She misses something, it is Jan of course, although her memory of her friend has receded with the distance travelled, and she wants then to return and never come back, yet this is an impossibility, and she drinks straight from the bottle, then lifts the phone and dials Tony’s number.
There is no answer. She supposes she should eat, yet she holds not appetite.
The confines of her home are making her long for somewhere else, and more than this, at the back of her mind there is a vague feeling that there is a reason for her loneliness, as if she should not be alone, and she decides she will go out.
A week passes; nothing, no word from Tony, or anyone for that matter. Faith spends her time drinking from the few moments after waking, usually mid afternoon, then going out in the evenings, returning late alone.
This has become her ritual, a way to blot out her sadness at the loneliness she feels, yet it only masks her desire for company. The guys she meets she doesn’t like, will not bring herself to sleep with despite her growing needs, and she wishes Tony will call.
She has been throwing up when she wakes, no doubt a self imposed sickness from the quantities of alcohol she has been consuming, and she thinks that she will lay off the booze for a while, but every day she starts her waking life with either gin or vodka, a temporary friend that expresses its feeling through her body, lends a dulling to her thoughts.
She is scarcely eating, although she does get odd cravings, generally at night, for ice cream, and she finds some therapeutic nourishment in this frozen food.
Her favourite is strawberry, she likes the colour and it tastes good to her gin soaked tongue.
She wakes at 3 am, on the dot, and runs to her bathroom, falling to her knees on the lime green tiles and heaves a stream of liquid into the toilet, she tastes the gin, it’s not so nice on the way back up, and tears of exertion sting her eyes, she is half blinded by the salty fluid, and she gives a final heave of dryness before breathing in sobs of discomfort. She feels a moment of self pity, replaced by a loathing for herself, what is she doing to herself, whatever it is, it isn’t the answer to her problems, and she has a moment of clarity that she must change if anything is going to get better. In her half drunken daze, she sees through her tear stained eyes the colour of her bathroom walls, and decides that she will redecorate, starting from the morning. She will change the sea green walls to a purple maybe, but she has to sleep and she returns to her bedroom and huddles under the duvet, a protective cocoon of warmth, and she makes a vow to herself that she will change.
Finally she sleeps.
The next day she buys some paint and a roller, some brushes, and a selection of fine teas. She takes a Valium and sets to work. She sleeps. And awakes, again in the darkened hours of the morning, and again she is sick.
A week passes. Faith is feeling better, generally, and she has finished her bathroom which now sits a friendly purple, a new mirror above the sink, and a new toothbrush in the holder.
Yet the sickness progresses and Faith is troubled.
She makes an appointment at the doctors, and the next day she arrives at the clinic, ten minutes early, she has been awake since six A.M throwing up, and it’s good to get out of the apartment and into the fresh air.
The doctor smiles a friendly welcome, and nods as if in complete understanding when Faith describes her symptoms.
"Have you had any sexual contact in the previous month or so?" the doctor asks Faith, and Faith feels slightly depressed at the admission that she has not, and is surprised when the doctor suggests a pregnancy test.
It is positive.
Faith is both pregnant and perplexed.
She walks for hours, replaying the past weeks in her mind, trying to catch a glimpse of possible conception, yet she cannot place a time and date for this likelihood. She can barely remember her trip to the other place, never can, only the knowledge that this place exists, yet she feels the answers perhaps lay within that dimension. Although she feels it is too soon to return, she also has a stronger feeling, the Eros to return to this place, and it is decided she will go that very night.
As she lays on her bed, the syringe clasped between her fingers, she feels some trepidation for her journey, she always goes with Tony, but she cannot reach him on the phone and he did not answer his door when she called round.
The acid lights sparkle like a wet dream, beckon her into their wondrous beauty like an old friend inviting her into their abode and as usual there is a freshness to their glow, every time she sees this it is as if for the first time, and as her body breathes through the chambers her soul surfs through, Faith is reminded of the loveliness that exists, something outside of the condition of being human, and Faith feels glad.
Then she is there, above the streets below on the skyscraper rooftop, and she hears Jan’s voice from behind her and she has instant access to the memory of this world and she is happy to see her friend, it’s as if nothing has changed.
The words tumble from her mouth before she can stop herself.
"I’m pregnant."
They embrace, and Jan runs a soothing hand through Faith’s hair.
They decide they will go for a drink.
They are seated in an upmarket restaurant, their table on the veranda, the pinks and yellows of the sky creating an artistic wash upon the metallic azure table. A waitress arrives carrying a notepad, with pen clasped firmly between her teeth. Faith orders an opiate, Jan a tequila and gram of cocaine.
"It must be Tony’s, but I didn’t know that that was possible, shit!" says Faith.
The drugs arrive, Faith orders tequila too, God knows how it will sit with the opiate, and Jan waits until her friend's drink has come before starting on her own.
They clink glasses and down the fiery liquid and there is a soothing violence to the beverage that makes Faith think of needles.
"It isn’t Tony’s," replies Jan, "and thank the great Goddess Shub for that. He’s here you know. In Dizor."
"How can that be possible?" Faith asks, exhaling a plume of narcotic into the atmosphere.
"He found a way. A way to stay here."
Faith is unsure of what to ask next.
She is curious as to how Tony has been able to keep himself within the world of Dizor; however she is just as curious as to how Jan knows about the impending birth of her child.
Jan smiles.
She has sensed the query floating around in Faiths mind.
"Because I’m her mother, silly," and at this she laughs playfully. "She is born of my blood. She is born of me."
Faith picks up the leather strap which rests next to her syringe of grade A smack and wraps it around her biceps. There are holes in the strap and a fastener, it is like a mini belt really and she adjusts the setting to suit her slightly muscled arm. She flexes a few times until her vein of choice is prominent and she picks up the syringe and pierces the skin into the blood carrying vessel. She pulls blood into the syringes barrel and then plunges the drug into her system, immediately feeling a relaxing warmth, like a spiritual massage, and despite her surprise at Jan's claim to being mother of her child, she feels an overwhelming relief and laughs, an expression of her delight.
Jan racks up two lines of cocaine onto the silver framed mirror and offers it across the table to Faith, with a rolled up twenty dizar note. The silver inhaler that comes with the apparatus sits unused on the table.
Jan watches her friend inhale the fine white powder as a thought occurs to her and she smiles across at Faith as she speaks.
"You know. I think I have an idea."
The Fluid ambition is busy as ever, and as the two girls approach they can hear the music blaring from the interior.
Faith has her knife clasped firmly in her hand, under her leather coat. Jan however is being less subtle and brandishes her cleaver. They see Tony, he is hunched over the 18 ball pool table, lining up to take a shot, unseeing of Faith and Jan as they take place behind him, and he jumps at the mention of his name.
"Hello Tony," these are Faiths words, the danger in her tone an allegory of her intent.
Tony produces a warm smile, and beckons the girls to the corner where a glass of beer sits amidst a sea of discarded syringes.
"We hear you’ve gained a green card for permanent residence with Dizor,’ says Jan, tapping thoughtfully with her cleaver on the tables edge. "How did you do it Tony?"
Jan cannot mask her dislike for this man, her hatred emits from her eyes like radioactive poison and Tony himself cannot hide his in return.
"Well hey there Jan. Still fucking the street walkers? What do you call it? A compassionate fuck?"
Jan smiles at this, despite herself. "We all deserve to be fucked Tony. Even you."
"Hell, I ain’t got no problem there, sunbeam. Ask this one. I know how she likes it."
The knife is a reflective act of violence that finds itself at Tony’s neck, and he withdraws, hand upon the hilt of his golden Biretta, and he smiles nastily, falling slightly, knocking the beer onto the already polluted floor.
"Ain’t no cause for that kinda attitude. All you hadta do was ask," says Tony, drawing himself back into a standing position.
"You know of the chemist?" he asks.
The knife still hovers a fraction from his throat.
He continues as if he has his answer. "Listen, if you took that blade from my neck and put it somewhere else I could probably give you his address a hell of a lot easier. Seems I’ve already shaved once today and don’t particularly need a reminder."
Faith relents and lets her hand drop to her side, however the look in her eyes tells Tony that he’d better be quick with what he says next, and he says "He lives on the south side, 702 Blizding Avenue. Now can you just leave me to it please? I was clearing up here," and he indicates the table, with a mixture of various multicoloured balls that lay strewn on the black cloth, and turns his back to the girls.
Jan lays a heavy cut to the back of his head and a gash appears half way down, deep into his skull and Tony grunts and stumbles forward. Faith sticks him with the knife.
"May the great Goddess Shub grant your soul to beatific slumber," says Jan, and she slits Tony’s throat, granting him painful death, and the twosome leave as Tony rests in his own blood.
Faith inhales deeply on the last of a rolled spliff, the glowing embers a single eye that lends a skewed perception to the eyes in her head, before flicking its remnants into the overgrown garden, it’s broken wooden fence acting as a barrier between a car on concrete, wheels gone A.W.O.L , and a small dishevelled house, mostly wood, and she softly fingers her knife with one hand, the other clasped firmly in Jan's.
"Looks like we made it baby," Faith says.
"So far so good," comes Jan’s easy reply.
"You know of this guy, Jan?" and her friend's name registers in somewhere in her neural network as SOCIETY/TELEPATHY, Faith is getting better at telepathy, Jan has been giving her tutorials, and again Faith digs the beauty of understanding she gets just saying her friends name out loud, the duality of comprehension such a vocal action brings, and her spine tingles with delight.
"You think this guy’s open to visitors?" again Faith asks, she has asked before, on the way, and she is unsure how to approach the situation, although she is confident her lover will know what to do, as Jan has the answer to just about anything.
"Only one way to find out," replies Jan, and Faith is glad her partner is here to take charge.
Both girls are feeling some confidence after the cocaine and giggly after the heroin, Jan having partaken in her own injection before departing the restaurant, and Faith takes a swallow of Jugarana, a strong sedative liquor that she has purchased on the way to see the chemist.
The girls approach the door and Faith is the one to push the doorbell, she wants to play her part too, and it’s more than this, she wants to display that she too can take charge and that she is there for her love should her love ever need her, and man she loves Jan, this is why it never worked with men, they just didn’t understand, especially poor dead Tony, and part of her just want to get back to Jan’s apartment, their apartment, and make sweet love, so instead, as the doorbell shrilly buzzes she kisses Jan with a prolonged longing, stopping only at the sound of movement from within the small shabby house.
"Who’s there? I'm packing," a voice cries out from behind the door, the faded sign above the peeling painted wood of the entrance indicating 702, and both Faith and Jan are struck by how effeminate the voice sounds, and they suppress their joint need to giggle as they exchange a glance.
"Just a couple of girls here, man. We’re packing too, but don’t worry we’re friendly, just wanna talk is all," these are Jan’s words, her tone persuasively friendly and after a period of hesitation the door is unlocked, bolts drawn back and the chemist stands there.
Faith is surprised by how young he looks. A woman stands to the back of him, and it takes Faith a moment to realize that a conversation is taking place, and she attempts to tune in but it’s too quick.
Then Jan speaks. "She’s a traveller. Can you fix it?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"Sure. We’re not like your last visitor."
"Then he told you. Where is he now?"
"Dead."
"Huh. A waste of chemicals but I’m glad the bastards gone," and Faith gets the slightest feeling of the two of these people having been threatened, a kind of de-manning to the chemist, yet she also know he also loves his wife and would protect her if it came to it, and this makes her trust him, and she supposes her too.
"Then let’s talk prices?"
"ONE THOUSAND"
"FIVE HUNDRED"
"SEVEN FIFTY"
"SIX HUNDRED"
The chemist sighs and turns to the woman, who gives a slight nod. "I guess it’s better than my last offer. And we need the money."
Faith gets the sense this man is a doctor and she means to ask Jan, yet the woman has read her thoughts and she says "On Dizor, doctors were made illegal under the Natural Survival act ten years ago."
Faith smiles awkwardly, she is not used to such personal thoughts being made known so... impersonally; and she wonders about how to hide thoughts, it must be necessary or why the need to vocalize?
Jan produces a huge wad of bills from her pocket and starts counting as the man says, "It’s a simple procedure."
He leads them through to a back room where there is a chair that reminds Faith of a dentist. She automatically takes a seat.
"So what exactly am I paying for here?" asks Jan.
"Well I'm familiar with your earth chemicals and basically what we have here is a modified variant of new chemicals on the territory market."
Jan knows territory does human testing and also knows that only certain card holding people or highly trained terrorists can acquire these chemicals.
"What are they called?" she insists.
"If people find out the contents of the mixture then my business isn’t going to be a business for long," the chemist protests, yet Jan does not look happy.
Yet Faith is tuned in enough to Jan to pass an 'it’s okay I need to stay' telepathically.
Jan squeezes her hand and Faith says "Let’s do it, I’m getting hungry," and tries to relax as the needle enters her vein.
Faith feels heavy as the green fluid mixes in her bloodstream and she gasps in agony, a cry tempered with fear and the dim understanding of being in two places at once, a duality of existence and she feels torn apart, like the stitches of her very make-up have come undone and the chemist says, "There that’s it all done."
Yet Jan can tell something is wrong and shakes her lover by the arm.
"Faith? Faith are you okay?"
Yet all Faith can focus on is the nothingness.
"My baby? Where’s my baby?" she moans, over and over, her words beginning to slur as the mixture continues to amalgamate with the extracellular fluid in her blood.
"Great Shub, you mean she’s pregnant?" shouts the once doctor.
<
br /> The woman comes running over and they carry Candy to another machine, Jan too worried to make threats, and the woman hooks up heart rate monitors and stomach dials, while the chemist injects a sedative.
Finally the woman says, "I don’t suppose you want to buy some opiates? Or some stuff from this realm?"and Jan nearly screams, "why?" and the woman says, "because she’s about to have a baby."
Jan pulls out a wad of bills and Faith says, "No. I’m doing this straight. For us. And her, I'll feel this pain."
The screams sound like war, the bloody sheets from a murder scene, yet it is only Faith on the leather chair of the machine and she squeezes Jan’s hand and then screams again.
The doctor is not legally meant to aid delivery, only a person who can survive a birth can survive, but Jan has paid an extra four hundred and the woman helps too.
And then she is here.
The tiny body of a beautiful baby girl, with the most startling green eyes which Jan, her mother, has ever seen. Faith just feels good to hold her and Jan thinks she has never looked so beautiful.
Jan hands the couple another £250 and then hails a taxi home.
Little green eyes survived.
It just so happens though that Reckwick is in town.
Dizorian police car sirens ring out like a paranoid dream. Reckwick however ignores the city cops. What are they to him, the right hand man of a Goddess? He is Shub Niggurath’s private guy, her star player and she has gifted him with travel to Dizor. Here he plays not for his soul but for gifts.
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