by James Newman
“The City,” I told her. “The City has eyes. The city is the snake. Watch out for the snake eyes.”
“And ears,” she said. “Have you been on the Punch?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t like to talk about it?”
“I don’t mind talking about it. I just don’t want to revisit it right now, okay?”
“Okay, no need to be so serious,” Trixie said. “Let me tell you one thing about snakes. I really like them. I love snakes with their long smooth bodies and their sharp little teeth.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“They eat rats, and if there’s one animal I can’t stand, it is the rat. I hate their ratty tails and their ratty little teeth. I hate their rattiness, their rattitude, their ratmosphere repels me!”
“Yes, but we’re all rats, Trixie. The city is a snake and to the snake, all citizens are rats.”
“I hate rats,” she replied. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Right now, they are all down there in the sewers twitching their little tails, rubbing their little paws together, hatching their little ratty plans.”
“Sure, I promise, I won’t mention it again.” I held my life-enhancer device in front of her. She took hers from inside a handbag, rubbed hers against mine, and with an audible bleep, our lives were forever entwined.
The jazz band played oblivious, as all of us were inside the bar, to the shards of dawn climbing up the skyscrapers outside like a spider strangling a dead flower in a disused lot. The sun would win the battle as it always did, the people would scatter away from her rays and shelter in the shade. Office workers would wake up, shit, shave, or not shave, as is now the fashion, attach their false eyelashes, pop on plastic fingernails, as is the fashion, pull up their pin stripes, kiss the mirror, do a little dance and dive into the corporate pond. They would do all this, as they should, but down in the zone things were happening, the lost were finding the way, breathing their second wind, a wind that would blow them along to at least late morning and maybe blow them beyond closing time.
The trombone player walked over to the chocolate Chesterfield. I toyed with the gin fizz, turning over the credits Sloane was no doubt losing by having me follow this wayward woman. The notes swelled and swayed inside the cavernous bar, the cackle of crude laughter, booze-soaked voices swore excitedly as points were made and points were proven, everybody talking and nobody listening. Maybe that was what was mostly wrong with the world. The trombonist combed a sweaty hand through his hair, lowering his body down from the stage. He walked over offering his hand. I shook it and said. “Groovy.”
Trombone player smiled; took it as a compliment. Yeah. He was that sort of trombone player. He took out the copy of On the Road and leafed through it, read a passage, you know, the one about the bathroom window, slipping outside just in time. He put the paperback back into his pocket smiling like the Siamese who caught the sparrow, and then he smiled again.
“This is Joe,” Trixie said. “He’s a stylish thief.”
“Hope you aren’t trying to steal my woman,” he said.
“No man owns a woman, my friend,” I said. He liked that and smiled a wide toothy smile to prove it.
“Why don’t we go downstairs, away from the heat,” he said quickly surveying the bar. “Some of these dudes are giving me the creeps.”
“What do you think, Joe?” Trixie said. “You want to go down?”
“I’d be delighted,” I told her.
THREE
DOWNSTAIRS, THE dungeon was as cold and as empty as a cave. Various torture contraptions filled the room. Center stage was a rack. Trixie strapped herself into the gallows and smiled. “Can you believe people actually get off on this?”
“That and much worse,” I said.
“Come on, how screwed up must your tiny little mind be? Strapping up like a piece of meat at the market?”
“It’s all about give and take,” the trombone player, Blue, smiled. “The Ying and the Yang. Some folks like to give and some of ’em like to take. This kind of set-up just makes it more formal, you dig? Folks know their place in a set up like this.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I dig,” thinking he was onto something. “I read something about it in Metropolis. It’s basically a guy thing. Authority figures, politicians, army types like to get back the pain they inflict inside these kinds of places. Makes you wonder why they have to be so cruel in the first place?”
Trixie stood like a criminal on the gallows. “These places are becoming more popular since the Punch. Seems there’s something rather rewarding about punishment, no?” she struggled mockingly in the rack. “Hit me, hit me, burn me with candle wax, god darn it man, HURT me!”
“I think you’re supposed to get undressed first,” I ventured. I could see it happening, the black skirt hitting the cold floor tiles, that metallic cling of stiletto on marble as she kicked off the boots.
Blue gave me a cautionary glance and I responded by raising my hands up theatrically.
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Not so fast, sailor, we are down here for a reason.”
“Damn right,” Blue said to Trixie. “I think it’s about time for my medicine man routine.”
“Loosen my moorings!” she squealed.
“Sure,” Blue pantomimed the unstrapping of Trixie from the rack, “it’s in my hard case. One of the last legal highs in Fun City, brother, you try the S before?”
“The S?”
“Scopolamine, derived from the nightshade plant. They call it the Devil’s Breath and before ingesting it, a brother needs to ask himself some serious and searching questions. Are you ready to give up free will? Are you ready to pass your freedom over to the Dark Side? Are you prepared to have your memory altered, perhaps forever? These are the questions a brother must ask himself before he picks up on the S. So tell me, Joe, are you ready to get high?”
“I’ve been on the Punch.”
“Well, that’s just dandy, because you see, the S messes with The Punch. All that bullshit they programmed into your noodle will be erased temporarily by the Devil’s Breath. That’s why we here take it. That and the fact that this here S is the last legal high in Fun City, for now at least. Now some of the things that happen tonight might seem strange but when you live in Fun City that’s all part of the trip, right? I mean you have taken psychoactive substances before, right?”
“Sure.”
“Just as well, Joey boy, because this here is the granddaddy of trips. This will BLOW your MIND. You will start by feeling dryness in the mouth. This will be followed by a general displacement of the senses and you will experience a free-floating anxiety. Then with luck, the visions start and you will be seeing and hearing things like you never ever heard or saw before. Trixie, you need to go back upstairs. Backstage in my trombone case, there’s a pocket inside the case. It’s right in there.”
Trixie trotted off upstairs, Blue turned to me. “She’s discovering herself again in Fun City. She made a bad decision when she was younger. She had a rough childhood, follow that up with a rough controlling marriage. You know what I mean, man?”
“Sure.”
“She had to grow up with a terrible secret.”
“Most kids do,” I ventured. “What was hers?”
Before the trombone player had time to blow, Trixie returned. He took out a knife and began sharpening it on a flint. “Good to keep a clean weapon at all times. Say, what did you say your name was?”
“Joe, I told you that before...” I hit voice record on the Whisper2000 clip under my belt.
“Okay, Joe, what you do is you take it, like this, and you cut it down like that. Then we cut into small chunks, and yes, put it next to the fan, we have to dry these out and then it’s in the coffee grinder, and Trixie, you have the caplets?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Okay, we put the powder into the caps and then swallow.”
Trixie sat crossed legged on the floor. “First, I have a st
ory. If we are to all enjoy this scopolamine together we need to be in the same frame of mind, yes?”
“Sounds legit to me,” Blue said.
“Shoot,” I said.
“There are four boys, school boys, dirty, horrible little school boys who are out mucking around one day when they find this beautiful butterfly in the woods next to their school. They tie a piece of string to the butterfly and make it perform tricks, circles in the air. They like the butterfly, but then they get bored. One boy tears off one wing and another boy rips off the other. They hold it down under a magnifying glass and burn parts on the creature in the mid-afternoon sun. Then their stomachs rumble and they run to get lunch. One of the boys runs back to the butterfly and hides it under some leaves. That summer and the rest of that year the butterfly grew back its wings and the year after, it flew high above the school. It saw the little dots that were the bad boys who had made the butterfly stronger. But it didn’t care, for it was a bigger and much more beautiful butterfly now and it could go wherever it wanted and they couldn’t because they were stuck on the ground. Now, let’s swallow.”
FOUR
SWALLOW WE did.
“I feel like a cat with a hair ball in my throat”
“Shouldn’t the caplets have taken care of that?”
“No, no, my mouth feels dry, like I can’t swallow.”
“Wait,” The trombonist said, raising his left hand in a Native American peace gesture. “It’s working.”
And it was.
The room danced as we waited for the next wave. The rack and an isolation box and a range of whips, paddles and gags hanging from hooks, inanimate objects buzzed with innate static. The room breathed. Trixie picked up a metallic object that reminded me vaguely of a cheese grater. She brandished it above the trombone player, smiling at her work. Her smile seemed to fill every nook and cranny of the room.
The houseplant swayed side to side talking about conceptual art as the room turned undersea green and the trombonist was down on his hands and knees impersonating a Pekinese. The temperature rose. Trixie broke out a box of crayons and began drawing spiraling spiders on a piece of ratty A3. I looked closer at her lost world to see a long-legged beast with fangs dripping with blood, behind the spider spirals, Aztec designs swirled with menacing intent. The picture breathed, you dig, breathed, up and down, in and out, the images growing in size before reducing back down as that benevolently smiling spider smiled. Then I realized the spider was Blue, then Sloane, then Jimmy.
The set began to change as follows:
Trixie whipped by Blue in a black devils mask.
Trixie locked in a box.
Trixie on the gallows.
Trixie’s leather boot painting imaginary lines on Blue’s tense captivated face.
Trixie.
Trixie.
The Fear hit.
You ever have The Fear? Ever come down from a three-day session and suddenly, reality wraps her warped fingers around you with the cold disappointment of earthly responsibility? I’d been in that dungeon maybe an hour or maybe a week. I couldn’t honesty tell you how long I was down there, dark when I arrived and dark when I left. What was once real is no longer considerable. Dreams are the true reality and our dream mind sends out our awkward bodies each day to gather information for the next dream, and that’s what makes The Fear so real.
Nevertheless, I had a job to do, Fear or no. Managed to shoot a few shots with the Red-eye clip, so evidence I had. The two of them tripping in a sex dungeon should wrap the case. Stood on shaky legs and got out of the room, brushed into the Red Zone, the walls alive with Van Gogh intensity. Didn’t say goodbye, speech attribute lost somewhere back in the dungeon. Took the stairs, the sound of the jazz band, muted conversations, and the flicker of a cigarette lighter. A primitive fear of fire somehow comforted me; I am what I am what I am. The Punch stripped away your preconceptions, yanked you out from the safety of the known world, and dragged your soul kicking and screaming into another world where you were subjected to sensory, emotional, and cognitive deprivation. Punch survivors took hallucinogens in an effort to claim back some of their past. Some took hallucinogens in torture chambers.
Buildings transfigured into flowers, white, curved buildings. Strangers harbored evil thoughts and worse intentions and to be alone was to be safe. The Eyes looked down onto the streets. Hallucinogens feed from a sense of community not isolation, loyalty not deceit, paranoia bred paranoia as I swam down that tired old suspicious river with not a paddle nor clue into the abyss.
I am what I am what I am.
Before I knew which way was west, the flower really took hold.
The Punch.
How they had found me once, took me apart, put me back together and let me go.
My thoughts turned to Jimmy.
I was in trouble.
FIVE
JIMMY TESTED the Glock by firing it into the night. A cheer broke out as the mob surged forward towards the perimeter fence. They were three hundred in number and pressing towards a line of armed police. Some of The Resistance aimed at the Eyes, firing their weapons at the cameras. Others shot straight ahead at the line of armed officers standing behind armored shields awaiting the order to open fire.
Order given, shots rained horizontally. Jimmy felt a slug graze his shoulder, fell into a roll and sought cover in one of the tunnels. His heart hammered as he stood and took flight further, deeper into the City. An unmanned food cart provided shelter. Jimmy twisted around and gazed back to The Resistance pressing against the perimeter fence.
Icy panic rushed through his veins as he surveyed the scene. A battalion of Fun Police had emerged from either side holding The Resistance in a classic pincher maneuver, closing in quickly from each side. The Resistance had nowhere to go but into the jaws of the armed police. Some made for the perimeter fence and tried to scale it before succumbing to the firepower. Earlier in the day, one of the tech kids had deactivated the electric pulse running through the gates and the fence, but Jimmy figured it’d only be a matter of time before it was functioning again and they’d all be fried.
Shots filled the air, blood-curdling screams and yelps of joy from the FP. He watched one FP grab a young man who had been floored in the crush. He held the youth by the hair, lifted his head up, and emptied his police issue into his mouth, spraying brain matter into the purple night sky.
Two officers brutally tore the clothes from one young woman and took her right there in the street. The grey uniforms closed in and swallowed the mob with brutal, tactical precision.
He felt foolish heading back into the heart of the city, but not to do so was surly to die.
Jimmy had nowhere else to go but deeper into Fun City.
Towards Dylan’s office.
SIX
RAIN FELL heavily before settling in iridescent oily puddles, as I walked on past a ragged man rolling along the tunnel smiling, his teeth catching a sudden shard of neon, his trousers completely tailored from the plastic bags tendered by convenience stores and left to rot on the streets. Never look down on the street man, for all of us are closer to him than we like to think. Especially, if we’re under the influence of a mind control drug, and our feet, not having any other choice, are taking us to the liquor store.
The liquor store man looked up at me like an old poacher examining his quarry. “Sounds like your boy Jimmy is making the scene?”
“What?”
“Listen,” he turned up his life-enhancer device, model 96F, designed to look like an old transistor radio, the unit sitting on the shelf behind the bar blasting out simulated static and white noise, he tuned it to the broadcast: guns firing, small explosions, screams of joy and panic. “Quite the little firework party they have going down. The Resistance is trying to break down the perimeter fence again.”
I made certain not to make eye contact as he drained five credits from my card. “Jimmy is dead,” I told him, remembering the certificate and the visit from immigration.
&nb
sp; “Well, you should know,” the storekeeper smiled, “you being the detective and all.”
Made it to the office, unscrewed the lid off the bottle of poison, poured seven fingers in a pint glass, and added the ice. The letter sent from immigration, Jimmy’s death certificate, I turned over the sequence of events that led to his disappearance. The blackout of communication was followed by the rumors of resistance involvement. A search of the city brought up no sign. The visit from immigration, and the signed death certificate sealed the deal.
Watched the credits drain into the glass.
The rats hadn’t taken the bait.
But I had.
Jimmy had run with the wrong firm all his life. I’d thought he was settled here, but he had slipped into bad habits again, and I wasn’t as close as I could have been. Jimmy had hovered close to zero credits, associated with the Punch Resistance. The night of the first Push I lay here listening to the sounds of fighting in the streets, not knowing where Jimmy was, whether the tunnels below the city were as expansive as the stories had told us, if they even existed, how The Resistance came about, and if it had the ability to break Fun City.
I switched on the ceiling fan and listened to it grind. Rattle and hum, rattle and hum, cough and splutter, and after the Tiger Sweat went down, it sounded like Beethoven’s fifth. I tapped my life-enhancer onto the reader and sadly chuckled, realizing for perhaps the first time that value is subjective, arbitrary, nonsense; I’d dropped below a hundred. I switched on the wireless. The Resistance had been contained and reduced in numbers, some had been eliminated on the streets, and the others had been driven back underground.
The credits were worth both nothing and everything, not solid objects that weighed the carrier down like coins these were just digits on a screen. When will the city realize that by placing a value on human behavior we are engineering a city of actors and pretenders? No good deed goes unnoticed and no bad one goes unpunished. Is this what people lived, died, killed, and fought for?
Validation?
Time was equally unquantifiable as minutes stretched to hours counting down towards what? Time rewarded credits for pretending to be someone who you are not. Isn’t the time you spend pretending to be someone else not your own time?
