“Yeah. It’s a whole thing.”
I let him hit me with his free hand - five, six times. Saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. His fist felt warm and human - pounding against my temple, jaw, eye socket.
I watched the blood rush through his neck - frantically pushing thick nutrients from his heart to his brain.
His fist on my mouth - my lip stretches over my teeth but doesn’t split; all wooden callousing and hair.
I searched his face for the Jesus I remembered but I couldn’t find it.
The Boss-Lady’s careful footsteps stop at the doorway.
The Doctor; still on the floor - face flat against the meat-carpeted linoleum.
Dad; still stretched out against the wall, protected by a light coat of broken glass and blood; trying to burrow himself out of existence.
And Jesus - free hand twisted and swollen; struggling to maintain a fist - beating it against my face and neck.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
My face was creeping - the parasites frantically raced from wound to wound.
His sour breath tried to form words but they were lost against his teeth.
I twisted the tyre iron from his hand and threw it over my shoulder; thin crash as it settled down over the broken glass and wood.
His free hand hung in the air between us. I took his wrist and pushed him back against the cages - empty, the groan of metal as they rocked back and forth.
I put my foot against his stomach and stretched his arms out.
His eyes are deep and black; pupils so wide that I could fit my entire fist into them.
His lips worked over some unknown concept but failed to deliver the words.
“Relax. Catch your breath. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
I could feel his heartbeat through the sole of my foot.
Strong and wet.
He attempted a knowing smile but had lost control of his face. His lips stretched wide but his eyes had given up.
I half-turned my face toward the door.
“Are you all still here?”
A convulsion from somewhere on the floor. A sob, potentially. A sigh. A death-rattle.
“Well?”
Three practice responses - all quiet air and shuddering lungs, before she responds.
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. I’ll be finished in a second.”
I turned back to Jesus.
His brows were collapsing fast. Every muscle in his body lining-up and phoning it in.
My fingers on his wrists and my foot in his stomach were the only things holding him upright.
“Are you ready?”
His face slumped. I looked directly into his scalp.
“Look at me. I’m going to give you one sentence. One free sentence. As many commas and semi-colons as you like. This is your final platform. Use it.”
He lifted his skull as if it was made of lead.
“I…”
I waited.
“Try again.”
“We only want to… to…”
“Jesus. I’m being generous. Come on. Speak up. You’ve got an audience of four and I gave you a killer introduction.”
His breath was short. After a few attempts, his chest inflated.
He straightened up against the cages.
“I only want to help people. I only want to do good. I want to make the world a better place for everybody. I want to…”
The words wouldn’t echo. They were too thin. They slipped through the seams in the walls and were lost forever.
I smiled. It felt legitimate. Our eyes met and I nodded.
“Weak.”
I pulled his wrists tight and pushed his stomach with my foot. My thigh burned, filling with blood.
“It’s time to wake up.”
His wrists popped. His elbows flushed - the fraying of tendons like broken wires. He looked at his arms like they were a stranger’s. Betrayal.
“Who…?”
The word squeaked from between his teeth.
I relaxed my thigh for a moment. He sucked at the air frantically.
“Who…?”
I drove my foot into his chest and pulled his arms away from their sockets. The skin tore like paper, wet popping as the bones separated, tendons twang and coil, and the muscles pulled apart like rotting wood.
His blood was dark and thick. His mouth stretched open, contorted, drowning in the air like a bloat-fish.
He folded over my knee. His arms felt heavy. I tossed them aside and didn’t hear them land.
The blood didn’t stop. A constant, steady, bubbling stream like a natural spring. The room smelled like rust and meat.
I caught him by the neck and held him straight. His knees buckled and his body hung loose from my grip.
“Almost finished, don’t worry.”
His eyes flickered, fighting the urge to roll over.
I put my face close to his. I could see nothing my distorted reflection in his wet eyes.
My chest hummed - dry vibration - and the parasites lined my throat.
“Welcome to my new world.”
I pushed my mouth over his - spreading his lips with my tongue. His teeth clenched. I put one salty finger into his mouth and pried them open.
My lungs heaved. A rush of parasites filled our mouths. I coughed in steady waves and they rushed up my throat, leaking between our faces, crawling over our cheeks.
My eyes were blind with color. A raw, animal joy.
Procreation.
I pulled my face away and his eyes were closed, lips still parted. Parasites played over his cheeks, swarming in rattling clouds over our heads.
“Almost finished. I didn’t lie. Almost finished.”
My voice was quiet and I felt warm and tired and satisfied.
My fingers were still around his throat.
I lifted my free hand and clenched my fist, waiting for the blood to creep through my shoulder, over my bicep and into my forearm.
“And now…”
My knuckles punched through his stomach like paper. His organs were dry and soft. He didn’t react. He didn’t emote. I felt the first early spores creeping through his gut.
I guess they didn’t expect to see me again, so soon.
My fingers found his spine and wrapped around it. Bony spurs pushed into my palm.
His teeth worked over the air; eyelids struggling to open. Tiny slits of wet pupil.
I twisted my fist.
His spine split and fractured - wet fibers popped and separated.
His legs went limp; my grip around his throat tightened - his body begged to collapse.
A gutful of black and bile and stinking air bubbled out between his lips.
The parasites worked against my fist to reclaim the vertebrae but it was too early and they were too green.
I pulled my hand out and dropped a fistful of yellow bone and organ meat on the floor.
There was nothing in his face. Vague, frantic beating of his heart - so fast and irregular that I couldn’t separate it from the general rhythm of the city reverberating through my bare feet.
I opened the cage with my free hand and folded him inside. His useless legs curled around his sides and the stumps of his arms drew thick swathes of red along the metal walls.
His eyes opened slowly. The parasites were thinning - disappearing into his mouth and nose; pushing into the yawning wound in his stomach, humming in a thick carpet over his arm sockets.
“And now we’re finished”
My voice sounded dry and old.
I folded the locking bracket over the wire door of the cage and rattled it with both hands. The cages rocked against the wall. It wasn’t going to open anytime soon.
The room smelled wet and heavy and slumped silent over my naked shoulders.
I turned to face the room.
I felt lost.
The Boss-Lady stood a few steps outside the door.
Dad still pushing himself through a seam in the wa
ll.
The Doctor working his cardboard bones into some semblance of sitting.
“Come in.”
I motioned for the Boss-Lady and knelt to prop Dad up against the wall.
“Are you alive? Awake? Look at me”
His pink eyes rolled over my face. There was nothing meaningful in them. A thin sheen of fear.
Jesus’ arms stretched over the tyre iron. I kicked them aside and scooped it up. My fingers left trails in the thick pool of blood. His arms settled against the wall, crossed in limp expectation.
“Come in. Now. Don’t make me ask again”
The Boss-Lady moved into the threshold and stayed.
Close enough.
I flipped the tyre iron and it slapped against my palm. It felt cold. Unbalanced. A little off.
I pushed it into my waistband and addressed the room.
“Well. Here we are. It’s been a difficult month for all of us.”
The Doctor stared at the floor. I backhanded the cages and the shock of metal on metal jolted him awake. His eyes met my stomach.
“Thankyou. Listening ears. Please.”
I cleared my throat and spat a rogue parasite on the floor. It drew a thin line through the blood, making a beeline for the arms crossed against the wall.
“You’ve all done things that you can’t come back from. And that’s fine. So here’s the plan…”
I jerked my chin toward the Doctor.
“Throw me that jar of blues.”
His eyes crawled over the floor around him. Fingers working against the swelling of their own joints.
I caught the jar and pushed a handful of blues into my mouth.
They tasted bitter, foaming against my tongue and cheek lining. Chemicals ran down my throat.
Vague memories of Home - the bar, my booth, the steady hiss of the stills, black-wood smoke pooling against the roof.
I sighed and threw the jar back to the Doctor. It shattered against the floor between his legs.
I tapped the floor with my foot until their eyes met mine.
“I don’t want anything from you. I want you to go back to your homes…”
I gestured to the Doctor.
“…to your surgery, to the meatbin…”
…to the Boss-Lady…
“…to your brothel…”
And to Dad
“…and to your Bar”
“And I want you to keep playing at whatever you were playing before. And know that I’ll be watching over you, protecting you - and that I will come for each of you - and when I do, the word that comes out of your mouth will be…”
I paused, spread my palms, pulled each of their eyes into mine.
“Yes.”
Their faces were dead.
“Remind me. Everybody. When I come to you, what will you say?”
Silence.
I pulled the tyre iron from my waistband and flipped it a few times. It still felt cold; something strange about its arc.
“Last time: When I come to you, you will say…”
I drew an impatient circle in the air with the tyre iron, beckoning the words with fingers clotted with blood.
The thin voice of the Doctor.
“Yes.”
“Very good! Very good!”
“Yes”
Dad. His voice carried through his spine and into the rotting wood of the walls. Even with the support of an entire building his voice was empty and limp.
The Boss-Lady’s eyes were fixed on mine.
The tyre iron slowed to a halt.
I felt my smile fading, muscles in my mouth packing themselves away. I pushed some mock enthusiasm but it warped into an illegible grimace.
“Yes?”
My voice, this time. Upward inflection cracking at the bitter end.
She leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms, clearing her throat.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
My face burned, my stomach turned over and I looked between their faces.
Empty eyes. I met their gaze and saw no sign of recognition. No glimmer of memory or emotional meta-data.
My heart beat fast and shallow. I turned to Jesus; his cage wept thick and black, his eyes half open. I put my face close to his.
Quietly, more air than words - breath sliced up by clenched teeth:
“Do you know who I am?”
His eyes wavered slightly but there was no response.
He could have been brain-dead. Bad sample group.
I turned back to Boss-Lady.
“What did you say?”
“Who are you? What are you? What do you want with us?”
Were my cheeks wet? My eyes felt hot.
“I’m…”
I couldn’t find the words. Packing the meatbin, blues and shine, chasing ferals down tar-dusted alleyways. The sky hot and mute and bright.
I looked down at my bare torso, held my palms up, wrists and forearms.
All stained with tar. Veins thick and bulging; alternate black and blue fingers running beneath my skin. Star-bursts of dark purple where they met at my elbow and wrist.
“You fucking…”
What did I look like?
“Goddamnit.”
I pushed out a heavy, sour breath. The Old City, the New City - I pushed them all out and felt them eddy and dissipate.
All wet eyes on me.
Start over.
“I’m the Blue Devil.”
I flipped the tyre iron.
Vague fluttering of the Boss-Lady’s lips. Dad narrows his eyes as if looking at me from a distance.
Again, louder. My voice clenched the room and shook it.
“The Blue Devil.”
I flipped the tyre iron. It felt warm again. Jesus’ breath ragged behind me. I flexed my muscles and my skin crept with parasites and hair.
I pointed to each of them with the tyre iron. I deferred my emotions to my face.
Teeth bare.
I spread my arms and beckoned the parasites to the surface. Ragged fibers stretched through my pores. Blossoming of hair through my follicles.
Three mouths, six lungs - pulled the oxygen from the room and sat with it.
Silence. Heavy and expectant.
Salt and fear.
I closed my eyes and felt a true smile split my face.
“Welcome to the New World.”
Blue Meat Blues Page 20