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She inhaled cigarettes like oxygen and when I ran out of wine she’d be gone. I’d never seen her in the daylight, only running into her at night, either in some dive or alley or attached to some half-gay boy wearing more make-up than she ever did. It never took any effort to pull her away to some pay by the hour joint and do things to one another that would take multiple confessions to cleanse myself of. In all our nights together I never caught her name and never gave her mine. I once made a remark that she was nothing more than a midnight snack and from that night on she was “Snack” and she never complained. Now she was like so many others, bled out in a shit apartment on the wrong side of town, so far dead that I couldn’t get a feel for any essence of her in the room. Madness had gone prowling the streets looking for murder and found Snack.
Madness had painted the room with her, words that made no sense in every corner of the room. Maybe the words made sense to him, maybe they were free-verse of a mind on the other side of sane, maybe he was simply bored with his toy that lay in the middle of the room, staring at the ceiling with empty eyes and a half open mouth stuck not in a scream or a gasp but almost as if her last word was, “oh,” like her death dawned on her. A throat clearing tore my attention to two cops in their blues standing in the doorway. “You seen everything you need to?” asked the fat one, a sergeant who looked as if he’d never met a meal he didn’t like. “Yeah,” I said, looking one last time to Snack and then shrugging and shaking my head. I walked past the two cops as I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, fishing one out for myself and then offering the pack over my shoulder, neither of them responding. I shrugged again. “You boys never saw me, right?” Again, no response, and that’s exactly as it should have been. Their last fifteen minutes were now gone. It’d be another three minutes before they even began to think again and by then my cigarette would be done and I’d be wanting another one. It was between that first one and reaching for the second that my mind flickered and went nuts, a flash, red smear like the walls of that apartment, and a scream that sent me pivoting around to find an empty sidewalk behind me. Madness was still prowling the streets. A phone ringing cut through the tension. Close. Next to my heart. I took a moment to light another smoke, another moment to reach for my phone, another moment to answer after I saw who it was. “What?” was the best greeting I ever gave the man as it was the best he deserved. “I’ve got something for you, Crowley.” He was calm and direct. Amazing how a man changes in a few years. “I’ve got my own problems, kid.” “And this is one of them. Where are you?” He spoke like he was my boss, as if a few dollars a week made me beholden to him. “Chicago.” “Leave town.” I leaned my head back and sighed heavily. “Can’t. Like I said, I’ve got my own problems.” “There’s a man on your tail.” “There are a lot of men on my tail.” “Not like this one.” “Listen, Ca…” And it broke through again, red, angry, calm, cool, collected and sharp as a switchblade. “Hello, Jack.” The voice came beside me but I couldn’t move to look. The cigarette fell from my mouth as it went slack and I tried to fight back. “Crowley?” the phone said, then yelled, then yelled again. “Get the hell out of there!” “Tell him ‘it was nice talking to you’.” “It was nice talking to you,” I said. “Damn it, Crowley, don’t…” “Tell him ‘you’re going to have a visitor soon’.” “You’re going to have a visitor soon,” I said. “Tell him ‘he’ll want what’s his’.” “He’ll want what’s his,” I said. “Fight back, goddamn it!” “Tell him, ‘love ya’.” “Love ya,” I said. “Now hang up.” “Crowley!” I hang up and find that I am having tea with the Queen of England and she has just related to me her time spent as a lounge singer during her early twenties. We are sharing a laugh when it dawns on me that I have a burning question inside. “What do you want?” She shakes hear head and gives me the look a grandmother might when a young one asks a question they should already know the answer to. “You know someone five years dead that we wish to find.” Her voice was patient and lacked the royal quality one would stereotypically expect from the Queen. “I know many folks five years dead,” I say as I bring a cigarette to my lips and light it. “But none of them are really to be found.” She smirks knowingly and shakes her head again. “He hurt us in the past, delayed what is ours and kept us from ourselves. Surely you should agree with our desire to destroy this man. You do not think so favorably of him yourself, do you?” “If we’re thinking of the same person…” “We are.” “Then you’re right, but he pays well and I do think quite favorably of that.” The smirk fades from her face and she narrows her eyes. “Is the pay favorable when you find yourself dead?” A hot slice cuts my cheek and I gasp. “That is just one cut.” He is speaking Mandarin but I understand every word. The words don’t fit him, his red hair, his gray eyes, his wild grin that cuts through his pale face from ear to ear. The barber’s blade bounces in his right hand as he practically dances and hops in front of me. “I haven’t done this in years,” the man says and then cackles. I am bound to a tree in a forest. “Where are we?” I asked. “Who the hell are you?” “You are bound to a tree in a forest,” the man said as he leaned close to my face, his breath minty. “I am who you’d like to call ‘Madness’ but that’s quite harsh of you given how little you know of me. Now I know of you and, well, since I took the mind of that precious girl you used to nail, I feel a special bond with you. Not fondness, mind you, just a bond. Like we’ve fucked or something, but with the lights off and no kissing, do you get me?” I didn’t get him, but I didn’t get myself at the moment either. “You’re fighting up there,” he said as he tapped my head, “that’s good. I like that. But save your energy, my enemy, my friend.” “What the hell do you want?” I spat out with effort. “I want to know where your friend is,” the man said. “Now you’re going to say you don’t know where he is.” “I don’t know where he is,” I said. “And that might be true, at least up here it is,” he said, tapping my forehead. “But back here,” he tapped farther back on my head, “or over here,” he tapped elsewhere, “or here,” and another spot and then just grabbed my head, “or just somewhere in there you know. Oh, do you know.” He pulled my face close to his, my arms being held back by the tree, a strain in my shoulders making me wince. “I’ll find your friend. Then I’ll take his head and remove what is mine from the stump that is his neck. Then I’ll find his friend, my enemy. And then I’ll take him to lunch, maybe we’ll go to the park, and then I think I’ll kill him slowly because that’s how I work with people like that. “You, Jack, I like you. So I won’t bother with the lunch or the park. We’ll just cut straight to the chase. Emphasis on cut. Oh, go ahead and say it.” “Like hell you will.” “Feel better now?” I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t feel a goddamn thing. “In public, Jack, right here on the street, and no one will care. Watch!” He let go of my head, stepped back and dramatically pointed to a pack of boys walking on a sidewalk in the middle of the forest. “Lads! Do you mind if I kill this man here?” They looked from him to me, seemed to consider it, then all shrugged. He turned back to me with an impossibly wider smile and hummed as he danced the barber’s blade before my face. “The Chinese used to have a method of execution called ’slow death’ or, as you probably know it better, ‘death by one thousand cuts’. The goal is to keep you alive and conscious for as many cuts as possible as I remove pieces from you. It’s quite fun and I’m sorry you’ll never be able to use it yourself, but I do envy you seeing as how I’ve never had the pleasure of being on the receiving end. Oh well, maybe one of these days. “My personal record is eight hundred and thirty seven cuts, Jack. Think you can out last that?” I thought any number of things at that moment but couldn’t act on any of them. “We already have one,” the man said, taking a finger and tracing a painful line on my face. “Where shall we go for two?” “You’re twisted.” “I’m the second coming of the first son of another Albert Weisz, but you can call me Oliver.” He followed with a cut on the shoulder. “You know what your problem is, Jack?” he said, taking a step back and sizing me up for his next strike. “You’re unoriginal. I’ve been around, my friend, and I’ve met your kind over and over and over. Hell, I’m your kind in a fashion. “The calm, cool asshole that can charm his way into anything, relies on a bit of magic or psychic mumbo to get out of fixes. I’m thinking I should wear a trenchcoat just to fit in with the archetype, feel at home in my skin and the like. I don’t think I could do the smoking, though, bad for the lungs and the like. I like breathing, keeps me fresh, keeps the mind going, you know?” A slash on my chest as if to make his point. “Oh dear, I think I went too deep with that one. I’ll tell you what,” and we were back on the street, “I’m going to tell you a little secret, you know, between you and me, since we’re so close and all, like brothers. He leans in close to my ear whispers, “Jack Crowley’s been dead for twenty years.” I tried to respond as he backed away but couldn’t. Not for a lack of words but lack of ability. I’m lying on a couch but can not move except to turn my head and see this guy sitting in a chair, looking at a clipboard, flipping through the sheets, dictating to me a history. “Young you, whoever you were before, lost and lonely, probably abused by a drunk father and abandoned by your mother, waking up to find yourself with this fantastic gift of fucking with other people’s heads. You probably first use it to have her buy you ice cream. Cookies and cream. Only they’re out of cookies and cream so you have the guy behind the counter cluck like a chicken for five minutes and then jump up on the counter and take a dump right there. You’ve having fun. “But you realize your life still sucks. Not just because you didn’t get cookies and cream but because you’re some little shit that hates himself merely because he was never loved by his parents. But there’s this guy you know, this guy who comes by once in a while to tag your mother. Smooth talker, charmer, smokes like a champ and drinks even better. “You like him. You love him. You want to be him. “So he comes over to do one to your mom and you spring your plan. “Didn’t realize stealing a mind would be so traumatizing, did you? Didn’t know who the hell you were for a while there. How did that make you feel?” “What the hell are you talking about?” He was out of the seat and kneeling on the floor next to me, his face close to mine again. “You’re not YOU! You took the memories and thoughts and suave of some son of a bitch your mom was throwing it to and made yourself him! But you forget because up here,” again he jabs my head, “you rewrote your own history! How old are you?” “Forty two.” “WRONG! You’re thirty four! Jack Crowley was eight years older than you! Don’t you get it!” I wince at a slash across my forehead, shallow but sharp, and I feel the warm on my head. “In there you’ve fucked it all up! You can’t just take minds and leave it at that, there’s a science to it, an art!” A slash down my forehead, down my nose, and I gasp. “Me, I’m a master at it. I have twenty three distinct memories and not one of them overpower the one that matters most. And no one, not you, not your little shit bossman, not his little shit friend, are going to keep me from what is mine.” The blade was at my throat and he leaned close again, glared at me with more hate than I’d seen in eyes before and I’d seen it a lot. “I’m the only Magenta the fucking Magician.” He jumped back as I moved, quickly swung out and caught the side of his face with a fist and he staggered back. I was off the couch and on him, my hands finding his throat as the world shifted again and we fell to the sidewalk. “What the fuck do you want with me?!!” “I already got it.” I punched him in the face and he laughed. “What’s so goddamn funny?” “You. Fighting so hard when you’re already dead.” I saw the blood running down my arms and to his neck. I pulled my hands away and saw the cuts, the bleeding. My shirt torn and drenched, my pants covered in what should have been inside but had been freed to pool at the ground below me. “Oh,” was all I could say as death dawned on me. And the man laughed as things just faded to black. Anthology Two Presents… “Twisted” The Sweetest Thing ipod Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge hd Beloved Infidel dvdrip
by Jason S. Kenney Leave a Reply |
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