“What’s your name?” she asks, toying with the silver disk hanging from her choker.
“Could you piss off? I’m not interested in anything with tits, even if they’re fake.”
“My name’s Lily,” she says.
I’m too slow. I turn to look at her, my mouth opening to ask a stupid question, when she reaches down on the ground and grabs the violet chain.
She pulls, hard, and I thump onto my back.
Even though I think I’m still awake, everything is black and sparkly. It’s like her dress, like the sky, and then I keep blinking until my vision focuses again on the ceiling, with its emergency sprinkler system nozzles and sleeping moths. My head hurts and my leg hurts and I think I forgot how to breathe.
I don’t understand how she can touch the chain when I can’t, but I also don’t understand how she was a dog. The collar is the same, though. I remember now.
The pavement scrapes by beneath me as she hauls me by the chain, toward the elevator. Some people getting into their cars glance over, then studiously pretend not to notice so they don’t have to get involved. To people who can’t see the chain, this looks like a psychotic tantrum, like I’m scooting myself toward Lily.
“Stop,” I plead. It’s barely audible, just a croak.
“I’ll stop when you give me back my pin, you insufferable bag of dicks. If you were scared of me biting you, just wait until you see what I can do with this tether.”
“I can’t —” I start, but I lose my breath again when she whips the chain around a few times, like a jump rope. I curl forward, retching. She lets go, and I lie gasping like a landed fish as her fingers poke through my pockets. She flings jewelry on the ground as she finds it, and finally, gives up.
“What did you do with it?” she asks.
“I gave it to someone,” I say. The pin is cold against my heart, reaching through the book and the coat.
I know my mascara is smeared now, waterproof or not. I have to remind myself that as bad as this is, it will be worse if I don’t put the desired item in the chest. I just need to get to a door.
“I need the silver thorns to do my job. That ‘old bitch’ is down one body guard until I can change back into a dog. I’ve killed for her before, and I’ll do it again.”
“Please, it’s too late.”
“You’re a wretched liar.” She swings the chain around, lifting me off the ground, and slams me into the back of a lime green Escalade. The crunch is either a rear window or all of my bones.
This time the flashing lights are colors. Blue, red. There’s glass in my hair and everything tastes like blood.
There are cameras, I remember, in the parking garage.
I force my eyes open, past the prodding cops, and see them escorting Lily away. She glares over her shoulder, yells about theft.
I’m not sure if I’m coughing or laughing.
They frisk me, looking for her pin, but it’s in the book where they can’t find it. They do find the other jewelry I stole — well, what Lily didn’t already throw on the ground — and they handcuff me.
Fine. If I have to pick from: getting murdered, not putting the pin in the chest, or getting arrested, this is my best option.
They don’t care enough about me to call an ambulance, and after a few minutes, I have to admit I probably don’t need one. The injuries they can measure are just a mild concussion, a split lip, and some bruising.
§
The book is still in my jacket, and they make me wear ghastly jail jammies, so I spend all night wondering what the page says now.
The first time I failed the author, the book gave me a countdown for fixing my mistake, and when I gave up, because I didn’t understand how bad it would get, the book told me to go into my kitchen, pull out everything with a skull–and–crossbones sticker on it, and pour myself a cocktail.
I had no intentions of doing it, but that’s when I found out the chain reached deeper inside than just my leg, than even my flesh and bone.
My hands mixed every cleaning product I had into the glass I usually use for scotch. My mouth opened, and I poured it down my own throat. The slop burned as it passed through me, for days, from my lips to my asshole. It crept through my veins and flavored my breath, blurred and stung my vision.
When I couldn’t take any more and tried to slit my wrists, I did bleed, but it smelled like Pine Sol and trickled out like rust–colored syrup. It didn’t change my condition. When I tried to leave my apartment, or use the phone, my hands refused.
I was so alone that Death refused to visit, and even my own body was on someone else’s side.
§
I keep my lawyer’s business card laminated in my wallet, and I call him with my usual lies. He gets me out late on Monday morning, and I’m in too much of a hurry to sit through his warnings and advice. In the cab on the way home, I open the book.
Place thorns in chest. Fifty–four minutes until punishment.
I pull out the pen I stole from the front desk at the police station. I don’t know if this will work, but I’m desperate. Bracing the book against my knee, I write:
black lily touched my skin, tried to kill me for the thorns. got away but can’t steal for you if dead. what now?
My words disappear, but I don’t know if that means they’ve been read. I stare at the page until the cab pulls up outside my apartment building. I am too sore to go up the fire escape.
The doorman I cheated holds up a hand, like I’m traffic he’s directing, and says, “Hey, you owe me forty bucks, or —”
“I’ll get it for you tonight, when your mom pays me,” I say, eyes still on the blank page. I open the stairwell door and step straight into the fifth floor hallway, where he can’t follow fast enough to kick my ass.
As I walk toward my apartment, text appears on the page, showing up in strokes as someone writes each letter.
Place thorns in chest. Thirty–three minutes until punishment. Stab her with iron knife.
I stole an iron knife with a silk–wrapped handle months ago and put it in the chest. My teeth creak against each other. I don’t know where to get another. Who would even want a knife that rusts?
I shut the book and fumble with my keys. I don’t know if I could even use the knife — I can’t imagine stabbing Lily, stabbing anyone. I’m a thief, not a murderer.
I can’t wait to put the pin in the chest so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. My leg feels like one solid cramp. I’m so distracted that I don’t smell the perfume until I close the door behind me.
I look up in time to see Lily grab the violet chain and flip me onto my back again. At least it’s carpet, I think.
“You left your filthy face grease on my tail, so I had your scent,” she says. She’s dressed much as she was Saturday night, in a short black dress and pumps.
I’m not playing this game again. “I’ll give it to you,” I say. I thrust out my palms, my favorite no–weapons signal.
She crosses her arms.
“Let me get it.” My sore muscles tear like wet paper as I struggle to my feet.
“You sure made a shitty deal,” she sneers.
I pause on my way to the chest. It looks like a normal steamer trunk, against the wall under an expensive–ass painting that I also stole, next to an even expensiver–ass plasma screen, which I actually bought because for once it was easier than stealing.
“Deal?”
“This isn’t a deal?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow. She dangles the chain meaningfully.
“No. I just… I stole that chest,” I say, pointing. I explain about the chain and the book.
I open the chest, because I want to show her the gold — prove I’m not lying — and see the same iron knife I stole months ago, with the chartreuse silk tied around the handle. The author must be loaning it to me.
Lily flops down on my couch, setting her shoes up on my glass coffee table.
“You foolish mortal. Do you know what you could have gotten, if you’d asked
instead of stolen?”
“What?”
“A contract with a clause stipulating when your service ends. We make fair deals, you know. We always have.”
“What are you?” I whisper. I’ve watched TV; I’ve seen movies; sometimes if no one is looking I even read comics. I don’t want to say any of the silly words out loud, like demon or faery.
She snorts and shakes her head.
“Me? I’m someone who can actually kill you. I’ll just wait for you to start chugging Drano–on–the–rocks again, and then offer a quick death in exchange for my pin… unless you want to take me back to the hotel and show me where you hid it. I smelled you in that utility closet — is that it?”
Lily pours herself a couple fingers of scotch and sips it, watching me. I reach into the chest and slide the knife into my sleeve. It’s cold under my fingers; I imagine sinking it into the soft hollow at the base of her long throat.
I’m suddenly so nauseated I almost fill the chest with half–digested jail food.
“How do I get this chain off?” I whisper. “That’s all I want.”
“Good luck, bitch. Pretty sure you have to kill the bastard writing in the book.”
I pull out the book, flip it open again, stare at the words.
Four minutes until punishment. Place thorns in chest. Stab her with an iron knife.
My only idea is desperate, and stupid, but what do I have to lose?
I hold the book over the trunk and shake it. The pin falls out. The bottom of the trunk swallows every silver thorn before Lily has even gotten to her feet.
Her face crumples with rage, and even if she can’t turn into a dog now, her bared teeth could have fooled me.
“Help me kill him and I’ll get your pin back,” I say quickly, half of a second before she yanks the chain toward her. If I can’t make my plan clear she might kill me, so I force myself to explain even though every word is a scream.
“I can… control doors,” I gasp. “I can get there.”
She scowls. “That could take forever.”
“It won’t.”
I’m more scared of this plan than I am of Lily. The last place I want to go is the place where the pain comes from.
After an interminable moment, Lily drops the chain.
I’m too shaky to stand again. I kneel at the coffee table and reach for my only glass, which has her lipstick prints on the rim and a finger of scotch left in the bottom.
She slides it out of reach. “Start talking.”
“Okay.” I gather my thoughts, trying to ignore the glass. “I can get there and steal the pin back. I just need you to protect me the way you protect the old lady.”
She shakes her head. “The book’s author has a dog, I’m sure, and she’ll still have her pin, because some slutty mortal crybaby didn’t snatch it.”
“I am not slutty!”
“Could’ve fooled me, Captain Nippleparty,” Lily says, pointing at my torn shirt. She stretches, rolls her head to pop her neck, and gets to her feet. “Okay. If you can get the pin back fast enough for me to use it, I’ll keep the dog from eating your face. But you’re on your own with the book’s author.”
She grabs my hand, and I feel a thrill at the touch of her strong fingers, until she casually kicks the violet chain on her way toward the front door.
I pull her back.
With my other hand, I close the chest’s lid and grip the cold brass handle. I feel through the possibilities: the tiny wooden room it usually opens to, or the bigger room beyond.
“Maybe you’re not as stupid as you smell,” she says.
I open the lid/door, step in, and we both fall through, linked by our hands.
§
We land on a desk carved of glittering white stone.
I don’t have time to look around: in a chair in front of the desk, so close I can smell his graveyard breath, there’s an old man with butter–yellow eyes and Count Dracula hair. His waxy, colorless skin reminds me of a maggot.
For just a moment, he looks like he got fisted with an ice cube — and then his eyes drop to see the violet chain coiled on the desk’s smooth surface. He smiles and lays one palm over it.
Pain. I’m on my belly instantly, swimming across the desk. My hands claw at the stone, at Lily, at the still–wet pages of the book he’d been writing in, as if somewhere I might find the switch to turn it off. My boots encounter momentary resistance, followed by the music of hundreds of coins clinking, rolling, and spinning on a marble floor.
I crane my neck at Lily, just in time to see him strike her face with the side of his fist. The quill with which he’d been writing stabs into her cheek, dribbling black ink down her jaw.
In one smooth motion, she slides off the desk and lands in a defensive crouch.
As she backs away, the clicking of her heels multiplies. It’s a dog trotting up behind her. Woolly and beige, like an old couch, it seems harmless until it bares its teeth. The rumble in its throat sounds like a power tool.
This was stupid, so stupid. I should go back through the chest. My left elbow bumps against it, so I know it’s still here on the desktop. Just shut the lid, then open it once, tumble through into my apartment. No doubt I’d be punished, but at least I’d be far away, where I belonged.
The plume hanging out of Lily’s cheek quivers as she stands between the book’s author and his canine mercenary. Then the dog jumps on her, its paws on her chest, tearing into her arm when she swings at its face.
It’s hard to focus, but I force my right arm flat on the desk so I can reach into my sleeve.
The book’s author watches Lily go down to her knees, his face expressionless. I draw the iron knife, and before I can change my mind, before I can get sick again, I slam the blade into the side of his neck.
The blood that dribbles out is iridescent like a parking lot puddle. He paws at the knife with both hands, but a moment later he goes limp and molds to the contours of his chair like wet laundry.
The pain fades, but it doesn’t go away. I don’t have time to worry about that, or the fact that I just went from thief to murderer.
It’s my fault Lily’s here.
I dig through everything I knocked off of the desk, coins and the inkwell and a bunch of jewelry, but I don’t see Lily’s pin. I have to get it to her — a dog against a dog is a better chance than she has now.
I can’t find it. The dog snarls louder behind me and Lily curses. I glance back to see her holding it at arm’s length by its collar, its teeth gnashing the flesh of her arm as if it means to chew it off.
No time to keep digging. I scan the room. It seems carved from a single block of opalescent white stone, even the desk. Sourceless frost–tinted light shows me shelves and shelves of familiar items. I spot a broken pocket watch that worked back when I stole it, a hat pin I remember sneaking off of a mannequin in a porn store window, and finally, the brass spyglass I stole from the nautical exhibit.
That’s the one I grab.
Lily’s blood is slick under my shoes as I dash over. I swing the spyglass at the dog. I don’t want to hit it, but its mouth is foaming with Lily’s blood, blood she never should have had to spill. When the brass strikes the top of the dog’s skull, it yelps, falls to the side, and is too dizzy to get up. I know how it feels. If I tried to pull the knife out of a dead man I would have passed right the eff out — I’m barely hanging on as it is. I swallow the gush of about–to–puke saliva and breathe through my nose.
Lily stands, her lacerated arm dripping more blood. “Where is my pin?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Why am I still chained?”
“I don’t know.”
We stare at each other, she without her pin, me still attached to the chest by the violet chain.
“Let’s load the chest with all the coins and jewelry,” I say. “When we get back, we’ll sort through it all.”
I take off my coat and rip out the lining to bandage Lily’s arm. When it’s wrapped tight, she helps me pile
handfuls of treasure onto my coat, all of it stained with ink and blood. We lift it together and dump the contents into the chest, over and over until there’s not a coin left.
“I can take you back through,” I say, “so you can go to a hospital.”
“You’d trust me in your apartment with all that cash?” she asks. She starts to grin, winces, and yanks the quill from her cheek. “How come you’re not going back that way?”
“I have to own both chests until I get the chain off,” I say. “I can’t bring it through itself — I don’t know what’ll happen — so I have to go back the long way.”
Maybe I don’t hide my dread well enough. Her eyes are sharp and dark as she looks at the chest, already empty, and then back at me.
“No, thanks,” she says. “I think I want to see what’s through door number two.” I fight the urge to hug her — I’m covered in enough blood as it is.
I grab one end of the chest, and she grabs the other, and we walk toward the door. I caress the cool handle, considering the possibilities. None of them will take us home, but you don’t get through a maze without hitting a few dead–ends.
I choose a hallway, and then another door, and another.
Subterraneans
William Shunn & Laura Chavoen
IN THAT SUMMER OF ’84, TUESDAY nights were usually Tuts, and Wednesday nights were Exit. Most Thursdays would have been Neo, but Shirley was tired of being predictable. That’s why they ponied up their five bucks apiece to the scary guy on the door at Medusa’s.
“But I’m not going to know anyone here,” said Caroline, hanging back in the doorway.
The rumbling bass from upstairs pounded in time with the angry pulse in Shirley’s ears. She grabbed Caroline by the arm and pulled her inside, out of the sticky August night. “That’s kind of the point,” she hissed. She didn’t want them to look like posers in front of the bouncer.
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