Strategies Against Nature

by Cody Goodfellow

  Cocteau’s Beauty And The Beast. In color.

  I found a set of hand-tinted reels in Paris when I went talent scouting a month before. I kept it back as a special surprise for our anniversary or if I fucked up bad and needed a hole card. But I gave it to Emil, and his Transnistrian image-hacking freaks tweaked it.

  They ran the old thirty-two frame film through rendering software that created intermediate frames. The result is not quite seamless, and gives the movements a deliberate, underwater feeling.

  We watched it and she got fidgety and distracted. I was piqued when she asked me to go, but by the time I got to my office and checked the monitors, she was already going to town, looking at a spread I’d left out for her. I swear, no porn ever got to me quite like that one lousy peeper-cam scene did. The way her whole body shook as she humped her hand, face down and squeezing tears out onto the sticky pages, perfect ass in the air like an invitation to a ghost.

  So she finally caved in. I shot the scene subtly, and it was tasteful.

  Ariane, with dark auburn hair upswept into a crown, is giving the oldest Von Tripp daughter a piano lesson. The girl is overcome by grief. Ariane consoles her, believing it’s because her lost mother and father that she cries, but she is tormented by strange desires. . .

  Surprising only Ariane, she finally plants a sloppy open kiss on my wife’s darkly painted lips. She recoils for a moment, long enough that I almost cried “Cut!” and made with the apologies and cocaine. But that’s the trigger, the moment we see it all go down in her eyes. And she returns that clumsy girl’s kiss with a woman’s hungry ardor. Confused by her own as yet unshot experiences at the hands of a cruel butch headmistress, Ariane lets out a lifetime of pent-up, misdirected lust in that one kiss, which grinds on for nearly three minutes, before her pawing, caressing hands find their way into Astrid’s formidable uniform blouse.

  It would’ve been a milestone in porn even without the technique. But we laid the technique on thick. Wanted to put Ariane back in the heads of every man in the world, make a million stalkers overnight. And we did, but not men.

  Ariane had held onto a pretty big audience after she left the circuit, but her solo videos had brought in a whole new one. Women told each other they watched her the same way a golfer would watch Tiger Woods, to pick up pointers from a pro. But even without the process, she turned those bitches on.

  You can’t judge porn on the merits of the script, the acting, the bells and whistles. In the end, you just have to ask, Did it work, or not? Well, this one worked, didn’t it?

  I guess it didn’t just turn them on. It put Ariane into that emotional speed-dial that people keep for those they’d go into a burning building after. They were hardwired to love her; and when no amount of chardonnay or bonbons would relieve the pain of not having her, they turned to each other.

  What do I say to critics . . . Porn critics? Oh, just . . . people . . . who say I doomed the human race . . . Fuck you, too. No, that. Seriously, I didn’t doom mankind, I just took his pants and gave them to women. He’s had them for ten thousand years and look at what he’s done with them. Even if they put pins through the ankles of every boy born and leave them all for the wolves, humanity will prevail. That’s what scares me.

  Some of my defenders. . . and I wish they’d get off my side, really. . . but some of them say you know, it’s hypnosis, so like, I didn’t command them, I just set them free to be what they always were, inside. I’m the scapegoat for why they never made a woman come, y’know?

  No, what I believe. . . No. What I know. . . Not every woman who saw the video had the reaction, and not everyone who did see it permanently changed their orientation. The overwhelming majority did, sure. . . but again, this is subliminal programming, it’s not a lobotomy. Some people are just more suggestible than others. Sure, a lot of women who were consistently told they were every bit as good and important as a boy, who really believed they ran their own lives and were worth more than fractions of the man’s dollar. . . They probably weren’t pulled into it. Sure, the select, the happy few girls that somebody somehow managed to teach to really believe in themselves without a man’s vote to break the tie inside. . .

  I know, I don’t speak for women, Lord knows they’re not grateful to me. . . But they’re not going back to their men, are they? The ones raised inside it. . . Well, tap on the glass there, again. Show them your gizmo, they might come through the wall and rip it off you.

  Something tells me when the matriarchy is ten thousand years old, my role in it won’t be what it says. But you know, it’d all be worth it, if I get to be their Devil.

  FAT OF THE LAND

  Stan was in the soup aisle at Safeway, checking the ingredients against a nutrition site on his phone. He didn’t notice she was gone until the dumpy lady who managed the liquor and dairy case came up and tapped him on the shoulder. “We have your daughter.”

  She was still hiding where they’d found her, curled up on a bottom shelf in the next aisle, nestled in a pile of tattered packaging, and she wouldn’t come out. Growled at them when they touched her.

  They tried to tell him she’d eaten all of it, but he didn’t believe it. He didn’t know what she ate when she stayed with her mother, but he fed her only healthy snacks—she was a good girl, this was all a huge mistake. And all the while this crap came out of his mouth, he knew he was wrong, but he couldn’t stop.

  Her face was red and encrusted with crumbs when he hauled her out of her burrow. She came alive in his hands, snapping and kicking at him and wailing to be let go. She was hungry.

  He apologized and brought her out to the car. When he came back in to pay for his groceries, the cart was gone, and they politely asked him to take his business elsewhere.

  The bags she had torn into and emptied were still lying in the aisle. A clerk with a broom talked furtively into his cell phone as he swept the uneaten nuggets into a dustpan.

  He gave her everything she wanted. Why did she want to go and eat dog food?

  She wouldn’t talk on the ride home, and went to bed without supper.

  He got more and more agitated, the more he thought about it. His ex-wife didn’t answer her phone. He didn’t leave a message. Their daughter was due to go home on the train tomorrow morning so she’d be home in time for school on Monday. The train was a fucking mess these days, always behind schedule and overcrowded because of the gas crisis.

  He had to talk to somebody.

  After poking around on the Internet, he found a customer service number for the dog food company.

  “Our new line of dry kibble for healthy active outdoor dogs features new all-natural high-enzyme proteins for optimum intestinal health. But some indigestion is to be expected, sir, when people eat dog food.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a dog in your house, sir?”

  “No.” He didn’t have space for a dog, or the money, but Sharon bought a Boston terrier puppy soon after he moved out. “What’s that got to do with anything?“

  “She might have picked up a taste for the stuff. It’s pretty tasty, if you want to know the truth. Additives. Artificial flavors. Addictive stuff.”

  He was thinking about how his ex-wife complained that she was acting up to get attention, really infantile stuff lately, like pretending to be a dog, eating out of the dog’s dish. Her therapist said it was a common phase in children processing trauma.

  The operator lowered his voice to an urgent, hissing whisper. He could barely separate the stream of caffeinated rant into words. “How do dogs decide what kind of food to eat, Mister, did you ever wonder that? Because it’s all crap, made as cheap as we can get away with, and most people buy whatever’s cheapest or has the best packaging or boilerplate about nutrition. Dogs will eat their own shit, if you let them, so what does taste matter? So they make it more like a drug than a snack. . .”

  This was no way for a customer service operator to talk; he hadn’t expected anything but a curt, scripted reply.

&nbs
p; “You know how dogs, when they need to get sick, will go out and gorge themselves on grass? Instinct tells them what they need. Dietary cravings are normal for humans, too, especially girls and women. . .”

  “She’s only nine years old. What are you implying?”

  “Nothing at all, sir. Just—” The operator covered his mouthpiece and spoke to someone, probably a supervisor. When he came back, his voice was louder, perfunctory. He told Stan not to worry, and advised against taking her to a pediatrician, and took down his name and number.

  He needed to rein in his anger. This wasn’t about Morgan or himself, but his ex-wife. Morgan had looked peaked and bony day before yesterday, when she stepped out of the Amtrak office. He’d been late to the station, and had to claim her from the fish-faced purser, like lost luggage.

  He worried about how Sharon was caring for her, but he was at sea. Girls were never his strong suit, and this one was more of a mystery than any he’d ever known. Kids grew up differently, now. Maybe the vaccines weren’t making them autistic, and maybe the growth hormones in the milk weren’t turning them into sexually mature nymphettes before they were done with Barbies, and maybe TV wasn’t brainwashing them with videogame violence and pimp/ho vulgarity, but something was very wrong and he couldn’t get her to open up, and he couldn’t help but conclude that someone had stolen her away.

  Until the grocery incident, he’d figured it was anorexia. She turned down In N’ Out with a grimace, and picked at her tacos. Maybe she was flirting with vegetarianism. She slept in and stayed in her room, drawing or watching You Tube videos on her laptop. Was she getting her first period?

  His worry transmuted into a rootless, tail-chasing fury, but he made himself go to bed. He was still lying there, half-conscious, when the phone rang.

  “You know what they say. . . It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.”

  “What the hell. . . ? Who is this?” But he recognized the voice, despite his disorientation. He had been daydreaming about that voice.

  “They have a lot of projects in the third world, in Latin America and India, you know? Backwards places, but that’s where they’re making the future. Much bigger projects than dog food, man. What dogs eat today, we’ll all be eating tomorrow.”

  “What does this have to do with my daughter?”

  “I’m—I’ll get to that, but it’s complicated, okay? What they’re doing, it’s not to hurt anybody. . . Someday, they’ll be hailed as heroes, they think. But they’re working on something down in South America, where the dog food is processed. Fixing the big problems.”

  “What problems?”

  “Famine, man. Pollution. Killing two birds with one stone. They’ve got a huge applied biology division down there that’s been working on ‘proprietary organic solutions to waste management.’ Fancy way for saying they’re working on bugs that eat garbage and shit out edible food.”

  He got out of bed and started looking for something to write on. Down the hall, he heard Morgan get up and go into the bathroom.

  “You still there?”

  “Yeah. But what—”

  “Hold on. I haven’t tried to explain this to anyone before and I’m trying. . .” He heard teeth clicking like dice in a cup. “So, they gave up on bacteria years ago, because it kept getting out of the lab and eating everything organic it came across. You know those tropical diseases like ebola, dengue and shit? Ten times worse. Outbreaks in Rio ate whole neighborhoods.”

  “Really?”

  “What, you don’t believe me?”

  “No, I just. . . I don’t follow the news too close, but I think I would’ve, you know, seen something about that. . .”

  “You don’t understand how high the stakes are, here. They’ll do anything to cover this up until they’re ready to roll it out. That’s why the dog food—”

  “What about the damned dog food?”

  “It got contaminated. They have a stable program down there, and they’ve been making all kinds of products out of solid waste for a while, now. They’ve been putting it in dog food in the states, but nothing much else, so far.”

  “What do you mean, contaminated?”

  “Eggs got in the wrong mix.”

  “Eggs? What kind of eggs?” In the bathroom, Morgan’s querulous moan cut through his confusion.

  “The proprietary organism’s supposed to be easier to control than the bacteria, but just because you patent something, doesn’t mean you can control it. They wanted brand loyalty for dog food ancillaries—you know, snacks and shit. They even tried to develop a dog cigarette, no lie, I’ve seen fucking transcripts, so you know. . . They wanted something a dog could eat forever and not get fat.”

  “Daddy. . .”

  “I need to go. My daughter needs me.”

  “Hold on, this is important. If you love her, you’ll listen carefully. Because these people don’t love your daughter, and they won’t think twice about taking her, if they decide she’s a threat.”

  “We’re not a threat to anybody. She’s sick, though, and if your fucking company. . . Why are you telling me this shit, anyway? Are you some kind of fucking lunatic?”

  “Listen to me! Have you looked at the ingredients on the shit you eat, lately? Do you know what any of it is?”

  “What, like preservatives, and dyes and stuff?”

  “Not half of it. The rest, the stuff they’re putting in the crops and the livestock and at every step in between, is to make your children into better citizens. Soldiers hostile all the time, too short an attention span to read or learn, hormones going fucking nuts, going off and suiciding as soon as they get stateside. . . You think that shit is an accident? You think it’s a fucking side effect? It’s all part of the goddamned program. Layers of control, my friend.

  “When they realized the dog food was spoiled, they put out a new batch to correct the problem, before anyone noticed or complained. A mild taeniafuge, saturated with artificial flavors the dogs would associate with the endorphine-precursors in the second-hand food the organism produces. . . they call them ‘baby birds.’ Dogs gobbled the stuff up in the tests and passed the dead parasites, no problem. But until you called, no humans had reported getting infested. . .”

  “Daddy!”

  He dropped the phone and skidded in his socks to the bathroom door. It was locked. “Morgan, open up, honey!”

  “No!”

  “Are you okay, honey? What’s wrong?”

  “I just have to go to the bathroom. Leave me alone!”

  “Then why did you yell for me?” Take a deep breath. Count to ten. She’s scared.

  Well, so am I.

  “Do you need anything?”

  A long, pregnant silence seeped out through the door. A thousand awful thoughts cut into his brain.

  “I need toilet paper.”

  “Hold on, I’ll get some.”

  He went back to the phone and picked it up. The racing breath on the line sounded like sandpaper on glass. “You can’t take her to the hospital, do you understand me? If you try, they’ll find out, and you’ll never see her again. Trust me, these people are ruthless motherfuckers.”

  “You don’t work for them?”

  “I’m working here to get inside, to try to find people like your daughter before they do. Do you have a pen and paper handy? You need to take her to a safe house before she expels, where we can get her taken care of, and document this shit. . .”

  “No. This is crazy. My daughter has a stomachache from eating dog food. I don’t know what your problem is, man, but I’m done playing with you.”

  “Listen, you can’t—”

  Stan hung up.

  There was no toilet paper in the linen closet, so he got some Burger King napkins from the kitchen.

  She insisted he slide them in under the door. He heard the toilet gurgle and splash. She flushed it, but he could hear the telltale overture of the drain backing up.

  “Go away, Daddy!”

  “I can’t do that, honey. Le
t me come in and help you.”

  “I want Mommy. . .”

  That tore it. He put his shoulder to the door and shoved. The cheap lock assembly popped out of the flimsy particleboard and rattled around in the sink. The knob punched a neat round hole in the drywall.

  He stumbled into the bathroom, spilling napkins everywhere. Morgan jumped back and cringed away from him, then darted out the door around him. He turned to catch her, but slipped on the sopping wet linoleum and fell on his ass in a puddle.

  Morgan ran to her room and slammed the door.

  Nice work, Superdad.

  He was reaching behind the toilet tank for the plunger when he saw it.

  He stared into the overflowing bowl for a long while, so preoccupied that he reflexively lifted the plunger up, not to use it, but to defend himself.

  The bowl was filled to the brim with the foamy broth of diarrhea. Though the mess was nearly opaque, he saw the shadow of something lurking at the bottom of the bowl like an alligator in a bayou sinkhole, its snout almost pushing out into the air.

  It blew a string of bubbles.

  He’d expected and dreaded to see blood in the toilet, but there was no trace of red. So many other colors, though. . . colors he had never ingested or hosted in his anatomy, and all shiny with a sickening rainbow that churned and bubbled of its own volition, charged with some awful alchemical process.

  He jammed the plunger into the bowl and jabbed into the mess as he flushed. The toilet gagged, the pipes moaned and shuddered beneath his feet, but they took it away.

  She cried when he put her on the train in the morning. She never did that. He hugged her, and didn’t ask if she remembered to take her meds this morning. Without them, she was spacey and prone to throw fits about any little complication. Just like her mother. . .

  He’d asked if she was okay, and she nodded. Did she want to go to the doctor? She shook her head and started to pull away. He started to ask her if she wanted to stay with him, but her answer would be too much, either way. He imagined picking her up and getting in his car, packing up his shit—everything he needed would fit in the trunk—and just going away to start over. Wouldn’t being hunted, seeing her face on milk cartons and knowing people everywhere thought him a monster, wouldn’t all of that be better than letting her go?