Food of the Gods

by Cassandra Khaw

  The rusalka strokes her companion’s back in wide circles, leaning forward as she does. She works fingers into the feldgeist’s hair and begins scratching her like a churlish pet. “I thought education in Asia was exemplary. You should know this.”

  There’s a schoolmarm’s bite to her voice, the accent crisply Eastern European. She smiles truculently, but I don’t smile back, drumming fingers against the back of my seat. The feldgeist pops a knuckle between her teeth, begins to gnaw, eyes flitting nervously between us.

  The rusalka sighs. “Isn’t it obvious? The Body Train loves its snacks.”

  I’M IN TROUBLE.

  Again.

  The lights have been going out periodically during our journey. Each time they do, they return with one less passenger, one less drunk in a three-piece business suit, one less teenager with a thousand-dollar phone.

  Nothing for us to worry about, said the rusalka, plaiting the feldgeist’s maize-yellow hair. We’re invited. Despite her tart reassurances, however, everything’s gone belly up. The last electrical malfunction didn’t just pinch a commuter, it took everyone. Everyone except me, and the guy at the tail of the carriage.

  I watch him as the halogen bulbs stammer, a Silent Hill standoff. Horror movies always begin with ‘hello.’ If I say nothing, maybe this will stay nothing, a rush-hour purgatory in the belly of a literal beast.

  A smile crawls onto the man’s lips. He cards his fingers through dense curls before heaving himself onto his feet. He is lanky, slightly stooped, furtive in the way of the habitual criminal. The lines of his face are simple, and unnaturally sharp. Not unhandsome, but not quite human either; a sketch of a man, an idea.

  He saunters up to me, smell of tobacco and synthetic leather, skull tipped to one side. He digs his hands into his pockets and lets the smile creep up one side of his face. When he speaks, it’s with the rolling accent of Croydon, consonants kept to a minimum.

  “Hey.”

  I glance at the window. No reflection, just a distortion in the glass about the width and length of a six-foot man. “Hi.”

  “I suppose that was a bit dramatic.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Mm.” His quiet unsettles, for reasons I can’t yet put in words; it scratches at the inside of my cranium. My head is a casket full of fog, thoughts eating themselves, looping into incoherence, and I feel like a senile old man trying to recite his own last rites. “I needed to get your attention. Sorry.”

  He isn’t. We both know it. But I let the insincerity of the apology slide, rap fingers along my thigh. Itch, itch. Itch. A crawling pressure develops behind my right eyeball, presses down. Something is wrong, a degree of nope that surpasses even the inherent stickiness of the whole situation.

  “That’s fine. I’m fine.”

  The conversation, stilted from the beginning, shudders to an uneasy halt. I palm my neck, while he watches on, not breathing, not moving. My apprehension grows, and I’m quickly reminded that the fight-or-flee response is actually closer to fight-or-pee. Again, the man smiles. I’m now convinced that he’s tuned to my internal monologue, one more god with a finger on my psyche.

  “No,” he says, lips peeling back over gray-pink gums, his eyebrows scrunched together, expression marginally pained.

  “No, what?”

  “I’m not a god, bruv. You couldn’t get me to be a god even if you paid me.” He plops himself beside me. His presence contracts further, a comma of projected self, so small that it might as well be hypothetical.

  And maybe, that’s what gets me: the silent insistence he’s indistinguishable from the everyman, a chump, a pal, a man of the people. Because clearly, Guan Yin help me, clearly, he’s not.

  His smile twitches. Right, he’s still listening.

  “I’m better than a god,” he says, drawling the second word, be’ah rather than better. He sheds his humour as he leans forward, an intensity sieving into the vacancy. The train eels on, preternaturally noiseless, and as it takes a corner, I find myself wondering if it’s eavesdropping.

  “Okay.” The safest of all answers. I tilt back. “Better how?”

  “Better,” he repeats, listless, eyes now tracking the darkness beyond the glass. A faint smile appears. I don’t follow his gaze. I’m afraid of what I’d find. “Because I believe in due compensation for services rendered.”

  “There’s always fine print.”

  His grin is crooked, all jagged teeth. “Of course there is. But the difference is I’ll let you read it first.”

  It feels a little like coming home, that announcement, that subtle challenge, slid under the door like an envelope stuffed with news. And in a way, it is. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t work, would just laze in off-season Ibiza, a Singha in hand, and never worry about bagging bloodied bones again. But if I had to choose a labour, it’d be something with paper.

  Clerical work is alluring in its austerity. No moral quandaries, no risk of existential self-reflection, no opportunity for compound fractures. A minefield of possibilities, sure, but the threat is reactionary, dormant until invoked. More importantly, it doesn’t get you killed. Sepsis by papercut; a lie.

  I percolate the idea through my head.

  “Do we have—”

  “No.”

  That brings him up short. “What?”

  “I said no.”

  “But I hadn’t finished.”

  “Answer’s still a no.”

  To my delight, a strand of whining petulance creeps into his next answer. I’ve fazed him. I gazed deep into the abyss, and the abyss blinked. “You’re going off-script.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to stamp your foot and disappear in a cloud of sulphur when I refute you three times?” I cross my arms. If he expected me to come racing at the prospect of a challenge, well, he’s wrong. Slothfulness is healthy. Enthusiasm is not.

  Another turn, another halogen seizure. The man rolls his eyes up, stares at the ceiling, and I observe with glee as he counts down from ten, teeth grinding over every number. At last, he sighs. Loudly. Sharply. When he lowers his gaze again, something gives. His veneer of humanity pops like a soap bubble, and the color leaches from his hair, his skin, his eyes, even the various grays of his attire.

  He opens his mouth, and it’s not words that disentangle themselves from his larynx, but meaning itself, multimedia synesthesia. He hijacks the parietal lobe, pumps nuance straight into the cerebrum. It doesn’t all show up right. I catch snatches of memory, mine, his—its.

  Cosmic anecdotes that dissolve neuronal pathways as quickly as they find them. Gusts of childhood aromas, a first encounter with sambal. Ambition, alien in its scope, seven-dimensional scheming to make my mind shrivel. Minah’s smile.

  The dissonance doesn’t last. Eventually, it germinates structure. There is no language that can adequately encompass what he shares, no trick of storytelling that can convey the multi-sensory soliloquy. It is a montage of recollections and augurings, quick cuts of destruction: my apartment exploding, smoke and glass geysering from the duct-taped windows; documents shredded; every living relative, gutted, split open from ear to ear; Ao Qin, charred and grinning, drooling black, rising from a bank of black fog—

  The universe creaks as an immeasurable weight leans down, presses on the caul that separates matter from metaphor, an analogical pseudopod extended through the gulf of time, a supplication to obey: carrot and stick, held up like weapons. And for a moment, everything holds its breath, history itself pausing to ruminate on the narrative. I grin, the world swimming between colors, a fugue of almost-shapes, and say what every action hero should say in a climactic scene.

  “I need to talk to a lawyer first.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “IF YOU’RE GOING to throw good money down the drain, laddie, why not just give me the proceeds? Laywers won’t save your wallet. Besides, it’s not like the Boulder isn’t stinking with them.”

  I blink. “Wha—aaaggggh.”

  The Body Train is g
one. In its place, a raucous basement pub that looks like it was built in a crypt, capitalism gleefully feasting on architectural carrion. It teems with people and pustules of furniture, radial tables and high bar chairs. Thick stone pillars merge into the vaulted ceiling. Flatscreen televisions sprout between the joints, blaring sports commentary and beer adverts, both of which are indiscriminately booed by the patrons.

  Somewhere in the crowd, glass smashes on someone’s skull and the mob roars its approval.

  “‘Aaagh’ what?” the Cat asks, still too close, his arm slung proprietarily around my shoulders.

  I shrug myself free and shake my head, scanning the chaos for a glimpse of the bar. No luck. More crucially, no explanation for whatever had happened. The encounter with the nameless man feels so unreal now, a trick of alcohol poisoning. But I know better. Reality has a flavor, a metallic aftertaste, like a film of blood over your tongue, and it is unique to each individual world. Diyu, for example, is spiced with sulfur, and Banbudo—the in-between place, a marketplace for the myth-born—is pungent with odors that the piriform cortex can’t translate.

  The place where I’d been taken to was dry ice, old water, salt and time, like nothing I’d ever sampled. It lingers in my throat, a stillborn laugh, and I swallow again as I fight down the questions itching beneath the recollection. Later, I promise. For now, there are more immediate concerns. Like how we’d gone from public transportation to pub, and why my left forearm is dripping with cider.

  “What’s this?” I jab a finger at the damp limb, nearly dropping the beer stein I didn’t realize I was holding.

  “Your arm,” the Cat offers unhelpfully, taking a swig from a martini glass, pinky extended in some blasphemy of courtesy.

  “I know it’s my arm. But why is it wet?” In times of doubt, I find it best to cling to irreverence. A second glance around the pub reveals the rest of our company, holed up in a side room, flinging dice across a table, aggressively entertained.

  “Because you spilled cider on it, obviously.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  The Cat lets fly a wailing laugh. “Wasn’t me, laddie. But it might have been yon lad, who disagreed with you hitting on his lass.”

  “Really?” Slowly, I put together a map of the property. Chambers bud from the main space, cleverly obscured by angles of architecture. Every alcove is occupied by games of chance, some more identifiable than others. In some stand roulettes and blackjack tables, dealers in pinstriped uniform. In others, more esoteric paraphernalia, equipment that could be mistaken for sex apparatus if it wasn’t for the bookies and the blackboards, surfaces chalked with odds.

  Actually, who knows?

  “Aye. You were on a kissing spree, you were.” The Cat finishes his drink, his grin now spreading from ear to ear, teeth yellow and chipped. A single incisor is capped with gold, surface brocaded with glyphs.

  “Kissed a lot of girls, did I?”

  “Plenty. And also a few men.”

  “What about children?” I sip the tepid cider. It tastes better than I’d expected; flat, dulled by exposure to the air, but still a sweet enough cocktail of passionfruit and lime. I smile, slightly artificially, eyes ticking across the room again. The third inspection reveals the towering Jack, haloed by negative space.

  The Cat doesn’t miss a beat. “Hadn’t seen you accosting the wee ones, but there’s a kitchen boy who sobs for his marm when ye get close.”

  I stare at the Cat. “Jackass.”

  His grin grows manic.

  I take it as my cue to leave, patting the Cat on a chunky shoulder, before setting off towards the awkward emptiness that Jack’d built. Swollen though the crowd is, it’s easy enough to navigate, largely congenial, apologizing even when I’m the one to bump foaming beer from hands, or tread on unlucky feet. I imagine the appropriate response would have been to retaliate with yet more profound contrition, possibly even prostration, but I swagger on. Stereotypes are there to be exploited.

  Eventually, I arrive at Jack, who sits nested at the corner of the bar, top hat upturned on the counter like a begging bowl. His face, now divulged, is generically local. Pinkly English, perfectly forgettable, mediocrity in the flesh. Even his hair follows the pattern, thinning along the firmament of his skull, a widow’s peak gentled by the short cut. Just an average Jack. I think I might be disappointed.

  “Yo.” I flash the Vulcan salute.

  Jack scrunches his face, perplexed; replicates the gesture. Then he sighs gustily and tips the brim of his hat forward, a bizarre little motion that nearly has me putting a coin into the velvet cavity. But I don’t get far with the thought. A figure lunges through the crowd, black-haired, braids flapping everywhere. Veles doesn’t pause before scooping me into his arms, and crushes any objection I might have from my lungs.

  “Rupert! Glad you made it. Wasn’t expecting you to show your face.” Veles swaps his grip, clasps a hand around each of my arms, still somehow keeping me aloft the whole time. “How are you?”

  I grin at him, sickly, feeling rather like a bullied nephew. “Peachy.”

  He kisses me sloppily on each cheek, moist smacks that curdle my expression. Veles looks worse for wear; a new scar bridging socket and jaw, the flesh inflamed, glossy. Fresh deformities aside, he seems happy.

  “Come. You meet Sisyphus. He will want to get to know man who helped Veles win big.”

  “Who’s Sisyphus?” I gingerly begin prying at his fingers; it accomplishes nothing, but I feel better for trying. The thick slabs of Veles’ extremities might as well have been hacked from stone. “Any chance you could put me down?”

  “Yes.” Veles releases his grip, and I plummet three inches to the floor, thoroughly mugged of any remaining dignity. As I rub sensation back into my arms, he presses on. “Sisyphus is Lord of Boulder, Master of the Ring, Gambler Ki—”

  “Er.” I consider his testimony. On the edge of my peripheral vision, I see Jack signalling a frightened bartender for more whiskey. She leaves, comes back with a bottle of smoky emerald, no tumbler in sight. “What?”

  “Sisyphus is in charge of our bets.”

  “Sisyphus.” The word hisses along my tongue, trailing memories. I don’t like where this is going. “As in the damned bastard king? Sisyphus, as in the Sisyphus? Of the Sisyphean ordeal.”

  “Da.”

  Oh, dear.

  “I”—I drag out the pronoun, scooting back a step—“don’t think I want to meet him. I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but where I’m from, people hate it when you make them lose money.”

  “Sisyphus understands fair play.” Veles shrugs, leashing my shoulders with an arm. He doesn’t push as much as he unthinkingly steamrolls me forward with his sheer momentum. In a fit of discontent, I endeavour to ping Bob but he, along with the other spirits, is unusually uncommunicative. How bizarre. I shelve away their silence for later introspection, too busy keeping tempo with Veles’ long strides. He steers us towards one of the smaller rooms, the mob parting before us like a boozy, swaying sea.

  Finally, we arrive. Two men, both about six feet tall and about six feet wide, freight trains gone vertical, stand on either side of the entrance, hand over fist over genitalia. Veles nods at them. They nod back.

  Veles scruffs me like a misbehaving kitten, hand twisting into my collar, before ushering me inside. The room, similar to every other room in the Boulder, is packed beyond capacity. I breathe sweaty armpits and the sour, stinking aroma of human anxiety. Veles seems entirely unmoved by the rancidness. He resumes leading us through the throng, until at last we come face to face with a small-boned, smiling accountant of a man.

  The only indication of Sisyphus’ sovereignty is the crown that sits in his gray-stippled hair, a simple diadem of bronze, absurd in its plainness. His glasses are comparatively more interesting, magnifying pea-green eyes to give him the appearance of a Ren and Stimpy extra.

  He doesn’t acknowledge our arrival, focused instead on the floor. The tiles have been r
eplaced by varnished pine, inlaid with a byzantine alphabet of pictographs, a syllabary that resembles nothing I’ve ever seen, all laminated with the faintest shimmer of gore.

  At the heart of the board, a body—no, a living man, naked, penis a dessicated stub against a pale, bruised pelvis. Someone has opened him from throat to groin, flayed him, before pinning the skin to the wooden floor. His entrails glisten, frosted with gold ink, runes beyond counting. As I watch, Sisyphus creeps forward and pens another whorl, another character along the sinuous fold of an intestine.

  The man moans, softly, orgasmically.

  “What. The. Fuck.”

  Veles shrugs as he comes to stand beside me. “Just like normal man require motivation to work, prophet need motivation to see.”

  “Who is that?”

  “That is Helenus,” Veles explains, patient. “Cassandra’s idiot brother. Several decades ago, we misplace his sister. So, Helenus must now serve in her place. Unfortunately, he’s not as good. His spoken prophecies are eh. But Sisyphus discovered that blood cannot lie. What Helenus lacks in eloquence, his entrails make up for in effectiveness. So, we read the future in his offal.”

  “That is—” Sick? Repulsive? Coming from a cannibal chef, my revulsion would sound a bit rich; but bile coats the back of my mouth nonetheless. I swallow it back. Absently, I scratch at my neck, nails gouging into unexpectedly dry, scabrous skin. “Unusual.”

  Double entendres for every occasion.

  “Da. But this millennium is unusual. We make do.” Veles, as always, is disconcertingly chirpy. “Not long now. He is just auguring tomorrow’s casualties. Few minutes. After that, Veles make introductions.”

  True enough, Sisyphus is done in a few minutes, rising to a ripple of respectful applause. A boy, maybe ten at most, scurries forward to proffer a steaming bowl, towel draped over an elbow. Sisyphus, with great care, dips his hands into the liquid. When he is done, he dabs a finger along the boy’s forehead: a benediction of some variety, judging from the kid’s radiant expression.