One More Last Shot
Chapter 2
Harry is hovering over me when I come to. His big bushy hair leads down into his big bushy eye brows that connect to his big bushy beard. The hand extending a glass of cheap booze is covered in thick black fur. I don’t remember his real name.
I don’t want to ruin his sofa, so I decline the drink. Harry sets it on the coffee table. I sit up and shake the cobwebs out of my head. The fog doesn’t lift from the room.
Through the haze and his thick mane, I can see that someone paid Harry a visit, too. It looks like he went to the zoo and tried to measure the bottom of an elephant’s foot with his face. I don’t know if the rules allow me to bruise, but if they do, he’s probably thinking the same about me.
The ape in a suit sat down in one of the armchairs across from me. I don’t know how I missed him until now, but in the other armchair sits a long, thin, oily grease ball of a man. His face shines and sparkles in the light. His slicked back hair has more lubricant in it than most cars. Red rimmed, bug like eyes protrude out from his face over big floppy jowls. He gives me a crooked tooth smile so slick that my ex could have used it for an oleo substitute. I take the glass off the table and hold it.
Harry introduces me to Slimy. I don’t bother remembering his name. Slimy apparently hired Harry to find the salesman, that’s how Harry found me. The greasy looking bastard extends his hand. I just nod. I don’t like him.
“Your wife’s back in town,” Harry says. I hope that neither of them notice that the sofa is wet behind my head. I put the empty shot glass down. “She paid me a visit,” he continues and points at his purple face.
I don’t correct Harry that she’s not my wife. How did he recognize her? I died before I could tell him that she’d changed.
Slimy speaks up. He tells me that he’s looking for a man only known as the collector. The man I’d shot was a protege of the collector. I already know that. I didn’t know the name of their connection, but I don’t really need to. The only information I need is that they were connected.
He and Harry suggest that Slimy and I team up. I’d rather they tie my shoes together and push me down the stairs backwards. I don’t object, though. We leave Harry’s office and get in my car.
Not too long ago, I had a hot dame riding shotgun next to me. Now I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get the slime off the seat from my new passenger. Maybe I would only hate him if he rode next to me in silence, but he never shuts up.
Theories and conspiracies pour out of his mouth like ice cream down the sides of a cone left out in the sun during a record heatwave in the middle of the summer by a 4-year-old whose face is covered in the uneaten gooey chocolate smear and hands drip with its remnants. I get sick just hearing them. The one that irks me the most is he thinks the collector let me find the salesman. He says that the collector wanted the salesman gone.
According to Slimy, my killer is so uptight about things that he shits diamonds. Sloppy hack jobs like Angel and Lucky’s office piss the collector off. So, he used me to get rid of his disappointing student.
So much crap comes out of Slimy’s mouth, I don’t know how much is true or how much he actually knows. Any information, no matter how contradictory, he treats as Gospel. I’d hate to be one of his choirboys.
I pull us into the only place with a lead left, the office the salesman had worked over. The secretaries should still be there and I hope to get something out of them. Slimy knows they’re there, too. The twinkle in his eye and boy scout troop in his pants tells me he wants to get more out of them than I do.
The secretaries roaming the halls aren’t the one the salesman changed. Dressed up in knee length skirts, blouses and vests, they all have their hair done up in neat buns. They wander about in a professional manner. The salesman would have never left them so functioning, or so plain.
Lucky’s roaming the halls as we pass through. He doesn’t recognize me. He has the content aura that only someone married to Angel could have. Lucky bastard. I don’t say anything to him.
We burst into the boss’s office. His secretary is yelling at us that he’s in an important meeting and that we shouldn’t disturb him. Following us in, she turns red when she sees the meeting in progress. She flees the room and closes us in.
A living blowup doll is getting handed to it from behind. She looks like someone’s failed recollection of Marilyn Monroe. Her bust is way too big, like they could double as beach balls on warm summer afternoons down in Santa Monica. Her hair is way too blond, like the shade of the sand that the beach balls bounce off of. And her eyes way too vapid, like they were filled with the air that somehow wouldn’t fit into her overinflated beach balls.
Slimy licks his lips and leaves an oozing trail of saliva on them that glints in the light. I can’t wait to be rid of his company.
He goes over and interrupts the happy couple. He starts roughing the guy up, demanding to see the rest of the girl and pounding him for information. The girl starts humping her fingers and moans for someone to pound her.
I ignore them all and walk over to the side door in the office. The door might as well have a neon sign pointing at it saying “All Nite Nudes” it reeks of sex so much. Opening the door reveals a room full of crawling flesh. Girls identical to the one out in the office squirm about the floor. There’s more than half a dozen of them. All of them are naked and outlandishly proportioned.
Two are reversed over each other so they can pleasure their partner orally at the same time. They lick their lover’s tender spot while intermittently moaning. Four others have them beat as they all do the same thing, only this time forming a circle instead of a sixty nine. The remaining two aren’t using their mouths, settling with ramming fists into each other.
A rank smell hits me and knocks me back a step. The odor of sex, unwashed bodies, and things unmentionable to even the most risque and loathsome of men and women trolling downtown befoul the air of the room. I don’t know which makes me want to vomit more, the stench or how horribly the women have been destroyed.
They aren’t even human anymore. They can’t eat or drink. They can’t sleep. They can’t talk, unless pleas for intercourse count. That’s the only thing they can do. If I’d shown up a day later, they’d all be dead.
I can see the lines dangling off all of them. They’re faint and broken. Maybe the salesman wasn’t finished, maybe he was planning on coming back and giving them the ability to survive and that’s why the strings were broken off like they are. I’m not experienced enough to know, but I doubt it. The salesman wasn’t the type of guy to care about that. He’d just left the stands untied and went about his day and got shot.
Glancing over them, I can tell who was changed first by how little is left. The first girl’s all but gone. I inspect the remains. There’s nothing new there. It’s worthless.
Her original mind is gone. That’s not true. It’s all there. It’s all intact because of his sloppiness. She’s just gone insane. What she’s become has destroyed her old self. I coax bits and pieces of who she use to be to come out and to take the disappearing strand. No transformation like Angel’s will take place, but she’ll live. She can survive.
She can make her way downtown and make a living now. She’ll never be mistaken for a conversationalist, but at least now she understands the fundamentals of society and living. Maybe she can pleasure men at night. Maybe she’ll find some rich john to take care of her for the rest of her days. She has that much now.
The rest of the girls are just as bad off as she is. None of them are capable of doing what Angel did, some of them come out more functioning than the first, but they don’t stray far.
I’m more than halfway through fixing them when Slimy comes and joins me. The greasy stains on his shirt are joined by blood. I don’t know if he left the boss alive or not. Neither would surprise me.
What does surprise me is the second Slimy steps into the room, I can’t see anymore. I can see, but I can’t see. The lines vanish like so many bottles of scotch in my office after a long day of reminiscing about my ex. That’s how I notice that the fuzzy I’d felt ever since waking up in Harry’s office wasn’t from the blows to my head. It’s Slimy.
He ignores the girls I’ve finished. They’re laying about, exhausted and dehydrated. He strips and takes two of the ones that I haven’t gotten to yet. He sits down and one of the girls mounts his hard member. She rides him up and down. He sticks his right hand in the other girl and pumps in time with the girl sliding on his shaft. Looking around the girl on his lap at me, he gives me a wink and a smile.
The smug bastard. He knows he’s affecting my vision. I rage. I bound over and push the girl on his lap off. She tumbles into the space I just vacated. Slimy pulls his hand out of the other girl to bring it up and protect himself, but he’s too slow. I slug him in the face.
Apparently he only likes to be the one giving out the blows. He looks at me with eyes burning with the promise of death and murder. What do I care? I’m already dead. I give the pompous prick a good look at the bottom of my shoe and wipe the look off his face with it. One more strike and he’s out cold.
With his consciousness goes the haze. I can see again. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have. He could wake up at any second. I finish healing the girls as best I can and head back into the office.
The last of the former secretarial force is trying to get a rise out of the unconscious or dead body of her former boss. Her line is the strongest. The boss had special plans for her. She used to be his secretary and he’d harbored a resentment for her ever since she’d spurned his advances.
He’d paid the salesman good money to keep her mind intact so she didn’t go insane. But the sudden tearing of the cord had loosened a lot of the protections and there isn’t enough left to restore her to her former self.
She is far more capable than the rest of the girls. An idea comes to me. I don’t let her shape herself. Holding on to the strand, I take the parts of her that I want. I take her matriarch temperament. I take her maternal instincts. I take her business sense. I take her personality and flame what’s left of her self-worth.
The girl I create isn’t Angel. No one can be her, but the girl I make is almost as spectacular. She lets go of the man who destroyed her life and heads to the sex room. Her presence dominates the other women. The newly birthed brothel madame readies her charges for their journey downtown and their new lives.
I leave her to her business and step out of the office. There’s no one in the hallways now. It won’t be long before the cops arrive. Slimy can explain everything to them. I’d rather not get tangled up.
Leads exhausted, I plan on going back and waiting in my office when my wife steps out into the hall in front of me. Not my ex, my wife. I stop and look at her. She’s beautiful.
My wife is sitting at the kitchen table. She’s reading one of her magazines. I recognize it. I recognize her clothes. This is a day etched into my memory. Tomorrow, I’ll be framed by my partner and my life will fall to shambles. I’ll be kicked from the force, my wife will leave me, and my only friend will be a liquid Scotsman. This is my last happy memory.
She looks up at me with her jade eyes. “Welcome home, Tracey.”
I go over to her and give her a kiss. “Hey, hon. Have a good day?”
“Not really. You can’t see the cords.”
“What cords?” I head over to the refrigerator and pull out the pitcher of tea. I get a glass and fill it to the top.
My wife ignores the question. She gets up and pins me between her, the fridge and the counter. She presses her lithe body against me and leans in. I can feel her teeth nibbling my ear. I want my wife.
It’s not like she’s going to just walk out on me tomorrow after I get arrested. She hangs around and fights for me, only there’s not much of me to fight for. She won’t leave me. I have to drive her away, worn, fat, and broken.
That’s all months from now, though. I’m here now, enjoying our last intimate moment. Her mouth has left my ear and she’s kissing my cheek. I tilt my head and our lips lock. Joy, an emotion I haven’t felt since this day, fills my being. I want it to go on. I want it to continue to where I know it leads. But I haven’t seen my wife in years. Words burn in my chest.
Raising my hand, I push her chin up so that our eyes meet. “I love you,” I tell her.
“Find the cords,” she says.
My wife pushes away from me and everything vanishes. I’m back in Lucky’s office building, staring at my ex who has a gun trained on me. My throat screams for liquid relief.
I understand why Harry knew she was back. My ex is her old self again. Haggard and worn looking, her faith in mankind worn out of her by a system that wouldn’t believe her and an ex-husband that was too busy being drunk to fight.
Her flabby arm shakes as she aims at me. Her dull green eyes don’t have enough passion left in them to burn. “You stupendous shit,” she says and fires.
I wait for the bullet to pierce me. I wait for the thud of lead hitting meat. When that doesn’t come, I wait for the sensation of something passing through me. I’m already dead. That doesn’t come either. She’s completely missed me.
My ex turns and runs like I used to when presented with my bar tab after a bender of drowning out memories like the one I just experienced. There’s no grace in her movements. Like so many barkeeps after me, I pursue her. It’s only a matter of time before I catch her.
She makes it out of the building and into the neighboring alley. I round the corner after her and she’s gone. Only she’s not.
Radiant sex is waiting for me. The creature who returned to my office, the woman that got me killed, is standing there. She looks at me, dares me to approach her. Her pheromones hit me like a fat man who hadn’t eaten in thirty-four days shoving his way past old people and children to the front of a line Sunday morning after church at an all you can eat buffet.
It takes all my concentration to scan her, looking for the lines around her. The lines that changed her. She might as well be made out of porcelain.
My eyes bounce off her large chest and slide down her thin waist before coming to rest on her wide hips. They trace down one towering leg and then back up the other. The black dress doesn’t hide much of her flesh, but what I’m looking for is nowhere to be found.
There is no cord, no line, no nothing. I know she’s been changed, but looking at her, it’s as if she was born this way. But I know she wasn’t. It’s got to be somewhere. The collector or whoever had made her is really good. The line is so thin it might as well be transparent. I find it though.
I take it and am about to examine it when it disappears. I can’t see anything anymore, my eyes fill with soot. I don’t need to turn around or hear his derisive remark to know that Slimy’s behind me. He berates me for sneaking of with a girl so fine all by myself.
She and I ignore him. My ex takes a step forward and puts her large luscious lips on mine. She tastes like brandy that could be sold at a hundred dollars a glass. Her scent hits me first, vanilla and raisin with the potent kick of alcohol. Then a fruity oak flavor hits my tongue as she sticks hers in my mouth. My body burns with the heat of her strength. To a sober drunk like me it’s heaven.
My ex runs her hands up and down my chest. I feel her reach into my inner coat pocket. She steps back and wipes the saliva off her lips. I feel intoxicated for the first time since I died.
I don’t wonder how she’s able to touch me. All I care about is that she’s kneeling down in front of me with her eyes locked on my hard crotch. She runs one hand down it over my pants. It distracts me from the other hand picking the pipe up off the ground.
In one fluid motion, she stands up and cracks my head with it. It’s my turn to sink to my knees in the alleyway. Only, I’m not pretending to go down on someone. I’m just going down.
When I come to, Slimy, my ex and the pleasant buzz I had were gone. The only things they left me are a crushing headache and a desire for an even stronger drink. And whatever my ex put in my pocket.
Reaching in, I fish out the book of matches that she’d put in there. They’re from some sleazy night club close to where I found the salesman. I’d never been there, but I know where I’m going next.
My car’s still waiting for me out in front of Lucky’s building. At least they’d left me that. I hop in and pull away just as the old squad pulls in. Maybe they’d get some freebies from the best new brothel in town, or maybe they’re honest. I don’t care to find out.
Soon, my Mercury is resting on the curb outside the low rent lounge my ex wanted me in. If only I were here to get a drink. I’m not though. I’m here because it’s the only lead I have.
Smoke fills my eyes as I enter the joint. There’s only a couple of people in there and none of them are smoking. Slimy’s in here somewhere. That means my ex is, too. I head over to the bar, I can at least pretend to drink.
The piano man is playing a low key tune that drags everyone down. Not that the sobs in here need any help with that. They create an air as lively as a cement filled balloon and as jovial as the kid who’s trying to play volleyball with it. An applause that makes me think Micky Mantle just walked in holding up Marilyn Monroe’s skirt while DiMaggio pulls down the front of her dress tears through the joint and I look at the stage to see what got the rise out of everyone.
It’s my ex. She’s changed out of what she was wearing in the alley and has redressed in an even more form fitting black evening gown. Her bulbous bosom stretches the thin fabric close to the point of tearing. It snugly fits the rest of her figure eight body so thoroughly I have to wonder how she even got into it. Its ankle length hem flows behind her and she has to take small measured steps it so tightly fits her legs. Even so constrained, she doesn’t walk out on stage, she floats.
The crowd goes quiet and she starts singing. Her body is different. Her mind is different. Her voice hasn’t changed. A soaring soprano fills the silence in the room. The song she sings clashes with the darkness of the joint. She used to sing it to me.
We all listen as she fills the emptiness in our souls in ways we only dream alcohol can. But like a shot of bourbon poured by a prohibitionist bartender, it’s all over too fast. It’s too short. The crowd wants more. I want more. But she’s finished. She heads backstage.
I hop off my seat at the bar and I follow her back and into her dressing room. Sitting in the chair in front of the mirror is Slimy. His face manages to glisten in the low light of the room. His gun is drawn. My ex stands behind me in the corner. I should have brought a drink with me.
The rules that I knew were done. I don’t know if I know the rules anymore. Before, I would have felt nothing, but after taking two beatings from my ex, I no longer feel safe.
Slimy starts talking again. It sounds like more of the random garbage he was spitting out earlier, but he’s more focused. I can tell he’s telling me the truth. He admits he is now. Earlier, he says he was trying to through me off. Now that he’s decided to kill me, he wants me to know the truth. He wants his monologue.
The smug bastard tells me about shifters. I know the shifters. The salesman and the collectors are shifters. I don’t need to hear about them. What I do need to hear about is what Slimy is. He gives people like himself some flowery name. If there are more people like him, they’re all probably just as slimy. Slimers the whole of them.
Slimers, he tells me, are like the anti shifters. They stop the shifters from making changes. They’re immune from being changed and while they’re near, shifters can’t do anything normal people can’t.
Waving his gun at me, he tells me what I am. He calls me a seer. Seers can see all the underlying connections between the shifter and their target. Seers can’t actually make changes, but we know the truth. We can see it. Shifters can only detect their own connections to a subject. Seers know about them all and can learn anything from them.
Shifters hate seers. We’re the only ones who can find them out. Slimers mostly get in the way and are considered a nuisance, nothing more. Seers are the ones who can bring shifters down. Most shifters try to avoid seers like a deadbeat ex-husband flees alimony payments by jumping out the bathroom window while men the size of a freight train break through the front door to collect on it. The collector is different. He hunts us. He destroys us. The collector enjoys unraveling seers’ very existence from the world.
There’s something wrong with Slimy’s explanation. I can change people. He’s either mistaken about what I am and what shifters can do. Or I’m something else altogether.
He doesn’t know why the collector won’t kill me, why he wants me alive and far far away. But Slimy doesn’t care. He’s got my ex now and after he kills me, he’s going after the collector.
Slimy loves the sound of his on voice too much. So caught up in explaining the world to me and that he knows more about it than I ever will, he doesn’t notice me go for my piece.
I pull the trigger. The look of surprise on his face is the first genuine expression I see him make. Behind the surprise, I can see he wants to kill me before he dies.
Using the last of his strength he aims his gun back on me. Slimy knows a lot, but he doesn’t know I’m already dead. He doesn’t know the rules. His finger squeezes and the bullet goes flying through me like the rules say it should. It makes a meaty thud in something not me, just like it’s supposed to. My ex screams out just like she should after the bullet meant for me buries itself into her.
My wife falls to the floor. Not my ex. My wife. Her brunette hair halos around her head and blood pools under her. I sink to my knees and cradle her head in my lap. She reaches up and puts her hand in mine.
“I never stopped loving you,” she says. Tears don’t come to my eyes, they can’t. She sheds tears for me.
“Tracer, find the line.” I start searching her for the collector’s touch, for the lead back to him.
“Not me. Yours, Trace. Find yours.”
I want to tell her I’m sorry. I want her to know I regretted what I did to her, to me, to our lives. I wanted to tell her I thought I was doing it for her. That I needed to push her away, because I never stopped loving her either. But it was too late. I’d pushed her away once. The collector had taken her from me another time. And Slimy had taken her from me for the last.