Conscience

by John Skipp

  “RELAX YOUR SOUL!” it encourages me.

  I wish that I knew how.

  And it’s not like I can’t afford it. And it’s not like I don’t have time. And it’s not like it wouldn’t do me good, in so many ways that I can’t even count. My muscles are screaming with panic and stress, not to mention good old alcohol saturation. From my chest to my back to my feet to my brain, I can’t even tell you how many places I hurt.

  It would be so good to just set down my bags, place myself in the hands of a lovely technician. Let her work her magic, read my knots like Braille, release all the toxins from the clusters I’vebuilt.

  I try to imagine not hurting like this. I try to imagine being free of this pain.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” you say.

  Your reflection is directly behind me.

  I whirl, and you take a couple dancing steps back. “Seriously,” you say. “Why not give it a whirl?”

  “WOULD YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?” I can’t believe how loud I say it. Looking around, I realize I’ve been heard. People look at me, but they don’t look at you.

  I remember I’ve gone crazy.

  They can’t see you at all.

  The result is confusion. I fight back with rage. It’s a clarifying emotion, the strongest one I have left.

  It’s all I can do not to blow your fucking brains out.

  “It’s a thought,” you say. “I mean, it won’t get you what you want, but it sure will get you what you don’t. You really want what you don’t want?”

  I step toward you. You dance back.

  And I am afraid to talk out loud – already, I’ve attracted way too much attention – and the notion of gunning down random pedestrians does not strike me as a very sound plan.

  “A massage would be better,” you suggest; but it’s already out of the question. The mere fact that you suggest it is all of the reason I need.

  “Let’s take a little walk, then,” you say. “Maybe think about where all this is heading.”

  The inner ring of the third floor mezzanine is, in fact, a jogging track. It’s a pale army green, with a yellow stripe bisecting it. Evidently, the third floor is all about health, banistered polyps notwithstanding.

  As it turns out, these dangling pods come equipped, alternating between big comfy couches and shiny exercise machines. So one can jog for a while, then lift some weights, then jog some more, then stretch out on the couch, then jog some more, then do some crunches. Total fitness, the LOGAN’S RUN way.

  You are totally unencumbered. I have all of my baggage in tow. If I just let it drop, I could catch you easily. But I can’t.

  You remain just out of reach.

  We begin to go ’round the circle: you dancing backwards, me trying to catch up. There is no one else on the jogging track with us. “Slow down,” I say.

  “My ass!” And you laugh. Around us, the science fiction world spins. The future, as it already is. “You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to think. You just wanna kick my ass.”

  I smile grimly. “Aw, you know me too well."

  "I am you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “See, I don’t call that thinking.” Forever twelve steps ahead. Or maybe thirteen, to tie the ghostly vibe in. “You were doing way better down at the bar.”

  “That’s cuz you weren’t around.”

  “I’m always around. You just couldn’t see me."

  "I don’t ever wanna see you again.”

  “Well, I can’t help you out with that, but...” A thoughtful expression crosses your face; and your eyes, so full of soul, take on a sudden tragic clarity. “I know, I know. Fuck it. Let’s just get it over with.”

  And before I can puzzle out what that means, you turn away from me, start heading for the nearest exit: breaking the circle at the catwalk that leads toward the Catalina Room.

  I follow; and strangely – with every step – my bags just seem to get heavier and heavier. It occurs to me that I am getting tired, understand at once that it’s all part of your plan.

  The realization stokes my bottomless fury, feeds my fierce determination to remove you from my life.

  Let’s just get this over with.

  For once, we completely agree.

  The lobby to the Catalina Room takes up one entire half of the third floor. It is plush and luxuriant, used for swanky affairs.

  The crocodile tiles give way to a sprawling carpet: curiously quaint, given the ultra-modernist setting. The fact that it has faded slightly, over the years, just makes it more anachronistic. It looks like a super-fine variation on something my Grampa might have had in his den.

  The pattern itself – repeated, unto infinity – is of a four- leaf clover-like flower, encircled like a crest. The colors are muted – brown, green, gold, white – and at the center of each flower is another, smaller flower.

  I notice all this helplessly, as I follow you in. The curse of awareness: irrelevant, yet here. Once upon it, our footsteps make no sound.

  And nobody else is there.

  The Catalina Room itself is closed, but that’s not where you’re heading. You do not tarry by the faux-Picassos, don’t walk straight through the closed doors like a special effect.

  Instead, you head for the doorway clearly marked with a picture of a man, and then a picture of a phone.

  So the question becomes: who the fuck would you be calling? God? Or do hallucinations pee? (To which the answer comes: why not? They take showers...)

  You disappear inside the doorway, and all my hackles rise. If you were anybody else, I would anticipate an ambush. If you were anybody else, I’d drop my bags and pull my gun.

  As it is, I step inside the doorway. You are standing there in the kiosk, facing me, arms spread wide. There are no weapons in your hands. You have no weapons at all. It is clear in your gaze, which is leveled upon me: direct, malice-free, and profoundly forlorn.

  “Okay,” you say. “You wanna jack me up? Do it."

  "You won’t like it.”

  “I know.”

  I set down my bags. My shoulders ache, and I roll them dramatically, listen to the audible pop of old bones.

  “Ouch,” you say, with the saddest of smiles. Your sympathy makes me see red.

  “Don’t you feel sorry for me!” I hiss, striding forward. You do not back away, and my world goes even redder. “You smug cocksucker. I will beat you to death...”

  “Well, you’ll certainly try...”

  I laugh, a harsh and ugly bark. “What? You think you’re gonna STOP me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “‘Of course not!’” I mimic you, twice as loud. By now, I am close enough to hit you. I grab you by the collar instead. “Bitch! I would love to see you try!”

  With that, I drag you close: and all the while, I am staring into your eyes. Awaiting the fear, or the bristling anger. Searching hard for some human response.

  Instead, you just shake your head and smile.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” you say...

  The next red I see is yours.

  It flies out of your nose, as my fist slams in. You fall back, but I hang on to your collar: propping you up, as I bash you again.

  This time, it’s all about your mouth: your fucking mouth, no longer smiling, an oval full of teeth that snap and bleed as I pound them down your throat.

  “COME ON!” I scream. “COME ON, YOU PUSSY!” Spittle flying, as I hammer you again, this time right between the eyes, the eyes that helplessly roll with pain...

  ...then stare right back into my soul...

  ...and I cannot stand those eyes. Your eyes. So much like mine. Only better. No confusion there, at all. No anger. Just strength, and astonishing love.

  “FIGHT ME!” I howl. “FIGHT ME, GOD DAMN IT!”

  In response, you spit blood and teeth in my face. But you will not raise a hand.

  And that is all that I can stand. I cannot take this any more. I can’t take your eyes, seeing me this d
eeply.

  I punch the left one so hard that it squirts like a grape.

  And now I’m making a noise that no human should make. Should ever, ever have to make. It erupts straight from my bowels to my throat: a spritzing shit of sonic despair, directly from my heart to you.

  I let go of your collar. You collapse to the floor.

  Flowers within flowers.

  And blood all over.

  And I want your other eye to die, but my dread is so huge that it staggers me back. I am covered with blood. There are teeth in my hair.

  It is time for me to go.

  So I do, leaving you shattered on the floor. I think I should feel good. But I really, really don’t.

  I feel you watch me grab my baggage, on my way out the door.

  It is the worst feeling that I have ever had.

  SEVENTEEN

  And now I am walking away from the Catalina Room. With my bags in hand. And my mission before me.

  There is no more time to discuss this issue. I look at my watch.

  Seven hours have passed.

  I blink, look again. It is eight o’clock. This is flat-out impossible, but right there it is. I look up, through the black spokes in the glass ceiling, and see that night has fallen.

  I should be there by now.

  “Sonofabitch!” I say out loud, to no one in particular. Or maybe I’m saying it to you. If this is the truth, you have fucked me up bad. Maybe even worse than I fucked you...

  ...because, if Mort’s spies are correct, the women should be starting their ritual now. Their little “Prayer for Peace”. They will all be together, in the nice little Hollywood Hills bungalow that Liam has provided for his harem. Keeping them near. Keeping them hidden. Keeping them under his control.

  Right now, the incense is burning. The candles are lit. Whatever hoodoo they do is already underway. When I close my eyes, I catch a glimpse of them kneeling, invoking their bogus light. “Adding their energy” to this force that sweeps the world. Devoting themselves to the Change.

  This is the moment I was hired to walk in on. This is the moment that I want to destroy. This is the moment for foreheads exploding, hot-to-trot Liam groupies dying left and fucking right.

  And I’m not going to make it. That much is very clear. If I’m lucky, I will catch them at the end.

  But only if I move very quickly.

  It is hard to keep from running, but walking fast is the best I can do. I do not want to be stopped. Not now. Not here.

  My God, but my baggage is heavy.

  I am covered with blood, but I’m sure no one can see it. There are teeth in my hair, but no one will ever know. The subway is only five blocks away. At this hour, they are still running at roughly fifteen minute intervals. That ’57 Chevy – as cool as it was – could not possibly get me there faster.

  I can still make it in time. And belief is the bedrock. If I say I can do it, I know that I can.

  It is the thing that has kept me alive, through all of my horrible challenges. It is the thing that has allowed me to perform like a monster leviathan, for over twenty years. It is the thing that has kept me invisible, invincible, calmly sliding through the cracks.

  These are the things that I completely believe.

  Until the blonde woman starts to scream.

  She is a wound-tight executive woman, with the kind of face that reeks of compromise and loss. Ruthless enough to play the game. Not smart, hot, or cunning enough to win. She’s the kind of woman who has mid-leveled herself to a hard-won place that she could lose at any second.

  Beside her is her twin, who is almost identical. Except her twin is not screaming.

  Only shaking her head.

  But the fact is that both of them see me. See me for who I really am. Their eyes are as weighty as yours.

  And my baggage is so heavy.

  God, I want to let it go.

  But the woman is screaming, and my time is running out.

  I heft my bags, and start to run as best I can.

  At this point, my choices are simple. I can exit through the lobby, or take the bridge off the sixth floor. The lobby is way closer to the subway. The sixth floor is more sparsely occupied.

  “SHUT UP!” I scream – my contribution to stupidity – and then start racing up the stairs.

  The fourth floor food court is almost empty. I lumber past it like a dream. The staircase keeps spiraling upwards. My heart hammers against my lungs.

  I pass a Japanese businessman on the stairs. He nods at me, compassionate, like he’s seen this before. The understanding in his almond eyes is so huge that my stomach convulses, and I puke all over the tiles.

  “Just listen,” he says, as he touches my shoulder. I respond with a fount of Burger King and stomach acid.

  It is tempting to curl up in a ball, give up, acknowledge my failure. It is equally tempting to punch his goddam lights out, right here and now.

  Instead, I keep running again. Pushing past it, as I always have. Disregarding all contrary information. Leaving his wise eyes to focus on my back.

  On the fifth floor of the Hotel Bonaventure, the first thing I notice is a place called Flowers Travel. It suggests a wide world of possibilities. Not a single one of them mine.

  If I were not myself, I could be in Barcelona. Jamaica. Hong Kong. Anywhere but here. I could disappear, once again and forever. I could be anyone.

  I have thirty thousand dollars and change in my pocket. It’s not much, but it could go a long way. The bulk of the world is dying of starvation; and there are many, many places where I could live like a king.

  As I round the staircase, forcing myself on, I find myself thinking about Mort and Israel. Is that what he’s doing? Making a run for safety? Is his shit just about to hit the fan?

  Or is he looking for something: perhaps, a life with any meaning whatsoever? Some way to wipe the awful slate clean? Some way to justify ever having been born? I think about our last conversation – the whole stupid classic rock thing – and it yanks on me in ways that I entirely don’t expect.

  Suddenly, Pink Floyd is playing in my head. Not “Dogs” – as I requested – but “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond”. Not the song about corruption’s downward spiral – and the inevitability of doom it implies – but the one that cries out for the spirit to triumph.

  The song that remembers what’s been lost.

  At the time, I thought Mort was just fucking with me. Just being a dick, as usual.

  Now I wonder if Mort even knows what he was saying to me yesterday: how much of it was conscious, and how much of it was conscience, unconsciously leaking in.

  I think about the yarmulka he always sports, and how hypocritical it always seemed. Such a bullshit gesture of piety: like a pederast in a priest’s collar, or burning a cross on a black man’s lawn, or flying a plane into a building in the name of Allah. As if a tip of the hat from God is gonna make it all okay.

  I hate bullshit more than anything else. That much has always been clear. I hate seeing the truth misrepresented.

  The truth is all I have.

  Does even Mort have a soul? That’s the question I’m asking.

  Because – if he does – maybe I’m not just crazy.

  Maybe I have one, too.

  My bags are still heavy, as I reach the sixth floor. But they seem strangely lighter.

  Or maybe I do.

  The sixth floor is entirely dominated by Japanese restaurants. Shabu Shabu. Teppan Steak House. The Tatami Room.

  There is a man, curled up in the hallway, sobbing his eyes out. I recognize him at once. A corrupt businessman, with almond eyes streaming.

  “He’s coming,” I say, and walk past.

  I am amazed by how quickly the next minutes go. It’s a weird kind of zen, as I relax behind my fate. I am still moving quickly, but without the same pressure.

  I am making a decision.

  It is making sense to me.

  I am thinking about Liam Pathe. About the difference between what
he says and what he does. In theory, he’s a beacon of hope for us all. In practice, he’s a lying, womanizing, cult-building, manipulative, smarmy, ass-sucking piece of shit, with God knows how many abominations strewn behind him.

  Which one is truer? The image or the message? The vision in his heart, or the behavior in his life?

  If I know one thing about anything, it’s that it’s really fucking hard to live up to your ideals.

  Once upon a time, I did not hate them.

  Once upon a time, they seemed worth dying for.

  Once upon a time, I loved a beautiful woman.

  I do not want to kill her any more.

  Roughly a block from the station, I stop, and set down my bags.

  For me, it is a profound moment. I am letting them go. I am not looking back.

  Amongst the contents of the baggage I abandon is the mask that I was going to wear. Your basic ski mask – knitted black upon black – concealing my features, as I wasted those women.

  I am also leaving behind several changes of clothing, which would be very useful in my escape from L.A.

  There are a number of weapons in there, many of which have nostalgia involved. Most memorable is the box-cutter with which I slit my brother’s throat. It worked really well. I have long considered it my lucky throat-slitter, and have used it since, many dozens of times.

  And then, of course, there is my solitaire deck.

  Like a smoker who’s quitting, I want to play them one more time. Like a gambler, I want them to probe my luck. Read my fortune. As if that ever worked.

  Here, on the sidewalk, I say goodbye to them at last.

  The Seventh St./Metro station is one of the blandest ones around. This is where chrome and dinginess collide. The real future, for most everyone involved.

  I travel two stories down to the Red Line, with only occasional screams.

  I am not alone, in the fucked-up sweepstakes.

  I see twins, almost everywhere I look.

  I don’t know what they’ve done. I am sure I’ll never know. The sins of the world are so rich, and so varied, and so unbelievably personal in nature.