Leaning over, her tongue licked my neck. She grabbed my arm to stop me.
“Lie down right here, and you’ll find out how real I am.”
My head stopped hurting. I fell into the depths of her crystal blue eyes. I never wanted to come back out. And yet, I did.
“No,” I said, this time with emphasis. “You’re not real!”
The instant the words left my mouth, the pain returned worse than before. I gritted my teeth because there was nothing else to do, and kept telling myself one more step, one more step.
With a pouting frown, Dawn turned away—then whirled and leapt at my throat, her face distorted into something hideous, her mouth filled with serrated steak knives. I got the blade up to protect my face, so those jaws of death closed on the steel. Instead of ripping out my carotid artery they bit the sword in half. Spitting out the broken steel, Dawn threw back her head and laughed, a hoarse, throaty, demonic wail.
“I never wanted you, Steed. I only wanted your money and your protection,” she said, following this with a growl. “You’re a worthless fool to think I could ever love you. You’re not strong enough to discover the Balance!”
Curved talons flashed toward my face. I jumped back and swung the broken blade…which wasn’t broken anymore but was whole again. The sharp edge sliced through her extended left arm at the elbow. With a deft backhand that far exceeded my meager abilities with a sword, I cut off her other arm, but she still kept coming using her teeth and feet. Dodging her now-clumsy lunges, I waited for my chance and shoved the sword’s point into her mouth and out the back of her head.
Blood and brains dripped from the burnished metal as I drew it out of her gaping maw. For a brief moment her face transmogrified into the innocent visage of the girl I’d sacrificed everything to save.
Then she disappeared.
Each step was harder than the last. The vicious, relentless pain in my head caused me to close my eyes and stumble. My weakened left knee buckled, and I fell to one knee, but I immediately struggled back to my feet. Through the fog in my brain I heard my mantra rising.
One more step. One more step.
I took that step.
The next assault was the worst yet. Sensory overload hit me like a pyroclastic flow sweeping down the slopes of an erupting volcano; thousands of smells, tastes, sights, sounds and touches, so many, so fast, that they flooded my brain so I couldn’t distinguish one from another. No word describes how excruciating my agony became. Suicide would make it stop, and I considered it, nearly cutting my own throat. Four molars cracked as I ground my teeth, and I spit out the broken bits. I was overwhelmed and paralyzed, like a virus sucking up 100 percent of a computer’s memory and processing power, rendering it unresponsive to user commands.
One more step. One more step.
It wasn’t a conscious thought or a reaction or a feeling. It came from somewhere else within me, like the essence of my being, my soul, had moved into the physical world and taken over control of my body after my brain had shut down.
Don’t stop again, whatever you do.
First one step, then a second and a third… I looked down on myself as an objective observer hovering overhead. I would have given odds on my dying soon. Resistance grew with each step. It was like forcing my way through sludge that sucked at my feet and threw me off balance. The path twisted left and right now, in great loops and switchbacks. If anything, the pain and flood of sensations increased, yet somehow, I coped with it better and kept moving, even gaining momentum. Electricity crackled along the edges of my body and the hairs on my arms and legs stood on end. I didn’t feel those things I just knew them to be so.
I took another step.
Suddenly the resistance dropped, as did the overwhelming sensory attack. I moved faster until an old-style World War Two Jeep drove across my path a scant ten feet in front of me, blocking my way. It was driven by two Bengal tigers wearing red marching band uniforms trimmed in gold, complete with hats. Their eyes gleamed through the darkness with a hungry lust. They snarled and leapt out of the Jeep toward me, 600-pound engines of destruction, bent on playing tug of war over who ate what part of me.
Instinct told me to stand my ground, even though only a madman would face over half a ton of apex predators with a sword. But when I swung my weapon it wasn’t a cutlass anymore, it was the legendary Honjō Masamune, sharper than ever. Although off balance because of my injured leg, I put all of my weight behind the swing and decapitated both tigers with a single stroke. Both fell headless at my feet, but the heads kept growing until they vanished. Only then did I see a long tooth trapped in my left wrist.
I dragged myself forward, like Lon Chaney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Jeep disappeared. The pain and sensory assault returned and tears blurred my failing vision, but I kept moving.
One more step, one more step.
I remember it all, every detail of every creature, every force of nature, every thing that tried to stop me. The path went up, down, doubled-back, and ran straight. Booby traps threatened my every step, from hidden pits to crossbows. A flying snake dove and breathed fire that scorched my hair, and a seven-foot-tall suit of mechanical armor fired rockets and explosive rounds from an auto-cannon, shredding me with fragments of burning steel and severing my right leg below the ankle. I fell to my knees, leaning forward on my right hand, but I kept going.
Then I saw her, and I instinctively knew it was the final barrier. All deception had, by now, been stripped away, all of the pretensions and posturings and unimportant tricks we play on ourselves exposed for judgment. Tears rolled down my cheeks from the incessant pain and massive overstimulation of my senses, or so I told myself. But that wasn’t it. I cried because in that moment it was all so real to me, and I knew the only way to finish was through the figure blocking my way, my first and only true love. Whatever I thought I felt for Dawn Delvin, it was shallow beside the undying adoration I felt for Cynthia Witherbot.
And now I had to kill her.
While I thought of her as the most beautiful woman on Earth, in truth Cynthia was almost beautiful, but not quite, at least according to the self-appointed judges of those kinds of things, fashion magazines and social media influencers. Her face was ever so slightly on the square side of heart-shaped, and while she had clear skin, in places it clung tight to the bone, giving a hard edge to her appearance. There were other tiny flaws here and there, which only made her more attractive to me. No, the problems between us weren’t and never had been my physical attraction to Cynthia Witherbot.
“Oh, my poor Steed,” she said. She was standing twenty paces ahead of me, her arms outstretched. She wore no clothes. “My poor, poor Duncan, what have they done to you? Come here and let me make it all better.”
I crawled toward her on one hand. One knee slipped on my intestines, which I didn’t realize were hanging from a gash across my groin. Immense fatigue made it hard to keep my remaining eye open; I’d lost the other one to some sort of demon a while back. The effort of moving forward seemed insurmountable, yet I scooted ahead. My eyes were level with Cynthia’s crotch, but lust was the farthest thing from my mind. I just wanted the hurt to go away.
One more step, one more step.
Sparks flew from the fingertips on my right hand as I reached toward her. Cynthia’s bottom lip quivered in a way I’d never seen before, an empathetic reaction to my obvious suffering. She loved me every bit as much as I loved her. I knew it now, with a certainly I’d never known before. Through the shimmer and stars flashing in my vision, I could see it in the tiny lines around her eyes as she fought back tears. She stretched her own hand toward mine…
The instant our flesh touched, for the first time in my life I understood what it meant to be a whole person. Only in that moment did I realize that, until then, I had been like a jigsaw puzzle with a key piece missing. Cynthia completed me in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible.
The sensory overload stopped as though an electric breaker had tripped and shut off power. The space
we occupied turned black. All pain vanished, leaving behind only a mild fatigue. My body was whole again, completely healed with muscles taut under naked flesh as I pulled her close.
Gently, I let my fingertips drift over her familiar body as I kissed the full lips I’d missed so, so much. My light touch found the impression to the left of her lower lip, where a youthful piercing had left a tiny, moon-sharped scar. I’d fantasized many times about caressing that ever so slight deformity and feeling her shudder beneath my touch. It was a dream to kiss it again.
She was the real Cynthia Witherbot, she had to be. Her skin felt warm under my touch. I found the crown of her right hip bone, a genetic anomaly making it slightly larger than its mate on the left, putting a cheerful bounce in her walk that clearly annoyed her, making the pleasure it incited in me all the more delightful. That one little imperfection in her otherwise icy persona made me love her all the more. Her eyes had the same unique color that reminded me of moss in the darkest forest. I fell in love all over again every time I saw her.
“Never leave me again, Steed,” Cynthia said, in that throaty British whisper I could never resist. “Stay right here and hold me forever.”
She had both of her hands around my waist, pulling me close. I never wanted those arms to move again, but to stay fixed in place forever. Using my left hand, I brushed aside a strand of dark hair that had fallen across her right eye. With my right hand I slid the poniard that had materialized in my fist between her ribs into her heart.
Cynthia’s usually stern face, that so fit her nickname, the British Bitch, stiffened in surprised. Her mouth formed an O as blood ran from the small cut in her chest. Strength left her legs and they buckled, but I held her up. Tears filled my eyes as I held her and felt her last breath escape her lips.
I never stopped moving. Unwilling to let go, I lifted her body and staggered forward. When my muscles burned too much, and I feared dropping her, I finally laid her on the mirror-black surface of the floor. Blood smeared my chest, none of it mine. The silver tracings had returned to the walls, pulsing with power. Still sobbing, I rose, kissed the scar on her lip, and pushed through a gateway framed in red light.
Chapter 16
At some point during my ordeal, the day’s fantastic events had transformed from bad dreams or drug-induced psychosis to reality. However absurd they might have seemed when I woke up that morning in Jamaica, or likely the previous morning now, my mind now accepted them as facts.
The path I followed back up to the living quarters seemed more direct than the one we’d taken down, but exhaustion dragged at my body unlike anything I’d ever known, worse even than when I’d gotten cut off from my unit in Pakistan and went four days without sleep. When I pushed through the door to the living quarters, Ribaldo and Jürgen glanced up from the dining room table with obvious surprise.
“Dear god, Steed,” Ribaldo said, “are you done then?”
I rested on the back of the couch. The air smelled of something deliciously meaty.
“I think so.” It was all I had the energy to say.
“No one has ever discovered the Balance that quickly,” Jürgen said.
“No, they have not.” Ribaldo’s tone now held something new: respect.
“Ribaldo took six hours,” Jürgen said, smiling at his brother. “I did it in four and a half.”
To me, it felt like I had been in there for a week.
“How long…for me?”
“Under ninety minutes.”
“Huh.”
“Now I understand why the assistant director let you walk the path so early and with no preparation. Truth be told, I never expected to see you alive again.”
“I killed her.” My voice sounded dull in my ears.
“Her?”
“Cynthia. I stabbed her in the heart. She died in my arms.”
“We’re not supposed to discuss our journey to discovery, Steed. But if it makes you feel better, the assistant director is alive and well. We just spoke to her moments ago.”
The day’s experiences all ran together, making it hard to decipher reality from delusion, but the heartache I’d felt when I killed Cynthia still hurt.
“That’s impossible,” I said, “I had her blood all over me.” Yet even as I said it, my mind told me that Ribaldo was telling the truth, and it did so in a way that I’d never before experienced, a statement of fact rather than a feeling. And apparently, he noticed a change come over my face with the realization.
“Yes, Steed, you have indeed discovered the Balance. Eat something now, then rest. Tomorrow we shall go over what it means. Merkus!”
Merkus scuttled in with that peculiar knuckle-walking gait of his, carrying a large silver tray laden with food in one hand.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting Pansette de Gerzat, too, will you?” he said.
“What is it?”
“Sheep guts,” Merkus said.
Ignoring him, Ribaldo cleared his throat. “Merkus is a bit judgmental when it comes to French cuisine. Pansette de Gerzat is a specialty of the French town of the same name and evolved as did most French offal dishes, as cheap animal cuts that poor people learned to make delicious. The dish consists of minced lamb stomach enveloped in the reticulum along with onions, salt, and pepper. The recipe Merkus follows adds pork intestines for tenderness. It is tied with string and then cooked in a broth made from fresh herbs and vegetables. The dish can be eaten grilled, as Jürgen likes, or accompanied by a sauce, which is my preference. It is often accompanied by common vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, or lentils. I had it prepared as a celebration in case you were successful.”
“Begging your pardon Mr. Steed, I was wrong,” Merkus said. “It’s sheep and pig guts.”
“I hate to waste your hard work, Merkus, but I’d rather have a bacon cheeseburger.”
Ribaldo wrinkled his nose like I’d ripped a terrible fart, which I would have done had I eaten the offal. Merkus, however, flashed his tusks. Pointing at me with a finger, he nodded.
“Now that’s proper eating if I do say so. One burger comin’ up!”
Calling it a burger doesn’t do the grill-striped mound of perfectly charcoaled ground beef justice, topped with lettuce, tomato, thinly sliced red onion, bacon, crunchy dill pickle slices, and mayo on a buttered and toasted brioche bun strong enough to stand up to its contents. The pre-cooked meat patty alone must have weighed a pound.
I sat across from Jürgen and ate the entire thing without once putting it back on my plate, finally washing down the contents with a refreshing glass of Vinohradsky 11°, one of my favorite Czech beers. It wasn’t until later that I wondered how Merkus had that uncommon brew chilled and ready for me.
The brothers appeared appalled by the grease dripping from my sandwich onto the plate, and afterward concentrated on their own food, not even looking up while talking. I couldn’t have cared less. It was the best burger I have ever eaten, if not the best food, period, and I said so.
“Merkus, you’re a fucking genius.”
“The ladies agree with you, Mr. Steed, but not for the same reason.”
“Drop the ‘mister’ and just call me Steed.”
I sensed rather than saw a change come over him, since subtle changes in the expression of blue orangutans weren’t my specialty. From that moment forward he wore an aura that identified him as a friend. I don’t know exactly how to explain what I mean by that, except in terms that aren’t wholly accurate but convey the general sense. After my experience discovering the Balance, people…glowed, in various colors, giving me a general impression of their true intentions toward me.
But just then I was too tired to care. Maybe killing Cynthia hadn’t been real, but it sure felt real, and it left me emotionally drained. After running a finger over my plate to pick up leftover bits of meat and grease, which disgusted the twins when I licked it off, I headed for the bedroom Merkus pointed out to me.
Without bothering to undress, I dropped face first into the mattress and re
membered nothing more.
A mug of strong black coffee was steaming on my nightstand when I awoke. I assumed Merkus put it there, but how did he know when I’d wake up? I’d slept for eleven hours and hadn’t heard any alarms. I drank half the coffee before getting up, after which I shaved, showered, brushed my teeth, and picked out some casual slacks, shirt, and shoes from the wardrobe in a walk-in closet—my wardrobe, the entire thing, last seen in my apartment. I was beginning to understand how chess pieces felt being moved around the board without volition, because obviously there was something in play here that everyone knew about except me.
When I went into the dining room, Merkus had a plate waiting that was piled high with thick-cut bacon, a cheese omelet with tomatoes and chives, extra-crispy hash browns, grits running with butter, three pancakes, maple syrup, orange juice, and more coffee.
“Are you psychic?” I asked, no longer amazed that I was conversing with a blue ape. Merkus’s presence in the universe felt as natural as if he’d been a goat, or a butterfly, although if those things talked it would also have taken some getting used to.
“I don’t need none of that psychic bullshit to know what a man’s man eats for breakfast,” he said. “None of that fancy frog crap they’ve got to cover up in sauces so’s you don’t choke on it, either.”
“So, you eat bacon, too?” I mumbled as I took my first bite, closing my eyes at the exquisite smoke flavor of the meat. “I thought orangutans ate fruit and—” I stopped, because while he might look like an orangutan, there were several key differences, like speaking. “Sorry,” I said, genuinely worried I might have offended him.
“About what?” What came out as “wot.”
“The whole, well, you know…the orangutan thing. If that’s what you are.”
“What else would I be?”
I stuffed half the omelet into my mouth before answering; apparently discovering the Balance worked up quite an appetite.
“I thought orangutans were orange and, you know, didn’t speak English.”
The Trashman Page 15