King Cage
And the Worth Street Djinni
Mike Stop Continues
King Cage, Book 1
Chapter One
It used to smell like cardamom, but now it smelled like hell.
Even the bandana across the King’s nose did nothing to cut the stench. You’d think the aerosol would have burned it away by now. Or that the colors would have clotted up whatever crevices he smelled from. The King gagged, but he was used to gagging. If it wasn’t the cans, it was the grit, the oil, the ash, the smoke—and it all smelled like hell because that’s what it was.
The King stepped back to get a good look at his piece. The harsh light of the flashlight multiplied his shadow against the tiled wall of the abandoned Worth Street Station. Another step cast it out into the cool and all-consuming dark.
The letters on the wall spelled KING CAGE, stacked four on four. They were the cells of an impossible prison. Each was at angles with the others, and each bore the telltale signs of a single-colored life. The K was yellow. The E was purple. The I was red. The green cell held potted bamboo and a Granny Smith apple, sans worm. The purple cell was a sparse affair. Only a wine glass and a spilled pill bottle remained. All of the cells were vacant save one. The red I contained the djinni—the spirit of the piece—a creature of fire and smoke and foul intentions.
Behind the eight cells, the King had sketched the backdrop. Skyscrapers through a fisheye lens that curled in on themselves like snakes eating their own tails. No penthouses, no basements. Just elevators with more buttons than you could count. Another puzzle. Even if the djinni were to escape its cell, it would never escape the city.
The angles of the King’s top G were all wrong. He did his Gs like arrows pointing forever in on themselves. But tonight, his top G pointed up and out. To the street. To the sky. To anywhere but the bowels of the city where he worked and often slept.
With a cork board against the offending G’s left edge, the King sprayed black. He then grabbed the white can and sprayed the other side. Sure, he could have waited to wipe the excess until it was time for the backdrop, but the white mark kept him honest. It kept him sharp. It kept him from crossing his eyes later and thinking it looked just fine. It was everything to see a piece as it was, rather than how you wished it to be.
The King coughed. And at the edges of the echoes, he swore he heard something other than his own swollen lungs. He turned.
It was no bum, the King knew. No priest of the streets. The crazy ones had no knowledge of how to be quiet, and the others all knew to make a little extra noise. Common decency was the only law of the undercity, from the Subterranean Saloon to the Seaward Baths. Down here, all anyone wanted was a little peace of mind. So you didn’t scare. You didn’t sneak. You left that sort of thing to the shadows.
The King squinted into the dark, his eyes adjusting to what little street light seeped through the grating above the tracks. He peered up the downtown platform. Then he swayed from side to side, checking between the rows of steel support beams that divided one side of the station from the other.
But the dark revealed nothing, and the King didn’t have the time to waste on rats. The painted djinni glowered, its chin firm and its jaw clenched, life stewing beneath its molten red eyes. Deep inside, the King felt the spirit’s silken tendrils fiddling with the tumblers of the locks of its cage. How long before the djinni broke free? Half an hour, maybe? Less for a Red.
The King found his knuckles against his chest, his heart pounding. He rubbed the back of his fingers against the sensitive skin there. Just as he had that first time, with that first Red. The corners flared at the edges where his prepubescent chest had curved to cage his throbbing heart. In the mirror, it was worse. There was no hiding how the scar grimaced back at him as the red djinni did now, from the center of the King’s crimson I.
The King turned to the lemons in the yellow cell. You had to get those puckered pores just right. You had to make it real. You had to care. It didn’t matter if it was lemons or cherries or the big, soppy vaginas the King saved for the bloated Blues. You had to make it true. Or the magic wouldn’t hold, and the djinni would break free in no time.
The King sprayed. He lost himself in spraying. He sprayed like a pointillist, hitting the wall up close with short, sharp bursts. He was a contortionist too, spraying through the gaps of his twisted fingers to make subtle arcs and corners and lines. He was at times the creator, spraying with vigor and precision, and at times the destroyer, spraying a noxious cloud at arm’s length, burning away his central nervous system with toluene and xylene, even as he breathed his work full of life.
The King reached for the canvas messenger bag he used to carry his cans. He needed some blue to round out the shadows of the yellow cell. But there was someone on the floor beside his messenger bag. A kid with oily, olive skin and cheeks marked by deep crevices and bloated, white peaks. The kid’s pants were too big and his denim jacket was too shiny. His eyes darted back and forth like a wild raccoon, one hand on the King’s canvas bag and the other around his can of blue.
“Thief,” the King muttered.
And the kid leaped, running north along the platform. His boots slammed hard against the cement, the cans clamoring like cowbells inside the canvas bag. He vanished into the dark at the edge of the King’s flashlight, reappearing with the cool glow of the cellphone he’d drawn to light his way.
For a moment, the King felt only the searing pain against his chest. He heard only the sizzling of his own bare skin. He’d seen red djinn slice their quarry up the middle so that their ribcage swung open and their fillings fell out. He’d seen them devour their victims one finger at a time, spitting clean bones to the floor before advancing to the next. And the next. So as the kid ran, all the King could think was that the djinni was going to break free, and it was going to kill when it did.
“No!” the King growled, his voice echoing through the empty subway station. “Stop!”
Then he grabbed his flashlight and ran.
Chapter Two
The world disappeared and reappeared with the King’s swinging flashlight. One moment, shadows danced across the tracks, cast by the support beams between the express and local lanes. The next, he was at warp speed, graffiti neons streaking across the left wall, glistening with the metallic ash that had collected since its last spray.
More than once, the muse had led the King to the Worth Street Station to bind yet another djinni on yet another cold and empty night. He cursed himself for racing by his older pieces as hundreds of thousands of commuters did daily, without so much as a passing glance. The grime had taken so much of the life from what’d he’d painted. Vandals had taken the rest, throwing up their tags without a care for what he’d left. Or why.
“Stupid prick!” the King called out.
The kid tugged his pants back over his ass as he ran, his long legs making it seem as if he floated. But the King was gaining. He’d have his cans back soon, and he’d finish his work with time to spare.
“Do you have any idea—”
The ground twisted beneath the King’s front foot. He’d put it down on a two-by-four left by the MTA god knows when. It was as black as the filthy cement beneath it.
The King hit the ground first with his outstretched hands, then with his chest and chin. The flashlight flew forward, tumbling to rest with its beam in the King’s eyes. It blotted out everything but the electric coil at its molten core.
The King moaned, his chest heavy with phlegm and too weak to release it. He thought how nice it would be to stay there. To let the kid’s footfall fade until finally it was gone. But he couldn’t. It was hours after midnight
, and there was no way to replace his cans this late. Not even in Chinatown. And if the coming morning rush wasn’t enough of a reason to finish his work, the red djinni was.
The King pushed himself to his feet and rushed forward. He grabbed the flashlight as he ran, more careful this time to watch his footing. His left hand was wet, and he didn’t have the time to see if it was with oily subway water or with his own blood. He wiped it on the bandana around his face, pulling the mask down. He was already breathing heavy, and the paisley, red fabric didn’t help.
“Look, I’ll pay you!” the King yelled. With what money, he didn’t know. “I just want my cans.”
At the far edge of the platform, the kid hopped onto the tracks. He turned, and for an instant the King’s light landed on the kid’s face.
“No way, KC.” Shadows flickered like demons through the thick corn rows that ran from the front of the kid’s head to the back.
“You know me?” The only people who knew the King were dead, or close to it.
“Who doesn’t?”
The kid darted off into the darkness, and the King jumped down after him.
They ran up the downtown local track, both doing their best not to slip on the slime between the rails and not to trip on the crossbeams that held them in place. It was the kind of obstacle course city dwellers paid top dollar to find upstate, not knowing there was plenty of good muck right here.
The King gagged on the old air as he ran. He’d spent too much time underground. Too much time with his cans. He hacked up something thick and spat. Then he kicked off the right rail to leap over some shadowy carcass in the canal between the tracks.
And he wondered, had bamboo been the right choice? Or would sage have been better? Had the purple cell needed some sign of abandonment? Crumpled panties? Wet tissues? Something thick and white dripping from the edge of the mattress? Would the backdrop have been better as a landscape than a cityscape? Was his old and addled mind losing its touch? Or was this just the djinni beginning to break through?
“Bet you didn’t think I’d be gaining, did you?” the King called.
“It ain’t gainin’ if you gaspin’, KC.”
And he sure was gasping. What had they run? Three blocks? Two? The light of the Canal Street Station glittered off the greasy black beams ahead. But the station’s fluorescents bulbs couldn’t explain all that light.
The King squinted. It was more than just the station lights. It was a train. No, two trains. An express and a local, both pointed in their direction.
Bing-bong. “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”
The electronic conductor’s voice bounced off the walls. The doors of both trains closed at once, like brittle applause. Then came the telltale blistering, screeching, jackhammering locomotion of the 4-5-6 line. The tunnel air felt suddenly thick and crowded.
“Get off the fucking tracks!” the King yelled, his voice nearly lost in the onslaught of echoes.
“Fuck you, pedejo,” the kid said, dipping his head into the oncoming wind.
They were in a game of chicken now. Either could jump to the side at any time, but jumping to safety also meant slowing down. The left side of the tracks was too narrow, bounded by the concrete wall. And the right was home to the electric third rail.
Clearly, the kid knew what was at stake. He knew if he chose one side or the other too soon, the King would have him. His only option was to keep running up the center of the tracks as long as possible. To head directly into the light of the approaching train.
Screeeeee-kichonk-kachonk-kechonk! Screeeeee!
The express rushed by, the air rocking both the King and the kid to the side. The train was mostly empty, though its few, exhausted passengers still found their eyes drawn to the windows. It wasn’t every day you saw a full-grown man chasing a teenager to his death.
The front conductor must have been dozing, because it was only as the middle conductor sped by that the express train honked. And when a subway car honks, you don’t just hear it. You feel it. The King’s eardrums flared. His bones hummed. His brain rattled like a wine glass at the opera.
Honk! Honk, honk!
“You fucking idiot!” the King howled. “Get off the goddamn tracks!”
Upturned grit caught at the back of the King’s throat. He heaved against his own lack of breath, his lungs so full of acetone sores they barely did anything but ooze anymore.
He’d been in the kid’s shoes more than once, sometimes running from the cops, and sometimes from a djinni he’d failed to bind fast enough. No way the kid knew how hard it was to maneuver so close to a moving train. The air pressure went up, and the wind blew against you at over fifty miles an hour.
At those speeds, what were the odds that when the kid jumped, he’d clear the train? And what were the consequences? The kid could get electrocuted. He could get dismembered. He could get cut in fucking half.
“Jump!” the King yelled. “Just fucking—”
Screeeeee!
The kid had to have heard, but he just kept running, the canvas bag bouncing against his side.
How easy it would be to take the cans off the kid’s leaky corpse after the train had run him down. How nice it would be to get back to work. To realize that evening’s vision. To block yet another djinni’s path of destruction. And all the King had to do was stay silent.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself. It would be just another victory for the djinn, shifting our world ever-so-slightly closer to theirs. So the King leaped over the left rail, coming to rest against the wall.
“Truce!” he yelled.
The kid kept running. There was no more than a hundred feet between him and the train, and the gap was closing fast.
“Truce, motherfucker! Look!”
The kid glanced back. The King held his free hand against the wall, heaving like he’d never seen the outside of a cell. But still the kid ran, determined to get as far from the King as he could.
The space between the kid and the train halved. And halved again.
The King saw the kid’s bloody end in his mind’s eye.
“Jump!” he yelled, his voice wavering. There was just a few yards between the kid and the oncoming train. “Jump, you fucking—”
The kid jumped right, his shoulder cracking against the nearest support beam. And he was lucky too, because it was the only thing that kept him from falling under the express train as the last of its cars plummeted past.
A moment later, the 6 train was between them, screeching and honking in equal measure.
Screeeeee-kichonk-kachonk-kechonk! Honk! Honk!
A rush of cold ran up the King’s back. The kid was safe. Now all he had to do was get his cans, and he could resume his thankless work in peace.
The King looked into the wind as car after car rushed by, inching forward with the hope of clearing the space between himself and the kid.
Then, like a passing fancy, the kid’s voice swished past.
“Sucker!”
The kid hung from the steel supports linking one train car to the next, the canvas bag slapping against his hip. He was getting away, and he was doing it in style.
“Son-of-a-shit!”
Chapter Three
The train rocked against its shocks as it rushed past. It would carry the kid far out of reach, and with him, the King’s cans.
For the second time that night, the King thought he might lay his crown against the slick subway cement and call it quits. Hadn’t he earned it? Didn’t it matter that he’d always done his job? That he’d always followed the pain to the edges of this world and the next? Or was it not pain, but attention he needed his art to capture? If so, how long would he toil in the bowels of the city before he found it?
Even if there was a hardware store open this late, the King couldn’t afford to buy new cans. He hadn’t taken a job in days. He’d dropped out of sight to follow the djinni to the Worth Street Station. So as the final train car rattled by, the King knew he either get
his cans back from the kid or doom the people upstairs to the djinni’s frightful whims.
He had to get on that train.
The King dropped his industrial flashlight and stared into the wind. The back of the final car had the same spring-loaded supports the kid had latched onto up ahead. But without an adjoining train car, the heavy chrome stuck out on either end like the stunted wings of a fallen angel.
The King had to get the timing just right to catch onto the back of the train. So with a silent wish, he kicked off the wall, throwing his hands out ahead of him. The train rushed by so fast the King was sure he’d miss the metal wing and tumble out onto the tracks. But the metal support slammed into the King’s waiting palms, and he clamped down, praying he didn’t pull his arms from their sockets.
The King’s legs flew out behind him, his torso held up by wind lashing the underside of his outstretched body. The metal wing rocked with the extra weight, but it held.
“Fuck!” the King hollered, his toes skidding against the ground rushing beneath him.
The King’s left foot caught on a crossbeams, and he saw himself falling right off. He saw his skin scraped from his skeleton by the ceaseless stream of jagged edges that made up the New York City subway system. He saw himself bleeding out and dying with his face in an oily puddle, just as he always knew he would. And if the King’s knuckles weren’t so tightly clenched, he might have. Instead, his boot bounced off the beam, and in the following seconds, it bounced a dozen times more.
The King curled his knees into his chest. No longer supported by the sharp wind, he swung forward. His body slammed against the dirty metal wing, and he found his footing on the bottom extension.
The train’s back door was locked, but the King was running out of time. He had to get to that kid. Up next was the Brooklyn Bridge Station. A minor hub. The express to Brooklyn would be waiting for transfers from the local and the J-M-Z trains were just a stairwell away. Not to mention the street. If the King didn’t catch the kid before the Brooklyn Bridge Station, there would be no hope of finishing the piece, and the djinni would go free.
King Cage and the Worth Street Djinni Page 1
