Now the man’s legs are buckling—he pitches forward, down and to the side, his head slamming against the edge of the desk as he collapses to the floor. Alex rides the body’s descent, letting go of the pen and knife handle as she steadies herself so she doesn’t fall off. The chair rolls backward, leaving dark wet tracks in its wake. Now she kneels against his back, the twitching flesh pinned under her strong legs. He never got a chance to scream, poor thing. The pain, though—she can tell by the way his body moves, by the tortured sounds pouring out of his mouth, that he still feels everything. And it’s not going away just yet. The knife grows both ways, it can hollow out a human in other ways. Alex lifts her skirt again, moving herself over the handle until the tip brushes against the crotch of her panties. She moves her legs over to his sides, pinning his torso in place, and places her hands against his upper back to keep him in place. Already the handle is tearing through the cotton, drilling its way through the folds of her wet flesh; and her entire body shakes in unison with the man as the knife delivers to both of them equal amounts of pleasure and pain.
Her eyesight darkens; the office disappears. In her orgasmic vision, Alex is the blade, splintering into a hundred silver threads, burrowing and whisking its way throughout the man, burning the magic out of his flesh, blending his insides into viscous mush that leaks through his splitting skin and pours over her hands and legs. All the colors of the underworld, flowing between her engorged lips into her body and mind. The burnt smell of superheated blood and crushed bone fills the air. Flashes of antediluvian light, flickering births of supernovas and star nurseries, strobe the images away: she is so close this time, so close to seeing what is there beneath all this shallow surface of sticky, repulsive physical life. Something waits for her down there, beneath the chaotic horror of biologic creation. Eyes that are not eyes, lifting up; thoughts that are not thoughts, turning to her. And it knows her name. A cave; the first cave; the first vein; the first geologic moment in time; the pre-biologic heartbeat of the first life. She is falling, rushing down, breaking apart, plummeting like the Leonids onto the face of—
He’s dead.
“Fuck.” The word comes out of her mouth on the tide of a low groan—she’s stuck on the blade handle, again. Liquefied human goo gels and cools against her skin. The man’s body is nothing more than a squishy flat bundle of clothing and skin, everything else covers the office floor like the blackened, pureed remains of restaurant garbage coagulating in a back alley. “Gross,” Alex mutters as she arches her back and carefully lifts herself off of the now normal-sized knife handle. Her skirt and blouse are caked and heavy with blood and sweat and coarse bits of bone and viscera—not that it matters, she can explain all that away by saying she had an accident while restocking the production shelves. But she wasn’t prepared for this, it was so spur-of-the-moment; and now she’ll have to budget more money for the laundry service, which means less money for whiskey come payday. Also, she can’t stand the smell.
Grabbing the edge of the desk for support, she pulls herself up onto her shaking legs. Sweat pours down her body, every inch. She’s absolutely soaked. “Fuck,” she says again, running her fingers over her face and flicking the excess drops into the air. Alex looks down and sighs. She’s never going to get this cleaned up, not in a million years. Maybe if she wipes her shoes off on some corner of the carpet that isn’t soaking wet with shit and blood, she can leave the room and lock it behind her; no one will know she was ever in here. Not that it matters, she’ll have her desk cleaned out by the end of the day. Not that that matters, anyway. This is her last day anywhere.
Her mug lies next to the man, coated in goo. Using her finger as a hook, she lifts it by its handle. The straw rattles against the empty plastic sides. What a disappointing sound.
“I need more vodka.”
“No, you do not.”
Alex drops the cup and turns: a second man steps from the dark of the elevator and raises a gun. Before she can even gasp, he fires. She feels the bullet enter her upper chest, just above her left breast—she’s never experienced such terrible pain and force before, even from the blade, perhaps because this is so divorced from numinous mystery, the bullet is just an ordinary piece of metal, poorly forged out of some shallow surface cave passing itself off as a mine: the offensive, naked nothingness of the act takes her breath away. Or maybe that’s just the bullet nicking the top of her lung. Alex falls back, down, her head hitting the chair and sending it skittering away as she lands on what’s left of the first man’s mushy head.
The second man steps out of the elevator, gun leveled at her head now. She has no doubt he can make his mark. She stares over at her knife. It’s so close, it only needs her touch—
“No. Stay right where you are,” he says, and steps over to the pile of clothes, his gaze and the barrel of the gun never wavering. “Do. Not. Move.” He reaches down.
“No…” The word is more of a strangled gasp that doesn’t fully leave her mouth.
The man lifts the knife by the tip of the handle, his mouth grimacing as though he’s holding a turd. The knife has shrunk back down into its very ordinary shape of all-purpose kitchen tool. He’s wearing black gloves, Alex notices, not leather but some type of material that glistens like oil. The sight of those repulsive gloves against her knife, her beloved—despite the pain of moving, a small sob escapes her throat.
“Give it back!”
The man shakes his head as he holds it up, examining the minute carvings on the handle.
“My father’s—I’m dying—please just let me hold it until I’m dead.”
The man shoots her a look. Alex can’t tell if he’s amused or sad. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m not alone—my coworkers—they’re calling the police right now.”
“You better hope they aren’t,” he says with a very earnest look on his face, waving the blade back and forth at the mess on the floor. “Although, I’d love to hear your explanation for all of this. I don’t think it would work as well as when you took care of your art director. Who happened to also work for me. In the Ministry.”
Alex stares at him. She feels all the blood draining from her face in a cold rush, as if she were a child caught with her hands in the candy jar.
“Yes.” The man finally moves the gun away, holding his jacket open as he stows the knife. “Anyway, no one on this floor can hear anything that happens in this office. It was built that way. There is some serious fucking magic coating these walls.”
“Please, just give me the knife and leave. I won’t follow you.”
“You can’t follow me. The elevator is operated by a key. I am that key, so to speak—it only works for me. Just like the knife only works for you. Same principles, different systems of magic.”
“The knife isn’t magic. I can’t do magic.”
“Oh, I know.” He sits down at the edge of the desk, looming over her like a thin vulture. His skin is the wane, light brown that occurs when someone goes years without setting foot outdoors, and his jet black hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail, which makes his face and long nose appear even sharper. He really does look like a vulture, one of those Andean condors that sometimes circle over the mists of the Becher in the early morning. His handsome head would look lovely in her refrigerator, or perhaps on her wall, next to the other masks.
“It’s not our magic, what you and this knife do,” he continues. “Not Obsidian, not elder magic.”
“It’s not magic,” Alex repeats in a dull voice. He thinks he’s just going to let her bleed out while he lectures her into her grave. But this isn’t how she’s going to die. This wasn’t what she saw. And perhaps he doesn’t know what she can do, without the knife. Keep talking, you stupid fuck.
“I think,” he says, a thoughtful tone creeping into his words, “I think that perhaps you might be right. In which case, what you are and what you can do is far more troubling than people might suspect.”
Alex looks away, out the windows. He
can kill her, or not. She’s done with him.
“Do you want your knife back?”
She says nothing. Outside, the skies have turned an angry grey. Thunderstorms, or something worse. The air traffic has subsided, but the sirens still wail, wail, wail.
“Yes. I want it back.”
“You know you’re not dying. I know that, too.”
“Yes.” Already Alex feels the bullet twirling around in her angry flesh, working its way toward the surface. It’s not the bullet’s doing—it’s her body, pushing it out and knitting up all the damage along the way. Broken bones, a busted nose, cuts and scrapes, a liver and kidneys that never bear the burden of all the booze she drinks. It always ends the same, she emerges from chymical “accidents” and fires as damaged as the corpses she leaves behind; and then she heals and goes on the same as before. It’s not magic, though. She’s not immortal or indestructible, just—something else, a creature with no power over her own continual re-creation. If it was magic, if she could truly change her flesh on her own, the things she’d do to herself, oh the incredible things…
“You thought you’d just keep me here, talking until you healed yourself, and then? And then?”
Alex smiles. Despite the discomfort, she shrugs.
The man aims the gun and shoots her in the right shoulder.
“You BITCH!” Alex slams back against the floor, writhing in pain.
“My apologies.” He sets the gun down on the desk, and gingerly steps through the remains of his coworker. “You should know, and I don’t expect you to appreciate or thank me for this—” he leans down, grabs her right wrist, and begins dragging her across the floor, speaking loudly over her howls, “—but I was instructed to kill you and toss your body off the building. Which I would have been happy to do if I was working solely for the Ministry. But as it happens—” the man props her up against the back of the elevator, and pulls a large oval clasp, not unlike the clasp of a necklace, out of a discrete panel in the steel wall “—I additionally report to a second organization, and I have another, better use for you. So I need to keep you safe and calm and out of harm’s way.”
The man unlatches the clasp and lifts up her left wrist.
“Are you ready for this?” he asks.
“I’m going to kill you,” Alex says. Her voice is dull and flat, but she injects every bit of hatred inside her into each syllable. “Even if I have to tear my hand off to get to you.”
“I don’t doubt that. In fact, I’m counting on it.” The man slides the edge of the hook through the middle of her wrist, carefully and expertly nudging it past her shifting bones. Alex feels a dizzying darkness crinkling around the edges of her eyesight, but she doesn’t turn away. Blood streams down her arm in thick rivulets, but not enough to indicate that he’s hit any major veins or arteries. He’s good, he’s probably had a lot of practice. The edge of the clasp emerges from the other side of her wrist like a sewing needle, and the man closes the other end of the clasp against its bloody counterpart. It locks with a wet click.
“Why do you drink so much?” the man asks as he steps away, inspecting his handiwork. Alex does the same, staring up at her arm. The clasp is attached to a slender, almost cheap-looking chain that leads up to the recess in the elevator wall. She could rip it out in a second, if her wounds were fully healed. If she wanted. If she gave any fucks at all, which she really does not anymore. A tiny tube winds through the links, she notes, running down the chain and disappearing into the base of the clasp—the light in the elevator is low, but if she squints, she can just make out drops of clear liquid sliding down the tubing. A slow lovely warmth is spreading throughout her limbs, lapping away the sharp edges of the pain. The tube contains alcohol. He didn’t miss her veins at all.
“Don’t worry, it’s not enough to kill you—there isn’t enough vodka in all of Obsidia for that. It’s just enough to keep you very content, very docile.”
“You’re a piece of shit. Tell that to both your employers.”
“I’ve noticed that you’re drunk almost all the time at work. Except, of course, when you’re taking some poor soul apart like a roast chicken. But then, that’s after hours. You’re always sober for that. For most people, it’s the opposite.”
“I’m not most people.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“And I don’t get drunk at work, it’s just, it’s always just enough to not—never mind. I don’t know why you’re asking a question you already have the answer to.” Alex feels almost gregarious now, despite her desperate inner efforts to care even a single fucking bit about how much she’s going to enjoy riding his pulverized bones to the hidden center of the planet and beyond.
“I wanted to make sure you understood why I’m doing this.”
“Because I can’t heal as fast if I’m drunk. Because you know I’ll just sit here like a wet rag doll, sucking up all this free top-shelf booze, pissing myself and dreaming the afternoon away so you can do—” she waves her free arm back and forth in the air “—whatever it is you’ve come here to do.”
“Trust me, it’s not top shelf.”
Alex smiles. Little bits of dried blood flake off her lips and settle onto her blouse. The man returns the gesture, revealing a wide, clean set of ivory teeth.
“Why is the building shaking so hard?” Alex asks. His polite smile freezes, just a touch. “Why were so many aircraft lifting equipment and machines out of the center of the city? Why was all the traffic this morning so crushing and relentless? All in one direction. I got off in the middle of the spur, but the rest, they just kept going. Thousands and thousands of horses and cars. Should I have gone with them? Here’s a more interesting question: why did you stay behind?”
As if in response to her words, dark shadows well up throughout the office as the light retreats from the windows. The blood and carnage fade with the furniture into a soft, uniform gloom.
“Storm,” the man says. All the warmth has bled from his voice. “A storm is coming. It’s almost here.”
“Must be one hell of a storm.”
“Yes.”
Despite the warmth of the vodka rolling through her veins, cold veins of dread erupt in her chest. “Is this the biggest storm? From the Southern Ocean?”
“Not that one, no. They—haven’t found Him yet. He’s still an undiscovered country, dreaming. This is something else. But, also from below.”
“Below Becher?” The cold horror doesn’t fade away. “Below us?”
His voice is almost a whisper—in the hot gloom, she can barely hear him speak. “Yes.”
“What is it?”
“We’re not sure.” His tone is hesitant. “We can’t quite make out its full form.”
“And yet we’re bringing it up?”
“Yes.”
“Which part of Becher is it under?”
He says nothing.
“Which part? Where is it buried?”
“It’s not buried, actually. It’s being born. We’re just—speeding the process up a bit. No, that’s not really accurate. More like an immense cesarean, and we’re performing the surgery.”
“You didn’t answer my question: which part of Becher?”
Again, he says nothing.
“Answer me, you fuck!”
The man steps back out of the elevator, and slides the metal gate shut. “I have some work to do on this floor. I’ll be back for you in several hours. You’ll be fine in here, it’s air-conditioned, it’s completely safe.” He grabs the handle of the closet door.
“Which fucking part of Becher? Which FUCKING part?”
He smiles at her again, his pale face a hundred diamonds grimacing behind the steel mesh as he opens his mouth; and Alex almost cries out for him to stop, because she knows what he’s going to say and she can’t stand it, she’s known it all this time, from the moment she woke up in the dead of night, from the moment that massive, mysterious quake momentarily sucked all life out of the earth and sky and replaced it with fl
at cosmic nothingness, from the moment she put her hand on the great glass panels of the front lobby and pushed her way through the sticky primordial gloom into the dying elevator that wriggled its way up all those shivering, sickly floors to the dilated and curetted rooms of her emptied-out employer in a district emptied out to make way for the even greater vastation of what’s coming.
And the door shuts and the darkness covers her completely, leaving only his magic-charged words illuminating the space with their terrible, wondrous fire: all of it.
Tenebrosus
The One That Comes Before Page 5