Monstrocity Read online

  “I do, too,” she said, inching a little closer to me. Our shoulders and legs almost touched. We settled back, our mugs cupped in our laps, and were peacefully silent for nearly a half hour as if we were indeed a familiar couple. It was a good feeling. It was just a bad time for it. I had spent several days acclimating to the idea that I was a killer. Programming myself to become the avenging angel. Now, seated beside me, was my nemesis. And I was falling in love with her.

  I woke to find I’d dozed off. Saleet was gone. On the VT, a bright green snake with a leafy frill around its head poised motionless amongst vines and leaves, watching and waiting as a three-legged insect drew closer to it. At last, it struck with a blur of speed. Three kicking legs dangled out of its smiling jaws. Camouflage, masquerade. It made me think of the fairy tale Saleet had told me.

  A clink from the kitchenette. I sat up straight and saw Saleet smile at me over the counter/partition between the two room sections. She was at the sink, had just rinsed out our coffee mugs. “So, you’re awake. How rude of you.”

  “Sorry.” Stretching, I rose.

  She came to stand in front of me. Playfully, she pretended to grind her black heel on my bare foot. Then she looked up at me. She was short, but still imposing in her uniform.

  “I better get going. I hope you really aren’t mad that I came.”

  “No, I’m not. Really.”

  “Get yourself a new computer. And it wouldn’t hurt to give me a call from a phone booth, until then. We could see a movie...”

  “I’d like that.”

  I walked her to the door. At the door, she turned, put a hand on my shoulder, drew me down a little and kissed me on the mouth. She didn’t open her lips, and didn’t linger long. Short and sweet. Very sweet. Then she slid her hand off me. “Call me,” she repeated.

  “I will,” I promised, not sure if I were lying.

  She stepped over the threshold. I closed and locked the door between us.

  PART THREE: JELENA

  I AM A good man, I am a good man, I am a good man, I repeat to myself as I pace my small apartment. Good thing it rained up there today, I think. Good thing, so I could wear my poncho to hide the shotgun under. How else might I have hidden it? I could have worn it anyway, though it might have seemed odd. I’m still sorry I lost my pistol...

  It is all over. It is done.

  Mr. Dove was standing there in front of the candy store, as agreed, and he had a black umbrella folded under his arm. I suggested he follow me down Fassl Street a little, to an alley, to a courtyard. Though it had stopped raining, he seemed perturbed to be continuing our business outside, but we walked side by side like old friends. He was so polite. Polite to a dangerous fault. “Don’t want anyone to see us,” I told him. “This is a lot of money. I have paper bills; is that all right?”

  “Certainly,” he said. Having a lot of paper bills on me instead of transferring the amount from a credit card helped to legitimize the need for privacy.

  “Sure you aren’t hungry?” I asked as we entered the courtyard. I had noticed the other day that it was octagonal in shape. No windows on any of its eight walls. I couldn’t imagine why the fountain in the center had ever been put here, but then again there were a few stone benches, and some overgrown flower beds. I could envision more than one marriage proposal here, maybe between long-dead Chooms. Had this courtyard been located at another point in town, derelicts would be sleeping on the benches and the fountain would be lost under graffiti. Even in this nice part of town, there was still some graffiti on the walls, and trash bobbing in the broken fountain’s slimy pool.

  “I’ve eaten,” Mr. Dove said. He sounded a bit impatient, testy. Did my arrangements make him nervous? Did he have a gun on him, too? My shotgun’s pistol strap was slung over my shoulder, so that the gun hung down my side. All I had to do was slip a hand under the purple slicker, swing the gun up into both my hands, level it and...everything went by so fast after that.

  I remember that gray serpentine limb that reached toward me from the fountain as I fled the courtyard. He had been suspicious, hadn’t he? I didn’t find a gun on the body, but he had brought a friend. How had it known to be in the courtyard? Had he willed it there as we entered it?

  It’s a good thing I killed him. Someone with powers like that. I’m a good man.

  From my pants pocket I take the little poker chip that contains both Atlas of Chaos and The Veins of the Old Ones. I wish I had a computer to view them on. I’ll have to spend more of my limited funds on that tomorrow, damn it. I don’t want to venture out again today. I’m too – charged right now. I need to pace. Just pace.

  The disk is purple, like the building with the book store. Purple seems to be the big fad color these days. What will become of Mr. Dove’s expensive collection now? Next of kin? Will they be auctioned? Dispersed throughout other colonized worlds? Spreading the disease? Maybe I should have put more thought into burning them after all. But I can only do so much. In fact, am I finished? Aside from studying these two books, what more can I do? How could I ever track down any of the other priests that are out there?

  Well, I still need to see if I can close whatever portal Gabrielle opened. Dove, too. Maybe the books will help me locate those portals. That would be the first step, I should think.

  I end up going out, after all. Just to a corner market to buy some Japanese beer. I drink one after another at home. I fall asleep watching a documentary about animals, wishing Saleet was beside me. Ants carrying eggs in their jaws through intricate underground labyrinths...

  I dream of giant ants coming from a far distance, ants with immense wings that are like sails catching the light of stars to convert into energy. These gigantic ants carry horrible, squirming fetuses in their jaws, fetuses with great bulbous heads and bundles of external intestines or perhaps tentacles clustered over their distended bellies.

  ***

  I BUY A new, full-sized computer. I pay for a cab to bring me home with it lest I get robbed again. I set it up; a nice big screen, no more squinting into that tiny palmcomp vidplate. The first thing I want to do is call Saleet. The first thing I do is pop in that purple chip I didn’t have to pay a single munit for.

  The books are dry, impenetrable at first, do indeed seem like the work of crank science. Not much talk of all those interesting demons from the Necronomicon that I dare not name. (Even a name can be an evocation.) But interesting diagrams. It is suggested that some of these figures, particularly drawn in the corner of a room, can open doorways to various alternate planes of reality. It is even suggested that a structure, built in a certain way, with certain angles to its rooms, built atop certain intersecting lines of magnetic force in the earth (I’d read about similar “ley lines” and “dragon paths” in Earth occult books), could serve as a kind of subway station to numerous alternate dimensions.

  A news story on the VT behind me draws my attention.

  Mr. Dove’s body has been discovered.

  The courtyard is shown. His body has been removed, but there’s a nice close shot of blackening blood on the old Choom cobblestones. (A link offers to take me to photos of the body itself; I decline.) Mr. Dove, it is reported, was a mutation...

  (Ah! So he wasn’t an alien after all!)

  ...and his real name was Ben Chapman. Mr. Chapman owned Dove Books, on Morpha Street B Level. This buyer and seller of rare books had a collection estimated in the millions of munits. It is not known if Mr. Chapman had family, but if he didn’t, local schools and scholars are hoping to acquire some of these texts.

  Ants are crawling through my veins, stealing corpuscles in their jaws.

  The motive for the crime is not known, but robbery has been suggested. Mr. Dove (his face easy to remember) was seen talking with a man in a purple poncho-style rain slicker...

  I’ve got to get rid of that right away! God – what if the police run scans of the witnesses’ memories? They could get a clear image of my face, broadcast it. And if Saleet were to see it...
<
br />   I have to shave off my goatee. God, I might have to shave my head again. But what would Saleet think of all this changing of my appearance, back and forth? Better stick to the goatee. Anyway, I remember, I had the hood up over my head. That was good...yeah...

  The news story ends. Another killing comes on its tail: a murdered prosty with a broom handle jammed inside her. (She’s shown on a metal table spread-eagled, the broom inside her up to the bristles; is that the end of the handle coming out of her bloody mouth? God, I hope she was already dead before that happened.) If viewers blinked they’d have missed the Mr. Dove story. I can only hope that it isn’t much pursued...

  I take my new, shiny black shoes into the bathroom to examine them closely, wipe at what might be blood spatters. Well, I should buy new shoes again; even a minute particle of blood will show up if someone gets hold of these.

  I shave off my goatee and mustache after all. I hope Saleet likes this look – if I let myself see her again. Now I look like I did when I still had my job. Respectable, bland. Camouflage, masquerade, like the green vine-like snake, smiling at the insect. That’s me.

  ***

  PONCHO GONE. SHOES, too. Second pair of new shoes in a week.

  Saleet calls me. “So, you have a new computer. And why didn’t you call me?”

  “Sorry – still haven’t felt well.”

  “You don’t really want to see me, do you?”

  “Of course I do! Look...let’s um, let’s go to a movie tonight.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Really! Look, Saleet...I’m just shy. Y’know?”

  “Yeah, I know.” She smiles, reassured. “It’s cute...”

  We see a film by Jason Torrey, a director we both like. I pay for her tickets and popcorn; I have a bag of fried dilky roots, that great greasy Choom snack. Afterwards, we sit in a corner café, in the window like fish in a glowing aquarium; it reminds me of that Edward Hopper painting (my father brought me up on art). We discuss the movie, then talk turns to Saleet’s day at work.

  When she starts to describe a murdered prosty with a broom shoved inside her, I tell her I saw it on the news. She’s on that case herself, with her partner.

  “Who could be so sick?” she fumes.

  “Some men really hate women. Because they lust for them, and that makes them feel like they aren’t in control of themselves. Like they don’t have the power. Have you considered a Kalian perpetrator?”

  “Very funny. This isn’t a joke...”

  “I know that!”

  “This is just an exaggerated penetration, like an exaggeration of the contempt that all men feel toward prostitutes when they use them...”

  I feel pretty guilty right now that I’ve rented prosties myself, between girlfriends. But I didn’t feel contempt toward them at the time. Just stupid animal desire. Still, I can appreciate that it degrades the women, perpetuates their own self-abasement, and I’m not proud of it. But I can’t tell Saleet any of this. I want to change the subject, but she feels passionate about her work and I do find it interesting.

  “I helped arrest an exhibitionist today. He drove up to some teen age girls and asked for directions. When they looked in his car he wasn’t wearing pants, and he was playing with himself. He said abusive things to them. They got his license number, the idiot, so my partner and I cuffed him at home. He has a wife and a teen age daughter himself.”

  “Pathetic loser,” I say.

  “I feel like I’m doing some good in the world.”

  Yeah. Me too, I say to myself. But your arrested pervert will go free soon, maybe after he gets some pills to take. Maybe it would be better if someone put a load of shotgun pellets into his head, instead.

  “People are so sick, so diseased,” she goes on. “It’s like a plague. Like being all cramped up together in a city drives them insane. You know, like too many rats in a cage. I know this is nothing new, but still, as a forcer it really comes home to you. Really makes you feel helpless. But you do what you can.”

  “That’s all one person can do,” I agree. “It’s human – humanoid – nature, though. You can’t blame the city itself for it. Not like the city is possessing them.”

  “I know. Human nature. I read in a Kalian newspaper recently that twenty-four people were killed in a feud over the disputed ownership of a glebbi.”

  “Like our friend Zul had? What is a glebbi, anyway?”

  “Sort of a lizard that looks like a llama. Not worth twenty-four people dying over.”

  “That was back home, on Kali...not here...”

  “Right.”

  “Have you ever been to Kali yourself?”

  “I was born there, but my parents moved us here when I was four. It was a business consideration; my father is an executive with Alvine Products.”

  “What products are those?”

  “They genetically design and produce comestible life-forms. They farm them right there in the same plant. It’s a big complex.”

  “I think I’ve seen it; in Industrial Square, right?” And I know what she’s referring to so politely. I’ve seen documentaries that show rows of these big fleshy blobs, without heads or limbs (well, some have these stout stumpy flipper-like legs so their bellies aren’t dragging on the floor), hooked up to cables pumping them with nutrients, pumping out the waste. Most are designed from cattle, pigs, Earthly domesticated animals. Chickens (with or without bones; take your pick) with no heads to lop off...but they still have those tasty legs and wings (mm, mm!). Even without heads, these creatures make you sad to see them on VT, so in a way I don’t know that it’s much of an improvement. Makes these zombies even more pathetic than natural animals, in a sense. But I don’t criticize the practice because I don’t want to make Saleet defensive, and anyway, I’m eating breakfast for dinner even as we speak: sausage and bacon with my eggs and toast. Mm, mm. But she brings it up herself, anyway:

  “I love animals, so I don’t ask him about his job much. Luckily he’s not a designer; he’s administration, upper management. I had a tour of the plant once, and that was enough for me. Reminds me of that poem by Thomas Hardy – Bags of Meat.”

  “Ah, don’t know it, but it sounds tasty.” I chew exaggeratedly. “I saw something horrible the other day. When I was going after that mugger. In an alley, in the water from the flood, I saw a cat with its skin pulled off. Its hide, you know? It was still alive. I saw a show once where some fucking cold-blooded fucker tossed a cat alive into a boiling vat to cook it for food, then pulled it out and peeled its hide right off like husking an ear of corn, only a lot easier, and then they tossed it back in and it was still alive, still trying to swim as it cooked, and trying to scream. It was the most horrifying thing...so unnecessary. It was like taking the time to actually kill the cat first wasn’t worth consideration. What does that say about a person? But anyway, this cat I saw was just like that. It was near a trash zapper that was all overloaded with garbage, so I guess I thought it was...I dunno...garbage too. But still alive.” I shrug.

  “Sure it was really flayed? Maybe it was just a mutant.”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s sad. It reminds me of the Utalla.”

  “Which is?”

  “A kind of hobgoblin in Kalian folklore. They’re these big wingless birds that live in the mountains, and they love to eat cats. They skin them alive to torment them before they eat them, and make their nests from their pelts. I guess the fun of the myth is that cats usually eat birds – get it?”

  I get it. And I’m also thinking that when I spotted that dying cat, I was in the process of chasing an alien with a long beak like a stork’s. I can see that Saleet, watching my face, is realizing it now, too.

  “Hey – maybe our mystery alien is a Utalla.”

  “Do Utalla have bodies like men?”

  “Nnno...but. It’s funny, isn’t it? They’re described as having skin like metal...”

  “My guy had shiny skin. Like it was translucent silvery on the surface, but bl
ack under that.”

  “Huh,” Saleet says, gazing down into her salad, poking through it intensely as if looking for something. She murmurs, “That’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “The devils are afoot,” I say.

  She looks up at me. She looks grim. But can she feel as grim as I do? I figured I was merely the victim of some addict in need of drug money. But now I’m wondering if this creature knew about my palmcomp in that bag, and the chip that lay inserted within it. Was sent to retrieve it from me. That would mean that even with Mr. Dove dead, I still have active enemies out there, who know who I am, what I have, that I’m a threat to them. If I’m right about this, I assume the thing was in league with Dove, or at least had communication with him, learned from him about me. But...when I told him on the phone that my disk was stolen, he convincingly acted like he didn’t know about it. So this being acted independently of Dove. Still, how did it know about my disk? What else might these forces have gleaned about me? Did I really kill that jellyfish thing I saw inside Gabrielle’s body, the only witness to my deeds? If that thing escaped somehow, into some other plane, it too may have carried word of my activities. And that tentacled thing in the fountain. All of them bringing their reports back to...who? Is my paranoia getting too far ahead of me?

  I try to get off the subject, so Saleet won’t wonder why I’m getting so serious about hobgoblins, and ask her, “So why are you investigating this woman with the broom thing, instead of homicide?”

  “We work in conjunction with homicide on sexually oriented murders; homicide needs all the help it can get, in Punktown. This is my first murder investigation.” She munches some leaves thoughtfully. “I wonder if they’ll bring us in on that dismemberment case, where they found the woman’s body parts all over the city.”

  “I think I heard a little bit about that. They found her head in a Laundromat in the suburbs, right? Inside a washing machine? And her legs miles apart...”

  “Yeah – she was scattered to all the furthest points of the city, except for her torso, which was in the middle of the city, on a park bench on Salem Street.”