Tristan’s frequency floods my consciousness now; twisted strains of orchestral anarchy ...

 

is that Jimmy fucking Buffett?

 

Man, T, you are one sick bastard.

Now that Mr. H and Fleur have taken a train to meet Denny, the King and I take the express to Picar. The expresses are big like Greyhound buses only they sport the logo of a rabbit on the side of their bright orange carriage. I think it’s good to be somewhere where the rabbits have a chance and so I have a smile on my face. Rabbit races are very popular here says the man sitting opposite to me on the bus. Expensive Pedigrees chase after stuffed Greyhounds and right now he tells me Picar central will be rammed because of the annual Beta-Carotene at the Super-bowl. It’s tradition to bring back silver plated rabbit droppings after each event and throw them into the waterfalls where they’re washed out down to the valleys and then picked up by fisherman who, in turn melt them down and sell the silver back to the city. I love these altruistic traditions.

We’d decided to take this journey to Picar for one because without the village the King however much he might have enjoyed the company of wanker’s and his tight pink jump suit found that fresh company had brought humiliation and it was time to move on. Secondly I had been brought to this place for a purpose that was not yet clear to me and short of clarity I decided on finding reason in the fortunes of the journey alone. Thirdly The first major performance of the Genius Child Orchestra, whose luck had dramatically changed due to a substantial and anonymous donation, were opening for the following days races and this seemed reason enough for our mountainous jaunt.

As we travelled on, a hawker made his way up and down the bus selling T-shirts and refreshments. His shirts were emblazoned with the words, ‘My family went all the way to Picar and all they brought back was this lousy T-shirt.’ The shirts came in four sizes, small, medium, large and hanging dreadfully. He was also selling CD’s and he just happened to have a copy of The Genius Child Orchestra’s first release. I bought a copy and listened to it on my player for the rest of the trip, sharing my phones with the king.

I thought of Pookie, Swim-Swim and bubbles, my fish back home in Camberwell, I thought of the Meister and Toni and I thought of The Softest Person and wondered again, as I often had if there was perhaps more significance to all things doll. I’d been feeling a bit plastic myself just recently and it really is a very difficult feeling to describe. I have an odd taste in my mouth for example and I think that I can make out these moulding marks that appear to run along the sides of my torso and then down the insides of my thighs. Also, and just sometimes, my eyes open when I sit up and then close again when I lie back down which is very irritating. I’ll have to go and see a doctor when I get to the city. I wondered why, what and if about all kinds of things and then I just started thinking about sex.

The king sleeps now on my shoulder, dribbling and I can see that we’re nearing our destination as we climb along the plateau’s edge. It’s an unbearable route for anyone fearful of heights and some of these roads don’t even seem to have a barricade. I’m no good with heights and so I close my eyes, recline my seat back and try to forget about falling while I listen to the tins and whistles, wails and crescendo’s of the orchestras Kinder maelstrom until I’m off to sleep too. ‘This shaker of salt makes me want to cry, this shaker of salt makes me wonder why, oh wieeeeee, oh wieeeeee are we the genius chillen chiklin orchestra woooeee, oh wieeeeee.’

Alright, you motherfucker.

You want me to face up to this, face into it, lie face down in it until it fucking drowns me?

Fine.

I was born of a clear cold night on an island that doesn’t exist, to a man with no woman and a woman with no man, and before I was born my mind split in two and Lucy took the other half.

I was raised in the moonlight on the edge of the tide on an island that doesn’t exist, and everything I ever needed was ripped away from me. My other half was gone.

But she doesn’t exist and neither do I.

She’s a fucking doll, Tristan.

And so am I.

And so is Aliss, who yes, clearly, was always Alicia. Alicia trying to give me a second chance. Alicia kicking tango with dear Lucy, fencing nearly fearless with my soul.

And you, old Tristan, are also a fucking doll. Made of stuffing and sawdust and buttons and rope. Not that it matters; we could be marrow and flesh and hair and we’d still be what we are.

But you wanted to be a fucking Pinocchio, Tristan. You wanted it more than any of the rest of us. Cut the strings, cut the strings, cut the strings.

There are no fucking strings, Tristan!

The strings are inside us, wound around our little rubber hearts, threaded through our arteries. Web of subcutaneous fiberglass fat that rides beneath our cotton skins.

You can’t make those strings shrivel up and die by flooding the system with poison, Tristan. Biker Joe, A.P. – you’re not going to get anywhere with that. They don’t know what you think they know, and even if they did they would die before they told you.

They would die, Tristan, before they told you. Because their little doll hearts beat blacker than yours, and each and every one of them wants to be the man in the pink jumpsuit.

A richly vibrant, sometimes insanely paranoid and cruel palimpsest, Picar has been tightly woven over thousands of years into layers of progressive architectures. The lower levels of its structure are carved from the Plateau itself, whilst successive strata dilute the symbols of ancestor magic becoming ever more rational, dispassionate, frail, and cynical, the further one stood from its birth stone the brighter and cheaper its neon became.

Gangs of warrior monks dressed as Catholic priests and adorned with black gold kept check on the so-called radicals, peace seekers, punks and immigrants. The fundamentalist vigilantes struck for order. Outbreaks of civil unrest between the priests, who believe that true liberty is a pollution of the human spirit and the Polemites, secularists who believe that no true enlightenment can take place unless the sacred is re-marketed, has become more and more frequent.

On the outskirts of the city walls dispossessed ragamuffin’s and exiles slice at each others flesh for scraps of food filtered from the sewers that drain effluent into the Efflit river and on into the lakes. The landscape is dotted with small fires, nests for metal buckets that boil down discarded fish bones for the purposes of making sniffing glue, a vile, yellow residue of poor oblivion.

Once a month warrior monk outreach team’s venture into the slums to offer work instead of charity. Those that accept and there are many, march to the discipline of the hard chapters, brigades of highly skilled fighters that push into the Libertines, neutrals and Polomites. ‘Covert or overt, podium or sword,’ this is their cry.

Amongst the romance of the cafes, the neutrals sip coffee and keep the flames of Picars powerful oral traditions alight under the glow of Absinthe and whisky until the soporific effects of opium level excess and filter out fools. Certain whispers rouse excitement and debate; sometimes there is talk of an army or some mythic garrison of peace crusaders from the UN, but they laugh. There was never anyone coming, no aliens to save us, great truths or absolutes, that god forbid would snuff out the mysteries. We had all heard the stories before and we’d laughed then too. But still, talk was different now and the gossip had turned to something new, people were talking about ‘The Ten.’

Mr. H and Fleur said that they’d prefer it if I didn’t come with them to confront the preacher. I followed them anyway at a distance and after a short trek I was able to find some decent cover from which to view proceedings. A column of smoke billowed out from the small hamlet. All the inhabitants were placing their costumes, all that rubber, grease paint and ribbon on to a huge fire and as each individual threw their skin on to the flames they were given an instrument by the preacher himself. Each time he reached into a large box filled with violins, mouth organs, a large variety of brightly coloured Kazoos and an old standpipe that had been drilled with holes. There were also a large number of empty plastic containers that were handed out along with requisite tools for their rhythmical thrashing.

I watched as Mr. H and Fleur walked around the queuing villagers and through the rippling haze of burning costumes. When they reached the preacher I couldn’t hear what was being spoken from my inaudible vantage but watching carefully it was clear that the conversation was focused on the moustache problem. Mr. H angrily prodded the radish and then waggled his finger at the preacher. After H had finished making his case the preacher took a moment to think. Finally he spun about, bent down into the box that housed the instruments and spun back hitting Mr. H with a Tambourine in one hand and then artfully following up with a blow from a rubber chicken with the other. H reeled backwards as Fleur quickly came to his aid. She immediately tried to protect him, cursing the preacher man and lunging at him, swiping towards and missing his head in retaliation as two of the villagers rushed to restrain her. The preacher kept pointing to Mr. H’s top lip with a huge smile.

From what I could make out I think H sustained a small cut to his brow. At least I could see that the radish had gone. Fleur was gently let go and the village that had seemed content to patiently wait out the fracas that had momentarily halted proceedings once again turned to its endeavors with a shrug. My two new acquaintances left the smoke filled square as the preacher picked up a small round object and popped it into his mouth. It was the radish. Mr. H’s moustache was only hidden after all; the art of illusion comes easy to a preacher.

Suddenly, just as I was about to hurry back to the encampment I heard a branch snap behind me. I spun around. “Good morning!” A well-spoken male voice said in a whisper. The man didn’t look too threatening in a tight, pink jump suit. “And who are you?” I said whispering back.
“My name is Kallerakal and actually it’s not my name anymore its Marjorie or Marge for short if you like. I came up here a while ago after reading all these self help books and I thought ah, to hell with all this king stuff, I did used to be a king you know, that really was my name…” I nod. “Anyway so the thing is it didn’t take me too long to work out that all those cats down there are barking. So I refused all that doll get up and they made me look after the err…” He paused for a moment and pointed over to a small enclosure filled with old gentlemen in orange jump suits, “…to the err, to the wanker’s over there and…”
“Wanker’s, Who?” I interrupted perplexed.
“Ah, well, you see, some of the old men in the village get…some of them got caught cracking one off.”
“Cracking one off?”
“Yes, you know what I mean don’t you, shaking the fat-man, bashing the Bishop. Cracking one off for Christ’s sake, you must have heard of that?” He graphically articulated with his fist.
“What, so they lock up all the…” I laughed as I said it, “…the wanker’s”
“Well yes, anyone who gets caught of course.”
“And you get to do this job in a tight pink cat suit?”
“Yes.” He said, looking down and over his attire objectively, an excess of blood ruining an otherwise honest but pale complexion.
“Well if it was me old boy I think I would’ve taken the Barbie outfit.”

We both turned back to the village and to a chorus that one might hear from an orchestra pit before a performance. “What’s with all that I said?” pointing down towards a small, growing crowd hacking away at the production of polyrythmns and an attendant sea of grinding disharmony. “Wannabes, sycophants and madmen.” Said the redundant king.

Tristan's been watching me for days now. Not even trying to hide it. The frequency squawks straight through my skull; echoes of Lucy's laughter mixed in with the electromagnetic hum. Soon there won't be anything left of me.

Or her.

Or him.

They know this as well as I do, and yet I can hear in Lucy’s laughter that her abandon is true. Ironic that she inhabited a prison much more tangible than mine all these years, when I’m the one whose always been stuck. Frozen in fear.

That was the thing with Alicia – the reason I lost her. No -- the reason I never really had her. (As much as any force could ever possess an entity like Alicia.)

She could always smell my fear. And eventually she realized it was a permanent stench. Nothing she could give me, nothing she could show me, was going to take it away.

And Tristan smelled like freedom. Christ, Tristan smelled like Teen Spirit.

 

Hey asshole – thanks for stealing my girlfriend!

Heh. It’s funny because I know you can actually hear me. Like, I Actually Know. You can positively fucking hear me.

Maybe if I’d been able to feel like this sooner, under different circumstances, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Or rather, the last. Manic laughter, finger on the button. End of the world in a fit of nitrous giggles. A blaze of numb, nihilist glory.

That’s what you want, I know. And nobody’s going to stop you. Not even K3.

Mr. H has been having trouble with his face furniture since those proceedings inside the church yesterday. I only know this from what little I overheard whilst resting, comfortable in my arboreal nest of branches that’s agreeable enough for even the humblest Bonobo. What kind of ceremony would do that sort of damage to facial hair?

Fleur had been trying to help:
“It just keeps fanning F.” Said H, exasperated.
“Well look, just…look do this.” Said Fleur gesticulating and moving towards him but he dodged away from her.
“Let me do it.” H said, twisting. He tweaked and pulled while bending over, tempting gravity into the fray whilst Fleur just stood and watched patiently, bemused. “What are you doing now H?”
He stood upright in response to her but then suddenly he seemed to shrink, giving up.
“I might never get it straight.” He said, hopelessly stamping his foot into the ground.
“Come here sausage.” She said comfortingly, drawing him into her and holding him tight. H’s shoulders began to shake a little as tears of bewilderment broke loose. “I…” H began in vain, questioningly, but it was all over.
“Sssh.” Comforted Fleur and together they rocked slowly from side to side until H, exhausted, fell asleep in her arms.

Morning arrived and Mr. H awoke to find that his tash had become a radish. In resignation to fate he said nothing but sat at the waters edge, his knees drawn up whilst he looked out towards the village; a morning call to prayer melodiously crafted from wineglasses variably filled with water, broadcast from the porcelain prayer tower above.

I climbed down from my tree and greeted H but he ignored me, so I lay down on my back and enthusiastically rendered a sand angel with my arms and legs. That’ll cheer him up I thought.
“Look.” I said jumping up, smiling all over the place and pointing to the angelic silhouette in the sand. “It’s a sand angel!” He looked over at the shape disinterested. “The tash?” I said surprised, noticing the small but obvious red irritant.
“It’s a fucking…” He began angrily. H stopped, composed himself, cleared his throat and started again, “Sorry, it’s a radish.” He said and then, “…like an engorged tick in fear of a hot fag.”
“Ok. Maybe it’ll go down in a few days, what do you think?” I belched unconvincingly.
“I think…” He began, “…that I have a Radish on my top lip.” Ah, sarcasm I thought, “…and when I sniff…” He continued again slowly, “…it plugs my right nostril. And…” He went on, “…I’ve tried to pull it off but I think it’ll rip my lip off with it.”
“Shit.” I said, useless. “Well then we’ll just have to go back to the church, find the guru and ask him to reverse things to make it hairy again.” I rattled.
“Yes.” Said H changing his tune and jumping up. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.” Excitedly he marched over to where Fleur was still sleeping and gave her a gentle nudge with his bare foot to wake her.
“I’m going to the village.” He said emphatically.
“A…a…and me.” I said, stuttering.
“We’re going back to the village.” H said, punching the air.
Fleur stretched her arms out over her head and seeing H properly she sat up suddenly. “H.” She said surprised and then lowering her voice with seriousness. “H…” again almost baritone, “…you’ve a…”
“A Radish, yes, I know.” He preempted.
“On your top lip.” she said after a short pause.
“And were going back to the village to sort it out.” I said jumping up and down a little too enthusiastically. They both looked at me.
“What?” I said.

This place is clearly not on Picar.

And yet, it so clearly is. There’s that whispering in my ears, above and below the thwum-thwum of the machinery: the saline shhhh, shhhh of the seashell. And just a minute (hour? day?) ago, I caught the unmistakable whiff of Lucy. Lemon and licorice, thunderstorm ozone. All my little hairs stood on end.

My vision is clearing, but only slightly. A glowy gauze remains. Sounds are becoming more crisp, though still elusive around the edges. I think I might be a bit cold.

The funny thing is, I feel okay. Like a decade of tension has been drained from me. I suspect I may be under the influence of some force that has been intentionally designed to make me feel this way, and perhaps I should be wary of such an attempt to lower my defenses. But the effect has been so comprehensive as to render me completely unperturbed by this notion. I feel good – I don’t give a shit what happens next.

And I can see it all unfolding, like a stone rolling downhill. Green grass, sunshine and gravity. I’m not precisely sure of the details, but I’m heading toward the lake. I’m walking. This is where I’m supposed to be.

Now it turns out I'm -uite a bit more lost than m- daughter. But at least I'-e got Internet. Fleur and I (and Brim, when he's around and not off dissol-ing between the High & Low Cities,) too- occassion to stop and camp along the Memor- Ban-s of the Efflift Ri-er. A little -illage of dolls was camping there. The- weren't real dolls, the- were people dressed li-e dolls, I'm sure -ou'-e seen them in other neighborhoods, their houses were real dollhouses. Their wee computers onl- ha-e nineteen letters, though, I'll as- -ou to fill-in the dashes. Most were dressed as Helping Dolls. Their bonnets loo-ed a bit more rustic than the street -ind.

We got to tal-ing with these -oung and gentle. The- had a dialect which was a bit hard to hear. Fleur pointed a flashlight at their mouths. That helped. We discerned that the- had a map in their possession and soon enough the whole thing unfolded right in our hands. It was a chec-erboard pattern, blac- being the Burroughs --A Supercomputer. Green being the dense flora/fauna.

The oldest doll girl, Chiffn-, her face a porcelain -arnish, cried remembering s-uare E-2 of the map, she said, "A- -u-- -- f-- ---n-'- -- ---t -h- ---a-a-!" Which I too- to mean that she harbored a great sadness for the loss of her homeland there in that s-uare.

"What happened to the Land of ---n-'- -- ---t?" I as-ed.

One compatriot, a -oung Ebbl- TeeFee Buttrespouts- said, "-t- o--- -- I --f ---au- -? O, -- - f-f- -o--!"

Fleur as-ed, "So, I don't understand -uite right. If that's all, can't she -ust go home? I mean reall-. Loo- at her." And Chiffn- went on somberl- a-blubberin, despite the comforts of her lace collar. While Ebbl- T.F.B. e-pounded the great distance we were from Chiffn-'s growing-up -ears (E-2 on the map) and, be-ond that, an- other coordinate on the grid. She said e-en the long leg of a great mountainous robot born on the moon couldn't stretch to where we were at -ust then in that little ri-er -alle-.

"What's the map good for then?" I said.

"-- ----?" as-ed Ebbl- T.F.B.

Fleur and I pu--led at that, but Fleur caught on first. "Ohhh, ah -a-. We're at unmappable coordinates." She held the flashlight up to her own mouth. "And this map's the proof."