by James Newman
A spider.
Once finished, the pen dropped from his hand. Eyes closed.
Pulled Hugh up and fireman carried him to the elevator. Got him out of the room and down to the street. Sirens bellowed from the street. FP cars pulled up. An officer I recognized as Col Kult strode towards us, smirking as he lit a Honduran cigar. “Taking out the trash, Mr. Dylan?” he said as a smile danced across his lips. “Again?”
“I can explain.”
“Of course you can,” he replied, “at the station.”
TWENTY-THREE
TWO CHAIRS, a desk, grey walls and ceiling. Kult smiles at me like I had just been pulled out of the pond, and although the catch wasn’t big enough to feed his ego, he wasn’t prepared to throw it back into the water just yet. He relights the Honduran cigar and examines the cone of ash as if it had begged a question. “These foreigners who come here to die. It is a problem for us, reflects badly.”
“The City loves all her residents?”
“Yes, every single one of them,” he smiled like a shark in the shallow reefs. “The City needs to answer questions. Questions like, what was a once young healthy man doing dead in the arms of a resident who has, to be quite clear about it, been interfering in things that he shouldn’t be interfering with for much longer than we would, ahem, like to consider reasonable?”
“If you want to deport me just say the word. I am more than happy to leave The City.”
“Yes, you say that, but are you really, Mr. Dylan? You see, you have made a life here. One of the few foreigners to make a life here.”
“It is not much of a life.”
“But you like our dark hours, isn’t that so?”
“Well, I like them better than the light ones.”
“What can you tell us about the dead boy in your arms?”
“I can tell you that you already know whatever or whoever killed Hugh, and you are just looking for a scapegoat. I can also let you know that without evidence that I was the one responsible for the kid’s death, you have to let me go, in let’s see, three hours and forty-six minutes, referencing section 5 sub-section 6 paragraph 7 of the manual furnished to you by this good city. Book me and I’ll be gone.”
“A wise ass,” Kult smiled, “nobody likes a wise ass.”
“Better to be a wise ass than a dead ass,” I leaned over the desk. “How about one of those cigars?”
“How about a statement?”
“Are you recording?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it doesn’t matter either way, but let’s assume you are, so this is my statement. Yesterday morning, approximately 11 am, I get a call from the States. The father of the deceased asks me to check on his son. Says he has been too liberal with his spending in Fun City. I check the address and two present: Hugh and a woman whose name I didn’t catch. The woman left. Hugh was in a trance. I carried him down to ground level and that is when our paths crossed. I’m figuring the woman called you hoping that together you and her could bully me, scare me into paying some sort of release fine. I’m talking about an admin charge of some description, money under the table, a bribe. Well I know the City and the rules, and my lawyer, Mr. Sangsamanan, is just a call away. Which brings us up to this point in time. Has my client been made aware of his son’s death? I have his contact details. The time lag between the death and the reporting of his death to the parents may be problematic. I mean you don’t want the old man reading about it in the morning paper before he’s been officially told the news. Do you?”
“You will report back?”
“I’m not going anywhere. I have nothing to hide.”
“Very well. And you will give us a copy of your report to the client?”
“Of course, this is a suspicious death. I would say, probably, from the way he went so suddenly that it was a brain tumor, but the hospital will confirm that for us both.” I stood. “I am of more use to you out of this place than inside it.”
Kult tapped his cigar ash into a mother of pearl ashtray. “Work with us, Mr. Dylan. Not against us.”
“Sure,” I said and made it out of the station. Onto Beach Road. The sun was right above the City, rays beat down throwing a hazy film over the town. A jet ski ripped across the bay. A lone swimmer swam far away from shore. A group of pigeons pecked around in a pile of garbage spilled from an overflowing dumpster. The Beach Road was locked with traffic, Honda motorbikes, SUVs, taxicabs and sports cars. Bars, hotels, cathouses, guesthouses, massage parlors, beauty salons. A grid of bars stretched behind where Beach Road met the Red Zone to the east, and the Dark Side to the west. I turned and headed back to the Red Zone.
Kurt spent his last days in the Red Zone, what for? I couldn’t tell, but somehow, someone, something was pushing the case further through the night and into the dawn, as if it were a game to be played to the finish. Hugh, what was the Spider angle?
How did the Devil’s Breath figure into all of this?
Points awarded for endurance.
I made it to a bar on Main Street and ordered a bottle of death. Drank myself into a dark corner where we acquainted ourselves with each other. Death and I got along just fine. The truth was, I was comfortable with the concept of dying, fantasized about it, danced close to it, and courted it. We must keep trucking forward, it was essential, it was what Fun City was there for, its purpose, its very nature the wild sea of sin on which lonely vessels such as Kurt’s sailed. Below us were man-eating sharks. One false move and we were fish food. Drank myself further into that corner, drank myself stupid to the memory of all those who had fallen and those still standing on shaky legs.
Drank and drank and drank.
The sun was still up in the sky as I ordered a beer in a bar in the Tunnel, just about to take a hit when a man approached. He wore a grey suit and his words were empty. What was it that man said? Why would a man in a grey suit be interested in me? Then the Star Bar and the Rat’s warning, but it was too late. The man closed in, I felt offended rather than hurt, as an object shot up my left nostril and night swallowed the City like a spider.
TWENTY-FOUR
HOSPITAL WARD.
White walls, white ceilings, a white cabinet, a white vase holding a single white rose. White was the color most wanted to see before they shuffled along that bitter white corridor. To my left wrist attached by medical tape, white, an IV drip. Tore off the medical tape and removed the needle. Used some white tissue from a white box on the bedside table to stop the gentle flow of red. Picked up the doctor’s notes from the foot of the bed and read the scrawl:
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome / damage to the peripheral nervous system / Inserted cerebral foreign object / S.P.ER. Scopolamine delirium / Patient to be kept under observation for 2 weeks / Do not discharge /
Was there a higher power?
If there was, he’d dealt a difficult hand.
Time and time again.
The nights had been a blur.
What did that conjoined twin say?
“Don’t ever trust the machine.”
What machine?
How long had I been out?
Temples throbbed, hands shook, but it wasn’t the first time. Yet normally the pain came on later, after the last drops of alcohol drained from the system and hydration hadn’t been exercised. It normally came as a package special delivery in the afternoon post with a sudden unexplainable anxiety. The last ten years living in and out of stupors, suitcases, and suicidal women’s suspicions. Episodes of sobriety held the show together, yet time was advancing like a resentful stepmother armed with a scrubbing brush. Time was an old wench approaching a backwards child who could no longer go on resisting his fate. I had to quit the race. Starting to look my age and feeling twice it.
I knew Fun City hospitals cost not just a figurative arm and a leg, but limbs literarily cost money to be removed. Misdiagnosis was the rule rather than the exception. Doctors told the patient about conditions requiring expensive medical care in order to line their
pockets and keep the overseas pharmaceutical companies in bed with them. Walk in with a cold and walk out with the Black Death. Whatever cost the most and kept the mob that ran the whole city, including the health care, wallowing in money up in the mountains. The rule was not to trust anyone, least of all a doctor.
The door.
Tried it.
Locked.
Hell
Pressed the alarm assistance bell by the bed and waited. A woman in a white uniform, matching the color of the room came in followed by a man wearing a suit and tie. Suit and Tie said, “Mr. Dylan, what are you doing out of bed?”
“More to the point, what am I doing in it?”
“Please, sit,” the man brushed a hand through his balding scalp. “There is much we need to talk about,” nervousness remedied with a sanguine smile.
“I don’t have time for jibber jabber, Doctor.”
The doctor was in his sixties, redness flashed across his lined face. “My name is Doctor Johnson. I am your primary physician. You have to understand something very clearly. You were brought in here last night. Your condition was disgraceful.”
“Is that a medical term?”
“The bill has been paid. It seems you have a sponsor, somebody interested in your recovery.”
“Recovery?”
“You have been infected?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, Doc...”
“Nurse, pass me the x-ray.”
The doctor held the slide up to the light shining through the window. My skull, with an object about the size of a walnut lodged inside.
“A tumor?” I asked.
“It’s a foreign article. An implant. Recently injected.”
“Well, why don’t we take it out?”
“Mr. Dylan, it isn’t as simple as that. We have seen this component before. It has mechanical hooks that spread out like an umbrella. If we try to manipulate it out, the device will expand and cause terrible cerebral damage. Some surgeons have tried, but it has proved hopeless. We don’t have the time to explain in detail. The best we can do is to keep you under observation until...”
“Until what? Whoever shoved that device up into my head comes forward? A guilty conscious perhaps? I’ll try my luck at finding him if it’s all the same to you.”
“Mr. Dylan, we insist that you remain here. This device renders the subject hypersensitive to external stimuli. We do not know what states of disorder it is capable of manipulating. We insist you remain under observation.”
“Well, Doc, I insist otherwise.”
The nurse approached with a hypodermic. Using a right hand in an attempt to knock it from her grip, a sudden flash of light blinded me, so arm retreated. The head pain intensified as I battled the urge to vomit. Fell back onto the bed. Nurse hovered over with the needle like a vulture above a slaughtered calf.
“You put that spike in me, your career is history,” I said.
The doctor looked at me quizzically, held the nurse back.
“I have a lethally low tolerance to benzodiazepines. Had my stomach pumped a few years ago. If you don’t believe me, check my records. They are in this hospital. You would be better off with a strong antihistamine. 200 milligrams of hydroxyzine dihydrochloride would put me out like a light. Either that or a shot of morphine.”
The doctor took a prescription pad from his pocket and began to scribble something down. The nurse glanced over his shoulder.
The door was open.
Saw the chance.
And took it.
Stood, medical tape and tubes tearing from my body. Made it through the door followed by shouts from the doctor and the nurse. They took chase but didn’t close the lead through the screaming pediatric wards and geriatric ward, forward, past the hospital reception. Crashing into an unoccupied wheelchair, it spun twice and rolled away from the hospital, down the slope. Ran on and out into the streets, flagged a motorcycle taxi rider. The rider was ready, kicked the bike to a start and head aching, legs quivering mounted the Honda Sonic and told the driver, “Take it to the Red Zone.”
TWENTY-FIVE
TRIXIE TURNED the shower controls to cold and let the water hammer down onto her body enjoying the shock to her nerves, the excitement of cold water on her body. She lathered her hair with shampoo and rinsed it off with the cold water. Twisting the shower off, she stepped out of the cubicle and reached for a towel that she wrapped around her mid-rift and then reached for another towel that she used to wrap around her hair. She splashed some cologne on her pubis, and admired her recent shave and the burn it invited. She stepped into a pair of panties and let the first towel drop to the floor. The second towel she used to rub her hair vigorously, enjoying the scent of coconut conditioner.
Once dressed (leather pants, tank top that read UP TO YOU, dog collar) she took a taxi to the Very Special People bar and ordered a Long Island Ice Tea. As she went to pick it up, her hand bounced away from the glass as if she had come into contact with an electromagnetic field. Two twins glanced over and smiled.
“Mother...” she said.
A bearded woman stared directly at her. “Lady, I ain’t your mother!”
“No, it’s just...”
“Just nothing,” the Bearded Woman stood up and approached Trixie, placing a hand on her shoulder. “What you doing here anyway? There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I just...”
“Just nothing. You think you’re better than us. Is that it? Hanging around places filled with the physically challenged? Show me your scars? Show me your pain, lady?”
“We all have scars,” Trixie whispered, barely audible above the sound of glasses clinking and the subtle murmur of conversation.
“Say that again?”
“We all have scars.”
“Well, show me yours, woman?”
“I can’t. They’re inside.”
“Does this look to you like a psychiatrist’s office, lady?”
“No.”
“Well, get out, and take your beauty with you. We don’t need to be speaking with the likes of you.”
The long neck woman who had been silent until this point turned her gaze towards them. She spoke in an inexplicably tutored English accent inherited by way of a NGO transplant to the west to study ethics. The long neck woman smiled for she lived for moments just like these. “Nor indeed, should we be speaking to anyone who is an OUTSIDER.”
“I’m not.”
“SILENCE. And forgive me for my interference in the matter. You work for the Eye, Madam.”
“But that was...”
The bar hushed as the long neck woman continued, “ALL conversations in The City are now recorded. Every telephone conversation and every personal conversation is being recorded, and do you know what is happening to these recordings? What is happening to the personal utterances of individuals who come to places like these simply to let off steam?”
The twins shook their collective heads.
Trixie stared at the long neck, speechless.
“It is not just the Eye and the Ear watching and listening to you. There is now such a thing as a conversation broker. This softball Gamer is a broker of conversations, a man or woman who owns and peddles in every single thing that you do and say. Do you see? It disgusts me to think about it, but think about it I must. These ghastly people have compiled a database of conversations that are uploaded each and every day to the main memory base. Conversations are being bought and sold. Should you get drunk, high, or whatever the children do nowadays and awaken feeling you may have said the wrong thing to the wrong personage, you can log onto this database. You enter your password, and find all your conversations, right there for sale. But you would know all this, yes? You are one of them.”
Trixie looked at the woman. “People are buying their own conversations back?”
“Indeed, if they’re worth it. Your boy, Dylan, is one such person. And for a premium subscription fee, one can find and buy all the conversations that have been held
ABOUT YOU. It’s all rather SOPHISTICATED, my dear. Every single thing that you say is being bought and sold on the market place, so watch what you say and who you say it to.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Trixie stood up from the bar.
The patrons jeered as she paid and walked towards the door. The one place she had felt at home had dismissed her. Startled and then angered, she realized she had made another mistake. She felt that she was offering them something, but the truth was that she was only an observer of the shame and the pain that they dealt with, a customer and not a custodian. She was a voyeur of their sufferings, trying unsuccessfully to include her own humility in their sacred domain. The freaks didn’t care and there was nowhere else to go. They, the freaks, were harboring a deep shameful knowledge of which she could never be privy or part of. Where left to go? The suit and tie cocktail parties of yesteryear, the sushi bars and French bistros in the CBD? Keep walking through the oily streets. Dylan may have the answers. Perhaps a down and out detective like him held the key. He was her only hope, and anger, fear, and admiration drove her towards him. Outside, the rain fell, it gathered in puddles as she fumbled for a cigarette and a lighter. A shard of lamplight and a man with a rodent-like expression approached. What was that in the palm of his hand as he looked down and then looked at her with the smile of a benevolent rodent? As she passed, he blew a powder from his palm into her face.
The street spiraled up into the sky and the first command. “Follow me.”
His hand rose in front of her face.
An elaborate twist of the fingers cast the hypnotic spell.
She followed.
There was nothing else that she could do, other than to follow.
TWENTY-SIX
A SHOP window blackened by traffic exhaust with mandarin script discolored by acid rain, Chinese herbalist moonlighting as a pharmacist open around the clock, no prescriptions were required.