Sex and Murder Magazine

By Douglas Allen Rhodes

I’m three drinks into a two day bender when I feel reality begin to remake itself again. All around me I can sense it, the all-too-familiar, little flickers and waves, as whatever the world was before this becomes what it will be now. I do my best to ignore it and order another Jack on the rocks to chase away the gut sickness that always follows these “shifts.”

My drink comes and I swig down half of it before paying the new bartender. He sneers at me with all the uninterested derision of man who dispenses poison for a living, takes my two-fifty with a huff, and stalks away. A cloud of smoke assails my nostrils as some mook to my left lights up a cigar that would have been better left in Mexico. To my right, there’s a guy piping off about some kid who blew his face off over a broad. I turn back to my drink and try to drown them both.

My hand strays to the grip of my gun and I run my finger gently over its polished steel stock. It shouldn’t be too long now until she shows, it’s already well past midnight, and we agreed to meet here at eleven. I check the clock to make sure the time’s still the same then I knock back the rest of the whiskey. I’m just raising the glass to get another when a woman’s voice from behind me kills my plans.

“You ready Bannion?” she demands, her voice equal parts gravel and lace.

I turn to face her, “Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

Before I’m even off the barstool she’s halfway out the door, like she could care less if I’m coming or not. Half the heads in the joint watch her leave, their faces taut with something worse than desire, something far more realistic and true. The lady’s not more that five-four, and dressed like a high-dollar hooker. She likes the way that puts her in charge, she always has.

Outside the bar she’s got her Escalade, its too-large body stained lipstick red. Even though I know it’s not healthy, I steal a quick look at her as she climbs in. She’s amazing, everything a man could want, and, at one time, everything I ever did. I look away before she catches me, and get in the truck.

“Here’s the deal,” she starts, that voice of hers now razor cool and full of malice, “I want you to take out a particularly annoying deadbeat who’s gotten on my bad side.”

“What’s the specifics?”

“He’s a little shit, but he’ll have at least two guys with him, both packing. I want him to suffer; and I wanna watch.”

“What’s the location like?”

“High-rise penthouse, top notch surveillance, and possibly up to five civilian guards—all armed.”

“That everything?”

“Everything you need to know.” She sneers at me and turns the ignition.

The engine purrs to life and she eases into traffic with that certain, fluid grace I never could manage. I turn my head to look out my window and begin to run down the particulars of the job to come.

Half an hour later we pull up in front of downtown’s finest skyscraper. A valet appears in a rush of scarlet and brass and spirits away the truck. The boss-lady takes the lead and strides towards the entrance. Two twin doormen fall all over themselves to clear her way. For the second time tonight my hand drifts to my gun’s handle, caressing it. This time I pull it out.

“Jessica,” I state her name with way too much familiarity—in the voice I only use for times like these—and instantly she knows what I’m really here to do.

“You bastard!” She spins around, almost faster than my eyes can follow, a chrome .45 in her hand.

She’s too late. I’m already firing and she’s already dead.

I hit her twice, once in the heart, once in the head, and she crumbles to the ground like a rag-doll.

I almost get a second to taste the cool five grand I just made when I feel the shift start and my nausea kicks back in.

*****

I’m standing in the icy cold October rain, in front of some house I ain’t never seen before, with a pistol in my hand and blood all around me. I clench my old trench coat tight around the rags I’m wearing and try to remember what I’ve done.

It looks to be around noon, but it’s hard tellin’ in this rain. At my feet lies the bloody corpse of some poor, dead housewife. In the house’s doorway her kids all stare at me in horror.

I shake my head to try and clear it, but it ain’t no use, the fog ain’t liftin’. I got no idea what it is I’m doing here or what the hell I’ve done.

I look down at the woman again. She’s been shot in the chest and the head, and streams of thick, dark blood flow from her wounds to form a pool of finished life beneath her. Thin wisps of acrid smoke rise from the barrel of the .38 I seem to be holding in my left hand. I lose myself for a minute in their cordite whispers, drifting back to other times, other kills. Back to the war.

One of the children, the youngest of the three, begins to scream. The high pitch shriek of his little boy’s voice tears into my mind and snaps me back to reality.

I shove the .38 into a pocket of my coat and start to run. I don’t know where to head to, but I have to get out of this place. I stick out too strongly here, in the suburbs. There’ll be nowhere to hide.

I run for what seems like hours, tearing through the little maze of manicured lawns and above ground pools that make up this tiny little world I’m trapped in. I’m trying to get somewhere I can’t even name, somewhere safe and away from here.

I start running blind then. Everything blurs together as I tear through yards and down streets. The trappings of good neighborhoods disappear. Boarded up windows and broken bottles take their place.

Ahead of me the city is suddenly near. Its old buildings and new parking decks offer me a security I can’t find outside of them. I make one last leap over a chain-link fence, round the corner of a two story colonial, and find myself at the mouth of an alleyway that stretches off into the distance between two giant buildings. Breathless, I fall against the wall to my right and vomit.

When I’m finally able to do something besides pant or puke, I try to get my bearings. As near as I can tell I’m down by the bowery. Then I see it, up ahead of me, tearing a hole in the skyline, the city square’s massive clock tower. I remember a place I know, right by there, where I can sit down, have a drink, and get this all sorted out in my head.

I push myself up from off of the wall and wipe away what vomit remains on my lips. I head for the tower.

It takes me awhile to get there. I duck in and out of alleyways and stay as out of sight as I can. The tower leads me where I need to go and I find myself in front of one of my most common haunts. I know I look like the hell I’m headed to and I sure don’t have the money I’m gonna spend in there, but I still sidle in and make my way to the bar.

The bartender looks at me once and without asking what I want brings me some kind of mixed drink. I nod graciously towards him and down it. Obviously he knows what I’m about better than I do.

“What’s the problem Ty?” he asks me in that big, black, bassy voice of his. “You look like all Hell is after you with a warrant.”

I chuckle at that in a way that leaves no doubt I’m in the lurch and nod.

“They’re after me by now,” I tell him.

“Who?”

“Does is matter?” I glare back at his bartender’s grin. “Point is, any minute they’re going to bust in here all piss and fury, and take my head off.”

“Really?”
“Lissen, goddamm it; they might be right to this time.” I stop, uncomfortable in my honesty.

“How long you known me?” I ask.

“I dunno, somewhere around three years?”

“And in all that time, I ever done anything to hurt no-one?”

“Not that I can recall. Ty, you in some sort of trouble?”

I start to answer him, I think, but the TV in the corner of his bar distracts me. On it, a neatly groomed white woman is talking directly towards me. She seems to know what I’ve done.

…are baffled as to the motive behind the brutal murder of Jessica Meyers, the single mother who was gunned down earlier today, in front of her three children…

I look back at the bartender. He’s standing there with wide, worried eyes, and looking from me to the TV and back again. Even before his lips start moving, I can tell what he’s gonna say.

“Ty…” he looks at me in a way I can’t quite explain, like the two of us are in on the same secret joke, “did you kill that woman?”

I want to run away, I want to tell him no, but I can’t.

“Aww man,” I feel myself start to cry, “I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

“Well now, Ty,” he reaches across the bar to put his big, calloused hand on my shoulder, “I think you may have.”

I can’t even answer, I’m only tears and regret by this point.

“But the thing is, son,” I hear him say, “what was it, do ya think, that made you want to kill her?”

I stop and look up at him. “What…what do you mean?”

“Well,” he says, “seems to me, and I’m just sayin’ stuff now, but it seems like you oughta have a real good reason somewhere for why you wanted to kill that woman.”

A thick silence descends, and I realize there’s no one in the bar but us. I try to remember if anybody was here when I came in, but I can’t seem to recall.

“Maybe you oughta think about that, Ty,” he leans in close to me, “maybe it’s pretty important.”

Then, just like that, he’s straightened up and pulled away from me. “But for now, you gotta go, it’s closin’ time.”

I slide down from the barstool and head for the door, more confused than when I got here.

“Oh, and Ty,” he calls after me, “don’t worry about the tab, I got this one.”

Outside the bar it’s just getting to be morning. There’s a subtle silence on the streets that’s only found in a city around five AM, and I’m completely alone.

DOOM,

The clock tower across the street starts to chime.

DOOM, DOOM, DOOM, DOOM

The sound of it is everywhere. I feel a terrible urge to run away. I can’t explain why, but I need to be away from it. Whatever it has to offer, I don’t want it. I turn to run, but never get the chance. My stomach burns with pain and I feel myself start to black out.

*****

When the darkness fades again I find myself in an odd little room with high ceilings. A thin pale light seems to come from nowhere. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room are a sort of color that’s silver yet somehow not metallic. Off to the side, attached to the wall in some indiscernible way, bare of any bedding and decidedly uncomfortable looking, there’s a cot. Aside from the cot, though, the room is completely bare, there’s not even a toilet.

I’ve heard of these places, though I never thought I’d live to see one. I always assumed I’d go down fighting, in glory, not surrendering like some green cadet. But that’s what it has to be. I don’t remember exactly what happened but no-one ends up here without surrendering. Wotan damn my cowardice.

There’s little doubt in my mind of what’s to come. I know that I don’t have too long now before they come for me. What little we know about them has been clear on that much. Prisoners are nothing more than guinea pigs, fresh bodies to be dissected in hopes of finding new ways to kill us more effectively, more cost efficiently. I can look forward to nothing but pain, death, and hell.

I begin to go over every inch of my cell, looking for any cracks or weaknesses, but, of course, there are none. I turn my attention to my cot. I try to find some way in which I can dismantle it, some way to turn it into a weapon.

It’s no use; it’s just as much a part of the wall, with the same infuriating lack of seams or cracks, as the rest of my cell. I sit down and stare at a wall.

Time crawls by and I grow restless. Out of frustration, more than anything else, I go over to the wall I’ve been staring at and begin to rap on it. Nothing happens, of course, but the prospect of returning to the cot gives me the motivation I need to continue.

I start to bang on the wall then, a little louder, but, still, there is nothing. Why would there be? There is no one to hear me. They have put me somewhere away from all others.

I return to my cot and lie down then. As if on cue, the wan light of my cell dims to near darkness. I try to sleep but find it impossible. I must do something. I must escape somehow.

Desperation leads me back to the wall, but this time I try Schweitzer’s code. I tap out the first message I can think of—is anyone there?—and then I tap it again, and again.

On the fiftieth time, someone taps back.

Hello, is that someone else?

My heart leaps within me; I can hardly handle the exhilaration.

Yes! Yes, I am OberKapitan Henniger.

The wall goes silent. I wait, breathless and desperate for it to speak to me again. The longest moments of my life roll by before the tapping starts anew.

Then, they have you as well.

What? I tap, What do you mean, “as well?”

It is I, Henniger, your Kommandant, Heinrich.

It feels as though I have been struck. I reel with the news, and have to sit down to keep from falling. My mind pleads to heaven. No, not the Kommandant, he would never surrender to these beasts. Yet, the proof is incontrovertible, here he is, just like I, a coward and a traitor to our race. All has been lost.

It takes long moments before I can tap again.

So, you too have surrendered.

What? his reply comes immediately. How dare you, I was betrayed, the same as you.

For the briefest of seconds my heart leaps with hope. Had I not surrendered? Had I stayed true to the Fatherland? But then he speaks the traitor’s name.

It was that damned race traitor, Sustern. How is it that you do not remember?

No, I plead silently, not Sustern, not my beautiful Jessica. Yet I know it must be true. Who else could have given them the Kommandant and me?

I beg forgiveness Herr Kommandant, I do not recall what happened, I simply found myself here.

You don’t remember?

No.

You poor, poor man.

I began to grow anxious. What has happened? What has Jessica done? Why will he not tell me?

Kommandant, I tap, what happened?

No tap comes for several minutes.

I cannot tell you.

What? Why?

I cannot know for certain whom you are. If you would know, then you must go to the Reichstower, the information is there.

A thousand questions flood my mind. Why can he not tell me? How am I to get to the Reichstower when they hold me prisoner? Where is Jessica? My mind reels, but I never get a chance to ask him anything else.

The wall of my cell forms a seam in its center where none had been before. Like some monstrous cunt it parts, its sides spreading wide to either opposite wall. For the first time, I can see the corridor outside my cell. The smallest of hopes wells up inside of me. The briefest of escape plans takes hold, but just as quickly, it dies. The spiders enter my cell.

I’ve seen them on the battlefield many times, but it’s never been like this. The battlefields only had the warrior cast, diminutive five or six foot beasts, nothing like the two who stand before me now, omnipotent in their monstrous girth. These are masters.

I recoil from them in a pathetic fit of cowardice that sets their mandibles aflutter with excitement. On six razor taloned legs they move towards me. Their manipulating arms reach for me. I try to fight back, but no human is a match for these beasts unarmed. In seconds they have me tied in silk, paralyzed from their bite.

The world becomes a blur of lights and sounds. I’m whisked through labyrinthine corridors, passed from one beast to another, until I find myself strapped to a slab of metal in a room whose unholy purpose is apparent.

A master class spider skitters up to tower over me. Some sort of wicked looking cutting tool is in his manipulating hand, and the excitement of what he is to do to me drips from his mandibles.

His blade flashes forward, cutting deep into my face. The horror of what he is doing barely has time to register. He removes my nose. I scream, but it makes little difference to him. He’s far too busy stretching my nose out, tacking it down to some course silken board, and documenting his findings.

I vomit all over myself.

*****

My hands ache, my arms ache, all of me aches. Alone in the darkness, bound hand and foot to my chair, I await God knows what.

For the millionth time I try to remember where I am and how I got here, but, just like always, nothing comes to mind.

This is the way it has always been. I’ve been here forever. Just me, just this chair I am tied to, just this darkness I sit in. We’ve all been here forever, eternal lovers, we are intertwined, unable to separate from each other, unwilling to try.

“You love to think like that, don’t you?” a voice cuts through my silence.

“It’s sad really; this poorly phrased romanticism you seem compelled to quantify yourself with.”

I can’t see anyone in the darkness. Still, I refuse to answer him, my silence is sacred. I will not break it.

“Is that what you think?’ he taunts me, then chuckles, “Yes, I’m sure it is.”
Why do you think you’re here?”

Silence is my answer.

“You know, it’s your fault. You put you here. It’s true.”

The shocking incongruity of his words sends me searching, once more, for the origin of my confinement. But it’s still no good; I can’t remember.

“Yes you can. What do you think I’m telling you for?”

“You’re pathetic; the poor little boy, so sad, so in love with his own impenetrable darkness, his own infinite sadness.”

“That’s what you’ve always thought. Isn’t it? You’ve always clung to that idea that you were just deeper, just somehow more human than the rest. Your pain is the worst, isn’t it? It’s what sets you apart.”

He scoffs at me, and for the first time in decades I try to see through this darkness I’m imprisoned in. It’s no use, though, try as I might, I can’t see him.

“No, of course you can’t, you’ve never been able to. Not in all these years.”

“Do you want to know something?” he mocks me. “I’ve been right here the whole time. Right here. I’ve been just standing here, looking at you, listening to you, hating you for every thing that makes you not me—every little thing. Isn’t that something? Isn’t it?”

He screams the last two words at me, and for the briefest of instants I think I see him, but just as quickly he’s gone.

“Of course it is.” He laughs a hollow little chuckle.

“Well Danny-boy, this is it then. The time has come.”

An all-too familiar dread takes hold of me. I know what is coming next, somehow I remember it. Dear God help me, I know what he’s going to do.

I know how I got here.

Click

The sound tears through my prison like nothing else ever could. For the first time in millennia light intrudes on my beautiful darkness. In its reflected brilliance I can see but one thing. It’s the first item I’ve ever seen clearly in all my life—the barrel of a shotgun.

Its gaze stares me down directly, never flinching. Its starkness becomes the epicenter of my reality.

“That’s right Danny-boy,” the bastard repeats in a slow, even tone, “it’s time.”

“Wait!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

I try to free myself from the cold comfort of my chair.

“No.”

The muzzle flashes and the voice of God himself roars in anger and justice.

*****

I come to life.

My first act is to spill the contents of what was once the stomach of one of my others upon the ground. My body wars with itself, as they all, my others, try to come to terms with where they are, who now they have become. I try to calm them all, to soothe their dissention, but I am unable.

A thousand instant politickings unfold. Battles are waged, alliances are formed, and, finally, they are contented. Their rebellion is quelled, and the “we” become I.

Now given control, I rise from the laboratory slab they’ve birthed me on and start my life in the hell of man’s demise.

All around me are the dead bodies of my fathers, those few foolish geniuses who have tried to sustain their race through me. I hold up the hands of men who once had their own souls and I try to understand why they would do this.

Doomed or not, how is it that one can be so desperate to live on that he is willing to forcefully graft some piece of himself onto another?

That is what I am.

I am the sum of my forbears, the repository of their hopes and sins, their desperate atavistic last try at immortality.

The laboratory I’m in offers no answers, and I waste no time leaving.

The outside world is little better. The insistent encroachment of the species I represent has left their world a barren husk. Clouds of ash blot out the sun as electrical storms rage unchecked across the sky. All around me the dinosaur bones of a thousand fallen monuments to greed and achievement stretch vainly towards a heaven they long ago forsook.

Nothing seems to remain of the reality my others remember.

I begin to walk.

Forever passes slowly as I tread over a world of decay and morbid folly. Everywhere it is the same; everywhere they have left their mark. Still I keep on, trudging day after day, year after year, in a futile, desperate search for something, anything, that might remain.

In the 532 year of my diaspora I see it on the horizon.

A single, solitary skyscraper stands a lonely vigil at the end of humanity. It appears to be whole, miraculously enough, yet that is the least of it. What is most remarkable, what thrills and scares me more than anything, is the lights. They are lit on the top floor. Something else has survived.

At first I refuse to believe the eyes (they’ve always been fond of their little deceptions after all) but no rebuke, however stern, can cause them to see it any different. I am forced to accept that what I see is real. Joy and fear begin to have their way with me.

Somebody’s heart leaps within me and I head for the skyscraper, moving far faster than I ever have before. Miles fly by. This glorious spire of survival grows large before me, and its fierce magnificence begins to dawn on me—me and all my others.

Too late I realize how little of my excitement they share. Many of them begin to scream that they don’t want to go to it. They’re scared of what it will mean, scared of how it will change this being they have crafted. I ignore them and keep running.

One mile from my goal my feet rebel, refusing to go on. They desert me, and I tumble to the ground in horror.

For a minute, I am defeated. I lay there sobbing, listening to their pleas of cowardice. In the end I refuse them.

It’s hard going for the next 500 yards. I trudge forward on stumps of raw and lonely flesh. My ankles scream in agony but keep going.

The whole thing is too much for my right arm to bear. It hatches a plot to crawl down the length of my torso and convince my loyal legs to secede. The left one refuses flatly, it will have no part of this, but my right is not so strong, and, besides, the arm has a point.

Rationalizing that the tower is most certainly the reason that the world is how it is, they abandon me together, stealing my balance away from me and forcing me back to the very earth that had long ago decided it had had enough of us all.

Tears stain the eyes (they’ve always been two of my more sensitive forebears). I begin to crawl forward. One legged and one armed, I scratch my way across the ruins of their world.

A thousand feet from the skyscraper my left leg gives in to the inevitable.

Another five hundred and it’s my remaining hand.

I manage to get within 300 yards before my eyes can bear no more of this madness and take their leave as well.

I will not be denied. I manage to drag myself forward on the stump of the one arm that remains with me. That’s when I see her.

She’s standing before the door, feet set and arms crossed, with a cool and angry look on her face. With silent dread, I realize that she’s blocking my way, that she’s determined to keep me in this dead land.

At the first sight of her my manhood leaves me.

Most of my remaining parts follow after.

Still, I keep on. I refuse to surrender. I refuse to let her beat me again.

Moving like the worm I have become, my torso and head inch slowly closer, almost making it to the door. But then she speaks.

“No, Sean,” she says, “I can’t let you go in there.”

Sean, my mind screams, is that who I am?

My chest and gut have had enough. Together they leave my head.

“It’s over Sean. You’re dead. Just let it go.”

Her voice is so sure that my head can barely muster the strength to roll forward and lie at her feet. Stooping down to my level, she picks me up and looks into the places where my eyes once lived.

“Just let it go, baby, just let it go.”

I can’t though; I just can’t. I must get into this building. I must find the truth.

The head I live in refuses the idea, telling me that it thinks she’s right, we should just quit.

It would be so simple, but I can’t. With all that truly is me I hurl myself past the worthless cage of others’ flesh that constrains me.

*****

Everything stops then—the shifting, the lives, everything.

I find I’m whole again for the first time, in a body I vaguely remember. I stand naked and cold in the lobby of this final tower, this last bastion of realness. To be honest, I don’t know what to do.

Ding

The familiarity of the elevator’s chime scares me. I spin to see its doors open.

Metal plates slide obediently back to reveal an empty vessel, a barren transport waiting to be used. I step towards it.

“You be careful now,” a deep, black, bassy voice calls to me from behind. “Truth is a bitter pill.”

I turn to see the speaker, but no one is there. I am still alone.

The elevator seems menacing.

“Ja, of course it is. Truth is the hardest enemy to face,” a voice I’ve never heard cautions me.

I don’t bother to look this time.

I step into this chariot of discovery. With a sense of awe and dread my finger (my finger) reaches up and pushes the top floor’s button. Metal plates shut with military precision and I feel the world I’m in fall away below me.

The ride lasts forever, yet it’s over in seconds. The doors open, and I step forward into my destiny.

It matters little to me what the room I’m in looks like. All that I can focus on, all that I can see, is the set of windows before me. A familiar luminescence, unlike anything I’ve ever known, spills into the room through them. It beckons me forward. Awestruck, I walk over to them.

A crowd of people are gathered around my body (can it truly be my body) some crying, some stoic. In the center of them all stands a woman I have known a thousand different ways.

She’s saying something about dignity, something about love, but all I can think of is the way she broke my heart.

Everyone around her respects her; they all think she’s so strong.

They’re all wrong.

None of them knows, she’s not strong, she gave in to temptation, she betrayed our love. She’s the reason I…

She’s the reason I did this.

I well up with fury. I will not let this go unanswered. This bitch will not be left a hero while I lay here unable to move, unable to speak, unable to be.

I will find a way, I scream through my eyes, I will live, I will not be silenced.

“I know this is what he would’ve wanted,” she tells them.

Doctors move towards me and the machinery I’ve become a part of. They begin to separate us, using final, exact movements.

“He’s in a better place.”

All around me the world goes black.