"You don't fool me," she whispered, watching him from behind hooded eyelids as he leveraged the other foot against the heat of the sidewalk bricks where at least some of them still looked like they had when they'd first been laid: nice and flat and patterned. Not so many of those anymore--too much damage from the holocaust for the cobblestones to look neat. Most now heaved up in places, tripping filthy vagrants and respectable survivors alike, not that the two of those things could be separated, anymore, either. The mere notion of filth and respectable matched as poorly as the sidewalk stones--at least in Theda's part of the supercity.
Even in the shaded late afternoon light, even beneath the shadows of leafy treetops stretching leggy, malnourished branches to heaven, she could tell the guy was studying her. Looking through her, she thought, as she squatted next to her card table on her side of the street, trying and failing to help a middle-aged client back to a doddering stand.
"You good, old man?" she asked the client.
He batted a hand in front of his eye before nodding.
"Smokin'," she said to him in response. "Now get the hell up."
As he struggled to stand, she peered beneath her lashes at the man across the street. His presence unnerved her in ways that made her make stupid mistakes, the latest one even now lying prone at her feet and struggling to keep his eyes open. She couldn't say she blamed the old guy for passing out--his specific trick had been filled with crusade massacres and his own horrible, impaled fate upon returning home to Turkey. Still, she couldn't afford the lolly-gagging.
"Come on," she said to the john, slapping his cheek. "Get your wiggle on and get the hell out of here. You got your ride."
He'd rightfully earned a grisly death during that trick if she had to say so and even gave a damn in the first place. She cared about two things: godspit and money in exactly that order unless she needed money for the godspit, and then the two were reversed. All she concerned herself with was getting paid--just like any professional woman of trade--and in this case, she might have worried about that, so grisly was her client's vision, except she'd long ago learned to get the money up front. This old fart was no different, except he couldn't find his feet to save his soul, no matter how much she yanked at his elbows. He kept stumbling back onto one knee.
"Fuck, man," she said. "You're going to be all right. Just get the hell up."
She darted a look across the street to where her stalker, ten minutes earlier, had staked a claim to his spot the same as he'd done for the last four days. Before she had a chance to coax said client from a faint on the sidewalk. The stalker must have seen the exchange of money, watched as the codger had fallen, was watching still as she rapped the gent's cheeks. None of that could be called a mistake, not in separate actions; no. The mistake she'd made, that she'd been making for the last four days, was to ply her trade at all in the face of that unnerving stare from across the street.
Like the hookers who came and went around her, sometimes flashing splinters of smiles at her, sometimes trying to run her off, Theda had settled into her chisel-colored survival instinct the way any good magician would, if said con found herself trying to live out of a cardboard box in the middle of summer, plying her trade from a card table with a bowed-in middle and joints rusted nearly clean through.
She turned her tricks from it with the same sense of resolve as the prostitutes. It was a fair enough description, an easy enough way to describe what she did, except maybe that analogy of prostitution wasn't even right. Maybe she was more like the fortunetellers of old Earth: like Nostradamus or those famed kids from Fatima. Or, like a ghost whisperer in some archaic, entertainment-based television series. Except, all those descriptions failed to nail her trade down just right because no one in his right mind in this new world would admit to believing anything remotely divine was left behind.
"Take it all away, Theda," her mom was fond of saying, back before the god had come and left the globe in devastated ruin. "Take it all away and all folks have left to hold onto is faith."
Well, faith had come and gone and left nothing in its wake but a wasteland that needed to shake its way back to equilibrium. So much for faith; so much for the prophetess's wisdom. Nothing left hereabouts after the great holocaust but an eastern half of a supercity in near ruin and a western end robust and teeming with plenty. Oh, and crime, of course. And hedonism. And hopelessness. Those things they had aplenty.
The holocaust, the apocalypse, the rapture as the chosen might have called it, left Theda peering at the bustling afternoon street from a derelict card table day upon day, calling to people as they passed by, in order to earn a living: "Hey," she'd coax. "Want a magic beyond any? I can do it for you. Give you some escape."
Magic. A foolish thing to ply when men wanted sex and debauchery; she figured that out quickly enough, had to change her come-on, but that was fine; Theda was a smart gal.
"I can give you a ride you'll never forget," she'd say, and that one would get them. A chance for some filthy old fart to roll over on a girl in her twenties. Old fools. She learned early to target the old men; the younger ones weren't so inclined to pay for sex, not when they could take it for free. There were a few, yes, but most of them didn't bother with hookers unless they had some leftover sense of morals. And those became less frequent than in the early days of the holocaust. A girl didn't find fresh-faced young men like her first trick anymore; they'd all become too jaded.
She'd offered to do that first trick for half a ten, so long as he had the right paperwork. She knew he imagined an experience entirely different than what he got, but she didn't let it bother her. She merely took his hand as though she planned to lead him off somewhere--an unnecessarily modest notion in the ruins of the supercity where hedonism reigned as equally as theft and assault.
It made her aware how of foolish it would be to tell her mark what he was truly in store for; he might certainly change his mind and solicit another one of the girls who hung around the corner for what he really wanted. She couldn't have that. She needed the cash.
So, she'd gripped his hand tightly as she'd drawn out her pin and stuck him deftly in the thumb like her mom had taught her. A bubble of blood rose on the pad of his skin and she fought the urge to smear it between her thumb and forefinger as she slipped his greasy digit into her mouth. She concentrated very hard, as hard as she'd ever done when she and her mother worked together in the last days, before they knew it was the last days, when Theda had begun her training. She drew hard on the flesh, pulling in even more of his fluid as she focused.
She got shifts of colors for a few seconds, then the unnerving sound of gunfire, the acrid stink of gas and mouldy earth. She presumed he felt the burning that came with the stink she caught. Mustard gas, something whispered to her psyche. So, the poor young fellow had been in the First World War during his last life. Had died as a soldier, retching in his trench, along with a dozen other men.
She wasn't sure how much he'd understood, but she did know he got all of it: every detail, every nuance of sound, each smell, and sight. He was there because she was there. And because she was there she knew things about him that he wouldn't want anyone to know--least of all himself. Poor soul had flattened right out on the remnants of sidewalk and she'd had to rummage through his pockets for the five-dollar bill before chasing him off.
Just like her old gent here, who was still swaying on his feet, enough that he stumbled and went to one knee again. She knelt down next to him.
"I said get the fuck out of here," she hissed in his ear.
It was often this way with the reincarnated. When their lives got telecast to them in living, breathing, reeking color, they felt the shame again as though they were fresh. Except, most of them didn't quite understand that it was their own soul memories they were experiencing; they imagined it was a reaction to a vision she had somehow pressed into their consciousness, a roller coaster ride of hallucination. They weren't really sure how she did it, or even if it was something she actually did
to them. They just knew they lived something in those moments and it was worth the price of admission. A short bit of exhilaration in a life filled with agony and despair.
Because there was no pleasure in New Earth, not since the god had come, no real joy in living, and so, whether a little trick of the light, a trick of the hand, a trick of some sort of hallucination, it didn't matter. It was a pretty trick she turned, indeed. No one in New Earth cared about such trivial things as morals, ethics, even the old-fashioned notion of sin. It was back to the primeval concerns of eat, sleep, forage, fornicate, and if all that was taken care of, you moved it up a notch. Steal, kill, use, and assault. Same things really, just on another playing level, like some kind of warped Dante's inferno high on a gob of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Now, not quite eight months after the war, she actually made enough money to buy a day-old egg salad sandwich each morning from the survivor's station, one that, fortunately, came with a smear of godspit taped to the bottom of the cellophane wrapper. The coffee she got free, left on the back step in a thermos by the manager of the station, Ami. A good man for a dealer, even if he was a bit intense for her tastes.
She wasn't sure why he was being so nice to her. Unless it was because of the trick she'd turned for him, the one he'd said changed his life.
She wished she could say she was grateful for Ami's kindness; instead, the only thing she was grateful for was the money for the sandwich and the smear of bliss-inducing drug that he taped to the bottom.
Only the physical touched her: the sun baking her arms to a toast-colored brown, the rain making her card table even more dilapidated. Most times she didn't even feel sorry for the prostitutes who set up shop with a bruise or two on display. These last four days were the first time in nearly eight months that she felt some sort of anxiety past getting her next fix; and she paid attention to that nervous energy. She'd be a fool not to.
All because of that unflinching stare from across the way. She'd need to find another spot, perhaps, to peddle her wares. For now, she had her hands on her knees, studying this new arrival from beneath a hooded gaze, wondering what he thought of her particular brand of shenanigans. The re-vision she'd executed didn't bother her; what bothered her was what this man across the street must have been thinking as he watched her help a john to his feet. What she worried about was if he'd noticed the way the john gripped her hand as though she were a tether holding his body from falling off a very steep cliff.
What she worried about was if the new arrival would infer something remotely spiritual about what he saw--because lawlessness, hedonism, and debauchery were all very fine and good in this new world, but religion of any sort most definitely was not.
Phoenix: Act 2
Her stalker was still there two hours later. The sky was gloaming above the buildings and the shadows had begun to stretch out as though they'd leaked from a bucket of tar.
When she looked up from tucking the ratty table awkwardly beneath her armpit, intending to be done for the day, he straightened up. If he was after a re-vision, he'd come soon enough, she knew, but the waiting had been murder. She paused, sending an enquiring glance his way. Just when she thought he'd amble over, he pushed himself against the graffitied wall and shuffled off up the street. He headed west, away from the slummier bits, higher up the hill where shoppers and business people did their best to make normal lives in a ruined metropolis.
She felt a moment of panic as she watched him saunter toward the better half of the supercity, hoping he'd pause at the crest of the hill and turn down one of the streets; that would mean he resided in the same half she did and not in the elitist section. That section kept the only real law in the city, in the entire globe. He didn't pause and turn. He kept on over the crest, and then she found herself hoping that he would have nothing to do with enforcing that global law that tortured and put to death anyone who even remotely sparked the mere idea of religion.
She realized her hands were clenching the edges of the table and told herself that nothing would matter soon, not even the possibility of being accused of religion-mongering; because soon she would be lost in a spit-soaked haze where the only god she worshiped was Pleasure.
She felt along her jeans, pinching at the pockets. Yes. Still there. Two crinkling smears of godspit and twelve whole hours to ungod each one of them onto her tongue. Plenty of time to forget the worry of the lurking man.
If she hurried, she could gain her spot before sundown and be blissing out before the streetlights came on. She passed by several wiry men as she raced for her haven, several spitters leaning back to back in darkened doorways, supporting each other as they surrendered to their god.
One spitter moved as she passed by, reached out to her. "Spare a few bucks, sister?" he said. "I gotta eat."
"Looks like you're already pretty full," she told him, but she felt her pocket again, just in case her smears had fallen out. She caught sight of his eyes in the streetlight as he leaned toward her, his suspicious gaze falling on her hands and the way they fiddled at her pockets. He knew she was holding. He knew.
"Greedy little bitch, aren't ya?" he said, trying to find his feet.
"No less hungry than you, my man," she said casually. He'd probably never manage more than a threat; he was still too deep in his bliss, trying to find a way to take the edge off encroaching reality, but she picked up her pace just the same. She couldn't afford to lose her packets. Not tonight. She'd been jonesing the last two hours just knowing they were in her jeans, just knowing she could pull them out at any time and escape this hellhole they called New Earth. She wouldn't lose even one to this gluttonous bastard who'd already tasted his fill tonight. Godspit. Hunger and gratification in one drug. Thirst and quench. Agony and ecstasy. God in a godless world. The irony was almost delicious.
The drug had begun as a way to identify those poor souls who'd contracted HIV: a smear of paper across the tongue and voilà. The reaction between saliva and chemical turned the paper a bright violet if the virus was present and remained inert if the virus was absent: a handy test in an age when AIDS had begun to kill more people than Cancer. HIV had morphed and survived and morphed again until the pandemic of it wiped out a third of humankind even before the god came and rescued his chosen.
So easy to bastardize a good thing and turn it into something ugly. A mere brush of drain cleaner and the smear could paralyze the user in a miasma of dopamine. The gift, the thing that earned it the street name godspit in a world where the term god was akin to ruin and misery, was that it didn't deplete natural dopamine like other drugs did. Instead, it flooded a person's brain with the hormone. The joke in spitters' circles was that the god himself had hocked a loogie at Earth as he departed with his righteous, and so now, no one seemed to care what its pharmaceutical name was; they only cared that it either marked you as clean or condemned you to the sanatoriums.
She hated to watch her johns smear non-deified papers across their tongues and prove their health to her, when she really wanted to reach across the table and grab the blotch from them, douse it with cleaner herself and surrender to bliss. Each time they turned the strip to her, inert paper white, she mourned the waste of a good smear.
Tonight, she would pass through both the shadows and the darkest part of night in just that state. And come morning, she'd trundle off to the survivor's station for a cup of coffee, an egg sandwich, and if things continued to go her way, another smear of her favorite distraction to take her through yet another night.
She felt a familiar itch creeping up her spine as she anticipated the next few hours, felt along her jeans pocket for the piece of cellophane, her throat tight at the thought that they might have fallen out when she'd last touched them. When she heard the telltale crinkle, her heart tripped over on itself.
"Thank sweet fuck," she murmured and had to steady herself against a pile of debris at the mouth of her little cavern. She'd found it a month earlier beneath a pile of rubble that had fallen from the bridge that joined th
e two super cities before the Beast and the god waged their war.
Even in the dark, lit by one remaining street light, she recognized the sections of I-beams that had fallen during the apocalypse, both fortunately settled into just the right configuration to trap concrete hunks and bits of pavement to form a sort of cave. Most nights, she lay in the small niche inside of her cardboard box perfectly unmolested. Most nights, she had the good fortune to pass through the deepest parts of darkness wrapped in her sleeping bag, soaked in the perspiration of such intense ecstasy the cave could have fallen down around her and she'd not have cared.
She peered inside; relieved to see her spot was just as she'd left it that morning. The cat was still there, the handle of the plastic bag showing through the pile of rubble she buried it in.
"Here, kitty, kitty," she whispered, chuckling. Her cave was too good a find; she couldn't be sure someone wouldn't squat it when she left for the day, so each morning she buried the same dead cat beneath a pile of rubble in the back corner. The smell repelled the would-be squatters. She pulled at the handle of the plastic bag, holding her breath, and carted it twenty or so feet down the bank of the river where she buried it again until morning.
Now to get at it. Her mouth was already watering, her palms already itching, and she knew if she dallied much longer, went too far, she'd puke up her anticipation. She eased herself down onto a cement block just outside of her grotto and pulled off her sneakers then stripped off her jean shorts and T-shirt so that when the sweats came she wouldn't soak through her only clothes. Trembling hands extracted the drug from the cellophane, then, with urgency climbing her spine, she went feet first into her sleeping bag.
She had to get it right, lie back just right, make sure she was perfectly settled, her legs apart, her head cushioned by her pile of clothes. She licked her lips. Swallowed exactly three times. Shook her wrists out another five. She wanted terribly to just pull the strip off the smear and lay it directly on her tongue, needed it so badly that the rasp of her tongue against her palette brought shivers of goose flesh to her shoulders. She let them come. She let them travel down her back and legs. It was part of the ritual, this feeling of desperation, of delaying until she couldn't stand it anymore, until the tremors reached her toes where they turned to cramps that made her instep curl upward.
Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection Page 77