by Stark, Logan
A part of Homeless must’ve known, a deep part inside. ‘Wait – my name’s Noni Makaratzi. I can help with the—’ Midori fired his pistol three times: clap! clap! clap! Three bullets spilled into Noni’s forehead. One went all the way through his skull – spilling blood and cracked bone away from his head. The other two bullets stayed in his skull. Noni’s head fell on the ground. A snap. Breaking parts. It didn’t take long for blood to paint the floor in a wave.
The men standing behind Midori’s stretched arm were finding this hilarious. They were chanting: Ma name is – they waved their hands around like scared girls – Ma name is Already Dead. Midori, however, the man who had shot someone without flinching an eyebrow, smiled humbly. He lowered his arm, got out a napkin, and wiped the gun’s nose and trigger.
Peter had the urge to retaliate with words, but what was the point? He could scream all he want, protest, tell Midori what he’d done was cruel, but what the fuck was the point? He was bound against the Dream Infiltrator, unable to move his arms and legs. Screaming would only waste energy. Peter took a deep breath, let it swirl around his stomach, let it cool the hurtful emotions, and released the air through his nose, a long and frustrated exhale. ‘Why did you kill him? What was the point?’
Midori waved his two fingers in the air. The men behind trickled away, some leaving the building, some going to the hoops to play a round of basketball. When it was just the three of them, one being the dead Noni Makaratzi (his face barely recognizable, glazed in blood), Midori reached for the three-legged chair and screeched forward.
‘There’s a saying,’ Midori said. ‘Action speaks louder than words. I just showed you an action. The Yaramati shows, don’t tell. Words are hallow trunks invested with woodworms. And I hope, truly hope, that you understand me when I say—’
Peter knew it was a mistake but did it anyway. He spat – a slimy, warm yellow that came from deep inside his throat – on Midori’s face. Peter wasn’t a spitting person, had never done something like this before.
There’s a first time for everything, a voice cackled in his head, which sounded like an old dying woman.
Midori fished the napkin from his back pocket, the same one he had used to clean the gun. While wiping the dripping gunk from his cheek, his right eye twitched like one of those angry characters in a cartoon show. Peter saw that some of his saliva (more mucus than water) had landed on the side of Midori’s lips. In fact, now that he was looking a little closer, he could see that a lot of his saliva had landed everywhere like a shrapnel bomb.
‘That’s for killing my friend and the homeless man,’ Peter said, trying to act overconfident, because only overconfidence could mask what he’d done, to make what he’d done seem a little less. He knew he wasn’t in the best place to bargain. Peter saw Midori look at his gun and felt a new level of fear build inside of him. It was a special type of fear only the unlucky ever got to experience. The fear was devoid of color, not even black, and it made a person think he or she only had a few seconds to live. Peter had to say something, and he said something stupid: ‘Let me go and I won’t tell anyone.’
Stupidity paid off. Midori threw the snot covered napkin onto the ground and broke a smile. The chair screeched a little closer. He grabbed both Peter’s knees. His grip felt like a robot’s hand, a rotary machine holding an object firmly, and it was tightening. ‘What makes you think you’d ever leave, boy? I’ve already told you, haven’t I? You are property of the Yaramati. And there’s no leaving, not until you’re dead.’
In the background, a ball bounced around and fell through hoops. Voices, enthusiastic ones, shouted for the ball, urging for team play.
Peter saw a vivid image in his head, a strange one. He didn’t watch much TV, but he’d once seen a documentary on Western farm animals, something titled Animals R Us, and they showed how cows were squeezed into a pen and hooked up onto these long, spaghetti-like tubes that were used to extract milk – at lightning speed, and the machines made a loud gurgling sound, like an old truck trying to start up in winter.
Peter was the cow. The gymnasium was that pen. Everything made sense.
Midori ran his hand down his slicked hair. He had his composure in check again. He reached for the floor and picked up the black case. The case was a glossy black and no bigger than a spectacle holder. Midori rubbed his hand across the shiny leather, looking at it as if it were an item from god.
‘I still need to show you what’s inside, Peter.’
For all Peter cared, he could throw the case away. Peter looked away and at Homeless’s body, or Noni Makaratzi as he was once called. The blood from Noni’s face had made its way down to his knees, where the pool of red glimmered under the gymnasium’s dim lights. Peter had wanted him to stay alive, because he’d seen Noni’s dreams, had seen him in the tall building where he’d received his promotion up the ladder. Peter was going to ask the man a question: what’d happened? Because in the dream, Noni was a healthy, promising man, who seemed to have a lot of potential. He wasn’t supposed to be in the Lower Part of the city, especially a homeless man; he was supposed to be living in Upper City, working for an important company. What’d happened? Was it something to do with his father? Because the last question Noni had asked in the dream was of his father, that if he could come over to Upper City as well. The boss man had said yes, he could, so how did Noni end up homeless? Did his father not want to come over? Did it force Noni to stay in Lower City? Maybe, a big maybe. But these things did not matter anymore. His mind and eyes were too occupied by what’d happened not too long ago. His friend, Ohko, shot in the head. Noni Makaratzi, the man whose dreams he’d infiltrated, shot in the head three times: clap! clap! clap! And what were the men in black coats doing now? They were shooting hoops, running around like teenagers on a high school playground.
‘Think it’s time that I show you the contents, Peter,’ Midori said, pronouncing Peter as Petaaar, the never ending a. He cracked the case open, removed a glowing, silky-white syringe, and laid the case on the floor next to him. He leaned toward Peter, his eyes locked on the magical liquid inside the syringe. The liquid, a silky white with hundreds of glittering gray, was like a beautiful woman’s hair, long and famously soft, times a thousand. But apart from its unique texture, it was the fact that it glowed a full-moon white that made Peter look in awe.
‘Have you ever seen Dream Energy?’ Midori asked. No response. ‘Of course you haven’t.’ He leaned back, taking the moon glow with him. Peter didn’t want the glow to go; he was like a moth seduced by a pretty light. Midori had the syringe close to his face, eyes squinting. ‘Thing is,’ he said softly, ‘most people don’t really care.’
‘Is …’ Peter knew it had to be so. ‘Is that the energy I extracted from the dream?’
The syringe covered Midori’s left eye, and Midori peered with his right, past the glowing white. ‘Thought you’d never ask.’ He opened his mouth until two or three or four teeth revealed themselves, and then he snickered long and maniacally.
-11-
Peter’s newest friend, a man he’d come to know as Spotless, was a slim Asian (most of them were, but he was extra slim) who wore dark-brown overalls with the letters TOKYO’S FINEST embroiled at the back in gold. Mr Spotless was a tad different from his comrade.
‘So I told my momma,’ Spotless said, throwing his weight forward, ‘why you gotta hate my new GF? (Pronounced Gee-Eff). She’s a nice little pretty girl—’ Spotless laid the mop against his hip and gestured a thin waist with his hands ‘—you know what I’m talkin bout, right?’ There was silence for at least five seconds, Spotless waiting wide-eyed. When Peter didn’t answer, Spotless grabbed the mop from his hip and dipped it into the red bucket, which had to be cold by now, because when it came an hour ago, it had steam swirling around the rims.
Spotless pulled the bucket a little back, the wheels burping (wheels tired of being pushed around). The mop went back in, splashing murky droplets. He leaned against the stick. ‘That’s what I don’t
get. Get this, okay. I think it’s cauz my momma big and ugly, no offence. My new GF ain’t like that. She’s as thin as this cleaning stick.’ The mop landed on the floor where Noni Makaratzi’s head had once lain. There were still splotches of blood that needed cleaning. “Not to worry,” Spotless had said. “All you need is hot water, a good soap, and a mop with hard bristles. You don’t wipe the blood, you scrape it.”
Peter was getting hungry, and the smell of hot takeaway wasn’t helping. The basketball players had stopped shooting hoops and were crowded on the spectator benches, eating rice and meat.
‘What do you think I should do?’ Spotless asked. He pushed a wave of red water toward the bucket. ‘Should I tell momma that she’s acting crazy again? I mean, she did say she was gonna cut her throat with a carrot peeler, and that ain’t no joke, I tell ya.’
Peter carefully looked around him. He was still on the Dream Infiltrator, tied and upright. ‘Hey,’ Peter said, trying to get Spotless’s attention. It didn’t work, so he tried again. ‘Hey, why do people call you Spotless again?’ Peter already knew, but he had to butter his ‘friend’ up.
‘Cause,’ he smiled a big one, ‘when it comes to cleaning up bodies, there ain’t no one better than me. I clean em away, almost like magic.’ He leaned against his mop and gestured a silly magician hand gesture. ‘Now you see em, now you don’t.’ Spotless laughed, mouth wide open.
Peter thought: your teeth are fucking ugly. Peter laughed with Spotless, hoping that his laughter didn’t sound too forced. Spotless didn’t seem to mind; in fact, he seemed happy to have a laughing buddy. But when Peter looked behind, he saw faces looking at them, and they didn’t seem too happy about the laugher. Fortunately, they went back to eating whatever they were eating with their chopsticks.
Don’t draw too much attention, Peter thought, and don’t make Spotless laugh like that, draws too much attention. Albeit, it’s not really that hard to make the man laugh. Peter looked around him for any sharp objects. There was no way he was going to be their little cow for milking purposes. He was getting out of this place.
‘Ha, look at this.’ Spotless rummaged something from the mop’s bristles, not minding getting his gloveless hand a little messy. ‘Think this’s bone.’ He brought it over for Peter to see. ‘What do you think?’
For some reason, the blood on the floor – now mostly foam and red bubbles – didn’t affect his hunger. Earlier, when the blood was still thick in redness, he’d wondered about this, thinking that the sight of gore should’ve removed his hunger, but it didn’t. But this all changed when Spotless had decided it’d be a good idea to show Mr Peter the remainder of a deceased Mr Noni Makaratzi’s skull.
The contents in Peter’s stomach, which were very little, mostly sticky liquid and clumps of half-digested mussels, whirled around and then shot into his throat. His throat was a ball of acid that wanted to come out. Peter mustered enough willpower to swallow the acid back into his stomach, but it didn’t work. The string of hot liquid made its way back up his chest, past his throat, and into his mouth. Now he knew exactly what he had for breakfast and what he had last night – a combination of milk, seafood, and bread. He was going to throw up, he thought, any second. The hot liquid wanted out.
‘Shit, you okay?’ Spotless asked. He threw the piece of skull away like a Frisbee. He didn’t pat Peter’s back, he pounded as if Peter were his only family member alive and choking on food.
Milky-green vomit spilled from Peter’s lips. It was hot and a lot. When Spotless saw that he was wrong about the whole Peter-choking thing, he backed away and screamed something in Japanese. Peter wasn’t too sure if the man was laughing or crying, maybe both. But what he was sure of were footsteps running toward him.
Peter lifted his dripping-vomit chin and saw guns out; they were waving them in the air like a group of lunatics, screaming in English and Japanese. One of them had his eyes wide open, screaming at the top of his lungs, knocking the bucket of blood water over. They stepped over the red wave and swung their guns at Peter as if they were casting spells.
‘He’s not dead. Not dead!’ the wide-eyed Asian screamed.
‘Check pulse,’ another said.
‘What happened?’ one of them asked, looking at the bucket of spilled blood water.
A voice squeaked from behind, Spotless’s voice: ‘Think I know what’s going on.’
‘What’s going on?’ the Asian with the big eyes asked. ‘Tell me!’
Spotless laughed, which was a mistake.
Wide-Open-Eyes Man looked at Spotless with a terrible hate on his expression. Peter, who felt like gurgling another wave of vomit, watched in horror as the man pointed his gun at Spotless, and thought he was going to shoot him, but he didn’t. The gun, however, did go off. Thunder clapped as bullets sprayed on the roof, making dust rain. Spotless wasn’t laughing anymore. The men in black coats were looking at each other, some of them still trying to understand what was going on.
The man checking Peter’s pulse had rice stuck on his lips. His breath smelled of chicken and a lot of soya sauce. When Chicken Breath was satisfied, after checking Peter’s pulse for the fourth time, he turned around at the waving machine guns and told them – with preaching arms in the air – that everything was okay.
The only person not okay was Peter, who still had warm acid stuck in his throat. It’s a good thing Midori wasn’t sitting in front of him when he had fired from his mouth. Thinking about that made Peter want to laugh, and then he felt like crying. Everything that’d happened – Ohko shot in the head, the thoughts of his mother waiting and wondering about him, Noni shot in the head, the pool of blood on the floor, the scent of takeaways while being locked as a prisoner – it was all too much, and the stress had come out as vomit.
-12-
Evil worked full-time, holidays included. The time was somewhere around 2 a.m., and the outside moon was covered in a few strips of cloud. Puddles of last night’s rainfall were scattered everywhere, some of them reflecting flickering streetlamps, a dim orange that made shadows jump away as they flicked on.
As Peter was escorted from the gymnasium door, he thought: there are a lot more cars than when I arrived. Four yellow Subaru cars were lined up behind a green one, kissing each other’s bumper. The engines scratched softly at the night. Unknown shadows, shielded by tinted windows, appeared and disappeared, trying to have a look at their latest prize.
‘Where are you taking me?’ There was no response. They were ignoring him as if he was nothing, just a walking no one. Lucky for him, he had gotten a total of thirty minutes’ sleep before they came in and dragged him away, without telling him where he was going. They were also kind enough to give him a bottle of water when he’d puked all over the floor, thanks to Spotless who’d showed him a piece of skull that looked like dripping-red candy. ‘I want to know where I’m going,’ Peter tried again. A hand pushed his back, urging him to walk a little faster.
‘We no talk now,’ the Yaramati gang member said. ‘You walk, we talk, later.’ His broken English carried on: ‘You walk like sister, faster!’ He pushed Peter’s back with his machine gun.
The lack of clouds made tonight a cold one, and something just made the air colder. At first Peter didn’t want to believe, thought it was his tired eyes and acidy throat that clouded his mind, but as he approached the green Subaru car – the engine hissing – he saw his mother’s face behind the windshield.
The car doors opened in a synchronized wave, first the ones behind and then the green Subaru. Midori climbed from the green machine.
‘There, there he is!’ Midori said. He had different clothes on, again, this time a black, long-sleeved shirt, high boots, and a belt with a large skull in the middle. He clapped his hands together and continued grinning as if he knew something Peter didn’t, something big – big, big news. ‘I heard what’d happened, Peter.’ He waved his hand in the air, a two-finger twirl, and walked over. ‘How you feeling now?’
When Peter saw his mother
climb from the car, his heart squeezed into a flat line. Sweat broke across his forehead. He felt dizzy all over again. Why? he thought, why oh why oh why? This night couldn’t get any worse. Peter looked at his mother and saw what he’d anticipated. Horror and confusion.
His mother had lost weight. As she approached the streetlight, her body swimming from darkness and into urine-yellow light, Peter saw that he was wrong; she hadn’t lost weight – she’d lost almost all her weight. For a few seconds her face looked like a skull in some horror movie, a face rejuvenating its skin back as time went on.
Felicity Steel, his mother, was the only family Peter had left. She was a hardworking individual and still pretty for her age, fifty-four. But, Peter thought, how come she lost so much weight? Was she sick? Or did all this mess make her sick?
‘Oh, my child.’ Felicity tiptoed toward her son, almost tripping over her shaky knees. ‘What’ve you gotten yourself—’ Peter thought his mother was going to slap him across the face, but she crashed into his body, both her hands sliding down his cheeks ‘—what’s going on? I’m so, so—’
Tears welled in Peter’s eyes. He hugged his mother the hardest he could, but there was no escaping the horror they were in. ‘It’s okay, mother. It’s fine, really is.’ While his mother sobbed in his arms, the Yaramati looked at them as if this was some kind of reality TV show. They were enjoying this, he could tell. Even that fucking cleaner – Spotless – was standing not far away with his cleaning utensils, his one knee on the red bucket. He grinned at them, and the grin said A Happy Family Reunion.
Felicity pushed herself away, but not too far away. ‘They told me you Dream Chased.’ Before Peter could utter a word, she continued: ‘And they said something about you having a unique gift for it.’ She used her shirt’s collar to pat tears away. ‘What’re they talking about, Peter? I’m so scared.’
‘Mother, everything is—’ Midori slapped his hand on Peter’s shoulder, making him jolt in fright.