Lethal kisses, p.4
Lethal Kisses, page 4
The press almost found him out after one dance-mix engineer decided to isolate the voice from the rest of a bootleg tape made during the Santa Monica rave, but when his wife found him dead in his home studio, word was she only played so much of the tape before setting fire to it, and the studio itself.
Even that episode did nothing to stop Edan from blowing his own horn one last time … Just as he’d predicted, I was sitting in my overpriced, too-small apartment, watching my expanding waistline in my hall closet mirror and not really caring one iota about my increasing girth, when the Express Mail package came. There wasn’t much in it, just a cassette, some photos in a plain manila envelope, and a self-taped video. No note, no last verbal jab … although once I heard that naked, raw voice on the tape, torn free of the lulling, masking overdubbed music, and thumbed the eight by ten inch black and white photos out of the envelope, I couldn’t bring myself to watch whatever it was he’d videotaped, for I knew I wasn’t nearly insane enough to live with myself after watching it. The way Edan was, or had become after his last voyage in the land of the Sirens. And before he’d turned the tables on them in memory of every other man they’d managed to kill.
I’ve since burned the photos, but removing the images from my mind isn’t as easy as licking off a tattoo the hard way. He’d kept them as they originally were for a time, long enough to photograph them. Aside from being small, delicate, they were more or less human looking. Before he flayed them, taping their voices as he did so. But only above the waist; after they finally died, and were preserved with whatever it was he used to render them glassy-hard above, it was obvious from the lone shot of the unwrapped one that he’d taken pains to keep the flesh of the legs and what was between them soft enough to keep enjoying, perhaps in honour of those who’d died before being able to enjoy them.
After all, word was that the skin cancer didn’t ruin all of his skin …
But, despite my own flabby body, and my descent into crotch shots, despite all that Westmisley did to ruin me, I’ve never needed or wanted personally to verify that rumour …
ANAMORPHOSIS
by
Caitlìn R. Kiernan
Caitlìn R. Kiernan was born near Dublin, Ireland, the year Brendan Behan died, but has lived most of her life in the southeastern US. She holds degrees in philosophy and anthropology, and has worked as a palaeontologist, a newspaper columnist, and an exotic dancer. In 1992, she began pursuing fiction writing full time. Her short stories have sold to a number of anthologies and magazines, including Book of the Dead 4, Love in Vein 2, Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium, and Sandman: Book of Dreams. Her first novel, The Five of Cups, was published in 1996. Her second novel, Silk, is forthcoming. She lives in Athens, Georgia.
Kiernan says, ‘Music is extremely important to my fiction. I absolutely cannot write in silence. And every story winds up with two or three albums that absolutely define the “exact” tone of the piece. With “Anamorphosis” it was Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral (1994), Tool’s Undertow (1993), and October Project’s self-titled début (1993). For me, that’s the “soundtrack” for this story, that particular mix of industrial discord and ambient sadness. Also, the liner artwork for The Downward Spiral was a major inspiration (Russell Mills and David Buckland), and the fairy rings got stuck in my head because of a particularly fabulous photograph that Cindy Palmano did for Tori Amos’s Under the Pink (1994).’
Deacon was walking, ragged boots slapping concrete, not even noticing cracks or a quarter someone dropped. Just keep walking, marching, letting the red shit behind his eyes bleed off with the Atlanta April heat, and what’s that Mr Eliot? Sorry, man, no lilacs, just bus fart diesel and the shitty sweet stink of kudzu. In the east, the sky had bruised down to dull indigo and there was still orange towards downtown, and Deacon, pressed in twilight.
He didn’t want to go back to his apartment, one sweaty room and a thrift store Zenith, always the same snowy channel because the knob broke off. Didn’t want to stop walking and have a beer, two beers, even though he still had the twenty Hammond had shoved into his hand when no one was looking. No way he wanted to eat. Might never want to eat again.
‘Yeah, well, Lieutenant Hammond says this one’s different,’ the greasy cop with the neck like a dead chicken had said as they climbed the fire stairs, seven flights because the elevator was busted. And the stairwell choking black because the lights must have been busted too, and Deacon had just kept his hand on the rail and followed the cop’s voice and the tattoo of his shiny policeman shoes.
This one’s different, and he almost stepped in front of a big ugly Pontiac, bondo and some paint on its shark snout the colour of pus. The horn blared and behind the wheel the driver jabbed one brown finger at heaven. And Deacon stepped back up on to the kerb, This one’s different, Deke, OK?
They had stood in the long hall, yellowy incandescence and scrubby green carpet, Hammond looking old and sick, hatchet-faced and yesterday’s stubble sandpapering his cheeks. Deacon had shaken his head, Yeah, man, whatever, didn’t know what else he was supposed to do, say, but Hammond really looked like cold turds and he’d said, almost whispered, Just be cool, man, it’s real rough in there, but just be cool.
Deacon watched the Pontiac until it turned and headed down Edgewood. The streetlights along Hilliard buzzed like giant bugs and faded on.
Hammond had opened the door and there’d been other voices inside, other cops, muttering navy shapes past the detective’s wide shoulders. The air that spilled out into the hall had been cool and smelled the way hands do after handling pennies or old keys, meat and metal, and Deacon had known that there weren’t going to be any handkerchiefs or dog-eared snapshots this time, no pacing back and forth over a weedy, glass-crunchy vacant lot where someone had said the missing husband or girlfriend or daughter had last been seen. Once Hammond had even made him hold a tongue some old lady had found in her garbage can, a dried, shrivelled tongue like beef jerky or some Viet Cong’s misplaced trophy, and Aren’t you getting anything, Deke? but this one was going to be different.
Just stay cool, Deke.
He was alone on the street now, except for the sound of cars on other roads and low voices through the opened door of a bar with its rusty sign that read Parliament Club, Ladies Always Welcome. Deacon walked on past the bar, dark in there, little pools of neon and someone laughed, deep and threatening enough that he didn’t turn his head to look.
Hammond had looked at him one more time, apologetic, before they’d stepped through the unnumbered door and Deacon had slipped, skidded and would have gone down on his ass if chicken neck hadn’t been back there, caught him under the arms. Christ, man, what the, but by then he could see for himself. The carpet had ended at the threshold and the floor was just hardwood and something on it that looked like Karo syrup. Except that it wasn’t, and What the hell, Hammond. I don’t need this kind of shit. But the door had clicked shut behind them, safety bar snug down across his lap and the rickety little train was already rattling into the fun house.
The apartment had been bigger than his, cavernous studio and a kitchen off to one side, a hallway that probably led to a bedroom. One wall entirely of dirty awning windows, hand-cranked open, like that was gonna help the smell. He’d wanted to cross the room and stand there, stare out at the city rooftops and catch mouthfuls of clean air, not look at the syrupy maroon floors or the brighter smears down the plaster walls. But instead he had just stood there, staring, tasting the acid ghost of the diner eggs and hash browns from breakfast hanging at the back of his throat and waiting for Hammond to say something, anything that would make sense of this.
You OK, Deke? I know, Christ I know, man, but …
Deacon had done his hangover morning counting trick, backwards from twenty-five, and the room, impossible Jackson Pollock nightmare, shreds and things hanging, ugly things, draped from furniture and lampshades. Disembowelled sofa cushions and crisp slivers of shattered glass.
Just tell me if you feel anything, anything at all.
I feel sick. And he’d gagged, covered his mouth with the back of his hand.
Hammond’s frown had deepened, careless thumb gouges in wet clay, and to chicken neck, Cummins, why don’t you see if you can find Mr Silvey a glass of water, and Deacon had raised one hand and shook his head to stop Cummins, hadn’t dared open his mouth again to speak. Breakfast and bitter bile tang and the room, getting in past clenched lips, slipping through his nostrils.
Deacon had closed his eyes, swallowed, and when he opened them it had all still been there, and Hammond, running fingers through his thinning hair.
He looked up from the sidewalk, disoriented, no street signs in sight and for a moment the buildings, the billboards, meant nothing. And the slippery certainty that if this amnesia could be generalised, made complete, but then the world tilted back; vicious recognition, a derelict beauty salon, windows and door plywood scabbed and bandaged with movie ads and election bullshit. Almost full dark, and there were better neighbourhoods.
What do you want me to do? as he’d taken one step towards the centre of the room, the gutted sofa and belly-up coffee table, shoes smacking like cola-sticky theatre floors.
Anything you got, Deke, as he’d lit a cigarette, one of his stinking menthol Kools, exhaled grey-white smoke, and even that hadn’t disguised the red smell. Do that voodoo you do, and to chicken-necked Cummins, lingering somewhere too close, I want to know the second forensics shows up down there, you understand, the absolute second.
Deacon had looked up at the high ceilings, just bare concrete and exposed plumbing, hovering fluorescent fixtures on taut chains. Jagged butt-ends of shattered tubes. And ropy garland loops dripping thick blood and shitty spatterings below. The video tape, glossy brown in the morning sun and shadows, had reached down to the floor like streamers.
Who was this, Hammond?
He hadn’t felt the breeze through the open windows, but the lights had swayed a little, rust creak and whine, and the tape had rustled like dead leaves.
Small-time porn operator, and the detective had sucked at his cigarette, guy named Grambs. Pause as the smoke whistled out of him and Hammond had inhaled loudly, chewed at his lower lip; eyes cloudy with the familiar indecision that Deacon knew meant he was weighing how much to say.
Anyway, looks like Mr Grambs had bigger enemies than us, so that was all he was getting today, but really Deacon hadn’t given a shit. His head had begun to throb, rubber band winding itself up at the base of his skull and dull sinus burn. And hadn’t he read something somewhere about poison fumes from broken fluorescent bulbs? Mercury gas. Neuro-toxins. Mad as a fucking hatter.
Deacon sat down on the metal bench inside the plexiglass bus shelter, alone, and here the tubes were shielded behind dirty plastic and hummed like a drowsy memory of wasps, electrons danced and he blinked in the ugly, greenish light.
I don’t want this one, he’d said to the detective, but that had been later, after he’d stepped over or around crimson rags and the expensive-looking chair toppled over on its side, after he’d noticed all the mean little gouges in the dark wood. And there behind the sofa, hiding in plain sight, such perfect circumference, an architect’s anal retentive circle traced in tattle-tale grey and argent feathers, eggshell, sharp teeth and the pencil shafts of small, bleached bones. And the mushroom clumps, fishbelly toadstools and fleshy orange caps, sprouting from the varnished floor.
Maybe five feet across, and nothing inside except the fat pinkish slug of the penis, the scrotal lump, a crinkly bit of blond pubic hair.
Slow seconds had passed, time seep, and no sound but a garbage truck loud down on the street and the Cellophane crackle of a police walkie-talkie.
I don’t want this one, Hammond. Go find yourself another head monkey, but maybe he hadn’t said the words aloud, because no one had seemed to hear and his mouth had been so dry, tongue and palate snagging at each other like worn-out Velcro.
In the bus stop, Deacon closed his eyes, shut out the shitty light and the translucent reflection of himself in the plexiglass, tried to swallow, and his throat felt twice as dry as it had in the dead man’s apartment. But, hey kiddies, we got a cure for that, yes sir, that’s something we can most definitely fix.
Hammond had been suddenly swearing at everyone then, for not having seen, for not being able to find their navy blue assholes with a flashlight and a roll of Charmin, and Deacon had sat down on the edge of the sofa, not minding the stains, the wet that had soaked right through his threadbare jeans.
Nobody fuckin’ touch it! Hammond had growled. Don’t even fuckin’ breathe on it! He’d shouted for Cummins, but Cummins had already been talking, had stopped and started over again.
Forensics is downstairs, sir. They’re probably already on their way …
But Hammond had interrupted, Take Mr Silvey out the way you brought him in, and then, If I need to talk, Deke, I want to be able to find you; he hadn’t taken his eyes off the thing on the floor, the thing within a thing. And he’d pushed the palm-sweaty, crumpled bill into Deacon’s hand.
And try to stay half-way sober.
Then Cummins had led him back across the room to the door, ride over, this way, please, and watch your step, hadn’t said a word as they’d followed the darkened spiral of the stairwell back down to the sun-bright street.
Deacon had the job at the laundromat thanks to Hammond, and Tuesdays and Thursdays and weekends he sat on the wobbly bar stool behind the counter, watched street lunatics and traffic through the fly-specked windows. Read the paperbacks he picked up at the Salvation Army or Goodwill for a quarter apiece and tried to ignore the incessant drone of washers and dryers. Just make sure no one steals anything or writes on the walls or craps on the floor. Sometimes the machine that sold detergent and bleach would break down, or one of the Maytags would stop running and he’d have to make an out-of-order sign, red magic marker on ripped-up Tide boxes or pages torn from the phone book.
Late Saturday morning, and the hangover had faded to the dimmest brown pulse of pain in his head, but things could be worse, he thought, the handy credo of the damned, but true nonetheless. The laundromat could have been full of the fat ladies in their dust-stained pink house shoes, every drier roaring, tumbling loads of towels and boxer shorts like cotton blend agates. The hangover could have had a little more backbone, could have done the dead soldiers proud.
There was a Ben Bova space opera beneath the counter, and a coverless collection of Faulkner short stories, but the eleven-thirty sun hurt his eyes too much for reading. Deacon pushed his sunglasses tight against his face, sipped at a warming 7-Up.
When the pay phone began to ring, he moaned, glared through his tinted drugstore lenses at the shrill metal box stuck up below the sign that read ‘The Management Assumes No Responsibility …’ Thought about slipping out until it stopped, maybe going across the street for a fresh soda. Or perhaps he could just stay put and stare the fucker down.
Fifth ring, and the only customer in the laundromat, a Cuban girl in overalls and a Braves cap, looked at him. ‘You gonna get your phone,’ she said, not quite a question and before he could answer it rang again. She shook her head and went back to her magazine.
Deacon lifted the receiver half way through the next ring, held the cool plastic to his ear.
‘Yeah,’ he said, and realised that he was actually sweating, had all but crossed his fingers.
‘Jesus, Deke. Does Henessy know you answer his phone like that?’ The detective’s voice was too big, too friendly; behind Hammond, Deacon could hear the station house mutter, the clatter of tongues and typewriter keys.
‘Hey,’ and Deacon wanted to sit down, knew that the cord wasn’t long enough for him to reach his stool. He leaned against the wall, tried not to notice that the Cuban girl was watching him.
‘We gotta talk, bubba,’ Hammond said, and Deacon could hear him lighting a cigarette, hear the smoke exhaled and hanging thick around the detective’s head.
‘I think,’ pause, and so quick then that the words seemed to come from someone else, ‘I think I’m gonna sit this one out. Yeah, man, I think I’d rather sit this one out.’
Heavy silence pushing through the phone and a woman’s faint laughter, Deacon’s heart and sweat and the dark eyes of the girl across the laundromat. And when Hammond spoke again, his voice had lost its big, crayon-yellow sun cheeriness.
‘I thought we had an understanding, Deke,’ then more silence, skilfully measured and strung like glinting loops of razor wire against his resolve. And he wanted to ask when there’d ever been an understanding, what Hammond could possibly think he understood, how much understanding you could buy for the odd twenty bucks and this shitty job.
Instead, he stared back at the Cuban girl, waited for the silence to end.
‘Well look. I don’t want to get into this over the phone, bubba, so how about we get together after your shift, somewhere we can talk.’
The girl looked away and Deacon closed his eyes, focused on the not-quite dark, the after-images swimming there like phosphorescent fish.
