Vørst: The Ice Caves

His penchant for always dressing in 
an impeccable white pin-stripe suit
 had earned him the moniker “Frost Giant”

           Montague Vørst was a man of enormous proportions.  Rising to seven feet, three inches he towered over everything and everyone around him – and he liked it that way.  The sheer terror that his imposing size struck in meeker creatures was a delicacy to his palette.  Thor beware should Vørst raise his voice here on the ground, it would quake like thunder on earth.

His penchant for always dressing in an impeccable white pin-stripe suit had earned him the moniker “Frost Giant”, though no one dared call him that to his face.  It added to the image that he was the owner of an exclusive night club called the Ice Caves.  It was a chilled, underground sensation.  Considering the parched and polluted city above the streets, the cool atmosphere down here was worth paying for.

That wasn’t what made the Ice Caves elite though.  It was the dream shows. Most nightclubs had Visionaries that conjured up images according to the evening’s theme. Usually they were journeys around spectacular architecture.  Some were a fantasy wandering through M.C. Escher’s structures or around a surreal Seussical garden with swirling trees and tufted beasts.

Not at the Ice Caves though.  Here, the Visionaries were allowed to dream free-form – with a varying stimulus applied to them as the night went on.  The end result was usually a cacophony of twisted images never before seen.  The more eccentric, the better and if you made it as a Visionary at the Ice Caves, you could get a job anywhere in the city – if there was anything left of your mind’s eye.

The Ice Caves nightclub was elite for its dream shows.

Tonight, Vørst was trying not to yawn at the displays on the frozen walls of the VIP Cavern around him. Someone scurried up to him, from his size he could easily be mistaken for a child. Once you saw his bearded face, sunken eyes and yellowish skin, it was obvious he was one of the Cyin. They were an offshoot of humans, offspring of those badly deformed by the radiation.

The cyin awaited his master's acknowledgement before speaking. With a wave of his hand Vørst bade him speak, although he refused to look upon the creature.

The Cyin were human offspring,
badly deformed by radiation.

"Sir, I saw some of the outliers go topside, they had women with them. Pretty ones, I did not recognize them - and trust me - bodies like that I would remember." He hissed slimily.

Vørst’s eyes shifted down to the lump of a creature blathering at him.  Sheer revulsion distorted his huge face into a Goyan monster. Whether his disgust was aimed at the cyin, or the cyin’s apparent libido, was uncertain.  A safe gambler would just say likely both.

He grew tired of sitting as the creature yammered at him and rose from his lounge chair. It was positioned like a star in a crescent moon so that he could watch all the Visionaries at once.  Strolling the scythe of unconscious bodies around him, he studied their sleep with a chillingly clinical eye.

Waitresses would apply various stimulants to
the REM volunteers.

They lie on anti-gravity chairs, each with EEG electrodes taped to their faces and head.  At every station was a medical trolley equipped with sensory implements of every imaginable kind.  Feathers, spurs, sandpaper, moleskin, essential oils, electric wands, tweezers, wire brushes, dental dam, straight-razors – it was all there. 

As the Visionaries drifted in their pill-addled sleep, waitresses would tend to them, applying various stimulants to the R.E.M. volunteers. The nightmarish visions that this produced were then projected straight from their brains onto the walls of the Cavern for Mr. Vørst and any elite guests he may entertain, to watch.  For the average club-goer down on the main dance floors, the residual aural colors lit the ice walls in a brilliant color show.

“Outlying scum crop anew everyday.”  Montague’s voice rumbled like an avalanche in the chest of the deformed, little man. “How are these ones any different?”

Looking down at the miniature grotesque as he waited for its answer, it occurred to him that clinical study was one of his favorite reasons for keeping it around.

To be continued...