Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  On an otherwise deserted street, a cab cruises by, and I raise an arm and give it a limp wave. I’m surprised when he stops, and hurry into the car, glad to be in out of the cold, which has sobered me, but not nearly enough, and not for long. The leather seat is cold on the backs of my legs. My head throbs.

  “Where you going?” asks the driver. He’s of ethnic descent and seems tired of me already. That’s okay. He can join the fucking club.

  “Nearest open bar.”

  The driver gives me a sigh and a shrug. “Sunday morning. No place open now.”

  I sit back and appraise him. I can smell his aftershave. It is not unpleasant. He turns around to look at me, thick eyebrows raised questioningly.

  “Liquor store then.”

  “Buddy, no liquor store open now.”

  I glance longingly back at the bar. The outside lights go off, plunging us into darkness, but not before I catch sight of the figure standing there on the sidewalk. He doesn’t want me to get out of the cab. Doesn’t want me to leave. For him, for us, the night has just begun. I feel a flutter of panic in my stomach. Or is it excitement?

  “Do you have anything to drink?” I ask the cab driver and he looks at me as if I’m mad.

  Of course he won’t have anything, but it never hurts to check.

  “Sir, I must ask you to leave now. I have to make money, ok?”

  The driver is growing restless, cautious.

  I don’t move.

  Can’t.

  The cab driver has no drink, but he has money. And that will do for now, because I need to find somewhere to be, need to find a part of the city that lives after dark, just like I do. And that kind of living comes with a price. Sometimes it’s cash, sometimes a watch, sometimes it’s blood. Whatever it takes to satisfy the need.

  “Mister, please? I need to go now, you understand?”

  I am hit with the sudden urge to ask the driver to bring me home, but I don’t know where that is. I know where it should be, where I belong and with whom, but that life seems so very far away, so unattainable. For now, at least. The sponsor promises it is something we can work up to.

  Outside the car, the sponsor lights a cigarette, and rotates his free hand, indicating his impatience. Get on with it.

  “I understand.”

  There is plenty of darkness still left and we are still alive.

  And so

  goddamn

  thirsty.

  About the Author

  Kealan Patrick Burke is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY, KIN, and SOUR CANDY. Visit him on the web at http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com/.

  THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE

  by

  Jessica McHugh

  Chapter One

  The best way to take atlys is to inject it straight into the testicles. Your balls feel like they're made of iron, and sure, they hurt for a few minutes, but afterwards you wonder how you ever lived without iron balls.

  In the thick of withdrawal, splayed across my rotten couch in the corner of former-Highlandtown High, delicious atlys-memories engage my mind. Not just with fantasies of shooting my own junk. I think of drugged up women, too—Serena, in particular. She told me shooting into her nethers made her clit feel like a cannonball. She called it “The Head,” back when I still called her “wife.” The Head had its own voice, its own thoughts, and its own desires—namely the “Iron Men” between my legs.

  And who could blame it? The Iron Men were good boys back then. When life got too heavy for me to handle, they were always heavier, swinging around my knees. “It's better down here,” they’d sing. “Just shoot some more atlys, Perry, and you'll see.”

  Life was sweet in those days. That’s how it is in the beginning. Even slathered in shit, a beginning always has some gold beneath. It’s more than anyone can say for the middle. Endings are uncertain—they can be good or bad—but the middle is an excremental obstacle course. The best you can hope for is fool’s gold, but you’ll have to sift through a lot of shit just for a glittering lie.

  That’s where I am now: the middle, where the Iron Men aren't so good. They can still be heavy, but they don't swing. They hang. They sink. They grunt, “What happened to The Head? She was such a doll. She used to make us tuna sandwiches and massage us when we were sore. Now we just wallow, waiting for the next pinprick as we slam against Perry Samson’s little pin-prick. Come on, man. Look up The Head and see what she's doing these days.”

  But I already know. The binoculars I found in the dumpster behind the Kum Den Smokehouse leave a slimy film around my eyes, but they also leave me more informed about my ex-wife’s activities. The truth is, I don't have the heart to tell the Iron Men that their old friend The Head is long dead.

  But Serena is still alive, and goddamn her for it. She's still living, still smiling, still screwing the piece of shit lawyer who made sure I couldn't come within five hundred feet of her. Luckily I don’t need to get that close. The binoculars may reek of mildewed meat, but at least they let me see her: in her apartment, at her job, even at the Inner Harbor where she walks hand-in-hand with a man who knows the horrible person she was and loves her anyway. The lawyer does for Serena what Serena can’t do for me. She can never say, “I love you despite your faults, Perry. In fact, I love you because of them. I love how devoted you are to atlys. It takes a long time to build up a relationship like that, and I admire you for it. I was too weak to hold on to my devotion.”

  Yes, you were, Rennie. You were so weak you fell into the arms of the first man who pouted his lip and told you you were too good for junk. Now you're safe and warm in the arms of the law; the same law that beat you black and blue just three years ago, the same law that put you in a tin can with rapists and cuntcutters when you were twenty-four. How quickly recovery makes people forget, and how nice it must feel to be empty-headed with the law between your legs.

  I’ll be the first to admit the binoculars aren't enough. I miss feeling her. Hell, I miss feeling every woman who isn't a bag of bones with a lipless snatch. I miss giggling women with butterfly tattoos above their asses and cosmos spilled on their breasts. I miss women who would fawn over and praise me for being a tortured soul hanging on a needle and a prayer.

  But you have to take what you can get, right? Patterson Park has a lot to offer in the way of women, but there’s not much variety in the dog-eared bunch. The only differences lie in their flavors of poison, or how much meat remains on their diseased bones.

  I've gotten laid since Serena left, but none of those women were more than rough, gray holes leading to tunnels that had been banged too often to constrict. I don't claim to have the biggest dick, but I shouldn't feel drafts between my thrusts. I shouldn't hear the ghosts of thrusters past wailing at my short-lived libido. I haven’t needed a woman in a while anyway. The only time I get hard anymore is when raw atlys calls the Iron Men to active duty. With liquid junk, I can fuck for hours—as long as I don't focus on the fact that I'm banging a desperate crank whore missing her labia.

  Since potsticking became a fad in the early 2080s, a complete chick’s been hard to find in the park. When I first joined the ranks of Patterson trash, I fought to overlook the meat a girl had sold from her arms and legs because I knew fresh compensation from the Kum Den Smokehouse would fill the empty spaces. Now I have to block out the fact that they're no more useful than my fist, and rarely as warm. People pay a lot for a regular addict’s meat, but cuntcutter meat is filet mignon to Baltimore Fatcats. They’ll pay a hefty sum, and the girl will be in lipless hog-heaven. But the money comes and goes fast, and I, pumping away at the resulting ravine, don't cum at all.

  It doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t screw when I’m atlys-sick.

  The lingering ghosts of schoolgirls who once walked the halls don’t help me accept my frigid fate. Even with the rot and ruin of Highlandtown High, I picture those perfect girls, their hopes as high as their tits. I bet they thought neither could ever drop. Hell, I sure didn’t when I was tha
t age. Youth ensures that bodies are firm and futures flexible. At twenty-seven years old, I’m still a young man, but there is no youth to be found.

  When I shamble through the crumbling halls, I’m reminded of girls I can no longer have. Even the warped, rusted lockers remind me of them, my favorite kind: women who are difficult to open.

  Serena was like that in the beginning. With legs like stubborn pickle jars, she required the right type of pressure to pop her open. If I’d known atlys’s powers of persuasion when we were seventeen, it wouldn’t have been hard for me to get inside.

  We were a couple for four years before we ever did atlys together. I enjoyed doing it alone, but like sex, it was way more fun with a partner. After the first taste, her lips parted. After the first snort, her thighs followed. After her first shot, she was up for anything. We did things no one in their right mind would think of as pleasurable. But we weren't in our right minds, and that’s what she liked about it… for a while.

  Jail changed everything. After three years of carefree atlys use, we slipped up and bought from an undercover cop. The only options were to sink or swim. I always saw myself as a swimmer, but unfortunately, Serena’s family saw me as the captain of Team Sink. Even when I was clean they never warmed to me. So, after she was bailed out of jail, they begged Rennie to swim away from me, as fast as possible. Our marriage was over soon after that. I tried to convince her that our wrongs had felt right because they were right, that if she let go of sober definitions, we could be happy again. Unfortunately, she wised up—or dumbed down, depending on how high I am when I evaluate her abandonment. She sold our apartment, moved to Eastern Avenue, and never asked where I would go. After she got clean, she put all of her dirty deeds behind her, and I was the dirtiest of them all.

  It broke me. She was my wife for Christ's sake. We were married for three years, in love since we were seventeen. It sounds cliché, but Serena took a piece of me with her when she left. Not in a sappy she’ll-own-my-heart-forever kind of way. No, it was more of a that-bitch-whore-stole-my-manhood kind of way. She killed the man she married: the master of the Iron Men, the lover of The Head.

  That man had hope. He had a family. Even though my parents and sister are just a cab ride away, it feels like they live on another planet. The way they talk, the way they think. They assume they’re better than me because they live in the sun. Well, I see the sun from my atlys-shadows, and you know what? Fuck the sun.

  I’ll make the best of life in the shadows, without a family. Who needs a family when you have a potsticker roommate who still gets free shit from his?

  Loshi is an atlys addict, too, but if he wants to leave our wallow in the school he has a place to go. If he wants, he can get warm, get full, get money to get high, and start the process all over. I often encourage him to do these things, because it’s one of the easiest ways I can touch them. Even if I only get crumbs from Loshi, they’re better than nothing. It’s why I’ve stayed friends with him all this time.

  Maybe “friends” is going a little far. If he couldn’t help me, I doubt I’d hang around him. Loneliness isn’t an issue for me. Sure, a shooting partner is preferred, but Loshi’s no Serena. If I had easy access to atlys, I’d need his company like Loshi needs another potsticking hole in his belly. I could be buried alive and still be happy as long as I could shoot atlys in the dark.

  Loshi doesn’t get a lot from Mommy and Daddy these days, but it’s enough to maintain his addiction… and mine, when he nods out. My thievery causes him to blow through his parents’ money faster, but Loshi has another income that keeps withdrawal at bay for a few days. Thanks to the handouts and long free lunches with his family, Loshi has been able to stay pretty plump. It made potsticking a lucrative option. When his parents take him out to eat, knowing he’d use their money on drugs rather than food, he eats as much as possible. The fatter he gets, the more flesh he can sell to the Kum Den Smokehouse, and the more atlys he’ll bring home to me. It’s our own fucked-up version of bringing home the bacon. I guess that makes me the bitch in this relationship.

  Fuck it. As long as he gets me high, I’ll be the bitch.

  My uselessness is never more obvious than right now: moldering in withdrawal, waiting for Loshi to return with a bag. I don’t have any money, and even if I did, I’m too sick to cross the park. In fact, walking upright is difficult most days. When I’m atlys-sick my legs don’t hold on any better than my stomach. I puke as I fall along the park, taking forty-five minutes to cross what should take ten.

  Instead, I’ve stumbled around North Highlandtown for the past few days, hoping to find a lost Primetimer or easily duped dealer. But it’s tough to score near home. These snakes are varied in their grit, as many coming from posh streets as filthy ones. But education doesn’t show in transactions. Just because you’re smarter than your nineteen year old toothless, gouged-up dealer, it doesn’t get you a bag any easier. You’re only as fast as your slowest man. I’m happy to dumb myself down for the greater good.

  Loshi enters holding onto a bag. I can tell, and I’m not the only one. Addicts creep out of the shadows like parched lizards, their jaws slack and veins aching. I doubt I look much different. Scooting to the edge of the couch, I claw my thighs, my mind screaming for Loshi to hurry the fuck up. I know the powder isn’t meant for me, but I also know I’ll find a way to make it mine.

  Loshi sits down, his hand still in his pocket. He probably doesn’t want me to know how much he has, but he has to break out the bag eventually. And when he does, I’ll be on him like bloodstains on a hooker’s mattress.

  “You were gone a while. Your parents give you anything?”

  “Took me out to eat, yeah. I didn’t think my mom was going to give me any cash—my dad said no way. But before they dropped me off, she slipped me a fifty.”

  I wheeze. “Mama’s boy.”

  “I bet you wish you were one right now.”

  He’s not wrong. I’d be anyone’s boy if it meant I could score a bag.

  “You go to the pond?”

  He smirks, and my mouth waters.

  “The good side?”

  His silence is telling. If he doesn’t want me to know his quantity, he sure as hell doesn’t want me to know the quality.

  “I heard the Vagina Bake’s having a free night,” he says.

  I roll my eyes. “I’m fine with my hand until the right girl comes along.”

  Loshi laughs. “I think we already met her. Atlys be thy name. Hey, didya get anything from that fat bitch last night?” He scratches an itchy divot in his forearm.

  I’d forgotten about it ‘til then. I’d jumped a whore in the alley, hoping she had enough cash to get a hit or two, but she was just as dry.

  I shake my head, unable to speak for the salivation when he pours out his bag.

  “Don’t mind sharing her, do ya?”

  “Actually, I do.” I laugh this time, but Loshi doesn’t crack. “I’m serious, Perry. I know you’ve been swiping my shit when I nod out.”

  I’ve been waiting for this. My natural impulse is to lie, to accuse one of the other snakes in our nest, but lying to a fellow liar is hard work and I’m too sick to try.

  I bow my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “But you know what you gotta do.” He pops his switchblade and points it at my minimal gut. “You have to contribute, man. Say you will, and I’ll give you a bump.”

  The thought of potsticking disgusts me. I’ll get a free hit of liquid before surgery, but that alters my attitude only slightly. I swore I’d never fall that far. Even then, with Loshi’s bag begging to disappear up my nose, my body revolts against the thought. I’ve already deemed myself worthless, but I still believe a tiny shred remains, buried deep in my flesh. If the knife slices in, I’m afraid all worth will slide out.

  I’d just tell him what he wants to hear today and tell him to fuck off about potsticking tomorrow, but I’ve played that game too many times before. I’m afraid he might actually listen this
time. Although it doesn’t bug me to imagine Loshi abandoning me for a better friend, imagining that new guy gorging himself on what should’ve been my jacked atlys makes my blood itch.

  Loshi scoops a bump of powder with his filthy blade, and my nostril gets wet with anticipation. Cackling, the Iron Men say, “Go on, Perry. What’s a lump of flesh compared to free junk?”

  He prods me again, and my craving answers, “I’ll do it.”

  Leaning in for the snort, I accept my disgrace. But atlys says, “Forget it,” and I obey with a grin.

  Chapter Two

  Patterson Park belongs to the lowlifes. I once heard certain parts of Florida are hit by storms at the same time every day. Patterson Park is much the same. At six o’clock every day, when the sun hunkers down on the hill and the Netvision TVs scattered throughout the park brighten, it’s time for the night children to emerge from their slums and taste the high life. Some people walk the dark paths untouched, but that’s because their hands are firmly clamped to half-concealed weapons. It isn’t a guarantee of safety, but it’s better than walking the park with a rape whistle.

  Most people don’t like walking the park at all, but it’s a necessary evil if someone wants to get high, fucked, or potstuck. The second option is the farthest away from the Snake Hill slum. What used to be the “Virginia S. Baker” rec center has deteriorated so bad, it’s the “Vgna Bake” now, the cheapest whorehouse in Baltimore.

  The cops are around, and they’ll respond quickly if called, but they don’t usually give offenders more than a punt to the nuts. I don’t know the politics, and I don’t want to know, but the cops don’t seem to care about the play-for-pay as long as they’re getting paid. Hell, they probably get their share of play, too.