Shade City

by Domino Finn

  The DJ rolled his eyes as she explained the bit about her father but was clearly excited about the opportunity in Miami.

  "When's the wedding?" I asked.

  "It feels like a lifetime away," he said.

  Pam slapped her hand to his chest, as she had done to me earlier. "This summer, Soren! You promised!"

  It wasn't even Thanksgiving yet. The two had plenty of time to fight and make up before then.

  "I know, Bunny."

  "I hate when you call me that."

  Soren threw the cigarette butt to the ground and looked up and down the alley. Satisfied, he pulled a small joint from his pocket and lit up. I'd only known Soren for five minutes and was already witnessing the third drug being put into his system. That alone wasn't too strange. Everybody here fiended for something. People don't go to nightclubs to moderate themselves.

  Still, Soren was different. I can always tell with them. A light touch, just while brushing past, is enough to feel the second shadow inside. I had bro-hugged the guy and the presence was unmistakable. Now it was only a matter of taking advantage of his need.

  He passed the weed to Pam. She took a light hit and gave it back to him, then drank a large gulp from her glass.

  "Hit this," he said. He held the frizzled paper between two fingers as he offered it to me. There was a chunky piece of metal on his finger. A ring gone bad. It looked like something you might pay too much for at the Renaissance Fair.

  I shook my head casually. "No thanks. I usually go for the harder stuff."

  Soren smiled. He still seemed very alert as he took heavy tokes and paced between the two walls. "I can help with that too," he said, "but this patio isn't private enough."

  That was the last piece of the puzzle as far as I was concerned. He was one of them. A faker. Soren was a fiend, trying to exploit his senses and adrenalin any way he could. Dancing, drinking, smoking, spinning—he placed those pleasures above all other concerns, probably even Pam. If chemicals were his weakness, he would be easy to exploit.

  Those outside kept mostly to themselves, but there was a constant wave of people shuffling in and out. Doing anything illegal here would attract a lot of attention, especially from the bouncer standing outside the gate at the front. This was a bad spot.

  Pam put her hand to her forehead. "Baby, I want to sit down." Our drinks were all half-finished, but hers was hitting harder.

  "Go ahead, Bunny."

  She looked at the filthy concrete in disgust, put her hands on her knees, and leaned her ass against the wall. Her tight red skirt would have made it difficult to go all the way down.

  "It's always something with her," said Soren in an annoyed voice. "It's Saturday night. I'm here till I get kicked out." He waved his hand dismissively at her. His heavy ring slipped down his finger, but he caught it and adjusted it back into place.

  I took another sip of my rum and watched as Pam swayed to the side. She was getting groggy and her heels weren't the surest of footings. I put my hand on her shoulder to steady her. I was, after all, responsible for this.

  "Maybe we should go upstairs and chill out for a bit."

  Soren let out a disgruntled sigh and upturned his glass into his mouth. "Every single time," he inflected. He extinguished his joint on the wall and returned it to his pocket.

  "Here," I said, taking the Long Island from Pam's hand and pouring the remaining alcohol into the dude's glass. He looked at me with a frustrated expression but appeared grateful.

  "Thanks," he said. Soren stepped closer to me and lowered his voice. "You know, it wouldn't be so bad if she were a better fuck."

  "Soren!" Pam yelled. One moment she was struggling to stand and the next she had summoned the strength to slap him in the face. His glass fell from his hand and banged on the concrete, somehow not cracking but tipping over and spilling nonetheless. Great.

  Soren shot her an evil grimace and jumped at her. I put my arm across his shoulder and held him back.

  "Dude!" I said discreetly, looking backwards at the gate.

  The stout guy brushed my arm down but backed off, understanding that hitting her here would have sent him to jail. He exchanged a confiding look with me.

  "It's just that she's always holding me back."

  Pam began weeping as silently as she could manage.

  Soren rolled his eyes again. "You see what I mean?" He put both his hands against the brick wall and leaned into it.

  "No," said Pam, brushing her eyes. "I can dance. I'm fine. Let's go in." As much as she tried to reassure her fiancé, we both knew she didn't have it in her. She pushed me away and almost immediately lost her balance. Her ankle gave out, or she twisted it, and she slipped to the floor. I caught her and gently set her down as she struggled to remove her heel.

  "Fuck this!" said Soren. With a sudden flare of temper, he rammed his head into the wall. The blow wasn't for show—his skull impacted the brick so fiercely it made a sound just as loud as his glass hitting the floor.

  I let go of Pam and, as she dropped to the street, pulled Soren away from the wall. His forehead was split open and blood ran down his forehead and nose. He started laughing. Then we heard metal rolling on the cement. Soren's ring was too large for him. It had fallen off.

  "Chill out," I urged and looked down the alley. People were watching us. We were a sideshow. Guys were chuckling. Women were horrified and trading judgmental glances at the floor. I realized Pam was lying on her back with her legs spread open, one knee resting against the wall, exposing her red panties to the entire alley. I felt guilty about that.

  "We need to go inside," I told Soren. I looked him straight in the eye to get my point across. Once he nodded understanding, I released him. He scooped up his ring and headed for the door. He left his fiancée in the alley.

  I lifted Pam to her feet. "Come on, girl."

  She was putty in my arms. "It hurts."

  "Don't worry. We'll sit you down and take a look."

  She hobbled unevenly with me while Soren went inside the club. I heard louder murmuring in the alley and hurried to catch up.

  "My shoe," she said.

  I looked back. One of Pam's red heels was resting on its side by the wall.

  "It's okay," I said, and pushed her inside.

  Pam clung to me in a daze as I walked her up the dark staircase. She was soft against me, trusting me completely. All I could think about was that her boob was pressed into my chest. What a dick I was.

  At the top, I headed for the rows of seats in the mezzanine. Soren looked my way.

  "I'll go clean up. When she settles down, catch up with me. I've got some snow."

  He disappeared into the hallway. There was a men's room at the end of it that he'd be in for a while. Pam and I were alone again.

  "Is he hurt?" she asked, putting up a meager attempt to fight me as I sat her in a cushioned corner.

  I pulled in snug next to her. "It's you I'm worried about. You drank too much."

  Her eyes lazily looked into mine as her face leaned against the seat back. "It must have been the pot."

  I nodded and grabbed the edge of her skirt, pulling it down to make sure she was decent. She was dug in behind a table so she would be safe here for a bit.

  "I saw you with some girls downstairs. I'll tell them to come up."

  As I slid away, she gripped my thigh tighter than I would've thought she was capable of in her condition.

  "Don't go," she said with a longing in her voice.

  I looked at her full lips and her big nose and her shapely legs and her hand resting on me and sighed. She wouldn't remember any of this.

  "He used to be so sweet to me."

  I nodded. I knew all about it already. I didn't need the story but I offered her one.

  "He's probably just had a rough couple of weeks."

  The muscles in her forehead tensed and she wiped her wet eyes. "It's been longer than that. The first month of our engagement was perfect but then he totally changed. He's been partying harder t
han usual and ignoring me."

  I wanted to tell her he wasn't the same person she knew. I wanted to comfort her and tell her things would turn out okay, knowing she'd probably forget the whole conversation anyway. But that's why there was no point. What was important was that Pam would wake up tomorrow and be happier because of me.

  "Too many drugs," she muttered, getting sleepy. "Three months already..."

  I furrowed my brow. Did she just say what I thought she did? "He's been like this for three months?"

  The girl's brown hair obscured half her face but I could see that her eyes were closed.

  "Pam?"

  Her chest heaved as she breathed heavily but she was completely limp. She was asleep.

  * * *

  My steps to the bathroom carried a determined intensity. No more pretenses. No more games. The hallway was dark and painted black and red and had a small gathering of guys hovering at the end. The men's room door was open but the bathroom attendant stood blocking it. He was an old black man with scraggly white fur that grew unevenly across his cheeks and chin. As I approached, I realized he was sending the crowd to the other restrooms.

  "Is my friend inside? With the blood?"

  "He's fucking up my business, man," complained the attendant. "Get him out of here or I call security."

  I smirked. This had worked out after all.

  As I checked down the hallway, past some of the guys who refused to leave in case there would be something interesting to see, I noticed a single Asian girl staring at me. She was very short—tiny, even—and had pale white hair that hung just above her shoulders. The hair and her cream dress stuck out in the darkness. It was what initially drew my attention to her. Then I noticed the large doe eyes behind the bleached hair. They gazed at me so intensely. It was almost unnerving. Unsettling. And intriguing.

  "Did you hear me?" pressed the black man. I turned and saw that his yellowed eyes meant business.

  "No problem," I said and brushed past him.

  The bathroom was lined with a set of small white tiles, old fashioned not in a trendy way but in a hasn't-been-remodeled-in-a-long-time sense. The floor was chipped and uneven. It looked as if the smog of the city had managed to seep inside and cling to every surface. It was a small space that afforded a few stalls, sinks, and urinals but was completely devoid of interest except for Soren, me, and the bathroom attendant.

  Soren was standing next to the sink. His head wasn't too bloody anymore, just some red in his hairline and circling the drain of the sink. He was digging through a candy jar on the counter next to a row of colognes, cigarettes, condoms, and other trinkets the old man was selling. Soren had a big grin on his face when he saw me and threw a handful of wrapped mints back into the jar.

  "I hate these fucking things," he said, "but now that you're here, we can get started." He pulled a small clear plastic bag from his pocket. He shot a glance behind me, then walked into the corner stall.

  The bathroom attendant was still blocking the open door. His expression urged me to hurry up. I put my hand up to ask for a minute, then walked cautiously to Soren as he snorted loudly. I pressed against the first two stall doors to make sure they were empty before arriving at the end. The guy had his pinky in his nose as he finished another bump.

  I didn't know Soren but I could tell he was getting worse. He gave no fucks about consequences. This was the second time in five minutes he was close to landing himself in jail. He just kept pushing, trying to find more and more ways to top himself. And people who would enable him. He held the baggy up to me.

  I shook my head and leaned my side against the back wall. From my pocket I pulled out a box of smokes and produced a black cigarette. It was a clove, but it wasn't a normal one. It had a bit of my homemade flair to it. I lit up and inhaled the spice blend deeply. It tasted different from pure tobacco. The cloves and the sweet paper did a good job of mystifying the flavor. I found they masked my recipe the best.

  "No. Not in here," said the old man, stomping towards me.

  I pulled out a twenty and placed it firmly against his chest.

  "It'll just be a minute," I promised. "Take a break."

  The man was both outraged and excited at the same time. He made much more than that in a night, but it wasn't often he got a tip that large at once. I thought of it as paying for his lost time. If he was at all offended by it, he decided to back off. The old man picked up his tip jar and walked out of the bathroom. I snapped the door closed behind him, flipped the deadbolt, and turned around.

  Alone at last.

  I pulled out my pocket watch. It was 1:52 a.m. I was cutting it close with the train, but I could pull this off quickly. I returned the watch to my jeans to free up my hands.

  Soren emerged from the stall, eyes wide at the fact that I had gotten the attendant outside. "You sure you don't want any, Dante?" he asked, flapping the small bag back and forth. "I owe you a drink. Take one bump, at least."

  The constant pounding of the trance music was muffled in the enclosed space. This was as private as we would get in a club this big. I took a long drag at my clove and shrugged.

  "Why not?" I stepped forward and offered him my cigarette. "Can you hold this?"

  He traded it for the bag and didn't think twice before putting it to his lips. As he smoked, I put my fingers around the baggy and zipped the seal closed. I stared at the drugs in my hand.

  "It must be fun to pretend you're something you're not."

  Soren coughed and looked at the black cigarette in his hands. "What the hell is this? It's not pot but it's not just tobacco either."

  I put the cocaine into my back pocket and smiled at his confusion. "You don't like it? It's perfectly natural. Illegal in the US now, even though it's not more harmful than a regular cigarette."

  His face fixed to a weird expression. I couldn't pin it down. Some kind of mix of pain and pleasure. He inhaled the gray smoke that rose from the tip as if he could discern the ingredients.

  "Well, that's not exactly true," I added. "The effects are quite disagreeable for those hiding in another's skin."

  As I spoke those words something clicked in him. He experienced a moment of clarity and realized many things at once. He knew that his secret was known by another. He knew that I knew he was a shade. Not Soren, but inside him. The life of another, abusing the body to experience worldly pleasures that were otherwise out of his reach. He stared at me and realized that, not only did I know about him, but I intended to expel him back to his own world. To flush him from his host. It was time for Soren, the old Soren, to return and patch up any damage that had been done to his life.

  The shade stared at me with coherent eyes. His tongue drooped out of his mouth, extended just past the bottom of his chin, and held in place. Blood from the cut on his head again flowed down his face. He raised my clove, the one I had sprinkled with white sage, and put the fire to his tongue. It sizzled and he grimaced slightly.

  Something was wrong. He should have been dizzy by now. I had felt his second shadow; he was no different than the others. A common fiend. Not malevolent or evil incarnate. Just a weak, desperate shadow of a man that once was. His vice was loading himself with chemicals and pleasure, anything that could make him feel again. And as high as he was, with the herb being absorbed into his lungs and blood, he should have been overloaded and collapsing, abandoning his host for good. Instead, he was somehow resistant. And angry.

  "How are you fighting that?" I demanded.

  He threw the extinguished clove to the floor and sucked his tongue back between his grinning teeth. Soren took a step towards me.

  "Listen," I said quickly, perhaps with a tinge of panic, "if you just relax I won't hurt you."

  The broad guy laughed and I suddenly regretted mixing up the Long Islands. I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on the mistake because Soren charged forward and planted his fist in my chest. I flew backwards in the air and collided with the wall, right next to the closed door. I slid to the floor and landed
on my hands and knees.

  He was stronger than the others, somehow. Different.

  Soren ran straight at me, looking to crush me into the wall, but I wasn't helpless. I leapt straight up into the air and planted my feet against the wall behind me, then launched forward, over the head of my wild opponent. I hooked my arms and tried to catch his neck as I flew above, but he ducked ahead and slammed into the wall. I flipped around from the light contact and landed hard on my feet and waited to see if Soren would get back up.

  Unfortunately, he didn't knock himself out. Soren picked up his wide frame and turned around. A trickle of dark red ran down the side of his face as if from a leaky faucet.

  "You're just going to hurt yourself here," I said, holding my arms up to show that I meant him no harm. "Have a smoke and let's talk for a second."

  He approached me again, this time with more measure. I searched the stash of products the bathroom attendant had lined up on the counter. I picked up a pack of Kools and lightly tossed it to Soren. He batted it away with his hand.

  "Not a menthol guy?"

  "Who are you?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "What do you care if I drink and smoke and fuck in this world?"

  "Soren might care."

  "I am Soren now. I deserve to live just as much as he does. Even more, since he is unwilling to fight for his place."

  The shade advanced slowly, content to talk. He didn't care about the bathroom attendant outside. Or the bouncers. Or the police. In this bathroom, it was just him and me. And he was blocking the exit. I kept my distance by stepping backwards. It was a short-term solution.

  "Why doesn't the sage affect you?" I asked. "You're nothing special, just a common shade."

  Soren chuckled as he advanced but did not answer. My back hit the wall.

  "What gives you the power to defy me?" I insisted.

  "Defiance is power," he replied, then spread his arms and grabbed me in a bear hug. He clamped down hard and had both of my arms pinned. I wiggled to the side but he wasn't weak and had leverage. I pushed off the back wall but he spun me around. My hip skipped against top of the sink. "Who are you?" he repeated.