Nemo Arator

When I first read Solstice Carnival, I was struck by the vivid images it conjured up in my head. Believe me, that doesn't happen often. I hope it will do the same for you.
How do we as readers distinguish between dream and reality? That is the dilemma we face while reading Nemo Arator's Solstice Carnival.

SOLSTICE CARNIVAL

By Nemo Arator

“WAKE UP,” said the voice with the elbow that jarred me from slumber, shuddering back into consciousness. It sounded like Neil, but I knew it couldn’t be him because I hadn’t seen Neil for over a year; therefore, this must be a dream.

I tried diving back under, but then he nudged me again and that killed it – the balloon popped, and the whole thing was wiped away, all the vivid colors, shapes, scenes and feelings, vague intangible associations. I grasped desperately to retain something of it, anything, but clutched empty as like silt pouring through my fingers every last bit drained away without a trace, slipping forever back down into the black hole of my unconscious.

I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in a theater; I was at a play; I had fallen asleep. The voice was that of my friend Stephen, whom I was sitting beside and had slumped over when consciousness deserted me sometime during the previous act.

“It’s getting on to the next part,” he said.

I pulled myself back upright and rubbed the blear of sleep-resin from my eyes, then looked toward the stage. The curtains parted to unveil a bathroom scene that featured an old claw-foot tub, a sink, a toilet, and a man in pajamas sobbing on the floor uncontrollably. A pair of angels in soiled robes floated in the shadows near the ceiling; they looked down on him with gentle faces. Then one of them farted, and the other picked its nose.

“Poor fellow, isn’t he?” said one of them.

“Yes, he is,” said the other.

“I wonder what he’s crying about.”

“I don’t know. He certainly is sad though.”

“Yes, he is.”

They went on like this, and I yawned helplessly and looked around. The theater (which had formerly been a church) was in full attendance today. Nonetheless, I felt my eyelids droop once more. This was a rather somniferous interpretation of the solstice legend whose anniversary was being celebrated tonight with a carnival after dark, to which this afternoon’s theatrical rendition was a prelude. A bitter, beautiful irony made interminable as they carried on:

“Is there nothing we can do to help him?” said one of them.

“I don’t think so,” said the other. “Whatever his ailment is, it is something he will have to solve himself.”

“Then why are we here?”

“I am not sure....”

And then suddenly, before the scene could go any farther, the rear doors burst open and two ninjas on hovercrafts came soaring into the theater. They swooped above the audience in a figure-eight, then charged at the stage, unsheathing katanas and started to hack and slash at the actors. The angels being stuck suspended were unable to escape; but I saw the protagonist manage to crawl off-stage.

One of the ninjas pulled around to pursue him, but they turned too sharp and nearly tipped over. The other effected a more graceful maneuver and zoomed into the wings, the first one fast behind, and then both were gone, the murdered seraphim left to hang bleeding, twitching cadaver sway.

This all happened so fast I could hardly react – I jumped out of my seat, and then my eyes popped open.

The stage was deserted. The props remained in place, but the actors were gone. They had evidently taken their bows and returned to the “Real World” and the roles they played there. I looked around and saw that much of the audience had also departed; the last few stragglers were just going out the door. They moved thoughtfully, unhurried, certainly not the panic aftermath of witnessing a massacre.

I turned to Stephen and said, “What happened? Did I miss something?”

And he laughed. “Of course you did. But you always do. It’s over now anyway. Let’s go.”

We got up and shuffled to the main aisle, whereupon I headed for the stage, spurred by a vague but urgent impulse. At the front I went to the side-door that led to the dressing room, which I found to be heaped with various props and costumes; a coterie of dolls and puppets stood in the corner, along with a pulpit, an upright cross, a bunch of flags and banners, some folding tables, and a wheelchair.

But nobody else was in here. I stood there looking at this. What was I even doing in here? Something was wrong with the air: it was too dry and lacked oxygen. I felt my lungs tighten in my chest, then my vision started blurring. I reached out to brace myself against the nearest wall and then I saw the closet door swing open and one of the ninjas emerged, a small hunched figure dressed entirely in black.

The ninja pulled a cardboard box over its head and came at me with a police baton and started beating me with it, viciously and relentlessly. I crumpled beneath the onslaught, my vision ruptured by black flashes. Then the assailant was gripping my arm and shaking me, but the trauma was too much; the blackness swelled in one final flash, and I sank down into it.

I awoke an indeterminate time later, lying on the floor in the dark of an unfamiliar room, half-curled beside a large box crammed to overflow with masks and assorted garments. Faint multi-colored lights flickered in a small square window near the ceiling, a ghostly strobing rainbow. In those amnesiatic first moments after waking, I couldn’t remember who or where or what I was – the details of my present condition were as elusive as those of my current surroundings.

I struggled to my feet, went to a door I didn’t remember closing, and back into the now-deserted theater. With all the lights off and the people gone, the silence in here was a tangible thing if one were to remain still for long enough to feel it. The main doors I knew were bolted shut, but in the gloom across the stage I saw a dead exit sign over a door with a horizontal push-bar, which doubtless led to the alley. I strode swiftly to it and through.

The door opened into a narrow cobblestone lane between the buildings and I emerged onto a small landing. I shivered in the late December chill and buttoned my coat to the collar, then descended the crumbling steps and started walking toward the far end of the alley, where I could see the passage of a lugubrious parade slowly making its way down the street. I could hear music too, the sound of horns: a mournful, raucous dirge. And then I realized – the carnival, it was happening now.

My heart swelled with excitement, and I picked up the pace, restraining the desire to run. Soon I emerged out onto the sidewalk, right into the midst of the festivities. Here the music had a melody as much of the carousel as the requiem, and celebrants thronged in the street, a masquerade of fire-breathers, belly-dancers, magicians, musicians, and exotic freaks of every stripe, adorned in paints and jewels and all sorts of costumes and great flaring feathers, rippling capes and scarves. A motley cavalcade of floats and carriages drifted through the crowd which was as likely as not to be dressed in only a mask, gloves, shoes, and nothing else, for carnival was a night to turn the world inside out.

Tables and booths were set in rows down the way, each boasting various novelties and phenomena, their attendants beckoning passersby to come sample the wares. All the lights and sounds and movement and color – everything together boiling Saturnalian euphoria up into the air; for a moment I could only stand there and try to take it all in without being swept away.

I saw a naked Aboriginal man with long gray hair standing outside a sidewalk café, waiting patiently stoic in his nudity to be admitted. But no one was in front of him, and empty tables were visible within. Just as I noticed this, a man dressed like a circus ringmaster quickly approached and ushered him into the cafe, stopping to watch as the elder walked directly to a specific table and seated himself there.

As he stood there, the ringmaster reached into his pocket and withdrew an ordinary hotdog wiener and stuck it in his mouth like a cigar. Indeed, he then reached into his waistcoat for a lighter and held its flame to the protruding end, holding it there until the meat blackened and charred.

I turned from the sight feeling faintly disquieted, and looked up at the old church building instead. Small dim lights I hadn’t noticed from inside made the front windows glow. This was surely done to symbolize that the great performance is everlasting, the show will go on, and there will always be a candle lit. But I had seen for myself the benighted cavities within that were its rooms, containing only dust, garbage, gravity-bound furniture, silence, and stillness.

Standing above the main entrance in an open-faced vertical niche was a statue of the saint Mary. The marble manikin stood serenely over the bacchanal, forever frozen in the act of conferring her blessings upon the flesh-and-blood anthropomorphs below. Already rotten vegetables, excrement, and handfuls of money lay in scattered piles upon the front steps.

I turned back to the crowd and ventured into the milieu. All around me people were drinking, laughing, dancing, staggering about, engaged in various behaviors. I watched the gaping faces tilt back for another swig of whatever elixirs were on tap, tilting forward to burst out with the laryngeal audities, slurred verbiage, their eyes blinking pools of expression. I continued onward, following the longitudinal curvature of the boulevard toward the row of traffic pylons barricading a side street.

A little farther down some women in a doorway were saying something to me, a denim-wearing duo who waved and beckoned. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I went over to find out. They giggled impishly as I neared, a blond and a brunette, both of them wearing striped sleeves and stockings. The brunette stepped forward and handed me a black sugar cube with a wink but without a word; instead she took my hand and drew me into a cramped foyer.

“What were you saying out there?” I asked.

“That you should come with us,” said the blond. “We need one more person, and you’d be perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” I asked.

“Come with us, you’ll see,” said the brunette. “It’s just through here.”

The blond took me by the hand and I thought, What the hell. It was unlikely I’d find Stephen out there in that mess, and doubtless the fellow was already caught up in some carnival adventure of his own, or would be before the night was over; so I might as well see this through, whatever it was. I dosed the sugar cube and followed them up a flight of stairs and from there into a convoluted series of passageways and stairwells.

After a while, as we went from room to room, down one corridor after another, sometimes doubling back on places we had already been (or seeming to), I began to wonder whether they were playing a prank, leading me on this interminable journey for the sake of some unknown amusement – or perhaps they themselves had become lost, confounded by the building’s interior sameness. Their manner was no longer as playful, their faces set, looking vaguely troubled, and I began to worry.

The interior of this building seemed to consist entirely of these endless passageways of closed doors, various rooms within, furnished or not, peopled or not, giving way only to further rooms, hallways, and stairwells. But we continued onward, a seemingly endless peristalic passage through the inexorable maze of worn carpet and peeling wallpaper. Eventually we must have passed through every single room within that building.

Finally we emerged into a long, wide, poorly-lit corridor. I sensed their relief at the sight of the glowing red Exit sign above a door in the distance. As we walked toward it, I noticed openings in the ceiling that appeared to be ladder-holes, into which one could jump and grab hold of the rungs and climb up to whatever was in the darkness above.

I realized we must now be somewhere far down in some deep subterranean level, for there was a nitric dampness in the putrid air, the smell of mildew was palpable. I heard the buzzing of flies along with the murmur of voices, clotted with mucus and sleazy sardonic laughter.

We passed a couple drunks who stood casually pissing on the wall, staring down at their releasing organs as the urine flowed into a trough at their feet. Curtained booths had been carved from the bedrock, wherein I saw people seated facing each other across tables per usual, but with their bare asses sitting upon toilet bowls.

“You did sow all that you could, now eat,” said the blond jejunely, and the brunette laughed.

“It is rather ingenious,” I said.

Then we reached the door; we went through it and up some stairs; then through another door and emerged out into the night and open air, staggering across the parking lot behind the building. It seemed a colony of nomads had encamped here, for a ring of tents was set up, forming a sort of eye-in-the-storm refuge away from the carnival throng, which was still audible, pulsing distant diastolic.

Back here the air was calmer, quieter, the people more subdued. Lanterns hung from poles and I detected a playful lilt in the soundscape, something amid the discombobulated syncopation of casino games and arcade machines within the tents. I could see people inside those tents, playing cards, spinning wheels, rolling dice – making bets, taking chances – they played in secret these games of risk, manifesting fate mechanical.

I glanced back at the building we emerged from and saw the man dressed as a ringmaster standing near the door. He nodded at me with a knowing smile, as though he and I were both privy to something no one else was, and that it was significant.

But even as he smiled, he kept his eyes fixed on the two women I arrived with, swiveling in their sockets to watch as they headed for a specific tent and went into it. I took a step closer and saw them gathered inside with the other occupants; they were looking out at me expectantly, their eyes wide, waving their arms excitedly, beckoning to come on.

Ku-kaw, ku-kaw!

I looked up just in time to see a huge raven alight upon a nearby lamp post and stare down at me with eyes like shiny stones. The ringmaster gestured for me to enter the tent with the ladies, which I then did.

Inside the tent eight or ten people were gathered around a table upon which sat a rectangular box-like device made of stainless steel. It had eight hoses protruding from it like a hookah or the limbs of a spider; at the end of each hose was a translucent respiration mask. I figured it must be either a beer keg or a nitrous oxide tank. Folding chairs were arranged around the table and a single light shone from the roof. The ringmaster came into the tent and gestured for us to seat ourselves while he closed the entrance flap.

After I sat down I noticed the entire floor was covered by a single large and exquisitely detailed piece of carpet, perfectly fitted to the dimensions of the tent. It was a lush supple spread awash in crimson dust and golden arabesques; I briefly recalled the flying carpets of Arabian lore. The blond and the brunette seated themselves on either side of me. Across from us sat the others, though their features were indistinct in the gloom.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s this all about?”

“It’s the longest night of the year, and we cannot fall asleep,” said the blond.

“So we are going to inhale this magic laughing gas, and it will enable us to talk to the spirits of Christmas past,” said the brunette.

“It’s like a séance and a time machine.”

“Trust us, this is going to be grand.”

I looked back and forth between them incredulously, but they were serene and imperturbable. The ringmaster got the hoses untangled and started passing one to each person. Somebody handed me one, and after a moment’s consideration I fitted it over my face, as the others had done.

“Is everyone comfortable? Are you ready now?”

The question brought me back; it was the ringmaster. I had never heard him speak before and I was surprised by the sound of his voice, though I shouldn’t have been, for it perfectly befitted his personage. He stepped toward the machine and rested his hand lightly upon what I presumed was the start switch, which was (I hoped ironically) fashioned from a common toilet flush lever. The ringmaster looked down at those of us who were seated at the table and smiled.

“Then close your eyes,” he said, and I did. In the molten lava static behind my eyelids I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing; suddenly I was in a self-induced sensory-deprived state, and for those last few moments I just floated in it, happy to exist and be at peace.

I heard him say, “Now make a wish,” and then I heard the sound of the lever plunge and the machine hummed into life.

All memory ceases there.

[30]

[Index] [About Us] [Stories] [Story 1] [Story 2] [Story 3] [Story 4] [Guest Art] [Editors Write] [Archives] [Contact Us] [Links]

Copyright © 2024 by 4 Star Stories. All Rights Reserved.