“I know you don’t believe me but I will get someone for you. If I find an exit. I don’t know why I should, considering you tried to shoot me the last time I was here.”
“But you weren’t here though, were you? You’ve figured that out by now surely. And you understand me.” The suited man shuffled and winced strongly. “I was justified in wanting you blasted from existence. That me should’ve sent you to hell, and that you would’ve thanked me.” He paused and smirked, “Eventually.”
Kattar expelled a quiet chuckle. “You are the only thing that makes sense in this place, though I’d find it hard to explain that sense to anybody.”
“You’ve shaken things up, that’s why. This tower has been stagnant, replaying its rituals, for all the time I’ve been here, so I’d guess at longer than that also. I make sense because I’m the watcher, I observe, I see things, and I act in response. I’m no knee-jerk. Serve it cold, is what I say.”
Out in the audience an echoey click floated from one side of the auditorium to fill it, followed by a shaft of grey light in a stream. From the place of the onwards door, the door Kattar had travelled through so many times, a new door slowly swung freely open and a small upright shadow—like a rotund walking stick with a bulbous head—appeared framed in the doorway in silhouette.
With a purposeful and flowing motion it moved forwards and out onto the theatre floor, making its shadowy way to the stage.
As it glided down the inclining steps the light from the stage slowly reached it; first in teasing glistens, then over it completely. A squat pole of flexible gristle, dark blood nearly black, tinged with redness here and there, a mixture of oesophagus and spine, spun together with gross ligaments pulled tight and interlacing, all supporting a wider throat at its top, head-like, projecting a bouncy and corroded tongue which flopped at its tip, painted with slimy drool.
“Are youth Kathersh?” it said, with impediment.
“Oh shit,” the suited man said from behind Kattar, “You’ve sure got someone’s attention now!” The suited man laughed, but genuinely this time. “Go with that thing man. It’s probably your best chance to get to that exit.”
“I am here to ressquesth your presensth. Follow me pleasth.”
dek kvin
The throat led Kattar through the door and into the dull light of a cavernous floor. All wall enclosed and black, same material as the ceiling and floor, murkily reflective, a polished rock chamber, seemingly with NO EXIT. Kattar twisted his neck to survey the doorway he’d entered by and saw only blank blackness and his plodding image ethereally stalking the throat away. The throat edged its way forward, by a mesmeric process of the sequential lifting and rolling of fibrous extensions from the bottom part of it as it contacted the smooth surface, a determined tone to its glide, steadycamming all the way to its chosen rest point. It stopped a short way onto the floor and Kattar breathed with tired and sore lungs.
The room held at the centre a gathering of figures sat at a large circular table, the table itself hewn from the same substance as the rest of the room, shiny and dark. All dressed in uniform black, with grey teflon visors in wraparound, hiding their gaze, their features were expressionless. They busied themselves with knitting needles, their wool an endless supply of raw arteries pulled from the meeting point of the walls to the ceiling, long pink strands of pliable flesh exuding from somewhere beyond the room, reaching from every corner, crafted together into knitted artery scarves, the scarves flowing from each figure to out and over the tabletop to cascade into an open round chasm at the very middle.
“Pleasthh remain standinggng for thhechhairmanss addressss. I will thransthlate where nesthesssthsary.”
A single seat stood out in anomaly, and the only clear-eyed man at the table rose from it. The others continued to knit silently, held in an upright posture in chairs designed to mimic the aesthetics of commuter and airplane seats, moulded in black, all wearing headphone sets, a large node attached to their voice boxes, the multilingual club readying for the act of translation, the receivership of a unified voice.
The chairman, freed from his iron lung, propped himself up by leaning one arm onto the table and taking his full weight with his left hand, frail and haggard. He paused for a long time.
“This building has a sickness,” he said, his voice scratchy but resolute.
The voice box nodes on every figure lit up as the translation devices initiated.
“Are we nothing but sectaries for the double bind of commerce? We are infantile idealists of a mono-utopia, this elegant hegemony is predisposed to a culture of chaos, the hierarchy we’ve structured with expediencies at the sacrifice of individualism. Globalisation has made us curs, snarling our way to doom, triggered to implode—a fosterer of insurgency and revolutionary acts.”
“The chairmann thoughth longng and hard abouth thiss,” the throat said, droplets of drool sliming over its raw residue of a jaw.
“Our Wayfarer is dead. No more will that creature reign. These halls are returned to our stewardship, though I fear we are unpractised and unprepared to do what is necessary. As a result, I will attempt to resurrect Wayfarer as soon as possible.”
The figures stopped their knitting and sat passively.
“Your attention fellows!” The chairman shuffled his arm and regained a safe position, hollow eyes sunken and sparkling. “I have the star, you see? That shameful hecatomb will no longer be necessary. The balance has shifted. We should take this opportunity, friends, to return Wayfarer, but on our terms.”
The others recommenced their knitting with greater ferocity, arteries jittering overhead, the flesh scarves tumbling into the dark pit at the centre of the table.
“The chairmath is getthings too bigg for histh bootsth.”
“Please, please! Do not worry yourselves—it’s the only way to restore our order. The Queen will be no obstacle. You see, the star lights the way, and new cracks have appeared to me. One of these fractures showed me a way out, fellows. So I’ve banished her up top, sent her through with no way to return, and shut the door on her wormy arse.”
“Yesss,” the throat hissed, “there is your exith. Inside the chairmanthsh.”
Kattar stared at the chairman as the man tensed in the effort of his sophistry, a bungled entreaty to ring-fence the status quo, the cackles of hyenas set to demolish kingdoms in seizures of waste and violence.
The table remained implacable, an inch not worth giving, the game being up, the frenzy of the clacking of their needles shaking contours into the air.
“You’ll regret this,” the chairman said, his voice growling every syllable. “If you reject Wayfarer, dismiss me, then the tide will sweep you up too, every last one of you!” His skin bubbled and a harsh white light brightened slowly deep within, creeping to reveal the capillaries and veins of his exposed face, neck and hands, glowing like an supernova through his clothing. Blue flame ignited his thin hair, creating an electric nimbus around his head, a slit grin across his face. The figures writhed in their seats, their manic knitting dropping stitches, great holes appearing in the fabric, their translation nodes malfunctioning and flickering causing hectic spasming, windpipes fighting for oxygen and expelling gobbledegook.