by Dan Carver
I yank open the curtains and he screams, clawing at the sunlight. I smile. Fucking vampire.
“We’re all in the gutter, looking at the stars,” I quote, probably incorrectly. He changes tack.
“I know you’re an ‘angry young man,’” he says and, God rot him, he does the quote marks with his fingers thing. “You want to kick against authority; you want to assert your individuality; you want to dye your hair blue, call yourself ‘Johnny X’ and dance all night to crazy punk rock music!”
And I don’t want to do any of those things, because I’m twenty-six, not sixteen. I want to stop drinking, start a family and run a canoe hire business from a log cabin by the side of an Estonian lake. I want to paddle kayaks in summer, carve souvenirs in winter and raise children that don’t die of cirrhosis aged forty-five. But I keep this quiet. No sense sharing your secrets with a sociopath.
“I didn’t ask you to join my family,” he says, “But I’m determined to make the best of a bad situation till my niece comes to her senses.”
“Eh?” It’s not my wittiest riposte.
Dromedary is a paranoid man who digs into his employee’s private lives. When he finds something of interest he’s not averse to exploiting it. So when he snouts around and discovers I’m married to a Bactrian girl he spots an opportunity to cuckold me and cement his place in the aristocracy. But Rachel is no closer a relation to the former Prime Minister than I am to Chairman Mao. Her family pissed their inheritance away three generations ago. She sees through his ‘avuncular’ interest and finds it downright creepy.
“She’s not your niece,” I say, and I’m about to add “and she’s barely my wife” when he issues some threat and I tell him to go shove the plasma stand up his arse sideways.
“Why, you little bastard!” he cries and throws a half-peeled fruit at me – whereupon I disappear in a puff of smoke and a tinkle of fairy bells because, according to the nurse, it’s all a drug-induced hallucination and I haven’t arrived yet.
When I turn up for real, it’s much the same thing. Only this time I get citrus juice in my eye.
“Transform yourself into a form of gas, will you?!” he snarls as I’m seized by burly men and dragged into an adjoining room. This is nothing new. Staff beatings are Dromedary’s main motivational tool.
But these aren’t his usual thugs. The suits are too good. No human hair/acrylic mix for these two gents. And they haven’t tried hitting me yet. So you can understand my apprehension. This isn’t normal.
“Your boss will have explained the situation, no doubt,” says the shorter of the two, six foot one, broad as a barn door, slightly twitchy, and watchful as a fox. He sees me scoping the territory and blocks the exit. “You’re welcome to jump out the window, sir,” he suggests in his Southern barrowboy growl. “We are seven stories up, though.” And so I graciously decline.
The second man’s taller and leaner, but equally wide; shaped like an upturned triangle. The scar on his left cheek has a hypnotic pull and a curious, cranberry colouration. It seems too precisely inflicted to have been obtained in the course of standard employment and I’m not keen on the way it joins up with the corner of his mouth.
“So you’re aware of the situation then,” he states in a manner that’s far too affable for my liking. “Mr Dromedary has brought you up to speed.”
“He’s stoned,” I say. “He threw a satsuma at me.”
“Don’t get smart,” I’m told.
“Do you like your job?” asks Scarface in smooth tones. “Good jobs are hard to find. I hear you got this one through nepotism.”
“I’d never heard of Dromedary when I signed up,” I say, shaking my head. “He certainly didn’t know me.”
“He said you’d say that,” growls Shorter Man, clearly playing Bad Cop to Scarface’s Good. “He says you’re smart but your attitude stinks.”
“He says you’re shifty,” says Scarface.
“But we don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing,” says Shorter warmly.
“It’s not a good time to be jobless,” takes up Scarface. “No unemployment benefit. No housing benefit. Shops putting poison in the skips so tramps can’t scavenge the out-of-date food. Not that we have out-of-date food anymore.”
“And not a good time to be homeless either,” Shorter continues, “what with the leopards and all.”
“I’m sure your wife will be fine,” Scarface smirks. “Mr Dromedary will see to that. But you... Well, she won’t think you’re so ‘sexily non-conformist’ when you haven’t washed for a year and your arm’s been bitten off!”
“You bite the system and it bites back!” Shorter sneers. “Quite literally!”
“I think you get our point,” Scarface concludes. But I don’t. Christ on a bike, I have absolutely no idea what they’re on about.
“Is this a staff appraisal?” I ask. Scarface makes a noise like laughing.
“Funny,” he says.
Our meeting lasts approximately half an hour. There’s a couple of anomalies: I’m shown a picture of a man skewered with a railway spike and asked to draw conclusions from it. And there’s lots of talk about bodies floating face down in canals. But, in a country where everyone’s permanently drunk, threats and cartoonish behaviour are part and parcel of everyday life. You learn to ignore it. I’m bored now. I ask what’s going on. Scarface fixes me with his weird blue eyes.
“You made ‘Alfonse’ The Talking Alien, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Hah! I love that little fucker!” adds Shorter helpfully. I’m starting to suspect he’s a little odd.
“Thanks,” I say, “but I don’t see what this has to with...”
“And, most recently,” Scarface continues, “you’ve been working on full-size replicas of the human body?”
“Yes, that’s the polite way of putting it.”
“And you married into the Bactrian family?”
“Yes, but probably not the branch you’re thinking of. And Rachel, she’s not really my, er...”
“She’s a relative of Mr Dromedary.”
“No, she...”
“I think you’ll find she is. Mr Dromedary is the half-brother of former Prime Minister Bactrian – although that information is to stay between you, me, my colleague here...”
“And our friend with the railway spike,” Shorter clarifies.
“Indeed.”
“But I’m not...” I plead.
“Please, Mr Jupiter. You’ll have time to speak afterwards.”
“Best to sit back and listen for the moment, Sir,” says Shorter.
“We need a puppet maker.”
“We need a puppet maker and Mr Dromedary gave us your name.”
“Why?”
“Firstly, because you have the experience and secondly, because he’ll be taking forty percent of your first year’s wages as a finder’s fee,” Scarface tells me.
“He also wants a clear run at your wife,” adds the always charming Shorter, “but that’s very much by the by.”
“C’est la vie,” I say. “You mentioned wages?”
“Yes, Jupiter. You see, we’ve been observing you for some time. And, whilst we’re forced to conclude that your attitude does indeed stink and that you are indeed shifty, psychological profiling suggests that you can be brought to heel like a dog for large sums of money. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’d say there’s an element of truth in it. Are you... are you offering me large sums of money?”
“We believe in rewarding hard work,” says Shorter.
“Doing what?”
“We require someone to assist with a little, er, promotional campaign.”
“And you mentioned ‘first year’s wages’. So it’s a long-term contract?”
“Oh, believe me,” Laughs Scarface, “if this comes off, there’ll be plenty more work in the pipeline.”
“And I’ll be working for you, through Dromedary?”
“No, Mr Jupiter, you’ll be working
for us directly. We know how he whips his staff like Hebrew slaves. It’s inefficient. We believe in nurturing talent. We’re progressive. We believe in the potential of people.”
“Sign up with us, Sir, and you need never worry about that goofy, red-faced troll again.”
“And that’s got to be an incentive. But think it over. We’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You know,” I say, as I’m halfway through the door, “when you dragged me in here, like a kidnap victim, I thought something sinister was going on.”
“Oh, no,” laughs Scarface. “Not in the slightest.”
“Heavens no!” says Shorter. “Why would you think that?”
So I walk past Dromedary steaming in bed, and I’m smiling so wide it hurts.
I’m about to jump ship for an undisclosed job with two unknowns who show strangers pictures of dead bodies. My motivation is the flimsiest of promises coupled with my own rampaging greed. Am I being stupid or is this the coolest thing I’ve ever done? I was looking for an adventure and it found me. I’m actually happy.
Dromedary signals with a dripping paw. He asks how my meeting went and then starts questioning my human parentage. Now I no longer have to take this.
“Has anyone signed your cast yet?” I enquire cheerily, rolling his protesting carcass over. And whilst he flaps his podgy flippers, I scrawl “To our very own Elvis the Pelvis, love from the boys at www.fisting.com.”
“He’s big on the scene,” I tell the nurse.
I walk out into the night. It’s black and it’s cold, but not even the smouldering wreckage of my car can bring me down. I feel free. I feel alive. It’s God: nil, Jupiter: one!
* * *
Picture the remnants of a supermarket car park. Weeds grow through the cracked tarmac. Faltering allotments ring one half of the perimeter, rusting automobile wreckage the other. The supermarket itself is long gone – looted and firebombed by Walmart shock troops. An abandoned petrol station remains. If you listen, you can make out two leopards fucking on its big, flat roof. A black limousine arrives. Scarface steps out of the shadows and nods. The limo leaves.
Chapter Four
Entry To The Upper Echelons
(And Why You Shouldn’t Marry Your Sister)
“It’s just a job,” I tell myself. I’m staring at my reflection in a compact mirror. My reflection doesn’t look convinced. He looks downright terrified. The floor’s covered in plastic sheeting, thank God, because if I don’t leak fluid on it, I’m sure Mr Bactrian will. Only I don’t know it’s Mr Bactrian yet. That knowledge comes later. I do know I’m alone with a corpse. And not an attractive corpse. And that today’s task is to skin him.
So I signed my new contract on Monday. Scarface and Shorter came around my house and formally introduced themselves as Misters Calamine and Calamari. I guess you need to sound continental to get ahead these days, now that ‘English’ is a byword for ‘inbred’.
We drank nettle tea and I signed my way through an array of papers arranged on the dining room table. Pretty standard stuff.
“There’s a three month trial period,” says Calamine. “Just a formality really, to see how we all get along. If all goes well, there’s a chance of a permanent position.”
“Which means you’ll be eligible for our health and pension schemes,” Calamari tells me, with a look that says I may soon need them.
“You’ve got a pension scheme?” I’m shocked. “Nobody has a pension scheme these days.”
“We do,” says Calamari smiling. “You’re playing with the big boys now.”
“There’s just one more thing,” says Calamine, opening his briefcase. “Nothing to worry about, though. Now, we’ve been through your contract, that’s out of the way. There’s just one more thing we need you to sign.” And he passes me The Official Secrets Act. My mouth drops open and my mind goes blank. Calamari claps me on the back.
“Yes, we kept that quiet, didn’t we? Thought we’d spring it on you. Thought we’d sound you out a little first – see what kind of stuff you were made of.”
“You told me you were from ‘Thruster and Parkin,’” I burble.
“On paper, yes,” says Calamari.
“And on your payslips, too,” Calamine confides. “But, in actuality, you’ll be working for His Majesty’s Government. Hence this.” And he slaps the document before me as casually as if it were a work colleague’s birthday card. Calamari passes me a silver fountain pen.
“Nice pen,” I say.
“It’s yours,” Calamari answers. “Now sign.” And, God help me, I do. It’s only later that I remember the photos they’d shown me and what I’d taken as drunken bravado – testing the nerve of the new guy – strikes me as something more sinister. Because they didn’t seem drunk at all.
So now it’s Friday and I’m alone in an abandoned industrial unit in the middle of a nasty estate. I’ve a hairy-backed carcass with a hog’s thighbone for a cock for company and there’s a bowie knife with a sinister matt-black finish in my hand. And I’m wondering, if this is what happens when you say yes, what the Hell happens if you refuse?
Out of fear and the promise of that fat paycheck, it’s the fear that keeps me here. The money lost its attraction an hour ago.
I hold the mirror to the corpse’s mouth. There’s no condensation, just seeping halitosis.
I'm not squeamish and I'm not superstitious. I've cut people open and I've stitched them back together. I'm eminently qualified for this job in terms of skills, experience and my usual mindset. But something's wrong.
I’ve skinned mink before, sure – for food and blankets, we all have – but skinning a person seems like an act of desecration. If I thought God cared, I’d be concerned for my soul.
And then there's the stench, and the fear of what it might mean. I don’t want to see this man’s intestines. It’s bad enough looking at that corncob of a penis. The thought of what this diseased hulk's internal organs might look like has my stomach vaulting. But I'm a professional. I keep telling myself that I'm a professional.
I swap the bowie knife for a scalpel from my old medical kit. Start small, I figure, pressing the blade into his veiny, white flesh. But I can’t make the first incision. What's wrong? I was never this nervy in the operating theatre. I've got to get this thing in motion, and if it takes a big, dumb, decisive gesture to do it, then so be it.
And so I throw the scalpel like a dart, right into his torso. Big mistake. His bloated carcass deflates like a balloon, spraying gas and all kinds of decomposing matter everywhere. Including over me.
When I’ve finished throwing up in the carpark, I straighten my clothing and consider a trip to the library.
So, I’m going through the shelves and I come to the row we may as well call, ‘The Single Man Section’. There’s plenty on taxidermy so I pick something at random and read: “Hunting’s fun but it can be over all too quickly. If you love animals and want to spend more time with them, why not enter the exciting world of taxidermy?”
The next book, I suspect, is a parody: “Like hunting? Have you ever thought of doing something productive with the animals you murder? A chapter called ‘Catch And Cosh A Cute Companion!’ confirms it.
The third book goes beyond mockery. Two bobcats in Civil War uniforms hoisting the Confederate flag – that’s the front cover. The back cover? Well, why the coyote would want to wear a tutu is anyone’s guess. Still, one large, hairy mammal is pretty much the same as another – even a former Prime Minister – and so I take it to the front desk.
* * *
Lucas sits quietly by the window. Purple clouds spit acid rain onto the city. Drizzle sizzles on parked cars and expensive paintjobs bubble and burn, flooding the gutters with metallic pigment. He watches a mink liquefy.
It’s a rare pause for thought in a punishing schedule. Laura packs a plastic-wrapped squishy something into an insulated, aluminium flightcase.
“Don’t stick your head out,” she warns, “it’ll melt.”
“D
on’t worry,” he whispers affectionately, “I’ve got spares.”
“When’s Jupiter due?” she asks, addressing the flightcase to ‘Vatican City’.
“Not for a while yet, I think. He’s having trouble finding transport.”
“Is he bringing Elton with him?”
“God, I hope not. The last thing I need’s another lecture on supernatural fish.”
“Speaking of problems, have you paid the rent, yet?”
“No,” Lucas answers. “The police have frozen my account.”
“Looks like we’re moving again, then,” she says.
Lucas has astonishing bad luck with rented accommodation, developing a semi-irrational hatred of lettings agents in the process. I say ‘semi’ because his grievances are completely legitimate. He’s been lied to with such furious regularity that he makes them swear on the holy books. Not that that means anything these days. When they’re “absolutely, definitely going to be in” they’re out. When they’re supposed to be meeting you at a property i.e. out, they’re in. Only they “can’t come to the phone right now” because they’re too busy counting their money.
‘The most infuriatingly rude and ignorant people outside of employment agency staff,’ is how Lucas describes them and that’s a pretty damning indictment.
With half of England’s architecture crumbling back into dust, it’s hard to find rented accommodation. It’s even harder to afford it. So sharing with strangers is the only realistic option for a single man. And Lucas will always be single because he insists on wearing a huge, bushy moustache.
Of course, sharing has its downside. You can never be sure what kind of freaks you’ve moved in with until it’s all too late. From students, who’d wake him up at three in the morning to tell him how antisocial he was, to knife-wielding maniacs, he’s lived with them and he’s regretted it. He particularly hates sharing with small-time drug dealers who fill the living room with smelly young men. There’s nowhere to sit unless you win it in some convoluted card game, and the lights burn twenty-four hours a day until the coin metre runs out and they all migrate to the next pothead’s pit.