The building was lit up and warm. No effort had been made to hide their presence.
The first few waves of tar hit the ground. I brushed it off my hair and neck and slipped beneath a cement overhang.
“Fucking hell. Goddamnit”
Tarboy wiped his face and licked his hands. I said nothing. We both smelled like chemical burning.
“Okay. This is what you need to do…”
I wiped my neck with my sleeve but it still burned.
“Watch over this building here. If Jesus is alone or with just one other person, come and get me. If there are two people or less in there, come and get me. Take note of the direction people leave. Got it?”
He nodded. I turned to look at the building.
“Okay. Move where you need to, don’t get caught and keep out of the tar. I’m going to be at the Boss-Lady’s house until early morning.”
I gestured diagonally across the rooftop. We could see the glow from here.
“It’s the bright building over there. Come in through the front door. If I’m not there, I’ll be back at the bar. Knock on the wall like before.”
I turned back to him. I couldn’t make out his face in the dark.
“Got it?”
“Got it.”
Another sheet of tar fell. It sat heavily on the cement and didn’t hiss or evaporate. I was late. Goddamnit.
I waited for the sheet of tar to pass and lowered myself carefully between the floors of the building. The tar was slippery and ate into my clothes.
The second floor looked directly into the Animal Hospital. I whistled to the Tarboy and the silhouette of his face cut through the dark blue sky.
It didn’t matter if they saw me.
If anything, I wanted them to see me. I wanted them to know I knew where they lived, and I could get at them whenever I wanted to.
The room was small, the walls were a warm brown and the light was gradually fading in and out. Jesus sat facing Junior across a small table.
He was speaking slowly and without expression. Junior stared at the ceiling, slowly spinning the pistol against the tabletop. I cringed as the barrel rotated past me.
I wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying.
A new wave of tar fell. I ran my fingers over the shiv in my pocket.
There were two jars of shine in front of them. A lump rose in my throat.
Junior’s skin looked soft and wet in the light. His eyes were small and overgrown by pale eyelids. His neck formed a perfect line from his collarbones to a chin that ended uncomfortably close to his bottom lip.
Whatever Jesus was saying, Junior didn’t seem to be listening.
Jesus worked over the words with a jaw knotted with muscles. His lips retracted over dark, square teeth and his eyes shone beneath the overhang of his Neanderthal brow. He leaned forward and gestured with a sharp finger. Junior didn’t respond, just continued to spin the pistol against the table. His chest inflated and then sunk back into his body. I watched the sigh rise through his throat, inflate his cheeks and push through his thin lips.
The gun was off the table and in Jesus’ hand so fast that it took me a second to process what had happened. Junior’s fingers clutched at air and he looked from the table to the barrel of the pistol that Jesus was now pointing in his face.
Jesus spoke again, slowly, without blinking - staring into Junior’s eyes. Junior’s expression hadn’t changed. He seemed bored but now his attention was on Jesus and the gun.
He held out his hand and jerked his head. Jesus’ face wrapped itself around an artificial smile and he flipped the handle into Junior’s palm.
They sat in silence drinking shine.
I dropped into the alleyway and stuck to the walls. The overhang kept most of the tar away. I pushed away the image of Jesus and Junior drinking Dad’s shine.
The tar fell in slow waves and covered the ground like a sheet. I waited for each wave to pass and moved between cover. I was late but I'd sold my time cheaply. The house could wait.
I worked my way along the side of the building. The windows cast orange paths across the dust and the tar boiled in the light.
I pressed my chest into the wall and edged up to windowsill. Insect was sitting at the foot of a wide table with her back to the door. She was talking to the Kid and somebody else. Their voices were low and didn’t seem to peak or trough. Idle chatter. The Kid was facing the window but he was staring at the table. I crouched low and crossed to the other side of the window.
The back of the room was lined with animal cages - two up and five across, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Fats sat at the head of the table, sipping a jar of shine and sucking at a metal pipe. A constant stream of yellow poured from his nose as he spoke. In the shadows of the cage in the far corner I could see a feral - the same feral who had tried to rob the bar. He looked pathetic and small, sitting cross-legged behind the wire door and chewing the room with his eyes.
I tried to focus on the voices inside.
The tar hissed in the light and and every so often a new wave would hit the ground, soft and thick and mute.
“It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter.”
I wasn’t sure who was speaking, but the Insect replied.
"It does matter. If you wouldn't eat it, you shouldn't be feeding it to somebody else."
Her voice was breathy, with a hint of feral rasp - but she spoke clearly and forcefully.
The voice that replied was deep but cracked with uncertainty. I looked into the room to see Fats blowing the words through a new world fog.
“I could eat it. I will eat it. If we can figure it all just right we could all eat it. And that would solve everything. The butcher would become the farmer and you would have enough food for everybody.”
It was the Kid who replied, repeating himself.
“It’s still irrelevant. And it still doesn’t matter.”
There was quiet, followed by a drawn-out sigh.
The Insect broke the silence.
“Try explaining that to them. I’ve tried. I’ve tried explaining it to them. But it’s hard-wired. It’s a part of them. They eat. They’ve got to eat. And when we leave them to their own devices you get these maniacs with their brains all twisted with black meat. So what would you recommend we do?”
The Kid replied.
“I don’t know. Whatever Jesus tells us to.”
A chair scraped against the floor, followed by footsteps and Fats groaning.
“I don’t really know what we’re doing here. So we feed them. So we dress them all up in costumes and run them around. And then what? What happens after that?”
“Well… that will be all.” Insect’s voice was strained “We’ll have done a good thing, the people will be safe and happy and… I guess that’s it.”
Fats laughed. An inappropriately-loud laugh. It cut its way out the window and shattered the darkness in the alley.
“That’s not it. That’s never it. Jesus didn’t stop at feeding the poor. There’s a Kingdom in there somewhere. And you know it’s going to have a King. And by Christ it will be invitation-only.”
“I’m going to see my sister.” Insect sounded tired and frustrated. I heard her rise from the chair.
“Wait” his voice was earnest.
Silence. I could only guess Insect had stopped.
“You know I want the same thing you do. I want everything to be back the way it was. I want everybody to be fed and happy and alive. I want to eat bread and red meat and I don’t want to have to barter with cannibals and psychopaths but…”
The glorious ‘but’.
“…it’s just… this is the best we can do, you know? We’re only two people. And I’m not tough like you.”
I didn’t see her leave the room, but I slipped into view just in time to watch Fats blow a lungful of smoke into the feral’s cage.
“I’m sorry - they wouldn’t want me to give you a pipe. I’ll bring you something to drink and maybe some rough. Ar
e you okay?”
The feral said nothing, his head slowly turned and his eyes met mine.
I ducked below the window and moved on down the alley. My heart was beating fast.
I was late. I’d seen enough for now. Muscles was unaccounted for. The Kid had left but I had no idea if he was still in the building. Insect would be walking in the same direction as me.
“You’re late”
A slave held the door open and the Boss-Lady stood in the threshold, one hand on her hip, one behind her back. The slave was tall and looked healthy.
“Sorry. I got caught in the tar.”
She looked me up and down.
“Come in. It’s been quiet so far.”
It was warm. Lamps were burning black-wood but the smoke was being funneled away through a network of mismatched pipes. The roof was free of tar.
I took the shiv from my jacket and put it in my back pocket. The doorman took my jacket and put it on a rack. It was still wet with tar and radiated fumes.
“Take a seat at the bar. We’ve got plenty of shine, thankyou”
She waved toward the bar but didn’t face me, continuing up the stairs.
“Behave, look after my family and I will be upstairs if you need me.”
The doorman looked me over. I took the tyre iron from the small of my back and slipped it along my hip. I nodded and smiled but he turned back to the door without expression.
The house was bright and vibrated with life. It was a strange contrast to the streets or the river or even the bar. Feral companions spoke to feral clients in their stilted feral way and they almost sounded human.
I took a seat at the bar and fished three blues from my pocket. The bartender examined my face. I narrowed my eyes and examined him right back.
His face was all hair, his eyes swollen and almost perfectly circular. His pupils crawled across the split in my lip, the dried blood on my chin and the purple swelling around my eyes.
Finally I saw a flash of recognition in his face and I broke into a wide, fake smile.
“A jar of shine, friend.”
I reached out to slap him on the arm but he turned too quickly and I caught nothing but air.
The room was a twisted recreation of an old world bar. The Boss-Lady had managed to keep a stock of cocktail glasses and glass shelving and a heavily-patched jacket for the bartender. It felt a little surreal. A little like a carnival. Humanity: The Tunnel Of Love. Everything was exaggerated and crooked.
The barkeep pushed a thin flute of shine toward me and stared at it. I drank the shine and pushed the empty glass back toward him.
“Get me a jar and give this fancy glass to somebody with more taste.”
He took the flute and turned away.
“And bring me smoke.”
I looked around the bar. I was crashing. The last blue had worn off. My mouth was no longer cracked and dry. I was sitting in a grotesque parody of the old world. My stomach turned over. It was all shine and pill-dust and saliva.
The bartender pushed a jar of shine toward me and fixed me with a button-eyed stare.
“And the smoke…”
He stood perfectly still and stared at me. If it wasn’t for the hum of people around us I would have thought the world had frozen. His eyes didn’t move. I raised my eyebrows, held my breath and waited.
Along the bar a feral called for a drink. I flinched and the bartender grinned. He pulled a handful of dry smoke from somewhere out of sight and slapped it down on the bar. It was damp with palm-sweat.
I took the black tobacco and turned to watch the room. I couldn’t take the eyes anymore.
There was nothing going on. Just twisted, brown flesh wet against twisted, brown flesh. The voices clung together and settled on the floor. I could feel my pulse in the small of my back. I ran my tongue over the split in my lip but it had gone numb and the skin felt cold. Maybe I needed to sleep.
A human voice elevated itself over the rumbling. It felt refreshing, in the smallest way possible.
“Call your mother for me, I want to talk to her.”
Insect was waiting by the door. Her clothes were completely free of tar. The doorman gestured vaguely upward without turning around.
I moved to the furthest end of the bar and positioned myself behind a pair of ferals. They ignored me and continued to conspire in low, shine-drunk tones.
I watched the Insect from between them. She was roughly my height, corpse-thin and tanned. Her cheekbones were high and sharp and her eyes were so narrow that I couldn’t tell what color they were. She had a set of long, needle-like pipes hanging from her belt and with one hand her bony fingers plucked each one in turn.
The needles were longer than my forearm and thick. Hollow on the inside. Re-purposed metal pipes from some lost domestic industry. Sharpened to rough points.
Her other hand rested on the back of her roughly-shaven head, her fingertips drumming an impatient beat against her skull.
The Boss-Lady came down the stairs and embraced her sister. The Insect didn’t move, her hands continuing to play silent, nervous music.
I didn’t catch the pleasantries. I assumed they were there. The Insect’s tone escalated quickly.
“And they want to somehow farm it and turn it into… chaff or something and use it to feed them all. To feed all of us.”
Her gestured were animated but her shoulders began to sink.
The Boss-Lady shrugged.
“I’m not sure I see the problem. If they want to eat it, they’ll eat it. If they don’t, they won’t. And they’ll either eat something else or not eat at all.”
Insect looked between the slaves and ferals in the room.
“They can’t make decisions like that. They aren’t capable. I live with them, I talk to them everyday. If they don’t get meat or rough they eat black meat. They know what it does but everyday they row out onto the water and drag it back with them. They can’t help themselves.”
“You give them too little credit.” The Boss-Lady put her hand on the doorman’s forearm. He tensed up and then relaxed, turning to her with pathetic gratitude. “And even if you’re right… you can’t control what people do. They’re driven by need. At least… they think they’re driven by need. If it’s in their nature to inevitably eat themselves out of existence or to poison themselves into insanity… I’m not sure we can stop them.”
I could see the muscles in the Insect’s jaw clench and unclench. Her fingers splayed out by her side and she took a deep breath.
“So the choice is between starvation, cannibal extinction and serving up hair - not knowing if it’s animal or vegetable or living or dead but definitely knowing that it does nothing but hunt skin and eat tar.”
The Boss-Lady shook her head.
“Honestly, it sounds like a good idea to me. I mean, if you get the Doctor onto it and have him do the proper tests and what-not. It sounds like a step toward a sustainable future. Certainly better than the meatbin.”
The Insect’s chest deflated and she smiled.
“You’re right. I guess… I don’t know. The ocean, the tar, the hair crawling up over the edge of the breakwater and trying to work its way under your skin… It just sounds… unnatural. Or wrong”
The Boss-Lady smiled and put her hand on the Insect’s shoulder, and as she spoke I stood and strode up to them, plastering a broad, cocky smile across my face.
“Insect! It’s been so long! Your sister tells me you’ve been hanging around with Jesus and the other smoothies. Is that true? Are you selling out your little feral family down by the river for a little religious enlightenment?”
I stretched my arms out and basked in the fury that spread across her face.
“Get into my hug!”
She had a needle in each hand and she bared her teeth like an animal. It was glorious. The doorman grabbed one wrist and her sister grabbed the other.
She turned to the Boss-Lady and spat.
“You let him in here? You know what who he is! You
know what he does!”
The Boss-Lady spoke firmly and quietly.
“He has been paid to look after my house and my family.”
I interrupted.
“Not just the house, not just the family. I’m here to look after all of you ferals; from the tiniest, decrepit old lady to the mightiest black-meat sucking psychopath. Justice and Love and Honor and Food. I’m the real Jesus here.”
Her face contorted and seemed to stretch unnaturally. She pointed a needle at me, addressing the room with outrage.
“This smoothie came down to the village today - he tried to kill an old woman, he burned three men and then cracked one of their skulls with that tyre iron.”
I shrugged and exaggerated a grin.
“Hey. My love is complicated. And that old lady started it.”
She had both needles in my gut before I had time to laugh. They went through cleanly, crossed in the middle and came out on either side of my spine. I felt every inch of them.
From down on my knees I could see the doorman and a pair of ferals holding her back. Their arms were hooked around her elbows and torso. She threw a few kicks but they hit nothing but air.
The Boss-Lady gestured to the door and turned away.
“Get rid of her”
I coughed, spat something hard and sweet on the floor and slowly stood up.
“No, no. Don’t. Please.”
I cleared my throat. My face was wet.
“It was my fault. I deserved that. Let her go.”
The ferals didn’t move.
I tried to yell but my lungs wouldn’t supply the air.
“Let her go. Seriously. Let her go. You know who I am.”
I pulled the needles from my stomach in one swift motion and held them out to the Insect. I wasn’t in pain. I couldn’t feel anything at all. It wasn’t a good sign.
The ferals stepped back and the Insect took the needles. They were slick with dark blood. There was no gratitude in her eyes, just pure animal hatred.
The Boss-Lady turned back toward us and bent down to look at my stomach. I motioned her away but she didn’t move, just peeled my jacket aside and pushed a finger into the wound.
Blue Meat Blues Page 8
