But why go on? You know the drill. The bitch had turned werewolf on me.
I felt the proximity of her hot breath, before I noticed the transformation in her mouth. It washed over me in a heavy perfume of rot. Her canines expanded into blades, punctuating the horrors chattering around them. Her gums had sprouted seemingly endless rows of short, spiky, snapping teeth.
She sat up and stood, heaving me from my position of misguided attack and throwing me across the domed room with a roar.
I heard the crack of my head before I realized I’d even hit anything…
I became aware of motion, first by a jarring back and forth from head to feet and then by several jittery hops. I was laying on my side in a small space. My wrists were bound behind me and seemed to be connected to my equally pinioned ankles. The space smelled of oils and musty towels. I opened my eyes, initially to darkness and then, a thin line of muffled light became visible. But, I was drifting, again. My brain felt the soreness of a blow, like the fall in the garage that had essentially killed me. The last I knew of the space was a low pace of guitar strums accompanied by bass rhythm…
I awoke, for the second time, inside a rusty barrel at least twenty feet in diameter and towering into unknowable dark heights. I was confined to a dental chair by heavy bands of fabric tightened through metal buckles that reminded me of airline seat belts. Across from me was the huddled heap of a vacant body. His skin was dark and separated, to reveal dried muscle and tissue, the consistency of beef jerky. The remainder of his face was a lacework doily that exposed the inner workings of jaw and sinus. But, despite the state of decay, his identity was obvious.
Rude Wingtip Guy.
In an effort to determine the cause of his death, which immediately brought to mind torture, considering the state of his body, I scanned the perimeter of the room. My chair was surrounded by a roller coaster of hanging glass containers and rubber tubes. These were lit by several lamps standing on tripods of the sort mechanics use to do work on cars in driveways. Space heaters glowed red, and humidifiers hummed and sputtered puffs of moisture into the tropical climate of the room. Above my chair and slightly to the side was a stainless steel tray table crowded with nefarious metal tools, none of which looked particularly dull.
Just outside the ring of suspended glass jars and tubing, a TV flickered an image of a damp room with a single-paned window covered in condensation, its edges spotted black with mold. The walls appeared to be vinyl panels of a color not seen in this century. The carpet was shag and specked with browns and greens, but had probably been gold before the housekeeper quit. A woman was tied to an oak armchair and dressed, not in a silk bathrobe, or a terry sheet, but in obvious synthetic fibers, poly-somethings, that itched against skin like methamphetamines. What’s worse, her feet were bare, and touching the filthy floor. I realized she must be in that most horrifying of residences—if you could call it that—a trailer114. I’d normally be only superficially disgusted, but as the woman raised her head of blonde hair, her pale skin revealed the image of my friend. Last seen exploding into a hairy monstrosity.
It was Wendy.
A jarring of turning metal sounded from within the room, followed by the squeak of decrepit hinges. Fresh air followed it into the room.
A voice projected from behind me, the direction of the damp breeze. “How are you dear?” Footsteps followed, closing in. I was in that instant enraged; I struggled against my bonds with every bit of energy I could muster. A wondertwin couldn’t have tried harder.
Chapter 26
A Barrel of Laughs
Dentistry after death? What once was a ridiculous question has become the plastic surgery of the dead set. Supernaturals are crowding Mystical Dental for procedures like tooth sharpening to mechanical implants—saw blades, micro-drills, etc….
—The Undead Science Monitor
The voice belonged to Shane.
I’m fucked, I thought, and not in a good satisfying way, either, but in an abrupt Shane way: unremarkable, disappointing, brief. My taste in men apparently hadn’t improved; if only my taste for Martin hadn’t been so literal. I regretted not turning him zombie—or allowing him time to transition, a more appropriate description—and keeping him by my side, a partner, a lover. He certainly had a knack for it. But here, with Shane up in my face, my anger slipped right past self-loathing as easily as if I’d been buttered. I lashed out, slapping Shane where it would hurt, right across his big fat ego.
“You were a fucking lousy lay, Shane!”
Even Claire, who’d entered the echoing room behind him, giggled, back in her Wendy mask. She stationed herself somewhere off to my left obscured by the glow from the television. On the screen, the real Wendy struggled against the ropes that restricted her to the chair.
Shane’s smug grin dropped into grimace with the velocity of an amusement park thrill ride. And, I most certainly was both amused and thrilled by the reaction. Until the bastard slapped me back…hard. His wide palm barreled into my right cheek, snapping my head to the left, with a painful jarring of my neck. The skin there seemed to drag my lid down. The bastard had done facial damage. He had to die!
“You seemed to enjoy it at the time, bitch.”
“Absolutely, Shane. You’re so right. All ten seconds of it.” And that was being generous. “And, before you even bring up that shit I said in the hall as a defense, that had everything to do with your incompetence in the bedroom, and my personal generosity to tutor. I pitied you, thought maybe I could put you through some training, so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself in the future. How old are you, anyway?”
Shane’s mouth resembled a shrew’s. The response came from Wendy-Claire, “He’s two hundred and ten.”
“Two hundred and ten years old!” I barked, with much mocking. “In that time, you’d think you could learn how to please a woman.” I turned my head to address Claire. “Three jabs with that sorry wiener and he was done. I’d do better with you.” Then back at Shane. “At least she could figure out how to get me off!” The words spit from my tongue like venom.
Claire’s Wendy-body shook with uncontrolled laughter; she was bent in two, supporting her torso with her hands on her knees. Shane powered a ferocious slap to the opposite cheek—the force of it brought my face to within an inch of his. His gorgeous face, made so ugly by the personality behind it, had the look of a gargoyle perched for centuries115.
“Listen. I don’t want to hurt you.” His face was changing, now, all charming smile and white teeth. “But I am going to…gonna hurt you bad.”
“Now don’t fuck her up too bad,” Claire said. “She’s still your date for the Mortuary opening.”
“The fuck I am!”
“Shh.” Wendy’s voice attempted to soothe, but had the opposite effect, considering the source. “You won’t even remember this when we’re done.”
“Done with what?” I asked, voice shaking into a vibrato, glancing again at the tray of sharp dental tools. My sight bounced between Claire and Shane; both wore disturbing grins I’d rather not try to imagine again.
“The remaining ingredient to turn this planet into my kingdom.”
“A kingdom of zombies, Claire? That’s just crazy talk. Who will they eat?”
“They’ll eat everyone, then when there’s no human left, or they’ve all turned, they’ll starve! Oh do go ahead and beg. ‘Please don’t go through with it, Persephone, please!’” She clutched the sides of her face mimicking the horror of that far-off situation, and faking a reaction that would never come out of my mouth. It was clear she didn’t know me at all.
“Persephone? Persephone? Is that who you think you are Claire?” I vaguely remembered the goddess of the damned from a high school English assignment. Daughter of Zeus married to Hades, blah, blah…and blah. “And, who’s this hambone?” I twisted my wrist under my restraints and jabbed my thumb toward Shane. “Is he your husband Hades? Sorry excuse if he is. You’re both fuckin’ nuts.116”
“Enough!” Claire o
rdered. She motioned to Shane. “Start the process, we need every puff of breath you can squeeze from that bag of rot.” She came up to the chair and bent down into my face; her expression was hatred, skin stretched over nothing at all, but hate. “I will bring the dark, girl. That is a certainty.” She stomped off for the door, yelling back to Shane, “Every ounce of fucking breath!”
“Absolutely, my goddess.” He seemed to do a nervous jig.
In the distance, footfalls on what sounded like hollow metal stairs. They trailed off into silence.
Shane inventoried the variety of tortures on the tray. I watched as his hand passed over a pair of nasty looking shears, slowed to a hover at a glimmering scalpel, and, finally, lighted on a curved pick, with a point so miniscule it could pry open pores. He stroked the tool as though it were a lover, tenderly, lightly pressured.
“Absolutely, my goddess.” I turned Claire’s order into baby talk for Shane. “Jesus Christ! You even sound like an impotent little turd. I guess she’s lucky to have someone as servile and vacant as you, Mr. King. Oh wait…I just got it, Mr. King. King of the Damned.”
Shane backed into a court bow. “At your service.” he said, in a ruinous British accent, which had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about, and everything to do with him being an idiot. Jeez, what did I see in this guy? He spoke again in a more menacing monotone.
“I’m going to start you out like this…”
His voice trailed off and he leaned into me. Grabbing the sides of my jaw and popping my mouth open he inserted a square of metal, a spacer, which forced my mouth and jaw agape, wide enough to accept a small fist. From somewhere above my head, he closed a mechanism that framed my face; it held me so securely, I felt paralyzed from the neck up.
“And, this is the next part…”
The tray was beyond my vision, in that state, but I could hear the piercing clank of steel against steel. The bastard made sure to draw the tool across my line of sight, and my eyes followed it wide and with the first real horror since my change.
I mewled and pulled up off the chair with my hips.
The curved pick dipped down into my mouth, found an anchor and then blind pain ignited; my body screamed for my mind to go blank.
He withdrew the instrument and brought his face in line with my own. His mouth churned and he puckered. A thin rivulet of spittle dripped from his mouth into mine.
“That’ll cool it off.”
I heard him fumbling on the side of the chair. It shook and then began to move with the sound of electronic gears. My head was lifted to give a direct line of sight to the TV. Off to my right, Shane was typing a message into a BlackBerry.
“Watch this,” he said.
On the screen, Wendy had stopped struggling with her ropes. Her head hung down, the back of her skull even with her arched shoulders. She heaved occasionally, sobbing, I suspected. It was torturous to watch. I shut my eyes.
“No, no, no, lover. This next part is very important.”
I gargled dissent.
A clanking on the tray, and he drew a mechanism that looked like an eyelash curler. The tool had two flexible metal strips, attached to a pair of tong-like handles. Shane demonstrated that with a squeeze, the bands sprang into an oval shape. The sight of them blurred as he brought them closer to my left eye.
“Don’t move now. I’d hate to slice it open, eyes are quite messy and pop like grapes with even a minor pressure from something this sharp.” He squeezed the tongs lightly and they made an ominous, click-click, to accentuate his point. Shane was the worst kind of sadist, the cliché. He just had to describe the events, self-gratification barely hidden behind the wavy lip of a Peanuts character. I hope you never meet up with his type. The spank and nibble sadists are fun, occasionally, just to change things up. But this guy was totally out of control.
I howled with frustration and pain as he pressed the slivers between my clenched lids and pried my eye open. I felt a horrible scraping inside the socket. I forced myself to look straight ahead, lest he get sloppy and blind me. The corners stretched to the point of tearing. I relaxed a bit for a second one, for fear of cutting my eye in the struggle.
With both hostile appendages adhered, I had no choice but to watch the screen. A person entered the dingy room. A woman, in a white shirt, black pants, draped in a green logo apron, one of Persephone’s Starbucks death goons, strode up to the chair, circled, and positioned herself behind Wendy.
She must be mortified, I thought. Wendy prefers the upper hand, in every situation. She’s in control, even when she follows my ass around. Her suggestions are always welcome, and appropriate for the situation. She’s my Betty Crocker Ho, and she was in trouble. I fought with the belts again. Every part of my body tensed, probably compressing the empty honeycomb of blood vessels, collapsing them.
The barista wrapped her right arm around the top of Wendy’s head, pulling it backwards and lengthening the bound woman’s throat, exposing it to vulnerability. My mind dragged a memory from its fat trap. Hostage footage from Al Jazeera. Serrated knives and beheadings. I tried to shake my head as though cold, frozen, to vibrate my eyes and blur the image, disrupt my suspicion of where this was all leading.
The woman drew up her left hand and pointed a scraggy unmanicured nail toward Wendy’s cheek. She continued until the nail was touching the hollow of a dimple. Then, she started scratching, slowly at first, lightly, a caress. The victim’s pale skin issued a deep purple hue and Wendy began to mouth the word “no,” barely audible, over and over, like a chant.
The scratching became more direct, always at the same spot, until the already loose covering gave way and a gash lit into the dead cheek. The woman began to pick at the tear exposing grayed mealy muscle. She looked up at the camera, and instructed Wendy to do the same, which she did. I hoped she was drugged; her eyes were sanded with defeat.
Then, the unthinkable.
The torturer pinched onto the tear and slowly pulled at it, until it gave, releasing a long ribbon of skin from Wendy’s face. A scream echoed from the speaker as the ribbon, as if reaching the end of the Christmas roll, caught hold of some stronger attachment. The woman looked down at her work, wound the strip of skin around her finger and jerked it taut; it released with a further pull.
My eyes ventured to the body of my creator, lying on the floor. I could feel the thin pieces of metal cling to the balls. His face was stripped in a similar fashion. I feared this would be my fate. Even if I weren’t killed, I’d not be suitable for viewing, not ready for prime time.
The woman loosed Wendy and stalked off camera. My dearest friend collapsed forward, spent from the pain, or the frustration, or more likely, the knowledge that her ability to draw male victims had been dismantled with no more effort than a child would exert.
“Startling footage, don’t you think?” Shane asked.
He brought his index finger into my line of sight. There was dirt under the nail, or blood, the cuticle was shaggy and curled and the nail itself was jagged—he, obviously, chewed his nails. He wiggled it in the air, a prelude to a scratch, I supposed. But then withdrew it and continued to babble on, incessantly.
“I can’t imagine how any of you’d think that I could jeopardize my new position as a day walker. I mean really, I’m just going to give it up and go back to being a slave to time?” He was moving around, now. Adjusting the heights of the glass bottles, which I saw were strung on some sort of pulley system. He removed the openers from my eyes.
I had wondered whether Gil had suspected such at our meeting in the Well VIP room. He appeared so disgusted with that particular topic and Shane, in particular.
“When Claire acquired the gift from Mr. Norris here…” He motioned toward the heap of rotting flesh in the suit. “…I would have done anything to get it. I was tired of living my afterlife in the dark. I’m bound for more important things. For greatness.”
Does he hear himself? How does one become so grandiose? I feared it had to do with
eternal life. They must be bored. But, to the point of insanity? Ricardo was perfectly sane, Gil…eh, probably not a good example, but I’d met some people who had it together.
“It’s sad to think that the breather thought he could buy his life with such a gift. But I’m rambling…” He gazed down at the still corpse.
What was that; did he actually have some insight?
“I bet you’d like to know more about the gift itself; well let me tell you…”
Nope, not so much, not a lick. Shane went on to talk about an amulet of great power, stolen from the, and I quote, slut-u-bus’s. I thought of the empty shadow box. As long as he wore it he would be safe from the sun and any other harm, almost. He brought it out of his pocket. A thin layer of dust highlighted the etchings.
I don’t need to describe it again. You know it’s just like mine. Except mine is where? Oh yeah…purse. Where else would you keep your super protection amulet? I wouldn’t want to wear it, at all, or anything. I’m such an ass. I was sure they’d texted the help request, too. Probably left that phone lying there on purpose. Everything else seemed to be set up, including me spreading shit about Karkaroff. Shane had seen to that.
He rambled on, “…so it was kind of sad, then, that after we got your maker’s breath, he didn’t have any life left in him. So rare, you breathers—one in a thousand’s my understanding. They say that you even have the ability to heal yourself over time; of course, it would take far longer than a human would. Heh. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? Don’t worry, I’ll be more careful with you. After all, Persephone has plans for you. Of the servant variety.”
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