Moral Zero

by Set Sytes

  The voices eventually trailed off and then ceased. The three were quiet for a moment.

  Johnny Black eventually stood up. You two need your heads sorting out. Get help before it’s too late for the rest of us. He shook his head and walked off.

  Kidd Red grinned awkwardly at Mr White and scratched his hair like a dog going for fleas.

  Fun. Another drink?

  Yeah, smiled Mr White. Whiskey.

  Red winked and beckoned the bartender over and called for two glasses. He watched her plump rear as she poured the amber liquid, swilling it down onto ice like spiced piss on a glacier. Her buttocks quivered a little, as if feeling the weight of his gaze.

  Red unconsciously licked dry lips then turned away from the woman as he realised what he must look like. You should try me when I’m on hallucinogenics, he said in a serious tone to Mr White. It’s fuckin crazy man. I’m seeing new textures, new colours, seein in new dimensions, new senses, new concepts unimaginable before, everthin goin at shutter speed like maybe how a fly sees things I dunno. I’m talkin just . . . ah fuck, it’s impossible to describe. I feel like a goddamn genius though when I’m on it. Fuckin staggerin.

  I bet.

  Red tossed some coins on the bar and took his drink for a sip, whilst looking conspicuously at the bartender’s cleavage as she took the money. Do you think other people can do what we do? He took another sip as the woman walked away.

  How do you mean?

  Our mind jumpin. All the crazy thoughts.

  I think anyone can probably do it. They just . . . don’t.

  Red sniffed. Can’t would have been better.

  I know.

  Johnny was back and leaning close, ushering them in by some invisible force that craned their bodies together. The three of them in that cloud of smoke and between them they smelt like sex and death and loneliness. His husky words fell upon them and whether they agreed or disagreed they listened and no matter what was said part of them understood and felt bowed. In each of their heads they saw things to come and things that could never be.

  There’s a sociopath inside everyone, he said. Everyone. Every single man and woman and all of them in between.

  Not inside me there ain’t.

  Yes there is Red. There’s hot fucking murder in your breast I can tell you that. It’s inside the most saintly of us, so it’s sure as hell inside you. You don’t need to have a killer’s heart to have it, cause killing ain’t in the heart. It’s somewhere else, somewhere deeper. It’s just waiting. You see, the body ain’t as shallow as we think. You think you can go in one side and come out the other a second later, like it’s all that you see, but it ain’t. If you travel on the right wave, you will journey for a long, long fucking time. It’s some half of eternity in there, don’t get me wrong. Now I’m not saying there’s all manner of endless sights to see, cause there ain’t. Nearly all of it is wasteland. Total barren desert, not even that, far as the eyes can see and then some. If you’re lucky or you know the way your path will cross with some place of detail. Maybe a shack, a hamlet, an oasis, maybe even a city. That’s where things are kept, things that make you you. And then it’s back to the wasteland. That’s you too, but it’s the absence of things. The things men can’t fill. And you go on and on, further and deeper, and god knows when you last saw anything but nothing. Finally though, you come to a hollowed out basin, and in the basin a pit, a hole. It’s there in each of us. It looks like a mine or a well but there’s no bucket and no structure, just the hole going down into blackness. It’s too far to go, way too far. But if you somehow reached that bottom, in a place darker than darkness, where light and seeing things are just the ideas of the mad, you’d hear the growling, the snorting and snuffling and the scratching and shuffling, and the drips of saliva hitting the cave floor. And you’d know you’d be in the presence of it. Embodied death. Personified sickness. A grotesquery. The sociopath in you.

  Mr White was staring at Johnny with wide, childlike eyes but Red, pretending to only be listening semi-attentively, now sighed. I’m sure there is a point comin, somewhere.

  Shut up, shut up and listen, growled Johnny.

  Red sighed again and laid his head in his arms on the table. But he listened.

  Coming down this well are two lines, and they come from way up, above the sky, above everything. These lines to some are string, or rope, or stalk, or vines or veins, but not like any of that sort you ever seen before. They hang down, but stop a long way short of the floor, far out of reach of that grotesque. For some. For a time. One of the ropes is red. The other is black.

  How handy, colour-coded, Red murmured from his arms.

  And, depending on the person, Johnny continued, ignoring Red, They are very different lengths. In the vast majority of people the red one is much longer, hanging down closer to the reach of that monster. It’s all twisted and scarred and sticky with blood and in it you can find pieces of bone meal. It pulsates with an irregular beat. The red vine symbolises passion, leading to crimes of passion. These can be most things, even pre-meditated. They may be symptomatic of revenge, vengeance against those who have wronged you directly or indirectly. They are characterised by a tempest of emotion, such as anger, hate and lust. Frustration. Impotence. All those symptoms and events that lead you closer to that final effect, or multitude of effects – each of them lengthens the vine, or lowers it from above. Every temptation, every time someone pushed you, angered you, done you wrong. The vein gets longer. It twists down like it’s alive. Perhaps it is. Things keep going wrong, then that thing down there can jump up and grab it. And then, claws hooked in and snarling and frothing, it climbs . . .

  Then there’s the black rope. This is sharp and dull. It looks dead, like tangled black hair. Less vicious looking than the red one, but you don’t want to go near that one. You don’t want it reaching the bottom.

  What is it? asked Mr White breathlessly.

  Johnny looked him hard in the eye. Disconnection, he said. It’s disconnection, dissociation, plain and simple. Detachment from the world. It ain’t an easy thing to tell anyone, they got to know it for themselves. Else they look at you strange, or get all psychoanalytical on you, like you’re some science project. Some people are more prone to the black vein. It trails down, fed by things like isolation, disillusion, apathy and depression – I mean real fucking nothingness depression, deep philosophy and overthinking, misanthropy, confinement, solitary existence. Lack of distraction. Lack of love, lack of hope, lack of joy. All of them feeding into each other. Too much virtual reality, maybe. Perhaps trauma, tragedy or abuse somewhere, they too can jump the black down. They are not necessary, but they sure help. It creates numbness. Maybe there’s nought but unflinching rationality driving the descent. But once that black goes a-lowering, whatever takes it, it’s real hard to raise it back up. And the effects, once that creature climbs, can be much more horrific than the ascent of the red. There are no innocents.

  You done? Red lifted his head up with a wry smile.

  You’re a man of unbridled passion, Johnny replied. You’ve got a lonnnng red vein. Hell, that creature is bouncing and leaping up trying to snag his teeth and claws in that dangling thing.

  Red curled his lip and looked down, and then looked back up and rolled his eyes. Red for red, black for black too I bet. How goddamn convenient.

  Yes, I am on the black. There ain’t nothing convenient about it. I know I don’t have a red line.

  Red sat up and raised his hands. Whoa now, fuck off. Yeah you do. If we all got these ropes or vines or whatever the hell they are, then so do you. You ain’t special.

  Johnny smiled. I got the black. That’s enough.

  No no no no. Your red may be a bit shorter than mine but it’s there. Hell, I know I could make you snap.

  Johnny chuckled. Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll just advise you don’t try and make Mr White snap.

  Red turned to Mr White quizzically. Him?

  He’s got the longest of both lines. Maybe they’re
all tangled up together, just the one red and black line. He’s the most dangerous person I know.

  Fuck off.

  Johnny leaned in to Mr White and spoke softly. What do you think about all this?

  Mr White wasn’t making eye contact with anybody. He was looking down at the floor and had been for a while. I think . . . I think . . . I think it makes sense. He swallowed. I can get the idea of being pushed too far . . . and of losing connection. It’s confusing. I don’t know, I just feel I get it. It’s similar to things I’ve thought myself.

  Keep talking.

  Um. Sometimes, like when I’ve had too much time to myself, things feel more distant. I feel more distant. Things feel kind of alien. I start to question things, just lightly at first, hypothetically. A wry amusement. Questioning reality, I mean. Um. People sometimes feel like, like just characters. And then like cardboard cut-outs. When I walk the streets . . . I’ve felt a lack of . . . integration. As though sometimes I’m the only real thing and I’ve just been dropped here to see how I’ll react. Like a test. An experiment. Sometimes there’s a temptation to break the system. I guess. I don’t know. It’s like you said, you can’t really explain it unless you’re already like that. But I get it.

  Johnny turned to Red and raised his eyebrows, jabbing his finger at Mr White. This. This is why he’s the most dangerous.

  Red looked confused, then just muttered fuck, and left it at that.

  Sometimes it feels like I’m just stuck in some kind of game, Mr White said softly.

  Black closed his eyes and Red stood up, swearing again and this time loudly, but it was drowned out by a piercing siren, some kind of alarm.

  Mr White looked about confused, and saw all the others in the bar staring at them, some of them stood up. None of them had a kind expression.

  What’s going on?! he cried, wringing his hands.

  For fuck’s sake get a grip! Red yelled over the sound. Don’t fuck up like that!

  Johnny grabbed Red by the collar. Get a grip yourself, he growled in his ear. You’re fucking up in a whole nother way.

  What’s going on? Mr White shouted again, just as the siren abruptly ended, and his words seemed to echo in the sudden emptiness, thrown out into the silent world.

  Sit back down. Both of you, said Johnny quietly from his seat, as the other patrons of the bar got back to theirs and returned to their own business. It was an alarm, White. Like in Ten, remember? That was Red’s fuckup. Remember what you read and calm down. But we ain’t gonna talk about it, not now and not later. So let’s just drink our drinks and go on as normal, alright?

  Red sniffed and slumped back in his seat, downing his drink and hammering it back on the bar. Mr White made to protest but a glare from Johnny made him sit down himself, his brow furrowed and his eyes flicking about as he worked through things in his head.

  God in Hell, we’ll be the death of each other, Johnny scowled.

  Here’s hopin, Red said, and burped.

  STREET

  The night clustered around them, cruel and cold. They were outside another bar and Mr White was trembling, but he didn’t know if it was from cold or something else.

  Beside them Red was vomiting, torrid sick pouring and dribbling out of his mouth like he was under some ectoplasmic possession. It splashed on the pavement under him with a sound like the slapping of wet cloth and in the moments when nothing was forthcoming he filled the silence with demonic, animal retching.

  Will he be okay? Mr White glanced at Red, concerned. I don’t know what he took tonight. I can’t keep track of him.

  I’m sure he’s a professional, said Johnny dryly. Ain’t you Kidd?

  Red replied with another retch, cacophonous and guttural, a nightmare plea pulled from the belly of a dying animal.

  He says yes.

  We should get back to the hotel. Mr White walked over to Red and patted him ineffectually on the back.

  Go, said Johnny. I’ll go my way.

  Should we arrange a time to meet up?

  I’ll find you. Tomorrow.

  Mr White looked at Red and hesitated. Perhaps I should wait until he’s in a bit of a better state.

  Has he ever been in a better state?

  You can go though.

  I will stay.

  They stayed, saying nothing. Looking out into the night. Watching the patrons of the bar exit and walk off. Some looked in disgust at Red. Within ten minutes the bar had emptied and closed its doors.

  Mr White watched Johnny as he watched a woman walk on the pavement opposite them, past them. She was not from the bar. She held her head high and walked with a strong, confident gait. Her hair was in a tight ponytail and she was dressed in a leather jacket and faded black jeans. She was not particularly attractive but there was a certain intensity to her gaze, which lay fixed on the path ahead of her. An intensity beaten by Johnny’s dark, fierce gaze. He watched her coolly like a predator. Unblinking. His cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, leaking smoke. Mr White watched Johnny as he watched the woman walk. Her gait. The set of her jaw. Her character. Her soul.

  What’s wrong? whispered Mr White quietly, tentatively.

  Ssh. The noise hissed out through his teeth, around the cigarette, and for a second the cigarette flared bright and bloody and the smoke blew forward.

  The woman turned a corner and disappeared out of sight. Johnny watched the corner. Seconds passed. Each one throbbed like it was the drum of the world. And then Johnny started walking. His long legs were measured, purposeful in their stride. He didn’t look to the side. He didn’t look behind him. Mr White watched as Johnny turned the same corner and he too was out of sight, and he had not said anything, had let him go.

  Seconds passed. The drum beat harder. Mr White shivered, and realised that Red had stopped being sick. He looked down and saw he had disappeared, had left his foul exorcism behind as though some reminder of the past, of a presence vanished. It looked to Mr White in that thin, gleaming streetlight like a signal, a warning. Some oblique pattern left by the sick and the damned and decipherable only by the sick and the damned. The streetlight flickered and buzzed and for a fracture of a second it was cast into shadow. With the light back, the foulness of the body remained but the soul behind it was still gone.

  Mr White rubbed his arms. He was alone. He moved forward, jerkily, as though some puppet on a stage. He stopped. He moved again. He shuffled towards the corner self-consciously, took a deep breath, and then turned it.

  Nothing. A dead street. The backs of disused warehouse clubs and closed gun shops. Corrugated iron fences protecting nothing. Things never finished, empty and unfurnished with great holes yawning in their structure. Further up, squat, faceless buildings with bricks cloaked black. It seemed as though they were looming out from ahead, clustering into his perspective and trying to close the gap of light where the backstreet came out on a wider road.

  He continued walking forward. He was halfway down the street when he heard a noise. It was repeating itself, occasionally changing tone but it was murky, unclear. It sounded like the echo of some exotic bird or some repetitive children’s toy with the volume turned down. It was wordless. In the daytime it might have sounded comical, here it sounded terrifying. Mr White had stopped dead. He did not want to move on and he did not want to turn his back on such a noise.

  He heard it again, a muffled screech. Insistent and inhuman.

  No, human. The truth hit him. A truth out of the darkness. It was the sound of the best a human could muster when they could not speak. A human desperate for attention and yet unable to raise more than the most feeble shrill. It was the sound of impotence and tragedy. It was the woman.

  Mr White stepped forward, again more Frankenstein’s monster than man, and then he stopped as abruptly as he had started. His limbs locked. His jaw tense with terror. His eyes were wide and mad when they were open and wrinkled tight when closed. They went on and off, like switches.

  The impotence of the woman spread to him and ensnar
ed him. He willed himself to move and yet he didn’t. That will to action became quieter and quieter, as though it had a volume control and Johnny Black was turning it down just as he had turned down the woman’s attempt to scream. His mind was sluggish and bleak, frozen. His conscious was a glacier at the start of its course, too slow to have a destination.

  The only thoughts that surfaced from this frozen mire were monosyllabic. Don’t. Can’t. Must. Can’t. Him.

  A dead body floating. A pool of the eternal void.

  Seconds passed into minutes. Anyone looking would have thought Mr White had been zombified, struck hard and stuck fast. A trembling statue.

  In a burst of heat, wild, uncontrolled heat, the glacier melted and Mr White ran. It was instinctual, without time for thought or will. He ran back the way he had come.

  The sounds of the woman had stopped, but he took no notice. He was deaf to the sounds of the world. Dumb to the ways of the world. Blind to the lights, the shadows.

  He stopped, made himself stop, and immediately slumped against the wall. Red was lying next to him, semi-conscious, mumbling and drooling. Mr White was muttering nothings into his hands. He stopped, reached out to Red’s pockets and dug out a cigarette packet and a lighter and he lit a cigarette and smoked it hard, in harsh spikes. The smoke misted in the cold air. It burst and coalesced when he coughed. Ten minutes later and his second smoke drifted its fog around him, and Johnny came upon him veiled in silver. His hat pulled down. His form a shadow in itself. A whisper in the night.

  Mr White glanced up at him and looked back down.

  Johnny nodded at him. Mr White sensed the movement and nodded at the ground.

  There was silence for a minute as Johnny smoked, stood up in front of him, looking at Mr White. Mr White sat down looking at the ground.

  What happened with that woman, Johnny? Mr White said eventually, the words rushing out fast and hard into the cold air. He clamped his lips tight and ground his teeth.

  Which woman.

  The one just now. The one you followed. Just now.