Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01

by Happy Hour of the Damned

  Claire elbowed my ribs. “Are you ready for it?” She made a quick gesture to imply that people may vomit and to prepare myself.

  “Huh?”

  Now I’m no prude, you may have gathered, and, yes, I eat human flesh and have seen terrible vile things since my transformation. But what came next was just, well…wrong.

  Wait for it…

  The woman turned to the audience and ran her hands up and down the sides of what could only be described as a zipper. It was embedded in her skin from her sternum, to somewhere inside her panties. The music slowed to a pattern of thump and cymbal with no accompaniment; the crowd hushed, some covered their eyes with loose fingers, ready to close them and shut out the vision. The dancer began to do an ad-hoc belly roll and twirled the pasties at the same time; she reached up and slid the zipper down while rolling her stomach, seductively. The tab was drawn to the band of her panties. She tore the underwear off and drew the zipper to its final destination, just north of her vagina. She rubbed the sides of her belly and the motion caused her abdomen to open like a shaggy grin. Intestines spilled out of the cavity onto the floor. The dancer continued to bump and thrust, twirling her guts around her shoulders like a feather boa. I noticed that her innards were either embedded with gemstones, or bound with strands of pearls, emeralds and sapphires. There may have been rubies but those could not be distinguished from the swollen redness of the bowel, itself. A murky slosh burped from her abdomen, onto the stage boards, like chum from a trawler. The woman’s face contorted in a stroke of orgasmic acting, as the curtains descended. I drained my cocktail, a Black Magic (see inset); I needed a little magic, just then, to soothe my stomach; it was flopping like a dying fish.

  * * *

  Black Magic

  1½ oz. vodka

  ¾ oz. Kahlua

  1 dash lemon juice

  Serve in a Collins glass with ice.

  Garnish with a lemon twist.

  * * *

  The crowd was of two minds: impressed and disgusted; hands covered mouths while others clapped wildly over smiling faces. Screams and laughter blended together into a roar of astonished bewilderment60.

  Claire nudged me and pointed across the room, where a woman was, at that moment, rising from a crouch over a now-filthy spew-covered trash can. When she finished wiping her face, I realized it was Wendy. We ordered another round and tried to stop laughing.

  I’d taken to doing supernatural marketing projects on the side, just until I got up the nerve to sell my share at Pendleton, Avery, and Feral. We mulled over a marketing campaign for her consulting firm, but my mind wandered to Liesl, again. I planned to call the wereleopard’s girlfriend the next day, generate some movement in the search. I glanced down at the card still faceup on the table; I hadn’t taken a good look before.

  Rochelle Ali—555-9063

  My mouth dropped open.

  “I’m going to get going, Claire.” I scooted from the booth. “It was great meeting with you. I’ll have Marithé, my assistant, contact you when we’ve prepared a workable strategy.” I excused myself and stepped out into the mist to clear my head.

  Outside of Convent, a storm was brewing. Both figurative and literal flashes of lightning pierced the night sky, as well as that sustained darkness that is my mind. I was flabbergasted, flummoxed, one or the other, both. The name was instantly identifiable. I had just seen the bitch, oddly enough, on the same night that Liesl blew town. At the Well, she was on the arm of the diminutive Cameron Hansen. That’s right, folks; Rochelle Ali was that princess of the elements, the plastic-surgery-riddled Channel 8 weathergirl. Whore. I struggled to draw air into my dead lungs. A spark was catching fire in me, and I needed Wendy. Where was she?

  I headed back inside.

  Chapter 13

  All the Chocolatey Goodness

  You know you want to. Go ahead. Gorge…

  —Zombie Times

  Convent empties its crowd into a hall resembling the Paris catacombs, its walls embedded with dusty vacant skulls and stacks of femurs, tibias and assorted ribs, each set cramped into wall crypts like a Japanese capsule hotel. There was a low rattle in the bones, their reaction to the reverberation of darkwave music shouting from the speakers. A macabre chandelier of antlers blazed overhead in faux candlelight, dried heads hung from it, horns pierced through eye sockets, mouths. A cossacked concierge was embroiled in a conversation with a burly man whose neck shared its collar with hair tufts resembling a cravat. A step closer and I could hear the topic—werebear hunting grounds.

  “You should try Les Toilettes,” the grim attendant said. He stood on a raised pulpit, surrounded by an intricately carved Victorian gothic rail. He was referring to the club, not the john, but the advice was helpful either way.

  I found Wendy in the bathroom, behind the vibrating stainless steel stall walls, shaking with the pulsing bass. She was shitting her bowels out, into a rarely used club toilet. I didn’t envy her position, but imagined it well, hunched over and rocking. You know the drill.

  “Wendy? Is that you?”

  “Oh God, I wish it wasn’t.” Inside the stall, the toilet paper roll spun, a lot.

  “Do you need another roll, or should I find a towel?”

  “There’s the Amanda I know, funny as usual.” Wendy’s voice was a humorless monotone. She groaned, and a stream of wet splattered into the water. “I just couldn’t resist.”

  “What happened, sweetie?”

  “I’ve got a real impulse control problem. I feel like one of those damned mistakes.” A low belch echoed from Wendy’s rotting bowels, filling the room with a pungent sulfur scent mixed with earthy death, a zombie meat fart.

  “I’m sure you’re being too hard on yourself. Tell me.” I laid out my lip accoutrements on the counter, a stick of matte dusty rose, liner and gloss. I reapplied, dabbing the lipstick on with the precision of a brain surgeon. Perfection.

  “I was at my desk, finishing up a column, for my editor, a real dick,” she said. Wendy wrote a column for The Undead Science Monitor on supernatural innovations61. Her prose was sharp and witty, just like our repartee. “I had just hit save when that retard rolled by with his orange-flagged snack cart—I swear to God, my work is all about getting fat—and what did he do? Slowed down, that’s what. A pencil cup filled with Twix, hovered a foot from my face. I was doomed. I bought three and devoured them like an off-camera Jenny Craig. It was pathetic. Then, I remembered about meeting you, after your meeting and forgot about the binge. I hadn’t planned for eating, so I didn’t have my safety panties. God, it’s so embarrassing.”

  I approached the door, put my fingertips against it. “It’s fine. Are you empty yet?”

  “I think so.” The words were followed by useless grunts, shallow attempts at expelling phantom shit.

  “I’ll get you some wet paper towels.”

  While Wendy cleaned up, I called the number for the weathergirl, got her voice mail and left a brief message for her to call me. She came out of the stall and started to touch up the makeup on her tearstained cheeks. I was feeling my most empathetic; so, I gave her a quick hug, and finished the job, adding a shimmery gold dusting to her apples.

  “You look super hot,” I said. She smiled dimly, her face puffed with exertion. “Let’s get one for the road, and then it’s out of here.”

  “Where to?”

  “To talk to Rochelle Ali, if she calls me back.” I took the lead through the restroom’s swinging door.

  “The weathergirl, what the hell for?”

  * * *

  Convent

  Pathetic ’80s Desperately Goth Afterparty Set List

  Skinny Puppy • Smothered Hope

  Sisters of Mercy • Black Planet

  Bauhaus • Lagartija Nick

  Siouxsie & The Banshees • Cities in Dust

  Cocteau Twins • In the Gold Dust Rush

  The Cure • The Hanging Garden

  Mission UK • Serpent’s Kiss

  Echo & the Bunnym
en • The Killing Moon

  Shreikback • Nemesis

  Dead Can Dance • Cantara

  Xmal Deutchland • Incubus/Succubus

  II

  * * *

  “It seems when not busy pointing out imaginary clouds on blue screens or whoring around with Cam Hansen, our Rochelle keeps company with a wereleopard, or kept, is a more apt description.”

  “So?” A wave of indifference washed over Wendy’s already sick and battered face.

  “The wereleopard’s gone missing.”

  We walked back into the main club, past the horny partiers, grown rowdier. The afterparty for Burlesque of the Living Dead was raging; the dancers joined the crowd each dressed in a different colored gown and smoking cigarettes like diner waitresses. I scanned for the booth I shared with Claire. She was gone. I didn’t see her anywhere.

  In that short time, between the end of the strip show and coming out of the bathroom, the atmosphere had changed—scary, but not in a frightening way. Scary lame. The owners were force-feeding the crowd an ’80s Goth vibe, which, of course, some pathetic vampires were eating up. You know the scene, Bauhaus or the Sisters of Mercy blaring their dark notes and bass growls (see inset). The antique velvet davenports that lingered on the periphery of the dance floor were draped with maudlin ghouls in little girl’s Sunday dresses; you know the type, of course yours are living, if you can call it that.

  Needless to say, Wendy and I do not fit in. A fashion refresher: I’m in black Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choos; Wendy’s wearing a snappy Stella McCartney and the cutest pair of high cork wedges you’ve ever seen. We head straight for the bar. The keep was a pale gent, thin and tall, stretched, almost. “What’ll it be?” he asked. His skin jiggled loose with each word.

  “What’s the house cocktail?” I offered my standard reply.

  “It depends on your condition, light-aversive, ethereal or abovegrounder.” He leaned against the counter for support, as though his next word could be his last.

  “You guess.” Wendy leaned into the bar, thrusting her chest toward him. She had absolutely no standards. What was she doing? He was completely inedible.

  “Zombies,” he said, just like that, like it was obvious, and it is so not. He grabbed two glasses and filled them with a clear fluid from an apothecary jar and slid them in front of us, then turned his attention to the next customer, a brooding vamp wearing what looked like a homemade dress of shredded black rags. Sad! Her bathtub was probably stained from all the dye it took to create that fashion disaster62.

  “How can he possibly know that?” Wendy asked. “We could easily be two innocent living women, who wandered in here, unaware of the danger all around us.”

  But what I heard was, “Blah, blah, blah.”

  Because, across the room, in my banquette, still warm from my ass, lounged the man from the elevator. That’s right, RUDE WINGTIP GUY. And he knew I was there, too. How could he not? Honestly, I looked totally hot. I made my way to the table, past the gyrations of the urban evil dead and terminally unfashionable.

  “Hi,” I said. “Do you remember me from the elevator?”

  He was barely able to drag his eyes from the table. When he did, I wished he hadn’t; there was less of him to look at than when last we met. His face had slid across his skull; his cheeks settled into a fleshy pouch under his chin; he was missing an eye, the left one; and his nose was exposed skull. He had deteriorated and what’s worse, he went out in public like that.

  “No,” he hissed, as though someone slit a tire. The small word stretched out across the room and lingered like a fart.

  “In the Treasury building elevator, about three weeks ago, you breathed on my neck.”

  “I…did…nothing…of…the…sort…girl.” His voice was rough as sandpaper and slower than I remembered.

  I wasn’t sure how to continue. If I even should. Maybe I had offended him. “It’s just that, well, I remember you; I was wondering why you did it?” I gestured to my body, which looked pretty good and resisted the urge to do a spin. I was trying to be serious.

  “Of…course…the…proximity…shared…air. Did…you…have…an…accident? After?” It took like five minutes for him to get these words out and I was getting impatient, looking at my watch. I’d have to be brain-dead to not know I was a zombie. Some new information would have been nice.

  “Yes…uh, I meant why me?” I dreaded the question as soon as I asked it. He would decompose faster than he could answer.

  “W-h-y…”

  I tapped my right foot, watched some shifts make out and ignored the obligatory cravings.

  “…not,” he finished and looked away, brought a shaky lowball to his lips, and slurped like the French hit a soupspoon.

  No, he did not just say that. Why not? Like he’d simply had to take a piss.

  “So it was like, I think I’ll turn someone into a zombie, today, and buy a new sweater, perhaps. Is that it?”

  “Sure,” he said, just like that, dismissive.

  I flashed back to my mother’s words, So last minute. That was me. So last minute—an aside, if you will. I could hear the bitch’s voice. Oh, why bother thinking about Amanda? She’s just an afterthought, an unconscious whim. She’s a Twix bar binge, double bucket chocolate cake party, a spattered toilet aftermath. Do get the glommers their cocktails, Amanda; they’re so much more interesting lubricated.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “Let…me…” He was going on, but I was done, I didn’t have time for another five-word/ten minute sentence, particularly of the rude variety. I stomped across the crowded dance floor to Wendy’s side, shoving the night crawlers with my elbows. As I approached, she dismissed some short thing that was hounding her for a date.

  “Off you go, little one,” she said. The vampire dwarf sneered, revealing impressively large canines63. “Oh, don’t be mad.” He flipped us off with a stubby finger, and skulked away.

  Nice, I mouthed, and took a sip from the drink in front of me, what must have been pure rubbing alcohol. “Jesus, it’s awful, where is this distilled, Wisconsin? Did they bother to clear out the cheddar curd?” The bartender sneered and pivoted on shaky ankles toward the back of the bar.

  “Warms you right up, though.” Wendy slurred, head lolling. “Who was that?”

  “Hmm?” I dunked a finger in the swill and stirred, an aurora borealis oil slick swirled on the surface.

  “You were talking to that guy over there.”

  “Well, I guess you’d call him my creator, but this is only the second time I’ve seen him. He’s the one that set this sexy dead thing in motion.” I shook my hair, but didn’t really sell it.

  “That’s weird.” Wendy looked confused.

  “What?”

  “Well, usually, the one that gives you ‘the breath,’ chooses you very carefully, because it is extremely difficult to conjure that kind of power. Most of us have been groomed to become zombie.”

  “So you know your maker?”

  “Absolutely.” Her eyes trained on me like I was the dumb ass. “So do you.”

  I gave her my best clueless-irritability look: cocked head, squinty eye, and raised eyebrow. Cute.

  “It’s Ricardo, darling.”

  “But you acted like you didn’t know him at all…” I stopped myself. The memory of their introduction rolled through my head like film. They had been flirting like horny high school kids. At the time, I wouldn’t have been surprised for them to rub their butts across the carpet, like a couple of dogs in heat.

  Wendy sighed. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

  Okay, we’ve shared a hundred pages; you don’t have to be coy. Go ahead. You are dying to ask me what you taste like, right? You’re thinking, maybe chicken, because that’s what everything is supposed to taste like. Rattlesnake? Tastes like chicken. Rabbit? Tastes like chicken. Cute Safeway produce guy? Tastes like chicken—nope, not so much—that underage kid that you keep looking at like a pervert? He tastes like what I think deer mus
t taste like, gamey, like there is a film across the meat, a sheen of sweat, fear maybe mixed with a metallic, rusty iron thickness. I’ve come to relish the blood, it’s like the gravy, really; it’s like Sunday dinner comes five nights out of seven64.

  The first bite is difficult in a challenging way; the flavor is unique and yet varies from person to person and across race and nationality. Despite all the claims that humans are all the same on the inside, it turns out not to be the case, at least in regards to flavor.

  Wendy and I have gone through some heated arguments over the past few months as to which race tastes better. I lean toward the Latino; I am partial to the olive-skinned European men, which by now you are aware. Wendy prefers the fresh snap of an Asian boy. She says they have an almost organic flavor, like most all vegetarians. I think they are a bit bland, but will do in a pinch. The additional appeal is that they are moderately easy to snare; their slight physical nature does make them easier targets. I’m, of course, generalizing. There are obvious variations in flavor and texture, but that’s all age, diet, and exercise.

  The night’s repast was pedestrian, literally. When we left the club, we got hold of a teen runaway right outside, like he’d been left there by room service. He thought he’d gotten extremely lucky, and in a way he did. After all, we were definitely the hottest things coming out of Convent.