Odds n ends

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literacysuks1

on Dec. 9, 2010

THE QUESTION AND THE CASE OF THE FEMME FATALITY

It would be a cliche to say her legs went on forever, but they did go on significantly longer than the average. The dress is tighter than plastic wrap. The lips stuck in a defiant pout. Endless black holes painted on the eyes and hair darker than a room with all the lights out, far too perfectly shaped to belong to a member of the human beings club like you and me.

Problem is, she's dead.

I don't know how many people saw her before I got here. The black and white and red-all-over body had been resting here under the potted trees for a few hours, left arm folded unnaturally behind her back and haughty eyes staring into a starry sky they'd never see again. It was like a bad joke. I could tell the time by how it SMELLED. It's perfume and it's sweat. It's decay. It's death.

I'd caught onto this by dumb luck. My masked alter ego had just broken up a drug deal, and I was high off my own sense of self satisfaction until I saw the little fragile broken thing below. A comedian who ended up overdosing on sleeping pills used to say you couldn't throw a dart without finding a crime in Hub City, and that you'd probably end up with the thing stuck back in your own neck for the trouble.

The cold hard moonlight filtering through the leaves creates an intricate pattern of shadow across her face and on the blood drenched stone under her. She's been here on the balcony of some pretentious high rise coffee shop that had been converted from an apartment. It's closed, but that's no guarantee I can sit up here forever without being seen. I gag, then hunch over for a closer look, telling myself that the misted over eyes weren't looking at me, but that the synapses in her brain had just stopped firing. Sun rise and sun set. It didn't help. Somebody had caved the back of her skull in. No other bruises. It only took a single swing and there was no struggling. I smell something new, like rotten eggs, and suppress the gag reflex again.

This isn't the first time I've been around something like this, so why is it bothering me so much?

Detective work. Focus. You're here to make this bit of senselessness make sense. I almost miss the black purse laying out on the gravel and the dark a few feet away. The money is gone and there's no cell and no ID, it's been raided like a K-Mart in a riot. Of course. I begin to rifle. Chapstick. Tic-Tacs. Things I can't mention in civilized company. A black card the size of a matchbook emblazoned with a lion stares back at me. It's black and red and a roman numeral 7 sits at the top. It looks familiar, and I pocket it despite the very real possibility it was from some harmless nightclub she'd been to the week before. Maybe I just want something to convince myself I had enough evidence to leave.

—

"So. Did you find anything from the samples?"

"I'm not CSI, Vic."

"…So, did you find anything from the samples?"

Aristotle Rodor sighs and flips the pan containing the fresh eggs. He farmed them himself from the pen of chickens he had out back, along with the 4 country miles just away from the city lights. He was always saying the chemicals in that 'pre-packaged shit' had ruined the taste. I nurse the corner of a piece of toast and scratch my nose, squinting at the sickeningly beautiful Rockwell esque sunlight pouring through the large windows.

"Well, your Jane Doe was hopped up on something before she bit the big one, I know that much. So many drugs in her bloodstream I couldn't tell which was which."

I call him 'Tot' and he calls me 'Vic', mask or no. I don't know where I'd be without him. Probably dead. From the minute I decided I'd put a costume on and avenge those who otherwise wouldn't be avenged he'd supported me with everything he had, and everything he had was a lot. He's a genius, a scholar. I try not to let it go to his head.

"Hh."

"Food any good?"

It was likely amazing, but I couldn't touch it again.

"Eh."

"Something's bothering you, that much is obvious." Tot said, easing up on the fire of the stovetop and pulling the pan back.

"Not really"

"You couldn't telegraph it anymore if you TRIED, Vic. And I've seen you try." Then he dumps his own eggs on the plate, not really gesturing toward any eating utensils.

"The body. It reminded me of somebody. Of a few people" I stare into the bread grains like they hold the answer to life and death and everything in between.

"Anybody I'd know?"

"Doubt it."

"Oh. Ah–Mera called. She's been missing you down at the radio station. You might want to call her back. Said something about a date–" Tot, the old man, scratches the baldest part of his head, like he always does when he was beating around the bush.

"The card. Did you find anything on it?"

"Huh. Maybe. It's flimsy."

"Try me."

"Lions are the strength card of the Major Arcana. Few of the local celebrities throw these theme parties every week focused around tarot themes–this month, anyway."

"In Hub Center, right? I never suspected anything about those. Cute and annoying."

"Me either. That's why I said flimsy. but you've either got that, or a dozen drycleaners, high school football teams, and etcetera using lions in their logos or names."

"Or a serial killer. Could be a theme."

"With a literal calling card? Kind of GOTHAM, don't you think?" He said, raising his eyebrows a bit too high.

"Maybe. I'll crash one of these parties next time I get the chance."

"Next monday. It overlaps with the proposed date, Vic."

"I'll have other dates."

He stops for a second, like he decides he shouldn't say something and then immediately decides he's going to say it anyway. "Right. Forgive me if I'm overstepping my bounds here, but don't you think you should put more stock into the live women than the dead ones?"

I consider bringing up his long-deceased wife, but I hold my tongue.

—

The frigid brush of the wind against my bare face makes me realize how used to the mask I'm becoming. Almost like growing a monster of a beard and then shaving the thing off all at once, everything feels slightly wrong as you readjust. I pull up the collar of my coat to compensate and it helps a little. I'd driven down here as Vic Sage, hoping my profession as a radio journalist would get me into this week's big Tarot bash without a problem, but I had been wrong. A big bald guard gladly showed me the error of my ways. They'd also charged me twenty dollars to park. I hoped no one would jack the tires. I'm locked out.

Then again, not that it's really a worry. I end up taking an elevator on a building across the street and getting across to my destination through a sixth or seventh story window and a creep along a ledge. Almost fall a few times because of the wind, but luckily I don't. I'm positive people would have seen me clambering around up there, but they likely assumed it was just a jumper, and that wasn't all that rare around the taller sections of the city.

Thankfully, it was empty at this level. The rumble of a party buzzed under my feet. Snatches of conversation and empty laughs. Clinks of glass and songs nobody listens to anymore. I start to go down the stairs and prepare to join society. As I count the steps I remember the face of the dead girl.

—

I genuinely can't carry on a conversation with these people.

He's an actor who started a ski line or some stupid thing that wastes the time of millions. He's tan like cancer and it keeps distracting me from the things coming out of his mouth. When I try to speak, the music pumping from the speakers covers my words, but never seems to take over his. Shouldn't have said I needed an interview. He smiles and his bleached teeth are whiter than the plates Tot served the eggs on. He's shooting a music video with a pre-packaged pop star I haven't heard of, and when I ask about a missing girl he talks over me. Excusing myself fails, and I explain my thoughts on gun control until he leaves.

This continues for a good hour, and I start to hope one of the guards will notice my lack of an entrance wrist band and kick me out. A woman asks me which product I have used to dye my hair it's color. Two more women and a man hit on me, but not with any real interest. The place was dead.

I sit against the 30 foot tall wall lined with marble pillars and immaculately decorated but tasteless red curtains, a tribute to decadence in a city that can't afford it. I note how pathetically thin the Tarot theme is, a few touches here and there, like throwing a single string of tinsel on an uprooted pine tree for christmas. I look out at the crowd of people and they blend into everything I hate about this goddamn beautiful city. I become resigned to the fact that I followed a false lead. A girl had been mugged and died a brutal death, and that was all there was to it. She had gotten buzzed on designer drugs and wandered to a coffee shop, where a man had taken advantage of her stupor and attacked her for her money. Another freak with some insane agenda. She was probably airheaded and dull, a footnote in the appendix of the appendix of the gene pool. Hardly anything to be sad about.

But maybe she was. She had reminded me of a couple old girlfriends. People I'd dated at a time when the world made sense and romance wasn't a fiction. Warm, nice people despite a few piercings. Things always started like I imagined them in films, and then we'd argue and go down the laundry list of break up cliches. It's easy to point fingers, but most of them were my fault in the end. Despite the way all those times ended I always fondly remember the beginning. Maybe someday I'll figure out how the good ending is done. Maybe after I hit enough people and wear that blank mask long enough to work myself out. Maybe not.

I look up. In the corner of my eye I see something black and red being passed to a pretty young blonde by some decrepit buzzard squeezed into a suit . Discreetly. Members only.

The card.

She has the card and they look like they didn't want anybody else to see it. I stand up.

—

It's becoming difficult to stay patient and follow the two at a safe distance. The old man and the young girl, they'd left the main room together and are going somewhere. Down staircases. Too many of them. Weren't we five floors up?

She bobs and weaves as she walks, like a child's rubber duck in shaky water. She's obviously had her fill of the refreshments. The man shakes a bit also, but for different reasons. He seemed about 8 feet tall and just shy of eighty years old, but the vulture like creak of his neck made it look like less. Frame like that, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. His hearing must be bad, because he hasn't noticed me trailing him yet. Wait. Is it getting darker? Why aren't there as many lights? Every floor seems to be painted progressively more muted than the last. The man turns over his shoulder and sniffs, I hug a corner before I'm exposed and notice a wonderfully decorated potted plant. They go down another winding staircase and stop in front of an elevator door.

Red and black. The ditz steps in, and I follow her. Suddenly her watchdog is gone, the small space is full of yellow gas, and a man with a blank oval where his face should be is telling her to shush. I was glad the chokehold on the man worked, I wanted to be quick and simple and it was something Richard told me should be completely silent if I did it right. I could have done it faster, but there was always next time. The woman huddles in the corner of the elevator, whimpering bits of nothing and probably thinking she's hallucinating me. I look for the controls, and I see buttons labeled one to one-hundred. I stop for a second, and remember the 7 on the card.

"Hi. I'm the Question. Try not to throw up."

Bzzt.

—

The doors slide apart. I walk out, the lady sprints. This was more like it. I'd come here looking for the kind of filth that would make my stomach do calisthenics, and this certainly fit the bill. A pleasure pit, even matching the warped tarot theme in the way the upstairs hadn't. People using other people as meat. Shrieks and moans. Whips and chains and leather. Convulsing and tightening. Sweat and disease and things too fulfilling to actually fulfill a person. It was the ultimate act of nihilistic anarchy, to disregard all common decency and live out your every impulse like an animal. To become an object. To treat everything as equally disposable and usable to prove nothing really matters.

Except one. The others were sprawled out, naked and writhing, but one man was still dressed in a brown suit and brandishing what I make out as a crowbar. He stands above them on crushed velvet, a few foot difference thanks to the steps on the ground. His eyes immediately pierce the twenty feet between us and he looks confused. He hadn't paid for one of me.

Better now than never.

"The HELL is this!?" I yell, and then I kick aside a heavyset man on the ground who saw it fit to become a nude throwrug. He grunts.

"enh!" The man in the suit says.

Wait, the suit. He's on the city council. Isaac Jefferson. He gave the thumbs down on the petition to fill the potholes on main street last year. What was this? Was this what the club was for, or was it something else? Were the parties really just covers? Was the black haired woman a political enemy? A former lover? I get closer and I notice a bit of black fluid on his crowbar that I hadn't earlier. A man and a woman, both beautiful and both taken out with a single hit, skulls shattered. They were bound with ropes. Why hadn't I noticed rope burns on the girl to begin with? Why–

"I'll call security!" The man isn't so big anymore. I see him shrink.

My leather shoes pound up the velvet steps.

"WHY!?" I hit him and I growl. He collapses back up against a wall, next to a spot where coal plasma had jettisoned just ten minutes prior. The others in the room are too drugged to do anything but groan and screw. The man looks up at me, his jowls wobble as he grins with blood stained teeth.

"The girl with the black hair! Who was she?" I feel my voice raise and rattle. I'm not supposed to lose my composure.

He stops, and he looks up at me. He just says "WHICH ONE?" and keeps grinning. I hit him again. And again. My glove thwacks against and breaks cartilage and it's not enough. The color of the crowbar matches my glove and he crumples to the floor, still breathing but not able to smile. There was no security.

—

Somehow I'm outside. It's too cold and I can't breathe. Head is swimming. Everything hurts. Hands keep shaking. I try to remove my cellphone from my pocket and it takes a lifetime to get myself to dial. Two for it to ring. He picks it up.

"Tot–"

"Vic? Vic, are you okay? You sound–"

"Why won't it make sense, Tot? Why can't it always make sense?"

"Vic?"