by Chris Kelso
- Do you, um, have a reservation Mr…?
- Bittacker… Vincent Bittacker. And yes, I believe I do.
The receptionist drags his index finger down the list of occupant surnames. No Bittacker.
- Um, I’m sorry sir but there doesn’t appear to be any reservation.
- Damn, damn, damn…
- Sir?
- Well, it’s just my brother Ivan was supposed to make the reservation on my behalf. Obviously the little scruff hasn’t bothered his backside.
- I’m terribly sorry sir.
- No, no my good man, I’m the one who should be sorry. I’ll just take a single for the night then.
Otto Spengler slaps Vincent Bittacker’s wallet against the counter and keeps grinning.
- We have, um, two rooms available sir. If I might suggest, room 502 on the very top floor, it’s one of our finest deluxe suites.
- No. Nothing too ostentatious. I’ll just take the other option. Let’s keep this affordable.
- Very well sir. Room 320. Um, here you go. – The receptionist forwards the keys to Spengler.
- I’ll only be staying the one night anyway…
- But sir, the weather?
Spengler looks around the lobby as if hoping to better ascertain the true purpose of Denny’s statement.
- Look sir. – the receptionist tilts his monitor so Swarthy can read from it - High seas forecast and strong winds extending from Madison to near Plainfield. It’s a storm warning sir.
- But surely, here on Edison, the chances of being struck by the tail end of the storm are remote?
- The storm is expected to reach Edison moving east at 25 mph.
- Hmm…
- Shall I, um, book you in for the weekend sir?
- The weekend?
- Yes sir, the storm warning is expected to clear by Monday evening. We can, um, offer you your last two days with us for free if you broaden your stay into, um, mid-week?
- Yes. I suppose that would be the best idea.
Spengler, under the guise of Vincent Bittacker, had done it. He’d managed to find a hide-out and at half the expected price. A silent busboy is even helping him load his hefty Saratoga trunk into the elevator. Spengler noted that the music in the elevator were madrigals of Gesualdo, famous musician and murderer.
No one suspects a thing. They’d never find out it was him. The operator pushes for the 3rd floor. The ascent is slow and quiet. Perfect.
*
Spengler makes his way to room 320, sticks his key in the deadlock and enters. He takes a moment to process the day’s mayhem. He inhales deeply once, twice, three times, before punching the air repeatedly and noiselessly screaming for joy.
- I fuckin’ made it! I fuckin made it! I’m a fucking chameleon! – He keeps saying out loud to himself.
Spengler heaves his massive brown Saratoga chest onto the bed and caresses the metal banding as if the case itself is a precious commodity or gently sleeping lover. After another deep breath, he unclips the trunk to reveal a broken, skinned corpse. Spengler marvels at the twisted and bloody object stuffed into his luggage container. Suddenly he hears someone screaming something about - FREEMANTLE! WE SHOULD HAVE SAVED FREEMANTLE!
This prompts him to close over the Saratoga chest and hide it under the bed. Someone knocks on the door. He catches sight of himself in the mirror. His constantly shifting physical appearance freezes on a face he hasn’t assumed for a while—a serial killer who had been hanged at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in the 30’s. Spengler moves warily towards the door, places his left eye to the peephole. It’s a small boy. He decides to open the door.
- Hi – the boy says, looking up.
- Hello son.
- Have you met the Zonekiller yet?
- The what?
- Zonekiller.
- Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent – Spengler smiles widely.
- He lives in 308 just down the hall - the kid thumbs in the direction of the Zonekiller - People think he’s weird but I like him. He dresses like a spaceman and pretends to shoot people in the street from his bedroom. You might like him too.
- I’ll keep that in mind.
The boy turns to leave and Spengler realises he might be missing an opportunity.
- Wait son. Do you like candy?
- Not really.
- Oh, I see.
- I better get back.
With that, the boy runs across the hall and into room 313. Probably better he doesn’t kill any kids during his stay here. It might draw suspicion. His escape has been so flawless, why ruin all that hard work. He starts thinking about what the boy had said about the lunatic in 308.
*
Otto Spengler slinks from his room across the corridor, his back against the wall, inching towards the Zonekiller in 308. He raises a knuckle to the door and knocks three times. A man answers. He is tall, attractive. Spengler knows the man is Brandon Swarthy. The lost piece of the puzzle, the gap in his psyche, the Dr Jekyll to his Mr Hyde. Swarthy recognises Spengler too. It’s as if these men were the same soldier blown apart by a neutron bomb, both running off in opposite directions, separated on a foggy battlefield. But now they have reconvened. They’re ready to be one again for the first time in decades. Two parts of the same soldier.
- Hey, Ke-mo sah-bee! This book does not exist. You are reading about a killer who does not exist – Swarthy says this and smiles. Spengler smiles too.
- So you want to become a Zonekiller eh? – Swarthy goes on - The Federation of Exchanges is a cushy job if you can land it. Come on in!
Spengler enters room 308 and closes the door behind him. Inside, the Zonekiller’s hotel room is without walls or a bed. There is a row of limestone spires and a great expanse of rock stretching out for miles beyond.
- The Greensboro Gutter himself, eh? Been to Mylar-5 before? – Swarthy asks.
- No, can’t say I have.
- Did I tell you about my adventure there? The ground feels like hot cobbles beneath the arches of your heels. Eventually you got used to the burning sensation, but there was always a sandy texture to the grooves of my feet and toes after walking for so long on the blistered terrain—that, I found harder to get used to. I abandoned my vessel about three miles back on a ridge beside a stone monument. I’m not sure if it was a religious relic.
Swarthy is in the middle of his performance, Spengler looking forward to reading lines with him.
- So the gastank was empty and I knew the chances of stumbling across a lavish supply of liquid-hydrogen on this godforsaken sphere were slim to none. I was stuck there, on a stretch of baked clay with no other life to speak of—which was curious because Igmus was known for its endemic animals and carnivorous succulents. I’d been on the planet for about 12 hours by this time and I’d seen nothing but my own shadow cast across infinite dunes. I wasn’t complaining.
Night time didn’t exist in this place, enough to have me pining for the day-long polar night of Mylar. The only liquid I’d seen on the planet was a lagoon of mercury potted in the middle of the infinite rocky, dunescape. I tried to drink it but, even when I managed to seize a handful without it squirming through the crevices of my fingers, it wormed immediately into the declivities of my hindgut and straight out my blinking anus. Mercury doesn’t stick around in your body too long, they prescribe it on space stations for constipation in fact—and anyway, it has no thirst quenching properties.
There were times when I thought I saw numerous ships whiz by overhead, but my throat had seized up from dehydration and it took all I had just to keep one foot in front of the other. These might have been nothing more than feverish phantasms of course, it had gotten difficult to tell what was real from hallucinatory.
*
These mines were typically used during interplanetary warfare, which was my intention at least when I first designed them. Most of the devices I was using to destroy these bleak little landmasses were the same ones we used to channel
attacking forces into predetermined fire zones—you know the ones, you’ll have used them yourself at some stage. The ones with the yellow main charge and a red charge with the secondary fuse-well on the side of the actual mine which acted as an anti-handling device? The Galactic Confed’s were ‘into’ recycling even back then you see.
I was there when Terra besieged the ancient city in southern Freemantle. The mines I designed created tactical barriers and were instrumental in slowing down the progress of Reticule invasion forces and allowed reinforcements time to arrive back in 0800. I was proud of my design when they were being used properly.
The symmetrical dunes were making me dizzy, I felt like I was walking through a single image stereogram. They started moving into, first crescentic, then parabolic mounds. The wind on Igmus was bidirectional, so your hair would end up in all kinds of crazy styles. If someone discovered me at that stage they would’ve mistaken me for a madman. I wasn’t so far from being a madman actually. In fact, we both know I’m a madman now. Don’t we? I mean we both know it. You and I. Me and you. Us. I. You. Me.
For a moment Spengler thinks Swarthy is about to break character but it doesn’t happen.
- In the distance I could make out a weathered rock projection, a break in the never-ending, sterile section of land. It seemed to veer off into a sandspit and a swell of mercury.
I’d begun fantasising about the other exotic planets I’d obliterated—scarred Nao-17, with its meteor battered surface and valleys carved by glaciers, or the Panagon Penenisuli, a planet so filled with hydrocarbons you could have mined the soil and left a millionaire—or the thermal planet of Boondagswa, you’ll be bathing in a bubbling mud pit one minute, inhaling a fatal concentration of sulphur the next.
In Freemantle, I remember there was a place on the outskirts of the city full of coniferous trees. I remember thinking about you there. I remember missing you. I remember thinking – I wish my more instinctual half was here to help me out. You think I forgot about you?
- Yes, frankly – Spengler says, half surprised by his sudden opening to add to the conversation.
- Don’t be silly. We just got lost in different corners of history. But we’ve synchronised, finally!
- While I was outside there, a little kid about eleven- or twelve-years-old came bumming around. He was looking for something. He found it too. I wanted to take him out to a gravel pit about one quarter miles away. Leave him there, but first commit sodomy on him and then kill him. His brains coming out of his ears when I left him, and he will never be any deader.
The Zonekiller is grinning with his head tilted at an unnatural angle like a piece of psychiatric art.
- I saw the light over the confessional and the voice said: That's the person to kill.
- This could be the end of the solo career – Spengler squats on the rocky plain.
- This could be the end of it all.
- This IS the end. No more rehearsal.
- There’s one more person left to convince.
- Yes…
- It won’t be easy.
- Leave him to me.
Yes, my name is Vincent Bittacker.
No doubt you will have heard a lot about me, most of which will have almost certainly emerged from unreliable sources. I decided to hate women because they’re too much hard work. A rabbit will give up its life quicker than a woman will give up to orgasm. We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, and we are everywhere.
And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.
Sometimes the movie is too long and you want it to end.
Is that Ornette Coleman?
All (or most of) the best anti-Ultra-Realist art will be shown in Buenos Aires because of its strong opposition with the Ultra-Realist movement. A similar relationship has been established with the Southern US states
One Passion and Four Transformations, 2046
India ink and photocopy on paper
5 panels, one frame
17 6/8 x 58 3/8 (45 x 148 cm)
Collection the artist
Tempestad (The Storm), 2046
En la Marana, 2046
Mortigi por arto bonfarto XX, 2040
From the Ultra-Realist series, 2040
Mixed media on canvas
58 ¼ X 87 ¾ (148 x 223 cm)
Private collection, Buenos Aires
Mortintoj bebo kolaĝo (Untitled), 2041
Ink on paper
11 ½ x 15 1/8 (29.5 x 38.5 cm)
Collection Marcos Curi, Buenos Aires
Mambo, 2041
Mixed media on canvas and wood
98 3/8 x 87 ¾ (148 x 223 cm)
Alabama
Mortintoj bebo kolaĝo (Untitled), 2041
Ink on paper
11 ½ x 15 1/8 (29.5 x 38.5 cm)
Collection Marcos Curi, Buenos Aires
La vivo kaj tempoj de Otto Spengler 2043
Oil on canvas: nine panels, overall approximately:
68 ¾ x 7 5/8 (205 x 215 cm)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
Cerrado por brujería (Closed for Sorcery), 2044
Oil and collage on canvas, 78 ½ x 98 ¼ (199.6 x 249.7 cm)
Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (formerly Archer M Huntington
Art Gallery), The University of Texas at Austin
Algún día de estos 2044
Mixed media on canvas
70 7/8 X 1181/8 (180 x 300 cm)
Private collection, Buenos Aires
Unger House 2045
Mixed media
98 3/8 x 78 ¾ (250 x 200 cm)
Private collection, Buenos Aires. Collage with India ink and
colored pencils, 13 7/8 x 16 13/16
Collection Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery
Memmortigo. Oil on doors, 79 X 29, 79 X 30, 79 X 20, 2045
Buenos Aires.
Acrylic on Canvas
200 x 250 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
Tormenta (Storm), 2050
From the time you wake up until the moment you go to bed it’s all a lie, all a sham and a swindle. Everybody knows it, and everybody collaborates in the perpetuation of the hoax. That’s why we look so goddamned disgusting to one another.
- Henry Miller
Table of Contents
Title page
We eat in front of the fireplace. Janice is passed out in the corner of the room, hog-tied limbs resting limply at her knees. Our meal consists of a noodle salad with chicken and cilantro that we picked up in Baton Rouge. It’s easy to prepare, especiallyI guess no one could ever comprehend that mind and its inner collusions. But I want to understand it. I want him to share his darkest fantasies with me. Perhaps he thinks I’ve already been privy to a lot of sensitive information about him. I suppose most serial killing starts as a consequence of a fantasy, refined over time. I was part of his fantasy. Isn’t that enough? I’m sorry to say, but no. I want more. I want everything Brandon has to offer. I want it all.
- Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent - Spengler smiles widely.