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Sanctum Aeternam::The Prince of Atlanta::II. Enter Theda
Theda
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August.
The South.
At 9:47 PM, according to the weathered clock standing at the intersection of 4th and Independence streets, the light disappears with a deep purple wake after a final stubborn clawing at the dark skies over Atlanta.
A cloudless night. And, almost as a counterbalance to the weight of the sun beyond the horizon, a deep amber moon splits the edge of the earth from the depths of space, flattening and widening in the residual vapors of a 3-digit-temperature day. And even now, the barometer on old Flannery’s curio shop hangs at a horrid one-hundred-two degrees…but it’s dropping.
The terror, however, lies in the reading on the dial below: 93% humidity. And the needle is still as the stiffs across the street, tucked away in the concrete sepulchres of Atlanta’s oldest cemetery.
An absolutely perfect place for a Greyhound station.
Yes, the icon of earthbound torment, the Greyhound symbol buzzes softly in the vaporous eve, attracting scads of insects. Gnats. Gadflies. Fireflies. And the dumpsters on the side of the aging depot attract still more varieties of pests. More gnats. More flies---Mayflies this time—and mosquitoes….many mosquitoes. Multitudes of them, fresh from the fetid pond at the edge of the cemetery, just beyond the wrought iron staves…
The bloodsuckers love the Greyhound.
They don’t seem to mind when the slipstream wake of the road warrior #1379 eases up before the yellow cinderblock façade at the front of the station, airbrakes hissing and squealing from the 870 mile, 26 hour trip from an even bigger fetid pond, the Big Apple, New York City.
A strained mechanical whine as the ATLANTA marquee above the windshield rotates grudgingly upward:
OUT OF SERVICE.
And the 5 of 8 ten-watt bulbs flanking the notice die gratefully, and much quicker than the sun did.
Knees do the Jiffy-Pop as the driver with the nose that whistles slightly when he breathes takes his leave of the vehicle, the bus shifting to the port side as the man who owns no scales relieves the monstrous beast of a 375 pound gallstone.
Tuesday night.
Nobody goes to Atlanta on Tuesdays.
Sometimes they’ll go to Charlotte. Even as far as Greenville, if the Revivals promise speakers of significant kah-raz-ma and faith. But Atlanta—not on Tuesday.
Not on Greyhound, at any rate. Trailways, sure. Green Tortoise? Never. Greyhound = N.O.T.
And so the driver, Nedrick, has a few moments to himself, shaking out the pins and needles from joints just too darned tired to haul around the kind of weight Nedrick’s been accumulating for the last twenty years or so.
Glands, he’d told his doctor. A gene thing.
Doctor Halvert had shaken his head. Once. Decisively.
Fat, he’d replied. It’s a food thing.
Doctor Halvert hasn’t seen Nedrick since that rainy day in the Spring of 1978.
Whistling softly at the voluminous ratio of bugs-to-sign and bugs-to-garbage, Nedrick isn’t thinking about his weight. A quick slap to his neck, a check to see if he’d scored the beast attempting purchase. Removing the Greyhound Standard Issue Driver’s Cap, wiping the sweat from his brow, the matted hair caked in a near-solid halo about his balding head, he blinks away the road-gaze and is relieved to be off I-85, his near constant companion…just like old #1379, the road warrior herself.
The slumbering engine ticking into relative coolness adds a backbeat to the buzzing of the sign with the perpetually toiling dog upon it. And as Nedrick transfers his mesmerism from road to the swarm of foolhardy insect life, he cannot help but remain completely ignorant to the small D-ring latch of the rear passenger luggage bay turning softly, ever-so-slowly against the streamlined metal.
“You guys’re matin’, arentcha?” (Slap.)
A wry grin as Nedrick considers a pair of Dobson flies joined at the b-thorax, cavorting haphazard amongst the throng.
“Yeaaah….you go, m’man. Go (slap) get ‘er. Lady’s gotta know when the time is right, (slap) i’nat right?”
A pause in the play-by-play as Nedrick’s wide brow furrows in the pale cast.
“...hunh...” (slap)
No, not a pair of Dobson flies. One Dobson fly...one Praying Mantis.
Locked by mandible and jagged forelegs, the Mantis knows it is only a matter of time before the victim tires—or its head comes off.
Nedrick, fascinated, absently swatting, swatting.
The latch has ceased movement.
“Dang, mistah—“ as the Dobson succumbs, landing atop a newspaper box and skidding several inches with (slap) the mantis attached. “...that’s some harsh business.”
(Sl--)
In defense of his neck, Nedrick’s swatting hand hits something much larger than a bug. Something… fuzzy.
Hairy.
He recoils and spins—rather, ‘starts and rotates’—stumbling back against a support post for the extended eave of the station, just below the bug-ridden beacon.
A figure clad in a long, heavy winter coat, the deeply hooded head seemingly regarding the drama as the Mantis goes about the task of removing the Dobson’s head. It is s quick process once the predator disengages from the exoskeleton of the carcass; then, flickgrabPOP, the head comes right off like a pull tab.
“Inevitability only hesitates because of struggle,” a woman’s voice, faintly muffled, matter-of-fact and without any form of emotional investment, startles him yet again, an aftershock. “…it never fails. Only… waits.”
I-85 veteran Nedrick Carson has stumbled over the chain attached to the post that assures vandals at least a few more seconds of toil before they make off with the paper boxes. He stumbles and flails…or, rather, lifts his arms almost to chest level before he strikes the pavement with his ample posterior.
The figure turns to regard him, slowly unbuttoning the full length coat with the deep, deep hood obscuring all but a dull glimmer of…something…etched out of the darkness by the meager glow of the sign.
As it separates, the winter coat reveals a streak of light underneath—and another—and then, as the last button releases, the mystery unravels: the material underneath throws dull reflections from the dark, smooth surface. As the wrapping paper is removed, the lithe feminine figure clad in (plastic?) draws his eyes sure and true straight to the curvaceous terrain beneath, all the proper areas effectively sculpted into art from the vague dark material by the accents the light throws upon it.
Mesmerism takes a second jump.
And now the arms reach up and up to the hood—and pause—and draw it so as to reveal a face shrouded as the body, save for the areas about the mouth and eyes, where a fine dark mesh interrupts the aerodynamic mask.
The coat slips easily from the slick material to the gum-spotted ash-stained concrete, revealing her entire body to be clad in like manner, seamless — and she stands, alien, above the fallen man.
His mind a juxtaposition of fear and awe, of confusion and attraction, his nose whistles loudly as Nedrick struggles to regain his composure.
But this—person, whomever she is, draws covered hands valium-slow up,
and up,
over her hips,
her stomach,
and higher to her
(a mosquito lands unharmed and stabs and feeds behind his right earlobe for quite some time)
and then around her neck where, as her hands finally disappear, something can be heard to –tik- and the hood widens behind her head as she pulls from both sides, up and over, dark hair spilling wet from the cocoon then the hood falls forward and he gazes upon the chrysalis reborn.
Eyes stolen from the safari exhibit at a fine zoo — blazing with indomitability of spirit, and retaining the separation man recognizes as he gazes through the glass into a world where one of the beings does not belong.
The separation of predator to prey.
“So?”
Inquiry as hair is pulled from face.
Nedrick couldn’t answer if he’d tried. Not only is Nedrick in absolute awe, not only is Nedrick speechless, but Nedrick is now noticing the icy grip spreading from his mid-chest across his body, up and over and down his right side, because Nedrick is having a heart attack.
And as the carnal attraction from this creature, for this creature, continues to override the seriousness of the situation, coaxing his mind to further revelries, blood coursing away from his failing heart to —
“Aw, Hoffa in my cake, what're you doing?”
The seriousness suddenly becomes quite apparent; some erogenous switch has blown a fuse somewhere in Nedrick’s bulky frame.
“Good Friday, I wasn’t even TRYING. C'mon, you’re too BIG. You're pure cholesterol. What the hell do you eat, other fat people? I could fit NINE of me in you.”
Yes, Nedrick now knows that he is in some serious hoo-haa. His mind has gone.
“C’mon Gorgo. Get up.”
And Nedrick feels dully, distantly impressed as she yanks him from the floor, hefting him bodily upon her shoulder—dully, distantly impressed that a stroke could conjure up such fantastic images in an otherwise simple and nondescript existence.
(The mosquito behind Nedrick's ear, of course, has vacated.)
And as she heads off into the night, her free hand grabbing her coat and stuffing it into a duffel bag resting near the rear baggage compartment of road warrior #1379, her voice carries even to the oldest graveyard in Atlanta, and perhaps to some of the stiffs thought to reside there:
“One thing straight: you mean nothing to me. I’m doing this so you’ll OWE me. I don’t know Atlanta, I don’t LIKE Atlanta, and you’re too fat and too mammal to do me any good. So here’s what you’re going to do for me in return for what’s left of your life: First, DIET. Good NIGHT, invest in some Slim-Fast or something…”
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Theda has come to Atlanta.
And not, by any means, to live there.
And on a newspaper box tagged with gang symbols, paint scratchings and cigarette burns, a headless Dobson fly no longer twitches as the warrior Mantis preens the razor tines upon tiny, deadly forelegs.
Edited by: Theda at: 8/15/01 12:21:39 pm
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