by Al Ewing
The fledgeling police force in London take little notice of Eliza Smith's disappearance, not suspecting so well-regarded a citizen as Herr Doktor Klugefleisher. In reality, the girl is now little more than a mindless shell, the regimen of chemicals and electricity that is designed to affect the foetus in her belly having rotted her own brain tissue to the point where she cannot speak or feed herself, or even think.
Awareness first comes to you as you grow in her womb. The garbled snatches of private thoughts reach, not your ears, but your growing frontal lobes. Slowly, you begin to understand. The womb is commonly regarded as the paradise to which many seek to regress, but for you it is a horror beyond description. The amniotic fluid you float in bubbles with foul, noxious chemicals. Electricity sizzles through nerve endings, causing intense pain even as it acts on your nerves and cells, warping and mutating your body. The accelerated growth of your head is constant, unending agony, and all the while you can feel the cold, frozen evil of your father and the babbling insanity of your mother. This is your earliest memory.
Not mine...
You wanted to know my story, John Doe. Allow me to tell it in my own way, as a weapon to destroy you completely. Feel my life happening to you, every nightmare, every agony, every spirit-crushing second of torment compressed into the telling of it. Listen to my story and die...
After four months, your mother finally dies, and Herr Doktor Klugefleisher is forced to cut you out of her womb. It is hard to say whether it is the chemicals and the electricity that kill the poor woman, or whether it is you - your immense, lolling head is already much larger than a normal baby would grow and the womb now presses against you, stretched beyond endurance, your mother's agony constantly battering against your mental defences to merge with their own, one more horror in a sea of horrors. Her death comes as a relief.
Your first sight when the knife carves through flesh to release you is the grinning face of Herr Doktor, staring down at his prize. As he lifts you in his arms... his hands gripping the sides of your head as your body dangles, shrivelled and almost lifeless... and then there is a knock at the door above. As well as receiving thoughts, you have been broadcasting your own - thoughts of pain, fear, misery! The good Doktor is inured against such, but his neighbours are terrified at the sensations that crawl across their souls - which their limited minds can only translate as the sound of purest murder echoing from the house of Herr Doktor Klugefleisher. And so the police have arrived to enquire as to the nature of the disturbance.
Klugefleisher turns his head - and you lash out, using telekinesis for the first time as a small child might flex infant fingers. You catch his head within your mind, and his head continues to turn... turn... turn! He pleads! Begs! His screams for mercy become shriller as his vertebrae begin to tear apart one by one, but there is no mercy in you... only a cold desire for revenge!
A sickening crack of separating cartilage and the devil doctor lies dead - a fitting punishment for his crimes against humanity!
You float in the air, contemplating the dead man, as the police break down the door, motivated as much by the emanations of rage and grief that spill from your warped brain as by the ominous silence... only to fall back, screaming in terror, as they break open the soundproofed room to find you floating above the corpse... your distended head supporting your withered frame like a child's balloon supporting a string...your eyes, black and pitiless, glowing with the power afforded you by the madman's forbidden experiments!
I can't feel any part of me - all I'm aware of is old Victorian stone and the smell of blood and in front of my eyes there's an old German scientist with his head on backwards. I'm drowning in melodrama.
And I think he's doing something to me. Some essential part of me is starting to lose... integrity. Coherence.
That's right, John Doe. I'm taking you apart, brick by brick, cell by cell. There's going to be nothing left of you but single cells, isolated, unconnected, a thin soup of living, mindless sludge on the floor.
You can't win, John. Herr Doktor Klugefleisher created me as the ultimate development of the human mind. Had Darwin's theory been in common usage at the time, he might have thought of me as the product of millennia of human evolution... come, don't you want to see how I was studied? How I became a curiosity for Victoria until she saw my true value and assigned me to aid in the work begun by John Dee? Perhaps you'd like to see first-hand how I came to take over MI-23, how I began the work of eradicating your kind, one by one...
Or perhaps it's enough to know that all of you from the waist down is a thin, liquid ooze. Your body cells don't respond well to the kind of heat I'm putting out, John. You were never the strongest of your kind, and now that I've learned how to pry your cells apart from one another it's going to be very easy to turn you into nothing but a thin, lifeless gruel.
Goodbye, John.
He's got me.
I can feel my mind simplifying as I burn and melt on the floor. Feel that terrible alien hunger creeping up to take over, that part of me that was in control all along, playing me for a fool all my days, the nasty little inner demon that's made me the bad guy in the story of my life. Hell with it, anyway - I should relax and let balloon-head take care of it. God knows, after seeing what this body's capable of, I wouldn't trust myself with it. And these people are allegedly the good guys, even if they do make Jack Bauer look like a liberal bleeding heart.
Why not let them save the day?
I try and relax and let it happen. I'd close my eyes if I still had them. But it's no good.
I'm selfish. I'm evil. I'm an insect who only cares about survival.
And I want to live.
He's inside my head, drowning me in his memories while he dismantles me piece by piece. All right, then. All right. If he's such a fan of memories... I'll give him what he wants.
What are you doing, John?
Just let go and let that drive to live take over... stop suppressing that animal part of me, that weird insect part that's wanted to rise to the surface ever since I got within sniffing distance of this guy. I can't see what that part of me wants - what's been making me act so crazy this past hour - but I'll bet he can.
Let's let the dog see the rabbit.
John? What are you thinking... you can't escape, John...
What are you...?
Oh God... oh God, I didn't realise... I didn't... get away from me...
GET AWAY! GET AWAY!
And then it's just screaming. Screaming in my brain. And whatever he saw made him lose his cool enough to let me out of his grip. I wonder what it was?
I'm not burning anymore. I can move. It's too late, though.
I'm moving already.
I'm a passenger in my own body. I can feel it - oozing liquid half sliding and slopping, arms moving with inhuman strength, propelling the top half of me across the burning floor, padding and lapping against the hot wood, fingers flexing and uncoiling with enough force to send this melting, distorted flesh prison that used to look like a human being up into the air...
...arms wrapping around the gigantic screaming head that's still broadcasting terror and madness into my mind... but not a terror for his own safety.
For the safety of the planet.
I wish I could stop this happening. I wish I could do something, anything apart from just watching it happen. But I'm not in control anymore. I'm a fading voice, an unreal personality, a cheap disguise torn away in the final scene.
I wish I'd let myself die.
But it's too late now.
The arms tighten enough to crack open the huge skull like an eggshell and I can smell the grey matter slopping out -
- the BRAINS -
It's so hard to stay coherent -
My teeth chewing and gnawing and swallowing down the stringy grey matter and suddenly a light switch goes off in my head and I
I
I
Understand
Everything
And then the world ends.
&n
bsp; Interlude The Second
New York, 1976
- and in that last moment of self-awareness memory floods in and Johnny hears the twinks chatting under the strobe lights of '76 -
"I don't care about sex, I just want somebody to hold, I'm such a pervert -"
"Oh God, don't tell me you've been talking to Texas Barry, please, Texas Barry spins that exact line all the time, Stevie went home with him once, the man's got no cock to speak of -"
"Oh, don't, don't tell me that, I'm on downs, why would you tell me that -"
"Oh please, he wants to marry every boy he meets, oh, oh God, this is my song, this is my new song, come on I want to dance -"
- and they jump up from the sofa and move onto the floor and dance and instantly their places are taken, one man this time, older and watching the lean tanned boys twirl and flex and move around the floor and toss their heads back in something like ecstasy and look so good and sing in time with the music, 'make me believe in you, tell me that love can be true', old but newly discovered to them, a sweet reminder to Roscoe that old things come good sometimes -
- and Roscoe's cruising for twinks at the Tenth Floor and feeling alone and out of place because the New York scene is mutating so quickly now, new joints springing up every week but the white straight polyester crowd is edging out the blacks and the gays and the both and the men are fat and permed these days and their teeth are bad and they don't like to dance, why would they want to dance like fags anyway, they're here for one reason and that's to get drunk and get laid and what the hell, maybe that's cool despite everything because God knows it'd be nice to get some dick action in New York at thirty-eight years old -
- and seven months, nearly thirty-nine if you think about it and Roscoe's thinking old man's sour dour thoughts tonight as the speed kicks in and rewires his brain and the twinks dance like it's just for him, erection like a stone at the bottom of a lake in his pants, hard but drowned deep in cold water and soon to be eroded into sand and nothing and he's thirty-eight and lonely and lost in New York and something's going cold inside him and it's been four months since he did anything and there's grey in his moustache and his belly's starting to nudge over his belt and oh God what if nobody ever wants to fuck him again -
- and oh God that kid looks so damn good in that vest, what is he, eighteen, seventeen, it's like he stepped off a beach in California and through the doors of the club and all Roscoe wants to do is gently lead him into the toilet and unbutton his tight jeans slowly and with the reverence that should be accorded to the risen Christ or a reclining Buddha and blow him just as an act of religious devotion more than anything -
- and Roscoe doesn't do a damn thing as per usual except mutter like a crazy bastard and drink coffee and maybe he should get up and dance but he doesn't have the rhythm in him anymore, it'd be like those goddamn white straight polyester assholes that are gonna be the face of disco music for 1977 and until the end of time maybe and maybe that shitty little punk asshole on Fifth Street was right, Jesus, he should have beaten hell out of that little bastard but what if he was telling the truth -
- and Roscoe can't handle these thoughts any longer, he can feel the drugs taking him into some down deep dark place so he latches onto the twinks again, so warm and healthy and just glowing with life and sex and strength and that's what it's all about and Roscoe listens in because whatever they're talking about is better than this shit in his head -
"Oh God, I forgot, guess who I ran into on the street, just try to guess -"
"What? I can't hear you -"
"Johnny Doe! He was panhandling down on thirty-eighth, letting tourists touch him for a buck —"
"Oh my God, is Johnny Doe coming, I'm totally in love with that man, he's like Bowie meets Bogart -"
"He's decadent, he's just totally decadent, have you touched his skin ever, it's ice-cold -"
"That's what it must be like to fuck Bowie -"
- and that's a weird thing to hear because it was four months ago with Johnny Doe in that alley and Roscoe taking him into his mouth and running his tongue slowly up and it wasn't ice-cold but it was cold and so weird that he nearly stopped but Johnny does look a lot like Bogart or some kind of outer space Ziggy Stardust cool dream Bogart anyhow and it'd been a couple months since Jason left him because his goddamn shrink told him to, never trust a fucking Jungian, and Roscoe had him in his mouth and couldn't smell him and it was like Johnny didn't have a scent and that was so weird and so hot at the same time -
- and his cum was black -
- and afterwards Johnny asked his name, looking down and kind of smirking like the cold bastard god of decadence he was, and Roscoe got defensive and told him the PhD part even though he usually kept that quiet because this asshole was a freak not a rock star and Roscoe didn't need this dominant-submissive game-playing shit right now -
- and suddenly Johnny Doe dropped his cold-ass decadent pose and took Roscoe back to his place and they drank whiskey sours and Johnny gave him a handjob on the couch and that was the weirdest because all the time that cold hand was moving and stroking and teasing and touching and getting Roscoe harder than anything ever had in his life that soft cold Village voice was telling the craziest story Roscoe ever heard -
- and Johnny Doe was saying he wasn't a human being -
- and then he finished Roscoe off and left his head spinning from the intensity and the information that Johnny Doe was Ziggy Stardust and The Man Who Fell To Earth and Dracula AD 1972 and whatever the hell else he was and that was why he had no scent and why you couldn't feel his pulse or hear his heartbeat and Johnny took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom and and and -
- and word spreads fast in a place like this and another young hot perfect guy was joining the first two and the newcomer's solid black muscle was the perfect counterpoint to the sleek white marble bodies dancing around him and this brand new 1976-model twink reminded Roscoe of that time he took Jimmy home -
- and the morning after Jimmy's dad was at the door with a shotgun ready to blow Roscoe's head off and Roscoe barricaded himself in the bathroom and called the cops and they never came and eventually Jimmy's dad blew a hole in Roscoe's Warhol print saying it was the path to degeneracy and took off and Jimmy wanted to get back together but by that time Roscoe was sleeping with Jason and they were going to move in together and this used to be a funny story Roscoe told at parties and now he wanted to cry thinking about it and what was so special about Jason anyway after Roscoe had fucked a spaceman -
- and he has to listen in on the twinks again just to block out that gnawing fucking hole right through him, the twinks turned right around like meerkats to stare at the entrance and the crowd making awestruck noises and celebrity noises and Jesus noises -
"Johnny -"
"Johnny, over here, Johnny -"
"Remember me from the Garage, Johnny -"
"Johnny - Johnny - Johnny -"
- and six foot of Bogart/Bowie pure pale blue-white flesh shock-white hair walking through the door and every inch of him cold and decadent and ignoring all the lust and need and the backlash bitching and milking that goddamn Bowie bullshit everyone expects of him these days and maybe that's why he does it -
- and Roscoe stands up slowly and heads to the office in the back that Gary said he could use whenever he was speeding and stressed and needed a place to be alone, thank God for Gary, and he closes the door on the music and the talk and the bullshit and just sits behind the desk in that little office and rests his head on his hands and waits and wants to cry -
- and Roscoe thinks back to him and Johnny Doe lying in bed listening to the couple in the apartment upstairs screaming at each other and how Johnny wanted to know who he was and what he was and everything and Roscoe with his head full of dope smoke saying anything that came into his head and still freaking out on that experience and on Johnny's cold space muscle and Bogie eyes and smile and making all kinds of promises -
- and he wishes now he'd never said a
word -
- and Roscoe took all kinds of samples out of Johnny, like skin samples and blood samples and stool and hair and listened to the heartbeat Johnny didn't have and listened up over coffee to ten years of Johnny's life story, starting off in a cheap apartment on Haight-Ashbury, dealing acid and reds until Altamont shot down the hippie dream and he came east to the Village to lose himself and melt into the first culture he found and before that he hated hippies like poison and hunted Reds behind the cold dark whiskey sour desk of a private eye, Bogie not Bowie in those days and before that he fought in the war like everyone else and before that he ran hooch and hung out with Dorothy and before that well it doesn't matter but there's a lot of before that you can keep a secret right Emmett right -
- and Roscoe had heard some weird coming-out stories in his time but Johnny's was the oddest, coming on like he didn't care about nothing except fitting in to whatever scene would have him, so he asked all the right questions and a few crazy ones and heard things that made his blood run like ice and killed his hard lust dead as arctic tundra, things like Johnny saying he snuck into the morgue sometimes and ate brains -
- and Jesus Christ, Johnny admitted he ate brains and why the hell didn't Roscoe call the cops right then except maybe this was his last chance to do something right with his life and this was too big to let go of -