Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (12 page)

Convent empties its crowd into a hall resembling the Paris catacombs, its walls embedded with dusty vacant skulls and stacks of femurs, tibias and assorted ribs, each set cramped into wall crypts like a Japanese capsule hotel. There was a low rattle in the bones, their reaction to the reverberation of darkwave music shouting from the speakers. A macabre chandelier of antlers blazed overhead in faux candlelight, dried heads hung from it, horns pierced through eye sockets, mouths. A cossacked concierge was embroiled in a conversation with a burly man whose neck shared its collar with hair tufts resembling a cravat. A step closer and I could hear the topic—werebear hunting grounds.

“You should try Les Toilettes,” the grim attendant said. He stood on a raised pulpit, surrounded by an intricately carved Victorian gothic rail. He was referring to the club, not the john, but the advice was helpful either way.

I found Wendy in the bathroom, behind the vibrating stainless steel stall walls, shaking with the pulsing bass. She was shitting her bowels out, into a rarely used club toilet. I didn’t envy her position, but imagined it well, hunched over and rocking. You know the drill.

“Wendy? Is that you?”

“Oh God, I wish it wasn’t.” Inside the stall, the toilet paper roll spun, a lot.

“Do you need another roll, or should I find a towel?”

“There’s the Amanda I know, funny as usual.” Wendy’s voice was a humorless monotone. She groaned, and a stream of wet splattered into the water. “I just couldn’t resist.”

“What happened, sweetie?”

“I’ve got a real impulse control problem. I feel like one of those damned mistakes.” A low belch echoed from Wendy’s rotting bowels, filling the room with a pungent sulfur scent mixed with earthy death, a zombie meat fart.

“I’m sure you’re being too hard on yourself. Tell me.” I laid out my lip accoutrements on the counter, a stick of matte dusty rose, liner and gloss. I reapplied, dabbing the lipstick on with the precision of a brain surgeon. Perfection.

“I was at my desk, finishing up a column, for my editor, a real dick,” she said. Wendy wrote a column for
The Undead Science Monitor
on supernatural innovations
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. Her prose was sharp and witty, just like our repartee. “I had just hit save when that retard rolled by with his orange-flagged snack cart—I swear to God, my work is all about getting fat—and what did he do? Slowed down, that’s what. A pencil cup filled with Twix, hovered a foot from my face. I was doomed. I bought three and devoured them like an off-camera Jenny Craig. It was pathetic. Then, I remembered about meeting you, after your meeting and forgot about the binge. I hadn’t planned for eating, so I didn’t have my safety panties. God, it’s so embarrassing.”

I approached the door, put my fingertips against it. “It’s fine. Are you empty yet?”

“I think so.” The words were followed by useless grunts, shallow attempts at expelling phantom shit.

“I’ll get you some wet paper towels.”

While Wendy cleaned up, I called the number for the weathergirl, got her voice mail and left a brief message for her to call me. She came out of the stall and started to touch up the makeup on her tearstained cheeks. I was feeling my most empathetic; so, I gave her a quick hug, and finished the job, adding a shimmery gold dusting to her apples.

“You look super hot,” I said. She smiled dimly, her face puffed with exertion. “Let’s get one for the road, and then it’s out of here.”

“Where to?”

“To talk to Rochelle Ali, if she calls me back.” I took the lead through the restroom’s swinging door.

“The weathergirl, what the hell for?”

Convent

 

Pathetic ’80s Desperately Goth Afterparty Set List

 

Skinny Puppy
• Smothered Hope

Sisters of Mercy
• Black Planet

Bauhaus
• Lagartija Nick

Siouxsie & The Banshees
• Cities in Dust

Cocteau Twins •
In the Gold Dust Rush

The Cure •
The Hanging Garden

Mission UK •
Serpent’s Kiss

Echo & the Bunnymen •
The Killing Moon

Shreikback •
Nemesis

Dead Can Dance •
Cantara

Xmal Deutchland •
Incubus/Succubus

 

II

“It seems when not busy pointing out imaginary clouds on blue screens or whoring around with Cam Hansen, our Rochelle keeps company with a wereleopard, or kept, is a more apt description.”

“So?” A wave of indifference washed over Wendy’s already sick and battered face.

“The wereleopard’s gone missing.”

We walked back into the main club, past the horny partiers, grown rowdier. The afterparty for Burlesque of the Living Dead was raging; the dancers joined the crowd each dressed in a different colored gown and smoking cigarettes like diner waitresses. I scanned for the booth I shared with Claire. She was gone. I didn’t see her anywhere.

In that short time, between the end of the strip show and coming out of the bathroom, the atmosphere had changed—scary, but not in a frightening way. Scary lame. The owners were force-feeding the crowd an ’80s Goth vibe, which, of course, some pathetic vampires were eating up. You know the scene, Bauhaus or the Sisters of Mercy blaring their dark notes and bass growls (see inset). The antique velvet davenports that lingered on the periphery of the dance floor were draped with maudlin ghouls in little girl’s Sunday dresses; you know the type, of course yours are living, if you can call it that.

Needless to say, Wendy and I do not fit in. A fashion refresher: I’m in black Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choos; Wendy’s wearing a snappy Stella McCartney and the cutest pair of high cork wedges you’ve ever seen. We head straight for the bar. The keep was a pale gent, thin and tall, stretched, almost. “What’ll it be?” he asked. His skin jiggled loose with each word.

“What’s the house cocktail?” I offered my standard reply.

“It depends on your condition, light-aversive, ethereal or abovegrounder.” He leaned against the counter for support, as though his next word could be his last.

“You guess.” Wendy leaned into the bar, thrusting her chest toward him. She had absolutely no standards.
What was she doing?
He was completely inedible.

“Zombies,” he said, just like that, like it was obvious, and it is so not. He grabbed two glasses and filled them with a clear fluid from an apothecary jar and slid them in front of us, then turned his attention to the next customer, a brooding vamp wearing what looked like a homemade dress of shredded black rags. Sad! Her bathtub was probably stained from all the dye it took to create that fashion disaster
62
.

“How can he possibly know that?” Wendy asked. “We could easily be two innocent living women, who wandered in here, unaware of the danger all around us.”

But what I heard was, “Blah, blah, blah.”

Because, across the room, in my banquette, still warm from my ass, lounged the man from the elevator. That’s right, RUDE WINGTIP GUY. And he knew I was there, too. How could he not? Honestly, I looked totally hot. I made my way to the table, past the gyrations of the urban evil dead and terminally unfashionable.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you remember me from the elevator?”

He was barely able to drag his eyes from the table. When he did, I wished he hadn’t; there was less of him to look at than when last we met. His face had slid across his skull; his cheeks settled into a fleshy pouch under his chin; he was missing an eye, the left one; and his nose was exposed skull. He had deteriorated and what’s worse, he went out in public like that.

“No,” he hissed, as though someone slit a tire. The small word stretched out across the room and lingered like a fart.

“In the Treasury building elevator, about three weeks ago, you breathed on my neck.”

“I…did…nothing…of…the…sort…girl.” His voice was rough as sandpaper and slower than I remembered.

I wasn’t sure how to continue. If I even should. Maybe I had offended him. “It’s just that, well, I remember you; I was wondering why you did it?” I gestured to my body, which looked pretty good and resisted the urge to do a spin. I was trying to be serious.

“Of…course…the…proximity…shared…air. Did…you…have…an…accident? After?” It took like five minutes for him to get these words out and I was getting impatient, looking at my watch. I’d have to be brain-dead to not know I was a zombie. Some new information would have been nice.

“Yes…uh, I
meant
why me?” I dreaded the question as soon as I asked it. He would decompose faster than he could answer.

“W-h-y…”

I tapped my right foot, watched some shifts make out and ignored the obligatory cravings.

“…not,” he finished and looked away, brought a shaky lowball to his lips, and slurped like the French hit a soupspoon.

No, he did not just say that.
Why not?
Like he’d simply had to take a piss.

“So it was like, I think I’ll turn someone into a zombie, today, and buy a new sweater, perhaps. Is that it?”

“Sure,” he said, just like that, dismissive.

I flashed back to my mother’s words,
So last minute
. That was me.
So last minute
—an aside, if you will. I could hear the bitch’s voice.
Oh, why bother thinking about Amanda? She’s just an afterthought, an unconscious whim. She’s a Twix bar binge, double bucket chocolate cake party, a spattered toilet aftermath
.
Do get the glommers their cocktails, Amanda; they’re so much more interesting lubricated
.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Let…me…” He was going on, but I was done, I didn’t have time for another five-word/ten minute sentence, particularly of the rude variety. I stomped across the crowded dance floor to Wendy’s side, shoving the night crawlers with my elbows. As I approached, she dismissed some short thing that was hounding her for a date.

“Off you go, little one,” she said. The vampire dwarf sneered, revealing impressively large canines
63
. “Oh, don’t be mad.” He flipped us off with a stubby finger, and skulked away.

Nice
, I mouthed, and took a sip from the drink in front of me, what must have been pure rubbing alcohol. “Jesus, it’s awful, where is this distilled, Wisconsin? Did they bother to clear out the cheddar curd?” The bartender sneered and pivoted on shaky ankles toward the back of the bar.

“Warms you right up, though.” Wendy slurred, head lolling. “Who was that?”

“Hmm?” I dunked a finger in the swill and stirred, an aurora borealis oil slick swirled on the surface.

“You were talking to that guy over there.”

“Well, I guess you’d call him my creator, but this is only the second time I’ve seen him. He’s the one that set this sexy dead thing in motion.” I shook my hair, but didn’t really sell it.

“That’s weird.” Wendy looked confused.

“What?”

“Well, usually, the one that gives you ‘the breath,’ chooses you very carefully, because it is extremely difficult to conjure that kind of power. Most of us have been groomed to become zombie.”

“So you know your maker?”

“Absolutely.” Her eyes trained on me like I was the dumb ass. “So do you.”

I gave her my best clueless-irritability look: cocked head, squinty eye, and raised eyebrow. Cute.

“It’s Ricardo, darling.”

“But you acted like you didn’t know him at all…” I stopped myself. The memory of their introduction rolled through my head like film. They
had
been flirting like horny high school kids. At the time, I wouldn’t have been surprised for them to rub their butts across the carpet, like a couple of dogs in heat.

Wendy sighed. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

Okay, we’ve shared a hundred pages; you don’t have to be coy. Go ahead. You are dying to ask me what you taste like, right? You’re thinking, maybe chicken, because that’s what everything is supposed to taste like. Rattlesnake? Tastes like chicken. Rabbit? Tastes like chicken. Cute Safeway produce guy? Tastes like chicken—nope, not so much—that underage kid that you keep looking at like a pervert? He tastes like what I think deer must taste like, gamey, like there is a film across the meat, a sheen of sweat, fear maybe mixed with a metallic, rusty iron thickness. I’ve come to relish the blood, it’s like the gravy, really; it’s like Sunday dinner comes five nights out of seven
64
.

The first bite is difficult in a challenging way; the flavor is unique and yet varies from person to person and across race and nationality. Despite all the claims that humans are all the same on the inside, it turns out not to be the case, at least in regards to flavor.

Wendy and I have gone through some heated arguments over the past few months as to which race tastes better. I lean toward the Latino; I am partial to the olive-skinned European men, which by now you are aware. Wendy prefers the fresh snap of an Asian boy. She says they have an almost organic flavor, like most all vegetarians. I think they are a bit bland, but will do in a pinch. The additional appeal is that they are moderately easy to snare; their slight physical nature does make them easier targets. I’m, of course, generalizing. There are obvious variations in flavor and texture, but that’s all age, diet, and exercise.

The night’s repast was pedestrian, literally. When we left the club, we got hold of a teen runaway right outside, like he’d been left there by room service. He thought he’d gotten extremely lucky, and in a way he did. After all, we were definitely the hottest things coming out of Convent.

I looked up from spinning a leg on my teeth like a lathe, and saw a van make a slow pass. It was blue under the streetlamp, and despite large panels of darkened windows, a spark of red light was visible inside. I stood up and took a few steps toward the vehicle. A spray of water came from the van’s tires, as it tore off into the night.
Shit
, I thought.
Have we been made?