Queen City and Other Dimensions. E.C. Wells
attributed the question to the voice of his smart-ass conscience.
The mere thought of “coming out,” making himself visible, frightened Poor Sir Geoffrey beyond description. “A life in the closet isn’t living, but it’s safe,”he thought. V smartly rose and said as the actress she never was, “You are so cute.” Then she left the room at warp speed.
Feelings of shame, anger, sadness and self-hatred with suicidal tendencies are often exacerbated in the wake of unrequited love. “It’s not about love, kiddo, and you know it.”Poor Sir Geoffrey wouldn’t listen to his higher self. So, he felt himself doleful, witless, a man of little consequence as he sat dreaming he was still awake in the parlor with Maxfield, who had recently returned from safari in Africa, and so he borrowed Sir Geoffrey’s ear well into the night to relive it.
Cruelty would certainly be one of the many last things to enter V’s mind, but when people pose a question they ought to know exactly what it is they want to do with the answer. Do they want the truth, or do they want to postpone the inevitable by going on a long and arduous expedition through the maze of V’s rhetoric?Poor Sir Geoffrey.
V’s father, The Late Reverend Aires, once a man of the cloth, probably synthetic and made in China, became a radical disciple of an unknown Roman Catholic denomination whose teachings had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus nor the amelioration of Humanity; not too unlike so many of Jesus’s later-day followers waiting for the joy of a Theist America, sooner than later. Many a Christian is a Christian in name only——nothing new there; followers of the Anti-Christ as proven by their political aspirations, their hate and violence from consuming too much red meat, no doubt, contributed greatly to V’s appreciation for seeing a thing in its proper perspective. “Rose colored glasses are for the flock to view the Good Shepherd; not for the Good Shepherd to view the flock,” the Good Shepherd often told his Little Princess Victoria before sending her off to pass the collection plate. With the restrained smile of a sad, starving, disconsolate, but hopeful, orphan V created a short piece of theatre impeccably played. Those who looked into her watery crestfallen eyes, who sat and waited for the end of their world, dropped more cash into the collection plate than they could otherwise afford. The Little Princess had that effect on folks, which left many worshippers feeling guilty for their own poverty. The late Reverend had also gained considerable recognition from his missionary work which took him around the world converting to whatever, saving whomever, however, for a price. Jesus can be an expensive business. While still in her teens, the Little Princess had become a world-class traveler. When the Little Princess reached her forty-first birthday——thirty-fifth again and an another over-priced regenerating cream reason for supplemental anxiety——she made up her mind to leave for posterity a certain and indelible contribution, which now only left her to settle upon exactly what that contribution might be; further cause for anxiety.
V is not quite the controlling, argumentative creature that some have mistakenly mis-thought. She can be of course, but it is not one of her full time personas. V learned the long and hard way, that it is no longer beneficial for her sense of wellbeing to make confrontational choices, or to take unnecessary chances. A new leaf? V is unquestionably smart, intuitive, often overreaching, overbearing and rarely knows what is good for her own good; however, she did turn over that godawful new-leaf metaphor with the help of psychotropics. V has an inexplicable desire for lasting fame which she disguises as, “leaving something for posterity.”
V is easily bored and she does not suffer fools willingly; as evidenced by those who have exited her life only to find themselves transformed into the walking wounded, limping back to their zombiehood. Before the medications, V was perceived as a bitch. That’s not to say she was or she wasn’t; it’s all a matter of degree and interpretation. Now, through the magic of chemistry, V could be more deliberate, thoughtful and carefully rehearsed before launching into anything that could be deemed the least bit provocative. V does gain a great deal of satisfaction from her supposition that by the time her victim realizes her villainy it is too unreasonably late for a counterattack.
V rarely goes out unless it is necessary, or there is the promise of fun, or she simply must get out for no apparent reason. Her switch to isolationism came after her realization that, on balance, the heavy side of the scales snores with sleeping people who have chosen their ignorance, their lies, their deceptive euphemisms born of prejudice, hypocrisy, and rampaging hatred. People, generally speaking, cannot be easily trusted, or trusted at all. No way. No how. No one. Except Lily, of course. WOW! Really?Maybe her darker moods were all just a passing cloud of negatively charged particles of self-consuming acridity.
Oftentimes, V sincerely thinks herself far too complicated for most mortals to grasp for more than twenty seconds, or so. There are moments in her days, sometimes entire days, when she believes herself a genius. Then, time persists and she finds herself in a Ground Hog Daysort of way. “There must be something better! Days should not be indistinguishable nor interchangeable with the day before, or the day before that,” V pouted in a world weary, muted outrage.
It should be pointed out that after V dropped out of community college she never stopped educating herself. V is one of Gertrude Stein’s biggest fans. All of Stein’s books fill the top shelf of her bedroom bookcase. Once that shelf was filled with Ayn Rand, but when Ayn Rand began to smell like bullshit and rotting fish, V tossed her Fascist greedy ass into dumpster-hell along with a copy of The Art of the Deal, for which she paid a quarter in a yard sale, to make room for Gertrude Stein. She credits Stein with teaching her the ever-interesting elements of subtext. How to read, basically. V has been using education in sublimity ever since to mystify with seemingly never-ending layers of indirection and subtext which she claims, “…should not be mistaken for ambiguity.” V told this to the man seated next to her at one of Minnie Beach’s dispiriting dinner parties. When the man barked in return, “I don’t get it!” V smugly accused, “That is because you are short of imagination! You must have exchanged it for a degree in who the fuck cares!” The following day V learned that the man who had been seated next to her was a Nobel Prize winning nano-scientist working on a government project in Colorado Springs. "So friggin’ what!"V remarked to herself when she learned of her ignorance.
V’s father died from an oversized hybrid Africanized honey bee attack. Strangely odd, since the killer bee is unable to survive as far north as Colorado. Maybe, its faulty navigation had something to do with global warming. In whatever case, V was left to pay the astronomical taxes on the mansion known as Shady Sanctum. Maxfield Talbot, her father’s step brother, helps out with his royalties from several books——An Entomological Study Of Washington DC, How To Think Like An Ant Before The Rapture, Don’t Kill Our Friends The Bedbugs,and For The Love Of Dung Beetles. His foray into the field of etymology produced his first book on that subject, Conversations With Insects, but he soon returned to his entomological roots due to a royalty dispute; one does not pay interviewees! There is also Max’s Social Security which helps to keep Shady Sanctum in the family. There is little left in the Talbot coffers after paying for all those pounds of illicit drugs, his traveling expenses before he learned to fold space, his latest trip to Haiti on bug business, and all those epicurean escapades in Morocco.
Maxfield has made it his life’s work to study arthropods which led to his earning a rather widespread reputation from his knowledge of the practical implementation of gene splicing. His lectures on the ins-and-outs of entomology were a hit on the university circuit. Any knowledge of his surreptitious experiments in insect husbandry——though not quite the Doctor Mengele of the insect world——were nonetheless restricted to a select few peers. One of them was Doctor Fleischmann, an old Queen City University chum who now lived on an obscure island in the Coral Sea.
Doctor Fleischmann was released from prison after five years for not living up to his oath as a doctor of medicine, which caused the death of a wildly popular pop singer which, in turn, made Fleischmann a wildly unpopular pariah. So, he sequestered himself on a small island east of New Caledonia and northeast of Australia known as Sphincter Island. While working for the late pop star Fleischmann bought the island with cold hard cash. That was before he murdered his cash cow; the King of Pop.
The last time Max saw Fleischmann they spent their time together reminiscing