Slag Attack (5 page)

Life

And comes to a plateau of sorts. Flat smooth earth and he’s at the top of something maybe the top of everything and this is all new to him and this feeling of newness feels good. He’s all emptied out and this lack of insides makes him less aware of his outsides. But awareness builds. He feels his bones coming up from nothing. Massing around themselves. And he feels his muscles and his nerves take shape and strengthen and then his skin. Blood chugs through everything and he takes his first deep breaths and fills his lungs with this unsullied air. Aware of his solidity in this space. He approaches the edge of the plateau and looks out onto a world not yet built. He knows what is to come. It hits him in a single blinding flash of knowledge. The people will come. The buildings will come. The cultures will come and with them will come all those dangerous human emotions. With them will come everything that can gnaw a person away from the inside. And he is also aware of the inescapability of that. He becomes aware of life’s grim march. Onward. Forever onward. Meeting whatever cruel fate awaits but it is through this cruel fate and face of humanity that true beauty can shine. No death is a good death but all death is inevitable. He turns to meet it. Casting out his insides to the blank world around. Hollow. Full. And now hollow again. Approaching through the fog is a pack of wolves. Except for their heads. Their heads are the tapered toothrimmed heads of mature slags. He lies down on the cool earth. Feels the air swirl around him and drop down onto his face and kiss his lips as the first of the slag wolves bites into his flesh.

A Kind of Death

It’s a mangled form emerging from Fugueland. Whole on the outside. Slagwolf-gnawed on the inside. The human body is an ever expanding collection of things some of which have to be trimmed away. Sometimes death is necessary. It gives us something to bury far beneath the ground so more light can shine on the life that is left. Some people are here. Some people have always been here. Some people deserve to live. Some people deserve to die. He is only the messenger. Only the envelope. Only the shell. He could break and crumble at any minute.

11.

Shell dons his clothes, mounts the dirt bike, and heads back into town. He isn’t sure what just happened to him. The taste of vomit lingers on his tongue but he feels a renewed sense of purpose. He will look for Pearl in one last place and, if she isn’t there, he’s decided to go back home and quit the agency. And if he decides he can’t live without the agency, can’t live without a job, then he’ll take a gun and put it in his mouth or perhaps his hollow eye and pull the trigger. Maybe the Mikes were right about Fugueland but Shell doesn’t know if being a different person is a good thing or a bad thing. The world certainly doesn’t need
more
people like him.

   
The final shreds of darkness are still all around him and he can feel the immense weight of the day breathing a sunny whisper on the other side of the curtains.

12.

It’s dawn by the time he gets back to the apartment. He’s tried to shut everything else out of his mind and concentrate only on finding Pearl. Everything else will have to wait. Fuck everything else. Whether he finds her or not, he’s decided this is his last hurrah. He might as well go out with a bang.

   
He thinks about Mr. Happalance saying Pearl has always been here. He thinks about Mr. Blatz saying Miss Fitch has always been here. He thinks about the man in overalls saying everyone was looking for Pearl. Shell knows someone who is not looking for Pearl. He knows someone so wrapped up in psychotic insanity she has to drag herself from the living room. Hollow City. Okay. So some people are hollow. Some people make good vessels. Maybe Pearl is in the apartment. Maybe Pearl is in Miss Fitch. Maybe her psychosis is the act of a diminutive Queen trying to fight her way out. Maybe Pearl has chosen to hide in the one place where she will go undetected. The insides of every other house are devastated, torn apart by people, the occupants, searching for Pearl.

   
Shell figures it’s time to do some devastation of his own.

   
He pulls up in front of the building. Main Street at dawn is only slightly buzzing. Trash and the insides of people’s homes, often one in the same, line the street. The sound of the chainsaw continues to rip through the air. He makes sure the Glock is still tucked into the back of his pants.

   
He opens the door to his apartment and crosses the kitchen. Miss Fitch lies face down in the living room. She is covered in slags. Shell kicks some from her hand, grabs it, and drags her into the kitchen. He then goes about ripping the apartment apart. Cabinet doors torn from hinges and then the cabinets themselves from the walls. Cushions and beds ripped apart. Carpet up. Drywall smashed. Nothing. Nothing. And more nothing.

   
Panting, sweaty and out of breath, Shell maneuvers into the kitchen and picks a butcher knife up from the covered floor. He rolls Miss Fitch over and doesn’t even bother to feel for a pulse. Briefly, he feels a sense of contradiction. How could he save that kid at the Mikes at the possible expense of Pearl and then open up this woman to find her? The feeling passes. He wills it to. If Miss Fitch isn’t dead yet with all those slags writhing on her, she will be soon. Miss Fitch isn’t doing anyone any good. The people of Hollow City
need
Pearl, Shell convinces himself. Because convincing himself of that is better than believing he wants the money or wants to go out on a memorable note. It seems too perfect. The only thing that could make it more perfect would be if Miss Fitch were named Miss Oyster. Open the oyster, find the Pearl.

   
Shell slashes her from the hollow of her throat down through her rotten sex. Gullet to groin.

   
And there’s nothing inside. She’s filled with slags. Absolutely packed with them. Shell hopes his repellant is still active. He stands, takes a deep breath, and lets the knife drop to the floor. He wanders outside to vomit and just keeps wandering home.

13.

The Rotting Man sits behind his desk, plump, gray, and stinking. A small pile of cash sits on the left hand side of the desk. His once white dress shirt is stained yellow at the shoulder and plastered to his skin. Shell sits facing him.

   “
I failed,” he says.

   “
You gave it your best. We can’t all be winners.”

   
Cliché after cliché after cliché.

   
Even though he spouts words of encouragement, The Rotting Man looks unusually depressed. He pushes his glasses up his fleshy nose with his right hand, turned a purplish gray with the rot. “I am sorry to say, however, that you will not be receiving any of this.” He pushes the pile of cash off the desk with his left hand. It hits the floor and scatters only slightly in a puddle of fetid fluid.

   “
I think I’m giving it up anyway,” Shell says.

   “
Quitting the agency?”

   “
Yep.”

   “
But you’re the best detective we have... In fact, you’re the only detective we have...”

   “
And a failure.”

   “
Come on now. You’re too hard on yourself. Tell me: when you were out there in Hollow City... they ever tell you how
small
Pearl was?”

   “
Pretty small. Diminutive.”

   “
That’s a pretty fancy word. You pick that up there?”

   “
Yeah. Well, I kind of knew what it meant. That was probably the first time I’d ever heard it in conversation. This was an interesting case. I know you have confidentiality clauses with your clients but, seeing as this is my last one, I was wondering if you could tell me who was offering to pay you for looking for Pearl and what exactly they wanted with her.”

   
The Rotting Man looks down at his desk and shakes his head. “You’re right,” he says. “This was a strange case because there was no client. Actually, I guess there was. The client was Hollow City. It was an open reward. To the first person who finds her.”

   “
I knew that.”

   “
I was going to give you this amount,” he gestures to the sopping money on the floor. “And take Pearl back to Hollow City, claiming to have found her myself. Their reward was roughly double what I offered you.”

   “
Actually, you didn’t offer me anything. I just assumed it was the standard amount.”

   “
Which it was.”

   “
Which is probably why you never went into specifics.”

   “
Could be. I needed someone who could bring her back here without anyone ever knowing it. Or else they would have pounced on you, restored Pearl, and given the reward to you.”

   “
You really are a greedy shit.”

   “
I know. That’s what this business is all about. Pure greed. Anyway, it’ll be tough to see you go.”

   “
It’s not just the failing. I haven’t been feeling well lately. Nauseous all the time...”

   “
Maybe you have a parasite or something.”

   
The Rotting Man holds his middle finger and thumb about six inches apart. Shell notices he has lost a pinky since the last time they met in person. “They say she was about that big? Say anything about her ‘magical powers’?”

   
Shell nods.

   “
Maybe more like this?” The Rotting Man decreases the size considerably. “Do me a favor before you go—just to satisfy my morbid curiosity—let me see what’s under the eyepatch. You never have told me how you lost it.”

   “
My ex-wife plucked it out during our last great battle. It’s kind of gross-looking.”

   
Shell slides his chair back from the desk and stands up.

   “
You visit Fugueland while you were there?” The Rotting Man asks.

   “
I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Shell leans over the desk. He’s kind of nervous. He’s never voluntarily shown anyone what was under the patch before.

   “
That’s where I caught the rot,” The Rotting Man says, standing up to meet Shell over the desk. “Yep. Many years ago. I used to live there. In Hollow City.”

   “
I never knew that.” Shell puts his fingers on the patch and lifts it up, seeing his reflection in The Rotting Man’s glasses.

   
He sees The Rotting Man tense up and, in the reflection, he sees why.

   
A brown eye stares back at him. He moves his fingers up to poke at it. How did that get there?

   “
You have her,” The Rotting Man says. “That’s her eye.”

   
Shell takes a step back.

   
The Rotting Man unleashes a noxious stink.

   “
So what if I do?” Shell asks.

   “
She’s mine.”

   “
Actually, she’s the people of Hollow City’s. If anyone’s.”

   “
She’s in you. I need her powers. They’re the only thing that can stop the rot.”

   “
And now we come to the truth. I think I’ll take her back myself. Maybe I’ll take the reward.”

   “
You won’t.” The Rotting Man throws open a drawer and removes a huge, antique revolver. Shell immediately regrets leaving the Glock at home.

   “
If you shoot me then she’ll die too.”

   “
I only need a little bit of her power. And then you’ll be free. Both of you will be free.”

   
Suddenly, Shell feels a whole other system of thoughts move in his brain. It takes control of his brain, his processes, and he feels himself recede to the back of his skull.

   “
I’ve never been free,” the Queen says loudly, with Shell’s voice, with Shell’s mouth. “So you want to keep me here as a cure for your sick condition or take me back and throw me to a pack of sycophants. I don’t see how I can win.”

   
The Rotting Man thumbs a button under his desk. The lock in his door clicks closed.

   “
Heal me,” The Rotting Man says through rotting lips.

   “
Let me go,” the Queen says.

   “
Just touch me in the rotting parts. Please.”

   
Pearl moves Shell’s arm across the desk, within an inch of The Rotting Man’s torso, hovering just in front of it, before driving the fist forward, into the feverish insides of The Rotting Man’s body. The Rotting Man chokes on his insides, aims his gun, and fires for Shell’s heart but hits his shoulder instead. Shell is thrown back into the door and, looking at The Rotting Man standing there with the gun in his hand, doomed but bent on destruction anyway, he feels a giant force build inside. It starts at the base of his spine, works its way up through the back of his throat and erupts from his mouth.

   
The Rotting Man is driven against the back wall by this invisible force. He continues to gargle and spew and now he is rotting at an alarming rate, the stench of putrefaction filling the room as his insides explode from puffy, rotted flesh to land on the dingy tiled floor. The gun falls to the ground and it isn’t long before The Rotting Man is a pile of dried meat and bones.

   
The Queen directs Shell’s body outside into the gray summer afternoon.

14.

An unlikely pair, Pearl and Shell drift as one into a dim, narrow alley. The conscienceless Shell and the consciousness of a whole town. Shell’s insides feel swollen. He drops to his knees, bracing himself against the grimy brick wall. He feels his skin stretch to bursting and then further. Ripping. He can hear it rip and he wants to scream, wants to cry out but doesn’t want to attract attention and, besides, Pearl controls his mouth. And she, apparently, doesn’t feel like screaming at all.