Moral Zero

by Set Sytes

  What about her.

  I heard screaming.

  No you didn’t. Johnny was calm, cool. His rasping voice buried itself in the dark, quietly rumbling its stones and weeds.

  I heard something. Mr White tried to not let himself stammer. It was becoming easier. Something was changing. The night was becoming more relaxed. The tension was winding down. Johnny’s words cradled him.

  What did you hear?

  I don’t know.

  Well.

  There was silence for another minute. They had both finished their cigarettes. Mr White put the packet and the lighter back in Red’s pocket. Red mumbled something indistinct and his eyes opened briefly and shut again.

  Did you follow the woman? Mr White asked again. Calmer now.

  Yes.

  What did you do with her?

  Raped her. Johnny put his hand in the rim of his jean pocket and took it out again. You know what I did.

  The wire of the night tensed, wound itself tight for a second. The city strained. Then it relaxed again. It seemed to speed up, and then slow again. It hummed, and then fell silent.

  You raped her? Now Mr White seemed incredulous, as if he had forgotten the backstreet, as if it was some nightmare in miniature that had blurred and drifted away in the time since its inception.

  That’s what I said. Johnny sighed almost imperceptibly.

  What? said Mr White, and he had forgotten, forcibly forgotten all but a shadow of before. He grimaced. You’re joking?

  I don’t joke.

  Why would you do such a thing?

  You knew what I was when you met me. I told you who I am. What I do. He whistled through his teeth. The thin shrill of a tea kettle.

  It’s a fine thing ain’t it, he said, his hands resting lightly on his hips. When a murderer can be good and a rapist never so. There ain’t no such thing as a good rapist. Good murderers are easy to find. If you rape, you done sentenced your own doom. Not so for murder. Any kind of murder can be excused if the character wills it. It’s twisted. Sabotaging a life is deemed so much worse than its utter removal. There is no recovery for the dead.

  Did you murder her? said Mr White, lightly, as if him and his words were at a great distance to each other.

  Johnny grinned and said nothing.

  This is you then, is it? Mr White finally looked up and met Johnny’s eyes.

  Anything can be imitated, murmured Johnny.

  Mr White asked him what he meant by that but Johnny merely shook his head and turned away, finally freeing Mr White from the awfulness of that prolonged gaze. But he saw his eyes before he turned around and though they were dark and steeled, in the pits of them he saw the flickers of dancing stars, dancing in an ocean of unfathomable sadness.

  HOTEL

  Mr White lay in the bed of the hotel. In an adjacent room he heard the drone of a TV, and in the other he heard the restless movements of Red as he slept or tried to sleep or did whatever it was he did. Overshadowing both these sounds was Mr White’s own breathing, and the thump of his heart.

  Mr White had been staring at the wall for an hour. Occasionally blinking. He was not thinking, not really. Nothing that could be called truly human sentience. Twice he tried to make himself cry but nothing came. So he kept staring.

  Eventually his eyes fell closed and he slept, as silent and still as the dead.

  They spent four more days in District Twelve, Red fucking every girl he could in masterpieces of perversion, Johnny distant and infrequently seen, only staying with them for brief periods before he vanished again. One girl in particular Red had taken great pleasure in talking about, describing her to Mr White as being absolutely filthy, I say the dirtier the better but I mean, fuck, the room stank like shit after if you get me?

  I get you, Mr White had replied.

  Smells like love, Red had laughed. I was almost sick.

  Mr White grimaced. Did you have fun?

  Oh man.

  Mr White didn’t say it but he had watched them at the time, his eyes glued to the readymade peephole or gloryhole between the rooms, between every room. He had seen the acts, the filth and the sickness. He was disgusted and entranced. He stayed until the end, holding his nose with one hand and masturbating with the other, and then removing his hand from his nose and falling apart inside himself with the stench of sin. He felt like he was in the room, part of Red, feeling what Red felt, and fetishes that had never held cards with him transfigured themselves into intoxicating delights, things appalling and shameful and invigorating in equal measure. Glorious in their foulness. Mr White writhed in twisted abasement, slave to a world rich in fecundity. He poured his soul out through the hole and drank in Red’s soul back through it. He tried not to be sick, and in this he was moderately successful.

  On the afternoon of the third day Johnny had returned to them, had knocked on Mr White’s door and brushed past him when it opened. He looked about the room with disinterest and sat on the bed. He took a ready-rolled cigarette from the bedside table and took his lighter and the cigarette flared up in his mouth. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes obscured by the low brim of his black outlaw hat.

  Hi, said Red, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  Hi. He didn’t look up.

  You’re back then.

  I’m back.

  What have you been up to? Or don’t we wanna know?

  Johnny was taking long drags on the cigarette and finished it quickly, without answering. He crumbled the butt in his hands and dropped it into the unused ashtray on the table. Around the room were discarded butts and ash where Red had paced and dropped his smokes. There were small burns on the carpet but they may have been symptoms of history.

  Johnny took off his hat and ran his fingers through his black hair. Red self-consciously moved his hands about his, playing with the ends. Johnny was wearing a beaten up leather jacket that they had not seen on him before and he reached inside to pull out a shiny silver tin. Such polish and gleam seemed unnatural, an anachronism to his person, some trinket that he held as though a connection into the modern world.

  He opened the tin soundlessly and though they could not see inside he took a thick black cigar and lit it and stuck it between his teeth as he replaced the tin. He breathed in and out and grinned. It’s good.

  Is it.

  It’s been a while. Johnny looked up at them, finally. So. Yesterday. Have you ever heard of the V.S.S?

  Mr White shook his head.

  I have, said Red, pouring himself a drink from the dark rum and fizzy pop that lay in unlabelled plastic bottles beside him. It’s the Voluntary Snuff Society. It’s here, in Twelve. God knows how they get away with it, this place’s biggest illegal is against harm, any kinda harm, no matter how much the consent.

  Things thrive in adversity, smiled Johnny.

  Yeah. So, you go to the V.S.S. Red shook his head in distaste. Charmin.

  What’s it like?

  Johnny looked over at Mr White, grinning at his interest. Horror, he said. It is horror. Foul transmutation of humanity. It’s in an underground warehouse. There’s dozens of them, they used to shift it about to not be caught. Now they pay the police and the District government off. Hell, some are members. I can always tell a lawman from looking them in the eye. They were there. Standing around, waiting their turn. In the centre are the drains, and most of it goes down the drains but not all. Not all. The ground is stained dark red all over. Patches on the walls. Some on the ceiling.

  Johnny took another drag on his cigar. I look in their eyes and they don’t look back. There’s something dead there. Some carcass of soul. I look at them and all I see are carrion. They’re masturbating, the semen falling out pathetically and running thick and slow on the ground. Mixing with the blood like dessert. It’s yellow and white and congeals between stones and dries. No man or woman there got it right inside their body.

  So you were there looking at semen, said Red.

  Johnny ignored him. The id
ea of the V.S.S. is one of self-preservation. Of the final say of the ego. Males and females sacrifice themselves to be remembered in film. They believe there is nothing else that can capture their life, their existence. Most of them got nobody else to remember them. They do not want to die unsung. To die a nobody is to have never been alive. Some might be well known, they might be high-profile. It don’t matter to them. It ain’t enough. There must be a final record. The world must be ended on screen.

  They stand in the centre, among the drains. Men and women and girls and boys. Young and old. Some are coerced into being there, and though that is against the principles of the society it is often overlooked. There is a market at stake, and sometimes fresh meat is not always willing. Others watch them. There are the performers – they call them actors and actresses. And there are the watchers. The performers always seem more alive than the others. They are often smiling, full of vitality in their final minutes. Dressed up and made up, looking their best. How else to go out? The smiles do not last. Rarely do they last.

  It is hard. There is no torture, not as such, but sometimes the deaths are slow. They are filmed of course. There are cameras to capture them on all angles. They bleed differently. Some bleed like pigs. Only a few bleed like you would expect of a human.

  Red was shaking his head to himself, and almost continuously drinking. He seemed about to say something but didn’t.

  Mr White was listening in rapt attention.

  Johnny took his hat off and placed it beside him on the bed. He lay back, putting his boots on the bed, and blew his smoke towards the ceiling. I waited until the end, he murmured. I did not get pleasure. I did not try and get pleasure. The place is . . . hollow. It is pitiful. You may think me evil in my actions, but this is something else. Not evil. I do not know what. Not evil.

  I stayed till the end. There were one-on-ones. These are always at the end of the night. Clients pay good money to see the deaths in private, to enact them, just them and the performer. And, of course, the cameras. I was there too, invisible in the shadows. The private rooms of the warehouse were locked behind each client and opened again after a knock. I was already in one. I saw the man come in. He was old and fat, with thick glasses that enlarged his eyes like some alien. Some insect. He panted as he walked in. He was suited but quickly discarded it to a vest, and naked below. She was beautiful and delicate of a like rarely seen in the V.S.S and he masturbated looking at her. She was dancing, in a green dress that glittered in the lights, and he paced around her as though she was sexual furniture. There was only one camera in the private rooms. Just one, pointing directly at each performer, each willing victim. I watched as he picked up a carving knife from a tray of implements. There were plenty worse to pick. He moved towards her and she smiled, her teeth shining white and her lipstick red and her hair fake in a blonde wig.

  He stabbed her in the neck with the point of the knife. I watched as her smile fell off her. But I was watching the man. I knew this man. I knew of him. Don’t ask me who or how, I won’t tell you. I watched as he withdrew from her, leaving the knife stuck in, her choking on her own blood, and he moved back and behind the camera and he pressed a button on it and the light winked out.

  No writer or poet could describe the expression on her face. Her eyes as she saw the camera turned off as she died. I will not try. You can imagine and you will fail. He took away from all he could take at her final moment, at the moment of her dying, her living. In this girl’s eyes, he took more than it is possible for anyone else to take, more than anyone has ever taken from her before in all her years. You could see her soul shred.

  This man, if he could be called that, this thing, was masturbating as he stole the last dream this girl could ever have. As he began to cum, huffing and sweating, his mouth open and his eyes unfocused, I moved fast up behind him and pushed my own knife into his back. I twisted it. He made a strange, racking noise. Not a scream. Shock flooded his body before any pain. His penis died and shrivelled in his hands but continued to pump its diseased load over his stubby fingers. I twisted the knife and asked him if he felt it and I told him it was the world ending. I withdrew my blade and I pulled him back and he looked in my eyes but did not see, and I stabbed him in the heart. I pulled out and blood trickled down to mix with his semen. I smiled at him and I saw something pass across his face, and I knew he knew. He knew that I had taken his dream as he had taken the girl’s. But the chain stopped there. It was the perfect moment of ruining the perfect moment, but this was not my dream. This was not a murder. He had nothing in him that could be murdered. This was a robbery.

  Johnny stopped, and closed his eyes.

  Mr White said nothing but closed his eyes also. Red took a deep breath in and out and seemed weary, as if listening to the anecdote had stolen something from him, and not the people in the story. He finished his drink.

  So you’re the same as the man then? said Mr White, his eyes still closed, where Johnny Black’s sudden hard gaze could not penetrate. And still it did, boring through his eyelids.

  No.

  I think . . . I think I am beginning to understand you.

  You are beginning no such thing.

  Mr White let it go, turning to Red as he slightly wobbly got to his feet.

  Red held up his hand as if to hold back any questions. Bar.

  In the early hours of the fourth night Red and White were woken by Johnny kicking in Red’s door. Mr White put on some clothes as fast as he could and ran into Red’s room to see Johnny standing over Red as he sat up naked in bed, mercifully by himself.

  The fuck? Red was yelling. The fuck?

  Listen Kidd, just listen, commanded Johnny, not looking around as Mr White came up behind him. They all did so. They could hear the familiar buzz of the drones. The sound was thick, as though a pack of them. The noise was close enough as to come from inside the hotel. Echoing along the dank stone corridors.

  Get him dressed, barked Johnny, and Mr White realised he meant him. We have to leave. They’re after us.

  After who, I ain’t done nothin.

  Between us we just about done it all. We’re outta here, just get dressed and follow. Leave anything you can’t pick up right now.

  Mr White rushed to help Red, who grumbled but quickly sprang into action as the noise of the drones increased. He shoved his sockless feet in his cowboy boots and Mr White ran back into his own room to gather the essentials and put on his own shoes. He was back in Red’s in thirty seconds. Red had a sleeveless shirt hanging open and his belt was unbuckled. He was throwing bottles and cigarettes and packets of tobacco and sex toys into a plastic bag and Johnny, who was the only one completely dressed, was roaring at him to stop fucking about.

  Where did you get all this? Mr White said hopelessly, watching Red chuck a double ended dildo that looked unwashed into the bag, a sticky and purple ribbed cockhead rising out the top like it wanted a front row seat to the chaos. You never had this when we last jumped ship.

  Girls, muttered Red.

  In the end the bag was left, thanks to Johnny pulling Red through the window after him by the scruff of his shirt. The three of them crawled down the fire escape and were off into the night, Johnny turning them through backstreets of backstreets. Red ran stumbling along, trying to light a hastily plucked cigarette with one hand, the purple dildo waggling in his other.

  There were sixteen districts in Rule, and they spread out like a grid, all within walking distance of their neighbours. At the edges of Rule, the edges of the furthermost districts, was a wall so high that even the tallest buildings could not see over it. It could not be scaled, knocked through or tunnelled under. On each of the four sides of Rule there were huge metal doors, guarded 24/7 by a contingent of police. They were opened rarely, and when they were they showed merely an extension of wall, the gatehouse and another set of doors, and before the exterior doors were opened the interior doors were closed fast. No onlookers standing in the area could ever see outside. Whole lives had been lived and
lost in Rule, lives that saw the outside more as a myth than anything, if they ever thought of it at all. Something unseen and thus unreal.

  If you were in Rule, then Rule was everything.

  Rule was a city unlike any other. If it could be even called such. Each district, no matter how close it touched its neighbours or how brief its borders, was under its own, local rule. A government of one district had no say in the running of another district, not in its infrastructure, its justice system, its laws, its customs, or its moral code. There seemed little crossover between districts; some values might be mutually shared among certain districts but they were never mutually understood. The borders were kept and controlled, immigration and emigration were permissible, but the only real co-operation between districts was of material transport, the trade of goods. A criminal in one district, should he or she successfully cross the border, was a free citizen in the next, even if he or she had broken a very similar law to what was considered illegal in the new district. There was no extradition. A district would capture and punish its own. The chances were, however, that an escaped criminal from one district would soon be convicted in another, given continuous opportunities to break the law. Even the most evasive of criminals would soon run out of districts.

  Crimes considered the most severe were those that befouled some strong moral taboo within that sector. These were usually sexually related. Common ethics as they applied to all other situations were never applied when sexuality was present. Sex was seen, in every district, as the prime factor to make a case unique, to be dealt under its own terms. Each district had its own idea of what was, plain to put, wrong, and the insular, intensely xenophobic nature of each district propagated these ideas as history passed, so that these moral taboos were enshrined in the local system. Sodomy in District Three was as foul and alien a concept to them as use of condoms was to those in District Five.

  The districts might as well be separate states or countries. No-one held authority over Rule in its entirety, there was nothing to command the city en masse. It was if separate countries from across the world, complete with all their cultural, judicial and moral baggage, had been crowbarred together to within minutes walking distance of each other. It was preposterous and yet Rule continued. It did not thrive. For the most part, it was run-down, slums and seediness. The criminal element was high, as was the presence of law enforcement, each force local and protecting only the district itself. Police were known to stop dead at each border, with no jurisdiction beyond.