No Dogs in Philly (14)

A Cyberpunk Horror Noir | Chapter 14: Limbo

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The sun was hot, a wonderful, luxurious hot on her naked skin. She wriggled and dug herself deeper into the sand, massaging herself against its cool, abrading yield. Oh yes, that was it. The water was warm, coming in gentle waves to tickle her feet. And it was quiet, so quiet, quieter than she had known was possible. Not a sound except for the gentle lapping of the waves and the crush of sand on her back. She dozed and woke and repeated. How long had she been there? Forever of course. There was nowhere else to be. No distracting hunger, no worry, no need to piss—was she even breathing? Yes, her lungs moved in and out in a long, slow, relaxing rhythm, but she sensed this was merely a feature for her comfort, that the action served no purpose other than its absence would be frightening.

It was annoying when she realized this would have to end, that this wasn’t life, and it wasn’t death. There were memories, distant, from ages ago, but they were there, nagging, poking her, prowling the edge of her calm. They were becoming aggressive. She’d have to do something about it. She sat up and opened her eyes. Her other senses had been right; she was on an island. It was tiny, a hump of sand with a single palm tree amidst an infinite blue ocean beneath an infinite blue sky. She marveled at the blue, how it blended flawlessly from shade to shade, light where it touched the ocean and steadily darkening until directly overhead it was almost black. She could see stars amidst the darker blue, scattered silver freckles in the sky.

There was something here with her. Force. Presence. Menace. She blinked and it took shape.

A dog.

It was as big as a motorcycle, bigger, no smaller now; its size wavered, rippling like the ripples of the waves in the ocean. Its eyes were blue and then gold and then black and then white; its fur, a scraggly staticky black, then blue and gold, color that was not color, shape that could barely be called shape, every part of it absurd and kinetic, yet stock-still and solid.

It hurt to look at—she could feel the reflection of it, the light radiating out of it like a force in the reflective cones and rods and cellular gel of her eyes. Blue light, oozing, seeping from her irises, they were bluer now, stained and marked, she knew. The blueness was inside her.

Then, a blink, and she was the dog, seeing her. A frail, scant, sallow monkey-thing. Its organs weak and febrile, polluted with plastic garbage and mechanical kludges. Shivering and pathetic. Isolated and distracted. She licked drool from snarling lips. A howl rumbled in her throat, and she let it loose, a cry of annihilation, shaking the ersatz heavens. Her lips curled to flaunt their contempt, fangs aching for blood. Yes, blood! She howled and the sound was fire. Her heart beat with the pulse of stars. Oh how good it would feel to slick her fangs with the blood of a worthy prey. Twitching, warm, pulsing death in her mouth. Hunt! She must hunt.

And then she was herself again, and the dog was gone. The echo of the power, the rage, the predatory instinct rattling hollow in the tender husk of her human form. She shook like she’d just vomited out her soul, wrung and drained—oh, how already she missed that power.

A warmth tickled the palm of her hand. She looked down and saw a faint glowing orb the size of a pea hovering just above her skin. Without quite knowing why, she breathed on it, pouring her will into the orb. It grew from the size of a pea to a marble. With another breath it grew again—now it was as large as a golf ball, bright, and white, radiant, setting all the hairs of her skin upright. It smelled of ozone—what did it do? Anything, anything at all, came the answer, a whisper in her subconscious. Anything that one could achieve with violence. It was hers if she wanted, the power to destroy.

“Hello, Saru.”

The voice was startling, but she didn’t startle. No, somehow she had been expecting it. Those nagging memories of another world were skittering into her vision now, obnoxious, black, wriggling insects. Jolts of strange pain and an ecstasy that felt like a violation. She clenched her fist, extinguishing the orb, and looked up.

Friar. He stood where the dog had sat, wearing his professor getup. Just like Jojran, he was nightmarishly perfect. His paunch sat better on his frame, he stood straighter, his fingernails were manicured, hands tan, not pale and soft from healing endless wounds. His brown eyes twinkled, kind and bright, wrinkles and liver spots almost artistically dappled across his face.

Saru snorted. “Why do you get clothes?” She waved a hand over her nakedness. “Can’t you make me a towel or something?”

“I’m not in control here,” Friar replied. “You are. This is your margin—or, rather, a psychosomatic representation thereof. The margin you share with SaialqlaiaS, the Blue God.”

Something in the back of Saru’s memory niggled to the forefront. The hump of the island. The lonely palm tree. The white sand and blue, blue sea. She’d seen it all before. It was an ad for Purifil sublimated water. All that was missing was the bottle and the narrator cooing, Escape to fresh. Wow. Her subconscious looks for an escape and finds an advertisement. Even her wildest imagination was just marketing.

“Come with me, Saru.” Friar held out a hand. “It’s not safe for you here.”

Saru regarded the outstretched hand like it held a dead rat. She took a step back.

“Cut the crap. I know what you are.”

“I’m your friend, your colleague. Your ally.”

“No, that person is dead. You’re just a bad copy.”

Friar shook his head. “I am me. I am my body. I am my genes. My memory. My mind. All that and more.”

“More bullshit. You’re part of it. The Hungry God.”

“Yes. I am a part of the UausuaU. Though really, there are no parts. Only the whole. That which is. And everything outside the UausuaU is not. My only regret is that I did not join sooner.”

Saru took another step back.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to ask you a question. When did you know I was a target? Was it before or after I killed you?”

“No, you did not kill me,” Friar said earnestly, pleadingly. “I did not die. I was born. These human bodies are not life. They are not even the shells of eggs or the membranes of embryos. They are entropy, randomness, as inorganic as rocks and stars. There is no life outside the UausuaU. Only death.”

“Tell that to the elzi.” Her heels splashed into the water and the wet sand sucked at her toes.

“The elzi live as I do within the UausuaU. We live as you cannot even imagine. Immortal. Omnipotent. Each in a paradise of our own making.”

“You’re dodging my question.” The water kissed her navel, the wavelets jumping up to tickle all her crisscrossing scars. “The real Friar wouldn’t jerk me around like this. Is it because you don’t know the answer? Or you haven’t figured out the best lie to convince me yet?”

“I am real, Saru.” Friar smiled kindly, so warm and genuine it sent a tremor of disgust down her spine. “And the UausuaU does not lie. You were never a ‘target.’ The Gaespora have been experimenting on humans for centuries. Their modus operandi is to recruit whatever proxies they can, to cultivate margins that will bring gods into conflict so they can exploit the chaos. That you have a foothold with one god or another doesn’t make you special or unique. You are no more a ‘target’ than anyone else.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m here to help you. When I joined the UausuaU, I saw the danger you faced. I saw the Gaespora were manipulating you to act in ways that would draw the Blue God closer. SaialqlaiaS is a beast of mindless violence. It wreaks destruction wherever it ranges unchecked. I can spare you that suffering. I can give you life. All you have to do is take my hand.”

“Mmmm…pass.”

She took another step back and slipped as the sandy bottom fell away. She paddled backwards awkwardly, keeping her eyes on Friar.

“That’s not the way out,” Friar said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve never swum in the ocean.”

The water splashed around her neck, into her ears, and over her head. She didn’t really know how to swim, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t really water. When she bobbed back to the surface, Friar was gone. She treaded water clumsily a few moments to see if any other guests appeared—her mom, an ex, maybe McJesus or Santa Claus—and then, assured of her aloneness, she struck out for the empty horizon.

 She paddled until the island disappeared. Realizing this was accomplishing nothing and she wasn’t getting tired, she let herself sink, let the water fill her lungs. At last, she felt a pain, a pressure, a panic as the blue sky disappeared under the darkness of the water, sinking, sinking, sinking, and the pain growing and morphing into a body pain, and then a face staring at her, some broken mask of a face, Jojran, cackling at her, and she saw that they were holding hands, standing in his kitchen.

His veins had crawled out of his wrists like worms and were slithering into her skin.

She whipped the prod from its holster and slammed it like a club into his temple. The soft bone crumpled and the prod sank half an inch into his skull, crackling at full power. He closed his eyes and opened them slowly, sighing as if impatient.

“How disappointing,” he said. His right hand blurred forward, too fast for her response implants to follow, and formed a vice around her neck. In a casual, whoopsie-daisy motion, he lifted her up and dragged her across the counter; the tiles cracked as he slammed her into the floor. Stars floated across her vision—why was she staring at the ceiling? It was hard to breathe, like one of her ribs had gotten lost and wandered into a lung. Ow. The prod wriggled in her noodle grip, still sending out sparks and arcs of electricity. Jojran, broken-mask, crumpled-skull Jojran stood over her, massaging one hand in the other. He laughed and threw up his hands.

“Why is it so hard with you, Saru? Why can’t you just be happy?”

She tried to spit and blood dribbled out the side of her mouth—had she bitten her tongue? There was something to say to that, something witty and defiant, but it wouldn’t come. She seemed to be having trouble keeping a single thought in focus, it kept getting pushed out by the pain in the back of her head. Sitting up was impossible, but an arm managed to flop up and poke at the wet sensation in the back of her head. Her nails came back painted red. How pretty. She should paint her nails more, treat herself more. It was okay to spoil yourself every once in a while, maybe she’d even enjoy it.

But first she needed to live.

She tried a leg sweep, a half-assed affair that didn’t budge his foot, didn’t even make him look down. Then she tried to kick him in the testicles, but he swatted her boot away like it was a humping terrier. He reached out a hand, presumably to help her up, and she tried to stab it with her boot knife. He evaded easily, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to her feet, where she swayed, tottered, and then slammed the flip dagger in her heel into his foot. Of course he didn’t react. She was beginning to realize that pain was not a useful negotiating tool in this scenario. Jojran didn’t seem to care—didn’t seem to feel it.

“Is there nothing you want?” he asked, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Do you really want to be like this? Angry, sad, afraid, fighting without knowing why? You could be so much more.”

“I…want…” she had the hiccups for some reason, perhaps a result of the meandering rib bone. “I want to kick your ass.”

“Yes…” he said. “You do…you really do.” He let her go and spread his arms wide, vulnerable. “Do what you must, Saru. It doesn’t make any difference, really. Today, tomorrow. Seven years or—”

She shot him, a real bullet this time, right in the chest from a foot away.

“…you will be happy…”

Again.

“…you will know peace…”

Again.

“…and joy…”

And again and again, she emptied the whole automatic clip, closing her eyes and screaming. When she opened them it was quiet. Jojran, his body, the alien impostor, or whatever it had been, was lying on the ground in front of her in a puddle of blood, riddled with holes. He looked peaceful, happy even, somehow, and that annoyed her. The blood was pooling around her boots, soaking into Jojran’s white fuzzy carpet, splattered on his nice white couches. Her head was killing her, she couldn’t focus, her feeds and her implants were scrambled from the touch or the trip to the island, or the blow to the back of her head. Her hair was wet and she could feel the wet trickling down the back of her neck, sliding down the channel of her spine.

She swayed to her knees and then she limped her way to the elevator.

The music in the elevator was a tropical melody, blue skies and white sands. It was the same ad, Escape to fresh! The doors slid open at the lobby and she sucked in a breath and tried to look normal as she walked to the exit, ignoring the security guards. She’d washed as much of the blood off as she could but there were still splatters on her coat and jeans, and she couldn’t really walk out naked. She pushed hard against the doors, leaning in to support her body weight. They wouldn’t open.

“It’s only a matter of time,” the security guard called. There was a click and the doors swung open. She stumbled into the night.