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Blue Meat Blues

Page 16

by Joshua McGrath


  I sucked at the blues and cleared my throat, standing straight and flexing my fingers.

  “I get it. I get it. It makes sense. And here’s something else that makes sense… I’m the only one who can fix this. You know that. Look at me. Who else is going to do it? This guy?”

  I jerked a thumb at the doorman and he bared his black teeth. She put her hand on his shoulder and he shrunk away from the touch. I felt a low, seething anger welling up in my stomach. She shook her head and dropped her hands to her sides.

  “The people are afraid of you. They’re terrified of you. You know that. It’s your whole… deal. You know what happens if you kill Jesus? You taint our entire value system with your reputation. They think in simple terms. Pro-Jesus and Anti-Jesus. And if Anti-Jesus has your face plastered all over it?”

  She shrugged and looked me in the eyes. I bared my teeth and spread my lips.

  “This sounds a lot like politics. Old-world bullshit.”

  She nodded.

  “People are people. Some things don’t change.”

  I laughed and held my hand out to her. She took it in her thin fingers. The doorman’s eyes drilled into my wrist.

  “I’m going to kill Jesus.”

  She squeezed my hand and let it fall.

  “I know you are.”

  She turned and started up the stairs. The words trailed behind her. I spoke to her back.

  “Is there anything else you wanted to say?”

  She paused for a moment without turning. Her head slowly shook side to side.

  “No.”

  The Animal Hospital was warmly lit, the windows were still unboarded. The black-wood lamps sputtered and wheezed tar smoke that rose and clung to the ceiling. I stood in the alley and listened. The blood rushed in my ears.

  I couldn’t hear anything meaningful.

  A swarm of dust and gravel fell from overhead and splashed in the tar. The Tarboy stood on the roof of the neighboring building - cutting a deliberate silhouette against the green sky. I waved and he ducked away. I leaned against the wall. He silently appeared at the end of the alley and joined me against the wall. I turned my head to look him over. He looked young and awake.

  “Where have you been?”

  He didn’t meet my eyes and kept staring out into the tar.

  “Waiting for you.”

  Our voices were drowned in tar. We spoke low and without inflection.

  I turned away and look at the sky. It felt cool against my burning eyes.

  “Why didn’t you help me?”

  “You didn’t need it.”

  I pushed myself from the wall and turned around, backing into the alley. The tar fell down over my shoulders and clung to my hair.

  “Is he inside?”

  He nodded and pointed to the second floor. I followed his finger. The high window sat over a cement awning and flickered with yellow light.

  “Is he alone?”

  He nodded again.

  The front door was locked and barricaded. I remembered the shrieking wood on the stairs, the groaning floorboards. I looked up the wall to the roof and across to the neighboring building. I could probably get onto the roof and lower myself on to the awning.

  The Tarboy shook his head.

  “Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. You’re finished in this city. It’s all over.”

  The words hit me in the stomach and I felt a hot spike of anger stabbing up my spine.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He stood up and squared his shoulders to me.

  “You know what I’m talking about. This place is dead. You’re an outcast. You’re bored. Drop it. Come with me. The burners leave in the morning.”

  His gaze didn’t waver. I couldn’t read his tone; his face was a mask. I raised my eyebrows.

  “Go with you?! Where are you going? Why with you?”

  I stretched my arms out and spread my fingers, open palms.

  “Look at me. I’m a smoothie. I’m a city smoothie. I’m not a feral and I’m not a slave.”

  He groaned and rolled his eyes.

  “Marking thing as feral and non-feral is childish. This place is stale and dull. Is this really how you want to spend your time? Wasting your un-death running around a crumbling city, hitting meat-slaves with a piece of metal; popping pills and drinking shine and building some sort of pathetic storybook fame as a killer?”

  I chewed over the words and pushed down the rising feeling of insult.

  “Everything you just said sounds like fun. That sounds like an amazing life.”

  He shook his head and sighed, stepping closer, eyes still fixed on mine.

  “It won’t last forever. Bodies are a limited resource. And the fear or admiration of these people is completely worthless.”

  He grabbed my forearms and squeezed them in his hands. His fingers felt like steel. I suppressed my shock and pain and swallowed a hard lump. He put his face close to mine. My desire to headbutt him until my anger drained away was overwhelming. I felt his breath on my face - he spoke low and firm.

  “You want to be strong? You want to massacre thousands of dead-eyed half-people? Get out of the city. It’s making you soft. That blue hair growing in your wounds in just the beginning.”

  He released my arms. The pain throbbed sharply. I spat on the ground and put my hand on his chest, pushing him firmly backward.

  “I’m plenty strong. And all but one of my enemies have been massacred. I’m going to climb up there and kill Jesus. You’re free to go. Thankyou for your service.”

  I turned to leave. My face was burning hot. He put his hand on my shoulder and my muscles coiled up in anger. His voice was laced with venom.

  “You’re weaker than you think. You go around synthesizing some sort of fake old world life, shine and blues and houses with roofs - avoiding the hair and avoiding the tar, picking around the edges of the dead world for the bits that you recognize from your old life…”

  He took his hand off my shoulder and gestured around.

  “You’re not the new world at all. You might have escaped hunger but you’re still barely better than the people you kill. Have you seen yourself lately? You look like some sort of monster. Some sort of… blue devil.”

  I ran my fingertips over my lips. They were matted with mold and dry blood; hard callousing and shards of tar.

  I synthesized a smile.

  “Blue devil, huh? I like that.”

  The Tarboy sighed and rolled his eyes. His breath was sweet and felt hot on my face. Too warm. Too human. Too grounding.

  “The world is a lot bigger than you think it is.”

  He shook his head.

  My heart was beating hard and my body felt light and hollow. I leaned against the wall and crammed a handful of blues in my mouth. They smelled like heavy industry as they dissolved in saliva. I turned to the Tarboy.

  “The world is nothing. The world is trash. I’ve been stabbed and shot and locked in a cage, poisoned and headbutted and ripped up. I’m still here. I don’t die.”

  He spat on the ground and threw his hands up in frustration.

  “So maybe you can’t die. None of us can. Doesn’t mean you can kill Jesus.”

  I pushed away from the wall and took a few steps up the alley.

  “Get out of here. You’ve done well by me. Tell your owners that I was happy with you. I’d tip you but I’ve got nothing left. See you around.”

  I turned the corner and made my way inside the neighboring building. My skull felt empty and cold.

  I should have hit him.

  But I felt numb.

  If he heard me land on the awning he wasn’t showing it.

  The cement was soft and my boot-heels had left two half-moon dents.

  I flattened myself out on the awning and crawled until I was under the windowsill.

  The tar boiled away in the warped square of light cast by the window. The air coming from the room was warm and moist and smelled like smoke.

 
Before I jumped he had been sitting facing the window - his chair pushed up against the door. There was a heavy-looking wooden club across his lap. He stared out the window and sucked at the pipe; his cheeks lit up with the embers - slowly filling the room with yellow clouds.

  I kept quiet, face down, ears straining for signs of life. The rhythmic creaking of the floorboard, sharp tapping on the desk beside him, the crackle of tobacco and flame.

  I must have been there for hours. The sky had escalated into a bold, electric purple. I wanted to sleep. My eyes were dry and my eyelids fell automatically. I struggled to stay conscious.

  I carefully inched my fingers into my jacket and fished out a few blues - creeping my hand to my mouth and letting the pills rest in my cheek.

  If he wasn’t asleep by now he would never be.

  I dragged myself forward along the wall and knelt beside the window, slipping the tyre iron from my belt. The purple sky shone in the tar. I held my breath and tensed my stomach to drive my blood pressure up. My blood felt thin and diluted. The blues had stiffened the blood vessels in my brain and they felt like spikes - dicing my brain with every thought.

  “Goddamn it.”

  I jumped through the window and landed with my feet wide - bracing myself, the tyre iron out to the side and one defensive arm forward. Jesus stared at me without moving, a thin smile spreading over his face. He blew a wave of smoke across the room.

  “How long were you lying out there?”

  My lungs deflated. I breathed quick and shallow. He lay his pipe on the desk and leaned forward.

  “You’ve really hurt me, you know. You killed a lot of beautiful people.”

  He slipped the club off his lap and held it in one hand, resting the tip against the floor. His other hand gestured vacantly.

  “I’m just trying to… build a little testament to the old world, you know? Even you should be able to appreciate that. Farming food, workers running around and living out their little lives, law and government, arbitrary rules and meaningless needs and wants. A tiny kingdom where everybody can feel needed, protected and worthwhile. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  He stood up and swung the club by his side. I backed toward the window and kept the tyre iron up.

  “Freedom. Freedom is a terrible terrible curse. A gross punishment. Torture. Do you see? That’s why they still eat. It’s just… something, you know? Something to hold fast to.”

  He took a step toward me.

  “You’re the same, I would guess. Only you’re holding fast to some tacky concept of revenge or fear or fame. Right?”

  I coughed and spat a mouthful of blue dust on the floor. I feinted toward him and he stepped backward, raising the club across his chest and flexing his legs.

  “Do you remember me?”

  My voice shook and my words were punctuated by the dry smacking of my lips.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  A low rumble built up in my chest.

  “From the old city. Do you remember this?”

  I jumped forward and swiped at him with the tyre iron. He ducked and the metal sailed harmlessly in front of his face. I leapt backward again. He looked at the tyre iron and back at my face, narrowing his eyes.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Blood forced its way from my chest through my neck and into my face. My scalp pulsated.

  “You dragged me from my house. You beat me with this tyre iron. You set my neighborhood on fire. You burnt it all into nothing. You said you’d come to wake me up. It’s time to wake up. It’s time to wake up.”

  I stuttered over the words.

  He tilted his head and looked me over.

  “Sorry. I’ve burnt a lot of things. I’ve beaten a lot of people. And I’ve had a lot of catch-phrases.”

  My head felt like iron. My bones were only loosely connected to the muscle. My eyes felt as if they would split open.

  “Well I guess it doesn’t matter. I killed your friends and I’m going to kill you, and then I’m more than likely going to kill everybody that you managed to manipulate into playing along with you.”

  He side-stepped, circling to my left, crouching slightly - the club was longer than my forearm. He had the reach advantage. He smirked and his face twisted with a sudden, clinical fury.

  “Not manipulation. People want what they want. And they don’t want you. I think that’s what’s got you all worked up. And you’re just like them. A limp little old-world zombie.”

  He threw himself toward me and swung at my face with the club. I ducked and the wood clipped my hair. I hit him in the side with the tyre iron - it reverberated against his ribs and the shudder echoed up my arm and into my chest. He winced - a hot cloud of wet air, and caught me in the jaw with a surprise left hook. I fell to the side and he was immediately on top of me, his knee pinned the tyre iron to the ground and I struggled to catch hold of the club.

  He grabbed my free wrist and stretched my arms out; his grip was rough and his skin was burning hot. I bucked my hips but he was too heavy.

  The club cracked against the side of my head and the world pulled away sickly. I could hear the distant thudding of wood on bone. I slipped a disconnected wrist from below his knee and grappled with the distorted mask of his face. I pushed my fingers into the eye. The world shrank.

  I watched the club descend through a pinhole of light.

  My fingers were wet. I pushed as hard as I could. I heard the distant splintering of wood and felt thin needles crawl along my skull.

  My hand dropped limp against my chest. Everything was liquid and black. His voice sounded like it was carrying through water.

  “If you survive this, I guarantee…”

  The weight lifted from my chest. I couldn’t move. I no longer owned my body.

  “…I guarantee you will apologize. And I will accept it. And we might even become friends.”

  I felt his salty fingers in my mouth - pushing pills down my throat, into my cheeks, stacking them up on my tongue. Hard pills that tasted sweet like flowers. Reds. Far too many reds.

  He worked my jaws manually with two sweaty palms, pushing my head backward and pouring shine into my mouth until it overflowed and ran over my chest and into my nose. It ran into my lungs. I was drowning in shine but couldn’t do anything.

  The reds dissolved and the pill sludge crept down my throat. My body became warm and light. My nerves tingled.

  Sleep.

  Finally, sleep.

  I tried to smile, but I had no face.

  My senses staggered back; one by one.

  My ears were assaulted by a nauseating sound of rushing water that gave way to a wet, constant hiss - vaguely comforting - like the sizzle of meat on hot metal.

  The red swirling of blood in my eyelids. I couldn’t open my eyes.

  The smell of smoke - dense, chemical smoke and the vaguely sweet smell of meat.

  The taste of flowers and blood that had coagulated to dust. Tidal licks of stomach acid that crept along the back of my tongue and rushed back into my lungs.

  I couldn’t hold a train of thought. It derailed as soon as it reached an intersection. I clumsily tried to reconstruct my situation but the images wouldn’t stay in line.

  My heart was still beating. My nerves started to sing from the inside out - heart and lungs, stomach, brain and eyes. There was a dull twisting pain in my skull, behind my left eye; a heavy pressure on my brain.

  I could feel the heat in my veins. They felt like they were choked with thick lumps; slowly dragging themselves up my calves and into my thighs.

  My skin came to life all at once - my eyes sprung open and I scrambled automatically to my feet, blinking in the light - my entire body was burning.

  The pain was deep - long twisting channels of jagged agony pushing its way through my pores - stretching them wide open and splitting muscle and tendon and bone.

  Stale air escaped from my lungs and pushed through my vocal cords without
stirring any meaningful sound. I frantically scratched my skin - vision drawing into sharp, painful focus.

  The tar boiled on the ground all around me, my skin was covered in a heavy, choking sheet of black that hissed and pulled tiny waves of skin with it - evaporating in clouds of blood and tar; smoke and sweat; leaving a thick ash of black and grilled flesh.

  My chest was naked, my feet were bare, my trousers were torn at the knees. The skin on my palms had blistered and hung loosely from wrist to fingertip.

  I could do nothing.

  I stumbled to something dark and tall - hit it with a stinging forearm - it felt solid; and I pushed my back against it, arms hanging dead by my side - clenching my teeth and waiting for the tar to boil away.

  I was pure pain. No logic, no rationale, no plan.

  Consciousness again. I was still propped up like crumbling drywall. My joints were locked in place. The tendons felt like they were splintering when I bent my legs and shifted my shoulders.

  The Tarboy squatted in the black dirt in front of me. He traced a human figure on the ground with one finger and looked up at me.

  “You’re back.”

  I opened my mouth; my tongue worked over the air but the words didn’t come. He stood up with a groan and brushed his hands together.

  “Don’t bother. You were lying in tar-smoke for hours. Your lungs and throat and vocal cords are probably fried.”

  I cleared my throat and tried again; my mouth formed a dusty, shapeless whisper. It meant nothing. I rubbed my eyes and looked around.

  The road was maybe thirty feet away - the bitumen was thick with tar. There were no lanes. Deep tyre-wide ruts ran along the center. The burners had cleared a broad path beside the road. The trees were withered and their road-facing sides were burnt away and twisted.

  I ran one hand across my head. A deep trench ran from above my eye and to the top of my skull. The bones were jagged and the wound felt ice cold where the air touched it.

  I looked around. I had propped myself against a tree. The nerves in my back were starting to scream - a thick, mute sensation that was growing as my consciousness crept in.

  I peeled myself away from the tree; the bark clung to my skin with blood and tar. I felt the flesh pull away from the bone. It snapped wetly against the black wood.

 

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