And then pictures of George himself, gathered and collected from the news channels, talent show panels, vidiflex interviews, music docs, game shows, all arranged and spun out by Nola, collaged, mixed and remixed with captured shards of pain and violence.
Guns firing. Flame. Then smoke.
Hands coming round to strangle at a man’s neck.
Pictures. Images.
Magnified sound capture: slice of blade through muscle, hitting bone.
I just wanna, I really wanna!
Sprays of blood from torn wounds.
A bullet hitting flesh, digging deep.
Vein slice.
Disease spreading in speeded motion.
The knife dripping.
I wanna get to...
Get to know you!
Cherry red lips parted to kiss.
Extreme close-up: open sores.
Fragmented signals.
Dead meat.
A corpse.
George’s face superimposed.
Black flies crawling on flesh.
I wanna (I just wanna)
really touch you
(Please) let me touch you.
All of you, the real you
I just wanna!
Click and flash of static interference.
Sxxizzklthhhmmmmmmxxstkkkkk!
Now. Melissa’s face took charge, took possession, the image flooding into Nola’s features, taking residence in her flesh.
George cried out. Wordless. Then finding the one name he could hardly speak without crying. Her name.
Melissa...
Nola opened her eyes. She felt her hands held tight around warm wet tissue, the neck.
George gasped, struggling for breath.
Nola tightened her grip.
She kept Melissa’s face for her own, whilst painting her hands with panic, with storms, sudden explosions of noise, detonations, music playing, a silver blaze of guitar sound, electrified, splintered, until all was only broken strings of pure light and colour and feedback running the screens of her hands around the neck of George as he stared deep into his daughter’s ghostly face. And then Nola’s face taking over, her own features peeled from some lousy promo video or other, a bright smiling translucent mask of herself that she had worn for too long now and the pain of it made her hands tighten further:
I wanna touch you,
just (wanna) touch you,
the real you, I just wanna!
Muscles contracting,
Her own throat closing as she felt the
Victim clutch
Body clutch
Breath clutch, closing
Fingernails drawing
Blood...
Now!
Sudden:
The FLASH of light from the dark portal of a camera lens. Cyclops eye monster sucking at her, sucking at Nola, wanting her, desiring. A camera singing:
Image, image, image,
Give me your image!
Give me your
Give me your
Give me your image!
Flash,
whirrrrrr
flash
whirrrrrr
flash.
Photographer Peckman was standing there, some few feet away. His finger pressed at the shutter button, over and over, shot after shot.
Nola’s hands unwrapped themselves. They came away from George’s neck, allowing him to fall forward to his knees, to the ground, the mud. There he groaned.
Peckman moved closer. He needed this. He had no other urge than to capture this electric illuminated woman on film, in numbers, pixels. These photographs would quicken and catch at eye and heart, they would flicker from screens worldwide. His name would spread with them. He was the one, the exclusive source.
Nola backed away, further into the woods.
The camera pursued her, wound up, triggered, hungry of lens, hungry for light, this small black box hunter of skin pictures with its robot dazzle eye.
Nola turned and ran into darkness, into rain droplet cascade. Branch tangle, mesh of crackle leaves. Hidden pathways, unknown routes.
Panic. Red haze in her sight.
Nola. Running, stumbling.
Peckman tracking her, camera at the ready,
Shooting.
Click whirrrrrr, click click whirrrrrr.
Closing on her.
Nola fell, hidden behind a tree trunk.
She could hear the camera moving through the trees, a shining creature of chrome and glass and shiny black plastic, approaching, seeking out, peering.
Crack of twigs, close-by
Uhhh...
Breath held.
Footsteps moving on, still searching.
Lens stutter.
Nola slipped off her clothing, revealing as much flesh as possible. She chose a different pathway, moving on step by step, slowly, quietly. Her body was searching the frequencies, calling down broadcasts of late summer foliage: falling petals, green leaves, russet shades, knotted branches, sticktangle of bird nests, black sudden blur and noise of wing beats, bird calls, play of shadows, raindrops, dappled light, insect noises, animal cries. With these effects she painted herself.
Camouflage Channel.
Tonight, live from the Forest of Dreams!
Naked flesh aglow with images.
Stay tuned for more after this!
Peckman waited, holding himself still.
The trees moved within trees, branches within branches, shivering, some kind of local disturbance.
Shimmer glade.
His eyes were dazzled, half-blinded by what he saw, and his camera clicked away madly, hardly knowing where to look. And all the numbers inside the machine, all the little ones and zeroes, they burned themselves on nothingness,
on a brightdark shiver of branches
leaf upon leaf
as Nola’s body melted away
into the forest,
becoming the forest.
-24-
.........................................*....................
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.......................//.....................................
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.....................//,,,>’*/>0 Moon.........................
.........................fall/.>...........................
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......//,..my name is...???/011011/no^la/......?>.............
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............?/.0,//.>lay down...................../01.>.......
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................(still waiting///&^C%/?/>+.................
. ........black branches.....................................
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tact...
-25-
George wandered over to the company’s mobile studio.
The producer was sitting on the step, drinking a beer. Her name was Cleo James. Just twenty-seven years old. A young woman with eyes already raw from lack of sleep.
George staggered into view, his clothes damp, hair matted, face red. He said:
‘Do you know who I am?’
Cleo nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m the father of Melissa. The father of...your victim.’
Cleo looked at him. ‘We’re doing all we can, Mr Gold. Really. I don’t know what to say. No one can explain it. She’s just...disappeared.’
‘You want an exclusive?’
‘An interview? Sure.’
‘No interview. Just get a camera on me.’
‘What?’
‘Now.’
Cleo snapped her fingers and a technician came in sight, a sleek bodycam slung across his chest.
‘Film this.’ George’s voice was harsh, without hope. ‘I want it live, no edits.’
Click flood bloom of silver heat from a lighting unit, showing George’s face in its lusty, dirt-smeared, blood-pink moment of driven need.
‘Are you going to swear?’
George looked at the producer. ‘What? Yes. Obscenities. Of course. Very, very probably.’
Cleo turned to the crew. ‘Okay. I need a five-second delay, with autobleep.’
George stood at the centre of sudden activity.
‘Okay. Mr Gold. We’re rolling now.’
George nodded.
He got a countdown, fingers marking out the final three seconds.
Now live, exclusive, from the site of mystery.
George stared at the lens. He made an enemy of the lens, this thin round curve of glass, an apparatus that had made him his fortune, now he saw it as a parasite, a stealer of images.
He felt that his drunken heart was being sucked out.
‘My name is George Gold,’ he began. ‘I have some claim to be the one true Saviour of this Nation’s music.’
He laughed bitterly.
‘I have eaten my own fingers to the bone. I have stolen my own money. I have sold my own soul to myself at a cut-down bargain-bucket price, and rendered it null and void, drained of value.’
His eyes lit up.
‘George Gold! George fucking *bleep* Gold!’
His hands touched at his neck, the tender skin.
Shivers passed through him.
‘A woman just tried to strangle me. A music star. My own creation. Check this: my own fucking *bleep* creation just tried to kill me. I can still feel her hands around my throat, and after everything I’ve given to her. But what does she know? Nola Blue? Nola fucking Blue! *bleep* Some crazy half-broken visionplex woman with her skin ablaze, showing me the world like she thinks I haven’t seen it before.’
He twisted himself, tight bound.
Skin clenched. Teeth snarl.
‘Listen to me. As a child and a young man I was beaten, made fun of, humiliated, bought and sold and bought again and raised up and laughed at and kicked halfway to death and back and pissed upon *bleep* and glorified as a two-bit god and a devil, and all of this on good old-fashioned television, in glorious hideous colour. Live in your homes!’
Now came a slow wave of warmth lit by moon and camera, his eyes alive at last, the old condition.
Memories of good and bad times. Escaping.
‘I stole my first guitar, some cheapo number from Camden Market. I was what, 15, 16 years old? Just arrived in the capital, holes in my pockets, nothing else. This instrument was a truly horrible thing, a nasty, second-hand copy of a copy of a Fender Strat. Lousy sunburst finish paintjob, all peeling, all scratched. Dodgy pick-ups. I couldn’t even get it in tune. Spent three weeks on it, polishing it up, strings breaking every other day, terrible crackles coming out of it, from a tinny box amplifier, bang, rtzzzzzzzzzttttttt! The noise it made. Shit. *bleep* Couldn’t ask for worse and yet, here’s the thing, people...I wrote ‘Who Cares About Love?’ on that same goddamn instrument. You see? Two years later, it was number one in half a dozen countries. You know that song. You’ve sung it. You’ve danced to it. Who the Fuck Cares About Love! *bleep* Number fucking one, worldwide. *bleep* First of many. Of course, I had to burn some people to get there. Whatever it takes, it takes. And more so.’
*bleep* *bleep* *bleep*
Now he breathed slow and easy and found his rhythm.
‘It doesn't matter. It does not matter, it does not matter one jot what you’re doing, it’s how you do it that counts. Just bring the good heavenly tunes to the people, the working people. They come home tired out from a hard day’s graft with hardly any money to show for it...listen now, let them put some music on. Make it easy for the everyday people to dream. That’s the one genuine point, the only goal. I keep saying this to the young ones coming up, all my sweet little creations. Make it easy for the people to dream. But they won't listen to me, they do not want to listen.’
Here he settled down, almost withdrawn.
‘The young won't listen.’
Quietly.
‘Ah no. They drift away. You hold them tight, far too tightly, and still they drift away.’
Slowing now.
‘Melissa. All lost.’
Now George’s eyes closed. His mouth moved alone.
Repeating. The one word.
Melissa...
Melissa, where are you!
Screaming.
MELISSA!!!
...
The camera loved him.
-26-
Nola walked on through the woods.
I nearly killed him back there.
Jesus. My fingers, so close.
Nearly.
Nearly killed George.
What is happening to me?
Where can I go?
Flagging now, weakening. She looked down at her hands.
Fingers around the throat, squeezing...
Seeing the palms covered in blood.
...Oh God. Look at me. Weeping.
Weeping blood.
Not real blood; only the signal-cast image of blood seeping upwards from each palm.
The real and the unreal played in her mind, in her eyes and all along her body. She was lost in the moments of blackout and jump cut, in the gaps between signals. And all around her the trees glistened with recorded life, leaves flickering with code, with numbers, with artifice. Her body followed suit. This forest had been recorded once, filmed, years ago, and now she was appearing in the playback of that event. And the further she travelled, the more she believed. By walking on far enough perhaps she would come to the edge of the illusion, and thereby escape from it. Instead, the forest closed around her; dappleflecked, mysterious, labyrinthine, without map or memory, every tree and branch another part of the film of her life.
Time slowed.
The dark moved against her skin.
Keep going.
And then voices ahead, through the leaves.
Nola paused.
She was almost naked still, her outer clothing discarded during the chase. And yet she felt no cold, no shivering after-effects of running. Her body flowed hot with the pictures that covered her, that crept all over her, every last stretch of skin alive with stolen passion.
She crouched down and peeped out through the branches.
A travellers’ camp had been set up within a bower, a roughly circula
r arrangement of patched tents and old rusty vans. It was close to midnight, and yet the people were still awake, many of them sitting around a fire. A woman sang a ballad of lost desire. A tattered purple flag hung from a central mast, on the top of which a satellite dish slowly turned to gather messages from the sky. Close at hand, dogs followed trails of scent, seeking out this stranger. Herself.
Nola had no choice.
She dressed herself in images, in clothes stolen from fashion shows. An iridescent outfit in silvery blue and green and grey: trousers, blouse, jacket. Adorned like this, she stepped out from the trees.
A teenage girl noticed her first, and cried out in wonder.
Others turned to see, to gaze upon this sight, this woman of shimmer and gleam.
~~~
Nola rested.
She slept fitfully for an hour or so, curled up in one of the tepees. Every so often, one or two of the camp’s children would enter through the flap to stare at her, at the slow-moving pictures that shivered on her face even in sleep. They could only think that the woman’s dreams had in some way oozed through her flesh, rising to the surface. And how wonderful it was, to see that her dreams were their own dreams, culled from the vision screen.
This was, they decided, even better than the Dome.
This was live. From the source.
Truly alive.
The children watched in silence, until called to task by their parents. There was work to be done, in readiness for the night’s events. This special night...
The camp was known as Tangent Five.
The residents were long-term fans of the Pleasure Dome, outcasts and wanderers from many different parts of the globe. Over the years, they had each of them drifted towards the location of their primal desire. One lonely day or night they had wandered there along the new pilgrim trail, set down their weary packs and decided to stay for a few hours. Hours had turned into days, into whatever time they could grab from their other lives, their so-called ‘real’ lives. And so one week had turned into two, into a month, into a year or more, and the initial reasons for being there had become a fanciful tale told around the fire, as nocturnal broadcasts triggered the stars. These outposts were semi-legal zones; the Dome company tended to let the intruders be, allowing them to become part of the overarching myth of the programme. Some of the older folk were veterans of the very first camp set up in series two of the programme.