Clerical work is alluring in its austerity. No moral quandaries, no risk of existential self-reflection, no opportunity for compound fractures. A minefield of possibilities, sure, but the threat is reactionary, dormant until invoked. More importantly, it doesn’t get you killed. Sepsis by papercut; a lie.
I percolate the idea through my head.
“Do we have—”
“No.”
That brings him up short. “What?”
“I said no.”
“But I hadn’t finished.”
“Answer’s still a no.”
To my delight, a strand of whining petulance creeps into his next answer. I’ve fazed him. I gazed deep into the abyss, and the abyss blinked. “You’re going off-script.”
“Aren’t you supposed to stamp your foot and disappear in a cloud of sulphur when I refute you three times?” I cross my arms. If he expected me to come racing at the prospect of a challenge, well, he’s wrong. Slothfulness is healthy. Enthusiasm is not.
Another turn, another halogen seizure. The man rolls his eyes up, stares at the ceiling, and I observe with glee as he counts down from ten, teeth grinding over every number. At last, he sighs. Loudly. Sharply. When he lowers his gaze again, something gives. His veneer of humanity pops like a soap bubble, and the color leaches from his hair, his skin, his eyes, even the various grays of his attire.
He opens his mouth, and it’s not words that disentangle themselves from his larynx, but meaning itself, multimedia synesthesia. He hijacks the parietal lobe, pumps nuance straight into the cerebrum. It doesn’t all show up right. I catch snatches of memory, mine, his—its.
Cosmic anecdotes that dissolve neuronal pathways as quickly as they find them. Gusts of childhood aromas, a first encounter with sambal. Ambition, alien in its scope, seven-dimensional scheming to make my mind shrivel. Minah’s smile.
The dissonance doesn’t last. Eventually, it germinates structure. There is no language that can adequately encompass what he shares, no trick of storytelling that can convey the multi-sensory soliloquy. It is a montage of recollections and augurings, quick cuts of destruction: my apartment exploding, smoke and glass geysering from the duct-taped windows; documents shredded; every living relative, gutted, split open from ear to ear; Ao Qin, charred and grinning, drooling black, rising from a bank of black fog—
The universe creaks as an immeasurable weight leans down, presses on the caul that separates matter from metaphor, an analogical pseudopod extended through the gulf of time, a supplication to obey: carrot and stick, held up like weapons. And for a moment, everything holds its breath, history itself pausing to ruminate on the narrative. I grin, the world swimming between colors, a fugue of almost-shapes, and say what every action hero should say in a climactic scene.
“I need to talk to a lawyer first.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“IF YOU’RE GOING to throw good money down the drain, laddie, why not just give me the proceeds? Laywers won’t save your wallet. Besides, it’s not like the Boulder isn’t stinking with them.”
I blink. “Wha—aaaggggh.”
The Body Train is gone. In its place, a raucous basement pub that looks like it was built in a crypt, capitalism gleefully feasting on architectural carrion. It teems with people and pustules of furniture, radial tables and high bar chairs. Thick stone pillars merge into the vaulted ceiling. Flatscreen televisions sprout between the joints, blaring sports commentary and beer adverts, both of which are indiscriminately booed by the patrons.
Somewhere in the crowd, glass smashes on someone’s skull and the mob roars its approval.
“‘Aaagh’ what?” the Cat asks, still too close, his arm slung proprietarily around my shoulders.
I shrug myself free and shake my head, scanning the chaos for a glimpse of the bar. No luck. More crucially, no explanation for whatever had happened. The encounter with the nameless man feels so unreal now, a trick of alcohol poisoning. But I know better. Reality has a flavor, a metallic aftertaste, like a film of blood over your tongue, and it is unique to each individual world. Diyu, for example, is spiced with sulfur, and Banbudo—the in-between place, a marketplace for the myth-born—is pungent with odors that the piriform cortex can’t translate.
The place where I’d been taken to was dry ice, old water, salt and time, like nothing I’d ever sampled. It lingers in my throat, a stillborn laugh, and I swallow again as I fight down the questions itching beneath the recollection. Later, I promise. For now, there are more immediate concerns. Like how we’d gone from public transportation to pub, and why my left forearm is dripping with cider.
“What’s this?” I jab a finger at the damp limb, nearly dropping the beer stein I didn’t realize I was holding.
“Your arm,” the Cat offers unhelpfully, taking a swig from a martini glass, pinky extended in some blasphemy of courtesy.
“I know it’s my arm. But why is it wet?” In times of doubt, I find it best to cling to irreverence. A second glance around the pub reveals the rest of our company, holed up in a side room, flinging dice across a table, aggressively entertained.
“Because you spilled cider on it, obviously.”
“Yes, but how?”
The Cat lets fly a wailing laugh. “Wasn’t me, laddie. But it might have been yon lad, who disagreed with you hitting on his lass.”
“Really?” Slowly, I put together a map of the property. Chambers bud from the main space, cleverly obscured by angles of architecture. Every alcove is occupied by games of chance, some more identifiable than others. In some stand roulettes and blackjack tables, dealers in pinstriped uniform. In others, more esoteric paraphernalia, equipment that could be mistaken for sex apparatus if it wasn’t for the bookies and the blackboards, surfaces chalked with odds.
Actually, who knows?
“Aye. You were on a kissing spree, you were.” The Cat finishes his drink, his grin now spreading from ear to ear, teeth yellow and chipped. A single incisor is capped with gold, surface brocaded with glyphs.
“Kissed a lot of girls, did I?”
“Plenty. And also a few men.”
“What about children?” I sip the tepid cider. It tastes better than I’d expected; flat, dulled by exposure to the air, but still a sweet enough cocktail of passionfruit and lime. I smile, slightly artificially, eyes ticking across the room again. The third inspection reveals the towering Jack, haloed by negative space.
The Cat doesn’t miss a beat. “Hadn’t seen you accosting the wee ones, but there’s a kitchen boy who sobs for his marm when ye get close.”
I stare at the Cat. “Jackass.”
His grin grows manic.
I take it as my cue to leave, patting the Cat on a chunky shoulder, before setting off towards the awkward emptiness that Jack’d built. Swollen though the crowd is, it’s easy enough to navigate, largely congenial, apologizing even when I’m the one to bump foaming beer from hands, or tread on unlucky feet. I imagine the appropriate response would have been to retaliate with yet more profound contrition, possibly even prostration, but I swagger on. Stereotypes are there to be exploited.
Eventually, I arrive at Jack, who sits nested at the corner of the bar, top hat upturned on the counter like a begging bowl. His face, now divulged, is generically local. Pinkly English, perfectly forgettable, mediocrity in the flesh. Even his hair follows the pattern, thinning along the firmament of his skull, a widow’s peak gentled by the short cut. Just an average Jack. I think I might be disappointed.
“Yo.” I flash the Vulcan salute.
Jack scrunches his face, perplexed; replicates the gesture. Then he sighs gustily and tips the brim of his hat forward, a bizarre little motion that nearly has me putting a coin into the velvet cavity. But I don’t get far with the thought. A figure lunges through the crowd, black-haired, braids flapping everywhere. Veles doesn’t pause before scooping me into his arms, and crushes any objection I might have from my lungs.
“Rupert! Glad you made it. Wasn’t expecting you to show
your face.” Veles swaps his grip, clasps a hand around each of my arms, still somehow keeping me aloft the whole time. “How are you?”
I grin at him, sickly, feeling rather like a bullied nephew. “Peachy.”
He kisses me sloppily on each cheek, moist smacks that curdle my expression. Veles looks worse for wear; a new scar bridging socket and jaw, the flesh inflamed, glossy. Fresh deformities aside, he seems happy.
“Come. You meet Sisyphus. He will want to get to know man who helped Veles win big.”
“Who’s Sisyphus?” I gingerly begin prying at his fingers; it accomplishes nothing, but I feel better for trying. The thick slabs of Veles’ extremities might as well have been hacked from stone. “Any chance you could put me down?”
“Yes.” Veles releases his grip, and I plummet three inches to the floor, thoroughly mugged of any remaining dignity. As I rub sensation back into my arms, he presses on. “Sisyphus is Lord of Boulder, Master of the Ring, Gambler Ki—”
“Er.” I consider his testimony. On the edge of my peripheral vision, I see Jack signalling a frightened bartender for more whiskey. She leaves, comes back with a bottle of smoky emerald, no tumbler in sight. “What?”
“Sisyphus is in charge of our bets.”
“Sisyphus.” The word hisses along my tongue, trailing memories. I don’t like where this is going. “As in the damned bastard king? Sisyphus, as in the Sisyphus? Of the Sisyphean ordeal.”
“Da.”
Oh, dear.
“I”—I drag out the pronoun, scooting back a step—“don’t think I want to meet him. I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but where I’m from, people hate it when you make them lose money.”
“Sisyphus understands fair play.” Veles shrugs, leashing my shoulders with an arm. He doesn’t push as much as he unthinkingly steamrolls me forward with his sheer momentum. In a fit of discontent, I endeavour to ping Bob but he, along with the other spirits, is unusually uncommunicative. How bizarre. I shelve away their silence for later introspection, too busy keeping tempo with Veles’ long strides. He steers us towards one of the smaller rooms, the mob parting before us like a boozy, swaying sea.
Finally, we arrive. Two men, both about six feet tall and about six feet wide, freight trains gone vertical, stand on either side of the entrance, hand over fist over genitalia. Veles nods at them. They nod back.
Veles scruffs me like a misbehaving kitten, hand twisting into my collar, before ushering me inside. The room, similar to every other room in the Boulder, is packed beyond capacity. I breathe sweaty armpits and the sour, stinking aroma of human anxiety. Veles seems entirely unmoved by the rancidness. He resumes leading us through the throng, until at last we come face to face with a small-boned, smiling accountant of a man.
The only indication of Sisyphus’ sovereignty is the crown that sits in his gray-stippled hair, a simple diadem of bronze, absurd in its plainness. His glasses are comparatively more interesting, magnifying pea-green eyes to give him the appearance of a Ren and Stimpy extra.
He doesn’t acknowledge our arrival, focused instead on the floor. The tiles have been replaced by varnished pine, inlaid with a byzantine alphabet of pictographs, a syllabary that resembles nothing I’ve ever seen, all laminated with the faintest shimmer of gore.
At the heart of the board, a body—no, a living man, naked, penis a dessicated stub against a pale, bruised pelvis. Someone has opened him from throat to groin, flayed him, before pinning the skin to the wooden floor. His entrails glisten, frosted with gold ink, runes beyond counting. As I watch, Sisyphus creeps forward and pens another whorl, another character along the sinuous fold of an intestine.
The man moans, softly, orgasmically.
“What. The. Fuck.”
Veles shrugs as he comes to stand beside me. “Just like normal man require motivation to work, prophet need motivation to see.”
“Who is that?”
“That is Helenus,” Veles explains, patient. “Cassandra’s idiot brother. Several decades ago, we misplace his sister. So, Helenus must now serve in her place. Unfortunately, he’s not as good. His spoken prophecies are eh. But Sisyphus discovered that blood cannot lie. What Helenus lacks in eloquence, his entrails make up for in effectiveness. So, we read the future in his offal.”
“That is—” Sick? Repulsive? Coming from a cannibal chef, my revulsion would sound a bit rich; but bile coats the back of my mouth nonetheless. I swallow it back. Absently, I scratch at my neck, nails gouging into unexpectedly dry, scabrous skin. “Unusual.”
Double entendres for every occasion.
“Da. But this millennium is unusual. We make do.” Veles, as always, is disconcertingly chirpy. “Not long now. He is just auguring tomorrow’s casualties. Few minutes. After that, Veles make introductions.”
True enough, Sisyphus is done in a few minutes, rising to a ripple of respectful applause. A boy, maybe ten at most, scurries forward to proffer a steaming bowl, towel draped over an elbow. Sisyphus, with great care, dips his hands into the liquid. When he is done, he dabs a finger along the boy’s forehead: a benediction of some variety, judging from the kid’s radiant expression.
It is only after the ritual is concluded that Sisyphus strolls towards us, a peculiar moue balanced on a thin, almost lipless mouth.
“Huh.” He announces, in place of a greeting, removing his glasses to wipe them with the hem of his shirt.
I blink, nonplussed, while Veles booms with laughter. “Well, hello to you, too.”
“You’re still alive.”
“You say this like it’s a bad thing.”
His expression crystallises into a scowl, eyes ticking to Veles, less nonchalant now. Veles, for his part, seems jovially oblivious. “I hope you understand that I will be incredibly disappointed if he doesn’t die tomorrow.”
“Is unfortunate development.” Veles pounds a fist on his sternum, grin feral. “Rupert is Veles’ lucky rabbit. So he’s going to stay alive.”
I’m halfway through a nascent sense of camaraderie when Veles adds, broad palm clapping my shoulder. “But if he stops being lucky one day, eh. He can die then.”
“How generous.” I grouse and scratch at my arm, up through the sleeve. I find another encrustation, thicker, rougher than the first.
The two ignore me, Sisyphus tallying numbers or affronts under his breath, finally sighing as he taps a finger against his temple. “It’ll cost me nine thousand ingots if he doesn’t.”
“Not Veles problem.”
“You could have half of that, if you ensure he dies. Helenus saw room for your possible involvement.”
“Tempting, but Veles can make bigger money the respectable way.”
“Firstly, I don’t know if any of this sounds respectable to me. And secondly, I don’t know if either of you have noticed, but I’m...” Itch. Scratch. Had Veles passed on his lice? In exasperation, I begin to pick the rind gloving my forearm. Skin, or something similar, comes loose in a single sheet. I pull harder, more frantic, even as I snarl at the two men: “Standing right here. And I don’t like the idea of dying unnecessarily.”
I don’t like the idea of dying for a reason either, but this isn’t the occasion for semantics.
“What makes you think I’d let myself get murdered for a bet?” I wad the ribbon of dried blood into my palm, hands starved for a distraction, anything to divert from the enormity of what I’m likely to say.
Sisyphus widens his immense gaze, shucking indifference for something worse: piercing interest. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? In every timeline, in every reality, in every variation of now, you always make it go back to you. Aren’t you ashamed, Rupert? You stand at the precipice of a maelstrom, a needle in the eye of time, a clot drifting through the veins of reality. With a single decision, you could change everything. Everything, in a world where reality doesn’t care about you or me, or even the gods in and out of the machine. You, Rupert, could change everything, and yet: you make it about you.”
> There we go.
“Hate being that guy, if you know what I mean, but I have no idea what you’re saying.”
He sighs. Somewhere in the background, someone is spooning glutinous rice balls into Helenus’ slack mouth. Peristalsis, much like many other bodily secrets, is something best kept behind whole skin. “What I’m saying is that your death is dependent on the temporal ecosystem. If you are fortunate and I am not, the timeline that keeps you alive will emerge triumphant. Inversely—well. Well.”
“Look, seriously? You’re still making no sense whatsoever. You—you’re suggesting that I was some kind of chosen one, or something. An aneurysm of history, or whatever you want to call it. But now you’re telling me that I have no choice but to hang around and see if I live or die? It really makes no fucking sense.” I unroll the scab, review my find, finally conscious of what my hands had been doing. The air evicts itself from my lungs. I’d expected red-brown tissue, transparent flakes of epidermis, a few strands of hair, whatever you’d normally connect with an unnaturally cohesive scab—but there isn’t any of that. Instead, it’s one of the tattoo spirits, crumpled in my hand; eyes wide, lifeless, terrified.
“You are not the only playing piece on the board.” Sisyphus tuts.
“Fuck you.”
Shit.
My vitriol robs the room of its voice. Everyone stares. In a surprise twist, Sisyphus proves the most tolerant. Instead of enlisting the crowd in my evisceration, he takes off his glasses again, wipes them on the corner of his shirt. Squints. His expression spasms into a grimace, delicate. “What did you say?”
I consider everything that’d went down recently, every aggression, every confrontation, every use of power to befoul, belittle, and break down. The thoughts churn poison. Coward. Poseidon’s voice again, bilious, so thick with disdain that I choke on the memory. But self-preservation swells like an ill-timed erection. (The mind can crave heroism, ang moh, but the body’s a sucker for survival.) I wet my lips with a dab of my tongue and grin, earnest, hoping it comes across as pliantly amenable, rather than just pained.
Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth Page 9
