Penny Dreadful Read online

  This world isn’t real, he said.

  My boyfriend would disagree, she said.

  Theseus was glaring at them from maybe fifteen feet away and she wondered when he had slithered so close, and how much he had heard. She knew that he disapproved of the Redeemers and tolerated them only because they were necessary.

  Her belly was exposed, her weak half.

  She couldn’t stand to look at him now. She backed away from the bar and dragged herself off to the dressing room, where Adore reclined on a mound of dirty pillows, rigid and bony. She often reminded Goo of a dead praying mantis. Adore had a headache, it seemed. She wore a woven silk ice pouch over her eyes and the room smelled of roses. The only light came from a green lamp that glowed like a fat firefly behind lace. Goo stood in the doorway, feeling like a wayward daughter. Her hair was a wreck and her skin itched as if she were covered in dry white soap. She was short of breath and confused. The Redeemer had not tried to kiss her, to take her tongue. And his advice had been very unorthodox.

  No one ever suggested that you leave the game, no one.

  Adore made a clucking sound. Gather yourself, girl.

  I’m sorry, Lady.

  Adore removed her ice pouch and regarded Goo with bloody eyes.

  Don’t be sorry, girl. You are an Exquisitor.

  You flatter me, Lady.

  I do not.

  Goo cast her eyes away, embarrassed. She was only an apprentice. Adore laughed at her, a delicate and fluttering sound. She held out her hands and Goo moved to help her up.

  Shall we take the stage? said Adore.

  I found myself sitting on the floor of Eve’s empty apartment, eating eggdrop soup in bright, unflinching silence. Eve apparently owned no television, no stereo. The only sound was my own manic slurping. At some point I must have thrown open the windows, praying for a little breeze or the distraction of traffic noise, but I couldn’t really remember doing so. It was odd, but Eve didn’t seem to have a telephone, either. Though I could have sworn she did have one. I had used it to order the food, hadn’t I? And that was an hour ago, maybe two. But now I couldn’t find a phone anywhere. It was a little maddening. I looked around and around, my head swiveling like a puppet’s. I rubbed my eyes, disgusted. She didn’t have a coffeemaker, a toaster. There were no electrical appliances at all. Maybe the food was delivered by fairies. Or else the phone was stolen by them.

  I was alone in the apartment. Chrome and Mingus the Breather had apparently taken their leave. Faded from the scene without word or gesture. I could barely remember their faces, now. I wasn’t so confident that they were real. They were too similar to the freaks that regularly populated my dreams. But if I closed my eyes, I could see Chrome in distorted flashes as he speared a dumpling with one yellow fingernail and fed it rather graphically to Mingus. There was fried rice scattered on the wood floor, as if I had been feeding imaginary squirrels. There were two untouched bowls of soup on the floor, and two spoons. I was Goldilocks, then. The soup is too hot, too cold. I wanted to write it all off as unexpected weirdness, nothing more. But I was dizzy, numb. As if I had suffered a mild electric shock. Or involuntary contact with two nonhumans. I forced myself to clean up the rice, to wash the bowls. I wiped my hands on my pants and stood staring at a long black wrinkle in my shirt, where Mingus the Breather had been kind enough to sew up a nasty hole in the fabric.

  Well, then. They were real enough.

  Here we go. I found this little blue notebook in the kitchen and not sure why, but I stole it. Eve had only written a few words on the first page, notes for a class and I couldn’t be sure but it looked like Logic 101. And the rest of the book was blank.

  I was going to rip that page out and start fresh but decided not to. The disconnected pieces of logic appealed to me, the odd little phrases. They comfort, somehow. And she has such fine crooked handwriting, like bugs crawling out of my head. Anyway. Not sure what I was thinking. It had been months since I wrote anything at all by hand. Not even a postcard to my poor mother. The rare signature maybe, on a bad credit card slip. Oh, yeah. I signed a lot of room service tabs when I was with Jude. She loved fucking room service. But the last thing I would have written by hand was probably an incident report for the department that was dull as a cloudless sky, I’m sure. That shit was deadly.

  If I wanted to tell the truth, I would say that I stole Eve’s notebook because I wanted to keep a record. And what use this might be is hard to say. I know this much. I can’t really trust my memory anymore. Or my perception of what’s real. And it’s funny to think that I have never done this before. This will be my first diary. If you could even call it that.

  Dear Jude. If I knew where you were I might send these notes to you.

  But I should tell you that something bothers me and maybe it’s nothing, nothing to worry about. I have my share of paranoid tendencies. As you know. Okay. I have been back in Denver for less than a day now and I’m looking over my shoulder like there’s a contract out on my narrow ass. I can almost feel the crosshairs on my neck. It’s not you, is it? I guess it wouldn’t shock me. If you were out there. Following me, watching me from rooftops with the eye of a sniper.

  Unless I inform you otherwise, I don’t know what day it is. Which is why these notes are not dated. I don’t even know the correct time. It seems I sold my watch a few days back. Anyway. It’s only been a few hours.

  I had to get out of Eve’s place. The boyfriend was freaking me out. Did I mention she has a boyfriend, a sick fucker with bad clothes. His name is Chrome and he suggested I change my name to Fred. I’m not kidding. You would want to kill him on sight. He said something funny, though. He asked me if I wanted to go see Elvis and it sounded a lot like a threat. How about that. I’m going to Graceland.

  You remember where you were when the news came on the radio that he was dead?

  Late summer and stupidly hot and I was at Chloe’s house. My first real girlfriend and she was trashy and not very smart and conditioned by her loutish stepfather to flinch when you looked hard at her or moved your arm too suddenly and was therefore happy to suck me off right on the couch whenever I dropped by with cigarettes or ice cream. Which I felt bad about but I was only thirteen and couldn’t very well say no when she unzipped my pants and bent over me with the cool silence of a Catholic girl doing a few Hail Marys. We were watching the Stooges, I think. And the couch was covered in dirty laundry and I could smell the stepfather’s socks and Chloe’s head was busily twisting in my lap when they interrupted the broadcast to say that the King was dead. Chloe lifted her face then, her mouth puffy and red. She stared at the television, stricken and pale and she said, oh my mother loves him or she used to, before he got so fat and gross, you know. Then she resumed, she sucked me off like she was born to the task and actually swallowed my gunk. Which inspired me to tell her I loved her. I was thirteen.

  Chrome:

  He was hungry. Oh, he was violent. He slashed at the air with his long fingers and leaned to breathe obscenities into Mingus’s left ear.

  I want to hunt, he said.

  Mingus glanced at the sky. It’s raining.

  Chrome muttered, not here.

  They sat on a circle of grass overlooking the freeway. Chrome was on edge, he was bored. He began to play with Eve’s telephone, picking up the receiver and saying: Yes, who’s there? He had cut the cord and removed the phone from her apartment on a whim, thinking to confuse and alienate the sickly Phineas, whom he had found distasteful and oddly alluring.

  He looked over at Mingus, who still stared like a simpleton down at the freeway. He was fascinated by cars, the poor thing. His favorite was the Saturn. He claimed it was the most graceful and godlike of machines. Chrome had to smile at this notion. He told Mingus that the Saturn was manufactured in Tennessee by unevolved humans.

  Mingus was ignoring him, though. Which was not wise. Chrome stared at his own fingers. They were twitching and he realized he could easily kill his little friend. It could happen as suddenly
as a violent sneeze, a brief involuntary convulsion. It was disturbing, really.

  There’s a green one, said Mingus. They are the prettiest, I think.

  J’ai faim, Chrome said.

  English, said Mingus. Speak English.

  I’m hungry, he said.

  It isn’t safe to hunt by day.

  Please, said Chrome. The Freds come and go.

  Everyone comes and goes.

  But the Freds stay in character.

  As do we, said Mingus.

  Ah, yes. But I am a bit more self-aware, said Chrome.

  Chrome removed a garrote from his boot and twirled it on one finger. The black cord was soft and silky to the touch but strong as piano wire. There was a piece of wood the approximate size of his pinkie at either end, wrapped in leather. He could kill a bear with the thing, if he could only creep up on one.

  You twit, he said. That was a Mustang.

  My eyes are failing in this light.

  How is your nose?

  Fine, said Mingus. I can smell you.

  Do you not smell meat?

  Mingus frowned. A car had drifted to a stop nearby, an ordinary Toyota. It was perhaps a hundred feet away, parked under a little tree. The windows were down and two men sat in the front seat. The angles of their jaws suggested an uneasy discussion of money. Mingus would surely smell sex on them, like salt and fresh earth. Even Chrome could smell it. The sex was coming from them in waves.

  We will not hunt a Citizen, said Mingus.

  Of course not. You will sniff out an unfortunate Fred who has lost his way.

  I walked out of Eve’s place and felt better straightaway. The oxygen had been too thin up there, or too pure. And I had been talking to myself in no time, poking at my eyes with restless fingers. I did find my knife, thank God. It was hidden under a sofa cushion. I had tried and failed to write Eve a note. Thank you for the use of the sofa, the money for food. Thanks for washing my clothes. And I love your new friends…and fuck it. I had crumpled these aborted little notes and tossed them at the window. I would see her later, maybe. It looked like she was running around with a lot of freaks but why the hell should I care. She was hardly a proper little girl before, was she. And she was not a child to be looked after.

  I had my own bellyful of problems, anyway. No money and nowhere to sleep, no job prospects. If I had three red apples, I might wander downtown and amaze the pedestrians with my juggling. I could gather enough spare change to buy a cup of coffee, maybe hang around a diner all day reading other people’s newspapers. I could beg a ballpoint pen off a kindly waitress and use it to mark up the classifieds. A few months ago I had dreamed of a job at a gas station, a video store. I had wanted to change my name and shave my head and write bad poetry.

  Yeah.

  I rolled my eyes at the sky, at a blanket of gray. I didn’t like poetry and I was not a good juggler. And I would first have to steal three red apples. I ducked into a phone booth and realized with some amusement that I bother to dwell on the irony. The call was free, at least. I told the emergency operator that I was a police informant and was in relatively grave danger. The operator was not amused.

  This line is for emergency calls only, she said.

  I’m going to be dead in five minutes, I said. Is that an emergency?

  Your name, she said.

  The angry flipper-boy, I said.

  Hum of silence.

  Phineas Poe, I said. Please tell Detective Moon to come get me.

  Theseus the Glove:

  The stage was black but for an egg-shaped spot of orange light. One of Goo’s bare legs lay stretched there as if cut off at the knee. Her thigh-high boots were nowhere to be seen. Theseus reached under his jacket to pinch his left nipple. He had his doubts about this girl sometimes, doubts about her belief in the game. But she was lovely as a sleeping child when bound and gagged.

  A gloved hand entered the egg of orange light.

  Goo’s leg looked as if it had been discarded, a piece of firewood. The hand began to stroke, or measure, her ankle with blunt, velvet fingers.

  Theseus felt wet.

  A small wire cage was shoved slowly into the orange light.

  The wire cage had two doors. One of them was an ordinary door, with a hinge on one side and a latch on the other. The other opened like a set of flaps, with a semicircle cut out of each side. The gloved hands carefully pulled open these flaps and inserted Goo’s bare foot into the cage. The flaps were then closed and the cutout circle fit snugly, if a little tightly, around her ankle.

  There was a low, steady grunting from the crowd.

  Money. This was silver in his pocket.

  Goo’s pale, arched foot was trapped in the wire cage. Now the gloved hand opened the rear door and a gray pigeon appeared, as if pulled from a hat. The pigeon was quickly pushed into the cage and the rear door latched. The pigeon crouched there, placid and dumbly staring.

  The egg of orange light began to grow.

  It widened to expose Goo’s hips. Her other leg was crumpled, hidden. The tattered, yellow-white dress lay like dirty snow around her. Her arms were splayed and apparently powerless. She was not restrained, however. She was deliciously passive and Theseus wanted to laugh. The girl was dangerous. Her eyes were shut tight and her ears flattened, feline against her skull. There was a thin pillow beneath her head. The Lady Adore crouched at the edge of the light, near the wire cage. She wore leather pants and no shoes. The coiled black cloth around her torso resembled a bandage more than a shirt. In her gloved hands, she held a bundle of damp gray rags. Adore appeared motionless, barely breathing as the orange light swelled. Adore placed the rags at the rear door of the cage, perhaps six inches from the forlorn pigeon. She lit a match, and the little bundle began to burn. Theseus groaned, sweating.

  The pigeon was frantic. It hopped up and down and sideways, like a grasshopper. Adore pulled a straight razor from the cuff of one velvet glove and began to cut and slash briskly at Goo’s clothes. The pigeon threw itself against the wires as if it might kill itself, then abruptly stopped. Instead, it attacked Goo’s trapped foot. The wedding dress fell away from the razor like paper.

  The bird was a mad, thrashing blur. Goo’s slim white foot was a web of trickling blood.

  The corset was so thick that Adore was forced to hack at it. She peeled it away and Goo’s belly was bleeding here and there, from superficial cuts. Her ribs were fine and shadowy. Her breasts were plump, her nipples red. Smoke from the small fire hung over her body. The pigeon was growing weak now, its gray feathers dark with blood. The Lady Adore cut away Goo’s underpants and tossed them into the silent crowd. She reached into the cage and cut the pigeon’s throat just as the orange light faded to black.

  Theseus smiled, pouring drinks all around.

  Multiple personalities. Don’t freak out but I’m pretty sure I have them. Not a clinical thing, not a disease. But a distraction to be sure. There are maybe six or seven pretty concrete versions of myself knocking around in here and I mean it gets fucking crowded when everybody is drunk or talking at once.

  And every so often the opportunity arises to assume another identity, to take another name and every time I want to run like hell, I want to run away from Phineas like his ass is on fire. Because I need a little personal space between him and me.

  Distance. I need distance from the others.

  But the other people I become are never strong enough. Or fast enough. Because Phineas wears them down in the end. He’s relentless.

  Early morning freak-out. I passed a construction site. Abandoned. Looked like someone was tearing a building down and then ran out of money. Their permit was revoked or something and the building was left half-standing and you could see this exposed brick wall that fifty years ago was an exterior wall but the building had been added onto and the wall was covered. There were old advertisements painted into the bricks, the kind that still said cigarettes were good for you. And rust marks in the wall shaped like the skeleton of a fire escape
and windows. A few of the windows were boarded up and plastered over. But the boards were rotten by now. Rotten and the plaster broken through. And through a few of these windows I saw people moving around. Combing their hair and drinking tea and reading the newspaper and these weren’t homeless people. They weren’t crackheads or squatters. They were just people. They all had that sweet laziness about them, that oblivious air of someone who is watching television alone in a hotel room in his underwear and has no idea he’s being watched.

  Thought I must be dreaming. Thought I must be deceived by the light but they were in there, I’m sure of it. And you know what? When I see something like that, all the other versions of Phineas scratch their asses and pretend they didn’t see a thing.

  Fuck them, right. I sat with my feet in the gutter and peered through the iron gate into the black space below, looking for dead birds and lost skateboards, rotting pumpkins. I scribbled in my notebook and tried not to lament my lack of cleverness. The cars flew past me and I felt more and more like an alien. I was the only creature in sight without a bright, metallic shell. It had occurred to me that Moon might not be so thrilled to see me. But I had no one else to call. Crumb would offer me tea and an amusing story about a guy who came in complaining of stomach pains, who believed he had an ulcer when in fact he was carrying a bullet and was too drunk to recall being shot. I didn’t need tea. I needed a job or a place to sleep. I needed a new pair of shoes, I needed a cigarette, and now Moon pulled up in a gray Taurus. The passenger window slid down and Moon stared out at me, his sour mouth twitching with amusement.

  Jesus, he said. Get in the car.

  Fortunately, Moon had cigarettes. And he seemed more than willing to drive around in forced silence for a while. His radio was broken, or so he claimed. We circled for a while, as if lost. It was a peculiar day. The sky was moody, inconstant. The light seemed to change violently from one block to the next and on one street it was actually raining. I shut my eyes and remembered driving across Nevada maybe ten years earlier. An empty stretch of desert, the highway glittering like a rope of black silver. The sun unblinking and the sky flat and silent as a stone. Peripheral vision fuzzy around the edges. A migraine, I thought. A hawk dropped suddenly from nowhere, swooping over the roof of the car and crashing into the luggage rack. In the rearview mirror I saw a brief windmill tumble of shredded wings, gray and white. As if the bird had exploded. And then nothing but my own face in the mirror and I had been baffled to see myself crying. How are you. How are you. I looked up and now we were sitting at a red light.