Wonderland's the New High

Introduction;;

Some speakeasy in a jazzical jukebox – some love-romantic running dreams about being something B I G B I G B I G – “we’re gonna hit this town like a hurricane and blow their minds asunder cuz we’re individualistic and original and our Fashion Statements are Fantabulous! – when it all comes back to noise noise noise and sound sound sound and screaming vocalists and abused drums and scratched guitars – “We think you’d do alright, kid. We’d love to sell you.”

Along the riptides, along the ferris-wheel love notes there are circles of songs that lead us away from shore.

And we are trapped,
enrapt.
We are raped by sound.

“…Acid Alice is a doll…"

Thick cigar smoke plumes around rich lips and absorbs into tailored suits and fishnets and leather and bounces off chrome and dimmed strobe lights while thin fingers encircle those slender cigarettes, are dipped, snubbed, and inhaled over and over to make great dis-ease look glamorous. They sit with crossed legs and arms, speak in monotone and toss their heads back when they rarely laugh; there is a low-tone chatter as if there is something to conceal in suggestive remarks and ambiguous slanders. Sounds of sips and clinks from granite countertops to glass stems are all mixed into speakers surround-sounded sounding some melancholy voice kissing a machine microphone to appease the crowds, who on occasion brandish arm trophies and smooth the floor with sensual slow dance.

“…Who walks and talks
and trips to fall
She purrs as she begins to crawl…”

Further on occasion there are ravatic beats up-tempo to the still-life and the lights blink neon-gasmic in pinks and greens and deep dark blues, moaning and groaning to hallucinatory hues when the dancers may jerk and fidget their digits and limbs to beats vibrating their bones and to great surges of energy energizing those of monochromatic. This great surge of previous vigor from a previous song drummed down to “Acid Alice” generated by “Mute Conduits” that was a mere whisper to the amplifiers but was caught and held by the skills of the guitarists and keyboardist and drummer- held it all together and made it something mock cynical with a smoother voice.

“…We untie your buttons
And unzip your shoes
We paint you up
In shades of blues…”

The tones toll in slow, dramatic teases, takes the rhythm as it eases and pleases and gathers eyes to his form; and they stare, and he thinks he’s something great and wonderful.

“…you’re something new to abuse…”

But, who cares?

“…when I run and jump and fly, I
crash
don’t burn don’t hurt don’t die…”
(just a small sing-a-long for neglected back-up singers)

Who cares about brown hair dyed black and combed to cover the right side of sickly pale facial features? Who cares about the red tie, the black sleeveless shirt stating in white block letters “Don’t die! You’ll be dead if you do!”, the studded belt with a red heart buckle hanging loose over baggy black pants stitched with white skulls and fires? Who even cares?

“…We love your hate
We laugh your cries
We pull the lights
Right over your eyes
We love the space between your thighs…”

This figure threading fingers- in black and white striped fingerless gloves, of course –through tossed hair had no bearing of meaning; he had no ideas of lovesick sadness to push emotion into his voice straining for just such a thing. Every fiber of his near gothically-grunged indie style and murdered makeup- black mascara smoothed around eyes, red eyeliner exaggerating intensity, white powder and blush coloring tan cheeks –read in intricate lengths his apparent cliché.

“…We push to smother
On white velour
You’re appetizing
On the kitchen floor…”

There is no talent in his vocals, nothing deep and heartfelt in his screams and whispers and shrieks and out-of-tone altos to rough tenors, but the dancers gyrate in explicit movements and the listeners grant him soft smiles when he raises tensed cords to a pitch higher than himself. He pushes apparent fraud in his desperate claims of nonexistent ability hanging loose in illusory atmospheres, but for his style they remark how well the makeup materializes under faint limelight.

“…chaste is something to adore…”
Good God he’s Beautiful when all dressed up.

“…We dance your walk
We’re watching you
But we would stop
If you told us to…”

Even the guitar strapped over his shoulder reduces to bumping against his leg when his fingers cannot count the strings, when he feels the sharp inability and embarrassment of his unknowing. But he looks the part with the unfinished tattoo on his bicep and with the several chains in different shapes hanging from his jeans and with the typically atypical style of silver charm bracelets up his forearms and the childish bunni ears drooping across his forehead. That’s the importance, yes?

He looks trendy!
He looks emotive!
He looks SCENE!

He is fantastical.

“…Because Acid Alice you’re just Doll
who can’t walk or talk
but stripes to stall
You cry as you begin to crawl.”

And the cliché bows, gaining a few claps and applause but none too much ‘cuz these hip cats won’t rebel to just anything. An hour break for the band; the amplifiers and DJs keeping their absence bearable and time for the pendulums of resonance to stop ricocheting sound in their heads.

Exit left, come to backstage.

Coughing into his clenched fist, the soloist realizes how horribly his vocals vocalized and when sighting the refreshment table’s gifts of bottled water, glasses, and soda cans set atop the scratched metal surface, he calculates a better remedy. He ignores what his peer performers are doing- they aren’t important, he’s the one selling this, dammit! –and meanders to steps leading to openly pink, neurotic air of luxurious smokes.

“Gimme somethin’ sweet, barkeep. I gotta shake off these blues.”
The reply to a question of what is desired from the bartender wiping his hands clean behind a countertop who replies, “Kid, this’ll knock your socks off. It’s new and improved,” and it’s better than E and it’ll show you things you dun wanna see...

Aidyn is seated on a swivel stool, careful to not smear makeup by resting his chin on the palm of his hand; such a soft palm, almost as if he’s never worked a day in his life. Breath fogs into the glass filled with sweetness, a sigh of something as his eyes roll around to new arrivals to the bartender’s haven. Eager lips down a few more sips before a clack- wooden counter to glass –insinuates a step towards the beginning of his drunkenness. The back of his hand moves to remove remainders of sweets from his mouth only to realize he’s smeared himself into a nice clown smile drooping towards his chin.

“Dammit.” He tries in vain to wipe the smears from his skin when he notices how large his hands are, how quickly the countertop is sizing itself to miniature stature, how the unimportant people reach symbolic measurements and carry themselves to ant-dancers, small and worthless and mindless hive-minds… “Damnn… Damnn…” He murmers, blinking the macropsia to split-second micropsia and he is a small, small unimportant thing tumbling down and down and down right through the black and white checkered floor and there is a splash. He gasps and flails and feels the sickness sinking in as the narrow tunnel compresses his lungs to force him to breathe; he opens his mouth to scream but all that mud and water and rust rushes past his lips into the open instrument of an empty body; no soul, no thought, no wondering or meaning or life or love and no calm no sleep no answer and no chance.

He is filled with such a yearn to be filled that he doesn’t think about what he takes in.
How does one become so empty? Who takes it out of you?
His eyes open to gaze at the fogged rippling of sur-reality, thrusting himself upward with kicking feet to cough and sputter out whatever caused such a hallucination. Weary limbs doggy-paddle to the inviting land that he clings to, pulls himself out with and lays on to catch his breath…

Oh, wait.
Is that grass?

There are skies as far as there are clouds, caught in the edges of leaves whispering against each other of the gnarled, aged trees; bent, weathered, sewn and worked into the earth. “What is that?”
The boy blinks and sighs, swearing to hear tiny, sweet voices.

“It’s, it’s a Bunni!”
“Ah! Ah! Get it out!”

Alarmed, he struggles up and whips about to see the owners of these words, but only comes upon the sight of-
“We are FLOWERS, don’t eat US, Bunni! We do not taste good!”

“WHAT THE FU –” Wide-eyed, he catches “rodent” and “fiend” and “murderer” but he doesn’t mind all that so much as these things talking to him. “Hey, hey, I’m not a… a ‘Bunni’. I just have these ears on… See?” He sinks to admit this might be real, and suggests an end to the fight by proving his humanity, but as he tugs at the white, fluffy ears, they do not respond except for his, “OW, ow… Umm…” Fingers fumble for the head band, find none, and then search for the human ears that have likewise vanished.

He is confused.
He is angry.
He is delirious.

Panic!

“Okay! Okay! You Flowers are going to tell me what’s going on here or, or I’ll eat each and every one of you!”