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The Vacuum Cleaner Woman

 

 

 

     When Frances’s mother dropped her off at the Cathedral there was already a crowd.  

     She got out of the car, said goodbye to her mother and shut the car door.  Her mother gave her a look through the open window but was silent.

     “I know,” Frances said.  “I’ll be careful.”

     “See you at nine, sharp,” her mother said for the third time.  She drove off, and Frances turned to join the crowd.  Like Frances, most of the crowd appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties.  They were standing in loose clusters, talking, waiting.  There was no semblance of a line.  They were waiting for the doors of the Cathedral to open and admit them inside to meet the rock star known as Estez.

     Frances began working her way through the crowd, trying to get closer to the doors.  More than a few kids were wearing tee shirts depicting the familiar axe wedged into a skull.  This was the album cover artwork of Estez’s breakthrough release, Corpses Alive.

     The anticipation in the air was almost a visible thing.  Estez had become an overnight sensation a year earlier.  He was a guitarist, singer and writer of dark rock music.  Most parents deemed his material gothic or Satanic, but that didn’t affect his album sales.  Corpses Alive had gone triple platinum in just under six months.  There were already bands trying to imitate his morbid sound.  

     Frances eased her way through the first few clusters of people.  She had never been inside the Cathedral before.  Frances thought the majority of the kids around her probably hadn’t been either.  It was an enormous curved building that boasted elaborate design—an architect’s wet dream.  Sculptures of angels stood sentry beside huge planter boxes bursting with flowers.  Frances had to admit she thought it was a bit much, but she did like the flowers and the stained glass windows.  The structure sloped up and up to an enormous silver dome at least a hundred feet off the ground with a white cross at the pinnacle.

     Frances stood waiting, studying the building and listening to mixed conversations around her. 

     After half an hour the doors banged open.  A heavyset bodyguard type emerged, dressed in all black and with an Estez tee shirt stretched thin around his barrel of a chest.  He squinted at the crowd and said, “Ten at a time.”  His lips barely moved.

     Frances was swept in with the first handful of fans.  Inside was dark but Frances could make out a large open area.  The place would seat a very large congregation.  Larger than life statues lined the walls among the shadows.  Frances thought they looked rather spooky.  If one of them were to move or begin speaking, Frances thought she might have a heart attack.  A few candle flame specks danced high up on distant walls like orange stars. 

     The big man in the Estez shirt led them toward the altar, their feet kicking up a murmur of echoes.

     “Awesome,” remarked a kid sporting a ponytail and an old worn out Estez tee shirt.  He had a black acoustic guitar strapped across his back.

     "Where is he?” asked a pale girl with thick eyeliner.  

     Without turning his head the bodyguard said, “He’s comin.”

     “Will he… you know… see us privately?” the pale girl asked.

     “He got no time for one-on-one, cupcake,” said the bodyguard, and this time his head turned a little toward her.  Then he added, “You kids sit tight.  I’ll let him know you’re here.”  He went around the back of the altar and disappeared.

     “Dammit,” the pale girl hissed to no one. “I was hoping for a minute alone with him.”

     A tall skinny guy with a long blonde goatee and small silver hoops in his ears smirked at the girl, “I’m sure the dude gets laid plenty without help from you.”  A few kids laughed.

     The girl tensed and stuck her fists on her hips.  “That isn’t what I want!” Her echo came back, want, want, want, and seemed to contradict her.  “And I’m not here for an autograph, either.  None of your business, anyway,” she finished, dismissing him with a heavy roll of the eyes.

     Frances wasn’t sure what she would say to Estez.  Everything she thought of seemed weak and lame, the sort of shit Estez probably heard all the time:  

     I like your guitar work on Corpses Alive.  

     Hey man, I dig your style.

​     Even, You rock, was a dumb thing to say.  The man was here, not on a TV but somewhere in this building and Frances was about to meet him in person, speak to him… the man who had become an overnight rock music legend around the world.  Frances wondered if she was about to be disappointed by the reality of the man.

​     A few minutes passed.  A couple of fans appeared to rehearse lines they intended to recite to the musician.  The girl with the heavy eyeliner had distanced herself from the rest of them.  She was listening to the others with poorly concealed dislike.

     Frances could barely make out the shadowy apex of the dome far above.  She wondered what sort of religious events were held in the Cathedral on Sundays.  Her parents weren’t religious at all.  She wondered why the place was so dark, surely there were lamps somewhere, crystal chandeliers or some shit.  But then again, of course they had it dark.  Meeting a star like Vanilla Ice or Justin Bieber the lights would be on.

     There was a stirring around the back of the altar, but Frances saw no one emerge.  She thought she saw movement but it was too dark to say.  Would Estez perhaps greet them by floating down on an invisible wire with a black light spotlight amidst an array of ethereal gothic props?  Or would he simply stroll out to meet them like anyone else?

     This time Frances was sure she saw movement, something black like a sheet.  And then suddenly Estez was standing among them, a tall figure in the center of their group with a dark cape thrown over his shoulders.         He looked them over, and Frances felt a chill.

     How’d he creep up on us and no one hear him?

     “Hello,” the musician said.  His voice was low, pleasant.  He studied them one by one in the dark, his eyes seeming to size up and categorize each, a slight smile playing on his lips.  Frances decided she wasn’t disappointed with the reality of the man.  Not at all.

     The pale girl came forward and fell to her knees in front of Estez.  She took his hand in both of hers.  “I understand your lyrics better than anyone!” she said. “I know you so well!”  Then, Frances heard her whisper, “I want you to drink my blood.”  She offered one branch-like white wrist.

     Estez did not accept the offer, but instead threw his head back and laughed a deep booming laugh that echoed like a madhouse inside the Cathedral.  Frances smiled, for in that moment she was glad she came.  

     But the moment was about to pass.

     “Drink your blood!” Estez exclaimed, purely delighted.  

     “Yeah …. yeah,” the girl breathed up to him.  Her face was eager, like a hungry dog, and Frances thought she might also look like that at the height of sexual climax.

     Estez’s smile grew even wider, and he looked up at the ceiling.  “Alright,” he said agreeably.  He moved away from the girl and the rest of the fans and positioned himself directly under the dome.  “That sounds real good.  But first, I need … this.”

     Estez extended one arm above his head.  Frances followed the musician’s gaze and saw something on the underside of the dome that had not been there a minute ago.  There was a crackling circle of blue electricity snaking around the highest point in the center of the dome.

     Estez spoke a word that sounded like, “Fie!”, and a bolt of lightning shot down from the dome and struck the musician’s raised hand.  A curtain of light flashed and briefly blinded the young fans.  Frances heard gasps from some of them.  

     When her vision returned she took in a sight that made her legs weak.  Where Estez had been a second ago there was now a giant standing eighty feet tall.  One tree trunk of an arm was still upraised as a flashing bolt of electricity coursed steadily from the dome to the upraised hand.  Estez had somehow transformed into this monstrosity. 

     Screams from the young fans.  Frances was unable to move.  It was the face.  The giant’s face was the most ghastly thing Frances had ever seen… the sort of thing the human mind was not made to understand: a grey mask twitching like a nest of rats, and one large cyclopean eye in the center of the forehead.

     Its mouth dropped open.  “HA HA HA!” it bellowed in a deafening, booming growl.  Its single eye rolled crazily, slowed and then focused on the kids below.  “WHO WANTS TO GO FIRST?”  More ground-shaking laughter.

     Frances felt herself trying to faint.  She forced her eyes to stay open but her legs were useless.  Some new sound had joined the towering monster’s roaring laughter, not just the terrified screams of the few kids near Frances.  It was a sound like a jet engine roaring into life.  Then Frances glanced down from that unspeakable face.  Gripped in one huge hand was the source of that sound.  It was a vacuum cleaner the size of a two-story house.  The jet-engine sound was the vacuum powering on.

     Frances realized what the cyclops was going to do a split second before it happened.  The monster uttered: “BAH!” and at once began rolling the vacuum across the Cathedral floor at the kids.  The girl who had asked the musician to drink her blood was the first to be sucked under the front of the enormous machine.  Frances heard her scream like the alarm bells of hell, heard the alarm bell get cut off by a sickening strawberry-in-the-blender sound, and the reservoir in the upper cylinder of the vacuum was instantly stained red.

     “HA HA HA!” the giant roared.  Frances noticed the giant had long locks of curly hair.  And it was wearing what looked like a long black dress… as though it was a female.

     Her favorite musician had just morphed into a giant female cyclops, wielding a huge vacu-blender.   

     Frances finally found her legs.  She cut away from the scattering group and moved down the side wall.  Behind her the giant grunted again, “GAH!”  And then a terrified plea as someone stared into eternity:  “No! No! No! Naaaa—”  Then the chopping sound came again.

     Door...  Find the door.

     But in the darkness and chaos it seemed impossible.  Frances glanced back over her shoulder and saw two guys, both maybe twenty or twenty-one years old, run into each other and go sprawling.  Neither got up quickly enough.  The vacuum, wheels spinning madly, carted over them easily.  Twin red sprays gushed into the top chamber of the vacuum.  It was getting full, a thick sloshing berry smoothie. 

     Far above, Frances noticed the cyclops was still conducting lightning with one hand.  Only now the monstrosity was head-banging as it pushed the vacuum, as if to a heavy metal scorcher only it could hear.

     The boy with the guitar slung across his back climbed onto the giant’s foot, apparently thinking the cyclops wouldn’t vacuum up its own foot.  It didn’t, but it did flip him from one enormous shoe neat as you please, sending him nearly twenty feet straight up into the air.  Frances watched as the boy soared up, did a slow-motion half turn, and then came down.  He landed flat on his back, shattering the guitar to splinters.  The vacuum quickly swallowed him up.

     Now the reservoir was nearly full of maroon juice, and there was only Frances and one other left.  The other was a petite girl in baggy denim with long brown hair and a backpack strapped over her shoulders.  She had a clever look in her eyes, and Frances suddenly wanted to try to team up with her.  Safety in numbers.  But the giant had its eye fixed on the girl’s slight figure.  She scrambled across the altar, her hair flying wildly over her backpack. She was headed for a door on the far side of the Cathedral.  Frances willed her to make it.  The cyclops wheeled its massive arm around, the other held steadily up toward the dome to conduct the bolt of lightning.  Frances supposed if the electrical connection were broken the giant would return to the form of Estez.  But how could she make that happen?  

     The cyclops shoved the vacuum at the girl, but the wheels jostled over the altar steps and smacked off an adjacent wall.  The force of the collision sent candles toppling to the floor.

     The girl was quick.  She cut into a short corridor and lunged for the exit door at the end.  The door didn’t budge. Locked.

     “GWAHAHA!” the cyclops bellowed in triumph, head-banging and not missing a beat.  Frances thought the girl had been the one triumphant as the vacuum wouldn’t fit into the corridor no matter how much bashing and tilting the cyclops attempted.  

     “COME OUT LITTLE DRUMSTICK, IT WON’T HURT.”  

     The suction from the vacuum was tugging at the girl, pulling her hair out behind her and almost catching the longest locks in the whirling front blades.  She held fast to the locked doorknob.

     Again, as if in a terrible dream, Frances intuited what was going to happen just before it happened.  Up above, the giant flicked a thumb and a switch was toggled.  The motor sped up, and the jet engine roar jumped one octave to the next.  Frances saw with some disgust that the giant’s headbanging also sped up.  To match the new tempo.  And Frances thought for a moment she could actually hear the distinctive sound of an electric guitar in the roar of the vacuum.  It sounded a lot like the chorus guitar of the opening track on Corpses Alive.

     The suction from the vacuum blades increased tenfold.  The girl didn’t stand a chance.  The pull had become so strong it lifted her off her feet as she clung by one hand to the locked doorknob.  One of her shoes had come untied in her mad dash to the EXIT alcove, and as the loose tip of lace caught in the blades she became a human tug of war, albeit a brief war.  The clever look was gone.  Now she had a look in her eyes of canned olives.  Her grip on the doorknob slipped a little... then completely.  She cart wheeled once and was pulled in head first.  Frances tried closing her eyes but was not quick enough to avoid seeing the girl juiced like a watermelon, backpack and all.  

     “STUBBORN!”  The cyclops bellowed.

     It shut off the vacuum.  

     Frances realized the giant believed all ten fans were taken care of.  She stood in disbelief, back planted against the far wall of the cathedral trying not to breathe.  The giant tapped another lever on the vacuum and the reservoir came free.  Inside, the red smoothie churned.  Never breaking the connection to the electricity in the Cathedral’s dome, the giant hoisted the reservoir with its free hand, and began to drink the thick stew straight from a straw-like appendage on the reservoir’s lid.  Dark liquid splashed down its front, staining its long dress and puddling around its feet.  Frances watched in horror as the monster gulped and gulped.  Finally the vacuum was empty.

     The giant set the vacuum aside and just stood for a moment, swaying as if drunk.  Then it raised each hand under the dome, and conducted lightning with both.  Its mouth opened and let out a scream that seemed to Frances to fill the universe.  In the scream Frances heard music, fast metallic electric guitars thrashing like axe blades, drums pounding a speed freak’s heartbeat, bass rolling like a thunder train out of hell. 

     Frances knew right away that it was music of Estez… or the thing everyone believed was Estez.  Although this time the music Frances heard was nothing she recognized from Corpses Alive.  She knew that album very well.  

     No, this was—

     And it came to her in a flash.  It was—

     It was new material.

     Her legs went into motion and she bolted for the Cathedral’s front doors.  The monster was staggering now, clearly intoxicated from the juice.  It was still screaming out new song ideas and did not see Frances flee.  

     Frances burst through the door... and that was when she woke up in bed, screaming.

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