Read Ghosts of Punktown Online
Authors: Jeffrey Thomas
LeBlanc’s military instincts told him to whip around firing, but he was just able to restrain himself. He lifted his arms above his head. “Are you forcers?”
“That’s right, dung-hole, and don’t you move!” LeBlanc’s gun was ripped out of his hand, and then two men were dragging his arms behind him, to secure them in restraints.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“What are we doing?” Now he could see the two men as they spun him around and trained their own guns on him. They were paunchy, out of shape in their black uniforms; obviously, not bio-engineered to be perfect soldiers as he had been. LeBlanc thought he might be able to take them both even with their guns pointed at him – might even be able to bust these restraints first in order to do so – but again, he reined himself in. One of the forcers gestured at Miter. “I don’t suppose you know anything about
that?
”
“He’s my partner! We – ” LeBlanc wanted to point out the skeletal form of the cleric under that mound of jagged glass, but the other forcer pointed to it himself.
“And you don’t know anything about all this shot-up artwork either, I suppose? Bet you started with that room of Sinanese stuff back there, huh? Did it give you a flashback or something?”
“Look, there was an intruder...three intruders...well, not intruders, but – ”
The forcer couldn’t resist a hard laugh. “Can’t you even get your hallucinations straight, mad dog?” The man remarked to his partner, “They should have just junked all these psycho-killer war veteran clones for organ scrap.”
Kneeling down beside Miter, the other said, “I don’t need any blue camouflage kidney transplanted into me...better they made these guys into dog meat.”
“I wouldn’t want him in my dog, either!”
“Look,” LeBlanc said, “do you see any bullet holes in him?”
“We heard plenty of bullets on our way up, believe me.”
“Well how about you look again over there...”
Before he could finish, and before either of the forcers saw it, LeBlanc spotted a third skeletal yellow figure bolting toward the room from the room beyond. It launched itself into the air, and landed on the back of the standing forcer, wrapping its hands around his face to dig at his eyes.
The man staggered and reeled, screeching, blood pulsing down his cheeks, while his partner sprang to his feet and looked torn between trying to pull the creature off him or waiting for a clear shot with his weapon.
Meanwhile, LeBlanc had turned on his heel and darted from the room, heading for the stairs that would take him down to the lobby and out of the Hill Way Galleries. He half expected to be shot in the back for his trouble, but by now the surviving cleric should have proved his innocence. He thought he would wait outside until backup forcers arrived and freed him. He thought it might be the right time to give up fine art in favor of the culinary arts.
“Help me! Oh God, help me!” he still heard the attacked man wailing. In years past, LeBlanc had gone to answer that cry many times, without hesitation, with barely little regard for his own safety, without knowing whether the cry came from a birther or a clone. He had dragged wounded men out of the line of fire, men who had been repaired to return home to their families and give birth to sons who might never know they owed their existence as much to him, who could never father a son. And he had won no medal, been awarded no pension. That would be like thanking a gun for its service, wouldn’t it?
Once – maybe even as recently as fifteen minutes ago – LeBlanc might have stayed to help the forcer free his partner, if he would only remove his restraints first, even at the risk of his own life. But he had decided not to bother. Like many matters pertaining to the birthers, he was learning more and more all the time, he had no personal investment here.
As these forcers had only helped remind him, security guard or no security guard, this was really not his battle.
Pre’tu was disinclined toward holidays and festivities of all stripes to begin with, but never had one darkened his heart so much as today’s. Holidays reminded one of one’s wifelessness, one’s childlessness, one’s diminishing of parents as time took them and one’s diminishing of money as one had to buy presents and food for those others who – with mocking grins of joy, or at least drunkenness – embraced each holiday only too readily, like certain birds that are enticed by any bright bauble no matter how broken and petty.
This was a Tikkihotto holiday, but with the colonization of other spheres, other dimensions, it was becoming a festivity even more insidiously propagated. Pre’tu lived, as many Tikkihottos did, in the Earth-established colony known as Punktown, on the world Oasis. Oh, if only the merging with other cultures, other races human and otherwise, would dilute and dissolve such ancient and grotesque travesties of tradition and superstition, but it was not so. In the interest o
f political correctness, schoolchildren who were not even Tikkihottos – Earth children, Chooms, others – were encouraged to recognize the holiday, read about and discuss it, draw or paint or sculpt in clay or in hologram the horrid, gaping, too hungry bird heads.
“Pre’tu! Pre’tu! Pre’tu!” the others chanted, like infant bird heads poking up from a nest, screeching for their glistening worms of pleasure. Birds still without feathers, translucent and frail, their eye feelers groping blindly. It was the prevailing image of this holiday, one of the two principal Tikkihotto holidays. Unimaginatively, one was a ha
rvest festival, and this was a spring festival, celebrating the cycle of rebirth, the emergence of new life.
“I’ll give you lot a worm,” Pre’tu muttered under his breath. “A worm to choke you mindless punch-swillers.”
Cousins, friends of cousins, cousins of friends, priests in their best robes strutting like peacocks, and the homeless invited in for a charitable meal (some of whom weren’t even Tikkihottos, but willing to embrace any culture that put warm punch in their bellies). Pre’tu glared at a Choom, looking like an Earther but for that ghastly ponderous grin stretching right back to his ears. The transient was shaking his metal drinking straw in the air like a little spear, a few drops of fermented amniotic fluid dribbling from its end. “Drink up, ‘Hotto!” he shouted.
He was the last. Of course he was. Hadn’t he always been, all his mercilessly long life? Last child born to his family, subsumed in the wake of his siblings. Last to become married (though first to have his wife desert him; oh certainly, his luck did turn around sometimes, didn’t it?).
And now, because he had been mired – cursing and pounding his console – in Punktown’s traffic (knowing only too well what the consequences would be), he had been last to enter the festival hall. Last to join the celebration. And as tradition dictated, the last must drink bird head.
He approached the great bird, strapped to the table before him as if it might rise from the dead, squawking in pain at the holes punched into its body, made thin-skinned and soft from a special steaming process, like a bag of gelatin in the form of a man-sized fowl. Its eye tendrils hung flaccid. Pre’tu’s own eye tendrils swam in the air, taking in the avian Eucharist. Someone – a child? – had left their metal straw still punctured in the swollen belly, inside which Pre’tu could see the shadowy suggestion of a litter in the womb. He imagined them still alive, gurgling, drowning. Trapped, like himself.
“Last drink bird head! Last drink bird head!”
“Drink from my ass,” Pre’tu mumbled, but what choice did he have? They were a mass, a culture, a system, and he was nothing but a failure in life and the last to enter the room. The fool who must drink the dregs that even the homeless people had managed to avoid.
Pre’tu leaned over the carcass, and inserted his straw into one of the nests of ocular tendrils. The tip pierced the socket, on into the morass that was all the mother beast had left for a brain (she, and everyone else in this room). Then Pre’tu leaned lower, applied his lips to the straw, and sucked.
They cheered his name. Triumphant fool!
And Pre’tu swallowed the blackened and bitter, bitter brains.
Mrs. Kingston's new forehead was high and broad, culminating in a plateau overhung with a close fringe of bangs. Just under the fringe were a few metal clasps, and a long scar ran down her forehead from one of them. Her eyelids were weighed heavily three-quarters shut. Another long scar ran under her jaw, passing over one of the two steel bolts protruding from the sides of her slim throat.
She still lay on the table. Mr. Roy swiveled a monitor screen down to her so she wouldn't yet have to raise the alien weight of her head.
"Oh," she croaked, still drowsy, a small smile emerging. "Beautiful."
Roy smiled humbly, nodded, touched buttons that gave her different angles and magnifications. She hadn't wanted green skin, as he had suggested. She wanted to be partly recognizable. He agreed that that was desirable. Normally he didn't consult with the clients, but some wanted to work along with him, and he had to tolerate such individuals. Normally his clients delighted in his surprising them, and he preferred that artistic license.
For Mrs. Kingston they had consulted a book on old, old horror films. He had steered her easily from her first attraction to the Bride. "Just hair," he told her. "That isn't enough...that won't catch the eye." She had agreed on the Monster. Jack Pierce's design. Roy liked that name. He had briefly considered changing his professional name to Roy Pierce but decided that was too phony. He despised phoniness.
Mrs. Kingston had been inspired to seek out Mr. Roy when she saw his masterful transformation of her friend Mrs. Violet into Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera, shaving her hair back, bulging her eyes and drawing back her lips and making her nose skull
-like. Normally Roy preferred not to work so closely from an existing model, another man's art, but it was nice for an occasional change, and he had become intrigued with Lon Chaney. To play a hunchback, Chaney had strapped a huge heavy appliance onto his back with a harness which prevented him from straightening. For the Phantom he had pulled at the skin around his eyes and lips and nose with a variety of painful means, as in some self-inflicted torture. Roy admired that sense of commitment, but his creations were surgical, were painless, and were not performed on himself.
* * *
May couldn't help but steal glances over the top of her magazine at the man across from her. Sometimes she saw only his eyes over the top of his magazine. He was reading a glossy-covered copy of Disfigured!, the soft porn magazine which appealed so to both men and women. It also contained articles, reviews, fashion layouts, but was most famous for its glamorous photo spreads of clothed and unclothed men and women, surgically deformed, maimed, transfigured.
There was still enough to see, however. The man's head was a mushroom cloud of flesh, a bulbous mass hung with lank scatterings of hair. At one point when the man traded one magazine for another May saw how his mouth was twisted into an uneven sneer, and the man caught her gawking. She began to look away, but he spoke to her.
"The Elephant Man," he said. "John Merrick. I was lucky to get rights -- others have inquired since. Normally Mr. Roy doesn't do work based on unoriginal sources but he says he's always been intrigued by John Merrick. He's sworn to make me an exact duplicate. I have only a few sessions to go. How about you?" The man eyed her up and down. May's face was smooth and untouched but maybe there was some amazing work evolving under her clothing which Mr. Roy had yet to complete. Huge warts? A network of distended purple veins? Dozens of moving, blinking human eyes scattered across her body?
"I'm not sure. I guess I want to be surprised."
"Oh, I'm sure that's fun, too," said the man, though not too enthusiastically -- not wanting to seem unhappy with his choice.
"May?"
May looked up at the smiling hostess, who in leaning over her gave May a good look at the deep ragged fissure which ran down the center of her face from hairline to chin. "Mr. Roy is ready for you."
* * *
Roy sent Armand Pittman out of his office to the front desk to make his next appointment; the bat wings which had sprouted from the sides of his head could flap, fold and retract, controlled by a chip implanted at the base of the skull, but he had next to have the webs of the wings tattooed with Egyptian hieroglyphics. At his desk in his office, Roy had a few moments to scan the application of May Azul for the first time on his monitor. There was a long waiting line to this, one of the most renowned offices in the city.
College student. Wealthy parents. There was a photograph.
A knock, and the hostess Iris opened the door to let in May Azul. Roy stood to extend his hand. Iris left May to advance with a shy smile.
His eyes ate up her face like a horde of ants swarming over it, scurrying in and out of hollows, nostrils, through the forest of eyebrows, all at once. He was filled with a dismay he had felt surfacing the moment his screen unveiled her photograph.
She had shoulder-length auburn hair, with an almost brassy undertone, and green-gray eyes, drowsily lidded, though not in the manner of Mrs. Kingston's new eyelids. Her face was not "perfect"...her nose was a bit boyishly unrefined and her "bee-stung" lips (he loved that term) were asymmetrical, this more pronounced with her lopsided bashful smile. But she was immediately striking. Her skin was white and silken, her neck long and thin, her body encased in a tight black sweater falling just to her upper thighs and banded at the waist with a realistic plastic snake (another college fad). Her legs were long in their black nylon sheaths. All this black only further heightened the snowy smooth perfection of her exposed flesh.
"Pleased to meet you." Her hand was small, soft, a little damp in the hollow palm. "Please make yourself comfortable." They both sat. Roy's smile was professional, didn't reveal his discomfort...he was as adept at smiling as at his art. He took in May's profile as she scanned photographs on the walls and his framed credentials in art and medicine. Why should she be so striking? At this time, medicine being what it was, there were nearly no natural deformities. After a fire or accident there was no need to remain scarred. There was no need to go bald, become obese, and shrivel up with age so quickly. Roy had seen perfection for most of his life. That was why people came to him and his kind, in fact. For something different. To stand out, make a statement, express their individuality. Almost everyone who could afford it wanted some kind of embellishment, ornamentation, or full transformation
-- young or old, male or female. Business was booming.
She shouldn't stand out to him, but she did. She wasn't perfect. That was it. She was beautiful, but she had a singular kind of look
-- that is, he would recognize her again in a crowd. She had features he had seen before but in a fresh arrangement. She already looked individual.
"Do you have any idea what you want, May?" Her application showed three question marks on the line below a similar question.
"Well," her attention came full upon him, "not really. I like the idea of being surprised with an original creation...I'm sure you could think of better things to do with my face than I could. You're the artist. The only trouble is, my parents are a little tight with their money and a little old-fashioned and they told me they wouldn't pay for it again if I don't like what I get."
That was the risk with the surprise approach, but Roy had very few dissatisfied customers come back (or go elsewhere) to have his work undone or converted to something else. As May had just said, he was the artist, he knew best, his clients trusted his decisions, no matter how wild or surprising. And sometimes he really got elaborate
-- inspired. He would sweat over one work for eight hours straight, then. The work could be undone, converted (for a heavy extra charge), but usually this was only done for those who came back every year or even sooner than that for a fresh new look.
"Maybe, ah, you should think about it a while longer," Roy told her. "The fads change so quickly, too...I think the more involved procedures will die back down to minor touches soon. If you can't afford to have your look adjusted or returned to normal I'd advise you to think twice about undergoing a major make
-over which may become obsolete and which you'll be stuck with until you have the money to change it."
That
appealing lopsided smile. "I’ve never met a doctor before who tried to get me to spend less money...I know doctors who'd prescribe me a brain transplant for a headache."
"I
'm not a doctor -- I'm an artist. I'm an artist for the artistic gratification first...the money second. I have a compulsion to be an artist. I'm not a doctor, or a mechanic, May."
"I'm sorry." She looked embarrassed.
"Don't apologize -- please. I'm not offended, I'm just making a distinction. Really. So...I'm really not sure what to suggest, either, May...if you're sure you want to do this."
"Oh yeah, I want something."
"What have you seen that you like?"
"Well, like I said, I want you to decide, but my friend Stacee had her head shaved bald with a ring of like glassy balls implanted around it that change color with her moods. A friend of mine, Jhonn, had one arm removed and a tentacle put in its place with a mouth at the end and a tongue." May smiled bashfully at the implications. "Zelda had her ears
made pointed and face made a lot like a cat, even with whiskers. I like them all but they're all different." She threw up her hands. “I like old art. I was thinking maybe something Picassoy. You must know Picasso?"
He did. "Picasso. That sounds extreme, May."
"Well, I don't know..."
"I suggest something subtle. The fad will change soon, as I see it."
"Well I can always get the money to change it in the future."
Roy sighed. He stared at the monitor on his desk, wondering if he should have her take a look at his photo file of previous customers. Her photo on the monitor gazed back at him. Striking. Lovely. He didn't suggest the file.
"I'll think of something," he said. "In the price range you've listed your work will be done within two to three hours. Are you ready?"
"Yes. Are you ready?"
She sensed his reluctance. "Yes...of course." He rose.
"What about the man in the waiting room, if he has to wait three hours? Do you have an associate?"
"No. Rhik just likes to come early, read, hang around. He likes it here." Roy could almost keep the bitter edge out of his words. "This way, please."
Picasso. He hated Picasso.
* * *
Roy made a big mistake in having had May Azul undressed and laid starkly, whitely naked like a corpse on hi
s slab. A corpse without bullet hole, wound, mark of violence. It only heightened his confusion. But still, her face remained his focus. He was a portraitist, primarily. A face man.
For a full half hour he paced around the table, coffee in hand, studying her. She was a tree. He was a chainsaw. And she wanted to become a chainsaw sculpture from the tree.
It wasn't easier to do a Mrs. Kingston or Mrs. Violet simply because they were less beautiful than this young woman. Of course that reaction was natural. But his reluctance had grown beyond his dismay at the application photograph -- grown upon talking with her. She was shy...cute...sweet, he thought. It was easy to despise the college types -- they sought the most outlandish expression of his artistic contempt. But she was naive, he told himself, simply giving in to peer pressure. She couldn't really want to look like one of Picasso's excuses for beauty...
Slowly, uncertainly, he set about preparing his pallet, eyes never straying long from that bare canvas.