Swallowed By The Cracks e-Pub

by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith

  There comes a moment in every person's life when he realizes the purpose of his existence. Sometimes that moment takes years to arrive, moving like a glacier until it starts to nudge you in the right direction. Other times it arrives like a slap in the face. Or a kick in the nuts. Either one gets your attention. One just hurts more than the other.

  This is my moment. This is my time.

  * * * * *

  I'm standing at the edge of Madison Square Park across from the Flatiron Building just after two in the morning, eating jellybeans and keeping alert for any sign of trouble. The homeless who sleep in and around Madison Square Park have been getting attacked lately, assaulted and beaten up. Since the police haven't managed to solve the problem, we thought we'd lend a hand.

  Inside the park, Vic and Charlie wander around pretending to be drunk and homeless, while Randy waits across the street by the 23rd Street subway entrance, smoking a cigarette. Randy didn't used to smoke. But he says it helps to calm his nerves.

  Frank stands next to me, eating an apple fritter. While Frank has started exercising to try to keep some of the extra weight off, he still wears sweats most of the time and likes to indulge himself with doughnuts and ice cream. Plus he says it helps him to focus.

  Frank's been a lot more fun to be around since he accepted his new life.

  "Mmm," he says, licking the sugar off his lips, then holding a chunk of apple fritter out to me. "You want a bite?"

  "No thanks," I say.

  I've already had my fill of pretzels and jelly beans, which are pretty high on the glycemic index, though not as high as sourdough bread or instant rice. But they're easier to carry around and they do a good enough job of upping my glucose levels. I just have to make sure I don't become diabetic. Even if I could afford to take something like Amaryl, the last thing I want is to have to worry about my mouth or face swelling up or my eyes turning yellow.

  The funny thing about prescription drugs is that most people will take them without even considering what the long-term effects of those drugs might have on them. At least guinea pigs understand what we're getting into, even if it's not a smart career move.

  And taking one drug to cure one problem can lead to more problems that require more drugs, until you're essentially medicating your medications.

  In a way, we've become like smart phones, only instead of downloading applications, we're downloading prescriptions.

  You've got high blood pressure? There's a pill for that.

  You're anxious and stressed out? There's a pill for that.

  You can't get an erection? There's a pill for that.

  We're gradually becoming more and more dependent on pharmaceutical drugs in order for us to survive. Whether we have problems with sleeping, depression, or gaining weight, there's a prescription answer waiting for us at the drugstore.

  It's only a matter of time before evolution makes a leap forward and humans start being born with a dependency on pharmaceutical drugs. Or exhibiting permanent side-effects.

  Apparently, some of us have already taken that leap.

  Laughter drifts to us from inside the park by the Shake Shack. Loud and boisterous, followed by the sound of a bottle breaking. That's the signal from Vic and Charlie. Frank shoves down the rest of his apple fritter and I pocket my jelly beans. Out by the subway entrance, Randy flicks away his unfinished cigarette and jogs across the street into the park.

  When we get to the Shake Shack, two punks are hassling Vic by the closed Pick-Up windows while Charlie backs away from a third punk out behind the hamburger stand. Two more punks are over by the Southern Fountain, terrorizing a homeless woman. Frank peels off from me and heads that way with Randy while I stand point and watch to make sure no one gets blind sided or outnumbered. Or in case someone pulls a gun.

  Since Vic's got two to deal with, I keep an eye on him in case he needs any help. But when he burps, the two guys hassling him are suddenly clutching their stomachs and stumbling away, falling to their hands and knees, spraying vomit across the sidewalk.

  While the local authorities have issued a statement saying that we are vigilantes acting outside of the law and are not to be encouraged, the local press hasn't helped matters by turning us into heroes, glorifying our exploits, and giving us names.

  The New York Post refers to Vic as Captain Vomit.

  Vic watches the two punks crawl around, moaning and puking, then he lets out a laugh and walks over to the closest one and kicks him in the ribs.

  I think Vic enjoys this more than the rest of us.

  Out behind the Shake Shack, Charlie is trying to reason with his would-be assailant. That's Charlie for you. Always trying to resolve conflict without violence. But the punk isn't listening. The next instant, Charlie shivers in the mid-September Manhattan night and the punk drops to the ground, shaking and spasming, looking like an epileptic having an orgasm.

  Charlie's been dubbed Convulsion Boy.

  None of us ever expected this to become our lives, but it's who we are now. We've become drug reaction crime fighters. Side-effect super heroes. Using our unique abilities to stop criminals by making them vomit and go into convulsions.

  Among other things.

  Over by the Southern Fountain, Randy lights up another cigarette and takes a deep drag as one of the thugs starts going into contortions, scratching at himself and whimpering, his skin blistered and covered with angry red splotches.

  Randy is simply called The Rash.

  While Randy isn't particularly fond of his nom de plume, he's embraced his new identity. We all have. We're the modern prescription for an overmedicated society.

  May cause skin rashes.

  May cause drowsiness.

  May cause rapid weight gain.

  The last of the thugs cries out as his waist expands and his arms and thighs grow to twice their thickness. Before he has a chance to run away from Frank, the thug busts through the seams on his clothes and falls down, incapacitated, his frame unable to support the extra weight.

  Frank's name is Big Fatty.

  We're the new breed of crime fighter. A product of our profession. And we're not the only ones. There are others who have apparently discovered that the constant exposure to the testing of pharmaceutical drugs has given them unusual abilities.

  Diarrhea Boy. Erection Man. Professor Phlegm.

  While most of them seem to be working for the benefit of others, there are some who have chosen to use their newfound powers for personal gain. Not us. We work for the less fortunate. For those who can't stand up for themselves. People like us. Or at least like we used to be. Before we discovered what we'd become.

  Two more punks show up late to the party. When they see their buddies throwing up and convulsing and collapsed in a writhing mass of excessive fat, they turn and run toward the southwest corner and the subway entrance. I take off after them.

  In the three months since my encounter with the skateboarder in Central Park, I've learned how to harness my new abilities. Now, I can direct my yawns at a single individual in a crowd with a range of up to fifty feet. I can even hit moving targets while running at full speed.

  Just before they reach 23rd Street, I yawn and the two punks collapse and go sliding along the sidewalk, coming to rest next to each other by the park entrance, their eyes closed in a deep, unexpected slumber.

  They call me Dr. Lullaby.

  «-ô-»

  About Michael Marshall Smith

  Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published seventy short stories and three novels – Only Forward, Spares and One of Us – in the process winning the Philip K. Dick Award, International Horror Guild, August Derleth and the Prix Bob Morane in France. He has won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any o
ther author.

  Writing as Michael Marshall, he has also published five internationally-bestselling thrillers, including The Straw Men, The Intruders and Bad Things. The Intruders is currently under series development with BBC Television. 2009 also saw the publication of The Servants, under the further name M. M. Smith.

  He is currently involved in screenwriting projects, including a television pilot set in New York, and an animated horror movie for children. His new Michael Marshall novel Killer Move will be published in the US and UK in July 2011.

  He lives in North London with his wife, son, and two cats.

  Visit his website at: www.michaelmarshallsmith.com

  Death Light

  By Michael Marshall Smith

  I know the moment, the exact second, when I gave up hope. It happened just as afternoon gave itself to twilight, and when it came, it dropped like a stone. It fell on me, and it fell hard, and when it landed, something broke. That's what I think, anyway. Though looking back, it seems it must have started a couple of days before. That's what they say, anyhow, and I cannot find clear memories of that period now so it's hard to disagree. All I can be sure of is the breakage, and that when something breaks, it creates at least two parts.

  I'd been in the DGA building on semi-mythical Sunset Boulevard, spectating a half-hour "meeting" in an airy office with an animatronic from the Los Angeles chapter of a well-known mini-major. I'd sat in a disconcertingly large leather chair and sipped a cup of very good coffee, while Jon pimped our creative wares, only making me want to vomit with embarrassment about twice. The studio droid been pleasant and upbeat throughout, assuring us that we were freakishly talented and it would be great for us all to work together, just great, really, incredibly, fabulously... great – and he'd be in touch, like, immediately. Seriously. Before we'd left the building, he'd be talking to us again. Before we'd even arrived today, wheels would start to turn. This guy was going to bend time itself, in order to us all working together way back before the Big Bang.

  Then his pleasant, willowy assistant – her name was something like Hope or Treasure or Magnificence, but after a couple of days of such meetings I'd given up trying to remember them, even though I knew that ten years from now it could be her who ran the studio – had shown Jon and I back out through their epic reception area, smiling pleasantly as she put us in an elevator. Which had also been pleasant, as such things go.

  As soon as the elevator doors shut and we were alone, Jon crinkled his eyes and punched me gently on the shoulder, dipping from the waist, a triumphant bend in his knees.

  "Hey, hey hey!"

  I nodded and smiled as best I could, wondering how he could possibly be so dumb as to not realise what had just happened.

  The elevator eventually let us out in the vast and silent street-level lobby, and our heels ticked across a shining floor toward glass doors beyond which the real world waited – as real, at least, as it ever got in this part of California. Jon retrieved his rental Le Baron from the underground lot (Budget having been fresh out of Mustangs), clapped me on the back, and nosed out onto Sunset, finding a temporary niche market for low-rent middle-aged producers in the late afternoon traffic, and adding his pair of brake lights to the array.

  I watched as his greying coif disappeared, and then, when I was finally alone, let out a long, slow breath.

  The guy from the studio wasn't going to be in touch.

  Not soon. Not ever.

  That much was clear to me, if not to Jon. It wasn't that we'd done anything wrong. It had probably been true before we'd arrived for the meeting, before we'd taken the flight from London three days before. That wasn't the point. It had been one company of many, the person we'd seen merely one executive among thousands plying their vague trade in this bizarre town. I hadn't even bothered to commit the guy's name to memory, knowing that within months he'd have moved up or sideways or down, to be replaced by someone identical. His hair might be a slightly different colour, or he'd be wearing a pant suit and be a woman – but it would effectively be the same guy, with the same combination of excessive confidence and covert vulnerability, bearing an identical trend-crazed decision-paralysis dressed up as cautious acumen. That wasn't the problem. What I'd realised was that there simply wasn't any point going through this charade, in turning up to meetings where everyone maintained a "relationship" without any real possibility of anything whatsoever coming of it. That there was no point believing in sudden and inevitable good fortune, or that a deal was just around the corner if I wanted it enough – that I could use my will to bend reality and make it give me what I'd always wanted.

  Reality, it turned out, was a lot more stubborn than it looked. Reality was tough.

  Reality could kick my arse.

  Or "ass," as they said out here.

  I felt like a child, a forlorn kid finally understanding that, however long he searched under the tree, Santa Claus really hadn't brought him a bike this year... And that next year wasn't looking good, either, what with the whole thing having been a made-up story from the get-go. I finally understood that the movie business in general had made a vast, unspoken decision, and probably made it before I was born.

  It would get along without me.

  I started slowly walking west along Sunset. I could have accepted a lift back to the hotel, but hadn't been able to bear the prospect. I'd told Jon I wanted to soak up the atmosphere – and I had – but now that was exactly what I didn't want to do. What had been exciting and energising an hour ago now felt exhausted, grey and sad. It was like seeing the woman you love, after she's told you she's been seeing somebody else for six months. She is still lovely, still all you want, but now looks new and distant, while you feel like somebody old and left behind: looking in, watching her, through glass which is thick and stained.

  And those last six months, that time you thought you'd spent together... It turns out she hadn't really been there at all.

  Anyone can walk into Hollywood's lobby. So long as you've got a screenplay or two or are allied to a half-assed wannabe producer like Jon, you can walk up to the bar and buy yourself a drink. Watch the players. Dream your little dreams. But there are other rooms, the ones where the real players lurk, waiting to cut the real/reel deals. Suites where the stars lounge, ready to take your work and pay you a little for it, while making themselves ever more rich, and famous, and indispensable. And there are the ballrooms too, icons like Chateau Marmont, which I happened to be passing – along with others which were doubtless far more fashionable these days but which I was insufficiently cool to have been told about. You could walk into any of those places right off the street, but that wasn't the point. Like a vampire, if you want to do real business, you have to be invited in.

  Until this afternoon I'd believed that my time would come, that I would be receiving the secret handshake and guided through the right door.

  Now suddenly I didn't.

  And I felt a fool.

  I found myself remembering conversations which had never taken place, things I'd imagined people saying of me, fantasies to warm long sessions at the keyboard:

  "This guy's not just one of those writers who turn up in neat jeans and nod and smile, then go home to spend the afternoon drinking bourbon and kicking the cat."

  "I hear you, Bob. He understands punctuation and everything. He's the real deal. His apostrophes are fucking legendary."

  "Let's get him locked down before someone else snatches him out of our hands. Three picture first look, duplex office on the lot. Make it so, stat."

  "We're talking high seven figures?"

  "Eight to be safe."

  "Plus a house to work in. Or two."

  "Hell – just give him Malibu."

  Was it bourbon? Or scotch? I had never been entirely clear of the difference. Whatever. Half a large bottle of something, at any rate, is what I beli
eved I'd be drinking per afternoon if I lived in LA for very long.

  As I passed the site of the old Marlboro Man billboard, I suddenly realised that I'd been so wrapped up in maudlin introspection that I hadn't even had my post-meeting cigarette. I stopped and lit one – a salute in the direction of the vanished icon, amazed that he hadn't yet been replaced with Cranberry Juice Woman, or Low Impact Aerobics Person, Zero Carbohydrate Guy or whatever the hell the locals were telling themselves would make them live forever these days.

  At the top of La Cienega I ground to a halt.

  I knew what my evening held. An interminable dinner in some restaurant I'd be supposed to be impressed by, with Jon and an American version of Jon boring each other senseless with largely fictitious tales of projects in progress, projects in development, projects in projection: projects which would never – and should never – see the light of day. A reprise of Jon's pitch of my screenplay, with everything but the most facile description of the plot utterly wrong – followed by double decaf espressos and a three-way flurry of unheartfelt declarations of intent to work with each other at some point in a never-to-be-determined future.

  I'll get my people to take your people out into the parking lot and kick the living crap out of them.

  And validate my parking, shit-head.

  For a moment I considered keeping walking, taking Sunset as far as the sunset, all the way to Santa Monica and the sea. It would take what – an hour or two? I could get a beer, sit and look out over the ocean from the palisades. Let the sight of the Pacific wash it all away.

  But I turned my head, and looked down the hill.

  My hotel waited at the bottom of it. I needed to shower and change, see if there'd been any calls, pump myself up for dinner, just in case. You never know, right? That's the spirit. It could happen, any day, and believing the game is already lost doesn't mean you can stop playing. Not when you've wanted to be a screenwriter since you first heard the word. Not when you've lived and breathed film and television for thirty years.