Chemical Gardens Read online

  “Jeepers!” I gasp. “She’s homicidal!”

  “I never did like her,” Pawn says. “I always sensed she wasn’t all there.”

  Dose is making blubbering noises and I’m tempted to ask him who he thinks the wimp is now, but I refrain from doing so. Instead, I say, “Forget her. We’re gonna get out of here with our old bodies and we’re gonna make it to that show and see that record executive and get our backsides signed to a deal. The heck with her and her threats. She doesn’t scare me!”

  “She doesn’t scare me either,” Pawn says, seemingly bored.

  Dose doesn’t say anything, but makes a sniffling sound.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get out of this orchard before she can sneak up on us again.”

  And that’s what we do, me with Nemesister slung over my back, Pawn, looking more curious than anything else, and Dose, drifting along behind us, shimmering and stinking of petrol.

  16

  Gradually the trees thin out and we once again find ourselves traveling down what seems to be an ancient city street, only without the city. Remnants of the past lie everywhere. Pawn and I have to constantly watch our step in order to not trip over stray bricks, chunks of wooden beams, broken doors, the occasional tangle of clothing. At one point we have to weave around the hulking remains of a horse buggy lying on its side, rusting away like a dead metallic buffalo.

  I kick at on old empty paint can and send it clattering into the shadows where it collides with something that makes a high-pitched squeal.

  “What was that?” I wonder aloud.

  “Probably a rat,” Pawn says. “I’m sure this place is crawling with all kinds of vermin.”

  “Rats?” I glance around nervously. “I hate rats.”

  “Yeah. Not to mention spiders and roaches.”

  I stop in my tracks. I hadn’t thought about all the creepy-crawlies that were most definitely living in this hellhole. “Rats and spiders and roaches? Oh, jeeze!”

  “That should be the name of our first album,” Dose says, sounding weary. “‘Rats and Spiders and Roaches’.”

  “Very funny,” I say. “I’m serious. Those things freak me out.”

  Something whizzes over my head, so close I can feel the breeze, and then shatters on the ground behind us. Pawn and I whirl around to see fragments of a china dinner plate where there’d previously been only dust.

  We exchange a glance and then a tea cup comes from the shadows where I’d kicked the can. The cup hits Pawn square in the chest and falls broken to the ground, but she only looks down at it as if it were made of cotton. Again, she shows no sign of pain or fear.

  “Someone is over there,” she says.

  “Go away!” a voice cries. “Just leave me alone!”

  I frown. The voice doesn’t belong to the demon. It sounds more like—

  “Whey?” Pawn calls. “What are you doing over there?”

  Our drummer. Big bad Whey.

  Something else is thrown at us—a rock I think—and then comes the sound of sobbing. “I said go away!”

  Dose floats by and disappears for a moment. There is silence and then the distinct sound of his laughter. “Oh, shit!” he snorts. “You guys gotta see this.”

  “Shut up!” Whey whines. “Get away from me!”

  “Goodness,” I say to the shadows where the voice emanates from. “What the heck is wrong with you? You almost hit me with that plate!”

  Whey moves out of the shadows, his big hands cupped to his chest protectively, tears and snot streaming down his bearded face. “Get away from me, Dose! I mean it!”

  Clearly unsympathetic, Dose asks, “Dude, why you being such a fag? Show them what you have.”

  I take a step towards Whey, trying to catch a glimpse of what he’s holding to his chest. I think it must be some kind of small animal—a chick perhaps—from the way he’s cradling it so carefully. Then he shoves his hands out towards me, palms up and together, cupping what looks like bloody little eggs.

  “MY BALLS!” he screams. “MY FUCKING BALLS FELL OFF!”

  17

  Whey sinks to the ground, a blubbering bundle of anti-man, his balls held close to his body. “I was just walking along and I felt these two little things rolling down the inside legs of my jeans. It freaked me out. I thought they were something alive, so I stripped down to my bare ass and that’s when I noticed my sack was…was…just hanging there, flat and empty! An empty pocket of skin!” He paused to bawl, having trouble catching his breath. “Then I shook my jeans and these fell out!” He displayed his balls to us again, sad little things in his huge cupped hands.

  I fight back a gag, though my first reaction, like Dose’s, was to laugh. Not only has Whey’s manhood been stripped but he has also grown a huge honking pair of breasts which poke out of his tie-dye tank-top like two enormous globes of flesh, complete with erect nipples. They’re almost enough to be envious of, except for the dark curly chest hair that blankets them.

  “Fuck, that’s nasty,” Dose says.

  “Interesting,” Pawn says with a clinical tone.

  I personally have no idea what to say. For once, I’m utterly speechless.

  Whey continues to sob on the ground, rocking back and forth like an abused child.

  “Look at the bright side,” Dose tells him. “At least you have balls to fall off.”

  The bright side only makes Whey wail louder.

  Pawn and I look at each other and shrug, at a complete loss. Then we just look around at our surroundings while Dose begins to pace back and forth behind Whey. After a while the moment becomes awkward, all of us just standing there while Whey sobs his life away. After an even longer while, I actually start to feel kinda bad for the guy. He seems so devastated by the loss of his testicles.

  I crouch beside him and say, “There, there, Whey. We’ll get your body back together.” I pat his shoulder reassuringly.

  “How?” he cries. “How the fuck do you plan to do that?”

  I hand him a hanky, though I have no idea where it came from. It was just suddenly in my hand, appearing out of nowhere. “Well, there’s a woman we’re going to see.” And I once again go through the whole story of the Metal Priestess. It’s getting pretty repetitious and by the end of it I’m yawning, but Whey gets the jist of it. He dabs delicately at his eyes with the hanky, watching me, hanging on my every word as if it was me who was the savior. “Do you really think she can help me, Ro?” he asks.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  This seems to cheer him up considerably and he smiles, batting his eyelashes at me.

  “Quit looking at me like that,” I snap, standing up. “You’re giving me the creeps.”

  “Yeah, stop being a fag already,” Dose says as he floats over. “The girls have more balls than you.”

  This sends Whey into a fresh fit of bawling (no pun intended) and Dose and I groan miserably. Unlike us, Pawn doesn’t seem particularly annoyed. She stands in the same place the entire time, her arms folded, her head tipping from side to side like a puppy saying, “Huh?”

  For some reason, her not being annoyed annoys me. “Pawn,” I say. “Do you have anything to contribute? Anything constructive that might be of some help?”

  She gives me a blank look. “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Never mind,” I sigh. “Come on, Whey, get up! We don’t have all day!” It feels good to be impatient. All that sympathy I was feeling was weird and creepy. “Stop being a pansy!”

  This really doesn’t prove to be a useful tactic, however, because it just makes Whey cry harder. I stand there and listen to it for exactly 30 seconds and then I announce that I’m leaving, with or without him. “You can come if you want to but I’m not staying here for another minute! I’m gone!”

  I walk away, muttering to myself while I adjust my guitar strap. Dose is right behind me, also low on compassion and patience and we haven’t gone more than a dozen yards when Pawn starts after us.

  Eventually,
we hear Whey shouting. “You can’t just leave me here! Hey! Wait up!”

  But we don’t. We figure that, even if he doesn’t have balls, he has two legs and two feet. He’ll catch up.

  18

  A huge archway with an arrow consisting of a hundred blinking light bulbs stands before us. The black sewer sludge flows directly beneath it.

  “Well, this must be the way,” I say.

  “I hope there’s a bar soon,” Whey sniffs. “I could really use a drink.”

  I say, “Yeah, you and me both.”

  “Fuck you two,” Dose grumbles. “You think I couldn’t use one? I could use one more than the both of you combined.”

  Having no body is making Dose even more cranky than usual and I think that if we don’t get to see the Priestess soon, I might have to set him on fire myself, just to shut up his complaining.

  “Well,” he says. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

  His flickering nothingness leads the way, and the rest of us follow him through the archway and into what we can only assume is a step closer to the one we seek.

  Inside is brighter than our previous travels have been, with more than just a few lanterns here and there. Strings of white lights hang everywhere, giving the place a festive feel, while lots of people move about, vendors scattered here there and actual buildings that you can enter.

  I look up, certain that I’ll see stars in a night sky but, as before, there is nothing above us. Only a hanging darkness too thick to penetrate with human eyes.

  Of course, not everyone around here is human. Not completely anyway.

  One guy bickering with a pretzel vendor gestures wildly with four arms waving. Beside him stands a little boy with vaguely buggish features and thin see-through wings growing out of his back.

  “Maybe when the earthquake hit, they fell down here too,” Whey says.

  I nod, but I’m skeptical. Most of these people have a certain air about them, as if they have been freaks for a long time and are quite comfortable with it.

  “Look.” Pawn points at what first appears to be the backside of a small cow but then the creature turns and we clearly see a male human head. The man/cow gazes back at us, his eyes deep brown and bored.

  “Do you get the feeling we’re not in Seattle anymore?” I ask.

  Dose groans his disgust, either at the man/cow or my question; I can’t tell which. Then he drifts off towards a building proclaiming to be CASINO LAND.

  “I bet they have booze in there,” Whey says, following after Dose.

  I open my mouth to protest—we have to get to the Peroxide show!—but then decide that I really could use something to wet my whistle. An ice cold brew would definitely hit the spot right now.

  “Come on,” I say to Pawn and together we follow the guys into who knows what.

  19

  Casino Land, it turns out, has everything one could expect from its name. Craps, roulette, poker, slot machines, you name it. Every type of gambling imaginable, in addition to strippers, cocktail waitresses and various small bars.

  We choose the latter, feeling the most comfortable in a dim, close-quartered atmosphere, and find a table in the darkest corner of a semi-crowded cantina. Nearby, a band of freaks is on stage, playing a happy jazz number with horns and a piano. The band drowns out the television that hangs above the bar, tuned to what appears to be a news broadcast.

  Pawn agrees to be the one to fetch the beers while the rest of us wait at the table, too embarrassed to approach the bar.

  “What if someone I know sees me dressed like this,” I say. “Do you know how humiliating that would be?”

  Whey nods his agreement, stashing his balls in the front pocket of his jeans. It takes him a while to get them adjusted and he fidgets in his seat for a few moments, clearly uncomfortable.

  By the time Pawn returns with the beers, Dose has wandered off in search of strippers, whining about how he can’t drink anyway. The rest of us enjoy our brews while listening to the band and checking out our surroundings.

  Green is the Enemy has played a lot of interesting and often dangerous places filled with a lot of interesting and often dangerous characters, but never have we played a place such as this.

  At one point, the guy at the table beside ours, who, on the outside at least, appears to be a completely normal human, is accosted by what can only be described as a Mud-man. Mud-man is exactly that: a huge mountainous blob of mud who slithers along the floor without legs, leaving a diarrhea-like trail in his wake. He has arms, but barely, and his face is set into the top of the mud pile, no head or shoulders to speak of.

  Mud-man is accompanied by two big guys in black armor and helmets with face masks. They seem like they could be human, but it’s impossible to tell as their bodies are completely hidden and neither of them speak. The most noticeable thing about them is the impossibly huge weapons they carry in their arms. Clearly soldiers of some type, they point their guns in the human guy’s face when Mud-man commands them to do so. Mud-man accuses the guy of being a thief and a lot of shouting between the two of them follows. The drama ends when the soldiers drag the guy out of the bar, the whole time with him screaming something about a setup.

  “Man, they’re gonna kill him,” Whey says.

  Pawn nods, her face blank. “Yes, probably.”

  One beer becomes two and two becomes three and just when we’re starting to catch a buzz, we count up our combined money only to discover that we don’t have enough for another round.

  This turns out to be a blessing in disguise when, just moments later, a woman runs at us waving a lit blowtorch. “You motherfucker!” She screams. “You think you can get away with that? I’ll fry your fucking nuts like eggs!”

  Whey squeals and dives under the table, thinking the woman is threatening him. But I can see that it’s actually Dose she’s chasing, his shimmering body jetting by us and stopping just behind our table against the wall.

  I leap up and put my body between his and the angry woman. “Whoa,” I say to her. “What are you doing? Trying to kill him?”

  “Damn right I am, now get out of my way unless you want those pretty red curls of yours scorched!”

  I’m taken aback, though not by her threat. Did she say red curls? Now they’re red? What the heck?

  Lucky for Dose, Pawn steps in and calmly asks the woman what Dose did to warrant such a hostile reaction. Those are her exact words too. “What did he do to warrant such a hostile reaction?”

  Her bizarre behavior snaps me out of my trance and then I, too, look at the woman for an answer.

  “He tried to get inside one of my girls!” the woman screams. “The fucking pervert!”

  “Oh, give me a break.” Dose snaps from behind us. “As if she’s never had a guy inside her before. She was into it!”

  I have to dodge the blowtorch as the woman makes a lunge for Dose and almost fries my nose off. Pawn calmly begins trying to wrestle the torch away from the woman, getting her hands burned in the process. The smell of burning rubber fills the air.

  The bartender—a man who looks like he just stepped out of a Picasso painting, with a sideways eye on his cheek and a nose where an ear should have been—comes over and demands, “You got a problem over here, Trixie?”

  “That son-of-a-bitch tried to body-rape Gertie!” The woman screams, still fighting with Pawn. “I’m gonna kill him!”

  “Is she okay?” the bartender asks.

  “She’s fine, but that’s not the point. The customers ain’t supposed to touch the girls and this fucker tried to squeeze his whole body inside her!”

  “Eww,” I say and turn to look at Dose. “You did that?”

  His shimmering shoulders shrug. “Figured it would be a new experience.”

  “Calm down, Trixie,” the bartender says. “I’m sure this here fella would be happy to make things right by paying you double for his time with Gertie. Ain’t that right, fella?”

  Dose scoffs. “I can’t pay her at all, never
mind double!”

  Picasso man eyes me and then Pawn. “You gals want to cover your friend’s bad behavior?”

  “Uh…” I say.

  Pawn finally yanks the blowtorch out of the woman’s hands and then tells the bartender, “We don’t have any money,”

  “Is that so?” He raises his one eyebrow before turning back to Trixie. “Well, Trix, how about I just go get that money out of the till and we’ll call it even? Both you and Gertie can come on in anytime and I’ll give you each a round on the house. How would that be?”

  Trixie grumbles for a few seconds but then agrees. “Okay, Bob. Thanks,” she says gruffly. “Lucky for that punk you’re such a nice guy.”

  “Think nothing of it, Trix,” Bob tells her. “Now you just go on back and tend to Gertie. I’ll be over with the cash in just a few.”

  The enraged woman can’t resist swearing a few more times at Dose before she leaves, but then she’s gone and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Wow, that was really cool of you, Bob,” I say. “I’d say we’ll make it up to you when we can, but I doubt we’ll be coming back to this part of…er…town any time in the near future.”

  “Oh, you’ll make it up to me now,” he says matter-of-factly.

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I stare at him dumbly.

  “How will we do that?” Pawn asks.

  Bob points to Nemesister, who’s been leaning quietly in the corner this whole time.

  “You’re musicians, right? Congratulations. You’re the new house band.”

  20

  It is only then that I notice all other action in the bar has ceased and that our little tribe is the center of attention. Even the jazz band has stopped playing, its members still on stage but staring at us.