Rollerskater: Oscillations
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This instalment contains strong graphic violence.
He couldn’t remember his name, nor who he was.
The ground was soft beneath him, like wet sand on the beach. As he looked around him, he could see an endless flat plane, as far as the eye could see. No landmarks. No geography.
It was neither night nor day, but a sort of twilight. The sky was starless, sunless, moonless, cloudless. There was no weather; the air was not noticeably hot or cold.
He stood. He was naked, but this did not bother him. There was nobody here to see him, nobody but himself; himself and his thoughts. The internal and the external had almost no distinction, here. His perceptions were as valid as his imaginings. He knew that this could not be real in a sense that he understood, but it was real in its own way, real as death, real as nothingness, real as – chaos.
He began to walk. He was reassured somewhat by the presence of the three dimensions. He could move in any direction two-dimensionally. There were no slopes to prove that there was a third dimension, but that he could stand upright and jump up and down if he wanted to told him that there was in fact a third dimension, here. But then again, he thought, his mind was accustomed to the presence of such. Indeed, perhaps all dimensions here were mere illusions, and time itself also an illusion, being that it was a fourth dimension. So perhaps he was going nowhere…but still, he walked.
The ground felt like sponges beneath his bare feet. The eerie absence of any sort of wind, any sort of sound, was unnatural. It was as though he was sealed in a glass dome, insulated to the elements, but big enough to constitute a world in its own right. He felt unbearably lonely.
He kept walking for God only knows how long. Time had lost all meaning. It could have been minutes, days, or centuries. Perhaps, he thought, this was death. This was what it was to die. The end of all space, of all time, of all identity. Just his restless spirit…and the Infinite.
Then, after a period of empty time had passed, he saw something in the distance. The first landmark he had seen since his arrival. It was a figure, a human figure, standing with its back to him. He walked towards it. He noted that he felt no need to run. He would not run out of time, after all, being as it was that there was no time to run out of. It might have taken him months to get there. But he got there. There where there was no there. Only now.
The figure turned to him, and smiled, as though he had been expecting the visitor.
“Hello,” the figure said, leaning on a black cane, the top of which was shaped like the head of a bird.
He had pale skin, and was wearing a buttoned shirt that had seemingly been stitched together from two separate shirts, one black and one white. The left hand side of the shirt was black, as was the yoke, while the remainder was white. He was wearing trousers that were similarly divided, black on the left side and white on the right, and a pair of shoes, white on the left and black on the right, with a pair of spats, black on the left and white on the right.
His hair, which he wore shoulder-length and cropped into a straight-fringed bob, was black on the left and white on the right as well, and the colour around his pupils consisted of a black ring around white. He smiled, and held out his left hand, clad in a white glove.
“My name is Magpie,” he said. “Welcome to the Notherethere.”
*
Screaming.
Not joyful screaming. Anguished, terrified screaming. And footfalls, like machine gun fire, frantic, staccato, desperate. Let me out, let me out.
Daisy heard it at the same time the others did. They were enjoying a beer. Lewis hadn’t yet even removed the guitar from around his neck. The screaming continued, yet the band continued to play.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Ollie said, looking over his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Jules said. He looked anxious.
“Should we check it out?” Lewis said.
“I think we should,” Daisy said.
They stood, and Daisy, perhaps involuntarily, took Jules by the hand and held it tightly.
They made their way over to the stage-side entrance, a walkway through which the stage and the dancefloor could be seen.
Daisy craned her head around to get a look. The dancefloor, though hard to see in the dark, was eerily empty. Everyone had left. Everyone but for two people.
Daisy clapped a hand to her mouth.
There were a pair of legs and part of a lower torso leaning against the bar, the feet clad in black rollerskates. The legs weren’t moving.
And in the centre of the dancefloor, writhing and convulsing as though suffering an epileptic fit, was Socks. To her horror, the band continued playing, as if to a full house. Danny St. James continued playing drums, Sven Gunnarson continued playing his bass guitar, and Derrick le Prince carried on playing his guitar and singing.
The vocals were almost inaudible under the walls of dark noise. Derrick was grinning widely and staring intensely at the bodies that were lying prone on the dancefloor, as though he were…
As though he were enjoying it.
“Hey!” Ollie shouted. “Stop playing!”
The band could not hear him. They ignored him.
“Stop playing!”
The band continued to play.
“Right,” Ollie shouted, over the noise. “Clear a path.”
“What are you doing?” Jules said.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
Ollie doubled back, then hunched over, charging forward. He launched himself on to the stage and tackled the drummer, who crashed with him to the ground. Danny’s dark glasses flew from his face and disappeared into the shadows.
Ollie stood up and kicked him.
“I told you to stop playing,” he said, frighteningly calm. Danny groaned.
Derrick turned around, hand rested on the neck of his guitar, plectrum in hand.
The others stepped on to the stage.
Daisy looked out on to the dancefloor. Socks had stopped convulsing, and now lay on the ground. She ran over to him, checked his pulse and his breathing.
“What have you done to him?!” she shouted.
His eyes had gone dim, and he didn’t respond to any external stimuli. He was seemingly comatose. Daisy quickly rolled him into the recovery position.
“Call an ambulance!” she shouted.
Derrick laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jules spat. “He’s seriously hurt.”
Derrick looked at him. “I know,” he said. “That’s the idea.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ollie growled, getting in his face.
Derrick smirked at him, and looked knowingly at Sven.
“The poor bastards don’t know what we’re about, Sven. They don’t know.” He looked down at the boy lying comatose on the ground. “He hasn’t told them.”
Sven smiled.
“They do not know about the job we have been asked to do. Ha. Ha.”
He had the simpering affectation of a coward, the sort of behaviour of a child in the schoolyard who hides behind bullies in order to avoid being bullied themselves. Daisy immediately loathed him.
“What do you know that we don’t?” Lewis retorted.
Derrick looked at him. “Know your place, normal,” he said. “This shit doesn’t concern you.”
Ollie’s face had gone bright red.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?!” he barked.
Daisy inspected Socks’s body. His ears, eyes and nose were all stained with dried, brown blood. Could it be possible that The Light Havoc had come to this university with the intention of killing Socks?
Ollie grabbed Derrick by the shirt. “Answer me, you prick.”
“A man after your own heart, Danny,” Derrick said, to the man lying prone behind him, still winded from the tackle.
Ollie punched Derrick in the mouth, knocking him back a few feet. Derrick stood up straight, took a handkerchief out of one of his pockets, and dabbed some blood off his lower lip.
“Alright,” he said, calmly. “Tell you what. I’m giving you, all of you, until the count of three to get out of here so we can finish the job.”
“And if we don’t?” Jules said.
“Then all of you will die. One…”
Daisy looked over at the disembodied legs leaning against the bar.
“Two…”
She looked down at Socks. She resolved not to leave him.
“Three.”
All of them stood their ground, and refused to move.
Derrick looked around him and nodded. “That’s a real shame,” he said. “I really did like your music.”
He clicked his fingers, and every fire exit slammed shut, locking firmly. They were sealed in.
Without warning, Danny rolled over, roared loudly, sprung up from the ground and took Ollie’s legs out from under him.
They crashed to the ground, and Danny began hailing fists down on Ollie, who put his arms up to guard. He was a hulking gorilla of a man, aggressive and imposing, and it was clear that he consisted of more brawn than brains.
“I’m going to break your legs,” he growled.
“Try it,” Ollie said, landing a punch to his jaw that would be concussive in any other situation.
Danny toppled back, and Ollie stood, raising his fists to fight.
Danny turned around and grinned, pulling out two drumsticks from inside his trousers.
“What are you going to do with those?” Ollie said. “Amen Brother me to death?”
“No,” Danny said.
By some dark force, the drumsticks transformed into needlepoint daggers in his hands.
“I’m going to break your legs,” Danny repeated. “But not before I gut you.”
He charged Ollie, Ollie got him in a headlock, and they tumbled to the ground.
Jules grabbed Derrick by the lapels, glaring at him intensely.
“Don’t do this,” he hissed.
Derrick grinned at him, then turned to Sven.
“Danny’s got the drummer. You kill the rhythm guitarist. This one’s mine.”
“What about the girl?” Sven said, with a sickening excitement.
Derrick looked right at Daisy.
“Save her for last,” he said.
*
The wanderer sat on the soft earth with his knees drawn up to his chin, deep in thought.
“I was someone else, once,” he said. “A long time ago, I think. Or maybe yesterday.”
“You know, a lot of people say that,” Magpie said, leaning on his cane. The soft ground didn’t seem to prevent him from standing upright. “That’s the nature of the Notherethere, y’see.”
“Am I dead?” the wanderer said.
“You are neither dead nor alive,” Magpie said. “You’ve entered an ontological no-man’s-land. This, my boy, isn’t even limbo. No, you’re nowhere.”
He spoke in a soft and friendly accent that the wanderer recognised from somewhere. It was an accent from a city, a big city, its eastern end. He seemed to take care to enunciate his consonants, only occasionally swapping a T out with a glottal stop, but the accent was still undoubtedly there.
“I must be somewhere,” the wanderer said. “I can’t be nowhere.”
“Believe it,” Magpie said. “This place has no geography. You and I are the only landmarkers. You can keep walking forever in any direction, and you will never see anything different. Tell me, does that sound like somewhere to you?”
“Well, then how did I get here? Who am I?”
“That, my boy, is information I am not able to provide you.”
The wanderer tried to dig his hands into the ground, but it was spongey and homogeneous. “I was someone before this. I know I was. I just don’t remember…who.”
“Hm,” Magpie said. “A lost spirit, it would seem. If it makes you feel better, most people don’t stay here for long. They figure out where they’re going.”
“In a world without time, what’s ‘long’?” the wanderer asked.
Magpie laughed. “You make a good point,” he said.
There came a sound in the distance, a soft thudding sound.
“Ah, look who it is,” Magpie said. The wanderer turned to look.
It was a cat, black on its left side and white on its right. The cat climbed up Magpie’s leg and came to rest on his shoulders.
“His name is Schrödinger,” Magpie said, scratching under the cat’s chin. “He’s a genetic chimera.” (He looked very proud of himself for pronouncing it correctly.)
“Mrroww,” the cat said.
The wanderer looked up at the cat. He had a strange feeling of déjà vu.
“Two things at once,” the wanderer said.
“Hm? You say something, boy?”
“The cat is two things at once. Schrödinger. Like, Schrödinger’s cat. That’s why you called it that.”
“Him that.”
“It’s so familiar,” the wanderer said. “I remember something about…two things at once.”
“I’m sure it’ll come back to you,” Magpie said. “Not a lot to distract you out here. Or is it in here? I’m never quite sure. Hard to have an outside when you have no inside, but the same is true the other way…”
“Would you be quiet?” the wanderer snapped. “I’m trying to think.”
“Oooh,” Magpie said, sarcastically, looking at the cat, who looked back impassively. The wanderer shot him a dirty look.
The wanderer was trying to remember. There was somewhere he was supposed to be. Something important he had to attend to. But what? What was it?
He had the paradoxical feeling that he was running out of time.
*
Daisy sat on the school chair, next to the wooden table. There was a small CRT television sitting on the table, flickering. It was showing an image of Socks’s face.
He’s in a bad way, isn’t he, a voice said.
“Yeah,” Daisy said.
Can you get help?
“No,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
Maybe there is nothing you can do.
“There must be something.”
Well, perhaps.
Daisy became aware that the voice was coming from somewhere outside her periphery of vision, and when she turned her head to look, the image seemed to move.
You have to relax, Daisy.
“I can’t relax!” she shouted. “It’s a war zone out there!”
It’s a war zone in here, too.
She went silent for a moment.
“What do you want from me?”
I want you to look.
“Look where?”
Look.
“Look where, damn it?”
Look.
Daisy turned her head, and the image from the periphery of her vision slid into view.
There was another person seated across the round table. She was dressed the same way as Daisy and looked almost identical, with the exception of one thing. She was wearing a gold comedy mask, with the facial features contorted into an exaggerated smile. There was nothing visible behind the mask.
“There you are,” the masked girl said.
“Who are you?”
“I think you know who I am.”
Daisy was dumbfounded. “No,” she said. “You’re just…a character I play.”
“A character, an imaginary friend. But that is, in itself, a form of life, isn’t it?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“No more ridiculous than anything else happening around you.”
“Alright,” Daisy said. “I’ve looked at you. Now what do you want?”
“I want to help you.”
“Yes, well, you’re not doing a very good job of that, so go away.”
“Alright,” the masked girl said. “Call me when you need me.”
Daisy climbed up on to the table, and crawled through the television screen.
And then there was one.
*
The fight was still well underway. She watched as Danny threw Ollie to the ground with a roar. Ollie quickly tripped him and sent him crashing to the floor.
He grabbed Ollie, and they rolled across the floor.
Derrick was slashing at Jules with the plectrum in quick, precise movements. Derrick was not like Danny, being slighter of build. He slunk like a cat, dodging and parrying, shiftily moving from side to side.
Jules’s cheek was bleeding heavily – he had been wounded when she hadn’t been looking. It would need stitches, for sure. She felt as though she were in a dream, trapped in the centre of the room, unable to move.
Danny and Ollie crashed over to the bar area, and both lay prone on the ground. Danny climbed on top of Ollie and pinned his arms down, leaning over him sadistically.
“You should have just let me break your legs, kid,” he said.
“I think I’d prefer that to listening to one of your songs,” Ollie said.
Danny growled. “Shut the fuck up, you little shit.”
He took one of the drumstick-daggers and raised it above his head, holding Ollie by the throat in his massive, bear-like hand, as Ollie scrabbled to try and stop him.
He was about to bring it down, when suddenly, he was blind-sided by an enormous crash on top of his head, knocking him out. Ollie crawled out from under him.
Lewis was standing behind him with the shattered remains of his guitar hanging on by the strings from the neck.
“Nice one,” Ollie said.
“I’ve been meaning to get a replacement,” Lewis said, tossing it to the side. “Where’s Sven, anyway?”
His question was answered immediately by a berserker yell, as Sven ran towards him wielding his own guitar as a weapon. Daisy noted how much he looked like a modern Viking, with the exception of his clean-shaven chin.
Just as the drumsticks had transformed into daggers, his guitar transmuted in his hands into a large, crystal battle-axe. He swung it, narrowly missing Lewis and Ollie, and went careening, carried by momentum, into a nearby wall. The axe looked too large and heavy for such a bean-pole of a man, which Daisy felt was somewhat in keeping – the coward hides behind a bully, and the frail man hides behind the biggest weapon he can find.
Ollie turned to Lewis.
“You know, I was a little too nice about these guys the other day. They suck.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Lewis said.
Sven looked back at them, pulling his axe out of the smashed plasterboard.
“Dra åt helvete!” he shrieked, running at them.
They ducked under the axe-blade as it came for them, taking the thin man by his legs.
Derrick, meanwhile, was grinning fiendishly as he backed Jules into a corner.
“You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” he said. “You could have left. But you just had to be a hero, didn’t you?”
“Any day of the week,” Jules said.
Derrick grinned, then held the plectrum to Jules’s neck.
Daisy immediately leapt up and ran over.
“No!”
Derrick instinctively looked in the direction of the sound, pulling the plectrum away for a split second.
He turned back, only for Jules to headbutt him, sending him reeling.
Daisy looked at Jules, her mouth slightly agape.
“Ma da’s fae Glesga,” Jules said, shrugging. “Got that Scottish fightin’ blood.”
Derrick held a handkerchief to his bleeding nose, backing away.
He looked up and smirked, swaying as he propped himself against the wall.
He began to laugh again. “You stupid bastard. You fucking stupid bastard.”
“JULES!” Daisy yelled.
Standing behind him was Danny, holding one of his daggers.
Danny raised the dagger, and felt Daisy knock him sideways into the bar, where he tripped over the disembodied legs, losing his balance and crashing to the ground, with the knife-point of the dagger pointing straight down…
Daisy gasped.
Danny, dazed, looked around him.
His dagger had penetrated the skate on the right foot. It jutted from the skate like a fortification on a beach.
There was no blood, no indication of injury.
“HA!” he roared.
Sven, who had been busy fighting off Lewis and Ollie, and Derrick, who had slunk into the corner, looked.
Danny pointed to Jules.
“I didn’t kill this prick,” he bellowed. “But look – I got the BITCH!”
Daisy looked at the blade. She could swear that it was glowing.
It was glowing.
Danny looked down at it, transfixed. Sven dropped his axe in shock.
“Danny, don’t look at it!” he shouted.
Derrick had put his head in his hands.
“Fuck.”
“Danny!”
“It’s too late,” Derrick said. “It’s started.”
“What has?” Jules said. “What’s started?”
“You shut the fuck up,” Derrick said, pointing his plectrum at him.
Danny peered at the glowing blade and tugged at it.
“Don’t!” Sven yelled. It was futile.
The blade came free with a rubbery squeak, and the glow intensified. Danny looked down into it, as though peering into a deep chasm.
“Wow,” he said. His voice had taken on a strange, high-pitched, almost child-like quality. It was unnerving to hear a voice like that come from such a large man. “It’s – forever in there.”
“You fucking idiot,” Derrick spat. “Sven, make sure your glasses are on.”
“What’s going on?” Daisy asked.
Danny laughed. It started as a slight chuckle, as though he had heard the punchline to some joke that only he was in on. The laughter intensified, and became a guffaw, a laughing-fit, as though it was the funniest joke he had ever heard. And then it became manic, shrieking, some Pagliaccio mid-breakdown, before dissolving into painful, full-throated sobbing.
“It burns,” Danny said, his voice hollow and reedy. “Why does it burn? Burning me. Forever. Forever. Burning. All here. You’ll see. Forever. Forever, forever, forever…!”
“DANNY!” Sven cried, clawing at air, trying to get to him. Derrick was physically restraining him.
“Fucking leave him,” Derrick said. “I’ve told you, it’s too late.”
“O, Jisses…”
Danny was now looking intently down at the hole in the skate. Whatever he had seen, was seeing, it had driven him mad. For now he was alternating between laughter, terrified screaming and sobbing, with very little transition between. He clutched his head.
“Burning, burning,” he said. His voice had become a sort of choked gargle.
The light intensified.
A beam of light ripped from the skate. In an instant, like a precision laser, it cleaved the large man’s head in twain, and then in another instant, as the fluids in the stricken cranial cavity instantly superheated to well above boiling, his head exploded.
Atop the neck of the body that had once been Danny St. James was a lower jaw, from which protruded teeth like marble gravestones. The tongue, unharmed by the killing light, lashed back and forth as what remained of the brainstem struggled to find purchase. Then, finally, the body collapsed backwards. Fresh blood spilled from ragged, charred, torn flesh.
Daisy covered her mouth and retched.
Derrick, observing the scene, looked at the other four, then to Sven.
“New plan,” he said, unnervingly tranquil. “Kill them all.”
*
A beam of light burst from the empty heavens and struck the ground. The wanderer had almost forgotten what light even was.
He shielded his eyes from it.
“What’s going on?” he asked Magpie, who appeared to be watching it with a sort of bored fascination.
“I think you just got your ticket out of here, my lad,” Magpie said, pointing with the cane.
Sitting some distance away was a door. A simple wooden door, in a frame, with a panelling design that most anyone would think of if someone said the word “door”. In any other environment, it would be mundane, uninspired, even, but the incongruity with the flat plain and unyielding earth made it stick out like a beacon.
“Will that take me where I need to be?” the wanderer asked.
“Hopefully,” Magpie said. “I don’t know what happens on the other side of that door.”
The wanderer nodded.
“I don’t think we’re so different, you and I,” the wanderer said. “I think we have something in common.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” the wanderer mused. “I think you’re like me. You’re two things at once. Am I wrong?”
Magpie laughed, scratching Schrödinger’s chin. The cat appeared to smile contentedly, in the way cats do when they are relaxed and in a good mood.
“You’re right,” he said. “You side with the dancing, but you have power over the still.”
“And can the same be said for you?”
“I side with no-one,” Magpie said. “That’s why I live here. There are no sides here.”
He laughed. It was seemingly a joke only he understood. “Away with you, boy. Someone needs you.”
“Thank you,” the wanderer said, beginning to walk.
“I’ll be seeing you soon,” Magpie said, behind him.
The wanderer wondered what that meant, but walked towards the door. An indeterminate period of time passed. Perhaps it took him microseconds, or perhaps it took him the full lifetime of a star to reach the door. It was all the same here. But after that period had ended, he had arrived. And in that time, he had time to remember.
Yes, I remember, the wanderer thought, placing a hand against the cool wood. I remember my name.
He felt quite relieved.
And then there was one.
*
“Who are you?” Daisy asked.
The girl across the table sat silent for a few moments. The contorted features of the comedy mask were unnerving. They hid whatever expression lay beneath them. The sunken, empty eyeholes gazed at her impassively.
“You know who I am,” the girl said.
“I know your name,” Daisy said. “But I don’t know who you are. Not really.”
“You’ve never taken the time to get to know me.”
“You’re imaginary,” Daisy said.
“And is the imaginary less real than the actual?” the girl asked, tilting her head.
“Yes,” Daisy said.
“What about concepts like truth, justice and love? Those do not materially exist in any sense. You cannot measure them. You cannot experiment on them. But you would say they are real, would you not? At least, in the sense that you can talk about them in a meaningful way.”
“But you’re a fictional character,” Daisy said. “You’re nothing but a costume that I wear. This whole conversation is happening in my head.”
“Yes, in your head. In your mind. And what is mind but simple fluctuations, electrochemical impulses, mere…oscillations?”
She tilted her head again, knowingly.
“I don’t follow you,” Daisy said.
The girl rested her chin on her hand. “Well, by your metric, not even your own mind can be real. Your experiences cannot be independently verified. There is no quantifiable way to measure your experience of the colour yellow, for example.”
“What are you saying?”
“That perhaps I am real in my own way. Perhaps some aspect of me is part of your spirit.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything going on at the moment,” Daisy said, frustrated. “I’ve come here because I am scared, Ella.”
Ella bowed her head.
“I want to help you, Daisy.”
“Help me how?”
“I believe I can resolve the situation. But I need you to give me permission to take control.”
“No,” Daisy said.
Ella paused.
“Daisy, please consider this.”
“I said no,” Daisy said. “I don’t know how you got in my head like this. But the answer is no, Ella. You’re my stage persona, nothing more.”
“Daisy, please.”
“Goodbye, Ella.”
And then there was one.
*
Daisy came back to herself. She was holding her bass guitar.
Jules was crouched beside her. They had made a barricade in the backstage area, blocking off the stage-side entrance, and had set up a smaller barricade, behind which they were now hiding. Lewis and Ollie were nowhere to be seen. They had become separated. Even though it was now four against two, they were still hopelessly outmatched. These men were dangerous, powerful and deadly.
He was holding her.
“You okay?” he said, softly.
“Yeah,” Daisy replied. “I really didn’t expect our first big show to go this way.”
“Nobody did,” Jules said.
“How long do you think it will take them to break down that barricade?”
“With that guy’s axe, I’d say about ten seconds.”
Daisy nodded, gravely.
“We’re going to die here, Jules.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“No, you’re being pessimistic.”
“It’s hard to switch it off,” Daisy said. “Especially when things like this happen.”
“It’s when things like this happen that it’s most important to switch it off,” Jules said.
Daisy hung her head.
“You’re right,” she said.
Jules took her hand.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said.
Daisy smiled.
There came a loud bang from behind the first barricade.
They peered over the second barricade, and Jules was holding her hand so tight, so tight she could feel his pulse, and their hearts were beating so fast.
The barricade came down with a crash. Sven was holding his axe, panting and sweating.
“Thank you, Sven,” Derrick said, stepping out from behind him. Dressed all in black, he looked like some Gestapo officer, some horrid tyrant.
“Come out, you cowards,” Sven shouted. He immediately took cover behind Derrick, apparently not noticing the irony.
They remained silent behind their barricade. They did not know if the assailants had succeeded in killing Lewis and Ollie. For all they knew, they were all alone. Daisy was trying to put the thought out of her mind.
Derrick looked over at the second, smaller barricade.
“Get out here,” he said.
Sven was gasping and panting.
They looked at each other, and then reluctantly, they stood. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
“There you are,” Derrick said.
He stepped towards the barricade.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he said. “I really did count myself a fan of yours. Never meet your heroes, I guess.”
“Daisy,” Jules said. “Get behind me.”
She did so, clutching her bass guitar.
“Cute,” Derrick said. “I was willing to let you go. I was even willing to leave you bruised.”
He took a cigarette from his pocket, took out a Zippo and lit it up. He took a puff.
“But then you killed Danny,” he said.
“He killed himself,” Jules said. “You saw it.”
“And he wouldn’t be dead if not for you,” Derrick retorted.
“So does killing us make it better?” Jules asked.
“A little bit.” Derrick smiled.
“Alright,” Jules said.
He reached back and grabbed Daisy’s hand.
“If you want to kill her, you’ll have to go through me.”
“Jules,” Daisy said, quietly.
Derrick, smirking, took the cigarette and stubbed it out on his tongue.
“Sven.”
Sven came at them with the axe, and Jules leaped the barricade with Daisy in tow. They cleared it just in time for the Swede to crash through the barricade, roaring. He stood, frustrated, and smashed it to bits with the axe, and turned back around. He looked like a wild animal, a Viking in battle-trance, eyes bulging from his skull, panting and sweating.
“You missed,” Jules said.
Sven suddenly stood up straight, and gave the most wicked grin.
And there was this
movement
Derrick stood in front of Jules. He pressed a right-handed fist against Jules’s left breast, and it was slowly, but steadily, turning red.
Daisy covered her mouth.
“No,” she said, softly.
Jules didn’t comprehend what had happened at first. Derrick withdrew his hand, spilling red droplets on the ground between them.
Coiled in it was a long, sharp dagger – one of Danny’s drumsticks. And dripping from it was blood, human blood, Jules’s blood, dark and venous, as black, in the dim light of the backstage area, as the jacket that Derrick was wearing.
Jules clutched at his chest for a moment, not quite understanding the pain he was in. His beige shirt had a hole in it, and from the hole, a steady pour was oozing. He was trying to catch it, to keep it in, but to no avail.
He staggered backwards, unable to speak, and fell.
Daisy dropped the guitar and caught him, and she tumbled with him to the ground.
Jules’s eyes were wide. He was in shock. He knew, somewhere, what was happening to him, but had no way of truly understanding it. No living creature would, really.
“Jules,” Daisy said, quietly.
It wasn’t at all like in the films. There was no anguished wailing, no dramatic scream of “No!”
Just the horrible spectre of death that now hung above them.
Derrick was laughing at his handiwork.
Jules’s eyes had brimmed with tears. He wasn’t quite ready to accept it. Not now, not so young, that’s what he must have been thinking.
His breathing had become ragged, shuddering. He looked into Daisy’s eyes, those hazel eyes, and she looked down into his brown eyes, and they thought about the days that could now never be, the kisses that would never be shared, and the future that was disintegrating in front of them. Jules’s mouth moved, as though he were trying to find the words.
Eventually, he found them, and he uttered them, in a voice so small and so faint that it did not sound like Jules, a voice that was barely a whisper.
“You are so beautiful,” the dying boy said.
And then he was gone.
Daisy held him close, and she cried.
*
Daisy and Ella were opposite each other at the wooden table, upon which lay Jules.
Daisy was shaking and sobbing.
“We have to do something,” she said. “Save him somehow.”
Ella said nothing, inspecting the inert body on the table before them. She walked around the table, tilting her head.
“Ella, stop playing games,” Daisy said. “Please, help me.”
Ella looked up at her. The comedy mask still grinned. Daisy was struck with anger, like the girl was mocking her.
“Take that stupid fucking mask off,” she snapped.
“I can help you,” Ella said. “But you must let me take control.”
“No,” Daisy said.
“Daisy, his body is dying, but there are parts of him that still survive. You remember what I said earlier? Mind is nothing but oscillations. Patterns, electric patterns. What you call a soul still dwells within him, but the spark will not remain for long. Ischemic injury is already beginning. We have minutes. A transference has taken place already, but without his base pattern, it’s useless.”
“It isn’t right,” Daisy said. “I’m me. You are you.”
“This is the only way we can save him, Daisy.”
Daisy looked at the body on the table. The head had been replaced, now, with a CRT screen, which was showing a dead channel, tuned to static.
She looked away and looked back.
“Do you promise to let me back in once you’re finished?”
“I promise, Daisy. I have always respected your wishes and I will continue to do so.”
Daisy nodded.
“Who are you?” she said. “Really?”
The girl looked down and back up, and the mask seemed to smile deviously.
“I am you,” Ella said. “I am an aspect of you. I was born when you were born and I will die when you die. I am the spark of chaos that lies behind all life. I am part of your ego. Your alter-ego.”
“But you speak to me like you’re not me.”
“I am the you that could be,” Ella said.
The screen had begun to buzz, and the static was stuttering and turning black.
“We’re losing him,” Ella said. “It’s now or never, Daisy.”
Daisy looked down, covered her mouth and sobbed.
“Okay,” she said. “Do it, Ella. Please, do it.”
“Say it, Daisy. Say it.”
Daisy looked up at her.
“Ella,” she said. “Take control.”
“Thank you,” Ella said.
She removed the mask and threw it aside.
And then there was one.
*
Socks woke with a start, as though roused from some nightmare. He sat up and looked around him. He felt like he’d been out for years, but, considering he was still in the nightclub, mere hours must have passed. Blearily he looked around him.
“Hey,” a voice said. “He’s waking up.”
Two men came up to him. He squinted to see them, recognising them as Ella Foe and the Oscillations’ drummer and rhythm guitarist.
“What’s going on?” Socks said. “What’s the situation?”
He looked behind him to see a headless corpse laying next to K-Os’s disembodied legs. Socks recognised it at once as the body of The Light Havoc’s drummer. He immediately looked away in disgust.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“The Light Havoc are trying to kill us,” the guitarist said. “We hid from them and they went backstage.”
“Backstage, what’s—” Socks said. “Oh shit, Daisy!”
He tried to get up and immediately toppled over. Every one of his muscles felt like it had been turned to paste.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Mind explaining what’s going on?” the drummer asked.
“You would never believe me,” Socks said, writhing like an earthworm.
“I’m open,” the drummer said, offering him a hand. “Ollie, by the way.”
“Lewis,” the guitarist said, following suit.
“Nice to meet you,” Socks said. “Loved the show, guys.”
“Thanks,” Lewis said.
Socks tried to prop himself up.
“We’ve got to help Daisy,” he said. “These guys are dangerous.”
“Yeah, we gathered,” Ollie said.
“I can’t walk,” Socks said.
The other two put their necks under his armpits and lifted him up. Socks groaned in pain.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to get backstage.”
“What?” Lewis said. “Are you mad?”
“I know we can help her, if we just—”
Socks never finished his thought, as just then, an explosion ripped from the backstage area, and two bodies were flung through the stage-side entrance, smashing into the wall on the other side of the nightclub and tumbling to the ground. It was the other two members of The Light Havoc, who lay crumpled on the floor for a few moments, heavily winded.
“Jesus Christ,” Ollie said. “What was that?”
Footsteps.
A figure stepped out of the shadows by the stage.
“Daisy?” Socks said, weakly looking at her.
The figure was dressed like Daisy, but her makeup was now smeared, such that it looked like war-paint. And her face, it was Daisy’s face, but this was not Daisy – not the Daisy they knew, for her hair was platinum grey, and as the figure came closer, all three could see that in her eyes, her irises now shone iridescent silver, like two tiny compact discs.
“Holy shit…” Socks said, amazed. The other two were dumbfounded.
Derrick groaned and staggered to his feet. He had landed on the other side of the stage, while Sven had slammed into a wall on the other side of the nightclub. He was carrying a large axe made from umbric. He, too, got back up, and took the axe by the handle.
“How did she do that?” he asked, turning to Derrick, who was surveying the situation. “She’s a fuckin’ normal.”
The girl silently walked towards them, holding her bass guitar. Calmly, she began playing one string repeatedly.
Dunk. Dunk. Dunk, dunk, dunk. Dunk. Dunk. Dunk, dunk.
The sound-system seemed to come to life of its own accord, amplifying the sound. It did not sound like the melodious, danceable bassline of Daisy’s band, but angry, violent and harsh.
“Fuck this,” Sven said, raising his axe.
“Sven, don’t,” Derrick said. He was bleeding from a wound to the side of his head, and it was trickling down into his left eye.
“She has already killed Danny,” Sven snarled. “No more.”
“Sven,” Derrick said, trying to block his path.
“Fuck you, Derrick,” Sven said. “Get out of my way!”
Sven used the last of his energy to rush the stage, leaping up and charging towards the girl.
“Daisy!” Ollie shouted.
Derrick leaned against a wall, and seemed to be reaching for something.
Sven was just about to hit her with the axe, when he stopped.
His limbs juddered to a halt, and he could not move.
“Wh—” he said. “What is…happening to me…”
It was as though he had met Medusa’s gaze. He tried to attack, but his limbs only trembled slightly.
The girl looked at him, continuing to play the bassline.
Dunk. Dunk. Dunk, dunk, dunk.
“Did you really think I didn’t see that coming?” she said. Her voice, too, was different. It sounded deeper.
“You…bitch…” Sven said.
The girl tutted. “For a handsome boy, Sven, you really are a piece of work.”
The three of them watched as Sven’s axe was suddenly plucked from his hands.
White, smoke-like tendrils stretched from behind the girl’s back, gripping the axe and holding it in the air. The same tendrils had also wrapped around Sven’s limbs, preventing him from moving.
“That’s enough,” Derrick said, charging towards the girl. He was holding a long umbric dagger. “Die!”
The girl smiled at him and did not attempt to stop his progress.
Socks tried to turn his head away as best he could, given the extent of his injuries.
He heard the sound of something chink against something hard.
The blade had stabbed the girl’s guitar.
“Oh dear,” the girl said, smiling. “Derrick, your predictability really is your greatest weakness.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Derrick said, trying to grip the blade. It burned his hand and he pulled it away. Sven could not speak and only watch.
“What the hell?!” Derrick exclaimed.
“That was the last piece of the puzzle,” the girl said. “That was all I needed.”
The blade began to glow with a golden light, before exploding into a column of flame.
In front of the bar on the other side of the dancefloor, the headless corpse of Danny St. James also burst into flames, and not even ash was left.
“You see,” the girl said. “That blade became infused with pure chaotic energy when it was stabbed into that skate. And you just transferred that energy to this guitar here.”
Derrick fell backwards, backing away from her on hands and feet.
“Which means,” the girl said. “That I am now able to break umbric.”
Sven issued a moan that may have been his attempt to scream.
“No,” Derrick said. “Impossible.”
“Allow me to demonstrate,” the girl said, turning back to Sven.
“Nnnn,” Sven choked.
The tendrils pulled ever so gently on the neck of the handle, where it met the blade, tightening their grip.
Sven’s eyes bulged. Socks realised – he was being strangled.
Tiny cracks began to form in the handle, and embers began to show.
There was a crackling sound, like stones rubbing against stones.
And in a single movement, the handle snapped in two.
Simultaneously, Sven’s neck jerked ninety degrees to the left on the horizontal, with a horrid crunch.
The tendrils relinquished, and dropped the now-still body to the ground, which, along with the axe, was instantly immolated.
And then there was one.
Derrick looked at the ground where his bandmate had once been, and then up at her. He laughed.
“You stupid bitch,” he said. “You fucking stupid bitch.”
In one movement, he grabbed his guitar, and stood, holding his umbric plectrum.
“Try stopping this,” he said, playing a chord.
The sound reverberated around the room, and Socks felt that feeling, that feeling of full-body migraine, return. He cried out in agony, thrashing against the two men holding him.
“What the hell is happening?” Ollie said.
The girl, too, began to bleed, and collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain. Derrick played a riff. She screamed like she was being burned with a hot iron, and, from what Socks was feeling, she might as well have been.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Derrick said. “This is the difference between you and me. You try to save the world. You put all your stock in the forces of chaos, and look where it gets you. You want to be the hero so badly that you don’t even notice that the odds are stacked against you.”
He stepped towards her. “And now,” he said, “I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill your friends over there…and then I’m going to kill that fucking rollerskater.”
The girl moaned, propping herself up.
“There was…one more thing…I didn’t…tell you,” she said.
Derrick did not stop playing.
“I don’t give a shit.”
The girl sat up, and, with all her might, fought past the pain, past the agony of the horrible chords, and brought her hand down hard on the strings of her guitar.
DUNK!
A blast of golden light issued forth, silencing Derrick’s playing.
The girl hit the strings of her bass again and again, violently, savagely. She screamed out in pain.
DUNK. DUNK. DUNK, DUNK, DUNK.
As Socks came to again, he noticed that her fingers were bleeding from the violence of her playing. Each note brought forth another wave of golden light, which knocked Derrick back, preventing him from continuing to play.
“You see,” the girl said, standing. The white pickguard of her guitar was now covered in droplets of blood. “When you stabbed my guitar, just then…you didn’t just infuse it with chaotic energy…you also infused it…”
She took a step forwards, slowly regaining her strength. White tendrils flowed from her back, into the backstage area, grabbing something.
“…with the spirit…of the man you killed. Because, you see…all a soul is, all a mind is, really…is just a pattern of oscillations. And his oscillations live now, in this guitar. And, Derrick…”
The man was backed against the wall, now, too fatigued to continue playing.
“He is very angry.”
The tendrils returned from the backstage area, bringing with them a Fender Stratocaster. They reached across the room and behind the others, where a smashed electric guitar, designed to look like a Les Paul, sat next to the bar, and carefully reassembled the pieces. Then they brought out a drum-kit, on whose kickdrum were painted the words:
Ella Foe AND THE OSCILLATIONS
“Is this shit meant to scare me?” Derrick said. “Well, it’s not working!”
“No,” Ella said.
Derrick laughed, mockingly. “Fuck you,” he said, going to play another chord.
His arms did not move.
“Wh-what?”
He looked at them in horror to see that white tendrils now gripped his arms as they had Sven’s. He had been duped.
He was moved to the centre of the stage, and Ella stood before him, holding her bass guitar.
“As I said, Derrick,” Ella said, bitterly. “That is your main weakness. You’re just so predictable.”
“Stop,” Derrick said. “Let me go.”
“Oh no, I won’t be doing that,” Ella said. “You have proven yourself to be far more trouble than you’re worth.”
And she raised a bleeding hand, and played a violent, grinding bass note, and at the same time the tendrils played a chord on the guitars and beat on the drums.
Derrick jerked backwards and his head lurched forwards.
He tried to say something spiteful, but all that frothed from his mouth was a strangled, gurgled moan.
Ella smiled at him.
“That pop you just felt?” she said, sweetly. “That was your liver rupturing. A nasty way to die. But I wouldn’t let it worry you.”
She played another note and Derrick cried out again.
“That was your small intestine bursting,” Ella said.
“St…st…” Derrick stammered, crying.
“Stop?” Ella said. “No, Derrick. After all…you could have stopped, and you didn’t.”
Derrick whimpered like a small child.
“It’s a real shame,” the girl said. “I really did like your music.”
Her arm moved up and down, robotically, and her hips swung from side to side.
And the golden light became blinding, hot and white. They could not see for the light what she was doing to him, but they could hear – agonised cries turned to gurgling, and then gurgling was buried under cacophonous, catastrophic walls of noise that filled the room, until he was completely silenced. Socks, Lewis and Ollie could only watch speechlessly, and after what seemed an eternity, she finished.
The light cleared, the noise echoed away into silence, vision came back to them, and they all stared at the centre of the stage. Where Derrick le Prince had once been standing, nothing remained but a pair of Chelsea boots with pointed toes, dirtied with dried blood and soot, and protruding from them were a pair of ankle-bones, blackened, charred and smoking.
The Light Havoc were no more.
Ella looked at her handiwork, and then out to the dancefloor, where the three men were standing in shock. She jumped off the stage and walked towards them.
“Sleep, now,” she said, and Lewis and Ollie fell to the ground. Then she turned to Socks.
“Are you injured?” she said.
“Yeah,” Socks said.
“There are emergency services waiting outside for you.”
“Th-thanks,” Socks said. “And what about K-Os?”
Ella turned to see the disembodied pair of legs at the bar.
She played a bassline, and light flowed from her guitar like an elixir of life. K-Os’s body reassembled itself from the matter that had been splattered against the bar.
The skates turned back from black to white, and she, too, slept.
It was the first time Socks had ever seen K-Os sleeping.
“Thank you,” Socks said. He was beginning to lose balance without the support of Lewis and Ollie. “I think I’m going to pass out now.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Ella said. “You look very tired. Pleasant dreams, Socks.”
Socks nodded, then crashed to the ground.
*
In the room with the wooden table, Ella sat across from Daisy.
Daisy couldn’t bring herself to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” Ella said. “I used only what force I deemed necessary.”
“It’s not that,” Daisy said. “It’s just that…nothing will ever be the same now.”
“I understand,” Ella said.
“No you don’t,” Daisy said. “You aren’t real.”
“I am real enough to know that change is troubling,” Ella said.
“Yeah,” Daisy said. She sighed. “So, is Jules dead? Really and definitely?”
Ella looked up with her CD-eyes and back at Daisy. “As you knew him, yes,” she said. “A…transformation has taken place. But his spirit is still very much alive, Daisy. It lives in your guitar.”
“…I see,” Daisy said. It was not the answer she had been hoping for.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Daisy said. “So what will happen to you now, Ella?”
“I have awakened your abilities,” Ella said. “So, I suppose I will merge back into your ego. You shall become me and I shall become you. If you wish.”
Daisy nodded. “So I will become Ella Foe.”
Her bass guitar had appeared on the table.
“And Jules’s spirit…the Oscillations.”
“Poetic, in a way,” Ella said.
Daisy considered it for a second.
“I think I’ve had enough of this for one day,” she said. “Thank you for everything, Ella. And I hope to see you again.”
“You will see me again,” Ella said. “Every time you look in a mirror.”
They both stood, and walked around the table. They embraced each other, and Daisy felt warmth, warmth like love, like the embrace of a dearly beloved friend or relative.
She opened her eyes, and Ella was gone.
And then there was one.
Another time, another place…
This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ARC ONE: UMBRIC SPRING
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