Slave Stories

by Bahr, Laura Lee

  Oh, the old Starfish works just like the alchemists and the back alley whisperers claim. I’ve seen it with my own real eyes. What Dr. Lob conveniently forgot to tell Waco is that there are some side effects. Duh.

  Seriously, would you score a street level nanogenic that rebuilds tissues and whole organs from a guy with prosthetic limbs? Bit of a clue there methinks. But once a Mudheader, always a Mudheader. Waco soon found out. Starfish grows you back—while also driving you insane. You start off gnawing yourself, then you progress to slicing. Soon you’re hacking your hands off and wondering how long you can hold your bleeding heart in a claw that’s just oozed back into form. Disgusting stuff to watch, especially in the confined space of a sewage swamp Dropbox. I decided that I was going to have to take action, and I think you understand the kind of action I mean.

  The thing that really sticks in my craw about the Slave State is that it turns everyone into rat fighters. I haven’t been to Spittle, but I know Wire City. I think Ersatz is even worse. Laissez-unfair, as they say. We’re all apparently free of the charge batons and the Lizard tanks, but the fatalistic obsession with self-indulgence as the tonic for the drudgery of available work has driven everyone Starfish mad. You can’t go to a strip club without gladiatorial games. “Show us your intestines!” What kind of shit is that? Now I was planning to somehow take out my best and oldest friend.

  Who am I kidding? Waco’s my only friend. The guys in the swamp pits? Sure we’ll have some amber and shoot pigeons together sometimes. But what do we really have to talk about? Surface crust and algae levels—big boobs and strangleholds? Waco and I used to be a true team in Shell. The Chicken Scratch circuit is no picnic, and we were righteous Cockfighter Pilots. There’s a lot more to designing, maintaining, and deploying Meg 1 exoskeletal battle-bots than you might think. Those retro metal skills have stood me in good stead as a pig man. Leeching hydraulic fluid, welding, repressurizing a pneumatic joint—we were a good team. We were old time Mudhead boys. But still, I was thinking about how to kill him. Not an easy thing to do with a Starfish addict. I decided to hit the Eel Tank and consult with Curaçao.

  The Eel Tank was one of the better bars that I could only rarely afford. It was owned and managed by a guy called Head Cheese. He’d had a penile growth treatment go terribly wrong, and had basically had the bottom half of his body amputated. “More bag than sense” was the chinwag take, but he was decent for a bottlebrush. He kept his toilets clean and I admired the precision mech of his auto-traction chair. Curaçao was a cosmetic Blue Girl, and his best tassel dancer. She’d done some fumigating of unwanted wantoks for a container park neighbor of mine. If anyone knew how to deal with a Starfish problem, she was the one. She was on counter, shaking it, when I showed up.

  I flashed her a token to signal a tit-a-tete. Nothing like titanium to get attention in this burg.

  “Darling! Haven’t seen you in elephants!”

  “This place is too rich for my blood, and you’re too fine for my coffin.”

  “So, what’s the hurt, sugar skull?”

  Blue nipples are still a gas to me. I needed a drink.

  “Just quietly,” I said… “I have a cockroach. Bad blood is I’ve known him from the incubator. Twined like worms. But he’s taken root in my bivouac and is on to Starfish.”

  “That is a knot.”

  “How do I untie it? Things aren’t good for him—and they can’t stay the same for me. I have sewage problems to solve.”

  “Take me to the Squirm Lounge. Two tokens. I have a maybe idea.”

  You get the advice you pay for—and often have to forego the blowjob you’d like.

  Once in the squiggly light and memory foam couches of the back lounge where the gals did their real business, she got right down to biz.

  “There’s only one new drug in town that can for certain trump Starfish.”

  “Tell me,” I said, and ponied up some more titan.

  “It’s called The Chain. It reverse viruses the Starfish and blows the cells of the units one by one—to exponential end.”

  “The unit? You mean my friend’s body?”

  “The target.”

  I hate being chastised about the protocol of backroom assassination planning by a Blue Woman with a very hot ass. But she was right.

  “So, that’s good news, yes?”

  “And no. It will cure the ill, but unless you want to be cleaning walls forever, you have to be careful about where the deal goes down.”

  “Indeed. What’s the time window?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe impossible. But in your box, if you were there, you’d be at risk of the explosive momentum.”(She and I had twined like worms there once, but I think the smell of the sewage swamp got to her.)

  “If it comes on when the target is free-styling, like in the markets, a lot of people will be influenced.”

  “Influenced? You mean blown apart or penetrated with bone shards…spattered with bile and seminal fluid…blood, goop, gore and digestive enzymes?”

  “You came to me.”

  I wanted to say that I wanted to come in her, but you don’t talk trash to Blue Women.

  “So, we’re saying nasty end. Any pain?”

  “Ask the dogs in the shelter. Look at these pert erect nipples. I’m not a doctor or scientist. You came to me about a cockroach problem—and you don’t look flush.”

  “He’s eating me out of house and home, and I can’t stand watching a friend keep dying and coming back.”

  “Ready for some good news?”

  “Hit me.”

  “I have a spec sample of Chain. I’ll trade it.”

  “And the catch?”

  “No catch, really. My brain damaged brother needs a job in the swamp. I’ll throw in a hand job to sweeten the deal. Can you get him hired?”

  “I can do Level 4. It’s pretty bad, but it’s titan every week.”

  “He’s jizz in the head. He just wants some pride of work and some place to go.”

  “What about a titty fuck?”

  “Sorry. These are the money-makers. You give it away, you never get pay. But I’m down for hand therapy. I remember the equipment. Know how to work it.”

  “I’m pleased you remember the equipment. Done and dusted. I’ll take the item and the proposition in question. So, all I need to do is arrange for some open-air delivery of the package with as little collateral involvement as possible?”

  “That’s it. If it were me, I’d allow 30 minutes, but don’t bank on that. Remember the nipples.”

  “I will never forget. Where’s the trinket?”

  She produced from her G-string what looked like a small silver pretzel made of bolt cutter thick steel. It was actually as light as one of those ancient postage stamps the man with the huge goiter living next door to me collects.

  “He eats this…and BOOM?”

  “Want your hand job now?”

  “No thanks. I want this to work first. Then we’ll get the job millstone for retard bro, and I can properly enjoy my hard-earned reward.”

  “Your call. I have stain remover tips if things go south.”

  “Things have gone south my whole life. That’s why I’m here. Ya got nice tits. Thanks for the mojo. I’ll report on how I go—unless you hear it in the news.”

  I waved goodbye to Head Cheese on my way out, wondering how I was going to get my best and only friend to swallow the Eucharist of his own demise without giving the game away. A chain reaction of cellular disassemble—at what sounded like TNT velocity. I was a nice guy once.

  <~~O~~>

  One time, when we were losing in a hillbilly high-priced robot fighting game on the saltbush outskirts of Shell, Waco produced this old rusted ten-penny nail. It was like a fossil of some lost world. It exactly held the broken machine we’d made together, as if it were invented to do so. We won…and he glanced at me, as if to say, “I told you. Got your back.”

  I keyed in to the Dropbox to smell lime mango barbecued glass squid. Waco’s h
ead was just re-emerging out of his shoulders, a little slimy, but or less the same.

  “I got a job, man!” His newly made mouth said. “Thought I’d make us some food. Goin’ into rehab on the Starfish. There’s this place across town. I want to thank you for bein’ such a good friend. It’s gonna be a bit, but hey, glass squid!”

  I had his death and release in my pocket, and here was the old Mudhead boy from Shell County. I still had a halfway good erection from Curaçao’s boob fragrance, but I went into what passes for my bathroom, and dropped the piece of Chain into the toilet. It would pass into the sewage swamp, where I was lucky enough to have a job. Even in the Slave State, you only get one oldest and best friend.

  The Last Lash

  —P. R. Differ

  Late in the afternoon, the elephantine coach narrowly avoided an open sewer and ground to a halt in front of Ersatz’s finest fetish emporium. The passengers had been intoxicated since dawn had purged the land of darkness. The driver, a thirty-year-old female, vomited into a cheap, obsidian bucket, crudely wiped sick from her mouth and then kicked the bile-filled receptacle over in disgust.

  “Wur heer nnoo,” she howled and then thought, “I think this is the right place.”

  “Nuuoo wee urn’t,” a passenger replied and then said, “oh fuck, what if she is right?”

  “Wee Fakkiiin aarrr hheeerrreee, yuu oodddiioouusss cuunnt.”

  “Nnssooo wee uurr nott, yoouuu sttuupppiiidd ggaaarrrrggoooyyylleeee.”

  “Ii amm ggooiinna eeuutt urreee skkiinn, cuunnt.”

  “Trryy eettt, yoouuu uggllyy bbassturd.”

  “Tthhhaatttsss uttt.”

  “Fffuuckk.”

  As the driver staggered up the aisle, discarded bottles disintegrated to the rhythm of her fearless march. Passengers cheered as she grabbed her opponent’s Adam’s apple and clamped his tongue between her teeth. Out of nowhere, a man rose from his seat—the pilgrim—and he jammed a knife into her left eardrum—perforating her brain as a result—multiple wounds rendered her job up for grabs. A sudden silence ensued and the pilgrim remained king.

  <~~O~~>

  The Festival of Unadulterated Pleasure was well underway, and the city was once again a modern-day Gehenna. Ersatz was within crawling distance of Wire City and only a mere stone’s throw from Spittle’s unofficial toxic dump. A Wire City newspaper headline once read: Ersatz: Zero Hospitals / Five Red-Light Districts. Afterwards, a Spittle newspaper headline read: Ersatz’s Dirty Secret: Locals Dump Waste in Spittle.

  The terminally-ill city knew how to harbour a grudge: its sewers engulfed children, its infected water supply poisoned pregnant mothers, its flora and fauna were rotten.

  Passengers emerged single file from the coach’s narrow door, and the man waiting outside the erotic boutique introduced himself as Lev Goasher: the arbiter of clandestine pleasures, the St. Peter of flesh, the final gatekeeper, and the owner of The Feast.

  “Wary travellers,” he roared, “come stain—ha, you get it—stain my sex furniture, finger my Victorian surgical tools, and try my signature offal-infused aphrodisiacs.”

  “Relax,” he told himself, suddenly unsure about his outburst, embarrassed by its vulgarity. He didn’t mean to stamp his authority on the stock—just convey his immense pride.

  The pilgrim’s handshake was stronger than limpet teeth. As Goasher smiled and embraced the pain, he ignored his stressed carpels, metacarpals, and phalanges.

  “Last year was okay, Goasher,” said the pilgrim didactically.

  “Yeah wel…”

  “I haven’t finished. The previous year, that was a steaming bag of shit for so many reasons: there was no sacrifice, no innovation, no gusto.”

  “Ugghh, well I…”

  “I know, I am a hard man to penetrate, but that is your job; to penetrate me is your job.”

  “I promise you will not be disappointed this year.”

  The pilgrim ignored the final remark, scoffed and was joined by two colleagues in entering The Feast.

  The pilgrim discussed Goasher’s display with the others as they explored and analysed the Victorian surgical tools: the rotating blades of the artificial leech (they could drain both ear and eye), the scarificator (another bloodletting instrument), and the Tobacco Smoke enema.

  “Never before have a fumigator and bellows entered the sexual equation,” said one man.

  “You shouldn’t blow smoke up his ass,” replied the pilgrim, “his body isn’t built for it. Unlike yours, apparently.”

  “Forceps and extractors, what a turn on,” cried another man, squirming at the thought of multiple orgasms brought on by antiquated medical practices. “If only I had enough blood to try the artificial leech as well.”

  According to the pilgrim, Goasher had most likely stolen the idea from another boutique when he travelled to Wire. According to the pilgrim’s colleagues, it simply did not matter whether Goasher had stolen the idea or not. It was the execution of the concept, its ability to scrape the barrel of pleasure, not its originality that mattered to them.

  “Just you remember who has the final say,” barked the pilgrim.

  The next round was not like the first and Goasher’s offal-infused aphrodisiacs sickened the triumvirate. There was a lecherous silence and the pilgrim forced a bile-smeared chocolate into his mouth. Deep down, in that malodorous pit he dared call a stomach, Goasher knew that the trio would be disgusted. The guinea pig gagged and then slapped the store owner.

  “I can’t even begin to express how disappointed I am,” said the pilgrim.

  “But you haven’t even tried out the sex furniture,” begged Goasher.

  “I don’t need to. Sex furniture is scabby, crude and offensive”

  “The first time I came here,” said the Pilgrim, “a clerk called Vic tried to fool me. He was a young man—most young men are fools—but his age didn’t matter to me, and it was clear to me that if he fooled me once, he would certainly try to fool me again. You remember what happened to him Lev? I do. I remember because every year, on this very day, for the last eight years, we try and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I remember what happened: you made me eat him—every last bit of him—you made me a cannibal. I used to be just like you, but you had me chained to this store.”

  A handprint—the same color as a sunset—on Goasher’s face made him look pathetic and doomed as he listened to the pilgrim.

  “Ouroboros: the snake that eats its own tail to sustain its life, the judge who kills when there are no more criminals left, the store owner who ends up on his torture rack because he can no longer push the boundaries”

  The pilgrim left the store—leaving his two colleagues to finish the task—whoever could digest Goasher would host the festival next year.

  From Within

  —Richard Thomas

  The first time they come to measure my son, he is only eleven years old. Two men knock on the door of our humble home that squats on the outskirts of Shell County, my boy and I eating Macaroni and Cheese, our eyes turning mid-spoon to the interruption. Outside the darkness is as black as pitch, matching their uniforms, their helmets slick, a measuring tape in each of their hands. Dust devils spin across the land—dirt and garbage lifting high up into the night.

  They never say a word, simply walk inside and lift the boy from his seat, one of them holding him as the other measures height, then width, then depth. They never speak, only nod at each other, and then retreat into the night, the door left open, as silt slips inside, and over the floor. I blink. The boy shrugs, and we go back to our meal. These things happen when your overlords float over the cities, some as small as cows, the queen bees as large as blimps. The smaller ones are grey, like elephants, the largest translucent—colored organs in red and purple pumping from within. They are beautiful and horrific, having ruined all we know.

  I work in one of the mines, as most of us do, out in the desert. Certain ore that we previously thought of as common is essential to th
eir life and continued development. Much like the storm troopers, I dress in a jumpsuit, but mine is orange, my son’s a shade of peach. We do not reside in the gothic mansions that line the pit, no, we are just workers, so little to live for but each other. And most days, that is enough. Our shotgun shacks ring out around the pillared homes with porches wrapping around the dirty gothic structures, foremen with shotguns, their women in tattered dresses.

  The boy works in a sorting facility, an expansive metal garage on the way to the Shell County mines. At night we reunite on the dirt path outside his building, holding up our hands to reveal the day’s labor—his lavender and blue from the kyanite, as if dusted by fairies; mine rusty and muted from carts of mica, splinters of the fine ore leaving nicks upon my skin. If it weren’t for the boy, one arm around him as we lumber home, exhausted, I certainly would have ended it by now. All up and down my arms are thin lines of mottled flesh, spider webs of dark promises I can’t keep—unable to leave, unable to surrender. He finds a way to chirp and laugh, something they discovered inside a mineral today, some sort of ancient bug—these buried worms and larvae—trapped inside the rock, the highlight of his day. He holds his hand out to show me the wriggling creatures and my stomach turns over. They look prehistoric, with their pincers and feathered legs. I don’t know if it’s a beautiful thing, his discovery and excitement, or just another sad story in a long line of sad stories.

  The second time they come to measure my son, I’m not nearly as receptive as the first. I ask them what they want, why they are here, and they simply push me aside and descend upon the boy. He is still so innocent, in this new world, never knowing the things I struggle to forget—free will, television, beer, football, movies, music, books, fine dining, travel—the list spirals out into the ether. He knows none of these pleasures, and never will. He stands up, his arms spread wide as they measure, and measure, and measure. I scream at them to get out, apoplectic with rage, my face flushing red, but they ignore me, simply nodding their heads—height, and width, and depth.

  When I lay a hand on one of them he turns on me with an unforeseen speed, a baton extending out of his hand, pulled from a pocket or his belt, perhaps, his gloved hand lined with metal spikes, the rapid-fire beating faster than I can witness, simply a blur of metal and blood splatter, my eyes, my nose, my teeth—my vision lost in a mist of red, as I fall to the ground, my hands never even raised.