by Heide Goody
Ray had his hands raised to protect his ugly scarred face.
“Sold in good faith!” he protested. “All sold in good faith!”
Death Roe tried to stand up and a table came smashing down on his back.
Tony fired, hitting nothing.
“Give them to me!” said Tony and rifled through Ray’s pockets. Ray didn’t resist.
Tony found the bag of rune papers, ripped it open, sending them everywhere and then put one in his mouth. Suddenly he could see. A murky light that was not of this world filled the room. The pain and suffering and fear which had been hidden in the dark corners of the nightclub was now plainly visible. Around him, tree branches that weren’t tree branches, weird bulbous growths and wet, dangling tendrils. It was like a cross between some David Attenborough jungle muda and the mould growing on his mum’s kitchen wall.
Fat round creatures, with four horse feet and tentacles where their heads should be, filled the dancefloor. There was a fuckload of them, twenty at least. The thin mouths in their bellies opened and closed in unison. Tony couldn’t hear them over the music that was still playing but it looked like they were singing or chanting.
One of the fat shaska stood over Death Roe. Death Roe was swinging his blade at it – through it – but it was like it was a hologram. It could touch him but he couldn’t touch it back. And that was just unfair. Tony fired his pistol at it but it was like shooting at air. Maybe the creatures understood that he had tried to attack them. Maybe. Whatever, a pair of them began to trundle at a leisurely pace towards the samakha gang trapped by the fire exit.
“Ain’t adn-bhul going out like this,” said Tony.
“Like what?” said Fluke.
Tony raised the pistol. He was going to put Fluke out of his misery before these tentacled butterballs could have him.
“Tony?” said Fluke, eyeing the pistol.
There was a squeal of feedback from the club speakers and then a voice over the top of the music.
“All right! Do we have anyone from Leng in the house tonight?” Tony recognised the voice. He looked towards the DJ booth. It was that scrawny minx from the consular mission. Nina Seth. Tony knew her well. She was a right laugh sometimes and a stone-cold bitch at others. “Shad ap’su byanah. Kahaiyn-de shiaufa yo-jadszoar fuabair!” she yelled.
That got the tentacle heads’ attention. Slowly, turning clumsily, they drifted towards her.
“Put your tentacles in the air like you just don’t care!” hollered Nina.
“What’s – ggh! – she doing?” said Fluke.
On the floor, Death Roe gasped and struggled to his feet as the monster over him lost interest.
“Hey, how many priests of Nystar does it take to change a lightbulb?” called Nina. “Three! One to screw the lightbulb, one to say when the stars are right and one to pu’qalsit myek oh. Huh? Huh? Am I right?”
In their silent other-world, the tentacled blobs shouted angrily and threw themselves against the DJ booth. Nina ducked and grabbed the microphone.
“Anyone with two legs, seriously, now’s the time to run for the exit. And spit out any of that rune crap. Drugs are bad, m’kay?”
Tony T propelled Fluke towards the door, grabbed Death Roe by his jacket shoulder and pushed him forward as well. Tony T was keeping his crew close and would use them as shields if he had to.
The glass around the DJ booth shattered under a torrent of flailing pseudo-limbs. The music screeched, popped and died.
“And anyone who helps the wounded out gets free vodka jelly shots at the after-party,” Nina shouted, no longer with the aid of a microphone.
Skirting wide past the mass of monsters, Tony clawed the remains of the rune paper from his mouth and threw it down. The alien light was gone. Bare electric lights shone on a dead night club, all smashed glass, broken furniture and floor that was slick with spilt drinks and blood.
Morag Junior could see the lights of police cars and ambulances ahead. She’d possibly taken a wrong turn by the Mailbox (after a month, this city was still a mystery to her) and had not yet caught up with Nina. The sheer number of emergency vehicles had drawn rubberneckers in. Traffic stood still on Broad Street. Midweek revellers stood in the road and gawped.
Morag could hear shouts and cries. There was a commotion on the pavement and the crowd swelled around the epicentre that was the Rockerfellers nightclub. Screams rose and the silhouettes of police officers struggled with containment.
The wave of people and the rapidly dissipating panic rippled down the road. Morag was jostled by a herd of drunks who were either trying to get out of the way or fighting for a better view. Then someone ran past her heading toward an Australian bar on the canalside. It took Junior’s brain a long five seconds to click. The Kal Frexo runes. Morag Senior had mentioned a dealer or something with a scarred face and the guy running pell-mell for the canal had a face that was more scratches than actual face.
“Hey!” she yelled.
The man glanced back and then ran on. That was an admission of guilt by Junior’s reckoning. She gave chase.
“Make a soup of his juices!” sang Steve from her pocket.
“Give me a chance,” she replied. “I haven’t caught him yet.”
The towpath was in darkness. Light came from streetlamps reflected off the still water and from the balconies of a French bistro up above. The man, either out of energy or ready to take his chances against her, stopped and turned. Junior didn’t even slow; she ran past him, arm held wide, and clothes-lined him across the throat.
He wasn’t a big guy and he went down but he grabbed her to stop his fall. They spun around one another, she grabbed him back and they slammed against painted brickwork. He grunted like a stuck thing as he tried to get out of her grip but she refused to let go.
“Steal his juices! Steal his juices!” cried Steve.
“Not helping,” she panted.
The man broke away by slipping out of his suit jacket. Something slapped on the towpath.
“Stupid mad bitch,” he muttered and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. Junior recognised the vague shape of a mind-sapping zahir and thrust her hand over her eyes before the deadly pattern could hypnotise her. She blindly lashed out and swiped the paper from his hand but he took advantage of her blindness and barged her against the wall again. She smacked her head and was suddenly lying on the ground.
Junior’s hand came upon something square and leathery and she realised it was a wallet, his wallet. It was thick in her hand, like it was stuffed full of cash. More importantly, she thought, it would have ID, an address. She could let him run now and catch him at her leisure.
The man snatched his jacket off the floor and then hesitated. He’d realised it was too light. He squeezed at it.
“Where’s my wallet?” he said, keening with increasing panic.
Junior got to her hands and knees and was rewarded with a kick in the ribs. She rolled.
“Where’s my fucking wallet!” He was frantic now and weeping the word, “No, no, no,” over and over again.
Junior curled her hands and her body about the wallet but he had spotted the action. He clawed at her.
“That’s mine!”
She rolled away and came up against the edge of the towpath. Any further and she was in the water. He booted her in the side again and tried to prise her arms open. She wasn’t winning.
“Harvest his vitals!” shouted Steve. The little sack doll tumbled over her torso and ran at the man’s feet.
“… the fuck?” he said.
In the break in the assault, Junior tossed the wallet over the edge of the canal. It wasn’t a plan as such. It was an instinctive act. If she didn’t have it, he wouldn’t try to get it from her.
“What was…? You didn’t!” He was sobbing now. “That had everything in it. The Black Barge... I’m a dead man. Why did you…?”
He sniffled, took a step back and then booted her in the face. Junior’s cheek exploded in a pain so sharp it blinded
her for a second, maybe more.
Thursday
Morag woke. The pain in her face hauled her up into consciousness when all she wanted to do was sleep. It was only in the final moment of waking that she remembered she was one of two Morags. She was the copy, the interloper, Morag Junior.
There was a hint of industrial strength cleaner in the air and she instantly knew she was in hospital. She remembered the police and then the ambulance. After that, things had become sketchy. She opened her eyes. The light at the window was TV-static grey and the lights above her were on. It was very early morning, possibly still technically night.
Nina sat at her bedside in the private room, munching on a chocolate bar as she sorted little squares of blue paper on the C-shaped bed table and taking pictures of them with her phone. Junior rolled over to look at her properly. The side of Junior’s face felt unpleasant and taut, like it had been coated in glue and sprinkled with a glitter called pain. She groaned involuntarily.
“You took a proper whack there,” said Nina. It would be nice to think there was a tone of sympathy in Nina’s face but, like most millennials, she seemed to struggle with expressing human warmth.
“I did,” mumbled Junior, finding her tongue to be a momentarily useless lump of meat in her mouth.
“When Scotch people bruise, does it come up tartan?”
“Did you just call me Scotch?”
“Is that wrong?”
“Tell you what, go to Scotland and find out.” She pushed herself upright. Her body ached but that was probably due to last night’s alcohol consumption. “Where am I?”
“The restricted ward,” said Nina.
Junior reached for the open can of Red Bull by Nina’s hand and took a swig.
“Why the restricted ward?”
“As soon as they saw your ID, they transferred you here. Enjoy it. It’s like having private health care but, you know, with a greater likelihood of something with more teeth than One Direction in the next bed.”
Junior took another swig and prodded her tender cheek. It felt like the pain was inside her upper jawbone and cheekbone. She didn’t think bones had any nerves in them but they hurt all the same.
“You didn’t break anything,” commented Nina. “The doctors mentioned a possible concussion and said that your bruises are going to make a colourful display. I assume it was that scar-faced perv that did it and not some random bloke.”
“No, it was Scarface.”
“Because I’ve had boys want to take me up the canal before and although it sounds like a good idea, it –”
“It was Scarface. I did get some good shots in but…”
Nina brought up a large cylindrical tub and set it on the table. Steve the Destroyer lay still inside it.
“And the pabash kaj doll?” she said. “The paramedics found it on you.”
“It’s mine,” said Junior. She prodded the tub but Steve remained still and inert. That could be a bad sign.
“Really?” said Nina. “Okay. Thought that might be an angle we could investigate.” She sighed and abruptly looked very tired. Junior looked at Nina’s clothes and realised that the younger woman probably hadn’t slept since the previous night.
“What happened?” said Junior.
“Huh? Oh. People off their tits on a mysterious drug. Then some ugly mofos turned up. Carnage on the dance floor. Everyone came staggering out covered in blood and their own vomit. Police. Ambulances. Some drunk girl sat on the kerb crying.”
“So, a typical night on Broad Street.”
“A typical night on Broad Street.” Nina gathered the rune papers into a pile and bagged them up. “Two people went missing.”
“Damn.”
“A girl – Allana something – and a samakha gangsta. One of the Waters Crew.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nina stood. “I need a shower. Rod’s coming over in a bit, he says.” She stretched until something went click. “Stay frosty,” she said.
When she had gone, Junior picked up the tub and rapped on the side.
“Steve? Steve? Are you still in there?”
The doll sprang into life and struck a pose.
“I am Qulsteyvan the Destroyer, outrider of the entourage of Prein, emissary of the shattered realms and loyal servant to the blind gods of Suler’au Sukram. I lay claim to your worthless spirit and all your adn-bhul kind!” it squeaked.
“Shut up, you daft bugger. I just wanted to check you were okay. Now find me my phone.”
“Your phone?”
“I need to contact the other Morag,” she said as she unscrewed the lid. “Everyone knows I’m in hospital. Can’t have her turning up to work in a few hours’ time, can we? Then we’d be well and truly rumbled.”
“So what if you are rumbled?” said Steve. “We will crush them.”
“If you say so.”
“Bring on the rumbling, snotlings!”
“Enough of that.”
“Let’s get ready to rumble!”
“Phone! Now!”
Jeffney Ray got up at dawn, an unspecified dread weighing on him.
He slipped out from under his Aston Villa duvet and looked at his hands. He had forgotten to put on his sleep mittens. His nails, always kept as short as possible, were ragged. Flecks of red and dried brown clung to the underside of his nails. He went to the mirror above the bedroom hand basin. In his sleep, he had clawed at his face and mouth. His lower lip was bleeding. A shallow but vicious row of scratches on his forehead was already starting to scab over. It looked like he had tried to headbutt an industrial sander.
Wondering how he could have possibly forgotten his mittens, he began to curse himself. Then he remembered the night before – the bitch on the towpath who had attacked him, who had stolen his wallet, who had tossed it in the canal. There had been over four hundred pounds in that wallet, all of Ray’s money. He had until noon today to repay the Black Barge the three hundred he had borrowed or pay the penalty: ten years of indentured servitude.
No, he reminded himself, closing his eyes at his own idiocy, a hundred years. “A hundred years”, he had joked.
He looked at the time. He had hours yet. There were ways and means. This early bird was as cunning as a fox.
Ray washed and then began applying bio-oil to his freshly ravaged face.
“It rubs the lotion on its skin. It rubs the lotion on its skin…”
Oh, to be hungvover, still marginally drunk even, and to find oneself at five in the morning riding the lift to the eighth floor of the Queen Elizabeth to visit oneself in hospital. Morag Senior had only herself to blame. She wanted to blame Junior but, via a circuitous route, that just meant the same thing.
The guard at the security door inspected her pass and let her through. That he didn’t simply say, “Oi. Aren’t you already inside?” and taser her on the spot was a small stroke of luck. She entered, found the nearest disabled toilet and texted her clone using the phone she had borrowed from Richard.
She waited for several minutes until there was a knock at the door. She opened it a crack and saw Junior’s face.
“Oh, my God,” said Senior and dragged her inside.
Junior’s face wasn’t exactly a mess but bruises seriously weren’t a good look. There was a dark mark with a cut at its centre on her right cheek and a black eye on the same side.
“It was the soul cash trader you were looking for,” said Junior.
“How do you know?”
“He was scarred. He mentioned the Black Barge. He panicked when I grabbed his wallet.”
“You still have it?”
Junior shook her head.
“Bugger.”
“Well, yes. The question is what we do about this.” She flicked her hands between them.
“You go home,” said Senior. “You rest up. You stay hidden. You can have a day off from the chores.”
“You are too generous, mother. And that’s not going to work.”
“Less of the sass from you,�
� snapped Senior. “I’m not feeling too great and I don’t appreciate being called out at oh-God-hundred in the morning.”
“I’m not sure I wanted to be called out of my sick bed to get abused in a public toilet,” said Junior. “And it’s not my fault you’re hung over.”
Junior looked at the bags Senior knew to be under her eyes. One of the Morags bloodied and bruised, the other tired as hell and looking like a schemie grandma. It was the most unflattering mirror for both of them and perhaps some sort of message about their life choices.
“You go home,” said Senior, “and then I –”
“It won’t work,” said Junior. “Nina has seen this face. She knows I’m injured.”
“Ah.”
“You go home. This is the face of Morag for the time being.”
“No,” said Senior. “I’ve got stuff I need to do. Catch that bastard drug dealer.”
“What do you think I want to do? That muda khi umlaq assaulted me.”
“He’s done far worse. There are people – innocent humans – taken by the Mammonites because of him. We could use makeup!”
Junior frowned and then winced at the pain it caused.
“You’re going to recreate these injuries with makeup?”
“Or… use a lot of foundation and pretend I’m covering them up.”
“That’s not going to work!”
“Well, we’ve got to find a way of making our faces match up!”
Junior punched her in the eye. Senior gasped and clutched at her face.
“What the fuck!”
Junior punched her again. Senior staggered and sat down hard on the toilet.
“Stop!”
“Hang on, just one more,” said Junior.
Senior waved her hand to ward off her copy. If the woman came any closer, Senior already had plans to rip the lid off the toilet cistern and brain her with it.
“Just stop!”
“It’s working.” Junior pointed at her face. “We’ve already got some discoloration. A couple more.”
“No!”
“But…”
“No! For three very good reasons!”
