by Kevin Wright
“Sponge baths and Jell-O, my friend, sponge baths and Jell-O.”
A nurse stepped into the room, carrying a bowl full of green Jell-O and a look that could curdle paint thinner.
“Hello, Milady,” Carmine said. “Working the overnight?”
Milady strode into the room.
“How’re your assignments tonight?”
The grim look of death etched in her face soured.
“What time’s breakfast?”
She slammed a bowl of green Jell-O down in front of Carmine, turned, and strode out. She did not say a word.
“Infatuated with me,” Carmine confided, digging into his Jell-O. He pressed his clicker, turning on the television; it was the news.
A news anchor behind a desk spoke…
“…over one hundred 911 calls was apparently nothing more than a man in a wolf suit on the set of the movie, ‘Fall of the Werewolf Lord.’ The producer of the film, Mr. Dennis Mentiro, apologized publicly to the citizens of Colton Falls for the numerous disturbances caused. He further stated that the Able-Dulles Cinema company will pay for any and all damages incurred.
“This incident occurred less than a mile from a scene that was not so harmless—”
The screen changed to a long shot of a burning building.
“Sources allege it was the scene of a double shooting of two Colton Falls police officers, followed by a five-alarm blaze. Both officers were reportedly injured, before this blaze began, in what has been a week of violence and tragedy in this urban community. Police won’t comment on whether this incident is related to a shootout that took place on Sunday in which ten officers were injured. Both are believed to be connected to the disturbing trend of a rise in gang violence in this area. In other news, Iraqi—”
Carmine clicked off the news.
“Two more.” Carmine shook his head.
“Yeah, I transported both of them,” Shotgun said. “Double whammy. DOA. Shotgun blast. Close range. To the head. No chance. M.E. just wanted the bodies out quick. It was sketchy, you know? Had that feeling that something big went down. You know what they say about that place.”
“Yeah.”
“Think it’s true?”
“Maybe. It’d explain a lot.”
“You ever been in there?”
“No. You?”
“No,” Shotgun said. “Story’s a blanket, though. Gotta be. Place was blazing when I got there. Started in the basement, fire chief said, but no one even tried to go in, so I think he’s full of it. They’re still just watching it burn. Cops were shot in the parking lot. Anyways, bucket-heads aren’t even pouring on the water, just containing it. Sucker’s gonna burn till there’s nothing left but lead paint and asbestos.”
Carmine sucked down more Jell-O. “You hear from Pete?”
“No. He and Winters left your apartment. I stopped by the Gurkha’s. He saw him early this morning. Went by to tell him about Elliot. Didn’t go too well, the Gurkha wanting him dead, and all. He told him so, at least.”
“Join the club,” Carmine muttered, looking down.
“I’m surprised the Gurkha and his boys didn’t do it.” Shotgun shrugged. “Pete was asking about some of the gangs.”
“Gangs? Which ones?”
“Aces and Eights. Oh, and I talked to Wilton, too. Saw him on Fuller Ave. Says he’s in if we need him, but…”
“Still half in the bag?”
“Probably all the way in by now,” Shotgun admitted, “but at least he’s still around.”
“Great. How about Winters?” Carmine asked.
“Not sure,” Shotgun said. “Heard a rumor, but, well, he left your boy a note. Real pleasant. Weird. Wants the kid dead, too, not that we didn’t already know that.”
“He didn’t kill him, though,” said Carmine.
“No, not yet,” Shotgun said softly, not looking Carmine in the eye. “But maybe he should have. Hell, someone should have.”
* * * *
The streets of Colton Falls glistened like a slick indigo serpent as Svetlana pulled her little shag jacket tight around herself and hustled out, pocketbook swinging. She brushed the hair from her face and glared back at Ivan, the Russian pimp with the metal tooth, her pimp.
“You will go now, or I cut you!” Ivan cried out into the night. “Lady, you will come back. You will bring man. Will make much money!” He shook his fist in the air, a straight razor gleaming in it.
“Yah, yah, yah.” Svetlana waved her hand, hurrying on.
She glanced down alleyways that hissed and steamed and banged from unexplained origins. The night was cold and goose pimples rose across her legs as she hustled down the street with a purpose, if no direction.
Hate, hate was perhaps the word she would choose. It wasn’t in regards to Ivan the pimp, though. Svetlana had had much experience with many men, and she had found that all were like him at heart. No, she could handle Ivan, for all his yelling, his punching, his cutting. He was a businessman, and he had to conduct business; that was only natural.
And it wasn’t this city that she hated either. This city with its thin veneer of respectability and open arms that promised an embrace, when it really meant to grasp, to squeeze, to suffocate. It was like most towns she had known, and she had been to many in her short life, from Moscow to St. Petersburg and on. Across the cold Atlantic, life was much the same, only the tongues differing and the currency. Colton Falls was no different, smaller perhaps, more concentrated.
No, hate was not the word. One must first be capable of emotion to hate, no matter how base that emotion may be.
Svetlana did not even hate her present situation, one of wandering aimlessly through the night in a land she had just arrived in, in search of a man she did not know. A man who would mistreat her, a man who would give her money, money she would give to another man, who would mistreat her. No, Svetlana did not hate; she did not feel anything, and perhaps that is how she survived. She still had her looks, which in some women would be gone by her age, and so she still ate regularly and slept in a dry bed.
Click clack, click clack, went her thin heels as she walked down the deserted street toward lights, toward the strip where men went to find women, and men and girls and boys.
Nearly to the lights, Svetlana paused an instant as a man stepped cautiously from an alleyway, between her and the light of the strip not far in the distance. The faint chatter of lewd propositions, of dark cars slowly rolling by, and the buzz of gross neon signs flashing on and off in the distance promised sanctuary.
The man walked toward her along the dark sidewalk. He was young, bald, walking with his eyes down. A long trench-coat graced his shoulders, brand new. Tags on plastic threads hung still from his sleeve.
Casually, Svetlana pulled a knife tucked inside her skirt top and held it concealed along her forearm. She was a good judge of men; she had to be. That was the first thing she had learned. The second thing she had learned was to always carry a knife, and that it was better if they did not know you possessed it. Svetlana was not stupid. She strode on confidently, her eyes up and her chest out … bait. She threw her arms up over her head in a stretch as the young man passed.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” she said, her breath frosting.
He continued on his path, glancing sidewise at Svetlana as he passed, but his eyes registered nothing and flickered back to the ground.
He continued on.
Svetlana stopped for a moment and turned, watching the man continue off into the dark. He hadn’t even gawked at her, not even one bit! “Hey handsome. Hey, man with new jacket!” she called out. “Hey, man. You there, stop. Wait.”
The man stopped, turned. He glanced to either side of him, as though to see if there was anyone else she could possibly have been talking to on the deserted street. “Me?” He pointed to himself. His other hand was thrust deep in his long coat pocket.
“Yes, of course, you,” Svetlana said. “Why do you not stop and take in my scenery? Am I not gorgeous?”
The man glanced to either side of himself, then looked her up and down. He nodded.
“Then why do you not stop and look?” she asked, hands on her hips.
The man shrugged.
“Are you fairy?”
“Very what?”
“No, fairy, you know, with bug wings.”
“Oh, hey — what the hell? No, I’m not a fairy. I’m just busy, okay. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Then come here,” she purred. “Come with me. We will go on date. It will have happy ending. You will see. Come, have look at me; I am gorgeous, no? You already say I am. I know I am. It is okay.”
“Uh, um…”
“Come, come, what is name?” Svetlana sidled up to him, running her thumb along the collar of the man’s coat.
“My name’s Peter.”
“This is new coat, eh, Peter?” she asked. “It is very nice coat. Very warm, no? Where you buy? Let me see, tags are still on.”
“I stole it.” Peter yanked the tags off the sleeve. “Actually, I left money for it, the window, too.”
“You have money?” She raised a thin, well-plucked eyebrow.
“Uh, some.”
“You are not police cop man?”
“You’re a hooker!”
“No, I am gorgeous prostitute,” Svetlana corrected, raising one French-manicured finger. She leaned in close. “There is difference, no? I smell pretty good, too, eh?” Her eyes flashed.
Peter closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, nodding slowly as he did so. “Yeah. Yeah you do. You smell pretty good.” When he opened his eyes they were ravenous.
“Come with me,” Svetlana smiled. She recognized that look, the look that kept her fed, warm, clothed.
Peter glanced left and right, as though considering something, but Svetlana broke his concentration by looping her arm through his and huddling close.
“We will go on date.” She tightened her grip around his arm, pulling him along, away from the lights. “It will have happy ending. You will see.”
* * * *
Detective Winters possessed superb tracking skills. Without exaggeration, by vision alone he could detect clues of the passage of an ant across pavement at night. He had been trained to track a variety of prey. Human, beast, and otherwise.
Training, yes, he had, but Detective Winters possessed a natural affinity for it as well. It was something he was born to do and was realized at a young age. His superb vision, or rather, ability to recognize and interpret spoor was not tantamount to his abilities.
Detective Winters excelled at his profession because he relied on his eyes, while hunting, only as a last resort. Time and time again it was his sense of smell that shed the grim light of justice upon his quarry. Everything in creation and destruction had its own scent. Fear, hate, lies, truth, death, undeath, disease, anger, strength, poison, magic. And Detective Winters knew them all.
Tonight Detective Winters tracked a werewolf through the night, along the bank of the Merrimack River. The werewolf, a most dangerous quarry. All of Detective Winters’s training, his skills, all of his abilities and cunning and experience, his eyes, his ears, his incredible, perhaps supernatural sense of smell, all of them were completely and totally unnecessary. An elephant trudging across a beach littered with paint-filled balloons would have left less slots than Lord Brudnoy did as he had trudged through the weeds and mud with the presence of mind of a deranged wildebeest. “Hmmm? Perhaps fifteen minutes ago.”
Detective Winters glanced at the moon as it slowly dipped beneath the horizon. Tomorrow night it would be full.
Creeping forward, he froze suddenly in the dark, eased to a crouch. The clatter and cough of a police patrol moving west along the bank, back towards the Joyce bridge, sounded ahead. Their flashlight beams jostled as the men made their way. They would be upon him in seconds.
Frowning, Detective Winters glanced at his watch. Cover was sparse here; a chain-link fence cut off any hope of silent escape to his left, and he couldn’t afford to lose time. Brudnoy’s tracks led east, past the patrol. He gazed out over the black river.
Like a ghost he moved then, down to the water, which he entered with naught a splash, knee deep. It was freezing cold, and it gripped him, swirled around him, the current strong, waist deep. Detective Winters gazed for a moment out across the river. Pale yellow eyes gazed at him from the deep water, far out, shoulder deep. They gazed at him with hatred and debt, for the deep ones never forget … and they never, ever, forgive.
Dropping low in the water, Detective Winters gave the audience of eyes, far out in the black water, one last glance before taking a deep breath, and he submerged. They would come fast with their gripping cold hands and their gnawing teeth. He must be swift, silent.
Floating face up, gazing at the stars that rippled and pulled and twisted overhead, he clutched his hat to his chest. The current took him, pulling, and he let it pull, steering with his hands when he had to, kicking, but otherwise just floating.
Kappas were on his mind as he floated in the black abyss, kappas, deep ones, death. It would not be swift. They would come for him with their black slime skin and drangling hair. They would grasp him and pull him deep down to their claustrophobic warrens and mud tunnels and rejoice as they rended his flesh slowly, and kept him alive through it, eating him by inches. The water was frigid. He wanted to scream. Flashlight beams reflected off the water surface above, and he knew he must go further, and his breath was nearly at an end, and they were coming. They were coming.
The burning in his lungs wriggled down to his loins. His arms and legs were numb, sluggish, and then he heard … singing? Was his oxygen-starved brain failing him? No. It was not failing him; it was the deep ones. They sing? Odd. He had not known. No one had ever known. None except perhaps those unfortunates who had met their gristle-toothed fate deep in the dark rivers and oceans of the world. Perhaps they had heard the songs as claws clutched them and drew them down. As they stared up on their downward journey, helpless, with only the certainty of a cold black death to comfort them.
Detective Winters had certainly never taken a duck in the river to explore the lifestyles of the deep ones. Water swished, not far away, from numerous sources, but Detective Winters remained submerged. His lungs burned, and his head reeled. The lights of the patrol were still above. Did they seem dimmer? His breath was at an end.
The kappas sang still, and it was louder, stronger, closer, and it was a song about him. About what he had done, and what they would do. Retribution and Revenge. It was beautiful, but then it devolved, degenerating into something crude and oily and filled with hate and hunger and the sound of sharp chitinous teeth clicking. He would pass out.
Detective Winters exhaled slowly, limply, bubbles sliding like a silver centipede from between his frozen blue lips in a soft line wriggling to the surface above, creating barely a ripple.
* * * *
She’s a fucking hooker, a gorgeous fucking hooker, but she gets paid to have sex. I do still have some cash. But she’s probably got syphilis and gonorrhea and shit. Yeah, and I’m going to be a freaking vampire in a day. But it’s wrong. I’d be taking advantage of her. Damn, she looks so, so good in thigh-highs. But she probably does this because she’s poor or something, has to feed her kids. Well, maybe she doesn’t have any kids. Damn, this town’s got more fucked-up beautiful women than Vegas, not that I’ve been to Vegas, but she is so hot. But syphilis, AIDS, gonorrhea, crabs, lobsters, monsters, chlamydia. Jesus Christ, she’s taking off her shirt! Whoa. Deep breath. Stay cool. Leave, just walk over there past those long smooth legs and her heart is pumping so strong and smooth, and she is so hot. NO!
Peter jammed his envelope of cash deep in the pocket of his new coat, turned and froze. In the dim half-light, Peter watched her move as she stretched her arms out and up like a cat. “I have to go,” blurted out Peter, moving toward the door. He could hear her heart pumping in her chest.
Springing like a cat, a cat dressed in thigh-high stoc
kings, Svetlana intercepted Peter as his fingers brushed the doorknob. “You do not want to go,” Svetlana whispered in his ear.
The hair on Peter’s neck stood.
“We have not finished date.” With a hand on his chest, she guided him back. “We have not started date.”
“Uh, yeah, about that…” Peter took another deep breath. “I … jeeze,” he said as Svetlana tossed her shirt in the corner and pushed in practically atop him. She smelled so good, and he could hear her heartbeat pound beneath that smooth, soft skin, just begging to be—
“I know you want me,” Svetlana glanced down, smiling, “and I want you, baby. You will be paying first, of course.” She pulled back and in her hands was his envelope. “Come, Peter, you paid, so why not be getting laid?”
“Did you really just say that?”
She just smiled, though, and stood there, swaying back and forth just a bit, the corner of the envelope touching her bottom lip. Then she placed the envelope on a small nightstand by the bed and stalked forward, grasping him by the collar of his coat.
A buzz was in Peter’s ears as her smooth skin touched his briefly, and the smell of her perfume, of her hair, of her skin, of her blood, overwhelmed him. He swallowed the saliva that gathered beneath his tongue, pouring down the inside of his mouth. The pounding of her heart as it sped up was hypnotic, and Peter could see the pulsing of her blood vessels beneath that graceful neck. Every contraction of her heart sent warm rich blood spurting throughout that beautiful body that Peter wanted, that Peter needed, that Peter took in his arms. His teeth were very long now, long and sharp, and they ruled him. There existed no memory of who or what he was, no feeling, no emotion, only a vacuole of lust and hunger that needed so badly to be filled.
For the first time in his life, Peter removed a bra in one smooth motion and tossed it to the floor. Svetlana played with the collar of his new coat before she yanked it back off his shoulders.
Her eyes went wide.
She screamed.
Peter snapped to, drew back. “What the—?” He looked down as his coat fell to the ground, at his clothes beneath, his torn-fairly-apart and blood-soaked clothes. A definite mood-killer.
