Monstrocity

by Jeffrey Thomas

  MONSTROCITY

  by

  JEFFREY THOMAS

  Cities are the abyss of the human species.

  – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  – For Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  First EBOOK publication by ANARCHY BOOKS 2011

  Copyright © Jeffrey Thomas 2003/2011

  First paperback edition by PRIME 2003

  Jeffrey Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Mobi ISBN: 978-1-908328-11-3

  ePUB ISBN: 978-1-908328-12-0

  PDF ISBN: 978-1-908328-13-7

  DESIGN ARTWORK by Jeffrey Thomas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, now or yet to be invented, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This novel is wholly a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed herein are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, and to events or places, is entirely coincidental.

  PART ONE: GABRIELLE

  IT’S ALL ABOUT time. Time and space.

  2.8 thousandths of a second after I pull the trigger of the shotgun, the clump of pellets have just cleared the end of the barrel, still encased in their plastic cup. People don’t think about the cup, because it breaks up shortly after it leaves the barrel. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. The cup is ahead of the smoke, though, which mushrooms free of the muzzle at last after 3.5 thousandths of a second.

  Let’s jump forward in time a bit: 5.7 thousandths of a second after the hammer drops, the plastic cup breaks apart like I mentioned. 7 thousandths of a second, and the pellets fly on their own; they still hold the cup’s shape for a while, haven’t had a chance to disperse yet. These are small pellets, mind you, not the big double odd. Only nine pellets in double odd. But this will do.

  I’m close to Mr. Dove, so we save some time there. The pellets don’t disperse much before they cover the short distance. I’ve been reading about guns lately – I know some gun trivia now – but I don’t know too much about killing people although this is not my first. Still, at this rate I figure it’s under ten thousandths of a second between squeezing the pump-action’s trigger and watching Mr. Dove’s face ripple and flap and tatter in quick slow-motion, at the center of a big red mist like a summer lawn sprinkler with children jumping in and out of it. Burst water balloon.

  He takes a step back. Catches himself, goes rigid as if he’s tensed up waiting for a second hit. His head is riven jaggedly almost right down the center, and the left side (my left, his right) suddenly sort of drops down onto his shoulder. He takes another step back, as if wary of what I might do next. Not much blood touched his suit before, except for the settling red cloud, but now with him resting half his head on his own shoulder his expensive white shirt front goes crimson in a fast tide. His suit and tie are shiny black, luckily for him, so the blood doesn’t show up as much or soak in. I’ve never owned a suit half that nice, and he’s not even a human.

  I contemplate – in another fraction of a second, though I think the shotgun thinks faster than I do – putting another concentration of pellets into him after all, but then Mr. Dove takes one decisive step toward me, reaches out with both his hands, gurgles sternly from the open top of his throat, and pitches forward. I dance back to avoid the splash. Lucky my new shoes are shiny black.

  My heart is at full gallop, and I’m almost gagging from the nervousness, but not from the blood. I’ve lived my whole life in Punktown, after all – I’ve seen worse than this. But it was never me who did it, that’s the thing. And now I’ve done it twice. He’s not human, but people always have that politically correct dung drilled into their heads (pardon the expression) about humans and nonhumans and humanoids and the not remotely human being equal. I’m a murderer now. As of this moment, a serial killer. Things have been going so fast lately – and I don’t just mean shotgun blasts.

  I’m afraid to get caught – sometimes people report hearing gunfire, if they’re trying to sleep or watch a favorite VT program – so I have to shake myself a little and I squat down over the body, the shotgun resting across my thighs. It has a pistol grip instead of a stock, so when I rise again I’ll slip it back under my poncho-like rain slicker. It’s dark purple, a current fad color, so I don’t stand out, and it has a hood that I’m wearing pulled close around my face. I dart looks all around me, then tug at Mr. Dove’s suit jacket. Rather than roll him over to get at the button, I rip the jacket open, then reach one hand under him, feeling for his lining pocket. His side, through his shirt, is too soft and warm; but it’s like he’s just sleeping, and solid cold would probably be worse. I’m hoping I don’t get blood on my hand.

  I close my fingers around the item I’m seeking. I’m a lethal pickpocket. I killed him for this tiny object. I’m a mugger. I’m trying to prevent the end of all civilization as humans think of it. I’m an assassin. I think I’m losing my mind, and I hope to finish this before I do.

  Back on my feet. It isn’t raining anymore but it’s gray and raw. Shotgun under my slicker, the strap at the end of the pistol grip slung over my shoulder. The object I’ve stolen now stashed in my own pocket. I look down at Mr. Dove, lying on his halved face on the floor of a small octagonal courtyard with brick walls and a cobbled floor. We’re in the oldest part of Paxton, which still bears traces of the vastly smaller Choom town that was here before the Earth people colonized this planet Oasis – like a few teeth that someone built a body around. A pretty enough part of Punktown, as this city is better known. Dove didn’t expect me to kill him, especially not here.

  Last look at my victim. His sundered head has no hair, and its flesh is an almost translucent gray, with squiggles of big black veins under it. His eyes are silver and lidless. He has no nose and his mouth is wide, almost as wide as a native Choom’s, with slick black lips. He has lacy gills on either side of his neck, which are a slightly pinkish color. He’s the best-dressed fish I’ve ever seen. His body should be on a bed of ice behind a glass counter.

  I’ve killed two birds with one load of bird shot: I have the item, plus I killed one of the priests, though I think servant or even slave would be a better title for them. Cultist, crony, zombie. This one wasn’t a human, but the first one was. The first one was harder. Especially because I loved her. I can’t think about that now...

  I could be caught. There are vigilante groups like the Ten Men to help fight back against Punktown’s rampant crime. There are police; we call them forcers. And there are more priests out there...

  I cross the courtyard. There’s an old fountain in its center that doesn’t spew anymore, but there’s a stagnant pool of rain water in it, and trash floats on the surface. I pass close to the rim of its stone basin, and maybe a peripheral movement below the filmed water catches my eye, because I give a little spring forward and toss a look over my shoulder and I see this gray snake flash out of the pool, whipping at me but falling short, then it draws slithering back into the water and disappears, and it wasn’t a snake but an arm, and I’m running now, out the other end of the courtyard. Mr. Dove didn’t come to our little meeting alone after all.

  ***

  IN MY FLAT, I have my wall-length vidtank on before I have my poncho off. It’s unlikely that the murder of Mr. Dove will be on VT this quickly, not guaranteed that it will ever be reported on VT at all due to the sheer numbers of the murdered who compete for that brief stardom. I go to an all news channel, then to a subdirectory and choose The Crime Report. Sub-category: Murders. Then I pick today’s date. Now
, I take off my beaded slicker, drape it across the back of my sofa, rest the pump shotgun across the cushions. “Coffee,” I say, and in the kitchenette I hear the coffee machine reply with a starting hiss/burble.

  Today’s report is dominated by a juicy story about two seven year old girls who killed a classmate they didn’t like behind their school this afternoon during second recess (being too busy during first recess, apparently, swapping vidgame chips with other girls). They stuffed several power cells down this girl’s throat to gag her and then cut her throat with a laser utility knife. I wonder where they got the idea to use the power cells, and I can’t help wondering which size they used – CC or DD? I imagine the cylindrical shape and particular size of DD would work better in this application than the smaller and rectangular CC. In fact, there is a link that appears which offers to take me to an advertisement for InfiniT Power Cells, but I don’t point my clicker at the link. I’m shown a close up of the dead girl’s face. I can’t imagine what might have made the other two girls want to kill her; she isn’t a nonhuman, even has the same long, curly black hair both of them have, except that hers is matted to her face with blood. In the upper right corner of this blankly-gazing close up is a link to an ad for Guzman Hardware, makers of the utility knife with the laser blade. In a box in the upper left is a link to an interview with the killers. I fire my clicker at the miniature faces of the two girls, which then enlarge to fill most of the tank except for the ad banners and weather report ever scrolling across the bottom. The two girls seem composed, and speak in dull voices.

  “What was it about Inez that you hated?” asks an off-screen voice, but there is a link offering to take me to a bio for reporter Paul Pope. I decline. One of the interchangeable girls replies.

  “She stupid,” this sullenly pretty, hard-eyed girl says with a little snap of a shrug.

  “Yeah, she stupid,” says the other seven year old. “Clothes be stupid. She like stupid games.”

  “She don’t like Sexbot or Bloodwhore.”

  “Yeah, but she think she sexier than us. She no sexier than us – she ain’t even like Bloodwhore.”

  “She ain’t ever even sexed, but she think she sexier than us.”

  “She stupid.”

  There is the inevitable link to an article on the dangers of sex and violence in vidgames, and another link to an ad for Bloodwhore 2: Slutty’s Revenge. There’s a bio link for each of the girls; out of curiosity I click on one of them. It lists her birth date, favorite music (a whole column of links to the various artists), her favorite food, vidgames, VT programs and the name of her boyfriend. She has a cat named Slutty.

  There is no news about the murder of Mr. Dove.

  I remember the gray, boneless limb I saw come out of the fountain. Maybe they haven’t found his body at all. Maybe something has taken care of that.

  Gaby’s murder was never on VT, either.

  She was my first victim. And my lover.

  But I think I’ve gotten ahead of myself again, here. I think I should talk about Gaby before I get back to the former Mr. Dove.

  Click on the link to My Past. Sub-category: Gabrielle.

  ***

  GABY WORKED IN a candle store on the second floor of the Canberra Mall, and she always smelled of their soft perfumes, as if her flesh absorbed the scents. Her skin was as white as wax.

  I was shopping for my cousin Amy’s birthday. My cousin has a thing for candles. I have a thing for flesh that looks like no blood runs beneath it. Gaby glowed in the dimness of the store, behind the counter as a pale luminescence. Her pallor was contrasted by her black hair – long, straight, parted in the center – and black garments. These consisted of shiny black gloves that ended half-way up her sensuous plump arms, a low cut dress with thin shoulder straps, and when I got close to the counter with my purchase I saw the skirt was short, and that she wore black nylons that ended at mid-thigh. Big ugly black boots. Her lips were heavy and purple. Her eyes were dark and narrow. Her figure was lush, full as an overripe fruit ready to spoil. She looked like she should be sprawled nude and languid on a divan for a painter of old. Up close, I saw what the low front of her black dress revealed: between plush breasts she had had her chest opened up, and a clear circular window gave one a view of her pulsing heart. This organ, like an animal viewed in an aquarium, had been embroidered with red neon-glowing thread which spelled out: MOM. Gaby had been very close with her mother. When you looked at Gaby upside-down, like when she lay sprawled on our bed naked and languid as if she posed for me, the tattoo on her heart read: WOW.

  Her shiny black fingers brushed mine as I handed her my card. Her bruised-looking lips smiled at me slightly, without parting. “Hmm,” she said, before bagging one of the larger candles, “this one looks about right for me.”

  I congratulated myself on how quickly I was able to join in her play. These skills are not second nature to me. I handed her a package of small tea lamp candles and said, “Here are some that are my size.”

  The purple smile inched a bit wider. She looked more directly at me. But I was disappointed that no further play followed. Had I gone too far? Misinterpreted her meaning? I mumbled a goodbye.

  I was standing in line for a coffee on the first floor when I felt a hand in my jacket pocket. I spun, expecting a pickpocket, and nearly backhanded Gaby across the face with my bag full of candles. She took a precautionary step back and just smiled again. I felt in my pocket, not taking my eyes off her. Something slippery, like a slithering dry membrane. I realized it was a pair of silky panties. They felt black. I was right, of course.

  I bought Gaby a coffee, and the first time we had sex that evening she wore nothing but those shiny black gloves that ended at her upper arms. Black fingers squeezed my own pale rear and she hooked her white legs over the back of mine. I tightly encircled her milky smooth back with both arms. Her pillowy belly and breasts were so soft beneath me that they were almost like flesh half turned to cloud. Her aureoles were very large but so light a pink that they looked more like a flush. When I took her from behind later that night, her smooth rear was spread large and inviting against my belly, a perfection of symmetry. Warm damp sounds of me moving inside her, like the sound of her heart.

  She told me after, as she smoked an herb cigarette with black paper, that in the candle shop she had thought I was good looking in the almost homely way she liked. She hated the artificiality of surgical and genetically engineered beauty, and we were in harmony there. I don’t think she really intended her chest–window as an attractive decoration (though some would find it so), but an ugliness to mar her too-pristine skin, a wound that could never heal. I kissed the window sometimes and she joked that she wanted me to pry out that lens and penetrate her there.

  I was skinny (I prefer wiry) with short dark hair and a tired sort of face with a thin little mouth and a weak chin but my eyes can look mean enough when I’m serious, or crazy-wild enough when I’m excited, I guess, that muggers haven’t jumped me more than a couple times. I suppose I should tell you now, better late than never, that my name is Christopher Ruby, because you’ll hear Gabrielle-whom-I-called-Gaby refer to me as Topher. She had to be contrary, yang to the yin, never called me Chris.

  I was twenty-nine and she was nineteen, but honestly I thought she was in her mid-twenties at least, maybe because of what Oscar Wilde said: “She looks like a woman with a past. Most pretty women do.”

  We had sex every day, at first. We both took a day off from work, once, because we didn’t want to leave bed. She had no muscle tone, but no cellulite, and I still ache for her lovely indulged body, that I have pierced in love and pierced in murder.

  In bed on that day we stayed home, one of her moist legs draped heavily over mine, Gabrielle said to me, “Topher, did you know that someone once told me that if you burn a candle in every corner of a room with eight corners, you can summon a devil?”

  “That’s nice,” I said. I was using her purple lipstick to paint her nipples.

  “
Your room here has eight corners, I just realized.”

  I glanced around me. “The room is square.”

  “Der.” She pointed to my bay window: two narrow windows on either side of a larger one. It looked down onto the side street on which my tenement house faced. My flat was on the second floor. “Count the corners in the bay window. That makes eight corners. Something about angles and corners makes it so you can conjure a demon.”

  “I’ve already conjured a demon,” I said, rubbing her leg.

  “If you do it right, the demon will obey your commands. My friend Maria said she got one to materialize for a few seconds. She’s the one who told me.”

  “Isn’t your friend Maria the one you said they found with her head cut off and missing?”

  “They think that was a drug related thing.”

  “Isn’t this like that dung where you have to walk downstairs backwards while looking in a hand mirror and when you get to the bottom you say something like, ‘Show me a ghost’, or something like that?”

  Gaby propped herself up on one elbow with interest. “Did you ever do that?”

  “No! It’s an urban legend kind of thing. Something kids tell each other to scare themselves.”

  “Maria was very much into the supernatural, Topher, and the supernatural is just the natural that scientists haven’t legitimized yet.”

  I connected both her nipples with a line of purple lipstick, in the center outlining the circular pane in her chest. I then connected up a line which ran down her torso and ended at the squint of her navel. From there, I traced a new line to the edge of her pubic hair, kicking off our blanket to do so. She went on talking like she only half noticed what I was doing.

  “You know there are other dimensions – beings from a half-dozen other dimensions live right here in town. So we don’t know how many dimensions there could be, right? So we don’t know if ghosts are remnants of our energy that live on another plane, or if demons are actual creatures that exist in a dimension that ignorant people just call hell.”