Orgonomicon (3 page)

"Yeah, whores all of 'em. Who needs them
anyway?"

"Yeah, right. Drink up."

Scott emptied half the can in one long,
guzzling swallow and belched.

"Fuck 'em all. They never done nothing for
me." He could feel the liquid warmth starting to work its magic on
his frazzled nerves. The ground shook under his feet.

"Mike, have you ever wondered why we're here?
Like, what are we really supposed to be
doing
right now? Am
I here for a reason? Was I supposed to be like, trying to get
something done?"

“Those are dangerous questions you're asking,
Scott. How'd you like to get another couple teeth knocked out
again? I bet you wouldn't. So I'm gonna cut you off right there and
encourage you instead to drink the rest of your beer. Or I'm gonna
have to cut you off another way, and I guarantee you won't like it.
Drink up. Alpha code two, seven, seven, nine-plus-one, right now,
chum. Drink your drink."

He blinked slowly, several times. "Yeah,
alright." Scott upended the rest of the can into his mouth and down
his throat. He ran his tongue around its contents, tasting the
strange liquid on the roof of his mouth; he ran his tongue along
the backs of his teeth and could have sworn he remembered a painful
accident, but everything seemed okay there. Mike was such a good
friend.

The feeling had come back? It seemed
familiar, he was almost certain that it was important to him
before, but he still couldn't place it. Was it that he was supposed
to be doing something, something specific and maybe even
desperate... he couldn't be sure what it was. He groaned and rubbed
his forehead. "Man, what did we do last night? How much did we have
to drink?"

"I don't know about you, but I think we had
just enough. There's still some left over. You want one?"

"Oh God no. My head feels like a jackhammer
ran over it. Punched fulla holes. I keep thinking I gotta do
something, something important."

"Relax, buddy. Your boss called and said not
to bother showing up. He says he don't need you anymore, so you got
no place you need to be. You got nothing to do but hang out with me
and shoot the shit and drink some more beer."

Scott was starting to get tired of it, tired
of Mike's one-track-mind approach to things. It was almost like
Mike was trying to prevent him from
getting...
something
...done. He wanted to tell Mike this and
see what Mike thought about it, but the next time he came to
consciousness, he was back sitting on the couch again in front of
the TV with a cold can in his right hand and his two front teeth in
his left. Mike was talking to him but so was the TV and, through
the racket the two of them were making, it was difficult to make
out anything at all; he could only put together a
patchwork-conversation, cobbled out of bits and pieces yelled at
him from all directions at once:

Mike: "The hole! The rabbit jumps down the
hole!"

TV: "And then all will be forgiven. You'll go
to a better place, with His love—"

Mike: "All over your face! All over your
face! Broken system Alpha niner!"

TV: "Elly-a-hoo, elly-a-hoo. Papaqui.
Elly-a-hoo, elly-a-hoo, papaqui."

Scott was starting to wonder just what the
fuck
that
was supposed to mean, when the TV shut itself
off.

He wondered what Ella was doing.

He held his teeth in his hand, the starless
sky blackening as the moon sank behind a skyscraper. It was the
first time he'd thought of her, directly, in days. He remembered
her face, her voice, the way her hair flattened to her scalp as she
rose up out of the water. She never really needed makeup; her
eyelids were naturally bluish and her wide, perfect lips a deep
red. Her voice was melodious, naturally in the higher range because
of a slightly-deviated septum. Her beauty made his heart tick a
beat out of rhythm, and he remembered how her lips curled like
snakes writhing when she snarled at him, how the blue lids framed
bloodshot eyes that told of drinking with strange men, and maybe
more as they drooped half-shut and her voice took on an ugly purr
and she told him about things uglier still. She had a knack for
knife-twisting, a natural. And still something in him felt the
tugging in his chest at long strings more terrible than anything
they'd done to each other and tangled in ways he couldn't untie,
even if he'd wanted to.
Did
he love her?

There was the voice again, hammering
hammering hammering, always hammering. Why now? He was trying to
get over her, yet images of her kept intruding on his mind. There
were memories of road-trips, their honeymoon, long summer nights
spent in their first apartment together. All the time they'd spent
homeless. The bad decisions. It was a never-ending torrent, the
buffeting images, seeming to shake him by his psyche and flipping
him around at its whim. For a very brief moment, Scott became aware
of how much time he'd spent in a daze, and then it became again
fog.

His mouth was full of a clear jelly when he
awoke, and it
hurt
. It hurt real bad. He wasn't sure how
many of them they'd broken out this time. He knew something was
wrong, that he must have screwed up again or else they wouldn't be
giving him the 'corrective treatment'. But it was different
somehow—why had he awakened during the recuperative phase? The
doctors usually kept him under for this part. It took a long time
and was filled with pain, nothing but. He
had
to get out of
this tank, right
now
, and get himself some liquid
painkiller. They'd said they made him need the booze, but he liked
it well enough on his own, without any encouragement. It made
dealing with
them
easier. Huh. So maybe they
did
make
him need it, after all. It would be just like them to be that
way.

He hated the doctors.

When he came to again, he felt much, much
better; it was still a far cry from feeling well, but he knew that
he was much better off than he had been before. At least the
torture was over.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind
than it had been blocked from his memory, was already gone, had
never been there.

He instinctively ran his tongue across the
backs of his teeth. All there, this time. And the thought vanished
again. At least the doctors let him keep his teeth this time...
There was a flash of light and a sound like a champagne bottle
uncorking. He counted the tiles in the ceiling, trying not to look
directly into the overhead observation lamp. Too long staring into
that bright light hurt his eyes and left a blue spot in his vision
that lasted for hours. He was pretty sure he was coming down with
something; the doctors really only held onto him so long when he
was sick, right? Something must be wrong with him.

The doctors always knew what they were doing,
with their white smocks and their clipboards and their needles and
stunguns and droning, droning voices. Nothing seemed to phase them,
either. He'd tried yelling and screaming at them, he'd even once
managed to pick up and throw a gurney at them. They had not been
pleased with that stunt, to say the least, but it hardly slowed
them down. His outburst went against the series of actions they'd
prescribed for him. They always knew what he should be doing, even
if he didn't. He was glad
somebody
knew what was going on;
he needed
structure
in his life.

It seemed that this time they were telling
him he was going to go back and visit his wife and try to beg her
to take him back. He didn't really want to and wasn't positive he
could make it sound convincing, no matter how hard they tried to
persuade him to push his heart in that direction. And they could
sure be convincing when they wanted to. The business with the teeth
was the worst—he was sure that was why they kept going back to it.
Pulling them out, smashing them out of his head, breaking them out
piece by piece, forcing him to pull them out himself—and then
they'd heal him back up and get him ready for the next time. It
seemed to him like they used it to motivate him for the more
important missions...

Something snapped and crackled within him and
the thought was gone again, but not quite soon enough. He had the
feeling he was letting a lot more of them through than the doctors
would say was okay. He'd had to tell them everything. There was a
terrible, shattering 'crunch' that resounded through his bones, and
one of his front teeth dropped out.

The next thing he knew, he had his hands
around another man's throat, squeezing the life out of him while
images of his wife flashed before his eyes.

Ex
-wife, he reminded himself. The
bitch deserved to die for letting those secrets out; this was
important stuff, concerning the security of the whole country. How
could she run her mouth like that? Fuckin' state secrets were
secret because it was important they be kept quiet. Fuckin'
loudmouth bitch. The man was good and choked; he wasn't getting up
again. Scott could leave now. He dropped the man at his feet and
turned away, scanning the empty parking lot. No witnesses but for a
squirrel who'd already run up the backside of a tree. Squirrel
probably knew well enough to keep its fuckin' mouth shut.

Mike handed him his teeth. "You've done well,
Scott. You did the job right this time. Good boy. Here, you can
have these back." Scott took what was handed to him.

"Thank you. I'm a good boy." He didn't
remember anything else for a while.

He'd killed his wife. Ex-wife, whatever. He'd
killed
her, choked her with his bare hands. How could he
live with himself? There was only one thing left for him to do now,
only one more killing that could even the score—his own. It
wouldn't be hard or take very long or anything; there were a number
of ways he could ensure his passing. Maybe he'd take a dive off the
bridge over the freeway, or maybe tie up a rope under that bridge
some dark night. A bottle of booze would make it easier to carry
out.

It wouldn't be all that hard, really.

He'd been given a bottle of whiskey by his
last boss; it seemed impossible to him that she wouldn't have found
it by now, but he could hope... He could call her. Call her.

Call home. Right now.

Scott found a payphone and pulled out his
last dollar bill, then put it away—he wouldn't need it for this
phone-call. He punched in a string of twenty-three digits, waited
for the silence and the three tones, and spoke into the hand-piece:
"Two bravo alpha query eighty-eight...," before stopping himself
and hanging up. It immediately began to ring, but he ignored it and
hurried away, looking for another payphone. He found one before too
long.

Why was he doing this? He didn't need to make
the phone-call, he'd done the job. Why was he calling in? Neither
was it the call he wanted to make. He pulled the dollar back out of
his pocket and slid it into the machine's face. Did he love her?
God, he'd questioned it so many times, but now he couldn't even be
sure whether or not he'd killed her. Why was he trying to contact
her anyway? She'd said she hated him so many times there was no
question she actually meant it. She'd been pretty damn clear about
that; to question it was pointless. And yet...

And yet, he couldn't help himself. The
buttons seemed to push themselves under his fingers. He almost hung
up when it started ringing. He almost hung up when someone
answered. He almost hung up when he heard her say 'Hello? Who is
this?'

Instead, surprising them both, he said "Do
you think something weird is going on? I think something weird is
going on."

"Scott, what the hell are you talking about?
Why are you calling me?"

"I think something's wrong with me. I keep
seeing myself as different people. And I think I have the flu."

"What different people? What are you talking
about? Is this some kind of trick, Scott? What is this bullshit
you're pulling now?"

"It's not a trick, Ella. I think I need help.
My head hurts."

"Have you been drinking again? Oh, who am I
kidding, of
course
you've been drinking. It's what you
do."

Scott drew in a deep breath and tried to
explain: "No, look Ella, it's not like that. I haven't had anything
to drink in a while. Days, I think. It's hard to tell, I'm losing
track of time."

The gloating expression she wore leaked
through the phone in her tone of voice: "Can't handle life without
me? Well, too bad, Scott. You fucked it up this time, for
good."

His next question seemed to puzzle her, but
only for a second. "What again did I do? I can't even
remember."

"You know what you did, asshole. Don't try
and play dumb with me. I'm not falling for that bit anymore."

"No, seriously, what did I do? I'm drawing
blanks—you gotta help me out here!"

"I don't have to do anything, especially not
when it comes to you, not anymore. Call me tomorrow." and she hung
up on him.

Scott rubbed his forehead; he felt a terrible
headache coming on, and with it a terrible thirst.

He'd done something bad; he couldn’t tell
what it was, didn't remember what wrong he might have done, but he
knew—he
knew
. Something had happened, and he'd been involved
and it was all bad. The doctors were gonna get him. He pushed out
of the telephone booth and staggered onto the sidewalk, swaying. To
his right, a man in a long trench-coat and sunglasses approached
menacingly; to his left, a city bus just pulling away from the curb
still had its back door invitingly open. The idea occurred to
him... he was pulled around by the shoulder and trench-coat planted
a hand squarely in the middle of his chest, and spoke the master
word:

"
Off
."

Scott awoke shivering with something cold and
hard beneath him supporting him high above the ground and a bright
light shining through his eyelids. There were many urgent voices
surrounding him, one of them confident and commanding the others in
a complicated procedure. This one scared Scott, deeply. "He's on
the move; secure the patient."