Trashland a Go-Go (7 page)

“What are you doing on this side of the gate anyway?” the rugged rubber-clad man asked Coco.

“Waiting for you?” Coco said coyly with a wink.

“Cute,” the man said. He was obviously not impressed. “You could be in a lot of trouble for leaving the kingdom. Did you get a pass?”

Coco could see that her usual games and flirtation would get her nowhere. She would have to resort to being herself. After years on the stage and telling men what they wanted to hear for their measly dollars, she wasn’t even sure who that was, but was left with little other choice.

“I woke up here. I mean, not
here
. I’ve been traveling for a day or so. I woke up a ways from here and the Oracle pointed me this way.”

“You’ve seen the Oracle?” The man looked at her with surprise floating somewhere within his mysterious blue eyes. Coco found it hard to focus when he looked at her.

“Yeah, she told me that—”

The man held up his hand, “I don’t want to know. The things she tells you are between you and her. No one else.”

Coco shot a look at Rudy who was buzzing around gawking at the wreckage of the Gatekeeper.

Rudy shrugged. “Sue me for being curious. But I left, didn’t I? I didn’t hear the whole reading.”

The man looked at Rudy and then back to Coco. “You let him stay?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. I mean, I didn’t know that no one else was supposed to know what she told me. And like he said, he left before she finished.” Coco stammered. She hated that he made her so nervous. He was different from the men she knew. Not just because he wore a rubber suit, or possibly lived in a landfill, but the way that he carried himself—secure, confident, and with a sense of purpose. She felt she could melt right where she stood. “I’m just trying to find my way home.”

“And where might that be?”

“NOT in a landfill?”

“A what?”

“A place like this. Filled with trash?”

He stared at her blankly.

“Forget it. My name is Coco,” she said. She extended her hand with poise, which he took, but did not kiss as she had hoped.

“Adrian,” he said perfunctorily. He grasped her hand firmly and gave it a good shake.

“Can you take me to this kingdom of yours? Maybe someone there can help me?” She batted her eyelashes.

Adrian turned and began to march away. Coco stood and watched him. She looked over at Rudy, who just shrugged and began to follow Adrian.

“Come on then,” Adrian called over his shoulder, “it’s nearly dinner time at the palace. And, personally, I am famished.”

Directly inside the gate sat a pile of decrepit Gatekeepers. They were sad looking, defunct robots, rusted in a heap consisting of a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, some roller skates, a television set, two pairs of garden shears and a set of crutches. A mass grave for the former guardians of the kingdom. Coco paused to survey the mess and raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Adrian.

“Like I said, sometimes they get out of hand. Come on.”

Adrian led Coco down a path where the trash had been shoveled to either side. They came to a bubbling puddle of greenish goo.

Coco stopped walking. “What is that?”

Adrian smiled brightly. “The pond. You should see it in the moonlight. It’s really very lovely.”

“I’m sure.” Coco tried to hide the look of disgust smeared all over her face. Dead goldfish floated on the surface and insects crawled in and out of the goo. Their bodies were coated in an oil-slick sheen. Mountains of trash towered over them. In the distance, some were topped with paper products. If Coco squinted she could pretend they were snow capped peaks.

There was a park with jagged playground equipment deemed unsafe for children years ago. Yet here, the children in their patchwork rags played and screamed gleefully. A tree in the center of the park dripped with tire swings and dirty, happy children. Their mothers stared cautiously at Coco as she and Adrian walked to the center of the village. Rudy felt a bit ragged and decided to nap the rest of the way to the castle, tucked in the folds of Coco’s over-puffed dress sleeve.

They passed strange dwellings constructed from old tires, wood, and large bricks of compacted waste. Several of the doors had holes large enough to crawl through and the windows were mostly just holes cut raggedly into the trash bricks.

Coco asked Adrian many questions. At first he answered in brief one word responses. But soon he relaxed and became more comfortable conversing with Coco. She learned that he was a knight, but primarily worked as a maintenance man for the Queen. It was his job to repair things like the Gatekeeper, the gate itself, and any other item the Queen felt needed an adjustment.

“Lately, since she is in heat, the Queen will just call a group of the knights to her quarters to check for loose floorboards. I usually find a way out of it, like claiming I am already on a repair. Especially now that the spores are dropping.” Adrian shuddered.

“Spores, like mold? Your queen is human, right?” Coco asked.

“She is
mostly
human, but yes, like mold. Now that she is in the late stages of this mating cycle, she drops spores. They are meant to attract a mate to her. Essentially by force.”

“Does it work?”

“She’s had three husbands since I have served here, all under the influence of her spores. She eventually grows bored and has them sent to the Chamber. Then the next cycle begins and she starts all over again.”

“What is the Chamber?” Coco asked, linking arms with him.

Adrian smiled down at her. She adored his rare yet brilliant smile. “Let’s just hope you never find out.”

The castle was a large pair of glass towers at the center of town. Some sections were filled with alternating green and blue glass bottles. They gave the vague impression of stained glass. The sun shone through the bottles, lighting the ground below blue and green. The two towers were joined by two sections of wall and a gate between them.

Adrian reached for the door and stopped. He pointed at a sign printed in large bold letters:

Coco read the sign aloud and looked at Rudy, who was awake but still nestled in the pink shoulder of her frock. “You may have to wait out here.”

“I’ll just hide in your sleeve. Maybe your hair. They’ll never know I am here. I won’t make a sound,” Rudy pled.

Coco looked at Adrian like a little girl begging for a puppy.

“The Queen won’t like it. She won’t tolerate it.” He shook his head.

“But if she doesn’t know…”

Adrian took a deep breath. He released the air slowly, like a human tire that had sprung a leak. “Fine. But! If she should discover him, I knew nothing of it.”

He pulled the door open and the smell of roasting meat hit Coco square in the face. For a moment, her mind drifted to the Oracle and her bag of meaty fortunes, but her hunger took over and her stomach began to growl. She stepped inside and Adrian shut the door behind her.

The Queen’s servants were sharing their evening meal in a large courtyard. Long planks of wood held up by barrels were covered in plate after plate of roasted meat. Servants sat on boxes, old broken chairs with wobbly, lopsided legs, and stacks of old phone books.

Adrian pulled out a gray-white, cracked plastic patio chair mostly comprised of duct tape. “You can have my seat, I’ll go and find another.” He smiled at Coco, but once he looked up at the other servants of the court his face went back to stone. All business. He marched off through a door to retrieve another chair for himself.

The servants in the courtyard appeared to be knights like Adrian. They all wore similar rubber armor, and greeted Coco with warm smiles. She took Adrian’s seat happily and the knight to her left handed her a plate. Coco reached out and grabbed three slabs of meat from the platter in front of her. Two of them she slapped down on her plate, and the third she bit into directly.

The other knights had no silverware so she was not all too concerned with proper table etiquette. She dug into the meat like a rabid animal, letting the juices dribble down her chin and onto the front of her dress. After several bites, she noticed a few of the knights staring at her. She put the slab of meat down and wiped her mouth with her dress. Then she tore small pieces from the roasted meat and placed them in her mouth, which she kept closed while she chewed.

Adrian returned with a wooden crate and squeezed beside her. He grabbed a few slices of meat.

The man beside him held up a slab, tore it into strips and let juice run down his arms. He looked over at Coco, who had her mouth rather full. “Have you ever tasted feline so tender?” he asked.

Coco stopped mid-chew. She managed to yell through her mouthful, “Excuse me?!”

“The cat,” the knight said. He held up a strip of roasted meat and waved it around. “It’s extra delicious this evening. It seems you showed up on the right night!” He grinned at Coco, with pieces of shredded cat wedged between his yellow teeth.

Coco leaned forward and spit the wad of meat onto her plate. The others watched her, stunned.

Adrian raised an eyebrow “Is there something wrong?”

“You’re damned right there’s something wrong! I’m eating CAT?! Why the fuck are you people eating cats?!” She spat onto her plate in an attempt to get any and all particles of cat meat out of her mouth.

“What do you mean—” Adrian started to ask. But he was cut off by a lofty, inquisitive voice from down the table.

“Is there a problem?”

Coco looked along the rows of knights toward the voice, ready to fire off comments about how wrong and barbaric it was to eat cute fuzzy kittens, but when she saw who spoke, she quickly rethought her strategy. “No. No problem. I’m just full.”

The Queen said, “I see. And just who might YOU be?”

Coco needn’t ask who was inquiring. The Queen wore an elaborate barbed wire crown encrusted with shiny bits of broken costume jewelry. Her dress flowed with layers of old bed sheets and curtains—solids, florals, plaids. But it was her face that drew the most attention.

Half her face was that of any pale, middle-aged woman’s. There were some wrinkles around her mouth, crow’s feet, and three deep lines that cracked through her forehead from furrowing her brow. The other half of her face was fitted with a piece of metal mesh, molded to form the structure of a human head. Instead of a left eye, she had a forty-watt light bulb. It blinked off and on when she spoke. She wore her hair in an elaborate orange and white twist that sat atop her head like a delicious pastry. Coco found this very distracting.

Adrian answered for Coco and himself while she stared. He stood at his place at the table and spoke with diligent respect and clarity, “Your highness, this woman is a traveler and she—”

The Queen interrupted him. “Adrian,” she said breathily, “since when do we take in strays? Except to eat them.” Her smile stretched wide, her teeth sharp, metallic points, and she laughed haughtily.

The other servants joined in laughing.

It wasn’t until the boom of laughter around her that Coco realized that everyone at the table was male, save herself and the Queen.