Queen City and Other Dimensions. E.C. WellsЧитать онлайн книгу.
a couple uneventful hours, the bus turned onto the axle-breaking bumpy dirt road outside the town of Squeezer which led to the picnic tepee and souvenir stand where tickets were sold before entering the shaft leading down into the caverns.
The Queen City Friends of Erotic Artifacts were quick to disembark as the bus finally pulled up in front of the tepee and made an abrupt stop——nearly hitting a man in lederhosen who was foolish enough to stand wide-eyed and frozen as the bus came barreling towards him. The near fatality could easily be attributed to the bus driver’s auto-asphyxiation from farting all the way from Queen City.
TWO
tea time at shady sanctum
Maxfield Talbot, a burly man closer to seventy than sixty, sat on a beanbag watching natives beautiful black women glistening rainbows banana skirts dripping fruit flies naked beady-eyes behind shrubbery wearing Campbell’s tomato soup cans paying constant attention throw off cans where manhood stands Jesus naked whips snap where are you the Vatican everything out of order does it matter not really look at the mess you’ve created you need more self-control keep jumps shorter remember order by secret signs learn to read envision pay attention believe it you’re doing good yes believe it keep jumps short and simple try harder stop fucking with time did we switch points of view no they are all yours listen to yourself we are in the mind always in the mind listen LISTEN! AWAKE! Max awakens and mumbles, “Where was I there...where in hell is here where am I now?” Max wriggled out from under his bed while trying to remember yesterday, or if there actually was a yesterday.
The especially tall pine legs of Maxfield’s bed, made by one of his sister’s husbands to accommodate his “portly proportions,” heightening the bed to allow him to remain a robust figure without going on one of V’s torturous vegetarian diets. Max believed himself to be completely invisible while under his magical bed. And, maybe he was.
Maxfield’s hallucinations are inexplicable, if indeed they are hallucinations. However one might try, there are no words, not one single word, to capture a nano-fraction of his disjointed reality, or an essence of his drug-induced visions, if they are drug-induced——the inexplicable Maxfield Talbot.
* * *
Another time in the parlor of Shady Sanctum, Max’s niece, Victoria Aires, was having “another one” of her anxiety attacks.
When others disagreed with her, however slight, it added unbearably more anxiety to be anxious about. V’s mantra to escape and forget about that basket of deplorables, is to smoke a doobie. It doesn’t do a thing to cure deplorables, but it helps to see them in a better light as, more than likely, human; however, lamentable and pitiful.
The visions and ideas V conjured for America’s own good, in her efforts to save it, never came to fruition, since she was never quite sure what exactly needed saving. And nothing ever came to mind in that regard. V told herself that she had every reason to be anxious. She was diagnosed with something quite depressing——bipolar. V was prescribed enough drugs to put a person of lesser tolerance into a persistent vegetative state. But visions fade and melt. They disappear and stream towards their source. Time becomes entangled. Memories become taunting devils, impossible bullies who come from nothingness and disappear into nothingness; leaving a sadness and a desire to try to become acquainted with the subconscious, or at least to learn to listen to its advice. “After all, it is the home of my conscience, is it not”thought V.
V desired to be an ageless woman, a natural woman of grace and mystery. V was also a woman hellbent on leaving an indelible mark in history. Her anxieties had anxieties of their own. Each passing day became more insufferable. More psychotropics, Doctor. For V, anxiety has always been well-traveled, carefully surveyed and familiar territory.
“Who is that sitting at the kitchen table, Lil?”
“He looks a lot like a satyr.”
“Nonsense. You are suffering some kind of LSD flashback.”
“I never took LSD, V! That was you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. There is a satyr sitting at the kitchen table writing something in a spiral notebook. He looks pretty real to me.”
“I never doubted he was real, Lily. I have known several satyrs in my day.”
“You’re full of merde! Take your damn pills,” her dearest friend Lily advised.
“They give me dry-mouth,” V sighed.
“But they make you more…”
“What?”
Lily was reluctant to get it out, but she managed, “…normal.”
“What in hell is ‘normal,’ Lily?
“Sorry, just saying.”
“Please, try not to say ‘just saying’ to me. I am not one of your Facebook friends. How about you go see what he is writing. When a satyr takes notes it is a sign of something historical about to happen and we are somehow involved.”
“V, he just disappeared.”
“That’s a satyr for you.”
V, bright red hair, pale white skin, attractive without make-up, well-groomed, eccentric, writes with a fountain pen and only in green ink, claims to be thirty-five, even though she has enjoyed her thirty-fifth birthday for at least a decade, more or less. She is known for her fashionable hat collection to cover those bad hair days, to avoid the ravages of sunlight, or mainly because hats are simply fabulous. If you want to be a woman of mystery wear a hat, the bigger the better. If you are a black woman on Sunday morning wear a hat ornate with muted colors, pink, purple and lilac petals shimmering in the slightest breeze or the turn of a head. If you are the Queen of England wear the same thing. Cowgirls wear a hat. If you need to hide a hole in your head you wear a hat. For the love of haberdashers everywhere, wear a hat!
V claims not to give a “rat’s ass” about what others think of her, but that is most certainly, in every respect, not true, fake news. If anything, she gives too much of the rat’s ass for what others think.
V owns a prodigious red stone Victorian mansion——a beautiful example of late nineteenth century architecture——that her father left to her after his “mysterious death.”
Her passion for going against the untangling evolution of time and fashion became part, but not parcel, of her persona. She had a good act. Most of her haute couturecame from yard sales and thrift stores. She knew how to create the eye-popping illusion of opulence with good taste.
V saw herself as a theatre person and all her friends would agree. Most thought of Victoria Aires as a drama queen, but the fear of her unexpected screeds of literary maleficence should anyone speak out of turn, or out of place, elevated the consciousness of her friends to an unexpected level of agreeability. Bipolar people leave little to the expectations of others.
V held a high opinion of herself as an artist. She knew she had a natural flair for directing. She daydreamed of having her own little theatre where she could show off her talents. Without quarrel, few would dispute what had become fact, that her talents and directing skills went far beyond the walls of theatre. V challenges herself to create and perform her own life with joie de vivre, a brava performance indeed, until she gets bored. And, when she is bored, V sharpens her directing skills on the lives of others; to the dissatisfaction of friends and foes alike. Distinguishing friend from foe needed a great deal of effort and appreciable skill. Once, V had a mercurial epiphany,“Perhaps I am a bit overbearing.”And then she forgot about it.
Once, Sir Geoffrey Hemphill pleaded, “Will you marry me, Miss Aires?” She replied with, “Oh, Sir Geoffrey, if I will I would have long ago.” V performed a spirited rendition of shy with a touch of coy and a whole lot of no. Poor Sir Geoffrey, looking spiffy in his white linen suit, pale blue shirt, dark blue with yellow diagonally-striped tie and vibrant yellow socks that poured into his brown and beige saddle shoes; dressed to the nines and