Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

  The door squeaks behind him and his relief pops like a bubble. Patrick puts on a smile as he turns. ‘Oh, hey, Clay. “Hey, Clay.” That rhymes.’ He laughs to cover the awkwardness, Broom peering out at him through the crack of the door. There’s something wrong with his face. It’s gone slack, like he’s had a stroke or contracted Bell’s palsy. ‘I didn’t think you were home,’ he tries again.

  Clayton opens his mouth, his lips gold-fishing, as if he’s dragging his brain up from deep underwater. ‘I was working.’

  ‘Doing some welding?’ Patrick guesses, gesturing at the mask shoved up on his head, the thick overalls and gloves.

  ‘Other things, also.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ He fidgets. ‘Listen, you got a minute?’

  ‘I’m busy.’ Clayton moves to close the door.

  ‘It’s about that.’ Patrick puts a hand on the doorjamb. ‘The show. I wanted to talk to you. I don’t have your cellphone number.’

  ‘Don’t believe in them.’

  ‘That’s cool, that’s cool. We get too hung up on them. All you see is people staring at their screens all day. Sucks us right in. Can I—?’

  Clayton backs away reluctantly and Patrick steps into a gloomy corridor lined with teetering stacks of newspapers and arrangements of stones piled up on top of one another. It smells terrible, like damp and rust. There is black mold growing up the walls. ‘You, uh, redecorating?’

  ‘It’s Clayton’s father’s house, my father’s house.’ He chews on the words like tobacco, something he has to spit out. ‘It’s his old furniture. He’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He keeps talking, rattled. He didn’t realize Clayton was so far gone. Maybe it’s the claustrophobia of the house, the stacks of old magazines that have made him nuts. Maybe it’s contagious. ‘Planning some papier-mâché? This stuff’s a fire hazard. You should be careful, man.’

  ‘I got an extinguisher.’

  ‘So, talking about flammable,’ Patrick squirms. ‘I’ve been discussing it with Darcy, you remember Darcy, co-curating on Dream House, and I have to tell you the truth, Clay, we’re a little worried. The praying mantis dragon thing you’re working on? Well, firstly, it’s been done before. With the Gurgitator.’

  Clayton lights up. Seems like somebody’s home, after all. ‘I helped make that. I hinged the jaw so it could open and close.’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely. Impressive. Fire-breathing dragon-bus stopping traffic all the way down Gratiot!’ He shakes his head at the drama. ‘It was a huge hit at Burning Lakes, too.’

  ‘They didn’t invite me.’ Clayton sinks back into himself.

  ‘Oh. Well, I hear tickets have got real expensive. But hey, originality is tough. You know that, you’ve been on the scene long enough to see all the trends come round again. You’re practically an art historian.’

  Clayton’s mouth tightens, like a twist of a screw. ‘You think my work isn’t original?’

  ‘No, no. We love your work, you know that, Clay. But we’re worried about the fire. We’ve got installations going up in these old wooden houses, and call me crazy, but a sculpture with a propane tank that shoots seven-foot flames into the air might be a little dangerous. We don’t want the party to get shut down for breaking some city fire ordinance. I mean, maybe, if you’re willing to do it without the flame-throwing, we can still consider it. But I’m not sure what your schedule’s like, if that’s going to throw you off?’ He tries to downplay the hopefulness in his voice.

  ‘I’m not doing the praying mantis any more.’

  ‘Oh.’ Patrick wilts with relief. ‘Oh, that’s a shame. Because the party’s on Saturday. So … does that mean you won’t be doing anything, after all? We’d still love to have you come along. I can put you on the guest list. No obligation, though. If it’s too disappointing that you couldn’t deliver something for the show, no-one would blame you if you didn’t want to—’

  ‘I’ve been working on something else. I’ll show you.’

  ‘Well, okay, I mean, I’ll have to discuss it with Darcy,’ he chatters, following Clayton through the house, stepping over a pile of black garbage bags by the door that have attracted flies even in this cold.

  ‘What’s in the refrigerator?’ he says, spotting the Post-it on the door that reads ‘Do not open’.

  ‘Nothing,’ Clayton barks. ‘It’s broken.’

  In his head, Patrick is riffing that funk number: ‘Won’t you take me to … crazy town.’ He’s going to lay this on Darcy and make his escape a.s.a.p. ‘Clay, I don’t think this is going to work out. You know how strongly Darcy feels about the cohesion of creative vision. We can’t randomly slot in another piece like art is interchangeable—’ and then he sees it. He puts his fingers to his mouth. ‘Oh. Oh my God.’

  The garden is never going to recover. The yellow grass has been obliterated by cement dust and spark burns from the welding torch. The praying mantis languishes in the back, a crude thing lumped together from old car parts, with hand-saws for claws and three pairs of mismatched mannequin legs protruding from its carapace, reflector-light eyes and mandibles that open on a hinge so it can blast fire from the propane tank in its belly. But that’s not what he’s looking at.

  He hesitates and then steps forward, picking his way between the figures occupying every space in the yard. Twisted bodies made from cement or coils of wire or welded combinations of wood and metal or clay. An army of the beautiful deformed, from miniatures to monsters in every medium imaginable.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Patrick says again, taking everything back in his head, all the doubt, the cattiness. This could be huge. Clayton could be the new Tyree Guyton. ‘How long have you been working on this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He’s already writing the catalog copy in his mind. Dehumanizing distortions, the obliteration of self, with a nod to Francis Bacon or Steven Cohen. Heck, David Bowie.

  There are vaguely human shapes in clay, with gaping mouths, arranged in a cluster, half their heads sheared off. They are all twisting their necks like corkscrews to look toward the house. A flock of roughly cast bronze female figures, with jabbing bird’s heads and disturbingly elongated arms flung back behind them, are arranged along an old log.

  A Christ figure with a beatific expression raises one sculpted hand in blessing, but his mouth is fitted with hinges and gears, and his robes, made from rags, are flowering with mold from being left out in the rain. A woman created out of wire covers her eyes with her hands with black tar oozing between her fingers, frozen in place.

  And then he comes upon the blob. It’s a malformed lump of molten plastic and candle wax that has bubbled up in protest under the welding torch, forming blisters like plague boils, scorched and distended and pinched into the semblances of faces with wax layered on top: a fat man growing extra heads from his belly. His mouth is gaping wide with nails for teeth, rammed up through his jaw, the round metal heads jabbing out the bottom. There are toys and junk embedded in his flesh.

  ‘This is … amazing, Clay.’ Patrick is jagged with excitement. ‘We have to talk. After the Dream House show. There’s a gallery in New York looking for new work. You should do a solo exhibition. It would have to be in the right venue, though. You’ll need a big space to let the work breathe.’ He hesitates, his mind racing through all the possibilities. ‘Has anyone else seen this?’

  Clayton shrugs.

  ‘Can we have him? The fat man? Does he have a name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Untitled? The Blob? The Man Who Ate The World?’

  ‘Call it whatever you want.’

  ‘He’ll fit beautifully. There’s an attic room in the Lust House – all the buildings are themed. We were going to fill it with a kiddies’ pool with condoms and plastic balls scrawled with swearwords. But this is so much more powerful.’

  ‘Will people see it? It needs eyeballs.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. We’re expecting four hundred people. There’s some video guy who
wants to film it too.’

  ‘Do you …’ Clayton looks confused, struggling with himself. ‘Do you want to be part of it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I need someone. I could make you something.’ He sounds so hopeful, it’s almost unbearable. No wonder. All these years of rejection. And hey, getting in early before the market catches on? That’s not a bad idea at all, Patrick thinks.

  ‘You mean a special commission? I’d love that! But right now you need to keep your focus here. Don’t second-guess yourself, okay? This is the best work you’ve ever done. Oh, wait. Will you need help moving him?’

  ‘I got my truck.’

  ‘That’s great. That’s amazing. I can’t believe how far you’ve come. This is your breakthrough, man.’ He claps Clayton on the shoulder and is repulsed to find that his jacket is crusty, the texture of cockroach wings. Patrick snatches his hand away and concentrates on not wiping it on his jeans. ‘This is your breakthrough, man.’

  Botanica

  The woman with skunk hair, black with white streaks, standing behind the counter in front of a wall of candles and glass bottles is not happy to have the police in her establishment.

  ‘No. Sorry,’ she says. ‘I don’t know anyone who does witchcraft. We sell blessings here.’

  ‘I see that,’ Boyd says, picking up a fat white wax cylinder with a label that reads ‘Pussy licking candle’.

  ‘I don’t judge my customers,’ she sniffs. ‘I order in what they ask for. Rich people have psychiatrists. These people come to me. I listen to their problems.’

  ‘Maybe you listened to a customer saying that they practise santeria. Or lucumí or vodoun?’ Gabi says.

  ‘We’ll go with any kind of witchcraft,’ Bob agrees. ‘Especially if there’s sacrifice involved.’

  It’s times like these that Gabi wishes her parents had taught her more Spanish. They were so dead-set on naturalizing themselves, and her especially, that it was always English, English, English. She grew up in Kentucky, where they pretty much were the Hispanic community, and only moved to Miami when she was sixteen. It was her first real exposure to Cuban culture, and for a while she ate it all up. The cuisine, the language, the boys.

  ‘You’re scaring off my customers.’ Skunk-hair shoos them aside to let a slight, bedraggled man with red shoes through. He puts down a candle on the counter. ‘Triple Strength Lottery Win’.

  ‘That’ll be five dollars,’ the owner says. ‘You have a fine day, Ramón. Good luck. Give my best to your lady.’

  The man leaves, setting the heavy oriental bell clanging sonorously.

  ‘How do you do that in good conscience?’ Boyd says, leaning on the counter. ‘That man doesn’t have five dollars to spare.’

  ‘I sell mindfulness and self-reflection. He lights that candle, every time he walks past it, he’s thinking about it. Maybe he buys a lottery ticket, or maybe he’s thinking about money so he applies for a job. I sold him a love candle and he tells me now he’s with someone, very happily.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Gabi says, holding up a paper pouch with a handwritten label that says ‘wolf’s heart’.

  ‘It’s not really a wolf’s heart.’

  ‘Can I open it?’

  ‘Only if you buy it.’

  ‘Do you normally sell animal parts?’

  ‘No.’

  Gabi holds up another pouch, a narrow twist of paper. ‘Then what’s this “black cat bone?’”

  ‘Excuse me.’ A woman in white with strings of colored necklaces and a white scarf wrapped around her head emerges from a small curtained-off booth at the back of the shop. She looks decidedly pissed off, Gabi decides. It’s something in the way she moves, her bracelets jangling. ‘I heard you talking—’

  ‘You tell ’em, Iya! Scaring my customers off.’

  ‘You’re asking about animal sacrifice and santeria?’

  ‘We’re making enquiries—’ Gabi starts.

  ‘Like you’re some podunk ignorant cops from the country,’ the woman says, inflamed.

  ‘Now hold on there,’ Bob says, ‘we may be podunk, but you don’t gotta insult us. I’m Detroit city born-and-bred.’

  ‘What did you find? Some shrine in the woods with bones and antlers that scared you? That’s palo monte, not santeria. Or kids copying nonsense they’ve seen on TV.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We’ve got off on the wrong foot. Can we start again? I’m Detective Gabriella Versado, this is my partner Bob Boyd. Can we talk about this in private somewhere so we can be less ignorant? It’s about a murder investigation where the body was found with animal parts.’

  ‘I do consultas in the back. We can talk there. But only until my next appointment arrives,’ she says crisp as frost on grass, leading them to the curtained booth.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gabi says, taking a seat behind the low table, Bob wedged in behind her so they can close the curtain. ‘I saw a sacrifice once – ebo – with my uncle in Miami. A chicken.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ the santera says. ‘It’s a very spiritual experience, an animal sacrificing its life for you. You should be respectful of that divine gesture.’

  ‘I know you also kill goats sometimes too. Would you ever do deer?’

  ‘We only sacrifice goats and rams – no cows, pigs, horses or deer – and tradition dictates that we eat the animal afterwards, so there would be no remains. We believe in … karma, for lack of a better word. When you do harm to other people, in one way or another, you’re also harming yourself. Performing witchcraft is only going to cause problems for you.’

  ‘Like violence,’ Gabi muses, ‘it has a way of playing pass the parcel.’

  ‘That’s a nice way of looking at it,’ the woman says, re-evaluating her.

  ‘Can I show you a picture and you can tell me what you think?’ Gabi slips the photograph of Daveyton out of her jacket pocket and puts it face-up on the table.

  She glances at it and flinches. ‘What I think? It’s psychopathic! This is the work of someone who is very disturbed.’

  ‘Not palo monte?’

  ‘No.’ She flaps her hand at Gabi to take the photo away. ‘Palo monte don’t mutilate living people, and there would be no ritualistic purpose in mixing a human body with a deer body. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘So what do you think this is, looking at the photograph?’

  ‘You’ve got someone with a bad head. A crazy person.’

  ‘What does that mean,’ Gabi presses, ‘a bad head?’

  ‘In our patakis, our folk myths, we believe that we come to the world with a destiny we picked for ourselves in Arun. Obatala creates the human body, but you have to get your head from the potter who molds them out of clay in his warehouse. On a good day he makes beautiful heads, but sometimes he gets drunk and makes a bad head. It’s a divine defect. There’s no way to tell from the outside, but once you’ve chosen your head, you have to live your destiny.

  ‘Most of us have a medium head. It’s not perfect, but there is enough good in there that with the help of the orichas you can be pulled to the good side. But people with a bad head are so damaged they can’t be fixed. There’s no remedy, the only thing you can do is stop them and recycle them back into the universe.’

  ‘So we’ve got your blessing to shoot this guy dead then? I’ll be sure to explain that in my report,’ Boyd quips.

  The santera ignores him. ‘You know, Detective, there is a lot of dark energy attracted to you because of the nature of this crime. You have to be careful. It makes you vulnerable to bad things happening to you or your loved ones. You should let me give you a blessing, or cleanse you.’

  Bob snorts. ‘Yeah, I’ll skip, thanks. We done here, Versado?’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Gabi says, mainly out of politeness but also remembering the teenager she once was in Miami.

  ‘Whatever.’ Bob pushes through the curtain. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  The santera picks up a bundle of bay leaves and brushes them over Gabi’s body,
sweeping over her while she murmurs a prayer in another language. Yoruba, she guesses. It’s over in a few minutes.

  ‘Thank you.’ She tries to convince herself that she feels lighter, but that’s just the smell of the herbs. She’s too old and jaded for magic.

  ‘You should take a talisman for protection. Asabache, jet, will help repel evil.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the problem,’ Gabi says, ‘I’m not trying to repel it, I’m trying to find it.’

  Walled Gardens

  Cas’s apartment block has a coffee shop in the lobby and a gift store because it’s a historic building, one of the highlights of Detroit’s architecture, with genuine Miskwabic tiles, elaborate floral designs on the exterior and gold art-deco patterns in the entrance hall. It’s a beautiful place to live, but more than that, it’s prestigious. There’s even a doorman who remembers her name, just like the story about the little girl who lived in the hotel in the kids’ book Layla used to love. But he’s not old and gentlemanly in a suit with brass buttons. He’s in his twenties, in an aubergine-colored dress shirt that’s the uniform around here, with a skinny mustache, and he’s kind of checking her out. ‘Hi, how you doing this afternoon, Miss Cassandra. And it’s Miss Layla, right? Nice to have you back with us.’

  ‘Hey, Javier!’ Cas waves as she walks straight to the beautiful old elevator and jabs the button repeatedly.

  ‘Hi.’ Layla ducks her head.

  ‘You need anything, you just ring down.’ He leans out from his desk to say it with a special intensity, like he really, really means it.

  ‘Was he hitting on me?’ Layla says as the elevator doors close behind them.

  ‘How long have you been alive? Every man is hitting on you always. But don’t feel special. It’s how management trains them up. Apparently “have a nice day” doesn’t sound sincere any more.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’ But she can understand it, how words can get worn down like shoes.