Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  Dealers populate the perimeter of the pond. It’s prime real estate, and because the higher-class dealers hang out on the northwest side, they can pander to the cooler parents and filthier kids at the ice rink. Most of the park is surrounded by Primetimers and walkers. The walkers aren’t so bad—all they do is stroll by the aching veins in their way. It’s the Primetimers who poke fun. They also poke literally. They kick and slap and throw garbage, waddling away when a snake shows the nerve to bite back.

  Patterson Park has only a few good sections, protected from the snakes and rats of the outlying swamp. Those places, and the nicer homes that line Patterson, are hard to avoid looking at. So, it’s hard to avoid the self-loathing they inspire. Those neighborhoods remind me that I wasn’t always the kind of cockscum who would live in a Snake Hill slum. I used to belong in the good places, or was at least tolerated there. My life pales in comparison to those people now. Literally. The constant flicker of neon and Netvision from the Primetimer side fades the surroundings. Nature is dull. People, too. Any luster you see is manufactured, either coated or injected into entities to generate a false sense of health. Much of the plant life has been replaced with composite plastic, but it has to be redone twice a year, or the city starts to look like a McDonald’s PlayPlace. It makes it hard to see the brilliance of life when everything’s chapped and pale. But if things were different, I’m not sure I would feel it.

  I doubt the Primetimers and Fatcats would ever allow a change. They’re too in love with their routines, like stopping eighteen times to watch Netvision while stumbling home from the bar. The only way to interrupt the constant sitcom broadcasts is to jump on the internet, but you can’t just browse as you please. The internet access on the street is reserved for purchases only. If you want real internet, you have to be in a residence or a building that provides WiFi in exchange for sales. After too many texting and walking deaths, the mayor had several streets blocked from internet usage. No one surfs for free, and since I can’t buy atlys online, I have little use of it. Besides, if there’s one thing Primetimers hate more than looking away from their beloved screens, it’s sharing anything with someone from Snake Hill. It makes us lowlifes want to fuck with them even more. Even when they call the cops.

  I guess it’s a good thing snakes are faster than pigs. The fuckers look like sweaty potatoes on roller skates, gasping for air as we laugh our asses off. But our bodies are no better. As soon as we’re home free, we gasp too, our veins crying out for comfort. If we get home free. Being chased by an unmarried cop could be a different story. But the park isn’t a fit cop’s usual beat. They’re needed to represent the beauty of authority—to convince the world outside that Baltimore is healthy when it’s anything but. They’re a different breed, but they’re all assholes in my book.

  The mark of a true Primetimer is in the weight. The middle-class neighborhoods around Patterson Park are flooded with fat husbands and thin wives, looking like the familiar duos of primetime comedies. They say the trend started in the early 2000s, but I think it really began when the city started its nonstop broadcasts of rehashed sitcoms and reality shows about putting on—rather than losing—weight.

  The few posh communities clinging to the edge of Baltimore have different transmissions; I don't know the specifics, but I've heard they get to choose what nonsense bombards them, and their options are wider. Primetimers are stuck with cartoon families and happy slobs while people in slums like Snake Hill get reruns of some ancient show called The Wire and hardcore porn. It’s no surprise for a guy to see his crankwhore mother in a golden shower skin flick showing on Eaton Street. You’d think the Fatcats wouldn’t want to show so much porn for fear of driving us to reproduce. They must know how hard it is to fuck when you’re a junkie. No atlys, dick can’t get hard. Hard from atlys, no worthwhile pussy in sight. Sometimes I settle for whatever floppity fish I can get, but I usually opt for my hand and a happy memory.

  It seems like the broadcasts want us all to think happy memories don’t exist anymore. When they show episodes of The Wire, scenes are obviously cut. Just when the show appears to be going in an uplifting direction, the broadcast jumps to scenes of the slums. They’re played on a loop, making me think they want us to see our whoring forebears and know, in decades of technological advancement, our breed hasn’t evolved. We're the same useless puddles of ooze desperately clinging to whatever crutches we can.

  All it takes are a few lumps of meat sold to the Kum Den Smokehouse to keep us in powder. But I dream of liquid. Raw liquid. Cooking powder doesn’t match the intensity of raw atlys. The proprietor, Ling Sugarman, has liquid in stock, but he saves most of it for the cuntcutters. Their meat goes for a much higher price on the Smokehouse menu, I assume because each chick can only be cut twice. However, since most cuntcutters are also hookers, they usually go for both lips at once. Saving one wrinkled flap doesn’t change the truth about who they are and what they’ve done to themselves.

  That's why Loshi keeps digging in. After you have one potsticker hole, you might as well have two—or ten. And once they're on your arms or shoulders, visible to the whole world, what's the harm in digging out a cheek or a chin? Hell, who needs a chin?

  Fatcats and Primetimers, apparently. They're the ones who pay to eat the flesh of their lessers. I assume it’s for the feeling of superiority, but it’s also for the buzz that tags along. In addition to being paid in powder, Ling Sugarman also gives potstickers a free hit of liquid atlys. That way, his flesh is dosed when the surgeon cuts out a lump. The diners won’t get as high as Loshi, but the drug supposedly tickles the tongue in a wonderful, addiction-free way.

  I swore to myself I'd never get into potsticking. Even when Serena kicked me out, and I was forced to accept that the rundown school was my new home. Even when I spent the last dollar to my name and the atlys sickness felt like it was going to tear a hole comparable to potsticking, I refused to twist a knife into my flesh. That conviction felt like the last thing I had. I used to have so much more. When I was clean. When I was a good person. When I was like my parents, my sister, my brot—

  No, not like Trevor. At least, not toward the end. He was worthless then, too.

  I forget about it sometimes: what happened to him. I wish I could forget about it forever, but a family member’s death always sticks with you, especially since he was supposed to be too smart to die young.

  My older brother Trevor wasn’t an addict like me. He was more of a dabbler, one who had a really bad luck day when it came to sobriety. But that’s all it takes: one bad luck day to kill you and dub you an eternal junkie.

  As my sister Nadine says, “You have to live so you can restore a broken reputation. There is no redemption in death.”

  She never said it to Trevor, though. I guess she wasn’t clever enough yet. I’m the one who has to hear it over and over. Every time I OD, it spews out with her sobs. Luckily, it’s been a while since I’ve OD’d—it’s been a while since I’ve seen Nadine, too. I guess she got tired of being threatened every time she visited me in Snake Hill. Honestly, I’m glad. I’m tired of protecting her from guys who want to rape, kill, or turn her out. I’m tired of explaining why Loshi has a new divot in his gut and why we’re so happy about it. Most of all, I’m tired of seeing how hurt she was by my refusals to go to rehab. Like I’ve told her a thousand times, rehab only changes someone if he wants it. Me, I just want atlys. I want the feeling of being able to lift the world above my head and, should the mood strike, smash it to pieces. With the world in shards, I wouldn’t have to see Nadine hurt. She’d be dead. We’d all be dead, like Trevor. Dead, and free from annoying helping hands, in a place where wants have been obliterated by the last blink. Maybe Nadine is right: there is no redemption in death because no one can want redemption once they’re dead. Once you’re dead, maybe life is a long memory of rights and wrongs and seeing no difference. You can only feel happiness. And for me, that’s feeling atlys.

  I might be jumping to conclusions about the afte
rlife, but who the hell isn’t?

  Chapter Three

  The Kum Den Smokehouse occupies a brass pagoda overlooking Patterson Park: a beacon for the Haves and Have-Nots alike. Loshi must know how nervous I am about the upcoming surgery because he says, “It ain’t so bad, Perry. You can’t even feel it until the next day.”

  “So, how does it feel the next day?” I ask.

  “What do ya think? Like someone tore a goddamn chunk outta your stomach.”

  I picture a hole in my belly and think, Jesus fuck, how can I do this to myself? But when my mind answers by filling the hole with a bag of atlys, it makes sense. Through the sweaty sickness of withdrawal, I can rationalize almost anything.

  From the pagoda, Serena’s apartment is just a short hike to the other side of the park. I see the tip of her building beyond the Kum Den—it makes me wish I’d brought my binoculars. There’s nothing sweeter than having a raw atlys buzz as I watch Serena’s tits escape her bra. She drops it to the floor and massages the underwire creases. She sighs, and I sigh. She smiles, and I smile. She kisses her boyfriend and I shoot atlys into my sack. Getting hard, I watch them, pretending his hands are mine. Cupping, pinching, turning fingers into lips that suck away the problems of the day.

  After those visits I carry my dirty thoughts back to the school. Loshi doesn’t mind when I jerk off in front of him as long as I don’t fuck up the couch. Honestly, I’ve stained those cushions more times than I can count on sticky fingers, but considering we stole it from an Eaton Street whorehouse, I doubt Loshi notices the extra crust.

  My fantasy of Serena is so thick I don’t see how close we are to the Kum Den until a clotted voice calls me back to reality.

  “Hey pretty boys . . .”

  Loshi and I turn to see Shankara wave at us. She nearly topples as she flashes a brown grin. Speaking of eaten whores . . .

  Her face is drawn bone, her arms are twigs freckled with gouges and injection sites, and I can tell by the way her shirt hangs that her tits are gone. They probably made some Primetimer a hefty meal long ago.

  “Off to Kum Den?” she asks.

  “What’s it to you?” Loshi replies, giving her a shove that nearly knocks her to the ground.

  She runs her hands over her misshapen body. “I got what you want right here. I got what you need.”

  “You got atlys?”

  “Nah, what I got is better than that. Atlys might make you feel like God for an hour, but an hour inside me will make God wanna feel like you.” She strokes her inner thighs as if the ravine has never known a man. She must not remember I had her two years ago.

  “Not interested,” I say, but she throws her indented chest in my way.

  “Wait, I know what you like, Perry. I know what all Samson men like.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Your brother Trevor. He liked it rough. He liked to be choked.” She draws her putrid grin so close I can smell her colon. It’s no surprise, considering how full of shit she is. I tell her so, and she laughs. “Fuckin’ snakes. You wouldn’t know good snatch if it bit your dick off.”

  “I know good snatch doesn’t bite my dick off,” I reply.

  “And your lipless twat can’t even kiss,” Loshi spits. “You’re not getting one sniff of our junk.”

  “I don’t want your junk,” she says. Her face shakes, but none of her features move. The skin is stretched too thin over her skull to risk a tear. For a moment, I think she’s about to scream at us, but what shoots between her shrunken lips is more bawl than yell.

  “I need food,” she weeps. “Please God, I need to eat!”

  Hookers aren’t well known for tugging heartstrings, but I feel the slightest yank in my chest. My sympathy makes me nod and reach out in consolation until she cries, “I need to feel the knife again!”

  “You what?”

  “You don’t understand what it’s like, watching people go in and out of the Kum Den, bleeding from their bellies, their thighs—oh God, I’d do anything for someone to open up a love handle.”

  She moans, sliding her fingers around the mutilated bowls in her body.

  Her shirt is pulled aside by the desperate clawing, revealing her crude surgical scars, black with rot. The men at the Kum Den are more careful than that; Shankara must have done the extractions herself.

  “A twenty, that’s all,” she says. “Just one twenty, and I’ll never bother you again. I need the food. I need the fat. I’ll fuck you better than I ever fucked Trevor.”

  I hate the way she says his name, but I don’t expect my hands to jump to her throat. Frankly, I don’t think I have the strength.

  I knock her to the ground, ordering her to shut up. But she doesn’t. She screams Trevor’s name, over and over, while faking an orgasm. She hikes her skirt to her waist and fingers her withered tunnel. We’ve drawn several eyes by this point, including some from the Primetime side of the park. Loshi pulls her up and hoists her twiggy body onto his shoulder, but she doesn’t stop shrieking until he throws her under a tangle of nearby elms.

  “Do you want your pot stuck or not?” he says. She nods, causing several strings of drool to abandon her lips. “Look, you still got a profitable piece of meat to sell, and Ling’ll pay a shitload for it. Then you’ll have the money you need to plump up and start over.”

  “What meat? Where?”

  Loshi pulls out his switchblade and grabs her bony face, forcing her yellow tongue to flop out of her mouth. The moment Shankara gets his intention, her eyes light up like a kid staring at her first Christmas tree. She curls her tongue, staring at the quivering tip. I can’t tell if she’s warring with the decision or saying goodbye, until her eyes snap to Loshi’s and, with her tongue still extended, she says, “Do it.”

  Loshi’s knife isn’t one I’d want slicing me. He uses it to cut food and atlys, but he uses it just as often to sift through garbage when we dumpster dive. When he doesn’t want to touch a rancid mixture of chowder and slaw to reach the discarded pizza beneath, the knife goes to work. It doesn’t look sharp, either. Or maybe there’s too much trash caked on the blade for the sharpness to shine through.

  It takes nearly two minutes for Loshi to saw off Shankara’s tongue, but through every crimson spurt, every “accidental” nick of her skeletal chin, the pathetic twat sings in joy. Blood pools in the back of her throat, intensifying the glottal aria. She reaches out, clutching at nothing. But the look on her face makes me think she sees something beautiful. Cash, food, maybe a dozen razorblades turning her fingers into happy hotdog slivers for some wealthy Primetimer’s mac-n-cheese.

  Her tongue falls into a puddle of scarlet mud. She looks down at it in glee, the bottom half of her face so thick with blood it looks like a cavernous hole. She spits up a tiny piece of tongue and frantically searches for it on the ground. Waste not, want not.

  Loshi wipes his knife on the plastic grass, but it doesn’t come clean. I tell myself to remember how it was employed today so I can stop him before he uses it on our next meal. But once atlys steamrolls my logic, I doubt I’ll remember. I might even lick the blade.

  Shankara appears to pray as we walk away. The only word I recognize in her clotted rambling is “god.” I can’t tell if it’s “Dear God, what have I done” or “Thank you God for this wonderful gift,” but the way she cradles her limp tongue, like it’s the baby Jesus, makes me think the latter.

  The Kum Den Smokehouse has two entrances: one for customers and one for trash like me. To prevent patrons from running into the disgusting origins of their meals, the restaurant entrance is situated several yards away from the pagoda, in the Casino. While the pagoda’s exterior is ornate, the Casino is as plain as it gets. I’ve heard rumors about the inside, that gold and diamonds encrust every surface. I’ve heard it’s draped in velvet, and singing servants bring you hot towels in the foyer before you’re led downstairs to the restaurant stretching beneath Patterson Park. I've heard that every Smokehouse appetizer comes with a free blo
wjob from the server of your choosing, but that claim came from a cracked-out bum with egg-beaters for legs, so I don't know if I should trust it.

  It makes some sense, though. The most desperate addicts, yearning to get their rocks off, have begged Ling Sugarman to cut off their rocks in exchange for atlys. And while the Primetmes and Fatcats suck down our dosed genitalia, a hired mouth sucks on them. It's Baltimore's own little Circle of Life.

  In reality, it’s probably no different from a T.G.I. Friday’s—a bunch of kitschy shit stuck to the walls, memorabilia from when we used to have popular sports teams, art, and culture. Hell, maybe we still do. Maybe I’ve just been in the park so long I don’t see anything but the junk: drugs, TVs, and people included.

  Whatever happens on the inside, it’s special enough for four armed guards to protect it. The entrance to the pagoda is guarded too, but not as well. While the casino guards look like military men, the pagoda guards are obvious ex-potstickers, who gave up the practice for Sugarman’s professional compensation, whether with cash or drugs. They’re no one to be fucked with, but I’d rather tangle with them than the beefy assholes in front of the Casino. The closest I get is in strolling across the park. At any moment, I’m walking on the heads of rich people eating pieces of Loshi—and after today, pieces of me.

  I tried to convince Nadine to go down there once. Not for a meal—just to satisfy my curiosity. She wouldn’t even consider it.

  “Clean up, get a job, and go down there yourself,” she’d said.

  I wish she could be as devoted as she was when we were kids. Next to Trevor, I was her biggest hero. She would’ve done anything for me back then, and after Hero Numero Uno was out of the picture, she was more inclined. But she didn’t love me as much as she’d loved Trevor. My parents, either. No matter what I did, I wasn’t good enough to step into his role. They’d rather it remain empty, which further emptied me.