Free to be, in some distant future time, horrified by everything he was doing.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
In Hartmann's blood Shad wrote Race Traitor and George Battle Lives! and Sharks Revenge on the wall. Then he changed his blood-spattered clothes and called the police. He told them that he lived across the street from that nice Senator Hartmann and that he'd seen several men in masks break into the apartment. Then he called every television station in the city and told them the same thing.
When he went back to the apartment in Jokertown, he went to the shower and stayed under the hot spray for a long time. He ate the heat as it rained on him, and the water fell to the porcelain floor cold as ice.
The Color of His Skin
Part 5
Gregg had a vague memory of his soul being wrenched away from his body, and then of running screaming through the night, followed by a period of darkness. He wondered how long he'd been out.
Gregg wasn't quite sure what he felt like. That told him that he was still in shock, because he knew damned well that he should be screaming.
He'd been jumped.
He seemed to have come to rest in a midtown alley in a nest of discarded rags. They smelled of ... well, a dozen varieties of piss, a trio of motor oils, a trace of lingering perspiration from six or seven people, ancient semen and vaginal secretions from a few encounters, at least thirty old food stains, and a hundred things that he'd never smelled before - it seemed his new body had a wonderful sense of smell; hardly an asset at the moment.
He squinted toward the light at the end of the alley, realizing that anything more than a few yards away looked blurry, and the street beyond the alley's mouth was just a wash of color. He might have a great nose, but the eyes sucked. Wonderful. He was going to need glasses.
Gregg lifted his right arm: the stubby caterpillar limb that came into his myopic view sent his mind reeling again. He shut his eyes, shivering like a frightened baby. He tried the experiment once more - and once more what he saw wasn't even vaguely human. There were three short fingers at the end; he could wiggle them.
Taking a deep breath strongly spiced with the varied aromas around him, Gregg bent his head to look at his body. He looked like a four foot long weinerwurst dipped in fluorescent yellow paint. Six legs/arms. Spiky tufts of hair protruding from the cylindrical rolls in the skin. He couldn't wait to see what his face looked like.
"Fucking shit, I'm a joker!" he squealed, and heard a voice that sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk.
Gregg waited for the mocking, taunting voice inside. He knew what it would say: Whassa matter, Greggie? You finally got what you've always deserved, that's all.... But the voice didn't come. Inside his head was only silence.
It seemed a very small compensation.
He crawled out of the rag pile. He had to find someone. He had to get help and find a way to get his body back.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
He couldn't hail a cab - they wouldn't stop for a fire hydrant with legs. Besides, he couldn't even see them until they were nearly on him.
He walked to the nearest bus stop. The nats who were there when he scuttled up gave him sour looks of disgust and moved on, refusing to stand near him - which was fine by Gregg, as he found that they all reeked. Three buses went by in an incredible wash of fumes before Gregg decided that none of them was going to stop.
He went around the corner, waited until a group of nats had assembled and the next bus had stopped, then scurried quickly toward the open door. The driver looked down at him as he humped his way up the stairs, and the glare was plain even with Gregg's poor vision.
"Get off my bus, Mac."
With Puppetman, it wouldn't have been a problem. Even with the weaker new "Gift," he might have been able to blunt the antagonism. But this body had no such powers. He couldn't feel the man's emotions at all - all he could do was smell the stench of his body. He suspected that the driver was on the second or third day in pair of underwear. "Look, buddy," Gregg answered, "this is an emergency. I'm Gregg Hartmann. I've been jumped."
"Yeah. And I'm Elvis, and my wife's Amelia Earhart. Get the fuck outa here."
Gregg narrowed his eyes and drew up on his hind legs. He suspected that the gesture hardly looked intimidating. "This is public transportation. I have as much right to use it as anyone."
"Yeah? I don't see no fare, and I don't see no tokens, and I don't see no pockets where you could hide 'em, either. Now, you gonna back outa here or am I gonna have to toss you out, worm?"
Gregg glanced at the faces of the passengers. Most were pointedly ignoring the confrontation, staring fixedly through the windows. Those that were watching wore matching scowls.
"Fuck you," Gregg said "Fuck you all." Even to his ears he sounded like a two-year old. Laughter followed him down the steps.
Okay, he thought. I'm midtown in nat country. Who'd help me here?
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"Erin, I have to see Peregrine."
The nat receptionist peered over the edge of her desk as if she'd just discovered a hairball on her rug. Gregg could distinctly smell her shampoo, her deodorant, her perfume, the dry cleaning fluid on her dress, the coffee in the mug on her desk, the bagel she'd eaten that morning, and the toothpaste she'd used afterward. "I'm sorry, but that's not possible," Erin told him.
"Look, Erin, I know this is damn near impossible to believe, but I'm Gregg Hartmann. You and I just talked last week, remember? You were trying to set up an interview with Pan Rudo. I was jumped into this damn body, and I need help, and I need to talk to Peri !" The last word was a soprano squeal. Erin's face had gone stiff and red, but at least she picked up the phone. "Thank you, Erin," Gregg said.
Half a minute later, the office doors swung open and the lobby guard - another nat - was giving Gregg the hard stare. "This the one?" he asked Erin. She nodded. "Come on, bub. Let's go."
"I'm not leaving until I see Peri."
The guard almost smiled. He smelled of aftershave and last night's beer. And gun oil. "You can come quietly or you can make it tough for yourself, short stuff," he told Gregg. "I don't care either way."
"Erin - " Gregg began.
"I don't find your sick little joke funny at all," the receptionist said. "Especially not from a joker."
"Hey, I was jumped!"
"I had a lot of respect for Gregg Hartmann - he was a good man. Now please leave."
Gregg looked from Erin to the guard. They had the same look the bus driver had. He dropped to all sixes, sighing, and padded through the door the guard held open. "But I was jumped. I really was," he told the guard as the man escorted Gregg to the rear entrance of the studio. "I am Gregg Hartmann."
The guard opened the door for Gregg, let him out and shook a finger at Gregg like a parent scolding a child. "Listen, buster, I see all kinds here. I don't normally mind. But you're sick. Anyone who would make a joke like this after Hartmann was murdered like that..." The guard stopped. He let the door swing shut and walked away.
"Wait!" Gregg shouted through the glass, his voice piping. "What do you mean, murdered?!"
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
He found out some twenty blocks later, near Jokertown.
A half dozen television sets tossed blue light from an appliance store window. The evening news was on. Standing with his front legs up against the glass, squinting, Gregg watched the body bag being brought out of his apartment building. There was tape of the interior - blood was splattered everywhere, and slogans had been written on the wall in blood. The camera focused on one: SHARKS REVENGE, it declared, written in shaky, smeared block letters. The reporter on the scene was talking about "... one of the most brutal, vicious, and sadistic murders the city has seen. Back to you, Peter."