rev0

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

I don’t remember when we found her. There still are so many kids who come through here that the names, faces, and secret origins start to blur. I will remember her always as the filthiest girl I’d ever seen. She showed up covered in dirt and grime head to toe like someone was using her to clean the factory’s chimneys. She always wore her hood up. Her dark eyes were looking everywhere — she looked a lot like a cornered cat always looking for the escape route.

Her name was Shee.

I don’t know how we knew her name. She never talked. Ever. Least not while she stayed with us. Someone told me her name. That person learned if from the person before. She responded to it, rarely looking you in the eye, but nodding, shrugging, shaking her head, always giving some sort of signal that she’d heard what you’d said to her.

This was back when we were living in the Henry Factory. They used to make adhesives or some sort of flooring. No one came near the place. The neighborhood at the edges of the property was latino — good people living in a shitty place. There was probably about twenty of us living in the huge ass building at any given time. We would crash in the offices making our way out into the city proper to scavenge as best we could. Beyond the core twenty, there was always at least five wayfarers who would just be passing through. We tried to treat people as we would want to be treated. What the fuck did we know — we were just kids!

Shee was maybe fourteen or fifteen. Very young. We thought she was latino until she cleaned up then we saw that she was East Indian. One of the other girls, Ling, started called her Shee the Goddess because honestly she was that fucking beautiful. If Shee was embarrassed or proud or anything from that attention, she never showed it. There was talk that maybe she was dumb and mute, but one look into her big brown flashing eyes revealed that she was way fucking smarter than the lot of us put together.

Shee earned her keep. She brought back cans of food, fresh vegetables, and even cereal once in a while. We would ask where she got it. She never responded. She just took her equal cut and sat down with the rest of us to feast. Because of her, things were really good for like a month (which honestly is an unheard of period of joy for us).

One day she showed up with a bony big black dog.

She smiled at all of us and waved at the dog. The dog barked at the hand gesture and proceeded to lick on Shee’s hand. “What are you going to name him?”

Shee shook her head.

“No name?”

Shee shook her head again, took a step back to stand beside the dog, bent her legs a little, and then pointed under the dog at the animal’s crotch. She smiled (we’d never seen her smile — not like this) and put up her index finger, wagged it, and then retracted it.

“Doggie is a girl?”

Shee nodded.

“And still no name?”

Shee shrugged and proceeded to open a bag containing her findings. The dog got some food. We were all happy. That’s how we got the dog.

One day we were out, four of us — Shee, Lane, Dog, and myself — coming back from the city with a meager haul of food and a bit of copper wire. That’s when we had our only run-in with our neighbors — a group of young fucks, runaways like ourselves, who wanted someone to hassle.

“That’s our dog,” one of them said — the tallest, a boy of maybe seventeen years with a shaved head and a really shitty blob of a tattoo over his right eye.

The dog growled sensing that she was the center of attention.

Shee put a hand to the dogs ear and entered a crouch.

I’m not a fighter. Lane was the laziest son of a bitch I’d ever met. There were three of them and three of us (plus a dog). We couldn’t fight. Not here. Not now. Probably not ever.

Shee took a step forward. It was a bitch her not being able to talk. She was maybe five foot two but she stood there like she was eleven feet of pure violence. She shook her head, always covered up with a ratty black hood, her eyes dark and angry.

“Oh yeah, sweetheart. That’s our dog,” said a second man.

There was rustling around us. We were in an alleyway between two abandoned cheap-ass corrugated tin warehouses. The crunch to one side of us was four more of these kids arriving from around the corner. This bunch looked young — maybe even younger than Shee with one scrawny kid lucky to be twelve years old.

Fuck.

Shee shook her head no again, and then she balled her fists in preparation for a fight. The dog growled now continuously.

“It doesn’t have to be this way — we didn’t have to fucking kill you shits. Just hand over the fucking dog.”

“Shee,” I said. Fuck I didn’t know what to do. My asshole was clenched and cold from terror. “There are too many of them. We should just give them what they want. So they don’t hurt us.” And when I said us — I motioned at Lane and myself and then finally, after perhaps a pause too long, at her.

Her eyes were dark. I’ve never seen anyone so angry. That cold clenched asshole of mine? Froze shut and then imploded.

I gave her my best puppy dog pleading eyes.

She dropped her head, clenched her fists, and then twirled to face the three.

“What’s it going to be tough girl?” said the leader mocking Shee. The other two laughed. “Are we going to have to fuck up you pussy friends or are we going to get the dog?”

Shee turned to look at the dog, still scrawny, dirty brown black, but tail wagging. She dropped down to one knee and nuzzled her face against the dogs side and ear. I swear she whispered something to that dog — despite all that we thought about her.

Then she stood, glared at the three. The leader took a half step back. She waved her scrawny arm and the dog walked towards the three.

She walked towards us. I thought she was going to beat us. Her lip quivered. Her eyes were boring into my own. “I… I… I’m sorry…” I said stammering and shuffling back away from her.

Lane was already turned and walking away from the whole scene cutting a wide arc around the remaining four shitbags.

Then Shee raised her hand to her mouth. She put her fingers into her mouth. A shrill whistle sounded. Behind her a dog barked, growled, and then attacked. Shee was right behind the dog. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.

Lane and I started running. I kept stopping. I heard dog ferocious dog barks and the screams of the boys. “Shee!” I yelled once. Twice. Fuck this. The sounds were more terrifying even than the look in her eyes. The screams were shrill and terrified. None were of a little girl. No yelps of pain from the dog.

We ran all the way back to the warehouse. We burst through the side door and propped it closed behind us. Lazy Lane even moved some rotting wooden crate over to the door as an extra block.

Some of the others saw the look on our faces and asked us what had happened. We never answered beyond saying “trouble” and pushed everyone to a good escape point in the rear of the warehouse.

About an hour later, there was the clank of a door opening and the sound of footsteps and another click click click beside that.

We motioned for everyone to stay hidden in the shadows.

There into the light of the center of the main warehouse room stepped Shee — completely intact, hood back revealing scars and a shaved skull now splattered with what at first looked like black paint.

Beside her was her mangy dog looking up at her adoringly.

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

Naked prostrate on an unheated cement floor face boring down targeting the Earth’s core. Slender neck twisted and shaved head shadowed with returning growth. Long bony gray limbs splayed in all directions like an impact victim — a jumper from the 50th floor. Yet her chest rose and fell with regularity.

The nurse looked in through the window. This girl she hated. It went against all of her training and even against the years that she’d put in here. The other nurses came and went. Most couldn’t hack it here — the extreme issues of the patients were too much for even the most dedicated staffers. She was different showing up for her work thinking only that someone had to do it.

What was it about this girl? Others were violent. This girl was most definitely violent even sedated she was strong and fast. Nurse Patience adjusted her white jacket, patted at the vial of sedative in her front breast pocket. She was a big girl, Nurse Patience, wide not tall. She was strong though. She’d tossed a few junkie madmen around in her time. This girl though, the girl in room eleven, she was stronger than was natural.

One of the staff doctors had no explanation for it. She’d never seen it, she’d said. Her words stunk of a different meaning — she wanted to get the hell out of the asylum (rehabilitation center). She humored Nurse Patience in giving the answer. She was young — she couldn’t imagine why Patience had stayed so long unless she was just as defective as the people that they were all trying to help. She never found any proof of that. She left the hospital and the field of medicine less than a year later.

Yes, strong. So very strong. Even now the girl was unmoving on the floor.

“You ready now, Nurse Patience,” said Marko, an immigrant from Serbia who was working his way through college after being cast out of his family. He was built like Patience, low, squat, and powerful. He clenched his fists in front of himself unconsciously as he asked the question. His forehead was thick, and his brow dark.

He looked at her, noting the crows feet around her bright blue eyes, the gray eyebrows, the short cut gray hair, the moles, one on the side of her nose, another on her cheek, another just under the turn of her jaw — none yet sprouting hair but very promising in that regard. She moved her thin lips into a smile.

“Almost,” she said, and then gave a nod.

“Wait,” she said shaking her head and a little angry at her own absentmindedness. “Can’t really give the girl her injection without the needle.”

She was already turned and walking towards a square silver cart just up the sterile white narrow hallway. There were charts — lists of the meds for each of the residents on this floor. Needles were on the top of the cart — a box of them, slender glass tubes topped with bright orange plastic caps. Fat fingers fished out a needle. She held it in front of her.

“Okay,” she said, her comfortable white work shoes clomping against the linoleum floors as she walked to the still crouched Marko at the room’s entrance.

They shared a deep exhale at the door — both staring at the peeling off-white now-yellowed paint of the thick metal door. Moonlight floated through the dirty safety glass into the hallway.

“Open it,” Nurse Patience said. Marko clinked around with a big ring of keys lifted from his belt, holding one up to the light, grumbling under his breath, then holding up another.

He moved in front of Patience and inserted the key into the lock. Click. He pulled at the door’s steel latched handle, depressing the lever, and opening the door. There was a creak that raced past them and danced through the long tall hallway before dissipating down an unlit emergency exit on the far northern wing.

Marko moved into the room, hands up in front of him like he was already facing off against an opponent in a grappling match. His little brown eyes were locked on her — the naked prone girl — and he moved his feet in a slow shuffle rotating around to the other side of the girl.

Behind him, Nurse Patience moved into the room. Her breath was shallow and her eyes locked also on the girl. She walked on tiptoes in an absurd bit of ballet creeping closer.

She fished the drug out of her front pocket. It was tangled in polyester fabric making her stop for a moment and work it with both hands, needle now held in her teeth.

“Her eyes are shut,” said Marko pointing down at the girl.

Patience glared at him. No speaking. Not in cell eleven. She shot a angry glare at Marko and then moved her eyes back to the girl.

Girl Eleven, she had not been eating. Her ribs protruded from her back like some sort of art project involving stretched rubber taunt over a wire frame. Her hip similarly stuck up. Her skin was gray even in the full white light pouring in through the doorway — it was not a trick of the light as Patience had hoped.

“Grab her,” Nurse Patience said.

Marko fell upon the girl like a starving lion, landing on her back, and quickly gathering up the girl’s arms. No resistance. A confused Marko looked over at Nurse Patience and shook his head “no.” “And she’s really cold.”

“Dammit, what did they do to her? Those bastards. Okay, hold her. We’ll still need to restrain her before we move her down to one of the examination rooms. Let’s have a look first.”

Nurse Patience moved in closer. She put a fat hand out gingerly to touch this little girl waiting, expecting, the girl to erupt into inhuman violence as she had so many times in the past. Patience’s hand touched the girl’s shoulder and slid up to touch her neck.

“There’s a pulse. Barely.”

Patience flicked the sleeve of her white gown out of the way to look at her watch and take the heartbeat. Weak. Weak. Weak.

“She’s not in good shape. So very cold too.”

Her hand slid over to touch the girl’s cheek. “Poor little thing. Shi is what they call her. I’m going to get my stethoscope — we’ll need to lock her back up here until we can get Mick up from his shift to help us transfer her. One second.”

Nurse Patience got up and headed out the door. From the cart, she grabbed the stethoscope. She took a step back towards the cell and then spotted the handheld light to look into a patient’s eyes and ears. May as well grab that…

A shrill high-pitched sound like metal on concrete hit the hallway. Patience jumped. The metal tool clanked against the metal cart. The scream dropped octave octave… Marko!

From the cell, the shriek stopped followed by a loud thud of meat against concrete.

Patience spun fully and made for the entrance. In front of her, all she could see was the black hole of the open cell door.

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

“Lenny will see you back in the booth,” said the hired goon who appeared totally out of place in the art bar with his bulk combined with his high quality black suit and his marine haircut. Somehow though, he appeared out of the art bar’s rear pushing through cramped elitist-filled space to get to us.

“He has the booth?” Jarl said. The goon’s face remained stoic.

I leaned up against the bar waiting for the ability to stand on my own two feet to return.

“He has the booth,” Jarl turned and said to me, making his blond eyebrows do a little dance and smiling.

Lenny had the booth. That required more than just stacks of riches and demonstrations of power measured in megadeaths. Fuck, I don’t know what it required, but it was a lot! I tried to mutter some response to Jarl. Failed. Continued clinging to the bar.

In the Princess Fantastika, there was only one booth — an eyesore of rich crimson plastic seats from the fifties with a table in the middle of cryptic ruins on some sort of octohedral tiles. Very cool.

“You two will follow me and do as you are told.”

The guard was like six foot six inches tall, no neck, shaved head, with two scars on his forehead making an X just above and cutting into his right eyebrow. He was uncomfortable talking with Jarl because, as stated so many times, was so fucking huge. The guard looked of some mediterranian heritage — olive skin, dark eyes that never stopped moving as they were presumably trained to do.

He looked me up and down, did a double take at a location on my chest, and then let out a little sniff before looking away from us. There was red puke stained there next to the buttons of my pink shirt (before we went out, Jarl convinced me that a pink shirt on a guy was a sign of virility… Shiva then laughed when she passed us in the hall and gave Jarl a high-five… then Jarl wouldn’t let me change back into a manly blue t-shirt). “Dammit,” I said and tried brushing off the stain. It smeared it into a puke comet trailing away for about an inch down from my sternum.

“Are you about complete with your shirt sullying?” Jarl said grabbing my shoulder and yanking me from the bar. “Are you doubting my fashion sense?”

I looked at him. I didn’t feel well. He’d ordered me a Blue Hawiian to drink after my puking. “Two umbrellas — pink if you’ve got them for my fragile little puke-dumpling here,” he’d said to the bartender.

The waitress wandered off after finding out that Jarl was gay though promised to try to introduce him to her brother who was straight but maybe worth a shot.

Such was a moment in the Princess Fantastika. Fantastika, indeed.

The bodyguard cut a trail of destruction through the posers and the artists. There were dainty squeeks of indignation, and some of the women complained too as we pushed past.

The bodyguard stopped just outside of the East Wing (as it was known) home to THE BOOTH. Two matching goons stood just inside the doorway. Our guide goon nodded to them. They nodded back. Communications at their finest — no hiding of secrets here. Just a meaningful nod.

One of the two inside tipped his head down just a bit and mumbled something. I couldn’t see a mic or a earpiece anywhere. I wasn’t exactly solid in the visual input department. Both of the goons looked like I was going past them on a train doing seventy five.

I wonder if there really were two of them?

One of the two held up a finger to us. Demonstrations in how to treat your inferiors — leave them at the entry while you swim through the vault of your riches taking breaks to give away piles to charity as tax breaks, but most importantly make drunken art terrorists wait for you just outside the…

“Jarl, I gotta piss,” I said grabbing at his arm. (For the record, the brick walls here had more give to them than Jarl’s arm…)

“Rev, you do not ever disappoint. Stop teasing though.”

Hell of a time for that part of my body to check back in with the chiefs in the response section of my brain. Oh, and what a message! We’re going to overflow down here, said the chief urological engineer in what sounded like a really poor drunken Scottish accent.

“You’ll have to wait, McBladder.”

Did I say that out loud?

Jarl was giving me that perplexed look. I was crouched over, hands on knees, facing towards my own groin. I may have said that out loud.

The fucking Scott started a countdown. He laughed in between counts. The pissant engineer thought this was funny. If I were him, I’d agree. Unfortunately, I’m not him. I’m… well, rather, he’s a part of me… and he… I… we are now preparing for a hearty pants-pissing.

Can you dig it?

Oh no.

I stood bolt upright.

Jarl looked very surprised at the look on my face. He took a step to the side so that he was no longer directly in front of me. The goon who guided us over flashed to extremely angry really quick. The guys behind him reached in their jackets for sidearms.

What happened next is of course classified. Okay. Fine. I was unable to hold up my end of the body bargain. Jarl got in to see Lenny and get funding for a job… ironically against Lenny’s own installations (which, Jarl explained later, Lenny now found horribly tedious and droll). Before that? Well…

I stood there next to the door, warm liquid joy rushing down my right leg while not one, not two, but three men in black Armani suits held guns to my head screaming at me to alternately “not move”, “get on the floor”, and my personal favorite “die!”

I did none of those things. I laughed the laugh of the dead — no matter what happened, I was going to finish what I started. I let out a loud “aaahhhhh.” Even with all the military-esque screaming, no one else in the bar turned to look at us.

To do so, by any of these art bar fuckers, would be an acknowledgement that something happening somewhere other than whereever they were was important or (gasp) more important than they were. The level of conversation did rise a bit to cover the screaming of the guards.

Then I heard Jarl’s roar of laughter over the yells. Belly laugh, belly laugh, then a fweeeeee of him gasping for air, then more laughter. It was infectious — soon the three bodyguards were laughing with him. Guns were lowered. Guns were holstered. Laughter continued. I swear I pissed through this whole thing. My shoe filled up like a glass and then that glass, as they say, runneth over to make puddle on the floor.

The laughter died down. Jarl and the three guards dried their eyes. Jarl went in. I stood out alone by the entry to the East Wing.

“Can’t I get in,” I said to the once again stoic goons.

“What do you think, piss pants?”

Words: either, department, demonstrations, mutter, hiding, teasing, classified, communications, chiefs, charity, away, riches, unable, entry, quality, preparing, apparently, association, slash, trained

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

As often happens on nights of extreme debauchery, a young rogue’s heart takes to flights of fancy and vomiting. The crowd at the Princess Fantastika could appreciate that. It was practically a rule that the party didn’t get started until someone OD’d or at the very least vomited on someone else.

I blame that fucking giant viking Jarl for the vomit. True, moments ago, I sung his high praise and went so far as to compliment him on the health of his hair. Well, there is nothing to praise about a three hundred pound man who TRICKS (that’s right!) a hundred fifty pound man into drinking his own body weight in hard liquor.

Somewhere along the way I drank some wine or a red cocktail too.

“Or that could be blood from an ulcer,” said the suddenly appearing Jarl, grinning down at me while I rested against a wall. Only it wasn’t a wall — it was Jarl holding me up with his tree-size arms wrapped around my own twig-arms at the pits. My feet may have been touching the floor, but the challenge was figuring out how to talk to those feet.

“Your friend really needs to leave,” said our superficially hot waitress to Jarl.

“He can’t leave yet. We have to meet with our publisher and our producer and then finally with the cocksucker, not literal, who is going to distribute the shows internationally.”

What?

“What?” she said drawing closer. Was it that simple? Was she a starfucker? Was this Hollywood? If the answer to that last bit was yes, then I was far more drunk that I thought.

I felt a bit better as I perked up my ears to hear what else Jarl had to say about our show. I wondered if it was a video feed program or perhaps a movie or even a live burlesque. Why didn’t he tell me about any of these things? I wanted to get into this conversation.

“I’m okay, Jarl,” I said except it came out as verbal static and spit. The raccoon-makeup’d waitress stood out of the way of my flying spit, arching an eyebrow, but smiling just a little at me. Suddenly my complete intoxication was charming. It was that simple then. Become involved with Hollywood like we were. Hot damn. Formerly, I required an intervention by jesus folk or at the very least by some people telling me about twelve (or was it thirteen?) steps. Now I was a fascinating piece of merchandise.

Jarl gave me a great shake lifting his arms up and down a bit too fast. The three lights in the cavern of mainroom that was the Fantastika were like long tailed UFOs streaking across a suddenly bleak and empty sky.

“Had I taken me the drugs as well?” is what I would’ve wondered if I wasn’t busy flipping my hands around in what from the outside must’ve looked like an angry retarded seal swatting at a fruit fly cloud…

My knees hurt. I’d already hit the ground — it just took a while for the message to get through to my head. I was kneeling in prayer with one hand on the stiletto heeled foot of the Virgin Mary and the other in a delicate sludge of dumped drinks. My stomach quivered. Here it comes! I began the ritual. Hyuk. Hyuk. Hyuk. Pre-heave stomach undulations. I had both hands down on the ground now.

“That’s the preparations for doggie style,” Jarl said to the waitress. I couldn’t see him but he had to be grinning.

She giggled. Her foot shuffled away from my left hand. “My name is Henrietta Bombay” she said to Jarl.

Hyuk. Huk! Oh god. My stomach was emptied with the prior heave. There was nothing more to add to that splatter of a story.

It was a small pleasure that my rapidly returning but still blurry vision allowed me to watch a really sexy pair of black leather ladyboots walk through an almost a finely pureed milkshake of my red vomit.

“I am Jarl — no last name because it is unnecessary, don’t you think?” he said some 10,000 feet above me.

I realized then that I was hallucinating the whole fucking thing, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Jarl wouldn’t be flirting with a girl. Or was I wrong about her being a girl? My stomach stopped shaking for a moment. I lifted a hand up from the ground.

“So earlier tonight,” Jarl said, “a good friend of mine proclaimed his great skill at drinking. He tells me that he is peerless in these parts. I didn’t ask what parts those were of course. Thank satan, I’m not from here…”

“Me either,” Henrietta Bombay chimed in.

A wave of cold shot up from my feet, slapped against the topdome of my skull, and then bounded back to my feet. A wave of heat followed next. An hour passed. My hand was still up off the ground just an inch or so (ha — like I could tell!) and my stomach imploded into an area less than a centimeter on a side.

“Where are you from, my darling?” Jarl said, his voice deep and booming coinciding with a lull in the asskissing chatter that fills art bars everywhere (well, ones that can’t risk music like this one at least).

“No where special. I came here to finish my PHD in biochemistry,” she said. There was pride in her voice.

My hand moved! I let out a little laugh of joy. It sounded more like a low growl of a man about to die after taking a steel spike or seven through his brainpan. I couldn’t stop it though.

South along my body my left hand moved. There were six fingers and a thumb. The thumb some sort of displacer effect causing it to shift rapidly between two locations leaving only ghosts at either edge. That always happens.

“Is he going to die?” Henrietta said. She shuffled another step back. She had kind of fat ankles now… No. That’s a chair beside her.

“Eventually we all will,” Jarl said. “My pitcher of beer is low when you get a minute, my lady.”

“Sure,” she said. Her feet didn’t move.

South my hand went. My head dropped. It was only supposed to move a little so I could watch my hand or maybe answer the question. Instead, it just dropped down limp.

Bingo. I hit paydirt.

“Is he touching himself?” Henrietta said taking one step back and one step behind the big black boot beside me belonging to Jarl.

“Sort of,” Jarl said laughing, “My guess is that he’s checking if he pissed himself. How’s it look comrade?”

Dry. Ha-fucking-ha — dry! “Yaaaah!” I said and threw my body up from the ground using my floor-planted right hand. That didn’t go so well, but Jarl’s big paw closed around my wrist and pulled me up.

“Still dry?” he said to me. “Look Henrietta — still dry.”

I couldn’t see her. Things were spinning. “Yeaaah!” I said with a smile on my face. I think one of my hands was attempting a thumbs up… though I’m not sure which one.

“Henrietta,” said Jarl, “another drink for my friend as well, please.”

Words: really, challenge, publisher, shows, intervention, producer, named, rogue, favorite, liable, ordering, capability, rapidly, tells, especially, wireless, internationally, heat, seemed, fill

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

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Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

At seven feet one inch, Jarl was not just a powerhouse homosexual viking mercenary, but he was also one cool motherfucker. We were hanging out one night at some club that was too cool even for artists. There wasn’t music playing. They never played music. They couldn’t find music as cool as the people who came in. (At least that was the rumor). I could accept that and even dig it a little bit.

It was Jarl, myself, and a few of the less relevant pissant rabble doomed to redshirt in a fashion most tragic. They liked to come along. We had to dress them. It wasn’t like we had a lot of extra clothes sitting about, but one hopes that at the very least one can buy ones way, visually, into an art bar. But this was no ordinary art bar. This was the Princess Fantastika — a name thought to be ironic for a shithole basement corridor, dirty red bricked walls all around, with matching death-trap fire-hazard rooms off on either side, each with their own bar. The irony is forced and in fact is the only thing that makes the place palatable. You see, we, the artists find it ironic that these stupid fuckers revel in their faux irony. We’re lapsing meta now, but sometimes, that is what an irony endgame requires.

Jarl was the one who first came up with that. His speech was too precise for him to be an American. He spoke too clearly and his vocabulary too large to have been bred on television. He was obviously some flavor of Scandinavian — I never asked.

“The irony in their desire for irony going so far as to name their drinks ironically, is that it is a desperate plea for attention to people such as yourself, myself, and that hot scrawny guy milking the Pabst Blue Ribbon over at the fake plastic bar. One hopes that he sees his own drink ironically — realizing that the working man’s beer is mass-produced by a mammoth corporation that isn’t attempting to pander to the working man but instead to produce the cheapest beer possible.

“I’ve always had a thing for that label though — it screams, in a very subtle way, poor royalty was here and all that they left behind was an assortment of black velvet paintings of dogs playing poker and a few (and he eye-rolled here, icy blue eyes rolling under blond brows and a smile splitting a meticulously cared for blond goatee) hula girls replete with ukulele and grass skirts.”

We all of course looked at the skinny artist man, black pants, tan jacket a bit dirty from whatever his day job is, white t-shirt underneath, dead black eyes looking up from a far too perfectly tousled shock of black hair cut in a bowl and revealing a jaw-line that any Hollywood actress would kill for. Noting our attention, he looked off but inside must have glowed at the sought-after attention.

Our waitress came over. She was totally smoking hot — too hot to be an artist. Yeah, well fuck you for suggesting that I suggested that a hot chick couldn’t be an artist. Maybe she was an artist then, okay? Does that make you fucking happy? Maybe she was directing one of Shakespeare’s (that old sexy woman who pretended she was a man and according to some stories, dressed as one) plays? Sure, she didn’t pay extra for the blackwork tattoos in hopes of overcoming a beauty that glowed out from all of her attempts to sever them. I think that the overdose-to-zombie of black eye liner brings out her fake-green-eyes even more.

Yeah, well fuck you again. I saw her at the grocery store before — her eyes are shit brown like mine and she had a huge pimple on the end of her nose… uh… like mine… and her ass was sagging a little bit in her Nike-brand sweatpants and white ipod headphones… What — am I still a bad guy now for calling out the hottie as a poseur? Does it matter?

“You’re just angry because she shot you down and pretended she only dated women,” Jarl said a smile splitting his big square face, his mane of golden hair back lit by one of the few carefully placed ceiling lights. “It is not her fault that she is beautiful, Rev. It is a hard curse to bear for all of us. Look at me, no?” He clapped me on the back with that big bear paw of his knocking most of the wind out of me. Yeah, he was just that fucking strong, and the damage was unintentional. I would never suggest that he was trying to take me out. If he were, I’d be running for an exit now and not just sitting here smiling goofily.

Yeah, you’re right — goofily is probably not a word.

“Let us drink my silly skinhead friend,” Jarl said raising the pitcher of beer that he drank from in a MOST unsubtly artistic fashion, a bit of foam already decorating his upper lip and mustache from the last quarter-pitcher draining gulp.

I explained before why calling me a skinhead was wrong. He continued doing it just to watch me arch an eyebrow and prepare to argue.

He defused the situation as he often does by being seven fucking feet tall, three hundred pounds of muscle, and smiling, and raising his pitcher in a toast. “To that fine young man over there, to artworks as yet unrendered, to a resurrection of art that belongs to the common people, to no more of that dipshit Les’s Artt Bombes, to a flight of doves going over a small green garden where I sit on a fortified white-painted bench sipping mead…”

“What?”

He grinned even wider at me and again clapped me on the back. He gave a mischievous wink, “I was just checking if you were paying attention Rev.”

“I always pay attention Jarl — especially to handsome brilliant fuckers like you.”

He wrapped a massive muscular arm around my shoulder housing me in the pit of his plain navy blue t-shirt. It smelled rather pretty. A hint of lilacs perhaps and a cleanness of sea air. Mental note: inquire as to deodorant used by the big guy.

“Are you,” he said giving my shoulder a squeeze using a huge hand that could probably pop my head like a grape, “flirting with me, comrade?”

“No, sir I’m not. I make it a point to never mix business with pleasure. Or penises… I don’t like those either.”

“Your loss,” he said, slapping my ass, and then yelling something in a crazy language, one of the dozen or so he spoke, at our waitress who was shuffling by aimlessly.

Words: overcome, seem, running, threatened, tragic, hopes, glorious, director, suggest, endgame, rabble, unintentional, sometimes, imposed, agree, popular, showdown, surrounded, effects, progress

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

Large, proud, vulnerable.

Yeah, just like that. We registered. We breed. We collect.

Are we bitter? Shouldn’t we be? Should we be articulate about it — perhaps listing out in simplest form, one by one the crimes committed against our humble newly christened sub-species?

Yeah, the girl was mental. Put her off into the little room. Snuff her out early — push her further and further into the darkness and hopefully she’ll just slip away. Problem solved. The little girl will trouble unwanted parents no more.

The drama was common. That’s what the books say. The isolation was a result of modern living. A more connected sociopolitical environment lead to easy access of information. When Mommy’s head was buried in information and floating on chemicals, who then will notice little Shi’s pretty new hair? Or Shi’s pretty little bands or ribbons that she put on just for Mommy to notice? Or daddy?

Who was daddy? That was the nickname of the man who showed up late at night able to talk only of how tired he was and talk of some faraway world of a large organization unfathomable to a little girl.

He wouldn’t notice ribbons either. He would hug and then push her away to get at the keyboard and the information. It was an addiction. The pushing was just a side effect. We’d gotten used to it, all of us, the forgotten.

The pets had it worse. They didn’t have enough awareness to take a really nasty fucking fall, draw a little blood, and get those few moments of interaction — tribute of a sort, a brief psychic return of the mother or father to older times where children were unsafe and needed more protection. Children now weren’t vulnerable. There weren’t men out there who collected pictures of little fannies. No of course not.

Don’t be bitter, Shi.

We do all of this for you.

Several times they tried that response. Then they moved on to not caring. They accepted what the counselors told them — Shi was just too goddamn smart. What could she do about it? What could they do? This was how the world worked? One couldn’t step out of the world could they? Could they? Wouldn’t it be like a sailor encased in lead stepping off of a ship’s stern, descending into frigid night time water, black like the world of dreams and sleep, and like the finest sleep increasing in blackness and chill with each passing moment? How long outside of the proper world of air could that sailor live? How long could the parents?

No, better to play along and live within that world. The new breed of soldier was one who could adopt and absorb the flows of information in ever widening circles of knowledge. We, as a race, knew more with each flicker of a quantum clock. Or did it flicker? It did. It didn’t.

It’s all statistical.

Just like her parent’s parenting skillz.

She made it to sixteen. That was certainly worth some percentage points towards young Shi’s success ratio. She passed the right tests. There was something strange in the way she thought though.

The neurologists didn’t find any anomalies.

The psychiatrists however took her in for more study.

Sub-species — she decided it herself sitting in her own piss beside the hospital bed in the ward where they kept people like her. They shaved her head. They drugged the Christ out of her… not that a sensible family would’ve attempted to put the Christ into her in the first place. No, the only reason to instill Christ in the modern age was to prepare the child for a career as a professional panderer or politician as they’re occasionally called by the lesser more homey papers. That wasn’t her problem.

She was just too smart. The television didn’t numb her senses. She was too perceptive — Shi was! Too smart. Too quick. There were places for that, but the numbers had lied. Her parents were statistically wrong to provide the proper genetic makeup and intelligence potential to account for her success.

There was nothing worse in society than an anomaly. Do you know why? Because it makes the statistically average feel bad. Fuck Ayn Rand — this is real. Don’t invoke her name in this. She was really a man named Irving Mahkovich. This isn’t about Irving — this is Corporate America.

The sounds of her room, the dark room (why waste electricity on something that had a high probability of just being recycled anyway?), bounced and danced along the narrow black-bricked slime-covered walls of the tunnel that lead down to her head.

Mental.

Yeah. No shit.

Bitter.

You think?

Her hand in front of her face — Shi’s hand — a creaking set of long lines slowly dancing and spidering down to a filthy paw.  For days she watched it.  She found an answer there or at least solace. The dancing lines of fingers, moving rhythmically. She felt her heart, far below the tower holding her brain, beneath several layers of soil and then wrapped off its own cell of ancient granite blocks start to move in time with the hands. Faster faster. Slower slower.

How slow could I make it go? Shi wondered.

Slower. Slower.

Then she willed it to stop — little Shi’s heart buried down down down.

Stop!

It did.

The tower was quiet. The room was quiet. Her mouth stretched. It hurt a little. Who moved it. Teeth were exposed to cold bare air.

A gasp from somewhere underneath, miles deep, but inside.

Her lungs, hidden from her by centuries of planning and misdirection, filled. There was a flapping sound then as the linens of the lungs shuddered under the gust.

Cold concrete struck against her forehead. Hands slapped down beside head. Dark almond eyes, hidden always in shadow, moved of their own accord to show the Lady Shi what a hand was.

She remembered it. It wasn’t dancing now. No lines. No motion. Her heart was beating but she couldn’t hear it. She just knew. The hand in front of her was filthy. The smell of piss and shit and sweat filled her nostrils.

Her body shuddered, starting in the middle and running in equal waves out towards either end — top and bottom. Her neck twitched sending her view of the world up, down, around, then to concrete.

A heavy clang sounded off to one side of her. A click. She knew this. A creak and a small zephyr danced across her nose bearing the smell of ammonia, of clean.

“Welcome back, Shi,” said an anonymous male voice.

—-
Words: ship’s, pushing, collect, picture, several, gotten, week, registered, breed, prompted, early, tribute, mental, souls, diffuse, times, bitter, vulnerable, large, proud

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

When Shiva called a meeting, Shiva the leader among leaders, we would all find ourselves hoping for something nice, quiet, isolated. Shiva was like Les in that regard — passionate to the point of being utterly stupid. Unlike Les, she was smart. Les was not. He was just passionate.”Recognize” she said addressing the small circle one of many groups (or so she claimed), “that you are monitored for some percentage of any given day. That percentage may be 100%. The systematic patternization of movements and accepted behavior is organic. The machine is learning in the center (or so I’m told in the reports I’m spending our support money buying from leaders more concerned with money than with progress). The edits to the patterns are being done by hands with agendas.

“The diorama of government is crafted of thin cardboard damp with the sweat of the poor and rainfall urine of the rich high above. The systemic crushes of related agendas spawns…”

What? I zoned halfway through that. She was the queen of random revolutionary slogans. She didn’t need you to understand (she explained this once to me as she sized me up for deeper involvement) just follow orders. This group in particular — a walled off cell that had the job of infiltration. They were most like the norms, were recruited in some cases from those ranks, trained, and then prepared to send back. Most of the faces looking up at her now in our dark dusty subbasement lair had behind them in foolish heads crushes on the shaven-pated Shiva stirring their revolutionary zeal.

She was beautiful — don’t get me wrong. She was exactly the kind of foul evil leader that a group of art terrorists needed. Smarter than 99.99 percent of the population and more beautiful out to at least five nines. She didn’t wear makeup. Her eye lashes were naturally thick and beautiful. There was something east-asian maybe Indian about her mixed in with some teutonic stock. Her skin was dark, her eyes were light, her body perfect.

I’ve seen her naked.

She beat the shit out of me after that. “How’s your hard-on now, fucker??!” she yelled with each kick or punch. She didn’t put on any clothes while she did this. We ended up in front of a tiger team about to head out. They watched. “Harder” I said in replay to her repeated question. Neither of us knew whether I was demanding more punishment or I was answering her question regarding the rigidity of my dick. A little of both probably.

I broke a rib that day.

The tiger team bled off under the boss’s glare. They walked away facing her though. I could see it through a swollen right eye. They couldn’t take their eyes off of her. They were right. She walked off after spitting on me. On her lower back was a mechanical tiger pouncing outward, steampunk style, heavy tubes and dirty parts.

That was a great fucking day.

“We will spawn new cells using the information we obtain from each center we establish and then control. That is our source of income. You’re all cool in your own way. It’s time though to push out your art — subvert the easy listening corporate art world in small bits, one dab of paint at a time if necessary.”

She thinks she coined that phrase — easy listening art. Edits aside, she rarely comes up with anything.

“That went well,” Shiva said grinning next to me reading over my shoulder as I typed, then leaning down, t-shirt wrapped chest pressing into my back. “I’ve come up with some things,” she said letting out a little laugh at the end. “We should go for noodles before Les comes back.”

“Where did Les go?” I look over at his work table. The red armed-light is off and pushed away from the messy tabletop strewn with electronic components and a varied rainbow tangle of wires. “I didn’t see him leave.”

She grabbed my hand from the keyboard, her hand soft warm with a rough callused inner surface. “Come on, dummy, seriously — he’s going to show up and he loves noodles.”

She pulled me up out of the seat. I looked at her ass (everyone does). It was covered in an unflattering green canvas skirt today. It was short enough so that the edge danced buttock-ward and silky brown skin of the inner thigh screamed “hello stranger!”

[Sex appeal is not ranked very high among things to look for in leaders of revolutions historically — television has changed all of that.]

She giggled like a girl as she dragged me through the poured concrete tubes — seven feet in diameter dry as… well… without getting too sexist or revolting I’ll say that…

I stumbled on the lip of one of joints of our culvert hallways. I flew towards her. She gasped, her eyes bright. She showed her age — early twenties — no, she was younger still in that instant. I, circus clown, put on a show for her, flew past, and landed against unmoving concrete, knees and palms.

“You missed me,” she said. I flopped down on to my side, bony hip slapping against the aforementioned concrete.

A few of the local peons poked their heads into the hallway to see what was making the noise. Then they saw her. Then they didn’t care about the noise. I was looking up at her too. She was looking back at me smiling.

I didn’t turn away. I tried to look past it. Her reputation for sincerity preceded her (or rather her reputation for a lack of… you don’t run a war with sincerity she said once and that time even her brow furrowed into a huh?) Is this what the face of a praying mantis would look like as it went to pleasure her mate? Did she, in some insect way, look like this all sweet and sincere.

I heard some mumble (ears not yet ruined by regular trips to rock shows) from the hallway. They fled when I turned to them.

They were calling me “the boss’s special lady”…

—

Words: rice, monitored, nice, crushes, leaders, isolated, diorama, center, government, buying, groups, sensors, edits, related, spawn, systematic, sized, hoping, idea, astronaut

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

The interview lasted only a few minutes. They’d come from the other side of the Pacific having heard of us via various underground currents that we sent out but have since abandoned since the Shoeless incident. Actually, maybe it was the Shoeless incident that brought them — the converts trekking in boxes and cargo containers to descend upon the wasteland of western america. The hand of Leslie was in this. His photos, his endless spewing of fantasy requests, each meaningless unless the Rosetta stone was in hand and we could only make and send so many of those out at a time. Production problems were a bitch. So was Shiva. She was in charge, though, despite what the rhetoric and propaganda suggested. Never ever mistake figurehead for actual leadership. Rev was the figurehead, but in realilty, he was dumb as dirt. He’d bring in the troops — ready each of them for a competition of vague and foolish tests of guerilla artwork, and then Shiva’d take over.Isn’t that right Leslie?

“My name is Artt Bombe,” Leslie said, thin lips moving on a pasty dough-boy face, dull eyes looking me up and down before smiling. He was the most dangerous of all of us. He was the one that would end it all. His computing of size of explosions and volume of paint sprayed via his name-sake Artt Bombes was already enough to qualify us as terrorists.

Make Artt not Terror.

Explain that to the handless child with skin permanently made pink — why pink? Why the fuck did you have to use the pink paint, Leslie? What feature of your work was it that would blast the ink down into the subdermal of the child not just disfiguring but also coloring? We fucked up really bad on that one — you fucked up Leslie. Shiva fucked up for not watching you closely enough. I fucked up by not clearing the floor with the new troops. We weren’t ready for something inside. It shouldn’t have gone down like that.

You still have that news photo of that child. I could never tell if you were sad about it or if you kept as a trophy. You’re a sick little fuck, Leslie Smalls.

He could feel me typing about him, I think. He looked over at me from his workshop table. The wires, the timer, the eyeball sized spheres of paint rolling around at the edge of the cheap cracked wooden table. He smiled again, looking evil, his little brown buzzcut backlit by the robot-armed lamp pulled low to his work.

“Do you want to go out and grab some noodles, Rev?” he said.

I smiled back. “Let me finish this prop-piece and then we’ll head.”

We both really dug the noodles.

It made nary a difference that he had something to prove. Didn’t I have anything to prove? Why was I doing this?

Fuck, Les just did the look around crotch rub. He does practically the same thing when we’re out plotting Artt. If you look around before you do something, then people are going to notice you. We’ve told him that like a billion times. It’s like a rule or something. If you’re going to do it anyway (and Leslie always does), just do it. Reach down. Give it a tug. A scratch. There you go. Aaaaand done.

And now he’s back to the eponymous bombs of his…

He had one of them now in his little rounded fingers, sausages being overused but apt here. The wires were black, white, and one red. He looked at it like one would a new born child. It was his child. Not like he could ever get near a woman to make one any other way. Yeah, that was mean. Fucking Leslie. He bit into his lip and lifted the cylindrical piece closer to his face. The other hand came up holding a tiny silver screwdriver and poked at the inside of the piece.

Out in the hallway, I could hear the two new Filipinos talking at each other as they moved the crates up the hallway. Shiva said something to them. Her voice was commanding and deep. Somehow, she always knew enough of any language on whatever stragglers joined us to boss them around. It was like her fucking super power…

—

Words: interview, latest, converts, hand, floor, trek, nary, houses, computing, piece, competition, feature, photos, fantasy, request, bring, ready, meaningless, actually, pacific

I had an hour maybe two to get clear of the office. The System would've noticed the big-ass transaction into my account. I would've preferred sumptuously untraceable anonycards, but no, she had to dump a big pile of money into the heavily monitored banking system.

Nice one.

So Emeresda Zaggywaggy was fucking me over already and I've only been working for her for an hour. Peachy.

I threw back another shot of some top shelf vodka that Ivan kept hidden in back somewhere. I knew to ask for it. I went over rooftops to get here. The sidewalks were just not safe.

Fucking Ivan. Dumb as a rock. Understands little English but can recite the fucking Bible backwards and forwards -- it'll get him far in today's America. His daughter was running the bar now grunting off in a corner over some glasses.

She was big. Really big. Tonight she wore this little red disgustingly tight tank top. Her arms squirted out from the sleeves like yeast of a bread pan -- except without the great coloration.

We fornicated once. You probably heard the scream the next morning. It didn't look any better on video the next week. Why her father would show it in the Dive I'll never understand...

Ol' Ivan treated me better after that though. Leena (or Lisa as she insisted despite her fathers protests) treated me worse. We still managed conversations. Like now.

"Another bottle, Lisa," I said smiling though a thick potato-liquor fog at the glowering square jawed behemoth.

"Fuck you, pindick," she said and kept walking.

Four or five of the dregs at the bar, ex-Russian military types crewcutted, thin, hired guns who spent all day glaring and praying for a gig, all laughed at me.

They'd seen the video. Their giggling leer in my direction made that plain. Ivan ran it all day long -- the sick fucker. I bet they didn't sell a lot of potato dumplings THAT day, boy.

One of the killers chimed after too long of a pause, his voice slow, "He already did fuck you, Leena -- he's probably saving up his money so he can buy enough flour for the next time."

His English was fucking impeccable -- practically Oxfordian.

I stood and clapped. Leena growled and turned sending her long blond and red hair airborne like a fiery newly lit flame.

She was fast for a fat chick.

The bottle whizzed just shy of the mouthy man's scarred and pitted face. His grin remained intact -- a glorious display of yellow and brown teeth. The bottle struck into the side of another patron as he jumped to get the fuck out of the line of fire. Too late old timer.

He went down with a girlish shriek.

Worse -- a bottle still half full of vodka (albeit the cheap shit) exploded against the begrimed concrete floor.

A second bottle came to her sausage thick fingers and was poised to throw.

"Not the good stuff!" I said screaming as loud as I could.

So maybe I'd drank more than one bottle. Maybe it was the pills I bought off of an armless asian, Wally or Billy I can't ever remember, in the alley just outside my office. I couldn't feel my feet. I was standing on something though.

Fucking Billy man -- or Wally, man. He was the greatest source I knew of unlabelled random drugs. Was it a coincidence that he was pissing in the alley entrance to the building housing my office? That he had a pocket full of happiness, sadness, and numbness at the same time I had a single card that was attached to a mound of money? "Oh yeah," I said aloud giggling.

The bottle hit me square in the bone beneath my left eye. It was preceded by a scream so manly it would've made some great General leading his army into mounted combat proud... except it came from Fat Ol' Leena and not me.

The System Enforcers kicked me awake in the alleyway. It was dark. Previously it was light. My crotch and ass were cold and wet through my poly pants. My left eye wouldn't open. The other would. The back of my head hurt like fuck. And these four jackasses wrapped in their black body armor and riot helmets were trying to shake lose one or more of my ribs.

"Hey," I said more a cough than a protest.

More kicking.

"I'm awake," I said and raised my arm.

They grunted like a trio of gorillas in heat who'd just found their first female.

More kicking. I gave the appropriate grunts and groans. I was still a man after all... despite the piss stains and, judging from the smell, a potential shit incident.

"Wait!" I said bolting upright. That in itself inspired so much fucking pain in my head and back that I almost blacked out again. "Wait!"

Amazingly, the neanderthals stopped. Their helmeted heads turned down to me. No faces -- only the mirrored shields reflecting my face all warped and bent and crooked. And there was blood. Yeah. Caked black and crunchy next to my mouth.

Fight back said some survival node in my brain. I tried to remember if these goons had cups in their uniforms or not. It looked padded.

"Jack... Jack Jack Jack -- its a big day if you're out. It must have to do with all of that money of ours that you're holding... Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack," the familiar voice said.

Detective Constantine Sumar.

"Connie -- where are..." I said

The answer was a boot to the blind side. It struck me below the ribcage in the kidneys. I dropped back down. Turning my head, I saw over me the black clad bald leering form of good ol' Connie.

He held in his hand a slender silver slate. He waved it over my head. "Open this," he said holding it down to me. I groaned and rolled over on my side so I could get a better look with my one good eye. It was most likely my note slate, slightly larger than his palm, silver, screen blacked out.

"Fuck you Connie -- you open it."

I expected one boot. I got four or five from different directions. One guy just kept kicking. Connie had to tell him to stop. I spit out blood. And a tooth.

"I erased it, Connie," I said, my voice one long gasping wheeze. "I'll tell you what it said though."

I drew in a breath.

"It said that Emeresda's husband was a rich merchant fucking his male assistant, that her daughter was murdered three years back in a snuff film, and that her effeminate teenage son has disappeared -- my guess is he's up in Vancouver peddling his sweet ass."

Two enforcers pulled me up, steel cable arms sliding under my own and lifting me into the air. A breeze in the alleyway reminded me that I'd shit and pissed myself. It felt cold. I'd have to change.

There was Connie in front of me, Detective Constantine Sumar, shaved head, silver goggles covering what I recall as squinting weasel eyes, wide chin, and the slate gray trenchcoat of the Detectives. What a little prick he was still after all of these years.

"What is she paying you to do, Jack?" Connie said slipping an insincere grin into place.

"Find her faith," I said. He wouldn't believe me anyway so why the fuck not go with the truth.

He punched me in my gut. Not as hard as he should've though. It didn't knock the wind out of me, but it did make me cough.

"He's up in Vancouver, Jack. You won't get a pass to leave the city for some little sodomite." He thought I meant her dainty son. I didn't. I found the missing tooth hole then with my tongue. The blood was sour in my mouth. My lip was swollen and now wet with blood and drool. With my one working eye, the other trying and failing to open, I looked at the mirrored goggles of the Sumar. I tried to put a sneer on my lips but it only liberated more bloody slobber.

It looked like he plucked his black bushy eyebrows, the little Nancyboy.

I opted not to say that though and instead went with "Well, I guess I'm done then."

Sumar took a step closer. His mouth screwed up and his nostrils danced. "Damn, you smell worse than the street people." He took a step back.

"They are smart enough not to shit on themselves," I said shaking free of the already releasing Enforcer arms. My legs worked less well than remembered. I half-buckled but regained control of the ship at the last minute. I didn't bother to dust myself off. This suit was shot.

"Go back to your vacuum tube, Jack," Connie said, waving a black leather wrapped hand to call away the four Enforcers around me. He said the Zaggywaggy family name then except properly and then went on "are too powerful for a shitbag like you. Plus, the wife is not okay in the head. Mr., " and again Zaggywaggy was how I heard it, " is trying to get her locked up."

Huh. Well, that makes a degree of sense then. I nodded to him, closing my one eye pretending to be thoughtful while my hand moved over the sore and swollen other half of my face.

Connie walked off with the four blackclad giants leading the way down the alley towards the better lit pedway beyond.

I wasn't going to let this go. It wasn't that I cared. No, not at all. Rather, it paid too well for me to just let it go.

Less than a half hour later, she'd left me to the cool purring comfort of my vacuum tube. There had been no spark -- no offer of even a few tugs on the Center to help a brother out. It was for the better -- not only was she crazy batshit but also very sincere. Added to that, she'd had both of her breasts removed and, through some unholy curse, had never fully grown a set of hips.

Or that silver flicker dress was the worst choice she could've made to accentuate her figure.

"Faith."

I toss the word over and over in my head. Her mouth -- she did have a pretty round red mouth -- formed the words. Her thick lower lip drew in, touched the white front teeth, to start the "f". Faith.

That had started an argument. I was already pissed and that didn't help.

"No more games."

"That's what I've lost. That's what you are getting hired to find for me."

"Okay fine, " you crazy bitch, "describe this faith that I'm looking for. When was it last seen? In the company of who? What were its... or is yours a her?... Do you have any money?"

"Your very empty account should show a pending transfer. Go ahead and look."

I walked back around the black plastic desk and tapped the control pad. "Funds", I said, and the screen came alive. There were a lot of zeroes attached to a one there in the pending column.

"When will that drop into my account?"

"When you find my Faith."

"Fuck that. You're wasting my time."

"I'll pay you ten thousand a week plus expenses until you find her."

I straightened up at my desk -- my back not my dick -- and looked at her. The smug smile was gone from her face. She looked old. Dark shadows hid her big eyes. Her pouty lips were deflated and stretched long. Whatever drug she took propelling her in here was wearing off too. Her hands shook. She clasped them together and pulled them close to her body, to the silver shimmering metallic cloth of her dress.

"Done. We'll get on that. We'll have your faith boxed up and waiting for you any day now. Keep checking the post," I said walking towards her, hand out for a shake or to escort her to the door -- whichever.

She stood and fugued. Time stopped all around her as she flipped on a thousand mile stare. I checked the wall where she looked. Nothing. Then her eyes rolled back into her head.

Don't die, thought I counting zeroes in my head and moving towards her.

Her body shook for a moment, a shudder starting at the top and ending with a funny kick out of her right leg.

"I have to go," she said, whispering, eyes locked down to the ground, hands reaching out wildly for the coat she draped over a cheap plastic lawn chair on the other side of my desk.

"Let me help..."

A swinging hand dissipated my desire to help at all. The coat was picked up and not put on, and heavy heals, thick ankles I saw now, headed for the alternate entrance, still marked private, still glowing blue from the lumes outside. There was a glittering at her turn coming from her neck. A cross, platinum silver something and bejeweled, caught the light as it swung high into the air towards salvation before dropping back down to the unholy earth and soiled impure body.

"The information you'll need will be sent as soon as I get home," she said as she opened the door. It creaked. I moved towards her. Her smell caught my nostrils. It wasn't entirely pleasant. She was sweating out something sour and thick. There was a thin layer of perfume over that, more herbal than anything, like sandalwood.

She was out the door. I was still sniffing and making my icky-face.

"Wait!" I said.

She didn't.

I couldn't pass out the door after her -- at least not yet. Not without the proper preparations. At the threshold, I yelled into the short blue lumed hallway, my own hand on the wooden dusty doorframe turned ghastly by the light. Shit. She was gone.

Back inside, I locked the door, once, twice, thrice click went the deadbolts. Why wasn't it locked in the first place? I couldn't remember the last time I went in or out that way. Or out at all.

The zeroes came back into my head.

I went back to my desk to look at the number again. Whoa -- that really was a lot of fucking zeroes. 10k was dropped into my account as I watched the screen. I double checked. Triple checked.

Holy jesus shitmonkey. The nut-job had money at least.

To celebrate I hooked up the vacuum tube again and pondered the Center of my Universe, Omphallos.

For a half an hour after, I sat waiting for the promised information to arrive. What could she possibly give me that would help?

Every four minutes, I'd check my account to see if the money was still there.

It was.

At minute thirty three, a small notice popped up saying that I had received an archive from one Emeresda Zagliogyi labeled simply "background on faith".

My first thought on seeing the notice -- what kind of fucking name is that?

"Detective Onan?" the woman said stepping into my office (missing the word PRIVATE spread at eye level on the opaque white glass of the door beside her).

"Jesus!" I said from my chair behind my desk. "Don't you knock?"

One of my hands was still wrapped around the plastic vacuum tube. I was pushing it further up my dick but now I had what is classically known as a situation.

"I did knock," she said over the low hum of my underdesk vac.

She took another step forward bringing her fully into the room. The blue hallway lumes cast a halo around her. She had on a long coat -- tall dame -- and some wierd ass kind of chef's hat with a feather poking out of one side. She closed the door behind her.

I sighed. I was tugging the tube off of me now. The situation unfortunately got me excited so the tube wasn't leaping to freedom. The tugging too had its positives... unintended and unfortunate.

I gave another sigh and looked over to the other door, open, out to the tiny front lobby.

She looked at it with me I eyecornered.

"You gonna break for it?" she said her voice low and melodic.

"No. I just wonder why you didn't use that door."

"Because you'd just break out the door I just came in, no?"

"You watch too many Feeds, babycakes."

She stood just inside the door looking around in the darkness. I finally removed the tube and let it drop to the floor. It ticked against the side of the plastic desk and then gave a louder thunk on the floor.

I had one hand on the desk and gave a tap at the pressure pad in front of me. The desktop display sprang to life. Ghostlight filled the office.

She squinted to get a better look at me. She saw the scar across my face, right eye, over nose, left cheek. I got a look at her. Black overcoat, glossy or wet or both. Heels underneath. Bare legs. Maybe naked underneath maybe not.

Her face was round to square like a eastern european child with big round eyes, big even squinted up. She looked young in the white light -- young and dead maybe. When her eyes moved to the lobby entrance I handled the last little problem. The Center of the Universe went unwillingly and only after a struggle was it pushed back beyond the zippered threshold.

"Are you lost?" I asked standing up.

"Aren't we all," she said looking down at my crotch. Without looking I made sure my untucked shirt covered my crotch. She was playing at being sassy. I hate that.

"Look lady, I know in the Feed we're supposed to have all sorts of cute short back and forth, but I just pulled a vacuum tube off my dick to talk to you. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to that."

"Please continue," she said and a wicked smile, toothless, spread across her face. "Your fly is still down anyway."

"He likes to see what's going on."

"Too bad he has to stand on his tip-toes to look out the window."

My fists balled. I'd never hit a lady. Maybe this was a man and I could give him a pop.

"Let me show you the door," I said and took a step towards her. She kept scanning the room.

"I have a job for you, Jack. You come highly recommended." One of her hands moved to the front of her coat and began undoing the buttons of her long black vinyl overcoat.

My juvenile mind, still juvenile at my age, began hoping that she would be naked underneath. The Center of the Universe applauded the notion and pointed at her in case I forgot where she was.

Reason chimed in hoping that she didn't have a dick.

"Could you turn on the lights?" she said looking up from her de-coating.

"No."

"Do you treat all potential customers this poorly?" Her hands moved one button and then another downward. The coat didn't roll open. All at once or nothing this show would be. "Hello? I don't have any tits to speak of, nothing dramatic anyway, so you may as well look at my face you asshole."

"Look," I said, my jaw clamped down hard and my hands clenched tight," I pointed to the door. I'm not the fucking welcome wagon. I'm a shitbag. People only come to see me when they're desperate and they need some sewer work done. With that in mind, I don't need to be nice to them. I can walk over and piss on their legs if it strikes my fancy. They'll stand there and take it. If they don't, then they proved to me and to themselves that they weren't all that desperate."

She was grinning at me, still no teeth, but her cheeks were balling up like sweet apples. I could cut glass right now with the Center of the Universe.

"You're charming," she said and finally pulled open her coat.

Dammit if she wasn't fully clothed underneath.