While it stood watching her, Vangie lay down on a pile of rubble, carefully framing the amorphous blob in her scope. She was almost wooed into believing that the shape froze, no more motion to be had, but then it reared its “neck” up like a cobra, prompting Vangie’s shot.
A shudder ran up the neck to a make-shift head, an eyeless head that pondered its landscape with only God knows what type of organ. Dipping down like a sea-serpent darting at a shoal of fish, it proceeded to snail forward, giving Vangie another opportunity to slug away at it. Shot two. Pause. No good. Shot three. Nope. Shooting the blob didn’t do much good. Time to move and lose it in the labyrinth that was once Mount Geneva, Illinois.
Leaving the undead Otasco behind, she hoped the snail would ignore it, but then again, what was it good for? I’m betting there are no townies left alive, or they grew wings and flew out. All of those care-bear boxes are probably for nothing and nobody. And the snail? I’m betting it rode in on that meteor from only God knows where. Did I attract it by flying inside the wall with my glider? Was this whole scenario a test by the brass to see what would happen if a volunteer plops in? Cheese to catch the mouse?
Vangie took the odd right, trotting down lonely backyard alleys, noting other houses pierced through with those blooming stalks. Some homes sported the hoods on the roof where the stalks pierced completely through. Black roofs meant spores aplenty. Is that what happened to the people? They became the mushroom stalks? Good theory, but as D.I. Collins would say–or rather yell: “Thinking gets you squat. Don’t fucking think through scenarios with the visitors. Feel them it out with human intuition. I want fucking psychics. Let the fucking visitors be smarter. Fuck them! I want you to be a third-eye fucking yogin. Every Mary Jane a living bullet, flame-thrower, shell. Do you think a shell thinks? Fuck no!”
Opportunity: Missing sewer cap. Inside I go. Just a flush away. Peeping, she caught no sign of Mr. Snail. Good to go. Get in, go far, come out smelling like a blooming rose.
Clicking on the rifle’s flashlight, she hustled her butt down a good length, coming at last to a three-way stop. Two turn offs. Which? Don’t think. Do! Feeling Collins push her to the right, onward she duck-walked until a ladder down become the only way to go forward. Having Aliens flashbacks. Did Hollywood try to tell us what was eventually going to happen? CIA and Hollyweird had a background. The scene grew humid, the pipe carpeted with low-hanging vapors. A yellow-piss colored light source waved her into an opening, an opening that swallowed her with its gargantuan size.
She stood. No thoughts. All sensory data. Get a load of this shit. Black crystalline lattices grew from ceiling to roof. Each lattice a home to yellow eyes. Open eyes. Closed eyes. Fluttering eyes. It doesn’t make sense.
Vangie felt enticed to move her shufflers forward towards a metal bridge. One of those construction site bridges painted orange with yellow handrails. The eyes watch me. Turning to follow. They aren’t human. More like amphibian eyes with odd black dots in the middle. Amphibians eat anything that don’t eat them first. Large fuckers walked the land back in the day. Big as Komodo dragons–or bigger. There’s a singular piss-yellow glow ahead, green water, and an island the bridge leads too eventually. And in the middle of that island grows a stalk with a mighty wide base, a base that seemingly gave birth to a black ulcer, glistening and full. It’s the lure and I’m the trout. It pulls me forward with invisible hands, wafting sweet nectar my way. I think I’m getting high as fuck.
Walking through the ulcer like Alice through a looking glass, her mind shut down, and Wonderland took over. She found herself waiting in a long line of people, each high as fuck just like her. Shuffling forward with shufflers, she forgot about volunteering for this mission. Sure, D.I. Collins appeared now and again to eyeball her, but Vangie was gung-ho, rifle strapped on correctly, hands tucked in along the seams of her pants, eyes forward.
Folks were smiling up there, walking up a ramp like they were about to get a fucking reward pinned to their chests, a trio of long black tendrils waving overhead as if watching over them. Fuck ya, the tendrils are chock-full of those amphibian peepers too. A tendril or two would touch the head of a citizen, and then the citizen descended down a ramp on the far side going only God knows where.
“Its a fucking carnival down there,” Collins said in Vangie’s ear, “so don’t worry Mary Jane. You are about to get the shore leave of your fucking life and like it. Hot dogs and cotton candy. Hell, all the gin and soda you can guzzle, boot! March it out, keep up. No looking back. There are no fucking release papers back there. Don’t fuck this up, Mary!”
–end
Notes:
So here we have the end of a little writing experiment. Full Metal Jacket meets the Great Old Ones with a bit of sheep processing thrown in. Where are they all going? Slaughterhouse V?
St. Nick gave me the knowledge of how to find the novelization of Full Metal Jacket. Apparently, it was a short novel published in the late 70s entitled The Short Timers. I spent a good afternoon soaking it in while sipping a holiday drink. I’m about halfway through. I’ll probably finish it up this long weekend. Thanks for reading and egging me on guys.
Also, a big shout out again to Lewis Carroll for his Wonderland creation.
