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DOOM MAGNETIC!!- PROLOGUE:
ANOTHER EYE, ANOTHER VIEW
William Pauley III
Z Starman plays his piano, hammering his fingers down on the keys like some insane masseuse rubbing out a stubborn knot of muscle. The entire arena is silent except for his playing. The cords ring out from his piano and when they finally reach the walls they bounce back again, creating a soft echo that is pleasing to the ear. Well, that is if someone possesses an ear that can actually hear it. Most don’t. That’s why the thousands of bodies sitting in the surrounding bleachers are hunched over, stretched out, and sliding out of their seats, all with bloody craters for heads instead of the usual flesh, bone, and brain filling. They didn’t come here this way. THE VOICE. Z’s voice did this to them. By the first chorus of “Oh! You Silly Things,” men, women, and children were all wrapping their arms and hands around, squeezing their heads, screaming, trying desperately to keep THE VOICE out. The red walls, the shower of blood, the pink bits of brain and the white bits of bone are all proof of their failure.
Besides Z, only three remain. A tattooed space cowboy named Maundin and his sobriety-challenged partner, Ms. Vonna, watch Z’s performance from the floor below in awe, waist-deep in a sea of bloody brain sludge. The third watches from up above, on a platform in the rafters. A Japanese man with a cue-ball eye and the body of a tarantula is sitting on the platform, nervously rocking back and forth, all eight of his hairy arachnid legs wrap tightly around his skull as it pulsates.
The vibrations of the sound waves are so thick and powerful that his skull actually expands and contracts with the beat of the music. His skull cracks and slides in places, severely deforming his face. The pressure is building…
The man’s cue-ball eye loosens from its socket and rolls down onto the platform. He reaches out for it with one of his legs, but as he does this, the pressure seems to quadruple. He again must wrap his leg around his skull. His bones continue to shift, his teeth rearrange inside his mouth.
Blood trickles out his nostrils, ears, and eye sockets. His body is tired, giving up. In one final effort, the man whips all eight of his spider legs outward and tears abruptly into the Doom Magnetic, disappearing on the other side.
The cue-ball continues to roll down the platform, skipping along the metal gridwork. It slows as it reaches the edge, teetering when it finally gets there. As the final chords of Z’s song are played, the cue-ball tumbles over and splashes into the sea of bloody brain sludge below.
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Another Eye, Another View
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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