Xeno and Trianne stumbled into the light coming from the misted windows of the converted brownstone factory, the outer facade steeped in run down brick, and ashen shadows.
“Look into the light,” the bouncer grumbled. He flashed a hand-held scanner beam into Trianne's pupil, until the device blipped and flashed the results on the LED display:
COMPED BY HOLLYMONDE
“Go ahead.” The bouncer motioned for Trianne to pass with a wave of his hand. She walked past the brute and pulled open the decrepit steel door of The Whispers, allowing throttled bass and drum beats to escape into the night air, as the door shut behind her. The bouncer thrust his palm out towards Xeno, halting him, until his pupil scanner reset. “Look into the light . . .”
Once inside The Whispers, Trianne took a few steps into the lobby and paused for Xeno's entrance. A herd of giddy clubbers careened into her, carrying her away like social kelp in a current of steamy perspiration, muddy chatter, heavy bass notes hitting her in the face, vibrating the membranes of her eardrum, the whole construct of it all supported by slabs of sewage-stained concrete walls, and rusted metal frames. She swerved and took a shot in the eye from a random dance laser, a flash of pain in her retina, a pomegranate splotch of temporary blindness.
Someone yanked her out of the crowd and swung her around, bracing her against the concrete wall, watching, her, waiting in silence for her vision to return. The strands of Xeno's premature gray hair came into focus.
“What took you so long?!” Trianne yelled to be heard above the crowd.
“According to the werewolf at the entrance,” Xeno yelled back, “we've been assigned balcony seats! Do you know where the H.I.P. section is?!”
“Yeah, this way!” Trianne led Xeno by the hand past depleted ravers, slumped against a serpentine bar like gazelles sacked by tranquilizer darts. They oozed their way through the dance floor mob, clogged with shirtless guys and bikinied girls with matted hair and runny goth mascara, inviting Xeno and Trianne to sip from luminous drinks, and probably wake up naked in the back of an abandoned van.
They cut through a thicket of couples on the dance floor, standing palm to palm, forehead to forehead, eyes shut tight in nameless disco trance solace, melding minds with Holly's 5-track transmission, using the Social Ray feature of the black box. The glowing green light on the control panel indicated the concert goer was now telepathically linked. Over the sea of heads, against the back wall of the stage, stock footage of the Sun rose on a cyclorama in a wash of orange light over the Earth's aquatic horizon, accompanied by rolling karaoke lyrics to Holly's hit single, “Energy Vampire,” sung with her synthetic multi-octave voice:
Your soul is like a tomb
Deep inside my womb!
I'll never give you cooties
C'mon shake your booty!
In their quest for better seating, Xeno and Trianne meandered up a metal frame staircase, stumbling over steps of beer bottles and crunchy litter, towards the balcony box seats. It was then that Xeno got a live glimpse of Holly onstage, glistening in cones of neon light, singing into the mike of her hands free vocal headset, her swollen cleavage held at bay by a breast plate of prosthetic witch hands with pointy green fingers.
The stage camera zoomed in on Holly's face, projecting her face in close up on the cyclorama. Now, everyone could see her chipmunk cheeks in exact detail, the severe black eye shadow popping the whites of her roaming eyes, giving it her listless all:
When I suck the life from you
I'll rest in peace for two!
C'mon bust a move
for my co-dependent dude!
“Why do all of Holly's songs revolve around weak men?” Xeno asked Trianne as they climbed the stairs.
“She's not looking for a man,” Trianne said over her shoulder. “She's looking for a stuffed animal.”
“I can see why. She's turning into one.”
Holly's house band, Le Strange, appeared on the cyclorama in various close ups, wearing fiberglass costumes resembling robotic hermit crabs, with bendable synthesizers built into the costumes. The drummer played standing up with huge sticks, pulsing with colored light when he struck the drum surfaces. In silhouette, they looked like gangly mutants, spawned from a radioactive landscape.
Xeno and Trianne finally reached the sign at the top of the staircase, where Holly's important people were to be seated—the acronym known as:
H.I.P. SEATING
They followed the catwalk behind cubic sections of storage containers with draped entries, furnished with shabby furniture, and large rectangular sections cut out for concert viewing.
Trianne poked her head into one of the box seats, startling a couple making out. The lovers glared back at Trianne with “get lost” in their eyes. She withdrew her head from the drapes, and the lovebirds went back to playing mashface. She poked her head into the next box seat. It was vacant—she waved Xeno over.
They entered the storage container box seat and plopped down in the ratty sofa, taking in the hopeless-prison-sentence interior. Through the cut out balcony window, they had a plum view of the concert down below, complete with plastic garbage bag curtains that could be drawn, should they want to play mashface themselves.
“Gamma Beer?” said a young girl leaning through the drapes, dressed as a dead French waitress in Grand Guignol makeup. She balanced a tray with two open bottles of glowing green liquid in the palm of her hand. “Compliments of Hollymonde.”
Xeno and Trianne helped themselves to the complimentary drinks, and the hostess withdrew with a fiendish grin. The two clinked bottles, and sipped the glow-in-the-dark beer just in time to catch the “Energy Vampire” drum solo.
The drummer's pounding activated synchronized light patterns inside the transparent Embryon drum interiors, exposing hazardous alien species, alive and kicking in fluid. It was rumored that the exotic cephalopods were just painted latex, puppetry, animatronics. Hollymonde Trading Cards did nothing to confirm nor deny this fanboy theory, but they always came with a stinky, brittle, stick of bubble gum that cracked into pieces if you mishandled it.
The sunlamps, mounted above the stage, lit up the dance floor like a clear spring Sunday morning at 12:01 a.m. Cotton-white light shone down on the audience, warming their pale cheeks. Couples un-melded for this moment, and raised their hands in the air, catching the radiation on the surface of their palms.
“Mmmm.” Trianne closed her eyes, letting the light warm her cheeks, leaning forward over the balcony rail. Xeno grabbed the tail of her skirt so she didn't lean out too far and do a face plant on the dance floor.
The drum solo transitioned back into musical verse. Holly began singing in the sonar-speak of creatures beneath the sea, wailing ghosts from beyond the grave, alien confessions leaking from deep space.
Spotlights swirled around the main stage valance, like snipers zeroing in on a target with laser sights. Ramen, the other half of Holly's sonic duet, descended from the top of the stage, suspended in midair by a wire and hidden harness, glaring at the crowd with wild, slanted, eyes. She had the physique of a sinewy olive-skinned girl with pixie black hair, wrapped in a red vinyl jumpsuit, a hands free vocal headset clamped over her head.
Holly rose in the air from a similar wire and harness, and met Ramen in midair, several feet above the stage. The two floated over the audience, singing in synchronized dolphin scales, tossing handfuls of ConfeXTC—edible confetti laced with XTC—over crowd members who rolled back their heads and stood around with their mouths open.
“Look at the whites of your eyes!” Trianne cackled.
“My eyes?” Xeno said.
“They're glowing in the dark from the Gamma Beer!” Trianne held up her compact mirror to Xeno, so he could see the whites of his eyes glowing green in the dark. She removed her chemorette and entered a simple code on the LED strip. When she took a drag, the butt glowed ultraviolet, the whites of her eyes now glowing deep purple in the dark. She blew a stream of smoke in Xeno's face with a lascivious smirk, then sank back into the sofa.
“What does that color mean?” Xeno sank down beside her.
“My favorite combination. Try.”
Xeno took a drag from the chemorette, held the smoke in his lungs, then exhaled through his nostrils. Soon, he was overcome with a pleasant euphoria, letting his gaze hang a painting on Trianne's nose, his eyes now glowing deep purple. She closed her eyes with delight, waiting for him to lean in, to enter the mashface zone, waiting for his lips to land on hers with the faint heat of his breath warming her upper lip, the alcoholic taste of Gamma Beer still in his saliva . . . In the darkness behind her eyelids, she waited, and waited, and waited, and then . . . she felt the weight of his body rise from the couch, the springs uncoiling. She opened her eyes to see him leaning out of the storage container window.
“What's the matter?” Trianne rose from the couch and went to his side.
“Look.” Xeno pointed to the closed drapes of the box seat next door. “Look at all that smoke.”
“There's couple making out in there. So what?”
“That's a lot of smoke for a couple smoking chemorettes.”
A sudden flash of orange light flared up behind the box seat drapes next door, catching the cheap plastic material on fire. Xeno dashed out of the boxed seat onto the catwalk, only to be met on by a surly bouncer in black leather jacket and chaps blocking his way.
“Where do you think you're going?” the bouncer growled.
Past the bouncer's torso, Xeno could see the mist from fire extinguishers bleeding beneath the sealed drapes of the box seat next door.
“Go back to your seat,” the bouncer demanded.
Xeno about faced, and did as he was told. He entered his box seat, meeting Trianne's gaze.
“Well? What caught on fire?” Trianne asked.
“I don't know.” Xeno shrugged. “I couldn't get past the bouncers.”
“God, that stench.” Trianne gasped. “It reminds me of something I saw at the Pods . . .”
Ramen broke from Holly in midair, flying solo above the crowd, going for broke, trying to hit a high note—her voice cracked, and cracked hard.
Xeno and Trianne clasped their hands over their ears, shielding out Ramen's electronic squawk. The awful screech fried sensitive components in black boxes across the dance floor, shorting out several Social Ray LED's, jarring the audience out if their trance. Holly dangled in mortified silence, waiting for the worst—the constructive criticism from the crowd soon followed. “BOOOO! YOU SUCK! BOOOO! HOLLY'S A FAT PIG! GET RID OF THAT JUNK IN THE TRUNK! RAMEN IS A NO TALENT DEUCHE BAG! BOOOO!”
Stagehands were quick to yank Ramen out of sight, behind the main valance. Le Strange evacuated the stage, colliding like bumper cars as they went.
“Hope you all enjoyed the vitamin D!” Holly blew bushy-tailed kisses to the angry mob, hanging all alone in the air. “My five senses are your five senses!” She soared stage left, waving bye-bye, vanishing behind the wings. Backstage, she came to a graceless landing at the end of the pulley cable, smashing into an upright mattress. The impact knocked her a little senseless. Stagehands rushed in, unstrapped her from the harness, and lifted her down.
Bouncers entered the dance floor, forcing disgruntled ravers back towards the lobby. The effects of the Gamma Beer wore off on Xeno and Trianne's eyes. Any further chemical romance was interrupted by another bouncer, who was nothing like the others. He wore a flared powder blue suit, with sparkle-blue eyes and slicked back surfer-gold hair. The name on his badge: FARIS.
“Holly will see you now.” Faris flashed a smile of chemically whitened teeth. He escorted Xeno and Trianne back down to the dance floor, behind the rear cyclorama, backstage past haggard talent wearing half a costume, or none at all, stagehands puffing on strange substances in the shadows, having muddled conversation in the glare of work lights. Towards the end of the maze, they could hear a guy hacking up a lung, but they didn't get his autograph. Faris came to a halt at a dressing room door with an engraved gold star:
HOLLYMONDE
On the other side of the door, a muffled altercation could be heard, exchanges of electronic scorn beyond the human vocal range, spoken in a dialect that could only be understood by someone who spoke Meta-Latin, Beehive, or Ant Colony. At the peak of the synthetic cat fight, Ramen stormed out of Holly's dressing room, slamming the door so hard, the gold star cracked off and fell to the floor. She shoved her way through the talent loitering in the corridor, choking on tears, snot, disappointment. Holly stuck her head out the dressing room door, looking exuberant, as if she had just come back from an overseas colon cleanse.
“Xeno! Trianne! Do come in!” Holly waved Xeno and Trianne inside her dressing room, then thrust out her palm at Faris. “Faris, stay outside.” She slammed the door in his clueless face.
Inside the dressing room, Holly led Xeno and Trianne through an alley of costume racks, past an array of foam heads, fitted with metro-wicca wigs.
“Sit.” Holly motioned towards the makeup counters with bulb frame vanity mirrors.
Xeno and Trianne took a seat in the swivel chairs, wincing from the flowers and wreaths on the counter tops, smelling more like bathroom than air freshener from sitting out too long.
“Champagne?” Holly lifted a bottle from an ice bucket, parked near her mascara junkyard.
“Sure . . . Having a blowout?” Xeno asked, extending the drama.
“No,” Holly poured for Xeno, forcing a cheerful expression, “having champagne.” She handed Xeno his glass, then poured for Trianne. “I bought Ramen synthetic vocal chords on the condition that she would practice, and she never does.” She handed Trianne her glass, then poured for herself. “You still have to practice, and she doesn't get it, in that little mechanical head of hers. Did you hear that voice crack? I almost peed myself!”
“So Ramen is out?” Trianne asked.
“Ramen is on probation.” Holly took a stern sip.
“You've come a long way, Holly,” Xeno said, toasting his glass in the air.
“It's Hollymonde.” Holly turned up her nose. “My name is trademarked, and you have to speak it that way at all times. If you don't play along, I can sue you for—”
“A gift for you, Holly.” Xeno held up a palm-sized pink cartridge between his fingertips.
“For me?” Holly snatched the cartridge from Xeno's fingers and read the contents:
NICOTINE NITROUS OXIDE (C10H14N2N2O)
COTTON CANDY FLAVOR
INSTRUCTIONS: THROW AT HARD SURFACE UNTIL VILE CRACKS, INHALE FUMES.
COMPATIBLE WITH MULTI-MERGE BLACK BOX.
CAUTION: CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE.
“Mmmm! My favorite!” She took a whiff of the vile. “I'm overcome with theater-friend fuzzies!” She gave Xeno a big kiss on the cheek. “I guess I can let my trademark down for one evening. Let's go to the dome!”
Comments (0)
See all