Furies- Thus Spoke

by O'Brian Gunn

  “And you shouldn’t.” The man in the tank top uncurls his hands and shows his palms. “Gotta start makin’ examples, show these cats that Wayne King don’t play.”

  “Das right, man, das right.” Wayne nods his head. “Where we at?”

  The man in the tank top jerks his head at the activity behind them. “Gettin’ another re-up ready for the south side. Plannin’ a sell with Magnet.” He scratches the back of his shoulder. “Hate dealin’ with that cat.”

  Wayne sits down next to him, wrists dangling over his spread knees. “Why?”

  “Cuz he’s weird as shit. Dude comes to the meet with a fedora cocked to the side wit some faggot ass feather stickin’ out.”

  Wayne’s knees bob. “Mag digs those film noir flicks. Tryin’ to bring dat ol’ skool style back.”

  The man in the tank top scrunches his eyes together, a mass of wrinkles creasing his forehead. “The fuck is film nur?”

  “Film noir, mutha fucka, film noir.” He stares at him, hisses between his teeth. “You fresh lil’ homies don’t know nothin’.”

  “Well, break it down.”

  “A’ight, look, film noir is a style of movie dey made back in—”

  c r e a a a k

  “The hell was that?” Wayne and the man in the tank top turn to look on the other side of the couch. The young woman with the ponytail looks up at the ceiling.

  “De hell was what?”

  “Shh.”

  The man in the tank top glares at her. “Man, I know this lil’ bitch didn’t just shu—”

  c r r e a k

  “Heard it dat time.” Wayne stands and looks up at the ceiling.

  Everyone in the house does the same.

  “Think it’s rats?”

  “We got ridda the Mickey Mouse club last week.”

  “Then what the fuc—”

  Four crude lines scour through the ceiling. Eve—RIIP!—ry hand scra—RIIP!—mbles for a—RIIP!—weapon. The claw marks form a rough square. Then, the ceiling cutout suddenly explodes down on them, showering them in wood, paint chips, and bent nails. Noir bursts out from the jagged hole upside down, claws bared, before flipping his body and landing on his feet in a crouch. He smirks as dust and debris kiss his shoulders and the top of his shaved head, swirling around him. “I’m the fuck.”

  The man next to him lunges for one of the guns on the far table. Noir quick steps to him, grabs him by the wrist and yanks his arm back and up before slashing his hooked claws out once, twice where the man’s arm connects to his shoulder. His claws scrape through bone and muscle with vicious ease. The man’s arm suddenly comes free in shreds and threads of tendon and flesh as the man stumbles backward, catching himself on his remaining hand. Noir roughly boots him in the side of the head.

  The man in the tank top takes up the crowbar at his feet and starts swinging. It makes Noir laugh as he dodges left and right in the steps of a familiar routine. “Did this number just last week, ’cept my partner was a much better dancer.” He quick ducks. “Like to do these little spins on the balls—” He pistons a fist into the man’s groin, forcing a hoarse groan between tight lips as the man brings his knees and thighs together. “—of his feet.” He absently shoots a kick back at the woman rushing him from behind before swiping his claws at the man’s throat. Blood squirts and blurts from the severed artery in his neck.

  He spins on the stumbling woman just in time to see her yank a blade from her waist. She thrusts. Noir jerks his head back and the tip of the blade scratches a line across his cheek. She jabs low, starts to slash high. Noir captures her wrist as it’s in motion before twisting it while cranking it out at her side at an agonizing angle, feeling bones grind together. He presses his claws into her wrist, forcing the blade from numbed fingers. He flings her into Wayne just as he raises his gun. They go down in a thrash of limbs.

  B L A M !

  A shot rings out behind him and the bullet thunks into the wall.

  B L A M !

  The spot where Noir stood just a split second before.

  B L A M !

  Noir vaults over the back of the couch, body parallel to the ground, and brings his knees up to his chest before launching them out into a brutal missile kick. The gunner wearing a backwards baseball cap is flung back on top of the table, crushing a bagged eight ball and reducing a brick to powder. Noir rolls off of the couch and fetches him up by the shirt and heaves him over the couch.

  Wayne and the woman are on their feet, standing next to each other.

  Noir takes two quick steps before jumping up into the air, planting his left foot on the back of the couch and slashing his right leg out. W H A M ! His boot lashes out at the woman’s face, cracking across her cheek, but she doesn’t fall. Noir’s body is spinning in the air. His other le flashes out. W H O O M ! Wayne takes a sole to the head. Noir brings his right foot up as he comes down, dropping it solidly on the gunner’s neck as gravity calls him back.

  C R A C K !

  He buries a clawed hand in the woman’s soft stomach, forcing her mouth open and her muscles to constrict reflexively around the hand twining through her entrails.

  B L A M !

  The passing bullet gnaws across his right ear with a burning bite. He withdraws bloody fingers from intestines and slaps the gun from Wayne’s hand. He dives for the falling gun as Wayne reaches for the second gun at his back.

  Time swims languid like syrup.

  A hand snatches a gun from the crank-dusted floor. A hand wraps around the grip of a gun tucked into a waistband. A shoulder hits the floor and the body twists. An arm whips out along with a gun barrel, aiming.

  Time slams back like a concussion.

  Noir stares up into the barrel of a gun as Wayne looks down into one. The—

  BLAM

  Wayne looks confused. Noir breathes evenly. Wayne’s eyes roll up at the neat bullet hole blown through his bandana. The puzzle comes together in his eyes, ears flicking as a bit of brain leaks out from the messy hole in the back of his head. He collapses forward with a loud thump.

  Noir collapses on his back as blood pulses through his veins. In his veins.

  Wayne’s veins give a final surge, leaking blood from the hole in the back of his skull.

  As Noir stands, he puts a hand to his grazed ear. “Hijo de puta!” He snatches up a bandana on the back of an overturned chair, wads it up, and presses it to his ear. He scans the bodies, making sure all of them are expired, and the TV snatches his attention. He searches for the remote and thumbs the MUTE button.

  “—ered us a reality show just last week.” Charles Johnson shrugs. “I don’t know if we’re going to take it, it’s still on the table.”

  “All I have to say is wow.” The blonde talk show hostess laughs. “Well, if you do accept, you’d not only be the first Alpha-Omegas to have their own reality show, you’d be the first American Alpha-Omega family to have a TV show. No pressure or anything!”

  “As long as it doesn’t interfere with the family or our business, it’s definitely something we would consider.” Anita Johnson removes a strand of hair from her eyes. “This is a chance some people never have but many deserve, and we feel that it’s our duty to—”

  Noir scoffs. “Someone should do me a favor and kill them.” He looks down and remembers that he has a gun in his hand. He raises it and pulls the trigger. The TV gives a dying snap, crackle, and pop accompanied by a small burst of sparks spouting out of the bullet hole.

  Noir taps the barrel against his thigh as he turns and leaves.

  Several handfuls of several seconds pass.

  He comes back, stomps over to the table resting on three legs, and snatches up a gym bag bulging with tight rolls of money wrapped almost lovingly in rubber bands. The door creaks as it closes behind him for the final time.

  Someone steps out of the room behind the TV. The glaring light makes a pair of pristine shoes shine as they walk across the blood-blessed floor. The bullet that killed the TV has buried itself in t
heir chest, but they don’t seem to notice it.

  Fingers, fine-boned and delicate, slip into the side pockets of designer slacks. The person stops and studies the tableau. They then bend down and touch Wayne King’s cooling wrist. Death courses from one corpse into another. The bullet is pushed out with a pling, flesh healing beautifully around the wound. They look down at the hole in the silk shirt.

  Giorgio studies the opening and frowns.

  Fiery reds interspersed with dramatic golden hues suffused with dashes of white. In the corner a single blob of blue rests solemnly, looking up at the racing streaks of green and brown with envy.

  “Isn’t it prosaic?”

  Leo clasps his hands and rubs his knuckles. “Isn’t art supposed to burst with imagination and creativity?” He swallows the large lump in his throat.

  The tall woman at his side looks at him, glossy black banana curls atop her head swinging and bouncing mightily. “Yes, but the lack of spirit is a testament to art itself. The candid quality doesn’t immediately assault your eye. You spend hours looking at it, wondering what the artist is trying to say until...you finally figure out that there’s nothing to hear.”

  Leo shakes his head. “All I see are colors and shapes strewn together on a canvas, Addie.”

  “You see through the eyes of a scientist.” Addie steps behind him and grips him by the shoulders, her mouth at his left ear. “We all think ourselves as fools to art, afraid that the artist’s true message isn’t the one we leave with. The truth is that the message is what you see, with your own eyes.” Her hands leave his shoulders, her mouth his ear. “Now, Leo, I have a phone conference. Mr. Morente should be here in a little while to pick up the Vusay, it’s all ready for him in the receiving room.” She throws him a smile. “Why don’t you idle here for a moment and see if anything speaks to you, hmm?”

  He nods.

  “Wonderful.” She breezes off.

  Leo walks over to a sculpture wrought from wood and iron. He steps back to take it all in. His chest rises and falls in a low breath.

  “Don’t think Addie was being literal when she said the art would speak to you.”

  Leo turns to find an older man in a jumpsuit slightly slumped over pushing a mop and bucket across the floor. He scratches at the rough stubble across his hollow cheeks, adjusts the frayed cap on his head. “What’s your name?”

  “Leo.”

  “Clint. I’m the janitor.” He squeezes water from the mop. “As you can tell.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Clint goes about mopping the floor. “So who are you, Leo?”

  He looks away from the sculpture. “Sorry?”

  Clint stops mopping, stretches up to his full height, and dramatically widens his eyes. “Who. Are. You. Leo?” He grossly over exaggerates each word. “What. Did. You. Do. Before. You. Worked. Here?” His eyebrows reach for the sky, neck stretched out as he gives a limpid little smile.

  “Oh, I was a, uh, I was a biochemist.”

  “Biochemist?” He pops his head back. “Don’t they make good money?”

  “Yes, we, uh, we do.” He slides back a step.

  “The hell you doing working here, then? Mix the wrong chemicals and blow the place to hell?” A jittery little guffaw twitters past his dry lips.

  “No, I’m just figuring some things out.” He tries to go back to the art.

  “Hmph. I heard that before.” He slaps the wet mop on the floor. “Said the same thing when I quit my job with NASA.” A shrug. “Somehow, cleaning up little kid vomit and buffing floors is so much more satisfying than pulling down six figures.”

  Leo glances at him, but says nothing.

  “Hear anything yet?” Swish. Swoosh. Swish.

  “Actually looking more than I’m listening.” His lips barely move around the words.

  “Ain’t gotta be a smartass.” He looks up from the wet floor. “Someone could dab a single dot of paint on a canvas and sell it for a cool million.” He dunks the mop in steaming water. “Have folks in those little hats, you know, the ones with the little stems, have them all in a tizzy trying to figure out what it represents.”

  “Berets.” He doesn’t look away from the sculpture.

  Clint stops mopping and starts staring. “Wha?”

  “Those little hats with the stems you were talking about, they’re called berets.”

  A side of his mouth wrinkles. “Well, you are a smart little whip. Still don’t explain why you working here.” Mopping calls his attention.

  “I told you I’m—”

  A dismissive wave. “Yeah, yeah, son, save it. Just mopped this floor, don’t need your hogwash all over it.”

  Leo looks at him. “And why are you here?”

  A genuine chuckle. “Told you, got tired of working with NASA.”

  Radio show excerpt:

  “Thanks for calling, you are on the air. Who’s this?”

  “This is Noa, from Phosphorous Park.”

  “All right, Noa from Phosphorous Park, speak your piece.”

  “I think that the Johnsons should stop what they’re doing and make an honest living like the rest of us.”

  “So you don’t think that they should be making people happy?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that it’s dumb to charge someone for something that they can get for free, and it’s even dumber to pay for it.”

  “You don’t think people should have the option of being happy and satisfied without having to pop a pill or going to therapy?”

  “No no no no! In those cases, the person needs to figure out why they’re unhappy in the first place. We’ve become so accustomed to a quick fix and it sucks, it really does. I don’t have anything against Alpha-Omegas, my girlfriend’s one, but I do have something against exploitation. The Johnsons, this so-called normal American family, are just using us to look like the Jesus Christ family.”

  “I see.”

  “And after watching my man Lamar Koehler last night, I looked into what he was talking about, about how several of their former patients have snapped. The man is on to something. Many of their patients, clients or whatever, are wearing crazy coats now, babbling and foaming at the mouth with huge drooling smiles on their faces.”

  “That could be a completely unrelated circumstance, Noa. Maybe complete happiness wasn’t what they really wanted at all and they couldn’t handle it.”

  “I’m sorry, man, but that doesn’t make sense to me. When was the last time you weren’t happy with being happy? I’m not disagreeing with you that being happy isn’t nice, just that it doesn’t solve all of the problems in the world.”

  “But it doesn’t hurt.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Who knows why some of those people committed suicide, Noa? Maybe they were in a rush to see what the afterlife is like. Some people commit suicide on accident. I know I wish some people would kill themselves just so I wouldn’t have to put up with them anymore!”

  “And maybe the Johnsons are giving these people pure satisfaction, but I don’t think life is meant to be lived like that. You can’t—no, you shouldn’t be happy all of the time.”

  “And why not, Noa?”

  “You just shouldn’t, man. Can you imagine how weird it would be if everywhere you looked all you saw were people smiling and laughing?”

  “Brings a nice image to mind.”

  “It shouldn’t. We’re human; we were given all of these different feelings, all these different muscles in our faces, muscles that were meant to convey a whole lot of emotions and expressions.”

  “But you have to remember that the Johnsons aren’t human, not in the conventional sense, at least.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sure they still remember what it’s like to be human. They weren’t born Alpha-Omegas...okay, so they were, but they didn’t know what they would become until a few months ago.”

  “So what do you think we should do about them?”

  “I don’t know, but we n
eed to do it fast, man, need to do it fast.”

  “I’mhappyI’mhappyI’mhappyOhI’msohappysohappysohappysohappyhappyhappy.”

  Beady brown eyes dart here and there on the other side of the metal door, white paint flaking and peeling around the bars on the windows.

  “How long has he been like this?” The young woman slides trembling fingers down her folded arms, trying her best to hide the tears in her eyes.

  The woman in the white coat glances down at the clipboard. “Since about five o’clock this morning. We’ve done tests on him and he seems to be fine except for above-normal levels of serotonin and dopamine in his system.”

  “So the only thing that’s wrong with my grandfather is that he’s obscenely happy?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  The granddaughter touches fingers to her lips. “I’ve been hearing about what that A-O family does, but I was hoping it was some kind of publicity stunt.” She looks in the small square window. Her grandfather looks back.

  “I’m happy, Lisa! I’m happy!”

  “Yes, grandfather, I know, you’re crazy happy.” She gives a forced reassuring grin. “Is he in any danger?” They take a few steps away from the door.

  “His body can’t keep up with the chemical demands of what they’ve done to him. We’ve tried sedating him in an attempt to get his brain to slow down producing the chemicals, but it doesn’t work.”

  “Will he...” She swallows. “Will he make it?”

  The doctor taps the clipboard against her thigh. “If we can’t figure out something soon, it could lead to permanent brain damage.”

  “I guess being happy for the rest of his life won’t be the worst thing.”

  “Not to him at least.”

  “How many other patients in here are former clients of the Johnsons?”

  “We’ve admitted eight over the past two days.”