Nocturnal Emissions (34 page)

“Deviation! Deviation! Shut it down! Shut the fucking thing down!”

When the three commandos burst onto the set, they had to squint against the dry, dead dust blown on an icy wind across a vast plain of barren desolation, stretching off to the horizon, with a dull sun waning low in the gloomy sky. The commandos were disoriented by these surroundings for a beat or two, but then they all opened fire with their SCARs (Special Forces Combat Assault Rifle). The dancing showman never even looked over at them, or stopped smiling—even as dozens of bullets tore into and through him, throwing his body to the ground. He lay there tattered, vivid red blood leaking from the wounds, forming a growing puddle under him. In death he grinned at the roiling sky just as he had grinned into the camera. For good measure, the squad leader stepped closer to him warily (as if the singer might suddenly reach out and seize his ankle) and fired a last burst of 7.62x51mm ammo directly into the entertainer’s face. His top hat, which he had retained to this point, rolled off with the aid of the wind.

They all watched this on the monitors in the control room. The team commander, hands on hips, legs spread in a wide stance, was wagging his head and saying, “Fuck
me
. Fuck
me
.”

The automatic doors to the control center parted and a man in a high tech motorized wheelchair barreled into the room. The man in the wheelchair, in his sixties and entirely bald, wearing wire-rimmed dark glasses, was demanding questions of the commander even before he had cleared the threshold.

“What was the deviation, Chief?”

“The thing said, ‘You make me feel I’m a girl’ instead of, ‘You make me feel like a girl,’ Doctor.”

“Good God,” the man in the wheelchair said, bringing it to a stop just short of colliding with the commander. “And did you end the broadcast before your men terminated the Continuity Agent?”

“Yeah, Doc, of course. As far as anyone out there would know, the channel just cut out…the viewers didn’t see anything.”

“Thank God.” The man in the wheelchair squeezed the commander’s forearm. “We’re lucky you caught him in time, Chief, before things degraded more seriously.”

“No shit,” said the commander. “Can you imagine if that thing had thrown two or three more words into the lyrics? Total fucking breakdown.”

“Chaos,” the man in the wheelchair muttered to himself in terrible awe.

His chair pivoted as he took in the monitoring stations set around the room.

This one little room, and this handful of human beings…all that kept the Continuum intact. And the Continuity Agent, of course. But, now they had been forced to take him down.

“We’re gonna be okay, aren’t we, Do
c?” The commander sounded uncus
tomarily unsure, even nervous. A crisis of this magnitude had never occurred before.

“Yes, Chief,” the man in the wheelchair reassured him, “but we have some work to do.”

#15: All’s Well That Ends Well

And so I, Fetch Vardoger, have continued to live in this town of
Gosston
, and continued to work for Nepenthe Pharmaceuticals. I am still in my tiny studio apartment, and I have not been dating anyone, but that’s okay right now. I feel some degree of order has been restored to my life, since my bed partner of bedlam has been removed. But I must confess that I have felt my eyes grow damp when I see those cookies she liked in the market, and also a few times when I was watching TV alone at night in my much, much too large and empty bed.

Last night, in fact, I openly cried while watching TV from my bed…but they were bittersweet tears.

I had been thumbing through the channels, watching a bit of this, a bite of that. A history program about some war or other, a nature program about animals, a soft-core movie with terrible acting and fake sex. And then, purely by chance, I stumbled across
that
channel…

And there he was—in his white greasepaint, with the red dots on his cheeks and red lipstick, his eyes ringed in black kohl. His hair (yes, a wig, I decided) all curly crimson red and bushing out from beneath his black top hat, drooping to one side like a crushed stovepipe, ringed with its lime green satin ribbon. As always, smiling glassy-eyed into the camera, singing, “Silicone Swirl you make me feel like a girl…oh Silicooone…Silicone Swirl” over and over.

What was this? I sat up in bed, perplexed. Had the fragmentary reports and rumors I’d gleaned from other channels, and my own extrapolation, all been wrong? Had the Continuity Agent not been killed? Or had he been resurrected somehow? Surely it couldn’t be a rerun—it didn’t work that way.

Then, I looked a bit more closely, as he did his little soft-shoe dance, twirling around and opening his coat at the lyric, “You make me feel like a girl,”

to reveal two swirling designs that spun around and around over his breasts like twin hypnotic vortexes. “Silicone Swiiiiiirl…Silicone Swirl,” he sang, dancing backward away from the camera then forward, closer, again. Close enough for me to see that the shape of his eyes was different from what I remembered. The showman’s eyes had something of an epicanthic fold to them, this time, like an Oriental person. And that never-faltering grin—it was a bit lopsided, higher on the right, the teeth very white but a little crookedly uneven.

That was when my eyes started to well up.

I hoped that enough people would watch her to make her feel real. She looked happy enough, at any rate. She had found her balance, and was giving us all balance in turn. As much balance as any of us can expect, at least.

I know I’ll watch her every night, and maybe not feel so alone. I will fall asleep under her watchful gaze, warmed under the glowing blue cathode blanket projected from her endearing grin.

I just wish those watchful eyes were not such an unnatural shade of green.

About the Author

JEFFREY THOMAS is the author of the following books from Dark Regions Press: THE FALL OF HADES, VOICES
FR
OM HADES, VOICES FROM PUNKTOWN,
THOUGHT FORMS and DOOMSDAYS. Other of his
books include PUNKTOWN, BLUE WAR, DEADSTOCK,
HEALTH AGENT, MONSTROCITY, LETTERS FROM
HADES and
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
: THE
DREAM DEALERS. Some of his short stories have appeared in such books as THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY
AND HORROR, THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES, THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION
and THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD POCKET GUIDE
TO ECCENTRIC AND DISCREDITED DISEASES. He
lives in
Massachusetts
, and his blog can be found at:
www.JeffreyEThomas.com/blog/

Dark Regions Press

Dark Regions Press is an independent specialty publisher of horror, dark fiction, fantasy and science fiction, specializing in horror and dark fiction and in business since 1985. We have gained recognition around the world for our creative works in genre fiction and were awarded the Horror Writers Association 2010 Specialty Press Award and the Italian 2012 The Black Spot award for Excellence in a Foreign Publisher. We produce premium signed hardcover editions for collectors as well as trade paperbacks and ebook editions for more casual readers. We have published hundreds of authors, artists and poets such as Kevin J. Anderson, Bentley Little, Michael D. Resnick, Rick Hautala, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, W.H. Pugmire, Simon Strantzas, Jeffrey Thomas, Charlee Jacob, Richard Gavin, Tim Waggoner and hundreds more.  Dark Regions Press has been creating specialty books and creative projects for over twenty-seven years.

The press has staff throughout the country working virtually but also has a localized office in
Ashland
,
Oregon
from where we ship our orders and maintain the primary components of the business.

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,
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