voice came from somewhere behind Matruk the Miffed, a rich and cultured voice, although slightly muffled. “But this is an interesting reversal of fortune, for it is usually the eight legs who are squashed by those with two feet rather than the other way around, hmmmm.”
“Get it offa me,” shouted Martuk the Mournful. “Get it away from me, I can’t stand spiders!!”
“Then this is your lucky day, my dear fellow, for this is no spider, but is in fact a fish, hmmm.”
It was such an unexpected reply that Martuk the Mollified could scarcely utter a word as the unseen stranger hoisted the eight-legged thing off him and helped him to his feet. The stranger turned out to be a large man wearing a red satin hood over his head and an angry green plant on his lapel. In shock Martuk the Manhandled turned toward the giant spider to find that it was indeed a fish, a rather ugly looking fish in a glass bowl, to which a series of eight mechanical legs had been attached.
“Who on earth are you people?” muttered Martuk the Mystified in a whisper.
“I am the Red Satin,” replied the man in the hood, “and these are my companions, Toby the Mystereon and the Memory Fish. We’re on our way to the Glass Menagerie and we need your rocket.”
“Huh?” came the largely unintelligible reply.
“We’ve been asteroid hopping, you see, and comet riding, but it’s all rather slow and we’d rather get there sooner than later, unfinished business and all that, I’m sure you understand. So, when we saw your rocket down here we thought we’d stop by and discuss terms. I can give you a very good trade-in discount you know, hmmmm.”
“No, I’m afraid not.” The statement was far stronger than Martuk thought was possible, given the circumstances. Hearing his own voice sounding so firm and final, after years of indecision and hiding from the world, gave him a surge of inner strength and a sense of self he’d all but forgotten was possible. “I’m afraid I need the rocket,” he continued, “to win back my fiancé and to reclaim my place as the greatest magician the universe has ever seen.”
There was a silence then, only broken by a muttered “bugger” from the Memory Fish and the tapping of the hooded man’s cane.
“In that case,” the muffled voice of the Red Satin mused, “as one magician to another, I challenge you to a duel of magic. The winner claims the rocket, the loser stays here. What say you sir, hmmmm?”
This was unexpected, but Martuk quickly realized that he could not refuse. A challenge from one magician to another was, according to the codes of magical conduct, not to be refused under any circumstance. However, the more he thought about it the more Martuk realized that he wanted to duel. He felt power and resolve coursing through himself again and for the first time in a long time he felt alive.
“I accept,” Martuk the Manic cried in a loud voice, and with a single command he summoned his wand. He had only used it lately as a back-scratcher and to stir his tea, but still, it flew to his hand without hesitation. He felt the magic flowing through him, energy building, and with a wave of his wand he summoned all his old tricks. A pack of cards came alive and danced through the air before him. Purple lights sparkled around his body as he lifted from the ground, floating toward his opponent. A mist was rising all around and the arcane howling of untamed beasts was loud in his ears. A ring of mirrors rose from the ground in a circle around them and Martuk the Mighty saw himself reflected again and again, once more strong and certain, once more wondrous and glorious, once more the greatest magician the universe had ever seen. Doused with power and ready to do battle Martuk moved in toward his opponent, prepared for a magical duel like nothing that had ever been seen before.
It was then that the Red Satin swung his cane in an arc and bashed Martuk over the head with it. As he slipped into the dark folds of unconsciousness Martuk heard the following words spoken.
“Well then, I guess that means I win, hmmmm?”
When he came to Martuk found himself alone. His rocket was gone and the asteroid was a mess, covered in discarded playing cards, broken mirrors and a foul smelling purple smoke. He looked upon the devastation and sighed loudly. Things never went quite the way you thought they would, that was for sure.
“Maybe it’s time to take up another profession,” muttered Martuk the Morbid. “I always wanted to be a zookeeper.” He looked up at the sky above him, at the comets chasing their own tails and the stars exploding in colours of magenta and puce, and he thought of Sarah. “Well then,” he thought, “asteroid hopping it is. Or maybe I can catch a comet.” Once more he looked at the splendour of the sky. “It’s a long way home,” he said out loud. “I guess I’d better get started.”
Ten minutes later the asteroid was empty of life. The only signs that anyone had ever been there were a torn joker card, a broken mirror and a tiny paw print in the dust.
End of Part Two
*
Part Three
Menagerie’s Fall
Reginald awoke with pangs of arthritis running along his leg, wishing for the fourth time that week that there was some other method of transportation apart from his trusty jet pack. Back in the old days when he had first started setting up his collection he had loved his gleaming chrome propulsion unit, energy coursing from it and catapulting him across the landscape of his world. He still loved it of course, but at eighty-eight years of age the g-forces always gave his arthritis hell the next day.
Rising from the couch where he’d dozed off some hours before, Reginald moved toward the great glass window that took up an entire wall of his living room. Beyond it sparkled the magenta and purple landscape of Therupa, his planet, home of the famous Glass Menagerie. It had taken him a lifetime to assemble, the greatest collection of living treasures the universe had ever seen, and now it was almost complete. Just one final item to add and he would have a complete set – every creature, every species, every possible type of living organism from every planet of the known universe. The thought both pleased and chilled him. His life work was very nearly complete, but that left the question – what on earth would he do when it was all over?
He looked anxiously at the nearby timepiece, a large Grandfather clock, sculpted from ornate wood and bone. He had made it himself, utilizing wood taken from the great timber wolves of Coutrous Prima and bone from the trunk of one of the vast Cartilage Trees that grew in the Wouldos Belt. It had kept perfect time (in fourteen different time zones simultaneously) for over fourteen Therupan years. Right now it was counting down for him. Only six hours to go. Six short hours until the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, until the last part of his collection, the last creature for his Glass Menagerie, arrived. If all went according to plan. He decided not to dwell on it, but to take in a tour of the facilities instead. His rocket propulsion unit, once gleaming and silver, was now dented and covered in a red rust exterior. But it still worked like a charm. Knowing that he’d have arthritis pains for the rest of the day, Reginald shuffled into his jet pack, applied his respirator mask, opened the sunroof and soared up into the purple and magenta sky of his world.
The first stop was on a floating platform high above the surface of the planet, a disc of blue that rested in permanent orbit above the world of Therupa. Reginald looked down at the surface of the platform as it writhed and wriggled, thin tendrils pulsing as a high-pitched laughing sound emanated from it. The old man mused that it looked as though the breeding cycle had begun early this week. The blue tendrils that wrapped over, under and through the platform belonged to thousands of worm like bodies, all of which comprised the group mind of an organism known only as the Fuzz. There was nothing else anything like this creature anywhere in the cosmos, self-replicating and self-sufficient, its many parts both bred with themselves and ate each other. Reginald had found it living on the underside of an asteroid and had gone to no end of trouble to recreate its exact living conditions here on Therupa. Obviously the transplant operation had gone successfully, since the Fuzz had been happily breeding with itself here for over a decade now. Reginald shook his head slightly, as always amazed that such a thing could exist, then kicked his rocket pack back into action and soared on over the planet’s surface.
Far below him was one of the larger cages in his planet-wide park enclosure. Although cage was hardly the right word, since no bars could be seen, nor indeed any form of constricting walls whatsoever. This was where the name had come from, the Glass Menagerie, for all the walls which housed his creatures were invisible, composed of pure energy, force walls as clear as glass. The only indication an observer might have to suggest that there was a cage there at all was the fact that the landscape suddenly altered vastly and dramatically in an area the exact shape and size of a large cube. Inside the area the environment had been specifically altered to adhere to the exact specifications of the creatures that lived within it. The purple rocks of Therupa gave way to lush jungle and waving green fronds. Inside the ‘glass cage’ rested an entire flock of Sherpedras, an arcane mix of carnivore and vegetable, looking rather like ten-foot bananas with fangs. Reginald had almost lost his life in taming this tribe of creatures, a savage and brutal life form that thought of little but hunting and killing (apart, of course, from their complex mating ceremonies, which involved rather a lot of peeling). Reginald gave them a cheery wave, nothing to fear from them now since his defeat of their leader had forced them to make him an honorary member of their tribe. Of all the races contained in his electric zoo these were among Reginald’s favourite. Their skill, honour and traditional tribal ways demanded his deep respect, but the real reason he liked them was because he thought they looked hilarious, the image of carnivorous bananas appealing greatly to his arcane sense of humour. With another wave Reginald soared on once more, moving onward in his systematic inspection of the Glass Menagerie, an electric zoo which covered an entire planet. He went from cage to cage, from the giant worms to the seaweed monsters, from the sirens to the intelligent tigers, from the simulated men to the talking rocks, from the deadly killer daffodils to the playfully frolicking colossal atomic war beasts.
It took Reginald the best part of four hours to make his in-depth inspection, only satisfied that all was well after personally seeing to each and every habitat cage to ensure that all his creatures were content in their respective environments. One of Reginald’s own quirks was that he saw himself as just another exhibit in this vast freak show. His own house was little more than another electric cage, adapted specifically to his own biological needs, and he had no qualms with this outlook at all. There were no other representatives of his own species here, but so long as he lived here he made the collection complete. Complete, that is, but for one creature. The last species that he needed to finish his life’s work and successfully house a representative of every known creature in his peculiar Glass Menagerie. Only a little under two hours now and all would be complete. His hands shook with nerves as he steered his jet pack down towards his own home, his own personal cage within the vast electric zoo. Just time enough for lunch and a good stiff drink, and then he would see whether or not his plan had worked. Whether or not his dream would finally be realised.
For lunch he had toasted cheese sandwiches. He washed them down with a Claytons and tonic. Then, carefully and methodically, he donned his best suit, combed back his hair, and prepared to wait for his visitors. He did not have long to wait, the fierce sound of a ship spiralling down toward the surface of the planet soon rattling out across the landscape. Reginald watched impassively as a gleaming red rocket, all fins and go-faster-stripes, came to rest upon the purple plain out beyond his window. With a faint sigh and the uncomfortable feeling of butterflies in his stomach, Reginald went out to meet his guests.
*
The door of the ship opened with a metallic clang and a resounding thud. Reginald stood, unmoving, waiting patiently as the occupants of the craft sauntered down the ramp. As they passed out of the shadow of the ship’s interior Reginald breathed a sigh of relief. It was here, the final creature, the last part to his complex puzzle. It was over. Done. Now he could move on to the next phase. He was smiling broadly by the time they had walked the short distance down to the surface of the planet to stand face to face with him. The first member of the party was a large man, his features hidden beneath a red satin hood. He wore a creased and rumpled tuxedo, a blood red cape with a tear in one corner in the shape of a large row of teeth, and a snapping green plant on his lapel. He also carried an ornate cane which he twirled in his hand like a baton as he walked. His companion was a fish in a bowl, although this bowl had been neatly supplemented by a series of mechanical legs, eight of them to be precise. The hissing pistons of the legs steered the spider-like mandibles nimbly across the surface of the planet, all the while keeping the water level even in the fish bowl that sat in the centre of the complex design. Neither the hooded stranger nor the fish said a word when they reached the surface, they simply stood, staring at Reginald, impassive in their brooding silence.
“Welcome to Therupa,” Reginald smiled amiably, “home of the Glass Menagerie. I hope you had a pleasant trip.”
“My dear fellow,” the hooded man began, rapping his ornate cane loudly upon the purple ground, “I say we dispense with the pleasantries right here and get down to business. You tricked me, hiring my most sought-after professional services for the express purpose of a rescue operation which, I must most emphatically stress, eventually turned out to be nothing of the kind. A kidnapping service I am not, nor a fisherman do I be. Your puppet master strategy has failed, however. I am well aware of your chicanery. The question remains, however, what are we going to do about it now, hmmmm?”
With a clunking and grinding the mechanical legs supporting the fish ground closer, steering the wide eyes of the ancient creature to a level equal with Reginald’s own.
“That’s right,” the Memory Fish muttered, “what are we going to do about it now, eh?”
Reginald simply smiled and shook his head.
“Please, do be calm. It is certainly true that I did partake in a little bit of subterfuge to get you here, but my motives are pure. I can assure you that none of you will suffer as a result of my meddling, quite the opposite in fact.”
“Pure motives my gills!!” The Memory Fish exploded with a flurry of bubbles. “You wanted to kidnap me and put me in a cage!! You wanted me as some obscene exhibit in your menagerie, a wretched part of your cursed electric zoo.”
“Not at all,” Reginald smiled, “I merely wanted you here as witness. It was him I needed to complete the collection of my Glass Menagerie.” And with a deft movement Reginald pointed his finger in the direction of the red hooded stranger.
“Me?!!” came the muffled cry of the Red Satin. “You wanted me here as a part of your zoo?!!”
“No, no,” Reginald laughed good naturedly, “I needed him.” And he leaned in closer to indicate the green growth on the hooded stranger’s lapel. “I needed Toby the Mystereon, the only known representative of his species in the entire universe.”
There was silence for a moment as they all absorbed this peculiar piece of information. After a suitable pause, however, the voice of the Red Satin exploded forth with uncharacteristic bluster, his cane rapping out a fierce staccato at his feet.
“Perhaps, good sir, you might do us the favour of offering some form of explanation as to What the Devil is Going ON!!!”
Reginald had practiced this speech often enough, muttered it to himself in bed at night, dramatized it before the mirror in the mornings. Even so he found himself fumbling the words as he ran them out over his dry tongue.
“Many years ago, when I was a younger man, I became concerned with the conflict that was inherent in our cosmos. There were races and creatures and monsters and species that met and fought with each other time and again, destroying each other and destroying the delicate balance and beauty of our universe with their passing. I knew that in diversity was the wonder of creation contained, and I knew that through the cultural collision of exploration and contact much wonder would forever be destroyed. So I set out to preserve that beauty, that wonder, that diversity. I began to collect together creatures from every planet, every habitat, every possible environment throughout the known universe, and I began to assemble them here.”
“That’s your great idea for preserving diversity,” the Memory Fish scoffed, “by imprisoning it all in little boxes?!!”
“At first yes,” Reginald admitted, “I thought that it would be enough to do that, to preserve the endangered with a cage, but I soon saw the error of my ways and set my sights on a larger plan. If one place, one planet, could encompass all the various races, could contain within it representatives of every living creature, and if they could find a way to live together in harmony, then that place, that world, could become the blueprint for universal peace, the microcosm that represents the macrocosm. To that end I designed the environments of this place to merge, the cages to mix and mingle, for this world to become a patchwork planet representing the entire universe. I merely awaited the last species to set the system in motion.”
Both the fish and the man and his plant looked thoroughly confused at this admission, but none of them moved to stop Reginald as he removed a small mechanical device from his pocket.
“I admit that I was a little underhanded in my manipulations to get you all here, but I needed the plant to complete the collection, and I wanted the fish here as witness. An immortal creature with an infinite memory, you shall remember this historic moment, when the path toward universal peace was first forged, when the blueprint for the future came to be written.”
It was with these words that Reginald activated the mechanical device in his hand. It was then that all the walls in the Glass Menagerie came tumbling down.
*
The energy of the cages melted like ice cream in the sun, oozing with a faint electric crackle as they faded into the biosphere. The environments that the walls had contained instantly began to grow, to spread, like a beast long held back but now released, like a disease replicating, going forth to multiply. The vegetation rippled outward, mixing with the vegetation of other cages, from other worlds. The lush jungles mixed with the floating bubbles, the floating bubbles mixed with the walking toadstools, the walking toadstools mixed with the intelligent oceans, the intelligent oceans mixed with the glowing deserts and so on, and so on. Therupa shimmered and changed, in a glittering instant becoming a patchwork planet, becoming a world of many worlds. And from their own tiny realms the various creatures stumbled forth, blinking in the dawn of a new day as their cages fell away and a thousand possibilities opened up before them. The tigers chatted to the talking rocks as a herd of war beasts went swimming in the singing oceans at the end of the world. Vicious bananas trekked through the undergrowth as gigantic worms burrowed vast and complex tunnels throughout the underworld of Therupa. It was frightening. It was glorious. It was strange.
“You know,” the Red Satin muttered as he watched the scene unfold impressively around him, “I think I could really learn to like it here, hmmm.”
*
Epilogue I
They forced their way through the thick undergrowth, hacking at the tangled foliage as best they could as they tried to force a way onward into the dark interior. They were a curious band, an old man in a jet pack, a fish on mechanical legs, a man in a satin hood and the whispering plant on his lapel. But they were unified in their mission, as one in their intent, for each of them wanted to make sense of this strange world around them, to comprehend the elegant beauty that was the evolving universe. So they pushed onward, toward the interior and the heart of the new mysteries which each of them knew was their birthright, looking for the answers to riddles that they knew were theirs to solve.
“I say,” one of them cried out, “it looks like another sun is setting. What’s say we stop for a few martinis and some mouse sandwiches, hmmm?”
But as to what the reply was, we shall never know.
*
Epilogue II
It was with a sated appetite that the childling laid down amongst the still steaming entrails upon the nursery floor. The tale had been played out, the story was over. It could rest now… rest…
But then a thought occurred, synapses playing the same tune simultaneously across each of its four mental planes. It wasn’t over at all, was it. That might have been the end of that adventure, but there was bound to be another following. And another. And another.
Looking down upon the spent entrails of its disembowelled mother the childling realized what it had done. By starting this story it had began something, a hunger that it could not control, a yearning that could never be fulfilled. A yearning for the story’s end, a hunger for that final closure, a closure that would never come. With weary resignation it rose to its feet and shuffled out of the nursery into the red glow of the dead night outside. It needed entrails. It needed to know how the story ended.
But in its hearts the monster knew that it would never know. The story never ended, not really. Not completely. So it was with suppressed rage and fierce longing that the childling took to the night in search of something to kill. In search of words to rend. In search of stories to devour.
Knowing that, no matter how hard it searched or how long it tried, it would never be able to find
THE END.