Undermeat
By Scott Crowder
Published by r[E]volution Press at Smashwords
Contents copyright © 2011 Scott Crowder / r[E]volution Press
All rights reserved. Any reproduction, sale, or commercial use of this book without express written permission of the author is strictly forbidden.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are inventions of the author. Any resemblance to actual events or people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Inspired in part by the album Sweetly from the harsh noise outfit Atrax Morgue. R.I.P. Marco Corbelli
Cover image was found on the internet and I make no claim of ownership to it. If it’s yours and you’d like it removed, please contact me at zombieapocalypse [at] earthlink [dot] net.
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Chapter 1
The junkie realized he’d needed something to drink as he’d driven down the road through the cool evening, fighting hard to keep his eyes open and the car aimed straight. Fatigue sucked at him from the inside, trying hard to make his body collapse in on itself and he needed something with caffeine in it, a lot of caffeine. He’d seen the Handi-Mart on the corner and so he’d pulled over and parked in the fire lane in front of the store, and he stuffed his gun under his waistband at the small of his back because Grandma Munster would know he was gone now, wouldn't she? She would know and she would try and stop him and he’d be damned if he’d let her stop him now, and so he took his gun with him when he hopped out of his car.
He pushed the front door open and strode into the store, and glanced at the clerk's hands on the counter; home-made tattoos on the webbing between thumbs and palms; a crooked cross on the left, a fading rose on the right. He looked up at the man's passive face; acne-scarred skin, a mouth full of teeth that had seen more than their share of meth over the years. The clerk acknowledged him with a single sharp jerk of his chin.
The junkie walked back to the soda cooler, hoping for some Red Bull, maybe, or some iced coffee or something, something to keep him awake until he could make his way back to Sweetly again. If he had some coke, and not the cola type, he could chop himself out a fat rail and...
No, he thought, pushing back against the idea. No, there wouldn't be any coke, not if he could help it, or meth, or any of the other drugs that used to eat him alive before Sweetly, the drugs he'd wanted desperately to kick because of Sweetly. Not if he could help it.
Not if I can help it...
He paused at the cooler door, rows of soda arrayed before him, and the door felt like a monolithic slab when he pulled at it. He stood there a moment, his brain too tired to process what he was seeing; soda, yes, but which kind did he want? An energy drink? The bright colors on the cans and bottles shrieked at him, biting at his eyes, and oh god, I'm so tired I can't even think straight.
He reached for something, let his hand fall back down, reached for something else...
"Hey!"
The junkie jerked, blinking his eyes as the realization that he'd fallen asleep standing there at last burned through the fog choking his mind.
What?
"Hey, dude," the clerk called from behind him and he turned slowly to look at him.
"Either make your choice or close the damn cooler, man. You're lettin' all the cold air out."
The junkie turned back to the cooler, its door still open, cool air washing out into his face.
"Just trying to find something to drink." He shrugged his shoulders to work out some of the aching kinks. "Asshole," he finished under his breath as he went back to perusing the racks. Coke Zero? Monster energy drink? Dismay flooded him for a moment when he realized that this was never gonna work. Caffeine was never gonna be enough to get him back to Sweetly, but he didn't know what else to do. The sudden thought of simply lying down on the floor and catching a few Zs seemed not so bad to him. The next breath he pulled felt as though it came from somewhere way down deep in his chest, below his chest, below his feet, even.
"Dude, really," the clerk said. "That's not your personal air conditioner. Can I help you pick one out or something?"
The junkie squinted his eyes hard as if fighting tears, because he was. Anger began to jack itself up in him, a berserker’s turbine screaming to life; he could see her, Sweetly; he could see her waiting on him. It was her supplications cast into the dark that had summoned him back from the Undermeat after all. She'd called him back from the Undermeat because she was in trouble and he wouldn't be able to find her again because of exhaustion, because he was too tired to stumble on for one more step and the futility of it yawned like a black pit inside of him. Memories pounded at the back of his blood-shot eyes, trying to get out, and Sweetly was in there with them, crying and saying his name again and again, tears and snot streaking her face, and the junkie eased the cooler door shut, the decision easier to make than he thought it would be, now that he'd made it.
"Tina?" he asked the clerk, still facing the cooler door.
"What?" the man asked.
"You don't understand?" the junkie said. "Tina. Snap Crackle Pop. Go-fast. Okie coke. Tweak." He watched his reflection in the glass door speak for him.
The clerk's reflection stared back at him uncomprehendingly.
"Come on, man," the junkie said, turning at last to face the other man. "N-methylamphetamine, a psychostimulant of the phenethylamine and amphetamine class of drugs."
The clerk's eyes narrowed and his lips seemed to thin out to a simple straight fleshless line.
"Just what you see in that cooler, asshole," he grunted.
"I can see it," the junkie responded, walking toward the counter. "In your eyes I can see it."
"Man, are you crazy?" the clerk asked. "Get some coffee."
"You tellin' me you don't have anything?"
The clerk leaned forward on the counter, fixing the junkie with a cold stare.
"I don't."
The junkie pulled the gun from his waistband and slammed it on the counter in front of him, kept it covered with his hand.
"Now tell me you don't."
"Oh, you aggravatin' motherfucker," the clerk said. He jerked a thumb to the ceiling behind him. "You do realize you're on camera, right?"
"I couldn't care less," the junkie replied, holding up a middle finger to the camera absently, never taking his eyes off the clerk. "I'm running out of time here. Now, give me whatever it is you've got and we walk away from each other. Hold out on me and you just may live to regret it."
The clerk sucked in a breath to say something else and the junkie knew it would start with an 'F' because the other man's top teeth were on his bottom lip and suddenly the gun wasn't on the counter anymore, the junkie was, and the gun was jammed under the clerk's chin, the clerk's shirt in the junkie's fist. As the junkie watched, the clerk slumped in defeat, anger draining from his eyes.
"Damn it, man," he said, and for a second the junkie was afraid the other man was going to cry. "Keys are in my pocket," the clerk said. "Shit's in the trunk."
The junkie hopped back down from the counter, pulling the gun from beneath the clerk's chin but keeping it pointed at him.
"Pull 'em out. Slow. And slide 'em across the counter to me."
The clerk did as he was told, looking all the while like he wanted nothing more than to sit down and get off his aching feet.
"Matter of fact," the junkie said, "why don't you come with me. I'll drop you off a little ways from here and you can walk back. Keep you off the phone for a while."
"I leave, Terry'll fire me."
"It's all on camera," the junkie said, a quick flick of the gun barrel to the ceiling. "He can't call you a liar."
"That damn camera ain't worked in years."
The junkie laughed and was suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all; he was wide awake now and he hadn't even taken any drugs. All he had to do was steal them.
Goddamn, man. Goddamn.
He fished his own keys from his pocket and tossed them to the clerk.
"Do what you gotta do, then."
In moments he was gone.
* * *
A half hour later, the adrenaline of his robbery wearing off, weariness began to overtake him again. He exited I-95 the first chance he got and pulled into the first gas station he saw. He eased the car to a stop around the side of the building, dug through the clerk's trunk until he found a gallon-sized zip-loc baggie filled with smaller baggies, each containing a dull white powder, and he sat back down in the driver's seat. He laid out a fat line of the meth on the vinyl passenger seat, pissed that he couldn’t smoke the meth here but he'd left his pipe in the car he'd surrendered to the clerk, so he leaned down and with one mighty huff pulled it all in. Instantly, great sheets of flame spread through his ravaged sinuses, “Goddamn, it hurts, oh fuck me!” he hissed, and he cupped his face in his hands, pressing hard on his nose. “God DAMN!” The fire in his sinuses raging and he wanted to cry but suddenly it seemed as though his heart rate dropped into some kind of passing gear, thundering to a full gallop in the time it took him to pull his hands away from his now-bleeding nose, his veins opening to the size of garden hoses, blood rushing, sloshing, his heart thundering racing, blood a roaring river that he could feel slamming in his head and gut and fingers. He could feel the promise in his belly start to crawl up the column of his spine like a fire moving up the floors of a skyscraper, and at last the super-charged wail of his heart cut through the chaos in his brain. Sweetly; he might very well make it to Sweetly now.
He cranked the car, put it in gear, and hit the road once more.
Chapter 2
As soon as Sweetly stepped through the door of the strip club, the music began to pound at her, to pummel her as relentlessly as Dylan Rose ever had. She stopped for a second just inside the door, waiting for her eyes to grow accustomed to the dimly lit interior, and ran her hands over her newly-shorn hair. She'd gotten it cut this afternoon. She'd needed a change, God, she'd needed something, so on a whim she'd cut it, all of it, losing nearly fourteen inches of hair in the process. It had been long and black, shot through with bleached and dyed streaks of yellow and red. The length and colors were gone now, the butchered remains of a delicate demolition. Now her hair was little more than stubble; the only length she'd left was in the bangs bobbing at her forehead. She sucked in a deep breath and bit the inside of her cheek for resolve. Then she stepped through the second set of doors, looking up at the imposing bulk of Bluto Canady, Dylan’s so-called head of security; Bluto was really just a glorified bouncer. Still, he was sweet enough, and he treated the girls with all the respect that Dylan didn’t.
"Hey, Bluto."
"Hey, baby," the huge muscle-bound man replied, his bald head gleaming like polished stone in the dim light. "Like the ‘do."
"Thanks," she replied. "Think Dylan will?"
"Well, shit no."
She humphed and stepped inside, walking past the bar where only a few hardy souls were drinking this early in the evening. Six p.m. and only one dancer was on stage now, a new girl who called herself Valentina; word in the dressing room had it that her real name was Betty Lou Purgason. A scattering of customers in the already-smoky, black-lit room, men already half-drunk here on a Friday evening, ready to spend paychecks best saved for child support, or state-mandated court fees arising from that DUI conviction, or maybe that misdemeanor assault charge last summer. She knew the type; by ten o’clock they’d have spent so much money they’d be convinced that one of the dancers at least owed ‘em a blow job; come on, honey. I just put yer kid through his freshman year of college, least you could do is suck my dick.
Oh God, she hated this place.
She waved at Betty Lou Purgason slash Valentina up on her stage; the girl waved back.
And suddenly here was Dylan, staring at her as he stood outside the door leading to the DJ's booth, Dylan Rose who both owned this shit-hole and pimped her out to anybody and I do mean any-fucking-body with a dollar in his pocket, Dylan who referred to his dancers as his scrumptious pie-holes, Dylan who was as ugly as he was fat and as tall as he was mean.
Dylan Rose, who saw the world as his private cat litter box; Dylan who could drink boiling water and piss ice cubes.
He glared at her fiercely for a moment, his eyes like two piss-holes in the snow, and then he walked toward her. He weaved his way gracefully among the tables and dancing stages despite his bulk, and she stood her ground. No sense in trying to postpone the inevitable.
"Sweetly. What the fuck. What did you do to yourself?"
"I got a haircut, Dylan,” she replied as demurely as she could. "Do you like it?"
"A haircut?" he barked. "Honey, I've met Marines afraid of a haircut that short."
She laughed with as little sarcasm in her voice as possible.
"Oh come on," she said, feigning a grin. "It's not like I'm bald or anything."
"You look like a dyke, Sweetly. The angry, man-hating kind. And nobody wants to see a dyke up there on stage unless she's with another dyke..."
"Dylan..."
"And they can't see that here because that kinda shit's against the law."
So's pimping, she wanted to say. And the drugs that run through here. And so are a lot of things, too. Instead, she stood silently, cursing herself for the malleable quality of her spine.
"Look," she said at last. "I know I didn't ask you first, but they're my tips, right? If they go to shit, it's my problem."
"No, darlin'," he growled, and took a step closer to her, glaring down at her with eyes she could have described as green, if green wasn't the color of growth, or of life. "It's not just your problem. 'Cause I take a cut of your tips, remember? It's how I keep money in my pocket, and when you try to put your hand in my pocket, you're fuckin' with the wrong set of pants entirely. You understand that?"
She stood as still as she could, afraid he was about to clock her, even out here in front of God and everybody. He'd do it; he had hit her before and she'd seen him hit other dancers before and she knew that it wasn't because he hated her; it was because he hated everybody.
"Do you understand, Sweetly?" he asked again, his voice much quieter, much more dangerous. He took another step toward her. Before she could stop herself she took a step away from the threat of his bulk.
"I understand, Dylan," she said, surrendering to her fear and swallowing it back down into the pit of her gut instead of letting it spew out, and knew that it wasn't because she hated everybody; it was because she hated herself.
"Now you're gonna have to close to make up for it, so I suggest you eat yer Wheaties." He turned from her to head for his office.
"But, Dylan," she said. "I've got that photo-shoot at eight in the morning. I can't be here till five a.m."
He spun quickly, and the look on his face was as hard as his fists, as tight as his wallet.
"What did you say?" he demanded, anger rising in his eyes like bile rising in a throat.
Sweetly noticed that Betty Sue had quit dancing behind Dylan. She glanced around to see that the customers had turned their attention to Dylan and his employee, the guarantee of female nudity secondary to the promise of violence. She glanced back quickly to Dylan.
"You're closing tonight, Sweetly. And you're going to the photo-shoot in the morning. Is that clear?"
He stood looking down at her, and she could see the rage directed her way, red and brutal.
"Okay, Dylan, " she said, and gathering as much dignity as she could, she gathered her back-pack to her chest and made her way to the back of the club, where the dressing room waited.
Chapter 3
The junkie rose up out of the fugue state of his high like a leviathan rising from the deeps, slowly and ponderously, and like a whale breaching the ocean's surface, he gasped for air.
The world swam back into view and he realized, inexplicably, that he could smell meat and diesel fuel, both burning. He shook his head and twitched his nose to clear away the smell when he realized he could only smell it in his head and not his nostrils, and he looked down at the gun in his right hand, then up at the windshield pocked with bullet holes.
The gun? Whose car was this?
And suddenly it came back to him, all of it, from beginning to end, in one mad snarled crashing rush. Sweetly's pleas for forgiveness and mercy, whispered into the empty confines of her heart, had bled into the Undermeat. When he'd heard them, he'd had no choice but to try and escape, to do whatever he could to keep her from making the same mistake he'd made.
Never go to the Undermeat for help. Never never never never never.
That place was...the Undermeat was...
Now here he sat, bewildered, wishing to God he could remember what had brought him here, but big parts of yesterday had vanished in a blur, streaked with blood and rails of meth. He set the gun down on the seat beside him, his hand feeling oddly light, his head aswirl with pain and white noise, grinding white noise pushing and throbbing and pushing, blood like thick muck in his veins, his flesh feeling pebbled with broken glass, salt the wounds that will not heal, amen and amen. Tears blistered his eyes as he realized that he'd left the Undermeat to save Sweetly but had instantly been swallowed by his old hungers, his old weaknesses, and she would die now because he'd be too weak to save her. He could feel the Undermeat pulling at him even now, tugging on the darkness at the back of his brain, at the hopelessness and despair coiled there like vipers. Surrender, it whispered. Give up, let go, and come home. And he wanted to so very badly, but Sweetly would suffer if he did, she would suffer and die, and he screamed, the shriek punishing his ears as it bounced back at him from the shattered windshield. A great whooshing breath and he sucked in a burning lungful of hot air to silence the next scream, clenching his hands hard on the steering wheel until his knuckles blanched white and then he screamed anyway, the scream rising up out of his gut, his balls, from where his spine met his spirit, the backbone's connected to the ghostbone, and his scream fell through its own octaves until it was nothing more than a pathetic giggle dripping from his lips like the foam of rabies. He patted the front pocket of his jeans. He could feel the thick baggie of drugs beneath the denim and knew that there were more under his seat besides. Certainly enough to get him to Sweetly.
The thought of more drugs, of more than enough drugs, gave his legs the strength to move and he flung the door open; he had to find another car to replace this one. He didn't know if the clerk had called the cops or not but he wasn't going to take that chance. He pushed himself out of the car door and looked around himself. He'd pulled off the interstate and parked here while still lost here in his fugue, and didn't remember having done it. Here, on a street in front of a row of shitty tightly-packed little stores in some shitty tightly-packed neighborhood. Poorly painted cinder block walls, bars on all the windows, busted street lights. He realized suddenly that someone was watching him from the closest shop doorway. The sign above her head said Rachel's Pawn and Fine Jewelry / When You Need A Helping Hand.
It didn't look like Rachel got a lot of fine jewelry to come through here anymore, not in this part of town, a window behind the burglar bars was broken and held in the frame with peeling duct tape, so no, not a lot of jewelry, but a whole shit load of need, you bet your ass. A woman, Rachel?, and holy shit, did she look pissed, bulging stomach above but scrawny legs below a ratty brown skirt, hair a wild frightwig mess, her eyes as dark as the barrel of the single-barreled shotgun she held in her hands.
"Goddamn crackheads," she said, and her voice sounded exactly the way he thought it would; too many cigarettes and whiskey sours and a life time of complaining to anyone who'd listen about how bad she'd always had it, ain't nobody never cut me no slack when I needed it. "Goddamn crackheads," she repeated. "I'm sick of you damn crackheads stealing my shit."
Before he could tell her that he wasn't here to steal her shit, that indeed he wasn't a crackhead, she raised the shotgun and she shot him.
* * *
Goddamn crackheads. Teach 'em to steal shit from me again. I'm sick and fucking tired of these niggers and spics and crackheads stealing from me, and I'm not puttin' up with it anymore, hell no, and just because he ain't no nigger or spic don't mean he can't be the first...
* * *
The junkie screamed as the shot blasted his side open, and he staggered back into the car, fell across the front seat, spraying the inside of the car with blood and chunks of rib. He slapped his hands over the open wound, yanked them away at the feel of the awful wet concavity, then slapped them down again, desperate to stanch the flow of blood.
Until he realized that there really wasn't any. The flow had already trickled up and stopped, along with the monstrous burning pain, leaving him with nothing more than a gaping wound in his side. He rolled awkwardly to his opposite side so that he could look down at the wound itself and gasped; deep and red, the shattered ends of bone poking out through his shredded t-shirt. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and climbed out of the car the same way he had before. The ugly woman had stepped from the doorway of her shop and was halfway to the car. She had her shotgun broken open and was pulling the spent shell from the breech. Her face fell open at the sight of him, her mouth gaping like his wound, and he had a suspicion that their expressions were horribly similar: shock and fear and sneaking paranoia.
"What the fuck," he snarled. "You don't have nothin' better to do than this?" he asked, indicating the wound in his side. "'Cause I can find something for you to do if you need me to."
She set the spent shell and the shotgun itself on the broken asphalt at her feet, as if to show him she would do no further harm.
"What are you doing here," she asked, "this side of the Skin?”
This side of the Skin? What the hell does that mean? And then he realized: she knows. About the Undermeat. This side of the Skin is out of the Undermeat.
“You here for me?" she asked
"No," he replied, and she seemed to relax a bit. "But it occurs to me that I need some stuff from you. That shotgun, for starters. Mainly your car. If you got one."
She dug a set of keys from a voluminous skirt pocket; a huge set, shit, there must have been thirty keys on the ring. She tossed it and it landed janglingly at his feet.
"It's in the alley behind the building."
"I only need the one," he said.
"Take 'em," she replied. "Take 'em and go."
"All of them?"
"Just go."
From another pocket she pulled a fistful of shotgun shells and dropped them near the shotgun. They spun and rolled and cavorted in the morning light. She turned and walked swiftly back into Rachel's Pawn and Fine Jewelry, locked the door, turned the Open sign around so that it read Closed.
When You Need A Helping Hand.
He watched her watch him through dusty blinds for a moment and then gathered his new things.
* * *
Take my shit and go, you Undermeat...thing. Take it all and leave me be.
You ain't taking me to the Undermeat with you.
The fuck you will.
Chapter 4
Sweetly stared dully, tiredly into the camera, her fingers thrust into her pussy; her forearm was beginning to hurt from holding them so deeply in there. She'd had to spit on them to get them into herself. Long ago, when she'd first started stripping, the taboo nature and sensual nudity had turned her on. Well, none of it did anymore, not a damn bit of it, and if it wasn't for spit and KY jelly, she'd be out of a job.
"Arch your back a wee bit more, missy," the photographer commanded, George or Gerald or Jerry or something, hell, she couldn't remember, and she wanted to spit on him. Hell, was he really calling her missy?
She arched her back a wee bit more, just a wee and not a fraction further as he continued taking photos for a website called Razorblade Girlz. Sweetly with her short black hair and full sleeves of tattoos, shredded angel's wings in black on her back, a blue and green cobra spiraling down the length of her left leg from hip to ankle.
George or Gerald or Jerry or Something stepped up close to her, pointing the camera directly at her crotch, at the shaven skin and pierced clit. When she'd arrived here at this abandoned warehouse this morning for the shoot, she'd seen him standing out front with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, chatting with a thickening, early-middle-aged woman with fading tattoos on her forearms and an assortment of facial piercings. His assistant, Sweetly had supposed.
"You the camera man?" Sweetly'd asked, and he'd looked at her as if she'd asked him to eat a booger she might have been holding out in front of her on a finger tip.
"I'm the artist who'll be photographing you, yes," he'd replied, and had spun on his heel to go back into the warehouse.
Now Sweetly looked down at the camera lens mere inches from her vagina.
"Pull your fingers out slowly," George or Gerald or Jerry or Something said. "Make them spread your pussy lips apart coming out."
So much for artistry.
She did as she was told, though, because that was what she did these days. She obeyed. When Dylan told her to do a skanky photo shoot for a skanky website for a few measly hundred bucks that he'd claim for himself, she obeyed. When the short ugly painter who had fancied himself an artiste (much the same way that George or Gerald or Jerry or Something here did) had come to them a few weeks ago smelling of rank sweat and oil paints, asking Dylan if he could stuff a lollipop in Sweetly's cunt (and not a regular small one, mind you; no, no, this was one of the big round circular ones you saw the cute child stars from the thirties licking on as they sang their asses off in the latest Darryl F. Zanuck Twentieth Century-Fox musical extravaganza)...
Well, that wasn't a really good example, because she'd tried to beg her way out of it. Please don't let him, she'd asked Dylan, knowing her request was dangerous, the words themselves like bee-stings to him, angering and aggravating and driving him to swat at their source. But the artiste stank, god, how he stank, and that lollipop, it had to have ten pounds of pure sugar in it; that thing was bound to give her the Mount Everest of yeast infections. So she'd asked, and Dylan had yanked her behind a phone booth. He'd then proceeded to pop her two or three times in the stomach. She'd doubled over, begging him to stop, begging him to let the stinking artiste shove his huge lollipop in her cunt as far as he could get it, all the way to her spleen, if he wanted to. Goddamn right you will, Dylan had retorted. And if you mouth off to me again, he'd said, and then he'd punched her one more time just to let her know exactly what would happen. So she wound up letting the artiste fuck her with the lollipop, and then she'd nursed herself through the mother of all yeast infections just like she knew she'd have to, but she'd kept her nose positioned squarely on her face and she'd kept her ribs thoroughly unbroken because, by God, she'd obeyed.
She had to obey. Dylan might likely kill her one of these days if she disobeyed. He'd kill her and then where would she be? Dead, that's where, and there was still so much to be done. She had to prove that she'd come back to him when he sent her out on her own, the way he had today, so that one day not too far down the road, after she'd found out how to get into the Undermeat she would be able to leave him and make the trip.
In the Undermeat, it was said, there would be people to whom she could turn, people whose skills and predilections would prove useful in helping her escape from Dylan. People to whom Dylan, even with his stone fists and granite angers, would pose absolutely no threat, especially since the stories she heard rarely described them as people to begin with. Nightburners, yes, scarlings or sin sangres or hellenbackers, but never people. One of these nightburners, in particular, interested her the most; the one called the Blacklokken, or Missy Stench, or Little Suzy Hollowpoint, or Eustace Eumenide. The Blacklokken could avenge a woman against a man if that man had done her a grievous wrong. And if the price was agreeable.
Only a few weeks ago, right after Sweetly had started her search, she'd run across an itinerant street preacher who claimed himself to be the Church of the Cross and the Strap's Most High Ecclesiast, Malachai Mortimer Mulcahey. But you can call me Philly.
He'd been on his second bottle of Thunderbird fortified wine by then, and she had yet to figure out how much of what he'd told her had been truth, and how much drunken bullshit.
* * *
They had been people till they done stumbled into the Undermeat. And stumble they did, too, 'cause don't nobody look for it unless they crazy! Now, I ain't never begged a white girl for nothin' in my life, and I ain't gonna start now, but I'm beggin' you not to go lookin' for the Undermeat. It changes people. The rules of the real world don't apply none down there and some of 'em have learned to use that to their 'vantage. Like that Blacklokken you lookin' for. Bet you my bottom dollar she used to be a regular girl like you.
They had been people, girlie-girl, and now they...shit, girl, now they ain't.
* * *
This had been George or Gerald or Jerry or Something's idea of artistry: she'd fingered herself to a fake orgasm on the top of a dusty forgotten desk in an abandoned office of a derelict warehouse here on the north side of Queens, and there wasn't even any place where she could wash her own spit off of her hands now because there was no running water anywhere in the building.
How artistic.
George or Gerald or Jerry or Something had packed his gear, handed her an envelope with the money in it, and had left without so much as another word (his last words had been Put them in your ass, I said. Not your pussy. Your ass, and perhaps he'd wanted to bequeath those words in posterity to her memory of him). Sweetly had already donned her undergarments and jeans, and now, standing beside the desk, she shook the dust from her shirt and pulled it over her head. Out the same door she'd come in that morning, and there on the cracked concrete of the loading dock stood the assistant, her back to Sweetly as she spoke quietly into a cell phone. Sweetly stood and watched her for a moment, waiting for the other woman to finish her conversation. My name is Laurel, she'd told Sweetly tiredly that morning as she'd helped George or Gerald or Jerry or Something set up the lights. Sweetly could tell just by looking at her that Laurel had done this sort of thing before, too. Not what George or Gerald or Jerry or Something was setting up to do, photography, artistry and all that, but what Sweetly was getting ready to do, what she did every day: sell herself, sell her flesh, not to the highest bidder or the lowest bidder, but to anyone who bothered to bid at all. Laurel, though, didn't even have the one thing going for her that Sweetly still did; her youth. Pretty enough but pushing forty, probably. Not old at all, but there were a hell of a lot of nineteen year olds out there with tighter bodies and more lustrous hair willing to do what Sweetly did herself. Considering the jobs that Sweetly took, Laurel probably had to pick from the bottom of the barrel.
And the barrel was nasty enough when it was full.
Laurel closed her phone and turned. She didn't seem surprised at all to see Sweetly standing there.
"You outta here?" she asked.
"I don't suppose I could use your phone to call my boyfriend, could I?" Sweetly said.
"You don't have a boyfriend, though," Laurel replied.
"I don't?"
"You don't have a boyfriend, right? You've got a pimp."
"Whatever," Sweetly said. "Can I use your phone or not?"
Laurel looked pleased with herself for a moment, as if she'd scored a point in a game Sweetly didn't know was being played. Then she held the phone out and Sweetly took it.
"Thanks," Sweetly said. She flipped it open to begin dialing.
"Don't do what you're thinking of doing," Laurel said.
Sweetly looked up mid-dial.
"What?"
"The Undermeat. It's no place to look for. Stop looking."
"You know about the Undermeat?" Sweetly asked, fully turning her attention from the phone to Laurel.
"Look at me," Laurel replied, then: "Look at this." She hiked up her shirt to reveal a plain beige bra. She yanked the left cup aside and scooped a large breast out. The breast was pale and speckled with small circular scars, as if it had been repeatedly burned with a cigarette. Sweetly winced.
"Two years ago I went to a photoshoot a lot like you did today. Supposed to do a few guys. Thought I'd fake it just enough to earn my money." She slipped the breast back in the bra, lowered her shirt. "They nailed my tits down to a chunk of two by ten and then ran a train for two hours. I had to pull the nails out myself after they left." She finished tucking in her shirt and looked back up. "Guess I was lucky they left the hammer behind, huh?"
"The Undermeat?" Sweetly prompted. Sorry about the tit, lady, but I got scars of my own.
"You think I haven't wanted out of here bad enough to consider it?"
"Why didn't you?"
"I did. I found a name, at least. The name of someone who could point me in the right direction."
"Why no more?"
"Too smart. Too stupid. Hell, I don't know. Afraid, I guess."
"How do you know I'm looking for it?" Sweetly asked.
"I can see it in your face. The hope." She laughed quietly. “The desperation.”
"It's not the..."
"Bullshit. Don't try and bullshit me. You'll never get the name that way."
“You’ll give it to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Laurel asked. “You seem nice enough.” She held her hand out for her phone. “You won’t be needing that anymore, will you?”
Sweetly glanced down at the phone in her hand as if she’d forgotten she had it.
“What?” she asked.
“Well, you’re not going anywhere with your pimp now, right?”
No, Sweetly realized after a moment. No, she wasn’t going anywhere with Dylan at all.
* * *
Stupid bitch.
Do you know what an anal fissure is?
Those goddamn frat boys stuck a beer bottle in my ass last month. Why should you be free when they stuck a beer bottle in my ass? Because you're younger? Prettier?
They'll eat you alive in the Undermeat, they eat everybody alive in the Undermeat, and it's no more than you deserve.
Stupid bitch.
Chapter 5
The junkie'd had a dream the day after he'd been confronted by Dylan Rose. Dylan had told him in no uncertain terms whatsoever to leave Sweetly the hell alone, I swear to God and sonny Jesus I'll kill her before I let you have her and oh yeah, by the way. Baby's dead, shit-bag. This was the day the junkie'd lost the anchor of his hope and had slipped away into the Undermeat.
In the dream, he'd learned that God was a dairy farm in upstate New York and this had really tripped the junkie out. God didn't live in the white farmhouse, stolid against the surrounding hardwood forests, He was the white farmhouse. He didn't walk through the rows of tall green corn, or across lush pastures divided by split rail fences and dotted with cow manure, He was the rows of tall green corn and lush pastures. He was the red barn bright as a beacon at the end of a dirt road, and He was the dirt road. All of these and more, parts of God: a rusting tractor, a chuckling turkey on the other side of the barn, chickens scratching and squabbling on hard-packed dirt.
Trippy, dude. God was a dairy farm in upstate New York. Who the hell knew?
In his dream, the junkie had awoken from darkness to a sky so blue that it hurt him to look at it. He'd never seen a sky that blue in the Bronx and as he stood on the edge of one of these pastures and looked out over the rolling land, he'd had to wonder: Why the hell haven't I seen one of these before? Why would they keep something like this from me?
He'd walked down the fence, running his hands along the rough wood as he went, warm sun on his face, soft grass beneath his feet, this is God, a dairy farm in upstate New York, and he'd thought Why am I here? I don't belong here. I've been an asshole my whole life. I don't belong here.
A cow, wandering heavily past him behind one of the split rail fences, had looked at him languidly. It occurred to the junkie that if God was this dairy farm, then He was also this cow.
"Moo," God had said, and to the junkie's surprise he'd been able to hear in that holy moo God's answer to his question.
You're right. You don't belong here. And you won't be staying.
"Then why the hell am I here?"
"Moo."
Because you tried, son. You truly did and I can respect that. I thought you at least deserved a glance before I sent you on your way.
"On my way to where?"
"Moo."
You know where.
The cow had sidled off without another glance and the junkie had continued down the fence line until he'd come upon a pile of cow manure drying in the sun, green grass tufting up around it. He'd choked back a snort of laughter; God's got cowshit in his hair. He reached out with the toe of a shoe and smeared some across the grass.
It wasn't funny, though. Not a damn bit.
God had given the junkie pit-bulls for parents; God had set the fish hook of addiction in his lip and then had yanked him hither and yon with it all these years; God had given him Sweetly only to snatch him away from her and banish him to either the Undermeat or Hell itself, he wasn't sure which, yet.
There wasn't enough cow shit in the world, as far as the junkie was concerned.
* * *
A buzzing roar woke him and he jerked here in the driver's seat of the lady's car, a battered old Mercury Cougar missing its back seat.
Damn it, he'd fallen asleep driving again, his eyes open, the world ahead of him dimming to gray and then black until the passenger tires had hit the rumble strips on the side of the road. He jerked the wheel to the left and centered the car in its lane once again. He'd fallen asleep driving again and soon a cop was going to notice and pull him over and that would be that. It was getting harder and harder to stay awake though, despite the bump of meth here and there all through the morning; exhaustion was a snarling thing inside him beginning to snarl ever louder. He shook his head and slapped his own cheek, trying to force the sleep from his head as if he were trying to shit his brains out.
After a moment he pulled his shirt up and glanced down at the wound in his side again, unhealed, bloodless, and as he tugged at his shirt a finger slipped into the wound, poking into raw flesh and he thought, God, I figured that woulda hurt, and at the thought, pain skyrocketed into his body and he yelped, swerving across lanes again in a fury of cursing. After the pain died down and he'd regained control of the car, the same thing he'd thought earlier in the morning flashed through his mind.
Why am I surprised? I was in the Undermeat and now I'm not because Sweetly pulled me out and I learned that God is a dairy farm in upstate New York. I was in the Undermeat until she called me out, and here I am not dying from a wound that should have killed me. Why would I be surprised, when God is a dairy farm in upstate New York and I'm like the night of the living dead?
He glanced to his left; the sun had risen to a point where it wasn't visible through the car's roof.
Mid-morning of the dead, maybe? Or would you call it early afternoon? Harsh laughter, a rough-hewn chunk of it, tried to die in his throat, but he forced it out anyway, unwilling to let it die and rot there behind his tongue.
Early afternoon of the dead, I like that. That's pretty good.
* * *
Baby's dead, shit-bag.
The junkie felt his knuckles tighten on the steering wheel of the old Mercury at the sting of those words as they crept through his mind again and again, tickling and prickling like the countless feet of venomous centipedes.
Baby's dead, shit-bag.
Baby's dead, shit-bag.
Man, fuck me...
Baby's dead.
The junkie hadn't even known that Sweetly'd been pregnant, that was the pisser of it all. She hadn't been feeling well the day before, and on Wednesday evening they were supposed to have met at the Wendy's on Macadam Street. Instead, the shadow of Dylan Rose's vast bulk had darkened the tabletop as the junkie had sat and waited for her.
"You here for Sweetly?" he'd asked.
"Who are you?" the junkie had replied, and Dylan Rose had answered. When he'd finished, the fat man had gotten up and walked out of the Wendy's, and the junkie had been able to hear, with startling clarity, the grinding and snapping of chains. They'd bound him to what little hope he'd allowed himself to keep, what little hope had kept him anchored to his place in this world.
When he'd entered the Wendy's restaurant that evening, he'd been a member, if only peripherally, of the real world, the world where moms and dads took their children to the park, where people commuted to work and lawyers tried cases and doctors took temperatures and college students hung framed Monet posters on dorm walls. In this world people complained about the high cost of living but kept right on doing it, where people paid their taxes and though the junkie'd never filed a tax return in his life he'd certainly earned paychecks even if they couldn't all be labeled as precisely legal; in this world, youngsters in love met for dinner and held hands and joked about how the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
The junkie had been in that world when he'd walked into Wendy's.
He'd stepped back out into the Undermeat.
Chapter 6
Jalapeño Higginbotham was the name Laurel the photographer's assistant had given to Sweetly, and the first thing Sweetly'd thought had been, What the hell kinda name is Jalapeño Higginbotham?
But Laurel had also given her the name of a place where she might be able to find Jalapeño Higginbotham if she was lucky. Sweetly had no intentions of quitting now, so instead of heading back to her crappy little apartment for some sleep, or better yet going to the club to give Dylan the money she'd earned that morning, she hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the cab driver asked.
“Fourteen East 51st Street,” she answered.
“Saint Patrick's Cathedral?” he asked, trying to get a good look at either her pierced lip or her cleavage in the rear view mirror.
Gee. I wonder which one.
“That’s the place,” she replied and slid into the back seat.
* * *
Seventy minutes and forty six dollars later (This has to work now. Dylan's gonna beat my ass for spending so much money) she stepped from the cab into the shadow of Saint Patrick's Cathedral in downtown New York City. The front towers loomed above her, clawing at the sky with their Gothic spires, and Rockefeller Center was a vast presence behind her, its shadow spilling across 51st Street like that of some ancient monolith.
Here in the church, Laurel had told her, worked a janitor named Jalapeño Higginbotham, and if Sweetly was lucky, if she played her cards right, he'd help her find the Undermeat. In the Undermeat she'd be able to find the kind of help she'd never be able to find here in the world around her, cops and lawyers and social workers and offices and paperwork. You're a whore, they'd say, and she knew they would because she'd seen it happen before. You're a whore, young miss, and if you expect us to believe any differently, will you please explain to the jury why you let a stinking artiste stick a lollipop in your cunt up to your spleen?
In the Undermeat she'd find the help she needed to punish Dylan, and it wasn't worth thinking about to wish that maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to find a little peace for herself, too, peace for the first time since...
She pushed the name away from herself the way a drunken redneck would push away a gay man at a bar: violently, forcefully. Desperately. She didn't allow herself to think about him any more, not even his name. She didn't deserve the peace of mind that the memory of his smile, his touch brought. She deserved nothing more than the pain she felt contemplating his fear and confusion as he'd waited on her at Wendy's that night, the despair that surely shook him when Dylan had shown up in her place. She deserved that, and nothing more.
She steeled herself and looked up at the front facade of the great church, the marble gray and gleaming in the sun.
Dylan. Dylan had made her do it. He'd caught her lying about her whereabouts one day, and had forced her with fist and shout and foot to tell her where she'd really been.
With...with someone else.
Dylan had been furious. About the lie. About the treachery. He'd tried to punch her in the stomach and she'd desperately covered herself, folding in on herself like origami. No! she'd shrieked and he'd stepped back, clarity dawning bold as sunrise on his face.
Holy shit. You're pregnant. This motherfucker knocked you the hell up.
He'd explained to her, then, exactly what it was all gonna cost her.
* * *
Sweetly looked back down from the cathedral's spires, squinting her eyes at the light reflecting from the marble facade. Now that she was here, fear began to filter down into her, like snow seen falling into the cone of light thrown by a street lamp at night.
Despite the fear, she stepped up through the doors of the cathedral into another world. As soon as the huge bronze doors closed behind her, the noise that characterized so much of the city was gone, replaced by a brooding, whispering silence. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim and colorful light pushing through stained glass windows, she noticed the people. Tourists and parishioners moved slowly through the open spaces, down the length of the church between the pews, beneath an arched ceiling that must have been seventy feet high. Many lingered at side-chapel altars or lit candles arranged in rows on slanted racks at the foot of the nave. Ghostly smoke haunted the air, and when she saw a priest heading her way, she had to fight the urge to dart into the street and run, seeing God in the priest and his plain black cassock, God Himself, and He hates me, he's hated me my whole life...
Instead, she held her ground, nearly clinging to a vestibule column as the priest swept by her and out the same door she'd just entered, paying her no more attention than was necessary to notice and frown at her ample cleavage and facial piercings. Car horns and jovial shouting floated in through the doors until they shut again, once more dusting the interior with silence.
She stood for a moment still clutching the column, feeling the place inside her that should have held God grow even emptier and she thought: Surely He's gonna strike me down or something. Here I am back in His house after so long and I'm not even here for Him.
Even as she thought it, though, she realized it wasn't true. She hadn't left God, God had left her, flowing away on a wash of blood spilling down between her thighs, washing away with the tears she'd cried when she knew that Dylan had chased away the only man who'd ever really loved her.
What did she have to fear from being here, in the house of a complete stranger?
Sweetly straightened herself and turned her attention down the length of the nave to the altar some one hundred and fifty feet away, and what seemed like acres of softly gleaming marble flooring leading to it. There were probably a hundred people in here; how could she find one Jalapeño Higginbotham among them?
Well, hell. If she didn't have to be afraid, why not the quickest way?
She strode down the length of the nave toward the high altar. To her right stood the pulpit, a small stone-railed platform raised above the floor by about five feet. It was reached by a short winding set of steps. She circled her way onto the pulpit platform, stone railings cool beneath her finger tips. Before her lay the church and the people milling about within it. Silence lay like snow, respectful and gleaming.
"Jalapeño Higginbotham!" she called, and though she didn't yell, her voice carried like a shout in the vast airy silence, rising to the vaulted ceiling like a flock of bright birds. People turned reproachful stares to her and she could feel herself blush, but sucked in a breath to call again.
"You don't have to holler," someone said from somewhere behind her, laughter in his voice. "I'm right here."
She turned and saw him at the base of the high altar stairs, a thin man in janitor's coveralls, a mop in his hands. A yellow mop bucket sat at his feet. Had he been there when she'd walked down the length of the nave? Surely she didn't miss seeing him, did she? He would have been right in front of her as she'd walked from the front door. Yet here he stood, large as life, his hair a bright red shout.
She stepped down from the pulpit and walked over to him. She held out her hand.
"Jalapeño Higginbotham?"
"The one and only," he replied, shaking her hand. "What can I do for you?"
"You can tell me how to find the Undermeat," she said plainly.
His broad smile broadened even more as he stepped up beside her and threw an arm over her shoulders, leading her away from the mop bucket.
"Sweetheart," he said, "if you can pay the price, I'll tell you how to find Heaven itself."
* * *
“Nothing more than this,” he'd answered when she'd asked him how much his information was going to cost, and he'd pushed her to her knees and then he'd fished his dick out through the zipper of his work pants.
Well, of course. Of course this was going to be the price, and she felt like an idiot, first because she'd been afraid he was going to push her to her death and then because she'd expected something different here in this impossible place, in this room bounded not by the laws of physics but by magic and miracle. Here he was knee deep in nonsensicalities and he wanted his dick sucked.
It all came back to this, didn't it? It all came back to this.
* * *
After Jalapeño Higginbotham had introduced himself standing at his mop bucket, he'd led her to a dark and heavy looking wooden door bearing a small bronze plaque that read Sacristy. This, she knew, was where the priests would get dressed for services.
Jalapeño Higginbotham had pushed the door open and she'd gasped in wonder and no small amount of shock. The space before them stretched out much further than the laws of physics dictated it possibly could. This room should have been small, almost tiny, here on one of the cathedral's exterior walls. Instead, the narrow room reached so far back that it had to cross...what was the street out there? West 50th? It had to cross West 50th and beyond, into the building that lay across the street. She'd stood there dumb-founded, staring from the darkness swallowing the room's far end to the ceiling that towered even higher than that of the cathedral behind her. Rows of stained glass windows marched high along the walls, letting in heavy red and gold light.
"After you," Jalapeño Higginbotham had said pleasantly, and placing his hand on the small of her back, ushered her in. They'd walked for a moment on dull marble floors between dull stone walls. The air smelled the way she imagined deep caves might smell, or maybe castle dungeons. Damp and cool, mosses and ferns and crumbling green rocks. After a moment they came to a chasm in the floor running perpendicular to the length of the room itself. A narrow walkway of rusty metal grating stretched across the chasm. Before she stepped onto the walkway, she gazed down into the abyss, still utterly shocked by all this. Where the chasm ran in here, a street ran out there. The chasm's depths were lost in darkness, and she could hear what sounded like rushing water or distant wind.
She turned to Jalapeño.
"What's down there?"
"I don't know," he answered. "I've never been down there."
"What is this place?" she asked.
"This is my home. I live at the far end of this room."
"This..." she said, waving her hand to indicate everything from the bottomless gulf at her feet to the vast and airy ceiling looming above. "It's not...How? How can...?"
"The Undermeat," he replied, as if that explained it all, and he ushered her onto the walkway, this time with a gentle hand on her elbow. Halfway across, though, his grip tightened and he drew her to a stop. She fought a sudden instant of vertigo and cursed the walkway's lack of hand-rails. She craned her neck to look back at him over her shoulder as fear leapt hot and biting into her throat. She'd been an idiot, hadn't she? He had nothing to offer her. He was simply going to shove her off this walkway to her death God knows how far below and then he was going to return to business as usual, mopping church floors. She wanted to look down into the chasm below her, but didn't dare take her eyes off him. That's when he'd push her, wasn't it? Yes, that's when he'd push her and he'd smile as she fell.
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