VAGABOND FUGUE Gypsy D. Sideshow
The revelation. The book of Romero’s demise levels at him in the glare of this woman he knows but doesn’t know. Some avenging angel? Romero’s Juliet? Xander cannot speak. Words and memories and pixels of words and memories evaporate into a thin vapor. His mouth is dry, his tongue sealed to the roof of his mouth.
The Vagabond Fugue Book One: The Xandromachia Chapter 5, “Revelation”
The woman’s glare finally gains moisture, her eyes appear like they will give way to tears. She would look down but that would submit to these tears and they would fall. She looks to the ceiling of the boat hull instead, her chin angling higher. No use.... the tears spill down the sides of her cheeks. “Fuck,” she wipes away one stream with the heel of her palm and then the other with the back of her hand. “Look, Xander,” she says, recovering, “regardless of what I think of you, we need to help you remember as much as you can.” She dries her hands on the folds of her skirt, and continues. “Listen,” she tells him, “there may be something I can do to help you remember, but it’s a long shot. Awhile ago, in the real world,” Sophia explains, “Romero had a traumatic brain injury in an accident and lost both a portion of his memory and several body functions for awhile. He couldn’t speak or walk and his emotions were intense and unpredictable.”
Xander wipes his face in his tank top trying to wipe away his approaching tears, then looks up at her.
table. “Do you think it will help me remember what happened to Romero?”
“Here, lie down. There is a certain massage technique that stimulates peptides in the body, and as such, can give people patches of their memories and functions back.” Sophia continues, “I tried it with Romero, and over time, I think it contributed to his substantial recovery.” Xander, listening, removes his clothing and obediently lies down on the
Sophia shrugs. “This is a virtual world, and yours is a digital body, so I don’t know if it will work, but,” Sophia adds, “perhaps enough of your consciousness uploaded into this world to be fused into this body...I mean...for example, those scars-” Sophia brings her fingertips to her lips, then looks again to the glowing tubes circumnavigating his head.
“Just breathe,” Sophia says again, in even tones, while Xander, flat on his stomach lay naked, save for a towel across his midsection. “Just listen to the pressure of my touch as it travels each muscle and tendon from end to end. Close your eyes. Travel with it.” As Sophia reaches below his skull with both hands, cradling his head in her forearms, she presses deep along the twin muscle bands on either side of his neck.
Xander exhales in relief. “God, that feels fantastic,” “Be quiet. Don’t talk,” Sophia tells him. “Just breathe and listen to my touch, the pressure is your vehicle that you need to climb into. As Sophia gets to work, Xander begins to feel like he is made of clay, as if she is the sculptor, with elbows, thumbs, fingertips. Sophia is rebuilding him, cable by cable, thread by thread. The pleasure and pain of creation, the endocrine rush...the endorphine blush into his body, as Xander breathes
relief and a release of tension with each trailhead and destination of his muscle bands. Xander loses time. Darkness, like that of a child in the womb with his twin....preverbal, pre breath...just presence in darkness. A filling of an absence in this darkness. Xander’s consciousness rises toward light slowly, as, with her knuckles now, Sophia deeply and dully rakes
over the ribbons of his forearms... and there, the flags of memory in those ribbons- a hand clasped to his wrist, a peach caterwaul of light, the pressure of Romero’s grasp against his wrist, an umbilical cord of shared consciousness...a roar-like rush in his ears, abstract pictures of feelings, details fluid and obscure, but rooting in him now.
Romero’s grasp is firm and corporeal, but the rest of him is fading, translucent like a ghost. They are flying (or floating?) with liquid marbled flames above their heads, the smoldering blackness of the deep below, far below this peach cloud. From the deep, a black plume of pixels inks its way upward and swarms Romero, wrapping around him like tentacles, sucking, grasping at him....more and more of him disappearing...
“Romero!” Xander cries,
as he feels Romero’s grasp, like a knot, slipping- frayed, breaking and spinning, then a snap, just before Romero is swallowed into the creature who vanishes into the deep.
Xander, Xander.... wake up....Xander!
Ropes are clapping against a sailor’s bare mast in the wind, no a slapping, slapping against the blurs of his face, gaining substance, Sophia’s voice repeating his name. Xander opens his eyes... Sophia looks down at him with concern, “You okay? I almost thought you weren’t gonna make it back.” “I saw him,” Xander tells her. “I saw Romero.”