Do what again? But he already knew, and as they walked back to The Wack in their own normal, imperfect bodies, Kathy kept chattering and cooing about how great the sex had been, and he knew that, yes, undoubtedly, he would have to do it again. Canal Street was just as crowded as it had been earlier, and the phantasmagoria of faces all ran together so that it could have been the same people over and over on loop and it wouldn’t have made a difference. They passed the Shop til you drop! sign and the wizard was gone, only the plastic forty bottle remained. The “saxophonist,” thankfully, had been asleep underneath the metal horse, and the golden mimes had seemingly returned to whatever miserable place they called home. The streets, the buildings, the graffiti, and the advertisements seemed to be the only thing static, while people meshed and fled like ripples in water.
Theo was thirsty. Whatever they’d done to his head was taking its toll, and a headache was coming on, dull but throbbing. It filled his head like pressure in a balloon, and his tongue was getting drier just from thinking about it. He felt nauseous, but he knew he had nothing to throw up. In fact, he ought to have been starving, but his stomach felt full of slime. He was sweating from the heat and now from the quesiness, and the anxiety of having to do it all over again started to overwhelm him. He didn’t want to do it again, not in two weeks or even two months, but the bar had been raised. Socrates was the high water mark, the new standard, and the Theo would never live up to it.
He couldn’t help feeling like he hadn’t really done anything, and in reality he hadn’t. It was all Socrates. Socrates and Praxis. He and Kathy hadn’t done anything at all; they’d just been dead in a labratory on some floor of that X-shaped building, vacant and slumbering while two supermodels walked around with their brain data.
Kathy, somehow, looked fine. A little irritable maybe, but fine. Her sundress had lost its vibrance though, and in the pale streetlight she looked like a ghost. She was changing— they both were— and Theo feared what they might become.
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That night, Theo dreamt he was moving through a tunnel. The sides of the tunnel were clear plastic, and outside there were birds and fishes twittering around amongst the foliage and observing him. He was trying to keep up with Kathy. She was way ahead, walking fast and wearing a pink wig. There was a Bengal tiger strutting between them now, and he didn’t know how to advance. The tiger was traversing the tunnel too, in the same direction, but at a slower pace than Kathy. Its tail swished back and forth, slithering down the tube like a snake. Theo had no choice but to try and pass, but he didn’t want to disturb the creature and get mauled to death where no one could reach him. He threw a black cloak over himself, and the tiger turned around. It looked straight at him, puzzled. Oh, don’t mind me, Mr. Tiger. I’m just an indiscriminate black blob. The curious tiger rubbed up against him. He rubbed back, trying to do it in a soothing way. The tiger didn’t seem to mind. It kept walking. Theo stayed at its hip, but it was too dangerous to move past.
When they emerged from the tunnel, they were standing on the beach, but Kathy was nowhere in sight. There was Kudzu on the beach, grass, tiki torches, and people arriving in cars. The tiger was gone. The cars kept coming, and the people kept spilling out. He didn’t recognize any of them. It was getting dark. The sun was nowhere in sight, and the horizon was pink in every direction. Above was purple, flashing white with heat lightning that revealed the texture of the sky. A gorgeous hispanic woman in a white dress approached him with a handful of white flowers that looked like the tops of dandelions. “Eat,” she said. “These are hallucinogenic flowers.” Theo let her pour the flowers into his cupped palms. “Eat,” she said. He drank the flowers like sacramental wine, and began to chew. The woman was gone. He kept chewing, and looked around for her. The people were everywhere now, and the only light came from the tiki torches. The ground was covered in the flowers and the Kudzu. He kept chewing, but he couldn’t swallow. His mouth was dry, and whatever he was eating seemed to be expanding and multiplying in his mouth. He started to choke as he pushed his way through the crowd, trying to escape and find a place to breathe. Unfamiliar and menacing faces stared at him from every direction, and the green and white mush began spilling out from his mouth. Some people stepped away from him like a man diseased, while others jeered. “Look,” one said, “He’s eaten a fistful of dandelions!” He staggered onto a patch of sand with his head spinning but fell backwards onto the Kudzu, which crawled onto him like a thousand long fingers until he couldn’t see anything and the beach party felt miles away.
He awoke on the beach naked with black water lapping at the soles of his feet. The sun was nowhere to be found, the sky and the ocean gray as old age, and in front of it all his pale feet stared back at him like two blind fish. Small, silent birds with long thin beaks paced along the waters edge, back and forth, back and forth, thinking. Just beyond them, the shark fins did the same. A wave ran up past his feet and licked his calves. He stood up. The wave receded and several sharks were left on the sand, flopping and thrashing as the birds danced around them laughing. The people and the tiki torches were gone. The Kudzu was gone. Where the party had been, a tall, strange plant was growing out of the sand, bearing bright orange fruit and beckoning him.
There was someone else on the beach, a slender, nubile woman, hurrying toward this unusual plant with her breasts bouncing. It was Kathy! He ran to catch up with her. He reached her beside the plant, where she was already taking bites from the delicious-looking orange citrus. They were like no oranges he’d ever seen. They were skinless and shiny, and Kathy’s eyes were in rapture as the succulent juices streamed from her lips, dripping down her neck and onto her bare breasts. He took the closer one, the left one, in the palm of his hand and licked the juice from where it glistened on the nipple. It tasted like orange strawberries and sugar. Like heaven. Kathy didn’t even notice him. She was moaning and ripping fruit from the stems as fast as she could eat them, completely consumed by the pleasure. The juices now ran down her whole body, a river of orange flowing between her breasts, along the subtle curves of her abdomen, and spreading into fingers running inside her thighs. Every time she plucked one, another took its place, like a drop of crystal dew being filled by the stem, and in each luscious drop stars and galaxies and the whole universe could be seen glowing from some inner light.
Theo plucked one for himself. There was a hint of pink in the orange, and a firm, liquid texture, and while he so wanted to taste it, he was apprehensive, frightened by Kathy’s loss of self, her total emersion in the thirst. He wondered how this plant could grow out here, how this little patch of fertile soil could exit in a field of sand. How had it survived this long, and in such luscious health? He looked at the ground and saw an eye blinking back at him, and a tongue squirming desperately for the drips falling from Kathy’s lips. With horror he realized that they were the nourishment, that their ignorant, meaty bodies would be more than enough to sustain this carnivorous plant, which had already consumed the party-goers, fed them a few mouthfuls of poison and let them die by the roots like flies drawn to a flame. There were teeth and organs and bones in the soil, all writhing at his feet, but he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t walk away without Kathy, who still hadn’t noticed him.
TO BE CONTINUED
Cover Photo:Image Source
