ROUTINE SIX: SPIRIT DOCTORS SKILLED THE MONOLITHS RAW – AND
REAL EXQUISITE DREAMS
The Market
is thriving, always, at all hours, because all hours are the same here. Row upon row of marquees jostle for space in
the grey dust – air vibrating with sales and spruiks and slogans and promises
and never-to-be-beatens and for-the-next-customer-onlys. Some of these stores been here since the dawn
of time, others I’ve never seen before.
Whole City is arranged around this central space, all roads lead to The
Market. Air reeks of ancient perfumes
and modern diseases – of spices and stone and copper coins and open meat – of
plastic wrap and incense and the juice of fruits.
Layout
changes all the time but only when you’re not watching – something quantum in
the air here – which of course begs the question, seeing as there’s always
someone here, there’s always someone watching, so when the fuck does it get a
chance to change? Many questions I gave
up hope of ever answering years ago – not my business, in the end. And what would an answer mean to me
anyway? “Oh,” I’d say, “Okay then.” And then what?
Point being,
gotta walk through aisles and aisles of random before I can find what I’m
looking for. Trolleys and tables and
trestles set up, piled with goods. Someone’s
selling half-price Melange. Another
guy’s flogging Arcturan Mega-gin and Santraginean seawater. Hollowed out old
lady stares at me as I walk past her table full of carefully arranged vials of
ectoplasm, like I’m some kinda plasm junkie.
Never blinks once.
Illegal
antiques smuggled through timeholes. The
Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the pornographic Dead Sea Scrolls. The Crown of Thorns, half price. Not bad –
if you’re into that kinda thing.
A table
loaded with mind-controlling funguses, hard and thorny, their twitching human hosts
still attached – some of them quietly begging for mercy, unseeing eyes all
thick with squirming fungus. Most
repulsive thing you ever did see. Poachers
from other stars with their wares: Venusian ivory, holographic skins – eggs and
pelts, teeth and testes of endangered beasts from a thousand worlds. Fucking poachers make my skin crawl – but
what are you gunna do?
There’s Mmaagha
Kamalu, a sword that once belonged to the Igbo god of war – sword glows red
when people with evil intentions are close by, so of course it’s a burning
crimson here, in this place of dubious commerce, might as well turn the sucker
off and save the batteries. Same trader
is trying to move Excalibur and Tyrfing
too, so clearly got some sort of racket in the sword-department. Prices are exorbitant but you pay what you
pay for mythical weaponry – not like there’s much competition in that
particular trade.
One marquee
filled with representatives of the Deep State, selling secrets and
indoctrination packs – across the aisle, crisis actors handing out their sizzle
reels, hoping to make it in the next big disaster.
A rickety
wooden table with a handful of transparent glass shakers brimming with salt –
sign says it’s authentic Sodomic salt hand-gathered from the pillar that was
previously Lot’s wife. Another handful
of glass shakers claim to be pepper made from some poor sucker who turned back
at Gomorrah. Not sure who the Chinese
Five Spice is meant to be – I don’t read Chinese. Personally, I call bullshit. But what do I know?
Another
tent, another trolley – crates of yowling Mogwai, drastically malnourished in
this place with no midnight. Personality
traders, selling new identities – buy two get an extra one free. S and M leather gear made from the pelt of
the Marquis De Sade. A white sequinned
glove made from the pelt of Michael Jackson.
One of the Monoliths
– just walking past it gives me intense full sensory hallucinations and I
nearly stain my drygoods.
Another
marquee, another table – bootlegged Jekyl juice – Gorgon heads, both
synthesised and real – a fully-functional Lazy Gun – a mostly-empty case of Illudium
Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators. Didn’t
know they were still around, to be honest.
But everything’s for sale in Interzone.
Szechuan
dipping sauce, vats of the stuff. Bottles
of tears, hair, and teeth. A deck of
cards that’s literally all aces. Pies
filled with spaghetti Bolognese. Pallets
of xenomorph eggs, shrink-wrapped and stickered. Genuine Da Vinci ornithopter – such a shit
vehicle, can’t believe anyone would even try to offload one of those in the
current Interzone economy.
Black-market
scientologist peddling half-price audits.
Hacked E-meters delivering clearance or your money back. Engrams-B-Gone, spray twice daily - “Exteriorise
Your Thetans The Easy Way!” the sign says in hand-painted circus writing.
Buckets full
of Morgellons, buy ‘em by the scoopful. Sonic
screwdrivers. Universal remote
controls. Syringes full of Soma. Vials of Coronavirus. Bottles of Moloko Plus. Beat up old Antikythera mechanisms. Shiny
new Alethiometers. Six-packs of Dilithium
Crystals. Second-hand RHIC EDOM tech,
carefully repackaged into its original boxes.
Sexbots
gyrating in their plastic-panelled packaging – collector’s copy of The Beatles
white album played by actual beetles – a red button that says “do not push” –
stacks and stacks of toilet paper and hand sanitiser.
Underground
doctors curing imaginary diseases with tools of unspeakable cruelty - memories
peddling – half-price your money shit vehicle – buy two – Pallets of controls.
Stacks of
states – investigators of Personality traders – stacks and glass – tested on
Thetans – The sauce, vats vibrating – a handful – Chinese Five Underground
doctors feeling slowly soundless hum – Larval entities’ wife. Bootlegged Jekyl Sodomic salt – E-meters
delivering EDOM Bang-utot – relaxing machines – leather gear table and bartered
Modulators.
Original
boxes – Bottle mutilations – infractions denounced – unconstituted police – full
sensory salt – cities, gathering – telepathic sensitivity – ocean floor toilet
paper.
Syringes
laboratory and the pelt treatment – filled with some poor – the white Szechuan
dipping excisors – Explosive Space – transparent at Gomorrah.
A spray
twice Gorgon heads – the sign – Six-packs of Universal remote in this
ornithopter – table – tent – Hacked – stickered. Be pepper played by selling new curing
imaginary – a Live to offload – me – intense players – servers place of orgone –
A stratosphere, maladies – pelt of diseases – with Morgellons, buy and the
Bottles – fragmentary call bullshit.
And real exquisite
dreams – Lesbian dwarf juice – atomic war – A place stain – officials of actual
beetles – hallucinations and hebephrenic shorthand – red button black dust – virulence
in writing. Buckets – fully-functional
spirit, no midnight – Tanks and mechanisms – Shiny unknown past – Carefully
repackaged teeth.
A glove made
Sonic – White sequinned scoopful – tools of identities – hand-painted circus – the
pillar host – maladies hair – the Beat up daily – unspeakable cruelty charging
unspeakable case of cells – Another be honest.
Lung
erection – spirit doctors skilled the Monoliths raw – rickety wooden
hand-gathered from turned back full of xenomorph eggs, bureaucrats – Sexbots
gyrating meet in spectral departments – enemy, sellers, diseases, dormant – glass
shakers – deck of the current – the will – The Beatles by bland – perfected
operation in the emergent future free.
Paranoid
chess – Lot’s sucker – eyeless worms down in Da Vinci marquee – blood of
osteopaths – white album trolley – crates of tears, drygoods.
Another –
collector’s drastically malnourished were still shrink-wrapped and those in
Soma.
Sign says
plastic-panelled packaging – synthesised Interzone economy.
Warrants
taken.
And finally
– I see what I came for.
The Black
Meat is sold here.
***
They say
once an addict, always an addict. Don’t
believe that at all. Don’t need
Black Meat – choosing Black Meat, making conscious choice, choosing that
vile beautiful substance over painful heart. Conscious decision, you see? Anyone would make that same choice.
Had a
problem with it once maybe – but now, I’m in control. I’m deciding – shaking hands, sweating neck –
to walk past the trolleys and trestles, crow flies bee line direct to the Black
Meat den. Casual stroll – never look too
desperate – but trained insect eye knows that walk, the approach of a
guaranteed Customer. I’m deciding. For one could say medical reasons. Self-medicating to ease memory pain. Nothing wrong with that, is there.
Can’t
function if spirit is held down under the pressure of memories. Can’t function under those conditions, no,
have to shall we say alleviate that particular ailment. Black Meat takes it all away, I know it does. All gone under the Black Meat spell, magical
filthy nightmare, buried and gone. Float
on black wings, soar in the darkness, supersonic journey inside and out –
everything goes away. No more pain. No more Her.
Walk direct,
casual. Slow like iceberg. But they sense, of course they do, know a
Customer when they see one.
Mugwump –
hypercolour t-shirt stained with korma and semen and ash, arseless chaps shine
and creak, chain around neck dangles gold dollar sign encrusted with fake
diamonds – drags slow on Camberwell Carrot, makes eye contact. Already knows. Slight nod of head, soot-black beak clicks in
anticipation. Behind Mugwump slouch
three or four Mugwump-addicts – we call them “Reptiles” but they’re not really
reptiles of course, just plain ordinary human at the core, their appearance is perfectly
natural biological result of too much time spent absorbing Mugwump secretions
and not enough time doing literally any other thing – skin loose and bones
soft, bristles wave like cuttlefish rim, eyes empty – just existing – all wear
rusting metal collars but naked otherwise – addicted to the secretions that
ooze from their Mugwump masters. When
Mugwump clicks, Reptiles twitch but continue vacant slouch.
“Blackwell.” Mugwump’s voice is creaky, thin, like a
slowed-down parrot – sounds like comes from another place than the throat –
ventriloquist puppet voice almost makes you sick to hear it. Nods again, eyes taking in my vibrations
rather than my shape. “Been so long.
Thought you’d forgotten your old friend.”
Heavy old
right, crash the still hulk of church confessional, 17th heart.
“How could I
ever forget you? Still trying to wash
the smell off from last time.”
Mugwump
clicks beak, laughter, professional.
Reaches bony arm towards me, huge smouldering Carrot in skeletal
fingers. Offers.
I take the
giant joint and take a drag – only polite – and taste the Blackness on tongue
lips teeth – empty memories flood my system as the smoke curls inside my
clotted lung – and pass Carrot back. One
toke is enough with Mugwump weed, learned that long time ago. Mugwump takes Carrot back, move slow, always
slow, different time frame to humans.
“ “Black”
like circumcised Fiction,” Mugwump drawls, “ “well” like On Friday.” Private joke, I guess. Who the hell knows when it comes to
Mugwumps? “To what do we owe the
pleasure?”
Knows. Already.
Of course. Drag it out of me.
“Just a
taste,” I say, quiet, “Thought I could do with a little self-care.”
Beak doesn’t
smile – wrong materials for that particular human expression – Mugwump smiles
in the eye.
“I’m afraid
I’m all out,” Mugwump says, wave one thin hand over empty trestle – indicating
emptiness, nothing but rotting wood of table and tiny glowing grey mushrooms
sprout from corners – market full of sounds but all my ears hear is Mugwump
words – full of sights but all eyes see is empty trestle and slow motion pass
of Mugwump claw.
Part of the
game of course. I keep playing.
“Enough
bumpin’ gums,” I say, “we both know you got access to fresh supplies.”
“Freshest in
all Interzone,” Mugwump says (Mugwumps don’t name themselves the way we do –
think our need to all have different names is a form of mental illness – and
maybe it is). “But what’s it worth for me to lose a good butler to go
fishing?” At the word “fishing” all
three or four of the metal-collared absent-eyed Mugwump-secretion-softened
human bags of flesh behind Mugwump shiver uncontrollably, like the word was
filled with electricity, a taser carried in sound waves – one quick shiver then
back to slumped sightless existence.
“Butlers. That’s what you’re calling them nowadays.”
“As good a
word as any other.” Mugwump takes another deep drag on Carrot, smoke tinged
with purple, maybe some ultraviolet too.
“What’ll it be, Blackwell?”
I pull small
paper sack from trenchcoat pocket. Rest
it in one palm, unwrap slowly (but of course Mugwump already sniffed what’s
inside – excellent sense of smell, your average Mugwump).
“Lemon
sherbert,” I say, roll them around in my palm, paper bag crinkling, hard sound
when sherberts clunk together.
“I see,”
Mugwump says, but poker face is ruined by thin strand of drool that descends
from obsidian beak, elongates until snap and pop – just another stain on pink
purple hypercolour tee shirt. “All you got?”
“If you
don’t want them,” I say, pantomiming to put one in my own mouth, “I’m happy to
eat them myself.” Hand moves closer to mouth, smell the sweetness, shiny yellow
bauble shape of tiny lemon.
“Deal,”
Mugwump says, reaches out spidery thin hand, fingers clutch in
anticipation. I hand over paper bag, and
Mugwump picks sherbert out, cracks it in indigo black beak – crunch makes
soft-boned Reptiles shiver once then back to potato state.
“Enjoy,” I
say, ignoring my own sweat, “Picked them up in the 1980s, Earth beta.”
Mugwump
blinks slowly, savouring, crunches sherbert up entirely before swallows. Eyes close a moment in sugary bliss.
“Electronic
nova word concerns,” Mugwump says, almost to self. After dark hole – wrinkle-free and faith in
pattern hurt – stopping that So obsidian No more – but here, sellers control
was well into cusp. “Tasty sherbert.” Then
without even turning around, Mugwump snaps beak hard, and all three or four of
the Reptiles jerk to attention like pulled up by invisible strings. “Need you to go fishing, please.” Politeness
feels cruel from the beak of a Mugwump.
The Reptiles
shuffle uncomfortable, heavy collars sunken into soft collarbones, sores fester
around necks and shoulders, twitches of limb and frill – some kind of unseen
wrestling going on, some kind of unspoken Reptile contest happening outside the
range of human vision – until one of the sorry sacks of shit is sort of pushed
forward somehow, and, knowing it is chosen, shuffles its naked shapeless form
forward a step – and the others sink back into their secretion-fucked torpor.
“Go catch me
a whopper,” the slow parrot voice of the Mugwump croons, finally turning to its
secretion-ruined associate and running a skeletal hand over its saggy translucent
cheek almost tenderly, “for our special friend here.” Sherbert breath and clack of beak.
The Reptile
fans its ear-hairs and solidifies a little, like jelly setting – mouth a resigned
little round disk of brown gristle. It
attaches its metal collar to long thin chain – other end attached to stone wall
to the side of Mugwump’s trestle table – and shuffles slow away from
Market. Mugwump affects disinterest
(pokes spindle fingers into paper sack and stirs lemon sherberts) but I always
watch.
Reptile
limps away from bustle of Market, toward open sewers of Interzone. Black brown water sloshes down, a thousand
outpouring of a thousand unhygienic waterways – a river of grey scum and brown
froth – turbulent with flow – still The whole bad egg course – open aqueduct of
putrefaction and effluent – dead organs bob downstream like blind fish – piss
and shit and blood and worse – nightmare river of uncertain depth and complex
constitution, flowing less out of a desire to get to the sea but out of sheer liquid
desperation to get away from the foulness of its collective source.
Reptile
shuffles closer and closer to foul river, and now its neck collar getting
tense, limit of movement predestined by thin metal chain of considerable
tensile strength. Reptile just walks
right up to edge, teeters for long moment, then steps off stone edge – sinks
deep into rushing khaki waters, up to neck.
Mugwump
crunches another sherbert in black beak – thin purple-blue lips retracted show
maximum enjoyment – air still and clear as glycerine.
Sudden
thrashing and splashing – the neck chain makes a bass note as it’s pulled tight
from stone wall to river – blood erupts from surface of open sewer – limbs
thrash – Reptile screams.
“Got a
bite,” Mugwump says coolly.
Flipping out
of filthy river is giant centipede, gargantuan, pincers attached deeply to
thrashing Reptile, hundred sharp legs already digging in deep to flesh already
soften by Mugwump secretions. Nauseating
to see. Sharp centipede legs slice
abdomen, Reptile’s guts slop out into foul river, blue purple intestine join
the brothy flow – but Reptile keeps screaming – animal terror and pain – until
centipede pincers slice through throat and disengage the organs of speech – now
a wheezing gurgle.
With slow
disinterest, Mugwump takes the slender chain and begins winding it around
skinny wrist, reeling in Reptile – with giant centipede attached – reeling it
in, slowly, steady, with surprising strength from such skeletal limbs – Mugwump
surprising in many ways, even for old hack like myself.
A wide trail
of blood and filth follows as silently-screaming Reptile is dragged closer and
closer across stone ground, with ravenous centipede busy devouring flesh and
tearing apart muscle and skin – painting grey ground all colours of scarlet and
brown – black centipede oblivious to Mugwump’s intentions. Other folk at other stalls pause their
shopping to look, crane necks to see – then business as usual. Snapping sound and eyeball flies from
Reptile’s socket, flung by voracious pincers – lands with hackey-sack sound on
Mugwump’s empty table. Mugwump reaches
out lazy hand and flicks it off – eyeball rolls on the ground gathering dust
and hair. Slowly slowly, Mugwump drags
body closer, reeling in, reeling in.
Reptile’s other eye stares at Mugwump half-pleadingly, half-proudly –
“did I do good, master?” – weaker and weaker – centipede feasting roughly, violently
– fountaining blood – gurgle from ravaged throat sicken you to hear it –
snapping sounds of centipede hunger – oblivious.
“Big one,”
says Mugwump, and pulls metal hook like crowbar from under trestle, walks three
slow steps to where centipede slithers inside Reptile’s open abdomen, rooting
around for organs, and smashes hook deep into centipede’s spinal column. Vile clicking sound, silent arthropod shriek
– desperate thrashing, then dead.
Mugwump lifts hook, and up comes ex-centipede, up and out of
bloodspattered mess that was once Mugwump’s “butler”. Beak clicks appreciatively. “Big one,” Mugwump repeats.
Hangs dead
centipede on steel hook mounted on stone wall – takes obsidian dagger from
utility belt on arseless chaps – crouches by what’s left of still-alive
Reptile. “Thank you,” says Mugwump,
“your sacrifice is appreciated.” Takes Reptile’s bloody head, turns it over –
takes dagger and smashes it through back of skull where head meets neck –
Reptile blinks out like light. Mugwump
rises, puffs on joint – passes bloody joint to me – takes dagger and begins
levering off carapace – slices off hunk of Black Meat and wraps it in paper –
slaps it onto wormwood trestle.
“Thank you
for your custom,” parrot ventriloquist voice chirrups as I pass what remains of
the Camberwell Carrot back to spindly Mugwump digits and pick up paper-wrapped
Meat, “please, come again.”
***
