Alamandra Vonn Pravus
Dungeon Spirit
Time drips by. Something is wrong.
When were you in a cafe?
“Ambrosia salad.”
Her voice is slow, a crawling bubble of sound slowly moving outward. What? You don’t recall ordering anything. Look down. It’s oranges and other cubed fruits sitting in a white paper bowl covered in white peaks of whipped cream. There’s a loud buzzing near your right ear. Or is it your left? The clock on the wall stares at you solemnly and stoically. Are bees bugs? Look down. You don’t recall skewering an orange slice with your fork, like you don’t recall ordering ambrosia salad. What is ambrosia salad? Fruit and whip, that’s right.
Fluid leaks out of the orange slice. It’s fragile and veiny, really just an engorged sack of fluids held together by thin, translucent skin. Fruit and whip. You can imagine cooks in a kitchen whipping metal cans, forcing them to vomit out pieces of fruit and syrupy juice until it runs down their sides and they lie in a pool of themselves. Bees are attracted to fruit, right? You don’t recall trying to bat away a bee near your ear, like you don’t recall skewering an orange slice. Is there a bee? You don’t know. Your hand will tell you. Oh. It never reaches your ear. You don’t recall a strange carapace in your ambrosia salad, like you don’t recall attempts at batting away bees.
Ambrosia. Food of the gods. Are carapaces, marshmallow whip, and fruit the food of the gods? The carapace struggles to fly away. It’s a bee, or a fly. You try to get the waiter to help it free. Nothing comes out of your mouth. A pounding pain slams your skull. Your heartbeat is so loud that the ground seems to tremble beneath your feet. You don’t recall much at all, in fact.
The clock is still staring at you. It says an hour, two hours, three hours have passed. What? You don’t recall that much time passing. The whipped cream has melted into the fetid, warm air. It smells like fruit and bees. What do bees smell like? You start laughing and crying. The air burns with the odor of reality. You stand up and the speed is blinding, singing your hair. You don’t recall being so fast. The whipped cream has splattered all over the table, mountain chains of sweet, sugary fluff.
Clean it up, your mind urges. The idea of wiping it up with your sleeves comes to mind, so you do that. Can bees smell? Can bees cry? You sit back down. You don’t recall a chair being there. The clock hands are whipping around, making you dizzy. You want to die. Stomach acid cuts a hole in you. You’re so hungry. The smell of whip and the existence is enticing. The clock is now moving so fast that you’re getting whiplash. Falling, falling, you’re endlessly falling into a white, white void, so dizzy, so dizzy, and you’ve exited the void and landed on the floor, curled into a fetal position, and you want to get up, you need to get up, everything feels sick, sick joke, your hand flops onto the corner of the table but you start falling, falling again, and you’re sliding around on the floor, the waiter looking down at you you’re so screwed up
What is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going in
You don’t recall Bohemian Rhapsody playing from nowhere in particular so loud it makes your organs quiver and your bones crackle.
Is this the real life?
The buzzing has long since stopped, but your ears are bleeding. A dull ache wells up in your head. You look down and up. Wisteria is a-
The roof is on fire, tires arranged in fat columns and pillars, burning away merrily. The heat blurs the air. The sky is jaundiced and melting butter. Sheets of fat pour off null clouds. Deep bass pulses of the sharp yellow ground swallow up birdsong. There is no grass. The grass died months ago, perhaps having some form of uncanny precognition. They say humans can’t see the future, but no one’s proved that plants aren’t clairvoyants. Parsley parapsychology. Contradiction 1: There’s no birdsong. The birds have also either died or flown somewhere I don’t know. The sea is practically boiling.
The harbinger of the helicopter, sound, sidles up stealthily until the 20hz tone is right in Adrian’s ear, innescant blade slapping, going chuff chuff chuff. The dominant silhouette framed in front of the sleeping orange sun, assaulting the senses, narcissistic as a daffodil, with the eyes of every mortal creature upon it, riding the cresting tangerine wave of the horizon. A paroxysm of fear manifested in a malignant metal shell, a nimble hunter suspended mid air by the miracle of physics. Relentlessly tracking down their prey and vanquishing the foe with a scathing barrage of explosives, pockmarking the ground with wounds and sending clumps of dirt airborne. When it lands, clouds of dust fly away not from the sheer force of the mechanical bull but in awe, revering zealots of the cult of machinery, fanatical believers of the sect of bullets. What a beautiful creature.
He is on top of a restaurant. It once was some sort of diner. Now it’s not.
The blue tie whips about angrily as the vehicle begins to descend. Adrian’s face warps in the reflection dancing in front of the aviators on the pilot.
“There is no god here.”
The whisper is smug and satisfactory.
When were you in a cafe?
“Ambrosia salad.”
Her voice is slow, a crawling bubble of sound slowly moving outward. What? You don’t recall ordering anything. Look down. It’s oranges and other cubed fruits sitting in a white paper bowl covered in white peaks of whipped cream. There’s a loud buzzing near your right ear. Or is it your left? The clock on the wall stares at you solemnly and stoically. Are bees bugs? Look down. You don’t recall skewering an orange slice with your fork, like you don’t recall ordering ambrosia salad. What is ambrosia salad? Fruit and whip, that’s right.
Fluid leaks out of the orange slice. It’s fragile and veiny, really just an engorged sack of fluids held together by thin, translucent skin. Fruit and whip. You can imagine cooks in a kitchen whipping metal cans, forcing them to vomit out pieces of fruit and syrupy juice until it runs down their sides and they lie in a pool of themselves. Bees are attracted to fruit, right? You don’t recall trying to bat away a bee near your ear, like you don’t recall skewering an orange slice. Is there a bee? You don’t know. Your hand will tell you. Oh. It never reaches your ear. You don’t recall a strange carapace in your ambrosia salad, like you don’t recall attempts at batting away bees.
Ambrosia. Food of the gods. Are carapaces, marshmallow whip, and fruit the food of the gods? The carapace struggles to fly away. It’s a bee, or a fly. You try to get the waiter to help it free. Nothing comes out of your mouth. A pounding pain slams your skull. Your heartbeat is so loud that the ground seems to tremble beneath your feet. You don’t recall much at all, in fact.
The clock is still staring at you. It says an hour, two hours, three hours have passed. What? You don’t recall that much time passing. The whipped cream has melted into the fetid, warm air. It smells like fruit and bees. What do bees smell like? You start laughing and crying. The air burns with the odor of reality. You stand up and the speed is blinding, singing your hair. You don’t recall being so fast. The whipped cream has splattered all over the table, mountain chains of sweet, sugary fluff.
Clean it up, your mind urges. The idea of wiping it up with your sleeves comes to mind, so you do that. Can bees smell? Can bees cry? You sit back down. You don’t recall a chair being there. The clock hands are whipping around, making you dizzy. You want to die. Stomach acid cuts a hole in you. You’re so hungry. The smell of whip and the existence is enticing. The clock is now moving so fast that you’re getting whiplash. Falling, falling, you’re endlessly falling into a white, white void, so dizzy, so dizzy, and you’ve exited the void and landed on the floor, curled into a fetal position, and you want to get up, you need to get up, everything feels sick, sick joke, your hand flops onto the corner of the table but you start falling, falling again, and you’re sliding around on the floor, the waiter looking down at you you’re so screwed up
What is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going in
You don’t recall Bohemian Rhapsody playing from nowhere in particular so loud it makes your organs quiver and your bones crackle.
Is this the real life?
The buzzing has long since stopped, but your ears are bleeding. A dull ache wells up in your head. You look down and up. Wisteria is a-
The roof is on fire, tires arranged in fat columns and pillars, burning away merrily. The heat blurs the air. The sky is jaundiced and melting butter. Sheets of fat pour off null clouds. Deep bass pulses of the sharp yellow ground swallow up birdsong. There is no grass. The grass died months ago, perhaps having some form of uncanny precognition. They say humans can’t see the future, but no one’s proved that plants aren’t clairvoyants. Parsley parapsychology. Contradiction 1: There’s no birdsong. The birds have also either died or flown somewhere I don’t know. The sea is practically boiling.
The harbinger of the helicopter, sound, sidles up stealthily until the 20hz tone is right in Adrian’s ear, innescant blade slapping, going chuff chuff chuff. The dominant silhouette framed in front of the sleeping orange sun, assaulting the senses, narcissistic as a daffodil, with the eyes of every mortal creature upon it, riding the cresting tangerine wave of the horizon. A paroxysm of fear manifested in a malignant metal shell, a nimble hunter suspended mid air by the miracle of physics. Relentlessly tracking down their prey and vanquishing the foe with a scathing barrage of explosives, pockmarking the ground with wounds and sending clumps of dirt airborne. When it lands, clouds of dust fly away not from the sheer force of the mechanical bull but in awe, revering zealots of the cult of machinery, fanatical believers of the sect of bullets. What a beautiful creature.
He is on top of a restaurant. It once was some sort of diner. Now it’s not.
The blue tie whips about angrily as the vehicle begins to descend. Adrian’s face warps in the reflection dancing in front of the aviators on the pilot.
“There is no god here.”
The whisper is smug and satisfactory.