Christopher WunderLee - The Loony - a novella of epic proportions

Out-of-room voice 1: Up… up… and away…

“Check, Houston, Folly-33 ready,” he’s given himself a code-name.

Out-of-room voice 6: Commencing countdown…

“Check,” Albert replies, squirming a little from the cold porcelain against his bare bottom. He’s in, secure in two-hundred yards of unscented, quilted, highly absorbent sanitation and a good knuckly grip on the seat.

Out-of-room voice 82: T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…

Digital pyramids in red neon tick-tock, he has begun his movement, pressure building in his sinuses, waiting, praying, the loud, fluttering rip of the release, a puckered plop, icicle drops rebounding against his spread cheeks. “You promised…”

…four, three, two…

A gray-scale, televised image bobbles on the screen, seemingly random, against the cameraman’s manual turbulence, big thoughts of small boys sitting Indian style inches away with worship gazes and lone girls on couch cushions with arms pressed tightly against nervous chests and whole families arched around family room flickers of granulated pixels and even, an older man, perhaps in a bar in Portsmouth, with a amber lager hoisted halfway to parched lips, frozen in an almost sacramental draw, prideful, scared, transfixed, seeing that knight of his mirror rising, paternally warmed, like that little league home room with three and two and two men on and one last toss…

Out-of-room voice 2: Out of the park…

He’s weeping, genuflecting against bare thighs, introspective, for those last few moments, occupied by the brand name… Was that even American?

…one…

Lift-off… we have lift-off… she’s all yours…

He pulls the lever, the flushing noise, the vessel moves, slightly at first, struggling, loudly, screaming, the hull shakes violently, Albert can barely stay on the toilet, he has to grab hold of the sink and the wall, he closes his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks, wriggling from the sheer velocity, ejaculating, yes, he can feel it moving, lifting, like an angel carrying him to god’s bedchamber, a cocktail placed before him, and nice salutations with the almighty,

“Hello my ideal maker… you’re not blind.”

Voice: Folly has cleared the tower…

The tower of Babel, the leaning tower of Pisa, the tower of Rapunzel’s hair, he is Apollo with Hermes’ wings, the chariot of the sky, They are watching, supplicating themselves to his image, he opens his eyes, she is watching, his lips forced against his teeth, cutting, the first drops of blood…

…she’s all yours Houston…

The halo of refracted light, downtown paradise, passing right on through like a fiery parade, all the orders rimming the sides, waiting for the chance for salt-water candy and clutching lost balloons, perhaps even Ed would ride by, still clinging to his ginormous cartoon dog, and wave knowingly…

“Oh, I’ve been…”

Gravity has gone in the mud… …you’ve really made the grade… He takes the off-ramp, into the darkness… “God is some kind of slum-lord.” The tail rocket drops in wormy segments, hollow, tumbling towards splashdown. He sees it, a skipping stone, dangling as if on puppet strings, full, contouring into a welcome face, his provolone complexion and bright thievery framed within a hexagon portal.

…floating in a most peculiar way…

The vessel lurches, he’s nearly on the linoleum, floating feathers, shards of tissue, she’s motioning towards him, the panel goes red, the sounds of her frying pan, fatty bacon in nude strips, the ratty bathrobe and heelless slippers, he’s got his fire engine fighting a major blaze over by the fridge, there’s that song she hums, all the time… One alarm, followed by another, and another…

…far above the world…

She’s always needed more than one, otherwise, she’d be late. He’s waiting for her to lean over him and make it stop. The two of them, sharing one mattress, except on those few nights, those nights when he would be there… Her brackish shivers wet the corners, twice his size, her warmth bending over his feet and shoulders…

Electric currents geyser off the buttons, the heat enters his knees, buried under the panel, the linoleum tile splits below soft clenched toes, the voice… the voices, crackling over radio waves, blend into one, the ivory sea fills the window, the steel knocks, collides, the seat snaps, the screen erupts, the dirty image replaced by throaty crystals, he’d woke after the anthem, and turned it off… no… this is not true, this is not yesterday, but a collapse, he’s running through the house as the doors slam behind, towards the center, towards her room, he’s never heard any of those names, never been to any of those places, those are secrets, his secrets, empty days of checkered gowns laying over naked knees, the squeak of soft-soled shoes with arch support, the dribble of pills in paper cups, the sheets of lapis lazuli out of the common window, car lights driving across the sky… He’s going down into it, a great staircase vines down into the pit, the visor mirrors the fire, the flue of the first breach slurps the flames out in genetic spirals, the helix of the burn, the pressure compacts, god’s clap, crumpling metal towards his center… the coal of the room, she’s standing just behind, her talon fingers creasing his shoulder, that soft guidance, towards the door… When her eyes tumbled down, that rusty guilt bleeding onto her handkerchief, the palm of the nurse hoisted over his head, his fumbling feet still in pj slippers, and clutching the moldy bear… When her eyes tumbled down, jade droplets on his crayola pond, muffled breath, stale prayers and her bowed head, a lectern of her hands covering her mouth and nose, he’s turning, following the sanitized lead and anesthetic stench, as the doors swing for one last fragment, she’s mangled on the waiting bench…

…and the stars look very different today…

The walls cave, the rush of the artificial breeze collides with his ribcage, he’s broke loose, feels the stress of the entire vessel pressing down, around… No… this is not a moment, not how it will be, how it was, there never was a day like that, she never… she never… tumbled… down… there were never streetlights and belt buckles and the little store on the corner and the familiar out the back window, receding, spring hillocks and snotty clouds, the missing curves and pale rocks, the empty seashore, the brown hills, the newly budding apple blossoms, the gate, the single asphalt strip towards the rambler buildings, the tires grinding just outside double doors and the stark gowns waiting with blurred faces, the back door never opened… No…

…I love her very much she knows…

He reaches out, like she did… playing like the light of the womb, its all collapsing, the window folds, the last capsules of light flicker, one crater, eyes cast, the devouring pressure, he’s running to the center, the tumbling is too fast, he’s closing the doors behind, the last few never slam, the crunching of it all like big wolf fangs, he’s almost there… He’s almost to her… the avalanche contacts…

“…and there’s nothing I can do…”

God speed Doctor Lochner.

* * *

The colonel picks up the telephone and dials, waiting patiently for an answer. “We've finalized the last one,” he says immediately and pauses, listening. “The mission is secure… yes, sir… no, severe psychosis… he's not retrievable… yes, sir… the Harris protocol… the last one… no, he's been ejected… comatose… no known medication… he's over the edge… its protected… thank you… yes… of course… Apollo is secure… I look forward to it… thank you… yes, sir… no records, no… he'll be confined… they know… we've established that… no, they've accepted it… twenty-two years… yes… yes… pseudologue… its complete… it will be… thank you.”