Untitled Novel: Chapter One. Feedback Please. (MATURE CONTENT 18+)

hapter One



She walked right through the door on grasshopper legs, jeans pulled drum-skin tight and stale breath of burning animal flesh. “God” I thought, “What a dreamer”. She moved like December. Stiff, cold; makes your cheeks red and teeth chatter. My hands gripped the desk and beads of sweat soaked through my sleeve. She let in smoke from the street; came in with a black cloud, face grey as junk and yellow grease under the lids, lipstick stroke and mustard gas perfume. I coughed up a big, black chunk and spat it in the rusty corner can. I had gotten Sick on the air and had a dry throat. Her barbed wire hair had turned silver in the snow.
“Hide me.” All she said.
I showed her a broom closet filled with coffee stains and shredded newspaper and she scampered inside. Insect agility and mad, human fear turned her into a mist. A tear along the ass of her jeans snapped me back to life, broke the coma. Feet were outside, Running feet, Searching feet. I closed the door and opened a duct tape window to let the exhaust out, only let more in. Sat back down, wondering what in the hell had died in the back lot making that putrid stench. Trash cans were being thrown against concrete outside, melding with the cacophony of heated shouts.
“Find that cunt!”
“Come on out, purdy thhaaannnggg”
Damn creatures. Soon they were gone. The room was silent except for a tick, tick ticking. Must’ve been the clock. Goddamn that smell. I tapped an old coffee cup against the edge of the wooden plank, “Welcome Home” on the side. Picture of the city, except all Mayberry and cheer. Made me smile every time. Unscrewed a Vodka and told the bitch to get out of my closet.
She came out all trembling and fragile when I noticed that face. Ashtray eyes and a white scar below the lip. She would wither away any day now, made a personal note to be around when that went down. The cheap perfume stung my nostrils and gave me redeye. Lit up a smoke and offered her one. Nervous skeleton hands reached into the pack and rattled the cellophane.
“What’s the name, sugar?”
“Rose.”
We sat for a few moments in suicide silence. Me blowing rings and her ashing on the carpet, biting those big lips till her yellow teeth were orange with makeup. Finally:
“Who were those fellows out front?”
“Who?”
“The men you were hiding from.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“Of course.” I said. Typical big city. Everyone is a stranger. The big employers at the top of the dump are just as mystical, elusive and therefore, threatening as the stranger following your shadow on the streets. Just a mechanical parade of walking mannequins, phantom masks revealing nothing but dead eyes and defeat, submitted to the desires of the green fungus.
She kept shaking but eyes stayed tearless. The iron young thing was familiar with death. One needed to be. Life is out of context without death. Dogs outside snarled and barked over the spoils of overturned trash cans.
“Have a drink.”
I pulled a dusty glass from the pencil drawer and polished it on my tie, tossed it to my right hand and pushed it to her corner of the desk.
“Thanks.”
Rose ignored the glass and sucked at the bottle, painting the mouth red. What an angel. Fallen one to. The best breed. Straight from the belly of the old, coughing beast. I stared the nasty bulge through slits in the duct tape window and tipped the bottle in loyal salute.
“Where you from honey?”
“Here, born and raised.”
I had known that when she walked in, all frantic and wild. Been near the swamp long enough to know what kind of creatures lived there. I had asked to kill the quiet. It always makes me uneasy. She was corpse stiff. Maybe I wasn’t using the right code. Tried something else.
“I like your ass.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
I didn’t piss her off at least. Just looked away, hiding those ashtray eyes. “What the hell” I thought. I reached back into the pencil drawer and pulled out a Desert Eagle .50 . Cold, polished steel sparkled in the lamp like bones in the sun. She must of smelled the oil because she Spun around with new color in those high cheekbones. Didn’t say a word, just watched me as I slipped a mag in and leveled it at her face. Going to get my kicks one way or the other.
“I presume you two have met before.”
“Who?” She acted casual, though I could see panic in her eyes. The ashtray was lit up in a prosthetic movie sunset. What a woman.
“You and death.”
I didn’t give her a moment to respond. Put a round through those cracked lips. Blasted brain matter and hair all over the cell. Head vanished and replaced by a mass of sticky flesh and skull particles. The dogs outside stopped barking. The city recoiled in what the untrained senses would believe is terror, though I knew better. The city wasn’t startled, just drinking in the pleasure. Letting the electricity hit the brain. Like a C rush; when you suck in and fall back, stare at the ceiling, the beast was savoring the flavor. Slowly, somewhere out there in the smog and dust, big rusty gears began to twist and creak again, moaning like undead lovers under the blood soaked moon. The dogs continued barking and one yelped.
“Survival of the fittest” I said, wiping lipstick from the Vodka with my sleeve.

Somewhere in the maw of the twisted, death apparatus, pinball machines rang and beer bottles shattered. Neon signs flickered through the smoke and ruckus casting down blues and reds on sidewalk puddles. An elderly man walked by dragging a stained trench coat begging the crowds for loose change. They staggered on, leaning on each other like inanimate, drunken cross ties. It was clearly Saturday, the big paycheck cash-in, a weeks worth of drinks on me.
Toby Darwin glanced at a gold watch and battled his way through the crowd. Someone yelled “Watch it!” and threw an elbow, knocking a broad over and onto the bricks. She exploded into mad, drunken laughter and the rain painted black streaks of mascara on her cheeks. Toby left the monkeys behind and cut across the parking lot, headed for a bar painted black with a neon sign that said “The Boiler Room”. A car alarm went off somewhere followed by a series of shotgun blasts, echoing through the steel tower canyons. What a night to be alive.
A big fellow in a grey tweed suit and old school bowler hat stood by the door. Toby pulled back his sleeve, showing a great purple scar that ran the length of his forearm. Tweed moved aside and let him in.
Inside was morgue still. A few shady characters had taken seats in the shadows. There was one man at the bar. Toby sat next to him and ordered a draft and pulled out a roll of quarters to pay.
The fellow in the next seat was covered in tight, black leather, head to toe. A ring in the suit exposed a face and forehead with a big steel plate, sewn on with wire. Rumor had it a factory explosion had cost him most of his left lobe. An expansive and ultimately pointless period in rehab facilities and mental institutions convinced the prick that he had nothing to loose and he began to climb down the ladder, into the bowels of the big bleeding monster. He found relatable freaks and discarded creatures, looking to vent on an unsuspecting world. He found the city, and dug into its guts, all the way to the SCREWs. Wasp had found that he fit in well amongst the rest of the crawling, biting insects. The drink finally arrived and the man turned to Toby. He had a high, rusty door-hinge whine and fought with words, sometimes dragging them out too long.
“What you waaaaaannnnntttttt?”
Toby shivered. The voice always turned him into needles.
“Just the usual.”
“I don’t knoowwwwww who you aaarrrrreeeeeee.”
“Wasp, its me. Toby. We are in the same club, man.”
Toby had expected this. Wasp had almost no memory. The leather nightmare slowly grinned and his eyes caught fire. Rows of yellow shark teeth reflected the glow outside.
“Show me your scaarrrrrrr.”
Reluctantly, Toby pulled up his sleeve. The throbbing scar ran wrist to who knows where. Wasp’s lizard eyes ran hungrily up and down his arm. Dragged his tongue across those pointy teeth and Toby felt the pins again. Finally, Wasp turned his face away, satisfied.
“Fifteeeennn dollars.”
“I know the price.”
“Hooowwww do you knnoooowwwww?”
Toby took a swig and dug into his coat, pulled out a greasy twenty and shoved it into those cold, leather hands.
“Keep the change.”
Wasp already had the vial ready. It seemed like the thing could only move fast when nobody was looking. Toby grabbed it and downed the beer, got up and walked to the door.
“What a fucking creep.”

Henry was a clown at Bernard’s Carnival who was assigned to operating the Ferris wheel while picking up Coke cans and keeping the rats out of the machinery on the side. Tonight was dead. There were no children, just a crazy handful of meth-heads who jumped and screamed into the suffocating haze. The bastards kept wanting to get back on the wheel. With a frown, Henry threw the switch again. Half the lights on the wheel were out, and the other half flickered. Candy wrappers and popcorn bags littered the pavement. The glow of the game stands seemed to wither and fade into the vacant lot’s abyss. Music slithered from a broken box and came out whiny and flat. Henry scanned the desolate battlefield with cold resentment. At a little over six bucks an hour, no one said you had to enjoy it.
The meth-heads clambered off the wheel again making as much noise as humanly possible, said something about cotton candy and took off. Mad laughter shrank under the darkness as they disappeared. Quiet again, aside from that goddamn music.
Henry rubbed his nose, smearing red and white makeup in horizontal streaks across his face and tore off his sweat-drenched wig, revealing a mass of tangled, black hair. He had to take a shit. Henry went behind one of the trailers, stumbled over something on his way back and hit his face on the concrete. “Fuck!” His scream should have echoed, but died somewhere in the stale, tomblike atmosphere between his mouth and the wall of austere skyscrapers. He got on one knee and spat, looking for blood. None in his spit, but the dim Ferris wheel lights caught some that had been there already. A puddle. Big one. And he was kneeling in the shit. “Fuck!” again. Got up and tried to slap the sticky mess from his pant legs. Ended up smearing it around a bit and getting it on his hands. Some had gotten on his face and melted in with the red makeup. Henry couldn’t see the shit, but sure could smell it. Nothing like the sick, metallic rancor of spoiled blood.
Henry walked back to the trailer cursing and wiping his hands on the ass of his coveralls, came back a couple of minutes later with a flashlight and crowbar. Scanned the mess and quickly found the body, shoved up against a stack of ripped trash bags and dirty towels next to one of the outer trailers. Henry identified the remains of what he had tripped over. A stiff, severed arm. The corpse was shredded and covered with flies. Bits of skin scattered like leaves in the hot exhaust updrafts. The arms and legs had been chewed on by something big.
Henry spat and turned for the trailers again, tossed the crowbar, found a pay phone bolted to a busted parking meter and dialed 911. A recorded voice answered. “This number is no (static) in servi(static) please (static)”. Henry let the phone dangle on the line and surveyed the Carnival. Where the hell was everybody? Something animal snarled off in the darkness.
The meth-heads came back, laughing raucously and headed for the wheel again. Henry rolled his eyes and walked to his post, threw the switch before they had all gotten on and one grabbed a rail, screaming bloody murder as the gears rotate, lifting his skinny, flailing body into the smog. Laughter erupted from the others and Henry smiled, syrup blood mingling with the clown makeup and dripping from his cheeks.

During her six years as a nurse, Dandelion had developed a strong stomach, so she had no problem hacking dead corpses to shreds. The autopsy crew found themselves shorthanded this year and Dandelion was promoted. Apparently, they needed someone with balls.
On the slab tonight was a dead male, age approximately 35. GSW through the cranium from a .357 magnum. Probably done from a standing position while the victim lay facedown, judging from the bits of tar stuck in the remains of his mangled face. Mafia execution style. This guy was in deep shit. It was the last stiff of the night.
The rest of the crew was on smoke break outside and making noise. Dandelion could hear them laughing and wheeling a gurney around. Dammed morons. She walked into the lab alone, grabbed a bloodstained butcher’s smock and draped it over her scrubs. Dandelion was dog tired and ready to go home; there was no time for proper procedures.
She threw the cover off the body and immediately wondered what the fuck he was doing down here. This was an obvious dirt bag. Rags for clothes and bad tattoos covered the blue and mottled body. They usually don’t send the vagabonds to the lab, otherwise, Black Forest Hospital would soon find their placid, reeking halls and cubicle cells overflowing with black body bags stacked ceiling high, which might be bad for business. Maybe she should read the chart, but that would take time. Why bother? Just slice the motherfucker up and get it done with. There was a bottle of wine and a bubble bath waiting at home.
She put on yellow latex gloves and grabbed scissors, cut his shirt off and immediately noticed the scar. One big purple cavern ran from sternum to crotch, shoulder to shoulder, like a great, putrid, purple crucifix. A loud crash rang outside and somebody started screaming, then laughing. One of the guys had probably fallen off the gurney. Stupid kids.
Dandelion grabbed a towel from the sink and a scalpel from the tray without sanitizing. What was the point? The guy is dead. She leaned over the body and hastily ran the blade along the length and width of the cross, swabbing up the mess of thick, dead blood with the towel. After a brief moment of sawing and sponging, Dandelion pulled the purple skin back like a book and dropped the blade. She stood in shock for a moment and rushed to the intercom. “Dr. Longshanks to autopsy lab. Quick.”

Gordon had her on her back and was ramming it up her ass. Fast. No mercy. The whore squealed each time he would dig in deep. He grabbed a handful of blonde hair and pumped another devastating 15 or 20 strokes and came inside her. He rolled off and sat on the edge of the mattress, fat white belly sticking out and over his knees. Gordon grabbed a pack of Camels from the bed stand. The girl was crying.
“Get the fuck out of here!” He screamed.
Through sobs: “C-C-Can’t I have another hit?”
“Absolutely not. No need wasting more of my shit on a fucking hooker. Get out before I drag you out by your hair!”
Gordon spat when he spoke and ground his yellow teeth together to fill the spaces of silence.
Sobbing, she quickly gathered up her stuff and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her dancing, perfect ass. Gordon laughed. A dry and mechanical hack that ended in a series of gut wrenching rattles and wheezes.
Lighting a cigarette, Gordon stared out the ceiling high penthouse window and over the flickering city lights, quivering in the invisible exhaust fumes rising from the streets and factories into the black sewage sky. The hard lines on his scarred face softened and something like a twisted smile grew out of a permanent scowl. Somewhere on the streets, a good 15 stories down a woman was screaming, leaking through the window seal in a ghoulish whisper.
Gordon ashed on the heap of blankets to his left and after a laborious effort, stood, pulling his boxer shorts on. He picked a black wallet out of his jeans and slid a fifty under the bathroom door. Walked over to the living room bar by the fireplace and uncorked a bottle of Sandrone Barolo Cannubi Boschis, 1990. Took a irreverent swig of the shit and started cutting the coke with an ace of spades. Six ounces were splayed across the marble coffee table like mounds of winter diamonds. Governor Gordon dove and took a hit, no straw, painting his nose white. Danced over to the desk and sat down on a redwood throne, decorated with shrunken heads and silver crosses, spray-painted black.
The hooker came out, wearing a leather skirt and an ebony, alligator skin top. She looked like hell. Makeup and tear scars scratched her cheeks.
“Leave.” Gordon pointed a purple, worm finger towards the door. She looked at the white mountains on the table and gave a final, desperate sob. Turned on her heel and ran out the door, shaking her head.
“Cant get a goddamn thing done with that bitch hanging around.” Gordon thumbed idly through a stack of crumbled papers on the desk in front of him. Newspaper clippings and a random stash of dossiers. The newspapers all related in some way to the SCREWs. Riots, bomb-threats, burglaries, mass suicides. A real nasty crew. Gordon’s permanent scowl grew darker and sharper with each cascading image of black and white, money sucking madness.
After a couple of minuets of crackling paper and gritting teeth, a rare moment came where silence actually conquered the penthouse of the Godhead Hotel. Something had caught Gordon’s eye. A name. Rodney Striker. Gun for hire. Age thirty six and a phone number. Who had put this on his desk? Stapled to the dossier was a black and white photo of a demon. A man with no eyes. Just black pits than ran clear back to the skull. No nose either. Two vertical slits were one should have been. Skin drawn tight around the mouth, broken teeth bared in a phantom grimace. Burn scars had turned the skin to a sticky mass of boiling lava. Gordon’s face grew sharper with what could have been fear, but was more likely an anomalous cocktail of iconic loathing. Competition. He could sense it. He always had. Now he had a face to put to it. Why else would this be on his desk? He tore the photo from the staple and flipped it over. Another name, scribbled in ink. Drill.
Gordon ran an index finger across the forehead of one of the grinning, shrunken heads. Picked up a gold plated phone and dialed Rodney Striker.

Fluorescent lights flickered on brown, stained tiles. The narrow hallway stretched and vanished in a distant focal point between two walls littered with broken PVC bones and methane stink. Catacomb silent, except for the constant dripping of a busted pipe and the menacing buzz of convulsing electrical currents. Pravus rubbed his arm and shivered in the freezing cold. The tile was covered with frost that burned his bare feet as if he were walking on coals. Came to a door on the left and the lights in the hall went out. Spun around in panic and clawed at the knob, finally turned it and swung the door open. Damn thing creaked so loud it echoed through the empty hallways, quickly raising to a deafening crescendo of sickening shrieks that lasted for what seemed an eternity.
Inside the cell, one of the two mattresses was already occupied. A young man with a beard and bald patches was twisting and shaking in nightmares, bathed in yellow streetlight that came flooding in through the bulletproof glass. Heroin withdrawals are a bitch. Pravus shuddered and quietly slunk to his side of the room.
Sitting silently upright on the edge of his mattress and rubbing arms, Pravus watched the city through the smeared windows.
A voice, from somewhere in the shadowed corners:
“You know they are coming.”
Pravus looked over to the other bed. The man was still shifting on the protesting mattress, but asleep. The voice wasn’t his, but Pravus had already known that. It was just something he could never get use to.
“You know that they are near.”
“Yes.” Pravus whispered, tears swelling in his weary eyes. “I know.”
The voice rose from the shadows and to the ceiling, louder and vibrating the cell. The other man coughed and suddenly fell still.
“You must get out. Must find a way. You know what they will do.”
“Where would I go?”
“Search for the cross.”
Pravus looked up. Something new. He hadn’t heard this before.
“The cross?”
“Look for the cross.”
Footsteps down the hall. Heavy footsteps. Pravus tucked his head between his knees and fought back tears.
“God no. Please help me.”

Jack Freeman did an enthusiastic tango in the hot, sticky alleyway. One drawn out slide and a quick jerk. Stop. Start again. Flames licked the night sky behind his flailing profile but somehow looked muffled and dull quivering through the thick fumes. A gas station was going to be a smoldering pile of cinders within a couple of hours. Stupid fucking prick at the desk should have kept his trap shut. Said something cute about Freeman’s bad eye. The one sewn shut due to a rough childhood and a broken bottleneck. Jack had jumped over the counter, strangled the bastard with a telephone chord, poured some 5W-30 over the fresh corpse and lit a match.
Jack lost interest in dancing and sporadically burst into a silent sprint down the remainder alleyway and onto Wolf Street. Took a left and headed towards the complexes. Time to get down to business. Stopped under a street sign at a lonely, unlit corner, decorated by a solitary steel mesh trash can. Scanned the dying street and took a drag from a cigarette. Stood like that for damn well near an hour. Finally, the lights in 234 went out.
It was a dump. Paint peeled from the frame, showing a black, water damaged skeleton. There was no car in the driveway. A shopping cart with three wheels, loaded with trash. Far off to Jacks left a child’s scream sliced through the so-called air followed by a thud and old man’s laughter. Came through the warped walls of a house similar to 234, only painted yellow. Jack emitted a hoarse giggle and skipped across the street. He loved this neighborhood. The projects really were the heart of the beast, the bleeding underbelly of the horrible machine, the cancerous marrow that kept the yellow bones alive. And they had no idea. Besides, it was always likely that these people had guns.
Jack tittered as he hopped onto the porch in front of the torn screen door of 234. Subtlety wouldn’t be necessary this time. Freeman couldn’t keep his hands from trembling as adrenaline pumped through his cold mechanisms. It would be a blind rush as soon as the door was opened, so Jack savored the tension. Grinned from ear to ear and looked up to the sky. Screamed in ecstasy and scared a family of rats from under the shattered porch who skittered off into the darkness. Rolled up the sleeves of his charred sweater, revealing arm-length scars, sprouting from the wrists like two leave-less, purple trees. Time to begin.
Shoulder first, Jack shattered the screen and flimsy plywood door with ease. Burst into the dark house, nearly tripping over a duct-tape couch littered with bottles of Bourbon and headed for the kitchen to his left. Quickly found a steak knife among the piles of soiled dishes and headed for the back, where the bedrooms probably were. Dodged an open closet door and tore down the hallway. Met a man rushing from a right doorway, midway with a shotgun. Jack was close enough he could smell the stagnant breath above the ambiance of cigarettes and old booze. Could’ve flayed him with a knife but hung back. Make things exciting.
Jack jumped straight backwards into the living room and rolled over the duct-tape couch just as a shotgun blast disintegrated a TV set into a nebula of diamonds and molten plastic. Another one pounded through the couch, shooting springs, splinters and stuffing that caught Jack’s left ear. Squealing in a Sadomasochist shriek, Jack surged into the air, over the couch and into the hallway, mad with adrenaline and waving the knife.
The man in the hall froze in panic and fumbled with two more shells until Jack reached him and drove the steak knife into his stomach. Paused and yanked it up to his sternum. Hot blood spilt onto his bare arms and splashed in a pile of intestines onto the brown carpet. The man’s face was still froze with terror. Spat crimson onto Jack’s face and collapsed. Freeman giggled and began to tango in the quickly accumulating cocktail of blood and grey guts. One drawn out slide, and a quick step. Stop. Squish. Splatter.