Blue Meat Blues

by Joshua McGrath

  I guess it had been me. It was rimmed with salt. He fixed on my eyes and licked his fingertips. Kneeling had made my joints stiff. I worked my knees with my thumbs. They loosened but lacked the familiar flood of warm blood.

  The branches sighed - dry and hollow - and she lowered herself back to the floor. Her shirt fell back across her stomach. Her fingers hooked around a fat ball of tar. The hair climbed over her feet and the skin of my face felt tight.

  She flicked the tar over the slab - onto my chest - too thick to splatter, it flattened across my sternum and stretched thin fingers over my ribs. A cold rush of surprise or anger. The Doctor, the Tarboy - no smirk, no wry smile - stared at the black stain; lips pulled straight.

  I felt a churning in the layer beneath my skin - that thin layer between skin and fat and muscle - a rush of heat and I looked down.

  Blue fingers pushed the pores wide open - cutting pocks through the tar, squeezing their mouth shut again. A furious carpet of hungry needles - the twisting pain as the skin stretched, the dry friction of the hair and a cool numbness for that sweet second before another needle cut through.

  The tar was gone. I brushed the shadow of dust from my chest. Pockets of heat swelled beneath the skin; chest, stomach, shoulders. Hot pin-pricks along my neck and down my arms. I felt awake. My eyes were hot. The room was rendered with heavy clarity. My skin was flushed red - a deep-set glow that made silhouettes of the veins.

  “How do you feel?”

  The Doctor shifted her body toward me. One hand lay along the slab. I put my palm against the stone and felt her shallow pulse hum along my skin.

  I felt alive. I felt clarity. I wanted to lie, but it seemed cheap. Her face was earnest and her mouth hung slightly open.

  “Fine. I feel… fine. Good, even.”

  She sighed - breath that smelled like grass.

  “Good.”

  We stared at each other over the slab. The hair shuffled below my knees. She searched my face. I held her eyes until my skin flushed and I looked down at the stone.

  The Tarboy tapped an irregular beat against the slab. Heat pooled in my shoulders. He jerked his chin toward the Doctor.

  “You should say thankyou.”

  I turned to face him. His confidence was painful.

  “And why is that?”

  He raised himself onto his knees - both palms flat against the stone.

  “Well… you’re functional, for one. Thanks to us.”

  I ran my fingertips across my scalp. It was jagged but whatever wounds were there had grown over. I tried to find a pulse in my neck but my body was loud - a grinding, thick vibration.

  “I was always functional. And it was barely a treat.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re a real charmer. Back from the dead and still a cocky, old-world child. A privileged bully.”

  I flexed my fingers. My muscles felt like wire.

  “Give me a good reason not to kill you.”

  I looked from the Tarboy to the Doctor.

  “Give me a good reason not to kill both of you.”

  The Doctor shook her head slowly and I felt vaguely embarrassed.

  She spoke to the slab.

  “Ah. You won’t.”

  The Tarboy stood up. I lifted my face to meet his eyes. I could smell the blood rushing into his arms. I sighed.

  “You’re right.”

  The Doctor put a hand on my arm. Her skin was cold.

  She gestured toward the Tarboy.

  “It's time to go. He’s going to take you back to the City. And he’ll watch over you for a while.”

  I turned to the Tarboy. He stared at the ceiling. His chest expanded and contracted - hot air forced across the branches. Unimpressed.

  I met the Doctor’s eyes.

  “Why?”

  She moved to stand, pushing off my arm.

  “We don’t know how you’re going to turn out. It’s… science.”

  I nodded. I tried to stir some feeling of betrayal but I felt nothing.

  “Like Seedbank there?”

  “Kind of. He’s a perfect ecosystem. You’re a very particular handful of things.”

  My veins crawled. I stood. The air tasted like the Tarboy.

  “I see. I should kill you, shouldn’t I?”

  She laughed. Maybe not a laugh. A shallow set of breaths, between yellow teeth.

  “Maybe. But I bet you feel alive. You can’t deny that.”

  “I feel nothing.”

  “And what did you feel before?”

  I thought back to the Bar. To Dad. To shine and blues. And to the Boss-Lady.

  “Nothing. But warm nothing.”

  “Right. Well. You both should go. There’s no reason for you to stay here. And you have things to do.”

  The Tarboy spat the word:

  “Jesus”.

  The memory split my skull. My chest felt too small. Something deep and terrible straining to escape.

  “You’re right. I’d… I guess I’d forgotten.”

  The Tarboy pushed a hole through the branches on the wall and walked through. Light poured inside; the hair seemed to cry out and burn away.

  I shuddered and turned to the Doctor. I had nothing to say.

  She smiled and blinked slowly.

  “Goodbye. Good luck. I’d say it was a pleasure to meet you but I imagine I’d regret it.”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a safe bet.”

  The air outside was wet; the river flowed heavy and black.

  The Tarboy balanced the raft against the bank and waited without gesturing, his broad, knotted back toward me.

  I turned back to the hut but the branches had closed behind us.

  I sighed.

  “Jesus”.

  I guess it was morning.

  The sky was a smug yellow, cloying and hot - picked up by the black river and assaulting my eyes from every angle.

  The water clung to the raft - the Tarboy pushed us along with a black-wood pole.

  The trees jittered nervously. Occasionally a cloud of spores would explode upward and a looping nest of vines would dart after them.

  I watched the hair gather on the banks. The water was too dark, too thick.

  I remembered sitting in my apartment, fused to the blood-black carpet.

  I remembered waking up in the forest - tar-burnt and brain-dead.

  The Tarboy’s back told me nothing. His heartbeat carried along the raft and felt steady and impassive.

  “Can’t we just walk?”

  He laughed and spat. A rogue clump of hair darted across the water and smothered the saliva.

  “You’d be torn apart a hundred times before you got halfway there.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  His neck tensed. I could taste his irritation. I held my knees to my chest and the raft rocked gently.

  “I don’t like the water.”

  He shook his head and worked the pole against a clump of hair.

  “That’s the monkey in you talking.”

  I sighed.

  “He makes a compelling argument.”

  The Tarboy gestured to the forest.

  “The forest is worse.”

  I couldn’t see more than twenty feet through the trees. A mess of vines and branches and black.

  “Better the devil you know.”

  “I’ve noticed that’s a theme with you people.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a blue. My chest felt wet. My throat felt thick. All blood or mucus or something. The blues had kept me dried out and hollow for so long.

  I stretched out along the wood and lay on my back. The water whispered through the wood and into my skull.

  “Do you hear that?”

  The Tarboy exhaled sharply.

  “What?”

  “The water. A sort of… groaning sound.”

  “There’s a lot going on under there.”

  I r
olled onto my stomach. The raft tipped slightly and the Tarboy shuffled to the side.

  I couldn’t see more than six inches into the water. A clouded mass of black sediment and oil and tar. Every few strokes a thin channel would open and a glimmer of silver would shine through.

  I pushed my fingertips through the surface.

  A deafening scream filled every empty chamber in my body. The hair rushed out of my hand and spread out across the surface. I tore my hand away but the hair had spread out in long strands. I rolled to the center of the raft and let it crawl back through my pores. A black stain followed.

  My bones were still ringing.

  “Did you hear that?”

  I watched the Tarboy, upside down, and tried to catch my breath.

  “Hear what?”

  The sky was growing dim. A cloud of spores spun across the river.

  It was pain. An old pain.

  “Did she do this to you, too?”

  He shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  His shoulders slumped a little. His greasy skin picked up the paling yellow of the sky. He looked like food.

  “She needs me. I’m clean. I can walk with you people. You… don’t like what you don’t understand.”

  He turned to face me, ran his eyes over my bare chest. The hair was still crawling back through my pores. A petulant, new-world child.

  I swallowed hard.

  “Why are you here? Why this city?”

  He crouched and tucked the pole beneath his arm, watching the hair creep over my stomach.

  “It’s just a stopover. There’s not really anything here. We follow the road, follow the river. Collecting. Watching. Learning.”

  “And Seedbank?”

  His face was growing dark. The forest was growing quiet. A soothing hum of satisfaction.

  “He’s exactly what he sounds like. He carries the things we find. Place to place. And occasionally he sprouts something new.”

  My eyes were hot.

  “That’s very cruel.”

  He nodded.

  “Life is cruel. You should know, you’ve got a hand in that.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Who is anybody?”

  “Clever.”

  He sighed. His breath ran through the last tendril of hair as it slipped between my ribs and pulled the skin closed behind it.

  “He’s my Father.”

  “I see…”

  Silence.

  “It’s nothing. I doubt he chose to create me, and yet here I am. We chose to create him. And we’ll leave it to somebody better than us to decide who got the better deal.”

  “And is the Doctor your Mother?”

  He nodded.

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It’s irrelevant. It’s never come up.”

  “I guess.”

  The sky had faded to a soft brown and the first tentative waves of tar folded over us. The hair snickered through my pores and I clenched my teeth and tried to lose myself in the rhythm.

  “So what’s the point of this? All of this?”

  “All of what?”

  I gestured to my stomach - to the crop of hair gradually swelling into a soft blue glow.

  “All of this. Me. Seedbank. Collecting. Experimenting. Observing.”

  He shrugged in silhouette and stood, pushing the rod against the bank.

  “No point really. Curiosity.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. My skin was burning hot.

  Tarboy spoke between waves of tar.

  “You’ve seen what happens when you build something. The world... normalizes itself. There's a flow. A natural rhythm. You stretch it and it snaps back into shape.”

  “And the curtain drops?”

  “The curtain drops.”

  I nodded blindly.

  “I’m the Blue Devil.”

  He laughed somewhere in the darkness.

  “Of course you are.”

  The tar fell and my body burned.

  Hair darted in and out of the pores, crawling from my mouth and nose - glowing softly below the skin - throwing the shadows of veins and capillaries like projections against a screen.

  The pain never dulled, but over time it became strangely pleasurable. Burning. Awakening. I shuddered. The raft rolled. The heat, the pain, the hair sliding along my follicles. It vibrated with a thin, high pitched sigh.

  I couldn’t hear my heartbeat - just a deep shuddering; tar being pushed in thick rivulets beneath the skin - dropping away between my stomach and ribcage.

  Tar ran freely over the Tarboy’s shoulders. The sky was harsh and red. I thought about Jesus but felt nothing of it. Dad. The Doctor. I wanted to be angry.

  There was an imbalance. I’d correct it… out of mathematical pride.

  The treetops glowed. Vines shot up from the floor like pillars. A vicious hunger for tar. The dry shuddering of wood on vine.

  I put my hand in the water and closed my eyes.

  Screaming static. Like a dissonant choir. Thousands of voices saying the same thing. Just… different phrasing. Different inflections. Almost clear enough to be understood. Something familiar.

  The Tarboy nudged me with his foot. I pulled my hand from the water and was dropped into comparative silence.

  “Don’t listen to it.”

  I blinked and tried to clear the echoes from my skull.

  “What is it?”

  He shrugged.

  “The Old World, I guess.”

  He wiped his face with his hand.

  “Some things stick. Puffed up on their own right to exist. And… I guess… Rights are kind of flexible.”

  I knelt up and looked into the water. The raft bucked and the Tarboy sighed, shifting his body weight.

  Black and thick. No glowing undulation of tentacles. Just hair softly glowing, clinging to the side of the raft.

  “It sounds angry.”

  He nodded, dragging the pole through the water.

  “Maybe. Maybe confused. Maybe frustrated.”

  I nodded.

  “Probably all the same thing.”

  “Like a kid whose toys have been taken away.”

  I looked over the surface of the water; hair struggling against vines on the bank - soft blue resistance.

  “I’ve never heard a kid scream like that.”

  Tarboy shrugged.

  “Guess they really loved their toys.”

  I watched his back for some sort of elaboration but it gave nothing away. The tar drew sepia curves down his shoulder-blades. Sickly organic.

  “You’re a strange one.”

  He shrugged as he replied.

  “Look in the mirror.”

  I wasn’t asleep.

  I’d just sort of… signed out. Disconnected.

  Lost in a daydream. Pulling together two-dimensional memories. Trying to breathe mental life into them.

  But I’d just settled into vague revenge fantasies; heat radiating from my stomach.

  A bloatfish broke the black surface and hair rushed into its open mouth. It rolled and showed a sickening belly to the night sky. Crawling with new-world life. Things I had no name for. Translucent fingers darted from deep below the water.

  Clouds of spores twisted across the red sky - hissing angrily as they settled on the canopy. A glimpse of silver in the chopped up water behind the raft. Something writhing deep beneath the water - something endless and formless.

  The Tarboy’s rhythmic strokes - soft, tar-choked exhalations. He watched the bloatfish sink into black - wide eye rolling back in its head.

  “It has no idea what to do with itself.”

  He didn’t wait for me to reply.

  “No… natural rhythms. Not… born, live, killed.”

  He gestured to the treetops - vines writhing angrily against the soft blue hair - spores buzzing and soaking up tar.

  “Predators just going through the dry motions. No real… motivator
s.”

  He fixed me with two clear white eyes from a tar-masked face.

  “Prey tucked away in comfortable little burrows… no real predators to hide from. Built to die but…”

  He turned back to the river.

  “…no longer dying.”

  I coughed and a wet mass of spores escaped my throat and twisted into the night sky.

  “We’re all just coming to terms with our exodus from the food chain.”

  Morning rolls over. The sky bleeds into a soft, vaguely comforting blue; tinged with brown at the horizon.

  The tar boiled up in choking clouds and my body is covered in sharp metallic dust.

  Tarboy curled up into a ball, face-down on the raft; and waited. His back rose and fell - the sharp notches of his vertebrae cut a beautiful silhouette.

  I lay on my back and watched it all blow over; coughing wet clusters of spores that escaped into the black smog. I felt them creep over my tongue, twitching against my molars, tiny spines seeking out some sort of meaning or sustenance. I opened my mouth and they leaked out into the sky.

  The forest had thinned out and disappeared. We drifted freely past the squat memories of suburbia. Brown right angles; telegraph poles, the foundation of a two-story house.

  I was a child at some stage.

  It filled me with some sort of mental nausea.

  The river stroked the bottom of the raft. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

  “All tides pull toward it.”

  The Tarboy spoke into the wood. I listened through the back of my skull.

  “All the rivers, the currents, the waves. They pull to a single point.”

  His breath was short and shallow.

  “It’s all there. The root of everything. The tar drags toward it.”

  I sat up, eyes still closed.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Seedbank.”

  “How does he know?”

  “It told him.”

  I lay back against the raft.

  “So why not go there?”

  “The tar wants us to go there.”

  “So let it take us there.”

  “I guarantee you that what the tar wants isn’t what you want.”

  I sighed. A spore pushed its way between my lips.

  “I want nothing.”

  Silence. I listened to the tar boiling off the river.