Content Warning: This episode is for mature audiences only.
The Great Chameleon War- “Still Life with Sumatra Mandheling, Table & Coaster“
Description: Welcome to the Nesting Zone: a surreal rim of jungle around Mt. Tahoma prowled by transdimensional reptiles. The Amanuensis catalogues his expedition up the volcano slope and records stories of explorers caught in the evolving dreamscape. Paleo-mythic lizard pyromancy. Blood whisper secrets. Carnivorous astronauts. Cursed poem hallucinations. Staying sane is not an option: a fiction podcast by Justin Hellstrom.
Connect with the show!
Learn more about the show on their website: https://www.thegreatchameleonwar.com/
Follow the show on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/TheChameleonWar
Support the show!
Become a Patron of The Great Chameleon War: https://www.patreon.com/singularityplaytime
Leave them a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-chameleon-war/id1521332575
Leave them a review on Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-great-chameleon-war-1305283
Talk about the show over on our Discord!
Head on over to the PodTales 2020 Discord to share your love for the show: https://www.podtales.org/discord
Transcript
Episode 05: Still Life with Sumatra Mandheling, Table and Coaster
“Lost Tape #27: Still Life with Sumatra Mandheling, Table, and Coaster”
[Haunted souls lost in a conical eye – piano chords]
“It’s day [mmmm, ch ch] 84 of my tour in the Great Chameleon War – and I’ve found a coffee mug on a table in the middle of a field.”
[Distant elk whinnying – waterfall and babbling brook]
“The mug is not of the novelty variety. No thermal designs that appear on its surface when hot liquid is poured inside. It’s not shaped like a tiger or an alien and it has no logo, words, or pictures on its ceramic finish. The coffee mug is plain white. Has a square handle meant for picking up the mug so as to not burn your fingers when the drink inside is steaming, like it is now.”
[Knocks on table]
“Mmmm. The table is wood. Legs set in the grass. A turquoise epoxy streak runs down the center of the tabletop along its curve of wood grain. One of those you see all over DIY internet videos and boutique shops in the revamped industrial zones of big cities.”
[Rubbing table – birds chirping]
“Rustic. Chic. Furniture your mother yells at you for if you place a drink on its surface without a coaster—which the coffee mug does in fact have beneath it. A thin cork square, [tapping of coaster on table] one of its corners chipped from an event so small the whole collective memory of the universe most likely forgot to store its origin.”
[Gear rustle – chair legs sliding on grass]
“There is one chair pulled out at the table’s side and I take a seat. Prop my elbow up.”
[Nails on porcelain]
“I’m thinking about the concept of heaven when I take my first sip.”
[Heaven’s entrance music—in other words, a lie]
“If heaven exists – it‘s big and time whorls infinitely across its boundary. Upon entering heaven, it would be understandable to become overwhelmed. So of course, you would spend your early cycles of heaven with those you loved during your life. Reveling in comfort and familiarity. Even if you died decades apart on the material plane—it’s likely they would arrive at the same time as you at heaven’s entrance pit. Such is the nature and duration of our lifetimes compared against the infinite.”
[Music that sounds like the longing of a palace that has lost all of its ghosts]
“You would explore jungles that span whole planetary systems—navigating vines that reach through space and orbit to ensnare moons and asteroid belts in great verdant crowns. You’d take long walks on a deserted beach. Silver sand pouring out of statues with permanent sunsets reflecting off their polished, multi-mouthed faces. [Sip] You would hold hands with the eternal love of your life and feel their warmth spread through every conscious pathway your imagination was capable of conjuring.”
[Music that sounds like eons decaying petal by petal from an immaculate flower drifting out at sea]
“But forever is a long time. And eventually, your hands would separate. You would walk around a marble column in a museum of inexplicable machinery—and your love would wander down a separate corridor. You would watch them go on their way while you went on your own—and before you knew it—you would be separated for what felt like 100,000 years.”
“At some point you would find each other again. Hold each other. Whisper secrets. But it wouldn’t be the same. Your forms would be slightly different— altered by the influence and landscape of heaven. At first just different hair styles. Maybe smaller ears. A change in voice and speech pattern.”
[Angels wither anxious – to stone – to dust – to a speck underneath your nail you never recognize]
“But such departures and their subsequent reunions would continue to happen—each time the form of your love distorting more. Extra limbs. No limbs at all. Different colors, different shapes. One heart pumping blood—turning to more hearts pumping blood—turning to no hearts at all. Circuits conducting electricity. An engine funneling steam. The miniscule gravitational pull of two dandelion seeds circling one another inside a glass jar.”
“And maybe if you were strong, if you could remember everything about your relationship from before, you would still love them. Still find a hand to hold when there were no hands left at all.”
[ Stretch of glass breaking music swoons into a operatic choir]
“Finally though—at the end of all love’s comprehension, after billions of cycles and expedition across that great, faceless clock—you would find them again. Completely unrecognizable. You wouldn’t even know they were there at all.”
“You’d walk to the top of a green hill and find a table, a coffee mug—not knowing that this was your wife, your husband – your best and only friend. A thinking thing with blood that once stood as the fulcrum of all meaning for you.”
“You would drink the coffee. Savor in its randomness. Flip the plain cork coaster over, thinking there might be a message hidden on its underside—but there won’t be. Just the chipped corner, which either means nothing, or means everything.”
“If there’s any understanding to be found, [heh] any last message of hope or loss or longing—it will come from walking away from the table – its pretty blue streak of polymer-resin glinting like a long forgotten river in the sun—a dark coffee stain among those ripples in the shape of two bodies, drifting lost and blind, side by side, but forever just out of reach.”
[Sound of chair dragging through grass, pushed against table, mug on wood noise, last sips.]
[Coffee mug smashed on table. On purpose. Waaaay on purpose.]
[Walks away]
[Giant chameleon roar – inquisitive – echoing around a hill]
“What?! No – no way.”
[Runs – runs through creek – heavy breathing – slides to stop at edge of cliff]
[Jumps – wind rushing – branches crack – impact with rocken slope, slides down into cave hole]
“Getin – getin, get in. [Breathing] This is okay. Okay. It’s a cave, this is good … Okay. The fuck is that blue glow though—”
[Hand clapped over mouth – struggling]
The Paleontologist: “Shhhhh, we can share the hole. Just keep it down.”
[Shuffles]
The Amanuensis: “Get off of me.” [sniffs] “Get off of me.”
[Shuffles away]
The Amanuensis: “Nice, uh [nervous] nice little cave ya got here.”
The Paleontologist: [clears throat] “Ya know I heard you. Talking to that coffee mug. Who the hell drinks a random cup of coffee just laying out in the open?”
[Chameleon rooting around sniffing, stifling a cry]
The Amanuensis: “The way you say that makes me feel like I should apologize. But I’m not going to.” [snort laugh]
[Cave rumbles, rocks fall, chameleon wail echoes]
The Paleontologist: “Whatever—you want to see where that table came from? Peer into the cusp of heaven? That great faceless clock?”
The Amanuensis: “Alright, I get it. Uh, sure. Just go ahead and show me – ya big weirdo.”
The Paleontologist: Okay. [coughs]
[Flashlight rev pumped – clicks on]
The Amanuensis: “Wow, yeah. That’s a goddamn great chameleon skull…”
The Paleontologist: “Yep – still bioluminescent too, Its brain underwent rapid petrification and spiraled upward like that—then splayed out into those four rectangles punctured through the ceiling. Those are the table legs. The blue streak in the table up there isn’t resin – it’s actually opal.”
[Chameleon Footsteps – Wailing]
The Amanuensis: “Has anyone ever told you, you’re, uh, you’re a weird geologist.”
The Paleontologist: “Paleontologist actually.”
The Amanuensis: “Yeah yeah shh shh shh. Listen…”
[Chameleon wailing, throwing a tantrum, spilling toxic tears]
The Amanuensis: ”Huh, it’s crying.
[Sizzling acid tears pour down the hole opening]
The Paleontologist: “Careful, that stuff is primordially toxic—a paranormal dissociative hallucinogen. I’ve seen people evaporate after ingesting some. Turn inside out and glaze into marble.”
The Amanuensis: “Whoa. Yeah, I’ve heard. A pharmacological pandora’s box. Pulls your spine out and lets it planeshift around a while without all the meat attached…hmm, I wanna try it.”
The Paleontologist: “Sooooo, you want me to babysit you?”
The Amanuensis: “No you don’t have to that. Uh. Just observe. Be a good scientist. Take some notes. Maybe sing me a song if it looks like I’m being colonized by repressed intrauterine memories…from my subconscious.”
The Paleontologist: [laughs]“Sure thing. Dear psychonaut. April 10th 2020. Subject CoffeeCup Smasher #24 – you may proceed with oral administration. Sweet dreams.”
[Flute from diseased canyon infiltrates cave – roots around for Chameleon lacrimal discharge]
The Amanuensis: “Huh. Alright.” “Alright. Alright. Alright.”
[Exhale]
[Drinks]
[The eternal resonance of Eve burned while nailed to an apple tree in the core of Eden]
The Amanuensis [INTERNAL]: I feel it—my insides becoming waterfall. Tropical. Dolphins…urchin-impaled. Jellyfish plummeting down my throat.
[Dolphin eeks, waterfall, distant thrums of columns toppling]
“Tearing. Splattering on rocks.”
[Porpoise spine cracking on boulder]
“Yes. A forbidden marine entrail language. Expanding. Painting red runes on boulders.”
[Heaven – dethroned, blares its last horn]
“Darkness sheds its rough pelt—”
[A tomb cracks its rock entrance open in a forgotten corner of time]
“cave dirt ripples to golden sand. Cerulean sky hews earthen walls and… and my hands. My hands are shrinking, my vertebrae contracting—clothes, clothes disinti-dissminti, words -g,g,g, sentence, hard, not form, no not good.”
[An interdimensional skin silk blimp parts space time overhead]
“– a breast – Sun dress – b-b-b-eer cans – sand castle –”
[Echinoderms sucking, gnawing, nibbling with tube feeler star feet tickling]
“Starfish, b-b-biting.”
[Close Wave and salt fizz]
“Foam salt…eye grit foam salt. L-l-l-izards hatching. Gull speared.”
[Egg shells – blood stained beaks – creatures eaten on the shore]
“So many—so many hatching. Carrying me, carrying me infant out to seaaa. And the roaring – roaaaaaaring – surf roaaaaring – Come to d-d-d-d- drown. We- we”
[Reverted baby begins to cry]
“Drown wet weeee wee…..”
[B-b-b-b aaaaby wa, wa waah, waaah]
[Waves – the tide come to steal a larval consciousness – supple and mewling]
The Paleontologist:
“Hush little baby don’t say a word,
Mama’s gonna send you to a whole new world
Past the waves and surf and foam
To a wet scary place where you’re all alone
For eons and ages and a thousand kings
You’ll forget who you are and all of your dreams
And if you still remember at the bottom of the sea A two headed mama’s gonna sing you to sleep.”
[Glockenspiel]
[Waves]
[The calm before you were born]
[Tape Reset]
Justin Hellstrom [Creator] : Thank you for sharing in the first part of my weird, LSD Lizard Fever Dream. The strange is just getting started. We’ll be back in the fall with part two and the finale of Season One. This Season featured Emily Phipps as the Arsonist, and Romina as the Paleontologist – with additional sound wizardry provided by Sean Barry, and script notes from my lovely and talented roommate, Ben DeCorso.
And for those of you who want Chameleon War episodes early, or would like to support more of my writing and audio projects, you can find me on Patreon at: patreon.com/singularityplaytime or visit thegreatchameleonwar.com to find other ways to support.
To stay in touch with your dear narrator, follow me on [laughs] Twitter and Instagram at ScratchyBananas.
Thanks for letting me seep inside your ear holes. I’m never leaving. You can’t unhear this. So, this isn’t goodbye. But the start of a forever sized hello [hello echoes].
