Flying Car Island: Page 5

The saboteur, looking at Bodaway's gesture, measured him as a friendly one. "My name is Blue Manitou, who are you?"

"My name is Bodaway. I come from the mainland."

The tall man called Blue Manitou pushed a pin into Bodaway's shoulder and said gruffly, "I don't know you."

Then Bodaway felt a warm wave wash over the hairs on his arms. He looked up and watched as a slow bubbling foaming wash of people hovered above him. To Bodaway, through the scratched and floater-filled cavities of his eyes he watched as pair after pair of air-puffed marshmallow people hovered closer and closer to his face. They rose up in front of the saboteur, and around him, and on the floating vimana and eventually completely around Bodaway. There was a slight humming sound. In his now delirious state Bodaway looked closer at the humming marshmallows only to discover each was hinged to a human strapped in with a backpack that emanated a gaseous power source not unlike that of a hair dryer. There was a smell in the air almost like a mix of ozone and sage, like metal and gin.

The beings, dressed in clothes of faded light pastels, hovered over him, like two-hundred pound hummingbirds. They stared at him as though he were a fish in a bowl. Bodaway couldn't gather the strength to muster much. His lips were tingling, he was gushing inside in some strange form of ecstasy like a fire run on pure gas. As if in a dream of quicksand and molasses he shouted out in a muffled holler, "Whoof arf yooooof?"

It sounded as comical to Bodaway as it did to the forty or so hovering fliers.

The laughter of the gaggle of floating gawkers perturbed Bodaway but did not have any effect on the ever growing protoplasmic layer of consciousness insulation that slowly grew over his body.

A young woman touched the silvery brown hair on Bodaways head, she reached above her head and lassoed a silvery white weather balloon around his limp torso. She threw a line to a bearded heavy set and tattooed fellow on her right, and to a light footed blond waif on her left. He felt the heave of their engines at the same time hearing a strange wind, whir sound emanating from their bags. The two tow rocketeers shouted to one another repeatedly, "got him?"

"Got him?"

"Yes."

"Yes?"

Back and fourth until it almost became monotonous banter. Bodaway felt an uneasy sway. He felt the cool rush of the ocean mist wave across the lines in his forehead.

He looked up at the giant bearded man, who was presently adjusting one line around his own weather balloon ballast, he shouted to the hefty man, "Hey what!"

"Hey what indeed sir!" The giant bellowed back to Bodaway and laughed.

From a distance the assemblage of flying silver balloon individuals looked wholly like some sort of gelatinous cloud. On the outer edges, both winged leaders culled and poked the group here and there. Even in Bodaway's delirious state, he could hear the distinctive sound of his blood red vimana. He heard the vehicles' narrators voice, "turning off route, head to nearest service station."

Then he was out, the light in Bodaway's mind turned dim. In the dank recess of this dissolving consciousness he envisioned a mountain of flowing ice milk raging in starlit reflections against his bare chest. The rain was rushing at him, taking all the heat out of his heart. Forcing him to pull on his ears, to question if what he felt was real. The sounds of the rain, the sight of rushing, racing clouds only feet above his head. He recalls the pin prick from Blue Manitou. He watches as all the light twists into weave, then a line, then a trail of whispering sentience.