"Then it's the perfect place for a fantasy, isn't it," I told him. I wanted to laugh, but I couldn't.
While Night's Black Agents to Their Preys Do Rouse by Walter Jon Williams
I
Darkness masked the street, concealing its face. Those who walked in the Jokertown night wore their own masks, some visible, some not. In the darkness or in the cold unreal color of the neon light cast by the Jokertown cabarets and boutiques, it was possible to believe that no one, no one at all, was quite what he seemed.
Darkness itself rolled along the deserted sidewalks, absorbing heat and color unto itself, hunting…
The Werewolf lay in a doorway, bleeding. His Liza Minnelli mask lay crumpled at his feet. His olive skin was zebra-striped with red pigment, port-wine stains gone mad. One eye was swollen shut. The other two were glazed.
"Hey." The darkness opened, revealing an imperiouslooking black man named No Dice. He was dressed in a black leather Pierre Cardin trench coat with matching leather beret, a Perry Ellis sweater, a couple dozen gold chains, twohundred-dollar high-top sneaks, the kind with the little squeeze pumps, gold-rimmed shades, a palm-sized green-black-gold leather pendant in the shape of the African continent. "Hey." The man knelt fastidiously, touched the Werewolf's shoulder. "You hurt, homes?"
The Werewolf shook his head, focused his two functional eyes on the black man. He spoke through split, bleeding lips. "What happened? Why'd it get dark?"
"No idea, homey. But I heard shots. You been shot?" The Werewolf shook his head again. He tried to rise, but his knees wouldn't support him. The black man took hold of him, helped him steady himself against the doorway. The Werewolf looked at the flaking green paint on the door. Bewildered desperation entered his voice. "This is where it was going down! I gotta help Stuffy!"
"Police soon. You better shag outta here."
The Werewolf's hands searched through the pockets of his jacket. "Where's my piece? What happened to Stuffy?"
"Somebody hit you, man. Gimme your mask. Get outta here."
"Yeah." The Werewolf panted for breath. "Gotta split." He staggered away, feet dragging on concrete.
No Dice watched him for a moment. He reached into the pocket of his trench, pulled out a pistol, then put it atop the Liza Minnelli mask that was-this week, anyway-the Werewolves' gang emblem.
Darkness bled downward from the sky and swallowed him up.
The revival house was showing Jack Nicholson in Roman Polanski's Jokertown. The last showing had ended three hours ago, and the marquee was dark. The marquee swayed, creaking slightly, in the cold winter wind pouring down the street.
Across the street was a spray-painted slogan, dayglo orange on brown brick: JUMP THE RICH.
Beneath the slogan a young woman knelt, hunched over a chalk painting. She was dressed in thirdhand clothing-a shabby baseball cap, a pale blue quilted jacket, and heavy boots two sizes too large. She had to squint in the darkness to see her work, the chalk painting she'd spread across a full slab of concrete sidewalk. It was a bright fantasy landscapegreen hills and flowering trees and a distant rococo Mad Ludwig castle, a scene as far removed from the street reality of Jokertown as could be imagined.
A man named Anton walked down the shadowed street. He was a huge man in a large belted canvas trench coat, and he had a drooping mustache. He had a heavy diamond ring on each and every finger, sometimes more than one. In one pocket he had seven credit cards his whores had lifted off tourists in Freakers, in another pocket he had their money, and in a third he had a small supply of Dilaudid and rapture, substances his women were hooked on and which he sold to them in return for their share of the earnings. He wasn't worried about people stealing any of this because he had a pistol in his fourth pocket.
"Hey, Chalktalk. Baby. Ain'tchoo got a place to sleep?" The young woman sprang up from her drawing, faced Anton in a defensive crouch. The streetlight gleamed on needle teeth, flexed claws. A stray piece of chalk fell from a pouch on her belt, rolled unnoticed into the gutter.
" I ain't gonna hurtchoo, baby." Anton maneuvered to head off the young woman's escape. "Just wanna take you home and give you something to eat."
The street artist hissed, flashed claws through the air. "Aw, Chalktalk," Anton said. " I ain't dissin you. I bet you real pretty when you get cleaned up, huh? Bet the boys like you."
He had the girl back up against the wall. She was shifting her hips back and forth, trying to decide which way to bolt. He reached a hand toward her, and her claws flashed, too swift for the eye to follow. Anton jumped back, stung.
"Joker bitch!" He shook blood from his hand, then reached for the belt of his coat. "Wanna play for keeps, huh?" He smiled. " I can play that way, bitch. Bet I know just whatchoo like."
And then the darkness rolled over him. The girl gave a little gasp and flattened herself against the brownstone wall. " I believe, Anton," said a voice, " I told you I didn't want you in my neighborhood anymore."
Anton screamed as he was hoisted off his feet. The darkness was as complete as if an opaque mask had been dropped over his head. He scrabbled in his pocket for his pistol. There was a crack as his arm was broken across the elbow. Another crack, the other arm. Another crack, his nose. All had come so swiftly, one-two-three, he couldn't cry out.
He cried out now. And then cold flooded him. His bones seemed filled with liquid nitrogen. His teeth chattered. He couldn't summon the strength to yell.
"What did I give you last time?" the voice said conversationally. " I believe it was second-stage hypothermia, correct? Lowered your body to about was it eighty-eight degrees? Just made you a little uncoordinated for a while."
Anton was still hanging in the air. Suddenly he felt himself falling. He wanted to scream but couldn't manage it. His fall stopped short. There was a horrible wrenching of his knees and ankles.
"Let's go to the third stage, shall we? Shall we make you eighty-one degrees?"
Heat funneled out of him. He could feel his heart skip a beat, then another. Anton ceased to feel altogether. His breath rattled in his throat, trying to draw warmth from the air.
"I told you to stop stealing, Anton," the voice said. " I told you to stop pimping underage joker girls to tourists. I told you to stop beating and raping girls you meet on the street. And you go right on doing it. What does that make you, Anton? Stupid? Stubborn?"
The voice turned reflective. "And what does this make me?" Cold laughter answered the question. "A man of my word, I believe."
The darkness flowed away, revealing what it had left behind. Anton, gasping for breath, swayed in the wind. He had been strung up from a streetlight, his feet lashed to it by the belt of his trench coat. His pockets had been emptied of money. The credit cards and the drugs remained, enough to put him in prison. Or at any rate the prison hospital.
Droplets of blood made little patterns on the pavement as the wind scattered them-each, until chilled by contact with the air, a precise 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Chalktalk? Girl? You all right?" Darkness flowed toward the fantasy landscape on the pavement.
The street artist was gone.
The flowing darkness paused, alert to movement in the night, alert to body heat. Saw none, then looked downward. The fantasy landscape was brighter, as if lit from within. Invisible clouds traced moving shadows on the landscape.
And in it the young girl was running. Up over a green hill, and out of sight.
Night surrounded the phone booth, which stood alone in a puddle of yellow beneath a streetlamp. Despite the spilling light, it was difficult to see just who it was who picked up the receiver and dropped a coin into the slot.
"Nine-one-one emergency. Go ahead."
"This is Juve." (pronounced Hoo-vay). His words had, a strong Spanish accent. I heard shots. Shots and screams.' "Do you have an address, sir?"