by Chris Kelso
‘Found your supplies asshole…’
The woman is a master of the pithy one-liner.
Kad helps me to my feet. I hug her willowy torso, nuzzle her bosom like a child reunited with his Freudian mother until she initiates the separation of our bodies with a subtle cough and a pat on the back.
‘Easy there buddy.’ She says and squeezes my shoulder to show she’s happy I’m alive. I turn to take one last look at the dead girl in the tub but Anja is gone - as if Henrik managed to dump a litre of acid over her, dissolving her to a pool of tooth fillings, before anyone had a chance to double check the detonated corpse.
- That sneaky…
One thing Henrik said to me has fixed itself between the dim bays of my neural galleries.
'To live truthfully under imaginary circumstances'.
I guess he’ll never find his snuff movie director.
Some journeys end. Not everything has to be so fucking Kafkaesque!
***
This is a humanistic work. He watches from the pinnacle of the citadel.
Out in the hall Kad and I load up as much as we can of the late Henrik’s hidden materials – and it’s quite a treasure trove let me tell you.
Henrik had bottles of $10 alcohol and soft drinks stored in the adjacent suites. That’s not to mention all the candy, cookies, crackers, and other snacks he’d pugged away for a rainy day. He wasn’t kidding either when he said he had saved up enough stuff to last him for months. Kad and I are set. Finally some good luck.
Famous last words, right?
We bag all the toiletries and spare clothes, make round trips back to our original floor. Before long room 295 looks like a factory stockroom. Kad pockets a load of condoms too, decides that if we don’t both make it out of the city alive then she’s going to go out the way she came in – partying and fucking without discrimination. I don’t know what this means for me or our relationship.
I’ve been thinking, I possess sensitiveness to beauty and resent anyone who even implies otherwise. I am a good man, yet I walk around this city with a broken heart – how is this possible? I haven’t even tested its capacity for love, and it’s broken already.
Love is an intruder when it comes to survival.
- Maybe she’ll get so caught up her hedonistic frenzy that she won’t notice how pathetic and in love with her I am. Maybe we could share each other’s bodies and have done with it? I don’t know…
‘Hey, look at this…’ – Kad hollers from down the corridor. She’s looking into Henrik’s bathroom. Maybe Anja’s corpse has made a miraculous reappearance? When I get there I see Kad has clearly had the stuffing knocked out of her, she loses her self-possessed edge. There are several bottles of Clorox bleach, household chemicals and concentrated sulphuric acid inside the cupboard beneath the sink.
It’s the acid.
‘You okay?’ – I ask, knowing full well she’s not okay. Why do I persist on asking dumb questions? Is it a life goal of mine to be considered utterly useless and irritating?
‘See that? Acid. I’m going to die here, just like in my dream.’
‘Hey, come on!’
‘I can’t explain it. I feel like that fucker, I feel like he’s going to kill me.’
I observe the sprawled Swede.
‘Kad, that’s impossible. Henrik is dead! You smashed his goddamned brains in back there.’
‘I know but…’ – Kad looks at Henrik’s supine corpse. I can tell she notices the absence of any reflection on the tiles or in the reservoir of black tar merging around either side of his skull.
‘We have to dispose of the body.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because I can’t have him here! We have to get rid of him! We have to get rid of him right now!’
I grab Kad and pull her into my chest. I feel her body convulse and her tears moistening my neck but she doesn’t make a single whimper.
- Gracious even in hysteria.
Whatever premonitions she’s had about her own demise at the hands of Henrik the Terrible, the least I can do is put her mind at ease once and for all.
‘We’re in this together. After all, aren’t we both just tiny parts of some greater mechanism, like a chain-spoked carousel of torture and misery?’
‘Well that’s comforting.’
‘I’m not trying to comfort you, just letting you know that you’re never alone.’
The stainless walls of PLATOS GATE reflect the number 295. I see the number in the blue lagoons of Kad’s teary pupils. Someone is going to die soon. I pray to something that it’s me.
- I always thought vengeance was unworthy of an enlightened society?
We strip the corpse and go about heaving Henrik’s long, skinny body into the empty bath tub. I notice he has no areola and a strange genital atrophy. Maybe he was an alien? Kad doesn’t waste any time seizing the sulphuric acid and upending its contents over the big Swede’s body. She has the corpse fully doused. This maybe isn’t the time to tell her that lye and water would’ve dissolved the body much faster. Why split hairs about something like this!
‘It’s done. Now we wait for him to liquefy.’
‘These things usually take a couple of days…’ – as the words escape my mouth, I’m astonished to see the acid melt right through the dearly departed alien being before me.
- No way is that human.
I see Henrik’s armour burn away little by little. I can’t help but notice just how thin his layers are once you penetrate the initial blancmange of skin – that circuitry of tendons and deep tissue beneath look so utterly insubstantial. But that’s just one of the myriad flaws in Henrik’s creator’s rushed, shoddy design.
I hear an audible sigh of relief from Kad’s direction.
‘You okay?’
‘When there’s nothing left of him I’ll be okay.’
Kad looks as if she’s standing face to face with the ghost of herself. We both watch as the flesh around his arms and neck go coal black and flicker to a red sheet of underlying muscle.
A heavy dosage of reality hits me when I least expect it – what are we doing? Is this what life is now? Dissolving bodies to appease our own paranoid delusions?
- It’s the way it’s always been. One swim in the industrial digester and you’re ready for home. Nothing changes, not even the shade of my 5 o’clock shadow.
I wonder if there are any more people on this floor. The city is inducing bad dreams to its citizens. I suppose by giving us paradise this allows those in charge to infringe on our basic democratic rights. I wonder how many people are in this hotel. Is it so much to ask that someone comes along we can actually trust?
Kad and I have no one else but each other. I should be jumping with joy. Fifteen minutes later and Kad deems the puddle of tan liquid that used to be Henrik sufficiently unthreatening. Time to leave…
- We trod forth.
We take the elevator back up to our room. Kad and I do not speak but I fantasise about stimulating the neck of her cervix. I overlay her face onto Ailsa’s body and recreate the wild scenes in the bridal suite from before.
Is this love or is this something else?
All I know is that whenever I’m around Kad I compulsively chew the hangnails from the fingers on my good hand.
When the access parts we both note that the door to room 295 slightly agape.
- Shit…
There doesn’t appear to have been any forced entry. Kad and I can hear the chaos from inside. She stands in the lobby, seemingly frozen in her shoes. I’ve never seen her like this before.
Is her mind still stuck on Henrik?
Has it thrown her for a loop?
Fuck, maybe she’s testing me?
Okay. Time to step up, Kurt. You never thought this day would come but Kad needs you. This is a chance to do something useful for the first time in my sorry existence. I push the door open with the flat of my palm and see the trespasser raiding through our newly acquired supplies.
I grab an
umbrella from its cast iron stand. I hold it, ferrule facing forwardly, with tight determination – one hand on the crook-handle, the other just above the ball-spring. I move slowly into the room, my own sharp intake of breath resounding in my ears. I stick two of Henrik’s water pills in my mouth and curse my high blood pressure.
I can tell he is built from the stooped posture, those protuberant traps and swollen deltoids that could crush the dimensions of a Volvo truck into a cube of compacted metal. Christ. Across the broad canvas of his back I can make out various skin eruptions and cysts. I need to suck it up.
- Come on!
‘Hey’ – I shout in his direction to get attention, and then I dive at him, drop the umbrella; wrap my arms around his waist. He goes down like a sack of old machine parts and we both crash into the kitchenette area.
He snarls and scratches at me – his face, a bucket of smashed crabs, twists at me, but I look into his eyes and see the dismal flame of hope. Two suns going nova.
I wrestle on top of him, shift his weight.
I take one big swipe at the air beneath me and my brass glove slashes his right cheek to a paper-chain of blood – and in doing so, delivering a much needed blow to the complex literary heritage of his kind.
He yowls and I supply him with the killer blow, stabbing at the throat with two central claws over and over until I feel the warmth of his viscera on my knuckles. I extinguish the dismal flame of hope. My first fatality.
I hear faint sobbing. Kad…
‘I left the door open. This is my fault…’
‘Kad, relax!’ – I pull her close and I feel her squirm until I release her again.
‘No, I need to be punished!’
‘No!’
‘Yes, please…’
‘Never. Now that’s enough. Pull yourself together!’
Kad takes a moment, gathers her emotions and stops sobbing like a child. She looks at me intensely for a minute, a tiny orb of saliva resting on her bottom lip.
‘You mean…you aren’t going to exile me?’
‘No.’
‘But…I exiled you…’
‘Things are different.’
‘How are things different?’
‘Because I’m in charge now. All your dumb rules are out the window.’
It occurs to me that we will never be free from this place unless one of us faces the creator. While I must admit the thought of being cooped up with Kad in a well-stocked bridal suite does sound appealing, I know she deserves better than that. This is my fantasy, not hers.
You see, I know she doesn’t love me, could never love me. The truth is that I haven’t earned love yet - from anyone.
I need to do something meaningful. I need to get Kad out of this hell-hole city and away from Miles Dunwoody. It’s time to obtain some meaning, something that transcends mere survival.
What about freedom and happiness?
Meaning requires validation from a locus external to the self.
If I can get Kad to safety maybe that’ll unlock the truth – and I really want the truth, no matter how awful it might be.
Seven -
‘I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us anymore.’
― Franz Kafka, The Castle
The burning eye of the sun covers everything in a sort of radioactive yellow. Time to end the recurring dreams of antiseptic metal mirrors and the cityscape that threaten the sensitive souls among us like great silos of acid…
A naked man shambles around the streets, drawing attention to himself with his junked-up jittery, needle-hungry glower. As he searches for the elixir, everyone else just watches. He won’t last five minutes on The Schism.
Every organ is visible beneath the diaphanous skin. I turn away.
Wind howls in from the northeast. Distant screams sore heavenward. While hunting the shadows, I see a body spotlighted, sagging limply from a lamppost. A woman gone flaccid - Ailsa.
There is no time to stare, no time to mourn. I mean, she and I shared nothing beyond physical gratification, I need to keep that in mind. It’s amazing how quickly the onset of love can snuff all those Darwinian urges to fuck and repopulate. It’s liberating to silence the inner demon of lust, even if it is just temporary.
- Christ, you sound like Miles fuckin’ Dunwoody himself! Squash all impure thoughts, chase things that are innocent and pure!
I’m no fundamentalist but there’s something to be said for finding meaning in interpersonal relations with other human beings. This whole nightmare has been one long journey to connect with someone. I’m wearing Kad down. I think, I hope, she has a new respect for me. I think Kad finds me magnanimous, fair-minded, loving even. These are traits I aspire to hold and project. In this sense I have had a successful life, albeit short and full of violence.
I move through the shadows, away from Ailsa’s dangling corpse.
If Kad knew what I was doing, that I’d left her to go track down Dunwoody, she would fucking kill me – and leaving her wasn’t easy. For the duration of my descent through the intestines of the PLATO’S GATE hotel I was in constant conflict, between my craving to get answers for Kad and the desire to stay and protect her to the best of my ability.
Now I’m on the streets, I’m not entirely positive what my next step will be. Wait for Dunwoody and The People to come get me? Then what? What if they convert me? I just know that there’s no use in just waiting around.
No, I don’t exactly have a full proof plan to work with, just a burning incentive to do something right for someone I love. It’s not my wish that you think me noble, but I do want to be remembered, even just in the mind of an onlooker like yourself, as a well-intentioned and halfway proactive protagonist.
Not quite a hero, but, at least, a man.
For the first time, a notch of stars. It’s like daylight outside. Lanterns hang from the cedars. This city doesn’t need darkness, it is a self-contained evil.
An old woman stands hunch-necked on the street corner holding a popcorn crate with vials of sparkling plum-coloured solution. From her coin headscarf and her various accoutrements I can tell she possesses a supernatural conception of good and evil. She has one eye but spots me lurking and tells me to approach.
‘I’m not one of The People, but I, um, feel I should warn you they are on their way.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘I have a sense for these things. I’m an artery of the city, we’re all connected. That’s why, um, that’s why they will inevitably find you Kurt. In this place, we’re all the same. Whoever you used to be, it doesn’t matter.’
‘I have no memories of who I used to be, but I’m full of guilt. How do you explain that?’
‘No idea, I’m not a mystic – well, no more of a mystic than you. That is to say, your guilt must be inherited from the communal conscience, though negative feeling usually is. There are a lot of bad people in this city who want redemption. A lot of guilt has been alleviated by Dunwoody but it stays hovering in the air like a layer smog. The guilt is infectious if you breathe it in. Don’t, um, never breathe it in, no, no…’ – she says this like someone struggling to organize their caffeinated thoughts. She conforms to the chaotic rhythm of details within the city.
‘I hate The People. They’re always telling me I’m an animal.’ – I say this staring off into the pseudo-blue sky.
‘Oh, now, we can’t judge The People. I mean, I’m a Jew. I am. A Jew. Of course it is not MY belief that Jews are all money scrounging victims, but I, um, I must respect that it might well be someone else’s opinion, you know? As an educated woman it’s my duty to, um, at least to respect it. You see, I don’t AGREE with it, but I RESPECT someone else’s right to express it.’
‘But they don’t just express it, they enforce it with bloody vigor! I don’t have to respect someone who tells me I’m a goddamned animal. If we go by your m
ethod then I have just as much right to express distaste towards the People as they do to dark dwellers.’
‘I’m sorry but you’re wrong. You don’t have the right, not yet.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I can see you, the real you. The real. You. You’re like a big ball of pink goo filled-out with guilt and fear instead of the normal stuffing humans have inside them.’
‘There’s more to me than guilt and fear lady. There’s love too.’
‘Yes. But that alone doesn’t entitle you to the right to call yourself human. Let me tell you something about guilt, it is all consuming. You have to, you have to, shed it if you want to be a person. I remember, a long time ago, um, I, uh, had become embroiled in a defamation case. My editorial about students being cry-babies was retracted from the university newspaper. They felt it violated basic routine journalistic practices. A deposition was sought by, um, by attorneys, it was all very embarrassing. I consider myself a rebel in my own way. How I ended up here? Well, I guess it’s a funny story. It had such an innocuous beginning, as these things usually do.
‘I walked into the kitchen one morning and saw my husband was already up, his legs sticking out from the cupboard under the sink. There were a bunch of hand tools strewn across the lino. I went about preparing things for breakfast, as I’d grown accustomed; figured he was tightening one of the loose pipe fittings – he hated to be harassed when he was trying to be handy. He saw every innocent inquiry I made as an expression of doubt regarding his ability to achieve masculine tasks.
‘I got out the eggs, cracked them into a bowl of milk and butter. Stuck two, um, two slices of brown bread into the toaster slots and started whisking. It was then I realised my husband wasn’t tightening anything. I realised this wasn’t necessarily even my husband. I saw an unfamiliar hand bringing out elbow joints of pipe. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that the two log-like legs didn’t belong to Brian either. Someone was dismantling the plumbing system.