Blood In Electric Blue

by Greg F. Gifune

  BLOOD IN ELECTRIC BLUE

  Greg F. Gifune

  Digital Edition

  Blood In Electric Blue © 2014, 2009 by Greg F. Gifune

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Deep Night

  Dominion

  Judas Goat

  Long After Dark

  Midnight Solitaire

  Rogue

  Saying Uncle

  The Bleeding Season

  The Living and the Dead

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  http://www.darkfuseshop.com/Greg-F.-Gifune/

  For my mother and father.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Rob Dunbar for reading this novel prior to publication, and for the subsequent conversations we had and the helpful and insightful suggestions he offered, all of which made the final draft of Blood In Electric Blue possible. Also, special thanks to Jonathan Whalley at MiJon Technologies who, when a virus hit my old laptop and was then unintentionally transferred to the only copy of this manuscript I had on disk, managed to rescue and save the original file of the novel from my badly damaged hard drive. Were it not for his expertise and diligence, Blood In Electric Blue (which was a little over half done at that point) surely would’ve been lost forever. And as always, thanks to my wife Carol, to Shane Staley and DarkFuse, and to you the reader.

  “And sometimes, when I waken in a strange place, my memories of the journey that brought me there resemble, in fact, the vaguely incredible, often unbelievable memories of a dream.”

  —Patrick Roscoe

  The Lost Oasis

  PROLOGUE

  The ocean looks different at night, more mysterious. Dangerous.

  Despite the chill in the air, a blanket of fog rolls gently across the surface, the dark water in slow but steady motion, the tide rocking and gliding toward the promise of solid ground. A slight section of beach separates land from ocean. Beyond it and the growing fog, silhouettes of buildings and the vague twinkle of city lights peek through curtains of darkness.

  Just beneath the waves, obscured by darkness and fog, something moves silently toward shore. Concealed in shadowy night water, it is neither fish nor man, yet moves with the grace and primitive power of a large shark, a creature slicing through the ocean with the confidence reserved for predators that have existed uncontested for millions of years.

  Something similar to a human hand, the fingers long, clawed and webbed, breaches the surface and mistakenly brushes a large channel marker buoy, the last one between it and shore. The bell atop it clangs and echoes through the darkness, momentarily disrupting an otherwise eerily quiet night.

  As it moves closer to land the water grows shallow and its feet touch bottom, toes taking hold in the moist and murky sand. With a fluid and commanding motion, it stands, its body breaking the surface as it rises up to its full height, the arms and upper body dripping saltwater, the torso littered with seaweed and ocean debris.

  There is little moonlight, but even in shadow it is apparent the being has undergone a metamorphosis, changing from sea creature to one better suited to land. Gone are the clawed and webbed hands and feet, the black eyes, the misshapen head, the flush ears, the tail and scales, the gills. All of it gone, replaced instead with human features.

  As the being walks the rest of the way to the beach, it pulls the seaweed free and tosses it back into the ocean while wiping the debris from the rest of its nude body. It moves with a distinctly feminine and seductive gait. As it shakes its head, its hair falls free and cascades down along the now delicate and smooth shoulders, long wet strands dangling above full breasts barely visible in limited light.

  It stops, considers its surroundings a moment, nose twitching, eyes staring, head cocked as it listens, hears, absorbs, the fog swirling, moving like smoke as it embraces the being. Not that hiding matters any longer. If anyone looks upon it now they will see nothing more than a nude, devastatingly attractive swimmer.

  This is the place, it thinks. She thinks. This is the place I’ve searched for. He’s here. Somewhere out there among the occasional lights but otherwise dark cityscape, the one she has come for is waiting, only now even remotely aware of what he is, what she is, of what is coming. Of what has come.

  For him.

  ONE

  Huddled in the darkness of the studio apartment, staring at slivers of moonlight sprinkled along the baseboards and throughout the room as if placed there strategically, he dismisses his nightmare as it occurs to him that perhaps a definitive solution to the horror that has become their lives doesn’t exist. He runs his hands across his head, finds remnants of hair matted and damp from perspiration, slick and clammy between his fingers despite the chill in the air. A burning sensation draws him to the pad on the middle finger of his left hand. It is scraped and raw, as it might appear had he spent the last few hours rubbing it against a rough surface. Extending his arms, he forces them into the path of moonlight. In contrast to the skinless circle at the tip of his finger, a pattern of cobalt veins traverse the pale skin along his arms, like netting.

  Blood, in electric blue.

  He next notices the thin gold bracelet on his right wrist and remembers a bar so many years before and a Haitian man named Roscoe, of all things, with a silver front tooth. Dignon bought the bracelet from a selection Roscoe carried in his briefcase. Less than a week later, Roscoe died in the alley behind the bar, what remained of his briefcase and those sparkling trinkets spilled about his collapsed form riding rainwater streams that trickled into nearby drainage grates. Dignon remembers him lying on glossy pavement, mouth open and caked with spittle.

  The bathroom door opens and artificial light spills into the rest of the apartment, ruining the balance of moonbeams and darkness with the subtlety of a fist punched through sheetrock. “Who’s there?”

  Wilma trips her way into the room with theatrical flair and choreography that would have made Bob Fosse proud. Wearing only pantyhose, she appears typically harried and sullen both, a large white towel covering her chest, eyes decorated, face painted and powdered. “Who were you expecting,” she asks, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?”

  The toilet flushes and Barry emerges from the bathroom next, still fumbling with his zipper. “Hello, Dignon, didn’t realize you were here.”

  Dignon acknowledges him with as little enthusiasm as possible.

  Wilma switches on a lamp. “Christ, Dig, what is it with you and the dark? I could’ve broken my neck.”

  “There are worse things,” Barry mumbles.

  Wilma frowns as if mortally wounded; a hand pressed flat against the towel, neon pink fingernails holding it in place. “That’s not funny.”

  “No,” Barry says, moving to the kitchen. “It’s not.”

  Dignon reaches for a bottle of beer hidden in the shadows along the floor next to him, raises it to his lips a
nd takes a long swallow. Then he notices Wilma’s hair, or lack thereof. He points at her with the bottle.

  “What, love?” Her hands find the top of her head, mascara-drenched eyelashes batting self-consciously. “Oh. Have you seen my blonde one?”

  He motions to the row of Styrofoam heads draped in various colors and styles of wigs that line the top of the bookshelf on the other side of the apartment. “There, on the end, that’s blonde.”

  “It’s got to be the platinum one, Dig. Tonight’s platinum night, I need—”

  “Well put something on,” Barry snaps.

  “Why do you have to say it like that, with such a cruel edge?”

  Barry takes a beer from the refrigerator, opens it and gulps some. “I say things exactly the way I mean them. It’s called being genuine.”

  “I don’t have time for this. I have to be at the club soon.”

  “Relax,” Barry says through whiny, mocking laughter, “nobody cares.”

  “That’s a—what a rotten thing to say.”

  “I just don’t understand why you all feel the need to perform.”

  “Excuse me, did you say: ‘you all’?”

  “Don’t get PC on me. You know what I mean.”

  “No, do tell.”

  “Is there some unwritten law, a chapter in the handbook that says all drag queens, transvestites and select transsexuals have to spend a certain number of hours onstage lip-syncing to Streisand and Garland tunes?” He looks to Dignon for validation but finds none. “By all means, be whoever you are, but just because you deck yourself out in sequins and put on heels and a wig doesn’t mean you have talent, okay? Can we establish that once and for all, please?”

  In a distant tone, as if she had suddenly thought of something else, she says, “I’m a waitress. I’ve never claimed to have any real talent, it’s just for fun. Besides, I only perform when there’s an unexpected spot, you know that.”

  “Perform. Christ.”

  “Well that’s what it is, what am I supposed to call it?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Wilma pretends to ignore him and moves across the room to the bookshelf. Inspecting the wigs, she sets one long fingernail in the crook at the side of her mouth and pouts more than necessary. “Stop being such an insufferable grump.”

  “You should never use a word like insufferable, Willie. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Okay. Stop being such a fucking grump. Does that suit me better?”

  “It does, actually.”

  “Finally legit after all these years, praise the lord!”

  “You know, sometimes you can be such a little…” Barry manages something smile-like and leans forward a bit, his beer bottle pointing the way, “Well, I’d say cunt but that’d be about as genuine as your singing.”

  Wilma spins back in his direction with the grace of a rabid figure skater. “At least I try. You just sit back in judgment like some grand poobah.”

  His smile fades. With his pointed features, curly-perm hair styled like an afro and his tall, pencil-thin frame draped in a shiny gray suit and open-collar black shirt, Barry looks like a refugee from a 1970’s disco. Yet despite his rather comical appearance, he possesses an unmistakably violent edge. “Why don’t you just quit while you’re ahead, OK?”

  “And I don’t like you when you drink. You become, for lack of a better term, unpleasant.” She turns to Dignon. “And you, you’re not even supposed to be drinking with the medication you’re on, are you?”

  “I haven’t been taking the depression pills, they’re too strong.”

  “But I thought the doctor told you to—”

  “They make me feel like a lunatic.”

  “Why do you let things torture you so? You’re a good person, Dig, you’re—”

  “I’m a delivery man.” Dignon finishes the beer and lobs the empty bottle across the room. It skips and bounces along the unmade bed. “And I’m not even that anymore.”

  “Guess I’ll be changing the sheets tonight after all.”

  “Boring!” Barry downs the remainder of his beer, slaps the bottle onto the counter and grabs a long raincoat from the back of a nearby chair. “I’m out of here,” he says, slipping into the coat.

  “See you at the club?” Willie asks.

  “Not tonight.” He heads for the door, giving Dignon a casual salute as he passes. “See you later, Dig-man.”

  “Bye.”

  She follows him to the door. “Call me later?”

  “We’ll see,” says Barry, and then he’s gone.

  Dignon waits a while before he asks, “What’s your greatest fear, Willie?”

  The question snaps her back into the present. She turns away from the door and concentrates again on the wigs. “Change, I guess. I’m a creature of habit.”

  “Mine’s the exact opposite, the possibility that my life will never be any different than it is right now, right at this moment.”

  “You just asked me that so you could answer it yourself.”

  “You’re a clever one.”

  “Stop being so gloomy, you’ve had a bad run that’s all.”

  “A bad run? I’m forty-two-years-old.”

  “That’s impossible,” she gasps. “That’d make me forty-four! Just look at me, I can’t possibly be a day over twenty-five.”

  He doesn’t laugh, though they both wish he had. “I don’t want anything so special, I never really did. I just don’t want…this.”

  “But then that’s life in some ways, love. We want what we don’t have. The fat girl wants to be thin and the thin girl wants to gain a few pounds. The girl with big titties wants smaller ones and the girl with little titties wants bigger ones. The blonde wants to be a brunette and the brunette wants to be blonde. And the redhead—well—let me tell you about red—”

  “And sometimes people just want to be someone else entirely, right?” He struggles to his feet. “Sometimes they need to be something else, something—anything—other than what they are, than what they’ve convinced themselves to be.” Dignon steadies himself against the wall with one hand and runs the other across the stubble along his cheeks and chin and throat. “Right?”

  “Sometimes they do.”

  “Even if only for a little while.”

  “Yes, Dig, even if only for a little while.”

  He shuts his eyes, feels a tear pinch free and trickle the length of his face. It clings to his jawbone, dangles a moment then falls to darkness.

  He’s envious.

  “Why are you crying, love?” she asks softly.

  “Sometimes I feel like it’s all coming apart, you know? Like I won’t be able to hold things together much longer, I—like at any second it’s all going to burst into pieces.”

  Somewhere outside a person shouts and a car horn blares.

  “You live such an isolated life,” Willie tells him. “You need to get out there more, live a little.”

  “You live alone too.”

  “But I have more of a social calendar. Plus, I have Barry.”

  “Barry,” he moans.

  “Look, don’t start, all right? Maybe if you got to know him better you’d—”

  “He treats you like shit. If he ever lays a hand on you, I swear to God, I’ll—”

  “We’re talking about you, not Barry. And he’d never do that. I’ll put up with a lot, but not that. You know that.” Willie scratches delicately at the corner of her mouth with a neon fingernail. “You’ve been through a lot,” she says, “but you’re not alone. You have me, and I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Dignon looks at the floor awkwardly. “But you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. I know what you mean. You were already having a hard time, and then that whole thing with Jackie Shine was just another log on the fire and—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. Not tonight, OK?”

  “I’m just saying, I know you’ve got a lot to deal with right now, but you’re alive, Dig, you’re alive. A
nd as long as you’re alive you’ve got a chance.”

  “At what?”

  “Happiness, silly.”

  Neither speaks for a while.

  Finally, Wilma asks, “What are you thinking about?”

  Dignon doesn’t bother to open his eyes, but can’t be certain fear is the only culprit. “Roscoe, a man I once knew. He sold jewelry out of a briefcase. I didn’t know him all that well, we frequented the same bar. One day, he died, had a massive heart attack and collapsed in the alley behind the bar. Except for a couple wakes here and there, I’d never seen a dead body before. His I saw by accident. I stepped out into the alley to relieve myself, and there he was. I remembered thinking, why is Roscoe laying on the ground? I thought he was drunk and had passed out back there. Then I looked into his eyes and I knew.”

  “How awful,” Wilma whispers. “You never told me that story before.”

  “It was years ago, back when I was living in New York with Lisa. For some reason, I was remembering his body tonight, collapsed there in that alley. His face, and the way it looked, that dead stare, lifeless and stunned. Even in death he looked surprised, like he still couldn’t believe what had happened to him. I think about him sometimes, and how when he got up that day, when he rolled out of bed and pulled his pants and socks and shoes on, when he brushed his teeth and took a shower and ate his breakfast, collected his merchandise into his briefcase and left the house, he had no idea what was waiting for him out there, that within a few hours it’d all be over and he’d be dead on filthy concrete. It was like that for Jackie Shine. It’s like that for all of us, we just pretend it isn’t.” He opens his eyes, finds Wilma’s pained expression. “I never thought I’d have to see anything like that again. I should’ve known better. It’s like I’m some sort of death magnet.”