I looked up, sipping the second fire-water, much slower, getting ready to settle in and start the real plan. I was looking for her; the one that’s next. The dope was kicking though and the drink was softening my gaze, and that’s when my lap dance arrived and I was distracted anew. I do believe that red is my favorite color.
The Halfling sidled up to my lap and placed a gentle hand on Bennie’s shoulder. I could feel her heat. She smiled seductively, really without even trying. She licked her fangs with her pink, forked tongue. Her red devil’s skin was both hide and silk. Her horns were short and sharp.
The demon Halfling danced slowly to the rhythm of Bennie’s pounding heart. She leaned in close and gently rubbed her hot face against Bennie’s warming one. And when she did, the trigger compressed again. I felt something there, faintly stirring beneath her skin. A memory; a series of them.
It made me inhale sharply and snap reverse against my chair back. She stared at me, clearly confused at the turnabout. I was obviously into her, but now I must have seemed almost frightened. Admittedly, I was a bit disturbed, but more excited than fearful. She didn’t understand. She stared at me, deep inside Slow Bennie, trying to figure it out.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” I replied, thinking how odd to run into someone here that knows Him. She knows Him, the one I ultimately want. This beautiful Halfling knows the Creator.
And she knows where He lay…
“Please,” I say, smiling, turning back on the charm. I stand quickly and pull out a chair for the darling girl. She knows Him. I spotted the server nearby and called her back over. “Whatever this beauty wants,” I say, serious as a heart attack, “she gets.”
“Of course, sugar,” she said to me. She raised her thoroughly pierced eyebrows at the dancer. “What’ll it be, honey? The Special?”
The dancer nodded and I gave the server four big notes. “For the both of us,” I added.
I handed to the dancer the remainder of my drink. She sipped at it while a gamely scraped the grains and remains of Uptown residue together to fashion for her a halfway decent line. She smiled at me and snorted it up, pinching her nose adorably afterwards.
“Thank you,” she replied with her little tinkling of a voice. “You are very generous. Do you want me to finish your dance now?”
“You are most lovely,” I admitted, easily enough in that it was true blue, but: “I’d rather enjoy your company instead, if you don’t mind,” I said and peeled off another hundred. I placed it beside her and she retrieved it with another one of her killer smiles. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind terribly sitting and talking with me for a bit? Maybe answer a few questions?”
“Sure,” she said, “that’s fine.” I smiled back at her.
The server returned with our Specials. I gave to her another one of Elron’s fifty notes and she got the message and left without a word. Good girl, that one. I took a sip.
“Do you mind if we get high first?” she asked.
“By all means,” I said, “That’s a first-rate idea, young Miss.”
We spilled out our grams on the table and bent right to it. I pulled up, feeling the Uptown Girl in all its glory. I leaned back, rubbed some more on Bennie’s receding gum line. I picked up the Sterno Ethanol, jiggling the ice chunks. They tasted like they were gouged right out of the Lake, but I was feeling way too good to care about such trifles.
I turned to look at the dancer. I asked her: “Do you know who makes this stuff?” indicating the Uptown. “Do you know how it’s done?”
“Sure,” she replied, “Don’t you know? It’s no secret.” I didn’t answer that, I just kept on smiling at her, waiting for her to spill the beans. “Everyone knows him. He is a great man,” she finished, somewhat wistful.
“I don’t doubt it,” I concurred. It was good gear. “But, who is he?”
“He is The Good Doctor,” she replied. “He is The Harbor King.”
“Excellent,” I said. I’d hate for him to be just some clever schlump. I thought a moment, “Do you know where I can find him?”
The dancer just smiled at me.
* * * *
I finished the rest of my gram, the dancer having moved on. I’d given her another hundred and the whole expensive diversion was well worth the cost. She’d told me many things. They were wonderfully detailed things about conjoined twins and a private lab. About the hospital the Creator ran and the all-important Damnation Scores. She explained that the very best drugs came from the ear wax and the dandruff of the twins. The rumors about the salt from their tears and the brand spanking new narcotic it produced. She told me their names, all of them. I then knew how I came to be, that it was the pile Slow Bennie gobbled up in his Uncle Elron’s room, and his before that, and so on and so forth, all the way back. It all became very clear to me. I understood the compulsion to consume the previous users. That was what I tried to gather unto to me, it really was my self, my essence. The urge, now that I know, is even stronger. It was all very fascinating and enlightening information that, I swear to you, I intend to put to good use.
I sat back, contented and thinking long and hard about it all. I sipped the gut bomb and absently watched the main stage as the next Headliner prepared to make her entrance.
It was a grand one at that. The jolt it gave me made Bennie sit straight up. There she was. I mean, this is why I came here, but it was still a marvelous joggle. The next one in line going backwards was there Headlining on the main stage. I should have known she would be a pro. I had wanted to eat her just like I did Uncle Elron, but it changed everything seeing her in the flesh. She had me inside her. I craved to go back in and not just to retrieve more of myself. There was much more to it than that. So, I just stopped right there, in the name of Love.
What, I ask you, are the odds?
My plans changed on the spot.
NOVEM
I HAD RANDALL FOLLOW THE HEADLINER FROM THE club. He (I’m most positive, now, he’s a he) traveled down the tunnel, away from the Club, as she made her way home. I sat back and tried to stay my excitement by glancing around. There wasn’t much to see down here. There’s just the usual blend of the far-out and crazy – crazy in how they look, crazy in how they behave. Crazy. This place was in want of a killing spree. Maybe later.
My Bennie’s heart was hammering like mad and I was almost more dizzy than I could stand. Randall was doing a fairly decent job of keeping her taxi in his line of sight. The nice length of sharp cutlery was still satisfyingly heavy. It was strapped to Bennie’s calf, hidden as it was beneath Uncle Elron’s ridiculous shapeless shift.
I was going to gut her. Or, perhaps I was going to cut out her still beating heart and squeeze the hot blood into my open, waiting mouth. I was. But not now. Not anymore. Instead, I have decided that I’d much rather ask her to be my Valentine.
Don’t you think that’d be sweet?
****
Donna had a bad feeling that she was being followed. The tunnels can breed that sort of paranoia. 3D chuckled to herself. She hoped it was only paranoia. She recalled an old hospital saying from before the C.E. : You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you. Too true, that.
Regardless, she could not shake the feeling of someone, or something gaining on her. It was horrible. 3D even considered taking the long way and looping all the way around the giant underground circle instead of simply pulling into her garage, which was right up ahead. Once there, she could lock herself inside, but something nagged her not to do this. Donna listened to the fearing nag. She passed her casa and looped herself around.
It would prove a regretful decision.
****
Randall slowed as she made it to her stop unharmed. I put my hand on his shoulder and ducked down a little lower behind it.
“Hold still for a minute,” I told him. I watched as Sparkle got out of her taxi. The doorman for her complex (pretty nice digs…) held the door for her and she went inside. “How am I going to g
et in there?” I mumbled to myself.
Randall heard me and he replied: “Why, that’s easy, Sir.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Because the Doorman’s a Downtowner, Sir.”
I just stared at him as he slid out of the seat. He adjusted his tail and made his way over. I could see Randall talking to the doorman. Cash (mine) was exchanged. He nodded to me and that was my cue.
I was in her building in two shakes. Finding her flat should have proved the most troubling of all, but she housed a part of me inside her already. I didn’t know then if she could feel me, but I sure could sense her. It was strong and drew me as a moth to a flame. I was on her door step and knocking, just like any legitimate gentleman caller or upscale customer. I was neither and when she opened the door, I shoved her inside. I locked the door on the quick.
Sparkle back-pedaled, hitting a key table or something, and fell over. I felt bad. I tried to make amends and to make Sparkle feel safe. She wasn’t having any of it.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I tried to explain.
“What do you want, then?” she frightfully asked me.
“To love you,” I replied.
****
The tunnels were full. Humans and Halflings alike were everywhere. Half of those lived there and
the other half were just visiting or passing through. The tunnel system itself was shaped more or less like the jagged spokes on a worn down to the nub wagon wheel. There were fair to middling sized recesses and big enough alcoves in every corner. These dark and dank corners were where no sane being would want to be caught alone. That’s where she found herself.
The poor thing.
The tunnel rats were congesting these out of the way inky spots. They were a moveable congregation of sustenance, teeth and hunger. They were in all places and the tunnel rats represented both ends of the food chain simultaneously. Their over-sized eyes glowed fiercely in the dark as they scavenged those that had expired, or at least those of whom could not outrun the pack swarms. The tunnel rats bred rapidly and in large numbers, making them the shrimp of the A.C.E. subterranean world. The rats kept scores and scores of folks alive. When the pups were flash-fried, they popped similar to kettle corn. The older and meatier ones tasted just like chicken.
Donna wasn’t thinking of mock chicken fajitas, or tunnel shrimp, or any of that. She just ran with a panic and without thinking, straight into the all-enveloping darkness. She ended up in an alcove that was a one-way blind. She had a large pack of tunnel rats snapping at her heels. When she turned around, she could see their glowing eyes. A light-show that bit, tasted, scrambled up her legs. The rats gnawed on her as though they’d never tasted flesh before. Their instinct was feral and all-consuming. Donna didn’t like that; not one bit.
Donna looked scared when I grabbed her. She was kicking and screaming, raining ineffective blows upon me. She was quite out of her head by this time, the poor thing. Sparkle couldn’t drive, having nothing but ornamental stumpy wings with useless, miniscule digits at the end, but she made a nice look-out. Neither one of us could tell if it was us, or the tunnel rats that were hanging off her like bats on cattle, that was freaking her out so. From the car lights that could just barely penetrate far enough for me to make her out, pitiable Donna was lit-up and glowing with green rat eyes and her own red blood. She was a spitting image of a Christmas tree in Satan’s recreation room.
It could have been us that frightened her. My bet would have to be on the tunnel rats.
While Sparkle waited by Donna’s car, I came wading in to the alcove. I was kicking and stomping the tunnel rats with wild abandon. Finally, enough of them were killed or injured, so that the horde’s attention was on the pathway of least resistance, which was to turn tail on their own kind. The tunnel rats dragged off the dead and dying. They went fiercely to a safe, darkened recess around a corner away from us. I picked Donna up off the ground, peeled off the remaining furry leeches and flung her over my shoulder like a fifty kilogram sack of potatoes. She did nothing to resist, so it was dead weight I was carrying. Bennie’s body is very strong and the car door was open. I tossed her in, Sparkle hopped in and I got behind the wheel. I pulled quickly into the stream of slow traffic while Donna kept thanking me, over and over.
It was like she thought I was rescuing her, or something. Huh.
****
So, I had her gagged and hanging upside down. We were in her flat and she was suspended by her ankles. I had bound her wrists tightly behind her back. She was doing lazy, hazy, crazy half-circles above a big, empty punch bowl. When I slit her throat, she bled out in under a minute.
By this time the two of us understood one another. I was in love, certainly. I don’t know if she was with me. It didn’t matter, because we two were joined and she accepted the inevitability of it all. She gobbled up Donna’s spilled blood as quickly as I had consumed Uncle Elron’s. I did have some of Donna’s blood myself, of course. It was necessary in order to further join Sparkle and to enhance ever further our unholy alliance. The Headliner consumed the vast bulk of it, whilst I de-boned 3D’s carcass. I needed a suit to get past the eye-dent.
We both snorted some more of the twins’ potent tears. We then had some wild, bizarre sex that did not transport us anywhere, it seemed. It did, however, make time bend and twist on us. Hours had passed that began to feel like whole days. It was enchanting in and of itself, but we both felt it was still a distraction. We had the occasion, but it seemed to us that pursuing sexual gratification was squandering the gift of time. We were wasting it on mere amusements. There was still more work to be done.
The de-boned carcass of Donna would fit, if I stretched it taut enough, like a suit over the body of Slow Bennie. Ingesting her gave both Sparkle and myself the directions to the big farm.
We made our way out of Donna’s flat and to her car. I had on the carcass suit, wearing it as a hooded cloak. When we get near, I’ll tug it down over my face so that her dead eyes would register and we would be let in. I hoped.
I so wanted to meet the Creator. I longed to speak to him. I need to see where he lived and how he lived. Then? Well, then I am going to kill him. Don’t you see? How many chances does one get to kill their god? I don’t know, but I will only need the one.
Don’t you dare judge me.
****
Uncle Tugmunkee was put out. He was ready to seize a little time for himself when the visitors announced their arrival. The Good Doctor was up top, out in the gardens, amusing himself. It was Tug’s nap time. He’d already cleared his schedule with The Good Doctor and he planned on taking a trip with a line or two of Crosstown Traffic. But now someone was at the door.
“Bother!” Tug exclaimed. He sighed deep, resignedly and chimp-knuckled his irritated way over to an adjacent wall-screen. “Who’s there?” he asked, doing nothing to disguise his aggravation. The screen lit up with the eye-dent of The Good Doctor’s niece and Sparkle, the sex performer. “Open the line,” Tug ordered the screen. “What the heck do they want?” to himself.
****
The Good Doctor was up top in the gardens. He had just teleported home to the farm from Hell’s Mouth. He still had on his travel slippers and his 9s were still strapped. The Good Doctor strolled leisurely about, Billy on his heels like an overgrown, hoofed puppy. He absently scratched Billy’s chinny-chin-chin and hummed softly to himself. He pulled the silver gun from its holster and placed it in his mouth. The Good Doctor fired a blast of Uptown Girl down the back of his throat. He held the persuasive spray for a long count. He exhaled slowly after holstering the weapon. The Good Doctor grabbed a waiting Billy by the ears.
“Not enough, I need more,” he said. The Good Doctor dragged the silver 9 out again and repeated the ritual. “Nothing seems to satisfy,” he mumbled, the sprint concentrating. Billy sat back on his haunches and waited for the Creator to draw it out. “To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive…” When he did, Billy sucked and nibbled at it until The Good Doctor
’s expulsion covered his goat-face. Billy licked his goatee clean. “Thank you, Billy,” The Good doctor replied and asked the goat-guy to check in on the gnomes. They had been ill of late. The Good Doctor was understandably concerned. The Devil’s in the details.
****
At fifteen miles per hour it took forever to get to the farm. The upside being that Sparkle and I were able to get good and topped up on Uptown. We drove toward the center where the underground entrance to the farm waited for us.
Sparkle obliged me while I drove. Bennie’s left hand was on the steering wheel and his right I’d thrust right up her tiny little stink-hole. I could feel an egg forming. I crushed the shell inside her, making her twitch and moan. I dragged out the slimy mess and spread it like marmalade on my stick. I would have forced her to eat it all, but she did it on her own.
I love her with all my heart.
****
We came to the underground entrance to the farm. I yanked down Donna’s face, hiding my eyes behind Bennie’s, behind hers. The eye-dent scanned all of ours, including Sparkle’s.
So far, so good.
****
“What do they want?”
“Doctor, Sir, they say there has been problems with Crosstown Traffic. There’s been some serious complaints.”
“What sort of complaints? Violence?”
“Yes, that’s what they are saying, but they are refusing to elaborate,” Tug told The Good Doctor. “Donna and Sparkle will speak only to you, Good Sir.”
The Good Doctor thought a moment.
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