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Great Writing - Home > SF > Shadow Puppets: 2nd Performance (Warning - avant-garde; no swearing)
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Science Fiction and Fantasy
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| Shadow Puppets: 2nd Performance (Warning - avant-garde; no swearing) | |
| By stevetroster | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 24 July 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Unless you class 'wanker' as a swear word. You have been warned, again.
Trapped inside a goldfish bowl, sound asleep, Timothy swims in a fantasy where effervescent colours prance to a villanella. The dream is amniotic fluid, warm and embracing. “Sleep, Timothy, sleep.” Perforating the rhythm of remote heartbeats, alien voices bleed across his slumbering consciousness. The voices are umbilical cords, nourishing and nurturing, bringing with them a sense of well-being. “How do you feel, Timothy?” “I feel a bit depressed. I guess… I guess I feel like another person. It really gets me down sometimes.” “Stay focused, Timothy. Nervous reactions create additional fractions. Do you know who we are, Timothy?” “No.” “Do you know who you are, Timothy.” “No.” “You are us, Timothy. You are us and we are you.” With casual indifference, a suit and a white coat scrutinize an image on an LCD monitor. The Armani glances at his Cartier. ‘What dosage have you got him on?’ ‘Seven hundred and fifty milligrams.’ ‘Per hour!’ The white coat fingers stubble. ‘We can’t afford to take any more chances. It’s late, I need to -’ ‘And my associates and I cannot afford to lose another of your little guinea pigs. Are you certain that -” ‘We’ve learnt much from our previous “glitches”. Have faith, Alexander. Young Timothy is going to make us famous.’ ‘I don’t care for fame, I just want the little wanker to make me extremely wealthy.’ ‘Aren’t you -” ‘You can never have too much money, my dear professor. Never too much.” Hovering above a bed in a squalid motel, Timothy surveys the scene with incredulity. Below him lies the ashen cadaver of a young woman, her dead eyes staring through his spectral frame as if searching for some mote cast adrift in the sea of infinity. His gaze follows a desiccated trail of blood that had sprung like a stream from between the woman’s lips, a sinister rivulet tracing the valley between blossoming breasts to pool about her navel. Bespattered with her viscous red discharge, the bed sheet resembles a Rorschach test. Timothy studies the pattern, an image forming in his mind. “Mother,” he whispers and closes his eyes. He screams. (We Travel A Short Distance Across The City Using Aerial Stop-motion Images) A lock of light yellow hair, grasped in a pale fist. “Evidence, Michael. Break her hand.” The sound of a dead finger wrenched from its socket momentarily transports Michael to a happier time from days long past, a time when he sat before a Yule fire with his family. “The Filth could arrive any time soon.” Michael recalls walnuts in a nutcracker. The sound is a nauseating. “No time to dally, Michael.” His stomach bilious and filled with revulsion, the albino collapses onto the cold linoleum floor. “On your feet, Michael. You could be the last of our kind still roaming free. It wouldn’t do to allow yourself to be caught and banged up in that nasty zoo. You’re born to be wild, Michael, born to be wild. We’ll have such wild times together, you and I.” (Time-lapse View Of The City At Night - Played In Reverse) Trapped inside a goldfish bowl, fast asleep, Timothy drowns in a nightmare where villainous colours dance to a funeral dirge. The air is a rancid miasma, thick and clawing. Hovering above a bed in yet another squalid motel, his stomach tight with a sense of déjà vu, Timothy surveys a scene of savagery. Below him lies the ashen cadaver of a young woman. There are black holes where her dead eyes should be and her cold lips have been bound with black insulating tape. Fragments of her short life flash before his eyes. LONELINESS - MOTHER - RAPE - STEPFATHER - FEAR. Desperate to tear himself away from the scene, Timothy imagines himself as a leaf tumbling on a breeze. HUNGER - PIMP - TRAUMA - DEALER - CRAMPS - CLIENT - MURDER. Timothy’s eyes are drawn back to a bed sheet bespattered with the woman’s blood. He studies the pattern. “Father,” he screams, and all the lights come on. “Do you know who your father was, Timothy?” “No.” “How about your mother?” “No.” “Do you know who I am, Timothy?” “Yes. You’re me.” “And I am you.” “And-and we-we are-are you-you and-and you-you are-are us-us.” “Where am I?”
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