Katherine Dunn - Nightmare Carnival

Outside, gossamer trails of night-blue mist waft through the backyard like torn strands of the Milky Way, sparking with millions of little pinpricks of pure white light. They drift and catch on the sleeping faces of the women and men pulled from their neighboring homes in the carnelevare’s orgiastic wake, settle into their hair and over their bare tangled limbs, crash and break apart against tall pine trees and dissipate with the rising sun. A thread of it trails against my bare leg, disappearing beneath the triangle of matted hair. The effluvium of a nameless carnival as it blew in and out of town. I gently pull it out and let it float away.

At the edge of the yard, legs tucked under thighs white and hard as marble, the small body of a woman with a missing left arm rests under a large tree. I walk over, and kneel before the Grand. She looks no older than me. Her pale green eyes are open, wide, blank. They stare through and beyond me, up into the sky. Her face is raised and lips are parted, as if being forced to drink from a bottomless cup. Or perhaps, as if about to speak a name.

A blood-orange sun was sinking slowly into the edges of my city’s wide electric edges, and I raised my worshiping hands and face like a grateful Akhenaten into its early autumn heat. I had lost a month, and so much more. It was time to go home, all the way home. Behind me, just within the shadows of the open warehouse doors, behind the boundary he could not see or cross, the barker stood, hesitant.

— What does it feel like? he asked.

— This? I turned, hand on my stomach, already slightly curved.

— That. All of it, the god and the power and the mysteries, folded into something so small and insignificant as you. To be so full. And — the sun. The weight of the air on your body. The pleasure of bearing so much pain. Being a part of the world, while knowing you’re not really a part of anything at all.

— I couldn’t tell you. I don’t have any answers.

He stared at me, waiting, disappointed yet still expectant; and then his eyes glazed. I could see him moving beyond me, his mind traveling to that invisible realm beyond the carnelevare’s end, where all questions are answered, all hunger sated, where all the endless pleasurable and terrifying variations of the chase dwindle down to a dead and desiccated end.

— Do you really want to know?

He looked up into the sky, then smiled his yellow-teethed grin.

— No.

One night, a trucker dropped me at a tavern in Screaming Elk, MT, population 333. A bunch of locals had gathered to shoot pool and drown their sorrows in tap beer. CNN aired an hour-long feature on survivors of violent crime. The Jessica Mace segment popped around halfway through and I told the bartender to switch it pronto. A sodbuster on the next stool took exception, started to bark his offense, then he did a double take at the file photo of me larger than life onscreen and things went from bad to ugly.

“You’re that broad! Yeah, yeah, you’re her!” Shitkicker had crossed over to the dark side of drunk. “Nice rack,” he went on in a confidential tone. “I wouldn’t pay a nickel for anything above the tits, though.”

I threw a glass of whiskey in his face, as a lady does when her appearance is insulted by an oaf. No biggie — I’d been nursing the cheap stuff. A couple of his comrades at the bar laughed. He recovered fast — animals are like that — made a fist, and cocked it behind his left ear. I puckered my lips. Don’t suppose that I enjoy getting punched in the face. It’s simply that I can make it work for me if it comes to that.

Despite my gravelly voice and rough edges, I know how to play the femme fatale. I can also hold my booze. It’s a devastating combo. My brothers Elwood and Bronson were the brawlers, the steamrollers. Elwood has gone to his reward and Bronson crashes cars for a living. Me? Let’s just say I prefer to rely upon a combination of native cunning and feminine wiles to accomplish my goals. Flames and explosions are strictly measures of last resort.

I’ll put my life in mortal danger for a pile of cash. No shock there, anybody would. Goes deeper, though. I’ll also venture into hazard to satisfy my curiosity, and that’s more problematic. The compulsion seems to be growing stronger. Violence, at least the threat of violence, is a rush. I’m addicted to the ramifications and the complications.

As the CNN story so luridly explained, I did for that serial killer up in Alaska, the Eagle Talon Ripper, and nothing has been the same. It’s as if the stars and the sky don’t align correctly, as if the universe is off its axis by a degree or two. Since pulling that trigger I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with myself. I wander the earth. It would be romantic to say I’m righting wrongs or seeking my destiny. Feels more like I’m putting my shoe into one fresh pile after another.

A good friend who worked in the people-removing business for the Mafia once told me there aren’t coincidences or accidents, reality doesn’t work that way. Since the first inert, superdense particle detonated and spewed forth all that gas and dust and radiation, everything has been on an unerring collision vector with its ultimate mate, and every bit of the flotsam and jetsam is cascading toward the galactic Niagara Falls into oblivion.

The dude possessed a more inquisitive nature than one might expect from an enforcer by trade. He said, Jessica, you’re a dancing star being dragged toward the black hole at the ragged edges of all we know. Drawn with irresistible force, you’ll level anything in your path, or drag it to hell in your wake.

Load of horseshit, am I right? Sloppy, I-love-you-man drivel. Yet his words come back to me as I travel east, ever east. I’m starting to believe him. I’m a dancing star and my self-determination is a façade.

Cut to the drunken asshole in the bar rearing back to knock me into next Tuesday. Not so fast, Tex, said the universe.

A rugged, burly fellow in a safari shirt and work pants stepped in and introduced himself with a left hook to the sodbuster’s jaw. Put the cowboy to sleep with one blow. I hadn’t needed a white knight. I’d palmed a steak knife and knew exactly where to stick it if necessary. But, I must admit, the crunch of the cowpoke’s jawbone and the fast-spreading blood on the scuffed floorboards thrilled me a little. A lot.

Mr. White Knight rubbed his hand. All those nicks and notches on his knuckles, like rocks that had been smacked together a thousand times.

“I’m Beasley. What are you drinking?”

“Ah, the beginning of another beautiful friendship.”

Mist flooded across the marsh and erased the country road. Rounding a bend, we were transported from present-day Montana to Scottish moors circa 1840s, or a Universal Studios sound lot with Bela Lugosi poised to sweep aside his cape along with our feeble protestations.

“Can’t-find-your-own-ass-with-both-hands-and-a-flashlight weather,” I said to cut the tension.

Beasley stepped on the pedal. His face by dashboard light put me in mind of Race Bannon and Doc Savage. The unbuttoned safari shirt contributed nicely. Ten, maybe fifteen years my senior, but some juice left in him; I loved that too. A crucifix dangled from the rearview mirror, also sprigs of dried flowers. More dried flowers peeked from the ashtray. I wondered if these details meant anything; made a note.

We were rocking and rolling like a motherfucker now. That rickety farm truck’s tires cried mercy. But when the moon hove nine-tenths full and full of blood over the black rim of night and screamed white-hot silver through the boiling clouds, everything stood still.