Then there were the diseases. The last thing he needed was to be stuck in a hospital — supposing his ID passed inspection — or enduring a working over from some HospitalCorps security thug, supposing it didn’t pass, which was likely. Once the truth of who he was had been vise-gripped out of him, there would be a call to the Rev. Then disposal orders would be issued, or he’d be shipped back in plasticuffs to face the self-righteous music. I’ll teach you to respect me, I have been set in authority over you, God hates you, you are morally worthless, repent on your knees, drink what’s in the bucket, flat on the floor, hand me the two-by-four, you want it harder, I’ll make you howl, and so forth and so on, the familiar religio-sado heavy-metal perv litany. Pre-bedtime amusements.
When the Rev had finished with Zeb’s neurologically trashed, defenceless, quivering body, it would be into the rock garden with it, eventually; but not before he’d been scorched and zapped into betraying the digital pathway leading to Adam, and had been forced to plant some online lures and instructions for him, including the necessity of not going public with the Rev’s fiscal and sexual misdoings and the urgent need for a physical meetup at which all would be explained. Zeb had no illusions about his ability to withstand the kind of implementation the Rev and his helpers would be more than willing to inflict.
So that was the hospital option, supposing he caught pube rot. The alternative to the hospital route didn’t appeal either. Dick fester, stiffie shrivel, penis putrefaction: the internet scare sites on that subject were the greeny-yellowy stuff of nightmares. More than enough reason to avoid the beckoning sirens of the Truck-A-Pillar stops, no matter how plump and firm the thighs extending from their red leatherette hot pants, how high their fake-lizard platform shoes, how boldly engraved their dragon and skull tattoos, or how bimplanted the half-melons emerging from their black satin halter tops like rising dough. Not that he’d ever seen rising dough, up close. But he’d seen videos of it. Once-upon-a-time mommy retros that, to tell the truth, made him feel kind of weepy. Had dead Fenella ever done any dough-baking? Because Trudy sure as hell hadn’t.
So when the smudgy-mouthed, crack-eyed, jelly-bummed beauties said, “Hey, big boy, how about a quickie, out behind the doughnut stand?” he did not say, Coming and he did not say, Meet you in heaven when I’m dead and he did not say, Are you out of your fuckin’ mind? He said nothing.
In addition to the disease factor, he did not yet know how to navigate the dark and darker pathways of the pleeblands: he didn’t want to hook up with a total stranger and then wander blind-eyed into some alley or sleazy motel or dubious knocking-shop washroom and come out on a stretcher or in a body bag, if that. More likely was, they’d toss him into a vacant lot and let the rats and vultures take care of him. Now that more and more of the once-public security services were privatized, there was no margin in the proper burial of a drifter like him, or in the apprehension — they liked to use that word, apprehension — of whatever scoundrels might have knifed him for pocket change.
His height and his budding ’stache were scant protection. He was green wood, an easy target; they’d get that at one glance, they’d beeline for him. The pleeblands were far from the school playgrounds of his youth, in which size really did matter. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” the scrappy little bantams — more than one of them — had said to him then. “Yeah,” he’d replied. “But the smaller they are, the more often they fall.” Then a swift whack, not even a punch, and down they’d go.
But in the darkest pleeblands, there wouldn’t be any verbal foreplay. No rattlesnake-warning quips and banter, just a rapid stab or slice or even a bullet from some obsolete, illegal firearm. The Linthead gang was especially vicious, according to the net. And the Blackened Redfish. And the Asian Fusions. And the Tex-Mexes with their drug-war tricks — the stacks of heads, the legless bodies strung up from old movieland marquees. He figured there must be a lot of Tex-Mexers controlling the Truck-A-Pillar highway heading south, it was close to their territory.
Despite these reservations, or, to be more honest, despite these cowardly fears, he knew that his best hope of cover in the short-term was in the worst part of town. Spending too much money would attract jackals; he was streetwise enough to know that. So once in San Jose he kept a low profile, stayed out of bars, and blended himself into the underclass that swirled around in the lowest pleebs like rats in a dump bin, scrabbling for whatever they could pick up.
For a while he slung quasi-meat products at SecretBurgers. It was ten hours and less than minimum, he had to wear the company T-shirt and a dorkwit cap, but SecretBurgers wasn’t fussy about identities. And they had protection against the street gangs for their booth workers, and bought off both official nosies and non-official ones, so nobody hassled him. He felt sorry for the female workers: they were paid less than the guys, and they had to wear tight Ts and fend off customers and management alike. They should have been issued hard plastic visors for their tits.
But his sorrow didn’t stop him from finally acquiring in-the-flesh carnal knowledge with one of the SecretBurgers meatbunnies called Wynette, a brownette with big, dark-ringed, starved-looking eyes. In addition to her alluring personality — a euphemism, he now has to admit, for her somewhat meagre snatch, which was the part that fascinated him, and he apologizes for that, but such is the case with hormone-sodden adolescent males, and it’s nature’s plan, and he thought he was in love, so fuckit — she offered the advantage of a tiny room.
Most of the SecretBurgers meatgirls couldn’t even manage that: they shared overcrowded walkups, or squatted in repossessed and decaying houses, or hooked on the side to support some child or addicted relative or tinselly pimp. But Wynette was cautious and frugal, and hadn’t squandered, and could afford some privacy. Her place was located above a corner store that sold alcohol tasting of troll piss and paint remover, but Zeb wasn’t too choosy at that time, so he used to grab a bottle of it to ply Wynette with before sex because she said it helped her relax.
“Was it as good?” asks Toby.
“Was what as good? As good as what?”
“Sex with Wynette. As good as the decapitated Lady Jane Greys.”
“Apples and oranges,” says Zeb. “No point comparing them.”
“Oh, give it a try,” says Toby.
“Okay. The Lady Jane Greys were repeatable. Reality’s not. And since you’re wondering, they’re both good sometimes. But it can be disappointing either way.”
Snowman’s Progress
Floral Bedsheet
Sunlight wakes her, coming in through her cubicle window. Birdsong, the voices of Craker children, the bleating of Mo’Hairs. Nothing unhappy.
She pushes herself upright, tries to remember what day it is. The Feast of Cyanophyta? Thank you, Oh Lord, for creating the Cyanophyta, those lowly blue-green Algae so overlooked by many, for it is through them, so many millions of years ago — which timespan however is merely an eyeblink in Thy sight — that our oxygen-rich atmosphere came to be, without which we could not breathe, nor indeed could the other land-dwelling Zooforms, so various, so beautiful, so new each time we are able to see them, and intuit Your Grace through them …