Sublime City Blues
Chapter 1
The air was thick and difficult. She fought for traction but no matter how hard
A sign carved into a plank of wood hanging parallel to her progress read; If you don't know up from down - Go sideways.
"What are my options? I could break down and cry or…."
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The nature of her imperative was dissipating fast.
She could feel it. She had no idea what it meant.
'The walls are so fast.'
Carved in stone and stacked letter upon letter in the palm of her hand. She watched as evolution turned the stone to dust, blown away on a warm breeze as the corridors blurred around the edges.
She was missing an important piece of something that mattered.
Fleshy red lips walking on matchstick legs stepped through a gap in the haze to remind her that she couldn't remember from one moment to the next. As the voice whispered in her ear, she knew for one fleeting second, if she did manage to connect one thought to another, it would be forgotten before her next footstep impacted so softly on the clouds that were covering the floor of these endless corridors.
Gone. Without a sense of loss.
She's running. Adrenalins flooded in cascades over rocks, around glistening moss and tall reeds along pebbled banks, weaving under shaded ferns growing from trunks hung with creepers. Mottled light on rockpools and small waterfalls. Fluid in sharp sinuous waves as the bubbling turns to a hissing into a roar and she's running and she can't remember why.
She only knows one thing; running headlong into an uncertain future is preferable to standing still and waiting for… What?
What she wasn't waiting for had no shape. Just a sense of fear
'The walls are moving so fast. Why aren't I getting anywhere?'
She remembered a name.
'Mandy.' The letters hovered before her eyes in cursive script.
"Amanda West!" The voice was dark, strong and loud.
She dropped to a crouch as she spun around. The world spun in the other direction, stopping on an empty corridoor.
It took a second to relate the sound to the source. Even when she knew the voice was hers, it was still someone else.
"How did I know that?" She didn't know how she knew that.
"How did I know what?" She didn't know what she didn't know how she knew.
The voice was not the one she couldn't remember. Whatever had stolen her memory was also having a confusing effect on her senses. Existence, from the inside out, has gone… soft.
She ran her fingers over it. She let it feel her.
RUN. DON'T STOP. In blinding pink Neon behind a tap dancing mouse in a white suit with red pinstripes, spinning a straw boater on its index finger. A Dixiland soundtrack she couldn't quite hear. She liked Jazz. The walls started to blur.
she leaned into it and pushed, it was just like crashing into a solid metal firedoor.
Locked.
Dead-end.
She turned around and retraced her steps back to the last junction, dragging her hand along the wall as she ran. The sound was like running a ruler along a picket fence. She wondered if she was hurting herself. When she reached the junction a raised corner of carpet tile caught her toe. She stumbled to the left and followed her inertia, digging her toes into the carpet in an effort to accelerate against this frustrating slow motion wall of jelly.
'At least the walls are moving again.'
"I've thought of that before."
Thought of what before?
"The walls!" She held on to it, saw a world impossibly twisted from a shape she knew should be round. She tried to imagine 'Round', but couldn't.
"Something is screwing with my perception of reality."
She repeated the words very slowly, needing to know the cause of her trouble but not knowing where to look. Not knowing how to look, running around the rooms in her mind looking for someone to talk to about it. She ran into the bedroom and stopped in the middle of the room. There was no roof, only streaky white clouds on a blue sky, forming the words as she heard her voice say, "I've been drugged."
The narcotic made the discovery a revelation.
A sunrise broke on the horizon. Her skin felt every photon. Bathing in waves of understanding, dripping coloured syrup with red and white striped candy-canes. White curtains of deduction billowed around her. The electric touch of synthetics brushing her skin, then smothered by warm honey creeping down her body, forming a cocoon of soft blankets and white cotton sheets. Safe and warm, with teddy bears and mermaids dancing on green wallpaper until the wind starts whistling past her ears as a savage mood swing drags her back.
'I'm still here.'
Digging her fingernails into the hallucination she's pulling herself up, looking for a way out.
'Is this up?' Perspective reversed. She was dragging herself down the wall.
The bears and mermaids had stopped dancing. Holding hands, watching her crawl one way and then the other.
A few started taunting her, shouting, "Go back."
"Stop."
"You're going the wrong way."
Laughing. Others shouting, "Don't listen to them."
"Keep going."
Laughing even louder.
She pushed her head through the wall.
Perspective back-flipped, stumbled, bounced off a wall. Regained her balance.
She was still running. The walls still blurred. 'Slow down. I have to get reality and my perception of reality in the same place and talking to each other.'
She groped blindly for threads of thought to tie together. In her mind and with her hands. Willing herself to slow down and fighting to find some place that her head had in common with her body.
'I must be getting better, I can hold on to a thought long enough to do something about it.' But that was all. Everything outside of that last thought was a deep blue sea with no sky.
The walls were coming into focus. Messages were getting through.
She saw this door coming.
She didn't think to stop, but at least she saw it coming.
A frightened cat sat on her shoulder and dug its claws deep into her flesh.
"Stop running into doors." The mental note fluttered to the ground and blew
away.
She turned and walked back toward the junction.
Now that the walls had stopped spinning, she noticed paintings of a city skyline hung at regular intervals along one wall. Each one slightly different from the last.
They looked familiar.
She found the junction but couldn't remember which way she'd come.
A coin flipped in her mind. Spinning in slow motion through the zenith of it's arc as she waited for fate to choose a way.
The coin splashed into a pool of water and disappeared.
"That's just fucking great." She turned right.
Dark deserted offices. The aroma of dust, old wood, old carpets. The top panel of every door was frosted glass. There was writing on the glass but she couldn't make sense of it. She knew they were words but her mind could not comprehend any relationship between one brush stroke and the next.
"Where the hell am I?" She was beginning to wonder if that voice actually was
someone else. Wondering if she'd tried any of the doors, she touched on a deep seated fear beneath the terror. A fear of being typecast or minimalised and much more. A Phobia. Once she'd learned to recognise it, she noticed so many more of them down there. A memory at the centre of it said, 'You don't want to get trapped in an office.'
Standing in front of her. A Policeman. A Sergeant. Talking to her.
"I'm a Police officer!" The breath from her exclamation blew away the image as she rode a rush of High Octane gushing through thick veins.
"I am a Police officer."
Confidence, close to exploding. She reached out for more but couldn't find it. She stopped and looked down at herself. No weapons, no uniform.
"I'm never a cop when you need one." She laughed out loud and kept going. It felt
good until it began to sound hysterical so she stopped.
'Telephone.' Running from door to door. They were all locked.
She leaned forward, her forehead against the cool glass, trying to collect her thoughts.
'Who would I call?' She searched her mind for anything that might have been a telephone number. Like a random number generator it fed streams of digits across the inside of her forehead. At first, stern and full of their own importance until a fifteen told a joke about a dog with no legs and the place erupted. Big band music played as white streamers and multi-coloured confetti fell from the ceiling. Fat Prime numbers danced with fractions. Single digits slapped double digits on the back, congratulating them on their accumulations. A five, a twelve and two eights sat at a table in the corner passing out cigars. One of the eights took out a deck of cards and started to shuffle.
She opened her eyes.
Turned, leaned back against the glass. Cool against the perspiration. Looking at
the painting on the opposite wall she realised, "That's not a painting. It's a window."
She was looking at the Sublime City skyline. Her home.
The street was deserted. No lights burned in the building across the street.
She was standing at the window but had no recollection of how she got there.
She wanted to look around but couldn't. Afraid she'd still be standing at the door, watching herself looking out of the window at the deserted street.
'It must be late?' She glanced at her wrist but couldn't recognise anything that
resembled a timepiece.
"What was I looking for?"
"A telephone number." A voice from behind her left elbow. Very small. Small with curly hair and freckles. Red hair.
'Why would I look at my wrist for a telephone number?'
"Why would you talk to your elbow?"
She didn't want to start an argument so she looked out the window and ignored
the small red-headed voice that wouldn't stop laughing. "Ring. Ring." She said to the view. She looked down at her hands. A Gold band on the second finger of her left hand. After a brief struggle, she held it up to the light.
It was inscribed, Scott/Amanda.
"I presume I'm Amanda." She ran her hand down her body. "Yeah, I'm Amanda."
That laugh began to rumble in her throat. Inside of her, a child, searching its room
for Hysterical and Frightened but couldn't find them anywhere. Wanted to panic but didn't know how to do it.
"What was I frightened of?" She tried to think back. A long road winding through low green hills stretching all the way back to the Mountains.
She was missing an important part of this picture.
The question started as a joke but took on frightening dimensions when whatever was running her mind and body failed to come up with an alternative. Her mind sent out white feelers probing for every nook and crevice and coming up with little more than Lint. A cash register tab flicked up over them. Written across the surface in a bold hand was the word; Scott. A small blue question mark appeared next to it and began to throb.
"Scott! Who… the fuck… is Scott?"
She looked at the ring in her hand and remembered that she didn't know.
She couldn't remember putting the ring back on her finger.
Did she ever take it off?
Her brain ached. Bells rang. Thoughts tripped over pieces of words. Cut their soft fingers on sharp edges of unfinished concepts. She felt all their pinpricks. Small cuts. So many small cuts. And the cobwebs and dust and thirst and the thick air and the constant ringing of a part of her brain that had been screaming at her all this time, screaming constantly, waiting for her to get around to it.
A small piece down the back on the left. Or was the right, she couldn't be sure. It was just over that ridge where it curves down to the top of your spine. So hard to concentrate with all that noise.
She listened.
DON'T STOP. RUN. The bells started ringing again. The screaming came back. Over the top, a choir of angels sang, "Too fucking LATE."
She listened to herself whisper, "No." Listen to it echo away.
It was behind her. She could feel it like electricity in the air. A Freight train ran
down her spine. Out of control. Her life fell to pieces. Her body went along for the ride, rollercoastering through heavy gravity on hard turns. Pieces of her fell to the floor and ran for their lives. Hysterical laughter welled up from a part of her she had thought was a small monkey sitting on her arm. Its howls rang in her eardrums. Screams from a place like a pulsing Spotlight, behind her eyes, beating against her skull trying to get out while another part of her willed her body to turn inside out and hide inside of itself. She looked at her left hand. Between her index finger and thumb she was holding two tickets to Death of a Salesman. Torn from her fingers as she's sucked into a whirlpool of blind panic, spiralling in toward the gaping black hole of the funnel. Black. Final. Thrashing in the current. Screaming for help. The taste of salt water and Crude oil on her tongue. Seaweed on her face. In her hair. In her mouth. Choking.
"On your feet Wells. DID I TELL YOU TO STOP." Rank. Streangh. Fear of failure. Punishment. Ridicule. Embarrassment. She pushed herself up off the floor, rose to her feet. The whirlpool spun gently around her knees.
"I'm a officer of the Sublime City police force." She said aloud. Saw herself in
uniform, from below, looking up, making her legs look longer and giving her jawline a touch of the Heroic. Black fatigues. Hair trailing in a light breeze. Square stainles buckles down the sides of her dress boots. Body armour. Badge, shining like a silver sun. An immutable part of an elite group trained to enforce the law and dedicated to protecting the rights of the innocent.
To serve and protect.
"To enforce the law."
She straightened her back. The steel returned to her self-confidence. Strength in
broad shoulders of muscles working in concert. Over, down. Looking for arms.
Finding them as blind faith in abilities she prayed that she must know instinctively
breathed life into the stone. Electricity flowed down her thighs, calves, into her feet.
Sprung. Strong. Ready.
She flexed her fingers.
"I'm an officer of the Law." It was her voice.
She clenched her fists, spun around.
There were knives where its hands should have been.
It was large, black and onto her before she had time to scream.
CHAPTER 2Back to Sublime City Blues