Desperately Seeking Pseudangelos, Chapter Three

What other way could it have gone though? Joe had intimated as much to Flashshadow on the drive over. As long as this was still his land, not Yon’s, the latter wouldn’t be the only one who commanded multitudes. That first afternoon with Sonica, several of Joe’s had looked in. Now he needs must summon another.

Not his shining heroes. They’d be ashamed to see him like this. Nor a villain, for by their very nature Yon and his entourage were without peer.

None of which was to say there’d been nobody worse than them.

For there was one.

Yon, being all eye, was first to show signs of lifting his gaze from Joe to some spot in the sky far above him. The others however were not slow about following his lead, and oculars already bulgy were fast becoming more so.

The form was that of a woman, feet planted on the pool bottom. Between these colossal cha-cha heels, Joe and his fallen fellows might well have been the minuscule mariners of Rhodes. To towering heights above stretched a physique of gleaming purple, apparently unadorned, though the head in the heavens wore what may have been a diadem. Thence the many-hued lightning glanced from a graven face beautiful and cold.

This was the Queen of Outer Space.

An action figure Joe had never dared take with him to school, although a select few friends had been invited to the attic that they might marvel at her as did he.

For Joe to do so again now was to be confirmed in his childhood theory that the fabric cape packaged as her accessory had been a last-minute intervention on the part of some toy company executive, for even by the loose moral standards of Pre-Nottingham Earth, one designer had gone to town. Curvatures of thigh which in proportion were trim and toned, but over which light and shadow rolled as upon the round vastness of power station smokestacks. Huge hips. A swooping celestial arc of back. And a bosom.

Unyielding.

Every sculpted swell and crafted crevice wrought in rock-hard plastic.

The Queen of Outer Space exited the pool-belly as though stepping onto a curb. With one languid hand she pulled the spiral water-flume down, its fibreglass and iron turning a bank of bar-rooms to rubble. Yon in unseemly haste was descending his chair, while the trio in custody of Mini-Flash prisoners released them as without a thought and ran. All the twenty-four were in desperate rout from this Ray Harryhausen nightmare.

Joe pitied them. Wicked as they were, they were nothing but known. Their every desire and every depravity he had experienced first. The Queen of Outer Space was the dark beyond, states and sensations undreamt of by a boy.

She always won.

Surveying the riotous microbes her smile was terrifying, for nowhere on that acre of mirth was written mercy. She’d trap them under the toe of her stiletto just for the pleasure of watching them wriggle. To her, they were no more than…

Well.

Rabbits.

Joe saw that.

The retreating ones, on the other hand, by now couldn’t be seen for dust. Their Fifty-Foot Woman wandered after them, idly kicking nightclubs out of her path, unhurried.

She’d catch up. She always did. And then…

Our hero shuddered.

His Mini-Flashes above were scrambling down into the pool, while Flashshadow and the cowboy picked themselves up. The only phrase Joe knew with which to praise these friends was “well brought-up,” for making no greater acknowledgment than they had to of what they’d just seen. All raced to Crushroom’s side where Mini-Flash Pseudangelos knelt, still wringing his feeler and beseeching him to hold on.

Just a worn-out stuffed vinyl mushroom from the fun-park back along the coast from here. At the end of the day, which Joe could tell this was, that was all he’d ever been. Indeed, Crushroom must have brought a good deal of happiness to a good many children in his time. It wasn’t his fault Joe’s memories had made him what he’d been here.

“I have waited,” groaned Crushroom to Mini-Flash Pseudangelos. “That which might yet be between us is all that I have left, and so little time remains…”

“Now, Pseudangelos, just because somebody’s attracted to you,” began Mini-Flash Juniper, but her erstwhile schoolfellow paid her no heed. Through her tears she told Crushroom with no need for words that his plea had been met with compassion. Then the circle of onlookers took a step back, as light such as that of an electric oven began to emanate from her.

Mini-Flash Pseudangelos had been known to materialize unto others thus, in a manner strangely reminiscent of a chocolate cake baking. This however suggested that same cake somehow reverting to its original ingredients. Crushroom meanwhile was discorporating too, starting with his tendril-ends which held their shape for the measure of a breath then fell apart to powder. These were no inert particles however, but rather seemed alive, mingling sumptuously with the luminescence and all the goodness it contained while the residual mass of Crushroom gladly gave up more.

Joe checked his disbelief as he grasped what was going on.

Pseudangelos had granted Crushroom his dying wish.

They were consummating.

To the whirl of sugar and butter and eggs Crushroom’s spores surged in streams, his essence circling hers, a Bacchanal such as surely had never been seen before. Those who watched awestruck knew that Crushroom would not return from this. When the primordial throbbing rhythm was at last danced out, there was nothing of him but what the breeze bore away. Mini-Flash Pseudangelos in her polka-dot bikini was back before the others again.

In both hands she held a tiny mushroom. Its cap as was red as Crushroom’s had been, whilst about the spots and stem was a beautiful chocolate sheen.

“It is the Son of Crushroom,” Mini-Flash Pseudangelos breathed. “And that was wonderful for me.”

“Shall we depart?” suggested Joe.

From pool to beach gate the survivors made all deliberate speed, Pseudangelos carrying her newborn before her. Flashshadow’s girls had brought their vehicles around, and so it was that three space-cars and a school minibus motored for freedom, outstripping the storm with the sea to starboard until sunbeams streaked from a clear blue sky. Nor did our heroes halt until they reached Crushroom’s domain, that corner of ancient ruin-strewn pavement lost amid fantasies of marshland. Here Mini-Flash Pseudangelos planted the Son, by a shady pool overhung by boughs at the heart of Crushroom’s home.

“Grow, my small one,” was her blessing, delivered with sprinklings from the swamp. “May you be all that your father was. Though what he was to me, none shall know.”

Her three classmates from the Special Program murmured their congratulations, and told Pseudangelos they’d always imagined she’d be the first among them to know the joy of motherhood.

“Big guy died happy, I’ll tell you that,” added Splitsville.

Joe went over to Mini-Flash Robin who was gazing back the way they’d come, where on the horizon the last scudding blackness of thunderclouds might still be seen.

“The Queen of Outer Space was totes something,” were Robin’s words.

Our hero thought of Flashtease, alongside whom he would always rank Mini-Flash Robin now that they had shared this adventure. Both boys were too much Joe’s friends for him to feel any envy towards them. It was more a sense of everlasting thankfulness that he was able to call them such. Maybe it was through others, and not your own subconsciousness after all, that you found your way to the person you had always longed to be.

Nevertheless, Robin looked as if he’d have appreciated a little elucidation on his theme, and there was no doubt Joe owed him that much.

“Indeed, my friend,” he therefore agreed. “I am grateful to you for asking nothing further. She is more than I would have had you know of me.”

THE END