Chapter 2: Xela Monet and the Thought Explosion

Chapter 2

Xela Monet and the Thought Explosion

Curtain call. Naaaaaaaaaaa. Nananana Naaaaaaaaa. Nananana Naaaaaaaaaa. Applause (muted). Curtain.  ‘The Phantom! S/he’s here!. Anxious whispers. ‘Poor fool, don’t make me laugh.’ ‘Croak’. More muted applause. Curtain.

Such was the routine, at the Theatre de Sewer Entrance B, every night for fourteen years. And while, to many, the thought of such tedious happenings repeatedly occurring for over a decade seems incredibly depressing, Xela Monet lived and breathed it. The once-Shakespearean actor cringed at every heartbreaking scene, laughed at every joke, and was utterly obsessed with the production and with hir role in it, the titular character. To hrim, the crudely-done bastardisation of French Literature (not to mention blatant musical plagiarism off of Pink Floyd’s fourth album) was ‘the greatest thing since sliced ketchup’.

Unfortunately, seemingly everyone else believed it to be a tedious, overused plotline ridden with clichés and unoriginal musical scores. Combined with the less-than-ideal location of the spectacle (Sewer Entrance B really is as bad as it sounds), the troupe was left in an irksome financial position. Of course, Xela maintained that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the material; it was the lack of education and broadmindedness that the typical modern clientele possessed.

‘Of course,’ s/he could be heard to say on any given Tuesday. ‘You can tell by looking at what the general populace is actually going to see. What were the most popular theatrical productions last year in the city? The Ambig of Forty Crowns by Voltaire and a theatrical adaptation of Kierkegaard’s Journals! It shows you what people are like these days. Bloody comfort zones, ambig. And of course those productions were at venues in the CBD, in nice comfy elderly theatres, in respectable neighbourhoods, devoid of nuclear waste. And we’re stuck out here in the DMZ. I tell you, it’s a societal conspiracy against inane operetta.’

S/he also personally felt, although s/he would never dare say it aloud, that part of the reason the public had little interest in hir play was the forced evolution of humanity to rid it of gender roles. Societal gender neutralisation, while it had seemed a good idea at the time, now to Xela seemed to have abolished the idea of romance. Although there were government pamphlets and fridge magnets circulating which concerned the proper etiquette of wooing members of the only sex, Xela felt that proper, old fashioned, Heathcliffe and Jane romance was beginning to decompose.

And so, on the seventh of November 412 A.N. (Après Neuter) the Theatre de Sewer Entrance B closed its doors for the final time. After many a tearful farewell, in the knowledge that half of them would be either living on the street or have plugged a bullet into their own cerebral cortex within a year, the cast departed. Xela, on the other hand, by this point had developed something of an alcohol problem. Not that s/he considered it a problem, but that did not change the fact that whilst hir cast, crew and cleaning staff were outside locking the doors permanently, the depressed prim don was passed out in hir janitor’s closet of a dressing room. Upon awakening, Xela tried each of the doors half-heartedly; s/he had already spiritually resigned to hir fate of staying in the theatre indefinitely. There was ample food; the rats were well fed and plentiful, and multiple cutbacks had taken its toll on the rat catching in the place; they were relatively complacent. Moreover, Xela had first found true love in this glorified auditorium, in the stage, the smell of the grease and intoxicating allure of the paint, in the well-polished exit signs, and most of all in fulfilling the role s/he was born to play: The Phantom. Of course, s/he had originally auditioned for Hamlet, but, alas, it was not to be.

The Phantom was perfect. Brilliant, yet unloved. Soulfully cognitive, yet isolated. Being locked in an abandoned theatre in the demilitarised slum was perfect for Xela: s/he had actualised hir character.

Moons passed. Rumours swirled in the largely immigrant slum-dwelling community of a mysterious watchambig, a spirit who had escaped from the bowels of the decrepit playhouse and would be seen standing on the roof at night, black and hooded, with half a stark white face, surveying hir domain. Attendance at the Church next door, though illegal, rose dramatically. And the Phantom watched each odd ritual, each sacrifice, each bizarre re-enactment of gender neutralisation, not interestedly, nor pityingly, but with weary indifference. As long as they did not trespass on hir holy site, or the moat-like gutter surrounding it, they were alright.

Xela did not break character; s/he adapted the Phantom’s personality to suit hir own needs. S/he, regrettably, did not play the organ other than a rather limp ‘Chopsticks’ routine. So s/he explored intellectuality in other ways, such as raiding the ancient cellars of the theatre. The place was a Mecca for obscure cultural artifacts from an age long past. There were Holy Roman Archives, Gothic sculptures, Ancient Greek plays, Hellenic artwork, vials of Romanesque Italian wine, Shakespearean original manuscripts, Elizabethan death warrants, Enlightenment-era scientific research, Industrial Revolution blueprints and diagrams, emancipation doctrines, a BetaMax player, Wikileaks-owned diplomatic cables, chips of abridged history from the Fourth And Fruitful Indian Empire, revolutionary calls-to-arms from 23^rd Century France, and gender neutralisation documents. It was as if the Censor Board had overlooked the entire catacomb. Xela immersed neuself in the stuff; s/he revelled in it. The Phantom lived, thrived and learned with furious capability.

One day, a rainy February shitshow of a day, about seven years after the theatre had been locked for good, the lock was broken open. It emitted a loud crack, jerking Phantom-Xela from hir slumber. S/he looked at the prop clock. It was 0917. All the good burglars are asleep at this hour, s/he thought. Carefully, s/he extracted a lengthy yet blunt lighting stick from beside hir bed. And s/he crept through the crawlspace, in full costume, like a trick of the light. Surveying the intruders in the mezzanine, s/he analysed them thoroughly. They looked like workambigs. Big, burly chavs in construction hats and sunglasses, clutching hammers and tripods. ‘Prospectors,’ Xela said under hir breath, as if uttering a curse word.

‘What was that?’ one of the workambigs stopped, scratching hir head and staring at the ceiling.

‘What?’ said another, furiously scratching hir other end.

‘Thought I heard summat...’ grunted the first, straining to hear it again.

‘Get back to work, you berk,’ said the workambig who seemed to be in charge. ‘This place is as empty as your skull.’

Xela dropped from the rafters, enveloping the head workambig in hir black cloak. The other workers screamed like small children. The biggest and chaviest of them made to grab hir. S/he struck hrim with the handle of the lighting stick and hir face partially caved in from the force of the strike, leaving hrim bloodied and hemorrhaging on the floor, a barely recognisable blob of arterial blood. Xela moved on to use the machete s/he had procured, originally intended for slicing ropes to get props and sets to fall. S/he wrapped it around the head workambig’s throat.

‘What the fu-‘

‘Why are you here?’ Xela hissed in hir ear.

‘You killed Jo, ‘big, s/he’s fucking dead!’

‘Why are you here?’ Xela repeated, in the same threatening voice s/he had used in the glory days, right at the climax, when The Phantom had kidnapped Christine.

‘Why would you do that, ‘big, why would you kill Jo? Smashed hir fucking face in! That is seriously uncool, sibling!’

‘S/he was part of an invading force,’ replied The Phantom’s voice. ‘As are you. So I’ll ask for a third time, why are you here?’

‘Prospecting!’ 

‘For what?’

‘Well, they want  o turn this place into one of them secret prisons, I guess. But don’t tell them I told you, hey, ‘big? I don’t want to be the first prisoner, do I?!’ and s/he laughed a hyperventilated crazy sort of laugh. There was a pause.

‘Do you know who I am?’ Xela asked, hoping that they did.

‘Well, you’se The Phantom, innit?’

‘Right. And what are you going to tell them? Your bosses?’

The head workambig spluttered and fell silent. The blade was pressing into hir neck sufficient to draw a single drop of blood which ran down the machete, curving around in an arthouse pattern. Luckily, one of the other workambigs piped up.

‘We’ll say the place has no structural integrity. Falling to fucking shambles. That’s how Jo got killed. Cos the entire block is sinking into the sewer. It would be madness to build a prison in a place like this.’

This one was smart.

‘See that you do. I don’t want to have to come after you. Now get out, before I violate the Geneva Convention yet again. And don’t forget your comrade.’

They heaved up Jo, who drooled quite a bit of slimy blood and bile onto the carpet, and struggled to the door. Good, thought Xela. No more trespassers for a while.

Just to be sure, however, s/he thought s/he’d take a few counter-measures. S/he had watched Home Alone; there was a video tape of it in the cellar. However, s/he didn’t feel the situation was yet dire enough to spend the time and energy with such thorough counter-attack measures. S/he had found in the prop department a quantity of fluorescent dye to be used to for actors to see their place markers on stage whilst the audience could not. S/he hauled three barrels of the stuff to the entrances and spread it on the floor in strategic locations. Also on hir list were the many ambigholes and walkways across the moat-like gutter that surrounded the theatre.  This way, only Xela would know if the dye had been disturbed.

The following morning, s/he found a fluorescent flashlight and examined hir traps. To hir utter dismay, a collection of footprints was found leading from one of the ambigholes and across the walkway into the theatre. The door was locked, but must have been locked by the trespassers, as the footprints were seen again in the side hall and the café, up the stairs and into a first floor store room, where they appeared to do something in the nature of a sort of pirouette, and turn right around and out of the theatre, taking the steps two at a time.  Mysterious, thought Xela. This was incredibly odd. Why would someone break into the theatre, take nothing, and rush out? Kids perhaps, doing it for a dare? But whoever they were, they didn’t disturb anything. S/he decided to put it out of hir mind.

After re-applying the dye, Xela went to bed, but did not get any sleep. S/he was agonising fruitlessly about the intruders, and tossed and turned all night as a result. At least the one thing s/he could be sure of was that they did not return. The theatre, though ancient, was deathly silent at night.

Yet, the next morning, footprints of fluorescent dye had been tracked all over the building once again. Though there was still no sign of anything being disturbed, Xela’s own thoughts were disturbed. It was as if some sort of explosion had taken place in hir cerebrum. How did these ambigs get in and out so silently? How did they break open locks and re-lock them without making an audible indication of what they were doing? Worse still, how long had they been doing so without hir knowledge? If those workambigs hadn’t shown up, s/he still wouldn’t know about these midnight burglars.

That night Xela stayed up and ready, patrolling every entrance, careful not to step in hir own dye. There was not a single disturbance. Upon checking the dye periodically around the building throughout the night, there was no evidence of intruders. Either it was a two-time thing, or s/he had scared them off with hir cognitive presence. S/he decided to sleep during the day, as s/he was dreadfully tired and beginning to go a bit mad. Upon awakening and checking the traps however, s/he noticed that they had been disturbed. Footprints were all over the theatre once again. Worse still, they had entered hir dressing room, the place s/he was fast asleep, and they had made a disturbance at last. Sitting on hir makeup table was a bag of raw garlic.

With a cry of un-Phantom-like uncontrollable fury, Xela hurled downstairs and ran full tilt, forgetting not to step in the dye, towards the ambighole cover, threw neuself down, tumbling through a narrow tunnel that surfaced in the gutter, about 5 metres below ground level. Here, the standing water had washed the dye from the perpetrator’s shoes. With a cry of frustration, s/he kicked a pile of charred garbage aside. The tunnels connected to the gutter went across the DMZ; it would be impossible to trace them even s/he could leave the confines of the theatre. With a start, however, s/he realised that s/he had not kicked aside garbage. Upon closer inspection, Xela discovered that it was, in fact, a human corpse, completely devoid of skin and badly charred. There was a huge gash in the pelvic region, as if more than just an ordinary knife had made it. Poor ambig, thought Xela, the first sympathetic thought s/he had had in seven years.

Before s/he could even think of a possible course of action, of vengeance for this terrible crime perpetrated on hir soil by hir invaders, there was a splashing sound directly behind hir.