nicholauspatnaude

Ice Flue Chapter 9

   The laboratory was cold and dark; jagged shadows of the experimental disease machinery were cast from the pale moonlight. 

   A light in the laboratory desk station next to Stan’s turned on. With enormous pilot goggles obscuring her face, she went immediately to work on a glowing orange and serum. After about five minutes of adding and subtracting chemicals, her serum exploded and burned to a dark crisp. “Damn!” She raised her goggles. It was unmistakably the beautiful but terrifying face of Elizabeth Dracula. 

   Stan recoiled in horror. “Elizabeth—“

   “Cheryl, actually.” She extend a long, thin hand, the Elizabeth snake rings intact with raised unusual jewels from the Zebra Fire Mines of Zantra. “I just started here yesterday, although my main interest is in politics. I’d like to be queen someday.” She blushed. “Arrogant, aren’t I? I haven’t even asked your name yet and here I am spouting off about my pipe dreams.” Her tone became series as the green in her eyes sent a chill through Stan. “I just want to state here and now that I do believe in the Time of the Ice Princesses with all my heart.” 

   Daylgo Arnie’s menacing and sweaty clown face appeared on the day screen at the front of the laboratory. “Okay grunts! Who’s ready to rebel against the system? Now don’t get down and give me—“ The screen was flipped off. Cheryl stood beside the screen, her puckered lips crumpled like a starfish’s legs as she raised a thin finger to them. Nobody had ever rebelled against rebelling in Stan’s presence. Nobody contradicted the revelations of Dayglo Arnie. Nobody. 

   Cheryl walked down the aisle, the green of her eyes flaking to blue as she stared hypnotically beyond Stan’s soul. “We’ve been at it all night and you haven’t even asked me out for a drink. Wanna play hooky?” Cheryl smiled, the ghosts of recently consumed silver cockroaches burning into muted fireworks displays. “I’m sick of all this rebellion. Let’s try a different approach. Have you ever been hurt by submitting? No? But it’s the most delicious hurt there is. I don’t even care if a religious disease burns me from the inside out. Get on the back of motorcycle, Stan Lunch, and hold me tight. Hold me like I’m your last breath of fresh air. Breathe me like a breath of ice.” 

   She ran her fingers through Stan’s hair, but the excitement made him clench up. He raised a shaking hand: he’d burst another vial of Ice Flue. The blue liquid dripped down his wrist like a precious wasted drug. His eyes blurred as he went cross-eyed until he could only see the glowing green skull of Elizabeth Dracula cackling as she gunned her motorcycle and aimed it straight past his soul. 

Tags: ice flue, Nicholaus Patnaude, psychedelic horror, spiral narrative

Ice Flue Chapter 8

   Above ground was an endless desert, except for some bone-shaped skyscrapers blending with glittering ice castles in the far distance. 

   There were no other recruits besides Stan and the police officer.

   “Get down and DON’T give me a 1,000. We’re gonna make you rebel and we’re gonna make you like it!” Dayglo Arnie roared, lifting belts from the sands and strapping Stan and the police officer down so that it was impossible to do a single push-up even if they’d chosen not to rebel. 

   The two ferocious suns beat down from overhead as Stan coughed from the sand he inhaled. As Dayglo Arnie began to lecture about the importance of rebellion at all costs, Stan’s attention drifted to the faraway town of bone-shaped skyscrapers and glittering ice castles.

   “Don’t look over there. You are forbidden to visit the Time of the Ice Princesses,” the police officer said, lipstick blurring into mustache while smirking. 

   One of the ice princesses floated across the desert as fast as an arrow. Her lips were grotesque as her jaw spread inhumanly wide as she smiled and rocket back and forth as if her face were a villainous mask in a Noh theater production. “Take the Ice Flue to Elizabeth Dracula. Only then can you bridge the gap to the Time of the Ice Princesses. Go back to discover the ice flue again. Go back.”

   The Ice Flue droplets had changed from blue to red on Stan’s hand. 

   Dayglo Arnie, red in the face, continued to berate the police officer for its lack of motivation in rebellion. But, due to the altered state of the Ice Flue, Stan faded from existence as Dayglo Arnie and the police officer looked on in dumbfounded slow motion. 

   Stan’s surroundings elapsed and blurred, his vision a throbbing tunnel, as he was pushed back to a surface, a cold dark cave surface that gradually revealed itself as his laboratory. He held an unspilled vial of blue Ice Flue as a magic trick had been reversed.  

Tags: ice flue, Nicholaus Patnaude, psychedelic horror, spiral narrative

Ice Flue Chapter 7

   Their bunk was like the inner chamber of a submarine.
   “Would you like some butter? Mother sent it from Germany!” The interval between spins had shrunken to a millisecond and the police officer blurred between male and female.
   Stan Lunch regarded the stick of coiled butter with dismay: it was shrouded by mold and packed full with cricket carcasses.
   “Mother says Elizabeth Dracula eats this every morning to keep her skin looking beautiful.” The police officer’s metal limbs resembled an antique wind-up toy.
   The hatch opened violently as a rush of boiling water poured onto Stan and the police officer. Steam rose from the police officer’s limbs as Stan screamed in agony. His metal hand bubbled and popped, but it didn’t feel like his skin burned; his hand was being forcibly shrunken, slowly and as if by an AWOL gravitational pull.
   Dayglo Arnie straddled the opening of the hatch. “Get a move on grunts. Your training has already begun. Where were you during the introductory video? Didn’t you hear the Flue Whistle?” Dayglo Arnie, his white clown makeup glowing as beads of sweat suspended within thick strands of his orange clown afro, hissed with fangs barred.      

Tags: ice flue, Nicholaus Patnaude, psychedelic horror, spiral narrative

Ice Flue Chapter 5

   Stan’s hover car passes hundreds of Ice Enterprise employees for his departure coincided exactly with their arrival. 
   The Ice Flue, warm like the embers of a campfire, hummed in his lab coat.
   A blue film glazed the early morning sky. Treasure birds, wrapped tightly with their dead in bundles, hung from billboard scenes from the Holy Book of Dracula and Dayglo like cryptic warnings, but nobody could be watching Stan. Nobody else knew about the Ice Flue, right?
   Woozy, distracted, yet curious about this break in Stan’s daily driving routine, Stan’s hover car sniffed around a billboard depicting a scene from the Frost Holly Book of Derevelations: a thousand or so children sank with the burning ship while praying to a ghostly giant emanation of Elizabeth Dracula, immune to both flames and drowning in her ghostly state. The children had undergone the purest act of martyrdom for the cause, according to the book. The cause was Elizabeth Dracula’s continued animation by crickets. 
   The next billboard illustrated a scene from the Holy Book of Defamation Regulations in which versions of Elizabeth Dracula hatched from eggs, her heads wobbling grotesquely on the bodies of spiders.
   Arnie Dayglo approached with his brigade of the Child Crusade–curiously, all of the same children from the previous depiction were present–bearing flamethrowers. 
   The children set the spiders with Elizabeth Dracula heads aflame in the manger. The scene bubbled and popped like a burning oil painting.
   A Police Sandwich Cruiser pulled up alongside Stan’s now nervous hover car. 
   Stan gulped. A strip search would undoubtedly uncover the Ice Flue. 

Tags: ice flue, Nicholaus Patnaude, psychedelic horror, spiral narrative