“Stop, I’ve got you”
I pulled his head toward me and wrapped my arm around his neck.
“Hold still”
I could feel the pulse in his neck through my sleeve.
“Hold still”
I chewed on my tongue, spat on my fingers and cleaned the blood from each eyelid.
He pulled himself away, blinking.
“Thankyou”
I tried to smile but the movement felt wrong and it became some sort of wild grimace.
“I’m here to help”
“So I guess that’s how you got all…”
He gestured up and down my face with two fingers.
“Yep. I guess I’m not qualified to do my job anymore”
I was sitting on the slab. He wet a rag with shine and started to dab at my lip.
He looked at me straight in the eyes. His face was close to mine. His skin smelled like smoke.
“In all fairness - you and I both know you go far beyond… I don’t even know what you are. Bouncer? Barkeep? Delivery boy?”
You aren’t my Dad.
I sighed.
“It’s a mad world. I’m just living in it”
He turned and folded the rag - laying it on the bench.
“That mad world of yours is changing. It’s been a long time. A lot of people are hungry. A lot of them are scared”
He gestured to the body on the floor, stooping to grab its wrists.
I slipped from the slab and took it by the feet.
He looked at me and nodded.
“One, two, three - lift”
We stretched it out on the slab. It was heavy with water.
One arm slipped off, swinging like a limp pendulum.
He took it by the wrist and put it back on the slab.
The body still had color. The face was dead and grey but the stomach and legs were flushed with fading pink.
The Doctor leaned back against the bench and fished a pipe from his pocket. I did the same. He offered me a wet mass of fake tobacco and I took it, nodding.
He took a sliver of black wood from the pile beside the stove and held it over the flames.
I stood beside him. He lit his pipe with difficulty - the tobacco was wet and the last droplets of tar still lingered in its pores. The smoke was harsh and acidic, but the nostalgia of the action made it comforting.
I walked to the doorway, turned around and leaned up against the frame.
He held the pipe between his teeth and pulled a leather case from below the slab, opening it beside the body.
“Where have you been? This isn’t fresh news”
Fresh news.
His words were punctuated by scraps of tobacco, puffs of thick sepia smoke.
He pulled the tools from the bag and lined them up along the slab. The cleaver. The knife. The saw.
I eyed the cleaver with jealousy. Potentially lust. Envious lust.
“I guess I got caught up in work”
He examined the tools in turn, cleaning them on his sleeve.
“You got caught up chasing ferals around the city.”
He didn’t look up.
“You got caught up popping pills and cracking heads and drinking shine”
I couldn’t argue.
“You’re probably right.” I said. ”I guess I…”
I had nothing to add. He was right, but the tone in his voice put me on edge.
Things were starting to turn already. I felt it in the bar and I was feeling it across the slab.
I cleared my throat.
“I thought judgment died when the curtain fell”
He took the saw and lined it up across the knee.
He spoke without looking up.
“Morality didn’t die. We just didn’t have the time for it”
He pushed the saw through the skin, angling it between bones. There was still a good amount of blood in the body. It ran in a thick stream through the channels in the slab, gathering in a plastic container under the drain-hole.
Morality didn’t die. We just didn’t have the time for it.
I cringed.
“And now we’ve got the time?”
He pulled the lower leg away from the thigh. It came away easily.
“It looks like it. We’ve got time to be having this discussion. You’ve got time to cause trouble down by the river. You’ve got time to be creating endless petty vendettas.”
He was sharp, I gave him that. I don’t know where he got his news from - but it was accurate.
I pulled in a deep lungful of smoke and blew it across the slab.
“And now what?”
He started to work on the other leg.
“Now…”
He waved the smoke away and set his pipe down.
“Now we can start to help people. We can start to really help them. Not with summary executions and arbitrarily dumping them in the meatbin. But actual… help”
He grabbed the ankle and the knee pulled apart cleanly.
“We can give everybody a good life”
I rolled the words around in my head. Good. A good life.
I wasn’t going to get involved in that mess.
A good life. A bad life. A mediocre life. Positioning our existence on some arbitrary multidimensional scale. I’d had enough of that before the curtain dropped.
I took a deep breath, exhaled quietly, tried to ignore the growing heat in my face.
“So who are these bold new titans of industry. Who is this…” I struggled to conjure up the right word. “This… posse”
He didn’t reply, just angled the saw across the hip and tried to feel out the path of bones with his left hand.
I cleared my throat and tried to sound earnest.
“I’ve already met the big guy, the muscular one. I met his pretty friend, I guess they’re in love? And I met the other one. He seemed like the leader I suppose. A young guy. Seemed angry. Or something.”
He looked up at me, lay the saw down and took the pipe up, sucking on it a few times until the embers flared up.
“That young guy.” There was acid in his voice. “Is not the leader”
“I see. I see.”
We looked at each other for a while, leaking smoke steadily across the slab - watching it get sucked away by the exhaust fan.
I waited for him to elaborate, but he just stared at me through the smoke. I shuffled my weight between my heels.
“So… who is the leader?”
He sighed - letting out a thick plume of smoke, and picked up the saw, pipe still between his teeth.
“Jesus” he said.
The word hung in the air.
“Jesus” I repeated.
And my heart beat fast and my breath came shallow, and with crushing certainty I knew exactly who he was talking about.
“Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a crate of rough and some blue meat for you”. He gestured to the body on the slab.
He didn’t look up. He continued speaking to the slab.
“And if you bring me another crate of shine later this week I’ll have another jar of blues and a half a jar of reds.”
I was frustrated and angry. Jesus and this Doctor dismissing me like a slave.
"As much as you want to believe it - you aren't doing charity work here."
I spat the words out over the slab. He didn’t look up, but stopped working.
"These people don't need to eat. They just want to eat."
I tapped my pipe against the door frame and stepped the embers out. If he could hear what I was saying, he didn't show it.
I turned into the living room and raised my voice.
"I know you haven't eaten in years. Even I hadn't eaten for months until I ate a handful of rough a few weeks ago out of sheer dental boredom. You're pandering to this old-world idea of food as some sheer necessity of life. We've escaped that. We've escaped hunger. Isn't that the greatest thing of all?"
Silence.
“This morality of yours is spit
ting in the face of a beautiful gift.”
I pulled open the front door and looked back.
I don’t know what I expected. Some sort of capitulation. Defeat. A validation of my world-view.
All I could see was a cloud of smoke and two pale feet.
“When the slave gets back - tell them there’s a fresh one out under the billboard. You know the one I’m talking about”.
A good life.
I didn’t close the door behind me and walked out onto the street.
I was angry and confused.
Jesus.
I had to see for myself.
I’d met a lot of Jesus’ since the curtain fell. I’d met a lot of Judas’, a few Shivas.
I’d even met a Buddha and I’d smashed his head with a cinder block in the alley behind the bar.
But I had a dark feeling about this one.
I was sure this was going to be…
The - Jesus.
Chin on the asphalt, tar pushed between my lips. The heat from his calves on either side of my stomach, his ankles bit into my sides.
“Stay down!”
I pulled my elbows beneath me and tried to lift myself.
“I said stay down!”
A sharp crack on the top of my skull, metallic, a hot burst of air on my scalp; my face dropped into the tar. I blew ineffectual bubbles. My mouth tasted like iron.
Silence. Relative silence. A thick wave of tar pushed my face into the asphalt. The officer’s breath rattled, ragged over his teeth.
My heart beat fast. Waiting for some sort of cue.
His ankles didn't move. His adrenal shuddering carried through my sides and into my ribs.
My skull was throbbing. Tar pried into the wound on the top of my head.
“Stay down…”
His voice was worn. Tired. A stalemate. There was no backup, nowhere to go.
I spoke into the tar.
“I'm going home. I'm just going home.”
“What did you say?”
Hot breath on my neck.
“I'm just trying to go home.”
Tar on my tongue, my teeth were humming.
A wet foot between my shoulder blades. My ribs grinded into the road.
“You just stay down.”
I let the tar run from my mouth, down my chin. It felt warm like saliva.
“Just… stay down.”
No room for a ‘why?’, no receiver for an explanation. A bureaucrat with his boot on my skin.
I pictured his smug face, free of tar, in the light of day, shirt all starched and pressed, badge worn down from masturbatory polishing. Smug grin of a man with the power of a system behind him. A book of rules to pull you into line, a gunpowder phallus to keep you there.
“I'm going home”
He twisted his boot into my back.
“You aren't going anywhere”
The acid in my stomach, the heat in my chest. There it was. The anger.
I spun around, his boot slipped, his ankle rolled. My chest ripped open on the gravel. I threw a hand blindly above me, meeting nothing, and he hit the ground as I staggered to my feet. My vision rolled, skull pounding.
His mouth was wide open, spewing no real words, pink tongue struggling to make a coherent shape.
“I'm going…”
Blind for a moment, the flash seared my eyes. His hand dissipated in a cloud of blood. Raw shining bone, the pistol a swarm of metal splinters. The explosion was mute, the pressure slammed my ear drums. I was falling and I couldn't stop, my stomach burned hot, his teeth ground together.
I folded over him and I could feel it; the hole in my stomach, hot blood spilling over his chest, his breath in my face, his eyes staring into mine.
“You shot me?”
No sign of understanding. I dragged myself until I was lying on top of him. My body was heavy. Tar pushed into my stomach cavity. My nerves sang.
“You shot me…”
His eyes rolled. His one good hand crept over my face; his palm on my mouth. Sweat and gasoline. His fingers searched out my eyes.
I pushed his hand away and drove my skull into his face. His teeth dug into my forehead. A gross exhalation of hot air and bile.
“Stay down”
Over and over. His face folded, spread, my shoulders ached, my stomach yawned open. Cold air on organs.
I couldn't feel his heartbeat. His eyes were pools of tar.
Some form of justice.
I was tired. Vision dark. I rolled off his body and stared at the sky, but it was so black that I couldn't tell if I was blind, or dead.
The sun was directly overhead, somewhere behind the the thick yellow sky.
At least… I assumed it was. I hadn’t seen it for years.
I checked my watch - held it close to my eyes, translated the hands through the shattered face.
A little after midday. My shadow was directly beneath me. The sky radiated dry heat.
I set the hands to precisely midday. It felt like precisely midday.
The burners would be rolling into the harbor soon. I hadn’t heard the call go out - but I could easily have missed it.
I had the ear in my top pocket and a jar of shine by my hip.
I wanted a hatchet or a cleaver or a machete. Something heavy and sharp.
I didn’t know where I’d carry it but things felt like they were escalating and it felt like I should escalate along with them.
Something thin and sharp, at the very least.
If I was on the floor again - that meat-head breathing his sweet breath in my face - I’d have it up between his ribs, scramble his lungs - ventilate the chambers of his heart.
And he would fall on top of me, blood coagulating between our chests until we were stuck fast together.
And…
And then what? Where was this mad fantasy going?
I wanted a blue, but my mouth was too dry. I needed a drink.
I’d have to wait.
I had to save the shine.
I’d get some brown water from the burners.
Midday. I had maybe seven hours until it got dark.
Seven hours to make a plan. I wanted this all closed off and tied up before I went to sleep.
One brief nightmare - punctuated by old-world morality and vague religious symbolism.
And the scars on my lip, knuckles and back would serve as a pale reminder of this…
Moral panic.
I smirked. Classic wordplay.
I would head down to the harbor - the burners should arrive soon. I’d pick up something sharp and - trade permitting - get a little water.
I’d ask around - throw out a few pointed questions about Jesus and his friends.
If they were brave enough to come into my bar and cold-cock me, they were bound to have been liberally tossing this dream of justice around the city.
I would head up to the river and hand over the ear. If the reward wasn’t enough, I’d put the iron to a few ferals. Just gently. A gesture. I had precious few calories of motivation left in the bank. I didn’t want to waste another blue on a feral.
I’d take the reward and anything else that looked good - head back to the bar - apologize to Dad and slip out in the middle of the night to settle the hash of Muscles and Jesus and the rest of the posse.
I picked up the pace and angled toward the harbor.
I felt like I couldn’t fill my lungs.
Everything would be back to normal tomorrow.
Jesus.
Everything would be back to normal tomorrow.
The words sounded empty.
The crowd was all breath and sweat and rust.
The taste stuck to the back of my throat.
I tried to push closer but the current of bodies was too strong.
Lost amongst a hundred frantic mouths all crying out at once.
The trader had propped herself on the front wheel of the burner, standing high above the masses.
She gestured to a feral with her oil-stained
head and mouthed silent orders to the worker perched atop her cargo.
He looked well-fed for a slave.
I shouted - waved the jar of shine above my head - but the wind picked up off the harbor and my voice was carried away in vapor and rust.
Not even room to swing a tyre iron. Just feral skin sliding across mine like some naked deep sea fish.
I shuddered.
I was thirsty and frustrated and paranoid.
The sky was creeping from yellow to brown - grainy like old film and edged with black.
The water in the harbor was slow and dark, a sickly dense purple.
Thick waves groped at the breakwater and a gangrene colony of hair spread out along the damp cement, frantically stretching syringe arms to fill each new patch of moisture.
The fractured silhouette of the old city sat jagged and low across the harbor.
I could see the empty space where my apartment had been. Now it was nothing but sepia sky.
The highway shot out over the water - all industry and girders and vague cultural memories.
The overpass groaned overhead.
The column of vehicles stretched wide across the water-front - idling, fed a steady stream of black wood, rocking as workers scrambled to load and unload.
The vibration of the engines carried through the ground, shot up through my heels and along my spine.
My teeth ached and my stomach chewed angrily at itself.
Every few minutes a thick cloud of tar-smoke would slip from an exhaust pipe - drifting down over the crowd like a black sheet.
In the shadow of the cloud the people would scramble backward, pushing and gouging, tar hissing and sputtering against skin and dust and asphalt.
And the breeze would pick up and carry the vapor away, leaving nothing but fine brown dust and the stench of burning hair.
And again, the crowd would push forward.
I turned to the feral beside me. His jaws didn’t seem to fit together, and his mouth hung open, tongue working against his bottom teeth.
He turned his head and looked at me. His eyes were pure black.
I wanted to hit him just to see if he was really alive.
He lifted one eyebrow, winked and turned away.
I was getting nowhere.
I pushed my way along the column, moving painfully slow between burners.
The guards looked out over the crowd, propping their chins against homespun scatterguns or lounging atop the truck cabins. They looked bored and unconcerned.
Blue Meat Blues Page 4
