She remembered the day she was born. The chemicals swirled in her, overjoyed, singing their Latinate names as she awakened. She was tiny, as small as an M&M, pastel peach and embossed with the face of a fairy. She was slightly telepathic, like all of her kind.
Tinkerwench’s life had one point. It was to be released from her pastel peach egg and merge with her liberator. When she was free, she would be powder pale, and dressed in a gown of pink crystals. She would wear earrings of yellow stalactites. She would swirl and dance, twanging her liberator’s brainwaves and mix mood-fluids like a DJ spun records at a rave, creating a seamless mélange of emotion and color. She could hardly wait. What Tinkerwench did after those moments of freedom didn’t really concern her. If pressed, she’d guess that she would be enhancing (and enchanting) her host Forever, or at least until the party ended. Right now, all was waiting. And competition. Tink was not the only one of her kind born that day. She laid in a plastic baggy, next her siblings, lizard-green Godzero, marigold Kitty and the Albino Twins. She perceived them next to her. They started chattering.
“I’ll be the first to be transformed,” said Godzero, breaking the silence, “because I’m the fiercest one of you all.”
When no one challenged him, he continued: “You two,” he meant the Albino Twins, “are unexceptional. No color, nothing to make you look any different from aspirin or anything else. And you two girls are too cutesy. I’m a monster, my poison is more potent.”
Tink could hardly stand such boasting. “Impotent, more like it. I’m a fairy, and my poison is tinged with magic.”
“Precisely my point. Only a girl would find you attractive.” Godzero humphed in triumph.
Tink countered: “Fool. You really have no idea, do you? Where we’re going, things like gender and sex have no meaning, whatsoever.”
Kitty spoke up, nervously adjusting the bow in-between her ears: “Can’t we all just get along, since it seems like we will be waiting together for a long time? I really do wish everyone the best.”
The Albino Twins seemed to talk, in unison, but no one understood what they said. Tink supposed that it was because they were both virgins, unembossed with a character, and subsequently, a character’s voice. The Albino’s language was undiluted chemical speak, with lots of long words, vaguely medical in sound, strung together like so many molecular components.
Kitty was too cutesy. But Tinkerwench decided to make a yeoman’s effort, and mend fences with the green lizard. “Each of us was born for a certain host. I trust that you’ll find yours, Godzero.”
Kitty’s ears wiggled in pleasure.
“Yes, and I wish the same for you. May she be made of sugar and spice, and everything nice,” growled the lizard sarcastically.
That was it. “And may you meet the brain-dead metal head you were created for!”
Kitty sighed dramatically.
“Shut up,” said Tink and Godzero simultaneously.
She saw that this was not going to be pleasant. She resigned herself to silence, thinking of the visions that she would give her host. Given that she had nothing to feed on, save the vague memories of her makers, this was surprisingly hard to do. She had a limited vocabulary in this regard. As a chemical substance, she was only the conduit for imagination; she really had none of her own. The semi-sentience that she and her siblings shared was, in this environment, quite useless. Tink did the only thing she knew how: she went dormant. This was not exactly like sleeping. She focused on her inanimacy; the unquiet rest of her volatile components being watched by her generic parts. Her tenure at the birthplace—a laboratory—would not be too long, she hoped.
The Albino Twins were the first to go. She ‘woke’ to hear their excited gibberish as a pair of tweezers lifted them from the clear womb of the plastic baggy. She didn’t know what they were saying, but she understood the moods and emotions perfectly. Tink perceived the Makers above her world, and watched as both twins were placed on two tongues, to be melted and absorbed into their bodies.
At once, she felt emotion flare in her. Jealousy. It was greener than Godzero, and as toxic as the poisons that swirled within her. Why did those bastards get to go first? They’re simpletons. She imagined (as far as she was able) their nude whiteness dissolving into powder, then into something smaller, until they were molecules. Breaking free of their egg-prisons, they would form into…what? For the Albino Twins were pure. They had not been tainted by a personality. They were also prototypes. The test runs of the batch. She would have to content herself with that.
Tink’s thoughts rode the dust particles in the air, which contained minuscule bits of her components. It sharpened her perceptions. She sensed Kitty and Godzero doing the same. The Makers put on a CD of floating, wordless music as they waited for the drugs to take effect.
By the third song, one of them said, “I think I feel something.” He had the tattoo of a dragon running down his leg.
The other said, “Not me, not yet.” He had the picture of a phallic-headed robot-child on his T-Shirt. The front of the shirt read ‘Tweaky’, and the back of the shirt said ‘Buck Rogers.’
Dragon-Leg said: “This music’s too-- It doesn’t mesh with-- Man, I’m beginning to get tweaked.” He lay down on a couch that resembled a giant rotted banana.
Tweaky walked over, changed the CD, putting on something less floaty with a deep vibrating bass. “How’s it feel, man?” he said when he finished.
Dragon-Leg didn’t respond at first. His eyes were open and slightly glassed over. He turned toward Tweaky. “Intense.” It was a whisper. It quivered the fairy-dust that the siblings rode.
Tweaky (who was substantially bigger than Dragon-Leg) sat down on the floor next to him. “It’s starting,” he said.
A few minutes of silence passed, as the Albino Twins played with their patterns, settling in their systems, adjusting things. Dragon-Leg’s hand fell on the floor, brushing Tweaky’s knee. Tweaky took the hand, squeezed it.
At that moment, the Twins’ orchestration began. Two ghost figures arose from the crumpled forms on the floor. One was a fierce dragon, liquid and glimmering in the air. (Tink heard Godzero gasp in what was probably admiration at this form). The other was a robot-child, with pinchers for hands and wide blinkless eyes of copper. They started speaking to each other. But the dragon’s language was all hisses and chemical formulae, and the robot-child’s words came in electronic chirps. When they realized this, both the bodies and the phantoms giggled simultaneously. The two figures began to dance to the music, sliding through the air. (Tweaky had grown a jetpack, and could fly as well as the dragon). Out of speakers, bass sounds burbled and electronic rhythm farted. A disembodied voice (processed through a vocoder) rippled the word Love through the air. The prone, empty bodies clutched at each other, sweating with intensity. They were not homosexual, Dragon-Leg and Tweaky, yet there was definitely something sexual about their joining. It was the Albino Twins. Symbionts. They joined with their hosts, and so to each other. It was beautiful. A thought, telepathically telegraphed to Tink, a fragment of a Bjork song: All is full of love.
This was what she had to look forward to. There would be no siblings, just her and her host. She could hardly wait!
Gradually, the music on the speaker wound down. The CD ended. Tweaky and Dragon-Leg slept on, oblivious as their doppelgangers swam through imaginary landscapes, both separately and jointly.
Hours, maybe days passed. The passage of time really had no meaning for Tink and her kind; not being alive, they had no need of such a concept. The place where they could access time and it’s meaning were lost themselves, awhirl in a world of color, love and sound. So Tink ascertained that time had passed by certain evidence. A light bulb burned out, a flare of white, gold and blue. Odors arose from the shells of the maker’s bodies. (Even the awareness of odor must herald something—she could only ‘smell’ telepathically). They were unpleasant and pungent. One or both of the makers had soiled themselves.
The Albino Twins lost their colors, their disguises, and eventually, their shapes. They spun around the air, fading and grasping for life. When one of the makers stirred awake, one of the twins (at this point a quivering white jelly more-or-less shaped like an orb) softly exploded in nothing. His brother (sister?) similarly dispersed. It was chilling. Like they had never existed.
Dragon-Leg croaked from the sofa, “Man, I’m thirsty.”
Physical contact was broken.
Tweaky nodded, blurrily as he rose from the floor. The two of them ambled over to the laboratory sink and poured themselves beakers of water.
“Dude, that was intense. I saw dragons and shit. How long do you think…?”
A pause as Tweaky glanced at his watch. “It’s now 7:00AM, according to this…I’d say you dropped at, like, 12 last night?”
“Almost seven hours!”
“What’s that smell…?”
Tink let their voices drift away. She was disturbed. In fact, she was more than disturbed. A small ember set her volatile ingredients boiling. Fury. She now realized the purpose of her existence. It was not noble at all! She, and her siblings were pleasure things, made to live and spawn in their hosts’ imagination, then die. They weren’t collaborators at all, helping the makers achieve a heightened consciousness. No. She and her siblings were toys, expensive party favors.
Tink was about to tell Kitty and Godzero about her discovery, but found that she could not communicate with the two of them. They were inert. A gentle thrumming at their cores was all she could sense. Kitty and Godzero were beyond reach.
She tried to wake them up, her rage floating on the telepathic dusts and powders.
Godzero was cowering: “Just leave me alone.” He retreated into his depths, no longer a fierce monster. He slowed himself down, becoming a product with the gimmick of a monster’s face.
“What’s the use, Tink?” said Kitty, “We are what we are. We live briefly in our host’s body, and then die. There is joy in that, there must be. Try not to think about it too much.” Kitty retreated to her inert state as well.
There was a kind of practical wisdom in what Kitty said, but Tink just couldn’t let go of her rage and frustration. She descended into herself, and withdrew her awareness of both her siblings and the makers. She became a ball of red energy, equal parts hurt and rage. The image of the Albino Twins disintegrating played itself over and over again. She coiled herself even smaller, a bruising red dot.
I am just a product. (But some products come with warnings). I am an illegal substance. (I exist outside the law). I am psychoactive. (Or just plain psycho?) I am candy-coated. (Hey kid, would you like some candy?) I have the face of a fairy princess, and I am pink. (I feel more like the Red Queen. “Off with their heads!”)
The red dot simmered, and flavored her chemical make-up. She was alchemical hatred.
(“What the use, Tink?”)
Time passed, hours or days. When perception returned to her, she was alone. Both Kitty and Godzero had been dropped, briefly mated with their hosts’ psyche, were dead or dying. She’d been vaguely aware of their leaving, had caught a whiff of fear. Godzero’d been scared speechless. Kitty had put on a brave front, and made a desperate attempt to reach her. “Goodbye, sister!”
She was alone in the world. She was in a plastic baggie, in one of the Maker’s pockets. She quested out on tendrils: it was Tweaky. He roamed through the outskirts of a giant party. She accessed that the crowd was all male. Testosterone rode the air, along with sweat, sex and the vibrations of monotonous music.
Tweaky worked the crowd, “Wanna party?” or “Wanna tweaked?” under his breath.
Tink did her part, feeling out the crowd for a suitable host. Most of them were already zonked out on something or other. In such a situation, she would be useless.
She was bought by a shirtless man reeking of Crystal Meth, and carried into room full of similarly sweating men. Lights skittered and winked in time with the music. She was pressed in the front pocket of the crystaled man. Tink lay waiting for her prey, like a spider.
His body vibrated along with the entire sea of mannequins. It was still early in the night. Happy remixes flew over the crowd, top 40 songs retrofitted with just enough of the familiar sound-effects to give the crowd a taste of what was to come. The doyennes of the dance-club scene, Madonna and Cher, appeared with new Turks and young upstarts.
The crystaled man danced with several men during this portion of the night, none of which were promising candidates. Tink bided her time. All of them were copies of her current carrier, with sleekly muscled bodies and single-tracked minds. They were beautiful gluttons, wanting to drain life of every last drop of pleasure.
Her crystaled benefactor slipped into the restroom with one of his partners, where they fondled each other in a toilet stall.
“Want some X? I got a tab.”
There was a horrifyingly suspenseful moment, in which she thought that the boy would say yes.
“Na,” he said, to her relief, “I’m already tweaked out…”
They continued to fondle and kiss each other in the shadowy stall.
When she and Crystal Man reentered the dance floor, she could sense that something had changed. For one thing, the music had changed. The fluffy top 40 music was now something darker, and more desperate-sounding. The room had darkened. It became a factory, seeping red lights, half-naked men toiling, and the music of industry clanging above. Her benefactor threw himself into the brutal music. He writhed and twisted, his muscled arms prohibiting true grace of movement.
This music was more propulsive. Tink sent out a questing tendril: it was a new DJ, called Lorelei. Her mixing skills were extraordinary. She drove the sea of shirtless men to the cliffs of speaker-stacks. They crashed over each other, foaming. The bass throbbed. The drums skittered and skipped. It was irresistible. At one point, DJ Lorelei stopped the music for barely 30 seconds, and started it up again, sending the circuit boys into a frenzy. At another time, there was about a minute or two of divas screaming over a bed of clattering rhythms. It was danceable terror.
Tink bounced in Crystal Man’s pockets; some of the sweat from his crotch oozed through. It was tainted with the methadone in his system. Tink began to think that maybe she wouldn’t be dropped tonight—her carrier was way too into the music and scene. He’d probably forgotten about her. She would have to wait some more. That was what she was doomed to do: wait, and then die…
Someone rubbed against Crystal Man, ground into his crotch. She could feel a knee crushing against her. Her carrier pushed the intruder off of him.
“Get the fuck away from me, dude!” He started to dance again. Tink felt a wave of desperation crash over her. The rebuffed man was still on the floor, licking his wounds. Behind his loneliness and hurt lay a large emptiness. It was hollow and hungry, waiting to be fed by something. DJ Lorelei’s music and the club of men had raised the intensity of his need. At once, Tink saw her canvas. Her need to work her magic in his echoey hollow soul was as strong as his desire and loneliness.
But how to get to him? She was trapped in a pocket. There was no way.
DJ Lorelei lulled the crowd with a trance piece. All is full of love, or bits of it, floated to the surface of the piece, like cream on the surface of milk. The rebuffed man stood up, moving away, looking for a chance to make Bjork’s lie a reality.
Tink called to him. Her voice dissolved into the lush mechanics of sound around her. Her voice was trapped, in motes from kieg lights. He only heard Lorelei’s mixes.
“Love,” sang Bjork.
Love, promised the crowd.
He turned back to Crystal Man, waiting to be fed.
Her carrier snarled at him, and handed him the plastic baggie that held her. (Anything to get that undesired guy away).
Her new benefactor—her would-be canvas—wasted no time at all. He went into the bathroom, clutching her in his sweaty palms. If love wouldn’t come from the vapid drones outside, it would most certainly come from her. He put Tink on his tongue. She began to dissolve. Her face melted and smeared. A palmful of water washed her down. She rode the waterfall down into biology. Acids hit her shell, and she emerged.
She had changed. Tink looked different from what she’d imagined her incorporeal form would have been. Her gown was still crystalline, but it was granular and jagged. The color was a pink deeper than fragility. She was magenta. Her earrings were the yellow of urine, and jaundice. No hair cascaded down her back; she was as bald as an egg. Her skin was colorless and anemic.
She felt herself drift away to various parts of her host’s body, bonding to and carried by the bloodstream to his brain.
Meanwhile, the placebo effect began. Duncan (as Tink learned his name) started dancing to Lorelei’s now relentless soundtracks. High from the anticipation of getting high, Duncan didn’t care whether or not he was dancing with someone. Soon, he’d be tweaking, and it wouldn’t matter at all. He would feel sexy. Soon, all would be lights, music and guys. It would smear all together into a marvelous paste. The paste would help seal off the things he didn’t want to see or feel. Instead, Duncan saw beautiful men, moving as stiffly as robots, staring at each other. He could imagine that they would be staring at him. He could pretend to be one of them. The drugs would smooth away any and all imperfections. Most of the men had very little percentage of body-fat, with six-pack abdominals and close-cropped hair. Duncan was merely thin, his wooly hair straightened by hot comb and chemicals. At least he had the same tattoo that many of his circuit-brothers sported, a narrow band of Celtic design. It didn’t really matter that it was black ink against brown skin, not the more fashionable verdigris color. But you did what you could.
Tink observed this dispassionately, as her power grew. She knew what hid behind the wall of emptiness, curled into a tight little ball. She was determined to smash that wall, to uncurl that tiny ball.
She came to her full power during the start of one of DJ Lorelei’s newest mixes. “I call it the ‘Biological Error Shakedown,’” the DJ announced. Dark chords slammed from the speaker stacks as the floor lights dimmed to a luminescent purple. In between drums that sounded like clanging pipes and crashing gongs, a nightmare voice shrilled, “You are a biological error.” The crowd went wild, with laughter and recognition. “Deviant,” screeched the voice. A smattering of ripping synth-cords burbled. The same nasal-like harpy intoned, “predatory… pedophile… NAMBLA…” in a mantra that went from high chipmunk speed to a low bestial growl. Tink took this a cue to begin her magic.
She began with beauty. In Duncan’s eyes, the purple and white lights turned into giant flowers on wire stems, iris and lily. The blossoms moved in time with the thumping music. The tribe of glistening men was soaked in their dew. Tink populated his sight with neon butterflies of varying sizes.
Duncan smiled, awed with the beauty. His heart was filled to bursting with euphoria. A new song phoenixed from the ashes of the old one. It was a haunting mixture of minimalist tones, soft jungle rhythms and dislocated female voices. It was a healing trance piece, nymphs and tranquility to the previous song’s harpy and horror. It seemed to last forever. Tink smiled and emerged from Duncan. She gave him angels that hid in the architecture, creatures with beautifully cruel faces, marble bodies and exaggerated genitalia. Their wings were thick and swan white. As she soared above the crowd, Tink noticed others like her, tethered umbilically to their hosts like phantom balloons. Was that Kitty over there in the corner? Did she catch a glimpse of Godzero, as he was fading? It didn’t matter. She was lost in Duncan’s joy. She was free! Her entire being pulsed with Duncan’s intense happiness—she didn’t know where he ended and she began. She whirled through the air, altering vistas to suit the music. Temples rose and fell; oceans lapped the coastlines of emerald and ruby jungles. Both she and Duncan were Queen of the circuit.
A need to touch and be touched gnawed in the pit of their stomach. Clutch—Duncan and Tink reached out for male flesh, to encircle and be encircled. At that moment, the music changed from oceanic trance to tribal dance. This one was ferocious, with stabbing, angry thumps and thwacks. Tink refashioned the angels into demons, with bat wings and misshapen faces. The light changed from soft blue to blood red, and the flowers became carnivorous.
Tink remembered her mission. She would die soon enough.
Duncan had stopped dancing, and was resting on a bench away from the crowd. His eyelids fluttered. The swoop and swirl had become too much for him. Flashing lights, demon-angels, and the ground was gonna swallow him whole. Closing his eyes didn’t really help. The angels hovered there, mocking. A splash woke him up. Some clumsy queen had sloshed beer on him. Those pants were $100 at least, worth hours of stocking frou-frou perfumes. But look at him—he doesn’t care. He’s perfect; he’s got a designer body, designer drugs, designer tattoo… The latticework snake snapped at him: “You don’t belong here…”
Duncan didn’t recall getting up from his seat, but everything became brilliantly real when his fist connected with the face of the trademark-beautiful boi. He wouldn’t look so young when that pretty jaw of his bruised. And the bruise would be purple red, the color of the lights overhead. Someone pulled him away from the boi. Duncan was being touched—it had a galvanic effect on him. He didn’t want to be touched. It was wrong, sickeningly wrong. He swung at the offender, missed.
“What’s wrong with him--?”
“He’s trippin’”
“Must be some bad stuff…”
Duncan broke away from the group gathering around him, and dove into the crowd. He ran into a ghoulish beauty covered in glitter. He twisted away, smashing into a man made up like a demon, with red skin and horns attached to his forehead. Above, the demons swirled. This was hell. The DJ spun spells in her illuminated box, in a fiery-red spotlight. It was like the volcano that giant demon emerged from in that Disney movie. Wings unfurled, as Duncan’s skin slithered. Something was trying to get outside of his body. He saw its face.
It was a bald woman, in a dress of scarlet sequins. Her skin was white, and her eyes purple-red. The color of a bruise. She wore yellow daggers for earrings.
Tink hovered before Duncan, smiling. She handed him one of her earrings. When he took it, it became a beer bottle, broken, dribbling yellow.
Fill your emptiness, she commanded.
She would die soon, she knew. She might have another hour, maybe the rest of the night. She would make it last an eternity, for her host. The crowd would become her plaything, her temporary fix.
All is full of love, Tinkerwench whispered. Then she laughed.