Conscience

by John Skipp

  He hits the same carpet a second later. I aim the barrel at his face. His high creeching animal noises cut off abruptly, leaving only a harsh quick hyperventilating sound.

  “Who’s here?” I ask him, and his eyes fill with terror: the kind that says I’m all alone . Poor Davey boy. He doesn’t even know, quite yet, how alone with me he is.

  “Well, good,” I say. “Now, I need your car. Where’s it parked? Out back?”

  He mewls and nods, spits out a wad of blood and tooth, reaching strangely for a pocket that he doesn’t even have.

  And I respect the fact that he’s really in pain, so I try not to laugh, but it doesn’t work.

  His eyes squeeze shut, as I helplessly cackle. And I know exactly how he feels.

  So I drop to a crouch before him, taking my own kind of pity. And he hears me or feels me, because his eyes squeeze shut harder.

  He doesn’t want to know what is just about to happen. I really don’t blame him. At least not for that.

  But then I think about someone I used to love, and the anger boils back, and the sympathy is gone. “Let me see your fucking wrist,” I say; and when he hesitates, I go demonic. “LET ME SEE YOUR FUCKING WRIST!”

  Now his arms are waggling in front of his face, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. They are saying, look! I’m showing you my wrists! They are saying, please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me! Over and over.

  He squeals when I grab his right hand with my left, yank it sideways, examine the smooth underskin. He has no idea what I’m doing. But his blue eyes yank open, as if to see what I see.

  And the cold settles in, as I stare at his flesh. “Look at that,” I mutter. “There’s not even a scar.”

  Then I stand, letting go, letting him thud back on the floor. I hover over him like death. Like the death that I am. If there were any joy left in me, I would say that I am enjoying this. But it’s not joy.

  It is purpose, fulfilled.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” I tell him. “But I sure remember you. David Marcus. Baseball bully. Euclid St. Am I ringin’ a bell?”

  He groans, tries to speak, but his mouth doesn’t work. There’s a question mark inside him, reconfiguring his spine.

  “Remember Donald Cobb? About three years ago, he got shot in his car. Ever wonder about that? Ever wonder why that happened?”

  Now his wet eyes glaze with memory, tilting up and to the left. It’s as if I have suddenly become less real, as the past sifts back into his consciousness.

  I allow this. “Nice job. Nice wife. Nice life. Way fucking better off than you are.” I shrug. “Couldn’t stand it.”

  Now he will not look at me. His eyes are searching some inner continuum. The tears are still streaming, but they’re almost superfluous. He is peeling back the layers upon layers of his life.

  “German shepherds,” I say. And that’s when it hits him.

  And he looks up at me, with jolting total recognition. As if to say, oh, jesus christ, you must be joking...!

  But I’m not.

  I give him a second to soak it all up.

  It is the longest second that he will ever know.

  Then I blow his nose through the back of his skull, watch his eyes scroll down as his head staves in.

  Welcome to the future, motherfucker.

  The Middle East ain’t got nothin’ on me.

  FOUR

  Thirty minutes later, I have showered and shaved, and absorbed all the Dave memorabilia I can stand. What a shallow little person. What an empire built on shit.

  So, Dave: you wanted to be a star? Join the club! Who fucking doesn’t? This city is crawling with people like that – wannabe big-shots with nothing to offer – all jostling for position at the meat-grinder’s gate, demanding to be next in line for the slaughter.

  There was a time when I felt sorry for people. Admired their endless struggles, and cared about their dreams.

  I can’t even tell you how long gone that is; and looking at Dave’s shit, it is goner than ever. How many pictures can you have taken of yourself? How many goddam pictures do you need? I swear to God, this guy had pictures of his nipples on his wall. Just his nipples! Like he was a nipple model. Like his nipples were a model upon which to base our culture. Like his nipples were some fucking work of art.

  “If you were lucky, you’d have nipples like mine!” I shout at the walls of the dead man’s bedroom. Looking up, I see myself in the mirrored ceiling. Laying on his bed, staring up at myself, it’s too easy to imagine the nonsense that prevailed here. All the wannabe starlets, and squat casting agents, and producers whose blunt dicks Dave once nibbled upon.

  I am drowsy – coming down from the adrenaline killthrill – and I am also slightly horny. But masturbating would be stupider than taking a nap. All I need is to leave a semen sample. (Although – based on the cleanliness of these sheets – I’d be one secretion out of a thousand.)

  All at once, the thought icks me out, and I stand abruptly. But not before noting my own body, myself. I am a middle-aged man, and my belly is thick, and my limbs are strong but forever spindly. I look like a malformed, truncated spider. And I don’t like the look in my eyes.

  So I dress myself quickly, and pocket the car keys I found in Dave’s discarded trouser pocket. It is, I remember with a grin, the pocket he thought he was reaching for: the one that didn’t exist on his rancid pajamas.

  I sustain that little chuckle, on my way out the door of his stupid little house. And leave him rotting on the floor.

  Dave’s car is a weathered Ford Taurus. I am unsurprised to find that it is low on gas. There wasn’t much in his wallet, either. Fucking loser. He came. He tried. He failed.

  There’s a gas station on the corner of Franklin and Western. The counter guy laughs when I pop one dollar’s worth into the tank. He just thinks I’m a loser, and he doesn’t know the half of it. But I don’t plan on driving real far.

  Fifteen minutes of L.A. traffic later, I am rolling into Burbank. (You bet your sweet bippy, and all of that.) Twelve blocks from my destination, I find non-permit parking and say goodbye to the car forever. Then I stroll down Hollywood Way, which is substantially less glamorous than it sounds.

  I stash my bags – but not the gun – behind the dumpsters out back of the old Cast & Crew building. Then I walk just a couple more blocks, steeling myself for the actual encounter at hand.

  Dave was just a pre-game warm-up. A little unfinished business.

  Now we cut to the chase.

  FIVE

  The offices of Zero P Tech Corporation are housed in a hunkered-down cinderblock shitbox: a maximum security hole in the wall, one block off of Burbank Blvd. It’s got half as many windows as your average Masonic temple; which is to say that it has fewer than none.

  But there are cameras in the parking lot, to watch me as I enter. Another for the close-up, when I buzz at the front door.

  I flip the bird toward the glassy eyeball lens, after thirty seconds of just standing there like a dork.

  “Fuck you, Chuck!” says the harsh metallic voice through the grate, and then the door buzzes me in.

  The guard at the door is no clipboard sissy, no lazy bloated Geritol rent-a-wreck. His name is Reggie, and he could snap you like a wishbone: three hundred pounds of muscle, with fifty left over for bones and fat.

  Reggie is even less friendly than I am. When he says fuck you, he’s not being my pal. I don’t like him, either – there’s nothing to like – and I guess that he feels the same way about me.

  But we respect each other, the way predators do. Always waiting for an opening, and nodding as we pass.

  “Mort’s waitin’ on yo’ ass,” he says.

  “I think that’s why I’m here.” I reach the door to the inner sanctum, tug. Still locked. I sigh, tug again. “Reggie, be a good bitch.”

  He would drag it out longer, but the watchful eye’s upon him. So, reluctantly, he hits the little button at last.

  As the lock g
oes click, I step inside, and blow Reggie a little kiss off my fingertips. Then I wipe them across my ass.

  And enter the corridor of the damned.

  It’s been almost two years since the last time I had to be here. In that time, it would appear that very little has changed.

  The first door, on my left, opens up to the office of Caspar, the Friendly Accountant. He is on the phone – grimacing, covered with sweat – as always. He doesn’t even look up as I pass.

  To the right is the legal department. The door is shut, but I can hear someone yelling.

  Next is Operations, where the bulk of the shit goes down. Call it extortion. Call it salesmanship. Call it the public’s right to know. Call it whatever you want, but call back fast if you want to keep your sphincter out of the tabloids, baby. Because these are the fuckers that broker transgressions, make or break reputations based on moneys paid out.

  Zero P is the name of the business. Zero Privacy’s the name of the game. Zero Peace, once their eye’s locked upon you. Zero Popularity, if you don’t meet their price.

  Enemies of Mort – of whom there are many – might prefer “Zero Penis” or “Zero Personality”. With a name like that, you’re just askin’ for it (my personal favorite is “Zero Pertinence”).

  But god help you if they catch you with a dick up your ass, or with a body in your closet. God have mercy on your soul if you’re a public figure with any kind of personal, private shame.

  These people are every bit as hard as me. Maybe harder, because they use their own names, answering the phone when celebrities scream at them in panic. They actually hand out business cards – I have seen this, in person – to the people they are hanging out to dry.

  I try to imagine my business card:

  CHARLEY WEBER

  Will Kill You For Money.

  Or Just If You Piss Me Off.

  Forget it. Way more balls than me.

  I keep walking down the hall, passing the cafeteria now. There’s some microwave action, and a couple of people talking. They are discussing a movie I’ve never seen. One loved it. One hated it. So what.

  If the star had a she-male for breakfast, the kind folks at Zero P would be nailing them to the wall.

  My favorite room is coming right up, on the left. Directly across from the Men’s and Ladies’. I peek inside, to see if my man Zachariah is working.

  He is.

  I am happy and sad.

  Now picture this:

  You are staring through the doorway, into a very long room. The room is dominated by two gigantic metal racks, each one maybe a hundred feet long. They jut out, symmetrically, in a giant v-shape, so that the back of the room is the vanishing point; and as you enter, you are at the widest point, funneling in as you proceed.

  There are three sets of shelves on each of these racks.

  These shelves are lined with glowing TV screens: maybe twenty per shelf, slightly more than a hundred in all. The low shelves are slung at ankle-level. The high shelves are slightly above your head.

  You are enveloped by these walls of imagery.

  And every single one of them is showing something different: a unique piece of video footage – be it on VHS, digital, beta, or what-have-you – and each is attached to its own little setup of tape recording and playback devices.

  So basically what’s happening is this:

  On every one of those fucking screens, some sort of indecency is playing out: a stolen moment, either produced with intent or acquired somehow by the fine folks at Zero P. Some from planted spy-cams. Some from pilfered home movies. Some from freelance paparazzi stalkers. Some by sheerest happenstance.

  Whatever the source, it is now being dubbed onto an audio cassette. With time code, that tracks the footage second for second, distilling it down to the sound alone.

  This will be useful to the transcribers, who will then type it all out: word-for-word, and second-for-second, at a minimum of 85 words-per-minute.

  Most of what’s showing on these hundred-some screens is nothing but wide shots of talking heads, verbal foreplay leading up to the money shots.

  But then – in one screen out of maybe forty –- is the actual money shot itself.

  Somebody nekkid. Somebody fucking. Somebody doing some other intimate, questionable thing, ranging from an awkward kiss to a giddy bong hit to a savage beating to something unimaginably worse.

  More than 80% of these people are complete unknowns, at least so far as I can tell.

  But every so often, a famous – or at least familiar – personage will pop up.

  And I’ll go, holy shit, I hated her sitcom. But she’s begging this clown to stick WHAT up her ass?

  Or I always KNEW that guy was an asshole! But did you hear that ignorant cornpone racist shit?

  Or oh, no, he’s a genuine talent, I don’t want to see his collapsed vein squirt all over a hotel room in Encino. Fuck...!

  And so it goes.

  In the dubbing room, you just never know what you’ll get. Because this is where the evidence converges: like a flume, sifting the scum for minutia. Catching every little speck of detail, precisely.

  This is where the forensic pathology of scandal takes place, in its highest and lowest forms.

  At the center of this kaleidoscope of filth, there is a fairly large worktable. There are stacks of tapes, still waiting to be dubbed, adorning its wooden surface. There are other stacks of tapes – freshly-dubbed audio for the video versions, coherently labeled and rubber-banded together – now ready for the next step in the process.

  There is also a good bit of paperwork to fill out, so that each job remains distinct from the next. So that nobody gets the cases confused. So that things run very smoothly.

  Zachariah is the man looming over that worktable, taking care of the paperwork now. He is a scrawny balding little bastard, but the desk is low – built to his five foot four scale – so he can loom without having to back it up with bulk.

  He is – to my eyes – the Man Who Fell to Earth.

  I enter the room, observe in silence. A noted talk-show host is actually stabbing someone in the eye. A prostitute, I gather – she doesn’t look like a civilian – as viewed from the desktop of an upscale hotel room.

  And as jaded as I am, I do not like how she dies. I do not like the noted talk-show host who is doing this horrible thing. I do not like the unflinching eye-witness shot of her life flowing out, or the horror her mouth excretes as she passes. Unheard, but still felt. With the volume turned all the way down.

  In fact – as I draw nearer – there is only one audible voice in the room. I scope out the banks of video monitors, trying to discern which one it is, still shaking off the snuff film I have just unhappily seen.

  I’m amazed that it takes so long to recognize.

  I’ve only loved her all my life.

  SIX

  But there she is, at the far end of the v. In the very last screen, on the upper right-hand side. Looking twenty-some years older, but unmistakably like herself. Vivacious. Garrulous. Beautiful. Crazy.

  Angela.

  “Just kill me,” I say...

  ...and my mind floats back to a different life, in a different time, with a different Charley Weber. And the taste of her is still fresh on my tongue. And my knowledge of her is huge...

  ...and I still remember crying with her, that last night...

  ...back when it was easy...

  ...back before I crossed the line...

  ...and that’s when Zachariah looks up from his paperwork – eyes gleaming in the phosphor-light – and smiles, just like he always does...

  Saying, “Hey, Charley...!”

  And then I am back in the now.

  “Zachariah,” I say; and before I can flinch, he is wrapping me up in his skeletal hug. What he lacks in bulk, he makes up for in warmth.

  He is one of the only people I still genuinely like.

  “How the fuck are you?” he asks, and means it.

  “Dangerously insane..
.”

  “Yeah. But other than that...?”

  “I’m still here.” Looking over his shoulder, at Angela.

  “Me, too!” he exclaims, squeezing hard. “How ’bout that?” I incongruously laugh, and hug him back.

  Then he pulls back and checks me out: not sizing me up, not dressing me down. His eyes assess me without judgment; and, as always, I am stunned by how completely rare that is.

  He sees me the way that I would like to see myself.

  As if on cue, Angela vanishes from the screen.

  “Interesting shit,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This whole cozmic convergence."

  "It’s all bullshit.”

  “Probably. But I still kinda like it."

  "Well, I hate it.”

  “That’s your job.”

  “That’s my mission in life.”

  “And you’re doing it up. Who can argue with that?"

  "Lots of people.”

  “Well, guess what. That’s their mission in life."

  "Motherfuckers.”

  “Monkey see, monkey do."

  "Monkey seen way too much.”

  “Fuckin’join the monkey club!” He laughs, gestures toward the hundred screens. “Another day, another dozen atrocities. And that’s just the shit that shows up on my desk.”

  “I just don’t get how you stand it.” I am utterly sincere, as I say this thing. “Being the kind of guy you are.”

  Zachariah sighs, his eyes tilting skyward, a little elf grin on his face.

  “I don’t know. I guess I was born to bear witness. I just always wanted to know what was really going on.”

  “And now you do.”

  “And now I do.” Clear-eyed and sane. Maybe saner than anybody else I know. “I know what people are capable of. All the way down to the bottom. All the way up to the top.”

  I laugh. “Where the fuck does the top come in?”