A pointed length of steel thrust out of the upper hole. When it reached its limit, a dozen blades sprang into a corona around its head. The man said, “The King’s Sup, with which he relieves us of the burden of our appetites.” He pushed the fourth and final button.
From the lower hole, a bundle of needles sprang forward, twisting first to the left, then to the right. “The King’s Chastity,” the man concluded, with which he relieves us of the burden of our desires.” He dropped the piece of wood. “Well, that’s all right, then. Oi!” he shouted. “One of you lot reset the Beneficence.” No one replied. “You see?” he said to Keira.
“But,” she said, “I mean, I know things can get bad, believe me, but even if they do, would you—I mean—you could take some pills, or—”
“Don’t you worry about it,” the man said.
Stage left, there was a commotion on the other side of the curtains: someone shouting, the scuff of boots on wood, the curtain swelling. A trio of camera men shoved through to the stage. Their arms were linked, as if they were the world’s shortest chorus line. Not to mention, least-coordinated: the man in the middle was badly out of step with his fellows. This, Keira saw, was because he was struggling against his companions.
“Well well well,” the man beside Keira called. “The prodigal son makes his entrance.”
At his declaration, the man in the middle glanced up from his contest and, seeing the King’s Beneficence, began to scream, “No! No! Not now! Not now!” He succeeded in tearing his left arm free of his fellow’s grasp, only to have the man on his right pivot in to him and drive his fist into his gut. The captive man folded at the waist like a marionette whose strings have been scissored. The other two took him under the arms and dragged him towards the box.
The remaining camera men had retrieved their cameras and were filming their companions’ progress. As the trio passed in front of her, the captive man turned his face to Keira and, in the wheeze of a man whose lungs have been emptied of air, said, “Do you know what this means? Do you?”
“It means what it means, old son,” the man beside Keira said. “It’s the Sign, is what it is.”
While his fellows were preparing to force him into the compartment—from which all deadly accessories had been retracted—the captive man made one final attempt at escape. But the others were ready for him, and the one punched him in the head, the other splayed his hand on the captive man’s chest and shoved. Hands covering his head, the man stumbled backwards through the opening in the box. His companions wasted no time in sliding the door closed over it. Keira’s last glimpse of the man was of his hands dropping from his face, his features a mix of terror and profound sadness. Once the door was shut, the men secured it with a trio of brass locks.
“Wait—” Keira said, but already, the camera men had begun to chant, “Choose. Choose. Choose,” one word repeated in steadily-escalating volume. “Hang on,” she said to the man beside her. He ignored her in favor of the chant. “Choose. Choose. Choose.”
From within the King’s Beneficence, the captive man shouted, “You can go fuck yourselves!”
In answer, the camera men raised their voices another notch. “Choose! Choose! Choose!”
“Do you think I’m going to do this? Just because it happened before, do you think it’s going to happen now?”
“Choose! Choose! Choose!”
“Stop it! Stop this right fucking now!”
“Choose! Choose! Choose!”
“Don’t you understand what’s happening?”
If any of the camera men did, he did not share it. Instead, the group roared, “CHOOSE! CHOOSE! CHOOSE!”
“God damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
“CHOOSE! CHOOSE! CHOOSE!”
Keira had had enough. Eyes straight ahead, she walked off the stage, exiting the direction the captive man and his fellows had entered, stage left.
VII
The other side of the mustard curtain was a short hallway at the end of which a fire door opened on a cul-de-sac. To the left, an alley cornered to the right. Across from her, a metal staircase climbed a brick wall to a doorway. To her right, a camera man stood amidst a herd of trash cans, recording Keira as she considered what might lie around the alley’s turn before opting to cross to the stairs and hurry up them.
At the top, she hesitated. A hallway like the one that had brought her into the warehouse stretched in front of her, a similar procession of mottled lights keeping utter darkness at bay. It occurred to her that she was, if not completely lost, uncomfortably close to being so. Should she retrace her steps, try to find her way back to the entrance? It would mean returning to the camera men and the bizarre scenario they were enacting, which she had no desire to do. Okay, the King’s Beneficence was some kind of special effect—it had to be; she couldn’t imagine Feeney presiding over a snuff film—but she had little taste for torture porn. Were she to step onto that stage again, no doubt she’d be met by a pool of stage blood, seeping out from under the box’s door, or, worse, a wash of pig or cow blood, splashed for maximum realism.
Straight ahead it is, then. Besides, there were camera men all over the place. When she needed to find her way out of here, she could ask directions from one of them.
Her footsteps were loud, as if the space beneath the floor were hollow. Echoes of her passage lagged behind, raced ahead of her. Were the lights growing farther apart? She looked over her shoulder. They were: at least twice as much space separated the nearest globes as did those by the doorway. The next bulb was more distant still. Nor could she detect the red light of any of the camera men.
To the right, someone was walking beside her. With a gasp, Keira turned and, for a moment, did not recognize the dimly-lit woman staring back at her in equal surprise. Then she realized she was seeing herself, reflected in a large, rectangular window. “Shit.” She approached the window. Through her ghostly image, she saw a bare room in which a desk lamp cast canary-colored light onto a plain table. There were chairs on either side of the table, the one on Keira’s left pushed in to the table, the one on her right slid back several feet out of the light by the man seated on it. She couldn’t distinguish much of him, mostly a long black or navy-blue coat and a haze of cigarette smoke floating around his head. Feeney? What was he doing here? Behind him, a camera man kept record of the scene.
A door in the wall on the other side of the table opened, and a woman entered the room. Tall, thin, wearing a black pantsuit, white blouse, and a necklace of black beads, her long hair dyed platinum blond (badly), she could have passed for Keira’s mother—for herself in another dozen years, if time were unkind to her. She thought of the camera men. Was this why Feeney had hired her, because she resembled one—or more—of the actors he already had cast for the film?
The woman tugged the chair away from the table, reversed it, and straddled it, folding her arms on its back. “Well,” she said, and Keira heard her, her voice carried by a speaker set above the window. The quality was poor; she sounded flat, tinny.
The man in the chair said, “Kay.” Keira couldn’t tell if it was Feeney, speaking.
“Don’t,” Kay said.
“Just talk,” the man said. “Say something.”
Without pause, Kay said, “I heard about Laceration Parties when I was still pretty new to this place. There was this girl from Vancouver I used to hang out with once in a while. Kirsten or Karen—I think it was Karen. She used to say, ‘It’s Vancouver, Seward, not the Vancouver in Canada.’ Maybe it was Kirsten. Big girl. There was a tavern near one of the more popular King’s boxes, The Debt Owed, where we’d stand at the bar and let failed businessmen and despondent troubadours buy us rounds of Pernod while they worked themselves up for the Beneficence. Anyway, it was during a particularly slow night that Karen, I’m pretty sure her name was, told me about these parties, these soirees, a friend had been invited to. In the hills, somewhere near the Observatory. It was just the A list at it, it was the A+ list, the A++ list. Supposedl
y, the King, himself, had put in an appearance; although Kirsten’s friend hadn’t seen him, personally. At the door, the guests had been met by a butler who presented them with a ceramic bowl full of razor blades. Everybody picked one for later. The friend had been a little vague as to exactly what had happened later, but her left hand and forearm were heavily bandaged, and she claimed she couldn’t move a couple of her fingers, anymore.
“I’d been in this place long enough not to doubt the story. I didn’t think I’d ever attend one, though. Not because of any moral reservations; I just couldn’t see myself being allowed to mingle with the upper crust—with the powdered sugar sprinkled on top of the upper crust.
“That was before René. If you’d told me I would let a corpse-driver set foot on the same street as me, let alone lay his hand on me…I knew he was, I guess ‘interested’ is as good a word as any. He would drive past the booth I was working twice a day, once on his way to the morgue, the second time on his way to Potter’s Field. They never repeat a route unless something’s caught their attention. I knew the risks of acknowledging, let alone encouraging, his notice. Several of the girls I’d met when I came here decided to find out what lay on the other side of the mortuary doors, and I never saw any of them again. I also knew that, without my consent, the corpse-driver’s designs would remain hypothetical. Despite the rumors, they adhere to the Compact religiously. It took years before I granted him recognition. It wasn’t that he won me over; it wasn’t that I had a death-wish, either. There was nothing else left for me: every other avenue had dead-ended. So I made eye contact, raised my left hand with the palm out, and let what would come next, come.
“There was no romance, no spark, no magic moment I realized he was the same as me. To be honest, I’m not one hundred percent sure why he kept me around. It was months until I could stand to have him touch me, and that was only under the influence of a good bottle of Pernod. I’ve never gotten used to the way his flesh feels; I still jump anytime he puts his hands on me. The smell of formaldehyde makes me ill, and I have zero interest in what he does with the bodies in the back chambers.
“But there are consolations to the role of corpse-driver’s companion. The money’s not bad, and even better, there’s the prestige, this weird, oblique status that allows you access pretty much everywhere. I hadn’t understood this the day I recognized him, that eventually, he would be my passport to a Laceration Party. It was in the hills, near the sign. What a sight we must have made, him in that tiny bowler hat and the fur coat, me in a feathered dress and boa. Not to mention, him five times the size of me—of pretty much everyone there.
“At the front door, a kid in a tuxedo held up a wooden bowl layered with razor blades for us to choose from. I took one; René didn’t, which should’ve kept him out of the Party, but really, who was going to refuse him? The house was full of celebrities and people too powerful to be celebrities. The deeper into it you moved, the higher the profile of your company climbed, until you were in a room whose original purpose you couldn’t guess with people whose names you didn’t know. That was where the razors were put to use. More or less in the center of the room, there was a stainless steel table with a woman lying on it, nude. I’m not sure what process had led to her being there. One by one, the people in the room walked up to her, surveyed the length of her body, and chose a spot on which to employ their razors. The only rule seemed to be that you were not allowed to slice an artery or vein. After you were finished, you cast your blade into a plastic bucket under the table.
“By the time my turn came around, the floor around the table was slick with blood. I stood beside the woman, whose body was a patchwork of exposed muscle and nerve. I had avoided looking at her face, which had remained untouched. I’m not sure why. But I could feel it, dragging my eyes up the bloody reach of her toward it. The second I saw her, I knew her: Karen, or Kirsten, my old crony from The Debt Owed. She remembered me, too; I’m positive of it. There wasn’t any fear or anger in her gaze, just a kind of blank fascination. I pressed the razor to her right eyelid, and drew it across.
“When I was done, I straightened, and there was the King, leaning over the other side of the table from me. They say only one person at a time ever sees him, and I guess that’s true, because around me, the partiers carried on as if nothing were happening. For a long, long time, while Karen’s eyes filled up with blood that spilled onto the table, the King considered me, and I him. He reached out his right hand, and I saw that he was wearing a white cotton glove. He touched the tip of his index finger to Kirsten’s eye, and the blood climbed the thirsty fibers, dyeing the lower half of his finger scarlet. He nodded, drew back a step, and the crowd kind of closed around him. I didn’t tell René what had happened, but I did hold onto that razor blade.
“So I’ve seen the King and lived to tell the tale. Everyone always makes a big deal about his face; you know, ‘No mask? No mask!’ As if he’s any different from the rest of us. As if all of us aren’t naked for the world to see.”
This time, Keira was not surprised by the camera man to her left; she supposed she must have heard him approach. Beyond him, she could distinguish a doorway through which amber light reached into the hallway. She stepped around the man, and headed for the doorway.
VIII
The room she entered reminded Keira of nothing so much as the living room of her parents’ brownstone. In front of a round of bay windows, an old television whose blocky dimensions suggested an altar broadcast footage of Feeney to an abbreviated couch and a recliner. Some error in the TV’s settings tinted the screen goldenrod. The director had been shot in three-quarter profile, facing right. He was holding a bulky phone to his left ear, a freshly-lit cigarette between his teeth. Keira knelt and twisted the volume knob clockwise. The soundtrack was playing whomever he was talking to. Their voice was flat, tinny; they were in mid-sentence.
“—about the sign?” There was a pause, as the voice waited for a reply Feeney did not deliver. “What does that even mean? It’s a movie.” Pause. “You know what? Forget about it,” the voice continued, as Feeney removed the cigarette from his mouth, considered its white length, and returned it to its place, “it’s not important. What is is that I’m here, in this fucking…I’m here, and everything is wrong. I don’t know where to start. The Goddamned sky, for Christ’s sake.” Pause. “You’re the one who brought me here, asshole.” Pause. “Yes, you did.” Pause. “Yes, you fucking did.” Pause. “I’m not being stupid.” Pause. “It’s like—” Pause. “Fuck you. You do not talk to me like that.” Pause. “Fuck you. You’re the piece of shit.” Pause. “You try to lay a finger on me, and I’ll cut it off.” Pause. “Fuck you.”
Keira stood. Framed by the archway that led to the front hall, a camera man filmed her crossing the room. Passing in front of him, and unlocking the front door.
IX
She emerged into a wide, flat space—a parking lot—the parking lot outside the warehouse. It was dark, the sky full of stars. Except for her car, the lot was empty. Had she spent the entire day inside? She didn’t feel as if that much time had passed, and yet, here it was night. She supposed she could return to the warehouse, but a wave of exhaustion rose over her. Just being around all of that…whatever you wanted to call it had left her legs weak, her head light. Missing lunch and, from the looks of it, dinner probably hadn’t helped, either. Behind her, the door she had exited clicked shut. That settled the matter. Within a minute, she was behind the wheel of the Metro, driving out the gate to the place.
The highway was quiet. Good. She would be home sooner rather than later. It was unlikely she’d manage enough sleep, but she’d take what she could get. Call time tomorrow was 5:00am, again. Ugh. Ahead, the full moon hung golden over the hills. She could not remember it ever having been so near, so enormous, the vague face suggested by its topography so apparent. For a moment she had the impression that something enormous had inclined its attention towards her.
Tires ringing on the road, a convoy
of eighteen-wheelers swept around her. The windows of their cabs were tinted; rather dangerous for traveling at night, she judged. The trailers were flatbeds, each festooned with a holiday’s worth of blazing colored lights, as was the cargo lashed to it. Such was the glare that Keira could not distinguish what the trucks were transporting until they pulled away from her, when she saw that the squared frames ribboned in crimson, mauve, and lemon lights belonged to gallows, their nooses dancing in the rushing air.
As quickly as they had surrounded her, the trucks were gone, their taillights red points in the distance. Keira’s eyes were sufficiently dazzled that, at first, she mistook the second moon rising into the sky for an illusion.
For Fiona
The King is Yellow
By Pearce Hansen
The old black man did his best to bury the butcher knife in Speedy’s face as Speedy came through the door. Speedy retorted by sliding out the blade’s way and emptying both the sawed-offed’s barrels into the geezer’s center mass. The results were as unpretty as you’d expect.
Fat Bob darted through the door behind Speedy, brandishing his wrecking bar at the empty room as Speedy broke open his sawed-off, dumped the empty shells, and slid fresh ones into the double-barreled’s breech. Both men stepped fastidiously away from the corpse’s blood pool, which spread slowly around the body.
Speedy gestured with his chin toward the doorway on the right, and Fat Bob angled that way. Bob peeked around the edge of the door jamb without actually making himself a target for whoever might be in there; he held his wrecking bar back against a grab. Bob looked back at Speedy and shook his head.
Speedy led the way to the left hand doorway, Fat Bob right behind him. This room was the jackpot: the book was right where the Man had said it would be, on the podium. The tome rested on a fine-pored supple piece of pale leather, looking like no cow skin Speedy had ever seen before.
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