Vin of Venus Read online

  VIN OF VENUS

  Paul D. Brazill

  David Cranmer

  Garnett Elliott

  Copyright © 2011-2012 by BEAT to a PULP

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except where permitted by law.

  The stories herein are works of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events portrayed in this collection are either products of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover image from Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com); Design by dMix.

  PO Box 173

  Freeville, New York 13068

  CONTENTS

  LoVINg the Alien

  Scion of the Evening Star

  Sword of the Evening Star

  Vin of Venus

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  About the Authors

  Other Titles from BTAP

  Connect with BEAT to a PULP

  "LoVINg the Alien," written by Paul D. Brazill and David Cranmer, along with "Scion of the Evening Star," written by Garnett Elliott, originally appeared on the BEAT to a PULP webzine. "Sword of the Evening Star" and "Vin of Venus," both written by Mr. Elliott, appear here for the first time.

  -LoVINg the ALIEN-

  His last memories as a whole man?

  Running. A strip of sun-bright sand that could've been a beach. Bullets whizzing left and right, passing within inches of his ear.

  His feet splashed water. Cold. Without thought, he turned and plunged into the surf. Dove down. Hunted cover. Bullets splashed next to him.

  Muffled by the water: an engine's roar.

  Darkness.

  * * *

  Dr. Piotr Krol took the rural roads faster than either the icy conditions or his current state of exhaustion should've allowed.

  He'd been up for hours. The drive from Warsaw to his country place was long, the Polish roads treacherous from lack of maintenance. Kilar's Ninth Gate soundtrack kept him company. He turned up the music, hoping the eerie strains could help keep him awake.

  Just a little farther. Yes, he could see it now: the roof of his country house, peeking over a copse of pines. Everything was dusted white.

  Everything, except for a murder of crows. He watched their black shapes slash across the sky, alighting on a snow bank alongside the road.

  He gasped.

  Reflex made him bury the brake pedal. A poor choice. The BMW slalomed right, threatening to jump an embankment. He fought to keep the car under control. A large pine bole loomed, but luck, and perhaps German engineering, brought the vehicle to a skidding halt, inches from the tree.

  Krol threw open his door. Breath heaving, he jogged toward the crows.

  A man lay atop the snow bank. Naked. Bloodied. The crows pecked at his face. Krol kicked and sent them flapping. He saw the man's hairless chest hitch with breath. The hint of mist from his nostrils. He was alive, but ...

  He had no left arm. And no left leg.

  * * *

  The hospital's antiseptic smell, that was the first thing.

  The second was the sounds. A constant beep, which he later realized was his own heartbeat, tracked by machines. Every now and then the old drunk in the bed next to his would shout in a language he didn't understand.

  But this morning came the sound he'd learned to look forward to. The ringing of metal against porcelain as his nurse stirred black currant jam into his tea.

  "Dr. Krol is here to see you again," she said in accented English.

  Vin sat up and accepted the warm mug.

  Krol's dress shoes clicked against the hospital tile as he entered. He stood well over six feet with a full head of silver hair. Vin gulped tea and set the cup down so he could shake the doctor's hand.

  "I have some good news and some bad news, Mr. Vin," Krol said. "The authorities have given permission for you to be in my custody while we try to find out more about you. My apartment in Warsaw is at your disposal. You can check out of here tomorrow."

  Vin couldn't help but smile at the prospect of leaving. "And the bad news?"

  "I have to go to London for a few days, maybe a week, to visit my daughter in Kensington. So, you'll be in the care of my housekeeper, Pani Maria. She's a lovely woman but she can be a tad ... brusque. And she doesn't speak English."

  "I'm sure I'll survive."

  Vin's neighbor, lost in the throes of delirium tremens, babbled what sounded like a rosary. Krol glanced over at him and sat on the bed's corner.

  "Have you remembered anything else?" he asked, his voice low.

  Vin closed his eyes.

  I see green skies and vast oceans. Stretches of emerald jungle so pristine it makes my heart ache. Whole cities carved from black basalt, and a people, both loving and warlike, with faces like mine ...

  "Nothing," he said.

  "Your first few days you babbled to me about being from Venus. Do you remember? I've chalked it up to post-amnesic delusions. Still, there's a real mystery here." Krol gestured toward Vin's wrist, encircled with an elaborate, ruby-studded gold bracelet. "Whoever tried to kill you left that attached. It must be worth a small fortune."

  Vin regarded the jewellery. It felt like a part of him. Literally—there appeared to be no way to remove the thing, short of hacking off another limb.

  Krol stood up. "In time, perhaps, answers will make themselves apparent. I'll bring you some clothes tomorrow morning and we can drive to Warsaw after lunch."

  * * *

  The third floor apartment in Warsaw's Praga district was minimalist enough to be Spartan. Krol had told Vin he only stayed in the place when he had to attend medical conferences. His frown suggested he didn't think much of Poland's capital city.

  Vin edged his wheelchair over to the bedroom window. Three floors up afforded a view of a small shop sporting a bright green frog logo, a vodka factory that had been converted into a nightclub, and a stretch of bars, including one with a large black tarantula perched above its dark oak doors. Looking at the huge spider, Vin felt a pull at his memory. But it was gone as quickly as it had come.

  The street bustled with young people wearing strange clothes and stranger hairstyles. A tall blonde in a black fur coat walked up to the bar with the spider and pressed a door bell. The door opened with a screech of escaping metal music. She slipped inside. Again, Vin felt another jerk of memory.

  Krol had told him the history of the Praga district. How it had escaped the bulk of destruction during World War Two, only to later become infested with organized crime. In recent times, however, the neighborhood had been gentrified by waves of art students and trendy media types, although it still had its shadowy corners.

  There was a knock at the door.

  "Come in," said Vin.

  The doorknob rattled. Someone cursed. Rattled the knob again. Vin wrestled his chair over to the door and opened it.

  A stooped woman in a red beret and thick fur coat stood grimacing. She clutched two shopping bags in each gloved hand.

  "Hello, En-lish man." She handed Vin one of the bags. "Mam na imie Pani Maria."

  It took him a moment to register what she'd said. "Vin."

  She nodded and wobbled past him toward the Kitchen. Vin tried to follow, alternating first the right wheel, then the left, using his leg to help pull the chair along the floorboards. It was slow going with one hand. Krol had mentioned getting a motorized chair in a couple weeks.

  "En-lish man. Here."

  Pani Maria's voice called from the dining room. He clunked his way into the sparsely-furnished chamber, where a large window with a balcony overlooked a deserted car park. The old housekeeper had removed
her hat to reveal brightly hennaed hair. Vin noticed she had a club foot.

  "You same as me." She pointed to her foot. "Do DNA!" she said, taking a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses from a small, wooden cabinet. "Let us ... drink."

  * * *

  He was dreaming.

  Water closing over him. Drowning. A chopping sound. The smell of his own skin, burning ...

  Vin woke with a gasp. The chopping sound continued for a moment, echoing from someplace below.

  He pushed himself out of bed, up onto the nearby crutch. No point trying to fall asleep again. The nightmare would only come slipping back.

  He shuffled to the dining room and pressed his face against the cold glass window. A stone wall surrounded the empty car park below. Next to the electronic gates stood a small breeze-block hut, where a uniformed security guard seemed to live. Vin waited, but no further chopping sounds were forthcoming.

  He collapsed onto the leather armchair that Pani Maria had placed there for him, along with a small coffee table, a remote, and an ever-present bottle of vodka.

  He turned on the TV. After flicking channels for a few minutes, he found an American series about forensic police. Good-looking people stared into test tubes while a short ginger man took his sunglasses off and put them on again. Vin couldn't concentrate on the program. A Polish man was talking over the English dialogue, translating, making it more annoying than anything else.

  He turned back to the window. There were scraping sounds, now. The fat security guard had emerged from his hut, shovelling a path through the snow. It seemed to be an obsession for him.

  Vin poured a shot of vodka and watched as the fat man went back to his concrete hut and pushed a large metal barrel out into the car park. The guard seemed to take forever rolling the barrel toward a black van with darkened windows.

  Something about the way the barrel clanged when set down struck Vin as familiar. His head started to throb. Next to the vodka was a bottle of sleeping tablets Krol had given him. He dry-swallowed two and felt a pleasant drifting sensation only minutes later.

  Drifting ...

  His eyes snapped open. The golden bracelet burned against his wrist.

  In the car park below, the fat man had opened the van's rear doors and was loading another barrel into the back. It could have been a trick of distance, or the pills, but Vin swore he glimpsed a pale arm hanging over the barrel's side, just before the doors shut.

  * * *

  The world outside the dining room's balcony had fallen into comfortable routine.

  Every morning, just past six, a tall man with long black hair took breadcrumbs from a plastic bag and threw them in the air. Black birds darted down from the car park's wall, where they had been lined up like notes on sheet music. The birds flew toward the tall man, landing on his balcony and sometimes him. His bellowing laugh echoed around the park.

  After the birds dispersed, the man waved to Vin and went back into his apartment.

  "Composer," said Pani Maria, with a disapproving grin. "He—" she flicked through her battered Polish-English dictionary. "He genius. Crazy."

  Vin thought he certainly looked the part.

  Dr. Krol had phoned to say he would be staying in England a few days longer, but Vin didn't mind. He had his routine now. After struggling out of the shower, he would dress in the endless supply of black sweat-suits Krol had left him and go sit on the balcony. Pani Maria would bring hot coffee. Between sips, Vin watched the neighbors come and go. Where possible, he would glean whatever apartment gossip he could from Pani Maria, using the dictionary to help.

  The fifth day, his routine was shattered.

  He had just been about to wheel himself into the dining room for a late dinner when he heard the scream. He looked down over the balcony and saw an old man in a blood-spattered suit, staggering from the security guard's hut. Within seconds, the fat security guard and a tall blonde woman—the same one he'd seen going into the "Spider Bar" days before—ran out of the hut and dragged the man inside.

  The bracelet on his wrist throbbed like a living thing, pulsing with heat. Out of breath, he wheeled himself back into the dining room.

  * * *

  Vin said nothing to Pani Maria. He doubted he could accurately translate his fears into Polish, anyway. But for the next few days he kept vigil over the Spider Bar and the security guard's hut. The gold bracelet continued to tingle with an invigorating warmth, making sleep difficult.

  By the time Dr. Krol returned he felt he had enough information to confirm his suspicions.

  "This is ... disturbing," Krol said, pinching the bridge of his nose as he read Vin's notes. He spread the papers over the dining room table. "I don't want to seem overly-sceptical. But you've been through a terrible trauma, and spent the last week cooped up in this place ..."

  "You don't believe me?"

  "It's not that—"

  "Look, if I met an amnesiac who'd claimed to be from Venus I'd have some doubts, too." He gestured toward the papers. "But all this happened. I've still got two eyes."

  Krol steepled his fingers, appraising him. "And you said the bracelet ... burns?"

  "Whenever something's happening, yes. It doesn't hurt. Sometimes it feels good."

  "Interesting." Krol stood and walked over to the window. He gazed out at the car park for several minutes.

  "Okay," he said abruptly, turning and clapping his hands. "Perhaps my daughter can stay for a few days. I'm sure she will find your investigation intriguing."

  * * *

  Marta Krol felt tired, even though the flight from Gatwick to Frederic Chopin airport had only taken a couple hours. Still, she was glad to be back in Warsaw and excited about meeting this new patient of her father's. Two years of social work among London's Down and Outs had left her jaded, but the prospect of meeting a delusional double-amputee wasn't something that happened every day.

  She flagged a taxi and dragged her suitcase inside, the beetroot-faced driver making no attempt to help. The cab jolted through early morning traffic, pulling into the Praga district a scant fifteen minutes later.

  Marta pushed open the gate and walked into the snow-smothered courtyard.

  Her breathing stopped. A large black van was parked at a hurried angle across two spaces, its engine purring. What looked like a trail of blood snaked from the back of the van to the security guard's hut, though in the wan light it was hard to be sure.

  "Marta," echoed an unfamiliar voice from above.

  She looked up to see a bald, one-armed man waving from her father's balcony. His eyes were wide with fear.

  "Dobranoc," said another voice. This one much closer.

  She whirled. A fat man in a security guard uniform came loping around the other side of the van. Sweat dripped from his grinning face. He held a dirty cloth in one hand.

  Instinct took over. She dropped her suitcase and raced for the apartment building's entrance. Warm air from the hallway embraced her as she slipped inside. But despite his bulk, the guard was close behind. He slammed open the doors and tried to grab her before she could reach the stairwell. His other hand shoved the rag toward her face. A strong smell, like chloroform, permeated the fabric.

  Marta kicked out as hard as she could, scraping her instep against the guard's shin. He grunted and dropped the rag. But he wasn't down. She'd taken self-defense courses in London, and could hear her Pakistani instructor yelling at her to kick him in the groin, take out his knees, gouge his eyes. It all seemed a lot more plausible when you were striking at a dummy.

  The lift next to her let out a ding. The doors rolled back.

  Ana caught sight of the bald man, leaning out on a crutch. He grabbed her wrist with his one hand and pulled her into the cramped lift. Both of them collapsed backward. The guard thrust his arm between the doors before they could close, flailing around for the control panel. The bald man hauled himself up—she noticed he was missing a leg, too—and pressed a golden bracelet on his wrist against the guard's hand. Gray smoke cur
led from the contact. The guard howled and snatched his hand back, allowing the doors to close.

  "How did ...?" she began. But her voice was drowned out by the lift's groaning, as it carried both of them to safety.

  * * *

  Krol poured large measures of brandy, then handed the drinks to Marta and Vin before sitting down.

  "Amazing work, Vin ... and Marta. Really amazing." He raised his glass. "Na zdrowia."

  "Na zdrowia," Vin said.

  "Na zdrowia." Marta tapped the dining room window. "I still don't understand what they were doing, though."

  "In a nutshell," said Krol, "The Spider Bar operated as a private bordello. It was frequented by foreign business men who wanted to, ah, have recreation with ladies of the evening."

  "I know how a whorehouse operates," Marta said. "They have do them in London, too, you know?"

  "Indeed. Well, one of the bartenders figured out he could increase his income by torturing the businessman for banking information. Our friendly security guard was an enthusiastic co-conspirator, of course.."

  Marta nodded.

  "And then Vin saw the security guard disposing of a body. After that he noticed it was happening regularly."

  "You'd make a good detective, Vin," said Marta.

  Vin felt himself blush. Marta was tall and blonde and had her father's easy good looks and manner.

  "You didn't do too bad a job yourself," said Vin.

  There was a loud knock at the door.

  Pani Maria shuffled from the kitchen and opened the door. There were muffled voices and then Panni Maria laughed.

  She walked into the living room, grinning and holding a fat brown envelope. She handed it to Dr. Krol, who chuckled when he read the note inside. "It's for you, Vin. It appears to be from a representative of the Spider Club. A 'thank you' for disposing of a problem that would have cost the business a considerable amount of money."