Monstrocity

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “Salem Street, huh? I didn’t know that.” All nonchalant. That nice old Choom sector is getting more violent these days. Thanks in part to yours truly. “So, do they think she was sexually attacked?”

  “Well, she was a prostitute. A young Choom girl. Besides being dismembered, her heart was cut out.”

  My fork has lodged in the air, half-way to my mouth. Saleet and I have definitely converged in the web of fate...if what I suspect is true. My intuition, my churning guts, tell me it is. I lower my bite of scrambled eggs. Must be nonchalant. I want to ask her if there were any traces of a star tattoo on the girl’s chest, or did the removal of her heart obliterate that? But I must be careful what I ask. I could say I heard such and such on VT, but the forcers might be holding back certain details from the media, details I must not bring up lest she think I murdered the prosty myself.

  “So they think a client...”

  “Again, man hating women. Pathetic,” she sneers. She’s beautiful even sneering angrily.

  I want to ask if the girl had purple hair. Eyes artificially slanted.

  Saleet goes on: “I don’t know why the sorry little wanker went out of his way to disperse her across the city like that, but who knows what fantasies drive these freaks. Head, torso, arm, arm, leg, leg, heart, and one finger. Index finger of her right hand. Go figure.”

  “Eight,” I whisper.

  “Eight?” she says.

  “Eight pieces.”

  “Yeah. Eight.”

  Eight. Eight is the number. It’s all about numbers. Math. Those body parts were not placed randomly. I want to know what other spots they were found in, but I’m afraid to get so worked up over this that it disturbs Saleet. She’s smart, she’s got that enhanced memory; I don’t want her to turn her sharp mind on me in that way. I don’t want to spoil what we have, whatever that might be.

  Saleet looks like she’s lost her appetite, too; she sets down her own fork, takes a sip of tea, then looks up at me. “The Utalla,” she says suddenly, throwing me off, “are aligned with Ugghiutu, in the folklore. They’re one of the groups of his servitor demons. Supposedly they know where to find his sleeping or hidden body – depending on your schism – and they feed some of his orifices the way birds feed their chicks...”

  “Regurgitated cat,” I try to joke. Stomach churning so loud I’m afraid she’ll hear it, churning like a washing machine with a decapitated head inside it.

  “You didn’t really know about the Utalla before tonight, did you, Chris? I know you’re interested in Kalian culture...”

  “What? Saleet, you don’t think I made up that mugger story just to play with you?”

  “I’m not saying that. Just...”

  “He really looked like that, I swear. Maybe it’s just an odd coincidence.” Though I don’t believe in coincidence any more.

  “Well, I just...it’s just funny how you didn’t want to file a report on the incident, and...” She stops. I think she can see the anger in my face as I turn my head away and sip my orange juice while I watch the traffic through the window.

  “It’s getting late,” I say.

  “Chris. I’m sorry.” She puts her hand on my arm. I like the contact, but I can’t break out of my chill that quickly. She thinks I’m a liar. “Chris...what do you want to do now?”

  “Do?”

  “Do you want to come see my place? You haven’t yet. Or we can go watch some VT at yours...”

  I know where this is going. My heart flutters above my roiling stomach, and the combination is a bit too much for me. Lust and fear don’t digest well together, especially with sausage and coffee thrown into the mix. I want this...oh, have I ever wanted anything more?...and I’ve been wondering when it would come up. But I have to hesitate. Again, I’m not sure I can keep seeing this woman if I’m to follow the path I’m taking. And with this new information, which connects to me directly, how can I not? Plus I’m hurt, a bit angry. And I’m distracted; I want to look further into the matter of Utallas and this murdered girl on my computer at home, right away. It isn’t the optimum time for this delirious opportunity...if any such perfect time could ever come. But even through all this chaos of feeling, she’s impressed and excited me. How many Kalian women would be this forward, this brave? Braver than me, that’s for sure. In a way, I wish she was addressing these matters instead of me. How I’d like to tell her, so she could help me...take over the investigation. But I can’t involve her, endanger her. And I can’t admit to my crimes, lest I end up trying to investigate these matters from inside a prison cell. Frankly, finally, I want Saleet so badly that it makes me overwhelmed, frightens me. But I’ll bet she wouldn’t believe that to be true.

  “Not tonight, Saleet,” I tell her. “I’m tired. It’s late. Next time.”

  She slides her hand off my arm. “Right,” she mutters, picking up her tea cup again.

  I look back at her. “No, really. Next time. Just not tonight.”

  “I really am sorry I said that, Christopher. I do believe you. All right?”

  “All right.” I smile to reassure her, but it must look forced. I’m not feeling too smiley. May never, ever again.

  We part solemnly. I give her a kiss on the cheek. I’m afraid she’ll get sick of this distance I wedge between us, will give up on me. It would kill me. But it would be for the best.

  ***

  FIRST, UTALLAS. I find a few references, and one folktale in its entirety which reads a lot like Saleet’s Zul story but without the benefit of being recited in her charming, slightly accented voice. Nest of cat pelts, skin like metal, pretty much the same stuff she mentioned. The things come across half whimsical in the tale, mischievous, not too scary for demon servants of the Big U. On another net site, an illustrated bestiary of imaginary animals, I find an artistic representation. It doesn’t look very much like my mugger. A long beak, but too curved. Great black eyes, but my creature’s eyes were bigger and his didn’t have whites. The illustration’s skin is too literally metallic (reflecting the crags around it). But I note the thing has arms and hands instead of wings. It holds a spitting cat in one fist.

  Opening my eyes, I realize I dozed off for a while in front of my monitor. My cheek is sweaty from resting in my supporting palm. Sitting back from my position hunched over the keyboard, I check the time and see I was only out for fifteen or twenty minutes, but it was long enough to dream. In my dream, I imagined that I had stumbled upon a net site devoted to the Choom alchemist Wadoor, author of Atlas of Chaos, who according to the late Mr. Dove used geometric formulae to open portals to other planes. Suddenly Wadoor himself was there on the screen, speaking to me in an urgent tone...but I couldn’t understand his native Choom tongue. The memory of the dream, its strong illusion of reality, actually gives me a brief shudder.

  I get up to stretch, pace myself further awake for a few minutes, open a bottle of Chinese beer (the best thing about Punktown’s cultural diversity is the diversity of beer), then settle in front of my nice new computer again to see what I can find out about this murdered Choom prosty.

  I go to the official site of the Paxton Police Force. On their menu, I find public access file categories for HOMICIDE, SEX CRIMES, CRIME LOG BY DATE, and such like. I decide to try HOMICIDES first. On that page, I type in a search with the words, “dismembered Choom prostitute”. I get a longer list than I’d hoped. But I click on the link for the most recent case, and I have found the one I’m looking for.

  There is a photo ID of the victim staring out of the screen at me. (A police mug shot, I discover; she was arrested once for hooking.) A young, pretty Choom with her hair dyed snow white. But her eyes cosmetically altered to emulate those of an Asian human. One lip painted blue, the other red. And lest I have any doubts because of the different hair color, the name spells it out. Her name was JELENA DARLOOM.

  The little creature I took to bed. Who lived in Mr. Dove’s building and had bad dreams and got a star tattoo with a fiery eye at the center, to protect her...but who u
ltimately abandoned her pimp to escape her life of prostitution, according to her friends. Could her pimp, Ric, have tracked her down, killed her as a message to the others in his stable? I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t go so far to make his point.

  I’m afraid to look further into the file, but I must. I must look at the link to CRIME SCENE PHOTOS.

  Oh...God...

  Best to get this first page over with. It’s of her head. There are several photos of it. One was shot through the front window of the washing machine. Another was shot through the open top hatch. The clearest shots were taken of the head on a tray in the coroner’s lab. Her hair, in these pictures, is a dark purple color, long and matted like a tangle of seaweed. Her altered eyelids are weirdly frozen half shut and her huge, gaping mouth has had its red and blue lipstick smudged and smeared away. But even in the laundromat shots, there is no real blood to be seen. Was the blood actually drained, or was it just that so much of it was lost through the sheer act of dismemberment?

  The next page shows her left arm. It lies on the open side hatch of the mail box in which a postman discovered it. The letters around it don’t look stained by blood. The flesh is as white and unmarred as wax.

  Next, the right arm; crime scene, and coroner’s slab. This appendage was discovered resting in an old flower box outside a suburban bakery. The palm is turned upwards, the fingers half curled like the legs of a dead spider, only the first finger is missing. I zoom in on the stump. Clean, neat, no blood.

  Left leg with its dainty bare foot propped carefully on the outside window sill of a bank. Right leg found lying against the wall, conscientiously out of the way so as not to be under foot, in the vestibule of a small tenement house. The toe nails, like her finger nails, painted fluorescent orange.

  Index finger of her right hand, pointing its orange nail at the sky. It was found with its end stuck atop a spike in a metal fence surrounding a smallish cemetery. I’m not only feeling sick, at this point, but increasingly angry. That finger touched itself, however unlovingly, to my flesh. Once it was the tiny, dimpled finger of an infant, whose mother had pressed her lips to it. Now it was a prop for a monster’s self-amusement, as if it were made of rubber.

  Resting on the hood of a hovercar parked in a condo complex, a shock to whomever had found it whilst preparing to head off for another seemingly dull day at the office, a smallish dark blob that had once been a pumping heart at the center of a vital, living being. I remember what my friend the doctor said, about organs looking like they shouldn’t be able to work. This near-shapeless mass does not look like it was ever an efficient, life-sustaining machine, even when connected up to its valves and tubes. It is a sad symbol, as if Jelena Darloom’s entire life and entire body have been reduced to this anonymous, compacted handful of bruised tissue. Reverted to a pitiful, formless fetus that will never be reborn.

  The last page shows Jelena’s still shapely torso, its purple-dyed tuft of pubic hair grotesquely challenging the world to view it, of itself, as sensual. Or not to view it as such. No bruises, no stains, such lovely alabaster skin made even whiter through loss of blood. Even the absence of head and limbs doesn’t seem to mar its terrible perfection, at least not the way that hole does between her tiny breasts. Its edges are clean, it’s almost a perfect circle, and the star tattoo is utterly gone as if removed with a cookie cutter. I’m reminded of Gabrielle’s chest window, showing her tattooed heart within her, into which later on she hid away her palmcomp.

  The torso rests on its back on a park bench, blanketing newspapers folded back from it, like a derelict who has spent the night there. Very funny. Very clever.

  Thank God that part is over with. Now I return to the beginning of the file; I can either read or listen to the coroner’s or investigating officers’ reports on the case. I decide to just skim through the transcripts, not comfortable with having these lawmen facing into my apartment, seeming to talk to me.

  Circumstances of death: HOMICIDE. Cause of death: UNKNOWN.

  I know they did not try to extract memories of her last moments from her brain, even if her head was still fresh when they found it. She was only a prosty. A runaway, I see from the report, previously arrested as I glimpsed before. Wait. Her head. Her head...

  I go back to the photos of her head, much as I hoped never to view them again. No bone-like, antler-like protrusions, as in the vidgame. But I saw the beginnings of such a growth on her friend when I went in search of Jelena that time. The lines between reality and unreality are blurring for me. I can’t take it in. The lines and curves of existence are being bent beyond all recognition...

  I skim the reports some more. The pimp, Ric, has been questioned but he has witnesses that can place him in a dance club at the time when Jelena must have been killed. Not to say he couldn’t have had an associate murder her, but I for one don’t believe that to be a possibility.

  Again, I’m intrigued – as the investigators are – about the wide dispersal of the eight body parts. On the file menu, an overview of the city is offered to pinpoint the spots where all the fragments of Jelena Darloom turned up. I click on this link.

  I view a satellite photo of Punktown which indicates the points of discovery, and also a street map with the same eight red dots. Punktown is so vast that from space it seems to sprawl like a continent in itself. Because it is always growing larger, larger, like a living thing (some believe one day it will merge with Miniosis into one megacity), it has an organic shapelessness. It does not grow out evenly in all directions. Around Punktown, in sparse fringes, are all that are left of the great forests that once surrounded the smaller Choom city it swallowed up.

  I’m not surprised to see that the points where the body parts were found form a neat if obscure pattern. At the very center of Paxton: the torso. At the extreme northern point of the city, the head. To east and west, the arms and legs (right arm west, left arm east, as if a giant lay on its back, crucified across the face of Punktown). I’m reminded of that sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, a diagram of a man standing inside a box inside a circle, seemingly with four legs and four arms, limbs spread wide like Jelena’s. I choose to view the pattern as a clock, however. Jelena’s right arm at ten o’clock. Left arm at two o’clock. The heart at four o’clock. The right index finger at eight o’clock. I can’t grasp the significance, but I do know that each of the body parts is precisely the same distance from that central torso.

  A sacrifice. A ritual. I don’t doubt, a ritual of summoning.

  Did they (they?) already put their mark on her before I met her? After all, she was already besieged by nightmares. Tried to ward them off with a tattoo of some occult symbol. Or, did I doom her through my contact with her? I can’t bear that thought. I have enough guilt about Gaby as it is.

  I use my tool bar to draw lines connecting each point to the center. I end up with a pizza with seven unequal slices (unequal because there’s nothing at one, three, six, nine and eleven o’clock). I try tracing a pentagram but that doesn’t quite work. As I look for some clear system, and try to remember if the figure matches anything I’ve seen in the books by Wadoor and Skretuu, I can’t help but notice the patterns in the street map of Punktown itself.

  The central, oldest section is more organic, a little less systematized, at least less obviously so. As the city spreads out from there, a bit more mechanically ordered. Grids that run north and south, east and west. But still, that system is broken up where the city has overlapped the older city, and overlapped itself time and again, so that grids superimpose grids, blueprint atop blueprint, as if generations of spiders have woven their webs directly upon those of the spiders that preceded them.

  Idly, I trace patterns in red, connecting this street to that street. It’s like finding figures in the constellations; you can pretty much build anything you want from the possibilities. I see suggestive patterns in both the old Choom streets and the newer, Earth colony avenues, but again, it’s like seeing animals in clouds. Or Don Quixote seeing giants in
windmills. (But Cervantes said, “Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things underground, and much more in the skies.”) What am I suggesting to myself, here – that there is some vast conspiracy in the lay-out of Punktown, starting with the Chooms (perhaps begun as a curse, a revenge, directed at the invading Earth settlers), then carried on by the colonists themselves? Carried out over generations by some secret cult of Freemasons, devoted to the Old Ones? Hardly possible.

  Well, perhaps not a conscious conspiracy. But could a silent, invisible hand...a vast, eight-fingered hand...have had some influence over the web-weaving? Some consciousness reaching out, whispering into sleeping ears, bending the lines and curves to its own advantage? Building a geometric diagram of its own brain in the very streets of this city? In effect, haunting every building with its essence, making each inhabitant a single cell of its titanic mind?

  I sit back in my chair, to either clear my head or take this concept in.

  It’s insane. But I think about Ugghiutu, shaping his amorphous body into a temple to himself, to lure inside the unwary, the Zuls. Masquerade, camouflage, like the snake pretending it was a vine. Hungry. Patient.

  Insanity, or intuition? Do my very cells recognize the truth in my suspicions? Does this invisible presence that I suspect even have a strand of its web connected to my own soul? Do my very atoms scream at me in an attempt to wake me up to this invasion at last? Maybe this is how the Old Ones, or their servitors, or whatever I’m fighting, have learned certain things about me...because I’m threaded into the weave.

  It’s like an epiphany.

  Thus begin hours of obsessive research that strays hither and yon, adrenalin counteracting my former doziness and the effects of my beer. I do a search on ley lines, which I read about in an occult book years ago purely for entertainment. I read about a Sacred Triangle in Great Britain that connected the ancient sites of Avebury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury. These ley lines or “straight tracks” are supposedly a pattern of magnetic earth force, and everything from prehistoric megalithic sites to less ancient churches were built upon them, as if to tap into their currents. The Chinese had their concept of “dragon paths”. I read about the phenomenon of crop circles. Huge mysterious symbols appearing in fields; most blatantly faked, apparently, but others supposedly genuine and allegedly formed along patterns of earth force. The immense Nazca Lines. The Phaistos Disk of Crete with its maze-like patterns and strange hieroglyphics. The principal of Feng Shui.