by Alex Johnson
They had the wrong house, but it didn’t matter because they had confused the case with another one. This happened frequently.
“I do not believe this shit,” said Sweetback Glide, stretching the newspaper over his knee. Even after three days and nights of the stakeout, he looked great—6 feet 2 inches of solid muscle packed tightly in a glove of chocolate skin.
Joe Oroborus, who was only 5 feet, felt cramped in the surveillance van. “What’s up, Sweet?”
“Well, check this out. Says here—and it’s a long-ass read, but it’s good—scientists in Italy discovered this new strain of DNA, it’s called free-form. Bonds to anything, something dies it picks it right up, you can glue things together that were never meant to be. Like some Superglue shit, only genetic. Now if I could only get me some of that, swap some of my old girlfriends around, know what I’m saying? Take this one’s pussy and that one’s mouth and this one’s fine long hair, take a chunk of the other one’s attitude and toss it in the trash, you know. I’m gonna build me a woman. That’s the way. You gotta use science these days, Joe. Look out honey, I’m using technology, you know? That’s the answer. It’s the key.”
“Sounds fascinating,” said Oroborus. He yawned. “Hey, do you have any of that heroin left over from last night?”
“Heroin? Are you crazy in the magic now? Yes, you white, you crazy all right, but are you crazy? I ask this again because the last time you did that shit, you nodded off right in the middle of an interrogation. We had that son of a bitch dead to rights. He was gonna crack. Then all of a sudden Mr. Honkey here takes a nap. A goddam nap! Little fool was smuggling jewelry up his ass in a finger-stall and selling it to the Mexican Mafia for that high-class pussysmoke.”
“I don’t remember anything about that,” said Oroborus. “C’mon, please? Just a smidge. My back hurts like hell. We’ve been cramped up in this van for hours and I don’t think he’s coming out. Couldn’t we just set up the robot and get back to the bar for shots or something?”
“Now I see how it is,” said Glide
“How what is?”
“How the worm turns. Now back when we was real detectives, or as you say, soft detectives—but we were real detectives, had us some serious badges —you kept whining about how we was gonna solve ourselves some cases and follow leads instead of just hanging out on my stoop and drinking malt liquor. Now we citizens—okay, barely legal, but we citizens—you do a complete 180, some Linda Blair shit. Hell man, you ain’t done nothing since we started this business but sit on your ass and imagine all the work you’re gonna do when you get motivated.
“Meanwhile, I do all the leg-work. I gotta sleep with all them white women. I gotta use my gat on occasion or break a man’s spirit down just in case he wants to pull some state’s evidence bullshit. Turn us in, when we the detectives. Thinks he’s gonna bring the hard pussy. Oh yeah, for a soft detective you were real tough, man, real tough. Back in the day. Now you can barely sit up.”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m telling you, we’re wasting our time. We should use the robot. Hey, you’re always saying we need to upgrade our technology. Well, here’s a chance. We haven’t used the ‘bot since the Mystery Drink Caper back in ’05.”
“Uh-huh. And that worked out real good. That ‘bot was stewing in shit for an entire weekend, I mean marinating. Stunk so bad we had to dissolve the little bitch in acid and start right over from the black box. Frightening, the smells. ‘Cause it wasn’t just no ass-rind either, something else got added to the mix. Spicy, complex as the barrel of a nanogun, but hell on the sinuses.”
“Right, but the new ‘bot is better than ever, and besides, I wanna do some shots.”
“The man wants to get his drink on.”
“Yuppers.”
“And he wants some of that China White.”
“Double yuppers.”
“And he ain’t got ‘I’m a crazy white man’ written on his forehead in invisible ink.”
“Nope.”
“Well okay. Can’t tell anyway, ‘cause I ain’t got my ‘crazy white man’ scanner with me at the moment. I’ve got a little bit of the horse left, enough for both of us. We’re gonna have to cold shake the motherfucker ‘cause ain’t no water in here. Another little something a certain someone forgot because he was too damn high to worry about the details of his next too damn high…never mind.”
Ten Minutes Later
“Now what was all this about free-form DNA?”
“You know, you curious. Usually you don’t pay attention to nothin’ I say, all of a sudden you all about the DNA and shit. Why?”
“You don’t have to be an asshole about it. I’m not a suspect. We’re not down in the hole with electrodes and gore candy, got some citizen plugged up his ass with insects…”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Well, free-form DNA will do a man right. Ain’t got a date for a Saturday night, shit, he goes down to the city morgue, they got some fine-ass white girls in there, pull ‘em off the slab, dump ‘em in a bag, take them down to that little lab we got going in East SoNoe and start the refinements, as I call them.”
“We have a lab?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it. Now shut up. I found something else too. There was a man right here in town, I mean smack dab in the middle of this fake plastic studio environment, they called him Dr. Shreck. Turns out he was some video director or some shit, made a bunch of crappy videos of glam metal bands, but check it out—that wasn’t his only gig. He called himself ‘Doctor’ but he was a Doctor of Theology. Yeah, that’s right. Went to some Christian school in the Midwest. Had no business rooting around in cadavers and extracting the pink flavah, you know?”
“Maybe…it’s just me…but half the time I have no idea what you’re going on about, Sweet.”
“Maybe…it’s just me…but half the time I just want to kick your ass and not bother with the reasoning behind it.”
“Maybe…we’re just incompatible.”
“Now you hurtin’ my feelings.”
“I thought you had a heart of steel?”
“I was just joking about that shit. Ok, so I do have a heart of steel. But my real heart, or, damn, how should I phrase it, my poetic heart is solid. I’m deep. Unlike some white trash no soul wannabe private dicks of my unfortunate acquaintance.”
“Okay, cut the crap. Do you think there’s a connection between those two articles?”
“Hell yes there’s a connection. They were both written by the same guy. Look, this dude. Roland Hymsaw. What kind of name is that?”
“We’re going to pay Hymsaw a little visit.”
“Okay, now you’re frightening me.”
“But it’s the only way.”
Oroborus twisted the key in the ignition. “You’re right, Sweet. It’s the only way.”
“White boy got some sense in him after all,” mumbled Glide.
***
“I don’t want any trouble, guys,” said Roland Hymsaw. He was dressed in baggy shorts and a ripped Slayer t-shirt with a bathrobe over them. His ass-length hair was dyed a luminous green. He gestured to an overstuffed sofa.
“Trouble? I don’t see no trouble. Do you see trouble?”
“Cut the crap, Glide. Hey, seriously, my partner here is just a little wired right now. But you’ve got the medicine. Right?”
“I have no idea what this white motherfucker is talking about. Can we come in?”
“Sure, guys. Sorry, I’m still waking up. Long night.”
“So what can you tell us about this Shreck dude?”
“My partner thinks there’s a connection…”
Glide put up a hand. “Not yet. What’s your angle?”
“Have a seat. Shreck’s been around for a long time. He’s kind of a fixture on the Horrorweird scene, always has some kind of project going on, but nothing solid. It all depends on who you talk to. I interviewed one girl who thinks he’s a flat-out genius. Seriously misunderstood. Now her knowledge of Shreck was limited to heavy metal videos,
and specifically, hair products. She does metal hair. I think she was impressed by the lighting in the one video he did for Fuckangel. Then she disappeared. Phone disconnected, no way to contact her. Then I get this call from a guy—maybe it was a girl, it was kind of hard to tell, but they had a really strange, low voice. Said Shreck was running an illegal lab and doing all kinds of heinous experiments. I followed him one time to this address in Sugar Valley…”
“Really,” said Glide. He gave Oroborus a significant look. “What would a low-rent operator like Shreck be doing in Sugar Valley?”
“I have no idea. But I’m pretty sure it’s connected to the lab.”
“Where is this lab now?”
“He’s using a warehouse in Bone City, right on the outskirts. Sketchy part of town. Doing some kind of Viola Flesh number…”
“Wait, did you say Viola Flesh?”
“You know her?”
“Only by reputation. I like some of her movies. That Reality Stack was fine. You know the one, Joe, where the movie kind of ingests your brain. Fucks you up for months afterwards, like a bad acid trip, but I really got a kick out of it. Went to this Caribbean island and got my dick torn out by witches. Then this shark fucked me in the ass. But it changes…last I heard the witches and shark-fucking got replaced by something even stranger, like some monkey brains, melon on stilts shit. You know how it goes.”
“Yeah,” said Hymsaw. “That’s the one.”
Back in the Dizzel, Fo Shiz
The mutiny had been building for weeks now. Shreck’s right hand, possessed and dominated by the Burp Me Melmo puppet now known as Dr. Fuzzly, had its own will and agenda. He would wake up to find himself menaced by the puppet, inches from his face, sputtering threats and demands. Shreck no longer had control over his hand, was helpless to counter the attacks that came at all hours now, fueled by Fuzzly’s rage and resentment.
Arguing with the puppet was useless. Fuzzly felt he was owed equal control and say in all of Shreck’s endeavors. But this was impossible for Shreck to grant. Operation True Blonde had powerful backers, moneyed interests with little use for the temper tantrums of a hand puppet with pretensions. When agents of the backers visited Shreck’s studio/lab, he was hard-pressed to explain that Fuzzly’s presence was purely accidental. At best, it seemed careless of Shreck, the fault of his unorthodox working style; at worst, a wild card that threatened to derail the project itself. It was only a matter of time before something radical would have to be done.
Shreck arose one morning with the puppet clamped onto his face like a limpet mine. He rolled straight out of bed, landing with the full force and weight of his body on the erstwhile Burp Me Melmo, who squeaked and moaned but held on like cold death. Shreck continued to roll, out of his bedroom and into the laboratory, the red fur full in his face, the little hairs bristling in his nose.
“This ends now!” Shreck rose to his feet and, half-blind, let his fingers do the walking through his instruments case, selecting a bone saw. He raised the saw with his left arm, powered it up and brought it down hard on his right wrist. The pain was enormous, but he cut until the puppet hand was completely severed.
Dr. Fuzzly yowled from the floor. “You can’t do this to me! To us! We have a complicated, symbiotic relationship! There’s still hope for us, isn’t there? Don’t you care? Did you ever care?”
Shreck was losing blood rapidly, but he still had the presence of mind to wrap a length of rubber surgical tubing around his arm as a rough tourniquet before hitting the panic button for the Naughty Nurse. Then he passed out, joining his former partner on the floor. The nurse found them in a tangled mass that reminded her of a baby and its mother. Only she couldn’t quite tell who was who.
***
“Looking a little grey there, my man.” Mike Volt swabbed the bar and started collecting the really gross glasses for the dishwasher.
“You have no idea,” said Bramley Shomes, his hands shaking. “Pour me another, and keep ‘em coming. I have a powerful thirst on me.”
“Maybe you should go home and sleep it off.”
“Fat chance of that. I’ve seen things…they’re scorched into my brain permanently, I think…has that ever happened to you?”
“Sure, there was this one time I was out in the woods back in Portland and this 50-foot gummy bear with eyes of fire tried to penetrate me. Sexually, I mean.”
Bramley started. The reference to Portland and predatory gummy bears had awakened something buried deep in his subconscious. But that was not it. Not by a long shot.
“Drink your drink slowly this time,” said Mike. “Don’t just pound it down. I want to hear your story.”
“I was doing security, you know, just the usual patrolling the strip mall and eating donuts, when we saw this strange light flickering from one of the houses right off 666 Street and Buñuel. You know, the really random part. Shit, man, you see lights and then you see strange lights, you know? This one was strobing on and off. My partner was deep into some kind of glazed confection and couldn’t be bothered, but I was bored as shit and needed action. Only so many times you can strip-search the homeless, and them smelling so nasty.”
“Understood,” said Mike. “Now drink your drink.”
“I got a script,’ said Vince. “This croaker gave it to me ‘cause I complained of headaches…I don’t even know what this shit is, but I got the script filled at the pharmacy.”
Barmely pulled a crumpled white paper bag from his optical yellow security jacket and tore it open on the bar. “Yeah, ok, so I tell my partner I’m going to check it out. Strictly speaking, we’re supposed to leave that kind of thing to the real cops, but I was craving adventure. My partner starts to nod off right into his donuts. I get the car and park it on a side street, then creep up through this alleyway and there’s this fenced-in lawn that’s just mutating with all kinds of weird plants I never seen before. It was spooky. Like Haunted Mansion spooky.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been down that road before.”
“So you understand what I mean. I got out my flashlight and played it around the yard. Suddenly I saw these eyes staring back at me, they looked like they were on fire. Deep red, you know, the kind that haunt your dreams. It wasn’t a dog or any kind of regular pet, it was like some kind of…like a lab experiment gone wrong. There were several sections, and part of it was like a worm and part of it was a hamster and then…it had these tits, I mean regular human girl tits. Then the thing started whimpering. I felt so sorry for it, but also like I had to get the hell out of there before I stumbled over anything else. The creature started making these horrible groaning noises, like rusty robot sex, and that set off an alarm. This cage came crashing down on me. I was totally trapped.”
“Trapped in there with a chimerical type creature?”
“No, man, the thing set off the alarm with its noise, and then I was trapped in the cage alone. I waited there…I don’t know how long. I had to pee so bad, finally I just unzipped. Fuck it, you know? Thought maybe if some sex pervert captured me to bukkake and slow roast I wasn’t going in there with a full bladder.”
V I.
The Creepy Origins of the Pink Holocaust
“Honey, we’re going to have to do something.”
“I agree, Von. But what?”
“It may be too late to help our princess, but now I’m thinking of the next generation. I’ve seen some of the girls Taffy has been hanging out with after school, and they’re a bad bunch. What’s worse, they all come from the same…the same stock as Taffy. Good blond stock. The same quality soup that gave us so many legends—like Cousin Biff, who still dominates the Death Ball squad. In the great beyond. I’m sorry, honey, I get so emotional.”
“It’s an emotional subject, dear.”
“And then I think of Jesus.”
“Oh dear,” said Yvonne. “Must you?”
Von Gooch looked up, and for the first time saw doubt in his wife’s eyes. The plague was spreading, the one he read about in his own
personal copy of The Holy Bible, which he had pasted together one awful stormy night in a fugue state. He dimly remembered something about his meds and his wife’s concern, but he was the one with vision. She couldn’t see it, not yet. And now the plague had spread to their daughter, Taffitha, who they had raised to be the perfect blonde princess. Something had gone wrong, very, very wrong. The evil had infected his wife now. What was next?
He went on his knees and implored, “Please, Jesus, though we live in fallen times, and all are bedazzled by the charms of darkness, yet we might see a deeper, more penetrating light scouring through the pollution that is soiling our young people, our daughters and wives—the womenfolk.”
“Von, maybe you should lie down. You look a little flushed. I’ll get the thermometer. Remember what Dr. Owens said about your blood pressure.”
“I know perfectly well what you mean by ‘blood pressure,’ dear. You mean that my prophetic tongue hath spouted words ye cannot grasp. Yet I assure ye that when the day of judgment comes, I will find myself on the right hand of the Almighty, and all who have doubted will be cast into the lake of Eternal Fire, there to turn like rotisserie chicken until the end of time.”
“Which reminds me, honey, what did you want for dinner?”
“Dammit, woman, you’re not listening to me.”
“I’m sorry, honeycakes. I do try. Help me to understand.” Yvonne made a mental note to call Dr. Owens and get a referral.
“It begins with liberal softening and it ends in drool and incontinence and fornication, my dear wife. It begins with some so-called ‘hip-hop’ music and it ends in heroin, the big ‘H,’ crack cocaine, and all manner of ungodliness. It begins when our young people forget the lessons of history and the word that was said unto the prophets and recorded unto the book.”