Grey

by Jon Armstrong

  "No!" I screamed as I tore off my seat belt. We were just taxiing past the tent, with the motors still revving, when I pressed the intercom. "Stop the car! Open the door!"

  "No!" said Walter. "We have to go. They'll kill us! They don't care."

  The car stopped and the side door slid open. When I started for it, Walter grasped my jacket. "Don't!" he said. "They're giants. They have killer sticks. They don't care who you are."

  I tore myself from his grip.

  "No!" he screamed, as I jumped.

  I landed in a slick spot and fell onto my face. Pushing myself up, I began running toward the satin who had killed the speaker-girl. "Son of a bitch!" I yelled.

  The seven-foot-tall satin turned to me. Its skin was pallid, its eyes, light green. The long pointed nose hooked over the lips like a beak. He bared his yellow teeth, as if he relished an attack.

  As I ran, I knew this was suicide. I wasn't going to help Joelene, kill Father, destroy RiverGroup, and protect Nora. I was going to be killed in the slubs for the death of my half sister. It was all wrong, but I couldn't and didn't want to stop. "You're dead!" I said, although I couldn't imagine how I could even hurt the thing.

  As I landed a punch on its stomach, he grasped my head, as one might an orange, and lifted me off the ground. My face and ears were crushed under his thick, ironlike fingers. My neck felt like it might break and let my body fall.

  "Let go!" I swung my fists as hard as I could at the arm that held me, but my blows slipped off the slick fabric like drops of rain.

  Pointing the electric rod at my chest, he said, "You die." A loud crack and a white explosion came from the end of the stick.

  The ground came up, crashed into my legs. I fell forward. The last thing I knew was the stench of burnt hair, and then I disappeared.

  A fleshy gurgle, like wet flatulence, came from nearby. I heard breathing that was going a hundred miles a minute. My skull felt like it was being crushed. My ears felt like they'd been sheared off. I was alive, but couldn't move. And although I decided the fast breathing was mine, I didn't think any air was getting into my lungs. I tried to move my arms or legs but couldn't. Something was on top of me.

  This was my death. I hadn't died when the electric rod had gone off. It must have knocked me out. Mother and the others thought I was dead and they buried me. Now, I woke buried underground only to die again. I made one last effort to move or make a sound, but I couldn't. The earth was too heavy.

  "Pull!" I heard from a hundred miles away.

  An instant later everything was quiet and I decided I was dreaming.

  "Pull!" I heard again as the earth above me moved. "Pull harder!"

  I knew the voice. It was Mason, the master of ceremonies.

  "Again!" he said. "Pull!"

  The earth slid from me. Light and air touched my face like divine hands. I could see. I could breathe. When I inhaled, I felt a searing pain in my lungs.

  Now it was my mother's voice. "Michael, can you hear me? Speak to me."

  "I'm alive," I said, choking.

  Hands grasped my arms and I was turned face up, but it took several moments for a terrible dizziness to leave. My mother's face floated before me. Bright lipstick was smeared across her chin and nose. Some of it dripped onto my face as she came closer.

  "Michael, you're so brave!"

  The air tasted cool in my lungs. I asked, "What happened?"

  "We all saw it. When the satin touched you with the rod, the spark jumped off of you, back to him. You killed that satin!" She wiped her face. It wasn't lipstick. Blood was flowing from her nose. Someone, Mason, I think, handed her a cloth.

  "They killed Fenn," she said, as she mopped her nose, eyes, and forehead. I didn't know who Fenn was, but imagined it was the man with the genitals. "Becka is bleeding badly. They took her to a doctor. We don't know about her. Mason's hand was broken. But you scared the rest of those ghastly satins off before they did any more damage."

  I lifted my right arm and inspected the fabric of my jacket. It was just like before. Clean, smooth, subtle, and perfect. I thought of the electricity impedance test—the display where I had pressed the button just yesterday before the doors to Mr. Cedar's workshop. My suit's subsystem channeled the electricity right back to the satin.

  "But what about Maricell?" I asked as I began to cry. "She okay?"

  Mother nodded. "She's hurt, but we think she's going to live."

  Seventeen

  As we raced back through Europa and across the Atlanticum bridge to America-1, and Walter sat slumped and silent, I tried to understand what had happened. That I had risked my life to try to revenge my half brothers and sisters, whom I had never met before—or even knew existed—perplexed and frightened me. But more troubling than my suicide run at the satin, was the depth of my feelings for them.

  Did that mean that Mother was right all along? Was it where I belonged? Should I join Tanoshi No Wah and be in their shows? If I did, certainly my fame would change their lives. As Mason had said, they could tour the cities and charge a hundred times more. They wouldn't have to eat roasted rat, live in the mud, and be attacked by pillaging satins.

  Or maybe it wasn't that simple. Maybe I wasn't what they needed at all. Maybe my fame would only do to them what it had done to me. The way they celebrated, toasted, and cheered me, I had been a deity and a promise I doubted I could ever fulfill. And what would it be like for me, traveling around the world, holding Mother's clothes as she stripped or even dancing with her? I couldn't fathom it. Worse, I could imagine tens of thousands of channel reporters chasing after us, trampling the grounds and ripping the tents to get the story and images of my new peculiar career.

  What if what I really felt was guilt? What if that was why I had run at the satin? But the truth was I hadn't caused their misery. I hadn't taken Maricell's jaw, one brother's arms, another's heart, and whatever else. No, I decided, the best I could do for Tanoshi No Wah was stay with my plan and destroy the man who had made them suffer.

  After exiting the Loop, we sped past the lights of Ros Begas, and up ahead, on the mountain, searchlights and lasers wove a fabric of light into the night sky. Halfway up the access road we had to stop, as the rest of the way was jammed with thousands of cars. A moment later, though, officials recognized us, and we were directed straight to the steps of the PartyHaus.

  The area was flooded with people, smoke, bright screens, and sequined dancers. I saw LardLik men in big wooden necklaces; Ball Description girls dressed as mice and cats. Hundreds of Petunia Tune women wore elaborate gowns covered with spots and dots. But most were Ültra in super-saturated stripes, plaids, and florals, with feathers, metals, leathers, cardboards, necklaces, ruffs, lace, hats, ribbons, and lights. From the top step of the PartyHaus all the way down to the oxygen gardens, they formed a writhing mass of colors, textures, and shapes like the grotesque and oily guts of an enormous sausage made of every possible fashion catastrophe.

  Even before the door slid back, I could hear an ominous Ültra beat in the distance. And when the door did open, a cascade of blue and orange fireworks exploded along the road sending sparks sizzling through the air. The gunpowder and smoke combined with an odd rubbery odor, and while it wasn't as bad as some of the smells in the slubs, the stench sat in the back of my mouth and burned like a splash of stomach acid. The sea of partiers before the car cheered, clapped, and screamed at us.

  – They thought you were dead!

  – I wanna see inside Elle!

  – Michael, Nora was attacked!

  – Fist my heart muscle!

  – I love you, but I hate you!

  I tried to locate the person who had mentioned Nora, but it was impossible in the mass of movement and sounds coming from every direction. Fighting their way through the crowd, two hospitality girls, like those of old—covered with food, soap, oils, paint, wax, vomit, and other bodily fluids—came to greet us.

  "Welcome to the RiverGroup product show," said one, who had a big splat of w
hat I assumed was pudding across her face and chest. "It promises to be the most fun show of all time, throughout the universe and perpetuity!"

  "Was Nora attacked?" I asked her, as I stepped from the car.

  Before she could answer, a man in a striped vest, checked pants, with blood-red eyes bellowed, "Should be! Hate that whore!" He began choking and then threw up black coagulated carrot juice onto his pink neon platforms.

  Shoving him backward, toppling him and several others like bowling pins, Pudding snarled, "Back up, fuckers! Make room."

  "Excuse me," I said to her, with instant respect, "could you please keep an eye on my friend." I thumbed toward Walter, who still stood in the car, his eyes wide and apprehensive. She said she would and then cleared a narrow path up the stairs.

  Halfway up, I heard a familiar voice.

  "Were you assaulted by mkg's satins?" The question came from the heavy woman from Intellectuals and Soup—the one I'd dubbed Pink Hat. She wore a simple, tasteful, long orange and red gown that looked like a tune-21, and her trademark feathered chapeau.

  I stopped. I was surprised to see her here and asked, "mkg's satins?"

  Her brown eyes grew wide as if she hadn't expected me to recognize her or respond. "Michael," she said, the same way she might have savored lobster bisque, "I saw a report." In person, her face reminded me of a young girl because she only wore cherry eye shadow, but otherwise her skin looked clean. "The report was about a dead satin in Asia-12 . . . an mgk satin."

  Of course! The satins had been gold—one of the mkg colors, and Nora told me her father had sent them. The news was crushing because it meant that I had brought those satins to my brothers and sisters. I asked her, "Is Nora okay?"

  Pink Hat's mouth tightened and her eyes—which looked larger, and a deeper shade of milk chocolate in person—watered. "It hasn't been confirmed," she said, in a voice that didn't seem to want to believe, "but I think she was injured."

  "Who did it?" I asked, as if I couldn't fathom the answer.

  "Crush my ass in my head!" screamed some Ültra goon behind her.

  After she grimaced at the shouter, all she seemed able to say was, "I'm sorry."

  "She's not dead, is she?"

  "No!" She shook her head, and a tear skittered down her cheek and disappeared into the folds of her chin. "I just love you two," she added, as she pulled pink tissues from her tiny beaded handbag.

  "RiverGroup," said Goatee in that slow, reflective way he had, "is barely viable." He stood beside Pink Hat, like her escort, but I hadn't even noticed him in his plain if handsome brown suit and a matching beret. His eyes focused on me with both intensity and feeling. "Despite tonight's histrionics," he continued, "my investigations suggest that RiverGroup is bankrupt. Monetarily and morally. There is one possibility now."

  "Rip it!" screamed a woman with a green face. "Break it blue!"

  After I nodded to the intellectuals, I continued up the stairs. Goatee was right; there was only one possibility, and I needed to find my nitrocellulose suit. At the top, the Ültra was loud and each drumbeat knocked a half-breath from my lungs.

  "vip area," shouted Pudding, "is level fifteen." She motioned at an elevator bank.

  "I had a suit delivered. Know where it is?"

  She shook her head and shrugged. I thanked her, and then headed through the doors. The foyer had been turned into a lounge. Bars lined the walls. Behind it stood hulky men in see-through tuxedos. Partiers lined up in front of blinking carrot, beet, and radish lights. "Sir," said one of the bartenders, who was coming toward me with a long orange tube, "tap root enema?"

  I continued right past him. Inside, every inch of the PartyHaus was clogged with Ültra addicts. Two men in white were bound like the three-legged race but with barbed wire. Their white clothes were soaked with blood. A brunette dressed in red rags that stunk of gasoline had several squirming, wet amphibians in her mouth.

  Most recognized me. Danced at me. Shouted and sang at me.

  – You're our only chance, Michael!

  – Crush my hope!

  "Excuse me," I said. "Pardon me." They wouldn't get out of my way, so I adopted the hospitality girl's strategy and pushed them back as best I could.

  I touched the back of a man's lime suit, but found it coated with some sticky goo. Going around him, a woman covered in what looked like broken shards of glass tried to bite my face. I ducked and slipped by.

  – Golden boy must die!

  – Murder Elle! Murder her love!

  "Get out of the way!" I told them again and again, as I continued across the floor.

  When I finally got to the stairwell, I felt exhausted and sickened, but began down. Below, in the glare of the orange lights, I saw a couple in matching lavender outfits thrust needles into each other's throats. I assumed the black stuff in their hypodermics was carrot liquor, but the woman's face quickly turned so red, she looked like a hemorrhaging tomato. I turned afraid she would split open.

  Another group in untanned hides and broken feathers were smashing each other in their faces with tremendous kicks and elbow punches. A man on his back was knocked in his face several times by a larger man's knee. As the victim smeared his blood over his face, like a child might finger-paint, he giggled as though pain had become pleasure.

  Many sang to the blasting Ültra, which ricocheted against the hard walls. Others, dressed in tight sequined outfits, did flips and tumbles in all directions. Farther along, I saw a man sitting on the floor gagging on a huge carrot that was stuffed halfway down his throat. A vaguely amused group stood watching.

  The second stairwell led into the same inky darkness as before, but now among the giant sex sculptures were dozens of mostly naked people rolling, groping, and taking each other. A woman mounted a man and then slammed her fists into his face like a crazed jockey beating a horse. Soon he was unconscious, but still she rode him hard.

  When I found my advisor, three people were dripping vegetable alcohols on her and laughing. "Get away!" I told them, as I shoved a man in a pink frock.

  "Fuck shit idiot!" he bellowed. He could barely stand. "I'll kill you," he said, his eyes fierce but unfocused. "Eat your fuck brain!" he blathered, as he swung a wild fist. He missed by five feet, stumbled backward, and fell onto the hard floor. His laughing friends began to drip alcohol on him.

  "Joelene!" I said, as I got down beside her. With my handkerchief, I wiped the black gunk from her chapped lips and swollen face. "You all right?" She didn't respond. "I have the aru." Her forehead felt broiling hot. "It's me, Michael."

  Barely opening her eyes, she murmured, "mkg."

  That she mentioned Nora's company surprised me. "They sent satins to try to kill me," I told her. Her eyelids hovered halfway, like indicators of her consciousness. I gave up explaining and got out the roach-looking pill my mother gave me. "I have it."

  I think she said, "Yes," so I touched the pill to her dry lips. She opened them and took it between her teeth. A second later, I heard a crunch.

  As I took off my jacket to drape over her, I inspected her left hand in the heavy metal cuff. I wasn't sure, but thought it might be infected. After I tucked my jacket around her for warmth, I said, "I'll be back. I promise."

  When I stood, I saw Father's silver-haired director before me. "I thought it was you!" he said. He wore a blue suit with an orange shirt and shoes. "We had rehearsals earlier. Except you weren't there. We used a stand-in, but you were supposed to rehearse! Then I see you running down here. So, I chase after you. And here you are!"

  "Can you unlock this?" I asked of the cuff on Joelene's wrist.

  "No," he said with a frown. "The show's beginning! We have to go."

  "I have to help her!"

  Shrugging, he said, "The show! You must get ready."

  "I had a suit made," I told him. "Is it here?"

  "There's no time! You'll have to wear what you have on." As he spoke, he looked me up and down, then at my jacket on Joelene and grimaced. "God, you're not even dressed!
I know your dad got some clothes for you. Let's go look."

  "I had a suit made!" I said again. "Like the orange ones from Adjoining Tissue."

  "HammørHêds? One of my favorites! Love them." Getting out a small screen, he checked with someone. "Michael's got a suit on the way. Did it get here? . . . Oh! Great! Level fifteen!" he said to me. "It's waiting on fifteen. Hurry. We have to hurry!"

  We dashed past the sculptures and the people everywhere, up the stairs and past the violence in the orange lights, and back to the dance floor. Now the director was in charge of pushing the Ültras back and shouting, "Coming through!" We made a right and headed to the stage. Across the huge orange curtain a swarm of lights circled as though it were about to open.