Bad Men

by Allan Guthrie

  "Do I look like a cook?" Wallace walked towards the cage and Pearce had to lift his head to keep him in sight.

  "You eat enough fucking eggs," Pearce said.

  Wallace looked at the floor-to-ceiling egg cartons. "That's soundproofing, you fucking fool."

  "I might be a fucking fool," Pearce said, "but at least I'm not a prick whose wife would rather fuck that poor bastard over there than have me within twenty feet of her."

  "You want to go first?" Wallace said. "Just keep it up."

  Pearce didn't want to think about what Wallace meant. But he knew, anyway. Wallace was going to crucify the pair of them. How was Pearce going to get out of this sorry situation?

  He heard Jesus sucking manically at the bottle of tea. "What's Jesus's real name?" he asked Wallace.

  The sucking sound stopped. Pearce tilted his head and saw Wallace had pulled the bottle away. "What's your real name?" Wallace asked Jesus.

  "Jesus," Jesus said.

  "Good boy," Wallace said and put the bottle back to Jesus's lips. Just as if he was feeding a baby.

  Jesus polished off the dregs and Pearce let his head fall back onto the mattress. He was fucked.

  But there were some things he had to find out first. He heard the sound of footsteps receding, looked up and Wallace was nearly at the door. Pearce didn't want to talk to the bastard, but he didn't have any choice if he wanted information. Engaging the fucker in conversation couldn't hurt. They might bond. People did that, bonded with their kidnappers. That's how some of them survived. Happened all the time. Yeah, bond with the fucker. Fucking right. But, supposing you wanted to, how did you do that? Ask him a question. Which is what Pearce was going to do anyway. So get on with it, pillock, before it's too late.

  Pearce said, "Why did you kill my dog?"

  "What're you talking about?" Wallace said, his hand on the light switch. "Everybody's obsessed with dead dogs. I like dogs, Pearce. I've never harmed a dog in my life. Why does everybody think I killed their dogs? Don't I have better things to do with my time?"

  "You killed him. You killed Hilda."

  "Your dog's called Hilda?"

  "What if he is?"

  "And it's a ‘he'?"

  "Fuck you," Pearce said. Yeah, fuck the rapport. Fuck bonding. There was only so much crap a man could take. "I suppose you don't know who shot up your brother-in-law, either?"

  "You think I'd waste my time on poor old Rodge? I wouldn't shite on him if he was a giant fly and it was his birthday."

  Weird that Wallace didn't want to take responsibility. "So who shot him, if it wasn't you?" Pearce asked.

  "What makes you think I'd know? I'm the last person anyone talks to." Wallace's hand carved an arc through the air at his side. "Family gossip goes sweeping right past me."

  So Wallace was denying everything. That was good. Pearce would ask about the Baxters' dog, expect a denial, then he'd know Wallace was serious and the Baxter family wasn't as mad as Pearce had first thought. "What about Louis?"

  "What about Louis?"

  "You know. May's dog."

  "Course I know who the dog is."

  "Was. Past tense. The dog's dead."

  "She'll be upset."

  "You saying you weren't responsible?"

  "You're obsessed with the idea of me killing dogs. Give it a rest."

  The fucker was enjoying this. "Well, you planning on ... you know ..." Pearce had a question but somehow between his head and his mouth it had gone missing. Odd, and a bit worrying. Try as he might, he couldn't remember what he was going to say. Shit, no. Couldn't remember what the fuck he'd been talking about. Something was a bit wrong with his head. Taken a blow too many, maybe. That was the last thing he needed. A brain that didn't fucking work.

  Wallace said, "I ought to smack the fuck out of you, Pearce," turned out the lights and spoke into the darkness. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

  Jesus was shaking.

  Wallace had come back, as promised, and he was now stuck behind Pearce's bench. Jesus couldn't see what he was doing, but he could hear the scrape of saw on wood and knew he'd soon hear the thunk of nails slamming home. Wallace was prepared. No hammer for him. Jesus had seen him carry in a nail gun. Black and yellow stripes. A giant wasp-like thing with a fuck-off sting in its tail. Jesus thought he'd long since accepted his fate, but he felt a brief burning sensation in his penis and a trickle of warm liquid on his thigh and realised he hadn't. A fucking nail gun.

  The sawing must have been going on for about fifteen minutes now, which seemed a ridiculously long time. But Jesus wasn't sure about that. Might have been just a couple of minutes or half an hour. It was hard to tell.

  The noise stopped and Wallace's head popped over Pearce's bench. Jesus was about to get another lecture, he knew, cause Wallace moved his dust mask to the side. Wallace liked the sound of his own voice, alright, and he liked nothing better than to dish out advice to Jesus. He'd been doing it for a while now. And Jesus was something of a captive audience.

  "We're all needy, Jesus," Wallace said. "That right, Pearce? We all need approbation. It's what being human is all about. I mean, think about this." He paused before continuing: "A man with a big cock who is never told by a lady that he has a big cock, might as well have a small cock. You see what I mean?"

  Jesus wondered what he was on about. Now seemed an inappropriate time for bullshit philosophy and it wasn't Jesus's fault Wallace had a small knob. It was, however, Jesus's fault he'd slept with May. He was very sorry about that and he'd told Wallace countless times. He'd tell him again, but his tongue didn't seem to be working.

  "You see what I mean, Pearce?"

  Pearce said, "I wouldn't know."

  "Is that modesty, I wonder?" Wallace smiled at Jesus. "Sad thing is, I like you, Jesus. Even if you do write poetry and you got my wife pregnant. What I'm about to do here, well, it really jiggles my heartstrings. Shouldn't be long now. Fuck, yes. As my mother used to say, ‘This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you'. I know, you're thinking what a crock of shit, eh? But it's true. I'd much rather I didn't have to witness it." He paused. "Ah, fuck, no. I'm lying. I'm going to enjoy it. Hey, want to know a secret?"

  Jesus said nothing.

  "Well? Do you? I'll tell you anyway. You know that tea you drank?"

  Tea. The tea. Disgusting but refreshing. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Jesus had drunk the tea. Yeah, then soon after he'd finished it, Wallace had disappeared. Then Wallace returned with a pile of wood and a saw and that fucking waspy nail gun and put on his dust mask and started making a cross. Yeah, that was it. A nice cup of tea.

  "I put something special in it," Wallace said, and returned to his sawing. No, he didn't. He'd finished that. The first nail slammed home and Jesus winced, imagining it entering his palm.

  If he wasn't already feeling sick, that would have done it. But, yeah, already he wasn't feeling too good. Not surprising since he'd been here in this hole for long enough to have lost count of the days, getting fed when Wallace felt like it, watered when Wallace felt like it. Jesus felt queasy, in fact. What had Wallace just said? He'd put something in the tea. Jesus looked over at Pearce, at the chandelier above the bench he was strapped to. The chandelier was moving around like a shiny sea creature. The walls behind it looked grainy. He could see all these little lines and they wiggled. Motion threads. Huh?

  The thunking sound was like a big ball that Jesus was sure he'd be able to pick up if only his hands were free. But they were free. What was he thinking?

  Thunk. Again. Sloop. Right into his hand. Like that.

  His hand felt different. Couldn't pinpoint the difference, though. No, yeah, no. Yeah, it felt like he was wearing gloves. He dropped the ball he'd imagined himself catching and it fell silently to the floor.

  Quiet once more. Wallace stood up again and wiped his forehead. His glasses looked like they were hovering in front of his face. He bent down again and there was another thunk.

  How many nails was go
od ole jack-in-the-box Wallace putting in this thing?

  Jesus heard someone praying and mumbled along with him. No idea what the words were, but he followed the lilt of the singsong incantation. He wondered if the other guy was praying to God or to himself. Cause he was Jesus now. That was funny but he wasn't laughing cause it wasn't funny after all. Wallace said so.

  The realisation sledgehammered into him: he was going to be crucified. He knew it already, but he hadn't accepted it. Somebody was going to rescue him. Wallace would take pity on him and decide not to go ahead.

  He felt like giggling. Yet that wasn't how he felt, you know, emotionally. He felt like crying. Did that make any sense? He was wired up all wrong, somehow. Poisoned, right?

  Somebody had killed May's dog. Somebody had killed Pearce's dog. Was it Jesus? Did he do it?

  Approaching the Cat & Dog Home. One rogue cloud in the sky towards Fife. The heat made the back of his neck prickle. The sound of a dozen dogs barking.

  There were cats here too. He couldn't stand cats.

  Snap back. NOW.

  Wallace was making the cross. That was it, all the wood and the toolbox and the nail gun and all that. Jesus had the vague feeling he'd worked this all out already. Yesterday, maybe. But the cross wasn't here yesterday. Was it? Had it been here that long? But that wasn't very long, was it?

  It all sounded familiar, though.

  Where was he?

  Didn't really matter, did it?

  Tiny fluffy toys lined the veins on the back of his hand. They did. He could see them. Not through his skin but in his head. How his hand got in his head he'd no idea but there it was.

  Bang. He heard the sound before it happened. Just a split second. Didn't know how he could tell, but he did. Funny thing.

  Wallace's head appeared again. No sign of the dust mask. And he'd taken off his glasses too, revealing his ridiculously blue eyes. They were BLUE, like that, capital letters, and they hurt to look at. "How you feeling now, Jesus?"

  Jesus tried to speak, but he couldn't summon up the energy. Tried again, and managed to say, "Odd." Sounded like somebody else's voice. Went out his nose and slithered round his chin and entered his left ear.

  Pearce said, "What did you give him?"

  Wallace said, "Heard of psilocybin?"

  Pearce said, "Magic mushrooms?"

  "Very good, Pearce. Didn't think you were the type. I brewed up a nice potent batch of mushroom tea, there. And Big J drank it all down like a thirsty baby. I could only give you a couple of sips, Pearce. You should thank me for that. Your world starting to change yet, Jesus?"

  Jesus tried to nod but couldn't move his head so he nodded inside his skull and knew that Wallace had seen him do it.

  "You had them before?"

  Jesus didn't do drugs. Never had. Apart from dope now and then and Es occasionally, but they didn't count. He'd never done acid and nobody did mushrooms these days. Not cause it was illegal, but it just wasn't cool anymore to do the hippy flip. He said, "Nah."

  "For a moderate brew, you'd have around fifty," Wallace said to Pearce. "You want to really trip, take a hundred, but I wouldn't recommend it. Certainly not for a first-timer."

  Jesus wasn't entirely sure about the numbers. More or less. Didn't add up. What was a quantity? I'll have one potato. Somebody else was in his head. Saw the bastard flying for cover out of the corner of his inner eye. Flying? Yeah, wasn't a person at all. Black and yellow stripes. Had a doubly-bulby face like a wasp.

  Somewhere Jesus grabbed hold of the thought that he hadn't been poisoned. Not really. Or had he? Shit.

  "You're gone, son, aren't you? Not surprising. Couple of hundred would be enough to make most people psychotic."

  Coupla hundred. Whee. Jesus was floating. This wasn't so bad. Bars on the cage were lighter than air. Floated with him. He must have risen a couple of feet, then jolted back down again.

  Wallace said, "I gave you five hundred of the little fuckers, just to make sure."

  A bad thing. Jesus was aware of that. Large quantity like that. Shit. Lots of drugs were bad, bad. Very bad. Bad. Yeah. One, two, three, four, five hundred. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But there wasn't anything he could do. Is there a problem, officer? He couldn't tell. Oops. There wasn't anything funny, but he was laughing. Damn, fuck, he had to stop. Five hundred. A lotta mushrooms. Somebody had mentioned that. Was that the other guy in his head? Mr Wasp. Not a bad price, five hundred, for a bag of mushrooms that size.

  Closed his eyes and saw that he could dream anything he wanted. There she was. May. Thrashing about underneath him. Telling him to do it harder.

  Gonna be sick, Lord Jesus. Gonna throw up my spleen, Lord Jesus. Gonna throw up my heart, Lord Jesus.

  Scraping.

  Wallace had done speaking. Gone back to work.

  His heartbeat. Lot of rhythm in this room.

  Melody from Jesus.

  Nice little number.

  Jesus is not my fucking name.

  It wasn't but he couldn't remember his name, so Jesus would have to do.

  Building a church. A cross. Put it on top. Kill Jesus. Kill me.

  The dog was dead. Wanted to ask. Where? Why? Who?

  The wasp in his head said, "Don't you think banana is an odd-shaped word?"

  Jesus closed his eyes. Mistake.

  Heart started jigging around like a pneumatic drill. Bounced off his ribcage. Not too bad, though. His ribcage was made of rubber.

  Words flew around in his head like swallows. He reached out, grabbed one. Knew what it was to be crazy. Said hello to the bird and the bird said, "I'm Robin."

  And it turned cold. Ice cold. Winter cold. He let the bird go, but his whole body was freezing. He shivered. Would have asked Wallace to turn up the temperature, but his tongue was vibrating, and, oh, maybe Wallace wouldn't have obliged anyway. Jesus's ears went numb with the cold and he couldn't hear anything. Wallace was banging away and Pearce was saying something to him and then Jesus couldn't hear anything and his tongue was vibrating and he couldn't take the batteries out.

  Felt like a year later when his tongue stopped quivering. Now it was tingling down the left side. Like he'd bitten it and it was healing.

  Many months ago. Or a couple of seconds. Couldn't tell.

  Ice-cold. He couldn't bite his tongue cause it'd break off. Maybe his ears had fallen off.

  Did he have a fever? A cold fever? Could you have one of those?

  "Concentrate," the wasp said. "You can't just stop breathing like that. If you do, you'll die."

  He'd stopped breathing? He was going to die?

  Like fucking shite, he was.

  He had to get a grip. Had to stop his thoughts moving so quickly. Kept running ahead of him. Needed brakes. Needed thought brakes. Did they exist? Nope. Patent them and make a fortune. What a fucking brilliant idea! Hang on. What the hell was that anyway? Exist. A made-up word if ever he'd heard one. But weren't all words made up?

  Shit. He was losing it fast. Wrenched his mind back. Damn thing was like an elastic band. Could play tunes on it. Bing, boing. Would you listen to that!

  A memory. Grab it, catch it, hold onto it. Nope. Couldn't find one.

  Whoa. Wallace was hovering next to the cage, about a foot in the air. Neat trick. Jesus held his breath. Wallace bent down, unlocked the cage door.

  Shhh.

  Jesus felt the silence in his belly. Caused a strange reaction. Made him thirsty again. Thought of the tea. Thought of the mushrooms in his stomach. Mushrooms like bullets slamming into his gut, one after the other with no respite. Felt sick, sick, sick. Man, that was a dirty word.

  A memory. A fucking memory. Just one.

  Bunch of kids. Most of them thirteen, fourteen years old. Tooled-up. Jesus in the thick of the scrum, even though he wasn't called Jesus. A hammer in his hand. Useless. Couldn't swing it. Bodies too densely packed. Wearing T-shirts. The New Bar Ox team wearing these tartan jumpers they got specially from a shop in Glasgow. Jesus saying, "Bastards. Ya fucking
bastards." No affiliation, see. Jesus in the middle taking on everybody. Somebody holding his hand. His mum. Saying, "You're all bashed up again." Jesus grinning, saying, "Aye, I showed them."

  Another memory.

  The girl said, "He'll kill you if he finds out."

  "You ..." the boy said, " ... you are worth dying for."

  "You smarmy lying toe rag."

  The boy grinned. "I'll take my chances."

  "Is this love?"

  "Aye."

  "Oh, that's nice. Keep doing that. You got rubbers?"

  "I won't come, eh? Trust me. Just. Come on. That's it."

  And there in front of him now was May's dog, he supposed. No, it wasn't. Well, it might have been but it turned into that fucking wasp and said, "You fucked the girl. You got her pregnant. You fucking deserve everything you get, you fucking idiot."

  "Are you paying attention?"

  The voice. What was his name? Brain like soup. Brain like glue. Brain like sizzling bacon. Szzzzzz. Like a buzzing wasp. Szzzzzz. Dropped in water.

  Floobadoob.

  I'm Popeye, the sailor man.

  Jings, crivens, help ma boab.

  "Are you paying attention?"

  Nuuuuuuh. Okay.

  Sweep to the right. Nothing. Sweep to the left.

  Cross, yep. Jesus, yep. That other guy.

  God. No, devil. Whoa, yeah. The skin on Wallace's face was shifting up and down like it needed stitching onto the bone underneath.

  Pain under Jesus's arms as Wallace lifted him onto something unyielding and tied him down. Tried to resist but his muscles were weak and his body unresponsive.

  Sudden clarity. Adrenaline rush. Cancelled the effect of the mushrooms long enough to think: "Leave me alone, Wallace, you big fucking donkey fucker," but he couldn't say it. Power of speech denied.

  Caught Pearce's eyes. Man looked sad. Gonna be okay, big man. Gonna be okay.

  Sound of a man crying. Oh, Pearce, you big poof. But Pearce wasn't crying. It was himself. He was the poof.

  Not in pain. Not yet. In mournful acceptance of your doom? Thank you, Mr Wasp. That about hit the nail on the head.

  Jesus knew what was going on. Just had to fight through the fireworks in his head, focus.