“The tar doesn’t want nothing.”
He dragged us onto the cement. The hair followed in wet clusters. It sucked at my bare feet and felt vaguely comforting.
The ferals watched with empty curiosity.
I ran my hands over my scalp, flexed my forearms and looked down at my torn trousers; my tar-stained feet, my stomach twisted up with blue hair and New World parasites.
“Christ I look like a feral.”
The Tarboy laughed and put his hand on my shoulder. I tensed and impulsively balled a fist. He gestured to the ferals.
“If somebody found the words to tell them that it’s all bunk… that the system has changed…”
He lead me up the shore. The hair tentatively followed. The cement was warm and dry.
“…that there’s no… consumer and product anymore. That they’re not part of an ecosystem. Just… parasites on a world that wants nothing from them…”
Nothing moved.
“Well… that’d be a first step toward the new world.”
The sky was coming over orange. The tar had boiled away. The air was hot and dry. He stopped us at the edge of the shanty-town.
“But I guess… that’s not what you want, is it?”
I turned to him. His eyes were wide and intense - his pupils tiny and black.
“If everybody knows what you know… that you can play God or Predator or Monster as you like… for a net cost of nothing…”
He gestured to the ferals. I had missed their dead, meat faces. Their wet cheeks. The human way they wiped the saliva from their lips.
“…Well. Your life would be nowhere near as fun.”
His fingers dug into my shoulder.
“Maybe that’s why you did this whole thing. This whole Jesus thing.”
I cringed as he said the word. My skull ached. I spat and took his wrist - peeling his grip from my shoulder.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He stepped back and smirked.
“Oh don’t I?”
I squared up. I could smell the ferals. All sweat and rotten teeth and piss.
“Don’t test me, Tarboy.”
He splayed his fingers out in mock innocence.
“Settle. I’m just talking.”
I turned and started to walk through the ferals.
“Jesus did a lot of talking. And you know what’s about to happen to him.”
I heard him laugh behind me.
“We’ll see.”
I swallowed the heat in my face. My stomach felt numb.
“We will.”
I felt nothing. No inertia.
I dragged myself forward - cutting straight through the shanty-town; convincing myself that if I kept moving the momentum would carry me through… carry me toward some sort of meaning or desire.
The old woman who had refused to pay me for the ear… from that black-meat maniac.
It felt so long ago. Distant and irrelevant. Images with no emotional weight. Some sort of disconnected daydream.
I saw her through the wasteland of twisted limbs and trash; and pushed through until I could feel her dead breath against my chest. She didn’t look up. Rhythmic, hot air.
“Call your friends”
She says nothing.
“Bring them out again”
Nothing.
I turned around. The same dead faces. I couldn’t tell if they were the same from earlier. It didn’t matter.
My hand on her cheek - I tilted her face toward mine.
“Now watch this, and remember”
I’m king-hit before I can turn around, but the fist bounces off my skull and my eyes reel for just a moment. Hollow. Empty.
I turned and threw a bare foot into soft gut - the jagged angle of ribs or hip. A wild fist, a hard skull and a handful of throat as I threw a feral to the ground - one foot on his chest; gradually suppressing the expansion of his lungs.
They shrink away.
I lifted him by his throat, both hands, and turn to the woman.
“Watch his face”
My fingers dig into his neck. My muscles hardened - dry like wood. The cruel fingers of hair thickening in my veins.
I lowered him to the level of her eyes. His hands feebly grasped my wrists.
His eyes turned over, breath growing cold and shallow.
“Just ask me to stop”
I looked into her face - the same dead eyes refusing to meet mine, cheeks wet with tears. The same pointless routine. The same cycles.
“All you have to say is stop. And I will stop.”
I half-turned to the ferals; shrinking behind their shanties.
“All you have to say is stop. And everybody will be alive. And you can get on with whatever you were doing. Eat black-meat. Burn wood. Drink black water.”
I smiled.
“Just say it.”
I twisted his face toward her. His body was going limp; his heartbeat echoed in my arms.
“Stop.”
She says it quietly - more breath than words.
“Again.”
I pushed his face close to hers.
“Stop.”
“Louder this time. They all need to hear it. Say it again.”
“Stop!”
I let go. He folded to ground. The memory of his greasy hands echoed through my wrists.
“Wasn’t so hard, was it? That’s all you have to say.”
She didn’t move. I smiled and turned to the ferals.
“That’s all you have to say. You just have to ask.”
I turned back to her.
“Now you’ve got something for me, don’t you?”
She nodded, cheeks greasy and brown, and crawled into her shanty.
The whole thing smelt moist and stale.
I could feel the Tarboy’s eyes on my back. Radiating heat.
She dragged something out with her. I didn’t look at it.
I put my hand on her skull, spread out my fingers until they rested on her soft temples; the ridges of her skull as it met the spine.
“Don’t worry about it. Call it a favor.”
I felt her shudder through my arm, humming through my shoulder and into my chest.
The air was sour - all bated breath.
I released my grip, my palm felt ice cold.
“Do you have anything to say?”
Silence. I waited, watching her purple eyelids work over her milky eyes.
She turned to meet my face.
“Thankyou.”
I smiled and straightened up.
“And you are very welcome.”
I backed away and turned to the ferals.
“I will see you all soon.”
Silence. Stillness. Fear.
“I thought so.”
I turned and walked into the shadow of the dead apartment block. The Tarboy fell in beside me.
“And that’s how you spend your second chance?”
I shrugged.
“It’s just a sideshow. An attraction. For kicks.”
“Why bother?”
Heat crept over my neck and pooled around my ears.
“Why do anything. Life is long. Endlessly long.”
“Just seems a bit trivial. A bit hollow. Pointless.”
“Exactly.”
The city was grinding. Humming. An anxious sound that vibrated along my bones.
My skin crawled.
This wasn't the city I had left. There was an urgency to it. No lingering feeling of spiritual apathy. Not the same wet black meat dragging itself through nameless intervals of time.
A sharp barking voice from behind us. I threw myself flat against the wall of the alleyway and raised my fists. They looked thin and frail in front of my face.
Tarboy walked through my line of sight, oblivious.
“Did you hear that?”
He stopped but didn't turn around.
“Yes”
I strained my ears, pushed the back of my skull into the bricks. Low vibrations.
<
br /> Whispers. Angry whispers. I couldn't count the voices. My heart beat cold metal through my veins.
“There's nothing there”
The Tarboy leaned against the wall beside me. His steady heartbeat carried through my shoulder blades.
I examined his face. Same grey skin, face impassive. He scooped a gritty ball of tar from the ground and chewed on it.
“It's the tar”
He spat a chunk of black mud into his palm and wiped it on my arm.
The pores stretched, fingers of hair wrapped around the tar and left a black shadow behind them. I rubbed the skin but the pain lingered.
“It's inside you. It's all inside you.”
He smiled. Barely. A twisting of one gunmetal lip.
“You heard it in the water. You're hearing it now. It's all still there. The old world of yours. Somewhere in the tar.”
He pushed himself from the wall and stood in the middle of the alley.
“It screams and whispers… and occasionally reaches some moment of clarity to shout out. But it's mostly nonsense. Without context.”
I rubbed my eyes with my greasy fingertips.
“You belong to the tar now. You've got a purpose. You should be happy. You're useful.”
I didn't open my eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
My voice was tired and thin.
“You're a carrier. A seedbank. Just a mechanism for new world biodiversity.”
The spores twitched in my stomach.
“And you?”
He stretched his arms and cut a line in the mud with his toe.
“I don't know. We can't really know. I just listen. Let the tar inside me and… listen”
I shook my head and moved beside him.
“I just need to sleep. I'm tired. Or something.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. I didn't twitch or jerk away. I felt nothing.
“Don't listen too hard. Don't resist. Just… absorb the tone. A million voices speaking at once is maddening, but the music of it will tell you something.”
I shook my head, forced a dry laugh and slapped my face with a gritty palm.
“Don't pull me into your pixie daydream. I'm the blue devil. It's time to kill Jesus”
He sighed.
“I'm not the only one who hears the emptiness in that.”
Evaluate the door.
Weigh the door.
Try to frame the door in the context of the past week.
There wasn’t much left of the original wood.
They’d repaired it twice. Maybe thrice.
The scraps of wood had been cut smooth and even, tessellating to form the sort of pattern that might have been considered artistic. Interesting, at the very least.
The frame had been reinforced with wire; hairy with rust.
It wasn’t a feral job. It was a job that had been done with care and patience and a level of effort miles out of proportion with the world in which we lived.
Clear Doctor-Engineering.
The Tarboy had left. I’m sure he was watching from somewhere.
My bare shoulders crawled under the heavy light and his unseen eyes.
God-damned daylight. God-damned time.
I wished it was evening.
Evening would have been more cinematic.
Tar falling, mystery and primitive fear lurking in the dark.
The door would burst open - damp chunks of wood sticking to the walls.
I’d be standing there, drenched in tar - hair angrily darting through my skin.
But it was bright and dry and quiet and the palette of the sky felt neutral.
My shadow stretched across the gravel and climbed the door.
And the indistinct vibration of voices played along the door frame and tickled the dust.
I could see the minuscule vibration of grains in the door. Vaguely robotic sounds. Like a buzzing wire.
Vague memories of electricity.
Why was I there?
I should have written a list.
I remembered…
Crisp, heavy shirt against living skin. Jacket thick with moist tobacco smoke, blood, tar and melted blues. Heavy boots. No fear beneath the hot sky. One head taller than the ferals. Figuratively. Flipping metal against my palm. Joy.
And now?
My pockets were empty. I was feral-naked. Pants rotting against my thighs. My skin stained bitter wine. Damp, all damp and… the taste of rot?
No tyre iron. No belt.
My mattress was a vague conceptual memory. The bar, the shine, the chalk of blues accumulating in the deep roots of my molars. The smell of blue meat, rot and boiling paper.
My feet were caked in dust.
I had nothing.
Nothing but - black-green fingers twisting along the blood vessels in my skull; growing hard - petrifying, sprouting bark.
Parasite antlers; gradually separating the hemispheres of my brain.
I shuddered and my muscles rippled. A thick, hot wave of alien adrenaline.
“It’s the right thing to do”.
A solitary, clear voice cutting straight through the wood and the heat and my dull mental cycle.
“It’s time we did something.”
Dad.
That even, measured voice. That voice from two steps behind the bar.
Two steps away from brutal revelations. Two steps from the truth.
I couldn’t picture his face. It was all wet eyes and the impotent pink flush of too-clean skin.
And swimming in my mind the face superimposed itself over the smug image of Junior, the obscene swelling of Muscles - the Insect and her earnest needles, the sad case of the Kid…
Vague regret…
I put two tentative knuckles against the door and pushed. Locked. Or barred. Or both.
And through the wood, through my knuckles - sheets of laughter.
Voices layered like oil. Throats writhing together. The tone of joy without facade. Honest joy.
Jesus. The Doctor. Dad. The Boss-Lady.
And I was back in the Old City - hopeless and alone and aimless and covered in dry blood and a corrosive fear of the unknown.
My eyes burned. Salt water carried grime down my cheeks and pooled at the corners of my lips.
And a heavy, wet gust carried the smell of the dead ocean along the street.
Alone, shame like napalm, the Tarboy’s eyes twisting into my bare skin.
The door exploded into dry dust. My thighs twisted with pure, artificial power.
Splinters shot through the underbelly of my foot.
Warm blood. The retro pleasure of being human for a moment.
Sudden and heavy silence. A chair groaned.
I pushed through the shattered teeth of the doorway.
The air inside was warm and sweet.
Three long strides across the foyer. Two bloody footprints. My mind was completely empty. My eyes; ice cold.
I could see the wall of the Vet, still stained with blood. Half an empty cage.
Teeth clenched with adrenaline and raw anger - in the absence of blues.
The fleshy body of Dad blotted out the doorway.
“What…”
His face tried to catch up with his brain but was outrun by my bare foot. I dug my heel into his soft belly and he was thrown backward - perfect red stamp of my foot on his gut.
Through the doorway - the room smelled like the Old World. Jesus stood against the cages on the far wall and watched with bored confidence.
The Boss-Lady sat to his right, cold face turned toward me - unknowable eye desperately calculating the chances of her death.
Dad was wedged between her chair and the wall. Limp arms searching for stability but gaining no traction.
The Doctor by the window. His skin was white; obscene like Old World nudity, mummified hands clenched against the edge of the table, red eyes pleading with the room for escape.
“Relax friend, we’re all family here…”
Jesu
s - his was voice raspy and confident.
His eyes ran across my body. My chest was flushed and my muscles writhed.
I flexed my fingers.
He met my eyes and some unanswered question settled over us like ash.
“…what do you need?”
I smirked. I caught it.
Fear.
My trousers covered his legs. My tyre iron was threaded through my belt at his waist.
The table was piled high with blue meat. Wet and fresh and glossy. A crate of shine. Jars of pills. Rough.
The Boss-Lady, The Doctor, Jesus.
Their lips were wet with meat.
Half-empty shine.
I brought my forearm down on the table - an arcing, twisting motion that pulled every muscle tight like a leash. I painted the room with meat and glass.
“Stop it!”
Jesus. Wavering emotion.
I coiled myself and crouched at the epicenter of the dead feast.
The Boss-Lady backed up against the wall. Jesus drew the tyre iron from his belt in slow motion.
The Doctor, frozen, sat at a non-existent table.
I met his eyes; saw the pulsating of thin blood vessels.
His face crumpled against the back of my hand. Bird-thin bones split like twigs; hollow and light and fragile. He folded to the floor. Dry like rough.
Jesus swiped at my head with the tyre iron. The air grinds around it. I let myself fall to the floor and the iron swept over my scalp.
I turned my eyes to the Boss-Lady; Jesus’ arm hyper-extending, inertia pushing him toward the wall.
Her eye was wide with fear.
I rolled to my feet and threw an instinctive fist; catching it painfully within inches of her throat.
Her jaw flexed and my stomach felt like it was falling.
She looked over my head. Her mouth was open and black like tar.
I felt her hot breath on my face; trying to process what we were saying.
I was projecting a dead language.
And the tyre iron bounced off the side of my skull - dull, metallic reverberating in my teeth; dry fiber knotting around the wound.
I closed my eyes, shook my head and turned toward Jesus.
His face was twisted and manic - red, eyes wide - teeth bared and clenched and breaking into hairline fractures.
“Give me my tyre iron.”
I caught his wrist mid-swing. My forearm swelled. I followed his eyes to my fingers on his skin. His pupils flickered between my fist and the writhing of parasites from between my lips.
Blue Meat Blues Page 19