Tenderloin

by LD Marr

  Tenderloin

  By LD Marr

  Copyright © 2019 Trisha McNary

  Published by Trisha McNary

  All Rights Reserved

  Includes chapter 1 of Alien Pets (Xeno Relations part 1)

  By Trisha McNary (a pen name of LD Marr)

  Cover art by Victoria Cooper

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Alien Pets

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 1

  In the near future…

  “Great news, Chloe, your tests today show no new alcohol or drug use,” I said to the teenage girl sitting a few feet away from me in my miniscule counselor’s office. “That’s fantastic. I’m so proud of you!”

  In fact, I was ecstatic. I was a new counselor at the voluntary clinic for at-risk teens, and Chloe was my first client to stop using.

  “Thanks,” Chloe answered.

  She was thin like everyone else, from the food shortages as well as her past drug use. But the slight smile of her dark-lipsticked mouth made dimples on cheeks still chubby with baby fat.

  “So I think you’ve gone more than a week without using. How’s that going? Anything you want to talk about?” I asked.

  “Well, you know,” Chloe said.

  I sat in silence and waited to see if she’d say more. I knew better than to push too hard. No one knew that better than me, and I tried to curb my enthusiasm. Chloe plucked with a black-painted fingernail at a loose thread hanging from one of many holes in her frayed jeans.

  “I know it’s hard to stop,” I said after it was clear that she wasn’t going to talk first. “And hard not to go back too. So if there’s anything that’s putting pressure on you to keep using, maybe I can give you some ways to cope. But if you don’t want to tell me, that’s OK. I don’t want to pry into your personal life, I just want to help you. You know that right?”

  I knew there was always more than just drugs going on. And the other stuff was usually more embarrassing than the drugs. Prostitution, shoplifting, and other crimes they didn’t want to tell me about. And why should they trust me?

  “I believe you want to help me,” said Chloe.

  Then more silence. We stared at each other. Two teenage girls who didn’t look that much different on the outside. But I was eighteen, and my dark past was behind me. Chloe had only taken the first small step toward recovery. Still at risk.

  “I think the hardest part is when all your friends are still using,” I filled in the blank for her. “If you’re hanging around with the same people and going to the same places, you keep getting that pressure. Right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Chloe. “I still go to the after-hours club. All my friends are there, and the music’s cool, and I like to dance. The Tenderloin Club. You know that place?”

  “Yeah, I know it,” I said. “I used to hang out there too.”

  Chloe’s eyes widened.

  “Cool!” she said.

  She looked at me with new respect. I decided it was time to let Chloe in on some secrets of my own past.

  “But I stopped going there when I stopped using,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything, and I kept talking.

  “Yeah, I went there all the time. I loved that place too. But I kept caving in to the pressure. ‘Come one, it’s just one line,’ my friends would say. And then I’d feel awful the next day. So that’s why I’m worried about you going there. Maybe you could find some other things to do, other places to go.”

  Chloe sat back and crossed her arms. Crossed her legs.

  “There’s nowhere else I can go,” she said. “That’s the only club that doesn’t card for underage. But I know that’s not what you mean. You want me to stop going to clubs, look for a job, go to school. You know a crappy place in Jersey or Brooklyn you can send me to live with some weirdos, right?”

  I laughed. This girl was no dummy. That’s why she’d figured out that the drug lifestyle was bad. I’d spent hours talking to her, and I knew she had a sharp mind. That was the level I had to reach her on now.

  “I’m not telling you to stop going to the Tenderloin Club,” I told her. “I’m just saying that it will make it harder for you to get clean and stay that way. The options I have sound boring, but I think if you give them a chance, you’ll be glad you did.”

  Chloe lifted both hands above her head and started finger-teasing her long platinum-bleached hair while I was talked. I’d noticed her doing that in some of our other sessions.

  Does it mean she’s bored, or I’m not getting through to her? I wondered.

  The answer to that came into my mind. She teases her hair when she disagrees with something, and she’s not going to do it.

  Somehow I knew that was true, but I didn’t question where that answer came from. Sometimes my mind worked like that. I’d ask a question, and there would be an answer. Or I wouldn’t ask a question, but I’d suddenly have information I needed. Or I’d be told to do something that turned out to keep me from getting hurt.

  I had some other weird mental episodes too. Times when reality seemed to change to something less real. But I never told anyone about these things anymore. When I had in the past, my school and family hadn’t reacted well. Then I had to run away, and I’d ended up homeless and using drugs. So now I kept quiet, but I still paid attention to those thoughts.

  Now I turned my attention back to Chloe.

  “OK,” I said to her. “You have to decide what you want to do, and I can’t make you do anything. You’re here voluntarily, right?”

  Chloe stopped working on her hairstyle and crossed her arms again.

  “That’s right,” said Chloe. “Anyway, I can still go to the club and hang out with my friends and dance and not drink or take anything. I did that all last week. It wasn’t hard. Just because you couldn’t do that doesn’t mean I can’t. I’ve decided to quit drugs, and I’m going to, and that’s it. We’ve talked, but you don’t know everything about me. And one thing about me is when I make up my mind to do something, I do it.”

  “OK, I believe you. I want to believe you,” I said. “You sound like you’re determined, and everyone’s different. I hope you’re right because honestly, I’m thrilled that you want to get clean. Because I was there too, and I know how bad it was. To be using and stuck in that life. That’s why I care. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” Chloe said.

  A tear dripped from the corner of one of her eyes. My own eyes felt moist too.

  “OK. I won’t tell you to stop going to the Tenderloin Club, and I won’t keep talking about jobs and halfway houses,” I said. “You know we have them, and I’ll wait for you to ask me if you ever want to.”

  “OK,” said Chloe.

  “Our hour is up now. Can I schedule you for the same time next week?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Chloe. “I’ll be here.”

  “I’m really happy for you,” I said again.

  I stood up and smiled. Chloe stood up too. I re
ached out a hand for her to take or not. It was the only physical contact the counselors were allowed to make. The meeting was recorded of course. But it would never be watched unless there was a need. A client’s complaint about the counselor, for example.

  Chloe didn’t take the hand I offered. Instead she leaned forward and gave me a quick hug.

  “Thank you,” she said in a teary voice.

  Then she rushed out of the room.

  She’s going to stay clean. I know it. The thought went through my mind.

  But that thought was followed by a cold chill that ran up and down my spine.

  No. I’m just imaging things this time, I told myself. Or that chill means something else.

  Chapter 2

  After work that day, I stood on tired feet on the subway train home. At this hour, the train was always packed. There were no empty seats, so I swayed back and forth and held onto a bar for balance.

  Through the train’s windows, in between long passes through dark tunnels, I watched the lit-up stations flash by.

  The train pulled into the Bowery station—the last Manhattan station under the unflooded part of the city. Everything on Manhattan island south of here was now under water from the rising sea levels of the last hundred years. Scientists said the rest of the island would go under in time, but for now, it was still here.

  The underground train tunnels and all the subways were supposed to be water tight. Our government assured us that the subway walls and tunnels were supported with the latest flood technology. But it didn’t look like any work had been done in this aging station—not lately or ever.

  I tried not to think about that when I rode on the train. And I wasn’t thinking about climate change in the future. My thoughts were on Chloe.

  I knew that I should be feeling happy and excited—my first client to stop using—but I wasn’t. The cold chill that I’d felt earlier had grown to nervous anxiety throughout the day. The more I tried to tell myself it was irrational, the stronger that the feeling of dread became.

  There’s no reason to feel so anxious, I told myself. Maybe it’s not her. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Am I crazy like people used to say? I wondered. Will I end up in the sanatorium they wanted to send me to after all? Getting a lobotomy or my brain dissected?

  My morbid thoughts were interrupted when a small bunch of riders crowded in front of the door next to me. Brakes squealed, and the subway car slowed and stopped. Instead of moving out of the exiting riders’ way, I felt a strange panic and broke out in a sweat.

  I have to get off this train! I thought.

  I crowded in with others next to the door. It opened, and we all got off quickly. Experienced riders who moved fast without any shoving or pushing to exit before the doors closed again.

  The rest of the exiting commuters walked away. But I took only a few steps and then stopped. I looked up and down the length of the rundown station. The smell of urine and disinfectant hit my nostrils with stronger force than I was used to in other subway stations, but I ignored it.

  Now my panic was gone.

  Why the heck did I think I had to get off the train in this junky old station? I wondered. Where did that bizarre feeling come from?

  As I stood there wondering why I was there, I was overwhelmed by curiosity about the station itself.

  I looked down the long length of tracks on both sides of the narrow cement island I was standing on. The station was long enough for at least twelve train cars to open their doors and let out passengers.

  On both far ends of the station, black metal-barred cages enclosed worn cement stairs that led up to the street. An ancient escalator sat unmoving halfway between the stairs.

  Another train pulled in on the other side of the tracks. I turned and watched passengers quickly exit and enter. Doors closed, and the train pulled away. I stared at the ancient wall behind the tracks. Grime and dust-covered marble tiles. Empty patches where tiles had fallen off and not been replaced. Odd mini-sized wooden door shapes were built in all along the wall.

  For no particular reason, I felt the urge to walk to the opposite end of the station. I started walking, and I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cool dampness of the station air.

  As I went along, I looked up at the cameras attached at wide intervals on the dusty, cobwebby ceiling above me. The cold feeling inside me intensified the farther I walked in this ancient station that had stood for almost two centuries.

  “Bowery,” said a placard carved into the side of the aged marble wall. Thick rust-colored metal columns supported the ceiling. The station was poorly lit, but the round panoramic cameras looked new.

  I kept walking and reached the stairs at the station’s end. The stairs were built into the far side of a concrete wedge. A door shape was etched into the side of the wedge that faced the station.

  I stopped and stared at the door-shaped lines. The coldness inside me became a feeling of terrible wrongness that somehow gave my mind a razor-sharp clarity. I looked up and located the camera that would record this section of the station.

  It was the same as the others, wasn’t it? It looked exactly the same. But when I stared up at it, it seemed like there was something different about this one. A dead feeling.

  The subway maintenance people must check all the cameras to make sure they’re working, right? I thought. It must be working.

  Then I felt a sudden discomfort at the thought of this camera recording me. I stopped staring at the camera and tried to act natural and casual. As if I just happened to be waiting for the next train at the farthest end of the station for some reason.

  I walked over to the rusty metal post nearest to the wedge and leaned against it. I put my hands in my coat pockets and looked sideways at the concrete wedge under the stairs.

  My vision seemed to sharpen, and I saw the door-shaped lines trace a real door beneath layers of dust and grime. A bare metal door was built into the dirty stone.

  As I had that realization, my sense of reality became fuzzy. Time sped up as if I were in a dream. The paths of commuters, entering and leaving trains and the station, flowed in blurred lines around me. As the rush hour ended and more time passed, the lines in my vision that were the paths of moving people thinned. I waited. I didn’t for know what.

  ⌛

  Time passed, but I didn’t know how much. Then another odd chill that wasn’t physical jolted me back to alertness. The movements of the people and trains passing by me slowed down to normal speed. My vision blurred. Then it sharpened again.

  My eyes fixed on the thin etching of the door shape under the stairs. A bright red line formed and blossomed there. Thick red liquid outlined the door and then oozed down its sides to the floor.

  An acrid, bitter smell burned my nostrils and left a metallic taste in my mouth. I recognized the taste from when I’d had my wisdom teeth pulled.

  That’s blood! I thought.

  A puddle formed and spread toward my feet. I stepped back. Then I walked away and stood near a few people who waited in line along the tracks for the next train. People passed by and walked to the stairs built into the concrete wedge—right through the blood. But none of them seemed to notice it.

  My curiosity overcame my revulsion, and I walked through the puddle of blood too, so I could watch people go up the stairs. They stepped in the blood, but I couldn’t see any blood on their shoes. And their feet didn’t leave any marks on the pale, dirty staircase.

  I lifted a foot to look at the bottom of my own plain brown winter boot. There was no blood there either. I walked back around and stared fixedly at the door that was now pouring out streams of blood. It flowed down off the passenger island onto the train tracks. I stood there wondering why the liquid didn’t cause any sparks from the live electric bars that ran the trains.

  Get away! a voice seemed to shout in my mind.

  Another chill shook me, and this time, I felt pure fear. I turned, walked back, and stood among the people waiting for the train
again, facing the direction that the train would come from.

  A loud depressurizing “whomp” sound, followed by a big splash, came from the direction of the bloody door. None of the other people waiting for the train showed any reaction to the sounds. I turned my head slightly and looked out of the corner of my eye back toward the door.

  A man walked out through an ankle-high river flow of blood. I stiffened with a strong sense of recognition, although I was sure I’d never seen him before.

  That man is the reason why I’m here! I thought.

  But I didn’t know why I had that thought. He was tall and brawny—bigger than any man I’d ever seen—dressed in jeans and a dark hoodie like anyone. A few strands of straight blonde hair stuck out from the edges of the hood that shadowed his broad, pale face.

  Another thought came into my mind: I need to memorize that face.

  So I studied it in my peripheral vision. A wide face with heavy features and thick lips. Light skin and eyes. But as I stared, the man’s coloring changed—from pale to brown skin and eyes, from blonde to black straight hair. Then his coloring changed back to blonde again.

  Did I really see that? I wondered.

  For a moment, the man stood looking at the people lined up waiting for the train, including me. His shoes and pants below the knees were damp with red liquid. But no one else in the subway seemed to notice the blood. Or the changes in his hair and skin color.

  I had an intense, undeniable feeling that there was something wrong with this man. Not just wrong. An overpowering emanation of decay and death.

  Now the sharp, powerful blood smell clogged the air. The smell of blood and something more that I didn’t recognize. None of the other people in the subway seemed to notice the putrid odor. The urge to vomit overwhelmed me, but I struggled to keep it down.

  I can’t draw his attention to me! I thought.

  Instead of walking over to wait for a train on either side of the platform, the man turned and walked around the bar-enclosed concrete wedge he’d just come out of. He climbed up the stairs and was gone.

  I breathed deep in relief. My need to vomit left too.