Saturday, October 30, 2010

From Falling Apart

Jason flicked the light switch and his other thumb fell off. So much for opposable thumbs, he thought. Does this redefine me in some evolutionary sense as less than human? Probably not, he decided, but it had been a week for redefining his anatomy: two thumbs, one foot, half an ear, and one testicle. All gone.

He was starting to worry in spite of Al’s assurances that it was just a passing thing as Jason spooned an ear lobe out of his coffee. “Bit of sleep, proper exercise, you’ll be fine,” Al had said. “These things have a way of righting themselves.”

But eight hours later, his ear was showing no signs of righting itself, and the image of his left testicle plopped on top of a deodorant cake in the urinal was still disturbingly clear in his mind.

He hopped into his apartment and tossed his right foot, still shoed, into the pile of slippers and boots outside the hall closet. It had come off on the bus home from work. A woman standing next to him had said, “You should probably get that looked at.”

He left his other thumb on the floor. Strange, he thought. Shouldn’t there be blood or something?

Five minutes later, sitting on the couch, cold beer in thumbless hand, he pondered the day’s events. Things had started normally: up at six, pee, ten pushups, ten sit ups, multivitamin, shave, shower, towel, groom, dress, bagel and coffee, off to work.

Things are simple when you live alone and have a routine, and that’s the way he liked it at home, simple. He had all the complications he needed in his life from his job. He had few friends and he rarely went out. Friends had a way of complicating things when their lives collided with your own, and the outside world was too prone to events and rules made by others.

His office was on the third floor of the Bonnano Tower building, the headquarters for ErectSoft Inc, the largest software company in the world. He wasn’t sure exactly what kind of software the company produced, but for him it didn’t matter. He wrote high level product development procedures documents, and the product development procedures he documented were so high level they could be applied to anything and everything. For instance:

4.6 Project Compliance Form – The Project Compliance Form (ESI/Form978/PC) contains specific project information, including Client and ErectSoft contact personnel, system requirements, project resources, media resources, and media depth. If the target market has been defined, then a Target Market Profile Form (ESI/Form349/TMP) will be attached to the Project Compliance Form; if not, then the Target Market Profile Form will be completed in step 4.9 Target Population Analysis, below.

So high that the details were devoid of information. And they changed constantly. But Jason’s life remained the same. At work, he kept himself busy documenting processes for projects that might not even exist for all he knew. At home, he followed his routine of eating at the appropriate times, watching sitcoms and reality show re-runs, watching the news before bed for confirmation that the outside world was definitely full of routines he wanted to avoid, and sleeping dreamlessly. It was a comfortable life and he couldn’t think of anything he would change.

Until now.

Now he’d like to change his life into one with all his body parts properly attached to his body. Manipulating the remote for his TV was clumsy with no thumbs but he managed tuning into the early evening news. Stories about robberies, storms, political scandals and troubles in the Middle East flashed across the screen, but there was nothing about missing body parts, no reports of appendages mysteriously falling off.

It must be an isolated event, something isolated to Jason Betts, maybe something he’d eaten just before the first isolated occurrence three days earlier when his left thumb had fallen off in the shower. He remembered thinking it was odd at the time, but since he used only two fingers on his keyboard at work, it didn’t seem all that urgent.

But then today happened – one foot, one ear lobe, the other thumb, a testicle. Something’s not right, he thought as he swilled back a mouthful of beer.

And swallowed his tongue.

Well he thought so much for complaining about all this. He downed his beer and pulled another from the cooler by his chair. He was prepared in the event his legs fell off.

He thought back to the shower three days earlier. Maybe the soap? The quality of the water? A contaminant of some sort? But that would have traveled through the water mains to other homes and something would have cropped up on the news by now. Chemicals in his clothing? Nothing was new. Nothing was different. Everything in his life was at it was and had always been. Nobody could pin anything on him. Nobody could say, “Jason Betts has done something … and now … all his body parts are going to fall off.”

There was absolutely no reason for him to be falling apart.

Except …

(He pushed back uncomfortably in his chair and felt something loosen up in his chest. Oh great he thought now I’m falling apart inside?)

… that day last week … when he’d stepped on an angel.

God, it’d been gross. Angel parts everywhere. Not at first when the little booger had screamed, “Ouch!”

He’d looked down and there it was all shiny and small and pissed off. He’d always thought that angels would be, you know, bigger. Its halo had floated askew over perfect blond waves. Bits of red had flashed from its blue eyes as it stood, arms crossed, staring up at him, tiny Michelangelo foot tapping feverishly on the sidewalk.

Jason did the only thing that seemed to make sense at the time. He stepped on it again. Harder this time. It had made a squeaky scrunching sound and felt weird, like stepping on a plastic bag of fast food with bones.

“OUCH!”

When he lifted his foot, the angel was still standing, foot tapping, minus one arm, the remaining one crossing its chest.

“I’m just a small man,” Jason had said. “I can’t have something like you reporting me to who ever it is you report. I can’t handle having to take responsibility for something like this.”

He stepped on the angel again and almost threw up. It felt nasty, like stepping on crunchy pigeon crap. “That hurts!” yelped the angel. “You stop that!”

But he stepped on the tiny angel again and again, harder and harder, until there was nothing but broken angel bits scattered on the sidewalk. There he thought that’s that. And he began immediately to feel better about himself.

Until he saw the itsy-bitsy skewed eyes glaring up from a piece of angel bit. The eyes smoldered and Jason shuddered. He wasn’t feeling better about himself anymore, and he wasn’t the least prepared to see the anger in the eyes soften and lighten and twitch slowly into a look of sad compassion. Jason could almost have shed a tear looking into those I’ve-got-the-blues-because-I’m-all-over-the-sidewalk deep blue eyes, but he didn’t. “Hey, you!” called the angel’s voice from lips scrambled willy-nilly throughout the angel bits strewn on the sidewalk. “I forgive you,” said the voice.

“You what?” replied Jason.

“I forgive you,” repeated the angel’s busted mouth parts. “Hey, we all make mistakes and life sometimes leads us along unexpected paths. I’m going to die now, but I just want you to know that I forgive you and I love you.”

The voice stopped. None of the angel parts glared, talked, or looked sad-eyed and compassionate. They littered the sidewalk without movement or sound.

That was easy, thought Jason.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

From Twisted Tails 3: Pure Fear

I can’t find my locker. Where the hell is it? Have I been away from here that long that I don’t remember where my locker is? But where have I been? And I don’t recognize any of the students in these halls. There’s nobody who knows me, nobody I can ask, “Where’s my locker?” I know this place, but I don’t know it. I know I have a locker here somewhere—a place where I store my crap—but why can’t I find it? And what am I doing here in the first place? I finished with this place years ago. I’m not supposed to be here. But I am. And I can’t find my locker.

The bell rings. The commotion swells. Hordes of students herd furiously to their next class, stampeding in step with their schedules. They all know where they’re going and move with the collective mind of a well-timed institution. Except me. I can’t find my locker. I know I have one by the sense that this is where I am and this is where everyone here has a locker.

Like magic or dream, I’m standing in front of my locker and the door is open and the halls are empty and I’m alone facing a pile of books and binders and I have no idea where I’m supposed to go next. I notice a red fire extinguisher on the wall, freestanding, no wooden case with glass. The panic builds on the emptiness of the hall. I need to be somewhere right now or I’ll be late. But where? I’m going to be the odd one out. They all moved to their classes, smiling, talking, certain. And I’m standing here wondering where I’m supposed to take these books and binders, which ones am I to take? There’s no schedule here, nothing posted. I’ve been away too long. Where have I been?

The fear is growing. It’s been there for how long? Just growing. Where am I supposed to be? Where are the signs? What class have I been missing all this time that I need to be in right now? What room? What subject? What teacher? I don’t know! I don’t have a clue. Nothing is familiar except the place, this hall, this locker, this moment in time. But even these seem strange in a way that sends bumps across my skin and strangles my stomach on the bile of its own fear. I look to my left, to my right, behind me, expecting some horrible truth to pounce suddenly and devour me in the chill of my own ignorance. My stomach is ice. My heart is mercury.

I’m fucked.

Monday, October 25, 2010

A Touch of Time

She was much prettier than he’d imagined. Dusty brown bangs floated around her forehead with long waves splashing against the air around her neck. Her lips were two waves of flesh on the crest of a kiss. Her figure fit everyman’s calendar dream—not overly undersized, not overly muscular or plump or buxom or plank-like. He could have sworn that her eyes glowed blue. She was just right. As he knew she would be.

So much for the warnings about Internet dating. He’d just hit the World Wide Jackpot and he wasn’t about to wonder how he’d become this lucky.

Her name was Persephone. He didn’t find it strange at all. His own name was Mordecai. Mordecai Morris. And he hadn’t spoken to his parents in a long time. He couldn’t remember Persephone mentioning her parents in any of their chats. He wondered if they were scholars or teachers or just well-read average Joes who thought they might wrest a name out of time and bounce it off the walls of the modern world. But he liked it. It suited her. She seemed to know a lot about history and the classics, and had described some of her favorite historical events in minute detail, as if she’d been on a movie set, designing the costumes and directing the course of action, much like a technical consultant drawing from personal memory.

He thought it was pretty damn cool that she looked as good as she did. This was just about the best thing that ever happened to him, or likely ever would.

“You’re Persephone?” he asked, smiling a little mischievously, knowing the answer.

“I don’t think so,” she said with a devilish smile. “What makes you think so?”

God, she was just like in her chats.

“Oh, the fact that you’re wearing a black turtleneck, red tartan skirt, black leggings, and you’re sitting at the table I reserved for us.”

“Nice guessing, Morry.” It was what she called him. He loved it. It sounded even better than it read. “Hope you can read Manchurian,” she said.

“This is a Manchurian restaurant?”

“You made the reservations.”

“Oh, yeah.” He pulled his chin lightly between two fingers. “I guess that would explain the name: The Frozen Horde. I thought it had something to do with iced desserts and lots and lots of blueberries or something.”

“Blueberries!” she squealed and grabbed his hand.

They were sitting in a café outdoors, in what looked to be a medieval French city overlooking a cobblestone street busy with men in tight knickers and long white wigs, and women with gowns flowing into the horizon. He thought he’d seen this place in very old prints and paintings. After a bowl of Bluet en Glace, they were sitting in The Frozen Horde relieved the menu had pictures of the meals.

Strange, though, he wasn’t hungry anymore.

***

She was drop dead gorgeous with the kind of lips a man could sink a kiss into and smother in lipstick with the tip of her tongue running along the edge of his soul. Big blue eyes peered through chocolate bangs, and her body could have been whittled from a stone of pure desire. She wore a skintight red gown plunging between spectacular mounds of white flesh. His eyes sizzled, his groin smoldered, his brain nearly snapped in half. She knew how to make an impression on a second date. Or was it their third? Who cared? She was drop dead gorgeous and he was the luckiest man on earth.

“Been waiting long?” he asked.

“And who might you be?” she replied.

He loved this game. “I’m the one who made the reservations for the table you’re sitting at.”

“Oh, him … the one who can’t read Manchurian.”

“We weren’t hungry anyway.”

“Speak for yourself,” she said. “Iced blueberries do not a meal make.” Blueberries. Ice. Something rattled at the back of his head, but evaporated into the Lost Regions of his gray matter at the sound of her voice. “So, do you speak Italian?” she asked.

“Everybody speaks Italian,” he said, picking up the menu. “Spaghetti. Lasagna. Linguini …”

She cut him off with the most amazing laugh ever to tickle his eardrums and her voice slid over the table like a spilled bowl of honey stew. “How did you know I love Italian food?”

“Everybody loves Italian food,” he said, and quickly regretted his words. “I mean, not that you have common tastes or anything . . . I mean . . .”

His ears buzzed with joy at the sound of her laugh. “It’s OK. You’re right. Everybody loves Italian, but I especially like it . . . I guess, for its historical content.”

“Historical content?” he asked. “That’s a strange reason to love food, but, if you say so . . .”

She reached across the table and took his hand and they were sitting across the table from Galileo Galilei as he tore off a chunk of Cabot while just around the corner in the kitchen Miro Sorvino sliced a wedge of Brushchetta and Luigi Pirandello twisted his fork into a mound of Spaghetti alla Bologna and Michelangelo Buonarroti gazed up from his wooden table as he chewed a mouthful of Tortellini di zucca and Frank Zamboni brushed ice from his jacket as his mouth watered thinking of Pizzette e Salatin and Federico Fellini scooped a steaming portion of Cannelloni al Ragu . . . and he still wasn’t getting it as he dipped a garlic stick into a pool of spaghetti sauce and wondered about the wooden bowl just as it turned to porcelain and Persephone smiled at him and asked if they should order another bottle of wine.

Another bottle? How many had they had? He tried to focus his thoughts but he was caught in the glow from her eyes and that was all that mattered and he said yes, another bottle of wine. Something red and Italian.

***

She was amazing. Life danced in her eyes. She was as fresh as the first time he’d met her and fallen in love on the spot, or had he already been in love after their weeks of sending and receiving over the Internet? He didn’t care. She was timeless and he told her so, “You’re timeless.”

She smiled bouquets and heartbreak and took his hand. “Something like that,” she said as they strolled past a heavily armored Samurai warrior outside a Japanese palace stretching into an ancient Far East sunset.

“But why me?” he asked.

“Why not?” she replied.

“There’s nothing special about me,” he said.

“Need there be?” she asked.

But you’re so … perfect,” he said. “So out of my league. Why me?”

“I have a different perspective.”

He decided to leave it alone as their walk took them along a pedestrian bridge made of a single giant piece of plastic spanning two magnificent skyscrapers surrounded by flying cars and people streaking through the air in jetpacks.

Their walk finished in front of the coffee shop around the corner from where he lived. He asked if she’d like to go in for a coffee. They walked through the door and he noticed immediately that she was much prettier than he’d imagined with her dusty brown bangs floating around her face, her hair splashing against the air around her neck.

He suddenly had a craving for frozen blueberries.

***

His hand was wrinkled and liver-spotted, his nails cracked and dried. His eyes beamed youthfully, but the pinched gray skin around red-veined whites looked like something from the Bin of Ages. His legs wobbled whether he was standing still or walking. His head shook when he talked as though trying to shake the words out of his mouth.

She sat across from him, young and beautiful as her eyes enveloped him with their blue glow. His voice cracked as he spoke. “We’ve had a wonderful life together.”

She smiled and nodded and said, “Yes, we have.”

“I’ve loved you from the beginning,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “And right to the end.” She took his hand and they were standing in total darkness until, an instant later, the darkness exploded with color and fire rushing light years in every direction, populating the emptiness with stars.

And he was in the Frozen Horde, sitting across from the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He looked at his watch and smiled. He wasn’t surprised. Not a bit. Just happy for the fraction of a second she’d spent with him.

He looked one last time into the blue glow of her eyes and winked happily as he turned to dust.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

From The Baton (currently out of print)

I'm not a bad person. Not really. I pay my bills on time. Like, I'm a goddamn fanatic when it comes to paying bills. I mean, I'm not one of those dickheads who runs up a tab and then says "screw it, I got better things to do with my time and money than pay for something I already used". I don't do that shit. I pay my bills. My parents did. I do. It runs in the family, like almost a genetic thing…you owe money, you pay it off. And I'm a considerate driver. I mean, I don't take any shit when I'm driving. I mean, some asswipe cuts me off, I give him the finger. It's a woman…hey, I'm all for equal rights...I give her the finger too. But when I had my license, I stopped for pedestrians. I stopped and let people out at intersections, even if it meant that the prick behind me honked his horn and I had to give him the finger. Or her the finger. Makes no difference to me. I'm that fucking considerate.

I'm not some kind've sexual deviate. I haven't had it in a long time and, you know, like I've done some arm wrestling with the Big Snake, but I don't bop hard bellies…nineteen's my cutoff and no younger no matter how big their tits are. When a lady says back off, I back off. No's no in my book, same as hers. And I don't watch porno flicks or read those expensive hardcore magazines.

Playboy and Penthouse. That's my limit.

I don't cheat on my tax forms, even if I knew how to do that. I don't steal. I don't lie, at least unless I really have to and then it's okay because I really have to. You know…life's gray sometimes. I don't talk about my friends behind their backs. I don't do that ever, and I've smacked a couple of dicks in the head for doing that in the past. No excuse for backstabbing your friends. No excuse at all. I don't cut into lines if I see somebody I know near the front of the line. I hate it when people do that! I don't play my music loud. I figure my music is my choice and it might not be my neighbor's choice, so I keep it to myself. That's kind've a choice I make for everybody so, like, being considerate can even be empowering sometimes. I don't give the check-out people in grocery stores or department stores a hard time when their computerized cash machines fuck up or the bar thing on the merchandise isn't working and makes the computer fritz out. I don't give innocent people a hard time. Innocent people get a hard time from every direction…but not from me. I don't do that.

But there's one thing I do…and I gotta say that I really love doing it.

I kill assholes.

About one a month.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

From The War Bug

My Baby, She Dumped Me

A crystal tube, tinted rose, stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Inside the tube, standing on an amethyst platform, stood a naked man, muscles still wet with lovemaking. His blue eyes emanated adoration as he watched Bella across the room. She leaned seductively in the quartz doorway, her nipples flaring hard pink against the smooth gold of her breasts. He smiled shyly, even though they’d been intimate for days. That was the way she liked them, muscular and shy, right to the end.

She smiled and pressed the button.

It happened instantly.

The amethyst platform disappeared and he fell.

***

It was suddenly breezy and hot. He was moving downward. The shadow over his head was moving away from him. No. No, he was moving away from it. He was falling, falling into an immense green and blue surface far below. His arms flew away from his body. He looked up. Acres of polished green crystal reflected the roiling mass of water into which he was descending. His hair fluttered crazily as his body accelerated toward the mass of water that stretched from one horizon to the other a thousand feet below.

Then he knew.

And a scream wrapped and wrapped around the small brown object plummeting from under the five acres of synthetic emerald that was Bella Bjork’s floating palace in the center of the Pacific Ocean.

***

A circular screen in the tourmaline wall flickered. “And none of them ever suspects?” said a dry voice. A mass of gray flesh and white robe appeared on the screen. Something like the end of a German sausage with a face etched into its center. Orange spikes protruded from the top of the mass. Microchips in the spikes caused them to curl and twist to reflect Jeemo’s excitement.

“You watched?” said Bella. Her voice was deep and disinterested.

“How could I not,” said the thick pink lips in the center of the sausage.

Bella stood straight and strolled slowly into the room as the amethyst platform reappeared. “They think it’s an ion bath, something to relax them and prepare them for more sex.”

Around the pink mouth, rolls of gray flesh curled upward into a strange smiling shape and Jeemo Roosenvelt laughed. “Your sexclone bill must be in the millions.”

Bella stared at the sausage face. Bio-chips transformed her hair into a dazzling waterfall of chestnut water splashing over the tops of her breasts. Jeemo’s narrow black eyes squinted as he stared directly at her engorged nipples. “Killing them turns you on, doesn’t it?”

Bella smiled coldly and then dropped the smile in an instant. “From now on you stay out of viewing mode until I say that you can watch me. What I do with my clones is my business. Now, have you finished working out your trail of smell, or whatever it is?”

“Digital scent trail.” His voice was flat and sluggish. “It’s called a digital scent trail, and, yes, it’s finished.”

“I still don’t see the need.” Bella sat down on a quartz pedestal. Her back and legs formed a perfect ninety-degree angle as she crossed one long golden leg over the other. Jeemo’s eyes followed the movement of her legs. He said: “With normal VPs, it’s not an issue. With sentient VPs, it’s different. Their programs interact with the programs and code around them, like a human brain emanates waves that interact with the surrounding air. That interaction lingers after the sentient VP leaves, like perfume, only longer. Our targets are cloaked to hide the interaction from the City Central detectors, but when I spring the capture program, the cloak will crash. That’s why it has to be done quickly … so that City Central won’t be able to track them. But there will still be some residual interactivity traces. To this end, I’ve…”

“But it’s all finished now?”

“It would take years for anyone to trace the paths I’ve programmed into the capture application. And even then, the physical location of the server would stop them cold.”

“And the server is ready as well?”

Jeemo sighed. “Yes, it’s ready. It’s been ready for weeks.”

Bella recrossed her legs, exposing a patch of firey pubic hair that sent a flush of pale red across Jeemo’s face. “And you’re sure that you’ll capture both of them? All the modules and links?”

“Yes. Yes, I’ve worked out every …”

“I’m sure you have, but I’ve heard this before from programmers: ‘We’ve worked it all out and everything’s going to be just fine’. But look around Atlantiscity. It’s crashing … just like the other city states. Everything is not just fine. Everything is falling apart and it’s the programmers who made it that way!”

“It wasn’t the programmers who went to war …”

“It was the programmers who designed the war tools and … oh damn it … let’s not get into this again. I want every line of programming from both of them to be captured. It has to be both of them. There may be code links between them and breaking those links would make the girl useless by herself.”

“I’ve set up the capture for both of them.” Sections of flesh drooped from the lower part of his face as though his chin were melting into the air around him. “We’ll have both of them within minutes of each other.”

Bella looked suspiciously at the massive figure on the screen. “I need them. I need both of them. This is important. Now … one last time … can you really pull this off?”

Jeemo’s small black eyes stared at Bella’s breasts. “Yes,” he said. “I can do it. You don’t need to worry.”

“I’m not the one who needs to worry about this not coming off right.” Bella glared into the folds around Jeemo’s eyes. Jeemo looked at something off screen and said: “Time to do it.”

Bella uncrossed her legs and stood up slowly, bringing Jeemo’s gaze back into the screen.

“And yes, Jeemo. It does. Very much.”

Jeemo spoke calmly, refusing to show his confusion. “I beg your …”

“It turns me on. Killing them. It’s the best part.”

Jeemo flushed deeply.

Bella narrowed her eyes on him: “And will it turn you on, Jeemo, darling, when I have you in the tube?”

A thin line of drool slid out of Jeemo’s fish-like mouth and was about to drip onto his pudgy chin when the screen flickered and his face disappeared.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

From Murder by Art

“True art is immune to the viewer,” she said. Her name was WhiteFeather. Just WhiteFeather. She was an artist, a fiber artist to be precise, who used an unusual combination of fibers in her art – bones, animal skulls, human hair, menstrual blood, souls of found objects, unusual stuff. The three hundred pound corpse nailed to the wall was also an artist. He painted beer cans, but that wasn’t his real art. WhiteFeather looked disgustedly at the big man hanging on the wall. “He’d get drunk and go on and on about his life itself being a work of art in progress.” She shook her head. “Well, thank God he finally finished it.”

She walked back to her studio, ducking under a snakeskin chandelier, real snakeskin. Boston couldn’t help noticing that she had a nice ass. After all, it was his job to notice things. She also had a wide mouth lit up with the brightest red lipstick he’d ever seen, but it suited her dark hair and eyes. He was tempted to tell her that she was a fine work of art, but he was here on business. He had a referral to make, and it looked like he was going to be up to his neck in shit again, but that was his choice. This was just the kind of referral he loved – weird, like him. Like, how often did you get a referral for a three hundred pound work of human art hanging on the wall of the most notorious art studio in the city, infamous for wild parties and wilder artists. Juicy.

“More like somebody finished it for him,” said Boston. The dead guy’s name was Art Cranbury. He owned the century and half old building that housed Studio4Ward, a former dance hall, now broken into four open studios shared by three hot stuff comers in the art world and one cold stiff that was soon to be hot stuff in the webloids. Apparently, the stiff had been a pain in the ass. “How long has he owned the building?”

WhiteFeather looked up from a leather moccasin from which she was extracting metal staples with a pair of pliers. “For the last six months. We thought it would be cool at first, having the building owner in here as one of us.” She tugged a particularly stubborn staple. It came out with a small tearing sound. “As one of us, maybe he’d lower the rent, put in air conditioning.” She pointed up to the ceiling at a circular opening about eight feet in diameter with ornate wooden struts radiating from the center. There was one in each corner of the studio. “Those fans just push the hot air around. On a hot day, this place is a furnace.” She pulled out another stubborn piece of metal with a loud chunk sound. “Who the hell makes moccasins with staples?” she asked herself angrily.

“But having him here didn’t work out?”

“The opposite.” She rested the pliers and moccasin in her lap and looked up at Boston. “He lied about being an artist. That’s his studio over there.” She pointed to a corner with what looked like a custom-made beach chair surrounded by beer cans, empty pizza boxes, and stains that looked like dried barf. An easel holding a child-like painting of a beer can faced out from his studio. All of Studio4Ward was cluttered, but Cranbury’s corner was filthy. “He was here almost every night, getting drunk, belching, farting, leering. The other two artists are women. We made a point of never being alone when he was here, and he was here most of the time. He passed out in his chair a lot, and stayed the night. He did that for nearly a week once. Went downstairs once or twice a day for beer and pizza deliveries. We had to plant air fresheners all over the place because the smell of him was sickening.”

“Karma,” said Boston.

“Beg your pardon?” She looked puzzled. After thinking a moment, she looked at Boson irritably. “Even if we’d told him he couldn’t move in…he owned the building. He could have moved in without our permission, or raised the rent, or just make life miserable for us in other ways.” She went back to pulling staples, but now with strong, angry tugs.

Boston turned back to the man on the wall. Art Cranbury was massive. He was nailed up Christ-like, hands open and nailed pretty much where Boston assumed the nails in Christ’s hands would have been. His head was propped by another nail, more accurately, a spike. Same for his feet – crossed at the ankles and spiked together. The only difference between Cranbury and Christ – besides size and sainthood – was that Art Cranbury had been nailed up backwards. And he was naked. Two enormous mounds of ass fat drooped from the center of his body, which had been painted with red and white stripes, barber pole style.

It was time to get into the vibes of this place. Boston had a theory about vibrations. They were at the core of all being, the building blocks of Creation. Come into contact with the vibrations of a place and your imprint would be left on them like aftershave in a breezeless hall, which meant that Art Cranbury’s last minutes on Earth lurked in the vibrations in this room. Boston closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, taking the air deep into his tan dien – the area behind his belly button that served as a powerhouse of spiritual and psychic energy – expelling it slowly, evenly. He dropped his shoulders and let his awareness sink into his belly button. He cleared his mind of clutter and entered the void. A deep low hum originating in his throat moved up into his sinus cavity, emanated from his nostrils. He stood by the body, ignoring its stench, and searched the stuff of Creation for information.

As usual, nothing happened.

WhiteFeather watched him, still tugging staples. Her expression said it all: she’d rather be extracting wisdom teeth from his jaws.

He had that effect on people. After all, he was Boston Jonson, Crème de la Crop of the CI fold – a Consultative Investigator, society’s filter between crime and the cops. His job was to be first in, check it out, and make a referral for anything from a full scale murder investigation to no further action required, or somewhere in between, like bring in the social workers and shamans or let the media handle this one. They sent him to snoop and refer – something he rarely did, being notorious for outstaying his welcome and acting the proverbial shit stirrer. But the webloids loved him – with eye-catching shoulder length tangerine hair, aqua eyes, square movie star jaw and a penchant for colorful Hawaiian hula-hula shirts, he looked just offbeat enough to capture the public’s imagination.

He stood on his toes and craned his neck around the dead man’s head. Having never met anyone weirder than himself, Boston was seldom shaken by anything he saw on the job, but what he saw now raised his eyebrows. The dead man’s eyes were wide open, but not with horror. The zany smile on his face suggested joy, happiness, bliss – like he’d died getting his jollies off. This was getting weirder by the minute. He loved it.

Boston’s wallet buzzed. It was Laurel from Central CI. He snapped his wallet open and saw the familiar woman’s head on the tiny screen. “Boston,” she said. “They want quick and dirtless on this one. The skinny is, Arthur Cranbury was an asshole, but a very rich asshole. Old money. Old family. He was the black sheep. The family would like his memory to just pass away with him. These people are powerful, Boston.”

“They’re always powerful,” said Boston into his wallet.

The face in the wallet looked annoyed. “Who’s always powerful, Boston?”

“Old moneyed families.”

“That has nothing to do with anything except you need to just make your referral and get the hell out of there. Even the police are going to cooperate on this one – maybe call it suicide.”

“Laurel,” said Boston, staring at the body on the wall. “He was nailed face-first to a wall with spikes and nails in his hands, head, and ankles. Then he was painted like a candy cane.”

“Some people like to get creative with their suicides. Make your referral.”

“Just a couple of things I have to check out.”

“Boston!”

“I’ll get back to you.” He snapped his wallet shut, cutting off a loud “Bost…!” and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. It buzzed immediately, but he ignored it. He noticed several dolls on the wall behind WhiteFeather. The heads appeared to be skulls of small animals and the hair flowing down from their heads looked human. “Into the death thing?” he asked, pointing at the dolls.

WhiteFeather glared at him. “Into the life thing. The dolls are reminders of the cycle of life. It includes death. Shouldn’t you just be following orders like the woman in your wallet said, and make your referral so that we can all just go back to normal?”

He ignored her question. “Did he have enemies?”

She cocked her head in the question mark pose, eyes and mouth wide, but instead of saying ‘duh’ she said, “Haven’t you heard anything anybody’s told you? The woman on the phone said his entire family wants him forgotten. She called him an asshole. I told you what he’s been doing to the artists here. Everybody in the building wants him gone!”

Boston raised an eyebrow. “Everybody in the building?”

She pushed out a loud sigh. “See that stereo system behind his chair?” Boston looked where she was pointing and saw an old pre-2020 nano-enhanced mini-system. The get-up would fit into your cupped hands, but it blasted out a thousand watts of ear splitting sound. “He cranked it so loud that everybody in the building could hear, and all he ever played was Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. He played it over and over and over. Eric threatened to kill him once.” She stopped short. “But he didn’t really mean it. It was just rhetorical.”

“What did he say?”

“Keep it up and I’ll kill you.”

“Hmm,” mused Boston. “Rhetorical.”

“Eric can be gruff at times,” said WhiteFeather, picking up the pliers and moccasin again. “But he’s not a murderer. He would never kill anybody.”

“And just who is Eric?” said Boston nonchalantly, but feeling like a bloodhound catching a whiff of prey. Could it be this easy?

“Just because you say you’re going to kill somebody, doesn’t mean that you mean it,” she said, snapping a staple angrily.

“Then he’ll be OK. Who is he?”

“Eric Hill. He owns a music store downstairs.” She pointed the pliers in a direction through the floor and off to Boston’s left. “Backstreet records. He sells plastic records to audiophiles.” She let go of the moccasin and pliers, clasped her hands and let them settle in her lap. “He’s had to come up here over and over to tell Art to turn the music down. I mean, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. Eric’s customers are serious audiophiles. They come in and hear that garbage blasting down the stairs, and they turn around and leave. Eric said that Art was driving his customers away, putting him out of business.”

“So why didn’t he just leave? Set up business somewhere else?”

“This building is special,” said WhiteFeather. “We all love this place. There isn’t anything like it anywhere else in the city. To get in here, we all had to sign five-year leases, and we have two more years to go. If we move out before then, we lose our deposits.”

“How much are the deposits?”

“Five thousand dollars.”

Boston whistled. “Big deposits.”

“They let us pay on them over the first two years.”

“Is Hill in now?”

“He’s always in,” said WhiteFeather, picking up her work again. “He practically lives in his shop. It’s down the stairs, to your right. Oh, and from now on…” She closed the pliers on a staple tightly and twisted it out of the moccasin almost violently. “…keep your eyes off my ass.”

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

From Murder by Burger

Eat It

It was the kind of place of which question marks are made. The ceiling disappeared into shadows high above several hundred square feet of buffed oak floor that formed a giant circular checkerboard. A leather chair in the center of the room faced a wall of tall windows with thick fog curling outside the panes. Each of the other walls had dark wooden doors framed by stone arches with vague coats of arms in their centers. Dozens of eight-pronged chandeliers dropped from the ceiling and hung a dozen feet from the floor like big bronze spiders with electric butts. Fifteen feet above the floor, and surrounding the entire inside of the room, a balcony that appeared to be carved from a solid chunk of mahogany posed its own little mystery. There were no stairs to the balcony, and no doors.

It was one hell of an ornament.

White marble statues of what looked like ancient Greek and Roman gods were pushed up against the walls. Most were naked. Some wore robes. They all smiled and winked. A four-legged creature with bat-like wings and an ugly half-dog-half-pig face bit into a marble cigar.

A man lay on the floor, his back propped against the wall. Beside him a marble breasted woman winked at nothing and nobody in particular. Around the man the air trembled with the smell of fear and food. His eyes protruded under horn-rimmed glasses as he watched his hand slide across his bare belly where his shirt was torn open. Bits of foodstuff spattered his navy blue dress jacket. More of the stuff, mixed with saliva, splotched his white beard. His face glistened with sweat as his hand moved slowly across his chest. He whimpered as it pushed what looked like the most perfect hamburger in the world against his lips. His jaw shook and his mouth quivered and his face twisted, but his lips parted and his hand pushed the burger in. He chewed and he swallowed, chewed and swallowed and whimpered and chewed some more until his hand was empty.

Then his hand fell to his side and grabbed another cold but perfect burger from the packing box and slid it over his stomach. As he watched the hand, a scream pushed through the masticated burger oozing down his throat and broke from his lips like a muffled belch. Blood spurted from his bloated stomach, sprinkling red spots on his hand, marring the golden perfection of the burger bun. Blood poured over his stomach and into the fabric of his white shirt. Blood gurgled out as the rip in his stomach lengthened painfully, and still his hand moved toward his mouth with the bloody burger.

***

Somewhere else, someone was thinking: A promise is a promise.