A Sham Shady Adventure.

Episode Two: An Encounter in an Alley.

    Well, I was back out there, on a case. The broad had just up & walked in & said "Mr. Shady, I’m being followed, and I don’t know by whom."

    Ms. Juliana Katyana, her name was. Yeah, she was one beautiful dame; yeah, she spoke good English; yeah, I needed the cash pretty bad; still, though... Whenever they show, your guts turn to mush.

    So there I was, out to track the who & the how & the why, a solid month’s alcohol draining from my system... Back to business.

    But first, the rites of passage, you might say. Escape costs. Reality is expensive, in terms of the soul. Day by day, chips off of the life energy; your freedom is your downpayment, but that don’t cover the rent.

    Sek: Pure soul: That’s the price. Me, I seen it for real & I learned to step out; just crawl into Gus’ Place & drown your senses. I see things a whole lot clearer than your average mark, and it hurts that much more. But if you need to re-enter, you gotta pay all outstanding bills, balance the books with interest.

    Out onto the sidewalk, into the sunlight. Streams of cars choking the air, the hive hum of people bustling in a series of strange puppet rituals, verging on the coordinated - deference, dominance, politeness, aggression, face-saving plays of respect - a bustling, hustling, regulated world leaking unspent energy out into the atmosphere...

    ... & energy don’t just dissapear...

    The way it was hitting me already, I could tell this was gonna be a rough one. There was a major, bad-ass manifestation in the works & I could feel it coming on, could see it in the shadowform cats & rats & bugs that danced always at the periphery of my vision.

    Decided I better get outta sight before it hit -

    Duck into an alleyway, heavy shadow out of the hard sunlight, flip-up trashcans, strewn litter collected in piles, old newspapers, discarded packaging - you know the scene, seen the film, I’m sure.

    I stumbled about halfway down, feeling the pressure build, building to break. These times are reality in its purest form, pure pain; but here I experience the present manifestation, see the truth of the world & my case most clearly.

    Hurts like hell, but...

    & then it hit me, so hard I musta screamed - the bricks in the walls, the trash, the sky - all - suddenly sprout thorns & weird, hard, spiny growths, stretching out to impossible heights & closing inwards to me, serating the air

    - hard to breathe

    - the heat, unbearable

    I was choking & rasping & kicking out wildly, struggling to untangle myself from tendrils of complex, geometric vines & creepers & broad, rough, pressing leaves like giant cats’ tongues, scraped by new upsurges of growth, skin dragged away on dry, green bark, the shadows of fugitive creatures darting always on the edges of my vision...

    ...then all is quiet & all is still.

    ...a moment, a glimpse... the cat-deer stands in the clearing, terrifying, terrified... weird black & green colour of its mind... & then it is off! A spring & shoots clear of the space into the bracken & the woods, negotiating the tangles & branches at breakneck speed, untouched,

    a blur of motion...

    ...and a figure stands over me, dark & framed against the sky.

    "Are you all right, buddy?" A voice asked. "You was kickin’ up quite a fuss, there."

    I shifted position to see more clearly - a guy, middle height & build, dark, mexican complexion, brown suit, a little shabby, & trilby hat, but something not quite right...

    I shifted my eyes, refocused to look a little deeper, and he was just the same, just a human form looking a little anxiously down.

    Which was dangerous. Most times, you look at a man this way, that man he start to glow, to unform, becomes an unfolding, refolding, complex aura. You stare like this long enough, he becomes a seething mass of bright filaments & tendrils, you can read his character there in the multiple, undulating interconnexions.

    When you look this way & they just stay human, you’re in trouble, cuz they either stopping you from seeing deeper, or, much worse, there is nothing deeper.

    Like I say, real dangerous.

    So I refocus again, & he’s there just the same, and now I knew what I as looking at, but I wasn’t any happier.

    An ally.

    Sounds nice, harmless, beneficient even, don’t it? But it ain’t.

    These creatures you either summon or they are sent as a gift, one where it truly is the thought that counts. You can gain great power by association with one, but if you don’t know the terms of the original contract, most likely you’ll end up dead. Kinda like a ghost, only they never been alive.

    They don’t mean to kill you, but once they lock onto your frequency, the frequency at which you receive & broadcast transmissions from reality, they just keep coming forwards, drawn on, you might say, by the blind urge to exist.

    One pet theory I got is that they are noise in the signal, static or irrelevant data that we, the receivers, can’t receive to read. But every part of the transmission wants to be read, and if it can’t make it on the airwaves, it’ll petition the reciever direct.

    &, incidentally, frying the circuits of that reciever, that being me in this present instant, & making it dead or crazy or, most likely, both.

    ‘S our own fault, of course, like with everything else. Trouble is, we are transmitters as well as recievers. One time, nature was a blind transmission from nobody to nobody, shooting through the wastes of time, the medium of the meaningless. Then we come along & start imagining agencies at either end, gods & devils, and a whole host of supernatural agents in the middle, like sinister pigeons & Dick Dastardlies, epic cartoon of a meaningless message, demons, spirits, witches, angels, the whole caboodle, the whole cabal, broadcast on every channel, pay per view.

    Yeah, we peepholes made a real psychic mess of this universe. Used to be a nice neighbourhood, now it’s got so’s you can’t take a stroll down the street without some punk fallen angel mugs you for residence in your liver. ‘S another reason why I keep mine nicely poisoned.

    Don’t get me wrong, kid; I’m not tryin’ to put it on you that I got the inside track on creation. This ain’t armchair philosophy - it’s field philosophy, to be believed only as long as it can work a change, then discarded. That’s why I been fillin’ you with this crap - I was in the field & up the creek, & I needed some kinda mental machinery to work an escape.

    Maps & territories... Now where was I?

    Ah, yeah; so this ally was standing over me, see?, real close, now - too close to just tune out - and without the first notion of how it was summoned to back it off, I tell ya, I was starin’ death itself in the face!

    "You okay, pal?" It asked, shuffling even closer, anxious expression on its all-too-human face. "’Zere summin wrong with your eyes?"

    It was almost close enough to touch me, and I could feel the real terror creeping up my back, clawing down my throat, numbing cold radiating from it, robbing my body of motion.

    It looked like the end of old Shady & no mistake, but, like I said, I got some knowledge of this kind of scene, the kind you earn, not learn.

    I figured if I could trick it into beleiving that I couldn’t see or hear it, that my perceptive frequency was too low for it too access, then it might lose interest & go away & bug some guru or other.

    "Hey, pal! Are you...?" It said, reaching down a ‘human’ hand to touch me

    - I knew I had to act now, or never again.

    Like a shot, I slammed my hands over my ears & screwed my eyes tight shut, then said in a real loud voice: "I can’t hear you, pal, cuz you ain’t there... & I can’t see you either."

    I saw it pull back a little as I peeked out from a slitted eyelid, saw its lips moving, but heard only the roaring pressure of my hands clamped firmly over my ears. It seemed to be working.

    "Yup! There’s no point talking to me, cuz I’m not listening, cuz you don’t even exist, so there!" I shouted.

    It stepped back again, shaking its head in bewilderment, and I gave it another burst: "I’m all a-lone in the alley, I’m all a-lone in the alley! No-body he-ar! No-body he-ar!"

    It seemed on the brink of stepping forwards again, so with a kick of adrenaline, I screwed up my eyes again & hollered out at the top of my voice "NOT LISTENING! NOT LISTENING! LA! LA! CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA, LA, LA! DUM, DUM, DUM! NEEAAGH!"

    I risked another peek from out behind my eyelids (where else, kid?), and saw the ally as it withdrew, back down & out the alley, the occasional, almost frightened glance back, and out of sight.

    I was safe! I slumped, exhausted, against some pile of trash or other, still reeling, in shock; still not registering how close to death I’d been.

    But at least now I had more of an idea of what me & my client were up against. I musta summoned the ally unawares in the throes of the first manifestation, and so it came; the almost lethal answer to the question I’d been asking:

    Ms. Juliana Katyana had had an ally put onto her - no way she coulda done it herself - and unless I could come up with something soon, she would be one dead dame.

    I had to act fast...