The jelly gives me flashes of her memories and dreams; she’s been with other Type Threes. She’s helped them murder people. I don’t care. I keep drinking her in, my tongue probing all the corners of her skull and sheathed wrinkles of her brain to get every last gooey drop.
I can control my tongue, but just barely. It’s hard to keep it from doing the one thing I’d dearly love, which is to drive it through her membrane deep between her slippery lobes. But that would be the end of her. The end of us. No more, all over, bye bye.
A little of what my body and soul craves is better than nothing at all. Isn’t it?
My arm aches, and I’m starting to feel lightheaded on top of the high. We’re both running dry. I release her, spritz her brain with saline and carefully put the top of her head back into place. She’s full of my blood, and already her scalp is sealing back together. We’ve done well; we spilled hardly anything on the tarp this time. But my face feels sticky, and I’ve probably even gotten her in my hair.
She daintily wipes my blood from the corners of her mouth and smiles at me. Her skin is pink and practically glowing, and her boniness seems chic rather than diseased. “Want to go to that Italian place after we get cleaned up?”
“Sure.” I’m probably glowing, too. My stomach feels strong enough for pepperoncinis.
I head to the bathroom to wash my face, but when I push open the door—
—I find myself in Dr. Shapiro’s office. She’s staring down at an MRI scan of somebody’s chest. The monochrome bones look strange, distorted.
“There’s definitely a mass behind your ribs and spine. It’s growing fast, but I can’t definitely say it’s cancer.”
I’m dizzy with terror. How did I get here? What mass? How long have I had a mass?
“What should we do?” I stammer.
She looks up at me with eyes as solidly black as Betty’s. “I think we should wait and see.”
I back away, turn, push through her office door—
—and I’m back in a rented room. But not the downtown dive with the dusty chandelier. It’s a suburban motel someplace. Have I been here before?
The green tarp on the king-sized bed is covered in blood and bits of skull. There’s a body wrapped in black trash bags, stuffed between the bed and the writing desk. Did I do that? What have I done?
Oh, God, please make this stop. I have to lean against the wall to keep myself from tumbling backward.
Betty comes out of the bathroom, dressed in a spattered silk negligee. I think it used to be white. There’s gore in her wig. Her eyes go wide.
“I told you not to come here!” She grabs me by my arm, surprising me with her strength. In the distance, I can hear sirens. “They’ll be here any minute—get away from here, fast as you can!”
She presses a set of rental car keys into my palm, hauls me to the door and pushes me out into the hallway—
—and I’m stepping into the elevator at work.
Handsome, blond Devin is in there. A look of surprised fear crosses his face, and I know the very sight of me repels him. His hand goes to his jeans pocket. I see the outline of something that’s probably a canister of pepper spray. It’s too small to be a taser.
But then he pauses, smiles at me. “Hey, you going up to that training class?”
I nod mechanically, and try to say “Sure,” but my lungs spasm and suddenly I’m doubled over, coughing into my hands. When did simply breathing start hurting this much?
“You okay?” Devin asks.
I try to nod, but there’s bright blood on my palms. A long-forgotten Bible verse surfaces in the swamp of my memory: Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.
I look up and see my reflection in the chromed elevator walls—my face is gaunt, but my body is grotesquely swollen. I’ve turned into some kind of hunchback. How long have I had the mass?
Instead of the pepper spray, Devin’s pulled his cell phone out. I can smell his mind. He’s torn between wanting to run away and wanting to help. “Should I call someone? Should I call 911?”
The elevator is filled with the scent of him. Despite my pain and sickness, the Want returns with a vengeance. Adrenaline rises along with my blood pressure. My tongue is twitching, and something in my back, too. I can feel it tearing my ribs away from my spine. It hurts more than I can remember anything ever hurting. Maybe childbirth would be like this.
Betty. I need Betty. How long has it been since I’ve seen her? Oh God.
“Call 911,” I try to say, but I can’t take a breath, can’t speak around the tongue writhing backward down my throat.
“What can I do?” Devin touches my shoulder.
And the feel of his hand against my bony flesh is far too much for me to bear.
I rise up under him, grab him by the sides of his head, kissing him. My tongue goes straight down his throat, choking him. He hits me, trying to shake me off, but as strong as he is, my Want is stronger.
When he’s unconscious, I let him fall and hit the emergency stop button. The Want has me wrapped tightly in its ardor, burning away all my human qualms. The alarm is an annoyance, and I know I don’t have as much time as I want. Still. As I lift his left eyelid, I take a moment to admire his perfect bluebonnet iris.
And then I plunge my tongue into his eye. The ball squirts off to the side as my organ drills deeper, the tiny mouths rasping through the thin socket bone into his sweet frontal lobe. After the first wash of cerebral fluid I’m into the creamy white meat of him, and—
—Oh, God. This is more beautiful than I imagined.
I’m devouring his will. Devouring his memories. Living him, through and through. His first taste of wine. His first taste of a woman. The first time he stood onstage. He’s at the prime of his life, and oh, it’s been a wonderful life, and I am memorizing every second of it as I swallow down the contents of his lovely skull.
When he’s empty, I rise from his shell and feel my new wings break free from the cage of my back. As I spread them wide in the elevator, I realize I can hear the old gods whispering to me from their thrones in the dark spaces between the stars.
I smile at myself in the distorted chrome walls. Everything is clear to me now. I have been chosen. I have a purpose. Through the virus, the old gods tested me, and deemed me worthy of this holiest of duties. There are others like me; I can hear them gathering in the caves outside the city. Some died, yes, like the ragged man, but my Becoming is almost complete. Nothing as simple as a bullet will stop me then.
The Earth is ripe, human civilization at its peak. I and the other archivists will preserve the memories of the best and brightest as we devour them. We will use the blood of this world to write dark, beautiful poetry across the walls of the universe.
For the first time in my life, I don’t need faith. I know what I am supposed to do in every atom in every cell of my body. I will record thousands of souls before my masters allow me to join them in the star-shadows, and I will love every moment of my mission.
I can hear the SWAT team rush into the foyer three stories below. Angry ants. I can hear Betty and the others calling to me from the hollow hills. Smiling, I open the hatch in the top of the elevator and prepare to fly.
THE BOHEMIAN OF THE ARBAT
By Sarah Pinborough
Staring out of the hotel window, Anna could still feel his damp sweat clutching at her naked skin, and her left palm throbbed slightly. Her nails had dug in a little too tightly as she’d gripped the mattress beneath them, the springs creaking rhythmically as she and Bob had gone through the motions of making love. It had been a relief when he’d rolled away, panting, satisfied, and unaware of how untouched she was. It seemed to be that way too many times recently, but once again she chose not to dwell on it. If you marry for money, honey, then trust me, you’ll earn every penny. She pushed the memory of Jane’s words away, just as she’d pushed Jane away when she’d strode out of their tatty London flat and into the glamour of Bob’s world a year
and a lifetime ago.
‘Jesus, Anna. It just gets better and better between us, doesn’t it?’ From the bed she could hear her husband’s breathing returning to normal, and she fought the small trickle of revulsion that slid down her spine, peering instead through the old glass pane of the imposing Urkraine hotel. Down below, the sun danced on the surface of the wide river, and alongside it, under the shadow of a resolute bronze statue, a young man in a gray military uniform removed his peaked cap as a plain, stocky young woman ran to greet him. Anna watched them as they walked away, for a moment fascinated by their blandness and their happiness with each other’s bleak appearance.
‘Are you okay?’ Her silence obviously bothered him, his need for her approval almost cloying, but she paused for a second before answering.
‘I didn’t expect it to be so hot. Last night it was so warm I couldn’t breathe.’ She watched her reflection shaping the words, taking comfort from the sensual smoothness of her lips and face and teeth.
He laughed, amused by her, and patted the bed sheets. ‘Even Russia has a summer. Although Perestroika or not, they’ve still got a bit of a way to go with air-conditioning.’
Turning away from the window, she moved back to the bed, pretending not to see the way his eyes ran over her body, assessing her, evaluating her, just as he had all those nights that he’d visited her in the club. Although then it had been different. Then she’d felt her power over him as she’d danced, her movements provocative, lost in the music until her own sweat covered her naked body and his eyes were so glazed that she was sure he couldn’t see her properly, and then she would smile triumphantly and lean forward, brushing his face with her long sandy hair as she took his money and a small part of his soul, watching him tremble with the contact that hinted at so much more. She’d worked hard at him, that much was for sure, and each little victory, each affirmation of her allure, had been an aphrodisiac. Knowing how much he wanted her, what hoops he would jump through for her, made her want him.
Now that they were married things were different. She didn’t dance anymore. He didn’t want her to. You’ve left all that behind you now. She didn’t like his eyes on her anymore. Things had changed. She had more. She was less.
Avoiding looking at his body, she looked into his eyes and smiled. It seemed to please him. ‘You are so beautiful.’ His words were as soft as his plump hand as it ran along the smooth curves of her skin, leaving a wake of goosebumps that perhaps he took as shivers of pleasure. ‘And I don’t mean just on the outside. It wasn’t your body that made me want to take you away from that life and marry you. It was the inside.’ He touched her face. ‘That clever, witty brain is what won me over, Mrs. Jackson.’
He’d said this many times, so many times that she figured he’d convinced himself that it wasn’t his desire that had made him chase her, that it wasn’t her power over him that he’d wanted to tame, that it wasn’t the need to reduce her by ownership that had driven him to risk shame and ridicule by marrying an exotic dancer. Not that many of the men that had seen her dance or strip or something in between would mock him for that. She was different from the rest; her abilities as a dancer matched by her sensuous beauty, and despite their jealousy she knew the other girls were as pleased as her customers were devastated when she dragged herself from the neon depths of the basement strip club and stepped out into the sunlight.
Still, she thought, as she folded up the empty place inside her, Robert Jackson was a very wealthy man and if he wanted to think there was more to her than beauty—that there was more to anything than beauty—then she would let him believe it. He thought his intelligence and his money were powerful, but it was her beauty that had brought him to his knees, although she was clever enough never to remind him of it.
‘That’s why I wanted to bring you here. To show you Moscow. It took a long time to get that visa for you. Not many businessmen’s wives get to see behind the Iron Curtain.’ He smiled, pushing back the sheet and grabbing a towel, wrapping it across his thick, pale waist. ‘I could have taken you to Paris or New York. But this place…,’ he gestured around the grandly old-fashioned hotel room with the slightly threadbare ornate carpet, ‘this city is something not many people from the west get a chance to experience. And once the reforms are fully in place, it’ll be changed for good and this way of life will be gone.’ Heading towards the bathroom, he paused to kiss her. ‘You’re getting to see history, Anna.’
He could have taken me to Paris or New York. She returned his kiss mechanically. ‘But it’s so ugly. Everything’s so dull.’ The words were out before she could stop herself, and for a few moments he paused, his hand against her cheek, looking at her and into her. ‘Beauty isn’t always obvious. Sometimes you have to look past the surface.’ He grinned. ‘Anyway, today you’re going to see lots of beautiful things. I’ve arranged for you to visit the Armoury of the Kremlin. It’s amazing in there. A museum of national treasures. I’ve got meetings all day but a driver’ll pick you up at ten and wait while you have the tour. Make sure you get to Red Square too.’
She frowned slightly, her brow furrowing. ‘Why do I need the driver? Surely I can make my own way there.’ She’d fought hard to shake off her gritty roots, but the independent desire that had made her leave home at fifteen still occasionally roared inside. Sometimes it was only when she was alone and anonymous, surrounded by streets full of strangers, that she felt she could breathe and be herself, whoever that was. The Anna that she had left behind or the Anna that she had become. She didn’t know if either really existed, but both were beautiful enough to make men and women stare as she passed by, and that was really all that mattered. That was enough to make her feel whole.
She watched her husband as he walked to the bathroom. Being owned was trapping her; something she hadn’t banked on when she’d taken the gold band and the gold credit card and everything else that went along with it. She missed the admiration she’d received when she was single. Available. Full of potential promise. She was still admired, but now it was as Robert’s appendage, as the cool and sophisticated wife of a prominent businessmen. It was tamed admiration. She reeked of aloof unavailability.
He turned the shower on and left the door open as he peed. ‘This is still communist Russia, sweetheart. A driver is best. I don’t like the idea of you getting lost in the city on your own.’
‘I thought you said there was no crime here. I thought everyone was too scared to hurt Westerners,’ she muttered, moving back to the window, away from the sights of the bathroom. There was no sign of the couple she’d seen earlier, but an old woman dressed in black apart from her colourful headscarf, waddled along the path clutching a plain bag, a few grocery items making jagged shapes in its sides where back in England a supermarket logo would have been. As they’d driven through the city from the airport, Bob had pointed out the lifeless shop fronts. Here there was no Sainsbury’s or Waitrose screaming for customer attention, just the universal gastronom, literally translated as food shop, with no branding, no competition, no need to lure anyone in. It didn’t matter which food shop was used. This one or that. The state owned everything. All the products were the same. All the prices were the same. Individuality was dead. The different culture seemed to fascinate her husband, but it frightened Anna slightly that everyone was supposed to be equal; exactly the same as everyone else.
‘Well that’s true,’ he called out to her. ‘But a couple of months ago the wife of an American diplomat went missing and was never found. She was quite a stunner, by all accounts. They’d only been here a few weeks.’ He poked his head round the paint-chipped doorway. ‘I would hate to think what I would do if anything happened to you.’
She felt his love tighten like a noose around her neck and glanced into the mirror on the other side of their tarnished suite, soothing herself with her reflection as she waited for him to go to work and leave her in peace.
Once he had gone, full of promises to return early to have some time with her before they me
t his government contacts for dinner and an evening at the Bolshoi ballet, she leisurely dressed herself, picking out a pale pink silk shirt dress, that pulled in tight around her slim waist. If Bob was with her, she would have worn a full length slip demurely under it, but she left it off, knowing that without it the sun would shine through, outlining the toned curves underneath. She pulled her hair back into an easy chignon, a few strands casually loose, as if blown free rather than carefully arranged, and then slipped her feet into the soft leather matching high-heeled sandals. Looking into the mirror, she could see that she oozed Western affluence, beauty and style in equal measures, and as she left Stalin’s gothic skyscraper hotel, all eyes following her, she felt happy for the first time since she’d stepped down from the plane.
Even without any modern air-conditioning, the inside of the armoury was deliciously cool on her bare arms as she followed the small group of quietly whispering tourists through the open wooden doors, and despite herself her eyes widened. The hall yawned wide ahead of them, the polished ebony-inlaid parquet floor covering at least a hundred yards before the next set of doors, beyond which, no doubt, another hall lay. The bloody crimson of the walls oozed down from stripes in the high white domes of the ceilings as if the bodies of those murdered throughout Russian history were piled high and leaking somewhere above. Opulent golden chandeliers sparkled light onto the huge glass cabinets militarily lined in three columns leading down to the far exit, each shelf within ruby velvet coated, soft for their delicate contents.
The guide smiled, pleased with her small crowd’s response, and Anna watched her as she spoke, first in Russian and then in English, her accent thick and monotone. ‘The Kremlin armoury is a unique treasure store of decorative and applied art. The museum’s foundation dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century and its oldest exhibit is the helmet of Prince Yaroslav which dates back to the early thirteenth century. Our tour today should last approximately two hours.’ Above the obligatory gray military uniform, fitted to show the woman’s shape but deny her sexuality, the guide’s hair was over-bleached and her lips just a little too red against her pancaked face. It was a look Anna had seen on several Muscovite women who seemed to grab at an ideal of glamour borne out of movies from the forties, a look that was forever to be out of their reach in this equal society. The woman didn’t fit into these surroundings that leaked whispers of a decadent past. She was too coarse. Too obvious.
Mister October - Volume Two Page 12
