Dean wondered how long it had been since death set in? Had it actually mattered anymore? Of what relevance was time to the deceased? Especially when there were other niggling concerns such as not being able to move a single inch in any given direction, trapped within a decaying coffin of flesh. That was the toughest adjustment to contend with. And what was the explanation? What answers could he have offered himself this night, the last of his life, the first of his death, in the wee slight moments after the coil of mortality had been sufficiently shuffled off and he lingered in the strangled silence of limbo while the haunts of regrets past swooped down like raptors from on high?
There wasn’t only the matter of kidnapping and molestation, as if he could have simply left it at that. There were also the mutilations, amputations, beheadings, and cannibalism that needed to be addressed. All sorts of mental distractions that, in the short run, served as curative methods to hush the whispers that shouted malevolence into the folds of his brain. Dean explored them all as he was never quite sure how much of which activity would have been necessary to ground him back down to normalcy.
There was also the presence of the obfuscation demons who frolicked in public places, daring the rest of society to gaze upon their putrescence, that forever clung to Dean’s flesh and flashed serrated toothed smiles from their insatiable maws, fingers tapping, awaiting the next feast. One million beasts ever at the ready, awaiting a sign or signal from him that the carnage that fueled their existence was about to begin.
Go on, they prompted, we understand what you need to do. We won’t judge you because we understand how difficult it was to treat meat with dignity. We can see it all so clearly from where we are.
They made it seem so obvious to Dean. Just one nudge at the right moment in the right direction. One glimmer of hope that the nightmares would end and he would find peace at last. One suggestion from the proper imp who offered him the precise piece of the puzzle that was needed in order to view the larger picture.
Pick your targets, that’s the ticket. The demons advised. Start small.Tiny murders can be done, they’re done all the time. Success stories abound. We can read you a list. Start today with a little ‘un and keep your focus there. Lay down a simple execution that you’re happy with. A death can be executed a thousand ways and despite how clairvoyant you think you are, you can’t predict the pleasure you’ll derive from adding this exciting little twist in the structure of your average day.
And of course, you can kill anytime. Why don’t you kill? You never kill when you get like this. Why don’t you just kill? It’s not a burden, not at all. Not killing is the burden, don’t you see? Look what happens when you don’t kill. We get to this point of crisis where nothing works. It all gets broken like a skull shattered with the claw end of a hammer and you can’t reach down to gather up all the skull fragments because you’re holding your grey matter inside your head and we’re saying let’s stop the skull from shattering in the first place. We can turn the hammer away from you and swing the claw end at someone else. But you have to help out on your end and let us know you’re reaching for the hammer.
And eventually, we’ll get to a place where you don’t take every godforsaken murder you commit personally. It’s not always about you and where your soul will visit when you die and you’re making these assumptions and it creates all this drama. All the outbursts, then the realization that what you’re doing serves the greater good, then the embarrassment from the remorse and the humiliation from the shame.An endless tug of war needlessly played against yourself until you just feel tortured about feeling tortured. And you see this as somehow easier than slitting a random throat for our bounty?
Perhaps what troubles you is you don’t believe that our words, our cause has merit. Fair play. Why should you trust the imps? We’ve never trusted anyone’s word. We’ve never followed a single command that anyone has given. And who has really? Is that ever how it’s done once you’ve been blessed with the gift of free will? The heart wants what it wants and who can deny it? What does yours want?
That was the question that ran through Dean’s mind. What did his heart want? Love? What good was that? Even if it wasn’t too late, what would it matter if the whole world lined up to love him if there was no penetration? Knowing what the heart wanted would be an unsolved mystery that would plague him in the grave.
And he would have eternity to hunt for clues. As the imps who turned on him abandoned him and found another, who in turn slaughtered Dean in much the same manner that he himself had killed so many others.
His soul should have wept as the demons tore into his flesh, but the truth of the matter was he finally had something to occupy his mind.
And that was the grace he found in death. The peace to deconstruct an unsolvable mystery.
My monotony needed twisting yesterday, so I went for a stroll, sans iPod. You know, breathe in a bit of city fresh air, clear some cobwebs, that sort of deal.
There I was walking down the street, mind-sifting through character conversations and scene settings when I looked down at the pavement and realized that I was traipsing through what looked like the aftermath of the Great Worm War of 2021. The sidewalk was a battlefield littered with the corpses of thousands of earthworms that coated an entire city block.
Logically I knew how this could have happened. I knew they came to the surface either during the heavy rains–but it’s been dry weather for the past week–or to pair off and mate only to get caught on things that are hard for them to crawl across, like sidewalks and subsequently fry on the surface from sun rays–but that normally occurs during spring.
So, what then? Had there actually been a battle? Warring clans pitched against one another over territorial disputes? Factions in conflict over the claiming of a throne? Families locked in a deadly dispute over an unholy union?
Or was it a warning?
As I stood there, staring at their dried remains, curled into runic shapes, I wondered if they had been somehow gifted with a vision of the approaching apocalypse and had sacrificed themselves in an effort to warn us in the only language they knew. The last Germanic language spoken to them by man before the two species went their separate ways.
At that moment I felt like Indiana Jones in the passageway to the Grail chamber, trying to decipher the worm cadavers’ possible portents of doom, only without the aid of a diary or Sean Connery whispering something about, “Only the penitent man will pass.” or like John Nash without an ounce of the mental code breaking ability.
And I stood there. Longer than I’m comfortable admitting. Frustrated by the limits of my linguistics. Finally, I forced myself to move on, but not before making a promise:
For most of my life on your world, I have made my living working in an elegance palace. Before you ask, my place of employment is really nothing more than a bordello. I do not know who invented the name elegance palace, but I must tell you, neither I nor any of the other employees working there find anything elegant about it.
The elegance palace is hidden in plain sight amongst neighboring office buildings, yet secreted behind its by-appointment-only financial institutional facade lies a towering empire of adult-themed enterprises. From boutiques to restaurants, bars, clubs and pleasure suites, if it is something even remotely related to sex, an office is listed for it in the directory. I call it prex melata, which in my native tongue translates loosely as ejaculation building.
The thing I hate most about the prex is that it only has one entrance and one elevator. Yes, you heard me correctly. One. Elevator. When my shift eventually ends, no matter how carefully I time it, I always manage to get trapped in the elevator with potential customers who know who I am because I am the only person on the planet who looks the way I do…
Alien.
The thing that does not belong. The piece that does not fit. I have no idea how you ply your trade, but put yourself in my missionary position for a moment and try to imagine that after an arduous day of ending the lives of concupiscent individuals through intercourse, that you now have to ride in a crowded box with clients who have just engaged in the sexual practice of their comfort level or financial ability, all of them eyeing you and imagining themselves to be the one who could probably beat the odds and survive.
I hate it. I hate the looks, I hate the arrogance, and I hate the sameness of it all. Eventually, they all will come to see me. Eventually, they all will die.
At least in the elevator there is hardly any conversation. I envy the employees who do not have to speak to the clients they service. I, on the other hand, am legally obligated to strike up conversations with everyone interested in sleeping with me. I am the only elegance employee that comes equipped with a Surgeon General warning. Sleeping with me will kill you. You must be made fully aware of that and sign legal documents to that effect.
Occasionally, though, I will encounter a client that asks, “Do you work here?”
My initial response leans toward the sarcastic, but I always answer, “Yes.”
“I’d like to visit you. What’s your name? What floor do you work on? Do you see clients outside of here?”
I want to tell him not to come. Tell him that I do not want to see him. That I do not talk to, let alone service, clients outside of the prex, especially those who have not paid to talk to me.
Some clients do that, the smart ones. They come in and lose their nerve and I do not blame them. They are still contractually obligated to pay for my time but I cut them a discounted rate. And while I do not enjoy talking to people who view me as a sexable piece of offworld flesh, I take pity on the ones who back out at the last minute. It must be similar to talking yourself down off of a ledge.
If I do happen to get a talker on the elevator, I do not smile or make eye contact. I simply answer their questions as curtly as possible and walk away abruptly when the elevator doors open. This usually avoids them feeling comfortable enough to follow me onto the street. It is the thing that scares me the most about the job, honestly.
I have a friend who prefers to be identified by the gender-neutral pronouns they, their and them, well, they are more of a colleague, in the business we call them sexociates, and I do not know if it is a vibe they give off or what, but they attract more gawker stalkers than all the rest of us combined.
Gawker stalkers are the creepers who lurk around the prex exit and watch the girls as they leave the building. It’s gotten so bad that Tawni, my sexociate, not their actual name but I doubt even I know their real name, has a taxi on call that they run into every night as soon as the elevator doors open.
Gawker stalkers never do anything to the sexociates, to my knowledge, they just watch. But it is still creepy. I get chills thinking about the possibility of some strange creeper following me home. They should just commit and pay the fee and get to play a little bit rather than being a loser that skulks in the shadows and goes home alone, unsatisfied.
Surprisingly enough, I have not crossed social paths with too many prudish types. When most people find out what I do for a living, they seem so fascinated with the concept of bartering intercourse execution for currency. I almost regret letting people know because all our conversations after that point turns to them pumping me for kinky or weird-but-true stories.
And that is when my relationships begin to die.
I do not have any eccentric stories. My sex organ forces orgasm and death, and if that is not enough to interest you, then what else do we have to talk about? My life is boring, really. So boring that no one wants to hear about it.
Not my actual name, mind you, but there is no real reason for you to know me by anything else. I was born—well, that is not important either, is it? All you need to know is that I am an alien—the extraterrestrial kind, not the immigrant kind—we can engage in intercourse for a fee, and you will most certainly not survive the experience.
Upon entering my boudoir you will undoubtedly notice the notches on the posts of my ornate bed. Your first inclination might be to assume these markings to be sexual conquests, and you would be severely mistaken. They are actually deaths. The number of grooves carved into the wooden headboard is one hundred and ninety-seven, at present, but the actual number is at least four times that. Only the deaths I regret have been engraved here. The rest received precisely what they came seeking and ultimately deserved.
A bit harsh, I realize, but how could you expect me to pity or mourn the passing of those who have tossed away so many possibilities, so many futures in search of la mort parfaite?
But I digress.
Due to the residency protocols of your Office of Planetside Security, the majority of my life was made an open book, yet there are certain things that remain hard for me to discuss. It is known that I was charged with treason back home for defending my personal beliefs—which remains my concern alone—and because my mate stood by my side during the trial, we were both exiled from my homeworld.
Set adrift in space, my people chose to let the universe decide our fate. If we were intercepted by a space vessel and taken aboard or found a world that would permit us to stay, then we were fortunate and were surely meant to live. If not, we would die on our craft when the life support and/or provisions ran out.
We traveled for what seemed like an eternity and never crossed paths with another vessel. Eventually, the ship malfunctioned and crash-landed on your planet. Only I survived, pulled from the twisted wreckage of my prison ship by a farmer who hid me away and chained me in his barn like an animal. He hosed me down and threw me scraps to keep me alive. What I did not know was that he was mustering the courage to have his way with me.
When I realized what he had in mind, I tried to warn him but I didn’t speak the language yet. I’m not sure even if I did that it would have made a difference. He forced himself on me and upon orgasm, promptly died.
My race can only mate with one partner in our entire lifetime. The first union sets into play a biological defense against infidelity by secreting a vaginal toxin that forces orgasm and subsequently death.
I was later discovered by one of the farmer’s neighbors, set free, and promptly handed over to Planetside Security. There I was taught the fundamentals of English and given an aptitude test to determine if there was a place on Earth for me. It was grueling and humiliating. And when I was finally issued a caseworker, she sat with me and explained that the only opportunity available was in legalized prostitution. I was insulted and furious and baffled by the thinking behind this. Did they not understand that of all the professions they could have handed me that this was by far the worst possible choice? Then I stepped back to look at the bigger picture. The planet was overpopulated by indigenous humans and the influx of extraterrestrials and what better way to cull the population than to tempt the thrill seekers who wanted to risk death? To treat terminal patients who wanted sweet release?
So, I embraced my role in society and performed my duty and was dubbed the “Whorebinger of Death” and the “Grim Raper” by the press. And naturally, because humans are bizarre creatures, there were ladies who worked the same profession who envied me.
I have yet to warm to this planet and it does not resemble my homeworld in any way. My assimilation was slow to nonexistent and this was primarily my fault since I declined to undergo the genetic surgery offered to offworlders to make us appear more human. Though the human form is better suited for the physicality of this world and less cumbersome and my world has turned its back on me, I am still proud to be of my race.
The more time I spend here, the less confident I am about my appearance. On occasion, I have watched a television show or movie, or glanced at an advertisement, thinking the models to be a proper representation of the human race. I have since learned that there are those among you who feel your appearance does not measure up to the so-called perfect people placed on display. If you are one of these people who question their beauty, I ask you to consider this: at least you are of the same species.
I stand at the edge of acceptability, balancing on the fine line of grotesque fascination and physical revulsion simply because my eyes are not the same color or shape as humans, and my hair, what little I have in places considered odd by your lot, was actually tufts of fine fur.
I also need to be aware of my nails and keep them within an acceptable length to where they were not considered claws. The same with my smile. Apparently, when I bare my teeth it triggers a fight or flight response in most people.
The column of light extended either way into infinity, so bright as to cut the mind’s eye to even contemplate. It was The Judgment of God, and Xaphan was trapped within it. Pinned in midair, wings spread to their fullest span, arms and legs akimbo like a celestial insect, the apostate angel watched helplessly as the Seven Angels Who Stand Before God hovered, circling him.
“What is my crime, then?” Xaphan asked. “Daring to ask if the design of these heavens we were made to build originated from God, or the vainglorious Viceroy of Heaven?”
Lucifer Morningstar’s countenance, normally bright and a thing of beauty, soured at Xaphan’s words, becoming a dark and heavily shadowed thing, despite the ever-present light.
“Tread careful, creature, for I know your name be jealousy,” Lucifer said through pursed lips. “Though you wear the guise of my brother, still will I smite you.”
“What right have you to question our brother?” asked Gabri-el, Ruler of the Cherubim, and the Governor of Eden.
The corners of Xaphan’s mouth curled slightly. “Free will grants me that right. Is that not our entitlement? I have made no secret that I believe this to be Lucifer’s heaven and not God’s own, and I intended to prove my theory.”
“By attempting to set Heaven ablaze?” Lucifer asked.
“Attempting? Did it not burn?” Xaphan replied.
“I cannot understand why he would harbor hatred toward the Celestial Choir,” said Micha-el, leader of the Celestial Armies, Angel of Destruction and Vengeance in the name of God.
“Hatred? Xaphan stated that he was only exercising his free will. Do we all not have that option?” said Rapha-el, Guardian of the Tree of Life in Eden, and Chief Ruling Prince of Second Heaven.
“Xaphan’s heart is filled with pride, not hatred,” said Uri-el, Angel Who Watches Over Thunder and Terror, and the Cherub who stands at the Gate of Eden with a fiery sword.
“Be that as it may, Uri-el, his free will was honored when he chose not to assist in the construction of the heavens,” said Ragu-el, Angel of Earth, and keeper of the Trumpet of Ice and Snow.
“Precisely,” said Remi-el, Angel of True Divine Visions. “He had no right to set asunder the fruits of our labor. Xaphan could have exercised his free will in any number of non-destructive forms, such as leaving the celebration, if it offended him so.”
“Perhaps, but did we do our brother a disservice by not opening his opinions to debate?” said Razi-el, Giver of Divine Mysteries.
“And what of God’s will, Razi-el? Lucifer was appointed viceroy by the Almighty! Should Xaphan’s will supercede Morningstar’s own?” Gabri-el looked from face to angelic face.
“Free will is a gift we should not accept lightly,” Micha-el nodded.
“Agreed. There must be rules set in place to govern the use of our free will.”
“And a punishment to be meted out should one of us fail to adhere to the guidelines? I do not agree,” Rapha-el said.
“If we do not make an example of Xaphan, then what keeps the rest of the Choir from repeating his mistake?” Ragu-el asked.
“Mistake?” said Uri-el. “Xaphan made a conscious choice and acted on it! He is our equal in all things! Who are we to judge him?”
“I must agree,” Remi-el added. “Who are we to judge? We are the Shadowside of God. Only God should hold judgment upon the Mal’akh.”
“A good point, which leads to an interesting question: Why has God remained silent and allowed these things to happen?” Razi-el asked.
“Enough!” Lucifer’s tone was a knife. “True, the voice of God has grown silent within me. That is why I have called you together. To decide the fate of Xaphan. The only vote not cast here will be mine. As God is hushed, so too shall I be. Your options are to either: Pardon Xaphan, Strip him of his celestial nature, Imprison him, or End his existence. Cast your ballots.”
Gabri-el was the first to break silence. “Our pardon, Lucifer. Not bearing the mantle of viceroy allows us to forget its burden. Since pardoning Xaphan is out of the question, and the other sentences are too ghastly to imagine, I vote for imprisonment.”
Rapha-el, Uri-el, Ragu-el, Remi-el and Razi-el concurred with the imprisonment vote.
Lucifer turned to Micha-el, “What say you, Micha?”
“I choose none of the options you present, brother. Though I agree an example must be set, I opt to wait until God has spoken,” Micha-el said as he flew away from the table. “Until such time, I will not be party to such gatherings.”
Gabri-el turned to follow. “Micha! Wait–!”
Lucifer, suddenly at Gabri-el’s side, placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “Let him be. Our brother is exercising his free will.”
“Xaphan, you are sentenced to imprisonment on Raquia, the Second Heaven, until the Word of God dictates otherwise. As part of your sentence, you are commanded to construct your own prison by hand in the same manner by which the heaven you destroyed was built.”
Xaphan considered his punishment a long moment before he spoke “What is the definition of Free? Is it having no obligations? And the definition of Will? A disposition to act according to principles? Then does not Free Will mean the freedom to make choices without obligation or divine intervention?”
The Seven could not find fault in his logic.
The column of light melted off Xaphan.
“Thank you, but I decline.” he said politely and flew off.
“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.” ― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
I have a memory like a sieve. My recollections of the past come to me in flashes and snippets and I have to be mindful not to fall into one of the many great blank holes when traipsing around in half-forgotten yesterdays. Part of it is the result of a built-in self-defense mechanism, tamping down the harmful events that one never quite survives intact. The rest? Just plain negligence. I am a poor caretaker of retrospection.
And for a while, I wasn’t bothered by it. Then I reached a point in life when memories—–of love and pain and the whole damned thing—-became important because I found myself wanting to catalog my journey before I reached the end of the race (it’s always closer than you expect and they say you never see the finish line with your name on it).
But now, when I recount the tales of the various and sundry someones who impacted my life before blowing away like a leaf in the wind, someones whose names I used to be able to recite by rote, those names have now taken up permanent residence on the tip of my tongue but never so close as to venture past my lips.
I find that in order to remember a past event, I have to place it in a location that’s visible so that I don’t misplace it along with my keys and smartphone. I have chosen this place as the soil in which to plant my evaporating memories before they’re gone forever.
I put this moment here:
Of the girl that I fancied in the first grade whose name might have been Cheryl or Shirley but for some reason I remember it as “Squirrel,” whom I wrote about when the teacher asked the class to write about something we loved. And that selfsame teacher thinking it was so adorable that she took me to Squirrel’s class and made me read it aloud to her. You’re never too young to discover embarrassment.
I put this moment here:
Of the German woman who made me my first brown bag lunch for school that consisted of a healthy liverwurst sandwich which I enjoyed the taste of but stopped eating altogether after being teased at school by the other kids for eating dog food. It hurt her feelings and I wish I had a stronger conviction to continue eating the lunches she prepared with love.
I put this moment here:
Of the asexual woman I worked with at a car rental agency who looked like a young Peggy Lipton and lived in New Jersey. I remember riding the Path train to her house and we would regularly break dawn discussing her passion, serial killers. She didn’t own a television and instead had an impressive collection of serial killer and unsolved murder case books. I found her fascinating and in hindsight I suppose I’m lucky that I never went missing.
I put this moment here:
Of the woman I worked with at a banking institution, who I spent a bizarre New Year’s Eve with as we dropped tabs of acid that didn’t work and searched Manhattan for the perfect place to ring in the new year and ended up laying on the grass of Central Park making resolutions and wishing on stars for a better year to come.
Sometimes when my mind is idle, I struggle to recall the names of people and events trapped within synaptic pathways that withered from non-use, names and events I feel I should remember because of the emotions that linger despite the fact the memories have faded and recognition has faltered.
I lament the loss of these remembrances because they’re all a part of me and I’m afraid to learn the answer to what of myself will remain when all the memories have faded away.
Gather ye memories while ye may. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
“Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The hawk was most definitely out tonight as I stood at the bow of the Staten Island ferry, coat collar popped and gloved hands thrust into pockets. This particular hawk bore a vicious set of teeth and wasn’t afraid to bite, which was fine by me. The colder weather combined with the icy wind that whipped off the bay afforded me some much-appreciated elbowroom, a concept that was foreign to most New Yorkers.
Being all alone out here wasn’t a problem. I had been alone most of my adult life. Alone in a crowded room. Alone in committed relationships. The people closest to me, those tenacious few who loved a challenge, were kept at an equidistant arm’s length.
Alone was my appetite.
Alone was my mantra.
Alone was my destiny.
“Not too cold out tonight, is it?” a voice said, almost causing me to leap out of my skin. There, suddenly beside me, was a woman bundled against the chill air, lips curled slightly in sarcasm. Right next to me. Within the boundaries of my personal space.
“Not as cold as it could be,” I replied more out of reflex than want. What I wanted was a little privacy, to tend to my own affairs as other people on the ferry tended to theirs. It was part of the unspoken rule when you agreed to live in this city. You avoided eye contact and kept yourself to yourself.
I looked at her, this stealthy woman that took me totally unawares. A full foot shorter than me, pretty, petite, and what was the politically correct term for it? Middle Asian? I wasn’t too sure and felt naked without my local ever-changing PC handbook to check for accuracy.
The immediate thing that came to mind wasn’t how stunningly attractive this woman was. My first thought was actually, Why are you talking to me? As a point of clarification, that was one of the things I admired about myself, whether it was my face or the vibe I gave off, people generally never felt the need to walk up and talk to me. Unless of course they were mentally challenged or capable—again I needed to consult the handbook—or nuts or out to start a fight with a stranger they mistakenly assumed was harmless. She was clearly none of those.
But the thought evaporated as suddenly as it appeared. She blurted out a simple statement of fact and I happened to be within earshot. Conversation over. Turn the page.
But it wasn’t over. “Do you know who you are?” she asked without a discernible trace of an accent.
“Pardon?” I was taken aback by the suddenness of the question. “What, like my name?”
“No, that is what you are called. I want to know if you had to describe yourself to an absolute stranger, what would you say?“
“Most likely? Nothing,” I admitted. “I’m not too fond of the question.“
“Really? What if Nazis held guns to your parents’ heads? What would you tell me then?” she smiled politely, waiting.
Damn. The Nazi ploy.
As much as I hated being manipulated in this fashion, I couldn’t allow anyone, not even this woman, the most un-New Yorkian person I had ever encountered, to think I was some heartless brute that would have allowed Nazis to murder my parents in an effort to avoid providing a self-summary.
“And just so you know,” she continued. “We, the Nazis and I, aren’t accepting you are a work in progress as a suitable answer, since we’re all works in progress until the moment we give up living.“
“Fair enough,” I nodded. It was one of those overused expressions that I couldn’t stand, just like thinking outside the box. I watched her with obvious suspicion and had half a mind not to answer, half a mind to walk away. Neither of those halves proved to be victorious.
I hadn’t the foggiest notion what came over me but words started spilling out of my mouth before I even realized I was speaking. “What I am is a pessimistic optimist, who believes love shouldn’t be denied to anyone, even to those born with icy hearts. What I know is that I’m wise enough to accept love as it finds me and not reject it because it doesn’t come wrapped in a pretty package. What I hope is that someday every lonely person will reach out to another lonely person and befriend them so that the word lonely fades from our lexicon.“
“You must be a writer because that was corny and clumsily poetic,” she eyed me for a long moment. “But an artful dodge, so I’ll let you get away with it. This time.“
This time? Just who did this woman think she was?
“Now it’s your turn,” I said. “Tell me something about yourself. Anything. Start with where you’re from.“
For the briefest instant, her expression took on a sadness that could only have belonged to reminiscence. “I was born and raised in India, longer ago than you would believe, but I have traveled all over, to places you probably do not even realize exist.“
“You’re probably right about that. Geography really isn’t my strong suit and I haven’t really traveled outside of the five boroughs,” I said, instantly embarrassed by my lack of worldliness. “So, what brings you to New York?“
She remained quiet for a moment before answering. “I work for an organization, currently in a state of transition, that suffered drastic downsizing due to image problems and public opinion. My employer is in the midst of rebranding and taking on a new staff to suit the company’s new direction. You can say that I am one of many headhunters.“
“Talk about your artful dodge. You said a mouthful just now and told me absolutely nothing about what your organization does to make a profit.“
“I can tell you, but only if you really want to know because that information comes at a price.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Your undying loyalty.”
I chuckled. “Of course.”
“Of course, you agree to my terms, or of course, as in a mockery?” she cocked an eyebrow my way. “We must be clear about this.”
“The latter, no offense.”
“I see,” she ran a hand through her hair to remove it from her face. It was then that I noticed she wasn’t wearing gloves and hadn’t actually appeared to be cold. “You asked me what brings me to New York. Would you believe me if I said it was you?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “All right, this is where I officially punch out of this conversation.”
She took half a step closer. “Your loneliness, your isolation is like a beacon to me. I am drawn to you. I know your kind. I have seen your future and you will most assuredly die alone. No mate, no children to carry on your legacy.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I’m happily married with three kids who adore me.”
“Not true in the slightest. You have lived alone ever since your cat died of leukemia two years ago.”
“How — how could you know that?”
“The same way I know the first girl to break your heart was Shirley Hartsdale in the sixth grade when she began dating your best friend behind your back and made you the laughing-stock of the school. To this day you hold a distrust of people because of that incident, even friends and family.”
I hadn’t caught the last part of her sentence. My brain was flooded with thoughts of Shirley Hartsdale, someone I hadn’t thought of in years and even now, she left a bad taste in my mouth.
“The organization I work for has that sort of information available to them, not solely on you but everyone on the planet.”
Oh God, I started to panic. She’s a terrorist. Part of some ferry-riding Sleeper Cell that uses attractive women to pry information out of dumb single Americans. My photo was most likely going to land in some Homeland Security dossier marked Al Qaeda Sympathizers. In that moment I just wanted this woman to be away from me. Far, far away.
“I am not a terrorist,” she smiled. “Nor do I belong to a cult. What I am is a member of a peacekeeping task force that seeks to restore balance to the world with the help of people like you, the overlooked, the forgotten, the unloved. More than an organization, the company that employs me is my family and is directly descended from the first family ever to set foot on the earth. It can become your family, as well.”
“What I can offer you is a love unparalleled,” She touched a finger to my temple and the wind died away. The air barely moved for several moments and I listened as she spoke. My world began spinning savagely. I winced and swallowed hard to prevent nausea from triumphing as her words poured images into my mind, saturated with so much sensory information and emotion that I thought I might burst at the seams.
“You will want for nothing. I will bear you many children and you will have a family the size of a small nation. A family who will worship and adore you. All this and more if you will simply pledge yourself to me forever and always.”
She moved her finger away and the stillness of the air vanished as the wind rose once more. I staggered a moment, my mind reeling with the imagery that pressed a palpable weight on me. When I regained my balance and sight, I stood there stunned and in comparative silence after being shown a world that only existed as the flimsiest of pipedreams. The reality finally hit that I was dealing with something way beyond me, something that threatened to swallow me whole if I wasn’t careful.
“And you will be free to follow your dreams. Become a novelist and millions will read your words. You will be well received all around the world. Spend your days lecturing, even teaching and sculpting young minds, if that is your wish.”
“Or,” she continued. “Write and direct films that interest you and your following will be massive. Fellini, Scorcese, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino, would not be able to hold a candle to you. You could be like Woody Allen and release a film each year, all guaranteed blockbusters with the stars of your choice eager to play a role.”
“And all this will happen because of you?”
Her tone shifted, becoming as sharp as a finely honed blade. “No, because of your pledge to be with me and only me.”
“Like signing my soul over to you?” I knew the answer but had to ask anyway.
“What an archaic notion. All I need from you is your promise, sealed with a kiss. The question is: do you want to live the life you have always dreamed of living or not? After years of struggling and going unnoticed by women and society at large, you have learned to wear your isolation like a protective shell but this isn’t who you truly are, who you were meant to be. If anyone deserves a shot at the brass ring it most certainly is you, is it not?”
I had trouble meeting her eyes. “That’s tempting, it really is…but I can’t.”
“You would turn down everything?”
“I’m too old to believe I can have everything. And old enough to know I won’t be happy. Maybe at first, on the surface, I will, but as time goes by I’ll know deep down that I didn’t earn any of those things. You wouldn’t be with me because you love me. You’d be with me because you needed something from me. Something I’m not smart enough to figure out at the moment.” I felt foolish because I truly couldn’t see the angle. My soul wasn’t worth that much so there must have been something else.
And suddenly I was aware of the nearness of the woman and no longer thought she was in my personal space but that I was in hers and I worried about what being within her sphere of influence might do to me. I was afraid that her essence, the power she projected would have tainted me, marked and cursed me forever.
“It seems I misjudged you. All that talk of accepting love as it finds you and erasing loneliness from the lexicon is all just a mask. Your problem is not being too old, it is being too afraid.”
“What?” my voice cracked as I felt a sudden pang of fear.
“You are a dichotomy of fear. You are afraid of dying home alone, yet you fear leaving your house to meet a woman you can form a relationship with, you fear being friendless yet fear making friends, fear being childless yet fear the responsibility of having children, you fear being loved, fear being hated, you fear life and just about everything else and you are content to let it rot your soul as you waste away out of existence.”
The wind rose in unison with the pitch of her voice and I was hit with a blast so icy it made my eyes water. I wiped the tears away and the woman was gone.
I went inside because I felt the sudden and dire need to be around other people, be close to them, feel their warmth. I settled down in a seat between two strangers, neither of them pleased that I had invaded their personal space, but I was past caring at the moment.
Looking down the opposite end of the ferry I spotted the woman talking to a man, most likely another lonely bastard like me. I wanted to go over and warn him but he probably wouldn’t have believed me, and wasn’t it up to him to face his own temptations? Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have been within his rights to accept? And was I a fool for letting the opportunity to end my loneliness pass me by?
Then and there I made a promise to change my life, to put Shirley Hartsdale in perspective and get on with living and reconnect with old friends, if it wasn’t too late. I pledged to make new friends and actively seek out the love I deserved instead of waiting for it to come to me. Yes, that was what I planned to do.
About Personal Space: This is one of them thar inspired by true events stories that happened one winter’s night when I was riding home on the Staten Island ferry.
A woman walked up out of the blue and started talking to me, telling me that she worked in the UN as a member of the Peacekeeping Task Force and her husband was a prosecutor for the War Crimes Tribunal. He was in The Hague, at that time, prosecuting a war criminal. She went on to tell me about their very strange but open marriage.
I blogged about this encounter on numerous occasions, mostly touching on the psychological effects the news media outlets’ constant terrorism scare reporting tactics have on the average person, even if they happen to be apolitical. And how even people who consider themselves to be an egalitarian, can get caught up in subconscious racial profiling.
It’s an encounter that has its hooks deeply embedded in my soul and I guess I’ll keep writing about it until the realization becomes easier to deal with.
He looked wild and unhealthy in the most horrible way possible for someone on the living side of the grave. His light-skinned thin face was a roadmap of scars and lesions, some old and scabbed and some fresh, moist and pink. The skin that circled his storm-gray eyes was a sickly brownish-purple color, that lent him a dark psychotic appearance. Even his hair was in bad shape, being matted in places and choppy and uneven in others. The interface sockets drilled into his temples and wrists seemed out of place; shiny buttons of chrome spit-polished to perfection. Like a beautiful new brass doorknob on an old weather-beaten door.
“Hate to say ‘I told you so’, but—” Marv flashed her a smile. Yellow, ragged teeth clenched around the cigarette butt. He adjusted the rumpled clothes that hung off his anorexic body like a tent. In his current condition, he looked more like the national poster boy for The Euthanasia Campaign, rather than one of the Eurasian Alliance’s Most Wanted.
Talitha watched his eyes take her appearance in. Her hair was cropped short, reddish-brown, curly. Her skin was a beautiful copper color. She recently lost a few pounds which brought her down to 121, which she considered to be her optimum weight.
“Are you alone?” Talitha asked, letting her eyes quickly dance around the room but always snapping back to her target, in case he decided to make his move. The only move he made was with the cigarette hand, bringing it to his lips for a quick toke.
The studio, stripped of the cheap grandeur it once laid claim to, was small. There was barely enough space to fit the little table and two stools that sat across from the stove and sink. To the right was an alcove that held a toilet, no sink, no shower, and no door. To the left, where Quinton stood, was an unrolled sleepmat. Atop the little table was an ashtray made of foil, an open can of Albanian beer, a dusty and scratched cybermodem with connecting interface wires, and some half-melted candles. Come to notice it, there were candles all over the room, on the stove, the sink, the floor.
Most importantly, on the floor, by his right foot, was a pistol. She brought her own gun to bear and targeted the spot between his eyes, her lips skinned back from her teeth. “Slowly kick the 9mike-mike my way, now!”
Marv hesitated a moment, looking at his Browning and its distance from his hand in relation to the slamtracker’s finger to her gun’s trigger. He sighed and complied, kicking his pistol across the wooden floor.
“Turn around and assume the position,” Talitha said.
He took a long last pull on the cigarette, crushed the butt in the ashtray, turned quietly and leaned against the wall, hands flat, feet spread apart. Talitha bent her knees and reached for the Browning, never taking her eyes off Quinton, and tucked it into the waistband of her slacks. She moved to her bounty and patted him down. Nimbly reaching into the largest of the advantage belt’s compartments she produced four very thin metal bracelets, two with green markings and two with red.
Talitha turned him to face her and Quinton obediently held his fists in front of him. She gently but firmly took him by one shoulder and pulled him down vertically, knees and back bent in a crouch, his hands positioned close to his ankles. With a series of clicks his wrists and ankles were cuffed. The bracelets had no chains or bars linking them. The slamtracker stepped away and triggered a device. Dim green and red lights emanated from the bands and they homed in for their counterpart. Two sharp clinks resounded when magnetized metal rings touched. She had arranged the bands so that his left wrist was shackled to his right ankle and vice versa. Unable to keep his balance in the awkward position, Quinton landed on his butt, knocking over his stool.
She did a quick scan of the toilet. Quinton was alone. In the periphery of her vision, she could see him sitting on the floor testing the magnacuffs.
“Forget it,” she said, holstering the Glock and examining the Browning. “To separate the cuffs you’d need to exert five hundred pounds of pressure in both directions.” Marv continued testing the cuffs anyway.
“Why didn’t you shoot me when I first walked in?” she asked, holding up his gun as if to say it’s loaded and functional.
“Not my style,” he looked up from the cuffs. His eyes, although weary and bloodshot, were sharp, intent, intelligent. “When I aim that gun I don’t shoot people, I shoot obstructions. I shoot aberrated ideologies. I shoot the future that has no place for the individual, only the corporate. The things that hit the ground when I squeezed that trigger were definitely not human. Maybe at one time, but not when they came to me.”
“You can’t glamorize killing. I do enough of it to know.” Talitha sat on the stool nearest her. “There’s nothing poetic about what you did. Nothing justifiable.”
“Since when isn’t freedom justifiable? Who decides that?” There was a twitch in one of Quinton’s jaw muscles.
“The survivors of murder victims.”
“And if you murdered me right now, could my survivors claim your freedom? Your life?”
“See this face? Not impressed by your word games.”
“They’re only word games, Ms. Slamtracker, if you’re on the losing side. When you’re winning, they’re indisputable facts.”
“Secure that crap, okay?”
After a long silence, Quinton said, “Murder me. Give my people a cause.”
“Your people? You mean—what is it you call yourselves now—The Midnight Raiders?”
“That’s what you call us. The media spoon-fed you a label and you lapped it up like a good corporate doggie. I’m talking about the hapless, the wretched, the destitute, the impoverished, the indigent, and unprovided for. All the underdogs are my people. They’re the stuff of lore. The kindling that keeps the flame alive.”
Talitha stared at him through slitted eyes. “Underdogs? How can you say that with a straight face? You’re part of the largest terrorist organization on three continents!”
Quinton’s intensity seemed to spark around his shoulders like electricity. “Since when is it terroristic to fight for freedom? When the movement first began, we held anti-corporate law protests, which was our right, to have our voices heard, to demand justice and equality. The response? They passed laws against us, claiming we were a menace to the EA Nations.”
Talitha glowered at him. “There are ways of fighting that don’t violate the law.”
“These corporations you work for, whose values you uphold and defend, siphoned billions of dollars from public programs that should have been used for food and shelter, creating a homelessness problem, which they sought to solve by rounding up the homeless and turning them into unwilling human subjects. They carved up the brains of public assistance recipients to implant software, wetware, data and storage chips, at first just to test the effects and later to create nonvoluntary data couriers. They connected toxin sacks to these people’s vital organs to force their cooperation. How can they expect us not to fight back?”
“Spare me your recruitment propaganda,” Talitha said and placed Quinton’s Browning in her waistband at the small of her sweat-stained back, adjusting it for comfort.
“Did you know the very first ‘Rinthjock, the guinea pig that was fitted with prototype interface sockets, was a woman on welfare?” Marv didn’t wait for her response. “Documented fact, look it up. In order to receive benefits for herself and her four children, she had to agree to submit herself for testing. The techies who created the method of downloading data directly into the mind without having to constantly slice open a skull and install datachips, devised a way to patch the human nervous system into a direct computer link via the major nerve trunks in the wrist and base of the skull. The process placed her in a vegetative state and to get a better understanding of what happened, they vivisected this poor woman, whom they considered intellectually inferior, and then had the nerve to rename the internet after her in tribute.”
“Her name was Labyrinth?”
“No, they weren’t interested in making a martyr out of her so they hid their tribute within a longer word. Her name was Arinthia Simpson.”
“You know, I let you go on to see if I could make some sense out of what you’ve done,” Talitha said. “But this dump is a sauna and I’m not in the right frame of mind to listen to zealotry at the moment, so be quiet, while I call this in.”
Double-tapping her right temple, Talitha activated her comm implant and held her thumb to her ear while speaking into her pinky. She called in the bounty and arranged for a wagon to swing by for the pick-up. All there was to do now was wait.
They sat in silence for nearly a half-hour, each with their own thoughts, until Marv said, “I read in a news article about a torture gadget the Eurasian Alliances Science Guild makes to sell to foreign countries that are still run by military dictatorships. Our own police agencies help by selling them torture equipment like this headband I saw. It’s worn like a skull cap and clamped on tight. Tiny pins on the inside of the band pierce the forehead, through the skull and into the brain. When activated, the headband selectively fries the forebrain with a jolt of current. Most of the victim’s memory is eradicated, leaving enough to implant an easily controlled pseudo personality into the empty brain, creating a killing machine.
“Our corporations manufacture these headbands. It’s made here, mass-produced in sweatshops that employ poor people at slave wages. Most of them don’t realize they’ll be wearing that cap eventually for some minor infraction that a rich person can simply buy their way out of. Mind you, I’ve only seen photographs of the headband; not the torture, just the results.”
“What did I tell you about—”
“Not spewing propaganda. Just making conversation to pass the time,” Marv said. “That wagon sure is taking its sweet time getting here. You positive it’s on the way?”
“It’ll be here, so why don’t you just sit there and reflect on your life choices.”
“Can I just tell you about this chair I saw?” he asked but didn’t wait for an answer. “It was a picture of an ordinary wooden chair bolted to the floor in a room in Chad where people had been tortured. There were no people in the photograph, but you knew from looking at the chair, from the blood-soaked back and seat that people had been tortured there. Women and men, light-skinned and dark, rebel and scapegoat, sane and crazy. In Chad, in Nova Scotia, in Cuba. And if it’s there for foreign dissidents, you know it’s here for native ‘Rinthjocks.”
“Of course, because you’re beset on all sides by the tyranny of evil corporations, blah-blah-blah.”
“Do you know the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist?”
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me,” Talitha rolled her eyes.
“It’s what side of the line you stand on. I’m on the freedom fighter side. How about you?”
“I’m on the side that upholds the law, the side that has to listen to your lies and whiny nonsense about being forced into a way of life not of your choosing. And when I don’t subscribe to your bullshit, then I become the enemy and that gives you the right to kill me.”
“That’s not what we—” Marv started.
“You weren’t born a rebel with interface sockets and firearms, it’s a choice,” she said. “You made a conscious choice to live outside the law and enforce your own brand of justice and you don’t even have the decency to explain yourself and own up to your crimes. Why is that, Mr. Freedom Fighter?”
Quinton squirmed a little to get comfortable in his crouched position. He was used to the heat so it didn’t bother him much but he noticed Talitha could not say the same. She had tied a rolled handkerchief around her head to keep the sweat out of her eyes, but was helpless to stop the dark crescents that grew under her armpits. “I’ll explain it to you, the way my mother did to me,” he said, keeping his tone even, gentle but not condescending. She was the one with all the weapons, after all.
Avenue B was crowded with petty consignees who made their living as best they could. DNA, RNA and organ banks. Barter firms. Boosterware outlets. Gambling holes. Hotels. Bars. Trixiepens. Bodegas. Prosthetic surgeries. Hockshops. Each animated with the cadence of people turning profits, the murmur of small enterprise, the barbed aroma of sweat and adrenaline.
Talitha Manchand inched her way out of the vendor clutter and holographic psychedelics of the avenue and jetted down a hotel-lined sidestreet. Three quarters down the block, she hooked a sharp left and spun the ’13 GeoPlymouth Cloudburst into a convenient alley. Guided by its lasertracking system, the hovercar maneuvered effortlessly through a maze of dumpsters and garbage cans, kicking up a mini-storm of grit and paper trash. The Cloudburst stopped a few feet from the back entrance to the Forgotten Realm Hotel, gently lowering itself on its flexible skirt. When she killed the engine, the skirt deflated and retracted into the car’s underbelly housing. She flicked on the dome light and slipped the Glock 19 out of the holster secured under the glove compartment and checked the load.
Flicking off the dome light, she climbed out the car, checked the alley, holstered the Glock in her advantage belt and walked over to the hotel’s back door. The sonic padlock was ancient; she picked it with a high-frequency whistle normally used to stand off attack dogs. With a soft click and a push of the door, Talitha stepped into a cluttered urine and sex-scented stairwell that used to be a service entrance and ghosted her way through the lobby.
The lobby loiterers were pretty much what she expected: snuffheads, scavoes, jonniegirls. Each in their little cliques, dialoguing. Except for a rail-thin stimfella, who was dealing stims to a skud, she might have gone unnoticed. The skud looked so hard up for a fix he probably would have snorted potassium cyanide. Behind the stimfella were two husky goons on the lookout. Definitely his billyboys.
“HEY!” the skud yelped as the stimfella pushed him to the side and walked away. “I slid you cash, so where’s my stash, man?”
Talitha knew there was no way the skud was up to going toe to toe with the stimfella but jonesing muscles sometimes made a weak man strong. And judging by the way he was listing and clutching the left side of his torso, he probably sold a lung or kidney to enjoy the uncollected stim.
“I’m talking to you, man! You deaf, or just stupid?” His answer came in the form of sledgehammer fists. The billyboys beat him to the ground and all he could do was bawl out in anger against their fury, trying to protect the recent surgery stitches.
The stimfella swaggered on an intercept course with Talitha and his billyboys, having made short work of the skud, weren’t too far behind. All three men stopped directly in front of her, blocking her path.
“Name’s Trent, jodie. Whatcha doin’ in the Paradise?” the slump-shouldered stimfella brushed blond locks out of his eyes and rubbed a blemish on the side of his aquiline nose. “Your man not servin’ you right? Lookin’ for a jock to rock your box? You found ‘im. I promise you a screamin’-and-creamin’-yabba-dabba-good-time,” he said, licking his thin dry lips.
“Fuck off,” Talitha said, before her brain could catch up to her mouth. There was no way this was going to end peacefully.
“Best put some speck on the way you talk to me, ‘fore I have to do it for you, the hard way,” The stimfella said, grabbing his crotch.
The billyboys exchanged glances and laughed. This was a game to them, Talitha realized. They were out for shits and giggles. Their laughter faded when Trent, sporting a lime green weasel-suede leisure suit, reached into his breast pocket, came out with a yellow plastic inhaler and fired a round up each nostril. He absently passed the inhaler over his shoulder for his billyboys to divvy up the dregs. Talitha studied the stimfella. A full head taller than she, confident, tough and tanked up on some stim that probably boosted his reflexes and gave him an adrenaline buzz. Someone was going to get hurt.
Talitha considered it might be her, so she tried to sidestep. Billyboy one and two flanked their boss left and right and circled her, smiling, Trent lashed out at her face with the back of his left hand, a bitch-slap, what real men used to keep their women in check. This punk regarded her the same way he did his stimmed-out trixies. Someone he could slap around one minute and get them to go down on him the next.
That was all it took.
Talitha’s body went wild. Blocking the slap with her forearm, she snagged his wrist with one hand and slammed the heel of her other palm into his elbow. The impact forced the elbow joint to bend the wrong way with a moist, popping sound. Trent’s scream trailed his collapsing body to the floor.
Billyboy One came in from behind and tried to get Talitha in a headlock but before his arm locked around her throat, she slammed the back of her head into the biliyboy’s face, smashing his nose. At the same time, she hooked her foot behind one of his knees and forced it to buckle while shifting all her weight against him suddenly. They toppled backward. When his head struck the tiled floor, his grip loosened and she rolled out of his arms and drove her elbow down into his solar plexus.
The remaining billyboy was over her suddenly, shifting his weight to his right leg so he could kick with his left. Talitha ducked inside the kick with her arms close to her chest. Then both arms shot out one after the other and her tiny rock hard fists slammed into the billyboy’s testicles like pistons from an ignited car engine. The quadruple punch doubled the man, forcing him to topple over Trent’s body and crash to the floor in a fetal position.
Talitha rolled to her feet and brushed herself off. She glanced around the lobby, her expression explicit. It said, simply: Next?
The cliques slowly scattered, loiterers making their way towards the exit. They recognized the fighting style and pegged her as slamtracker.
“Now that they know what you are,” said a voice from behind the front desk. “They’re probably planning to bum-rush you when you leave.”
“The least of my worries,” she mumbled.
The desk clerk, who’s nametag read: ADEL, was a nondescript beaker-bred hermaphrodite who looked as androgynous as they claimed Bowie did in his heyday. Adel seemed mildly amused, glancing past Talitha to the three moaning men on the floor.
The skud picked himself up unsteadily and began rummaging through the stimfella’s pockets. Trent made a weak grab attempt but the skud stomped down on Trent’s broken arm. The stimfella shrieked, eyes rolling into the back of his head, and the skud returned to his scavenger hunt, taking all the stims and money he found.
Talitha thought, maybe, if he hurried to the organ bank, the skud could get his old lung or kidney back, or even buy new ones. More likely, he would forego the organs and buy more stims. He was visibly bleeding from where his stitches popped, but he seemed rather pleased with his ill-gotten gains. He pocketed his goods and on his way out the door, he kicked both billyboys in the face, obviously the icing on his satisfaction cake.
Talitha turned her attention back to Adel, flashed her credentials and said, “You know why I’m here.”
“I’m the one who called, but don’t go thinking I’m some sort of snitch. I just needed the finder’s fee for an emergency, that’s all,” the clerk said and pushed a slip of paper toward her. “That’s his room number.”
“Not my concern how you justify it, as long as the information is accurate,” Talitha started for the elevator, spotted the OUT OF ORDER sign then made for the stairs instead.
The Forgotten Realm lived up to its name. Calling the place low-tech would’ve been high praise. Most of the mechanix here were decades old. Still, Talitha had to admit she was slightly impressed that the whole place was put together from salvaged materials. Shame no one here jerry-built an air conditioning system. She was on the nervous side to begin with, add that it was the last night in July, and it made for a woman who gave off enough sweat to cure the Delaware drought. Walking up twenty-three flights of rickety stairs didn’t help the matter any.
Talitha heard the stairwell door close behind her. Her left hand adjusted her advantage belt to put the more suitable compartments in her reach. The Glock 19 mini 9mm trembled in the grip of her tense right hand. She debated whether or not to leave the safety catch on. Her index finger rested near the trigger.
Cold fear poured down her spine as she started down the long, empty hallway. She licked her lips, trying to taste some courage. The Glock grip itched her palm. Her breath was quick. She paused outside the door number scratched on the slip of paper. Standing off to one side, she tweaked the doorbell and waited. Nothing. She put her mouth to the apartment’s intercom, ‘Marv Quinton?” Still nothing.
The locks on the door were electronic; finger-idents that were programmed to the renter’s fingerprints that could only be overridden by special 4-digit codes. Child’s play. From one of the smaller sections of her advantage belt she pulled a device roughly the size of her thumbnail. It looked like a tiny calculator. She placed it on the lock panel and it took all of fifteen seconds to tumble the locks.
As soon as the pneumatic door opened, her stomach quivered. “Mr. Quinton?” Talitha called into the doorway of the jet apartment. No answer. Not that she expected one. If he felt up to having company, he wouldn’t have made her pop all three of the finger-idents on the door.
Her weapon readied, she stepped inside. The door hissed shut behind her, the locks snapping closed. Darkness swallowed her like a hungry animal. The heat was three times as severe inside, made worse by the stale air. “Lights on.” she spoke to the ceiling, but nothing happened. Either he had disconnected the light mechanism, or this dump wasn’t fitted with voice activated halogen strip lighti—
To the left, the tip of a matchstick scraped along the warped wooden floor and burst into life. The barrel of the Glock swung left, her body following and she planted her feet firmly apart, slightly bent, thumbed the safety off and braced herself to lay into that corner of the room.
Laughter. Man’s laughter, as the match rose to light the tip of a cigarette. She couldn’t see his face clearly, the flame played eerie shadow games with his features. He sat on a stool in the corner, looking like a gargoyle on a precipice.
“You should be more careful when you violate someone’s space. If I was as mental as most make me out to be, I would’ve flatlined you at the door,” the gargoyle said. He blew out the match and was devoured by the shadows again, all except the fiery tip of his cigarette.
“Marv Quinton?” she tried becoming less of a target, stepping away from the spot he saw her at, but the floorboards creaked, giving away her movements.
“Depends on who’s asking,” the cigarette tip bobbed up and down as he spoke.
“Talitha Manchand, ‘Rinth police.”
“You mean slamtracker, don’t you? ‘Rinth cops don’t come this far out when they can hire local.”
“Fine. I’m a tracker, okay?” she swiped at the sweat on her forehead.
“Dialogue.”
“Not in the dark, Mr. Quinton-“
“I insist.”
“Not in the dark, Mr. Quinton!”
“I have my reasons.”
“NOT IN THE DARK, MR. QUINTON!”
“The years haven’t been kind to me.”
“Did I ask you all that? I just need to viz you, okay? It’s regulation.”
Quinton stood up and reached over to hit the old fashioned manual lightswitch. Two dusty fluorescent rings flickered on and Talitha squinted until her eyes adjusted to the light, and it took all the self-control she had to keep from flinching.
In the heart of Slummer Paradise, where the pollution-to-air ratio was widely acknowledged to be the worst on the planet, Marv Quinton fitfully tossed and turned on a rented rotten wood floor.
Why he opted to lay his sleepmat there was obvious. Being hazardzone, the Paradise offered excellent cover because it was as dark, grimy and ominous as the rumor suggested. The persistent stinging smog created by makeshift power stations and chemical plants, hovered over the tiny region and cut resident life expectancy short by sixty percent with cancer, heart disease and emphysema. The drawn faces of the locals took on the grays and browns of the cityscape. Acrid smoke from rows of chimneys darkened the streets. Lignite and coal, used to fuel the mechanix of the area, was primitive, cheap and abundant. It was also high in sulfur and ash and intensely dirty.
All in all, it was a small price to pay for a rest to the endless running.
The area was originally named Alphabet City in the PreCollapse Days, but that was before the FlatFall of ’92, when the Eurasian Alliances established the Global Commodities Barter Systems which succeeded in destroying the economies of the former superpowers. All plans for the commercial and residential redevelopment of Alphabet City were scrapped in the depression that followed.
After years of neglect and decrepitude, after sewage, factory discharge and poorly stored toxic waste had contaminated most of the surrounding areas, the residents who could afford it began moving away in droves and a dome was constructed to contain the area’s pollutants. It became a scarred and battered, lost part of Manhat, rumored to be inhabited by freaks and misfits. A place where acts of depravity and violence were the social norm.
An exaggeration on the truth. The area was inhabited by travelers and squatters mostly, with a few neurobikers, ‘Rinthjocks, and down-n-outters tossed into the pot to add flavor. Even though many of the babies were born with deformities, asthma, bronchitis, and eye and skin ailments, due to the high level of toxic metals collecting in their parent’s tissues, they were not misfits. They were pioneers that saw a home in a lifeless place. It was their sweat and muscle that rebuilt the area, some were even cunning enough to devise independent air-filtration, sewage and electrical systems. And as for the acts of violence and depravity, well, they happened no more in the Paradise than anywhere else. Both factions of segregated Manhat gave the Paradise wide berth just the same.
Rising fear from the rumors eventually led to the area being legally designated Hazardzone. That was when Alphabet City’s concrete and steel skeleton became Slummer Paradise. Home to those who had nothing to lose by becoming lost in the bureaucracy. Visited by no one in the mainstream, except for slamtrackers, who came to collect either police or private bounties.
And in the center of this asphalt and tar prairie, Marv Quinton hid in a one-room coffin, equipped with the barest of essentials needed to continue his existence.
Nighttime stressed him the most. He was used to being mobile until daybreak. The hysteria, brought on by the restlessness he usually managed to beat down, was just about to bust its cap. The rathole he took refuge in suddenly began to close in on him. He yanked the interface cables from his head shunts and shoved his cybermodem violently aside. Not even being online in the Labyrinth contented him any longer. He paced the room, chain-smoked and flicked stations on the vid monitor until nothing was on the screen but the subliminal psychedelics of the non-broadcast channels that were meant to lull the viewer into a passive, consumable state, which had no effect on Marv. For inspiration, he worked on his agenda and list of priorities until they became so sophisticated and scrambled, he had to stop before he lost his mind. Funny thought, that, since he was surely crazy already.
Sleep deprivation made him this hunted animal, addicted to fear and sometimes murder. He would have done Strega blotter, mescaphine tabs, hyperpyridinium Jell-0 shots, anything to put himself under, but his metabolism had been altered to make him immune to stims. So he forced himself to stretch out on the hard, unyielding sleepmat. He was certain he understood what Hell really was; lying down, tired enough to sleep through his entire lifetime, times three , yet not able to close his burning, bloodshot eyes.
Dreaming, perchance to sleep.
That was a curse he acquired while on the run. He never had dreams anymore, the dreams had him. Clutching him in a two-fisted chokehold of rudimentary panic that was beyond the realm of his comprehension, yet so basic in structure that it was ingrained in the very foundation of his nature. The fear, or the dream, he wasn’t sure which, had turned his cramped room into a vast black canvas, stretched to opposite sides of infinity. And his childhood phobia of the dark bubbled to the surface from that place buried by years of conditioning, logic and maturity, deep within the sub-sub-sub-regions of his mind. That tiny concrete and steel room, wrapped in wrecking ball chains, with the huge reinforced padlocks that held all the real horrors of the world: the deranged and deformed Prometheus, cybervampires, hellhounds, the CribDeath Man, Geriatric Rabid Killer Teddy Bears. Somehow they were all free again. Some nosey bastard just had to find out what was in that room, just had to pick the padlocks. And now they were coming for him, to exact their revenge, to toss his into that tiny prison. But not before they had their fun. Rule Number 101 in the Horrors’ Ethics Handbook: Always Enjoy Yourself At The Expense Of Others.
Wait! What was that at his ankle? Felt like teeth. Long, sharp, metal…
Only then, when he choked down a scream that made his throat raw, was he beset with the meat of the nutshell. The dream.
Flash-card remembrances assaulted his senses, of different things and different times, but ail in order, as if they had been carefully filed in some sort of mental card catalogue and plucked out by a librarian and thrust into his face, one at a time.
MEMORY of the rough feel of his father’s hands as they brushed his own, accepting his third year birthday gift. The hand-me-down IBM keyboard, one megabyte ram, forty megabytes hard drive with a built-in VGA holoplate that weighed a ton in his tiny grip.
MEMORY of the sweat that poured down his face and stung his eyes, at age nine, when he battled the school computer’s AI for supremacy and rewrote the comp literacy program to upscale the daily lesson plans to something a bit more challenging.
MEMORY of the wonderfully dirty, used smell of the money he made changing grades after he cracked the Board of Education’s mainframe.
MEMORY of the coy smile that played at the corners of his mother’s mouth when she announced, on his twelfth birthday, that she would finance his first set of chrome interface sockets.
MEMORY of the first time he jacked into the Labyrinth, the way the computer data reached out to him, into him, and tickled his nervous system. He reached his first orgasm at that moment, and was embarrassed at the time. Now he wished he could go back and re-experience that sensation. No other orgasm had come close since.
MEMORY of his father’s chalky brown face on the day of the funeral. The facial expression wasn’t right, wasn’t natural. The person that handled the cosmetics obviously never met his father while he was alive.
MEMORY of the scratchy white tissue in his mother’s hand that wiped the tears from his swollen eyes, as she tried to explain in a hushed and frightened tone, that his father hadn’t died of a stroke as she led everyone to believe. His father had actually been part of a rebel group named “The Midnight Raiders” who punched into the Labyrinth and attempted an illegal data raid on the Polygenom Corporation. Somewhere something went wrong and they tripped over an anti-intrusion program that wiped their brains clean and stopped their hearts cold.
MEMORY of his stomach churning savagely on the night before his fifteenth birthday, when he woke to the sound of his mother’s screams. The ‘Rinth police had violated the sanctity of their home and yanked her from bed with a gun to her head, dragging her struggling body into the street. She was still in her nightgown.
MEMORY of the mixed look of terror and anger on his mother’s bruised and bloodied face, as they shoved her into a dark nondescript van. He knew that was the last time he’d ever see her again.
MEMORY of the helplessness he felt, handcuffed in the backseat of the squad car, overhearing the conversation of the two ‘Rinth cops up front. They discussed sticking him in a foster home until further orders were received. Their casual tone of voice, like they were dropping off clothes at the cleaners, made him kick at the wire mesh partition until he wore himself out. The cops just laughed as he cried in frustration.
MEMORY of him breaking out of the foster care system two days after his arrival. If there was any justice in the world, he hoped somebody snatched the stupid ‘Rinth cops’ families out of bed at gunpoint and shoved the lot of them into a van, never to be seen again. How hard would they laugh then?
MEMORY of learning how to hustle on the streets to avoid eating out of restaurant dumpsters.
MEMORY of faces. Thirty-five screaming faces of strangers, slamtrackers, each characteristically unique and detailed. Faces burned on the insides of his eyelids forever. Thirty-five people, women and men alike, who probably had families that depended on ‘Rinth police bounties. Money that would never be collected. Families that needed to find a new provider.
So many memories, tiny shard images and hollow voices. He supposed, in its own way, it was a form of rest, a sort of OEM sleep. Open Eye Movement. His eyes darted around the bleak room, tracking the images that ran at ultraliminal speeds. The same way tonight as every other time he tried to sleep since he was fifteen. The dream made him a captive audience to a personalized home movie that he was powerless to stop when it came over him. Unable to sleep until the dream ran its course. When it was finally done, so was he.
Just as he was about to settle into that brief and fragile thing that passed for sleep, Marv Quinton woke hard, clothes clinging to his sweat-spackled body. Grabbing the Browning Hi-Power beneath his pillow, he racked the slide, chambering a 9mm shell and covered the door. The act was a smooth reflex, practiced so much, he could have done it in his sleep. Many times he had. The room was windowless and pitch to human vision, but he twisted his head back and forth anyway, scanning. His heart hammered. The remnants of the dream shrieked through his mind. An eddy of pure panic swept over him when he realized he had company.
Someone was in the hallway, just outside his room door.
MADD FICTIONAL 