The King and Other Stories: Collected Fiction Read online

  The King

  And Other Stories

  by Christopher Ruz

  The King and Other Stories is included in its entirety in Future Tides: The Collected Works of Christopher Ruz, a 60,000 word, 18 story omnibus encompassing all of Christopher Ruz's work published between 2007 and 2011. Future Tides includes the fan favourite cyberpunk short They Trade In Eyes, the award-winning heroin-fueled short The King, and the Gene-Wolfe inspired epic fantasy The Ant Tower, along with fifteen other short stories and novellas, for only $5.99 on Kindle.

  Copyright © Christopher "Ruz" Hayes-Kossmann 2011 All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or copied without written consent from the author.

  Table of Contents

  The Hard Sell

  The King

  No Exit

  Back to Civilisation

  Poirot and the Doctor

  The Hard Sell

  First published in Path of Least Resistance, RMIT Press, 2008

  I meet Seb14 for the first time at three in the morning, under a bridge. I've been drinking, harder than usual, and I keep one hand on the wall to keep from banking left and falling into the river. It's dark out. Can't see more than a few paces ahead.

  There's a hissing, like a snake waiting to spring.

  "Hello?"

  A shadow detaches from the bluestone under the bridge. All I can make out is the grill of a single-barrelled gas mask, like a fighter pilot. For a second I think about running, and then my feet tangle and I remember I'm already twelve beers down. So instead I say, "You hear a snake?"

  The figure raises one hand, showing off a cylinder with a sharp cap. The shape is familiar. A spray can, cheap and silvery, not a quality paint like a Molotow or Montana. A tagger's tool.

  My palm itches. "Can I hold that?" I say, and then the beer rises up in my throat. I stumble and fall.

  When I wake, it's morning. There's frost on my eyelids and in my nostrils, and the hangover is piercing. I gag, squeeze my eyes shut. Sunlight breaks through the girders in slats. I stand gingerly and check my pockets; wallet, watch, phone, keys, all present.

  Beneath the bridge, written in six foot tall silver letters, outlined in smooth black, is the tag Seb14. It's not bad. I've done worse.

  The sweet tang of propellant is making my hands shake.

  I take a photo with my phone and start the long walk home.

  * * *

  My workday starts late. A taxi is waiting outside my door at eleven, the driver beating on his horn like he's playing Reveille. I arm myself, lock the door and hop in.

  "Where to?" The driver is wide eyed, jacked up on the prospect of a big paying job. "Where you wanna go, huh?" I tell him, and the time I need to be there, and he nods, stroking the wheel like a cat. "I can do that."

  We're off.

  My weapon is a Hasselblad 503CWD, and my trigger finger is well trained. This is my job: camera-for-hire. Today, a restaurant opening. Tomorrow, photos of furniture for a catalogue, or promo shots for a cinema. Once I was hired by an art magazine to cover graffiti around town. I didn't see any of my own pieces, but my friend's throw-ups were still there. I recognised their lettering. It was like flipping through a high-school yearbook, and it left me feeling hollow.

  The driver knows the streets. We arrive on time. A local councillor waves, cuts a ribbon. The camera whirs. I wind the wheel and keep on clicking. The hangover nags at the back of my skull and I close my eyes and press the trigger over and over and over.

  I know where I want to be, and it isn't here.

  It's been a long time since I ran from police with spraycans rattling in my pockets, or felt the peculiar tingle you get when a line sits just right. Ten years now. It still itches.

  The ceremony is over. I pull out my phone and search for Seb14.

  * * *

  The bridge tagger has a gallery. I leave a comment on his best piece. Smooth fill. I'm the guy who passed out under the bridge last night. You tag alone? I leave a private email address, and wait.

  Two hours and three beers later I have a reply. Thnx. U hurt? Y u wnt 2 no if i tag alone?

  The atrocious spelling brings my hangover back in force. Been out of the game a while, want to try again. Looking for someone to watch my back.

  This time the reply comes quickly. Whats ur wrd?

  My word? For a moment I'm confused, and then it comes clear: my tag, my calling card. It used to be Domez, my high-school nickname. Thinking on it now, it all seems very nineties.

  I don't have one. Starting fresh.

  K. Meet u at bridge at 1am. Bring cans.

  I check my watch. Enough time to buy a few cans and catch a nap before I hit the streets for the first time in a decade. I grab my jacket and wallet and I'm halfway out the door when I stop. Maybe this is a bad idea. I'm headed back into something I quit for a reason.

  The thought doesn't last. The itch is worse than ever.

  * * *

  Under the bridge at a quarter to one. I'm dressed in darks. There's frost on the air. My bag is heavy with cheap cans, and beneath them, wrapped in a towel, is the Hasselblad. It's my security blanket. When I touch the trigger my nerves subside.

  A figure approaches, hunched over, hood up. "Hey. Guy with no word?"

  The voice is strangely high-pitched. "Yeah. Seb14?"

  "That's me." The kid drops the hood. My heartbeat spikes. This could be trouble.

  Seb14 is a young girl; eighteen in dim light, at best. Her hair is pulled back in a tight black bun. Her eyelids are painted with what looks like glitter. Her lips are big and pouty. A real high-school heartbreaker.

  I take a step back, suddenly thinking about escape routes. A pretty little tagger under a bridge at one in the morning? It's a sting. The police must be nearby. I'll say the wrong word and they'll pounce, battering me with nightsticks and frisking me for condoms. Do I have condoms? I can't remember.

  Seb14 cocks her head. "You got cans?"

  "Cans." Got to be careful with my words. "Yeah. Spraycans."

  She grins. "This a mid-life crisis thing?"

  "Bit early for that."

  "How old are you?"

  "Thirty-two, now."

  "That's not too bad." She jerks her thumb back the way she came. "Saw a good spot on the way. Come on."

  I don't know why I follow. She leads me down dark streets, beneath a garage roller-door and out the far side, down a rusted staircase. As we walk, she says, "Why'd you look me up?"

  "You didn't rob me. Seemed a pretty good sign."

  "Mmm." She considers this for a while. "You said you used to tag? Were you good?"

  "I was alright." It's a lie. I was middlish at best, and it's half the reason I gave up. But that never stopped it being fun.

  "There'll be some others with me," she says.

  "Will they mind an oldie?"

  "Some are older than you."

  "That's comforting."

  She sets her bag down. "Here." We're beside a petrol station that faces onto a main road, truckies honking as they pass. She's already laying down fill while I'm deciding whether to stick with bubble letters or embrace the new school. She smirks as she moves on to her second. "You really are toy, aren't you?"

  Toy? That stings. "It'll come back to me," I say, but it doesn't seem likely. My lines are slow and wobbly like a child's scrawl.

  She finishes her second. It's near perfect, the lines crisp, Seb14 standing out tall and proud. Mine is a joke. She pulls her mask down and purses her lips. "You done?"

  I toss the cans into my pack. "Think I about am."

  We walk on. Every few minutes she sto
ps to rip out a tag on a white-washed wall, or a streetsign, or the pavement. I ask about them, and she shrugs. "Just keeping warm."

  We turn a corner. Three figures are standing under the shadows of storefront eaves. Three cigarette tips wobble in the darkness like duelling sword-points. Seb keeps her head down. "That's them." I stuff my wallet and phone a little deeper into my pockets.

  They don't speak until we're close enough to touch. "Seb," says the tallest. "And your plus one."

  "Yeah. He's a bit new to this."

  I try to keep my voice even. "I was laying throw-ups when you were in primary school."

  "Shush." She places a finger on my lips. "I'm not talking tags."

  It's hard to make out the others. Everything is black apart from the dance of embers. I catch the hook of a Roman nose. Three day stubble above the sneering twist of a harelip. Three men. Harelip and Hook-nose are my age or older. The other is hard to tell. Mid twenties, maybe.

  "Fiver," says the hook-nose.

  "Phelps," says the next, the guy with the twisted lip.

  Finally, the kid. "Voda."

  "Like Darth?"

  "Like Vodafone."

  The hook-nose, Fiver, throws his cigarette to the ground and stomps it to death. "You told him what we are doing?"

  "Bits," says Seb.

  "Alright." He bends, and for the first time I notice the duffel bags at his feet. "Let's scoot."

  Fiver leads the way. The trail twists through back alleys and under a blue-stone arch. We cross a bridge, and I realise we're on the far edge of the CBD. The trail leads up a hill and down the far side to the edge of a highway where a billboard is lit from below with stadium kliegs. They drop the bags. It's bright enough to see everyone properly for the first time.

  Fiver is well over forty, his face a roadmap of wrinkles. He looks middle eastern, or maybe Greek, or somewhere in between. With his beak-nose and thin lips and anxious, flitting eyes he could be a Mesopotamian general surveying his troops.

  Phelps is younger, but not by much. Typical anglo, blue eyes, unshaven, hairline receding. I bet if he leaned over I could see my reflection in his bald spot. What I thought was a harelip now seems more like a war-wound; his upper lip has been slashed in half. He catches me staring. "Got glassed."

  "Ouch."

  "No shit."

  Voda is unzipping the bags. He's got a carefully cultivated layer of stubble and his wrists are slim and girlish, and I can tell that under his jacket he's rail-thin. He lifts out rolls of paper. Fiver opens his own bag; inside is a bucket with a wire handle. He grunts as he lifts it out. Beneath it are aluminium poles that he clicks together one by one to form a staff. Finally, he pulls a roller from a side pocket and attaches it to the end.

  I know what's happening now. "We're postering?"

  Seb is sorting the rolls with Voda. "Sort of. We're reclaiming it."

  "For what?"

  "Just look at it," Phelps snaps. All I can see from below is the rosy pink of young flesh, curves and softness and strategic shadows. I struggle to make out the logo. "Manbooster... erectile supplements?"

  "Yup," says Seb. "Not like men need to be spending any more time thinking about their erections." She grins cheekily, and I'm reminded that she can't even be out of high-school. It's not that she's out tagging that disturbs me. At her age I was doing the same. It's that she's hanging with these old farts. Fiver and Phelps are more than twice her age.

  Fiver raises a finger to his lips. "We must do it now. Fast." He tugs up the collar of his turtle-neck to cover the lower half of his face and points to me. "You watch."

  They move quickly. Voda and Seb scale the scaffolding like monkeys, rolls tucked tight under their arms. Phelps and Fiver are close behind, man-handling the bucket. The rolls unfurl and Fiver starts laying glue. It's wheatpaste: cheap, homemade, and a bitch to remove. It'll fix the poster in place until the apocalypse.

  Each strip finds its place, and the image grows.

  I don't know why I do it. Maybe it's instinct, my trigger finger telling me now, now, now. Or maybe it's the itch that holding a spraycan didn't quite cure.

  I open my bag and swing out the Hasselblad, adjust the focus and exposure almost unconsciously, and shoot.

  Phelps turns at the click of the shutter. "What the hell? No photos!"

  "Don't worry, I can't see your face," I call back.

  "I don't give a shit. No photos!"

  Fiver stops pasting. "Phelps. Let him."

  "Why?"

  "Just let him."

  Seb and Voda are looking at Phelps, frozen, as if waiting for him to explode. He scowls and turns away. "Keep going," he says. "I said, hurry up!"

  I realise I've been gripping the camera so tight that the winder has dug into my palm. They've all turned back to their work, and that's fine by me. The shutter rattles.

  "Can you see our poster?" Fiver calls.

  "Not from here." I check the photos so far. The sweep of Fiver's glue-roller is coming out as a long arc above Seb's head, like the aurora. I dial down the exposure.

  "So move back," he says. "This is important."

  I scuttle backwards, ducking as a car passes. The four up on the billboard are lit from every angle, but I'm still in the shadows. I can run if things go bad. There's no tagger code of honour in times like this. The last of the strips are going up, and I squint through the camera lens. It takes me a few seconds to see what they've done, and then I start to laugh.

  The billboard was originally a picture of a naked girl reclining on pillows, skin creamy smooth, smiling nervously, virginal and scared. Just the thing to get blood pumping and wallets falling open.

  The poster Fiver and his crew have laid over the top is almost the same. Almost. The girl is still smiling, but now the wrinkles around her eyes are dark and deep. Cellulite pinches at her thighs. Her stomach is creased by rolls of flesh. The space between her legs is no longer artfully hidden by shadows; it's now a giant thatch of curly pubic hair. She has bags under her eyes and her teeth have the slightest tinge of nicotine staining.

  Every one of these changes has been circled with a fat red line, just to make it doubly obvious. Then, above this all, the tagline in tall black letters: GET HARD OVER SOMETHING REAL.

  They're descending now, gathering up the bags, breaking the long pole down into its component pieces. My trigger finger hasn't stopped clicking.

  Fiver jogs over, pats me on the shoulder. His breath smells of garlic. "It is good, yes? Let's get moving."

  I nod. "I've never seen anyone do this before."

  "Now you have. Now you have met the four horsemen."

  We run into the night.

  * * *

  I wake dehydrated and wobbly.

  I go through a carton of orange juice as I check emails. A list of assignments for the coming week - flower shows and food photography, enough to pay the bills - and an email from Seb.

  What'd you think of the night? Fiver liked you, he wants to see the photos.

  I make myself cereal before replying. It was good. Didn't really expect that though. Is that what you always do together? PS - When did you learn to spell?

  That's not all we do. That one was mid-level. All part of a battle-plan. PS - I take the time to spell for people I know. What about the photos?

  What's this four horsemen thing?

  It's what Fiver calls us. I know, lame. You gonna send me the photos?

  I cull the worst before sending them through. The reply is fast. Fiver says kill any that show our faces.

  And then?

  Up to you.

  I move all the incriminating shots to a deep, private folder. There are some good ones left over. Not my best, but good enough. I email Seb again. Can I post them on my blog and portfolio?

  You have a blog? That's cute. Did you want to come out with us again?

  Definitely. Wouldn't mind meeting during daylight either.

  The reply takes an hour, by which time I'm hungry again. Coffee? Swanston St Starb
ucks at three.

  Done, I say, and head out with my camera bouncing around my neck.

  Starbucks smells good. The human stink of the street vanishes behind the aroma of coffee roasts, hints of caramel, fresh cakes. My stomach does a hungry backflip but I'm on a budget; I order the smallest, least fancy sounding latte. Seb is hunkered down in an armchair. She waves me over.

  "Hey."

  "Hey to you too." She has a huge Starbucks mug, the mermaid winking at me from between her fingers. Steam rises up around her face, winding through her hair. "Enjoying the weekend?"

  "What little there is left." I settle down and sip my coffee. "Last night..."

  "Never done that before?"

  "Well, postering, yeah. Nothing that big or so, uh, civic minded."

  She grins. "That's the four horsemen for you."

  "So which one are you? Pestilence or Famine?"

  "Christ, I don't know. Ask Fiver. He made it up."

  "How'd you fall in with them?"

  She sips her coffee slowly. "Friend of a friend. I was doing stencils, some anti-G8 stuff. It was starting to really shit me, how much they're trashing these little countries, half the middle east is on fire and they're talking profit... Anyway. A friend saw my stencils and liked them, and pointed me to Fiver."

  "And you run with him now?"

  "Not all the time. He's a bit intense." She turns away, clasping her coffee tight. "I still do tags and throw-ups, like you saw. But Fiver has the big ideas."

  "You didn't mind having me with you?"

  "Nah." She sets the mug down and looks at me for a while. I feel very old and vulnerable in her gaze. "Why'd you come back out to tag?"

  "I guess... I missed it. But I don't think it works that way for me any more. I can't just go out and draw on some guy's shop and feel good about it." I sip my latte. It tastes burnt. "Maybe you were right. It's an early mid-life crisis. I still want to go bust things up, but I don't know what."

  "Yeah. That's the way I used to feel."

  "So how'd you get over it?"