A Woman Sphinx

Yeah, had a Christmas and a holiday and all that. Not a New year, though, for the second time in a row. The holidays involved lots of pink Germans and is NSFW. I'll tell you after I finish this tome. It's nearly finished, by the way.

you
like a mountain squirrel
old enchanter
sounding large
& like a mountain squirrel
old enchanter
there in the flower world
the dawn
there in its light
that big place over there
that mountain canyon
sounding large
& like a mountain squirrel
old enchanter
sounding large

�Sir, are you ready to fulfil your duties as beautiful assistant as well as defying death for a couple of minutes?� Asked Adelaide.

�Alright, fantastic. Let�s give him a warm welcome,� she said, gesturing towards him with a Sale of the Century model flourish. Temptation model flourish, for the younger crowd reading today. You know, the quiz show, where you start with twenty bucks.

The audience did hushed claps. They weren�t unenthusiastic; just reverent. Plus there weren�t heaps of people there to fill out the sound.

�Alright, now, sir, please step aside for a moment while I bring out the Magic Stand-Uppable Casket,� said Adelaide.

Bryn moved himself upstage left, or whatever the correct thespian�s term was for where he positioned himself, and Adelaide wheeled to the fore what was pretty much as she had described. It was a magic, stand-uppable casket. You could tell it was a magic one because it had stars and a crescent moon painted on it.

That�s also how I can tell who are wizards and who aren�t. Wizards have stars and a moon on their pointy hats. Non-wizards don�t. Painted on stars and moons are very magical.

Anyway, there were faint shades of Inquisition torture chambers to this stand-uppable casket. Iron maidens and all that.

�Alright, without knowing, you have agreed to partake in the Disappearing Man or Woman Trick,� said Adelaide in her magic show voice. �Not all of you will necessarily disappear at once. It may be a long, and strange experience for you. But, no matter how strange it is to you, it will be stranger still to those of us left behind.�

�And now, if you would like to enter the Magic Stand-Uppable Casket, and face the audience, we can get this next trick moving along.�

She opened the casket up, and it creaked like a trapdoor sound created especially by a foley artist. It was a really appropriate creak.

Predictably, it was dark, dark, dark in there. It could have been a secret passage stretching out until the beginning of time. That�s how dark this thing was, even when it was still open. Bryn had heard that these conjuring caskets did have a special compartment behind. But, since everybody could see him go in right now, he didn�t investigate. Suddenly, he felt the pressure to perform when he didn�t even know what he needed to do.

�Alright now � just step a little further back for me, please, and we�ll shut the front again. Then, I�ll say the special incantation, and the magic will begin.�

Bryn started to feel claustrophobic. His tummy rumbled again. It was giving him a message. Bryn said, �No.�

Bryn was the one who went on to reason with himself. �No, oh, wait a sec � I meant to say that everything�s fine and we�re cool, and, um, let�s do this trick. Sorry.�

His gut was saying go for it, but his brain was panicking. It would turn out that his brain was right. As soon as that front shut, things were going to get mighty weird.

But, he looked at Adelaide, and she was standing there with a shocked face, like nobody had ever said no, and this magic trick biz was the most normal thing in the world, so he said once again, �Sorry about that. I meant to say I was ready. I never meant to say no.�

�Alright. I am now closing up the front. Sir, you may feel a little cold in there. Don�t let it bother you. It is just your journey to another infinitely mysterious dimension.�

She creaked the door shut. Just before it closed completely, her face appeared in the crack. She whispered, �Count to twenty and then take a step back. I�ll catch you.�

The door was shut. Bryn could hear what sounded like a chain being put around it and padlocked for increased dramatic effect. Then a mumble, presumably the special incantation.

It was so, so dark in here. Not like anything he�d ever experienced. Suddenly, all his other senses were incredibly heightened. His nose was just a teeny tiny bit itchy, which in this case was magnified to itching powder levels. He raised his hand awkwardly in the cramped coffin in order to scratch his nose, and couldn�t find his face.

So, what was this stepping back thing he had to do? Why did he have to step back? Was that the bit where he had to temporarily be out of the casket so that there was nothing in there and the audience would all say, �woooh,� and then he�d have to step back in again? He never got any instructions on when, or if he was meant to go in again. Shit. Oh, and he had completely forgotten to count to twenty. Double shit. He was too busy having his non-visual senses heightened.

�One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty,� he scrambled in one breath, and started to step back, as the casket was being slowly spun around, presumably so as to demonstrate that there was a proper back on it.

Shit. Now he�d gotten to twenty, was he supposed to step back now, or wait until it stopped again? Or had he already fucked up and he�d supposed to clear out of the joint ages ago when he was worrying and attempting to scratch his nose? Triple shit, this was high pressure, man.

The dark, dark casket, now with rattling chains on it, came to a stop. Bryn thought he�d better make that backwards step. It was a now or never kind of a deal.

He started to take that step back he may have supposed to have taken already, but he didn�t want to do any more. This was because he got an owies on his back.

This was more like an iron maiden than he�d thought. Except it seemed to be a voluntary iron maiden in a way. Usually you don�t get a choice as to whether you want to get spiked or not in one of these things. Usually, it just happens.

He stepped forward again and just managed to swivel his head around. As predicted, he could see nothing, but he could feel malevolence in front of his face.

He sure as hell wasn�t going to move again until he knew more about the situation. How often did magician�s assistants picked randomly from the audience by increasing and diminishing soccer balls get murdered in magical stand-uppable caskets on stage with several witnesses per year?

Bryn could no longer hear a sound from outside. It was freaky. It was as if the whole world was ripped away, and he was stuck in here, helpless, with no point getting out if the outside was just a void too.

Something moved behind him. He could feel the spines he had just about stepped back into glide along his back like they were trying to pat him without hurting him.

He suddenly felt that grip of fear where you�re stuck to the spot, only he couldn�t tell because he was stuck there anyway.

Then, it got worse. The spines kept moving around like the spiky back of the casket was living, and then he felt a flutter on his face. It felt like crinkly tissues, wanting to get into his eyes and his nose.

He thought he was going to be sick. He started to choke. The coffin seemed to be growing on the inside so that soon there�d be no room left.

As he felt the weird crinkly things tickle the underside of his nose, he started to yell, but it sounded really muffly in this changeling of a box. He tried to pound on the lid, but all he got was fistfuls of wet stuff and more spikes so that his hands were killing him. He could feel the whole thing moving, and hurting him, and tickling him, and he was what can only be described as motherfuckingly shit-scared.

And that, my friends, is pretty scared. I�ve never been that scared before. Not many people have. It is something reserved only for the very few who have seen things coming that they could not avoid, and they could not explain.

And yet, thankfully, that was the moment that the chains were removed from the outside of the casket. Bryn could actually hear that, off in the distance. The strange crap in the casket did not retreat.

There wasn�t exactly sunlight out there, but it was what Bryn expected more. The dingy pub.

Bryn fell out onto the stage. �AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH!� he said quite loudly from the side of his face that wasn�t pressed up against the floor.

You could tell that the audience was still there because they all collectively took a breath in.

�Uh, well, that�s magic for you,� said Adelaide nervously. �Sometimes, you think that the magic casket is going to send someone to a different place, but sometimes, the other dimension does not think it�s the right time. Clearly, in this case, it checked him out, and then decided no.�

Bryn started to sob extremely upstage. His badly grazed knuckles were in front of him, hanging down the front of the stage. Everyone could see that he�d struggled to get out like someone who had just woken up in a grave.

And then, things got ever so slightly more weird, if that was possible. A little, feeble, translucent thing fluttered down from the lighting rig above the stage. It was kind of shaped and sized like the Sorry Adelaide had given to him and he had lost ad found again in the reserve where he�d lost so much time.

They were flower petals. Not dried exactly, not like pot pourri rose petals or anything. Nope, they were more like petals from he flowers of succulents, and they were quite strongly coloured. It was hard to tell in this light, but they had a strong visual presence about them.

And then, actual full flowers. Just a couple, and then more and more, and then a few leaves mixed in, and then bigger ones, and a couple of delicate twigs, until it was raining flora onto the stage; onto Bryn�s head, festooning the dark room, and crowning Adelaide�s head. The audience was most likely getting pummelled by this plant-based deluge, but it was impossible to tell from the stage.

It began to rain more heavily. The flowers were now flinging themselves down onto the stage so that a ground zero of broken petals would respond by splashing back up again. It was happening a hundred-fold, all over the stage.

Bryn was going to drown if he stayed like this; a guy buried in a freak storm of rogue deconstructed exotic bouquets. The ridiculous variety of fragrances, both the extreme smells of perfume and the lure of a meat-eating pitcher with a zillion variations in between, was nauseating.

�Help me, help me, help me!� screamed Bryn through the chaos of flowers, spitting out bits of decomposing twig and petal as he tried to scramble to his knees to at least keep his head above the rising tide.

And then he fell forward, and fell off the stage. It wasn�t far to the ground, but the wind got knocked out of him and he couldn�t see straight. It was a bit disappointing that nobody had bothered to try and catch him, since he�d wavered a little bit before he�d finally toppled over, but then again, maybe it was just the fault of all the flowers everywhere. No visibility.

What happened next is all a bit sketchy. I wasn�t paying any attention at the time. I was looking through a House & Garden magazine from 2009 and was paying particular attention to a rad courtyard in Brisbane somewhere that looked like it had storey upon storey of out-of-control tropical plants in it. So, sorry. I couldn�t tell what was going on through the cascade of quiet flowers anyway, except that there was a whole lot of general confusion as to what was happening, and that Adelaide was off in a little-explored corner of the stage, standing there, looking nonplussed, or perhaps, all-knowing (it was hard to tell in this light, and in this level of flora), and practicing deep breathing exercises.

For once, Bryn did not lose consciousness. He was awake the whole time. He waited for someone to pick him up off the floor. He waited a long time as he was being covered in a blanket of easing flowers.

Finally, a hand reached down and grabbed his arm and pulled him up, gently. It was icy cold.

to sleep in
these flowers
to crawl there
I who am flower-world creeper
who sleep there
who crawl in these flowers
out there
in the tree world
climbing this branch
I crawl up it
to sleep in
these flowers
I who am flower-world creeper
who sleep there

There should have been a whole bunch of people in the beer garden after the magic show, eager to tell Adelaide what a great job she�d done, and how did she do that trick he�d never physically gotten around to doing that involved a number of eggs of varying sizes, and the one she�d also not gotten to do that made ordinary things that the audience gave to her spin around in the air marvellously and simultaneously, and where on earth did she find the support act because they had a lively, shambolic folk-art kind of a pizzazz about them like the Shaggs, but they didn�t do that because she hadn�t done that, and they�d all gone home, even most of the Majesty of Footscray. Jonathan hadn�t even been brave enough to pick up his drum stool off the side of the stage, or maybe he had just forgotten. He had a rare talent for blocking the fact that he owned and often needed a drum stool out of his mind.

The front bar had caught the vibe of what happened, and just about all of them had cleared out as well. Just a few ne�er-do-wells, neutralised by tiredness and drink, sitting on tall stools, and a couple of English backpackers who were crowded over a dimly-lit map, trying to figure out Melbourne�s tram system so that they could attempt a foray back to their youth hostel. They did not want to stay here tonight. The vibe was too creepy and electric.

The only people in the band room were no-one. The only people in the beer garden were Feng and Adelaide. The only person in the toilet, women�s or men�s, was Bryn. He was washing his face and his knuckles.

Bryn was currently, and rather appropriately situated in the men�s toilets, in case you were wondering.

Feng and Adelaide were on opposite sides of the beer garden. It was like they couldn�t even tell that the other one was there. Feng was still pretty darn drunk; too many Vodka Cruisers mixed with beer on tap, and maybe he was still hypnotised by Adelaide�s Crocodile Dundee hand, if indeed that had had an effect except for calming him down in the first place. He was lying on his side on an extremely uncomfortable and splintery, weathered bench which was half tucked under a matching table, his shoulder leaning against the table. It id not look like a great place to be precariously lying down drunk.

Adelaide was in the corner, sitting on a brick edging to a garden that held only the hardiest of stringy, woody perennials. The ghosts of cigarette butts were fading away all over the tanbark mulch in the garden bed. She wasn�t moving, except for her nostrils, which alternately flared and unflared themselves every several seconds. It had something to do with breathing.

Bryn looked in the fairly small mirror wiped under his eyes with some flaccid, wet toilet paper. Pub toilets really were the greatest, unbeaten champions in terms of unflattering lighting.

He could only remember bits of what had happened about half an hour ago, thanks to some convenient concussion. He wasn�t sure whether he�d knocked his head and then had the hallucination of flowers raining down on everyone, or if it had happened first, and then caused him to knock his head. All he knew was, this kind of stuff was getting too real now. He was starting to get physically hurt from this cactus fear. This wasn�t just innocuous postcards with neon greetings on them anymore. This was entrapment and torture.

He didn�t want to leave this grotty bathroom because he didn�t want to go outside and see his greatest fear: that everything had been real. So, he went into the one loo cubicle that was there, put the seat down, and sat there. He sat there for ages. That was no mean feat considering the layers of grime and faeces that had been only moderately successfully removed from its many nooks, crannies and pitted surfaces of this fetid toilet.

There was a knock on the door. �Oi, you in there; a geezer needs to relieve himself,� came an explanation for all the knocking.

�I�d prefer not to,� said the voice. �You see, I can only manage to get over the stage fright when I am surrounded by the wisdom of a thousand felt tipped pens.�

�What?� yelled Bryn, baffled. He guessed this guy probably meant he liked reading the inane and predictable graffiti that this toilet was obviously a grand purveyor of.

Having heard that last sentence, Bryn started to feel like maybe the world was normal again outside. It was just that he found solace in toilets. It felt like nothing could get to him in toilets, but that very, very scary things were lurking just outside.

In this case, it was a busting English guy, so Bryn decided to finally vacate the loo. It would be less risky that way. He�d seen shows about soccer hooligans and what they were capable of on the telly before.

�Alright. I�m coming out,� he said. He got up off the toilet. He�d warned the sat way more than a normal person would. If the English guy needed to do a sit-down, he was going to wonder what the fuck had gone on in there. Oh, well. He was just going to have to wonder. Maybe he�d be the source of a new stereotype: that Aussie guys take at least twenty minutes to piss sitting down.

Bryn cracked the door open. It was like a flashback to that Halloween party. He had memories of stuff from the other side of the world and a tie before he began to feel fear living inside his stomach.

The English guy�s white, shiny face was out there, peeking in. �You right?� it said.

There was no cascade of flowers. �Yeah, sorry,� said Bryn, and he stepped outside into the no-man�s land between the front bar and the band room. None of it looked weird anymore.

He could have chosen two ways to go. Home, or through the band room to the beer garden. He chose the second one. For all he knew, even Feng had gone home by now. Adelaide had probably headed off too, mad and incomplete. But, then again, he knew that she hadn�t.

So he decided to go through the band room. If the whole flower incident had been actually real, they were only bits of plants, after all. Were they really going to get him if they were just all lying around in there?

He dashed through and averted his eyes. He needn�t have worried anyway, because there was nothing there.

Maybe the flowers had all shrivelled and melted away to nothing. Maybe all the debris had been cleaned up by some particularly resilient bar staff. They looked pretty hardened behind the front bar at this place.

You�d think that someone would have called Channel 7 to come and film it, or get the police to come and investigate, or something. Because it had been real magic. But there was nobody in there. It was empty, just like it had been at the start of the night. Not even a leftover cloying smell. Not even any smell. Nothing.

Fuck, Bryn thought to himself. Don�t tell me that was just all in my imagination. Don�t tell me that. Fuck.

He headed on out to the beer garden. He saw Feng there, jutting out from the shadow on the wooden bench, his head facing into the cobwebbed table underside. It wasn�t the first time he�d seen Feng like that. It was just a bit earlier than usual. He was the kind of person who, when drunk, could find the most delicate of positions to sleep in, so that if he made one tiny move, he�d definitely fall over. And he usually would, several hours later, when the beer and the spirits were jut starting to ease off. It was sort of like an alarm clock.

And so he looked in the corner of the garden. The plants around Adelaide�s head looked innocuous enough. They weren�t about to rain own on anyone. He looked up at the sky. It was a poster boy for light pollution. It was probably cloudy anyway, though hard to tell.

He read her expression, or at least tried to It did not look mad. So he went over, and parked his butt on the brick edging as well.

�I could really do with a cigarette right now. But, yeah. I quit a while ago,� he said.

If only he had still been a smoker. Maybe the cactus growing inside him could have never grown.

They sat in silence for a wee while. Neither of them moved, except their breaths could just be seen leaving their mouths in the fairly cold air. The air would come out and swirl around on their own until they swirled around together between them.

Bryn raised his hand, and then put it down again. He ad no idea why he did that.

They sat there in silence again. Bryn didn�t know why he didn�t just apologise, and get that bit over and done with, and maybe just ask whether that whole plant-based rain thing was actually real, not that he truly wanted the answer, and so on, and then carry Feng to a taxi. But, he didn�t do that.

�My chest feels tight. My hands feel tingly. My brain feels like it�s racing. It doesn�t feel cool.�

�Oh,� said Bryn.�Well, let me know if you think you�re going to vomit, or pass out or something.�

Bryn shut his eyes and rubbed them with the force of a trillion horsepower. They were so gritty inside his eyelids. He wished he could get new eyelids.

Bryn�s heart began to pound a fair amount more than usual. For the second time tonight. Those hardy, rubbery plants were visibly growing around Adelaide�s head. The leaves were broader, and greener than what had been there before. It was definitely true.

And then she fell forward, doubling over herself, and slumped to the tessellated brick ground. Then she wiggled a bit, then nothing.

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