Moral Zero (13 page)

The sounds of the woman had stopped, but he took no notice. He was deaf to the sounds of the world. Dumb to the ways of the world. Blind to the lights, the shadows.

He stopped, made himself stop, and immediately slumped against the wall. Red was lying next to him, semi-conscious, mumbling and drooling. Mr White was muttering nothings into his hands. He stopped, reached out to Red’s pockets and dug out a cigarette packet and a lighter and he lit a cigarette and smoked it hard,
in harsh spikes. The smoke misted in the cold air. It burst and coalesced when he coughed. Ten minutes later and his second smoke drifted its fog around him, and Johnny came upon him veiled in silver. His hat pulled down. His form a shadow in itself. A whisper in the night.

Mr White glanced up at him and looked back down.

Johnny nodded at him. Mr White sensed the movement and nodded at the ground.

There was silenc
e for a minute as Johnny smoked, stood up in front of him, looking at Mr White. Mr White sat down looking at the ground.

What happened with that woman, Johnny? Mr White said eventually, the words rushing out fast and hard into the cold air. He clamped his lips tight and ground his teeth.

Which woman.

The one just now. The one you followed. Just now.

What about her.

I heard screaming.

No you didn’t.
Johnny was calm, cool. His rasping voice buried itself in the dark, quietly rumbling its stones and weeds.

I heard something.
Mr White tried to not let himself stammer. It was becoming easier. Something was changing. The night was becoming more relaxed. The tension was winding down. Johnny’s words cradled him.

Wh
at did you hear?

I don’t know.

Well.

There was silence for another minute. They had both finished their cigarettes. Mr White put the packet and the lighter back in Red’s pocket. Red mumbled something indistinct and his eyes opened briefly and shut again.

Did you follow the woman? Mr White asked again. Calmer now.

Yes.

What did you do with her?

Raped her.
Johnny put his hand in the rim of his jean pocket and took it out again. You know what I did.

The wire of the night tensed, wound itself tight for a second. The city
strained. Then it relaxed again. It seemed to speed up, and then slow again. It hummed, and then fell silent.

You raped her? Now Mr White
seemed incredulous, as if he had forgotten the backstreet, as if it was some nightmare in miniature that had blurred and drifted away in the time since its inception.

That’s what I said.
Johnny sighed almost imperceptibly.

What?
said Mr White, and he had forgotten, forcibly forgotten all but a shadow of before. He grimaced. You’re joking?

I don’t joke.

Why would you do such a thing?

You knew what I was when you met me.
I told you who I am. What I do. He whistled through his teeth. The thin shrill of a tea kettle.

It’s a fine thing ain’t it,
he said, his hands resting lightly on his hips. When a murderer can be good and a rapist never so. There ain’t no such thing as a good rapist. Good murderers are easy to find. If you rape, you done sentenced your own doom. Not so for murder. Any kind of murder can be excused if the character wills it. It’s twisted. Sabotaging a life is deemed so much worse than its utter removal. There is no recovery for the dead.

Did you murder her?
said Mr White, lightly, as if him and his words were at a great distance to each other.

Johnny grinned and said nothing.

This is you then, is it? Mr White finally looked up and met Johnny’s eyes.

Any
thing can be imitated, murmured Johnny.

Mr White asked him what he meant by that but Johnny merely shook his head and turned away, finally freeing Mr White from the awfulness of that prolonged gaze. But he saw his eyes before he turned around and though they were dark and steeled, in the pits of them he saw the flickers of dancing stars
, dancing in an ocean of unfathomable sadness.

HOTEL

Mr White lay in the bed of the hotel. In an adjacent room he heard the drone of a TV, and in the other he heard the restless movements of Red as he slept or tried to sleep or did whatever it was he did. Overshadowing both these sounds was Mr White’s own breathing, and the thump of his heart.

Mr White had been staring at the wall for an hour. Occasionally blinking. He was not thinking, not really. Nothing that could be called truly human sentience. Twice he tried to make himself cry but nothing came. So he kept staring.

Eventually his eyes fell closed and he slept, as silent and still as the dead.

They spent four more days in District Twelve, Red fucking every girl he could in masterpieces of perversion, Johnny distant and infrequently seen, only staying with them for brief periods before he vanished again. One girl in particular Red had taken great pleasure in talking about, describing her to Mr White as being absolutely filthy, I say the dirtier the better but I mean, fuck, the room stank like shit after if you get me?

I get you,
Mr White had replied.

Smells like love, Red had laughed.
I was almost sick.

Mr White
grimaced. Did you have fun?

Oh man
.

Mr Whit
e didn’t say it but he had watched them at the time, his eyes glued to the readymade peephole or gloryhole between the rooms, between every room. He had seen the acts, the filth and the sickness. He was disgusted and entranced. He stayed until the end, holding his nose with one hand and masturbating with the other, and then removing his hand from his nose and falling apart inside himself with the stench of sin. He felt like he was in the room, part of Red, feeling what Red felt, and fetishes that had never held cards with him transfigured themselves into intoxicating delights, things appalling and shameful and invigorating in equal measure. Glorious in their foulness. Mr White writhed in twisted abasement, slave to a world rich in fecundity. He poured his soul out through the hole and drank in Red’s soul back through it. He tried not to be sick, and in this he was moderately successful.

On the
afternoon of the third day Johnny had returned to them, had knocked on Mr White’s door and brushed past him when it opened. He looked about the room with disinterest and sat on the bed. He took a ready-rolled cigarette from the bedside table and took his lighter and the cigarette flared up in his mouth. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes obscured by the low brim of his black outlaw hat.

Hi,
said Red, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Hi.
He didn’t look up.

You’re back then.

I’m back.

What have you been u
p to? Or don’t we wanna know?

Johnny was taking long drags on the cigarette and finished it quickly, without answering. He crumbled the butt in his hands and dropped it into the unused ashtray on the table. Around
the room were discarded butts and ash where Red had paced and dropped his smokes. There were small burns on the carpet but they may have been symptoms of history.

Johnny took off his hat and ran his fingers through his
black hair. Red self-consciously moved his hands about his, playing with the ends. Johnny was wearing a beaten up leather jacket that they had not seen on him before and he reached inside to pull out a shiny silver tin. Such polish and gleam seemed unnatural, an anachronism to his person, some trinket that he held as though a connection into the modern world.

He open
ed the tin soundlessly and though they could not see inside he took a thick black cigar and lit it and stuck it between his teeth as he replaced the tin. He breathed in and out and grinned. It’s good.

Is
it.

It’s been a while.
Johnny looked up at them, finally. So. Yesterday. Have you ever heard of the V.S.S?

Mr White shook his head.

I have, said Red, pouring himself a drink from the dark rum and fizzy pop that lay in unlabelled plastic bottles beside him. It’s the Voluntary Snuff Society. It’s here, in Twelve. God knows how they get away with it, this place’s biggest illegal is against harm, any kinda harm, no matter how much the consent.

Thin
gs thrive in adversity, smiled Johnny.

Yeah. So, you go to the V.S.S.
Red shook his head in distaste. Charmin.

What’s it like?

Johnny looked over at Mr White, grinning at his interest. Horror, he said. It is horror. Foul transmutation of humanity. It’s in an underground warehouse. There’s dozens of them, they used to shift it about to not be caught. Now they pay the police and the District government off. Hell, some are members. I can always tell a lawman from looking them in the eye. They were there. Standing around, waiting their turn. In the centre are the drains, and most of it goes down the drains but not all. Not all. The ground is stained dark red all over. Patches on the walls. Some on the ceiling.

Johnny took another drag on his cigar.
I look in their eyes and they don’t look back. There’s something dead there. Some carcass of soul. I look at them and all I see are carrion. They’re masturbating, the semen falling out pathetically and running thick and slow on the ground. Mixing with the blood like dessert. It’s yellow and white and congeals between stones and dries. No man or woman there got it right inside their body.

So y
ou were there looking at semen, said Red.

Johnny ignored him.
The idea of the V.S.S. is one of self-preservation. Of the final say of the ego. Males and females sacrifice themselves to be remembered in film. They believe there is nothing else that can capture their life, their existence. Most of them got nobody else to remember them. They do not want to die unsung. To die a nobody is to have never been alive. Some might be well known, they might be high-profile. It don’t matter to them. It ain’t enough. There must be a final record. The world must be ended on screen.

They
stand in the centre, among the drains. Men and women and girls and boys. Young and old. Some are coerced into being there, and though that is against the principles of the society it is often overlooked. There is a market at stake, and sometimes fresh meat is not always willing. Others watch them. There are the performers – they call them actors and actresses. And there are the watchers. The performers always seem more alive than the others. They are often smiling, full of vitality in their final minutes. Dressed up and made up, looking their best. How else to go out? The smiles do not last. Rarely do they last.

It is hard. There is no torture,
not as such, but sometimes the deaths are slow. They are filmed of course. There are cameras to capture them on all angles. They bleed differently. Some bleed like pigs. Only a few bleed like you would expect of a human.

Red was shaking his head to himself, and almost continuously drinking.
He seemed about to say something but didn’t.

Mr White was listening in rapt attention.

Johnny took his hat off and placed it beside him on the bed. He lay back, putting his boots on the bed, and blew his smoke towards the ceiling. I waited until the end, he murmured. I did not get pleasure. I did not try and get pleasure. The place is . . . hollow. It is pitiful. You may think me evil in my actions, but this is something else. Not evil. I do not know what. Not evil.

I stayed till the end.
There were one-on-ones. These are always at the end of the night. Clients pay good money to see the deaths in private, to enact them, just them and the performer. And, of course, the cameras. I was there too, invisible in the shadows. The private rooms of the warehouse were locked behind each client and opened again after a knock. I was already in one. I saw the man come in. He was old and fat, with thick glasses that enlarged his eyes like some alien. Some insect. He panted as he walked in. He was suited but quickly discarded it to a vest, and naked below. She was beautiful and delicate of a like rarely seen in the V.S.S and he masturbated looking at her. She was dancing, in a green dress that glittered in the lights, and he paced around her as though she was sexual furniture. There was only one camera in the private rooms. Just one, pointing directly at each performer, each willing victim. I watched as he picked up a carving knife from a tray of implements. There were plenty worse to pick. He moved towards her and she smiled, her teeth shining white and her lipstick red and her hair fake in a blonde wig.

He stabbed her in the neck with the point of the knife. I watched as her smile
fell off her. But I was watching the man. I knew this man. I knew of him. Don’t ask me who or how, I won’t tell you. I watched as he withdrew from her, leaving the knife stuck in, her choking on her own blood, and he moved back and behind the camera and he pressed a button on it and the light winked out.