Skullcrack City

by Jeremy Robert Johnson

  Hex set me free. I was on top of the pyramid, self-actualized.

  And then I ran out of pills, again. I’d stretched out my intake as long as I could, knowing Hungarian’s murder would make things tense with Egbert.

  Anxiety forced me to procrastinate, pushing out a meet as late as I could. Hoping to have some small talk options on deck, I watched the most recent episode of The League of Zeroes. Alex Aurora’s chest-boxed light display and projector eye made a big splash with the audience, but as with prior challengers, no one was able to unseat Buddy the Brain. There was something fundamentally unsettling about seeing his brain in a box outside his body. The risk involved was unparalleled, the technology—cables running from brain box to a spinal column interface at the base of his skull—was borderline mystical. Most doctors interviewed confessed to ignorance of the mechanics. They said Buddy should be dead. Buddy said they should work harder, and refused to reveal the name of his surgeon, who he could now afford to keep on confidential contract.

  The guest musician that week was Robbie Dawn, pushing his creepy smarm and blue-eyed retro-soul. His cover of Marvin Gaye’s “You Sure Love to Ball” had become an internet sensation and scored him a cross-generational hit that funded his independent label SonsJeunes. He’d had twelve number ones since his crossover, and you couldn’t hit a club night in town without hearing one of his songs, or at least a remix. Most news stories focused on his business acumen and quick rise to fame, but everybody knew what really made all Robbie Dawn songs work: the drums. Those fucking drums, popping, exploding, insisting on their place at the center of your skull. The rhythms and tones swirled in a way that sunk right into your guts. You were nodding your head three seconds before one of those songs even started. Robbie refused to allow tours of his studio. When asked about his signature sound he played cavalier. “I like a certain tone, always have since I was young. But nobody was making the music I wanted to hear, so I had to innovate. I will say that I have a private database of drum sounds, and that the odds of anyone successfully copying what I do are one in a million. Now can we talk about my kids’ charity?”

  I felt better after the show. Buddy the Brain and Robbie Dawn both had secrets, sources of their power in the game. My run on Hex would be my secret, and take me exactly where I needed to go. No risk, no reward, right?

  I waved my hand in front of my face and it was just my hand. The Hex was wearing off and reality had an ugly edge I wasn’t excited about. Beautiful silver trails had been replaced by frailty, my hand vibrating with each beat of my heart. I became acutely aware of how thin the skin on my fingers was, how fast all of me could be rendered meat if inserted into the right kind of grinder.

  I’d managed to steal a hard copy of Delta MedWorks’ transaction records for the prior quarter. It weighed down my couch, an Oxford English Dictionary-dwarfing accumulation of data my sober brain would not be able to translate into meaning.

  I pocketed my Hi-Pepper Bear Spray for the first time in too many Hex runs.

  I put a little extra food in Deckard’s tank, just in case. When our relationship went sideways, Hungarian had only stabbed me. I imagined Egbert and Port to be more matter-of-fact about putting an end to things.

  “Fuck it, Deck. I’m going out.”

  And the vibe on 45th was way more warzone. Kept Squad had extra crew on the streets, flexing, emboldened by the appearance of an anti-Hex ally. But they had their guns showing, which played as alarm. They knew this disappearing brain gambit wasn’t theirs, and the presence of a new force had them on alert. Their eyes were on me. Their safeties were off.

  Beyond the Kept blocks, the aegis of fear had changed things less than I expected. Hex heads still darted from building to building or screamed at nothing anyone else could see. Shit—I was still out here too. Living inside the preternatural paranoia of the drug had rendered us immune to even rational fears. All stimulus was suspect and constant action was the order of the day.

  But Port and Egbert were businessmen, not users, and they didn’t have time to play conspiracy games. I was relieved to find they’d retained their post, less comforted by the fact that they now stood side by side. Port’s gun remained holstered, but Egbert had one of his Viking-sized mitts wrapped around a machete handle.

  I approached slowly. They tensed, shoulders up. Port’s arm inched further into his jacket.

  “What’s up, Crooked D?” His tone was flat. There were no fatuous smiles or denigrating dick jokes forthcoming.

  “Nothing much, fellas. How about…”

  Egbert jumped in. “We’re not your ‘fellas.’ In fact, we’re nothing to you right now. See this?”

  He lifted his machete into the streetlight so I could see it better. Written along the blade in black Sharpy: NOPE.

  I nodded, eyes wide, glad my last Hex rush was running thin enough that I wasn’t speaking before I could think.

  Egbert brought the machete to rest, flat side of the blade across his shoulder. “This is what I like to call my Right of Refusal. We’re in business now, understand? And if you make any offers that I’m not feeling, I’m comfortable exercising my rights. Say you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “Okay, great. Now I’m betting you’ll offer me some information.”

  I nodded, imagining the single swing of Egbert’s arm that could send my head toppling to the street, wondering how long the remaining blood in my brain would allow me to witness my mistake.

  “What was your connection to Hungarian Minor?”

  “Just buying, I swear. Same as with you guys.”

  “See, I’m not okay with that answer. Because somebody ripped off the top of Hungo’s head and disappeared with his brain. And that happened the same night you came to us and said you were looking for him. So I don’t want anything in my life to be the same as Hungo’s. Plus we’ve done some asking and it sounds like you might have had some reason to come at the guy.”

  “That was some old bullshit. I was young. I’d been jacked up for weeks. I was being ridiculous, and I overstepped my bounds. I pushed him as a joke, but he lost his balance and almost got clipped by a cab.”

  “Wait…a cab?”

  “Yeah, that was before they restructured their service areas to exclude 45th.”

  “Those motherfuckers.”

  “Yeah.”

  A moment of silence passed, the briefest unity.

  “So, Hungarian decided I couldn’t buy anymore. And he gave me this.”

  I reached to pull down my pants and reveal the scar from the stabbing.

  Port stepped in. “Hold it, D! We’ve seen enough of you already. Stand still.”

  I hadn’t even thought about what else I was revealing. Port took my Hi-Pepper Bear Spray from my back pocket.

  Egbert was nonplussed. “And why the fuck do you need that? Maybe to knock somebody out so you can get at their brain?”

  “What?” I made a split-second decision not to argue about how many better ways you could incapacitate someone for brain removal. “No. No. I don’t own a gun, that’s all. I’ve been rolled out here before.”

  They nodded and let the logic of my explanation stand. But I could tell both of them also pictured me getting robbed and then coated in bear spray just for kicks.

  “So Hungo cuts you off, stabs you, then later he takes to hiding in the sewers, and shows up dead the same night you come looking for him. And all I know about you for sure is that you’re a square peg motherfucker who’s buying too much and working on a ‘project.’”

  “And his dick looks like a hot dog that got hit with a sledgehammer and sewn back together by a blind lady.”

  “Thanks, Port.”

  “You’re welcome, D.”

  “Shit ain’t funny anymore.” Egbert was not letting go. His Right of Refusal was hovering an inch off his shoulder now, locked at the ready. Hell, he could probably broker influence with the Kept Squad by feeding them a dead tweeker for another cautionary art installation. “Listen…i
t’s not like you’re the only guy who ever had beef with Hungo. And I know by the smell of you that you’ve been using most of what we sold you. But you’re a risk, man. So, let’s open things up. What’s your project?”

  My eyes locked on Egbert’s machete, my legs ready to run if I detected the slightest downward swing. But bailing now was admitting guilt I didn’t have, and my comedown loomed with equal threat. The only option was confession under duress, all Hail Marys and crossed fingers and please don’t let me die on this street.

  The project spilled out in a fear-fueled gush—the fucking bank, the cowboys, the bullshit, Delta MedWorks and their local affiliates, my plan to shut it all down.

  It was my first time saying the plan out loud to someone other than Deckard, and it felt good, at first. But the longer I spoke, the more I felt like I was a distant entity listening to the ranting of a pants-shitting street prophet on his rickety milk carton pulpit. Even with the Right of Refusal looming, I did my best to avoid mention of “Martin S. Peppermill” or the name of the bank—I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Port and Egbert could be trusted with the whole picture.

  Were they wired and feeding audio to federal drones? Were they part of the Blue Whale data retrieval system? Had I fallen for an undercover subterfuge?

  The Fear rolled in faster, nearly paralyzing me. The Hex had taken me so far. Or had it? My mind was pulling in too much stimulus, none of it properly filtered for survival. All data was given significance. If everything was possible then anything could be. Uncertainty reigned as the lifeblood of conspiracy.

  What was I doing?

  I’d drifted off mid-sentence. Egbert’s face had changed to a kind of laissez-faire sadness—he’d written me off as having premature dementia, more “sick old dog” than “rabid and dangerous.”

  But Port’s face had lit up, clearly anxious to say something.

  What did he know? Or had he thought of another joke at the expense of my junk?

  “D, this is mad weird…probably just a coincidence.”

  “Probably just some bullshit.” Egbert was way over this situation. “This guy is fucking fried.”

  Port remained excited. “Yeah, he’s fried, no doubt. No doubt. But here’s the thing—I talked to Sammy Felton, Hungo’s buddy. He’s the guy who found the body. And he told me that before Hungo got snuffed he was running special jobs for a guy named Dr. T. I tried to get him to tell me more, but talking about it shook him up. Still, he dry snitched something about ‘bodies being supplied.’”

  “So?”

  “Crooked D, what was the name of the doctor’s office getting all that cash here in town?”

  “Tikoshi Maxillofacial Surgery.”

  Port clapped once and nodded. “See. Tikoshi. Dr. T. That’s what I’m saying. It’s fucking weird, right? Just…who knows?”

  Uncertainty engines were in overdrive. Conspiracy contagion thrived on possibility and coincidence as vectors.

  My faith was restored. Some divine providence had brought me to this moment.

  Could I find ties between Delta and the Hex trade? They had a massive pharma division, didn’t they? What if the new restrictions on their overseas testing had caused them to shift to covert research right here in town? Why had Hungarian taken to hiding in the sewers? And where the fuck was his brain?

  I wasn’t crazy. I was on fire. If I could find a link between Hungarian’s death and Delta MedWorks, then surely I could find a way in which our bank was complicit.

  The Hex had led me here, and it would keep me on the path. I had to secure more.

  I was dealing with businessmen who’d decided I was a liability. I realized the only move was to make the risk worth their while.

  “I’ll pay you triple for every pill you sell me, and I’ll give each of you ten thousand dollars once my project is complete.”

  Egbert picked up on my newfound confidence and took it for a ride.

  “If you can get us that kind of money, we want it as a down payment before your crazy ass gets killed.”

  Scared money don’t make money, right? I could feel the truth—this was the only window I would get before the Right of Refusal closed the deal and severed all ties.

  “Sure. I can get the cash. But I’m going to need your help with something.”

  Cue incredulity and a hand tightening around the grip of a machete.

  “No! It’s okay. Listen. Listen. Please. There’s a man named Martin S. Peppermill…”

  Then I sold them the beautiful idea of me not being me anymore, and we all agreed this was a step in the right direction.

  There is no such thing as “all the money and drugs you could ever need.” That’s because of the need part, and how that only disappears once life is extinguished. The money buys the drugs, the drugs work harder and harder to trick your blackened dopamine receptors into giving a damn about living. At some point you make a choice: fight your need the rest of your goddamned long-suffering life, or fill your need until it disappears into the grave with you.

  What I had for those last three blasted-out weeks was a more logical variation: More money and drugs than I ever should have had.

  Some part of me knew better. But that part didn’t understand the thrill of the game; it couldn’t grasp how amazing it felt to walk into a bank as “Martin S. Peppermill” and withdraw so much cash they had to count out the stacks in a secured office.

  Martin S. Peppermill was still a figment of my imagination, of course, but he now had an ATM card tied to his MK-Oil account and a very official looking passport and driver’s license courtesy of a friend of Port and Egbert. It had taken a series of multi-city ATM runs to put together the document acquisition cash, but I was able to perform much larger transactions with the I.D. I researched MK-Oil’s files and knew enough about the business and its higher-ups to run a B.S. session with a bank manager if they came over for a chat. I had one suit nice enough to sell the role.

  Port and Egbert got their twenty large. They used some of that cash to grease their superiors and allow greater Hex flow in my direction. And they even gave me back my bear spray, which I decided to carry at all times.

  I knew my clock was ticking—quarter end at the bank was approaching and now I’d made dents in the Foreign Transit Comp GL which couldn’t be ignored at reconciliation. The only choice at this point was to go balls out. If I slowed down I might start thinking about the choices I’d made and face the deep panic that was surely waiting for me. No, my mission timer was a fast-burning fuse and sleep was a luxury I’d have to trade for glory.

  Two pills at a time now, too many times a day to track. I imagined my cognitive function running like a supercomputer. I pretended that this reallocation of mental prowess was where the blackouts were coming from. If brilliantly mapping the collusion between my bank and Delta meant that I periodically lost things like, say, conscious perception and memory, then that was just the cost of my newfound nobility.

  Pain and gain. Guts and glory. Balancing the scales of justice. Icarus flew too close to the sun, but at least he flew. It became easier to think in loops of cliché than acknowledge the reality I’d created. Doom isn’t really something you want to focus on.

  I guess I should have paid more attention to the persistent dreams (which came during the day, and from which I have no recollection of waking): A black wolf watches me in the deep woods, waits for me to collapse, and doesn’t even tear out my throat before he starts to gnaw on my skull.

  I guess I should have spent less time worrying about invisible data receptors, and instead watched for the man in the green car who’d been paid to solve a problem.

  I guess I should have realized that no matter what kind of conspiracy I could dream up for Delta MedWorks, the truth would be far worse. My mind was simply too moral to invent what they were capable of doing.

  I did none of those things, not that I can remember. I’m not sure exactly what happened in my final days as a banker. It was definitely when I discovered how easy
it is to end up with blood on your hands.

  Even Hindsight looks back at this stretch of my life as a black hole, a spinning tangle of “What the fuck?” collapse which began the end of our world.

  Here’s what I remember…

  The bleach on the kitchen linoleum turned my hair yellow green on the left side. I’d passed out in a puddle, my body honoring the periodic rest demands I tried to refuse. Clorox was the only product I used for my daily housecleaning anymore. I vented via my windows, to ensure the fumes weren’t too much for Deckard, but I must have gassed myself beyond brain function. The skin on that side of my scalp blistered; the yellow green hair wouldn’t be attached to my head for long. My Martin S. Peppermill runs now required a gauze patch and a fedora.

  I was snarling in my office. Was it the wolf dream again? How long had I been snarling? Delores, sitting in the cubicle closest to my office, was speaking to a man I didn’t recognize. Pointing. Whispering. The man nodded in a comforting way. “Yes, ma’am. We’re aware of the problem. It will be dealt with.” I didn’t come out of my office for free pizza that day. I didn’t want to accidentally hear what I was sure was being said.

  I was no longer just Martin S. Peppermill. I was also Trevor Bainbridge, auto body and paint professional. A new batch of I.D., three accounts at separate banks, cash deposits daily, structured slightly below Fed reporting requirements.

  I was also Maria Scharf, at only one bank, very far away. Lipstick, a wig, a lovely chartreuse scarf. I couldn’t bring myself to do much mirror time that day—every glance made me feel like my mother was in the room with me, and that simply couldn’t be—so I’m sure it played tranny. Bank anti-discrimination laws and a serious depository balance boost before quarter end made my appearance a non-issue to the branch. They took my money. I’d sat in the car for ten minutes before attempting the deposit, sweating, whispering the words, “Secret squirrel, secret squirrel.”