InkStains January (10 page)

But not tonight.

The make-up must be powerful enough to reach
the cheap seats. Everyone’s paid what they can; they should get
what they paid for. The orchestra pit sinks empty and hollow. When
she rises from her chair before the mirror, her heels echo
brilliantly on the wood floor.

It’s show time. The theatre is at absolute
quiet except for the echo of her footfalls. She does not hurry. She
steps out from behind the curtains, onto the stage, exposed for
everyone to see. She walks with confidence to the mere circle of
light and fills it. She feels the thrill of expectation, the depth
of desire, the unmitigated anticipation. She takes a breath.

She lets loose with the first note. It
travels the length of the theatre, it reaches into the future and
the past, it resonates and vibrates even as a second note is
formed.

The words are old, a foreign language, but no
less powerful. Each note is perfect. She loses herself to the song,
as she always has. The words don’t mean as much as the emotions,
and the emotion is not built upon the song but expressed through
it: a desperate yearning; wishes and dreams fulfilled, shattered,
scattered; hope; sorrow; hopeful sorrow and sorrowful hope. The
song is merely an instrument. The message is in the notes.

When the song is over, her arms are
outstretched and her head held high. She quivers. She perspires.
She pants. She gave everything she had to give, and kept giving,
and none of that effort was wasted.

A heartbeat before the last echo of her final
note fades, the crowd erupts into applause. She bows, to this side
and that side, to the center; she accepts a bouquet of roses, and
other flowers are tossed onto the stage. The audience came from all
times and all places, ghosts of the deceased and the living and the
unborn, drawn by the simple beauty, the inescapable elegance, the
overwhelming effect of her final, aching solo, unaccompanied by
other musicians, one last moment of shine and glitter.

With an audible thud, the spotlight shuts
down. She goes down with it, exhausted and spent, and dies with
simple, undramatic quiet on the empty stage of a desolate theatre.
The applause ceases, and the ghosts take their star.

In the morning, the theatre’s new owner
strides down the center aisle toward a stage littered by a carpet
of dried flowers. His assistant follows dutifully.

The owner reaches the stage and scans the
flowers. He, perhaps, hears an echo of that final aria. He takes a
breath. He sees a possibility he hadn’t seen before. “Cancel the
wrecking ball,” he tells his assistant. “I have a better idea.”

26 January

It’s not much of a neighborhood, but you
don’t exactly come here to see the sights. Killers walk these
streets, and madmen, addicts that will stick you before they even
know you’re there. Keep your eyes open on a street like this.

It’s loud, music pouring out of every briefly
opened door, the sounds of pleading, the ticking of an imaginary
time bomb tied directly to your heart. I’m not happy to be here,
but these are my streets, I haven’t got a choice, and like anybody
else I’ve got my needs.

There’s no needs this street can’t
fulfill.

Cassie greets me at the door. She calls me
Joe. She might think it’s my name. I’ve never seen any reason to
correct her.

“
Looking for some fun
tonight, Joe, honey?”

I’m always looking for something. She’s never
really happy with my answer. She likes me, she really does, but
she’ll still take a twenty for ten minutes in one of those things
upstairs they call a room. “Later,” I promise, I’m always
promising. One day, I’ll take her up on her offer. But not
tonight.

It’s a typical club, in that it’s too dark to
describe with any accuracy. The clientele range from heavy hitters
to college kids looking for a little something to fuel their
ravenous cravings. They don’t have to dance well, they just throw
themselves wantonly into it and pray they survive till dawn.

The music’s gothic and industrial and blood
metal red. Dave’s the DJ. He carts in five crates of vinyl every
night. Guess he thinks it’s safe enough to risk the streets, but
not worth the risk of leaving them overnight.

There’s a fight in one of the backrooms.
There’s always a fight. There’s a cage and no rules. Three minute
rounds until someone’s laid out. No one submits. Maybe that’s a
rule. Far as I know, no one dies – not in the ring. Out back, I
wouldn’t be so sure.

There’s a fight now, two guys I don’t know,
already bloodied, the crowd jeering them. Money’s always on the
line.

Through the backroom is another. Bald guy
named Derek lets me in. Knows me on sight. You might call him an
insurance policy. Nothing ever goes wrong in this backroom. It’s
all fair – or at least above board – or at least, you know what
you’re here for. If the business was meant to go dirty, it wouldn’t
be done here.

Guy behind the desk calls himself Boss. He
answers to someone. I don’t ask those kinds of questions. I pull an
envelope from my jacket pocket and drop it on the desk. It’s filled
with cash. Boss won’t ask where I got it and I won’t tell him. It’s
not a game – it’s that kind of business.

“
Joe,” Boss says, opening
up his hands in a mock embrace, using them to talk as if he’s
Mafia. Far as I know, he’s not, but I don’t care.

“
Three grand,” I tell
him.

“
Yes, of course. Exactly as
expected. But you’re late.”

“
Couldn’t be
helped.”

He smiles. It’s big of him, that’s what he’s
telling me. “What do I care, ain’t that right, Joey?” He laughs.
“I’m having a scotch. You want one.”

I’m anxious to get what I came for, but I
take the drink. Only the best for the Boss and his guests. It’s
tough to get the good stuff anymore. It’s expensive. It survived
the shipping lanes. It’s also smooth. It burns my throat raw.

“
I could use you,” Boss
says.

“
I like being
independent.”

“
I know, Joe, I know. You
come and go as you please. But we’ve all got our vices, Joey, and I
can keep you – shall we say satisfied – far better from the
inside.”

“
You don’t need a man with
my particular skillset,” I remind him.

“
Don’t sell yourself short,
Joey.” Boss reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out three
bottles. He sets them on the desk between us. “Here you are, Joey.
This is what you paid for.”

His hand’s still on the desk drawer. I have
to lean forward to collect the black bottles. A grand each is the
going price – if you can find it. You could rave for less.

He slides the drawer open as I lean in, shows
me rows of bottles, perhaps two dozen. “I can make it interesting,”
Boss says.

I must admit, he’s got my interest. Last time
I saw that much ink in one place was before the war. I hesitate.
You would, too. I probably lick my lips.

Boss lowers his voice. “I know what you do to
get the cash. I wouldn’t ask anything more from you.”

“
Why me?”

“
Well, aren’t you the
best?”

I am. I don’t have to tell him that.

“
Tell you what,” Boss says.
“Keep your cash. Keep the ink. Keep all of it. Come back tomorrow
night, have a go at Derek. He’ll tell you what he wants. Then you
can do your thing to Cassie, too, and keep her for the
night.”

“
And there’ll be others?” I
ask.

“
There will always be
others.”

I’m done hesitating. I pocket the three ink
bottles, and the cash. “I can keep the rest here somewhere?”

“
Already got you a room,”
Boss says.

I curse. I meant to keep it under my breath,
but the Boss doesn’t mention it.

I walk home. I don’t see Cassie on my way
out. It’s cold, and a long, dangerous walk, but I need the air.
I’ve got a three-room walk-up the far side of the neighborhood. Got
my chair in one, and the needles, my whole kit, a half dozen
pictures of my skin work on the wall.

That’s not the only thing I need the ink for.
In my bedroom, I’ve got a small desk, something of a luxury these
days, and a quill. I’ve got plenty of blank paper – that’s easier
to come by than the ink – and a stack of poetry I’ve never shown
Cassie. Maybe now I will.

27 January

Soldiers move through the trees – closing in
on their target, weapons raised – in a blanket of unnatural
silence. Their faces are greased, their guns cleaned, their boots
encrusted with mud. They move in waves. There must be two hundred
of them.

Beyond them, forming a perimeters, several
Blackhawks hover – ready to fly, ready to provide support, missiles
loaded and anxious for their brief freedom.

Further out, a half dozen fighter jets and a
half dozen bombers and a half dozen troop carriers keep an
inconspicuous distance. They fly low, so as not to be seen, and are
mostly of the stealth variety, so as to avoid other forms of
detection.

Off shore, there’s an aircraft carrier, two
battleships, and a variety of support vessels on the surface, and
untold numbers of submarines beneath it.

In short, they’re not taking chances.

Their target is a simple cabin. It’s not
unoccupied. There’s a girl sitting at a table, both hands on that
surface, eyes closed so she can better see. There’s a boy pacing
back and forth, back and forth. He’s angry, frustrated, tired,
hungry, cold, and frightened – same as the girl.

He says, “This is stupid.”

She says, “Quiet.”

The soldiers come closer. The boy goes to the
window but refrains from pulling the curtain aside for a better
look. They’ve been in these situations before. It makes him
nervous. It only takes one.

He says, “Is it time yet?” He has a watch,
but it only speaks of time in the ways mankind has defined it.

The girl wears no watch but she knows. She
opens her eyes. She lowers her voice. She says, “Yes.”

The boy smiles. It’s not a joyful smile, but
he no longer has to wait. He can stop pacing. He can concentrate on
the job at hand. He says, “Good.”

And the door opens.

The door is in the floor at the center of the
cabin. You might think it leads to a cellar; in a way, and at
another time, you might be right. The girl has been saying things
in Latin, Babylonian, and Egyptian. She’s been saying things in
languages that aren’t dead so much as extinct. This is in
response.

The door opens and the first of the demons
emerges. It’s earthen toned, but its eyes burn red and it wields a
sword which has, in its time, captured a thousand and one
souls.

The boy’s sword isn’t a physical thing, but a
manifestation of his strengths and talents. He swings. It shatters
the demon’s sword, releasing its souls, and takes the demon’s
head.

The second demon, bigger, scalier, with
sickly yellow eyes and poisonous breath, falls just as quickly.

The third and fourth demons are twins. One
wears a necklace of human fetuses. The other has a chipped
tooth.

The girl says, “Watch out.”

The fifth demon is bigger than the cellar
door. He breaks it apart as he rises, and he roars something awful.
He also screeches something awful as it joins the other four dead
demons on the ground.

For a moment, it’s quiet. The boy says, “That
can’t be all.”

The girl says, “It’s not.”

And it isn’t. The sixth, seventh, eighth, and
ninth rise together. While they descend upon the boy, a useless
gesture, the tenth demon goes for the girl. This is the biggest,
slimiest, most vicious thing to rise from this cellar, and it
swallows the girl whole before the boy can put down the other
four.

The last three are smaller, but quick,
lizard-like, long-tongued, fire-breathing things. Only one goes for
the boy. The other two smash their way out of the cabin.

The soldiers open fire. The helicopters are
called in. The twelfth demon takes a hundred rounds of ammunition
before it stumbles. The boy is there to finish the job.

The thirteenth demon takes to the sky and
meets the fighter jets. It takes down four before a sidewinder
missile finds its way down the demon’s throat. It drops to the
earth with a thud. To be certain, the boy severs its head.

After the demons, a mass of the damned
emerge, escaping the bowels of hell. They ignore the boy. The boy
ignores them. He’s tired, and they’re the reason the soldiers are
here. There must be a thousand crawling out of that hole. They run
headlong into the soldiers, taking a rain of bullets but also
taking quite a few lives in exchange. They fight for their lives
and souls, though both have already been forfeited.

The boy enters the devastated cabin. There’ll
be men to bless and seal and send the soldiers’ spirits to their
eternal reward.

The girl stands by the cellar door wiping
gobs of slime and mucus and gunk out of her face. There’s also
blood. Not hers. Nothing else comes through the door. The boy walks
to the edge, looks down, sees the tenth demon retreating.

“
You turned it inside
out.”

The girl shrugs. It doesn’t much matter what
she did to the thing. It won’t return, and the portal has been
exhausted. It’s already collapsing upon itself. Quantities of demon
blood will do that. When the men come to seal it, it will be
permanent.

The boy says, “I’m hungry.”

The girl is also. She looks at the boy and
says, “You’re filthy.”

So they’ll get showers before they eat, and
maybe they’ll each sleep through the night – at least until the
girl locates another unsteady portal.

One day, she’ll find the last of them.