PARTY HONEYMOONING AND ASTRONOMY
Never say that a marriage has more of joy than pain.
- Euripides
As Barns regained consciousness he was totally disoriented. He vividly remembered cockamamie dreams in which he had done totally ridiculous things like resigning his job and marrying, of all people, that skinny ugly witch, Sally Twig. Dream hell! It was a bloody nightmare! The absurd dreams had their silly side too. He clearly remembered making an obscure, inept, junior level employee Head of DOD! What was his name again? Bates?
Usually when he woke up his dreams faded away rapidly, to be replaced by stark reality. As a precaution he ran these very amusing dreams through his mind again, so that they wouldn't be totally lost to memory when he fully woke up. However, moments later, he began to realize that forgetting the dreams was not his biggest problem. He could still remember the dreams vividly, but couldn't seem to locate reality in his memory, such as what day it was, or exactly what was happening at the office. Despite waking up, he still felt very disoriented.
Also, he was cold, sore, and was apparently lying on his back on a cold and very hard surface. Had he fallen asleep on the kitchen floor or something? Had he suffered some sort of accident? No reason to panic though; he would simply open his eyes, wake up fully, and abracadabra, in a few moments everything would sort itself out in his head. Then he would rationally deal with whatever was going on.
He opened his eyes, and the view was so odd that he became more disoriented than ever. This wasn't his kitchen, or any other room in his house, nor was it like any other room or place he had ever seen or even imagined! On what seemed to be the walls and ceiling surrounding him, countless bright, multicolored, three dimensional, kaleidoscopic patterns pulsed, danced, popped and slid in and out of view. It was as if the walls and ceiling were one huge, continuous, multi-windowed VISICOM screen. Holographic three dimensional geometric patterns expanded and contracted in and out of the walls, seeming to nearly touch him.
As he watched, many of the patterns were replaced by 3-D scenes that were recognizable and familiar. It was a colleague of Earth and humanity. There were scenes from popular movies, art museums, wildlife refuges, and natural parks, from jungles and oceans, and from football games, the ballet, and backyard barbecues. From each scene a very low volume of sound was emitted also, but due to the multitude of scenes, most of the sounds blended to create a soft background noise. All the scenes were enshrouded in the shifting, multicolored patterns. Barns watched, transfixed by the beauty of the evolving scenes and framing patterns. It was much better than any 3-D virtual reality video that he had ever seen before.
One of the scenes enlarged until it filled the entire room with huge sharks that swam silently towards Barns with gaping mouths studded with sharp teeth. The air felt damp and tasted salty, as though the ocean surrounded him. It was then, when he tried to pull his feet up and away from the oncoming sharks, that he found that he was tied down. No matter how hard he tried to move his legs or arms, he simply couldn't! He watched helplessly as one of the sharks took his left foot into its mouth. That's when he also realized that he couldn't scream, though he was certainly trying to! Fortunately, despite the realistic appearance of the sharks, he felt nothing attacking his foot. The sharks were holographic flimflam!
As quickly as they had arrived the sharks shrank to guppy-size and withdrew, to be rapidly replaced by a tranquil scene in a redwood forest. It seemed as though he was actually surrounded by the massive trees, which reached upwards hundreds of feet towards a bright blue sky. Sounds of the soft rustling of branches in gentile breezes and a chorus of birdcalls added to the tranquility of the scene. He could feel a gentle breeze on his skin, as he breathed fresh forest air filled with rich evergreen smells.
A relieved Barns took advantage of the reprieve to assess his situation. He found that he could move his head slightly to look about. The rectangular surface he was on was smooth metal, perhaps stainless steel, and it was raised above the floor, assuming that there was an actual floor somewhere beneath the redwood forest. It seemed more like a table than a couch or bed. It felt like he was tied down with soft ropes, though no ropes were visible. As he tested once again those invisible bonds, he speculated that some sort of 'force field' was responsible, although such things were beyond any technology he knew of. He also noticed that he was wearing his blue suit. He couldn't remember wearing that suit for several years, although he remembered wearing it during the nightmare in which he got married.
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from somewhere behind him. It sounded at times like Twig's voice, but it was speaking some sort of foreign language that he not only didn't understand, he couldn't even begin to identify! This was very unusual for Barns, who was fluent in six diverse languages. The most remarkable thing about this unknown language was the incredible, even impossible articulation and frequency requirements. Whistles and peeps in the upper frequency range of human hearing and perhaps beyond were interspersed with 'normal' and impossibly deep tones. It was the weirdest thing that he ever heard. It reminded him a bit of the voices of humpback whales and brown thrasher birds, but that wasn’t quite right either.
Several times however, Barns clearly heard familiar English words and names mentioned, including Barns, Bates, Melberg and Renson. Straining to twist his head towards the sound of the voice, he finally picked Twig out, silhouetted against a redwood forest background. She was mostly facing away from him, and wearing odd red robes of some sort. He noticed that she seemed to be 'talking' to a door sized 'window' in the redwood scene, in which a dark figure appeared. Next to Twig stood the tall, thin, impassive figure of Renson. And there next to Renson was Melberg! They also each wore blood-red robe-like clothing. What the hell was going on?
Twig stopped talking and a deeper voice seemed to respond in the same strange language. Barns strained to make out the figure in the window scene that was responding to Twig. He could actually see some sort of thin humanoid figure quite clearly, but the features were so unusual it took a few moments for him to sort them out. When he finally did, he would have surely screamed again, had he been able to.
The abomination that was talking with Twig was definitely not human. It seemed to have the head and upper torso of a talking bat or pig with big, sharp teeth. It had pig-like snout covered in black fur, large dark eyes, and huge, forward facing, pointy ears, mounted on a hairy torso that wore the same sort of glittery, blood-red, robe-like clothing as the others.
For a terrifying moment the pig/bat eyes seemed to be looking at him; and then its voice abruptly switched to English. "So, this ugly one with the fat belly is Barns. Is he of no more use to us alive?”
"No, Master," responded Twig. "He was becoming too hard to control. The incompetent idiot who we replaced him with will reduce our risk in the final days.”
The nightmarish bat/pig seemed to shrug. "Why bother with any of them, Twi'Na? They can do nothing to stop events now.”
"True, Master Dow," she responded, "but even though they could do little, we want no unexpected inconvenience or risks. We still need to finish gathering in our harvest before we flee. Also, this one has been such an irritant over the years; I want him to know what is happening to him, and to the rest of his kind, before we dispose of him."
The bat/pig opened its mouth, exposing huge sharp fangs, and licked its lips with a long, pointed, blood red tongue. "I approve. And when," it asked, "were you planning on 'disposing' of him?”
"Thursday night," she replied, "after the rest of our Warren members have returned with their booty, Renson brings us the safe, and I've shown Barns what he has helped us to accomplish.”
"Very well and proper, Warren leader," concluded the bat/pig. "Just be sure to save me his liver!” The two erupted in unholy laughter as the terrified Barns once again screamed silently.
As the bat/pig display window faded from view, leading Barns to conclude that it was some sort of communications device, Twig turned towards Ba
rns and approached him. He again noticed that she indeed wore the identical sort of lose, shimmering, red, robe-like garment that the bat creature wore. She bent over Barns so that her face was scant inches from his.
"Hello, dear husband, are you enjoying our honeymoon so far?” Her smile and the look in her eyes were hideous; inhuman. He tried to speak, but could not form words with his lips and tongue; he was incapacitated as if he had been over-Novocained by a dentist, except that instead of numbness he increasingly felt pain everywhere in his body. What did the witch mean when she said ‘husband’? That marriage business was surely just a nightmare, wasn't it? Wasn't all of this? It couldn't possibly be real, could it?
"No?" she continued. "Maybe you would rather be fishing, as our psychoanalysis suggested? Did you enjoy the shark sequence portion of our demonstration for the Master? Our far-flung Galactic customers will probably enjoy it and pay well to experience it.” From somewhere she produced a battered fishing hat laden with dozens of lures. Barns recognized it at once as the one in his dreams. The cheery little frog-faces did nothing to quell his growing terror. Twig placed it gently on his head, and then, still smiling, yanked and twisted it savagely, driving several razor sharp fishing lure barbs deep into his scalp. Though he opened his mouth to scream in pain and terror, he still could not utter a sound.
Twig again held her face only inches from the terrified Barns, while on either side of her appeared the faces of Renson and Melberg. Melberg smiled menacingly like Twig. Renson had always appeared impassive, but his gaze now bore into Barns like a hot poker. There was something in that gaze, something elementally evil. His eyes were two cold, black, bottomless pits. Barns was suddenly more terrified of Renson than he was of Melberg or even Twig.
Barns hadn't noticed before this the striking similarity between the three of them. All three were thin and wiry, with narrow, almost pointy faces, piggish noses, and large, protruding ears. With horror he recognized the similarities between them and the monstrous bat/pig named Dow. "My God," he thought, "they aren't even human!”
"What's the matter Lamby Pie," taunted Twig. "Not in the mood for fishing? Then how about some bedroom sports?” She puckered her lips for a moment, and watched with amusement the expression of revulsion that her helpless prisoner gave in response.
"On the other hand," she said, glancing briefly at her two companions, "we’re awfully hungry right now. Why should we wait until Thursday for our feast? Why don’t we eat you right now, or at least a few parts of you?” For the first time, she opened her lips to smile, exposing rows of razor sharp fangs, and emitted a guttural snarl. Renson and Melberg did the same. Long, pointed, blood red tongues ran back and forth over razor sharp white dagger fangs!
Mercifully, this was all too much for Barns, who fainted.