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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #111 |
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- Metamorph -
Chapter 02
by Arifel
II
`Whatever you can do, or dream you can,
begin it. Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it.' - Goethe
`i was living in Adelaide, more or less permanently on tour with a band
called "Wax Sundial". i expect you've never heard of them.' i shook my
head. `not surprising... they weren't very good. they let me write
lyrics for them, sometimes; i didn't have much of a say in their musical
direction, but i'd managed to work them around from being a
halfway-decent Hawkwind cover band - this was the time of the hippy
revival, mind - to the point of being borderline decent Goth - and one
night, after a show, this girl from the audience came back to help us
pack up. she wanted to talk to me, simply on the basis of the lyrics i'd
written.
`she told me that fifteen years before, she'd been given magical powers,
and she wanted to pass them onto me.' i moved down slightly and nibbled
her ear-lobe.
`magical powers, huh? like the ability to change the length and colour
of your hair?'
`like the ability to change my shape completely. read people's minds,
move objects without touching them... Fiona - that was her name - said
that she could pass these abilities on to one other person, and she'd
decided that i was that person.'
`is this why we're sharing a bed? you want to give these abilities to
me?' she m-hmm'ed assent.
`yeah. she warned me first, it would hurt - every cell in my body had
to undergo a sort of processing, and it took the better part of a week;
around a hundred and forty hours of the most horrific pain imaginable.'
there was something strange about the way she related this; as if she'd
been terrified of the experience, but with an undercurrent of longing...
`if i'd known how bad it would be, i wouldn't have done it, but once
she'd started, it was too late to go back.
`we went our separate ways after she'd instructed me in the use of my
new body; since then, i've met about half a dozen others of my kind. we
keep in touch.'
`and you want me to join your, ah, kind?' i felt her lips smiling,
brushing against mine.
`i've been reading your messages. i've read the stories. i've been
waiting for you to dump that Gary creature and get into the right frame
of mind for this transition.' i smiled back, not believing a word of it
and said,
`well... why not?' she held me away again, looked into my eyes with a
serious expression.
`you agree?' i nodded, without really thinking about it. she grinned,
exposing vampire-like canines. i froze for a moment, then grinned back
at her, thinking i've finally found someone i can relate to, and maybe
it was true after all...
`well?' i asked.
`well, what?'
`well, when do we start?' she grinned and threw herself at me, pushing
me back onto the bed.
`right now.' she kissed my throat, her tongue tracing the line of the
blood-vessels, tugging the neck-line of the jumper down so she could
taste my collar-bone.
`i meant, when do we start the procedure of making me one of you?' she
kneeled over me, her hands on either side of my shoulders, and stared at
me for a moment.
`you're pretty eager to undergo the most agonising experience of your
life, aren't you?' i returned her gaze levelly.
`if you can appear as - or physically become - anything you want, why
are you wasting your time with someone like me?' she took both my hands
in one of hers, held them above my head, savaged my throat with her
teeth.
`i see inside. i know what you're like. i know what you can be.'
`that's (agh), that's very flattering. you sound like Q, taunting
Commander Riker...' she grinned at this comparison, while lifting the
lower hem of my jumper and then ducking her head underneath the covers.
`some of my associates are a lot like Q,' she said. `same sense of
humour. one of them posed as a statue in the Art Centre for two months,
and when there was a suitably large crowd of people admiring him, he
suddenly came to life, announced "I'm completely bloody sick of this,"
and walked out.' i laughed. `i should introduce you to him.
seriously... playing games like that, what we call "distancing" games,
only emphasises how, how comfortable, how /good/ it feels to be human.'
she lay herself along my body, writhed; `and to do human things...' i
ran my hands down her sides, found the hem of the lycra bike-shorts she
was wearing, slipped my fingers underneath the hem and stroked her
behind. she brought her legs up, gripped my hips with her knees and my
shoulders with her clenched fingers, bent down and touched her lips to
mine. we lay like that for quite a while, hardly moving, until she grew
impatient and removed her lycra shorts completely. doing this caused
some cold air to slip in under the doona cover, and in our writhing to
recover some of the lost warmth, we ended up lying side-by-side, legs
intertwined. boldly, she explored me, her fingers cold enough to make
me gasp, strangely contrasting with a warmth centred in the palm of her
hand. helpless before such temptation, my erection returned in full
force; i lay back with my eyes closed and let her have her way with me.
i felt a sort of pin-pricking feeling on the tip of my tongue followed
by a hot flush, the sort you get when you've got flu and your body is
trying to deal with it. she lay on top of me, holding me tightly. she
moved her mouth close to my ear and whispered,
`it's going to hurt, worse than anything you've ever experienced. but
i'll be here all the time. i'll do what i can to help you.' i tried to
answer her and found i couldn't speak; i tried to turn my head, move my
hand. nothing. i simply lay there, no panic, breathing slowly,
shallowly, feeling the warmth inside grow until it became a burning,
aligned with my spine. a distant hum became a roar in my ears, and my
vision was filled with the sorts of patterns you get when you rub your
eyes in the darkness. the burning spread out, down my arms and legs,
slowly ascending my backbone one vertebra at a time. i waited for it to
reach my brain. i imagined it was like a sewerage pipe backing up, my
head filling with lava, covering the temporal and occipital lobes,
swirling around inside my skull, lapping against the somatosensory area,
a shivering derelict wrapped in blankets waking up and finding someone's
set him alight. the sensation stepped up a few degrees, to the point
where it felt like my skin was being inflated with scalding water and my
nerves, viscera, bones and the rest were swimming in it. i couldn't
move or scream or protest; each time i thought it had levelled off to a
degree i could stand, it got worse.
i could see daylight against the outside of my closed eyelids. the sun
had come up; it felt like i'd been burning for years, and yet the
movement of the light indicated it'd been less than half an hour. i
knew i wasn't going to make it, then; and it kept getting worse. i was
screaming, inside, vividly imagining that i was shaking my head from
side to side madly; then something cool touched my shoulder and neck,
magically draining the heat and pain from me down my right side from my
jaw down to my hip. ohh, yes, i can make it now, i thought.
`i'm taking energy from you,' i imagined her saying. `this process
generates a shitload of energy. are there any covens or mystics or
psychics living nearby? they might sense it and come looking.' she
touched my left shoulder and the heat retreated from that side, too; my
feet had cooled down but my head was screaming white hot. i didn't
think there were any witchy people around; this suburb was primarily for
people to retire to. most of the magick types i knew lived in Coburg.
`good. i'm going to do as much as i can for you right now, then i'm
going to call some friends. we'll absorb the excess energy and help you
through this.'
you're going?
`i'll be back in a few minutes; i just have to put out the call and i'll
come right back.'
oh christ, no - as soon as she removed her touch, the heat came back,
worse than ever. it was all the worse for not being able to move - i
imagined that writhing about, biting the carpet and shrieking madly
might have helped me deal with it. maybe this was part of the process,
learning to cope with the pain. i couldn't think of any distractions;
usually, when you're hit with this sort of sensation, your only instinct
is to get away from the cause. i tried thinking of music, something
harsh, thrash? guitar? the pixies. this monkey's gone to heaven, i
thought. it worked. i, visualised? audialised? the song as best i
could remember it, creature in the sky, got sucked in a hole, now
there's a hole in the sky, right, right... i imagined the guitars, the
strings, the bassline, the rhythm thumping along mechanically and the
pain pulsing in time to the beat. i imagined the guitar chords, D
Major, B Minor, D Major E Major F Sharp A Major, over and over. with the
pain changing intensity like this, pulsing, i felt i could survive for
as long as i kept the song looping over in my head.
meanwhile, my vision centres were going crazy, lines of bright blue
laser light slashing back and forth, red giant suns searing me from
either side, the left side of my brain squared off mechanical and
ratcheting like a three-dimensional slide rule, a Lemarchand puzzle-box
in full spin, the right side pulsing and sighing like a sponge soaked in
blood, in love with life and seeping from a million wounds, and both
sides were slowly expanding, spreading out to meet in the middle, and i
knew when they met that something terrible was going to happen, that
they were going to fight over me.
i smiled to myself amidst the noise, the agony, the light and the
approaching sense of terror. if i could've moved, i expect i would have
run my tongue over my teeth like Frank Cotton in `Hellraiser', and said
`Jesus wept!'. this was what i'd been looking for all those times i'd
taken hallucinogens, and here it was for the price of a kiss. wau.
the two halves of me were about to attack each other when she came back.
it seemed like months since she'd left me, and the relief from the pain
she brought made her appearance like the arrival of an angel. she
appeared as one to my spiky, skewed vision; i couldn't actually see her,
but the phosphenic noise clustered to one side and formed an MTV-style
figure, black-and-white face from some old movie, a burning purple halo
like neon rings of Saturn torn from around the planet and run through
with current, her wings formed from thousands of scattered feathers
dancing fitfully to the beat of my imagined music, her hands drifting
down to me like descending sheets of ice rain. as they settled around
my face, the bright lights faded to the point where i could be sure i'd
imagined them, and the heat receded. my brain no longer felt like a
tennis ball in a bath of molten metal. `it's okay, i'm here now. i've
sent out the call, and the others will be here soon.'
others?
`of my kind. of our kind. some of us keep contact, share research,
ideas. sometimes we collaborate on a project. i know of three who'll
definitely be here, two more maybe.
`our shape-changing isn't limited to the outside. there's a
modification that, uh, comes with the ability, sort of an optional
extra; it's like a combination quick-reference, add-on computer, instant
data storage-retrieval system. it handles most of the usual, boring
stuff like keeping records of patterns you might like to replicate one
day.' she moved her hands from around my face - the pain flared up
until she replaced her hands on my shoulders, massaging gently. `there
have been Metamorphs on earth for over eight thousand years... records
go back that far, at least. there's a sort of initiatory tradition
where newly-changed Metamorphs travel to Nereid - the smaller moon of
Neptune - and leave their signatures on a block of onyx there. i
haven't been on the Pilgrimage yet, but i'm told there's more than two
thousand signatures on it.'
how would someone get there? hitch a lift with NASA?
`Hah, no... various methods. one of us left in fourteen fifty-two and
travelled at sublight speeds. she got back only last year.'
you can travel faster than light?
`when it suits us to. don't ask how, i don't know the details. they're
in storage somewhere. when you need to make the trip, you work it out.'
i lay there, eyes closed, feeling like i was lying on the surface of a
huge balloon filled with some dense gas. occasionally, ripples would go
through it, and i'd feel like i was about to fall through the surface
and sink into the gas. Lydya sat beside me for the first light-to-dark
period, her hands touching me, either both sides of my head or my chest.
the moments where she moved her hands were terrible; the pain had
escalated to the point where i couldn't bear to be deprived of her touch
even for a few seconds. later that evening, two others arrived. i
could sense them at the end of the bed, radiating cool aloofness,
occasionally moving to get a better view of me. i still couldn't sense
any great change in me; sometimes, i lost track of the outlying parts of
my body, my feet and hands; sometimes i was reduced to a tiny brain on
an abbreviated spinal column, a rotten, wrinkled apple dangling from the
end of a withered branch.
Lydya talked me through the first night. she told me of the things that
the Metamorphs had done in the past while remaining in the background.
some had obsessions; there was one who lived in Canada who was taken
with uncovering conspiracies, who knew the names of the three men who
had really shot Kennedy; there was one who roved the world, collecting
genetic samples of every life-form in existence before the humans have a
chance to kill them.
`most of us lead fairly ordinary lives on the surface. we don't draw
attention to ourselves. we live as you do, from day to day,
accumulating experiences, storing sights and sounds and scents,
researching the physical world, looking into the past as revealed in the
genetic library, looking out into the skies at night. we don't judge
what might be considered wrong or right, but we all have opinions. for
example - well, speaking personally - if i came across someone being
raped, i'd do some uniquely painful things to the rapist. i'd make sure
he never did it again. for a while, that's all i did, wandered around
looking defenceless, attracting the attention of the sort of people you
wouldn't want to see wandering free at night. and then taking care of
them.'
from what i could judge of the light coming through my still-closed
eyelids, the sun was coming up again when she stepped back, briefly
charging me with agony before one of the others stepped forward and
touched me. the pain dropped back slightly, but was still foremost in
my senses. it was tolerable, but very uncomfortable; about the level
you would be at if someone were torturing you and you were bravely
resisting, spitting in their face and saying `do your worst, damn you!'
i knew it could get a lot worse than this, so i maintained. whoever was
there didn't bother to speak to me, so i just lay silently, trying to
feel out my outlines, establish what parts of me were still present.
with a little concentration, i could feel most of me; my nervous system
was still intact. i thought about the previous week, about driving my
car, the feel of wind on my face through the poorly-lined soft top, of
driving late at night with the music cranked up loud, of getting drunk
and reading electronic mail, of Gary and the way things had been when
i'd first met him, of my friends, of visiting Goth clubs, the crowds of
people, of watching Siouxie and the Banshees on the overhead video
systems, the taste of vodka and lemon, the smell of stale cigarette
smoke, the taste of peyote, the dizziness, late nights and early
mornings trying to achieve alternative states of consciousness and the
futility of trying to describe them by writing it all down on pieces of
paper with ballpoint pens.
abruptly, the pain rose to the awful level that signalled my being
alone. i suffered in silence, my mind darting about desperately trying
to find something that would relieve the feeling. nothing worked, not
even mentally playing the song `bone machine' over and over. the last
thing i recall is imagining my brain, smaller than ever and slowly
shrinking as it sank below the surface of a bathtub filled with molten
lead. shiny rivulets worked their way into the cortical fissures and
then completely covered it. with a buzzing sound, my consciousness
receded, and
for a long time after this point, i was aware, in a sort
of dim, uncomprehending, passive fashion; usually, one's
thought processes involve imagined sounds, words as you
talk to yourself internally, snatches of music, phrases,
desires, stimuli from your body, itches to relieve,
hungers to sate. i didn't think; i wasn't even aware that
the pain was gone. i simply was. the bright patterns were
gone; i observed the cycle of light and dark slowly
parading over my eyelids... and i waited
dark light dark light dark light again dark again wet
dark wet rain cat hello cat light wet light wet dark cat again hello cat
light she wet she hello she Lydya she. it's been raining. i think i've
been asleep. i'm in the uh garden. i'm in the back yard. i'm under
the lemon tree. cat. i think he wants to be fed. cat food is in the
house. get up. no? crawl. to the house. open door. cat food is in
cupboard. cat food is in can. can is closed. cat can't open can.
squeeze, it's open. broken can. cat eats. it's night time again. it's
raining again. i'm lying on the grass. looking up at the sky. the rain
falls on me. it's warm. there are things swimming in the rain. i can
see them.
a green thing has landed on my nose. lacewing fly. Chrysopidae,
backbrain says. i can see inside it, see the working bits, see how it
unwinds and flies from one spot to the next. it looks like a clockwork
toy, no more intelligence than one of those wind-up monkeys that plays
cymbals and bugs its eyes out. it does what it was wound up to do.
it was raining a few, uh, days ago. i have a vague memory of sitting in
the back yard, back against the lemon tree, just sitting there and
watching the clouds wheel past. it rained. i felt like i'd become a
plant, just content to sit and catch sunlight. (smile) maybe i'd put
some roots down.
she was here all along. Lydya. i suppose she was keeping watch, making
sure i didn't run off or something. i hope she fed the cats. they
seemed pretty hungry when i, uh, woke up. i remember opening the can by
squeezing it, and it didn't take any more effort than you might use in
crushing a paper cup. (smile) the cats didn't mind.
i remember looking at that lacewing fly that landed on me. it looked
big; well, huge, as if it'd landed on the stage of a microscope. i could
see the tiny nerves, muscles, quivering hairs, twitching eyes, antennae,
air whispering in and out of spiracles, cells dividing, code sequences
undoing, doing up again, undoing, like magnetic Lego blocks that kept
changing shape. within seconds i had... realised it, comprehended it
fully, from egg to adult. it was like those structures you could
generate in Conway's Game Of Life, the ones that would fly across the
screen spewing copies of themselves in all directions before hitting a
wall and dying. looking at it on that level, it was pretty sad; get
born, eat, reproduce, die. i begin to think that the complications
introduced by consciousness are needless complications. these things
happen; life lives and then dies. what's the point of agonising about
it?
what?
the hell with this. i intend to have some fun with life. at one point
- i can't remember when - Lydya warned me about the dangers of looking
inwards straight off. if i'd looked into my own form with the
thoroughness that i'd invested in that lacewing fly, i'd've been here
for ever.
i don't feel hungry. i haven't eaten for days.
maybe i did put some roots down.
*
i get up, my muscles protesting at first and then sliding smoothly; i go
inside. there's a funny smell in the house, one i hadn't ever noticed
before, sort of a heavy, musky odour. the rooms are in partial darkness.
in the living room, Lydya is reading one of my books (`The Lowbrow Art
Of Robert Williams') and listening to an LP (Adrian Belew's `Lone
Rhinoceros'). i stand in the doorway, staring at all the things i'd
never noticed before. unbidden, a kind of pulse surged up in me, my
vision blanking bright white for the briefest instant; when it subsided,
the entire room was perfectly outlined, every piece of furniture
highlighted, absolute distances between things marked down to within a
micron. the amount of dust in here is phenomenal.
Lydya looked up at me, smiled warmly, put the book down. the volume on
the record player dropped without her touching it.
`welcome to the real world.' she said in earnest. i just stood and
stared at her, taking in the words. i'd been without them for so long,
i wanted to savour their strangeness, how the universe could be bound up
into little packets and tossed around so casually. humanity is so
arrogant, in that respect. imagining that words can encompass reality.
i realised that the narrow way humanity thought, the narrow world-view
allowed into their narrow consciousness through the tiny narrow slit
that their narrow limited perceptions could manage, was just one way of
looking at things. it worked fine if all you needed was to keep your
belly full and to ensure a viable environment for your children. i'd
always imagined that there was more to what we understood. now i knew.
i entered the room and sat down before her, my legs crossing with an
ease they'd never known before, my hands resting easily on my knees, my
face blank, eyes wide, open, ready for anything she wanted to
communicate. i became aware of a new sense; the tiny hairs that grew
along my cheekbones were sensitive to changes in air pressure, much like
a cat's whiskers were; it was a welcome supplement to my other senses.
i found my voice, finally. it sounded strange to me;
`now what?' she rolled her eyes in exasperation.
`come on, there must have been a thousand things you would have wanted
to do if given the ability to change your shape! what happened to
them?' my attention wandered from her face to the dust motes floating
in the shafts of sunlight coming in through the kitchen window.
presently, i found more words.
`that was before. i feel like... well, like my volition has been
derailed, completely right-angled. i could really spend the rest of
eternity in the back yard, looking at insects.'
she smiled at me.
`would you like to go on a pilgrimage?'
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