Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “Please,” I said, “calm down. I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “What is it that you want from me?” she whispered, starting to tear up.

  “Nothing. Not a single, rotten thing. You were just an access to a drug, a way to her.”

  “Her?”

  “All I want now is to keep this poison down, so I can lie and sleep and dream, because it’s the only semblance of joy I can still hope to find.”

  “Are you…a poet?”

  “No,” I said, putting the laudanum to my lips. “I’m a damn joke.”

  I drank, and as the vile taste of the stuff slid down my throat, I began to violently cough and gag. Somehow I managed not to vomit, and with a sickened glaze, I cast my eyes on the bottle I held. A simple and ugly bit of brown glass.

  Like I said, this was no night for faerie juice, and no place to find your essence under an oversized cork.

  My essence.

  To Hell with it, I thought. I took another awful drink of laudanum. It burned a fire in me, a hot, spreading fire that seemed to be eating me from the inside out. I thought about the turnkey girl, how her insides fell out of her when she stood pierced against the Lucidia’s side. I closed my eyes and began to feel the approaching fog of the laudanum drift over my mind. I drank until the bottle was nearly empty, and then offered the remainder to the scared young woman.

  “Go on, red flower,” I slurred. “I told ya…I’m not here to give you any more trouble.” She didn’t move, so to back up my words, I pulled the gun off of my shoulder and laid it to rest against a wall. I was half-sure she’d make a move for it, but for some reason, I put it down anyway. Things make a different kind of sense in the fog.

  We sat there for years as I held out the bottle, and at last she took it from me and made it empty. I nodded with a sad smile. “There you go,” I said.

  And then the world became still. Quiet. That fog spread into a swallowing storm of calm, a contradiction I wasn’t remotely prepared to explain.

  And I was at last numb.

  It’s hard for me to convey, looking back, the emotional state the drug left with me. All I can really muster up now are more contradictions. A cheerful melancholy? A nervous calm? Eh, it’s not important. What matters is that I no longer ached, and I felt like I could finally get back to sleep.

  I fumbled to retrieve the wrinkled bills I had promised the girl and awkwardly left them in her hand.

  “Thanks for the...you know, the help,” I warbled. “Sorry again for the…well, thanks.”

  I turned to leave, and what happened next completely surprised me. I felt the girl’s scrawny fingers grab onto my wrist. Stunned, I looked at her, into the vacant look on her face that told me she was now swallowed up inside the same storm as I was.

  “You can stay with me awhile,” she said, “if you like.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Had she already forgotten the gun I put to her?

  “I’ve already paid you. You can drop this.”

  “I like you. You’re a little strange. You should stay awhile.”

  “That’s the laudanum talking, I’m sure. I’m going.”

  “No, I’m being sincere. You’re…there’s something…I understand why you’d want to hide away in your dreams.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “It’s pretty common, I think, for a person not to fully understand their own life. I’ve felt like that often.”

  The young woman was absolutely nothing to me, another passing stranger filling the space, so it surprised me that I chose to speak such an absolute and ugly truth to her.

  “That's nothing," I had slurred. “You know what's worse than not knowing who you are? Knowing who you aren't.”

  She didn’t have anything to say to that. She just stood quietly at attention. I sighed and tried again to leave.

  “Please stay,” she piped up.

  “Thank you,” I replied, “but I really need to get to bed.”

  “There’s a bed here.”

  “I know.” I tried to pull away, but she held my arm tight.

  “It’s warm,” she said.

  “Not interested,” I replied. “Just let me go.”

  “The ‘her’ you’re trying to find in your dreams,” the girl said, “what’s she like?”

  I held my tongue for a moment. “Wonderful,” I then said.

  “Then why do you look so beaten?”

  “Too much of a good thing, I guess,” I said with a tired laugh. She nodded like she understood, and then said the strangest thing of all.

  “Let me be her.”

  New strength found me and I pulled my hand away. “What?”

  “It’s my job to pretend. Let me be her.”

  “No.”

  “Sir, if you’ll hear me out—”

  “It would do nothing for me.”

  “Look, I know I’m just a whore to you,” she hazily spoke. “Just an unfortunate woman. A dollymop.”

  “Don’t call yourself that!” I snapped. Anger shot a hole through my numbing fog. “Don’t you ever use that word!”

  Her dizzy face turned red and she put her hands up in defense. “I’m sorry!”

  She began to cry, and my flash of anger melted into silly guilt.

  “Hey, uh, look. Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to yell. Here, I’ll stay a little longer. Just…I don’t want to see any more tears.”

  The girl wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You’ve seen plenty, haven’t you?”

  “Not really,” I said, sitting down on the old bed in the chamber. “But I’ve known plenty of times that I should have.”

  She smiled and shook her head at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You lied to me,” she said. “You are a poet.”

  I didn’t have an answer. In her stupor, the girl took my hands and pulled me up.

  “What are you doing?” I warbled, trying to keep my balance.

  “Dancing with you.”

  She grabbed onto me, dipped and swayed, and pulled me around the room. The walls blurred.

  “I…” I began to say as we danced. “I don’t really…”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Don’t think. Just move with me.”

  My head spun, faster than my feet, as all of Creation whipped around me. I clung to the girl, if only out of fear that letting go would send me plummeting from this world. She began to hum, her throat conducting a silly orchestra for our accompaniment.

  “Come on,” she whispered in my ear. “What do you want me to be?”

  My eyes rolled and my chin bobbed. “I don’t…want anything…”

  “It’s all right. Just tell me about her.”

  “I…I love her…”

  “Does she love you?”

  “I don’t…I’m not sure. I think she might, but…”

  “She can love you tonight.”

  “I don’t want a substitute.”

  “Oh, but think now, sir,” she gently spoke. “Why waste a night looking in dreams when you can have the real thing?”

  “It’s…not the same…”

  “Hush, sir. This flesh is more real than anything you’ll find in your sleep.”

  I shook my head at her in disagreement, but I don’t think she noticed. We just kept dancing, moving stupidly around her chamber. I was too tired to object and put up no fight as she began speaking in a predictable performance.

  “I’m so very glad you came to see me tonight,” the whore said, attempting to mimic a woman she’d never known. “You know how I worry about you. Are you still having dreams about me?”

  “Stop,” I muttered, feeling increasingly limp.

  “I’m so happy that you’re here,” she continued. “I’ve wanted to confess something to you for a long time.”

  “I’m serious. Don’t—”

  “Oh, my darling. You are in such foul spirits tonight.”

  “Just stop it!” I said, pulling away. “This is…this isn’t working.”

  S
he tried very desperately to continue our dance. She tried to hang on to my body, and in my weakened state, I lost my balance. Falling backward, I grasped for her shoulder, but clutched her hair by mistake.

  It came with me to the floor.

  “I’m sorry!” I heard the girl say as I lay there. “Are you all right?”

  I blinked and looked at what was resting in my hand.

  “A wig?” I mumbled. The straight, red locks were indeed bound and sewn together. They were false, and I let them fall from my fingers to the ground. False. That conniving madame hadn’t sold me a red flower at all. She just painted up a few stale, old petals. I looked up at the girl and saw her true hair, short, curled, blondish tresses stinking of rosemary. Her playact of the Doll now seemed all the more blasphemous.

  “Here, let me help you up,” she started.

  I shoved her hand away. Dismayed, she backed up from me and continued to apologize.

  “Stay away,” I commanded her, standing and fumbling with my coat. “Just don’t touch me.”

  “Please, sir! I didn’t—”

  “Don’t touch me!” I yelled, awash in my intoxication.

  “Please! I don’t understand!”

  She reached out to embrace me, and I got out of there, breaking out of the room at full speed as her haunting cries called after me.

  I ran.

  Hard.

  An absolute terror I would’ve seemed as I threw myself out of the brothel, were there anyone around to witness me, the woozy hysteric lost in the dead of night, running a footrace against his madness. And his madness was winning.

  A few streets passed beneath my feet and I refused to slow down, even after the brothel became just another shadow at my back. Before long, my eyelids grew impossibly heavy.

  “Just a little more,” I told myself. “Don’t fall asleep yet.”

  I stumbled at last back to my place of refuge, and stopped for a breath of cold air beneath the dark sky.

  Finally, I thought, the long night was ending. Even the stony mattress waiting inside my rented room seemed like bliss at that moment. With a long yawn, I dragged my feet towards the shelter.

  I guess you could blame what happened next on the absence of the Moon. The abundant darkness of the night meant that my eyes never saw the shadows of the feet that were approaching me. Hell, my ears didn’t even pick up on the soft shuffling of footsteps.

  My throat, however, did feel it when a thick arm caught me around the neck and threw me backward to the ground.

  The first thought that came to me as my spine slapped against the street was not, oddly enough, a curiosity as to who had just grabbed me. Rather, I was struck with the observation that this unscheduled trip to the grit and dirt of London’s ground didn’t sting nearly as much as it should have.

  Oh, and speaking of being struck.

  “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t ya?” my assailant jeered, thumping his boot repeatedly against my stomach. I groaned, but again, the pain I felt from his blows was considerably muted, which I attributed to the laudanum flowing through me.

  That said, it still hurt, and my foggy stupor hadn’t exactly left me coherent enough to successfully defend myself.

  “Yeah, that’s right!” the man barked as he tore me nearly to shreds. “You lie there and you bleed!”

  I rolled sickly onto my back and sucked air between my clenched teeth. “Who the hell are you?” I managed to say.

  “Who the hell do you think I am?”

  “I don’t—oof!” I cried out as I felt another kick. My mind spun like a carousel that should be taken out of commission. All I had wanted was to sleep.

  “Over here!” the assailant called to someone in the distance. “I got ‘im.”

  A few more bodies appeared from the shadows, one of them being held by the others at knifepoint.

  Yeah?” the man gripping the knife joked. “We got one too!”

  The one who had beaten me stood me up, produced a blade of his own, and put it to my throat.

  “You really think we were just gunna let you run away?” he laughed, grabbing my hair with his free hand.

  I set my eyes on the mob and saw that the other captured man, spotted with fresh bruises, was Gren. Similar marks on those who held him in submission told me that my friend had given them a decent fight. Gren coughed and gave me the expected sour look.

  “Thanks for showing up,” he muttered weakly to me.

  I just dumbly shrugged and stared at our captors. Their smiles were ghoulish and their eyes, even in the darkness, sparked with barbaric glee. A few of their faces seemed familiar.

  Oh, I thought, making the connection.

  Oh, God, no.

  “So where is it?” one of them demanded to know. The “it” they were referring to, I was sure, had to be the Doll. I assumed this because the first time I had met these mongrels, they had addressed her as such, nothing more than a machine in their possession.

  This, of course, enraged me to no conceivable end.

  The Motorists. Those repulsive, Godforsaken Motorists.

  “So where is it?” one asked me. In response, I spit in his face. The decision was a victory in principle, but as a lesson in common sense, well, not so much.

  I once again met the ground, face to the dirt, and laughter ensued. Panic and anger consumed me, and when they momentarily took their eyes off of me, I reached into my coat for the gun I was concealing.

  And found nothing.

  Dazed, I worked my mind until it produced an image of the weapon I had earlier pointed to the chest of a false-haired whore.

  The same weapon I’d left behind in her chamber.

  Oh, I thought.

  Oh, God, no.

  I endured a few more beatings at the Motorists’ greasy hands and muddy feet, and then I was lifted and shoved over to Gren. Our hands were bound behind us and our heads were covered with tied-off potato sacks.

  I was grabbed, pushed along, and then thrown down somewhere dark on top of something somewhat soft, almost like…cushioning? The squealing voices of the Motorists warbled off and my surroundings grew quickly quiet.

  It was oddly peaceful.

  As I laid there motionless, I felt my fatigue at last overcome me. I was finally falling asleep. In my last moments before drifting off, I could only ask questions.

  What great sin had I committed to end up like this? Was this my punishment for not spending the night in the brothel or for seeking it out in the first place?

  And how badly exactly had I been beaten? I couldn’t observe my wounds from under the potato sack, and being under the drug’s potent influence, I could feel very little. Had they broken my legs, I couldn’t help but wonder. Would I ever walk again?

  Ultimately, I put these thoughts aside and closed my eyes, unsure even if I would live to open them again. For the moment though, I was just glad to at least have the chance to rest.

  And when at last I finally slept, I had no dream at all, only the same, familiar loneliness spread out on another plane.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Return of the Motorists

  For those readers now gravely concerned for your narrator’s wellbeing, let me put your fears aside.

  I did not die that night.

  “That’s silly, Pocket.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You obviously didn’t die.”

  “Yeah, I know. I—“

  “Because you’re telling the story.”

  “Right. I was—“

  “Just doesn’t make much sense.”

  “I was making a joke.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh…wasn’t a very good one.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Well, there’s room for improvement in all of our—“

  “Can I move on?”

  “Just a little helpful criticism, Pocket.”

  “Moving on.”

  Hours passed as I slept. When I finally awoke, my neck was
stiff. The world was dark and smelt strongly of potatoes.

  “Was that another joke?”

  “No!”

  “Because it’s getting hard to tell.”

  “It’s a sincere line, Alan! I’ve been beaten and tied, for God’s sake!”

  “Just my opinion. No need to lash out.”

  Slowly I regained my memory of the night before, or however long had come and gone since I had closed my eyes. I was sober now and in terrible pain. My muscles pulsed beneath my battered skin, and a dull burn stretched from beneath my ribcage to my hips. I pushed my wrists against the ropes that held them, but the struggle got me nowhere.

  I realized that I was also moving, or rather, whatever I was lying on was moving. It seemed that the soft piece of something that I was left upon was attached to a set of wheels.

  And that meant I was being taken somewhere.

  I tried again to work my hands out of the binds. All I achieved was a fresh rope-burn to add to my list of pains. I grunted at the stinging tenderness and swore loudly.

  “I guess that means you’re up,” a voice beside me uttered. I nearly jumped at the sound.

  “Gren?!?” I nearly gasped.

  “What?” he grumbled.

  “You’re ali—“

  “Yeah, I know. We keep doing this. I walk away for five seconds, and it’s all excitement and reunion and ‘Gren, I can’t believe you’re not dead.’ Joy, joy.”

  I was silent for a moment. “Glad to see you’re fine,” I flatly said.

  “Fine?!? Oh, sure. I’m great. Spent a night getting a public flogging by a gang of maniacs, but sure, apart from that, I’m living the good life!”

  “Where are you?” I asked. “I can’t see anything.”

  “That’s because we have potato sacks on our heads.”

  I jerked my head and felt the burlap that covered my face. It made my nose itch.

  “Right…well…I guess that explains the smell. It’s making me a little hungry, to tell you the truth.”

  “Being hungry is making me hungry,” Gren complained.

  Looking back, it seems strange that in the midst of this nightmare, all we could do was make petty arguments. But I think that’s how men like me and Gren keep in one piece. The moment we acknowledge the terrible, we fall apart. It’s not so much a denial as it is a selective focus. Besides, at the moment, hunger was the more direct issue.