Everybody Scream! (18 page)

A final mounting gurgling, a loud liquid whoosh of expulsion, the great maw opened and Noelle instinctively hugged herself tighter. Bonnie didn’t hesitate, squatted deep inside the mouth, sat herself down, stretched out on her back with one ankle hooked over the other. She hugged herself, but only out of fear of breaking a bone, wrenching a limb, though that wasn’t common. She had left enough room for Noelle to gingerly step into the mouth (quickly, afraid it would slam down on her skull) and lie on her back in a similar pose, Bonnie’s head just beyond Noelle’s feet. Noelle hoped she didn’t hurt her friend through their closeness, although that usually only happened when people went in side by side. “I wonder what it would be like to go through fucking?” Bonnie called back, excited.

The mouth slammed shut, the outside light was cut off but an interior series of artificial lights came on. What if it malfunctions, Noelle was thinking, fear approaching dizzy horror, what if the full digestive process goes into action? A yawning sound, the hideous slick surface under her naked back began to tremble. The whale abruptly swallowed, shivering pudding-like flesh closing around Noelle and a gush of liquid washing over her. She tried to cry out behind her clamped mouth, squeezed her eyes shut as she was violently sucked along. Ahead of her somewhere Bonnie was laughing-screaming through the fluid gushing in her face.

Feet-forward Noelle was sucked upwards through a dark chute, then down into a large artificially lit white room of roaring fluid, on through a twisty pipeline which conformed itself to some extent to Noelle’s form. Her eyes were open but blinking, her mouth open a little behind her cupped hand. Amazingly she spotted one of those animal rights stickers stuck to the slick inside of one of the bladder-like lighted rooms she was whisked through. A black substance like shaving cream was suddenly extruded through the walls of the next chamber and enveloped Noelle, her eyelids reacting in time to protect her. She no longer heard Bonnie ahead, or anything but the sounds of the whale. To go through here while on heavy drugs, she numbly reflected for a moment, would drive one insane. And it was done, of course, every day and night.

She picked up speed. A new spray of liquid showered away the black foam, she rocketed through an underground river, the current powerful, and suddenly she was launched into the outer air from the dilated tail opening. Noelle found herself lying on her back in a net, staring up at the blue sky, people laughing and cheering or hooting. She was disoriented; it took a second or two to adjust back to reality. Embarrassed, she rolled over and shakily, awkwardly climbed out of the net. She spit fluid onto the ground, coughed, snorted at the fluid in her nostrils. Bonnie was waiting for her in the other opening to the balloon, laughing, twisting a finger in her ear. “Pretty wild, huh, girl?”

“Pretty something,” Noelle murmured, and almost retched, gagged, spit out more of her own saliva, afraid that it belonged to the whale. She followed Bonnie inside where a second bored man, not phased by their undress, handed them their gym bags. Further in the C there were a few shower stalls, which some didn’t employ but Noelle and Bonnie did. After drying themselves with towels, they encountered a young black-haired man, naked and dripping clear fluid.

“That’s pretty great on gold-dust,” he said.

“Are you?” Bonnie smiled, stepping slowly into her panties.

“Yeah.”

“I wish I was.”

“Well…why don’t you take some and go through again? My treat.”

“Oh, excellent–where?”

“My car? In the lot.”

“Do you have to pay to come back into the fair?”

“You can have them stamp your hand, I think.”

“Wonderful.”

“How about you?” the man smiled at Noelle, who was dressing with less luxurious slowness than Bonnie.

Noelle didn’t want to get in the way. “I’ll pass. I’ll be around.”

“You sure, girl?” Bonnie breathed, still exhilarated. Her nipples stretched out hard like the heads of eager little animals. “I don’t want you to get lost or bored or something. I won’t be too long.”

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure. Excuse me a sec, ahh…”

“Moussa. Certainly–go ahead,” smiled the dark, charming young man.

Noelle drew Bonnie aside, whispered. Moussa ducked into one of the showers, luckily. “Bonnie, be careful. Is this guy alone or with friends? If he’s alone that’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

“Why? He’s just looking to make new friends, like we are.”

“Just be careful.”

“Alright,
Mom
. I’m not stupid, Noelle.”

The second bored man reappeared. “Come on, no loitering.”

“We’re waiting for our friend to shower, okay, bumpkin?”

“Don’t mouth off to me, little girl, just move along.”

“Blast off, hick.”

“Bonnie,” Noelle said.

The man glowered, eyes bulging in their sockets like balloons filled with rage. He was tall and wide and wore an army coat. Noelle became afraid. “Move along, you fucking fish. I won’t say it again.” And then he turned and stalked away, visibly shaking with fury.

“God,” Bonnie muttered, a little cowed, “what a psycho. I thought he was gonna kill me.”

“See?”

“See what, see?”

Moussa emerged, his smile ever beaming. “Good, I was afraid you’d sneak off on me.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Moose,” Bonnie smiled seductively. She addressed Noelle. “Are you sure you don’t mind, girl? Just an hour...maybe you’ll run into the guys.”

“Maybe. Alright.” Actually, Noelle invited the opportunity to be by herself, out of Bonnie’s overpowering aura. Only a tiny bit insulted to be discarded in favor of free drugs and an unknown penis. She had quickly grown used to that from Bonnie Gross. “I’ll probably be in that mall building poking around.”

“Great–I’ll look there first.”

The three of them left the balloon the way they’d come in, but Bonnie and Moussa went one way and Noelle went another.

Noelle thought she saw the glazed eye of the whale turn to follow her but after a second look dismissed it as her imagination.

A young man fell in beside her. He wore black. Noelle’s downcast eyes took in his beautiful silver and black scaled shoes before she glanced over at his face suspiciously.

“Hello,” he said, “I’m Bern. How was that Jonah ride?”

“Icky. Next time I’ll just ride through the sewer system...at least that would be free.”

Bern laughed. “I thought so–that’s why I didn’t go through. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Noelle.”

“Noelle, you must be hungry after your harrowing ordeal.”

“Not really. I won’t be eating for a while.”

“Well I’d bet a nice cold beer would soothe your nerves right now.”

“Um, no thanks.”

“How about a snort to mellow you out, or a snort to pick you up?”

Boy, Noelle thought, Bonnie should have waited a few minutes to meet this one; he was better looking and dressed like a male model, black lipstick and all. “No thanks, I’d really just like to be alone right now.”

“Alone? This is a
fair
, Noelle, you’re supposed to be having
fun!
”

Yeah, Noelle thought, fun like getting your black lipstick all over my tits and your bone in my mouth, right? “I’d really just like to be alone. Anyway, I’m meeting some friends soon...I’d like to be out where they can see me.”

“Aww–are you sure? Just a smoke. Half an hour.”

She looked straight ahead as she walked. “No thanks.”

Bern sighed. “Alright, Noelle. It was nice talking to you. Hope to see you around.”

“Thanks anyway.”

Bern stopped walking beside her, watched her walk away. Damn–she was a sweet one. She submerged into waves of people, out of sight. Oh well. Bern turned, eyes moving in a sweep, flicking from one female to another as if he were changing VT channels in search of one to settle on. Plenty of time, but he still felt a bit stung, discouraged, finally. Two offers of drugs, and nothing. What
were
things coming to?

Sophi sat at a battered plastic table in the screened-in beer garden, a mug of mead and paper plate of dilkies at her elbow, a newspaper spread before her on the sticky table top. There was a two page spread of photos of the fair, a visual summing-up of the season. Happy-faced children behind bushes of candyfloss, screaming teenage girls on the Double Helix, a prize-winning cow gazing uncomprehendingly into the camera. Pearl on stage passionately singing, her narrowed eyes mournful, mic in hand like the painting of Del on the Screamer, her twin wearing a special sling inside her maternity dress to hold the three limbs close to the buttocks, which made for a more rounded and less conspicuous kind of bulge.

Idly Sophi paged more toward the paper’s front. An odd story caught her attention. Last night some strange creature of monstrous proportions had been sighted clinging to The Head, an orbital asteroid sculpture created three decades ago by the artist Cyrex Rendiploom, portraying on one side a human man’s face (howling in outrage or dismay down at the planet Oasis, like the man in the moon with a missile in his eye in that silent film by George Méliès) and on the other side a corresponding gape-mouthed skull visage. Scientists were investigating. A photograph showed a spider-like animal, many-legged, barbed, black, clinging to the globe’s skull side, its legs spanning the entire skull surface. My God, it must be gigantic! Sophi marveled. The Head could be plainly seen at night when it was fully catching the sun’s rays...and tonight it would be full. And the skull side would be in view, the paper further related. So it was that the mysterious giant animal would be visible to the naked eye tonight as The Head climbed the sky, to reach its apex around eleven.

Had it been hurled through space by some distant exploding ship or planet, grabbing hold of the first object that came within reach, or had it placidly swum through space to this inviting resting spot, or materialized there from another dimension? Even before she read it in the article, Sophi remembered last year around the end of summer hearing about a strange secret colony which officials had broken up on that skull side of The Head. The camp belonged to a group of several dozen Bedbugs, as they were nicknamed scornfully, scorned because they had this aura about them that made people nervous. They were an extra-dimensional beetle-like race, which used a strange sort of vehicle on an odd track to move from one dimension to another, the dimension determined by the speed of the vehicle and the pattern of the track chosen amongst the many variations offered by their large train beds. They had one train bed here in town. Whether this secret group had come from Punktown or directly from their own dimension they never revealed, nor their purpose for beginning construction of a bizarre mechanical temple inside a cave burrowed on The Head’s skull side.

Since then officials had twice arrested groups of affluent teenage humans who had had themselves illegally teleported to the cave, where they held wild parties and odd rituals. A security team on rotating shifts was ever present on the asteroid sculpture now. Except that since last night, all contact with them had been lost.

Sophi also thought of the mysterious giant leg which had appeared right out of the air here at the fairgrounds two years ago. It was somewhat similar to the legs of the spider thing; insect-like and jointed. It had remained hovering and unmoving in that spot through carnival season and empty cold season, and had become one of the carnival’s attractions, the first year having materialized behind the Dreidel but later given more room to be viewed and wondered at.

A hand touched the back of her head, stroked her hair. Sophi started a bit and twisted around at the waist. Disgust filled her, and resentful anxiety, like the immediate opening and spreading of a parachute. Johnny Leng withdrew his hand as if warned by her expression, but his smile didn’t falter. “Hi, doll.”

“Hi, scum. Would you mind not doing that?”

“Doing what? Breathing? Speaking? Existing?”

“Touching me. But you can stop existing, too, if you want.”

“Can we join ya?” With Johnny Leng was Sneezy Tightrope.

“You can, but I won’t enjoy it.”

“Life isn’t always enjoyment.” Johnny took a chair opposite Sophi and Sneezy sat at a table end. “Sneeze, before you get comfy wanna grab us some beers? Another mead, gorgeous?”