Authors: Sezin Koehler
Asha Kinsella, aka Galactic Canary
Y
ou don’t like this. You don’t like this one bit. You’re thinking in English, but that’s not what comes from your mouth. You want your mom. You want your sisters. Cherry Thrush and Cerulean Amazon. The super-trio. But you have an awful feeling they aren’t here. That they didn’t make it. It’s an emptiness. Something hollow inside. Their light is missing. You try not to think about it, but it’s all you can and you wish you could tell someone all they meant to you. You wouldn’t even know where to start.
You remember when you first met them. It was at a Revolution rave, downtown LA, rundown building, seedy-ass neighborhood. It was so hot. The site was a maze. So many floors, crowded with sweating bodies. You lost your friends. You were on E, but it was laced with something heavy. Or maybe that was the fear. You saw Cerulean and Cherry sitting in the corner. They weren’t like everyone else; there was a shine to them. They weren’t rubbing each other with lotion; they weren’t gnawing on pacifiers or lollipops. They were just chatting, like they were in the park or at a French café solving the meaning of life. They looked safe. You told them you were lost. They made room for you in their little world. You never found your friends that night, but Cherry and Cerulean made sure you got home safe.
They have a homegrown business: marijuana. They blow glass pipes and the like. They take you on as a partner. You move into their West Hollywood bungalow, of which they’d been trying to find the right tenant for months. You discover that the power of the three of you together creates fire from nothing. Firebirds. You research growing techniques, find out that menstrual blood is the key to the best and strongest pot with its nitrogen rich tissue and growth-promoting properties. You three can’t grow it fast enough. It sells like lollipops at parties.
You don’t know what you’ll do without your sisters.
Picking up the pen and paper, you begin to write for the nice detective. You munch on the gummy worms and chicken skin Nurse Pratchett discreetly slips through the door. It doesn’t help the sorrow, but it’s better than nothing.
6:15 AM LAPD Morgue
M
edical Examiner Guy Severin, now accompanied by several open-mouthed morgue assistants and a host of others who heard about the growing body parts, is more and more frightened as he watches the entities become whole. His greatest fear ever since becoming a mortician was that one day he’d be performing an autopsy or embalming and the corpse would open its eyes. Then he read a case in the New England Journal of Medicine about a man who was bit by a snake with paralytic venom who ended up being totally conscious during the start of his own autopsy and just by chance was able to open his eyes before getting his ribcage sawed open.
Anxiety courses through Severin’s body, adrenaline makes his hands shake, certain that any moment one of these people will sit up and start talking. Severin thinks he’s going to have a heart attack in that moment. No, he’s sure of it. He shudders, trying to get a grip.
Red Feather and Günn burst into the room. Their jaws hit the floor as they see and hear the creaking of what were body parts that are now mostly bodies.
“No fucking way.” Günn’s left eye starts twitching again.
“Way,” Severin responds. “Can I go now?”
I am freaking the fuck out.
Red Feather flashes with irritation. “No Sev, help us get these bodies loaded up. Ambulances waiting outside. All of you: Move it!” The group jumps to action. “Make sure they’re all strapped down properly. No room for error here.”
In moments the bodies are fully covered with plastic over the sheets, the black straps making zebra stripes over the gurneys. One by one, they’re wheeled out of the morgue, into the LA sun and placed in ambulances. Patrol cars not manning the explosion site wait to join the cavalcade.
Red Feather and Günn take the lead, clearing traffic ahead of the ambulance train, sirens blaring all the way to the UCLA medical campus, where dozens of staff wait to greet them and hopefully catch a glimpse of one of the medical marvel bodies.
“So much for keeping this on the down low,” Günn snickers.
“The more people that see it, the less cuckoo our report’s gonna sound,” Red Feather retorts.
“Touché.” Günn flips him the bird and feels her tension slightly ease.
Red Feather parks the car and he and Günn step out, walking toward the line of ambulances. Unlike every other investigation they’ve worked on, nobody stops a single person from snapping photos. They’ll need all the documentation they can get.
7:00 AM Office of the Mayor
T
he Countess Barona, a pale and perfectly coiffed woman in her fifties dressed in a modern spin on Victorian fashion, high neck and lace bodice, taps the nails of her manicured hand on the armrest of the uncomfortable wooden chair in the mayor’s office. Their conversation is interrupted by the phone ringing off the hook. The tendons in her fingers creak and her joints crackle as she tattoos faster. The mayor glances over at her, frowning at the noise she makes. Barona smirks and only raps harder. She’s his biggest campaign contributor, and she deserves his undivided attention, not forced to sit here in this cheap chair that will surely give her some sort of rash, waiting while he dallies on the phone.
Probably one of his boyfriends.
The Countess snorts and starts drumming her high heel on the floor in an unpleasant counterpoint to her fingernails.
“Be right there,” the mayor says hanging up the phone.
Finally. She stops her rat-a-tatting.
“Who, pray tell, was that?” the Countess hisses, “We are in the middle of something.”
“What are you doing here anyway? In case you missed the morning news, there was a terrorist attack last night and the city’s in a state of emergency. And you’re here for what, idle chitchat?” Mayor Charles Ellis snaps, regrets it instantly. He’s too tired and too upset to think straight, having been up since just after the explosion at 1:00 AM, unable to get the number of possible dead from clanging about his brain.
Thirty-four thousand four hundred and eighty-six.
“How dare you speak to me like that,
Mayor
,” Barona spits, enjoying keeping the mayor from what she knows are far more pressing matters. “Without my support you’ll never make it through the next election.” The Countess stares at him. He stares back defiantly.
“Or do you think you’ll get re-elected on your star power alone?” She sneers, the grimace of an evil stepmother.
“I’m afraid we will have to continue this another time. I’ve somewhere to be.” The mayor opens his agenda. “Shall we say next Thursday? I’ll take you to lunch.”
“You’ll do no such thing. We finish this negotiation now or—” a sly look steals into the Countess’s eyes. “Take me with you. I’ve always been curious to see what my millions have funded.”
Mayor Ellis sighs, knowing he never should have gotten involved with this crazy old bitch. His wife warned him he’d be selling his soul if he took the Countess’s money, and boy was his wife ever right. She’s always right. No wonder he never wants to have sex with her. Well, that’s not entirely true. But he tells himself that anyway. He’s not ready to admit even to himself who he really is. Ellis often worries that someone will catch his thoughts and expose him. Say goodbye to the mayorship then. You can’t run a family values campaign wearing women’s clothes and with a man half your age on your arm. No siree, Bob.
Fuck
.
“Countess, you know how much I value and appreciate your support—”
“Save the spiel, Mayor. You’re going to take me with you. I insist.”
The Mayor’s had it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. “I’m sorry, Countess Barona, but that will not only be inappropriate. It will be impossible.” The Mayor stands and starts to put on his coat. “We can have lunch another time at your convenience, but for now this conversation is over.”
The Countess feels a flush rise across her face.
The nerve to speak to her this way!
She takes a deep breath, composes herself, tamps down her rage. Her voice cool, she says, “How unfortunate. I’m sure the press would love to see the photographs I have of you.” The mayor stops in his tracks. Stares at Barona. “The ones of you doing your very best J. Edgar Hoover impression? Thigh highs and blonde wigs.
Tsk tsk.
Might I add that you’d be far better as a redhead. Has anyone ever told you that?” The Countess stands and slings her Prada cape over her shoulder. “Have a nice day, Mayor!” Countess Barona singsongs as she moves to walk out the door.
How the hell does
she
know?
Ellis thinks, furious and frightened.
A spy in The Cove.
Los Angeles’s most secure bordello my ass!
“Wait!” Ellis shouts. Barona pretends not to hear as she sashays down the hall, forcing him to chase after her. He’s gonna get creamed for this. He’ll tell them she’s…Oh screw it, he’ll think of something on the way. “Come on then, Countess. My driver’s waiting out front.”
A cruel smile steals across the Countess’s face. “You must be joking. Of course I have my own driver. I’ll meet you there.”
“Suit yourself.”
Fucking bitch.
“So?” Barona looks at him expectantly.
“So what?” The joy it would give him to pistol-whip her, wipe that smirk off her face.
“Where is
there
, Mayor?” Barona’s voice drips with scorn.
“Oh, that. UCLA Medical Faculty. Wait for me outside.” Mayor Ellis feels desperation trickle down his back in rivulets.
“Ta ta for now, Mayor,” the Countess trills, swivels and struts out of the Mayor’s office. Ellis, red-faced and furious, sticks his tongue out at her back and flips her a full middle finger.
“Drive into a median, you old hag.” Ellis pulls from his whiskey flask, pops an Altoid in his mouth and locks up his office, no idea of how he is going to explain all this away. He could just resign. There’s always that option.
Countess Barona’s Manolos
click click
across LAPD’s marble foyer in a similar rhythm to her nails earlier, sharp and demanding. Her limousine and driver Janosh wait outside, he turns off the news when he sees her coming.
“To UCLA Medical Center. And put some steam in it.”
Janosh looks in the rearview mirror and nods, shifting the limo in gear and revving the engine long and hard enough that it will leave behind a rubber trail on the concrete. The Countess Barona smiles. She has trained him well.
The Countess Barona
Y
ou look out at the Los Angeles landscape that you and your husband, the late Aleksandr Barona, helped build. What a team you were in the beginning. Automobile magnates and human traffickers, eventually driven from Europe because of what Aleksandr called your “proclivities,” and what you call “payback” for your husband’s penchant for sampling female merchandise before passing it on. How many virgins he ruined, their value cut in half because of his insatiable appetite and belief that this first sex would cure his many venereal diseases.
Regardless of your backstage business, Aleksandr joined the ranks of LA’s most elite and influential as county commissioner. By currying favor upon favor, you were insured a level of immunity for life, something you’d never had in any of your many European homes.
And in a city of so many million strangers like Los Angeles, children go missing every day, and with so many more reprehensible people to blame than you. Your sizable donations to children’s charities and orphanages seal your mask of benevolence in place. Well, to anyone who doesn’t personally know you, that is.
Since Aleksandr’s passing from AIDS—a fate you escaped by not having shared a marital bed for more than twenty years—you have diversified the Barona business interests. Nobody but you and your business manager know that you established the first of many Beverly Hills bordellos, catering only to the finest of Los Angeles’s old and new money: A club with the most upscale of clientele, all measure of celebrity, politician, and entrepreneur who could not only afford the hundred-thousand dollar yearly membership fee, but the hourly rate of five thousand dollars, to boot.
The Cove.
Your secret weapon, with its hidden cameras in each room, ever recording the disgusting habits of the rich and famous. Nobody in LA dare deny you, unless they’re willing to pay with their own blood and reputation. And in Los Angeles, city of demonic angels, nobody risks their own skin. Most especially not those at the top. Those with the most to lose. Like your dear friend the Mayor, who has the choice of eating out of the palm of your hand, or finding himself coming down with a case of toxic pariah, losing everything for which he’s worked so hard.
Winning: It’s what you do best.
7:30 AM UCLA Medical Center
T
he place is a zoo. Paparazzi craning their necks like giraffes to get a glimpse of the who’s who entourage rolling up in car after car. The mayor, chief of police, the commissioner, senators, congressmen. How the hell they all heard about the mysterious growing body parts, damned if Red Feather and Günn know. The mayor even brought his girlfriend, that insufferable self-professed countess, though there’s no evidence to indicate she’s anything but Eurotrash. The senators and company see Barona enter the building, Mayor Ellis’s beefy arm around her like a protective papa bear.
The gossip mill starts churning and the tabloids can already see tomorrow’s headline:
Mayor Ellis flaunts affair during American tragedy!
“Come on,” Red Feather says. “Time to break through the over-entitled hordes.”
Red Feather and Günn charge their way through the crowd, not afraid to throw the occasional elbow or four, and a legion of boys in blue follow suit.