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DOOM MAGNETIC!! - CHAPTER TEN:
UNFOLDING
William Pauley III
“You’re straining, my son,” mother says. “You have to pace yourself.”
At first I can only hear her voice, not see her, but slowly my vision returns and I can see that I’m again cradled in her lap, but without a body, just a sliver of skin with a face and nothing more.
“I don’t know how to control it just yet, mother. I’m trying.”
“I know you are, Qosey, but you have to take smaller steps. Just because you’re able to do something, doesn’t mean you have to do it all at once. You’re still in recovery. You tire easily, my son. Don’t overdo it or else you’ll finish early, like me.”
I look up at mother’s face with a bit of confusion. “Finish early? What do you mean, finish early?”
“Die young. Much before your time.”
I close my eye and slide down mother’s leg. I don’t want to think about this. Not here, not now.
“I never took you as a runner, Qosey. I raised you better than that.” She bends over to pick me up off the floor. “Look at me.”
I grunt and look up at her. She’s a beautiful woman. It’s no wonder men could never resist her charm. Even ladies were drawn to her. It was never any wonder. I knew, even as a young child, that my mother possessed a power that was unparalleled by anyone else around her. She had it. Everyone knew she had it.
“You must get that space cowboy, Qosey,” she says, gently shaking my face flesh in her fists. “You have to retrieve the purple television.”
My lips and eye holes stretch and form bizarre shapes as mother yanks outward on my face. “What do you mean, mother? Maundin no longer possesses the purple television. That lady fellow, Z Starman, has it.”
“Ah, but Z Starman is no more!” she says.
“What? Show me!”
Mother jams her fingers into my eye holes and black electricity steals my vision, taking me to a place where colors dance across the ceiling and walls like an automated kaleidoscope. I hear a piano playing down the hall. The chords are slow and sloppy, but necessary. A bluesy guitar joins, plucking notes slow and sad through the electric air. My body suddenly returns in full form. I follow down the hall to the source of the music.
Z begins to sing the lyrics to an original composition of his entitled, “Eight Line Song.” His voice is strong, but sad. I recognize it immediately. Z Starman, in the flesh. I stand at the doorway, looking into the room where he plays. He’s dressed in a green, sparkling, tight-fitting outfit. His bright red hair stands straight up, waving slowly with the music, making his head appear almost like a skull on fire.
He continues to sing.
I stand there watching as his fingers work the keys. His music is quite pleasing, that is when he isn’t using it to clean out skulls.
I listen all the way to the end. The gentleman playing guitar places his instrument down on a stand resting on the floor. He nods at me as he walks out the room.
Z pulls the wooden cover over his piano keys and sits there in brooding silence. I step inside the room.
“Mr. Starman,” I call out to him. “I’ve come for my purple television.”
Z closes his eyes and inhales deeply through his nostrils.
“Yes, I suppose you have,” he says, without even looking at me. “I regret to inform you that it isn’t here.”
“Then may I ask where it is?”
Z opens his eyes and turns his head towards me.
“You know, I thought I was still strong enough to carry it,” he says, with deep sadness in his voice. “I thought, for some fucking egotistical reason, that I would never see this day. That I was too strong to see this day. But I was sorely mistaken.”
He stands up and walks towards me. His walk is slow and shaky.
“As you can see, I’m very weak. I’ve been very weak for quite some time now. Over the last few years, I’ve been recruiting, marking every option with a small tattoo somewhere on their person. All of my recruits are now dead, mostly because of me, regrettably. All of them except for one.”
“Maundin,” I mutter.
“Yes, Maundin. He’s survived it all. He’s the only one who has what it takes, to take my position among the Starmen. He will learn to become a leader, a Master of Stardust. For that reason, I’ve left the purple television in his care. It is now his burden.”
A fiery rage boils behind my eyeballs. “Then he shall die!”
“Do what you will, Qoser, but I must warn you, killing him will be no easy task. By the time you find him, he will be very strong. Much stronger than you or any of the other rats working for the Japanese government. Go ahead, try him out, if you don’t believe me, but don’t expect to just walk away when the fire gets too hot. Fair warning.”
The rage boiling behind my eyeball causes heat to breathe along my face. I reach out and grab ahold of his collar with both my fists.
“Goddamn you, Starman! Do you know who you’re talking to? I could turn your skin inside out with a flick of my wrist!”
He laughs, “Well then, Qoser, my boy, what’s stopping you?”
I look deep into his eyes. His weak, aged eyes.
“Tell you what, I’ll save you the trouble,” he says, his tone just above a whisper. I let loose of his collar. He straightens out his clothing and runs his fingers through his fiery hair.
“If I’m going out, then I want to go out with style,” he says, with a short laugh.
He walks back over to the piano and lifts the cover up over the keys.
“This was always a favorite of mine.” He plays the riff of another original, “Life in Space?,” but doesn’t sing. Instead, he just plays the song in full on the piano, letting the music carry him out. The song is beautiful, and even manages to bring a tear to my eye.
His body fades, dissolving into the air before me. Only his hands remain. They continue striking the keys until the final note his hammered down, then they too become nothing, evaporating into the atmosphere. The note continues to ring, long after he’s gone. It’s the end of an era, and I’m the only one around to witness it.
It is magnificent.
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on April 11th! Stay tuned for Electric Diaphragm.
Unfolding
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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