by Jeter, K W
Five years later, we both come back to L.A. and hole up right on the fringe of the empty slums closest to the Orange County industrial district. There’s already a little sporting life going on here. Those GPC pricks got no hold on me, didn’t even bother to sign me to any contract in exchange for my high-priced education: they thought the prospect of a big salary was enough for their little pet cut-up to come home to Orange County. It wasn’t. Pretty soon, Betreech and I are a big success, making big money doing interesting work; becoming cultural heroes and objects of frenzied worship in our spare time. The Famous Amputationists’ School is looking for people who like to slice.
Whatever. Within months every GPC official is a customer of mine, including John Mox, even though he was head of the Video Church of Moral Forces back then as well. Just another satisfied customer, happy for me to arrange the customized tickling of his personal perversions. Little did he know what plots were circling around him, like pet vultures of mine. I had a grudge on him; I was just waiting for the perfect moment.
One day he comes up to my office, this office, with the hots. Wants me to do a big genital alteration (his thrill) on some girl he said he had found himself. Get this: I discovered later it was his wife. Some guys have no pride, even though she was, hmm, somewhat of a slut anyway. Her name was Jing, like the sound a cash register makes. The chance I had been waiting for. I assure him I’ll give his woman a box like none he’s ever been into before, and set to work. It takes me a while, but I do it just the way I want.
Now, I knew for a fact that Mox was as square in his screwing as everything else he did. Missionary position, with the lights off, always. So when that chick’s cunt closed around his organ in an unescapable rictus, all he could see when he looked down in horror at their interlocked loins was the faint phosphorescence I had given my little surprises, as they slid out of their cleverly concealed sheaths, but that was enough. In my ADR probe of Mox I had seen particularly strong a certain nightmare figure found in nearly every man’s subconscious, and now here was Mox, stuck hilt-deep in that dreaded nemesis, the Vagina Dentata. The grip around the base of his shaft was so tight that no fear was frenzied enough to drain even a drop of blood sustaining his erection, as he beat on the poor girl’s chest, she bewildered by all the uncontrollable functions I had built into her body to be triggered by simple coitus, mouse in baffled trap. He had time for probably one long scream as the long shark fangs I had filched from the ruins of the UCLA oceanology labs slid inexorably slow out of her groin and closed in on his prick like a dumb fish in a hard ivory sea anemone. If Goonsqua, his faithful little second-in-command, hadn’t been right outside the door, rushed in, and rushed him off to the hospital, while the girl went into her own hysterics at the sight of the bloody and mangled penis being spat out of her like a particularly ugly abortion, Mox would have been dead now for a long time.
Can’t win ’em all, I decided, sitting behind the little peephole through which I had observed (infrared scanner) the whole thing. In a way, Mox castrated was even more satisfying than Mox dead. I returned to my practice a pleased man, and things have continued as they are to this day.
❖
“Shoo-ee,” said Limmit, pale. “Some story.”
“Nothing much, really,” Adder said, shamming modesty. “Just another urban folktale of sordid bloodlust.”
“Mox became so down on you after that?”
“Well, sure. Before, he tut-tutted on his MoFo broadcasts in a general way about me and the whole Interface, but it was sheer hypocrisy—-just another thing too good to share with the masses. With his cock, however, went his duplicity. He’s become more powerful now, image-wise—attracts all those messed-up leafleteers you see out on the street, just itching for a chance to break loose and kill every dealer and whore in L.A. Mox keeps ’em repressed, however, to maintain his influence inside the GPC. He’s not quite as dumb as he is fanatical.” Limmit sat silent, thinking. “How come,” he said finally, “you wanted to get him?”
The amusement disappeared from Adder’s manner in a way that subtly frightened Limmit. The skin of Adder’s face tightened around his sharp bones, like a sheath about to be split open by the knife within. “Because,” he said, “everything I remember about growing up over there in Orange County came walking into this room wrapped up in that one person. Not because of some archetypal conflict of polarities, anarchy versus order, son versus father, or any of that other crap, but simply because I hated his bowels the same way I hated them when I was a goddamn child, for Christ’s sake, and my teachers would load me up on downers and tranks and set me in front of his sententious moral face on the tube. He was younger then, but it was the same face that came walking in here that had told me practically every day of my life till I was eighteen to sit still, work hard, be good, and don’t say anything. So I chopped off his balls, a childhood dream come true. I used to fantasize as a kid, with whatever part of my head was still mine underneath the layers of numb cotton wool they shoved in, that all my teachers, from nursery school on, were Mox’s paid agents. The truth was worse—they did it almost for free. And they did a good job, too.
“Look out there.” He cast a hand at the window that looked out over the street. “Everyone thinks it’s called the Interface because L.A. and Orange County share the same pathological boundary there. Well, that might be—it’s as good an explanation as any. But it’s my Interface, too. Every part of me that came out crippled or dead from Orange County is out hooking on that street, trolling down my spine for all corners. And there isn’t any part of me that got so crippled up that it isn’t staggering or crawling down that pavement in the same direction, regardless of incline, down or up. I mean, they did a job on me. When I stumbled into taking that surgical aptitude test long ago, all I could even think of wanting to be (at that point, it’s hard to want anything) was a fuckin’ librarian—the closest modern equivalent in my mind of a monk in a medieval retreat. And that’s where I’d be, thanks to Mox and all the little Moxes, if certain things hadn’t happened. Maybe Betreech, in his little den in Auckland, let me try out the ADR once too often; maybe the reptiles, the alligators, climbed up out of the sewer, up the toilet bowl, and ate, ass first, the good little boy squatting there taking his respectable, constipated shits. Whatever. It’s really no wonder to me at times that all those psychopaths in the slums are obsessed with me. The Interface isn’t anything I created with Betreech’s help. It is me, spread out with a giant hard-on thrust deep into the subterranean recesses of L.A. Godhood? I fuckin’ love it.”
“Jesus,” said Limmit, aghast at the vehemence that had swelled into Adder’s voice. “You’re really crazy.” He regretted it instantly, remembering the scalpel, gun, and flashglove laid out on the desk, a lunatic arsenal.
Adder laughed, becoming calmer. “I’m not that much of a megalomaniac. I’m just a hardworking hustler with a good con and an unhappy childhood like all the rest. Everybody’s got a horror story to tell. And a proposition for you. Go on, take it, it’s what you want, you little hungry pimp. You won’t wake up some night to find me standing over you, drooling onto a machete clutched in both hands.”
“So, all right,” said Limmit. He could feel his heart accelerating, dizzying him. “When do I start?”
“I’ll get hold of you tomorrow. The only job I’ve got going at the moment I’ll be able to wrap up by myself tonight. Oh yeah, one little thing right now.” He opened up the flashglove’s case and extracted the pinhead scanner. He placed it on the desk, its tiny eye gazing at them both. Taking the roll of money from the lab coat, he handed the bills over to Limmit. “Thank you,” said Adder, looking directly into the scanner, “for bringing me this fully active flashglove, which I’ve always wanted for my personal use and possession.” He picked up the scanner and held it to his grinning face. “Thought you’d have to wait longer for your evidence, didn’t you, Mox? Do your worst, schmuck.” He tossed it into a desk drawer and slammed it shut. The telephone rang across the room.
As Adder rose and went to the telephone, Limmit sat lost in thought. “Romanza,” he heard Adder say; the rest he couldn’t make out. I’m into it now, thought Limmit. One way or another.
A few minutes later, the phone conversation ended. “Hey,” said Limmit, turning around in his chair, as Adder replaced the receiver. “What happened to the girl? Mox’s wife?”
For a second, it looked as if Adder hadn’t heard. He looked blankly through Limmit, as though no one existed in the chair. Then his eyes refocused on Limmit’s face. “Her?” he said. “She died, I guess.”
Through the window, Dr. Adder could see the sun going down in flames from the sky over L.A. He sat at his desk in the darkening office, the shadows from the debris on the floor lengthening toward him, and kneaded his forehead with one hand. A few seconds ago, he had flung across the room the small red capsule that would have dissolved the headache, an aftereffect of the ADR. The capsule had bounced off the window glass with a tiny click, joining all the other items underfoot. Fuckin’ thing anyway, Adder thought moodily.
To take his attention from the pain behind his eyes, he glanced again through the contents of the manila envelope Romanza had sent over. The army messenger had been waiting down at the gates when Adder had come out of the ADR.
The first sheet, postdated a week ago, detailed the legal incorporation of something called Adder Research Laboratories; the other sheet awarded that organization the army’s contract for research into “the military potential of certain obsolete and discontinued devices of CIA design and origin.” Good old Romanza, thought Adder, his spirits rising a little. He’s earned his little treat.
There probably won’t even be any word from the law, reflected Adder. Mox had by now undoubtedly heard of his coup, his authorization for possessing the flashglove. He patted the briefcase sitting on the desk, then opened it and placed the papers inside. It’s mine now, he thought, even legally. It’s a new trip, being an incorporated research laboratory.
From behind him, he heard a groan and the sounds of stumbling flesh. She must be coming out of it, he thought, turning around. The young hooker appeared in the door from the stockroom, red-eyed and groggy looking. “Shit,” she said in a shaky voice, “that’s what I feel like.” She crossed the room and sat down heavily in one of the chairs in front of the desk. “That’s some rough stuff, Doctor.”
“Think so?” said Adder. “Don’t worry. You won’t have to go through it again.” Her skin, paler now, seemed subtly looser as well, the small breasts slack as though slightly deflated with age. It was as if something inside had contracted in fatigue. “Remember anything?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Blank.”
“No one ever remembers except me.”
“What did it say?” she asked flatly, looking full into his face. “What’d you find out?”
“Ever hear of junkie balling?”
Nodding slowly, the blood draining from her face, she whispered, “The Long One.”
“That’s right,” said Adder. He pulled open one of the desk drawers and extracted a syringe and a small vial filled with a colorless fluid. He laid them on the desktop. “I can do it later, if you want.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Go ahead and do it now. It takes a while to set in, doesn’t it?”
She watched as Adder silently pushed the needle through the vial’s seal. “I suppose I should have known it would be this,” she said. “I remember when I was in junior high school, they actually brought my class on a field trip down here. To scare us onto the paths of righteousness, I guess—they don’t do it anymore. Because it was daytime, only the scavengers were out on the street. Then a young woman, a whore, staggered out of an alley toward us. All the kids recoiled except me. She fell to her knees right in front of me. There was something strange about her eyes. She tried to speak, maybe something about the crumpled-up paper in her hands. I remember thinking it looked like a dirty rose. A real rat-faced man came running up and pulled her away.” She looked away as Adder pricked her arm with the needle. “They gave me a sedative on the bus back to Orange County, even though I didn’t need one.”
Adder sat down again behind the desk and tossed the empty vial to the floor. “Maybe that’s when you did pick up on this,” he agreed.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. In fact, she did appear to Adder to be stronger, her skin filled out to normality.
“It won’t always be this clear,” he said gently. “This stuff works in progressive cycles, you know. When you hit the periodic low points for the first year or so, you’ll remember all that you’re losing, and about to lose. It’s only fair you should know.” “I won’t regret it,” she murmured dreamily. “You’re being so nice to me. No one ever told me you could be like that.” “Don’t think I am. You’re just easy money to me.”
“Maybe everyone will be nice to me now,” she continued, even softer. “I wonder what they’ll all seem like to me. Junkie bailers...”
Adder carried the sleeping girl, the exhaustion from the ADR having caught up with her, into the stockroom and laid her on a gurney. No more would be necessary, other than calling the pimp in the morning to come get her.
When she wakes up, thought Adder, pulling a sheet over her bare form, she won’t be really human anymore. And every day that passes, she’ll be less so. The drug, the only actual hallucinogen Betreech produced, had been the culmination of the visionary epoch of drug use that had died out in the seventies. It had a cumulative, altering elfect on the individual’s genetic structure. Gradually, day by day, the perception of reality changed as the biochemical makeup of the brain and nervous system was replaced by the new patterns. The pimp fortunate enough to have such a commodity on his hands fed and protected it from the sharp edges of reality, and located the customers interested in intercourse with a body no longer inhabited by a mind that could perceive them. Adder analyzed it to himself as a form of necrophilia.
Back at his desk, he felt a vague dissatisfaction. Maybe I just like working with my hands, he thought. It’s too easy, just doing it with a needle like this. He opened the briefcase again and gazed at the flashglove, not wanting to probe any deeper into the causes of what he felt.
“Get out of here,” said Mary. Her eyes were narrowed with bitterness and hurt.
Limmit wheeled away from the dark window and faced her as she sat on the bed, face averted from him. “What’s wrong?” he shouted, though the hollow feeling in his gut already seemed to tell him. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”
She laughed, short and painful. “Happy? That you’re going to be Adder’s assistant box chopper? You must be joking.” “What’s wrong with it?” he demanded, wounded by her derision. “What’s wrong with working for Dr. Adder? Running that feathered whorehouse in Phoenix was better, I suppose.” “Oh, Christ, E. Allen.” She turned her face violently up to his, the single wet streak down one cheek running into her angry, pressured lips. “Can’t you see what Adder is? How long do you have to be in L.A. before you know?”
“Okay, bitch, so what is it then?” asked Limmit, maddened beyond restraint. He still felt ill from the speed at which he had, without warning, dropped into the pit.
Mary attempted to erase the tremors from her voice, speaking slow and flat. “He’s responsible for it. Everything in L.A., everything out on that street”—she flung one hand at the window—“he created. It’s his.”
“That’s a-fuckin’ right,” said Limmit. “And I’d have to be crazy to walk away from a piece of it.”
Shaking her head, she said softly, “You’ll wind up like him. If he doesn’t eat you first, like everyone else has been. You don’t understand anything.”
“I understand enough. You’re pissed because now you won’t be able to drag me into that drizzled-out revolution of yours.” “Get out of here.”
“The Red Madonna,” he sneered. “Mother to the troops. Too much for you to castrate a man yourself; you just look around for a natural failure.
But it’s not going to be me.”
A fine dust settled through the room, dislodged by the door slammed behind him. That stupid prick, Mary thought, remaining seated on the bed and watching the blurred images of the Interface’s light come through the window. Asshole.
The last stitch disappeared, merging into flesh beneath the humming chrome. Adder switched off the instrument and laid it down beside the unconscious girl on the surgical table. Perfect at last, he thought perfunctorily, admiring his own handiwork, the smooth, pink submaxillary skin. It was the only detail that had been left undone from the night before—in a few hours, Pazzo would be dead for an even twenty-four, one rotation of the earth.
The building seemed strangely quiet, bloated with silence, even though Adder could hear the noises of the crowd on the street. He drifted uneasily into the unlit office, as though looking for something. He sat down at the desk and switched on the lamp in the center of its cluttered surface. At the edge of its pool of light, a single ancient skin magazine lay crumpled. He picked it up and leafed through it, stopping at a tattered page he thought he had almost forgotten from when he had first seen it, rescued from Rattown’s underground debris. The young girl’s face in the picture looked calmly into the camera, somehow angelic among the hands that pulled and contorted her body, inserting themselves.