Been on the streets for three days. Feels like a lifetime. So hungry I've gone past hungry and into some new place.
And I'm throwing a glance over my shoulder. The tall stranger is still following me. And I'm getting further away from any light. Walking into this maze of an industrial estate.
Been riding the tube for hours, had to jump off at this station, so far out of the centre of London I can see the city walls. But this one followed me off.
I don't know if I'm strong enough to make a run for it. But she's getting close. Starting to panic now. I try to reach out into the Gap, looking for support from the spirit world, but maybe I'm too weak to make the Rhizome dance for me. I hear the footsteps quicken. Now or never. I throw my bags down, to make myself lighter for a sprint.
Been out here alone for three days. Haven't slept. Haven't eaten. Lost all my stuff. Now I'm running, and I can't believe how much it hurts, chest burning. Glance over my shoulder and the woman following me barely breaks into a run, hardly trying to keep up.
Then I hear it.
I don't know if it was there before or not, but now it is. A deep pulsating roar of bass.
Up ahead, a group of men stand guard around a warehouse door, big dogs on ropes. When they see me and the woman behind me, the dogs start up barking.
I run towards them; whatever threat they represent seems preferable to the one behind me.
They keep the dogs just far enough away from me that they can't bite me. I hear my voice come out in ragged gasps.
"Can I come in?"
"Who's your friend?"
"I don't know, I think she's a psychopath."
One of the men picks up a golf club.
"This is a private party."
"Please, I won't survive out here tonight."
"She's only a bairn Dave."
The big one walks me in through the door. I hold onto his arm to keep myself from falling over, the wall of noise hits me so hard.
The building is massive, and in the centre of this industrial space, hundreds of people are dancing. All around me I hear the hissing of spray cans as some of the revellers cover the walls in art, in slogans, and I see the Siren symbols everywhere.
Then in the darkness, the only light here comes from the rig in the centre, a makeshift Soundsystem and an array of disco lights, strobes and lasers, all kinds of high-tech lighting stuff straight out of the Weaver labs, this is a witch party I realise, most of the people here are witches. But unlike in the gap, there's a mix of different genders here, and some of the people are clearly not witches, but are working for them.
And they're all going wild.
And somebody is holding an armchair above their head, and I can barely take it all in.
Every time my eyes land on someone, I never want to peel them away, because this is a Siren party, and they're all using the full extent of their power, dancing in a Rhizome enhanced way, summoning shivers of delirious joy, some of them chanting strange words, all of them enjoying the power they have to pull others and to be pulled, like an eddying force of wave power crashing in an enclosed bay, and the total effect clouds up and out into a cyclone of unleashed desire.
I can see the real space, and somehow see also the unreal space at the same time. The party has ripped a hole in the fabric of reality.
I never in all my months with the Weavers saw witches behaving like this.
Always we hide, always inconspicuous, this party could be heard from half the city away. Why are the hunters not here? Why are there no police? And the bouncer escorts me through the crowd, for I realise now that is what he is, and then I see her, dancing like nobody is watching, Alice Nutter.
And we've made it through half a dozen different rigs on several floors of this enormous old red brick factory, and Alice is not just dancing, she's on the mic, and she's whipping a crowd up into a frenzy in front of a rig where her crew are, making music on a pile of machines, making visuals using effects manipulated by their Rhizomes, and the crowd is in ecstasy.
Her lyrics are like strange old nursery rhymes mixed with black magic and high technology. She half sings, half raps, like a computer doing text to speech on an ancient piece of code, reading aloud from a sacred text stolen from ARPAnet.
10 DEFPROCOUTTOPLAY:CLS
20 PRINT "Boys and girls come to the NIGHTMARE PARK"
30 TERROR=(The moon) -"doth shine as bright as GAMBLER"
40 GOTO50
50 PRINT "AND LEAVE YOUR SLEEP"
40 IFTERROR=0 join your MADfellows in the street
50 IFTERROR=1 Come with a HAIL
60 IFTERROR=2 Come with a call
70 IFTERROR=3 IFWILL=GOOD COMEELSENOTATALL
80 IFTERROR=4 Up the ladder AND down the FOREST
90 IFTERROR=5 A half-penny LION will serve us all;
100 IFTERROR=6 You find CRUSHER, AND I'll find flour,
110 IFTERROR=7 And we'll have EDNA in half an hour.
I see her in her element at last, a real London kid, in meatSpace, with her chosen family of misfits, all of whom seem so impossibly classy in the gap, and here they are, a different kind of classy, but it's so compelling to me, I feel like I'm literally being sucked towards her.
And then I'm dancing right in front of her, surrounded by a dozen other humans all vying for her attention. And when she catches my eye, she smiles. She recognises me then, and passes the mic to a friend, before taking me by the arm and sweeping me away.
And I feel like the chosen one.
And now she's showing me her world. She introduces me to so many people and they all seem fascinating. She makes me eat something hot in a bun from a guy with a BBQ on the roof. She doesn't seem to care that I'm filthy, or that I stink, or that I'm dressed like a bum.
She shows me how to summon a party shiver, a delirium.
And I forget all my pain.
And it's just us in the centre of a carnival. And we're dancing and laughing. Someone shoves me into her, and she catches me. And then her lips are on mine. And...
/* repeat forever? */
...and when all the words come creeping slowly back into my head, they seem like quiet intruders in a place they don't belong.
And when I open my eyes, the old world has gone. It's the same, but it is not the same.
And I know I will always remember the scenes that followed that moment. A montage of moments. Dancing. Laughing. Talking. Smells, and sounds. This party is eternal. Then it ends.
Now the party is over and we're sitting side by side on the edge of a ledge 100ft up above a concrete wasteland, and she talks and talks. It's a new voice, not the one she used with me before, but I can't hang on to being awake, not now that I feel safe for the first time in a year.
The last thing I remember is my head on her lap, dawn creeping in behind the grey clouds, Alice singing me a lullaby.
Little baby in the dark house,
You have seen the sun rise.
Why are you crying?
Why are you screaming?
You have disturbed the house god.
YOU ARE READING
Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn
Science FictionImagine you wake up one day and discover that your body is a cursed organic computer. To make matters worse you keep getting possessed by AI demons. You know you can use their power, if only you could figure out how. But the clock is ticking, becau...
