Four-thirty. Channel Seven gave the best account of the death of the woman. A voluptuous bleached blond read from the teleprompter that the woman’s name had been Quita McLean—Quita after the heroine in the Harlequin Romance her mother had once read. She would have been twenty-three, and her sister said that she had always cried when the puppies were burned in the barn fire in Lad: A Dog. The television camera focused on a gray, withered old man who would not stop crying.
After a commercial break (in which time Cassady allowed more lines to erode his reflection, leaving clear, watery scars), the blond came back to talk about a hostage situation in an embassy in Europe. One woman had been released by the terrorists—some fanatics wanting recognition for a dirtball country in the Middle East—because she had told him that she was pregnant. Suddenly Cassady remembered reading in the paper last week that a young woman who had been attacked on the West Side had told her assailant that she was pregnant so that she wouldn’t be
you can’t say it, can you?
raped. The man didn’t care. He did it anyway. Twice.
“Christ, give me a break,” Cassady whispered through his teeth, or maybe he only thought he did. He walked into the kitchen, reaching for a full bottle of Jim Beam, thinking that if he was lucky he would get liver failure. He was certain he hadn’t said that aloud.
Out of the corner of his eye, his hand still on the bottle, Cassady saw his friend, the roach, limping erratically toward the safety of an empty Jay’s potato chip box. Taking a dirty fork from the sink, Cassady stepped forward, lunging the fork into the roach’s mid-section. It sounded like a taco breaking in half. He kicked it out of the way.
By the time the Fast Money round came on Family Feud, Cassady was sprawled in his living-room chair like a discarded rag doll. A rusted spring stuck out of the top of the chair, coming closer with each of Cassady’s deep breaths to piercing his shoulderblade. The empty bottle lay on the floor beside him.
He dreamt.
“... as the Beaver.”
“Mommymommy, Denny was playing with my Barbie dolls again!” his sister three years his junior, was singing. Her voice sounded like the broken record it still was. They were sitting at the dinner table and his mother—no, it was Barbara Billingsley, Beaver’s mom; no, it wasn’t at all, this was getting confusing—turned her head sharply at the revelation. She was wearing a pink housecoat, and pearls dangled around her neck. The housecoat was missing several buttons. From his chair across from his mother, who now stared at him from behind her fortress of Teflon, Cassady thought that he could not remember June Cleaver ever wearing a housecoat on the show before ...
His father peered over the edge of his paper in slits. “He took their clothes all off, Mommy!” the stupid bastard was saying, and why didn’t she just shut the hell up?
“Did not did not!” Cassady became a broken record of his own, but his father was already standing, looming over his chair like an ogre, his belt coming rapidly off, making rough sounds as it passed through each loop of his pants. His beer belly fell forward, giving way to gravity now that the belt was not holding it back, and it sort of plopped into his potatoes. The belt made a flapping sound as it hit Cassady in the back
right where the spring in the chair poked through
“Faggot! Lousy faggot! Prissy Denny’s playing with Corky the Retard!” The words were ritualistically chanted by several male voices; he couldn’t see, scraping mud out of his eyes. He tasted dirt on his tongue. He blinked his eyes open, and no one was there except Sarah, and wasn’t that strange because he hadn’t met her until college, long after Jimmy Corcoran was beaten to death in an alley.
“Sarah!” his baby voice shrieked. “They hurt me, Sarah!” He felt embarrassed at the smallness of his voice.
“C’mere, you,” she soothed, cradling his head,
fell away from the rusted spring
and he awoke in darkness.
Kee-rist! What a Grade-A bitch of a nightmare that was! He remembered parts of it, but not all, just like certain parts of songs keep floating through your head
long after the thrill of livin’ is gone
while you’re walking down the street or waiting for a bus. Sarah, Corky, even a vague image of Mrs. Lavell making him recite the Lord’s Prayer in French class. And the dolls. Shit ...
???
He sniffed the air. Smelled like—no, he hadn’t crapped himself. Smelled like grass. Wet grass, how the inside of a lawnmower bag smells after you’ve cut the grass when it was damp with dew or rain.
But it was more than that.
He smelled something decaying.
the roach?
It was dark out—how long had he been sleeping?—and Cassady reached over to turn the lamp on. The tallow light flickered beneath a lampshade that depicted a panoramic view of Niagara Falls, and he screamed.
Cassady’s screams echoed through the thin walls and bare floors, but Audrey and Willis Fenton, who were watching Magnum P.I. next door, didn’t hear anything.
Because the scream never made it to reality; it was a sob that welled up in his throat like so much phlegm. It was the sound that the woman had made just before the man had let the knife drop into her mouth.
And she was lying on his living-room couch.
She was naked. And she was dead. Her skin had become green and cheesy-looking, like that of a person who’d been receiving treatments for advanced cancer. Her eyes were open, sunken down into their sockets, mucus running over the sides like badly-prepared eggs, leaving dried yellow pus lining the rims of her eyelids. One eye stared lollingly at the ceiling, the other focused above and to the left of the television, which was sputtering in static. Her hair was white and alive with maggots. The skin was pulled back tightly around her lips, a death-grin of dried leather. Mud was caked on her gums and her cheeks. Blood spattered her teeth. Her hands clawed ...
Cassady felt a sharp tingling in his crotch. At first, he thought he had urinated. A pain shot through his testicles. Sharp and quick, like when he sometimes rode his ten-speed when his shorts were too tight, and he pumped his legs too fast.
He looked down.
There was movement under his pants.
His testicles drew up. Cassady pulled the pants away from his waist.
A cockroach the size of a half-dollar was tangled in his pubic hairs like a fly in a spider’s web. Its legs backpedaled madly; with each revolution the skin below Cassady’s navel tugged outward in small, flesh-colored tents as the cockroach became more tightly entwined.
It looked up at Cassady, and the shadow of its antennae slashed a huge V across his bare chest.
Cassady screamed again. This time, it was real.
He awoke in a cold sweat, Shaking. It was evening; the lamp was off. A talk show was on the television, and Bryant Gumbel was asking Alexander Haig if he really was Deep Throat.
Dennis Cassady did not move from the chair for hours. He sat like someone in the later stages of senility, eyes glassy and vacant, lips quivering. Later, he would tell Sarah what had happened to him. He would tell her everything.
But that evening, he sat.
He scratched the scab on his hand.
He let it bleed.
THE WEIGHT OF ZERO by John Alfred Taylor
Born in Springfield, Missouri on September 12, 1931, John Alfred Taylor earned a B.A. from the University of Missouri and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He currently teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. While he has published some 300 poems in various little magazines over the years, Taylor’s output of short fiction has been relatively small, with appearances in Twilight Zone Magazine, Weirdbook, Galaxy, Galileo, and elsewhere. Despite this dearth of publication, Taylor has had stories selected for both The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories and The Year’s Best Horror Stories.
“The Weight of Zero” is the beginning of a novel in progress. Twilight Zone Magazine called it “an erudite and ambitious foray into the nihilism an
d decadence of the ’90s”. Taylor confides: “The germ of the story was reading about the cult of Ravachol and about Marie de St. Remy: the names of the Universellist publications and the quotations are authentic. So is the song about dancing to the sound of dynamite.”
Finish the book, John.
The toadlike concierge pointed upward and held out four fingers when Constantine asked for M. Richards. The stairs were steep and narrow, reeking of garlic and fish and urine, nearly dark after the fierce sun. Knocking on the peeling green paint of the door, he waited more than a minute without hearing a sound, wondering if the concierge’s grin had been pleasure at seeing an Englishman climbing on a fool’s errand. It might have been his accent; people had been smirking ever since his arrival in Toulon. But his accent was Parisian, not Provencal-provincial like theirs ...
Nothing stirred within, so he raised the brass head of his cane and rapped on the door again. Loud in the constricted space, but through the last echoes he detected a soft shuffling on the other side. The lock clicked and the door opened a bare few inches.
“Tony?”
“Beg pardon, Constantine. Couldn’t tell it was you.” His half-brother stepped back, swung the door wide so he could enter. There was more visibility beyond, thanks to a dirty skylight, and at first glance Constantine thought Anthony had changed little in the last four years.
He was thinner; because Anthony was in shirtsleeves and wore no tie, Constantine could see the cords of his neck around the gap between the collarbones. But his face seemed as youthful as ever till he turned sideways to the light and showed the fretted wrinkles round his eyes. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Anthony’s smile flickered like lightning. “Exile becomes me.”
He led the way inside, gestured toward a chair. “Welcome to my humble attic.” Lowering himself gingerly onto the broken seat, Constantine peered about. There was a desk of sorts, a narrow bed, a table with basin and pitcher all furred with dust in the bleak light. Lurid chromos and etchings ripped from journals decorated the wall.
Anthony gestured a bit too broadly. “After all these years my brother seeks me out. Before we fall on each other’s bosom, a libation is demanded.” He leaned over the table. “Unfortunately I have no brandy, but there is absinthe—”
“Too early in the day for me.” Constantine arched his hands over the head of his cane and watched as his half-brother added water to the sickly stuff.
Anthony sat down on the bed. “Cheers,” he said, watching Constantine unblinkingly over the rim of the glass while he sipped the clouded liquid. “Again welcome, but there must be some special reason for this visit in person—”
Constantine almost wished he’d accepted a glass of absinthe. Best go straight to the point. “You know the girl is dead?”
“I heard—in the asylum.”
“She never regained her right mind,” Constantine announced solemnly.
Anthony smirked. “Naturally.”
“I must say you take it rather lightly.”
Anthony lowered his glass. “I knew beforehand. She wanted to see some actual magic. Quid pro quo.”
“You mean she had to pay with her sanity?”
“No, dear brother—I had to pay with her sanity—that was the price my—instructors—asked.”
Constantine tried to keep his voice under control. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
“Monstrous!”
“You don’t understand, Constantine, and I couldn’t explain. There is knowledge worth any price, jenseits von Gut and Bose, as Herr Nietzsche would say.”
“I don’t speak German.”
“ ‘Beyond good and evil,’ But perhaps your Mr. Kipling says it better for you. ‘Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne,/He travels the fastest who travels alone.’ ”
“I know which way you’re going.”
“Not exactly filial. And inexact; there are thrones and thrones.”
“And principalities and powers,” added Constantine.
“Sound doctrine, Constantine, sound. But to the point—What brings you here? I suppose you were sent to tell me I can come home now it’s safe—”
Constantine squeezed the head of his walking stick till it hurt. “Just the opposite.”
“Oh dear. Might I ask why?”
“Anne is engaged to be married. A very good match. If you came back the scandal would be raked up again—”
“And poof—the very good match is blown out, eh? I understand, I commiserate. And promise not to come back. At a price.”
“What price?”
“Twenty-five pounds more per month.”
“Twenty-five more! What do you do with what the bankers send you now? You could live so much better than this.”
“I have rather special expenses.”
“Drink? Women?”
“Nothing so quotidian. Twenty-five.”
Constantine sighed. “All right. I think I can persuade them.”
“If you can’t, Anne can.” Draining his glass, he stood up to pour himself another drink. “Changed your mind?”
“Just a little, perhaps; I’ve never tasted it.”
“All right,” said Anthony, “and for you, a clean glass.” He pulled out a surprisingly fresh handkerchief to polish the tumbler. “Just a little,” he said as he poured, “and lots of water. The water may be the real risk—it takes years for the wormwood to affect the brain.”
Constantine took the offered glass, sipped gingerly. The blend of bitter wormwood and sweet anise was strange, and he couldn’t help making a face.
“It grows on one,” laughed Anthony. “And how are things with the family?”
“Everyone’s well.”
“Has Father a woman?”
Embarrassingly for a man of the world, Constantine found himself blushing. “Of course not—he’s never gotten over your mother’s death.”
“He’s no eunuch.”
“No, but—” Desperately, Constantine looked about, wondering how to change the subject. One of the chromos caught his eye. “My Lord!”
“What is it?”
Constantine pointed. “It’s Saint Denis carrying his head. You’re not leaning toward Rome, are you?”
“Certainly not.” Then Anthony followed the direction of his finger and laughed. “Oh no. In spite of the halo. That’s Ravachol.”
“Who?”
“An anarchist executed some years ago.”
“Now you’re an anarchist?”
“Not in any earthly sense. But that next picture’s Ravachol, too—this time surmounting the guillotine.”
“Seems a bit blasphemous, so like Christ resurrected.”
“Positively. But I know Ravachol is resurrected. More than I can say for the other.”
“Tony!”
His half-brother smiled. “The universe is larger than you think, and has possibilities unmentioned in The Book of Common Prayer.
“A guillotined criminal resurrected?”
“As with beauty, criminality in is the eye of the beholder. And he’s resurrected only by becoming part of something enormously larger—”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I could show you, though you still wouldn’t understand.”
Constantine drummed irritably on the floor with his walking stick. “Nonsense is difficult to understand.”
His half-brother smiled “Not nonsense.”
“What else do you call it?”
Anthony reached into the open collar of his shirt, pulled out a gray metal plaque on a cord. “I call it nothing; it has no name in any mortal language.”
Constantine blinked; there was a crucifix cast into the plaque. Perhaps Tony was lying about not being attracted to the Roman faith? His half-brother smiled, stroking the plaque lovingly with his forefinger. For a moment his smile froze, and it was as if there was no presence there, as if the teeth and muscles of the face were being operated by something as far away as Saturn, as if the eyes were
glass. Then Anthony dropped the pendant back inside his shirt, and was himself again. “And where are you staying?”
“At the hotel by the Gare.”
“Always the railway hotel, oh constant Constantine?”
“It’s convenient.”
“No doubt. But don’t eat there.”
“Are they unsanitary?”
“Not at all. But the cooking is almost British in its dreadfulness.”
“So what do you recommend?”
“There’s a restaurant a few blocks from here—inexpensive, but very good. Of course, I’d rather you paid for both of us.”
“All right.”
“But let me show you the sights of Toulon first.”
The heat of the day had gone, and Anthony showed Constantine Puget’s caryatids at the Hotel la Ville, the monumental gate of Vauban’s arsenal, the Grand Rade and Petite Rade with their ranks of masts, the Quai Sebastapol, before giving the cabby directions to L’Arbre Vert. “Not that there’s a tree near, green or otherwise. But the food is good, and the wine’s cheap.”
The sun was still above the horizon when they arrived, but the gaslights were already burning, pallid blue whispers against the whitewashed walls. At least there were tablecloths and respectable families solemn at the rite of chewing and swallowing.
“I recommend the house wine. Nothing extraordinary, you understand,” Anthony said when the waiter came. Constantine settled on bouillabaisse and poached sole, and his half-brother ordered consommé and fresh asparagus. “I eat less than formerly,” he explained. “It increases my ability to concentrate—a sharp focus is as necessary to the mind as a burning glass.”
“Necessary for what?”
Anthony answered with an almost imperceptible smile. “That would be telling.”
“Charades are amusing at Christmas, Tony, not now. You aren’t involved in something political?”
“Certainly not. Just because I have pictures of Ravachol on my wall doesn’t mean I spend my nights making bombs or plotting with bearded sons of toil.”
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