Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

“Five, four, three, two — “ the cameraman counted down with his fingers.

The ColorMaster looked at the video camera and smiled. How odd, he thought. How odd. He had been shown a copy of Directive Thirty-Nine. Read its contents with interest, in fact.

He looked at the camera, his face a pale white, only the slightest tinges of blue going unnoticed in the skin of his scalp and the space behind his ears.

Directive Thirty-Nine. Hmmmm…..

“Won’t you be my friend?” he asked the video camera. The bright red light shined at him, and he thought only for a moment, It’s staying the same color .

But the thought disappeared quickly, finally, like a dream forgotten upon waking. He told the video camera who the guests were to be for that hour. Asked the unseen audience to stay tuned throughout the entire hour, and to — to—

“Please ignore the misty smoke seeping through the vents,” he said, reading off the video screen to his left, in a calm, reassuring voice. “They are just happy gasses. A special treat from me, the ColorMaster. Enjoy. Breathe deeply. If you feel like sleeping, do not resist. Breathe deeply and enjoy.”

It was a live broadcast, the first live broadcast ever for the ColorMaster’s show. The list of guests was shorter than usual, only enough material to fill about twenty minutes, and then they would be off the air. Twenty minutes was all the time they needed for the gasses to take effect.

Nick Johnson had already forgotten his name as he copulated with Mrs. Blue. Had forgotten his name even before setting foot on the forty-first floor of building #812. The smoke came in through the vents in different colors.

How nice. Greens and golds and pinks and yellows and even his own color, blueberry blue, and my — wasn’t it just the nicest smell? Wasn’t it so awfully nice to breath in? He began to feel tired as his latest orgasm dissipated from his body. His eyes began to shut, and he noticed Mrs. Blue and Mr. Beige and Mr. Chartreuse already snoring. He only noticed their breath stopping as his eyelids fell shut irretrievably. He noticed their breathing stopped, but didn’t mind, the stopping of their breathing no more worrisome than premature ejaculation.

“Five, four, three, two…” The cameraman counted down to the end of the show, the last show for a long while, not caring if his voice was heard over the live broadcast.

The ColorMaster — newly appointed, but still the same — squinted at the video camera, at the bright red light that winked unceasingly at him.

“Won’t you be my friend?” he asked. The red light winked for the last time and turned the color of soot. The television crew began turning off the lights. The camera was rolled away and the ColorMaster was soon left in darkness.

Yet still — he repeated — time after time, as if the words had their own taste, their own color — “Won’t you be my friend? Won’t you be my friend?”

“Here ya go. Take it.” The stare-down lasted five seconds, but Harvey finally gave in and freed the hot dog from the bleached hands of the street vendor. Harvey paid the guy, thanking him with a sneer, and headed toward The Park.

Passing dirty white buildings and grimy apartment complexes, Harvey soon spotted the entrance to The Park. It was a wrought iron gateway that simply read PARK in cold block letters on top. The gate extended around the entire park in the shape of a square. Harvey walked through the entrance and onto The Park’s dull concrete ground.

“I smell ducks,” Harvey said, and grimaced. He bit off half of his gray hot dog and swallowed. He felt it swim down his esophagus.

The Park was a city-mandated nirvana of silicone and cement, containing iron trees scattered in computer designed patterns, a central lake, and numerous benches. Most of the benches were coated in slime formed by decades of gum, spit and crushed cockroaches. Harvey spotted a fairly new one with about a two-foot space free of muck. He sat down, holding the remaining half of his hot dog over his head.

“Quack!” Harvey yelled. He waited and listened. “Quack!” He watched the ground intently. A cockroach skittered out from behind an iron tree. Cockroaches were the only wildlife in this area, apart from a few species of mutated flies.

Harvey followed the cockroach closely with his eyes. “Quack!” he yelled again, and flung the remainder of his hot dog at the roach. He missed, with the bun flying to one side of the bug, and the meat flying to the other side. The cockroach waddled toward the hot dog as if running to the aid of a fallen comrade. It grabbed the meat and pulled it behind the tree.

“Damn ducks,” Harvey said, getting up. He peered around the iron tree and spotted the cockroach. He stomped on it three times before it stopped moving. “Goddamn ducks getting bigger every year.”

The Park was Harvey’s favorite getaway, his favorite retreat. It was a rationalized Eden of geometric shapes juxtaposed around manufactured liquid waste. The liquid waste constituted the contents of the cement-encased lake. Harvey’s attention slowly shifted toward it.

The lake was a perfect oval in the exact center of The Park, one hundred meters long and fifty meters wide, with an indiscernible depth. The surface of the lake was what had lured Harvey Waller to this spot years ago. It was covered with swirling rainbows of spilled oil, dancing and turning the fluorescent light of morning into a palette of shifting color. Harvey could watch for hours if he’d had the time — red bleeding into orange bleeding into yellow bleeding into green. There was nothing more beautiful, nothing more sensuous on earth, than the surface of that lake.

Except, of course, for Harvey’s color book.

He looked nervously about for signs of people. Normally, he wouldn’t dare look at his color book — not here, not at this time of day. But the ethereal display on the lake’s surface was of exceptional beauty today, and instead of satisfying Harvey, t made him want more.

He sat down on the bench, lifting his briefcase to his lap. He looked around again, listening for signs of any movement. He opened the briefcase slowly, lifting up the papers inside. Underneath was a false bottom, one he’d constructed himself, specially designed for the color book. He unlatched the false bottom and reached inside, grasping the book’s binding. He pulled it out.

Lifting open the cover was like glimpsing into the blinding glory of Heaven and Hell combined. Each of the first three pages of the book was a block of primary color — red, yellow and blue.

This was foreplay.

The rest of the pages consisted of various mixtures, various shades of these colors. Blue-green. Dark purple. Light pink. Orange. Lemon yellow. Fluorescents. Pastels. Colors that reached out and touched Harvey’s soul, contrasting greatly with the real world, whose primary colors were black and white, mingling with various shades of gray.

Harvey’s favorite page of the color book was filled with a deep red-orange. It flared out at him, lapping at his heart, giving substance to feelings that often flashed through his mind. It made that confusing flash of heat in Harvey’s brain almost tangible . Harvey ran his fingers over the page, caressing the red-orange color, wishing it would leap out at him, engulf him and form a cohesive bond with his entire being. He hoped it would fill the emptiness he felt.

There was a sharp tap on Harvey’s shoulder. His body went rigid as he slammed the book shut.

“Harvey Waller!” the voice over his shoulder boomed. “It’s decision time.”

Harvey turned and looked into the smoke-filled eyes of the man behind him. Harvey’s heart turned to cold metal, while the man’s face remained granite, carved with saw-toothed wire, jagged and rough.