Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
They emerged in a dark room. As soon as Nickel started walking behind Theren, the humidity of this space hit him. It was a far warmer feeling of wetness than the viscous moisture of the fog he was used to, fleeting whispers of moisture. The space around him reeked with a dank and soggy scent hinting at a body of water.
“Two Thraíha visiting me, rruh,” crooned the old man, his voice quieter but sharper, more immediate, closer to Nickel.
Theren turned to look at him, just barely discernible under the circle of illuminated light coming through the opening in the ceiling. He put his fingers to his lips to silence Nickel. Then he whirled around and stepped forth into the darkness, disappearing entirely.
The blackness was omnipresent. Nickel turned his hands over, flicking his wrists to see what contours and edges of them he could in the fading light. He stumbled forward to stay closer to Theren, whom he couldn’t see. His footsteps thumped in the dark, their dull echoes broken by the narrowness of the space. In just a few footsteps, he disappeared, every remaining line of his body melting into the all-consuming black. The humming clamor of the fighting Thraíha disappeared from far above as he walked further into the darkness.
Fear coursed through him, jolting the nerves throughout his body. He could no longer see or hear himself—not his footsteps, not the gentle ruffling of his robe against his bare skin. He couldn’t feel the book he’d kept close against his body under his clothes with great discomfort. But the fear frazzling his nerves kept him moving. He could feel the thrust of muscles and limbs he could not see, taking steps at a time. The fear moved him, and the fear was what he felt buzzing at his soles where he could no longer feel the slightly bumpy surface of the rock.
Don’t leave me, Theren. Nickel kept moving, electricity moving up through his legs, down, pushing on to the earth, moving him to satiate the fear of being left behind in this cave that threatened to engulf him.
“Why do you pass through the sepulchre of forgotten dreams?” rasped the old man. The voice was like a gust, buzzing and threatening to blow Nickel over. He felt blood rushing to his side before a jolt of nervousness pushed the momentum of his legs back to the left side.
“Don’t say anything,” whispered Theren. The voice seemed not to come from a specific location in the space but from all around, stemming from Nickel’s mind, only heard in his mind.
The rush of vertigo continued, ebbing forward, impelling Nickel forward. The silence was as pitched as the surrounding darkness. The darkness and silence were a void pitching through Nickel’s eyes and ears. The buzzing fear was a vibrating presence within him, but it had no center or focal point. He couldn’t tell where his eyes were—if they were closed or open, it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was like he didn’t have eyelids to begin with.
“I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe,” the old man hissed. “Things that would stop you dead. Things you don’t know I carry through my ages but that can still hurt you!”
A slithering noise reappeared, chiming like a rattlesnake. A shudder swept through Nickel’s consciousness. He felt tremors without feeling their physical focal points, like he was a rippling wave of air.
“The brothers of Abraham have been dead for almost a hundred years!” screamed the old man. “So I ask you,” he bellowed even louder, “WHY DO YOU PASS THROUGH THE TOMB OF BROKEN DREAMS?”
A shattering scream came from the right, losing its point of impact almost as soon as it appeared, turning into crisp cracklings that crackled through space with no clear direction.
“God is dead!” screamed the old man. He emitted a wheeze that crackled through the air like a gust of static. “He died between the Mediterranean Sea and—and the Jordan River!”
Screams erupted from everywhere. Human voices joined in shrill cries. They buzzed in a panoramic swarm, intensifying, resounding as if from within Nickel and from without.
“Yahweh! Mohammed! Jesus!” screamed the old man. “Killed in a bout of anger! Lying dead, wrestling in their arms!”
The screams turned to a hollow rendering, echoing and rising in volume. In these moments, Nickel only knew pain—a terrible crushing pain without a center, upon which he felt his body being directly crushed. It was a pain as familiar as the lurid trappings of the Ether. He felt the pain he felt whenever he’d been ensnared within the Ether, alone in his hovercraft, the pit deepening through his chest. Except instead of the rush of sensory thrill he’d felt before, he felt a hollow anguish engulfing him.
“Brothers and sisters killed by the texts!” the old man crooned.
The folding of air before a fire billowed before Nickel. The bright spark of a flame shot through the space, long and silent, wickering at the ends of a candle. The flame was smaller than what the volume of the billowing indicated.
The candles stood on a small silver plate, illuminating the gaunt, withered face of the crooning old man. His hair stood out over his scalp in sparse wispy strands. His jaw was angular, sharp despite the folds of sunken flesh just above his Adam’s apple.
Above his sharp, hooked nose were large eyes, creased at the edges by age but widened by receding eyelids so far back as if his eyes were about to fall out of their sockets.
Two blood-streaked, bulbous eyes were trained on a plate before him, slowly rising to meet Nickel’s sight. A thrilling tremor threatened to erupt in the air—and Nickel’s consciousness.
“Welcome to the Last Supper,” intoned the old man, the air rushing out of him like he was gasping. More sparks of shooting flames emerged to his sides, revealing candles and men seated to his right and left, positioned in various poses, looking in different directions and wearing various emotive expressions all trained upon each other. They were reacting to each other—in the middle of conversation. But they were frozen as still as marble statues, unblinking.
“We’ve eaten from the carcass of righteous flesh, torn asunder from endless pillage, rape, and conquest,” said the old man. He and his frozen accomplices were dressed in tunics lined in silvery patterns, old-fashioned attire like those worn by Templars of the twenty-first century. “We’ve drunk from the blood of countless enemies just to try and get a seat next to God.”
In the span of a blink that never occurred, the men surrounding the old man morphed into angry expressions. They were seated in aggressive postures, pointing fingers at one another, leaning into each other’s faces with wide-open mouths frothing with cries unheard, leaning away from assaults. Frozen in time.
The flames wavered, the candles next to the center blinking out before rippling up the air into existence once more.
The old man took a sip from his glass, letting its contents of thick, steely red blood stream through his lips. A soft buzzing appeared from the table as a few flies flitted over the dried, ragged meat of human flesh heaped upon the plates. They were heaved, torn apart, filled with gaping holes, entirely missing holes where they’d been carved out by knives and forks. Cracked and crisped at the edges. Cooked by war.
“You’ve walked upon the Last Supper of the United Republic’s grandfathers and their bastard brother of the East,” crooned the old man. “But you’re late to dinner!”
A gusty wind shrieked, sending a chill and blowing the baggy tunics of the men to the left. The candle flames rippled and wavered, still holding on to their longevity.
“Nearly two hundred years late!” the old man rasped. He glared at Nickel under two frowning, viscous eyebrows. His eyes were still bulbous, unfolded by his eyelids.
“You’ve died a hundred deaths to get here—thousands,” said the old man. “MILLIONS!” he continued.
Gunfire ricocheted behind the long dinner table. The faraway haze of fire and explosions drifted on the horizon. Missile fire rained down like slow lightning bolts.
“We stole the powers of God while seeking his salvation,” moaned the old man. His voice shook, his expression delirious. His chest heaved up and down. “We made a sacrilege of history and religion—all while fighting for them!”
A blinding flash of light grew like an exploding sunrise over the horizon. Only the ball of light grew into a pillar, expanding over the earth, growing and ever-expanding. A mushroom cloud darkened and rolled over the heavens.
A thunderous crackle ripped through the earth, louder than anything Nickel had heard before, crushing the world as shock waves of rubble and dust roiled over the earth.
“We killed God!” screamed the old man, his shrill voice just barely audible over the earth-shattering tumult. “Found new gods in his image, fought over them as the brothers of Abraham slipped into oblivion!”
The table was shuddering violently, the plates clattering in vibrating blurs. The cloud of dust rippling across the ground was nearing, increasing in height behind the table like an oncoming ocean wave.
“We abandoned our ideals, ripped the wombs out of our women! Castrated our men! Made the body a damned vessel for our politics!”
The dust billowed behind, blowing high into the air like a hurricane sweeping through.
“Come,” the old man said, patting the table before him, motioning towards the chair that materialized before the table. “Join me for the Eucharist of the future, condemned by the past!” The old man’s face stretched into a sickly smile, his cheeks and his gums widening across his face, splitting its sides.
He lifted a platter of dried, bloodied meat, carrying it over the table all the while continuing to stare at Nickel, unblinking. He placed the plate on the table, causing a soft clink of surfaces still audible over the roiling chaos.
“Come eat from the Last Supper of God before the Messiah of our dreams comes to kill us all!”
Momentum pushed Nickel through the air; the weight and strain of flesh returned as the force of momentum flashed through his limbs. The pain and horror of physical consciousness returned to him. The insecurity and shame of stumbling towards another human returned. The hatred of self and the sense of inadequacy he knew so well in the face of the other.
The other sat in front of him, looming, wrinkled, a waxing cursed body waiting to become a corpse. The old man’s body was taut with a domineering tension, waiting to spring upon Nickel, expressing his curse as he collapsed in the throes of death. The familiar nylon of his piloting uniform crinkled over Nickel’s skin. No longer in the Thraíha tunics he’d entered the cave in, he found himself in his jockey outfit worn when he was still living in his hovercraft. He crashed onto the chair, twisting his torso around its frame and sprawling his legs across the front of the chair.
G.R. Nanda 