Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (29 page)

He was a strange fellow: tall, gangly, with leathery skin, wiry hair, and crooked teeth. He reminded me of a lizard walking upright. He had a hiking stick and a burlap sack slung over his shoulder. As he cut across the fields, he resembled a scarecrow come to life.

When he reached the front porch, he glared at me.

“
What can I do you for?” I asked, staying my knife.

He spoke but a single word. “Kreet.”

I dropped my chunk of wood. “What a dirty mouth you’ve got! This is pious land, boy. I don’t entertain City mischief. Are you a dealer, is that it?”

His head bobbed side to side and he grew pensive. “No, I’m a simple user. I work in the sewage treatment plant in the City, fishing out prophylactics and aborted fetuses—stuff like that.” He traced a curious symbol in the dirt with his foot. “But . . . I
know
a dealer.”

I felt like charging forward and braining him then and there. What nerve: stupid, base, worthless junkie, coming around to spoil my bereavement.

“
I know the death of your wife ails you,” he said. “You’re trapped on this wedge of land with a heavy heart. But take comfort, friend. I too reek of sorrow.”

I squinted at him. “How do you know Arayana?”

“
My dream, you see, it whispered her name. Your wife provided the balance in your life. Now there’s a disproportion in the scales, and your world is off kilter.”

I rose immediately. “I didn’t kill her! That blasted City dumping its toxins into the water—it did this to her! It’s mutated the animals and made monsters out of them.”

He stepped back. “No, no—I didn’t mean to imply that you ‘killed her,’ please forgive me. Perhaps I am going about this all wrong. I don’t want to spoil it, you know? Please, allow me to introduce myself. I am called Mausu.”

He extended his hand, which I shook. “I’m Trinth,” I said, “Trinth Wolery.”

“
There, now we aren’t strangers. Please understand, I’ve come to help you Trinth. Kreet has an ungainly reputation; some fear it, while others adore it. Yet those who fear it do so out of ignorance. Misinformation runs rampant in Black City, and as a result, labels are applied to everything. But Kreet is not a drug. No, my friend. It is a doorway.”

“
What do you propose?” I asked.

Mausu bent before me, taking my hand, and the fields of wheat whooshed around us.

“
We go,” he said, “into the City. To locate the dealer.”

~*~

We came through a fog of smoke and sulfur to the Black City Gates. A man emerged with a hose and began spraying us down. Once clean, Mausu and I approached the gate and a spiny-faced woman, with her head poking through the bars, regarded us.

“
Permission to enter?” said Mausu, holding up his palm to reveal the inlaid bar code.

She studied him for a moment, then hauled open the gates.

“
She didn’t ask to see my palm,” I said.

Mausu smirked. “It’s quite obvious you’re not from the City.”

“
And that don’t bother them?”

“
We’re allowed visitors.”

He led me along an incongruous street lined with buildings. Patriotic flags sprouted from the rooftops, whipping in the wind. Businessmen bustled everywhere, heads bowed, hands pocketed, coat collars turned up. Women, whose shiny bodies reflected the ash-gray light, hurried nakedly about, for it was illegal that they be clothed inside the City. I noticed a group of children castrating a dog and, horrified, had to stay and watch.

“
Something dreams this City,” Mausu said, turning down an alley.

“
I loathe it,” I replied. “I want nothing to do with it. In the country, people respect each other; they don’t carry on with mechanical violence, or rape their daughters.”

“
Oh? Then what do they do for fun?”

I sighed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“
In here,” he said, shoving me through a lopsided door. I fell against a bedraggled nest of linens and uttered a curse. A flash of light exploded as Mausu lit a lamp.

“
This is where I live.”

“
It smells awful!”

He smiled. “Well, I
do
work for the sewage plant. You’d expect I come home reeking of roses and fields of wheat? We can’t all be—what I mean is: nothing about my life is romantic.”

He sat at the table, beyond which lay towers of books and disassembled machines.

“
That’s where I dreamed of your wife, right there in that bed. I saw your land, your farm—you. I saw your existence lowering, class by class. Soon you’ll have nothing left to offer but manual labor. Then you’ll be a machine, a proletariat, like me. And when a machine feels tired, it malfunctions. That’s why I take it. The doorway, that is. I go through, through, and through. Haha! They can’t find me then—nor will they find you. Look here, I’ll even say it:
kreet.”

The room swelled with the echo of a thunderclap. Walls rattled, papers diffused. When I looked to Mausu, he was smiling.

“
All right,” I said. “So you’ve piqued my interest. I want to try this kreet. But I don’t care anymore, do you hear? I
don’t
care. You’re preaching to the choir. Let’s just do it and be done.”

This seemed to upset him, and he was quiet for a while. Then he said, “Do you know what you’re going to see when you open the door?”

I shook my head.

“
The face of God leering back in all its glory.”

I sighed. “Well good, there are some things I’d like to discuss with Him. So, when do we do it?”

“
Rest now,” he said. “It has been a long journey. When you wake, we will go and see the dealer.”

“
I can’t sleep…” but before I finished the sentence, my eyelids slammed like portcullises, and I drifted into dream, the scent of raw sewage in my nose.

~*~

I awoke to blackness and stifled a cry. Hopping to my feet, I spun around, not sure where I was. Then Mausu lifted the lamp, shedding light on my memories.

“
What time is it?” I asked.

“
Time to go.” He rose from the table, hoisting the sack over his shoulder, but leaving his hiking stick propped against the wall.

“
Will it be far?”

“
No, but it will be
deep.”

“
What?”

“
The dealer lives in the sewage drains beneath the City. We can reach her lair via a tunnel at the treatment plant.”

“
The dealer’s a woman?”

His face cracked into a grin. “Aren’t they all?”

Night had settled over the City, and a billion stars chased a gibbous moon across the sky. Mausu led me past innumerable locked doors with shuttered windows, homes whose inhabitants were either asleep or intent on hiding. A maze of vagrants lined the sidewalks, curled up in bedclothes of trash and debris.

We reached a domed edifice squashed between two gray canals. Wooden wheels revolved in the water. Mausu unlocked a high metal door and let us inside.

“
Is there not security?” I whispered.

He chuckled wryly. “Of course there is: me.”

A matrix of steel walkways and stairwells led toward the ceiling. Near the floor, a pool of brown water bubbled, smelling terrible, worse than anything I’d encountered on the farm.

I followed Mausu to the back of the building and we entered a circular opening. A trickle of water echoed in the earth as we made our way down, guided by strands of glowing lights.

“
Something dreams this,” he said.

“
How do you know?”

“
Everything is a dream, whether it is our own, or someone else’s. I’ve been dreaming of this night for a while. You’re going to love the kreet, I just know you are.”

“
I haven’t got any money, if that’s what you’re after.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t you worry, little bourgeois man. The dealer gives of her own accord. Here in the Caverns of Excrement, money may as well be smoke.”

Sounds picked up in the distance: clanks, clatters, clangs. The tunnel ceased abruptly and we found ourselves in a vast stone chamber. A heavy iron grating functioned as the floor, suspended over dark stagnant water, in which sleek animals surfaced.

Dirt-colored people crouched in the corners, playing with fire, smoking, doing God knew what else. Many were so filthy I couldn’t tell whether they were naked or clothed. I heard their pleasureful moans in the darkness and even glimpsed a pile of pale, wriggling forms.

It was good Mausu knew the way, for I was dizzy with all the twists and turns. I felt nervous and out of place, and I missed the fields on my farm. Moreover, I missed Arayana.

“
Here we are,” he said, stopping before a rusty brown door shod in barnacles. A young girl knelt by the threshold, kneading her breasts. She was nude, I saw, and so dirty that at first I’d thought her clothed. Christ, she was only a child.

“
Stop doing that,” I told her. “Why must you do that?”

Rising from her knees, she hacked a wad of spit on my trousers and fled into the gloom.

Mausu searched my face for a reaction, but this whole situation was beyond me. This grotesque metal slum filled with pipes and depraved junkies left a lingering dread in the back of my throat. Blowing a sigh, Mausu patted my shoulder, smiled, and ushered me through the door.

~*~

The dealer sat on a throne of contorted men, their bodies lashed together and manipulated to form a solid, chair-like structure. They were still alive—and naked, their many phalluses dangling here and there like icicles on winter eaves. Loyal subjects genuflected at her feet, and above, a strange mirror, aimed up a shaft, reflected the sky, so that stars were visible inside the room. Most of the people—other than her—appeared dead or in some kind of trance. I shuddered as we approached the foul group.

She was tall and extremely attractive, with blond hair piled up around her shoulders. She wore a see-through fishnet nightgown, and smoked a slim cigarette. Her eyes, darkened by mascara, seemed to absorb my every move. Her height disturbed me, for she was nearly twelve feet tall.

Cowering behind Mausu, I traced the curves of her flesh, the swell of her bosom, the slenderness of her thighs. Her physique aroused me, yet similarly put me off. It was a strange feeling.

Mausu knelt before her, and I did the same.

“
Greetings, Cutcheon,” he said. “Here is the bourgeois farmer I glimpsed in my dreams.”

“
Yes, I see,” she said. “Does he wish to ingest the medicine?”

Mausu glanced at me. “He does.”

“
So let it be done. I ask but a small fee, which must be paid in full by the prophet.” She pointed toward Mausu, and instantly his expression changed. He jumped to his feet, saying, “But I thought the bourgeois would be paying?” Hysteria had crept into his voice.

The dealer, Cutcheon, rose from her throne, casting an immense shadow over us. Sinewy limbs dangled off her body, and a wave of blond hair spilled down her back. She brought the cigarette to her lips, drawing deeply, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“
No,” she said, scissor-walking toward Mausu. “It is you who lapses into dream this time. I am sorry.”

She hooked him around the neck and lifted him off the floor. His features distorted and his breathing grew rapid. I watched with mouth agape as a pair of dirt-encrusted vagrants carried him away screaming.

Cutcheon dismissed the rest of her subjects, and, sighing, reposed on her flesh-wrought throne. Now we were alone.

“
Off your knees,” she said.

I did as I was told, glancing up, marveling at the realness of the stars on the ceiling. For a moment, I thought I was back in the country.

“
What do you think?” she asked.

“
It’s amazing. Is it witchcraft?”

She laughed. “Nothing so romantic. It’s science, actually.”

I grunted, pretending to understand.

She twirled her cigarette between thumb and forefinger, making it disappear. “Would you like to know why Mausu was sent for you?”

“
He said he dreamed of me.”

“
Oh yes, he certainly did, but it was a dream I bestowed upon him. Do you know why?”

I didn’t.

“
Because Arayana, your late wife, was my sister.”

This startled me, and I gaped at the looming blond titan. “She never mentioned you.”

“
No, I don’t imagine she would have. After our mother died, she fled the City and I came down to the sewers. We’d had a bit of a fight, and she wanted nothing more to do with me. But that never stopped me from caring about her.”

I knew Arayana had been born in the City, that some strange incident lurked in her past, but she disliked talking about it, and I never pressed the subject. When we met, she was already well accustomed to farm life, and that was the reason I fell in love with her.

“
I’m not sure I believe you,” I said.