Day 3 - Vapors (Novel chunk)

Day 3 - Vapors (novel chunk)

Today was a little intimidating because I had to face up to the fact that I started writing without a clear sense of where this is going.  It feels a little adrift, and a little exciting.  I ended up thinking a lot about the novel I'm embarking on over the last 24 hours, and have some clear themes, situations and ideas coming together.

    Zoba had seen three of the yellow mornings in his countless millenia.  They always spoke of the same thing.  Death.  Murder.  Of course these were events of the human world, not his treasured Alcyia, but no matter the willful ignorance that some embraced even on this plane of existence, there had always been, would always be some crossover.
    But despite the rarity of the sky’s brittle parchment this daybreak, one thing made it rarer still.  The Spot.  A dark, rooted speck that Zoba could not fix with his gaze, but could not extinguish from his peripheral.  It spoke of intent.  Premeditation.  It indicated that a plan was forming to alter Alcyia from idyllic to a place of rage, violence, conflict.  Zoba would investigate.  That was his destiny.  But for the first time in his existence, he thought of the path ahead, and felt fear lace his belly.

    What. The. Fuck.
    OK, when you feel your body dissolving it’s a bit disorienting.  Like one of those massage chairs decided to teach you a lesson for spending too much time in Sharper Image and never buying a damn thing.
    Consciousness gets a little hazy, which is actually preferable to sharing headspace with some phantom named Zoba.  Zoba?  And that was some dread filled, freak me right the fuck out, please let me wake up type nonsense right there.  And so I wake up and…
    What the fuck?
    I’ve never been in an old timey cinema.  Don’t go to retrospectives of Chaplin, or Fellini, but whatever the first people sat in to check out the miracle of the first moving pictures was, I guess this is how my head thinks it would look.  Minus Julie, which is a bummer.  Straight backed wooden chairs aligned mostly even, with a projector stashed in the back of the room and a glorified bed sheet spread across the wall as a screen.  For some reason my mind jumps to one of those hotel investigations where they shine a blacklight on the bed linens and I feel a mixture of sick and silly imagining what splices of DNA my movie presentation might contain.
    The lights go out and I’m expecting the screen to flicker to life, but instead it explodes with color, sound, truly immersive IMAX 3-D assault my senses, holy crap do they have hologram tech now, import.  I don’t even know that I’m seeing so much as experiencing this kaleidoscope of wtf’edness.  Colors so vibrant I can smell them, vibrations that seem to rock and wreck my core, this deep sense of connection and isolation all at once and then…the faintest shade of weak tea.
    It’s not weak though.  It’s alive.  It moves.  Slithers.  Yearns.  I feel my heart begin to slow, but I can’t look away.  I’ve been bored, irritated, angry, dissatisfied most of my life, but this, this is wrong.
    Whatever this sense of impermanent color exudes, it is my enemy, the enemy of everything, and I am filled with an urge to find it.  And kill it.
    My heart slows further.
    Thump, thump.  Thump, thump.
    Thump.
    thump.
    A hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me back from the maw.  My skin is cold.  I gasp for breath and feel like fire lights up my core.  I leap out of my chair.  Feels like I almost hit my head on the damned ceiling.  Careen is probably a fair description of my body’s movement as I search for purchase.  This is all too much.  The images, the dream, the drug.  Where the hell is Julie?  Where the hell am I?!  What in the name of Ray Bradbury was that milquetoast bouquet of doom I just stared down.
    And who’s the skinny Asian guy in a Zoot suit who I think just saved my life?
    “Hey Mick.  I’m Reginald.”
    “I thought you’d be black,” I admit.
    Reginald smiles.
    I puke, and pass out at his feet.