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The Lavender Menace

Page 9

by Tom Cardamone


  “I could put a bullet in your head and then no one else would have to die.”

  “And you’d go to the lethal injection gurney.”

  He considers this. The clouds in his eyes and the sneer on his lips show me he hasn’t thought his plan through.

  “How could you do this to me?” he asks.

  I try to find a moment from our past, something that might touch his heart and take his mind off of opening my skull. But I can’t find a thing. Maybe it’s the duress of having a gun pointed at my brow, but I think it’s something more. The truth is, Curtis and I have shared little over the years except our bodies. We didn’t share our desires or disappointments—outside of some perfunctory vent sessions. We didn’t enjoy the same films or books or television programs. We didn’t even enjoy the same people. I never blamed him. After all, I’m the freak in this equation. Still the realization unsettles me. He is a hot muscle cub and I am his daddy bear, and as I look at the cold hole at the end of the pistol, I begin to wonder if that is all we’ve ever been to one another—the right type.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. I am Legion, and Legion is a master of the superficial.

  “Put down the gun, Curtis,” I say. “Put it down and walk away.”

  “No.”

  “I can make you.”

  “Not before I pull the trigger. Your body will go limp if you leave it. I’ll have time before you reach me.”

  He is right. But can he pull the trigger?

  “How could I have been so stupid?” he asks again. “How could I not have seen this? You’re a fucking psychopath, and I never knew.”

  “I’m not a psychopath.”

  “Right,” he says sarcastically, “you’re a revolutionary. You and your Third Estate bullshit. What the fuck is that anyway?”

  Christ, he couldn’t even be bothered to wikipedia the phrase. Did he never watch the news?

  “Before the French Revolution there were three estates: the clergy and the royals made up the first two, and the third estate was made up of the populace who suffered from the corruption and excesses of the first two. Now we have the corporations and the government as the first two estates; the third estate remains the same.”

  “Did you ever think people might be happy?”

  “They aren’t happy. They’re trapped. They expect their elected officials to make laws to protect them, but they don’t. Corporations possess the government the same way I possess anyone I choose. They make politicians construct castles of law, keeping them safe inside and keeping everyone else out. Enron should have been an epitaph, not a fucking instruction manual.”

  “So you’re going to murder every executive in the world?”

  “I don’t have to,” I say. Apparently, he didn’t watch the news. “Last week a personal assistant to the CEO of NationBank poisoned the asshole’s protein shake. Then she stapled the memo announcing his seven million dollar bonus to his lapel—seven million that came from the fed bailout for the bank’s failure. Yesterday, three members of the accounting department of Ervine-Tyne Power in California presented senior management with evidence of misappropriation of funds and falsified expense reports. When the senior managers, including the CFO dismissed them with a smug, ‘We’ll look into it,’ one of the accountants blocked the door, while the other two produced handguns and proceeded to assassinate every last one of them.”

  “And?” Curtis shouts. “Tomorrow someone else will step into those jobs, so what makes you think they’ll do anything differently?”

  “They may not,” I admit. “But there’s also no reason to believe they won’t come to the same end. It’s time for accountability, Curtis. Why can’t you see that?”

  “Murder is not justice.”

  “It’s all we have left.”

  “It’s all you have left, and I’m going to stop you.”

  “By murdering me.”

  “I…”

  “You didn’t come in here to reason with me. You didn’t want to discuss the situation. You picked up a gun.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “On that we agree.”

  And then silence overwhelms us. We stand motionless, looking at the men we thought we knew, and perhaps Curtis realizes, as I had, that we know each other’s skin and very little of what operates beneath it.

  “How could you do this to me?” he asks again.

  “Shut up,” I say. “You made this about you, not me. I never asked for your approval or your assistance.”

  “You never cared about me at all.”

  “You might be right,” I say. “But I stayed. Curtis, it may not have occurred to you, but I can be with anybody. Literally. If I want to be with a man—for an hour or a night or a month—all I have to do is slide into whomever he desires—a trick, a lover. Believe me, I did a lot of that when I was younger. But I didn’t deceive you in that regard. You got the real me, for better or worse. That means something.”

  “It means I was stupid enough to let you use me.”

  “You’re feeling used? This is my apartment, Curtis. This is my fucking building. Have you ever paid for a meal? You work to keep yourself busy, not because you need an income. You fuck your gym-rat conquests, and I never say a word about it. And don’t play the offended innocent, because I saw it happen more than once. Hell, I was in three or four of them when it happened.”

  “You spied on me?”

  I ignore the question, because the answer is obvious and irrelevant. “And did we ever agree to an open relationship? In fact, weren’t you the one who demanded monogamy? Weren’t you the one who said we could never have a truly intimate relationship if we were fucking around?”

  “Stop it,” he says.

  “You got that one right, didn’t you?”

  “You’re a murderer,” he snaps as if that negates my observation.

  “For fuck’s sake, stay on topic. If you’re genuinely concerned about all of the suited carcasses, quit whining about what I did to you.”

  “You have to be stopped.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” I say. “This isn’t a villain’s downfall; it’s a break up. We’re at the exact same place we’d be if you’d met someone else or if you’d caught me fucking around. It’s over, Curtis. Don’t ruin your life over it. Let’s just walk away. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. You can even keep the apartment. Otherwise you’re going to jail for murder.”

  “I’m stopping Legion. The worst terrorist our country has ever known.”

  “Prove it,” I say. “There is no evidence. Everything I bought or touched was done through the people I possessed. Nothing can be linked to me, and once I’m dead, even Looking Glass won’t be able to confirm who the body belongs to. He’ll see nothing but flesh and hair like anyone else, because my spirit will have been released for good. So how are you going to convince the police this was anything but a spoiled little muscle boy trying to snatch his daddy’s estate?”

  He considers this for a moment, eyes shrouded with thought. As he does so, I realize a few things myself. When Curtis accused me of being Legion, I didn’t deny it, didn’t so much as feign innocence, and when he pointed his gun at my face, I didn’t do much to defuse the situation. If anything, I’d fueled his aggression.

  Then, as my partner’s eyes clear with what he must consider a solution, I understand that I want an ending– if for nothing else, then certainly for the relationship.

  He speaks, and what he says surprises me, though I should have known he’d find it a rational enough solution.

  “Looking Glass can identify you now, before you die. The police will believe him.”

  “You don’t have enough time to get him here,” I say, my voice low and dry.

  He digs in his pocket with his free hand and produces
a cell phone. He lobs it across to me. Reflexively, I catch it.

  “Call him,” Curtis says.

  Ridiculous, I think. “No.”

  He jabs the gun in my direction. “Call him.”

  “Well look who’s trying on his daddy britches,” I reply. I give the phone another glance and then throw it to the floor, where it shatters on the tile.

  Frustrated with the game, I start toward Curtis.

  “Don’t,” he says.

  But I do anyway.

  “I’ll shoot.”

  “Then shoot or walk away. I’m done with this.”

  “Did you ever love me at all?”

  “I didn’t hate you. That’s as close as you’re going to get.”

  “Stop moving!”

  “Shoot or walk away.”

  And the motherfucker shoots me. The bullet tears into my chest, pausing my approach. Curtis’s eyes grow wide and white, and then he fires again, ripping a hole in my pectoral, my ribs, my heart. I collapse on the tiles…

  And then I slide through the floor, descending the many stories of the apartment building, and in the lobby I pause to note the panic on the doorman’s face as he answers a call on the building’s landline—likely a disturbed resident or Curtis himself, reporting gunfire. Down I go, through the parking garage and the basement storage units.

  Down to an apartment no one but I have entered in nearly a decade. The walls are lined with steel to keep out the rats and poured concrete to keep out sound and moisture. The interior is sleek and contemporary, but bathed in gloom.

  My real body lies on a hospital bed; wires and tubes sprout from my withered face and emaciated limbs like alien weeds. The hiss-chunk of a respirator echoes against tile and bare walls. Drops of nourishment plunk from the plastic sack into the IV tube. My heart rate, monitored by digital lines and cold numbers, is steady. My temperature normal.

  I pause outside of myself, looking down in disgust.

  No one has seen this monstrosity—the real me—in years, nearly a decade now. I will need to return to it soon. Walk it around, build up its strength before I possess another handsome disguise and set up a new alter-me in a new city.

  But first there is Curtis. If I let him walk away, he will talk and some will listen. A minor problem, but one I don’t need.

  He’s probably still holding the gun.

  So I rise from my actual home, leaving my real body to accept technological ministrations, and I soar back toward the penthouse and Curtis—a beautiful casualty of my plans. They will find him on the floor next to the body I have recently vacated, a bullet in his head. Murder-suicide. Tragic. Romantic.

  Revolutions devour the weak.

  The Ice King

  Tom Cardamone

  Tom Cardamone is the editor of The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered, and author of the speculative novella, Green Thumb, and the erotic fantasy novel, The Werewolves of Central Park. His short story collection, Pumpkin Teeth, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, some of which can be read on his website: pumpkinteeth.net.

  The Ice King walked into The Bear Trap off of Twelfth Avenue and stood, allowing the patrons hunkered at the bar to size him up. He liked to be admired. The men mostly looked like him: overly masculine, large and in leather. Several shaved heads wrapped in aviator glasses regarded him and, though no obvious emotion was revealed, The Ice King knew he was lusted after. He always was.

  Music pulsed. A few men pretending to be bored lifted drinks. Under the red lights the alcohol in the bottom of their glasses shone like diluted, bloody mucus. He stepped up to the bar and placed a boot on the rail. Men in jackets and leather pants turned to exhibit their hard-won physiques. The Ice King’s chiseled musculature was strapped by a leather-studded harness that crossed his chest and back, buckling at the waist of his leather chaps. Everyone was dressed like him in his own way, but no one else wore gloves. Cracking his knuckles produced an icy vapor, imperceptible in the darkness of the bar.

  When he takes off his gloves, people die at his frozen touch.

  The Ice King put a leather finger to his moustache and smoothed his upper lip. He was thirsty, but not for alcohol. Under natural light it would have been more noticeable that his skin was completely white, but he was not an albino. He was ice. Flesh steely, like a distant mountain peak; beneath the permanent tundra cold, lifeless rock. Metallic blue pupils swirled around white irises. His arctic gaze could freeze anyone and anything.

  The bartender eyed him wearily but The Ice King ignored him, absently stroking the long scar that marred his perfect bicep. The memory of that battle, the particular super hero who administered the punishment, bordering on total defeat, filled him with anger. And anger led to arousal.

  He exhaled frozen breath. The fools probably think I’m smoking. He puckered and blew lazy smoke rings of chilled air toward the ceiling. A fair-haired twink sashayed by, giving him a long look. He had always liked blonds.

  The boy cocked his hips as he walked; ridiculously tight vinyl pants shivered low across his shapely ass. He paused at the stairwell to the basement and looked back at The Ice King, his parted lips glossy, feminine. The Ice King followed. The music wasn’t as oppressively loud toward the back of the bar. The lights were fewer. No one noticed the icy vapor rising from the snowy footprints he left on the floor. Numerous bars throughout the world were named The Bear Trap. The only thing they had in common was the type of men they attracted: ready and willing. Likely he had been to all of them. He couldn’t remember the layout of this one though, and relished the anticipation welling up within; it was rare that any emotion broke through his permafrost of disdain.

  He descended the stairs into a labyrinthine bathroom of doorless stalls and leaky urinals. A florescent tube hung askew from the ceiling and flickered weakly. The stale air stank of piss and cheap poppers and cigarette smoke. Now he remembered: there was a backroom. The broom closet concealed a gross curtain that led to an ancient basement, practically a cave, with an earthen floor to soak up the sweat and semen of desperate animal assignations. The Ice King stepped into the antechamber crowded with mops rancid from the sour scent of bleach. He could hear men panting, sucking and wallowing in the darkness. These men were the clay he would sculpt.

  In bathhouses and backrooms, when the mood struck, he fashioned icy atrocities, orchestras of men frozen in acts of fellatio, masturbating strange flowers of arrested sperm arching in the air, mouths opened in screams of ecstasy or death, stalactites of sweat hanging off their chins. First he would observe the men, pushing away any who approached so he could better study the action of the room. And when the men reached a crescendo he thought aesthetically pleasing, he would take off his gloves and touch the nearest coupling. Walking through the room, he spread winter. All froze and he would pause by the door and exhale a final, wintry blast of satisfaction. Art wrongly considered a crime when discovered. He knew his vision was unappreciated by the masses, much less the authorities. Still, his only hope was that the police photographers accurately captured his work and preserved it for future generations. Possibly when the sun had dimmed and the world had grown colder, became a bit more like him, only then would his work gain the recognition it deserved.

  The twink stepped from the shadows. The Ice King had seen enough. He grabbed the boy roughly by the back of his hair and jerked his mouth open. The boy gasped in surprise but fumbled eagerly for The Ice King’s zipper. They kissed and the temperature in the room suddenly dropped. He savored the swirl of fear and excitement in the boy’s eyes, and watched closely as they became cloudy with frost.

  Winter came.

  The Ice King slowly rose above the city on a cloud of ice particles. With minimal concentration he could successively freeze and unfreeze the moisture in the air in such a way as to propel him to se
rious heights and at great speed. Obscured by clouds, he traveled the world, delivering icy mayhem wherever he pleased. The cold hell he created in the back room at the Bear Trap should have given him immense pleasure, but he was left wanting. The scar on his arm ached as he considered its source: the Canadian hero, Light Stream. The one time they had grappled Light Stream prevailed. Yet as the embodiment of cold, The Ice King considered himself a harbinger of death, so to have been thwarted—rather than feel defeated, he felt challenged. He was drawn to the earnestness of Light Stream, though usually revolted by such sincerity, coming from the hero it seemed wistful, and also oddly familiar. The Ice King wanted to return the touch, leave his own scars before freezing the blood in those “heroic” veins. The way his long hair had whipped about his face as they fought, hand-to-hand, high in the sky… he had always liked blonds.

  A new destination fixed in his mind, he turned and flew north over the city. Sirens wailed below. The Empire State building stung the low clouds. Appropriately, the landmark was lit white. Snow white.

  Mother Bear lived in a simple cabin on an island off the coast of Maine. She owned the island, as well as property in the Rocky Mountains. She often shared the island with the occasional girlfriend, though Mother Bear was short-tempered and her lovers never lasted long. Mother Bear was one of those mutants the government worried so much about. Worse, she was fully dedicated to realizing their worst fears. As the founder of the Annihilators, she attempted to forge a group to counter the World Guardians; where the Guardians strove to ease the world’s ills, the Annihilators worked to both spread and benefit from chaos. Unfortunately, the other Annihilators were jailed or dead. Only Mother Bear had escaped and, though she quietly scoured the world for new villains to re-assemble her team, she was battle-weary. She spent more and more time in bear-form, scavenging in the woods, fishing with her paws in streams or napping in dark caves. Of the villains she had originally approached, The Ice King was the only one who had refused to join and survived her formidable anger at being rebuffed. His cold fortitude had earned him her respect, and then begrudging friendship.

 

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