VAGABOND FUGUE Gypsy D. Sideshow
Set in a virtual platform moments after his body has been destroyed, Xander del Mar’ navigates a new world in an attempt to reg
VAGABON Gypsy D.
s flesh and blood ’s consciousness gain his humanity.
ND FUGUE Sideshow
The Xandromachia: Chapter 2 "The Call" The blaring foghorn- a swirl of light. Xander begins to rise- rise and swirl like the cream of a paint bucket being spun- being undone and spun back into a blurring mix of colored pixels- a rush of wind against the disembodied splashes of himself, flying like sunrise storm clouds, like 'sailor take warning.' Xander spins back into a human shape again, naked in a typhoon of color funneled around him, then smeared in stitches, thread by pixeled thread, being fitted into a suit, pixel by pixel, shocks of cloth covering him, not naked anymore, no longer the way God made him or didn't make him, the clench of a belt looped around his waist, his fitted slacks, of buttons fingering up his abdomen to the sweet choke of a polka dot bowtie. The wind slows, invisible servants attend to the polish, the preen, the dizzy floating descent, gravity drawing at his feet, the clean weight of his body pressing down into his designer shoes.
Double vision- hollered senses vibrating toward stillness,
a new world comes into focus,
carnival lights, the whir of sideshow gadgets, tinkering carnie music,
a world that is seemingly empty...
He looks to his shoes- up his tailored pant legs, starched shirt and silk jacket. Dizzy, the earth and sky stretches, like water in a balloon that glubs back onto itself. Xander breathes in the salty carnival air, the hints of cotton candy and urine soaked dumpsters. The trees breathe in the distance against the caramel sky, the spinning lights of the carousel, the gypsy tent, a fortune teller's table. Xander pauses at the tent, the table. There. Xander follows the pull of that tapestries, drawn like krill to the baleened maw of a hungry whale. Xander enters to the thick musk of incense infused tapestries, a table of runes, small bones and tarot cards. He reaches toward the stack when a cloaked figure appears, like a pixellated vapor in the chair beside him. Xander stumbles backward. The figure solidifies, lowers her hood, reveals the pale,
bald head of an android woman. She smiles up at Xander and motions to the
other chair. "Please, sit," her voice almost inside his head, remarkably and sensually human. Xander settles his weight into the chair, "I haven't the faintest idea what-" he interrupts himself, taking a moment to finger the hardware tubing at his temples to the disc at the back of his head. The android woman watches him, draws her cloak against her body. "You are still in a fugue state," she says, "but like the morning fog, that will fade with time." Xander raises his gaze from the table from the tarot cards, to the android woman's face. "Who are you?" The android woman smiles again. There is a warmth in her eyes that defies her animatronics. "I have many roles," she says. "Right now I am a sort of midwife." "A Midwife." "Yes. A herald to bring you into the world."
Xander looks back down at the table, grips it by the edges, testing his tactile response. The table feels sure and solid in his hands. "Is any of this real?" he asks her.
"There is the ghost of his code stream, but it trails off into the ether." They both pause, looking at each other.
Xander is surprised to feel a vulnerable flutter of a sob in his chest as he asks this.
"I have a brother?"
"It is to you, Xander," the android woman says. "Right now it's the realist thing you've got."
"Jesus."
"Yes."
The android woman smirks, "Almost, but not quite."
She turns over one of her tarot cards, The Hanged Man and ponders. She pauses before speaking again, as if sensing something in the air. "It is no "That is your brother," she tells him, longer safe here," she says. pointing to the card. "We believe he trav- "They are coming." elled to this world at the same time you did, but it's unclear where he went." "Who?" The android woman looks at Xander for a long moment. The word brother strikes him like an eel, electric flashbulbs of scattered memory, underwater flames, the embrace of two men sharing the same brain but different souls.
"No time," she says. She taps coordinates into her wrist and the back of Xander's head begins to glow and whir as an engine booting up. "Where I am sending you," the woman
says, "you will have all you need for your journey." "Journey?" The woman's voice grows more purposeful, her gestures hurried. "Find your brother," she says. "I will send someone to you, someone you have known in your other life." She snaps down another tarot card. The Lovers. She looks down, hurried, but slightly amazed. "Interesting, I should have known." She looks up at Xander. "Hurry along now, they are here." She presses the button on her wrist as she disintegrates into a pile of polymer powder, her cards and table along with her. Xander, in the red heat fever of brain activity, catches a glimpse of an obese
undead clown with glowing eyes carrying a spiked club and approaching him. A painted swirl of light, a screech and panic of machine parts in overdrive, and Xander is gone.