The Pupa Woman (II.II)
Chapter 2:2
Hello DEAR READER,
The following is Chapter 2:2 from my first novel, The Pupa Woman. You can read Chapter 2:1 here.
You can get the PDF over at my gumroad! ^_^
Available from our unfortunate tech-overlords over at Amazon both in paperback and eBook.
There were lit-up signs, lights that backlit images of ice-cream, dogs, babies, electronics, and cute little mascots like little chubby hamsters and button-nosed cats, which were built on each other and rose towards the tops of the buildings with hue against hue weaving into impossibly bright saturations and a video-screen featured a woman blown-up to skyscraper-sized proportions drinking from a bottle, smiling at you with contentment once she’d taken that first sip, and the white-hot light which splintered into reds and greens and blues was expelled in every direction, touching the fabrics and plastics which decorated the many store fronts ‘n her deep voice rumbling through the air threatened to overrule the shouted conversations on the street. Behind secure glass lay shoes and clothes which were tended to by assistants while a consistent stream of patrons bursting through alleyways like a torrent of ants erupting forth from a formicary bustled through open doors, some wearing the recognizable confusion of a tourist and some marching with the aggressive gait of a local resident who’d adopted urban aggression patterns but all basked in the powerful sensations and vibrancy which populated this downtown epicenter and absorbed a palpable sense of excitement– with palpitations in the heart do we know that yes, at some point a well must run dry, a crystalline stream of excess which reflected our spirit like the dull waters of a life-giving body; from the girls and boys who invited you into their store with bows and waves to the sounds of pop music somewhere in the distance speaking of compassion and tenderness as the buzzing & high-pitched noises in Susie’s ears disappeared into the city’s background hum. Susie tilted her head upward, towards the florescent dome of light which enveloped her, watching the billboards & neon signs spiral around her until disappearing into some dark void. Their lights intertwined & mingled till morphing into a heterogeneous continuum of color, accentuated by the voluptuous curves of their font which performed shapes & signs of mysterious origin and under their pink gaze jetted the customers with their bags ‘n their eyes filled with images of soup cups & watches & nylon dresses blinked along to each flickering display of video-cassette prices & lonely videogirls.
“Take a chance on love,” they might say while their childish faces morphed into coy expressions adorned advertisements for all the new personal computer systems, plump & engorged with memory, input-output capabilities, and networking peripherals. Men were yelling percentages at other less savvy-lookin’ men and women spoke to each-other with muted excitement about the clothes-racks placed on the street as children, some holding larger hands firmly and some roaming freely, pointed at the various lights and billboards visible from far away with the moon dimly watching through its rodent eyes as it begun its ascent from under the red-ish horizon.
Susie would bump into people while traversing those zebra-striped crosswalks, perhaps a man in a loose dark business suit which flowed along the wind on his way or returning from ribaldry and company-sponsored binge-drinking or a woman in red stripes and leather with an umbrella who twirls it so coquettishly with two teeth showing and only sometimes would this bump be so strong that it would force Susie once again onto that familiar dirtied ground she’d gotten so used to now home to change, old newspapers, plastic or paper still wet with stains and oil, and numerous cards on which were a variety of sexual fantasies and the impersonal and cold symbols of a telephone number.
She felt another hand on her arm pull her up and she meets the eyes of a young man with a slicked-back ‘do which reflected the yellow-and-red neon-lights of an electronics store off of its shiny black exterior... his other hand patted her on the shoulder and his large-framed sunglasses encrusted with glitter moved up the bridge of his nose as he gave a bellowing “’A thank you, thank you very much…” in the most unconvincing of voices yet the most convincing of smiles and Susie found herself smiling a little too as the young man moved away and hummed the tune to a ditty about loneliness and its own streets which were as solid and real as the geometry of any metropolis and Susie found herself hum a little too as the words streamed into her head… she was always moving her hands in time, wishing to envelop herself in the sheets of sound while its waves softly brushed around her neck and tingled her ear-drums, and she’d credit this instinct towards sensation for her slow gravitation towards the yellow-and-red neon-light from which one could hear the unmistakable sounds of a reoccurring bump and a distant cavernous noise, sparklingly insistently while a bright high-strung voice unmistakable like that of a woman who knows her age all too well while she lapels that bow incited the spirit and ear to incantations of love unperturbed by the dulling domesticity which youth will inevitably give way to. “Take a chance on love / you won’t regret it.”
A large back-lit sign invited spending easy cash on discount televisions and a large red arrow pointed towards the image of a large bulky color television stretched to fit a banner and Susie moved underneath it while dragging her hand across the rough surface of a billboard clad with a lady in a red sun-dress brandishing a camera– “a perfect picture every time, any time”– through the small entrance down three steps of stairs into a darkened room lit with red bulbs and the pure sound Susie had heard before was drowned out by a whole choir of impatient voices which sang together in discord while the large machine she’d held on to for support was throbbing with digitized pulses and squeals. A row of televisions was lined up against the far-side wall of the room with notecards stuck to their bulky grey exteriors, sometimes containing exclamation marks with red prices which overlaid the black prices, and talking heads and dancing bodies resounded loudly through their small speakers which excited the plastic into an unmusical buzz. A young girl appeared on one of the screens, dressed in a pink leather coat, and she sang as if this room were absolutely tranquil, paying no mind to the violent gunfire of the action-film to the right and the crocodile tears of the soap-drama to the left. A young man in an accountant’s attire bumped rather strongly into Susie and he apologized with a meek voice and blushing skin, quickly grabbing the jewel case that clattered onto the floor and in the process of doing so his own eyeglasses clattered onto the jewel case as well and his irritated sighs were drowned out by the rapid oscillations coming from the cabinet Susie still held on to, and she stepped towards the row of televisions and watched as a beautiful sports-car, painted in a hornet-y yellow, stopped in front of her with the doors opening to reveal a trim man in polo gear who placed his sunglasses on the roof of the car… a clink followed by a swoosh could be heard throughout the store and this polo-clad man on the screen brought a brown can closer to his mouth before stopping for just one second and giving Susie a suggestive blink she’d only ever gotten once from such confident men and she jumped slightly when a middle-aged suit with bad hair stepped out and meekly asked if he could demonstrate this particular television set to Susie and she watched carefully as the middle-aged suit with bad hair and obviously bad eye-sight in the dark grabbed a remote control, through at first the wrong one as they tend to look similar he explained, and surfed his way through a myriad of television channels while a large green number counted upwards in the corner of the screen.
Susie watched the light reflected in the eyes of the middle-aged suit with bad hair and wondered what his life was like after this shift, whether if once he was home alone in his apartment he’d undress, turn off all the lights, close the windows, and sit in the darkness to try and quiet the noises that no doubt must still ring in his ear at that point… or if he was like Susie and the only thing he really looked forward to was the moment he could lay on his side and hear the comforting voice emanating from his television set. Susie at this point was convinced of an innate attraction towards the images which flickered onto the screen manifesting in humans at an early age, and after a certain point one was no longer bothered by the simplistic platitudes and recycling of content, rather she’d found this to be its most comforting aspect as there was a profound sense of calm in knowing exactly how each story would begin and end; the tropes and stereotypes feeling familiar and she could almost feel the slightest bit of love & tenderness towards yet another comedy which mercifully rejected surprises in favor of being more like an old friend who wants to remind you of the memories you share together. In reaction to the opening of a world which seemed impossibly complex, she wanted to retreat into a world of rituals where the rough & tough emotional work was outsourced to people who were better-looking and could elevate even the most vulgar expressions to beauty.
Both Susie and the middle-aged suit with bad hair laughed with sincerity, well even fucking togetherness as they watched an old episode of some comedy program involving two men who ate at restaurants while loudly telling each-other the most vulgar jokes they could conjure. The comedian with hair was the so-called “straight man” and he’d often violently reprimand the bald comedian after he’d made a rude or ignorant comment about the food they were eating, or the professionally-dressed waitress who’s only smiling out of politeness, or even just slurping his noodles too loudly and mispronouncing words after burning his tongue. The middle-aged suit with bar hair laughed with a “harr-harr” and a youthful yelp at the edge of his tongue at a bit where the bald comedian spilled soup on the table and then attempted to clean it up with his napkin and he’s becoming increasingly more embarrassed once he realizes how much soup had been spilt while the comedian with hair moved away from the table while shouting abuse and trying to conceal his giggles, and the entire table is really just overflowing with this soup and the poor waitress comes out and she’s apologizing profusely– “I am so sorry for this. I am so sorry; could I get you something else? I’m so sorry!”– while trying to hand the bald comedian more napkins but the more & more he tries to lap it up with the soggy serviette the more and more he realizes how much had been spilt and the comedian comments on what really is a hopeless situation while the middle-aged suit with bad hair held onto his sides with one hand gasping for air while the other hand thoughtlessly but softly squeezed Susie’s shoulder and said nothing while he walked away breathless with laughter. A louder & more authoritative voice thanked the show’s sponsor and the image cut away to a middle-aged woman dressed in open blues who cuts a lemon with a deep comforting smile and in a soft voice whined quietly that nothing beat the taste of fresh lemon and she goes into the bag again with her hand to grab another lemon but instead she finds a bottle which she opens with a delicate twist and now her face is one of genuine surprise and she turns to the screen and now the deep smile returns, and yes at this point Susie was close enough to the television to fog up its glass screen and she tries to reach into its insides to touch her matronly body– an expedition to feel her cathode warmth and she murmurs gently, almost apologetically, that one should always stay open to new things and once she disappears Susie felt her body throb even more with desire and she moved away from the screen to stumble back up the stairs all embarrassed with a little bit of redness in her cheeks onto the street where she’d find a young man dancing with fluid motions of the hip to a large metallic-colored stereo, his sweat leaving dark stains on his red sports coat while he pointed towards the stars and shook his limbs to a percussive disco-beat and a young girl’s voice spoke of a rose withering before it can be pollinated.
Susie had heard many of these newer songs before, often full of passionate requests for meaningful romance while cold idiophonic frequency-modulated keyboards twinkled on top of mechanical clattering drums and bongos but here she stood particularly entranced and staring nowhere in particular while the young man moved so rapidly his limbs that Susie could hear the air bend around his limbs and this young voice struck her with its adolescent inexperience yet she felt a small sorrow in the way it broke and as the song approached its soaring coda this small voice was increasingly drowned out by a choir of singers and Susie felt herself approach the metallic-colored stereo and tried to somehow stop this crowd of faceless sound from what it was doing to this young girl’s voice, threatening to make her fade completely into the mix and when she placed her hands upon the stereo’s plastic shell, the words “Super Bass System” displayed prominently in an orange font, Susie felt two hands at her shoulders pull away as the young man, now understandably a bit upset, yelled abuse at this bad-smelling girl who was not respecting the sanctity of his performance nor the sanctity of his expensive high-wattage hi-fi, and Susie heard her voice fade out as the young man rapidly walked away with the metallic-colored stereo in his hand and Susie followed the young man down through the entrance of the subway system via mechanical stairs and her shortness of breath forced her to hold on to the railing of the escalator while breathing hoarsely and she felt the deep contours of her voice as it made the metal subtly resonate while the sound of drums and percussive synthesizers reverberated throughout the tiled and cavernous spaces of the metro-station.
Through the distance, pulsating through her body, she heard the explosions and counted one-two-three while noticing that the many faceless bodies would fall through the air– ruthlessly dismembered by Lolita 108’s vengeful rockets. She realized that even with her ash-muddied raincoat and bleeding nose, she was still simply one face within a large crowd, incapable of being seen by even the most discriminating sex-bot with heat-seeking missiles. The crowd now as a singular unit of responsive movement was pushing itself towards the metro-station in panic, as if the underground complex full of trains would provide ample cover from the short robot-teenager who was forming craters out of what were once ozone-scraping office buildings and residential apartments caked with soot. Susie did not follow them as much as she did throb along with them, feeling herself be pressed up against by flesh & bone which would sputter & convulse like a single organism into one general direction. The blob of humanity she was carried along in steadily pressed itself into a single line as it forced its way through the escalators into the metro underground which was loudly sending warning signals into the air through its amplification systems. Susie listened closely as she descended the elevators, noticing that the warnings had become increasingly specific to her own situation– looking around to see if anyone else noticed. She ran through the underground complex made of steel and concrete with her footsteps reverberating throughout the space, trying to ignore the voices which had begun to cross-modulate and form buzzing & spluttering sentences… she could not understand who the voices belonged to, the most vital sounds to recognition had been stripped and instead remained the impersonal edges of consonants commanding her to surrender to the temptations she’d been nursing all along.
Asking questions of herself– and was that Mr. Aiwa-Goldstar’s voice which rattled her brain as she squeezed herself past the rotary gates without paying? Being told through the noisy speaker that her obsession with a teenage pop-idol had been the reason she’d come this far, why she’d even willingly put herself in a situation where she’d be dodging missiles… the deep voice now being strangled into a garbled mess by a haughty soprano, exhibiting the Duchess’ mean-spirited curtness as she bored into Susie’s brain with accusations– Susie trying to dodge the service men in blue coats who she believed were now after her by hiding in a dark space full of mops and cleaning supplies reserved for service personnel.
“So, face it, you big ugly girl… Judy is all you can think about now,” overloading Susie’s neural net with those damn thoughts and feelings. She kept moving through the smaller passage-ways which ran adjacent to the pedestrian paths, feeling the heat of the large pipes parallel to the wall singe her skin while not worrying about where she was taking herself. “You can’t decide whether you want to be her or whether you want to…” Susie trying to cut the words short by screaming as loud as she could even though she knew that she’d reached the point where she could no longer deny that she was indeed having a nervous breakdown. From the speakers which seemed to be so impossibly loud that they penetrated even the deepest inner chambers of the metro station came forth coffee advertisements & little kids’ voices chewing on snacks which seemed to force Susie’s recollection, to push into her mind the memories she’d tried so much to suppress. Perhaps upon Judy, she wanted to recreate what had been thrust upon her… to this time be the powerful older woman who lusts for the girl, as a way to return her youth, the power it once allowed her to hold, to herself at the cost of someone else– as a way to see what had been so irresistible to that person she once held so dearly. “Hey,” she reasoned to herself… “Judy’s supposed to be sexy, right? That makes it okay!”
Now she’d ended up into the depths of a lounge, where sleepy business men with newspapers over their head reclined themselves in front of large televisions under which less affluently-dressed men dozed off with their heads resting on cardboard. She felt herself gravitate to a television which had an alarming hum, one so loud it managed to drown out the voices she’d been hearing from the speakers around her. She felt at the buttons underneath hidden away by a plastic panel, switching the channel to a singing competition where young girls are lined up and compete by singing canned songs to a studio-band's backing. The presenter, a thick-haired man in a purple suit, goes down the line, pointing the microphone at each girl who gives the same perky smile while childishly bouncing, and asks them their name to which they comply with rushed speech. It was a re-run of something she’d already seen, though the first time she’d been watching Sylvie more than the television– noting how she so carefully analyzed each idol with complete attention. The presenter went down to the last girl in the line and Susie pointed towards the screen with excitement, speaking to no-one in particular: “She's my absolute favorite!” The girl was wearing a short-sleeved dress which covered her back and adorned with abstract floral patterns. The presenter congratulated the girl on her recent success with a single, and she remembered both Susie and Sylvie being enraptured by her smile as they set down their foam noodles bowls, which sent shivers down Susie's back as an impossible weight was felt by such a simple expression. Her smile was not as wide as the others and it seemed almost achingly insincere underneath eyes which burnt yellow-brown with intensity and gravity so unfitting on the head of a teenager. She introduced herself as Judy and expressed her intentions of releasing singles around the world, to which the presenter chuckled in good humor and he asked her to sing for the audience here and watching at home. Susie felt herself shiver with discomfort, the resemblance with that VirtuaIdol seemed so close that she started to wonder if she was still glued to her monitor in that smelly cubicle.
Percussive synth sounds and marimbas interlock as a chugging disco-beat implores the audience to clap along and her dancing is too awkward, too shaky and frightened to be truly alluring or enticing; it was as if a frightened creature had been suddenly inspired to dance underneath the fiery heat of the studio’s lamps. Judy struggled to maintain her smile as she moved her limbs roughly in time with the pre-recorded music being played at a tasteful volume, and tiny globules of sweat fell from her forehead as her voice quivered with each successive note. There was a dramatic pause and a blast from a saxophone which introduced the chorus. Oh yes, this was the same voice, that same voice which spoke with such loneliness on that beach and begged with frustration to be pollinated, that voice which gave in so easily and faded away when the choir began to sing. Susie watched Judy’s ragged dances and imagined perhaps herself dancing in such a way to this music as well; imagined herself perhaps as such a cute girl with thin limbs and a coy sway to her hips who gets the attention of men with only the allure of what laid underneath the fabric, not to be desired yet desired so strongly.
… and if Susie was indeed a cute girl would the men think of her every-time they thought of a girl ‘n was it the underwear which caused that disgusting wetness on the bottom of their aging lips to form? She begun to understand why Judy might have felt anger and stumbled upon a tremendous shame which brought sickness to her stomach… yet she can’t look away, continuing to participate in the spectacle as Judy awkwardly waved to the camera with rehearsed movements. Judy continued, singing the lyrics of the refrain with enthusiasm. “Our first date / the one I’ve dreamt of for so long.”
Susie remembered how Sylvania towered over the television with her straightened posture, looking down with bile from her expressionless eyes, intoning loudly towards the screen as if the television were a two-way street and she were the voice of stoned-face morality on a busy street pointing accusatively with chopsticks. “Just admit that you have dirty thoughts for Judy, just like her producers,” her voice affected by the buzzing of the television– and now Susie wasn’t sure what was a delightful memory of domestic comfort, and what was the programmed payload designed to trigger something dire within her own brain. The audience applauded as Judy approached the second verse, dropping two semi-notes down. The disembodied voice which had now begun to sound a lot less like Sylvie struggled to be heard over the transients of the song, “just like the purple-suited pig who probably asks for certain ‘favors’ but only if the girls ‘really’ wanna’ make it.”
Judy was singing the chorus once again. “Our first date / a love I’ve been longing to fulfill.” Susie found herself imagining Judy in such a way, imaging a gust of wind, imaging what happens in the green room, the color of her underwear, yes yes all of these and red-hot images prepared for her flashed in her mind with stars in her periphery– all the meanwhile embarrassed and wishing they’d go away, being simultaneously the desirer and the desired… she wondered if she’d have the same knowing and uncomfortable smile, or if Susie would accept the stares and longing looks. You’re so sick, Susie… I hope someone locks you up, Lord knows what goes on in that brain of yours.
The audience applauds as the presenter approaches Judy and shakes her hand for the “excellent performance,” imploring the viewers to support her and purchase her single tomorrow. She thought of her and the payback the other girls had never gotten… the ones who were done wrong, abused and disposed of; what had been done to them was visible to all who had the change for a discount-price VHS cassette and it led Susie to the thought about how she’d eventually fade out, how she’d expire in her apartment or the others Sylvie had stolen the keys to, and the only evidence of her existence would wither away before it was burnt to ash, her pointers ceasing to be valid.
The idol show had ended and the channel cut to advertisements, two young children are drinking orange juice while watching sumo wrestlers prepare for a match. She admired those who were captured, those who stubbornly continue to exist, to be reproduced on every single screen by manner of magnetic tape even when the body itself had ceased to be. Suddenly, both the young children turned towards the screen and with a sudden darkness in their eyes they spoke– childishly asking Susie if she really could kill Judy if she’d been given the order to. Susie shook and held the television with her hands, telling them that anything would be worth making it all stop… yes, she’d do anything to stop the voices and the thoughts from holding her as a prisoner within her own mind, anything yes anything was what she screamed to the screen as the advertisements faded away and a darkness held the screen instead– somehow lit with the blackest of shades, as if only pretending to have been turned off when the exact opposite would be true. Susie watched the screen in suspense, letting her arms fall to her sides as the static electricity begun to make the tendrils on her face rise up.
After a short pause, a bratty school-girl entered the screen alit with buzzes and interference and excused her tardiness sarcastically as she took a seat at the dinner table. She exclaimed that she’d been seeing her boyfriend but that her parents need not worry as she was not that fond of him anyway and the audience laughed at the insinuation which subverted every single parents’ worst fears and she takes a grab at a bun and chews at it with excitement and says “hey, not bad this time mom” and then takes a slurp at her soup which is hot and steamy but then burns her tongue to which she screams and she jumps up towards the freezer in the kitchen connected to the dining-room from which she pulls an ice-cube and she drops it into the soup with a big splash which gets a huge laugh especially from that one lady who always laughs too hard in the audience yeah you know who and she also drops one in the soup of her little brother and she says “stop trying to act so tough, you little brat” and she takes a seat again and waits for the ice to melt as she finishes her bun with open-mouth chews and she has this big-toothed grin as she tells her parents that school was great today and that she’d been doing so well in her classes that the A-minus she’d gotten today on a quiz was really no surprise at all and the audience laughs and claps at the child full of guile as she so cunningly convinced her parents that she was a great student while in reality she’d been constantly cutting classes to go play at the arcade in which her favorite game was Super Golden Castle Tournament II and she’d scream all sorts of minced-oaths while trying to impress the cute boy who was the arcade attendant and she’d always say “hey…” with a funny little gesture which involved a finger and a fluttering brow yet she was always being ignored for that stuck-up little goodie-two-shoes who’d look all innocent and sweetly say “please show me, I don’t know a lot about games” and she’d be staring daggers at her while her friend would point out that she’d just been KO’d by the big burly wrestler character and then she’d look at the clock and say “oh no I’m late for dinner” but she’d try to play it off as just taking a run after school in order to stay in shape but the joke of it all to the viewer (and the girl doesn’t know this) is that everyone except her, yes even her parents, her little brother, the cute boy, that little goodie-two-shoes and her friend– they were all mannequins except for her.