I opened my eyes, and immediately it felt as though they melted right out of my head, a brown-white-grey slime slopping into the vomit and saliva that my face nestled in. I closed them again.
My nose was not assaulted by the clipped, antiseptic, back-of-your-throat smell of Middletown, and obviously not by the flowers, spices and fruit-scent of Uppertown. No. It was the acrid stench of Lowertown, a hundred thousand chemicals gases seeping from the whorehouses (Tech and Real) and the Dens and the unregulated factories, even from the pathetic Shantyslums, tiny as the individual houses were, to form the smell of Lowertown. It was a hand, plunging fingers through my eyes and mouth and nose, all the way down my throat.
I groaned. My pillow of vomit was cold. It was still sticky though, as I rolled over painfully, feeling the cheap grit and concrete (concrete! In this day and age! Came the voice of my father) digging into me.
Urhhhh. My voice. An animal’s groan, a widow’s moan.
Where was I? Who was I?
The cheap black jeans and T-shirt could have belonged to any scumbag, (don’t be so self-pitying, came the voice of my wife. My ex-wife.) so it was left to the long red coat. Red was the wrong word. Red was what it should have been, red was what it deserved, slowly rotating as a hologram in the window of a million shops in Middletown, maybe even one cheap-shit shop in Uppertown. It was brown and holed and stained and had believed the lies it was told, of an eternity of perfect red. It had sunk down alongside me, not fallen but sunk. Not a sudden drop from riches to poverty, no, a slow descent; accepted, inevitable and gradual, like an animal in quicksand.
Agony behind my left eye. Bionic, broken, out of fuel, had halted payments on it years ago; they had halted sending the energy. Fair enough. Shouldn’t be hurting that much though…
I couldn’t see my face (you can’t see reflections in the puddles of Lowertown, only shifting chemicals and the smiles of liars) but I knew what was there. Greying, thinning brown hair. Thick eyebrows that did not suit the bony highness of my face. Or was it the highness that did not fit my utterly average nose, or my wide, permanently disbelieving eyes? The lines fit, most of fear and stress, a few of age, (like one of those droopy dog faces that they take to because there’s far to many of them yes it’s inhumane yes it’s not what we’d like but we have to make do we have to make do, came the voice of my mother.)
So I regaled myself of who I was and where I was (the rest quickly came with these few facts, like shadows around the CityPoliceCarrotAndStickVans, when they rolled into Lowertown, the vans packed with Middletowners who have thrown a badge and a helmet on, intent on beating the shit out of these revolting Lowertowners who were spreading the Shantyslums, like a slow fungus, ever closer to Middletown.)
And having remembered this bare facts, I endeavoured to remember what I was doing in a darkened alley at night (would probably have been just as dark in the day, I remembered. Three months and I’m still getting used to the blotting out of the sun in Lowertown.) when there would be perfectly good Shantyslums who’s occupants had abandoned their home for a night at the brothels with the TechWhores or the RealSluts (depending on whether they were working the unregulated factories to make clothes for the Middletowners, or lucky enough to be working the REAL unregulated factories to process and package Wing.)
WING.
The word exploded in my mind, exaggerating the agony behind my left eye, which I hadn’t even noticed. Wing. It was holy water in a devil’s orgy, light spilling in to a dungeon from above, the kiss and the soft touch of a woman in the loneliest night. Wing.
SHIT. How long since my last fix? How long? Could I even walk? I needed to remember before I could find the White Rabbit, find the Junk.
I closed my eyes, felt the frost in the bones of my fingers through the holes in my gloves, felt the AGONY behind my left eye, felt the cold stickiness of vomit still caressing my left ear, calling me back, and felt a hundred different cries of sorrow and screams of agony and moans of pleasure, all over Lowertown.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember.
***
Saturday. Or Thursday. Maybe even Friday. No. Definitely Friday. Almost maybe definitely Friday.
Ah, who the fuck knows.
Urh, haa th fuchh knoshh. Out loud.
A week? Two weeks? Heads or tails, life or death. One week and I could function. A week and a half and I could shuffle like a Mutant from the documentaries about what was going on out East, or a long-gone Junker. I wasn’t a long-gone Junker. Not yet.
A week and a bit. Fixing around the corner after it from Rabbit the Wingman, same as every week. It was raining, a Winger’s spittle, same as every week. Same as every goddamn day.
No. Going off topic. Fixing around the corner, looking at the world the way it should be seen. And the way it shouldn’t. The tiny hole under his armpit
(best place to have it, d’ya get? Nobody goin’ sniffing there, man. Giggled Rabbit, handing the Wing over for the first time)
with the little metal rim. Fixing the Wing to it, feeling the Wing itself, the tiny ball, shooting into him through the hole. Instant cool, no sweat, lean back and breathe in.
What next?
A nightclub, pointlessly named, when there isn’t a Sun for Lowertown anymore, (ironic and meaningful at the same time, came the voice of my father.) Or was it a Den? Full of Wingmen and Wingers and RealWhores (just for the Wingmen, obviously), if there was a party. Wingmen holding the floor, Wingers slipping like sickening threads around the room, holding the Wingmen up in a weird criss-crossing patchwork.
A girl. Not a RealWhore (how could he afford a RealWhore?) a Winger. Somebody like him. Holding her lazily, feeling tiny spiders of pleasure run up and down his bloodstream like happy children. Everything being A-OK.
Did she even look him in the eye?
By the end of the night she was gone. Both of them had forgotten. Holding her for anytime between thirty seconds and thirty minutes, and then her vanishing off into the darkness, like a corpse in the sea at night.
***
Still feeling fine later. Sleeping somewhere. Wandering, plastered with a limp smile, and blank eyes. Yessir, everything being A-OK.
Sleeping for too long, though. Probably eating something in between naps, or just running straight on the Wing.
Feeling like I needed something, my feelings aroused by the woman last night at the party (or it could have been the night before that or the day before that or the night before the day before the night before that.) Finding a cheap TechSlut, in the hands of some wandering pimp. Looking up and down the pimp first, looked pretty decked out: Bionic arm for beating people who needed beating. But…clearly broken…watching it as it became clear it was bent at a fucking stupid angle. This pimp was down on his luck. No wonder he was happy to rent his TechSlut out to a Winger.
The pimp had a moustache. I could remember that. Just a little one.
Taking the TechSlut into the Shantyslum the pimp was standing in front of. The pimp promising that he’d leave him in peace, smiling under the moustache, smiling in the puddles of Lowertown. Knowing the pimp was lying, he’d be waiting right outside in case I tried to pull anything.
Coming inside the TechSlut. (Making love to a goddamn machine, came the voice of my father.)
To a goddamn machine
Feeling the rage, the useless, insignificant rage screaming around and around my head. The Wing was gone and finished. Reality, or non-Reality, was back. Hard and strong and cold, reminding me the truth: You're nothing.
Struggling, really struggling, to hold back the scream of agony and rage and of staggering, dwarfing loneliness.
A corpse in the sea at night
Punching the TechSlut again and again and again, until there were rips in the synthetic skin and my knuckles were bleeding everywhere.
You're nothing.
The TechSlut stuck repeating the same sound, a KinkyPainSexNoise, because the goddamn machine sensed I was hitting it.
Oh oh oh it went.
Digging my fingers into the wholes in the skin and into the eyesockets and ripping at the synthetic flesh, dry and powdery, like cheese.
Oh oh oh.
To a goddamn machine
Managing to pull most of the outer face off it, hurling them into the walls of the Shantyslum with loud splats. The nose, the mouth and what remained of the eyes just would not budge, though. Keeping on trying, spittle (and was that FOAM?) flying in all directions from my mouth. Feeling her eyballs (synthesized by some Middletown scientist years and years ago) under my fingernails. Like cheese.
Oh oh oh.
A corpse in the sea at night.
Biting her lips off. They came away with a wet ‘pop’ and a little liquid, like from a blister.
Oh oh oh.
Losing track of what I was doing, ripping and tearing and biting and bleeding from cutting myself on the cold metal beneath.
Oh oh oh.
Oh oh oh.
…
ERROR: PLEASE RETURN TO OWNER. ERROR: PLEASE RETURN TO OWNER.
Hearing the mechanical cry for help coming from the plastic voicebox where her lips used to be. Its lips used to be.
To a goddamn machine.
***
Rising and watching the pimp with the moustache and the bionic arm at the stupid angle come running in. Watching him carefully, when he came running in he started crying.
Watching him and seeing how pathetic he truly was. His tears came down and pooled in his moustache.
My baby, he was saying, my baby.
Realising something, I laughed. I was BIGGER than him.
Thwack thwack thwack. Feeling him slapping at my chest pathetically with his bionic arm. Wait. Not bionic…too light. Fake. Plastic. Laughing, I bent it back easily. Buckling, it ripped out of his sleeve. Wasn’t even attached, he’d just had his arm amputated and then stuck it in to look threatening. Down on his luck pimp.
Laughing as I slapped him around his head, he collapsed, ears ringing and I stepped over him.
Looking back over my shoulder as I left him, he looked like a fish, lying there in his tears and his spittle. Kept on laughing as I walked.
***
Limping down another street. Unconsciously heading towards Rabbit’s street corner now, definitely aware that I needed more Wing.
Chick, chick, chick. Voices, women’s voices, came from my right.
Emerging from the shadows came two women. Heads shaven, pitch-black glasses meant they were packing bionic eyes, tight clothing and bulging muscles meant they were dangerous.
Chick, chick, chick. They’d seen me. Definitely.
Trying to run, hearing them laughing behind me. Bored Wingwomen? Most likely.
Then one of them was on top of me, punching at me face. The cause of the agony behind my left eye, which was bionic: A punch skimming it, ripping it to the left unnaturally. It may have been broken but there were still tendons attaching it to my eye socket. Several of them ripped.
Screaming and clutching my face, hearing them still laughing on top of me.
Bionic eye? You gotta be pretty rich then, scumbucket!
Scrabbling in my coat, ripping more little holes.
No credits? Not a single one? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.
He got a card?
Nothin’. Jackshit
Nevermind, babe. Wanna kill him?
You want a rotting hobo body on our turf? Fuck no. Just leave him.
Feeling the weight rise off me. Spit landing on my face, more laughter.
***
And that’s how I must have got here. On my pillow of vomit.
I got up, slowly, painfully, and then scuttled like a scared beetle away from the street. I didn’t see the women, but I was most likely running too fast to notice them.
***
On the way to Rabbit I robbed a Shantyslum.
I scuttled behind a row of them, putting my ear to each one in turn until I definitely couldn’t hear the voice of an adult in one of them.
I bust down the door. The kids inside looked surprised, and almost vacant. I went through the little hut looking for credits. Knocking over the one child who tried to stop me as I found their little safebox.
I took all their money and headed to Rabbit.
***
“Redcoat, my man!” Rabbit could never remember my name. They call him Rabbit because the only visible teeth he has are his incisors.
“Same as usual?” Rabbit asked.
“Yeah.”
He fished around in his jacket and brought out a little bag. My eyes lit up.
Wing.
The bag was coming towards me, one little ball in there. Suddenly it stopped.
“You heard the rumours?” He asked. I wanted to leap on him and scratch his fucking eyes out.
“What rumours?”
“Bunch of Uppertowners got together a few scumbags from Lowertown, people like you and me, d’you get? And they stuck ‘em in this arena thing and poked ‘em with lasers till they died.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. I sell you the good shit,” he gestured with the bag of Wing. I was nearly drooling. “And I’ll tell you the good shit!”
“Well. How interesting.”
“Yeah.” He handed over the bag, I handed over the money and we were done.
***
I’m flying on the Wing.
I’m with a woman. In my head, but how is that any worse than physically with me? She’s perfect. She knows everything about me, she has everything I could ever want or need.
“I’m here.” She says. “I’m here.”
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