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Gothic Tales
| Ethnic Cleansing |
If anyone had ever tried to classify such things, I suppose this would have been suburban nightmare number twenty-three.
It was Sunday night, moving on into Monday morning. We'd been out to Apocalypse on Saturday night and had kept going thoughout Sunday, finally running out of steam around eight o'clock in the evening. Seven of us had started, but only three of us had made it through the gauntlet of the goth nightclub, the early-morning drinking session and the Sunday market trauma. It was a shame that when we finally collapsed into my king-size bed, Jeri and I were too tired to do anything with Michael; we were good friends, not so close that we felt we had to do anything apart from sleep whenever we ended up in bed together.
Anyway. As I said, it was Monday morning when the front door was kicked in and the house was invaded by a squad of heavily-armed men, their faces hidden behind reflective-plastic gas-masks. They'd cut off the power before making their dramatic entrance, and the place was underlit by their very bright torches. We were too stunned to ask what they were doing; they just surrounded the bed, pointing their blunt-nosed rifles at us.
Jeri - always a quick thinker in these situations -sat up in the bed and let the black sheets drop from around her shoulders, exposing one pale-nippled breast. I could see the line of some of the rifles waver in response, but they weren't about to be swayed from whatever they'd come to do. Someone up the back shouldered their way through the armed men and held up a plastic bag with a sheet of paper inside. I couldn't see much due to the uncertain nature of the light but I did see the word 'cleansing' in bold type near the top of the page. That was all it took to start that Pop Will Eat Itself song cycling through my mind; as they bundled us out of the house - still undressed - and into the back of their black van, I imagined their thumping, booted feet keeping time with the riff in my head, over and over... Ich bin ein Auslander...
There were about a dozen others in the back of the van, in similar stages of undress. Nobody I knew. We were too numb to speak; Jeri and I huddled together for solace while the van lurched around the streets, making two more pickups - five more people - before stopping at a long building in the middle of a concrete compound, surrounded by cyclone-wire fences. There were guard-towers at the corners with spotlights and, behind them, just visible against the sky, the long barrels of automatic weapons.
We were herded, shivering, through the double doors at the end of the building, down a long corridor and into a low-ceilinged room with that kind of painted concrete floor you sometimes saw in institutional communal showers. The doors slammed shut behind us and there was an ominous silence. I was the only one who spoke: "I guess Jello Biafra was right all along." Jeri laughed, despite herself.
A clanking sound came from overhead - oh, Goddess, this was it - and suddenly sprays of warm water shot out of concealed spigots in the ceiling. Again, we were too shocked to say anything; we stood or kneeled in a bunch at the centre of the room while the hot water beat down on us. It was quite relaxing, after a while; I'd just started massaging Jeri's shoulders when the water shut off and the guards entered with large, white towels. We were forcibly dried off and returned to our homes, but they still haven't been back to fix the front door.
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| Tin Girl
| Despite a crippling bout of influenza, nikolai went to Apocalypse last night. He was more-than-usually Gothed up; he doesn't like putting on tons of make-up like some Goths do, but I talked him into putting on some base (which gave him a cute pallor) and some eye-shadow. With the Pinhead mask on, he looked almost attractive.
He got back about three am - unusually early - and told me about a beautiful girl he saw there, who would spend exactly two minutes and fifty seconds on the dancefloor, before suddenly rushing off into a dark corner where her friend would adjust something on her back - a dress-strap, nikolai thought. The girl would then run back onto the dancefloor and posture some more.
One time, her friend forgot to remove the key. No-one noticed.
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| Another Doll for Sale |
"Sugar Plum"
She's the most adorable ballerina ever! First issue in the As Cute As Can Be collection, little Sugar Plum wins your heart with every detail... from her darling pink ribbon and beautiful blue eyes to her net tutu and precious pose. Sugar Plum is a petite 8 inches high, seated.
Item #76701 $49.95
3 monthly installments of $16.65
"Missy"
Okay, so she looks like a cheap ripoff of Neil Gaiman's 'Death' character from 'Sandman'. Look a little closer. Closer, asswipe! (smack) That's right. Look at the detail. Fingernails as long as knife-blades. See the pale skin underneath the black leather? Almost looks real, doesn't it? Heh. Individual strands of hair. The faintest hint of nipples through the latex. Real dried blood on the hooks. Okay, so most people don't want a Cenobite sitting on their mantel. We aren't making them available to most people.
Item #708068
$whatever you can afford.
4 monthly installments of large pieces of flesh from people you know.
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`You are so lost, edward.' - Tiny Toons Executive
As I stroll through the dark halls of the labyrinth
The endless cold paths of the God of the Maze
I have time, now, to think and review what has happened
To muse upon fate and those who are trapped by it
The leather and metal that imprisons my body;
Tthe scented black leather that confines my dead flesh;
The spikes that transfix me, one limb to another
The chilled, white-dusted, blood-flecked pale-blue cold skin
The screams of the captives, their shells ranged around me,
Pinned to their own fate, by spikes much like mine
Their pitiful cries for justice, release;
None of them touch me.
None of their sounds reach inside me and skewer me
Like the sound of your voice.
I arrived here, and then i sent you
To your Own Private Hell
Alone, apart, we continued to feel
I am here for a Reason.
I don't want to think about that.
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| My Friend the Arachnid |
This is for Marian.
I'm lying on the mattress, not thinking anything in particular. The bedside light is on and my head is turned to one side. I can see half of my face in the mirror, some hair brushed back from one eye which is half open, one ear with long fair hair tucked behind it. I have no particular impulse to get up, or read a book, or do anything except lie here.
I can hear the faintest scratching sound on the floor behind me. It stops and starts, occasionally drowned out by the sound of infrequently passing trucks outside. After a while, that sound becomes less frequent and eventually stops. There is the sound of hissing rain.
A pricking feeling in my shoulder. It goes away, returns slightly higher. I lie there calmly, a faint half-smile on my half-face. A regular series of prickings, as if someone was poking fuse-wire half a millimetre into me - a dragging feeling on my skin. Whatever it is moves up my back, tries to gain purchase on my hair, fails and falls back.
I see a furred black finger poke up behind my head. it descends and hauls itself into view, sitting on my neck -a spider; furry, black, slightly larger than my hand. It waves pencil-thick forelegs, exploring the territory, moving over my ear after carefully exploring this potentially interesting cavity.
I can feel its weight resting on my cheek. I wonder what it's doing - looking for somewhere to lay eggs? Does it think i'm edible? Maybe it wants to string a web from my nose to the pillow. Maybe it just wants to crawl inside my half-open mouth and live there. Maybe it's tracking the faint warmth of my breath and it thinks there is something edible up my nose. This last theory is partly borne out when it climbs down onto my nose, its back legs resting on my closed eyelid and probes my nostrils with it forelegs, the furry tips tickling me. I suppress a giggle, but can't restrain a tiny sneeze. I do my best to remain still, but the spasm dislodges the spider from its precarious perch, and it falls to the pillow with a thump and an annoyed waving of its legs. It manages to right itself by the simple expedient of hooking one leg up my nose and struggling back. It seems to like nestling in my left eye-socket, legs spread out over my face. With the sort of back-and-forth motion you'd expect from a cat, it settles in for a long stay.
I wonder how long it will ne until my next sneeze.
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Discord
Every thing was full of life
ruled by possession
insiders know your presence
i smiled)
I remove the empty spaces
Didn't answer straight away,
My bouts of burning thirst
And fitted the attitude
When to die
stand at will
All at once, in time again
Nothing moves outside control
spellbound
To make demands
Pulsing in time
he began to feel vaguely self-conscious
Something in case you see what it's like,
and from the others.
But i fear Control
make my decisions for me
tell me what the Wires aren't.
when i want to.
i must see things,
Thoughts that reminds me of your opinions
To enact hidden
pleasure-seeking pain-seeking
Nothing more to say:
Wednesday's mail was where the message ended,
You lower your eyes
glint
I can know
Never needing words
and from one to another
Sighing through the world
you can't see the lock for the leaves -
sometimes, you can't see any human traces,
Nothing happens.
no,
i can pretend that you're someone else's clock
He came over
On the field of battle
But had the wrong groups,
The warm stillness
No, i can know your presence,
hear you
Softly edged in purple
And what to do you remember
A fog,
Dumb and Blind And Numb
Did you dream that
You sent me here
Do you remember
watching the lights,
and hearing the cold black
And Never sleeping, always hidden,
Silently speaking, gestures and glances
There is a subtle curve
that reminds me of the dance
as if they don't touch
Poise, assuredness, and
The warm stillness
when we feel the requirement
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| Financing Myself |
Bills are piling up. Telephone, rent, metalife, ink for the printer, solder bills. The internet feed from Dialix I decide to let go, but I'm still falling behind. Time for another pilgrimage.
A little clearing up in the mountains. it's officially a tourist lookout; there's a TV repeater tower to one side and the faint remains of Samhain fires (it's a favourite spot of melbourne Wiccans, for solstice circles). I go over to the edge, seemingly sealed with brambles, and march down the slope, protecting my right arm underneath my denim jacket while the rest of my body is scratched and torn. It feels like i've been locked in a small room with forty rabid Kzinti.
Far below, the trees stand together in another circle, one that very few people ever get to see. I have to climb half-way up one of the trees to gain entrance.
Ignoring the feeling of fuck off, human, this isn't your place, I crawl across the dying grass (no sunlight) and find the hole. It's in the exact centre of the circle, about the width of a roll of duct tape; dark, bottomless. I take a deep breath and thrust my right hand into the hole. It's cold, I can't feel the walls of the tunnel and I have the same uncomfortable feeling as that soldier in The Keep must've had, crawling through the stone walls of a fortress with a terrible demon inside.
I lie there, arm stuck into the ground up to the elbow, waiting. Then there's a sense of something far below, sensing me and rushing to the surface of a huge, sunless underwater lake like a predatory fish rising to the bait, not a sound, but something similar, something that resonates in my bones, in my viscera.
Suddenly, it takes a swipe at me, slashing my forearm. I scramble back, falling over myself to get far away from the hole, sitting up against the least unfriendly of the trees, waiting for it to get bored and leave. It takes a few minutes - longer than last time - but eventually decides it has better things to do, and the sensation fades. Only then do I turn my attention to my arm.
Nine scratches. Some of them intersect the others more than once, some of them running parallel. I quickly copy the pattern into my notebook, then I press a swatch of calico over the wound, which is deeper than it looks. Blood seeps through.
At home, careful examination of the nine lines and a mathematical process derived from an old book on Qabala yields six numbers, between one and forty. While Marian watches one of my old music video tapes ("Hey, in that Bananarama video for 'Venus', is that Gates McFadden in the coffin?" "No, it isn't."), I fill out the lottery form. I know it won't win thousands of dollars, but it will provide just enough to keep our heads above water. Which is all I can ever expect.
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in sequence
in despair
i will lose me
in sequence
in despair
it doesn't matter
if we can kill you
it doesn't matter
if we can lose me to the heavens
only when i dare touch the sudden moment
i will lose myself tomorrow
senselessly
it doesn't matter
if you will or won't keep me as i am
cut and sick and screaming and silent
it doesn't matter
if there's one more melencholy day to the coffin,
as we can kill you
and a desire for me to die too
i just need to make sure
to resist the warm stillness
and the thoughts and things that lay buried uncomfortably long
now screaming in their same silent soul search
within four walls.
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| Wurlitzer Love |
A bar that bears a suspicious resemblance to the one in Akira; night-time. The numbers are divided, unevenly, between Goths (few) and members of a social sub-group known (in australia) as Bogans (many).
A word about Bogans to those unfamiliar with them: citified, urban red-necks, they wear tight blue jeans; tartan flannel over T-shirts advertising beer; moccasins. They will have a packet of cigarettes tucked into the rolled-up T-shirt sleeve. Their musical tastes encompass such innovative and ground-breaking acts as Cold Chisel, AC-DC, the whole Guns 'n' Jovi thing. They drive overpowered Holdens and Fnords and have no intellectual pursuits beyond ridiculing Goths.
The place is quiet except for the drunken hoots of the Bogans. A gaggle of them stagger over to the juke-box. It's one of those modern computer- based things, a rounded column about the width of those old Esso petrol-pumps, smooth unmarked plastic the colour of old bronze. A list of available songs scrolls past at chest height, yellow text on blue.
The Bogans jabber excitedly, pointing out tracks by Jimmy Barnes, The Angels, Rose Tattoo; their voices die down slowly as their spare processing capability is taken up with the task of figuring out how to work the juke-box. There aren't any coin slots, no swipe-card recess; no buttons, dials, switches, contact-pads, not even a grill for a voice- recognition system.
Half the group grow more excited at the list of songs and the other half grow more exasperated at their inability to get the thing to play any of them. One particularly drunken specimen kicks the machine; the glowing screen flickers and fades. They give a ragged cheer and go back to the bar for more beer.
A young Goth girl - floor-length black dress, lace panel over her cleavage, black lipstick, white face, kohl-darkened eyes with eyeliner curlicues, burgundy ribbons in her white hair - goes over to the juke-box and, before the astounded gaze of the Bogans, gives it an unashamedly affectionate hug. The screen comes back on, this time with blood-red Fraktur text on a black screen, listing songs by Big Electric Cat, Rosetta Stone, Southern Death Cult, Skinny Puppy. She gives the machine a secret smile and whispers to it; seconds later, Heresy by Nine Inch Nails is screaming out of the sound system. While the Bogans scratch their fleas, the Goth girl sweeps off to dance with herself.
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| Sunday Morning Noise |
Very early Sunday morning (ie around eight am). The room is lit by sunlight creeping around the window-shade, a dark-purple square and some low, guttering candles on the altar. Three figures are sleeping entwined in the black sheets on the bed, zebra-like intervals of pale skin, dark sheets, more pale skin, dark hair. At the moment, it's impossible to tell their genders. A jet passes over, engines making the windows buzz slightly. A candle flickers and dies.
A car pulls up outside, muffler loose and rattling, automotive emphysema. A door opens, slams shut again; a bonnet creaks up and then the radio starts blaring out something too distorted to identify. It has the standard dance-mix beat; occasional samples and synth notes pop out of the fuzz, putting it just on the annoying edge of recognition. Whatever it is, it's loud enough to wake up one of the sleepers. She slithers out from the sheets, stands and stretches, small breasts pointing at the Giger poster above the altar, rubs dark makeup from her eyes, brushes back gel-stiffened strands of blue-black hair. The music from outside grows slightly louder.
She steps over stray boots, socks and underwear, sorts amongst the junk on the altar, eventually selecting something shaped like a cordless drill. She presses a contact on one side, and a red LED blinks.
Out in the hallway, Kiril ignores her lack of clothing and tosses her a piece of fruit that he's grown out in the back yard. She catches it in her right hand, smiles her gratitude and bites into it, white teeth behind dark purple lips. It has the texture of a peach, a taste somewhere between an apple and a pear, and is packed with euphoric chemicals. No seeds. Glossy dark purple, almost black skin. She pads up the hallway to the huge front door, enters six digits on the keypad, opens it.
The front yard is overgrown with vines, ferns, an impenetrable mass of greenery with a tunnel cut along the path to the outside world. She blinks at the occasional shaft of sunlight which falls on her.
Outside the front gate, she can see a huge, something - a Ford? A Datsun? she has no idea; the rear tyres are much larger than the front ones, it's painted bright red and has a fluourescent green fuzzy dice the size of a basketball hanging from the rear-view mirror. The music is coming from two shoebox-sized speakers set amidst the sheepskin that lines the rear window. The bonnet, as she would have heard had she been awake at the time, is up and a pair of legs in acid-wash jeans terminating in elastic-sided boots is protruding from the left-hand side of the car. The legs wave about as if the body that they belong to is trying to undo a bolt with its teeth.
She examines the device she found on the altar. There are two unmarked dials on the back, both of which she sets to their half-way points; she then points it at the car and presses the trigger. It buzzes three times, a green LED flashing above the dials; she turns it to one side, frowning, then finds the safety catch and unlatches it.
This time when she presses the trigger, it gives off a deep hum and a faint disturbance - almost like a sheet of heat-haze wrapped into a pencil-sized tube - reaches from the barrel of the weapon to the side of the car. Twisting the left-hand dial makes the tube expand to the width of a toilet-tube, and she can see faint waves streaming along the beam to where it hits the side of the car, scratching and screaming like a dentist's drill. The bonnet falls down, and the person connected to the legs starts shouting.
The beam moves up towards the front of the car, blows in a side window and hits something vital inside; the radio dies. She releases the trigger and notes that a foot-thick layer of haze has surrounded the car, which is beginning to crackle and smoulder. The legs have stopped moving.
She backs off and watches as the car heats up, the windshield popping out like a set of false teeth being spat, the tyres popping, the petrol tank rupturing and spraying flame from the back with a breathy fooosh sound; the upholstery burning, the frame sagging into the softened tar of the road. The blaze seems to be confined to the car-shaped field.
She nods and goes back inside. Her companions are still asleep; she adds a fragment of amber to the single burning candle, to cover the smell of burning rubber, places the weapon on the altar and climbs back into bed.
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