Could Eddy Walpole read his mind a little? It wasn’t that he spoke for LaKarnafeaux, finished his sentences, related his stories for him–he was simply the boss’s representative, front man. Business manager, agent, publicity man. Either he was just very perceptive or he took some kind of drug which boosted telepathy a little. Rumors about were that one of LaKarnafeaux’s other men, Sneezy Tightrope, who wasn’t present, could see the future in dreams, see things in your past and read your mind, and had even been a carnival fortune teller for a brief while. A sensitive, no doubt aided by some illegal military drug. The memory of such rumors made Del squirm inside his waxen skin-case. He had to flee. He tried to shut his mind’s emanations off, focus on Sophi or something. Mitch.
“Well, I’d better head over to the morgue and look into things.”
“Okay, Del, nice talkin’ with ya. You and the wife come by tonight at least for a minute, will ya?”
“We’ll try–things might be busy.”
“Try.”
“Don’t forget the wife. We’ll all be here. Johnny and everyone,” said Mortimer Ficklebottom.
Del ignored him, looked to LaKarnafeaux. He was deeply asleep. Reverently, the boy Cod took away his smoldering cigarette and his beer.
Perched atop Pearl Mason’s small, egg-like pink plastic trailer was a nicked and worn pink plastic lion, resting on its belly with its maned head held proud above its front legs. The two, trailer and lion, looked to have been formed as one, but in actuality the pink lion was one of two which had once flanked the entrance of pink plastic stairs that led into the apartment building where Pearl had spent much of her childhood. The old tenements were to be torn down, Pearl had found, to make way for a parking garage, and she had purchased the better of the two lions–the other, more battered and spray-painted, went to a playground. It hurt Pearl to have the two separated–they had been brothers, to the child. But one could save only so many discarded animals. She’d already owned the trailer, but it was pale yellow; she’d had the new pink coat of plastic applied. It had since buckled in a few places and two seams had split open to show the yellow inside. That bothered her, she’d have to tend to that. This was her home, it was her. She had to be happy with it, proud of it. Yes–a person’s home was a reflection of who they were.
Pearl let Mitch in. There were only attempts at partitions; except for the toilet it was all pretty much one room. A chipped old horse from the miniature merry-go-round hung on the wall of the livingroom section, a birthday gift from Sophi and Del Kahn. Pearl made Mitch a coffee at the kitchenette counter, her back to him.
She wore a loose-fitting, short-sleeved and knee-length dress, soft pink covered with a black web-like cracked pattern. Her skin was the smooth, unblemished white of alabaster, her upper arms plump and soft and hips and bottom ample inside the dress. Her shoulder-length hair was a thick and crazy nest of frizz and tight curls, a sparkling dark-blonde–natural, amazingly enough, though maybe courtesy of a recessive gene from some ancestor who had had their blonde hair chosen for it by its parents.
“I heard a lot of shooting earlier,” she said. Her voice was a high, cutesy squeak, but not affected, and not inane-sounding, with an additionally cute stopped-up nasal quality. Natural, like her hair, like her skin, her full bottom, but she had put them all to her advantage. One had best utilize one’s inborn qualities.
“A bunch of punks killed a mutant and accidentally killed a little boy with a stray shot. I had to shoot three of them.”
“Great. Was that absolutely necessary?”
“Absolutely necessary? No. No. I could have smiled and walked away. I guess it’s not necessary to stop anybody from killing somebody, so long as it isn’t you…and hey, you don’t even have to stop that if you don’t want to, right? We’re all gonna die anyway, right?”
“Me and my big mouth.”
“I’ve got a twelve-year-old raped and strangled in the ice box and everybody thinks I’m the fucking psycho mad-dog–even you. That’s what I get for risking my life for other people, huh?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I trust your judgment, okay?”
“Then why’d you give me the old clichéd, ‘Great–was it necessary?’”
“I just don’t like to hear it. It’s scary.”
“Then don’t bring it up next time. You don’t want to hear it? Nobody wants to hear it…that’s why they’ll have to go on and on hearing it. ‘Cause they don’t wanna do anything about it. That’s the thanks I get. I always hoped people would be proud of me.”
“It might be necessary for you to kill, but we’re supposed to be proud you kill?”
“No–proud of my job, of which killing is a part at times.”
“I am proud of your work.”
“Then don’t start on me. You’re in a cold mood. Why?”
“I’m not in a cold mood. I’m a little blue. It’s last night; it was a good summer, I had fun, now it’s over.” The coffee was ready and an herbal tea for herself; she turned to face Mitch and he took his drink. Pearl leaned her back against the counter while she dunked her tea bag in her mug. Mitch tried not to let his eyes drop but they half-flicked–it was a near unavoidable instinct even now. She had kept her back to him an extra prolonged time, until it was no longer feasible–a habit she took on when she was in a cold, or angry, or blue mood.
“You have all these club dates lined up.”
“I know, it’s exciting, but I’m sacred. It reminds me of the old days.”
“Fuck the old days–they’re over. Nobody up here knows about the old days…that was another life.”
“And your old days are another life, huh?”
Mitch started to get mad, but broke a smile and had to look sideways away from her eyes. “I know, yeah, yeah. But it sounded good.”
“I’m excited but I’m scared. Here I’ve got so many people I know around me, so many friends. I’m part of a big thing. In clubs I’ll pretty much be alone.”
“I can understand that–it’s always weird starting a new part of your life, it’s traumatic…starting a new job or moving or getting married or whatever. It was hard for you giving up your old life and coming here, but now look.”
“It wasn’t hard giving up my old life,” Pearl corrected, “it was just hard starting my new life. Stage of life,” she corrected again.
“It was hard for me giving up the force. I loved my job–what I hated was the fucking disrespect and apathy and lack of compassion and fucking evil I encountered. No thanks, we got, no thanks. I had friends die in front of me…and no thanks. They say Car Thirteen men are martyrs. All forcers are martyrs now. Being a forcer in Punktown is the most thankless job around.”
“So what’d you love about it–getting even?”
Garnet gave Pearl a long cold look. “Getting even? I was protecting people, not getting even. I can’t even bring up my work a minute without you jumping on the mad-dog thing again, can I?”
“I just can’t imagine what you loved about it.”
“The challenge of doing good. Okay?”
“Okay–sorry–you sure are touchy about it.”
“About getting my head shit on for doing good? Damn right I’m touchy. I don’t apologize for it.”
“I’m not shitting on your head, Mitch. Get the chip off your shoulder. Fuck the old days–remember?”
“Alright, okay, enough about that.” Mitch sipped his coffee. “It’s just that it kills me, though. Everybody loves Mr. Mauser on VT and he blows away scum left and right…the girls worship him. They love that macho stuff. But I’m real–I scare them.”
“There are girls who’re drawn to violent men–punks, gangers, bikies, mobbies, beaters, apes. If you want a girl like that go ahead and find one. You have more to offer a girl than violence, Mitch, but it’s you who doesn’t seem to realize that.”
“That sounds good but it’s stools.”
“Then stop moping about how nobody’s giving you medals for blowing people’s
heads off.”
“You know what it is? People are always so concerned about dealing too harshly with criminals. People are afraid to hate criminals. I’ve had them shoot at me, look at me with the desire to kill me in their eyes. If everyone could know that feeling they’d realize you have to hate them in order to stop them.”
“You said you were finished.”
“That’s right, you don’t want to hear it. Hey, Pearl, it wasn’t your twelve-year-old son who got shot by a stray bullet from some mindless fucking waste product, was it?”
“Your adrenaline is still up too high, I think. Why don’t you go away and come back later? I’m agitated enough as it is.”
“I’m agitated, too–you’re right. That’s why I came to you, to help me mellow down. But instead you question my actions.”
“I’m sorry, I told you, I’m sorry. Accept my apology or leave, please. I have a show soon and I’d rather not have to take a relaxer to do it.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Mitch grumbled. “Forget the whole thing.” As he sipped he spied upon her over the rim of his mug. His eyes lifted to hers; she had caught him peeking at the strange, pointed and bent projection which pushed out the front of her maternity dress. He, quick killer of men, had to pause and suck in the air for extra weight to ask her, “Will you make love to me?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. In coming out of their roll her eyes looked hotly past him.
“Good. Fine.” Mitch’s voice shook a little. “I just wish you knew what it was like to need help, to ask somebody to make love to you and have them roll their eyes. It wouldn’t make you feel too nice, I think.”
“I don’t ask people to make love to me.”
“But I do, so I’m a freak. I’m sorry–I guess maybe I should leave after all.”
Pearl looked at his eyes again as he started to move. “Wait.”
“No. You’ll give in because you think I’m bullying you with a guilt attack. I’m not. I’m just saying the truth I feel.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But you know how I feel.”
“That goes without saying, Pearl. I understand your problem.”
“I’ll be okay. Let’s go to bed. We’ll both feel better. I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure? Now I feel stupid.”
“Don’t feel stupid. What do you expect from me? You say you understand my problem, and I told you I feel blue…”
“I’m sorry. I’m too impatient. We’ll both feel better, like you say. Okay? Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“I’ll be alright,” Pearl sighed. “I want to–I like it. I’ll be okay once we do it…” She set down her mug on the counter. He set down his mug on the stove and followed her through the parlor section into the open bedroom section. Pearl was opening a vial of pills, popped one in her mouth and swallowed without water. Shook the vial. “Almost out.”
“Don’t buy them from LaKarnafeaux yourself. Send somebody. If I ever heard one crack from any of them about you buying sex drugs I’d have to kill ‘em on the spot.”
Garnet tossed his windbreaker on the parlor love seat and laid his pistol on it before following her. Near the bed she turned to face him. He ran his hands up her mushroom-cool arms, down again, took a step closer. The irregular bulge inside her maternity dress pressed into him a little. He took in her face and she took him in as he did so. Pearl was thirty-seven, but younger looking; she took good care of herself…no gold-dust in almost a year, and she rarely even smoked iodine, as seaweed was nicknamed. Her eyes were dark brown, narrowed when she smiled, looking almost mournful. Her predominant feature was the smallness of her mouth in her rather pronounced, but not overstated, jaw–the corners of her lips barely extended beyond the edges of her nostrils. When she smiled and bared her teeth the lips hardly stretched, the upper seeming only to lift–along with her narrowed eyes giving her the aspect of being in discomfort or slight pain. But she was beautiful; her face seemed unspeakably old-fashioned to Mitch, aided greatly by her fair complexion and hair. She would have turned many heads even without the projection from her mid-section.
A little nervous with her eyes on him, Mitch broke his gaze free on the pretense of kissing her forehead through some corkscrews of gold hair. He began bunching up her dress gently in his hands. The projection snagged a moment inside the dress, as if gripping it.
Both naked in bed, he lay half on her, kissing her throat and upper chest, spreading his fingers around a plump breast, softer than any substance he could think of, semi-amorphous but heavy. Pearl had the classic female body, Mitch felt, the body immortalized by Earth’s ancient artists before the age of machines, and to which men were drawn even as women starved themselves in competition with each other. Pearl was an alabaster statute come to soft, moving life–she had stepped down from her oil-paint divan or idyllic pastoral scene. She was not long-necked, long-waisted, long-legged; she was short, compact, as plush as some Victorian divan herself, richly upholstered. Mitch gently swirled his tongue around her pale nipple. He kissed lower, down her belly. She turned her head to one side as if sleeping, eyes closed, and parted her legs for him. The drug was starting to effect her.
She wore soft makeup, she smelled of soft perfume–sweet, but not chemical. She did, it seem, endeavor to always remain stereotypically feminine to an almost inhuman degree. She had seen to it that she no longer had to menstruate, and the acidic inner smell which arose from intense, sweaty sex never rose strongly from her, even now with his lower face pressed into her secondary soft gold nest. She had had the dimpled or rumpled cushions of her divan reupholstered, firmed to a youthful smoothness, though without becoming a uniform plastic. She never crossed the line into glaring artificiality, but her care to hide her natural, animal aspects was telling. Her underarms were a perpetual soft bruised yellow from sweat against her so-white skin, a human detail she had missed but which clever artists like Renoir hadn’t.
She moaned slightly. His tongue tired, Garnet switched to his fingers for the moment, every part of his body a prodding creature that wanted entry. She squirmed, moaned again, tossed her head to the other side. He used his tongue and fingers in conjunction. She was there; the sex drugs had liberated her. Mitch’s hunger rose to a frenzy; he had never so weirdly, crazily wanted to engulf a person, consume them, take in every ounce of them. He kneaded her belly with a free hand. Rubbed his face from side to side. The pressure against his head tightened and relaxed alternately, she would arch and buck but he was a rodeo star, he wouldn’t be thrown. Pearl began to coo steadily in her cute, high nasal voice. Together, they were frantic. His hand switched from her belly to the leg of her parasite, which all this time had been lying across the back of his neck. He ran his hand up and down the small bent leg, up over the buttocks which projected from Pearl’s mid-section. He squeezed them.
Pearl thrashed to a climax, rolled onto her side to close and draw up her legs–shutting him out as she did at her pinnacle, abruptly, sometimes pushing him away as if afraid she would topple over some cliff edge. Her breathing began to slow but her eyes stayed shut. Mitch always liked to bring her to climax first; then he was free to finish off in his way, at his pace and rhythm. With her closed to him, he kissed her outer thigh and hip. Worked his way up to the parasite.
It looked as though a child or small being had dived or tripped head-first into Pearl’s plush body and become stuck inside. Protruding from her mid-section on her left side were one arm and two legs of an undeveloped parasitic twin, not even as much as a conjoined twin. The arm was bent and unformed, the hand more a hairless dog paw. The legs grew from a set of buttocks, these smooth and round but a bit less than adult in size, the thighs also nicely shaped but undersized. The lower legs, however, rapidly tapered and the rigid feet were rudimentary like the hand. The legs were bent at the knee and could be unbent a bit, but had no independent motion other than the occasional twitch. Pearl could tell a person where she was being touched on the surface of her parasitic twin, and could feel pain if it were in
flicted.
She had once menstruated from the secondary vagina hidden under the hanging protrusion, passed urine (but not feces, as she had no secondary anus) against her will, necessitating a kind of diaper, but had had her need to urinate as well as her menstruation surgically done away with.
Mitch kissed the smooth thighs, gently licked and squeezed the miniature of Pearl’s bottom. Pearl didn’t open her eyes or squirm; he went on. Gingerly, as if afraid to rouse her from sleep, he shifted and rubbed himself through the groove between the buttocks. The tiny unmoving hand brushed his belly. The twitching inside him became too much–he nuzzled under the buttocks at the door to the supernumerary vagina…pressed against it.
Pearl opened her eyes, twisted her body away; not abruptly, but meaningfully. “No, Mitch,” she moaned.
“Sorry,” he sighed, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. You wanna roll over?”
She did, dreamily, still recovering, and positioned herself on hands and knees while he mounted her from behind. It wasn’t impossible to lie on top of her but it was easier this way. From this view her anomaly was much less visible, and there had been those men in her life who could only have intercourse with her this way.
Her own, natural buttocks spread out wide before him, against his belly, a white expanse he ran his hands over. He reached under her to knead her belly. His left hand dared to run up and down the outer buttock of the parasite. This much Pearl tolerated. You had to be careful. Her moods dictated her protectiveness, the sanctity of her sister...
Most Earth colonists were non-European in origin. Asians, Blacks and Hispanics formed the vast majority, or mixes of these, and what White blood did surface was again usually mixed with one or more of the other types to a lesser or greater extent. There were those groups who steadfastly remained closed, shut off, jealously fixated on an ethnic identity–some Black groups, some Hispanic groups, White or Asian. Other people were so mixed that even their great-grandparents wouldn’t have known if they were more Black than White, or more Middle-Eastern than Oriental, and weren’t really one thing more than another–all physical and cultural identification obliterated, except as Punktowners. In the end, whatever the case, most human Earthers were darker-skinned, darker-haired. White-Whites might be sought after as novel, but also scorned or mocked, called “Anglos” or “lily-whites” or “ghosts.” This last seemed the most fitting.
Everybody Scream! Page 11
