The QUEEN SONG

(11) Scene 25-27

11/23/2019

Mike W McCoy

Version 3.0

<>25<>Of involution invocation.

A ragged rhythmic breathing sound slipped in and out of Ace.  It took a long moment for the realization that he wasn’t asleep but surfing along the edge of a Queen Song.  Part of him wanted to go deeper back inside the dream.  The other part of the old man wanted to confront the reality inside the ruins of the 4th floor deluxe disaster-chic suite.  If he did open his eyes, the vision would confound and confuse, but only briefly before rough reality enforced itself intensely. 

The crack-den of a room had connected walls that held up a splintered ceiling which was currently stopping 85% of the Death Valley desert sunlight.  A brushed-on layer of fine dirt and sand covered the dilapidated off-white Southwest style furniture and fixtures that circled the rusted iron-trimmed king sized bed.

On the side, a bright glare encroached on the trio of cult Handmaidens like a soft spotlight cast by a jittery stagehand.  Each woman appeared as the better starved class of disciple, but no fat filled the gaps between wire-taught muscles stretched across their exposed upper torsos and darkly sunburned arms. 

Their costumes were of the same variation, bras and skirts that once were expensive and elegant.  Now only rips and cactus needles clung tight, accenting their cross-legged seated posture.  Synchronized by the dream’s song, they swayed side to side, hands held low, dark ash-painted eyes closed tight.  Their different lengths of auburn hair had blood stained strips of cloth, and twists of barbwire, that secured the long filthy dreadlocks in place.

A low moaning sound, which could have been a language if sped up a 100 times, escaped their cracked lips in a 4-8 time to the left-right dipping of their heads.  It was an image of involution invocation, and something else, something Alien.

Queen Song was strong inside Ace, but not overwhelming, more of a constant numb pain.  The darkness that enveloped his mind, and surrounded everything else like a mist, was almost a physical thing. 

Someone else was also in the dream with him, but it was like trying to catch smoke.  At each cycle of the oppressive hallucinatory audio rhythm, which the ragged old man felt more than heard, the other became more distinct.  The darkness that surrounded him had become different, sinister, and aggressive.  He thought it was a living thing, trying to pull him forward against his will. 

Back in reality, Ace squirmed across the ratty unmade bed as his physical form tried to gain a bearing on the Queen Song.  In the dream, he slowly became accustomed to the dark and could make out shapes on all sides.  Spots of yellow-red light winked from unknown sources, and added the feeling of physical weight.

A stronger pull, like a gust of wind, forced his direction.  The layout had become blockier, more recognizable, more like the halls and wide corridors of the Grand California Resort.  The darkness was shaping itself into forms as well. 

Near the lights, which he had decided were bonfires and burning corpses, more familiar objects became clear.  Fleeting glimpses of naked dancers leapt across his field of view.  Their arms held up long flaming wands, whose burning embers swayed to the freaky female trio’s audio pounding his chest. 

Farther back, near the source of the Queen Song, someone waited.  The shape was changing the closer Ace moved.  It started as a flattened outline of a bird with dark wings stretched outward, like so much road kill.  Then it rolled itself inward to become a ball of oozing mud to size of a small sports car. 

Centered amid the shifting shades of darkness was the source of the Queen Song.  Indistinct and vaguely humanoid, it writhed and contorted with many different vibes.

The strong pull urged Ace onward, and made him neglect the more solidified shadows creeping alongside.  The odd shaped figures had wrong-bending legs and elongated, banana-shaped heads.  They were of no concern, only the voice making the Queen Song mattered.  It needed to be touched, needed to be loved.

It needed to be fed. 

Stronger and stronger, the song reached for him, and with each breath, Ace felt closer and closer.

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<>26<>  Best not remembered. 

The sunlight hitting the trio of moaning Handmaidens alongside Ace also burned the skin of Special Agent Boris.  He slept passed-out on the same 4th floor, but several rooms sideways distant.Deep throated snores escaped his acid mutilated face, and it almost kept rhythm with the 3 witches at the bedside of Ace. 

His tall frame was stretched out awkwardly across a filthy, green, thin-cushioned, relic of a couch.  The expensive suit and shoes were wrinkled and forgotten.  His tie was still snug tight, but the shirt tails and belt had the look of sleepy hands having pulled them apart.

The broken far wall of the hotel suite allowed the bright daylight in freely, but inside Boris’s mind, all was dark and shadow filled.  The space inside his dream felt angular, blocky, pre-formed, and after a choking inhale, it resembled ‘Moon Base Alpha’ just a little too closely.  That small bite from ‘Memory’ was enough, and altered the Queen Song’s influence.

The dream’s darkness was soon occupied by many others.  Others whose presence Boris could only feel alongside him, like smoke.  They were moving black bubbles, drifting from a deeper space towards a darker shadow of alternating angry shapes.  The Queen Song was coming from that oozing void.  It was animalistic and primitive in theme. 

Outside, in reality, the body of the special agent began to squirm and twist atop its vicarious couch bound position.  The Queen Song continued its call, but concurrently, a competing sense of movement altered Boris’s reactions in reality.  Gravity would exert itself during a roll or convulsion.  But inside the dream, his movements seemed to push the other phantom shadows away.  That was all that mattered, as his unconscious impulse was to get to the source of the Song. 

The dream made a quick turn.  Spaces of shadow stretched sideways in deep diving divergent directions.  A sexual urge was clawing him, but which way to go?  The stab of uncertainty had altered the dream.

Glimpses of firelight flickered from the multiple paths, yet each appeared to be the same visual.  Obscuring man-shaped shadows became clearer.  They each held identical cascades of fiery red embers, and created light trails as they danced around a central massive fire. 

In the dream, Boris threw up his arm to block the flame’s glow, but in reality, gravity won and pulled the 224 pound man off the crack-den dinette set.

“Augh, crap,” he grunted.  Slowly both bloodshot eyes adjusted to the realism of the Grand California Resort.

Boris was still in the same corner hotel suite.  The wall opposite the only door was missing most of its masonry, revealing a view of the outside vista.  Bright hot sunlight streamed in, cooking the crappy low gold shag carpet, and revealing the corners of the nightmare nest best not remembered.

The drop had re-positioned Boris between the couch and the crap that served as a coffee table.  Agent Yoshi’s borrowed revolver lay on top, empty and forgotten, next to a discarded old fashion telephone.  His shoes were shoved off near the room’s corner, and his elegant black blazer was draped over a pile of miscellaneous broken wood and plaster. 

“Just swell,” he mumbled looking for a wristwatch that was missing. 

After a deep breath, Boris strode over to the partially demolished wall and gazed down at the South Lawn of the Resort, or at least what was left of it.

The triad limousine was still parked alongside the dirt and debris filled Olympic-sized pool, just to the side of the rickety looking shacks that used to be cabanas.  The leaning walls of the buildings had dragged their tile roofs with them towards the mounds of desert sand which kept them separate from the slowly encroaching forest of smart-cactus plants keeping pace with the sun. 

The car looked intact, and it gave Boris a brief glimmer of hope.  Other shadows wandered around the pool, or collected amongst the ruble of the collapsed back wall of the Resort.  They pushed against that hope of escape.

The moving shades were cultists in various stages of awareness.  A handful of bare-chested men, costumed in similar ragged workman’s pants and dark red bandannas, pushed their way through the much larger spread of skinny malnourished people.  Those the thugs pummeled aside didn’t appear to mind the harsh treatment.  Some even looked to move closer and receive 2nds. 

The sounds from below were distorted, and not just by the Santa Ana wind whistling across the ruins of the hotel room, but also by a low grade moaning rhythm Boris could not shake from his head.  Not knowing what the noise was, or even if it was real, he focused on the pounding against the door.

“Now what?”

Plodding across the room, Boris wondered why his keepers would knock in the 1st place.  He was effectively a prisoner in an open air cage, and none of the cultists had shown any interest beyond Jax and Mother.

The pounding continued even as Boris reached for the knob.  He froze for just a split moment, and wondered about the hybrid woman.  Could she really be her, Experiment Number 8? 

The knocking started again, and Boris yanked the door open.  Not sure of who he was expecting, the special agent stood dumbfounded for a several heartbeats as his vision adapted the reality of the older Chinese man standing before him. 

The triad man’s once immaculate gold pinstriped suit was stained and dusty with noticeable tears along the seams of shoulder and inner thighs.  A smell of burned wood wafted from him, like an aura of combat, and fresh blood stains, that did not come from Club Uzi, were splattered across his dark, hard-soled loafers.

“Mahn,” Boris finally croaked.  “Good go see you alive.”

The Yellow Hand henchman tilted his head slightly, enough for Boris to get a full ugly reflection of himself off the shorter man’s T-glass shades, and then smirked a crooked grin that could almost be considered a smile.

Taking a step towards the room.  “Special Agent Boris, we need to talk.”

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<>27<>  The source of it. 

Downstairs, in the farthest corner of the Resort’s Main Lounge, a very drunk triad underboss, in a swamp-green suit, stirred in his sleep. 

Unkempt black hair was plastered around his pudgy, round, face by sweat and spilled alcohol.  The look accented the crazed expression of his lips twitching with short-shot, tepid smiles.  Quick, hard-to-hear, grunts escaped liked orders given to ghosts.  He was laying sideways across the deep vinyl booth, and both hands and feet jerked at an odd tempo, almost as if he was running. 

At least that’s what the woman in the red silk dress, sitting on the floor beside him, thought to herself.  Mei Liun was positioned to shield him from the view of the others milling about the long bar across the room.

“Chan, my love,” she whispered, stroking away a strand of awkward hair from his cheek.  “What are you dreaming of?”

She continued to let her hand linger, and glare daggers at the other Snakes and Birds of the triad.  They pretended not to see, or quickly averted their eyes when they met hers.

She was the favorite of underboss, and that title came with responsibilities.  Chief among them was to keep him from looking less vulnerable than his station in life demanded.  Now he was laying drunk, dreaming with no defenses, and if could see into his dream, Mei Liun would have broken into tears for him. 

In the mind of Xais, the Queen Song had called, but it was only the echo he could see and feel.  A midnight darkness under a sky with no stars or moon surrounded him completely.  All sense movement felt heavy as though walking across thick sand or in deep snow. 

Close by, red hot burning embers of fire waved and twirled in odd, out-of-synch gyrations.  Behind them, brighter lights like open fire pits, winked as manlike shadows danced and leapt before them.  The figure’s movements appeared timed to an oddly breathed rhythm that shifted sideways with every 3rd exhale.

Something bigger was just beyond them, a darkness without a fixed form, and about the size of a small car.  It became clearer the longer Xais dreamt.  A small group of human-like disciples appeared to be worshiping it, flailing about and twitching on the indistinct ground around it. 

However, another set of beings were off on the sides.  They, too, appeared to praise the centermost shifting darkness, but they were defiantly not human.  Their tall and arching silhouettes had the wrong-bending legs of a bird, and an immense tail which twitched and wavered about an elongated, banana-shaped head.  They seemed not so much to absorb into the darkness, as be the source of it. 

In the reality of the Main Lounge, underboss Xais began to twitch and convulse the closer his dream-self got to the unidentifiable shifting center darkness.  What actually was only seconds seemed like minutes, as his semi-consciousness confronted the competing realities.  His breath became hard and fast until at last a chocking sensation forced open his eyes.

The face of Mei Liun was only inches away, and his hand reflexively grabbed her shoulder.  He tried to say something, but she only heard a single word.

“Aliens.”

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