The bartender put a candle on the bar in front of us and turned away. The wax was soft and brown and clearly a product of the meatbin. Feral fat. Memory of meat. My mouth watered.
I stuffed the tobacco into the pipe and tilted it over the candle. A few rogue scraps of tobacco fell into the wax. I took a few shallow puffs and the pipe started to glow nicely.
“I’m a city kid. I drink shine and I eat blues. I rent myself out to pass the time.”
A cloud of smoke hung in the air in front of us. I turned to the trader. He was smoking from a glass pipe. It seemed to light up with every puff.
“You know something I don’t. I’m asking you from one animal to another. The blues won’t keep me going forever. And I know it’s meaningless if I continue moving or if I don’t. But I’d prefer to. So…”
The slave’s face had relaxed and his skin had lost the sheen of sweat. His fingers rested against the jar of shine and he held down his wad of tobacco with one finger. He looked pink and healthy and alive.
“Whatever you do for your boy here… whatever you’ve done to keep him soft like this... I will trade you anything I have to get some of it.”
Silence. The trader blew a lungful of smoke and put his thumb over the ember. I waited. The slave turned his eyes to me. They had no trace of recognition. He smiled an empty smile and turned to his trader.
The blue was foaming against my split lip. I took a sip of shine and swallowed what was left of it.
The trader turned to his comrades and muttered something. I didn’t catch the words but the tone felt malicious. My heart beat hard and I clenched my fists against the bar. The bouncers were crowded at the door - messing with a decrepit old feral who was trying to escape from the tar. He was barely more than a skeleton with a veined potbelly and two yellow eyes without pupils.
The bar was crowded. It would take them fifteen seconds to get to me at the least. In that time I could have the shiv through his eye socket and put the tyre iron to two of his friends. I would leave the slave alone.
The trader turned back to the bar - his friends circled around us. The bartender whistled and the bouncers moved in. The doorman threw the old feral out into the alley and gave him a warning stare.
I looked around. The group didn’t seem hostile. They were smiling and chattering in a tone I couldn’t understand. They passed a few jars of shine between them and shared a pipe of black tobacco.
The trader cleared his throat and slid a jar toward me. A hand shot out and pulled the slave away from the bar, back into the crowd.
The jar was sealed with a metal lid with holes punched through it. It was filled with a cloudy brown liquid that swirled behind the glass.
“What is this?”
I looked around the group. They watched eagerly, all black-stained faces and sharp, fractured smiles.
I put my hand to the jar and it jolted against my palm, jumping and thudding back against the wood.
I tore my hand away and jumped back from the bar.
“Holy christ!”
The brown clouds condensed instantly into a tiny ball of tendrils, slivers of blue - writhing against the glass, grasping at every place that had been touched by my skin.
The trader broke into a resonant, alien laughter - all gravel and oil. The crowd followed suit, a humiliating rumble of underused vocal cords.
I reached for the shiv but the trader caught my arm with a heavy hand. His grip was strong and the skin was rough and hard like concrete.
“No. Drink it. He did.”
He gestured to the slave and pushed the jar toward me with two fingers. The tendrils hugged his fingertips through the glass.
I looked around the group. All traders and slaves, a few ferals on the outskirts but nobody I knew to look at. I hadn’t done anything to these people. Not yet, anyway. I weighed up the situation in my head.
The slave had recovered from a brutal blow to the face and now looked better than he did when we started.
I had two critical wounds through my gut and had taken a broken jar through the small of my back and it was starting to burn.
My skin smelled vaguely like rot.
I had sized-up Muscles and he was strong and angry and so puffed up with blue meat that it would take fifteen minutes of digging just to reach his spine. Junior was rolling around the streets with a pistol and Insect had fast hands and those nasty pipes.
And Jesus. I had no idea what he was capable of now. He’d sucker-punched me back in the old city. I was a certified killer now. But the memory of his face as he brained me with the tyre iron was burnt into my brain.
I couldn’t let them get to me again. I had to draw a line.
“Goddamnit.”
I looked at the trader and gestured to the jar.
“Unscrew the cap, drink it, swallow that thing?”
He nodded - his jagged smile twitched.
I took a sip of shine and slapped myself in the face. The trader started to beat his fist against the bar. The crowd began to stomp. I raised my fists in the air and turned to give them a wide, cocky smile.
The bartender refilled my shine and stepped back, one hand underneath the bar - stroking the unseen scattergun. I twisted the cap off the jar and the blue mass flattened itself against the bottom. I could feel it shuddering through the glass.
The liquid was bitter and hot. My mouth overflowed and it ran down my chest. For a moment nothing happened, and I turned my head back to empty the last of the jar. The crowd continued to stomp, half cheering, half jeering.
My jaw exploded in pain. Tendrils shot down my throat so hard that I was knocked backward. I staggered to keep my footing and dropped the jar. It rolled harmlessly along the carpet and stopped at the foot of the bar.
My eyes filled with tears, my throat was completely blocked. The tendrils ran up over my teeth and down into my lungs. I tried to cough but the air wouldn’t come. I blindly grabbed for the jar of shine and poured it into my mouth. It pooled in my throat but couldn’t find a path to my gut.
A heavy hand struck me on the back and the mass slipped down my throat. I grabbed the bar and gasped for air - pulling in smoke and sweat and rank breath, thankful for every ounce of it.
I could feel it crawling in my stomach. Ice cold pains shot up my spine. I tried to pull myself onto the bar stool but knocked it over and doubled up against the bar.
My stomach rolled with steady, rhythmic pain - as if the tendrils in my gut were beating against the walls, snaking through my organs and rattling my whole body.
The slave started to laugh. A high, clear laugh that cut easily through the stomping and the guttural encouragement of the crowd.
I lay my temple against the bar and tried to find his face. All I could see was the trader - his face a surreal black in the swirling mass of the bar, his wide, jagged smile grew out and stretched and dominated my vision.
“How do you feel now, smoothie?”
His teeth barely opened - each word squeezed itself out between brown-stained bone and slapped me in the face. My head was pounding.
“What is this?!”
The Boss-Lady in the distance. I couldn’t see her. I was lost in a sea of teeth.
“Who did this?”
The stomping beat died out and the laughter faded.
Some muttered voices, punctuated with an upward inflection, I felt the words run along the bar and through my cheekbones. A meaningless vibration.
My bones were singing. Every nerve twisted in agony. Saliva or blood or bile poured from my mouth and nose. I was choking, not breathing. I couldn’t feel my heartbeat.
And from the chorus of my bones and nerves and organs writhing as tendrils punched ragged holes between them, I heard one voice cut through; clear and deep and resonant.
“Looks like this kid can’t handle his shine.”
I felt the words in my spine, in my ribs, along my jaw and in my teeth. It spoke to my tongue and echoed in my eyes.
It was Jesus.
“Th
ese city smoothies.”
I peeled my face from the bar and narrowed my eyes. The room rocked from side to side - all faceless silhouettes. I focused on the voice. The Boss-Lady stood at the foot of the stairs. Jesus had his hand on her shoulder. My face flushed with blood. My eyes were burning. I saw his long fingers on her collarbone. His eyes were hidden by dark brows.
Boss-Lady didn’t flinch. She crossed her arms and looked across the bar. He gestured toward me with brown fingers. The black cracks in his fingernails pulled his hand into sharp focus.
“I don’t know what’s worse - the ferals poisoning themselves with black-meat or the smoothies with their shine and amphetamines.”
He raised his brows and his eyes were white and cold. His pin-prick black pupils cut across my face.
“Pathetic.”
I could barely hold my head up. My heart beat so hard that it carried through the bar and drew ripples in the shine. I stood up and locked my knees, pushing myself from the bar with one hand and fishing for the shiv with the other. My muscles were thick and heavy.
The trader was six feet to my left, staring at Jesus, smirking.
“You poisoned me.”
I threw myself toward him with awkward, stilted steps.
“You son of a bitch.”
I thrust the shiv out toward him but fell short by a hollow foot. My elbow locked out and I stumbled forward. I threw a few clumsy, arcing slashes and tried to catch my footing. I blinked but couldn’t open my eyes again. I was sinking fast.
Something hit me in the shins and swept my feet out from beneath me. I clutched the shiv flat against my chest and let myself fall. I hit the carpet with my forehead. I didn’t feel it. I was losing it. I just wanted to get the shiv back into my pocket, but my hands were caught beneath my body. I was a dead weight. I felt a knee press into my spine and something hit me in the mouth.
I was drowning.
“Get that knife away from him.”
A feral voice carried through the floor and wiry fingers dug beneath my chest and flipped me onto my back. I tightened my grip on the shiv but they pried my fingers away easily. My eyes lost focus and I struggled to stay conscious. Somebody stuck their boot on my throat and a dark mass sat down across my thighs. I was pinned.
My eyelids were half-open and I couldn’t move them either way. I could feel tears streaming down my face. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I tried to breathe through my nose and a narrow thread of air hit my lungs.
I could see Jesus standing beside the Boss-Lady. The details fluctuated but I held fast to their faces. The tyre iron was wedged into my hip.
“Attempted murder. I’m calling that attempted murder. With a room full of witnesses. Give me some of your people and I’ll take him away and lock him up.”
Jesus still had his hand on the Boss-Lady’s shoulder but now held her firmly at arm’s length.
She didn’t look at him - just stared at me. Her eye seemed to swallow the room.
“And then what?”
She blinked and the room shuddered. Jesus turned between us and his teeth gnawed over the darkness of his mouth.
“We interrogate him, pass judgment on him and then sentence him.”
I tried to speak but my tongue was paralyzed. My breath gurgled in my throat. The Boss-Lady turned to Jesus and peeled his hand from her shoulder. She held him by the wrist and pulled him close. The doorman moved softly behind them. She spoke directly into his face - her lips spread over her teeth.
“And what qualifies you to do any of those things?”
He shrugged and tried to drop his wrist to his side. Her grip was tight and his arm didn’t move. He smiled and looked down at me.
“What qualifies you? What qualifies them? What qualifies any of us?”
She threw his wrist down and the doorman took a step toward them.
“Exactly. My house, my rules, my guards”.
The doorman took him by the elbow and held a screwdriver to his ribs. The screwdriver looked new, its handle was heavily taped and the lamplight reflected off the shaft.
Jesus didn’t resist. He didn’t acknowledge the doorman or the screwdriver. He looked directly at the Boss-Lady and moved slowly, back toward the door.
“I understand. And I want you to look out this door. This is my city. My rules. And soon, it’ll be filled with my children. And this little operation and this guy right here…”
He jerked a thumb at me without looking.
“…will have been judged. And sentenced. And the city will be just and at peace.”
My heart felt like it would explode. His smile was greasy and he stared directly at the Boss-Lady. I tried to will the doorman to jam the screwdriver in his spine.
I wanted him dead. I wanted to tear the skin off his face with my bare fingernails. I wanted to jam my thumbs in his eye-sockets.
The room went silent. The doorman returned to his post. I closed my eyes and let the sickness take hold. I would weather it out. Dark hands dragged me along the carpet. I could hear nothing but the heels of my boots grinding against the floor. The air rushed out of my lungs for a moment, a blast of cold air hit my skin, and then nothing. Thick, warm, nothing.
My mouth was warm. I was wedged along the foot of the wall, inches away from the falling tar. Tarboy kicked me in the stomach again and I doubled-over, hot liquid pouring from my mouth. Tar fell across my face. I rubbed my eyes and looked up. He kicked me again. It didn't feel like he was trying to wake me up at this stage.
"Cut it out."
I lifted a weak hand and he paused - one foot poised in the air, propping himself against the wall behind me. I pulled myself up and sat cross-legged with my back to the bricks. My muscles were tender but my body was warm and I felt surprisingly awake.
He kicked me again. His toes under my sternum. My body laughed but the pressure on my diaphragm turned it into sour air.
The Tarboy leaned against the wall beside me. I wiped my fingers on my pants and probed the holes in my stomach. They were dry and puckered and closed off two inches below the skin. The jagged wound in the small of my back had folded in on itself and grown numb. The split in my lip had filled with a thick callous that rubbed against my bottom teeth.
I fished a blue from my jacket and put it under my tongue. The tar had seeped into my pocket and the blue tasted bitter and disintegrated quickly. I looked up at the Tarboy and slowly pushed myself up the wall to stand beside him. The tyre iron dragged against the bricks and the sound was comforting.
"I feel good."
I stretched my fingers, cracked my neck and stood up on my toes.
"I feel really good."
He looked me over.
"You smell different."
I nodded and rubbed my knuckles. The skin was tender and warm.
"I drank some sort of.... blue poison-flower or fish or something. I felt like I was going to die but... here I am."
I shrugged.
"I mean... I could be dead. This could be hell. Impossible to say."
He cleared his throat and spoke without facing me.
“Did it move like hair? Like angry hair?”
I nodded but he wasn’t watching.
“I guess so. Like it had arms. When I touched the glass it beat itself against my palm.”
He sighed and shifted his feet. A thick puddle of tar-drenched dust was rising in the alley.
"They call it a hair-ball. Or a spore. I don't know why somebody would give it to you. And I don't know why you would drink it. You’re a smoothie. It’s not for smoothies."
I shrugged again. I didn't know the answer to either of those questions. He tapped his knuckles against the wall and jammed me in the stomach with his thumb.
"It's going to be inside you forever."
I felt nauseated. I shuddered at the idea of something growing inside me.
"And what does it do?"
He pushed away from the wall and faced me, standing beneath the open sky. The tar broke over him in wav
es.
"It eats. Blood. Tar. It's always hungry. It's wants all of your blood for itself. You'll feel it growing. Your veins will itch. It will spread all the way from your stomach to your fingers and into your brain."
I looked down at my forearms but I couldn't see anything in the dark.
"How do you know?"
He shook his head and looked up the alley.
"I don't. I'm just talking."
I didn't like the answer but there was nothing I could do about it. It sounded like a story. It sounded vaguely religious. Maybe the drink was a metaphor. Maybe I was the active participant in some abstract allegory.
All I knew was that I felt good, my muscles were loose and my vision was clear, and that I had been thrown into the street for trying to cut somebody up.
And Jesus had been there.
He had shown no hint of recognition, his fingers pressed against the Boss-Lady's neck.
I had been pinned to the floor. And he looked down on me; half-dead, foaming and writhing in agony.
And in this moment of impotence he had judged me. Or more - he had tried to judge me. And but by the grace of some bizarre new-world morality I'd been spared the humiliation of being crammed into a kennel like the feral I had seen earlier - sucking up second-hand smoke with teary-eyed gratitude.
It had been a close call. Too close. I'd played it wild and loose and forgotten where I was and what I was doing. Until Jesus and his friends were out of the picture all roads would lead to the cage.
And the cage would lead to the meatbin; Jesus and Fats and the rest; feeding the world with sinners.
It was a perfect ecosystem. The most democratic cannibalism. And every feral would raise their arms and cry out in joy as Jesus approached - their mouths salivating at the sight of him.
I slapped myself in the face and filled my pipe with the last scraps of black tobacco. It was mostly lint and hair at this stage. The Tarboy stood in the open, looking up the alleyway. The tar ran off his skin in rivulets. It didn't seem to stick. He stomped his feet and shook his arms, licking the tar from his lips.
I blew a thin stream of smoke and the tar pushed it to the ground.
"Nobody is putting me in a cage, man. Nobody is putting me in the meatbin. And I am not going to submit a request in triplicate to put the tyre iron to somebody."
Blue Meat Blues Page 10