by Blake Crouch
But the goddamn nightmares…
She shakes her head, as if that’s enough to rid it of the memories.
It isn’t.
She tried a free clinic, talking out her problems with some overworked shrink who got stuck doing community service. Was told she had post traumatic stress disorder, like soldiers get.
But knowing what her problem is doesn’t make the problem go away. Neither does the prescription shit the shrink told her to take.
Moni knows only one thing can dull the horror. Only one thing can wipe that freak’s leering face out of her head.
Glass crunches under the soles of her tennis shoes. Laces long since gone, the tread worn away. Above the stench of this alley, she smells something else—herself.
Something strange about knowing you’re at the low point of your life, and for her, that’s truly saying something.
But at least I’m not tricking.
And she could have. The motivation was there. So much easier to score a twenty-spot sucking some guy off for five minutes than stealing a purse. The one slung over her shoulder belonged to an eighty-year-old only four hours ago. She ripped it off the woman’s arm and sprinted off down the sidewalk. An older man had come after her, but he’d been too slow. She can still feel the burn from that run in the backs of her legs.
And the shame.
This is the last time. She keeps telling herself over and over and over, and she’s told herself this before, but it feels different this time.
One more high. One more fix.
And then she’s done.
She sees the fire in the oil drum up ahead, and her pulse accelerates.
Always a nervous proposition meeting a new dealer for the first time. And she certainly wouldn’t have chosen to come way out here into this veritable urban ghost town, but people don’t sell drugs in front of Gucci stores. A whore she’d shared needles with had recommended this place, saying it was the best.
Moni has her doubts. This town, like many others in Michigan, died years ago with the demise of the auto factories. The homes are all abandoned. The businesses all closed. The cops don’t bother patrolling, because there is nothing to protect and no one to serve.
Passing between the empty buildings, she slows her approach, wondering if she should make herself known.
“Hey!” she calls out to a black man leaning against the brick wall behind the oil drum.
He looks up from the cell phone in his hand and squints at her through the firelight, and the rising smoke between them.
“Hi, baby, you need something?”
“Yeah, looking for H. Can you help me?”
“Yeah, I got you. Come on. It’s aiight.”
Thank God.
Moni continues toward him, moving finally into the welcome heat of the fire.
The man is young, maybe nineteen, twenty tops, and he’s swallowed by a black down jacket.
“I need works too,” Moni says. In exchange for this address, she gave that whore her last syringe.
“Got all kinds of works for you, baby.” The man smiles, showing a gold tooth, but the smile isn’t for Moni. It’s for someone behind Moni.
She turns, senses suddenly on high alert, and sees two other guys strutting toward her. Black faces, black jackets, mean black eyes.
She’s seen eyes like this many times before. Knows with a sick, sinking feeling what’s happening.
“Look, uh, Jasmine sent me.” Moni hopes the girl’s name was Jasmine, but it dawns on her that it doesn’t matter. Jasmine didn’t send Moni here to score. She sent Moni here to get japped.
What is the world coming to when you can’t trust a whore strung out on smack?
“I’ll do whatever you want,” Moni says. “Don’t hurt me.” She knows they’ll run a train on her, but maybe they won’t be rough. Maybe she’ll even end up with the H when it’s over.
“Check this bitch with the don’t hurt me.” The man behind the oil drum laughs. “Whacha gonna do for us, baby? Huh?” He steps out from behind the fire and moves toward her. “You gamed a bit, din’ you? You gonna show us how skinny white bitches suck black cock?”
“Whatever you guys want,” Moni says, knees trembling. “Just don’t—”
The slap rocks her head backward, and Moni falls onto her ass.
“Don’t hurt me,” one of the men behind her mimes, and the trio busts out laughing again.
Moni covers up as best she can when the kicking starts.
A two hundred dollar gym shoe catches her face, frees a tooth.
She spits blood, starts to cry.
“Dude, don’t fuck her mouth up…how she gon’ suck?”
Moni begins to crawl back toward the mouth of the alley, but it’s too far away. Sick as it is, she wonders if she’ll still be able to get a fix when they’re done with her.
A kick to the belly. She kisses the filthy asphalt. Unbidden, the memory of the freak comes back, smiling down at her, ready with his blow torch and his video camera.
That time, she fought back. Fought for her worthless, miserable life, because she didn’t want to die.
Now?
Now dying doesn’t seem so bad.
And then the kicking stops and she readies herself for what’s coming next, trying to land upon some memory—so few worth a damn—to latch onto and take herself out of this moment.
“Walk the fuck back out this alley, cracker!”
What? They can’t be talking to her.
Moni looks up, sees a tall figure standing at the opening to the alley, ten feet away.
“I was wondering if I could buy some drugs from you guys.”
“Please,” Moni moans. “Help me.”
But the man doesn’t acknowledge her.
“He ain’t for real,” says one of the men behind her.
“Boy, it look like we open for business? Get the fuck—”
“Your door was open. So how about you stop fucking around and sell me something?”
In the moment of heavy silence that follows, Moni glances back over her shoulder at her attackers, who are staring at one another in complete bewilderment. The closest gangbanger puffs out his chest, taking two strides up to the white guy.
“Muthafucka, you just walked into the wrong fuckin—”
The blades seem to materialize in the white man’s hands, glinting in the fire from the oil drum.
Slash-slash and the black kid is on his knees, trying to put his face back on.
“Oh hell no.”
The two remaining men step over Moni, the one in front reaching into his pocket.
She keeps expecting the tall man to retreat, or at least step back, make some effort to protect himself, but he just stands there, letting them come.
The next swipe happens so fast, she only sees the blade for a fleeting second.
Then a wet, gurgling sound, the dealer staggering back and grasping his neck as blood gushes out of a gaping tear.
As he falls back into the brick wall and sinks down onto the concrete to die, Moni looks back at the tall man and sees that he’s already brought the third man to his knees, in the process of carving a canyon through his chest, feathers from the down jacket billowing around them in a cloud that quickly turns from white to red.
When he hits the ground, Moni pounces upon the dealer, snaking a hand into his baggy jeans. Her fingers grasp what feel like warm grapes, and she makes a fist and pulls them out, her heart jumping, her eyes widening, an incredulous smile exploding across her face.
Balloons. Six of them. Each filled with H.
Moni glances up as the tall man walks toward her. She thinks about offering him half the drugs. He saved her life, after all. It’s the motherload of scores, and more than enough to share.
He squats down in front of her, and she notices for the first time in the firelight that he has one of the palest faces she’s ever seen.
And long black hair.
“Oh, God, thank you,” she says. “Thank you so, so much.”<
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“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Moni.”
The man smiles a mouthful of awful, rotting teeth and spits a white piece of candy onto the ground—smells like…lemons.
Then Moni notices his eyes.
Black as tar.
Unfeeling.
Freak eyes.
“Hi, Moni, I’m Luther,” he says. “Do you know what an artificial leech is?”
2004 — The events in Blake Crouch’s novel Famous, featuring Lancelot Blue Dunkquist, occur next…
“My name is Lancelot Blue Dunkquist, and the best thing about me is, when you doll me up right, I look just like the movie star, James Jansen.”
Meet Lance.
38-years-old.
Works a meaningless job.
Still lives above his parents’ garage.
By all accounts, a world-class loser.
Except for one glaring exception…
He has a million-dollar face.
Lance has been mistaken twenty-eight times for the Oscar-winning movie star, James Jansen, and for the last 10 years, he’s saved his money, studied Jansen’s films, his moves, his idiosyncrasies, even the way he speaks. Now, after an unceremonious termination from his job, Lance has decided that the time has come to go after his dream.
From New York’s ridiculous avant-garde, off-off Broadway scene, to the surreal glitter of Los Angeles, follow Lance on his madcap journey of self-abandonment to become his likeness.
Part comedy, part human tragedy, and part suspense, the world through the eyes of Lancelot Blue Dunkquist is like none you’ve ever seen.
Break You
Yukon, Canada, 2004
Andy
Early October.
A cold, midnight rain pattering against the tin roof.
“We should be drinking whiskey,” Violet said. “Something to warm our bones.”
I set another birch log on the fire and crawled back onto the bearskin rug where Vi had sprawled with her wineglass.
“You’re already cold?” I asked.
“I’m a southern girl. I’m always freezing.”
“Hate to say it, but that doesn’t bode well for you this winter.”
“How cold does it get here? Worst case scenario.”
“Fifty below. Sixty on a bad day.”
“I won’t even get out of bed.”
I sipped my wine, glanced at the fireshadows flickering in the rafters over the loft—what had once been my office now converted into Violet’s bedroom and her four-month-old Max’s nursery. He slept up there in bliss, the warmest spot in the cabin, where the heat of the fire gathered.
I studied the firelight flush across Violet’s face.
I’d shunned it, fought it, tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t deny what I felt in the pit of my stomach. I was falling…hard…for this woman.
“What is it?” Vi said.
“Nothing.”
“No…you have this look.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smirked. “Are you crushing on me, Andy?”
I blushed through to the tips of my ears, wondering if she could see the color in the lowlight.
“Little bit, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s completely understandable. I’m adorable.”
I laughed, my eyes closing only for a second, and when they opened again, Violet had leaned in so close I could smell the wine on her breath.
Her green eyes were flecked with black. This I hadn’t noticed before.
“Violet—”
“I want this.”
“You’re sure? Because if you have any doubt—”
She shut me up with a kiss.
Soft.
Melting.
Melding.
I could’ve lived there.
We came apart, the corners of my mouth electrified with the taste of her. I ran my hand over the curve of her hip, wondering how far we were going to take this.
“I haven’t,” I said. “Not in a long time.”
“Haven’t what? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing, I just—”
“Wait.” She recoiled. “You think we’re going to sleep together?”
“No, I just thought—”
“I’m kidding, we are.”
“Why do you torture me?”
“Because it’s so easy?”
She set her wineglass on the floorboard and pulled me on top of her.
“Tell the truth,” she whispered. “How many times have you imagined this moment?”
I smiled, feeling her thighs against my ribs.
“You’ve been through a lot, Vi.”
“We both have.”
“It hasn’t even been a year.”
“It’s been long enough for me to know who you are. Stop trying to talk me out of this.”
So I kissed her, my hands running over her body in some kind of wonder. The fire raged behind us and the rain intensified. I had imagined this moment, many times, since the beginning of summer at least and still it didn’t feel anything like my fantasies. I loved her now, and that made everything better.
“Do you want to move over to my bed?” I whispered in her ear.
“Yes, please.”
And still I could barely bring myself to separate from her. Such a sweet and perfect place.
I got onto my knees and helped her up.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
I would’ve undressed her right there in the firelight if it hadn’t been so cold. I wished we’d done this in the summertime.
“I’m just going to run up to the loft for a second,” she said. “Go get under the covers and warm it up for us.”
I stood and moved across the cold floorboards toward the nook under the loft where my bed sat in darkness.
The wine had gone to my head, everything so pleasantly humming.
Violet climbed the ladder toward the loft.
My heart pounded under my sweater.
Reaching the bed, I tugged back the covers, wondering if I should be naked waiting for her, or if maybe there wasn’t something implicitly sleazy about that.
I crawled under the blankets and opted to play it safe, stay dressed for now.
I could hear Violet moving around directly above me in the loft, the boards creaking, thinking how many nights had I lain here in the dark listening to her movements, hoping she felt what I did, that she might decide to creep down the ladder in the middle of the night and join me in bed. A part of me still didn’t quite believe it was about to happen.
It was cold under the blankets, and I was drawing them up to my chin to keep in the heat when Violet shrieked.
I bolted up.
“Andy!” she screamed.
I jumped out of bed, rushed over to the ladder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, climbing.
“He’s gone.”
I stepped into the loft.
Dark up here and nothing to see except where the firelight reflected off surfaces of metal and glass.
“Who?” I asked, but I understood the moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw Vi leaning over into the crib, shuffling through the blankets.
“Max,” she said.
“There’s no way he could have crawled out?”
“He’s four months, Andy. He can’t even roll over.”
I turned on a lamp and moved toward her.
“You put him down after supper, right?”
She nodded, wild-eyed, her pupils dilated, chest billowing.
“He went down fast. Ten minutes. Then I came down and we were talking by the fire for what? A couple hours?”
“Yeah.”
Vi shook. “This isn’t right, Andy. This isn’t right.”
I stepped around the crib toward the only possible exit from the loft—a two-by-two square foot window just under the pitch of the roof.