The Pupa Woman (I.IV)
Chapter 1:4
Hello DEAR READER,
The following is Chapter 1:4 from my first novel, The Pupa Woman. You can read Chapter 1:3 here.
You can get the PDF over at my gumroad! ^_^
Available from our unfortunate tech-overlords over at Amazon both in paperback and eBook.
Lost in her own thoughts, she noticed that the gangly creature sitting at the chair had also fallen asleep, drool steadily trickling down his tightly buttoned-up shirt onto his white briefs which were hiding another slumber-dulled hard-on. She walked through the archway framed by the glass separating her and the machine, putting her hands up closer to that entity, a collective with a metal exterior and feeling the motion of a thousand electrons from one transistor to another expressing themselves as a soft hum. She mushed her face up against it, wishing to be closer… kissing it softly to feel the vibration affect the tender skin of her chapped lips. While Susie hunted the world of impressions in search of ghostly images projected onto a negative, the machine which remained stoic underneath her probing fingertips explored a world of digits in which all nodes were connected by information which broke off infinitely into smaller branches, each packet being only a representation for what lies further beneath. All of it was simply an image, an alias for something else. She wishes she could become an image and feel herself pass through the machine, reconstituted into what could only be known by its pointer which would flow like liquid through the golden streets of a metropolitan circuit-board; it was a profoundly debilitating experience to see another person on the street and never be able to get closer, far closer than your muscular-skeletal system would allow for and it seemed that bytes did not have this problem.
After she’d shotgun-ed the last of the beer in the ice-chest and explored the pockets of the two ultimately-helpful computer-creeps (which had netted her only some small change and a fresh phone-card), Susie had found herself lost again within the great confines of the record studio’s vertigo-inducing complex which only echoed in response to her burping. She’d guided herself through the many cavernously-resonating live rooms and intersectional hallways, ultimately finding herself after many disjointed staircases within an isolated observation post far above the steel doors she’d catapulted herself over. Even with squinting eyes, she could not see the felines which had been of enormous help to her and now anxiety was setting in. With her hands shielding her eyes from the sun which had begun its recession into the horizon, she could recognize the awful faces of the professionals who’d mocked her with made-up eyelashes fluttering as a microphone was held above the head of a police-officer standing by the damaged telephone cabling. Her neural stress had begun to recombine itself into nervousness, trying to fight off the fear that she’d been manipulated into becoming a distraction in some larger scheme for publicity… having basically accomplished making herself a big target. She could imagine the lawman’s jowls moving as he described the concave angles of her hairstyle and the plastic curves of her raincoat, trying to not surrender herself to the billowing feeling which had built up in her esophagus as she made her escape through a bathroom she’d discovered while trying to back-track her way to the Duchess’ office– making sure to aim for a soft place as she reluctantly tried to descend herself from a small window with a sink under her feet as a stepping-ladder, keeping her camera with stretched arms high above her head.
Lucky Susie; those bulging trash-bags had broken her fall, though one of her legs had found themselves lodged deeply within the rotting food and disposable plastic containers that littered the narrow alleyway she’d fallen into. She heard voices clattering up against the graffiti-tarnished surfaces underneath the railway bridge, shaking the iron foundations which held up the structure. Susie looked down from her elevated position and realized that this shadowy underpass had been claimed as turf by a group of motorcycle-enthusing delinquents– you could tell by their jumpsuits and leather jackets with shiny colorful helmets ordinarily depicting some sort of violent act. She tried to pass by on the tips of her toes, navigating her way through the grey corridors of the square-built houses made of cement which overlooked the railway tracks surrounded by mealy gravel. When she’d look upwards, she could see hundreds of air-conditioning units hang beneath titanium stairs… suspended below the windows of the forty-level apartment complex which carried elevated train-tracks all the way through its interior, gawking at its sheer volume which overwhelmed the visual senses as she felt her breath drained from her with each difficult step up the staircase.
As she turns another corner, she sees a teenage delinquent with a spray-can in the midst of adding shades of red to an obscene depiction of police officers enjoying their vacation hours– Susie might even recognize the figure trying to cover itself with a towel far too petite to hide those limbs denuded of its hair. She holds still after cloaking herself behind an outdoor vending machine, unsure of quite what to do… the teenage delinquent continuing on her art-work with single-minded intensity. Susie hears footsteps behind her and realizes that another delinquent had snuck up on Susie and was now readying themselves to pounce with some sort of rusting pipe. Susie considered her options; failing to come up with a solution she hurled herself towards the artist-in-resident in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the pipe’s brutal blow, making sure to screech as loudly as she can in order to maximize confusion. The delinquent artist screams obscenities and tries to wrestle Susie away from her but instead loses her balance which forces both of them to tumble on the ground with Susie trying to angle herself with half-hearted rolls order to keep herself behind the delinquent and possibly dodge any further tries at splitting her head completely open like a cantaloupe.
Susie turns onto her back and looks up at her assailant wearing colored leg-warmers and an elongated skirt which reached down to her ankles. Her hair had an odd resemblance to the multi-faceted depictions of vomiting which covered the wall. The delinquent holds the pipe up over her head and tries to keep it steady as her nervousness sent her into a fit of hyperhidrosis.
“Who the fuck are you?” the delinquent screamed with no real expectation for an answer. Susie was now reaching for the spray-can which had rolled away, hoping to perhaps engineer her escape by blinding her opponent… hoping she’d have the bravery to do such a thing. The delinquent artist had already gotten up at this point and started combing her hair to fix the damage that the fall had done to her bee-hive hair-do as she eyes the camera hanging from Susie’s neck.
“Woah, I think she’s a fuck-freak,” which made the green-haired delinquent a fair bit more agitated even though her lack of energy had already forced her to lower the pipe onto the ground.
“Oh shit, are you one of those people trying to take pictures of that idol’s dead body?” she asked before turning to her friend after she’d fixed her bee-hive, continuing to speculate about Susie’s profession.
“They sell ‘em to those lemon magazines, don’t they?” Susie pulled herself up, holding the spray-can at eye-level as she tried to move away– discovering the rapid footsteps of another delinquent quickly coming up towards her who’d heard the screaming and had gotten excited about the potential for some action. “Full of underaged videogirls.”
“Stay away from me,” Susie screams with a shrill timbre as a boy wearing a red-colored helmet gasped in surprise to find her waiting around the corner of the staircase, having not expected this strange figure wearing a raincoat and smelling of garbage to be wielding paint as a weapon. “Do they?” One of the delinquents interjected.
“Who the fuck is she,” the boy says with real anxiety as he reaches into the pocket of his blue jumpsuit for his switchblade. The two delinquent girls break their conversation and find a place behind the boy– not wanting to miss an opportunity to see him spill some hot girl-creep blood onto the trash-covered surface of the alleyway underneath the elevated railway tracks.
“She’s some fuck-freak who takes pictures of underage dead girls,” the green-haired delinquent suggested as the bee-hive delinquent pulled some bubblegum from her purse and placed it into her mouth, waiting for a satisfactory pop of the bubble before offering her own take on an explanation.
“Old men buy magazines full of them for fap,” offered all matter-of-factly without Susie having much of a say who’d jumped back reflexively while trying to dodge the boy’s stabbing motion, finding the coolness of the wall behind her alarming.
“I’m not a fuck-freak,” Susie says pleadingly and trying not to cry as she felt her body push itself into the graffiti-covered wall. “I’m a celebrity-hunter,” dropping the spray-can onto the ground, clattering hard as the metal met the cement, and holding up her camera as a sign of good-will– “I take pictures of celebrities… alive, I mean,” appealing to the delinquent’s acute sensitivities to the pathetic as she quietly descended down into the ground.
The delinquents keep steady for a while, looking at each other, trying to figure out how Susie had gone from an interloping threat with a spray-can to a curled-up cry-baby who was offering up the camera as a gesture of helplessness. In any other situation, one would easily see through it– a facile ploy to lower the guard of your enemy who’d now expose her jugular to you in a show of misplaced trust. It seemed however that Susie was quite different, muttering about how she wasn’t crying as she dried off her eyes with a sleeve. The green-haired delinquent had now sort-of started feeling bad about the whole thing, dropping her pipe onto the ground after deciding that she didn’t want to bash Susie in the face until mush came out of her tear-drenched eye-sockets– you know, just to see what brain tissue looks like when it comes out of the nose. The bee-hive delinquent, who introduced herself as Amberlynn Studebaker-Kress, started patting Susie’s back while trying to tell her that it would be okay and that they were just really kidding when they said all those awful things about the way she smelled and that he wasn’t really going to stab her and asking her to really please just stop crying now.
It was once they’d escorted Susie down with lots of hand-holding and copious you-can-do-it shouts to their turf underneath the bridge that she’d begun to be introduced to the gang, learning a little bit about their hogs and their inspirations & tools for street-fights including a piece of wood with a nail jammed through it and shards of glass placed between the fingers. She’d been let in on some secrets including how to effectively shoplift from small convenience stores and they’d shared some wonderful moments from their favorite films, including that moment when the hero used her two fingers to dislodge a set of eyeballs from a particularly-crooked evil creep. She’d also taught Luciana Ricoh-Fisher, the one with the green hair yes, some basics about the camera including its aperture control and the sometimes-useful auto-focus feature, bonding over a mutual affection for the power of an image.
“I’ve always wanted your job,” Luciana said as she pretended to snap pictures with exaggerated poses and onomatopoeic shutter vocalizations, framing images of Susie leaning with her back onto a particularly beautiful hog costumed with red racing-stripes and oversized fairings. “You don’t have illusions about yourself or your subject. You’re like a parasite that’s developed a symbiotic bond with your host. You need each other to survive.”
Susie stands up straight for a second beside the sleek hog and thinks about what she’d look like as a parasite, with long limbs– six of them in fact all hairy with long bristles and a pair of beautiful wings which flutter with shyness in the eve of twilight as a long snout sucks on the tree sap so sweet… immerging from the chrysalis which will wither and return to the soil like the decaying leaves of a once-fragrant flower.
“You know, worms were once a part of the human body. They protected us from our own immune system in exchange for what they could find inside of you; isn’t that a kind of love?” It turned out Luciana had once been a star student in the study of ecology, conducting vital research in her early teens on the inability of termites to digest wood without the presence of protozoans and bacteria inside of their bodies. Amberlynn laughed at Luciana and told Susie that she’d always been prone to making hilarious observations, saying how there was something really funny in the absurdity of her comments on nature’s fucked-up reproductive cycles. Luciana pushed Amberlynn away and tried to keep a serious face as she scratched her head. “Just think about it… death isn’t really a thing, huh. Each thing that withers away becomes fertile soil for another creature. How can there be death in the face of such overwhelming love?” Susie laughed too as Amberlynn wrapped her arms around Luciana and proceeded to give the green-haired girl the worst “atomic” noogie of her life with vigorous rubbing of the knuckles, soliciting yelps and pleads from the camera-wielding delinquent with a tongue sticking in-between her yellowy chompers. “Your head is fertile soil for my fist… bookworm slut,” Amberlynn said with ruff growls punctuating each syllable.
After the noogie-ing, Susie took from her pocket the bag of pills she’d been keeping close and played show-and-tell for the hog-drivin’ school-kids with a promise of a red one and a blue one if they could drive her down to this one hang-out spot they’d be having a party necessitating a serious crash by yours truly. The gang had never looked so excited before, being invigorated by this new-found opportunity to help out an honorary member of their hog-squad. The blue jumpsuit-ed boy introduced himself as “Mentuhotep” and handed Susie his red motorcycle helmet on which there was a depiction of a chicken slicing its own neck above the words non omnis moriar, telling her once she’d fastened it safely and collected her camera to get on his wild hog so they could ride… which they did, as dozens of youthful kids with their sweethearts lovingly gripping onto their waists placed their hogs into gear and the wonderful sounds of engine roar reverberated throughout the concrete gray matter which formed labyrinthine fractal passages extended throughout the Community Zone, heard as the resounding roar of a great demon so hungry it’ll devour anything in its path towards exhaustion and nothingness. Susie held on to the handles of the jumpsuit, feeling slightly too awkward touching his body and giving a big thumbs-up when Amberlynn passed-by beside them on her own beautiful wasp-patterned hog which was christened “Hymen-optera.”
As they traveled through the streets, sending terror into the good-mannered salary-men and the bad-hearted old ladies– sometimes avoiding the police and failing which necessitated a scramble followed by the eventual reformation that emerges without co-ordination. Yes it was after almost hitting that small four-door sedan as they passed through a red-light that she’d thought about the conversations she’d had underneath the bridge after using the change pilfered from those ‘puter-loving nerd-creeps to buy herself another hazelnut-mocha coffee-based beverage from that outdoor vending machine, the modicum of journalistic instinct she’d had now compelling her to ask what would motivate these intelligent kids to indulge in ritualistic violence and drug-abuse.
Now Amberlynn had gotten all serious and took Susie’s hand and placed it up to her heart, beside the torn edges of her reclaimed plastic poncho… “It’s something you feel here when you’re growing up, right? You don’t know why but it’s in you somewhere.” Susie felt the divine wind irritate her eyes, from which tears fall for only a second until blown away. “The feeling grows; it festers in you and begins to make you feel different. You discover a certain hatred towards yourself and others, and you begin to feel something within your body change but you don’t know where or why.”
The entire motorcade enters the confines of a tunnel lined with cracked tiles of red & blue, the howling of engines and screams of delight compose together a symphony of violent urbane noise… the sound something makes when it wakes up from deep within the bowels of an otherwise sterile & inorganic system of square buildings and railroads and walkways which elevate themselves over the vastness of highways. “What if the feeling doesn’t go away like it’s supposed to? What if it continues to grow, maybe because you fed it and allowed it to thrive within you? Others are growing into well-adjusted adults as their lower education comes to a closing but you feel yourself mutating into something different. You cannot understand them and they’re just as repulsed by you as you are of them… you start to believe that they’re just pretending to feel differently from you, that they’re liars and cheats.” “Are they?” Susie interjected.
Susie grips tighter, yet still insecure so she moves her hands towards the boy’s body and holds onto his warm flesh as he guides the hog over a ramp– she looks down and sees the roads & cars beneath them, appearing to her as miniatures while they glide through the air and she’s listening to his delighted laughter as the hog makes a safe but turbulent landing. “I know I’m being cryptic, I’m sorry… I’m just not very good at expressing myself, Susie.”
Do you remember the way you used to stare outside the windows, imagining what lays beyond the hill? Do you remember the beautiful shape of those rockets which suspended themselves in air seemingly by nothing above your crib and your dreams where you always found yourself a seat on one of those rockets? Where would you travel to Susie, if you could? Is there another place, where there are people like you? She’s crying now and hiding in a cupboard and her parents would ask her why she’d be hiding in there but she could never give them a straight-enough answer. How could she tell them that she knew where she was going to end up, at the bottom where she’d feed at the waste-product which trickled down from the top yet still tasted so sweet– not far from the brood which had spawned her, aware of what she’d become but incapable of changing herself. She wondered if Sylvania was still asleep in her car, blissfully unaware of… well, she wasn’t quite sure what to call these events placed into motion– she just feels insecure about herself, not knowing what she was supposed to be learning from all of this and it’s so fucking overwhelming.
Well hey, trying not to bust out with tears, she thinks of a song to distract herself… take a favorite from her all-time most awesome band which she’d listen to constantly, learning all the words and singing quietly to each note as jangly guitars wailed and tinny drums clattered– “the Insect Collector,” by the Pupa Girls… how’s it go?
look look! shiny beetles with green backs
moths with streaks in their wings,
larvae crawling through cracks
she waits by the trail, a cage in each hand
the sky turning bronze over grassy land
singing…
I got them, so I must get you
I got them, so I must get you
“There’s something happening here and you’re someone who recognizes an opportunity when she sees it, aren’t you?” Susie thought of platters of barbequed pork, glazed with deliciously piquant sauces of all variations. “No-one else could know why that pop-star did what she did and the extent of everyone’s understanding is the sight of pink brains splattered onto grey concrete.” Susie thought of troths filled with fluffy rice fried with all sorts of wonderful chunks of cabbage and pepper. “You know there is something deeper; you have a talent which lets you see what no-one else could see, don’t you?” Susie thought of noodle bowls with endless bottoms and each scoop supplying a pretty little prawn or pieces of chewy hard-boiled egg. “There’s a truth about us all hidden away…” Susie humming the tune with a creaky voice, drowned out by the loudness of the wind as it flutters by her ears with loud wooshes.
look look! grasshoppers with little polka dots.
caterpillars with delicate legs,
inky butterflies with spots
you think you’re hiding from my love
but my net strikes the air from above
singing…
I got them, and I will get you
I got them, and I will get you
“A truth hidden away which threatens to surface itself in violent ways,” Amberlynn sez with tears starting to well in her eyes which fell onto her mustard-toned trench-coat, something which would hint at a potential lying underneath its rough fabric. “You sometimes catch glances of this truth, yeah? You don’t understand it yet but you know it’s there, like I do.”
She was trying to stop herself from collapsing into a mushy pile of salty water while Susie simply watched the tears sputter from her head as if a well beneath the crust of the earth had been struck… Amberlynn placed Susie’s hand underneath her head to catch some of the tears which were hot to the touch. “I just don’t know what a real emotion is and what isn’t… I don’t know how people do it every day, how they just keep on living… I don’t know if anything I feel is really my own… I don’t know anything… I’m really confused, and it’s weird. You ever wonder if the tears are real?”
Susie wanted to cry too because like, right on man, but she didn’t know if was genuine or simply because she felt she had to– the principle empathetic response programmed into her by birth through a steady diet of the Oriana Music Group line-up and deep-fried commercial television… she realized that from within her came the mechanized hum of some greater machine and Amberlynn must have realized it too since she placed her own hands on Susie’s chest and tried to feel at the heart-beat which must thump weakly underneath it all. “I see. I think that, well, you weren’t born this way but it had always been a part of you,” Amberlynn sez– you’ve always tried to suppress but its growing stronger and soon it’ll be beyond your control. “Nothing is happening by chance.”
Okay sure, for some it would be part of an experiment in puberty yes, but for others it would not disappear like the rage or the sexual frustration would, no for some it would simply be the beginning… pushing its way through your intestines and clawing at your inner organs, demanding its release as you try to hold it in with cries and gritting teeth which gnash themselves into oblivion… for them, truth would come not in platitudes and the trust in your fellow man to support you but it would come in the form of inescapable violence which solidified the facile impermanent nature of this flesh which covers our bones. Yeah, I’m talking about the easy answers– it’s true because you can feel it, in your heart, in your gut, in your pussy. It’s the simple explanations we hold onto, or else risk losing ourselves in the incoherence of a world that seems to be totally indifferent to every neural panic fuck-freak who blows their brains out all over the mattress. With every little lie & falsehood you cut away, you lose a part of yourself too.
Amberlynn kept her hand pressed up against Susie’s chest, listening through her arm as if it were a probe through which signals could be received… after a long pause, Amberlynn moved her arm away and suddenly begun to smile– a smile so genuine it scared the shit out of Susie who’d always recoiled at sights this ugly. She coughed: “Susie… I believe that you’ll finish your way happily, and you will find the things you are searching for from the first breath,” and then Susie begun to really cry with salty globules falling into her hazelnut-mocha coffee-based beverage because that surprised her.