Punktown: Shades of Grey (36 page)

At a signing at Punktown’s Tatnuck Bookseller last year, at which Mr. Thomas was autographing copies of his collection of erotic horror stories
Shadows of Flesh
, he looked up to find a Vlessi wearing a metallic pink scarf waiting in line, clutching a copy of the book in its broad hands. Though the entity had no mouth to smile at him, or eyelids to flutter at him, it was apparent to Mr. Thomas right away—from the way the being lifted its unwieldy head eagerly when he looked up at it, and from the way its multiple rows of nipples stood glaringly erect—that he was in the presence of a very ardent fan. Sure enough, when it came time to sign the Vlessi’s book, the creature began to babble its admiration for his work, particularly this latest collection. “Your stories are so…so…
thrilling
,” it gushed in its translated voice. When Mr. Thomas thanked it and asked it to whom he should inscribe the book, the Vlessi said, “Could you write,
‘To me, from me’
?” When the author raised his puzzled head, the extra-dimensional explained proudly, “My name is Aga Borusi—but I’m you. I’m the Vlessi incarnation of your spirit. Isn’t that wonderful? I’m a Vlessi, and a female, and I’m even ten years younger than you—I’ve read your bio again and again—but we’re the same soul! And as such, you make me so, so proud of these stories! I felt so connected to them, it’s as if you had written them just for me. Or as if I had written them through you, or
for
you, or…you know what I mean!”

Thomas told the being he was delighted to meet it—her—and although he gently explained that he is an intensely private person (“Don’t worry,” the Vlessi replied, “with me you’ll be alone with yourself!”), he allowed himself to be talked into dinner with Aga Borusi after the book signing. But as he feared, Thomas’ admiring alter ego was not content with dinner alone, and repeatedly begged that the writer should bring her to his apartment so that she could look at his collection of books. Thomas rebuffed the creature with as little sternness as possible, and his natural compassion caused him to feel guilt when Aga Borusi fell into moody silence after that. They parted awkwardly.

But in the weeks that followed, there came a series of phone calls and flowers—both of these sweet at first, but later brittle and rotted. One afternoon he found a note stuck to his flat’s door with a Vlessi stiletto.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to make love with yourself? I don’t mean masturbation. I mean…yourself?”
Not knowing which concept —making love to himself or to his Vlessi self—repulsed him more, Thomas disposed of the note and almost of the knife, too…but at last decided it was prudent to tuck the weapon under the edge of his mattress.

Still, his fan’s attentions seemed relatively harmless until the day he was summoned to a hospital’s emergency room to find that his brother Craig (the youngest of the three Brothers Thomas) had been admitted for defensive knife wounds to his hands and arms, and a shallow cut along his ribs. Craig related that he had been attacked by a Vlessi in a pink metallic scarf, who had tried to drag him into a hovercar, in the process muttering more to
herself
than to him, “If I can’t have one brother, I’ll have another.” When Craig had struggled to resist abduction, she had produced a new stiletto and things had become deadly, but a passing forcer had heard the cries of alarmed spectators and the Vlessi had then fled in her vehicle.

Craig recovered quickly from his injuries, and Scott Thomas concluded that his Vlessi self had finally become too spooked or discouraged to resume her bid for his attentions, perhaps even returning to her own plane. He himself has had no contact with his enamored doppelganger since.

TRAVIS ANTHONY SOUMIS is, for good or bad, best known for his series of paintings called “Dreams are Dark,” exhibited several years ago at Punktown’s Hill Way Galleries. These paintings were the result of Soumis’ six months spent in the dimension of the Kodju people, the first two months recovering in a hospital from an adverse reaction to the teleportation process, during which convalescence he made sketches based on the images of his delirium. Soumis believes that some of the sketches were inspired not so much by his fevers and the restorative drugs, however, as they were by the entities he seems to have glimpsed, dwelling between the planes of existence.

Among the paintings created during this period were the covers for three of Jeffrey Thomas’ books.
The Sea of Flesh and Ash
combines two novellas, one by Jeffrey Thomas and one by Scott Thomas, both stories actually inspired by the painting used on the cover. This painting’s properties so disturbed the Brothers Thomas, when Soumis showed them the original, that they suffered serious bouts of depression and severe nightmares, and channeled some of these psychological reactions into the subsequent novellas. Thereafter, Jeffrey Thomas made sure only to view a reproduction of the art for the cover of
Punktown: Third Eye
, electing not to see the original. And the cover painting for the German-language edition of Jeffrey Thomas’ book
Monstrocity
was deemed so psychically unsettling that the publishers elected not to utilize it at all, though this painting was later used by another publisher for the cover of Jeffrey Thomas’ fiction collection
AAAIIIEEE!!!
This image alone, even in its reproduced state, has been linked with a number of suicides.

While amongst the Kodju, Soumis studied paintings from the Ganglia Dynasty, obsidian sculptures by the Order of Blind Monks, cave paintings by the extinct, cannibalistic Chol’i tribes, and the holograms of the late Kodju artist Mykari Yo, who himself went mad and took his own life after completing—and a moment later, destroying—a work called “Dreams are Dark,” from which Soumis derived the title for his own series of work.

Chemists and psychologists who have studied Soumis’ controversial body of artwork have concluded that its potent effects are caused not only by the unquestionably disturbing imagery itself, and the subconscious awareness it inspires in its viewers of the uncanny life occupying the seas between dimensions, but by the very pigments Soumis employed—some of these pigments defying categorization in human terms, and challenging both human eye and human brain. The primary pigment used can only be described as conveying a sepia-like tint, as interpreted by the deficient visual apparatus of
homo sapiens
(in the way that only the Tikkihottos can properly see and process the color they call “shrain,” appearing to humans as something hovering between green and gray). Kodju poet Uki Taru has described this pigment, which his people call “mat’ko” (rough translation: dust-flesh), in the English-language poem titled (appropriately enough) MAT’KO:

“A smear of ash from flocks of moths the fires slay,

The tears of immolation, the blood that’s wrung from smoke,

The blush of tombstone, the scent/sound/taste of decay,

When eye is nose/ears/mouth and every sense shall choke,

Drinking in the dimness from the bone-tailed end of day.”

As a result of their disconcerting aura, the Hill Way Galleries requested that Soumis remove the “Dreams are Dark” paintings from their facility, accepting an earlier group of work in their place. The originals have since been sold to a wealthy collector whom Soumis is under obligation not to name, but who keeps the artwork in a vault in his home, apparently only viewing it through spectacles designed by a Kodju engineer for the purpose, and also only after the paintings’ owner has taken a drug to control depression, anxiety, and psychotic episodes.

More recently Soumis was the source of additional controversy when the author/critic Cy Heliotrope received a request from the artist, asking if he could design the cover for his next book, free of charge, so impressed with Heliotrope’s work did Soumis claim to be. An admirer of the paintings Soumis had done for the covers of Jeffrey Thomas’ books, Heliotrope took the artist up on the offer, and shortly thereafter received a painting in the mail. Heliotrope’s wife Babs told the paramedics who soon responded to her call that when her husband opened the package, he stared blankly and silently at the painting for as long as a minute before suddenly bursting into screams, running out of the house, and disappearing down the street. When he was found, the writer was naked, curled in a shivering ball in a garbage-strewn lot, with globs of mud plastered over his eyes, stuffed in his ears and nostrils, and filling his mouth. The painting itself has never been found, and Soumis claims not to have a reproduction of it in his files.

Friends of Heliotrope, who in the wake of the incident commenced medication and weekly psychological counseling, accuse Soumis of purposely attacking the writer, as if he had sent him a letter bomb through the mail. They cite Soumis’ friendship with Jeffrey Thomas, and the long-standing feud between Thomas and Heliotrope, and suggest that Soumis brought home with him from the Kodju world a tin of the infamous mat’ko pigment, which he used in the creation of Heliotrope’s book cover in a conscious attempt to drive the writer insane.

Travis Anthony Soumis denies these accusations empathically—and when Jeffrey Thomas was interviewed on the subject, he responded, “One can’t give Travis credit for that. Mr. Heliotrope was
already
insane.”

DAVID G. BARNETT is a
well-known
if somewhat ominous fixture at various writing conventions, easily recognizable from the fearsome Maori-style tattoos that cover his face and body, rendered in shrain and mat’ko-colored inks. He is the founder of Necro Publications and its imprint Bedlam Press, the author of the collection
Dead Souls
(Shocklines Press), the editor of Necro’s anthology
Damned
, and an accomplished graphic designer.
Punktown: Shades of Grey
is his first foray into publishing nonfiction.

A popular anecdote about Barnett is that at one con, he confronted a magazine publisher and former client who had failed to pay him for a graphic arts project. When said former client retorted, “Blast off, ink-face,” Barnett pulled a Decimator .220 from a holster under his jacket and clipped the man across the jaw with the butt of its handle. The owned money was immediately produced.

But a recent event that Barnett attended, PunkCon 33, produced an even greater stir, and will be the talk of many a convention to come.

During that weekend, while manning his table of wares in the dealers’ room, Barnett was pleasantly surprised to look up and see none other than Jeffrey Thomas browsing through Necro Publications’ offering, even picking up a copy of his own novel
Letters From Hades
to flip through (though muttering, bizarrely, “Crap, crap, crap.”). Barnett had never met Jeffrey in person, but had seen photos of him numerous times, and so he greeted the writer enthusiastically. But the person in question almost flinched when the publisher spoke to him, fumbled the book back onto the table, and started drifting off toward another table instead, mumbling something about Barnett having mistaken him for someone else. Barnett was perplexed; it wasn’t just that he recognized the man’s face, but also the distinctive yin/yang tattoo atop each of his hands. Why would this author with whom he had thought to have a good relationship pretend not to know him like that? Barnett felt a bit insulted, but tried to write the writer’s behavior off as the eccentricity of a creative person—known, like his brother Scott, to be somewhat on the reclusive side.

Still, Barnett’s eyes followed the man around the room. He wished he could make out his
name tag
, but now the individual was too distant from him. It
had
to be Thomas, but going incognito. It didn’t make sense, however; if he were so introverted as to come to the con but not meet his fans, not read from or sign his books, why come to PunkCon at all?

Barnett’s musings were forgotten, briefly, when a Vlessi stepped up to the table to inspect its offerings. He had never seen one of these extra-dimensional beings face-to-what-passed-for-its-face before. After apparently not finding what it was searching for, in a translated voice the entity asked if
Punktown: Shades of Grey
by Scott Thomas had been released yet. Barnett said that it was still a few months away, and informed the creature that the book was co-authored by Jeffrey Thomas. The Vlessi said it preferred the writing of Scott, admiring its “poetic sensuality,” but confessed to enjoying the elder brother’s
Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood
, and said it would settle for Jeffrey’s stuff if it couldn’t find Scott’s. Barnett confided to the alien that he thought he’d seen Jeffrey perusing his books only a minute earlier. At this, the Vlessi seemed to become very intrigued, and it quickly headed off in the direction Barnett had indicated, which caused the publisher to feel a twinge of regret. If Jeffrey were seeking to remain inconspicuous at the con, Barnett feared he might have just put an unwelcome spotlight on the writer.