by Mick Farren
Semple didn’t bother to disabuse him; her intention was to simply sidestep and hurry on. But hurrying on presented something of a problem, since she had no idea where she was going. This made it difficult to carry off her usual air of command. She slipped past the man, who yelled after her, “Stuck-up whore! What’s your fucking problem? Think you’re too good for my kind?”
Semple, who was having enough problems with the human flesh in her digestive tract, tried to keep walking, but the man wasn’t finished. “So what are you doing out here if you think you’re so fucking good?” He started to follow her, yelling at her retreating back. “You get back here and talk to me! You fucks from the palace ain’t no better than the rest of us!”
The man’s tirade had the unfortunate effect of causing everyone within earshot to turn and look at her. At first these gawkers were merely curious. Up to that point, Semple had been too freaked to consider the impact she might cause, but with a hundred or more of the ragged, dull-eyed Necropolis poor staring at her, she suddenly realized just how sorely she stuck out, a painted and perfumed butterfly misplaced in a realm of deprived and disgruntled roaches and scorpions.
It didn’t take long for simple curiosity to transmute into dull, lumpen anger, and the randomly loitering began to gather into a loose knot of resentful faces. Semple could almost hear their thoughts. What could they do with this strange apparition, this gratuitous visitor from a world that they could only imagine with envy? At first the crowd kept its distance, moving with her but staring with growing hostility. The first to break ranks and actually advance toward her was a full-breasted woman in cheap and disheveled holiday finery, who had come from rutting in the desert dirt with two well-developed young men while a third took instant photographs with a cheap plastic camera. The woman halted a couple of paces in front of Semple, barring her way. She dusted off her hands and slowly looked Semple up and down. “So what happened, lovey? The doghead throw you out of paradise?”
Semple was forced to stop, but she didn’t think the woman’s sneering question merited an answer. She looked around for an avenue of dignified retreat, but none presented itself. The ring of poor had closed and she was surrounded. Fear hovered on Semple’s horizon of emotional options, but she knew that any hint and the mob would be on her in an instant. As far as she could assess the situation, the proles had decided she was Marie Antoinette and they wanted their cake. Emboldened, the woman took another step toward her. “What’s your problem, girl? Think you’re too good to talk to the likes of me? You’re on our turf now and you’re going to have to learn a new set of manners.”
Semple treated the woman to a look of what she hoped was sufficiently withering contempt. “Are you suggesting you’re going to teach me?”
The woman laughed and turned to the crowd of spectators. “You hear that? The bitch still thinks she’s safe on the inside.”
The woman was now close enough for Semple to smell the combination of booze, sweat, and the earthy body stink of recent sex. As the woman faced her again, Semple glared warningly into the smeared makeup of the gaudily painted face. “You’d be well advised not to start anything with me.” In fact, she wasn’t as confident as she sounded. This harlot from the slums had a mean scar over her left cheekbone, but Semple refused to be intimidated.
The woman’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Well advised? You’re telling me that I’d be well advised? You think some gang of Nubians is going to come running out and rescue you?”
Two other women had left the circle of watchers and were moving to join the first. Semple knew the situation was already on its way to becoming a class war flashpoint, and she was at a loss as to how to handle it when it turned ugly. To her dismay, the crunch came even sooner than she expected. The woman extended a dirty hand with chipped purple nails, trying to grab the jewel-encrusted gold collar from around Semple’s neck. “So what about this thing? You may have a dozen of them, but, out here, that could keep a family for a year or more.”
Semple jerked the collar out of reach. The piece didn’t even belong to her. It was merely on loan from the seraglio strongroom. As a possession of Anubis, she had no personal property, but she couldn’t expect the crowd to understand this. All she could do was maintain a bold front and hope for the best, and so she quickly snarled at the woman, “Keep your fucking bitch prole hands off me.”
A voice shouted from the crowd, “Strip the stuck-up cow!”
Semple’s lip curled. “You may find I’m not as easy to take as you imagine.”
Another seconded the motion. “Yeah! Strip her naked!”
A ripple of laughter ran through the spectators, followed by another shout. “Six to four on Suchep the Whore.”
Others picked up the phrase like a chant. “Six to four on Suchep the whore.”
Semple assumed Suchep the whore was the woman in front of her still eyeing the gold collar.
“Six to four on Suchep the whore.”
At the prospect of betting, men in the crowd were instantly galvanized. “I’ll take a piece of that.”
Some laughed at the double entendre, but the more serious gamblers eyed Semple with appraising eyes. The way Semple looked right then, in all her harem finery, straight from Anubis’s parade, she couldn’t imagine anyone giving six to four on her in a no-holdsbarred, straight fight.
“Who’ll give odds on the harem broad?”
“Four to one against.”
“I’ll double it if Suchep kills her.”
The bookmaking faltered for a moment as the trumpets sounded and the voice boomed. “Zero minus fifteen minutes and counting.”
Fifteen minutes was plenty of time. The mob’s attention returned to the fight at hand. “I got twenty says the aristo ain’t as soft as she looks.”
Semple was amazed. They were starting to exchange markers, getting bets down on the dragout between Semple in the god’s gold jewelry and Suchep with the big tits and purple nails. It was as if they were a pair of pit bulls or fighting lizards. Merely one more excuse for the movement of money. There was one consolation, though. A catfight might have been the last thing that Semple needed, but a crowd busy wagering wouldn’t so easily turn into a ravening lynch mob. Unfortunately, the two other women now standing a little behind Suchep the whore missed this point. Their lupine grins and clenched fists suggested they were eager to help take Semple apart, and maybe share in the proceeds. Semple knew her first move should be to put them straight. “You two better keep out of this if you don’t want to be blamed for screwing the odds.”
The two women laughed as though Semple were bluffing, but then Suchep shot them each a warning look and they got the point. As the two retreated, she turned back to Semple. “So you think you can take me, do you?”
Semple smiled sweetly. “Don’t be deceived by appearances.”
The woman smiled. “I’m going to rip your prissy fucking face off.”
Semple gestured to the scar on Suchep’s cheek. “Where did you get that from? A pimp?”
That was enough for Suchep the Whore. She lunged once more for the collar around Semple’s neck, and Semple jumped back again. This time, however, she came straight back, fully on the offensive, and punched her adversary hard in the face.
As the VC came at him, Jim’s muscles locked in panic. He found he could neither run nor completely submerge himself in the brackish water. Long seconds passed before he managed to regain his control, and by that point it was altogether too late. The dozen of them were so close that he could see their flat, stern faces, clear proof of the Nietzschean axiom of the Afterlife: “That which killed them also made them stronger.” He found he could make out the fine mechanical details of their AK-47s. He could even read the slogan, THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, on the T-shirt one of them wore under his black pajamas. Nearby a dinosaur coughed and snuffled and the VC column silently halted, instantly alert. With weapons at the ready, they carefully scanned the surrounding area. At least one of them looked directly at Jim, making what se
emed to be complete eye contact, and yet he showed absolutely no reaction. It was as if the guerrilla couldn’t see him, as if he were somehow invisible to the man.
The dinosaur coughed and snuffled two more times and them started to move off, away from Jim and the Viet Cong. The swell created by its departure all but swamped Jim, his mouth and nose went under, and he rose spluttering, right in front of the VC with the TRUTH IS OUT THERE T-shirt. Again, the impossible happened. The man seemed to have no idea that Jim existed. He moved on past him as though he weren’t there, only missing him by a matter of inches, and the rest of the column went right along with him. Jim got back to his feet, wiping the water out of his eyes, wondering what the hell had just happened. He knew well enough that weird shit could come to pass in the backwaters of the Afterlife, but this brief encounter was more than passing strange. Perhaps the VC’s inability to see him had something to do with the time disturbances that had occurred earlier. If somehow the VC had been slightly in the past and Jim had been slightly in the future, it might just be possible that he could see them while they could not see him. He had to admit it was a pretty threadbare piece of reasoning, but it did cause him to wonder what would happen when he reached the mansion. Would anyone see him at all?
One thing Jim knew for sure was that he wouldn’t learn anything by standing around, up to his waist in dirty water. He had no real option except to press on, so he once again dragged one boot and then the other out of the glutinous sucking mud and toward the yellow lights.
Suchep went sprawling, then pushed herself up on one elbow and put a hand to her nose. Blood was on her palm. It also ran down her upper lip and into her mouth. “You broke my fucking nose.”
Semple wagged an index finger at her opponent. “Never judge a book, bitch.”
Without warning, Suchep’s legs flashed out in a scissors move, a sneak attempt to throw Semple to the ground, and Semple only eluded her in the nick of time. Semple’s sideways retreat also gave the woman the chance to scramble back to her feet, and she came at Semple half crouched, hands reaching, fingers clawed. Semple knew in an instant that she had no chance of besting Suchep in a fair fight. She had neither her adversary’s down-and-dirty skills nor her stomp-and-gouge reactions. Her only hope was to think of something tricky, and fast. If she couldn’t fake out this incarnate piece of lewd aggression, she’d be toast.
The two women circled each other while the crowd bayed, teeth bared, faces stretched and ugly. Markers were changing hands at a furious rate now that Semple had unexpectedly drawn the first blood and the odds had radically shifted. The more money that went down, the more the crowd’s natural bloodlust was amplified by personal financial involvement. “Go get her, baby! Kick her in the cunt! Rip her tits off. We’re counting on you, Suchep!”
Suchep looked for an opening and Semple thought furiously. As the woman lunged, hoping to twist her talons into Semple’s long hair, Semple again ducked out of the way; suddenly an idea occurred to her. Her hand went to the fastening on the jeweled collar and she yanked it free. She smiled nastily at the Suchep, holding the collar at arm’s length. “You wanted this, didn’t you? What was it you said? This thing could keep a family for a year or more? So why don’t you come and get it? Take a chance on a year’s pay.”
Suchep frowned. Her blood and makeup were blending with the dust of the desert, which had been trampled fine by hundreds of feet, and sweat was washing the mix into dirty rivulets that snaked from brow to cheek. Suchep knew Semple was up to something, and was trying to figure out what. Semple sensed she had the upper hand, and she liked it. “So, are you going to come and get it?”
The woman lunged and Semple sidestepped, laughing. The confrontation was taking on the aspects of a bullfight. “Better still, why don’t you run and fetch it like a dog?”
Semple tossed the collar so it landed a few yards from where the two of them were facing off. Suchep was transparent. She knew she shouldn’t take her eyes off Semple, but she couldn’t resist looking to see where the precious piece might be lying. She glanced around and Semple punished her by punching her hard in the side of the head, just below the ear. Suchep staggered but at least had the presence of mind to move closer to the collar. Unfortunately, this was exactly what Semple wanted. As she’d hoped, her throwing the collar had brought the two other women back into the picture. When the betting had started, they had wisely moved back to give room to the designated contenders. With the jeweled collar on the ground for the taking, the picture instantly changed. The pair were now eyeing the prize, wondering if it was worth interrupting the fight, and how they could beat the wrath of the crowd and make off with the treasure. Suchep also saw what was happening and, probably against her better judgment, jumped back and attempted to snatch up the collar.
Semple was on her in an instant, kicking her in the side as she bent over. Suchep grunted and rolled over in the dust, winded and hurting. Semple kicked her again, and again Suchep rolled, but this time she came up with the collar in her hand. Semple backed off, grinning. “So what are you going to do now? Fight me with one hand or let go of a fortune?”
It was in this moment that Semple overreached herself, though she didn’t realize it until Suchep’s left hand came up and shot a well-aimed cloud of dust into her face. In the instant that she was blinded, the trumpets brayed a new updated warning. “Zero minus ten minutes and counting.” But Semple didn’t hear them. Now she was the one taking the punishment. Suchep’s experienced fists were pounding her chest and stomach. The woman had wrapped the collar around her right fist and was using it like a set of gold knuckles. Semple staggered back, giving ground in the face of the onslaught. She could taste blood in her mouth. The crowd was roaring and the odds were in motion again. A few moments earlier, when Semple had looked so good, a newcomer couldn’t have hoped to get into the action at better than evens. Now it was anybody’s guess. Semple took a stunning blow to the side of the head and, as her knees buckled, Suchep grabbed at her skirt and tugged. Before it pulled free, the skirt acted as a hobble around her legs, and Semple fell heavily. Even her blurred vision told her that Suchep was standing over her with a look of triumph on her face.
“Now I’m going to finish you, you stuck-up harem bitch.”
The first gray streaks of a false dawn were beginning to show in the eastern sky as Jim moved gratefully up onto dry land. His boots squelched water and more trickled down the inside of his leather jeans. He was soaked to the skin, but since the night was as oppressively warm and humid as Orlando in high summer, it hardly mattered. A clean crisp shirt would have been turned into a damp dishrag in a matter of minutes, even without repeated immersion in the swamp. He was just pleased to be able to walk without having to drag every second step from seven inches of suction. The trees that surrounded the old spooky mansion were directly in front of him, but before he could reach them he had to struggle through a fringe of undergrowth where the water met land. Primitive mangrove and a tangle of some kind of organic barbed wire—with wicked two-inch and toxic-looking thorns—represented the worst and final obstacle. As he gingerly eased and squirmed his way through the flesh-threatening foliage, he rejoiced that he had never abandoned the Lizard King affectation of leather pants. He only regretted he didn’t have the matching jacket. Although his legs came through unscathed, the thorns ripped his shirt and drew blood from long scratches to his hands, arms, chest, and back.
When he’d finally battled his way through these defenses, he found that, once under the trees, he was walking on a soft carpet of shaggy moss, growing lush on the mulch of fallen leaves and pine needles. More signs of humanity presented themselves. Over to Jim’s right, the rusting remains of a huge automobile lay stranded without wheels like a beached whale, perhaps a Lincoln or a Pontiac or a Buick Rocket 88 that, in its heyday, must have been equal in magnificence to Long Time Bob Moore’s Caddy. Most of the hulk’s paneling was now nothing more than red, flaking rust, corroding away from the chassis, but here and there patches
of faded pink paint were still visible. His first thought on seeing the remnants of a pink paint job was the mammal’s remark that Elvis might once have occupied the house. The immobile hunk had surely rested there for sixty or seventy years; a fairly substantial conifer had grown up through the interior, punched through the sunroof, and continued to grow for another forty or fifty feet. Logic suggested it was some long time since Elvis could have graced this sector of the Afterlife, except this Jurassic was in such a state of time flux that logic could not easily apply.
His main objective was still the dark bulk of the mansion, but Jim made a detour to take a closer look at the remains of the car. Even the outside chance of an afterglow Elvis presence wasn’t something one happened across too often. When he reached the dead two-door, he placed the flat of his hand on the pitted and discolored hood. Right then, worn out as he was, he could have used a strong jolt of Elvis magic, but the ruin of the car failed to deliver even the faintest residual slapback. More than a little disappointed, he turned his attention back to his primary target. One of the ground-floor lighted windows was on the side of the building directly facing him. An elaborate bay was surmounted by stone gargoyles with sculpted fangs and scales, holding up a heraldic relief, a coat of arms that bore the insignia of a key and an open hand with an eye in the palm. No detail seemed to have been spared in this homage to the intricate conventions of the Morticia Addams school of architecture.
Jim approached the lighted bay window with caution. He definitely wanted to see the inhabitants of the house before they saw him. He covered the last few yards to the house in a full crouch; then, with one hand on the carved stone of the sill, he slowly raised himself and looked inside. The spectacle that presented itself was hardly one of domestic tranquillity. The walls of the room were paneled in a dark walnut and hung with a half dozen paintings of grimly aristocratic men and women in flowing robes, posturing with dogs and falcons, against backgrounds of storm clouds and mountains. Aside from the paintings and the paneling, the room itself was dominated by a huge and magnificent fireplace, an edifice in black marble streaked by veins of yellow and green and with carved basilisks supporting a wide mantel. A log fire blazed in the grate, which might have invested the room with a modicum of hominess had it not been burning with bizarre blue-purple flames. Even more bizarre was the single figure standing motionless in the corner farthest from the fire. Jim couldn’t tell whether it was a man, woman, or even a lifelike replica, since it was covered from head to foot in a swarm of moving, jostling live bees.