by Aidan Truhen
My theatre is this room this space and the thing about it is that there is a cage in it and that cage comes down on that blue line and now Li Dong-ha and me we’re on opposite sides of that line.
So now there is a noise like bong and that is the cage dropping and I am outside and he is not.
The cage doesn’t look like a cage. It looks like some crates and a fork lift and some other crap. But it’s still a cage. Or actually it’s a lobster pot made of chainlink. Once you’re in you can’t get out. Not quickly. Not without cutters.
Eheh. Piss and vomit and blood but I am not in the box and Li Dong-ha is. Eheh. Keep crawling. Can’t help but laugh. Comes out like fucking Tucker’s emphysema.
What’s funny dead man?
You got a gun there Li?
Of course I got a fucking gun. I got lots of guns. You’re not getting out of here. I mean I love your little fortress hideout here I really do but in a second I’m gonna shoot you up the ass and then you know I’ll maybe go find the other door and we can finish up.
I don’t see your gun is all.
Sure it’s in my coat Price. I don’t wave it around when I don’t need it.
Yeah well if you reach for it my friend’s going to get real upset with you.
You got no friends Price everyone knows that. Tucker turned you in man we got millions of your money and you let Fred kill your buddy. You’re a deadbeat man. You’re nothing. One day soon we’re gonna kill your girl too.
Not my girl. Made that clear.
Yeah well tell yourself whatever you need to man.
No she made that clear.
Oh well that’s a fucking tough break for both of you man. I’m sympathetic.
Fuck you.
Just passing the time with a lonely asshole.
Your mama.
Oh fuck this Price I’m just gonna—
There’s a noise I’ve never heard before. I think it’s Li Dong-ha going for his gun. I’ve never heard it before because I’m pretty sure no one ever has. I know what it is but I still can’t understand where the different horrible parts of it begin and end.
It’s the sound of a man covered in razors standing up from a boxcrate and hitting another man in the face.
And then the guy covered in a homemade razor suit says:
LUCILLE!
LI DONG-HA IS ONE HELLUVA PUGILIST and he is strong like you have never even imagined a man could be. He is tough and he is mean and he is capable, but he is a guy in Armani bespoke being hugged by a delusional psychotic with enough of the Pale Peruvian Stallion in his bloodstream that he is right now seeing everything through a haze of bursting blood vessels. Li Dong-ha is a soldier and he has training, but no one trains for this. Lucille is mad as hell and whatever the fuck actually happened in his life that was so awful he is not going to keep that pain to himself any more.
Yeah. I took a crazy person who was not basically evil and I gave him mind-altering drugs and locked him in a warehouse in clothing covered in knives so that he would kill a monster for me and in doing so I have likely destroyed his chances of recovery forever. I do realise that is not a nice thing to do to a person and obviously—obviously I mean yeesh obviously—it’s not like I do it all the time but necessity is what it is and also I mean he was right there and that’s fucking destiny. That is fortune and glory calling out to him like calling his name if anyone actually knew what it was. Plus now at least he’s not going to get thrown away like a broken toy. Now he’s back on the board. He killed one of the Seven Demons and if he occasionally fugues out to Kenny Rogers well man when you’re famous that’s just a cool personality trait like a mutant power or something. So I guess what we’re saying is that at a certain point let’s assume Lucille is sufficiently in possession of his faculties that he understands what has happened here he’s gonna want to discuss it and I will say man there is no need to thank me but you’re welcome.
You’re welcome man. I’m just glad I could be there.
Lucille’s conversation with Li Dong-ha takes a surprisingly long time to be over and none of it is remotely pretty and a lot of it is barely even comprehensible. It’s a fucking education I swear like one of those did you see that show where the guy turns dead people into plastic and then he cuts them into sections and he polishes their surfaces so they are like medical jewelry or architectural models that shit is amazing. My whole understanding of the interiority of the human body is changed by this experience—I’m talking about Lucille now not the other thing—and it is almost like a holy thing like transcendent. The body is this incredible organic machine and we should care for ourselves not just because every one of us is precious as a person with loves and hopes and a future but because we are art man. We are fucking art. And Lucille is fucking Monet or Basquiat or whatever. He’s an art savant is what. Or maybe that’s me and Lucille is my hammer and chisel with which I carve new shapes into the world. Wow man just wow. I feel I’m really part of something here.
When it is done I mail some video of the whole thing to Karenina with a bunch of puppy emojis. And then I go play with Tycho until the doctor calls to ask me to bring him home from the vet.
RING RING: YUP.
Hullo is that Mr. Kenton?
Hi doc.
Jack Price? For heaven’s sake. Wrong number.
Ring ring: Yup.
Price?
Yeah it’s me.
What the fuck are you doing at my vet?
I happened to intercept young Tycho here and I figured we’d be friends awhile is all. You listening? Here Tycho say hi to the doc. (Arf arf arf.)
She doesn’t speak for a while so I say: Hello?
Doc? You there? (Arf?) Go on Tycho you go play with your aniseed rag man I gotta talk to the doc. Doc?
Doc?
Fuck you Price.
Yeah no doc, come on, what the fuck do you think I am? The dog’s fucking fine okay? Not like Billy I understand which is a fucking sin against reasonably priced manscaping by the way but I guess you do what you gotta do.
Yes.
Excepting this doc. Excepting this. I am not going to kill your dog. Your dog is gonna be completely fine. You see how that makes us different?
No.
Yeah okay fair point. They find Li yet?
Yes.
You see how that makes us different?
How does that make us different Mr. Price?
Only one of us is having any fun doc.
Jesus Price.
Some kid I got nothing to do with’ll be walking the dog in the park in an hour. For Christ’s sake don’t kill the kid okay? I mean that would just be unnecessary. I mean as far as I’m concerned you can kill the kid right but it would be kinda crappy behaviour and you don’t strike me that way.
Okay.
Also seriously check the dog for cancer soon okay because he’s sweet and Salukis really get that shit too much it’s a breeding thing.
I know that Price I’m a fucking scientist.
But you got him anyway.
I liked him.
You gonna tell the other Demons we had this little chat?
Probably. Maybe not. It doesn’t make any difference to what has to happen. Plus you did kidnap my dog Price it’s not like you’re a Good Samaritan.
I’m just drawing a line, doc.
Who isn’t?
AFTER THAT I GO OUT OF THE CITY for a couple of days and fish by a lake. It’s the weekend for fuck’s sake. Nice local physician accepts small bundle of cash to believe my bullshit story I got set on by hoodlums over a lady’s honour but they were her brothers and she’s desperate the matter not go to the police. Nice physician says it’s the best story she’s heard in a while for this kind of crap. Says I better not be no meth dealer or nothing.
No ma’am I ain’t.
Well then,
says nice physician, you go down and have yourself a beer by the lake and sit still because you’ve been rescuing a few too many ladies recently and you’re beat. You could lose that kidney you keep this up. It’s maybe forty per cent luncheon meat right now but you’re a lucky sonuvabitch—it ain’t yet compromised.
I fish. Turns out I fucking hate fishing but maybe that’s the whole point.
CHANGE OF PACE: I get the barber in nice town to shave my head again because the stubble is itching. The stitches are out of my scalp and the internal glue is holding so I just look like someone drew Frankenstein shit all over me for a fancy dress party. Little bit of cover stick from nice beautician and it’s all gone but the ripples. Tell you, make-up is freaking weird. It can change the way you look but entirely.
I put on a suit like an undertaker’s and I drive up the coast for hours along the side roads town to town and wayside inn to boarding house, cash in hand and no ma’am, I was a mortician, but you see I am retired. I’m afraid I could not stomach all that death. Well now I’m a poet would you believe and I have an eye to find a smallholding and go back to the land yes ma’am.
This coast is not like any other place. It’s not like Norway and it’s not like Scotland whatever people tell you. It’s not like anywhere in the real world. It’s ghost country and it’s full of spiders. There are spiders everywhere all year round: spiders eating bugs in the rafters and spiders making webs by the doorsteps. Leave your car parked too long and there are spiders on the wing mirrors and spiders in the fucking aircon. Get through that lot and you’re by the sea and there are sand spiders and then you’re in the water and you know what there are? Yes there are fucking sea spiders shooting little web bullets at the insects spiralling over the waves. When the fishing boats come in and vent their bilges into the harbours the bugs come down to eat and the spiders hide in the fishguts and they eat too. When the Russian cannery ships go past the trash drifts in behind them, the same thing happens. If you stand on the dock the spiders come and sit on you and look out to sea like they fucking know they’re waiting.
I hate the northeast.
It’s where I was born.
THE OLD GUY COMES IN BY BOAT and he stands in the front end like that girl in Titanic except he has his arms by his sides and the boat is a tiny tinny piece of crap. It’s got corrugated metal for a cabin roof and a bit of orange nylon string tied tight to the bit at the back that steers it through the water. I got no idea what this bit of string is for but I’m reasonably sure a boat with orange string on that bit is a cheap old piece of shit boat. There are crab baskets clumped around his feet and the engine makes a noise like GOGAGOGAGOGAGOG.
You Price?
Yeah.
You look like it.
Yeah.
But I should see the other guy, right?
Well yeah maybe. Figure you’ve got a strong stomach.
I do Price. I do. Come on. Come. What we can do is go and have a drink. I come all this way and you look like an American quilt.
Yeah I’m made of fucking unicorns is what.
I can see why everyone likes you Price! (But the way he says that it’s like he actually does.)
I SIT AND HE SITS AND THAT’S ALL. Sometimes we drink. Mostly we just sit.
He’s old. He’s got thick hands because he does manual work, on a farm. He’s got grey hair not white and he’s wearing an old fisherman’s sweater that smells of new lanolin. Got some of those smears on it you can never quite get out. Figure he kills his own food. Figure he guts it and cooks it and eats by himself. Or maybe not. Maybe he cooks for a lady. No reason why he wouldn’t. Maybe he’s got some special someone these days. Scars on his hands and no expression on his face, big broke nose so all the time he’s elevatoring his glass and putting it down. He looks like a dipping bird toy.
I’m familiar with your situation Mr. Price.
Yeah I imagine.
I cannot help you.
I think you can.
Nyeh. I cannot make peace between you and Demons. They have taken contract. Their reputation is on the line now also. You have inflicted some damages on them.
I guess I should have asked if that upset you.
Bah. You know it is a stupid question. I do not make transference, displacement activity. I am not big in denial. If I am upset I am emphatic. No. You know this. You are making nice. Is respectful. I like that. You want something from me, so you make respectful.
Yes.
Good for you. But I cannot help.
Right.
The way they manage their affairs is their business. If I have feelings about it I do not share them with my successors.
Would I have been able to do this to your Demons?
You would have died on the first day.
What I thought.
My Demons were more local. Maybe not good to take over a country, but to run a city from the underworld. Different approaches. These are now international.
Suppose I tell you I don’t want to make peace.
…You got balls like ostrich eggs don’t you?
Only the left one.
Come on then ostrich balls. Tell me what the fuck you do want and then we’ll see.
IF YOU’RE THE INVADING ROMAN EMPIRE confronting a proud barbarian culture and you don’t want to be at war forever you have two options. You can kill them all or you can recruit them. If you want to recruit you start with bored young men in need of dick-affirmation. You find the bravest craziest asshole in the new generation and you show him hot and cold running pussy and booze and a gold cockring and you bet him he can’t jump over a firepit and when he does you give him access to all that pussy and you call him a general and now he belongs to you.
I was gonna say that’s crude but actually as I look at it I don’t think it is. I think brave crazy horny assholes are crude.
Point being that you make your party more fun and basically more about screwing and getting drunk and being rich than the traditional party and once you’ve done that and literally every male from twelve to ninety wants a taste you go to the tribal elder with the most prominent boner and you say that obviously you always loved him most and would he maybe like to be cut in on all this action and all he has to do is bless the whole thing as in line with the holiest tradition and maybe the fulfilment of a secret prophecy he’s always kept in a golden tube up his ass.
For some reason people are way more impressed by gold stuff.
And that’s it. Job done.
The Seven Demons have got a little bit of your Roman game. They have recruited Tucker—to whatever point anyone ever has Tucker’s loyalty which is basically not far—and they caused Leo to defect albeit he just up and quit and then I fired his head from a grapefruit cannon into the Kenzo floral-print surface of Johnny Wexler-Cubano so they pretty much have to call that one a draw.
But now here we are like eight hours later in this nasty bar with the maroon leatherette and the fish smell and Volodya hasn’t left. You get that’s who we’re talking about, yes? I am sitting here comparing scars with the last First Demon of the Seven, the former and now retired renowned Kalashnikov Ukrainian log cabin motherfucker, the marksman who can kill you from a mile away. Not that Volodya would ever fucking touch an AK which is the firearms equivalent of a haymaker punch or farting during a lapdance. The AK is famous because you can basically make one in any machine shop. You can make one at a village blacksmith’s. And when you make it you can treat it badly and get it wet and dry it out and walk halfway across Asia with it and then pull the trigger and have a better than average chance it’ll kill the guy in front of you and not blow up in your face.
These are not the qualities Volodya looks for in a gun. He’s not a punk. He’s a concert pianist. I know because he’s been talking about his favourite guns in between the scar discussion and the business of how much I will owe him if he helps me
(basically everything I have ever, because he is so magical and log cabin motherfuckingly amazing and he is not just a sniper and a farmer he is also a scholar and a lover of beautiful women). I am able to say with certainty that the best marksman’s gun ever made throughout the universe, space and time is the customised limited edition Dragunov given to him when he retired from Ukrainian special forces.
Somewhere in the middle hours of this evening he has agreed to help me. I don’t know if it was before or after I passed out in a toilet cubicle and woke up to him banging the chick from the next table against the hand basins. I do know that when he came back and she went and sat down with her friends looking mighty pleased with herself I explained that I don’t want him to shoot anyone and now this whole discussion is tacitly about how I’m a decent enough guy for a kid with no history of hunting bears with a pocket knife but it has to be said that I’m a massive disappointment to log cabin motherfuckers everywhere.
WAKING TO THE SOUND OF VOLODYA’S BOAT GOGAGOGing out into the blue-and-white water. Way past noon. Getting on for evening again. Thank god because I feel like shit now so Christ knows what this morning was like. I don’t remember. Nasty little bar with the leatherette seats serves coffee like caulking what you call bootheel espresso. One step from being biodiesel. Drink it, drink it, hold it down, sit and eat dry bread wait wait and…
I’m alive. I can see colours. Okay.
Pretty sure that’s a family of spiders at the bottom of the cup. Fuck it. Protein is where you find it right?
Back to the city. Things to do to the people I see.
INCOMING CALL, OLD NUMBER. Bounced a lot. But not Fred. Fred uses the new number.
I say: Yeeeelllo?
Sarah says: I fucking hate you.
Yeah well that’s actually fair.
I’m dead Price. I am fucking dead and everyone I know is dead.
Is anyone you know actually dead?
