MEMP’IS
BOOK
SIX – “MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE”
(Sunday
{Venuday}, January 7, 2035, and After)
But
now there is to be no new music. Instead, a tremendous outcry, a veritable symphony
of banging and shouting heralding the arrival of the Trouble Factory - John
Crum at the head of his Patrol Officers, three techies from Wire and Chester Aspid (burned, buttered and bandaged, but valiantly leading
several of Clem Clarke's detectives in a great, grunting pullulation
of police flesh and nerves, swearing oaths and brandishing heaters) battering
down Mondretto's (unlocked) door and storming into
the studio by the dozens, only to pull up short and stand, dumbfounded, before
the paintings, Norlin and the empty chair from which
Henry Hat has deliquesced. The
paintings... and Mondretto... the paintings... and the plumbing vibrations
and unpleasant pool of dark yellow fluid in the hollows of the chair and the
scuffed, pitted floor, the paintings...
filth dripping from the plumbing overhead, rain spattering through the open
window, jas,
and more stains that crawl down the walls like serpents of a planar Paradise...
"Here is the
fellow responsible for the Specimen Depository," declares the Corporal,
screwing up his faculties and pointing at the suspect venomously, as if Mondretto*Kowl was only one among
a host of culprits for the patrolmen to discern, "...and for more, so much
more, also!"
"Can't
I go anywhere without running into you,
Norlin?" John Crum spits.
"Did
Henry Hat call you?"
"Who?" Chief Crum pauses, pondering, something
flitting across the surface of his cognition... a moth of memory quickly
forgotten, erased. "Why don't you just take a hike... your
very presence here compromises the Trouble Factory's case. What a stink!" the Chief exclaims,
recoiling from Henry Hat's remains, "…did you, or somebody, vomit..."
So Norlin takes his hike - but
lurks by the door long enough to hear the ancient record player reject and
commence again, see Mondretto throw back his head and
laugh along to "Pardon Me, Boy" while the chattering, toe-tapping, fingerpopping policemen begin pawing through hundreds of
Protein X and Y crimescenes, gradually falling silent
as the enormity of the New Plasma chancre upon Jatesland's
curved Substance takes form. And, once its Iatollah
has been cuffed and given the habitual Compliance statement, John Crum advances
to the easel, coughs, whisks away the sheet… grimy, now newly limned with
yellow Henry-dust… veiling the Incunabula.
Averting
his eyes… unsure of the lethality horizon of Mondretto's
tableau, even at a distance… Norlin refuses to see;
rather (through the muted discord of the police, the too-pungent emanations of
the brown slime on the walls and yellow phlegm that is all that remains of
Henry Hat, and too-pure vissure of the jas), he knows. He
reaches back into his recent and distant past, remembers, knows. No phonograph ever
reproduced sound with such clarity as Mondretto's -
before the detrition of the suncop,
for the vibration of striations within vinyl are ever-distorted by one common
pollutant - dust, dust on the
needle. And what is dust, after all,
but… in the great, urban centres of civilization (and
if there are no contributing contaminating factors, like small animals)… the
flaked, nearly invisible residue of dead, dried-out human skin.
But
in Mondretto-Kowl's lair, there is no dust…
Norlin reaches for something on
the floor, fingers closing over a scrap of cloth - half fabric, half woven
paint... anything that will prevent
him from seeing...
"Chief,
don't do it," he warns… "don't look!"
"Th' keb!"
John Crum recoils...
Averting
his gaze, Norlin barely perceives the Incunabula's
grotesqueries writhing and squirming, but Chief Crum has eyes affixed only upon
his own fate splayed out across the center of the canvas - a fate visible, to
others, only as planar blur. Norlin, in fact, will never, ever know
what destiny has been revealed to John Crum.
A skimmer in a poxmarked Zeut's
fist, rising from the mewling cacophony of Proteins X and Y, firing... and the
Patrols Chief's face exploding... again... again... again... or a hydro
exploding in flames? Or, even, an old
man… alone and forgotten… mind gone, weeping in a fex-drenched
pensioner's bed at Sunland Rest…
John
Crum stands, a broken husk in wet, police shoes, impaled on the divide between
present and future, weeping in the face of implacable destiny as a handcuffed Mondretto sidles past him, exalting...
"Am
I not the greatest artist and greatest criminal the century has ever known! Oh... I shall
confess, confess everything! And you shall fight among yourselves for my fex, which shall be worth more than that of Triple-J
himself!" Stepping out from his
rapture, he notices Norlin cringing against a wall,
eyes still averted. "Are you still here? Will you simply stand and stare at the one
who put the horns upon you; Reason's lover... that man hovering only inches
beyond the aspect of your telescope? I was that man. Me!"
Norlin, angered into sentience,
approaches John Crum, but the Chief remains unmoving, unresponsive. So, instead, he addresses Chester Aspid...
"Gotta fly. But, once you're finished with this sorry dook, get up to Mormentz, place
they call the Mad House, and nuke everything in its swimming pool. Nuke the whole kebbin'
suburb, while you're at it, Clem'll understand. Might pay a visit to the Chinese Market,
too..."
Sergeant Aspid
nods - he's still glancing at Chief Crum, wondering if this really is an personnel emergency, and if he's in charge now. His face
still glows from the explosion at the Jatesaneum;
there is a scorched, wrathful odor emanating from the Sergeant, and Norlin nods back, unsure if Aspid
even begins to recognize the extent of his problem. But the Corporal could give a fex for the Trouble Factory, now… he has places to go,
loose ends to resolve.