Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (26 page)

Shane readied a plastic anesthesiology muzzle and covered my open mouth with it. It smelled of rubbing alcohol. Shane’s wrist smelled of musky butt and nut sack
117
.

“Give it to me, Amanda. Don’t make me take it from you. That process will drain you. Just ask your daddy; he can vouch for that.” He poked a thumb at the carcass.

I’m not proud of what came next.

Shane brought his fingernail up to my cheek and scratched lightly once. I glanced at the TV. Wendy sobbing.

Then, he scratched again, still lightly.

I panicked, heaving out every ounce of breath from my dead lungs. If I could, I would have vacuumed them clean and handed over the bag, too. The rubber hoses bulged with the white viscous breath and tendrils coiled into the glass receptacles like soft-serve vanilla. I half expected to see black specks of youthful nicotine addiction, pocking the coils of zombie breath, but it was clean. So
there
, take
that
, Surgeon General.

Actually, come to think of it, I’m not sure if it was a finger-
nail,
specifically. It might have just been his soft spongy…fingertip. But, in my defense, torture is like a Christmas present; it’s the thought that counts, right?

“Wow. I knew you were vain. But, I don’t even need to ask. That’s all the breath you have. It’s more than enough to supply our baristas with their little deadly gel-caps
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.” He busied himself with checking the bottles, spinning some in his palm to examine the process.

I wondered what my breath could do a supernatural; to Shane.

He wandered around the room, mumbling. “Have to be quick though, the breath is so fragile…dissipates in the water after a few minutes, only get a few doses out of a serving…something about the gel-cap turns the pure breath back into a mistake generator…haven’t quite figured out why.”

He removed the mask and the separator from my mouth and jaw. I clenched and unclenched my teeth. My jaw was numb from the abuse, like the ache of a prolonged blow job. Shane was watching the breath dissipate and bead up into moisture in the different jars. The final bottle accrued a fine powder that floated inside it like Sweet’n Low.

I had to
lay
into him.

“You bastard!” Spittle flew from my lips.

“Now, now. You’re alive, aren’t you? What’s to complain about?”

“This isn’t the playground, Shane. It’s real life…er, death, I mean. If you think that dyke is going to take you as her
Hades
, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Shut up, you fat bitch!” he yelled and raised a whitening fist.

Oh…hell…no.

Mmm-mmm-mmm.

No…he couldn’t possibly have spoken it. I hadn’t heard it in years, but the feelings came springing back from the seventh grade. Janelle Cooper and Katie Swan holding me down, filling my mouth with the thick mud of a diet shake. I was literally seeing stars, but too angry to count the points. Whatever blood was left began to boil in my veins—you may want to cover your children’s ears, although, frankly this will be nothing they haven’t heard before in grade school.

“Fat?” I screamed and twisted in the chair, straining against the bonds. “You motherfucker! At least I’m not some crazy lesbian werewolf’s impotent little chew toy. You’re a worthless piece of shit, you know that, Shane?”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Shane’s hands were clamped over his ears like Tupperware seals, he shook his head from side to side, eyes tight as screws.

“What do you think? Ms. Persephone is going to rule a world full of those mistakes that marched out of Starbucks the other day. There’s no ruling them, you idiot. They’re gaping, snapping mouths, on legs. When they run out of humans to eat, what then? I’ll tell you what. They’re coming after lycanthropes, and any other warm-blooded creature. That’s right,
Hades
; even your carpet-munching wife will go straight down a gullet. Then what’ll you do? Huh?”

That’s all I had to say. But he didn’t respond. Couldn’t blame him really. But then, I thought of the anger, and
could
really blame him. I just had to add, “That’s probably the most strenuous fucking you’ve had in a long time, huh, Shane?” I really couldn’t help myself. What can I say? I just love to hear myself talk.

Shane was devastated; he’d collapsed on his knees trying to eke tears out of dry ducts. What a fool. P-thetic.

I let him cry for a bit and then let him off the hook, when I noticed a change of circumstance on the TV. Wendy was no longer alone in the room.

“Hey Shane, take a look.” I jabbed my chin toward the TV.

Wendy was smiling directly into the camera. Around her were three little blonde girls in baby doll dresses, their hair hung in perfect ringlets. They took notice of the camera and wandered over until their bodies filled the frame. In unison, they wagged their little fingers in chastisement. They would have been RKO cute, had it not been for the pools of black tar they had for eyes; their obsidian depths brought to mind the hungry mouths of the reaper’s transport. The girls disappeared.

“Oh no,” Shane whispered.

Within the barreled chamber, three glowing black slits appeared, resembling snaggle-toothed vaginas. This was followed by a low hum that echoed into a growl in the circular room. The reapers stepped in unison from their doorways. The one on the far left held Wendy’s hand, and motioned for her to stand back. They approached the weakened vampire and stood around him, as though they would clasp hands and play a game of
ring around the rosies
. Their tiny hands stretched out toward him, becoming claws, their blunt little Chicklet teeth gone needle pointy. Their eyes were deep black death holes, portals to somewhere else—where the screams live (or go to die).

He was on his knees when one reaper grabbed his face and opened his jaws. Another squeezed and prodded his gums until his second canines slid from their garages of flesh. The third went in with a shiny pair of wire cutters.

It was Shane’s turn to scream.

And, he didn’t disappoint.

Wendy and I readied, primped and spackled. We opted for complementary colors and matching make-up. We curled and ratted our hair out, until it looked coiled to strike, Medusan; her hair was ash, mine a lush brown—it never hurts to remind you. Rather than downplay our dead skin, we highlighted it, showcased it in white powder, and shadowed our eyes and cheeks in kohl. For the lips, a dull blue shade was toned down to a dark as midnight hue. All in matte. Duh. We looked like a couple of MAC counter bitches, only more lifelike.

We donned satin slip dresses, braless. It was, after all, to be red carpet runway. Wendy’s dress was black and low-cut to the navel, it trained behind her like cum-hungry groupies. Mine was gunmetal and backless; it clung to my form in smooth waves. I wore a long strand of pearls backwards, so they traced down to a diamond pendant that pointed to my ass. An advertisement, natch.

“Check it,” Wendy said, spinning on the marble.

A quick side glance. I said, “Hotness.”

I reached for a metal case embossed with the letters AF, and withdrew a cigarette; its paper dyed to match my dress, and twisted it into a long ivory holder. I held it out like a coy contract star.

“Oh my God!” Wendy shouted, not at all elegantly. “That is
so
the perfect accessory. I love it.”

“I know.”

We were ready.

The wait line rounded the corner, the usual sinister crowd, but the sirens from the spa were up front. A toilet clog of paparazzi were ten deep along the velvet rope. A trio of vampire criers in Victorian Morticiana shouted long streaming blood quotes into the night air; the words expanded and ribboned brightly like spotlights into the first clear night sky in weeks. The sign above the door glowed with fire, from cute little crematoriums; each of Mortuary’s eight letters silhouetted by blazing gas.

The six of us fell out of the limo Gil rented, black and stretch, out into the throng of flashbulbs and video spots. Wendy and I shined like blind China dolls, skin as delicate as rice paper; both Gil and Shane wore Armani well, though the former was inordinately more robust and less boyish; he’d have me add that he stood at least four inches taller as well. Unfortunately, the black suit combined with Shane’s white hair had the effect of a glowing voodoo candle—a dour one from the look of his face.

I jabbed him in the side. “You better make it chipper, Torquemada!”

The second crew from
Undead On Tape
yelled my name and got the finger. I grabbed Shane’s arm—
why is he even alive
? Tortured, fangless, downtrodden, and along strictly for appearances, bait for the bitch—while Gil tucked his into the crook of Wendy’s. Liesl and Cameron brought up the rear, as they’d been making out furiously like a couple of twelve-year-olds, despite repeated groans of protest,
so
gross
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. I would have pummeled them with picket signs, if I’d had them.

A short dark hall led to a pair of swinging doors. They opened into a lobby of chintz wallpaper and travertine floors; the furnishings were funeral home chic, grandmotherly sofas, oriental carpets and a liberal dousing of artificial dust and webbing—way over the top. A grim top-hatted gentleman in a dusty topcoat attended to the coat check. He introduced himself as Lucien.

“Memorize these faces,” I said. “We’re going to be around, a lot.”

Ahead of us, stairs led off to a passage labeled “The Drawers,” while another sign pointed through a hole toward “The Embalming Room,” and yet another to an area for “Viewing.”

I glanced at a smirking Wendy.

“Please be appropriately somber,” she said. The irony wasn’t lost on her. We met in a funeral home, and now, were heading in to a showdown with Claire, in the aptly titled club. It was like a good luck charm.

The plan was in play. Karkaroff was furiously insulted at Claire’s impersonation, vowing to help, to hear Ricardo tell it. She’d been the one to contact the reapers and arrange for our safe liberation—they were, likewise, on board for the plan. Shane talked to Claire, under heavy mental manipulation by Karkaroff, and insisted that everything was fine. As soon as she arrived, we would lure Claire into the ladies’ room and confront her, keeping her there until the reapers arrived to do their jobs.

For it to work, everything must appear normal. So far, so good.

“We’ll embalm her ass,” Wendy said, stroking the thin, fading scar that ran from dimple to ear. The reapers had worked a bit of evil little girl magic on the cut, and it sealed up like a real live girl’s would.

“No shit,” I said.

Ricardo stood by the main entrance; he wore black Dior, but to be truthful, he also wore the building, like it was an extension of him. “Everything is prepared,” he said as we approached. I winked at Wendy and Gil, Shane winced, Liesl and Cameron made out. He led us through the entrance into the main hall of the club.

Mortuary was a freak show. The design was fantastical and bizarre and I loved it. Upon entering, the patron experiences a sense of shrinking down to the size of a rat. Dead center of the space is the bar, set into the base of a massive steel embalming table. A giant body lay there, three stories above; its feet were visible, calloused, realistic. The body was draped by a gauzy shroud that cascaded down the table in pleats, drawn back to expose the bar beneath and secured to the table legs by surgical clamps the size of a fireman’s jaws of life. Beside the bar, a massive machine pumped what appeared to be cognac up a thick rubber tube, which curved and undulated, ending in a metal spike that disappeared into the body. From the opposite side, viscous red ooze drizzled from a drain in the bottom of the table. It collected in a metal pan beneath it—the water feature preferred by nine out of ten serial killers.

The crowd was an eclectic mix of species. All types of were-animals and vampires mingled with shimmering apparitions and zombies. Clevis Walls and Mata Hari of the “nice shoes,” stood nearby. The sirens made their way into the room. Ricardo greeted them, but ran his fingers across his lips like a zipper—I was to later find that they actually did not have names. So, Siren number one nodded agreement. A grumpy group of mylings sat in the booths that hugged the walls like platelets in a centrifuge. Near them, as though segregated by race, were the water sprites, wood nymphs and yetis. A large contingent of chimerae admired the blood pool, most notable among them a Jersey Devil and a densely haired chupacabra. A wendigo with tall antlers stood to their side, disgusted and ignoring them. The room was near capacity, but a scan of faces showed no sign of Wendy-by-Claire, at least not yet.

Ricardo clapped his hands twice, demanding immediate attention of his guests.

“Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. You are all most welcome here at…” He swept his arms out, theatrically. “…Mortuary!”

The wall of drawers began to click and shuffle open to various degrees, revealing the VIP seating—the destination for the stairway, designated to the Drawers—it makes perfect sense now, in an insane surreal way.

Mortuary Opening Night
DJ Malice
Set List

 

Ladytron
• Destroy Everything You Touch

Oakenfold
• Faster Kill Pussycat

Shiny Toy Guns
• Le Disko

Scissor Sisters
• Filthy and Gorgeous

Sasha
• Immortal

The Prodigy
• Voodoo People

Le Tigre
• Deceptacon

Curve
• Hell Above Water

Crystal Method
• I Know It’s You

Chemical Brothers
• Under the Influence

Ricardo was looking back into the lobby and gesturing to someone. “Enjoy!” He yelled to the crowd and the music began: Ladytron (see inset), thumped from the speakers and the overhead lights dimmed, leaving the club lit eerily by small lamps on the tables and uplights every few feet on the perimeter. The dance floor occupied the space on the far side of the bar. It filled with a glowing fog, dissected by a grid of laser light, and hosted a crowd of dancers so mixed, it was like nothing seen before at any of Seattle’s clubs. People were going to remember this.

Ricardo waved us over and we followed back out into the lobby and up the flight of stairs, down a hall to an elevator door with a keyhole instead of a call button. He reached into the interior pocket of his tux and withdrew a length of black ribbon, at the end of which was a key. With a twist of the key, the elevator opened.

It took us to the uppermost loge, an aerie both lofty and luxe, befitting our new status, I might add. Liesl and Cameron took up a position
120
on a tufted couch, set farthest into the balcony. Wendy, Gil, Ricardo and I crossed the space and stood looking down over the club. To our right, at slightly decreased elevation, natch, hung another balcony; this one was occupied by a familiar, yet scary, face.

It was Wendy. Wendy-Claire.

Gil and I pushed the real one down to the floor, where she sniveled something about dust on satin. I pivoted to see a glum Shane, stalled near the elevator door.
Get your ass over here
, I mouthed, pointing to the spot, where I expected his feet planted. When he did so, I hissed into his ear, “If you expect to survive the night, you’d better follow directions.”

Ricardo added, “Now, call down to her and tell her we’ll meet her downstairs.”

He cantilevered forward, over the edge of the drawer and yelled, “Wendy!”

Claire peeked up and simpered. She gave Shane a quizzical look, to which he responded with a dorky team sports thumbs-up. Claire nodded, a slow sneer spread across her bland face.

“Meet us in the lobby!” Shane shouted. He twisted toward me, but averted his gaze.

“Yes!” Claire screamed and grabbed a wrap and her clutch, an apropos beaded albatross
121
.

On our way out, I stopped to ask Liesl, “These are going to work, right?” I patted my chest.

“They should.” She shrugged. Her face expressed little sympathy or concern as though we were simply going shopping.

“It should? That’s not very comforting, Liesl. I would expect you to be more maternal just now—”

“It will, I mean. I’m nearly positive. Besides, Ricardo has a backup plan. Quit being such a puss.”

I glared up at Ricardo. He shrugged and rocked his head, as if to say, “maybe no, maybe so.”

“I want to thank both of you for
really
putting me at ease. It’s so…soothing. It really is,” I said, mouth split in a fake pageant smile one second, cat anus the next.

Wendy-Claire abandoned her corpse drawer before us, yet was nowhere to be seen.

“Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” offered Shane. He dusted imaginary lint from the lapels of his tux.

I glanced at Ricardo. He gave another unhelpful shrug.

What, exactly, do these people know?
I wondered.
I’m pretty sure I’m more aware of; let’s see…uh, everything. Jesus! No help, here
. I slunk off for the ladies’.

The Mortuary restroom was dark except for fabulous lighting over each sink, a muted pink, great for make-up application, not so good for watching your back. I propped my purse on the stainless vanity and touched up my lips, adding powder to take down the gloss. If I did say so, a look this flawless deserves to be on the nightly news, or front page of the supernatural gossip rags. I’d taken heroin chic to its next logical step: postmortem elegance
122
.

Behind me, two vampires applied neon Band-Aids of cloud in an open stall, one, an atrophic redhead with a pinched overworked nose, wore a trail of ten hits running up her arm. She needed to check herself in to a clinic or, at least, trade in her addiction, for one more stylish
123
. The other one kept busy, squeezing the heady paste from a repurposed tube of Crest Whitening.

In the far stall, a pair of low-heeled training kicks gave away a certain hidden counterculture element.

“Is that you back there, Claire?” I called to her, emphasizing the name—I had no intention of referring to her as Persephone; I wasn’t feeding into that delusion. I blotted the corners of my mouth, with a particularly soft facial towel, supplied from a shallow basket on the vanity. Next to it, various accoutrements, lotions, perfumes, even a small jar of vein concealer. Ricardo was so detail oriented.
Why weren’t we together?
I wondered.
So similar
.

Claire left the stink of her stall and parked herself at the next sink. “Retardo thinks of everything,” she said.

“Yes. Ricardo is quite fastidious.” My eyes darted to the drugged out skanks in the john. “What’s it going to be Claire? A meeting in the ladies’ room?”

She shot a terse eye at me, as if not sure whether to laugh. Hmm? Oh…wait, that’s a song from the ’80s, right?
Klymaxx
, or Klymaxxx, or something. The tune began to weave its way into my brain like a parasite.

Before it could take hold, one of the wasteheads started singing it. “I got a meetin’ in the ladies’ room, I’ll be back real soon…” They gyrated ’80s style, authentic, except for the flat hair.

“Shut up!” Claire barked.

“Yell much?” I turned to her and tilted my hip, resting against the vanity, exerting ownership. “I have to tell you Claire, I’m really surprised that you even wanted me alive.”

She crooked back to the mirror and applied way too much blush, with a brush so overworked it was curled at the ends. “I was certain that Shane wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. I guess I was wrong. I need you around for
special
projects.”

Special projects
. Care to join me in a spine shiver? What the hell did that mean.
Special projects
. It brought to mind knee pads and dusty poon—
ew
. I don’t think I need to tell you; that was not going to happen. Claire would have to shove handlebars through my head and work it herself.

“I have to tell you, Claire. The word ‘special’ creeps me out a bit. I’m not going down on you.”