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  VENERA DREAMS

  A WEIRD ENTERTAINMENT

  MIROLAND IMPRINT 12

  Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  VENERA DREAMS

  A WEIRD ENTERTAINMENT

  Claude Lalumière

  MIROLAND (GUERNICA)

  TORONTO • BUFFALO • LANCASTER (U.K.) 2017

  Copyright © 2017, Claude Lalumière and Guernica Editions Inc.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Connie McParland, series editor

  Michael Mirolla, editor

  David Moratto, cover and interior book design

  Guernica Editions Inc.

  1569 Heritage Way, Oakville, ON L6M 2Z7

  2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, N.Y. 14150-6000 U.S.A.

  www.guernicaeditions.com

  Distributors:

  University of Toronto Press Distribution,

  5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto (ON), Canada M3H 5T8

  Gazelle Book Services, White Cross Mills

  High Town, Lancaster LA1 4XS U.K.

  First edition.

  Printed in Canada.

  Legal Deposit—Third Quarter

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2017932213

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lalumière, Claude, author

  Venera dreams : a weird entertainment / Claude Lalumière. -- 1st edition.

  (MiroLand imprint ; 12)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77183-216-8 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77183-217-5 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-77183-218-2 (Kindle)

  I. Title. II. Series: MiroLand imprint ; 12

  PS8623.A465V46 2017C813’.6C2017-900608-8C2017-900609-6

  in memory of Baird Searles & Martin Last

  CONTENTS

  OVERTURE

  BEDTIME STORIES

  PART 1 ~ STRANGE ROMANCES

  THE CITY OF UNREQUITED DREAMS

  XANDRA’S BRINE

  AT THE WORLD TREE HOTEL

  THE VENERA FANTASY CONVENTION

  INTERLUDE

  VERMILION DREAMS: THE COMPLETE WORKS OF BRAM JAMESON

  PART 2 ~ ADVENTURES IN TIMES PAST

  THE HECATE CENTURIA

  THE SECRET DRAGON OF IMPERIAL POWER

  AGENTS OF THE VERMILION EYE

  THE SURREALIST LANTERNS

  INTERLUDE

  THE PHANTASMAGORICAL ODYSSEYS OF SCHEHERAZADE

  PART 3 ~ THE SECRET HISTORIES OF MAGUS AMORE

  THE SUBTERRANEAN ODYSSEY OF MAGUS AMORE

  ADVENTURES IN CRYPTO-ALCHEMY: THE GOLDEN CRYPTOGRAPH

  THE THIRTEENTH GODDESS

  VERMILION WINE

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  OVERTURE

  BEDTIME STORIES

  THE ODOURS OF SEX envelop the two of them. Already Isabelle is asleep, Pierre spooning her. Sweat makes their bodies stick together. He sniffs her skin, and its feminine fragrance catches in his throat. He has come only moments ago, yet his cock stirs, poking the soft cushiness of her rump. A rush of excitement jolts him out of his post-orgasmic daze.

  He raises his head to look at Isabelle. In sleep, her round face relaxes into an even more beautiful countenance, framed by her long black hair.

  Pierre is restless, feels confined by the smallness of the apartment, his senses hungry for more stimulation. He considers rousing Isabelle, for them to go out and explore the night together. But he is again struck by how lovely she is asleep, and he can’t bear the thought of waking her. He peels himself away, the film of sweat eliciting a soft kissing sound as their bodies separate.

  Isabelle moans Pierre’s name, but she doesn’t emerge from her dreams.

  Pierre dresses, careful to do so quietly. He steps out of the bedroom, out of their apartment, down the stairs, and onto the sidewalk. Into the hot summer night air.

  The odours of sex envelop him. The taste of Isabelle’s juices on his lips, the smell of her ass on his fingertips. The pungent blend of sweat and semen and girl adhering to his skin. As Pierre wanders the Main, brushing past the nocturnal denizens stepping in and out of clubs, bars, restaurants, cafés, and late-night alternative art galleries, he imagines a cloud of sex wafting from his body, insulating him from direct contact with the nightlife.

  The poster on the bookshop window intrigues Pierre. THE BED-TIME STORIES READING SERIES AT LOST PAGES PRESENTS The Darkbright Book of Scheherazade. The description is followed by a list of names Pierre has never heard of. Not surprising; although the evidence is all around him, he rarely notices the Anglo demimonde of the metropolis. Over a lifetime spent on the island, he has come to think of it as two cities occupying the same physical space: Montreal, Anglophone and multicultural; Montréal, Francophone and international. The Montrealers and the Montréalais each ambulating through their respective city, only peripherally aware of the twin metropolis coexisting subtly out of phase with their own.

  Tonight, in a lingering post-orgasmic altered state, Pierre feels out of phase with mundane reality altogether, participating in neither iteration of his city. Instead he feels like a phantasm — remote, yet unusually receptive, his senses drinking in every detail.

  On a whim, he opens the door to Lost Pages and walks in.

  The interior is dim, but bright lights draw Pierre’s gaze to an area near the far window that has been cleared for the performance. A balding man in his fifties, wearing fashionable jeans and a jacket that’s a size too large, is reading at a podium, without a microphone. Pierre stands near the door unsure whether to stay or go. He tries to concentrate on the words emanating from the makeshift stage, but his command of English is not up to the task of fully comprehending the convoluted narrative. Suddenly people start clapping. The reader has finished. Another writer walks to the podium. A curvy redhead whose trendy glasses and retro clothing give her an air that is at once hipster and scholarly. Pierre turns to leave, wondering why he bothered to come in at all, but he unexpectedly locks eyes with a stunning beauty: jet-black skin, long dark hair; dark eyes with long lashes; petite to the point of improbability yet exuding uncommon strength and confidence.

  Two other women sit on either side of her. One is tall and Slavic, with long blond hair and a perverse mouth; the other is of average height, with a Mediterranean complexion and a posture of casual elegance, yet radiating an edginess that hints at a punk past. These two aren’t listening to the performance, but rather are intensely trying to engage with the woman sandwiched between them; she appears to be mostly ignoring them. The Slavic woman notices the exchange of glances with Pierre, and cold fury seizes her features. She speaks to the short dark woman with obvious anger; Pierre is too far from them to catch the words. He feels like a voyeur for staring at the women while they’re fighting, but he’s drawn to their drama, feels connected to them, especially to the dark woman, the other people in the venue reduced to the status of anonymous extras.

  Abruptly, the Slavic woman leaps to her feet. She’s very tall — over six feet — taller than Pierre. She knocks down her chair. A few eyes turn toward her, but the storyteller keeps going. The blonde stands frozen, embarrassment and rage reddening her cheeks. Without bothering to replace her chair among the haphazardly arranged seating, she rushes toward the exit, elbowing Pierre in the ribs on the way out
— hard enough to let him know it was no accident. The former punk replaces the chair, then she too gets up and leaves, shaking her head in confused disappointment. The dark woman, now alone, nods from Pierre to the empty chair on her left, inviting him to join her.

  Pierre barely hesitates.

  “I apologize for Petra and Renata,” she whispers as he sits, but her tone suggests the opposite. Even at a murmur, her voice is deep and sultry, like a song. She leans in closer toward him. He catches a whiff of her aroma — a subtle spiciness redolent of salt and cinnamon and burnt butter.

  She halts in the act of leaning back, as if something has caught her attention, and pushes her face closer to his neck. She sniffs him, which he finds electrifyingly intimate and erotic. “I thought so.”

  He mouths more than utters: “What?”

  “You’ve just had sex. You reek of it. Of love. Of your fluids and hers. Whoever she is.”

  It strikes Pierre that the woman is speaking neither French nor English — the only languages he knows — and yet he understands her every word.

  Before Pierre can formulate a response, the crowd erupts in applause. The reading is over. Some people immediately move to leave the store, but several others line up to buy books and get their copy signed by the assembled authors. While all this activity is going on, the mysterious woman grabs Pierre’s hand and leads him deeper into the shop. She is even shorter than he thought, no taller than a tween girl, but there is nothing childlike in her penetrating gaze, her arrogant body language, her sensuous grip, her musky scent. They sit down on the floor, isolated from the bustle by bookshelves.

  She takes a clear glass flask from her bag and offers it to him. The colour of the beverage is burnt orange with hints of red. He twists open the cap. The bouquet reminds him of the woman’s own aroma, as if the two originated from the same source. Pierre takes a sip; the liquid is powerfully intoxicating. From the taste and texture, it is clearly wine of some sort, mulled with a peculiar blend of spices, but it spreads through his body like the best whiskey — a comforting warmth that softens the edges of the world.

  He replaces the cap and hands back the flask.

  She says: “Kiss me?” There’s only the merest hint of question in her voice. She assumes he’s going to do it. She touches his chin with her finger. No polish on the nails. He likes that. The sound of her voice pronouncing those two words — kiss me — echoes in his mind, like an unshakeable refrain, drowning out all other sounds, all other thoughts, taking on the imperative of a command.

  He leans in toward her mouth — the closer he gets, the more heady and delicious her aroma; all that remains in his mind is the compulsion to kiss her, to lose himself in her. He moves his hand to cup the stranger’s cheek, and as his fingers pass near his face he catches a trace of Isabelle’s lingering odours, which breaks the stranger’s spell. He pulls back before their lips make contact.

  Pierre runs his fingers over his stubbly chin, releasing more of Isabelle’s scent. Rubbing his fingers on his nose, he breathes deeply, lets himself be imbued with Isabelle and with his memories of her. His flesh still tingles from fucking Isabelle, the musk of their passion clinging to him.

  The stranger says, laughing, not unkindly: “You love her.”

  Pierre feels himself blushing.

  The dark woman once more leans in toward him, as if to whisper something, but instead her hand falls into his lap, where it lands on an erection.

  Pierre abruptly rises, without affording her another word or another glance. All he wants now is to get away from this confusing woman, to go back home, to get back to Isabelle, and to forget this ill-advised excursion. He flees outside. Into the hot summer night air.

  The hot summer night air envelops him. Pierre walks quickly, on automatic, without thinking or looking at his surroundings. The city seems darker than usual, as if there were a power outage, and unusually, even for the middle of the night, there’s no traffic noise. He stops and closes his eyes. Although he is eager to return to Isabelle, before slipping next to her in bed, Pierre wants to shake off his lingering agitation from the encounter at the bookshop. He thinks about how much he enjoys walking through Montreal; his favourite route consists of drinking in the always-bustling atmosphere of the Main, then veering off to skirt Jeanne-Mance Park and stroll on Avenue de L’Esplanade, continuing north to Mile End and zigzagging back south to the Plateau. He is forever enchanted by Montreal’s unique style of residential architecture, with the outdoor winding stairs, the porches and balconies, the colourful and varied gables, the closeness and tightness of everything.

  Finally, Pierre opens his eyes to get his bearings, to plot a course that will take him through the neighbourhood and eventually back home to Isabelle.

  But he has no idea where he is.

  Pierre’s environment is unfamiliar and strange. The air is thick with the smell of the mulled wine the strange woman offered him, mixed with the pungency of seawater brine.

  As his eyes adjust to the darkness of the night, he notices the ornate architecture, the shapes and configurations so unusual that he can’t entirely grasp what he sees. Vegetation and masonry merge into one another in confounding patterns. The sidewalk follows not a city street but a canal. Across the canal, he spots a handful of pedestrians; their body language is disquieting, as if their bodies, echoing the architecture, are assembled in somewhat inhuman configurations.

  Did the woman slip him a hallucinogen?

  Or perhaps he’s still in bed with Isabelle, and this whole evening has been a weird dream?

  Pierre steadies himself on the railing at the edge of the waterway, and a hand covers his own with a subtle squeeze. Looking up, Pierre says: “It’s you.”

  The Slavic woman’s name is Petra. Petra Maxim. “But that’s not my real name. I’m originally from Smolensk. I fled to Romania and lived with my punk friends in a deserted warehouse.” Her accent is subtle, softening the edges of the otherwise Parisian lilt of her French. He hadn’t spotted she’d been a punk, too, but now he sees the signs — in her posture, in her subtly but artfully mismatched clothes, in the tilt of her chin. She walks like a caged animal — there’s something fierce and unforgiving about her, like an Amazon warrior who you know will take no prisoners.

  And yet, despite her earlier fury, there’s almost tenderness — or is it pity? — in how she addresses Pierre. As they talk, the two of them hang onto the guardrail, looking out onto the quiet canal.

  “Then she found me,” Petra pauses and gives Pierre a long silent stare, “nursed me back from an overdose of vermilion dragon, and gave me a new life. Do yourself a favour: don’t mix heroin and vermilion. I live in London, now. With this new name, this new identity. I am hers. Her creation. I’m a photographer. I travel around the world. But I often come back here. This is the most magical city in the world. Also, because I love her.”

  Pierre hesitates — there is so much he does not understand that he doesn’t know which question to ask first.

  “You’re so confused. Poor little man. Let me ask you a question: in which city were you before you entered the bookshop?”

  “I’m from Montreal.”

  “I visited Montreal once. I do not like North America, but I enjoyed Montreal. A real city. A city with many layers of myth and history. Few places in North America possess even a hint of that potent brew, unlike in Europe. I did a photo essay for Metropolis Now on the vestiges of Man and His World, the 1967 World’s Fair. The photographs of the original event make me yearn to have been there.”

  Finally Pierre settles on the most important question: “How can I get back home?” He refuses to be ensnared by the overt obliqueness of these women. They can keep their mysteries. All he wants is for all this to end.

  “I can’t help you. She has plans you. It’s not for me to interfere.”

  Behind Pierre, another woman says, in English: “Why don’t you let me speak to him, Petra?”

  Pierre turns. It’s the third woman from earlier, a
t the bookshop. The one with the Mediterranean look who, Pierre suspects, also has a punk past. He can recognize it. He was a punk, too, briefly, when he was an exchange student in Bordeaux. Pierre wonders if this confluence of punk backgrounds is a coincidence, or if it points to yet another mystery.

  Petra answers the other woman, also in English: “He’s all yours, Renata. I’m tired anyway.”

  By the time, Pierre turns back to say goodnight, Petra is gone.

  They walk arm in arm. As they wander through this bizarre maze of alien architecture, briny canals, and dense vegetation, Pierre keeps expecting the illusion to fade and Montreal to reappear. Certainly the linguistic composition of their conversation is familiarly Montreal: he addresses her in French, she addresses him in English; and they both understand each other.

  “Why are all three of you so coy, so indirect? Can you not simply answer any of my questions?” Pierre laughs nervously; his attitude flipflops between being convinced that this is all an elaborate dream or hallucination and believing that he truly is stranded in a foreign city he can’t identify.

  “You really have no idea where you are? Surely you must recognize this city? Everyone has heard of this place. The home of vermilion spice. The notorious city of unrequited dreams.”

  “No, I tell you, this entire place looks impossible. And what is this ‘vermilion’ that you and your friend Petra keep mentioning?”

  “I have never met anyone who did not know these things … and I have travelled all over the world … unless you’re from another …” A worried glance appears on Renata’s face.

  “I don’t really care where I am or about the answer to any of these riddles. I simply want to go home. To my girlfriend. To Isabelle. If all this is real, if I truly am in a city far from my own, then, regardless of how I got here, surely I can fly back home. How can I get to the airport?”