After Hope Dies

by Lilly Haraden

  Bax straightens and focuses on the child. White, thin as a twig, hair the colour of shit. After a while they all start to look the same: a dispensable thing probably not worth the liability cost. Poor creature. It’d be a blessing to provide her an opportunity – any opportunity – to remove her from the life that she’s now going to have to fall back on. Our hero gives a few conciliatory nods and comes to: ‘Young Miss. I don’t think you’re cut for this line a work.’

  Little girl clutches her collarbone as if struck, eyes low, but she steps forward and blurts out, ‘P-Please…let me work! I don’t have to dance, I can just do other things.’

  Slow, soft: ‘Can you suck dick?’

  ‘What?’

  Bax reconsiders and follows through with: ‘Well, it’s not a question of ‘can’. Will you suck dick? Will you take one? Will you do more?’

  Doe girl clutches the hem of her skirt, scrunches up the fabric, and with frightened eyes she shakes her head no-no. She should have lied.

  Therefore, it’s a no. That’s how it works, dear girl. There’s only so much light a small candle of hope can offer. Riff-raff crowding around the flame cast big shadows for those who deserve it more. From a total utility point of view, some must suffer so that others can thrive. So the man simply waves his hand, palm up, and a minder cuts in from across the stage to usher the poor thing away.

  ‘Next.’

  After a while they all start to look the same. Don’t they, Baxter?

  This one decided to audition without her shirt on. Some caring minder must really be gunning hard for this girl and invested a good hour or two painting the top half of her body with glittery paint. Black tights on fire with sequins. Sparkles in the hair. Rubies. She looks like a flame spirit, or an NC17-rated Eurovision reject. White as chips. Geez, where my coloured people people of colour at, right? Age: maybe fourteen. There’s a whisper of the adult version in the making. An alluring glimpse of the future, for sure. Girl strikes-a-pose in the middle of the dance floor and waits for Bax to give the signal.

  Tug-tug. A little shadowy hand paws at the man’s arm and he turns. In the cupped hands of this spirit wiggles a little piece of paper, animate and hungry like a caterpillar. Bax reaches out for the charm and make a show of ignoring the girl, choosing instead to spend precious seconds reading the inscription on this particular piece of magic. Satisfied, the man nods, thanks his minion, and dissolves the paper on his tongue. Bitter like lemons, harsh like acid, clean like dry sugar. Bleh. The man sniffs once and returns his attention to the child, nods, and she begins dancing to some old Nicki Minaj bullshit. Not even twenty seconds into the routine, as the child is busy thumbing down her elastics to reveal obsidian legs, Bax waves the music dry. Child stops, caught in the silence, pulls her pants back up, covers her breasts with her arm.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ says the man with all the power as he stands, turns his back on the proceedings, walks to the rear entrance and spies a woman clad in leather that he didn’t expect to see. Hair the colour of the sea, this one. Eyes keen and wild on the stage, and then on Baxter as he stops by the woman. He slaps a hand on her jacket shoulder and sighs, ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’

  Dani replies, sweet, ‘You trust my judgement? I’m flattered.’

  ‘That’s right. You get to pick which one lives and which one dies. It’s a lot of fun, trust me.’

  ‘How much have you had to drink? You’re not driving, are you?’

  Bax slips into the dark lip of the entrance and muses, ‘I guess I’ll take a magic carpet ride to the Mayor’s, then.’

  Dani shakes her head, smiles, click-clacks through the silence of the dance hall. She calls out, ‘Next dancer! Bring her in, bring her in, ah. There. My dear, come to the centre of the stage, don’t be shy. Good, now, let’s see what you’ve got.’

  Bax turns and sees Dani, hands on hips, standing proud in the middle of the bar space, surveying the pretty landscape of child flesh before her. Oh, she’ll make a fine mistress one day, that Dani.

  Outside, coming up the alley that seems to be the place where all their shit goes to die, Bax encounters a feverish looking Fritzy. The two walk together around the corner to the proper rear entry, where a retractable car box sits dutifully beside the brick wall of the club. Fritzy’s supposed to be on the lookout for potential muggers or kidnappers, but his attention seems to be focused elsewhere. Bax, with keys in his hands, paused midway between lock and air, notices his bodyguard’s Shandian make an appearance. Screen on. With urgency, with distress, with a great plea in the great man’s eye, Fritzy leans in and murmurs, ‘Boss, I gotta ask. How the hell you be getten past the Ogre on the Aqua level? I be tryin all last night but the refresh rate on the yellow spheres is too damn low, you know? Fucken Candy Crush…’

  Bax finishes unlocking his car shutter and rolls the metal slabs up into the wall, saying, ‘Fritzy, my man, you gotta make money to earn money.’

  ‘Boss, that don’t make no sense.’

  ‘Grind on the Flame levels until you’re at least sixty, then pump all of your points into cooldown, not refresh. Cooldown will help with the refresh cards, which you need to start usen to get past Aqua.’

  ‘Shiiiit,’ and Fritzy pockets his phone, looks away, arms crossed, ‘here I was thinken you pay-to-win.’

  Bax smiles to himself as the shutters snap clean away and he takes a step back to view the splendour of his car: the spoils of a war that’ll never end. Desiigner once had a song called ‘Panda’ that everybody loved for a few months back in ’16. It’s about illicit drug-sourced cashmoney going towards a short-sighted vehicular purchase. Bax must have been channelling old Desiigner because he’s got himself a hot-dark grey-pearlescent ‘84 Porsche 911 SC. Eat your heart out, D – this right here is a black and white beast that blows the X6 right out of the water. Two door, modded headlights, tasteful neon underlay across the doors, nitrous tune, [research other generic car mod buzzwords] – this work of art is a marvel.

  He’s consigned a child to death, you know? Inside, from before, that precious little thing that couldn’t dance or suck dick. Well, she’ll be dead in three months. See, what happens when you refuse a child already desperate enough to engage in legal sex work is that they do it anyway. Except poorly, except without protections, without oversight or care or safety or help. In shadows, in alleys, in churches, in darkness. A whole raft of options exist for her death. Overdose on a client’s drugs, rape, suicide, etc. And it could have all been prevented. Bax sighs and steps down into the waiting arms of the Magic Carpet, lights the engine on fire. The world shakes and wobbles with the vibration, the roar, the killer-whale scream of a monster waking up from a thousand years of sleep. And out he pulls into the sour milk sunshine of a 10 AM day.

  Beside him, on the passenger seat, pressed into place by a flat seatbelt, rests a shadow. An electric outline. A thing of quiet magic and energy. Baxter thinks to ask it whether or not it judges him for the decision he made inside but thinks against it. That’s only the first mistake he’s made today; save the remorse for future hindsight, right?

  Anyway, he’s got an important meeting ahead of him.

  Mistake #2 – The Mayor

  Right beside the Hyatt downtown, but with an even more impressive marble lobby than what Corrina got all starry-eyed about, there’s the Mayor’s office. You can tell it’s the Mayor’s office on account of all the helpful labels. In gold, over the entrance: “Mayor’s Municipality Construct”. Emblazoned on the entry secretary’s chest: “The Mayor’s Property.” On the elevator shaft digital pad display: “Now Arriving at the Mayor’s Den”. Bax can’t help but smile as he steps out of the glass pill and walks down the airy, open corridor towards the Final Secretary dolled up like a porcelain creation. If he looks out left and right, he can see the entire world like a game of SimCity 2000, ready for him to destroy with a Monster. Final Secretary stands and performs a little bow, perhaps still stuck on ‘suck up to the Chinese shills’ mode. Bax couldn’t be any further f
rom a Chinese business man. No mainlander would sport a seventies white suit, crimson shirt all Prince-fluffed around the collar, pants so dark that daylight dare not tread, crocodile shoes. Damn. Those are illegal to buy now. But if Bax’s suit doesn’t impress wealth upon you, then wait until you see the Mayor’s Den.

  Now, I don’t want to alarm you. There are lots of shocking things in this story that I believe have caused much upset and angst. However this might take the cake, so please brace yourself and prepare the outrage hashtags because (please forgive me) the Mayor is quite corrupt. Corruption? In Eastern America? Well I never. Anyway, Final Secretary opens the door and out floods the light of heaven, the smell of perfume. Bax steps inside the new world. This room looks like what a bottle of expensive champagne sounds like when it pops – pwoffffff, that overwhelming surge of pure goodness. Marble, purple drapes, bookcases, a fireplace, a window so panoramic that you need to imagine it in some obscure aspect ratio to get the dimensions right. 41:9 territory. Outside glows the grey towers of the CBD like white cliffs astride a desolate, motionless ocean.

  And there is the Mayor. Rather fat, rather old, rather grey, rather white (just kidding – he’s Chinese-American), but Jesus Christ in Heaven Above – what a suit. Like a Fabergé egg woven into fabric and pressed so well into the contours of Mayor Ton’s roundness that it looks almost painted on, just like that Eurovision stripper girl’s costume. Steadying himself on the oak tabletop, the man shifts his weight from the suck of his deep green leather chair and meets the eyes of Baxter Monae. With the voice of crinkled cellophane, the elephantine creature rumbles, ‘Ah, I had a feeling I couldn’t quite shake you from the cobwebs of my life just yet.’

  Bax takes the man’s hand, shakes deep, replies, ‘Well, one simple solution to that problem, now isn’t there?’

  Mayor sniffs, smooshes up his nose to form lines and lines of skin, tells Baxter to sit down in a plush chair. Man does so, crossing legs, letting the hem rise up to display the alligator shoes (alligator, not crocodile, sorry. Still illicit). Mayor nods his approval and sighs, halfway through forming some grumbly excuse for a sentence but Baxter cuts in. Says as he reaches into his jacket pocket, ‘I’ll not be taking much of your time today. Consider this a gentle reminder of what’s owed to me.’

  Out come the papers. Two sets, each afforded its own seal and ribbon. Pay attention – these are official documents. See how they slide with weight, purpose, across the oak tabletop to the Mayor’s frame. Bax separates out both into separate vectors like the kanji for eight(八) before relaxing back into his seat. The Mayor makes no effort to notice the official documents, so Bax presses on, ‘God bless Mom. She had the foresight to impress upon me the importance of a good legal education. And now, when I’m not chasing down ghosts, or running a brothel, I set my mind upon what I like to think of as my Civic Obligation. There’s so much evil in the world. This is my way of making things right, one public policy request at a time.’

  Mayor rolls his eyes. ‘Christ Above.’

  ‘Take that first one, the one in blue. A very important social problem that you promised you would assist with. Why don’t you read along while I give you the run-down. Go ahead, pick it up. All right. I want you to pressure the state department to hand over control of prophylactic restrictions to local councils. Then, I want you to pressure every local council to remove their ‘pharmacist discretion’ bullshit. Then, I want you to contribute, by way of a modest levy on Chinese businesses, to provide cheaper access to birth control for those of us in dangerous industries.’

  Mayor rolls his eyes. ‘Christ Above.’

  ‘Now, onto the second one, the one in red. Another very important social problem that you promised you would assist with. Why don’t you read along while I give you the run-down. Go ahead, pick it up. This one’s – ’

  The Mayor grunts, his eyes in the middle of the red-ribbon policy plan. Eyes darting left to right, speed-reading furiously as if making up for the months and months of policy he hasn’t read. Eventually, the pig sets the paper back down and states, empty, ‘You want to decriminalise the streaming of child pornography from within private premises.’

  ‘“Licensed live minor digital entertainment services”.’

  Mayor murmurs, vacant, ‘Christ Above.’

  ‘– Doesn’t exist, I’m afraid. It’s just us, here on this earth, scraping by to make a living.’

  ‘Political suicide.’ Mayor huffs and deflates like a calm puffer fish, says, ‘Shit like this already exists in the shadows; why poke the tiger? Why make a legal fuss of it when everyone knows what goes on behind closed doors?’

  ‘Not that simple, I’m afraid. This guarantees protections that we do not have for when…inconveniences arise.’ Bax tilts his chin up a little and murmurs soft, ‘And I don’t seem to recall if I asked you whether or not it was suicide. Fact is, these are my terms for what I did to help you. But, my friend, don’t sweat the details. I’ve come with a little sweetener.’

  And out comes Bax’s Shandian: premium model, ninety-six percent screen to body ratio, twelve million QED pixels, a Hasselblad rear camera, an all-round technological marvel. The man navigates to his gallery, finds what he’s after. Ah. Here she is. What a gem. Young Janelle Broadchurch in all of her glory. Like a panther hiding behind blades of jungle darkness, peeking out dangerous from the stage lights. Her body clad in the subtle promise of nudity, this thing mirrored against the walls of the dance floor. Eyes on fire with a sparky lust. Bax flips the phone around and offers the girl to the Mayor. Mayor presses the phone to his eyes, takes in the sight of her, and scrolls at his own leisure. Sees Janelle on stage, sees Janelle in the back rooms doing her thing, sees the video of the child dancing like a cut snake across the whole stage for the pleasure of the camera man.

  She’s one of the best things to happen to the Carpet Ride, that little slut. A temper like a volcano, an ego the size of Mt. Olympus. Attitude, poison, body and blood. The perfect prostitute.

  The Mayor’s eyes absorb her flesh and Bax has to slip the phone out of the man’s hand to regain attention. Bax muses, ‘Suppose I could arrange a little time for you to have a chat with our star here. She’s nothing short of amazing, I assure you.’

  Mayor taps his fingers against the policy proposals and looks out the window. Really though, I’m sure we know exactly where his attention stands. Ton replies to nowhere, ‘First one, I’ll do. The pills and patches and rubbers shit.’

  Bax lets a little time pass, then shakes his head. ‘Disappointing. My friend, I don’t want to have to remind you the pains I endured to ensure that your old rival – Mr. Not the Mayor – endured in the lead up to your last election. What was it…a series of “rapid spinal reconfigurations”. No man could ever run for election again after that. Let alone run. Likewise, no mere man could ever rend that type of pain upon a human being…’

  Mayor narrows his eyes, bites back, ‘You thr- ’

  Bax stands, leans over the oak and cuts in, ‘Of course I’m threatening you. Did you think I’d just cosy up to your power like one of your Chinese fuckboys? I’ll be blunt: this is what you owe me. Don’t think I’ll accept anything less than these terms.’

  Mayor looks up to Bax with a defiant mixture raging behind his milky eyes. Holds his gaze. Stands, takes great pleasure in drawing out the seconds as Bax retreats to full height. The Pig says, ‘Show me that girl again.’

  Bax does so.

  Mayor says to the spectre of Janelle’s digital body, ‘One month. I want the works. Free.’

  ‘One month. You get this done for me, I’ll book you in for a visit, and our relationship will blossom.’ Bax takes his phone back and gives the Mayor a little salute – two fingers touched to the temple as thanks. He leaves the pig in his den of mud. Man doesn’t even pay the Final Secretary any mind on his way out.

  To his left, SimCity is on fire. The Monster is shooting lasers across the city, creating perfect squares of fire in its wake.

  To his right, At
lanta is burning quiet. Silent. Without any outward sign that it’s all hollowed out.

  Whatever. He’s got an important meeting ahead of him.

  Mistake #3 – Maple

  It’s a house like any other on the street. The good part of Stallwind, mind you, where the rich people like Yi-Ting and Una live in their two-story splendour. Neat gardens out the front with the little colourful flowers budding like frozen stars. Good paint on the exterior, the occasional gentle woof of a neighbourhood dog. The light is clearer here, the air purer, less corrupted by the factory smoke at the bottom of the Power Down Slope. Here on the hills, good people live good lives. Bax parks his 911SC behind a white van and cranks the handbrake, surveys the home on the right. You wouldn’t really know this place here is the set of a porno unless you piece together the unusual number of vehicles parked all around. Really, it’s just a house like any other on the street.

  Beside him, his shadow stirs – a silent passenger present at the edge of his vision. Bax whispers to the thing, ‘Sniff around, see what you can find out.’ Obliging, the grey smudge quivers and vanishes into the air like mist. Bax prepares himself, sighs, puffs his cheeks out, rips keys from the ignition, gets out. As he walks up the drive, someone from inside opens the door and greets him. Jason – one of the directors – dolled up in his expensive cotton shirt, gold watch, bucket of perfume. Horn-rim hipster glasses, early thirties millennial vibe. The man spreads his arms, takes a few steps down the stoop and calls out, ‘Baxter! Sup my nigga.’

  Oh dude, what the fuck. No. No no no no. You don’t…you don’t call a black man that to his face. You don’t get to do that. My God. That’s really not cool – what are you thinking? Bax feels the chill of that word, coming from that mouth, eat down into his belly. It swirls around there, brings up some nasty flavour of retaliation. Not wanting to break pace, though, Bax meets the man with one of those ‘black-approved’ sideways hand clasps and shoulder bumps, the kind of thing that implicitly says, ‘Whas good, my nigga,’ without actually having to say the fucking word. Isn’t that enough? Jesus. But Bax needs to reply, though. Oh the things he’d like to say. The array of choice insults and barbs that spread like a map of revenge in his head. Although, there’s a power imbalance here. Jason’s got the keys to the crypt and the power to shut this whole little meeting down. Do you tell a powerful friend pulling you a favour that his choice of words wasn’t the most apt in that particular situation? Or do you tell him to go get fucked. [RE this section. Lilly, didn’t the same thing happen in Atlanta: S1E1 with a radio DJ named Dave doing the same thing with Earn? Did you subconsciously plagiarise Donald Glover? Also, this whole spiel comes across as sanctimonious/hypocritical given how much the n-word appears in this story. Consider changing it. There’s a whole history associated with this word that you’re stumbling into rather blindly. Is that the point – some sort of meta commentary? This comes across as tawdry.]