"Does it have a name, this one?" Dauphin asked gently. The man shook his head.
"I don't name them. It is a demon, a chupacabra, a gargoyle. It is whatever you want to name it."
Dauphin was satisfied, it seemed, for he reached for the thing's snout and stroked the fur there.
"Gargoyle," he whispered, and the thing knew its name. It growled.
Dauphin could feel the vibrations rising through the creature's body. He turned his own body, presenting his flank, and pointed to a spot of skin that was soft pink and devoid of scar tissue.
"Here," he whispered, and the man urged his charge forward and pointed to the spot. The thing needed no further encouragement, for it unleashed it knife claws and struck Dauphin with the fluid grace of a creature more suited to ambush hunting than chained servitude. A vicious snarl accompanied the attack, and as the creature drew back for a second swipe, Dauphin, as he always did, wondered if this would be the last thing he felt. The razors parted air scant millimetres from his flesh, and the tight chink of chain being pulled taut cut through the sour air. The creature sat back on shit-stained haunches and extended a long tongue to lick Dauphin's blood from its claws. Harris rushed in with gloved hands to snap a Polaroid of the wound still leaking blood, and once done, pressed padded gauze to it. He proceeded to drag Dauphin back towards his discarded jacket. He had gone pale as snow, and as Harris helped him to dress, pressing adhesive tape across the pad of gauze as he did so, the creature's owner spoke.
"Why?" he asked.
"He collects them," Harris replied. On seeing the man's confusion, he added, "The scars."
* * *
The Polaroid joined the hundreds already pinned to the wall of Dauphin's office. They formed a tapestry of horrors. On show here were wounds made by every type of creature with claw or tooth. Dauphin wasn't foolish enough to believe he could gain a mark from every single species, but had captured one from each major group capable of harm. So here was the tooth mark from a big cat, a tiger. Next to that were dog, and bear and hyena, and wolverine. There were talon gouges from golden eagle and sparrow alike. A shark bite adorned his upper arm, and there were cuts and bites from insects, and from spiders, scorpions and a dozen species of snake. But these were everyday creatures and while they had their place, covering eighty percent of him, in fact, it wasn't these he was most proud of. There were others, like this newest adornment, the living gargoyle, which set his heart truly racing.
These were the Penny Blacks, the elusive Gauguin, or the Gutenberg Bible. They were the ones that he had been told he could never acquire, that no amount of money could force these creatures into being. But he had known the truth, and had ploughed his not inconsiderable fortune into the discovery of them. And so here, next to a long, winding scar made by the curving knife claw of a giant anteater, was a subtler mark. Shaped like a ring of raised pebbles, the mark left by the sucker of a giant kraken. And here, nestling among the ragged beak marks of a hundred-strong flock of starlings, a scar like a deep well, its originator, the talon of a thunderbird, the star of half a thousand cryptozoology websites. And yet these were not the strangest.
From chupacabra to demon, from vampire to were-creatures with a dozen or more lineages, all had their place. Creatures of fable and children's story had made their mark upon his old flesh, unicorn and devil alike. There was a three-tined scratch across his stomach where a poltergeist had been unable to resist the lure of touching skin, marking skin. That one, in which the deep wounds had appeared as if from the air itself, had had Dauphin reeling with ecstasy for a full week.
Dauphin looked upon his collection now, running a hand across a particular favourite Polaroid, finding its twin on himself, comparing the wound to the scar. The beauty in this collection, as Dauphin could see it, was that it only started with the wound. The ownership of such was fleeting, apt to vanish before you had a chance to peruse its stinging reality. Replaced with the scar, it formed a second longer lasting collection. Two for the price of one.
And what price? He had been bankrupted more than once, scratching his wealth back from the brink with well-placed share deals, and the sale of much of his family homes and land. He had money enough, he thought, for one last acquisition, and he was determined to make this the one to eclipse all his others. He wasn't such a fool as to forget that wrenching feeling when, each time he parted with money, each time the deal was made, he would turn to his procurer, the ever reliable Harris, and say, "After this, it ends, Harris. There cannot be any others. I cannot take it."
And yet here he was now, feeling the contours of his collection, feeling for that exquisite smoothness that would signal the discovery of another square inch of unmarked skin. He found it, of course, nestled high into the humid spot between thigh and scrotum. It would be there, this next one. He thought about taking a picture of that spot now, so that he would have a 'before' reference point, for this final time. He didn't, however. He could not go back and photograph each spot before its ruination, and he would not start now, so near the end.
* * *
"I have it," said Harris.
"You do?" Dauphin replied, eyebrows raised. His heart raced. "And is it…?"
"I am not sure which one will come," Harris said. "Only that one will."
"I have found the spot. The only spot left. This is the last, Harris. Truly the last."
"As you wish." Ever discreet, Harris neither asked nor showed interest. He procured. He bargained and haggled and begged on Dauphin's behalf, content to be the one who took the derisive looks, discovered and endured the harsh environs, and the beatings. He risked his life for Dauphin on a daily basis and had more than once been in jeopardy of losing it. His skin was similarly marked, although to a lesser degree, and there was none of the order and precise placing. None of the careful planning. For Harris, one scar, whether left by snake or wolf or porcupine quill, or perhaps something altogether more ethereal, was one too many. He did what he did for money.
"When?" asked Dauphin. Harris told him a date and venue. It was sufficiently far enough in the future for the fervour of anticipation to boil over in him, but not so far that he grew impatient and perhaps spoiled the blank area on his skin with a hasty purchase, something to soothe the impatient twitch in his hands and the irritation in his mind.
When that day finally arrived, Dauphin was at fever pitch, his very marrow on fire with desire. The money had been paid (Harris did not say to whom, and Dauphin could not guess), and the line of zeros that made up his remaining bank balance was a mild irritation, but nothing more. After this, he thought, money would be rendered irrelevant.
The dockside loomed ahead, rusted and bulky containers forming high corridors of steel through which Dauphin and Harris threaded their way. The smell of brackish water and gull shit met them at every turn, but Dauphin was so mesmerised by the place and the secret it held, that he scarcely noticed. Harris was less involved, and so held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. He directed Dauphin with muffled instructions, sometimes no more than a nod of the head.
The building they sought was unimpressive, given its purpose on this night. Squat and squalid in equal measure, the shape of it was partially obscured by darkness and partly by piles of rope and general flotsam. They made their way to it, Harris leading. Dauphin was wary now they had gotten this close. What if it was a fake, or worse, the real thing but not at all as he imagined or desired. Perhaps Dauphin's last scar would be the wound caused when his heart broke at the sight of it.
The door opened easily. They stepped into gloom so absolute it was like walking into tar. They both slowed their pace, shuffling forward to avoid tripping. A gleam of illumination washed across the room suddenly, the light from a passing freighter perhaps, and in its wake, Dauphin saw the layout of the room.
No windows, or none with glass that wasn't black with grime. A locker against one wall, its door limp on one hinge, its contents spilling like the organs at a dissection. A pair of overalls, a boot. There was a table
, complete with cup and plate. A single chair.
The figure sitting at the table looked as human as Dauphin did himself. A short man, he looked, utterly still and utterly expressionless. Clothes hung on him like they had been draped across a wire frame, and his cheekbones looked sharp enough to wound. He had short hair in an antique style, but he didn't look particularly out of place. In fact, it looked as though he rather suited the gloom, and was content to dwell there. As the light from the freighter crept across him, his eyes caught the gleam and threw it back at Dauphin in twin bright threads. He raised his head, the threads remaining steady, and looked at Dauphin.
He knew instantly that this was no fake. Had he expected whiteness, wings and feathery beauty to envelope him it its love? Perhaps, somewhere deep inside him. But this was the real thing, he had no doubt. The man stood, shaking off the gloom like rainwater from an overcoat, and approached Dauphin transformed, his own darkness gleaming somehow against the darkness of the room's interior. He appeared as though dipped in oil, light playing across him like a borealis.
Harris had retreated a few steps, and now a few more. Dauphin registered the sound but it meant nothing to him. The dark man continued his approach until he was mere feet away, and Dauphin spoke.
"Seraphim," he whispered and the dark man nodded. At this movement, shreds of darkness fell away, gleaming brightly as they went, like black fire. They pooled about him and ran like mercury until they met his feet, where they merged into him once more. "Ah," Dauphin said. "My seraphim."
The angel, for it truly was such, Dauphin knew, opened its mouth as if to speak. In the scant seconds before noise was heard, Dauphin's mind raced through half a hundred scenarios. He would be instantly deafened or killed outright. Perhaps he would have a revelation of such profundity that the sixty or so years he had lived on earth, and the forty of those he had dedicated to his collection, would be rendered irrelevant. Perhaps no sound would be heard, but only a subsonic tremor of such ferocity that he would be literally shaken to his marrow. None of these things happened. The thing's voice was quiet, pleasant, and calming. It soothed Dauphin's nerves instantly.
"You are Dauphin?" it asked.
To have his name spoken aloud by this thing, to hear the syllables flow from its tongue and lips like a breeze of sound, brought Dauphin to his knees, trembling and supplicant. He murmured his reply, a sound that abutted the angel's words like a stone against silk. The angel nodded again, and the blackness fell in shreds of inky smoke from him. As it did so, before it rejoined him in oily tendrils, Dauphin could see chinks of light; as daylight seen through cracks in cave walls, fire through the smoky glass of a furnace door. This thing was burning inside, it seemed, and the blackness with which it shrouded itself was protection, Dauphin realised. Without it, the thing would fly apart into its fiery whole, larger than worlds, wiser than civilisations, purer than the very air that sustained it. Dauphin reached a shaking hand towards it, and cried out when it took a step backwards. He touched a hand to a trailing thread of blackness, and it felt like he had lost that limb to eternity. The thread drew back towards its designer, keen to be part of the thing, and Dauphin's hand seemed withered, atrophied without its touch.
"Why?" asked the angel.
Dauphin looked at it. He formed an answer but was shaken by this second question. He had expected the stroke to come quickly, expected the roar of fire to stab between his legs and mark him forever. He would have gladly died for that stroke, had expected to. Now he knelt before his end, and tried to understand what was being asked of him. None of the other creatures had asked him questions before they delivered the stroke, or bite, or stab. They had done his bidding with little regard for the reasons why. It was in their nature of course, but even so, there had been sentience among some of them, and if he had garnered a few questioning looks before they dealt their blows, they had been only looks. Never this question. Never, why?
The thing asked again, more insistent this time, and Dauphin felt its breath as a blast of warmth, and felt a dreadful premonition that the angel would unbind itself from the trappings of darkness that swathed its truth, and burn him where he knelt. The angel's breath reached him again, and this time it seemed to calm his nerves. He was able, this time, to formulate an answer.
"It is what I do," he said simply. "I collect scars as others may collect stamps. They are my way of marking the stages of my life. It is simply what I do."
The angel looked at Dauphin. For the first time, Dauphin seemed able to make sense of its expression and saw there, not unconditional beatific joy as he naively presumed he would have done, but rather a complicated mix of scorn, of love and confusion. Its brow was furrowed, and in the valleys of that furrowing, needle points of light had begun to break out.
"Show me," the angel commanded, its voice now low and full of suffering. Tears had begun to leak from its eyes, their course down his cheeks marked by smoking lines of fiery wetness. The oily surface of his face and hands was roiling now, as if under some invisible pressure from within. He looked like a creature in turmoil.
Dauphin undressed as he was, without standing. It was a complicated affair, made more so by the dark of the room and the reek of the angel, strong in Dauphin's sinuses. He had to stop his undressing more than once to pinch his nostrils shut and to wipe the tears streaming from him. Now naked, his clothes a ragged pile beside him, Dauphin appeared small, withered next to this being.
It took in the sight of his skin's scarification, and there was a huge inrush of air, a fiery back draft that set Dauphin's hair blowing and pulled the sweat away from his chest and thighs, leaving him cold. The angel wept great tears at the sight, and repeated its questions of him.
"Why have you done this?" it begged, its voice louder now, beginning to peak at the limit of Dauphin's tolerance. His ears thrummed with it, and he tried to cover them in an effort to stop the noise. His arms were leaden however, and would not bend to his will. They remained stuck to the floor, as if nailed there. Dauphin began to shake his head, tried to warn the angel that he would soon be deaf to its bemoaning.
There was suddenly silence. In it, Dauphin could hear the stuttering hiss of his own breathing and also the crackle of the angel's. It had lifted a foot or so from the floor and hovered above him, its arms held out, palms up, dripping the blackness from it.
This time when he looked, Dauphin could not see the oily substance rejoining the angel's body. Rather it ran away from him, hid in the corners and shadows of the room. The angel, consequently, was becoming brighter, the fire of its innards showing through more and more as its covering fled. Dauphin now had to contend with the brightness. It was becoming unbearable to see, like looking at a blazing furnace, or into the sun. It hurt to look, and he closed his eyes. Even now, however, the heat at brightness attacked his eyelids. They began to crackle, or he imagined that they did, and he began to moan his fear and pain. The angel began to speak again, forever asking questions.
"What have you done to your body? Why have you asked me here? What can I do for you?" The voice rose in volume and pitch, and now Dauphin's ears became pained. He tried to speak, but it was like breathing into a hurricane. No noise left him, or such insubstantial noise that it was swallowed utterly by the growing conflagration.
He spoke in his head now, unable to open his mouth against the waves of heat that were coming off the angel. He could see right through his eyelids, or had had them burned from his face, and the being appeared swathed in fire, not red or yellow or even white, but some un-colour, the antithesis of everything he assumed it would be. Writhing knots of heat-haze filigreed its skin, and in those writhings, he glimpsed a body of perfect symmetry, an utter stillness of form. He marvelled at it, even as it undid him. He could feel the deep crackle of skin on fire, could feel the tightening of his limbs and face as they withered in the heat. And still it berated him with questions.
"Why have you done this? Why?"
He attempted to let known his desires, tried to communic
ate his wish for its touch in that secret place of smoothness. He gave up on words, and in a show of ludicrous pornography he bared his crotch to the thing, showing the place that he had chosen, parting his thigh and scrotum to have that place laid bare to the thing's touch.
"Scar me!" he managed to gasp, and in doing so, lost his tongue to the fire. It sizzled from his mouth and left him dumb. He was content to speak with his mind, and was rewarded with the mutterings of a thousand languages. They pierced him. He bled from ears and mouth and anus and still was content to kneel before the angel and receive its communion. He thrust his skin towards the angel's hands and smiled through corrupted lips as it drew close, all presentiment gone. The things face was a blur of incandescence, and it reached the sticks of its limbs to him. Fire speared from the tips and enveloped Dauphin. The contours of his skin became a playground for the tendrils of fire, and they found every hole and scab and weal and scar, flickering across each with the tenderness of wind.
Dauphin fell back, his skin cracking as he struck the floor, and his legs lolled obscenely, presenting his chosen patch of skin for the things touch. It reached towards him further, and looked into his eyes.
"Look at me, Dauphin," it said. The questions had stopped.
He turned his crisped eyes the thing's way, struggled to blink the smoke and ash from them, but couldn't.
Detritus Page 13
