by Chuck Wendig
This place felt like that. It felt just plain wrong, and Taye didn’t want to get stuck here in the pitch black: felt like he might step on a rotten floorboard and fall through any minute, and for some reason he didn’t want to know what was beneath these floors (hands, reaching for him, that’s what he imagined). He hurried after and caught up with Barley, suddenly feeling like someone was watching him from outside the meager ring of light.
They made it upstairs, and Taye was about to say something about getting the hell out of this rat-trap, who cares about the rain, let’s just run for it, but Little Bitch started kicking in doors. Didn’t take much to open ‘em (half of them crumbled to shit with even the most half-hearted kick), but it seemed to make him feel like he was a real man, putting boot to wood like that.
“Old-ass bullshit,” Little Bitch said after shouldering the last door at the end of the hall open. The door literally split in half and tumbled. “Isn’t this cool? I love this shit. People lived here. They left part of themselves here. And we can come along and see it. Take it, even.”
Taye glanced over his shoulder, thinking he saw something move. “Oh, yeah. Real exciting. We might find some buried treasure. Like a crackpipe. Or a needle. Or a burnt spoon. Maybe they’ll put us on TV for finding shit like that.” Did something just dart in and out of the shadows? He couldn’t tell. This place was flipping him out.
“Maybe we’ll find a porno,” Barely said.
“Barley’s got the right idea,” Little Bitch said, peering into the flat matte black darkness of the room at the end of the hall. “See, Barley, he an optimist. And we got, what, four more floors to this treasure palace? Let’s start with this room, here. You bet your lily white Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost ass we’ll find a porno, Barley. You stay positive.”
***
Sucking on the end of a revolver reminded Beau of sucking on a penny. Same acrid metallic tang.
He stood at the bathroom sink, elbows planted on the porcelain, gun pressed to the roof of his mouth. That was how you were supposed to do it, right? Beau wasn’t sure. But it made sense. Bullet goes through roof of mouth, bullet plows a nice furrow through the brainpan, all body functions cease, and the emptiness that has been plaguing him for two years can slink off and bother someone else. Good. Perfect.
Now, courage.
He needed courage.
He withdrew the gun barrel and looked in the medicine cabinet. Viagra. Zoloft. Aspirin. Benadryl. Astrtroglide. No “instant bravery” available. He slapped the medicine cabinet shut with a pill-rattling slam.
“I haven’t seen Tommy in over a year,” he mumbled. He hadn’t seen Petra, either, but fuck her, she was a gold-digging commoner with platinum hair and a Prada purse. The divorce wasn’t final (the divorce would never be final if he had his way, and his team of lawyers were attempting just that very tack), but that woman was barely a blip on his radar. Tommy, on the other hand. Good kid. Solid kid. What did he play? Street hockey? Basketball? Damnit. Couldn’t remember. Had it been that long? Didn’t matter what sport he played, he was a kid with success on the brain. He wasn’t content to just sit on his ass and wait for fortune to come down from on-high. He was young, yet, but one day he’d be a powerful man. Taking nothing from nobody. Ruthless. Inventive. Proactive. Characteristics unfamiliar to a man like Beauregard. A man who took, took, took.
Daddy’s money was good enough. Why work? Why make any effort when the rewards were so easy? He’d had some jobs. Big ones, important ones. They never seemed right, though. Devoid of meaning and purpose. Uncomfortable, like an ill-fitting suit. And what did it matter? Daddy was dead, but the money wasn’t, and it kept flowing downwards to only-son-Beau. If he wanted to, he could choose to never get out of bed. He could pay someone to bring him food. Sponge him clean. Wipe his ass. Irrigate his bed sores. It remained a tempting option even with a gun barrel in his mouth.
But what kind of life was that?
Tommy. Yeah. Tommy wouldn’t end up like this. You could see it in the dark of his pupil. A flash of silver. A quick glimpse of ambition. He’d never wish this life for Tommy. For all the money, for all the times he’d grabbed a fistful of Lila’s hair or drizzled wax down her back as he fucked her from behind, for everything he’d had and wanted, it didn’t matter. Because the emptiness was goddamn overwhelming. A tide of uselessness tugged at him every waking moment.
Hence the gun.
He mouthed the barrel anew. Savored that coppery taste.
The last thing his tongue would ever taste.
He mumbled into the black ear of the revolver’s barrel.
“I all empy inide.” I’m all empty inside.
“I own’t iserve to rive.” I don’t deserve to live.
“I own’t wanh iss rife any oor.” I don’t want this life anymore.
“Ake it away fom ee.” Take it away from me.
He pulled the trigger.
***
They found a porno, but it wasn’t so much a “good” one as a “weird” one. They discovered it pinned beneath an air conditioning unit that looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. Barley and Taye lifted the unit up while Little Bitch yanked the magazine out. Roaches scuttled for the borders of the room.
Now they had it, but they weren’t so sure they wanted it. Little Bitch held it the magazine Barley floated the lighter over the pages so they could have some light. What they saw wasn’t what they wanted to see. One page, a girl hung from a hook by the ropes around her wrists, something that looked like a red superball shoved in her mouth. On another page, a girl with her titties all bound up in bundles of gnarly rope lay with her legs spread before some big lumberjack motherfucker in a leather balaclava.
The boys stared down at it, brows furrowed, a little confused.
Barley looked up. “Why you want to tie up such a nice pair of boobies?”
“Maybe they’re trying to force milk out of ‘em,” Taye said, shrugging.
“I hear that,” Little Bitch said. “I hear grown men sometimes like to drink the baby milk from a Momma’s jugs. I bet it tastes like white chocolate.”
Taye rolled his eyes. “Forget what it tastes like. Don’t anybody else smell what I’m smelling?”
They lifted up their noses, took a whiff.
“I smell it,” Barley said.
“Yeah, all right,” Little Bitch said. “I smell it too. Let’s go find out what’s making that smell. Might be a dead cat or something. Besides, this porno sucks.”
He chucked the bondage mag over his shoulder.
“I don’t wanna find it,” Taye said. “Let’s just go.”
“I do wanna find it.”
“Maybe we go look for another porno. Something better.”
“I wanna find what’s causing that smell. I wanna see something dead.”
Barley nodded. “Me too.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Little Bitch added, his smirk looking sinister by the lighter’s glow. “You don’t mind waiting here in the dark while me and white boy here go poking around, that’s no problem. We’ll come back.” He waited, then said, “Eventually.”
He didn’t wait for Taye to answer. Little Bitch just took off, marching out of the apartment, the hazy lighter halo traveling with him. Barley just shrugged and trailed after.
Taye felt it in his guts that this was a bad move. But what else was he going to do? He sucked it up, balled his hands into fists, and hurried after.
Little Bitch was like a bloodhound in cornrows: sniffing the air, closing in on the rank odor. He stepped over a pair of ratty couch cushions and walked into doorless apartment that looked like it had been used by addicts: pillows, boxes, bricks arranged in miniature fire-pits, a charred-up hot plate. And all over the ground? Broken vials. Bent spoons. The tip of a needle.
“Be careful,” Taye said. “Watch your step.”
Vials crunched under foot.
“Smell’s coming from in here,” Little Bitch said, pressing his face into the crook of his elbow. He wa
ved them on.
They went into the bathroom.
The smell sucker-punched them. Barley started gagging, but Taye and Little Bitch held their shirts up over their faces, breathing in through their mouths, not their noses. The bathroom was crumbling. Sink leaned downward with exposed pipes jutting all akimbo out of the wall. Every tile on the wall, cracked and broken. Like someone had taken a hammer to each. Then there was the tub. Had a shower-curtain pulled across it, scummed up real good with black mold. The curtain looked brittle. Like an old woman’s skin hung out to dry.
They stood for a minute, dead silent, staring ahead at that shower. They knew that to see what was making the smell, they’d have to pull back that curtain. Whatever it was—animal, vegetable, or mineral—was in that tub. Nobody wanted to pull it back, but everybody wanted to pull it back at the same time. Even Taye felt it in his bones: I want to see what’s waiting for me. But then he felt the eyes again, behind him, coming from the same area where a mirror hung above the sink, its reflective glass tarnished and spider-webbed with breaks. And he didn’t want to pull the curtain back anymore.
But Little Bitch did.
He reached out, and Taye started to shake his head, started to say “No, c’mon, don’t—” but it was too late. Little Bitch yanked the curtain back (it crunched as it moved), and that’s where they found the corpse.
“That’s not a cat,” Barley said quietly, then handed the lighter to Taye. Then Barley puked in the corner.
“A fuckin’ dead guy,” Little Bitch whispered, like maybe talking too loudly might wake the poor sonofabitch out of his dirt-nap.
Taye wasn’t even sure it was a guy. The body had moldered in stagnant bathwater, and maggots crawled over every inch of his body. Taye felt his own gorge rise, and hearing Barley vomit up dinner wasn’t helping—don’t puke don’t puke Little Bitch will never let you hear the end of it—and he managed to choke it back.
Taye took a step back and jostled something with his foot. He spun around (anything to not look at the corpse anymore) and saw that he had bumped a rusty spoon on the ground into a discarded needle.
“Guy was cooking up some dope or something,” Taye said, and regretting speaking because it gave his bile another chance at the finish line. He forced it back down—barely.
“He’s got a needle sticking out of his arm, too,” Little Bitch said, getting the lighter as close to the body as he could manage. He slipped, almost fell into the tub—and, the way that body looked, into the body. Taye caught his arm.
They were close, now. Milky eyes stared up, unfocused, from the carpet of worms. Taye could almost imagine the corpse’s eyes suddenly coming alive, the pupils rotating in the rotten sockets and turning to look right at him. He also tried to imagine this poor bastard’s life. Was he homeless? Was he always homeless? Maybe he grew up in one of the row homes near where the three of them lived. Maybe this dude was a once a kid of Temple Row or Jessup Street or could be he came from those tomb-looking tenements down by the Greenhill projects. Maybe he even lived here. In this apartment. And he came back here to tie off one more time and die.
Little Bitch was thinking the same. “Maybe he got capped by somebody. Stole some drugs or some shit. This dude, he got in the way of some mean dogs, you know what I’m saying? Got bit. Maybe they killed him with drugs because he stole their drugs.” He took a deep breath through his mouth. They both knew he was making shit up, but out there in the neighborhoods, anything was possible. Little Bitch mustered false bravado. “Must be cool as shit to be one of those dudes, taking out betraying motherfuckers like this one here.” He suddenly made as if he was talking directly to the corpse. “Hey! Fool! Wake up! What you think about what I’m saying? Streets are tough game, son. You win, you get out alive. You die, well.” He chuckled. “Shit happens.”
“That isn’t cool,” Taye said, taking a few steps back and resting on the cockeyed sink. “Nobody deserves this.”
Barley was done vomiting, and just leaned into the corner, breathing loudly.
“He deserved it,” Little Bitch asserted.
Taye closed his eyes. He felt pissed. And scared. There were eyes still watching him from the darkness and there was a hard cherry pit sitting in his stomach. Little Bitch was just talking smack like he always did, but somehow, with a dead body in front of him, the boy’s disrespect was just too much to bear.
Taye gave Little Bitch a shove. “Streets are bad, man.” Images of his Pops, eyes glazed over, taking the belt to Momma again. “They do bad shit to you. We can’t be like this. I don’t want to end up like this. I don’t want to end up like this. Dead in a fuckin’ crackhouse bathtub. I wish I’d never been born here. I wish my Pops had a job and wouldn’t hit my Momma, and I wish my Momma would move far away so the streets wouldn’t use her up like a fucking, I dunno, like a washrag.” He sighed. “I wish that things were different.”
Little Bitch laughed, and for that Taye wanted to split his lip. “Wishin’ is for dummies. Hell, I wish right now for a bowl of vanilla ice cream and a pair of big titties in my face, do you see either of those things—”
A swift wind kicked up in the room, like someone opened a window to the apartment—but here, all the windows were boarded and barred. The wind snuffed the lighter flame, cutting Little Bitch short, and then Taye felt a harsh ringing in his ears and the room became a beating heart in the darkness. Those eyes that were watching him were now right behind him, and he about lost control of his bladder when a hand—silent and slow—landed on his shoulder.
***
No kaboom. No bang. No blood and brains painting the ceiling tile. The gun didn’t go off.
Beauregard felt the presence before he saw it, and for a scant few seconds he thought maybe Lila had come in, seen him, and tinkered with the gun to jam it up—and here she was to gloat. He tried to turn around and see, but he couldn’t. This isn’t Lila. Someone else. Something else. He opened his eyes, gun barrel still in mouth.
A finger—not his own, but rather one that was caked with black tar and riddled with calluses and blisters—had placed itself between the hammer of the gun and the revolver’s frame. Stopping it from firing.
Beau followed the finger to its raggedy arm, and gazed over at the homeless man—or was it a woman?—standing there next to the sink. The figure was buried in so many motley rags he or she looked like a genderless trash-heap. And the hair was long and nappy, poking out from a blaze orange wool-cap like half-crushed spider legs. The ‘person’ drew back a set of purpled lips to show off teeth as white as toothpaste.
“Ow id oo et in ear?” he asked around the barrel of the gun. He wanted to pull it out but found himself unable to move anything but his mouth and his eyes. How did you get in here?
“Shh,” the figure said—and still, even in that voice, there was no certainty—man or woman? Then he/she gently eased the finger away from the firing pin, letting it settle back against the weapon. Then the person quietly pried the gun out of Beau’s hands and mouth. “We don’t need this no more.”
Beau felt sick. And weirdly alive. An absurd thought reached his brain: This trespasser—my savior—sounds a lot like Whoopi Goldberg.
He turned his eyes toward the intruder and looked at the pile of rags that served as its clothing. Strange symbols appeared inked upon the different scraps—markings like snakes, script like Greek and Arabic, strings of motley nonsense scrawled in harsh non-lettering. But the symbols seemed to be moving, almost floating across the rags, even so far as migrating from one swatch of fabric to another with no care or concern for the laws of physics. It made him dizzy to watch, and when he blinked and looked again, the symbols were gone.
An idle thought that he couldn’t control went through his mind—are those swollen mounds beneath the rags tits? Rolls of fat? Tumors? Or something else? His mouth went dry as cotton.
The androgyne smiled.
“You long been on the outside of this city. Living at its edges, rollin’ in its money, honey.”
“That’s no problem, baby.”
“R-really?”
“’Cause I’m extending the invite. My kingdom’s several blocks over. And you’re welcome to come on over, stay a while.” Still no gender in that voice—it was deep like a man’s but had the upturned lilt of a woman’s. It (not he or she) pressed a greasy thumb to Beau’s forehead and began drawing some invisible letter or word. “Business is about to change for you, Beauregard Montrose. Welcome to my world.”
***
Upon feeling the hand come out of the darkness, Taye wheeled around and backpedaled into the wall.
“Little Bitch! Barley! Someone’s in here with us!”
Light flared up. Orange light, and flickering. Like that of a flame, but far more than a little lighter could provide.
Barley and Little Bitch were not there.
But someone else was.
Some bum had come in after them. Dressed in all sorts of crazy-colored patchwork shit. Grinning like the devil. Looked maybe like a man—but then, Taye wasn’t so sure. Might’ve been a crackhed or some tweaker—they get so fucked up on the stuff that whether they got a dick or a hole doesn’t matter anymore. He remembers watching two toothless hookers clawing at each other’s faces with fingernails like raven claws, screeching like birds, too. One cut into the other’s nostril. Blood everywhere. But here he couldn’t tell. Even when the figure spoke, the smoky voice gave no indication.
