by Set Sytes
Johnny Black stood up tall and touched his finger to Mr White’s chin, forcing him to meet him gaze. And you, you’re a watcher.
I am no such thing! Mr White scarleted.
Yes you are. I knew as soon as I saw you. And I could smell it. The smell of dried cum and dead fucking longing. Unquenchable.
Mr White blustered and raised his hands to protest, but Johnny Black shot them down with a look.
Ain’t this something, he drawled sardonically. Mr White here is more abashed by his voyeurism and Kidd Red – yes, I know your name – more hot up by his perversion and filth than I ever am by my murders and rapes and tortures. God forbid how beetroot Mr White’d go if I claimed he was, oh I don’t know, a goddamn cuckold or something. He flicked a lump of ash from his cigar and caught it in his hand. He sprinkled it in his empty shot glass, and span it clattering away.
Mr White looked horrified and Kidd Red frowned while Johnny Black cooled and smoked thoughtfully.
There’s a lot of vacancies out there boys, he said eventually, straightening up his southern hat and waving the cigar in their faces. A lot of people empty but for our cocks and knives. Red, I’ve got no problem with your fucked up shit, but it is fucked up shit so don’t act like you’re better than what I got, pure like lightning out in the prairie. I’m doing a lot you won’t get, but if you hang around me long enough some of it might come clearer. I’ve got philosophies you can’t even touch. Mr White, you can watch me and masturbate if that’s all you want to do, and while your objects of tainted affection are fucking other guys – including me, long may it ruin her – you will be having more tortured satisfactions then you ever had before. Now listen you two, I’m interested in you both, and company's a hard thing to keep with my methods – so you can stay, but there’s something you always got to remember.
What’s that? Kidd Red’s eyes were as wide as pearls and twitched in a chaos of unknown feeling. Mr White too was all blinking and swallowing the heart in his mouth like he was some kind of innocent.
Johnny Black clapped his hands on their backs and strode them out the bar.
I’m one of the wolves.
STREET
The walk took them past back alleys and front alleys of sin and corruption as thick as tar where the tart girls rode their skirts up small and high or small and low like belts or string, their ruddy faces aglow and blushed like blood under soft lights tinted blue and pink and red, somehow wavy and out of focus as if underwater. The air itself seemed full of smoke and sweet in its pestilence like sugar ridden over by insects and the shutters of the shops were riding high all corrugated and shiny looking, wet without rain.
The whores looked at them, pursing their baboon lips and puckering and bending out, their faces when they got close stencilled with dimples and their eyelashes like a black man’s hands with the fingers all splayed and nailless. Their thighs were bony and netted or bulging and naked, sometimes bruised pink if their flesh was creamy or wan, looking blue or sickly yellow on the blackest. The more voluptuous were bouncing out far from their waists as if overripe fruit ready to squeeze before they burst, and those thunder legs ran down to high socks or sockless feet, sometimes the toes curling in the dirt to hide the nails all fungal and flaking, but most at least somewhat manicured and coloured and precariously tiptoed in slutheels, raising midgets to chest height and tall girls gargantine and practised in their clumsless sexual totter. As you looked up their eyes were so dark like oil or midnight orbs, or blue and green like the sun reflecting off tropical seas, except the light was artificial and their implanted irises shone fake and jaded.
Many of the women were older, with skin that hung off them as if the call of gravity was more attractive than loyalty to the body. Their hair was brushed up or dank and straggled and the abandonment of effort seemed not as sad as the effort made all the more. The whores were men too, cut or not to all degrees including those without anything between their legs, or just with nothing hanging but over pumped sacks like human melons, with skin less leathered and more stretched tight looking like jellyfish or some bright-veined balloon creature of the deep sea. The men were as varied and garish as the girls, some bearded or heavy-set, some stern some giggling, and all dolled up they were in leathers or pimp-colour suits or dresses frilled and drag or contemporary slut. Their faces were unshaven or smoother than the women’s legs, with makeup dark and classy or like circus clowns, and there were mixtures of everything said before, and some had their backs to the wall with no real clothes at all but chains or strips of coloured or black cloth.
The hookers went beyond those two sexes and continued way on, with sexed up in-betweens, all laying individual claims to the definition of a third gender, and some of the streetwalkers were augmented biologically or mechanically; some were cyberdolls, those glorified robots in models flashy and new or old and worn with bits missing; some bald, some with an eye switched off, one or two dismembered with wires dangling and sparking or clipped and many with skin like rust or mould.
Many whores were bitten by disease. They leaked fluid from anyplace, some of it disgusting some of it sexual, and all of it both to some passer-by. Their voices were sugary and husky and hard and catcalls and whines, some dominant and teacher-like and many like schoolchildren, teasing and flirting with practised innocence, and some there attracted a mothering or fathering instinct, seeming like lost kids wanting put right; some begged for a spanking or whatever unknown lay waiting in your pants just for them, and many propositions sounded disturbing and were disturbing enough for some passer-by. Many of the younger looking acted the very opposite, as though dogs in heat or succubi in a new land or aliens ready to enslave the populace through seduction and insemination.
As they walked on, all faltering except for Johnny, the air high on stank in thick, mugging patches, making Mr White cough. It was especially foul around a few of the all-human men and women who couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of themselves any longer. Perhaps given up on the trade in their old age, standing about all creased up and tired, or maybe young and drugged up with eyes rolling back and wetting themselves and telling you to come for some sugar while drool pitted in the corners of their mouths and ran like spiderstring down their chin and into their cleavage or matted chest hairs, whatever the gender. And some of the augments must have disagreed with the whores and those kind of infections had their own kind of smell like something toxic in your vehicle, and many including the trio wrinkled their noses or held them pointedly, obnoxiously, but others drew closer and rubbed the insides of their legs, their noses sniffing like dogs catching the trail.
The lights spat and fizzed as they passed and some flickered on and off or stayed off, seeming beset inside with painted fireflies of bipolar temperament. Many of the neon signs had letters missing and by deliberation or coincidence or the lasciviously humoured hand of Fate a sign spelled ANAL where it should have spelled BAN IT ALL – like rich neon graffiti but a real sign that somebody had put up, perhaps in protest or mockery or some turn-on to themselves that only they truly understood. And then they passed pink swirls like icing on cake that read out GIRLS and then a pause in the concrete and then SLUTS. Red nodded at the sign and told them that it was his favourite word, but that some people might not like that and think it was giving some negative impression to which he could explain. Mr White remarked that nobody is going to care in a place like this and Johnny said nothing but barely looked from straight ahead. Red said it was a good word now and it had been taken back, and he seemed to wish someone to argue with him but they didn’t.
Johnny threw a cigarette down to the ground where it sank slowly into mud and he had another lit in seconds and billowing smoke out the corner of his mouth, his eyes narrowed and darting towards the shadows as if they called him there for secrets not fit even for the degradation of the street. Hookers yelled at them as if their words were gospel and unrefusable and Mr White kept apologising and Red was telling him to shut up when he saw a trio of undersized girls with b
reasts belonging to giantesses near falling out of what could never be called tops and with buttocks flared out behind them like stallions. Red said they were aug’ed to fuck but what about it and Mr White arched his eyebrows back in consternation and said he didn’t know and Johnny said no. Red looked to argue but just whined and kept looking back as the girls blew kisses to him and fondled their meats. One lifted up her skirt and Red saw what looked in the shadows like a fingerless and round-headed arm strapped to the leg in fishnets and he turned back around and shook his head fiercely and strode on a little faster and yet looked back again three more times and scratched the front of his jeans as if absentminded.
Mr White was too taken in by all the sights sounds and smells to offer any conversation and Black was quiet and mean and so Red chattered as if to himself saying nothing of value but saying mostly did you see that did you see her did you see it, fuck, and talked about what they could do and who was going to get it and who was what sex different to how they presented themselves even if it were full on obvious. He asked if they were all hookers or maybe just gals out to get some spare cash and then answered himself saying well then either they all were or none of them were. And then he said who was gonna have who and what they were after, but he didn’t get much response out of Mr White and just silence from Johnny, and Red said to nobody in particular that he hoped Johnny wasn’t going to stab some nice young gal. Johnny asked if they were the only ones that mattered and if an ugly old woman or a man or aug or even some cyberdoll with full on sentience got stabbed would that be alright, and Red chuckled and asked if Johnny was gonna be a cunt to someone and Johnny said maybe you. Red didn’t reply because he was alerted to more siren calls and was looking at more tits that gave him some positively heaving impression of his future.
Johnny stopped outside a café where unidentified roast meats steaming on trays were served to the insalubrious. They sat outside on wooden deckchairs by circular tables nearly as small as birdtables and shiny with grease smears. They were all littered with gristle and scrunched wraps of food, which marked in pink on white the name of the business, Redhot’s Big Meat, even though the portions had nothing big about it and the heat steamed off them faster than you could eat, so by the second half you ate cold blackened sinews and picked the bits out of your teeth like a hyena. The street was complete with the dirty hyena laughter to which everybody halfway sober seemed to take offense, and you knew that a wrong glance could send a fist or a knife your way and yet with Johnny with them Mr White felt safe. Red was too busy laughing at nothing, his face gleeful and him rocking back on his chairlegs close to turning over as if it was all infectious and the world about him seemed nought but a ribald pantomime, or perhaps he was just high. Johnny said the meat tasted like human and Red laughed and Mr White looked uneasy at first and then laughed too. Johnny smiled and the light from the café’s sign glinted on his teeth so that they looked like little blue knives.
After they ate they walked the streets like lost boys, each quiet, even Red, in their own private reveries of the night. Kidd Red was a slave to the gazes of the women, moving closer to them, staring, smiling, shoulders twitching in silent little chuckles at each new delight. Mr White looked and thought and analysed everything about him, reading faces and movements like words in a book. Johnny Black moved through the world as if he were his own shadow, said nothing, and the coloured lights that glared down upon them cast down on his low pulled hat that kept the top half of his face black and impenetrable, melting it into the rest of the night. He stalked like a panther and smoked in whispers.
Red had halted to chat with an aug outside. She was young with auburn hair and her lipstick was blue and she had no arms. Her figure was a strongly augmented hourglass, and the heavy top and bottom balanced each other out just enough to keep her standing. Mr White could not hear what Red was saying but it was clear they were flirting outrageously and Red was laughing and swaying slightly as if to an invisible breeze. She laid her eyes on his belt and he put a hand on her ass and pulled her in and she said something and he said something and the night erupted in a shrill thunder, a world-trembling foghorn screech that blacked out all other sounds to the tune of red flashes in the sky like blood lightning.
What the fuck was that? Red looked about in alarm, releasing the girl who vanished into the doorway behind her. The siren had ended as quickly as it had come.
You know what it was, Johnny said. Forget it.
Red looked confused for a second, and then his eyes widened. Oh, fuck. That’s what happens? Fuck.
Remember the rules! Mr White hissed.
I know the fuckin rules man. You know how we all respond to rules. We play them like a . . . like a . . . Red gestured impotently . . . And it’s the same damn thing.
He looked back at the now empty doorway and turned back to them, his face comically sad and puppyish for a second, and then he shrugged and it left him.
Where’s Johnny?
Mr White looked around. He was just here. Just here!
Red shrugged again. Ah, fuck him.
Johnny Black had been lost to the shadows, and within ten minutes Mr White had lost Red too, lost to a brothel and two women of opposite ages that wrapped him in their arms and drew him in to their lair. Mr White wandered the street from top to tail and back again and back again, not wanting to return to the hotel on his own, and worried about Red. He was propositioned by women and men, augs and cyberdolls of all ages and ethnicities and genders. He politely turned them all down and some of them he felt gave him a strange look. As though a man of such resistance was no man at all. Something that didn’t belong.
Two hours later of wandering up and down and going in porn shops and out again and in peepshows and out again and eating pizza in a green-lit parlour and just when Mr White was starting to think he had missed Red who had most likely gone home without him he stumbled into him exiting a completely different brothel.
Oh man. Red clapped Mr White on the back and bent double and vomited.
Come on Kidd. Come on.
It took a long time but eventually Mr White managed to steer a tumbling Red home. Or the closest thing to home they had that wasn’t a bar. A home of nocturnal insects and stained dreams.
BAR
They found Johnny Black in the bar the next day. Sat in the same spot. He watched them come to him and he nodded slightly as they sat down next to him. They didn’t know why they came to him. They didn’t think. They just did.
The usual, said Red.
What’s that? said the bartender.
Oh. Rum and mixer. The orange one. That one, yeah. Iceless. No ice.
And for you? The bartender looked at Mr White.
He’ll have the same.
Red gave his card and they swiped it and he signed his scrawl and got cashback and Mr White thanked them both.
Where did you go? asked Mr White nervously, turning to Johnny. Last night, I mean.
Johnny shrugged. Somewhere. He was sipping his whiskey and he was staring at the wood of the bar top.
I bet you got up to some sick shit, said Red. Another grand adventure in psychopath land.
Perhaps.
Red shook his head. I don’t get you man.
Johnny said nothing.
All that talk yesterday, murders and torture and shit. That was just talk?
What do you think.
How the fuck you live with yourself man. That’s just totally fucked. You got no morals?
Coming from you. There’ll be plenty baying when your neck’s on the rope.
I don’t do anythin bad. Not like you. Not like that.
If you say so.
Red rolled his eyes. Yeah I fuckin say so. He turned to Mr White. Why the fuck we here with this guy? But he didn’t stand up. He didn’t move away.
Everything is made up of two things. Things that can’t be done and things that can be done. That’s all there is. Things ain’t wrong just because somebody says so. They’re just things.
; Red took a mouthful of diluted rum and reached for his smokes. What the fuck you talkin about. Course there’s fuckin wrong. Some things are disagreed yeah. But, like torture for no reason? How’d you justify that?
The history of ethics is a history of changing minds. Good or neutral things turned bad. Bad things now accepted. There’s ain’t no definition to any of it. No absolute. There’s nothing to know, just to put forward, to draw back.
Red snorted. What about somethin like, like pedophilia? You sayin that ain’t wrong? Red puffed on his cigarette, looking down at the floor, his boots swinging back and forth on the barstool and kicking the bar.
I’m saying that a crime is the product of its time. And, by extension, the law. Once innocuous things are now called evil. Things once wrong are taken back into the fold. Our law ain’t careful and measured, it’s something cultured in a vat. Sometimes it gets mutated. People only really notice when something’s wrong when there’s a disparity, when the law has stopped fitting the time and grown out malignant and pompous, and there comes a chasm between the two. Then there comes an ugly mood. Justice can’t have independence. There’s gotta be some modernising, no looking back, no conservatism for law if it is to survive – and it’s only lived by the skin of its teeth so far. Times it’s got so big and sprawled, so ungainly and unfitting to the happenings and prevailing moods around it that it has come close to collapse.
Red looked from Johnny to Mr White and raised his brow and then looked back again. And murder?
Ah, murder. The pure amorality.
Immorality, Red corrected, helpfully.
Amorality. Law and order and morality and all that are just fixtures to make things work as we’re told are supposed to. To make people get along. It’s a community thing, there’s nothing right or wrong about it. There’s just what we give them. If God exists then that don’t change nothing, he doesn’t have the authority no matter what anyone says. That kinda authority is impossible once you give another free will. You can’t give a guy a choice but only if he obeys you. If he wanted authority then he’s failed. Why is it his to wield anyway? I didn’t give him it. I don’t acknowledge that kind of command, why should I? Because of a system of reward and punishment? As if the world ain’t already that. How can such a system make anything right or wrong? It makes people selfish and scared. It’s pure self-interest and that’s how we got to this state of affairs. A beautiful morality, that is. No, there’s no moral arbiter. There ain’t nothing but us.