Jordan Krall - Blow Up the Outside World

( End of Transmission)

Potter closes his eyes, the darkness of his eyelids transforming into a point-of-view showing him constructing a bomb out of spare android parts. He had the knowledge of having savagely fucked the machine. He had dismembered it immediately afterwards in order to build the mechanism that would hopefully tear down the Valdrott mothership. Or at least he hoped it was the mothership. If it wasn’t, he knew there were scores of other humans who were going through the same torturous experiences.

He opened his eyes and noticed he was still staring at the sacs hanging on the glass like fungi. The sight startled him and he closed his eyes again, seeing the construction of the bomb as almost complete. He opened his eyes and saw the sacs which seemed bigger this time. Potter closed his eyes and saw the end result of his bomb-making: a mess of electrical wiring, metal, multi-colored Semtex-glass, bits of biomechanical jetsam all fused together with translucent android-secretion.

The bomb looked complete but Potter couldn’t be sure. He looked up from the bomb and expected to see the milky sacs on the glass wall of his cage. They weren’t there.

He opened his eyes and the bomb disappeared. In front of him were the sacs, pulsing like furious blue hearts. What was going on?

Closing his eyes again, seeing the bomb.

Opening his eyes, seeing the sacs.

Both views were vivid and as real as anything else Potter had every experienced. When his eyes were closed, he felt the bomb. His fingers were able to caress the smooth Semtex-glass and twirl the wiring with his index finger. When his eyes were opened, his fingers touched nothing, the smooth sensation of the bomb absent until Potter closed his eyes again.

What was going on?

He opened his eyes, stared at the sacs. My name is Potter.

He closed his eyes, inspected the bomb. My name is Oswald.

And keeping his eyes closed, Oswald/Potter looked around his cage for the perfect spot to place the bomb. He settled on the corner closest to the Valdrott observation deck.

Don’t open your eyes, he told himself. Keep them shut and set the bomb.

(Oswald’s Transmission)

Whenever I close my eyes I see a grotesque cluster of sacs filled with blue milk. My stomach has also turned into one of these sacs but only when my eyes are closed. I feel like I’m in two places at once. I wonder if the Valdrott have anything to do with this. Now I remember something else, I remember that

(Transmission Error)

Oswald thought of the Lifeless One who was now just a wreckage of spare parts, many of which he had used in the construction of the bomb. He closed his eyes, shuddered at the sight of his ugly sac-stomach. Opening his eyes, he looked at his handiwork. He pushed any thoughts of his women to the back of his mind and ignited the fuse of the central bomb.

Regret was instantaneous.

Potter looked past the blue sacs, past the glass of his prison, past the Valdrott observers. He was able to see out a window and into the dark void of space and watched as a Valdrott ship exploded.

Don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes, he told himself.

He closed his eyes anyway. The temptation had been too strong.

On the dark screen of his eyelids, he watched shards of broken metal, glass, Valdrott flesh and wiring envelope him in a blazing orgy of fiery destruction. He could feel his flesh being ripped from bone.

He opened his eyes and drooped to his knees on the cold floor, crying. In a torrent of tears and blurred vision his eyes shut again. Potter saw other cages. Things he didn’t want to see… feelings he didn’t want to experience.

A young woman being raped repeatedly by a gang of hideously deformed semi-human beasts while her lover was forced to watch, held in place by chains of dripping energy.

They would probably dissect his brain later… to see if anything was different.

Potter could feel the pain of this poor man’s every emotion. He saw another cage, fit with reflective mirrors and housing a creature that must have at one time been a man, deformities spouting from every miserable inch of its skin, covered in blue, pulsating sores. It was begging for death in vain.

He could feel its pain as well. He begged with the creature.

Potter finally forced open his eyes, threw back his head and screamed with such force he thought his lungs were oozing out of his throat.

His bloated stomach began to split open, blooming slowly and painfully into a fleshy flower oozing a blue milky secretion. The sacs around him began to bloom too… but their secretion was more akin to the blue of the diseased New York skyline (oh, how he missed the earth).

When the two milky chemicals finally made contact on the cage’s metal floor they began to give off an odd red glow… and a strange odor… something familiar and welcoming… like female musk.

The Valdrott, his silent watchers, were gathered all around his prison.

And then everything exploded… again.

So I’m sitting there, taking in a movie at the Times Square Theater, and trying to mind my own business when the guy two seats to my right starts jacking off.

Once I saw that, I knew I should’ve gone to the Lyric and watched that Andy Milligan double feature. Sure, I had seen The Ghastly Ones three times and The Body Beneath twice but it still would be better than sitting there with the wet sounds of masturbation in my ear. And why the hell was the guy jacking off in the first place? We were watching Mondo Magic and it was far from arousing. Well, at least for me. Who knows what people found sexy nowadays?

I had to piss, too, which made me want to just get up and leave the theater altogether. To reach the less than adequate facilities in the Times Square Theater, you had to go through a dank labyrinth of trash and darkness full of potential danger. That danger could be junkie-thieves or angry transsexual hookers who won’t take no for an answer. They’d want your wallet or your ass. Or both. Even if you made it to the bathroom, you still have to worry about walking into a drug deal or blow-job. Trust me, those things did happen.

The urge to piss wasn’t overriding my desire for safety. I’ve heard stories about straight guys like myself being orally and anally raped by angry crack addicts or bi-curious pimps. Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against fags – but I have no desire to experience any penis other than my own. And I only call them fags because all the ones I’ve ever known always referred to themselves as such so I don’t feel like I’m overstepping any bounds of decency at all. In fact, one guy I used to work with actually introduced himself as Frank the Fag. I’m not kidding. That’s what he liked to be called.

So anyway, there I was watching the movie and holding in my piss, trying not to hear the guy next to me going to town with his palm.

Then from behind me a voice said, “Hey, you got peanuts?”

I ignored it. I didn’t think he was talking to me. People usually kept to themselves in a place like this.

But then there it was again:

“Hey, you with the beard. You got any peanuts or what?”

I looked over at the masturbator to make sure it wasn’t him speaking to me. Maybe the pervert knew how to throw his voice. Who knows what he was capable of, know what I’m saying? But it wasn’t him, thank God. He seemed oblivious to anything else but his cock and the action on screen. I turned around and saw a guy two rows behind me. He was looking me in the eyes, nodding.

I said, “What?”