If Em or the receptionist had seen Gregory walk through the front door … well, none of this would have happened.
I thought I knew all about PVG. The Centers for Disease Control agreed to work closely with brothels in our state to limit the possibility of on-site transmission—thus our swift vaccinations. They’d been sending us weekly informational videos and pamphlets. Big nerd that I am, I read it all and more.
Viruses have always fascinated me. I mean, think about it: They work by giving an unsuspecting cell new assembly instructions. It’s just … new information. That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? And yet it can be a complete horror show.
This is what I knew about PVG: Within a week of transmission, an infected person gets a mild to moderate headache and some nausea. For some people, that’s all that happens. After a few days of taking it easy, they’re back to normal. But for others, the headache turns into the worst they’ve ever had. A day or so after that, they start vomiting up blood, followed by their stomach lining. Most everyone ends up in the hospital at that point.
When a PVG victim gets out—if they get out and don’t straight up die—their digestive system is fucked all to hell. They can’t digest most foods and consequently can’t make certain proteins. Their body has trouble growing and healing. The enzymes their DNA uses to repair itself quit working like a tech bro after a four-whiskey lunch.
Sunlight, x-rays, cigarettes, cosmic rays … anything that can even slightly damage your DNA becomes a real problem. Victims’ skin cracks and their bodies sprout tumors. Their brains begin to degenerate. Sooner or later, they develop lesions on their frontal lobe and hippocampus. Without daily medication, those lesions inevitably lead to a variety of hallucinations, delusions and antisocial behaviors. And that’s when the local SWAT team tends to get involved.
PVG patients are identified by type. Type Ones are the folks who just needed a little rest and were fine, but are maybe-probably still contagious if the stars are right. Type Twos need supplements containing the proteins found in fresh human blood. Type Threes need the proteins found in fresh brains. Type Fours are the ones who died in the hospital. It’s all pretty gruesome, but honestly not really that much more scary than a disease like Ebola, or even drug-resistant syphilis. The CDC’s overall message was, “This is an incurable, complex, life-changing infection, but it can be managed just like HIV,” so most of us in the brothels figured we could get our shots and just roll with it.
But, obviously, we aren’t supposed to let in anyone with a case of PVG. Our vaccinations are insurance against being infected through random sneezes on the street; there is no approved protocol for preventing transmission during physical intimacy. Type Ones have to pass a viral load titer and carry paperwork proving it or the front door staff will turn them away. It’s not just on the honor system; there’s a quick-prick blood test every prospective client has to pass. If someone claims our test generated a false positive—and, to be fair, a lot of Type Ones don’t even know they are infected—the staff smiles and tells them to come back with a titer test from their doctor.
I didn’t even realize until later that Gregory was infected, even though I knew right away that something was seriously wrong with him.
Our playrooms are set up basically like a hotel room, except with a door in the front and the back. We courtesans come in through the front door, which locks and has a foyer beyond with a sink, mirror, etc. so we can do last-minute checks of our costumes and makeup. In the main part of the room, there’s a bed, sofa, and maybe some bondage furniture. The back entrance is for our clients, and it opens into a tiled dressing area with toilet facilities and a shower with sturdy handholds. The CDC says that washing with soap and water helps prevent PVG transmission, so clients have to clean up before they play; a lot of them like sexytimes in the shower, and none of us enjoy blowing a dude with swamp ass, so everyone wins.
I wasn’t surprised to hear the water running and to find the room filling with steam when I arrived at the room for Gregory’s session. I slipped off my green silk robe, draped it over the nearest high-backed chair, and sashayed over to the shower.
“Hey, Gregory, how’s it going?” I called, hoping to not startle him.
He didn’t answer. I figured he just couldn’t hear, so I rounded the corner to the stall door, ready to knock on the shatterproof glass.
And stopped dead.
The glass was fogged up, so I could only glimpse him as a blurry beige shape against the white tiles … but something was Definitely Not Right. My mind split in two as instinct raised my pulse and screamed get away while the rational parts tried to stay calm and make sense of what I was seeing. Had he come here with a little person who was riding him piggyback as he showered? No, that wasn’t one of his kinks—bringing someone else to a solo session wasn’t allowed, anyway—and the asymmetrical hump I saw rising from his upper back wasn’t really shaped like a clinging person.
I took a deep breath and tried again. “Gregory, you ok in there?”
No response. He was in the corner of the shower, pressing his face and chest against the tiles and swaying back and forth. Moaning faintly.
I gripped the handle and eased the door open just the tiniest bit so I could get a clearer look at him. Assess the situation. Use my brain and my education and not jump to any damn conclusions.
My next thought was that he had some kind of massive infection under his skin, like the epically pus-filled humps that Dr. Pimple Popper airs. But my eyes focused a bit more, and I saw that his skin was stretched tight over distorted shoulder blades and bulging ribs that looked like they had separated from his spine in places. Good Christ, how could he stand up and walk with that going on? Whatever was causing this ugly hump was pushing out from far inside him.
Cancer? It had to be cancer. How could it have gotten so bad so quick? It had been only six weeks since I’d seen him last, and he’d been perfectly fine then. What kind of tumor grows that fast?
I stepped away from the shower. Turned to the pile of street clothes he’d haphazardly dumped on the dressing room chair. Looking for clues like maybe a bottle of prescription medications or a clinic wristband or something.
The something I found was a boxy black pistol in a green nylon shoulder holster.
“God damn it,” I whispered. This is a concealed-carry state, but clients are forbidden from bringing firearms into a brothel. Gregory knew that. What was he thinking?
I carefully pulled the pistol free of its holster, holding it gingerly as if it were a dead rat. Just because I hated guns didn’t mean I hadn’t taken time to learn the basics, like whether the safety was on and whether the thing was loaded. Enough of the other girls brought in firearms for self-defense that I figured it would be stupid not to learn enough to protect myself.
It was a Glock 9mm. The safety was on, and the magazine was full.
God damn it.
I left the pistol there and went back to the shower door and slapped the glass with my hand. “Gregory!”
He jerked in surprise and turned away from the corner.
“Savannah, help me,” he moaned.
I backed up as he pushed the stall door open and stumbled out. And couldn’t help gasping because—Jesus Christ, I wouldn’t have recognized him except for St. Michael tattoo on his left pec. His face, chest and arms were painfully gaunt like he was a day or two from starving to death. And his eyes were both mottled black and red from 8-ball hemorrhages.
“What—what’s happened to you?” I stammered.
His face contorted in grief. “This is not my body! This is not the Becoming that God promised me!”
He started weeping. “The other angels are massing in the hills. I— I can hear them. I am called to my mission, but I don’t want it!”
Ah, shit, I thought. He’d had some kind of break from reality, or was delirious, or both. People knew I was running BDSM scenes in her
e; screams wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. My panic button was over on the side of the bed. If I hit it, two very large men with Tasers and mace would be down here in less than a minute. But Gregory looked fragile; an electrical shock might kill him. Better to try to calm him down first and then phone for help.
“Gregory, deep breaths, buddy. Can you tell me what’s happened?”
His expression twisted into a rictus of agony and he went into a half-crouch as though he were having a back spasm. “Oh God! It’s happening. Savannah, I didn’t know where else to go. Help me. I brought a gun … please kill me!”
Fucking hell. “What? No—”
He started screaming and fell to his hands and knees.
That huge, twisted hump on his back was spasming, shuddering. Then the skin above his right scapula split with a spurt of dark blood and something amber and watery, and I realized something was breaking free and clawing out of him.
“Savannah, please ….” He sounded like he could barely breathe.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Frozen like a rabbit. A leathery blade sliced up through the split in the skin, followed by a long finger of bone and a fringe of pale tissue. Then another blade sliced out through the skin on the left side of his back. The sound of bones crunching and skin ripping made bile rise in my throat.
“The gun, please, I won’t be able to stop ….” His voice was changing as he spoke. Deeper. Stronger.
I stopped focusing on the gory confusion of his back and realized that his whole body was altering itself. Bloody teeth drooling out of his gasping mouth. His face rearranging itself into something that didn’t look exactly human anymore. Bones lengthening. Muscles and sinews stretching.
He screamed like a raptor as his wings broke free of the cage of his back. Wings. Holy fuck. They spread seven or eight feet wide, tough membranes stretched tight over thin bones that looked strong as titanium. The air stank of blood and amniotic fluid.
I stumbled backward into the rattling locker as the winged creature Gregory had become rose and towered over me.
“I was bound, though I have not bound,” he intoned, his mouth full of long jagged teeth like you’d see on a deep-sea anglerfish. “I was not recognized. But I have recognized that the All is being dissolved, both the earthly and the heavenly. When a soul has overcome the third power, it goes upwards and sees the fourth power, which takes seven forms. The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of the flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath. And so I ask the chosen soul, Whence do you come, slayer of men?”
“Gregory, I— I don’t understand.” I was suddenly remembering passages about angels in the Bible. They weren’t hot dudes with halos like you see in Renaissance paintings. They always had to tell mortals “Fear not!” because they were fucking terrifying.
“Whence do you come, slayer of men?” He stepped toward me on long legs lightened for flight. “Wilt thou take thine sword? Or wilt thou shirk thy duty?”
The chair with his clothes and the pistol was just a few feet out of reach to my right. “I— I don’t—”
He reached out and touched my forehead with taloned fingers.
Instantly, my mind filled with images of winged, predatory beings like Gregory falling like a curse from God upon men, women, and children across the world. Tearing their skulls open with talons or drilling into their eye sockets with grotesque burred tongues. Devouring their brains, their memories, their very souls.
And in this vision I turned my face to the heavens, and suddenly I could hear the old gods whispering to me from their thrones in the dark spaces between the stars: Follow thy nature, and thou shalt be rewarded.
“We Archivists shall preserve the worthiest souls,” Gregory told me, pulling my mind back to the playroom. “We shall use the blood of this world to write triumphant praises to our ancient lords. Thy duty is to cull the unworthy, so that those inferior souls shall not distract us from our duty.”
The vision had shook me to my very core—I’d seen the wholesale slaughter of the entire human race. Was it happening now? Or was what I’d seen some glimpse of the future? Part of me had accepted that the vision was an absolute truth right up there with rain being wet and the sky being blue. But the rest of me was resisting the inevitable and thinking, Oh hell no.
So I lunged sideways for the gun, flicked the safety off, and unloaded the entire 10-round magazine into Gregory’s chest. It would have taken a very special talent to miss him at that distance. (I didn’t.)
Every bullet I fired into his flesh was nothing short of exhilarating. And when I saw his body crash lifeless to the tiled floor, I came so hard I lost consciousness.
~
I woke in the quarantine wing of the hospital. Guys in suits from the CDC interrogated me about what had happened, and what I remembered. I’ve done enough research on traumatic memory loss to fake it like a champ. After a few hours, I had them convinced that I didn’t remember anything other than sickly-looking Gregory lunging at me when he came out of the shower.
The suits left, and then it was just a matter of waiting. I never did come down with any PVG symptoms despite inhaling a fine mist of Gregory’s blood. Once a week had passed with no symptoms and no change in my viral titer, the hospital released me. Em gave me another week off with pay, which is pretty standard when a courtesan has someone go berserk on her.
Neither she nor anyone else batted an eye when I told them I’m buying a pistol of my own and bringing it to work. Everyone is very sympathetic and understanding. Some folks are telling me to buy three or four. You know, keep one hidden in the playroom, one in my car, one at home, etc.
But it’s not for self-defense. I don’t have anything to fear from those who have Become. As far as they’re all concerned, I’m one of the Chosen, too; they won’t touch me.
I am a Type Five, and I am not alone. We all received our apocalypse assembly instructions without any headaches at all.
Which isn’t to say that this has been free of unpleasant effects. Ever since I woke up in the hospital, it’s been hard to make myself come. And I’ve tried everything: my hands, my Hitachi, dildos, clients, a random hookup with a guy I met on Tinder. And yeah, Tinder guy did make me come, eventually … but only when I slit his throat with a razor after he’d come and was snoring away in the back of his camper van.
It was just as glorious as it was with Gregory. The kind of white-light, ascending-to-the-heavens ecstasy the saints used to sing about. Came so hard I sprained my back.
Fortunately, Tinder guy won’t be missed. And yeah, I know that for sure. I can glance at someone and know whether they’ll Become, or if I must save them for Archiving, or if they’re just a big ol’ waste of time and oxygen for everyone except the slayers of men like me.
The biggest revelation from all this, at least for me personally, isn’t knowing how and why the world will end, and that it will end in another three years at most.
It’s knowing why my father killed himself.
I mean, I thought I knew his reason before. Having read his suicide letter, I knew it wasn’t because he was sorry he’d just slaughtered his own family, because there is not a single shadow of regret in those three pages. I figured that he was too chickenshit to face the cops, the trial, and prison. Death was the easy way out.
But if murder is the purest joy I can find in this world, and if murder is just me following my nature like the old gods say … well, I surely inherited my nature just like I inherited my blonde hair.
So now I know, deep in my bones, that when my father shot my mother between the eyes, he came harder than he ever had when he’d been balls-deep in her pussy. He’d come harder than he ever had with a prostitute or with his own left hand. And when he murdered my little brother and s
ister … maybe he came even harder.
He killed himself because he realized that the neighbors had already heard gunshots and called the cops, and once he was in custody, he’d probably never be able to experience that kind of existence-affirming ecstasy ever again. Thus the angry, embittered tone of his letter.
I could be wrong about that. But it feels right. It’s just more satisfying to think that he died out of a deep, soul-wrenching despair rather than garden-variety cowardice.
~
I saw another Type Five at the grocery store the other day. Nice-looking middle-aged lady. Real grandmotherly type. But we both knew who we really were from the gleams in our eyes. We gave each other a little nod and smile and went on with our shopping.
The old gods still whisper to me in my dreams, but honestly they can all go pound salt. I’m not doing this for them. But if humanity’s doomed, and I know it is, I’m gonna get it while I can.
Paper Doll Hyperplane
R.B. Payne
DEFINITION: PAPER DOLL
A chain of human figures cut from a single piece of paper.
MATHEMATIC PRINCIPLE: HYPERPLANE
“A hyperplane in a larger multi-dimensional vector space is any subspace that is one-dimensional.”
RESEARCH NOTES
POSTULATE: REALITY AS AN N-DIMENSION KNOT
Miscreations Page 19
