Urban Legends of the Future by Chris B. Bollweg
“It was reasonable enough for her,” Johnny pierced Thorn with dagger eyes. “But it did frag her in the end.”
Lex perked up, “Did she end up joining a zealotus cult?”
Johnny looked stunned, “Yeah, kinda. How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess. Word association,” said Lex.
“You guys hear about the Holy Knights?” Johnny stroked his lazyhawk.
Decker’s faraway stare glowed orange. “Fringewiki has them as a sanctioned sect of the Universal Church. They hunt Lilim. Claiming to have acute knowledge of their mentality and biology.”
“What’s a Lilim?” Trip cocked his horseface.
Decker groaned, “Dude,” exasperated sigh, “really? I gotta follow the link?” Decker’s eyes twitched back and forth, “Oh swallow my schlong, the intro is like five walls of text. Whatever, I’ve read up on this slag before. Lilim is like the buzzword for monsters according to the Universal Church.”
“Focus,” Johnny silenced the group, “I’d put money on the incidents being related. What Tressie, my girlfriend, did back then and everyone who’s moved out in the last few years.”
“Except us,” Trip said, “we came back.”
“Yes, except Trip and Decker,” Johnny took a breath. “Lex was next on the list. And me.”
“I was almost up on the fourth floor,” Lex looked like she was sleepwalking again, “Johnny woke me. I was dreaming about seeing someone for something important. I just had to get-”
“-To the door,” Lex, Decker and Johnny said together.
They stood in silence what felt like five minutes.
“So what do we do now?” Decker said.
“Tressie had to cross over into, ‘The Dreaming,’ is how the Madre put it.” Johnny put his hands in his pockets, “She fought an Incubus in the dream world. She won, but ended up trapped there.”
Thorn raised her hand, “I’m totally high. So did you just say that your ex is stuck in a dream world with sex demons?”
“Yes.”
“Wanted to get that straight,” Thorn stared at her floral print sundress as she sat cross-legged on the floor. After contemplating life, the universe and everything in the span of a JumpLoop, Thorn raised her hand.
“Yes, Thorn?” Johnny called on her.
“We don’t have to cross over into dreamland or anything, right?” Thorn’s eyes widened with untold horrors, “I don’t think I’d want to go there.”
“The sex demon part sounds hot,” said Lex.
Decker said, “That kind of thinking got us into this mess in the first place.”
“Fellow Das Komplexians. I think it’s time to see what’s on the fourth floor,” Trip did a stock adventurer pose.
*
Decker and Trip held up the rear guard. Thorn and Lex held hands as they climbed the wooden steps fenced in with lattice. Johnny was on point, looking to his left to the sky as sunrise finished. He turned to face the group before the door. Johnny saw doors opening on the first floor. From each one, a dazed face tenant shuffled out into the grass.
“You guys ready for this?” The group nodded at Johnny. Lex and Thorn gripped each others hands. Lex bit her lip. Johnny gripped the knob, breathed out, and… the knob rattled a bit, but didn’t budge.
“Uh-oh, guess we gotta turn back around and let our nightmares eat us,” Trip tried to retreat and was grabbed by the arms by Decker and Thorn.
“Someone give me your house key,” Johnny said, failing at working his into the keyhole.
“Why?” Thorn was incredulous.
Decker reached into his pocket and passed it up, “Because some of our keys are interchangeable.”
“What the frag?” Trip gawped, “I so hope our key isn’t the-” Johnny turned the knob with 211’s key, “-murdershackkey. Well I’m not sleeping ever again.”
“Been there, done-” Decker said.
Johnny started cracking the door open, “Enough snappy banter. Stay frosty.”
“You just said enough sna...” Decker dropped his head. “I’ll shut up now.”
They burst into the room. It was wall to wall filled with old cathode tube monitors and medical equipment. Different stats displayed on each matrix green on spinach green screen. From corners unseen, tubing and wires sprouted and crept ivy-like around the room. The early morning coolness stopped at the door. Inside, still air stunk of chemical and infection. In the center of the mess of med equipment and wires was a pink sickly thing that looked like an androgynous forty-something laid out on a gurney. Mummified corpses lay beneath in mounds of dust. It sat up. Beautifully terrible yellow irises flashed at the group. Boney bumps under its skin ridged down its forehead. Past its nose was a cross between a snarl and a smile.
It spoke, “Mmmm, the first course of our final feast.”
“What-”
“-the-
“-frag-”
“-is-”
“Are you?”
“We are trapped here, away from our brothers and sisters. Our life goal has been to bring our kind back to this plane of reality,” It pulled itself upright. IV tubes moved beneath its new-flesh pink torso. “Here, we can thrive again. Avoid stagnating as a pustulant sect of lotus eaters. Feeding upon our drug that is humanity’s lust and dreams. Staying numb to the world that birthed us, the world that sorely needs us to keep it in check.”
Several things happened at once.
Lex turned and ran from the shack back down the steps, only to be turned back by a score of Das Komplexians surrounding the spiral staircase. Trip fainted. Decker goggled at the surrounding monitors. Thorn gave a rapid fire string of expletives. The creature switched its gaze to unconscious Trip and licked its lips. Johnny reached under his shirt like he was scratching his back.
“So sick of all these pitiful so called dreamers and artists this pit attracts. This horrid shack has barely sustained our hunger since the seventies.”
“Only twenty some odd years ain’t so bad,” Decker said. He stared at the asexual pink thing’s life support tangle of wires and tubing.
“The nineteen seventies.”
“That’s a pretty low shot,” Johnny said, fingers tensing against the rubber grip of his M9 tucked in his waistband.
“You try practically starving that long,” The Incubus/Succubus pulled itself closer to the edge of the gurney. Wires and IV’s tugged at rollable freestands. The monitors toppled over in a domino effect, sparking and bursting on impact. It pulled itself free from its life giving bonds, spraying a not red dark liquid from the holes. The creature’s eyes flared with greedy laser red light as it lunged for Trip’s body.
The crack echoed about in the hardly insulated room, ringing out for klicks around. Johnny’s tinnitus rose a half step up the scale. The thing doubled over itself and slumped off the gurney, pulling the last standing monitors to the floor with it. Johnny blinked away drops of its blood on his eyelashes. Thorn shrieked in absolute horror, covered in foreign insides. Decker stared on in wide eyed wonder as if he were videotaping the event. Decker brought Trip back around, let him know it was okay now, and got him to his feet.
Murmurs rose from the courtyard behind them. A shrill whistle, followed by Lex’s 818girl drawl, “Guys, get down here, c’mon.”
More bursts of random whistling. Johnny blew smoke out of the barrel, switched on the safety, and left the room. The remaining crew shuffled behind, looking dazed and covered in gore. The sun was already a shaded light bulb behind the smog layer. Every door in Das Komplex stood wide open. Each resident had moved from the spiral staircase to gather around the stage. Those that could grabbed a seat on the courtyard bleachers.
Decker, Johnny, Thorn, and Trip moved through the parting crowd and sat on the lip of the stage. Ghetto birds whooped in the distance. Lex stood before the blood splattered group, “So? Are you gonna tell us what’s up there?”
five
Heroine with a Thousand Faces
[OC2099CE]
“I’m telling ya
Tanya’s heels staccato click in the enclosed space. Ocean City summer humidity rippled the flyers in the swamplike conditions . Tanya was thankful for choosing the backless dress as sweat beads slide into her pantyline, “I am in my skin. I’ve only met Jynx, kinda, twice. I thought he was just a flamboyant dealer, not some street urchin impressario. But, let’s get raw here, this is a shady as frag part of Chinatown.”
Watty stops before the door, softshoes, adjusts his widebrimmed cap, and tosses his cane between his hands as if it were a great feat of dexterity, “We’re here invited. It’s okay. We might not know anyone else, but whatever. We know Jynx and this is his Cathedral. Bud culture’s about bleeding in anyway.”
Tanya opens her mouth, Watty holds a finger to his lips, one-eighties on his heels and raps on the industrial door with his cane.
Door opens with a rush of environment control. A cross-armed palooka in a black t-shirt gave an ocular patdown with yellow glowing implants, “Name?”
“Reginald ‘Watty’ Watson VII, and my esteemed colleague, Tanya Danger Hearst.”
A far off look from Palooka, “Not on the list.”
“You just read, ‘the list,’ right now? Right there?” Watty snaps his fingers, “Just like that?” Watty leans on his cane, blowing charm out his ass, “Certainly there’s some kind of mistake.”
“If you could page Jynx and let him know we’re here, I’m sure-”
“-Lady, do you know how many times a night I have this conversation?”
“Is it because there’s no list?”
Palooka could not look more exasperated. He pushes down his right tragus with a finger, “Jynx, more gatecrashers, ride in on cam F-Sec 009D.” Tanya blocks her cleavage with her clutch. The Palooka scans the duo head to toe and screws his face, “You sure?” Then says with a sigh, “Welcome to the party. Do what thou wilt, harm no one unless requested.” He beckons Tanya and Watty towards the dull thud of a kick drum on the other side of the airlock.
The outer door seals behind them with a magnetic, *CHUNK* followed by pressurization. With Watty behind her, Tanya couldn’t get out of the cramped space fast enough. A door hisses apart at a slant on the other side, opening up into a sweaty congregation of writhing bodies, pulsing lights and ultra-heavy beats.
Panic froze up Tanya’s spine. Her summer dress barely covered her knees knocking at the display before her. Walking into restaurants gave her panic attacks. This bordello of iniquity turned Tanya’s blood to cryosaline. As far as the eye could see were modders, tempers, slagheads, artists, tekheds, thespies, furries, band-aids, leather daddies, tops, bottom bitches, slicers, gadflys, femme fatales and further societal detritus inhabiting a hive of sin and skullduggery.
Watty put a hand on her slick back. Tanya didn’t budge, heels firm on the glowing lucite floor. A temper, with reptilian eyes set in the sides of her scaly head, stares at them cockeyed. She forced her slaveboy’s attention that way and laps a cocktail with a forked tongue. Tanya’s heartbeat moves her breastbone, sweat pouring off her forehead. Watty says into her ear, “Let’s go. If you wanna remedy your anxiety, we gotta mosey.”
Tanya stops hyperventilating. She takes an awkward step forward, the sole of her foot slips along the shoe lining. Watty steadies her, “That’s right,” he says, “work the legs. Right foot, left foot. Heel-toe, heel-toe. Or I guess toe-heel, toe-heel, for your shoes.”
Watty propels them through whorls of glistening bodies to the upper deck bar. “We just gotta find Jynx and get our slag. Then we’ll mingle a bit.”
Tanya grips her purse, eyes froze wide open with social anxiety. She recognizes the song the DJ transitions into from some classical track: AquaGenetic - Hyper Punch. A couple fish people in the corner lit up like Independence Day. Its cold bass line matches the frigid feeling in Tanya’s spine, sympathising her to the night groove.
Wouldn’t you like to try (like to buy)
A sip of my Hyper Punch...
The fish couple begin dance choreography. Pumping fists in the air, shimmying to the bass and twisting their webbed hands to the bubbling synth line. Tanya grips the wet bar as soon as it comes in range, “Okay, I’m with you. Now where the hell are we going to find-”
“-Looking for me?” Jynx’s goateed face pops between Watty and Tanya’s shoulders.
“Jynxy,” Watty A-Frame hugs Jynx, patting each other on the back twice. “What’s up you debauchutant son of a prick?”
...Share a little piece of mind (peace so kind)
from the kiss of my Hyper Punch...
Jynx is beaming as he pulls away, eyes glowing a red that matches the hair poking from beneath a comical top cap, “Blowing off steam from the pressures of being un facilitateur de l'artiste.” Jynx solemnly lays his hand over his breast, “I swear to the Mother, the entire cultural center of this compressed turd of a city weighs on my back.”
Watty said, “Oh Jynxy, what would us unwashed masses do without you?”
“Fragging die under an avalanche of mediocre with any luck,” Jynx grabs a drink from a passing tray, puts something in his mouth, and downs both. He flashes a neon smile at Tanya, trying her best to look busy on her mobile. “Mmmm,” Jynx rubs his hands together in a serpentine manner. “You brought the trad. Every party needs one.”
Tanya’s blood boiled every time someone used that word. While a loyal Roplaxive employee and customer, Tanya wasn’t about to pop temp traits and chew catnip at underground nightclubs like Ocelot Guy over by the bar. Being a traditional human was an obvious novelty in the studio. But being a guest, she choked down the usual contempt she held for legacy ©ids. While she was technically an heiress to Pre-Corporate American old money, that money died generations ago. Watty was just some grifter punk from North Hollywood, but he claimed history with Jynx. Watty claimed a lot of things.
...If you seek you will find.
You can speak your own miiii-ee-iiiind...
Above the bar, holographic dancers slither about one another in a sensual show. Some blonde creep with fluorescent white teeth framed in soft pink lips makes eyes at Tanya, gesturing for her to ditch the boys and join him. Music and white noise chatter filled the air.
...Love will come when you try (when you fly)
(from)a hit of my Hyper Punch...
Jynx leans towards Tanya, “If I recall correctly, you’re not a people person.”
“No, not so much,” Tanya scratches at a sweat slick arm.
“Let us abscond this pit of excess,” Jynx kisses Tanya’s, hand staring into her eyes with glowing red pupils.
Jynx led the two of them down a staircase that arched beneath the dancefloor. Flashes of colored LED beneath a menagerie of dancers shuffles above their heads. With a keycard tap, a round door in the wall irises open. Jynx gestures for Tanya and Watty to enter with an, “After you.”
Mounted to the circular wall were displays of other walls adorned with early 21st century street art. Ringing the center was a sunken lounge of memory cushions. A wet bar took up residence in the middle. Jynx skips-to-his-lou behind the bar counter, thumbs open a panel, then spins an old fashioned dial combination. Jynx pops his floor safe, pokes around compartments crammed with contraband and plucks free four tablet-filled vials.
Jynx lines up the vials on the bar. Tanya counts twenty tabs per vial and immediately feels her bowels clench with the need to take a skag. Watty admires a 2003 Shepard Fairey collage as if a fence in The Underbridge would touch it.
“I believe these were the little miracles we were popping last we hung out,” Jynx gives a sweeping gesture to the stash.
“How much?” Tanya’s hand already in her clutch for her cryptocred.
“Slow down,” Jynx’s voice like a Midnig
Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, Tanya hustles to the wet bar, spins the lid off a vial, and shakes two tablets into her palm. Jynx slides a over some water for the swallow. Watty pops a couple of his own while everyone else is having party favors.
“Go ahead and relax, my darlings.” Jynx spread his hands, “Rest your feet from those heels. This place is made so no one disturbs me.”
“Thank you, Jynx,” Tanya slinks to the cushion ring, stretching out, waiting for the hit.
Watty gulps water, “I’m gonna head out and meet the crowd. You don’t mind, do ya Tanya?”
“I’ll be out soon,” Tanya waves off Watty.
Watty makes his way to the iris door. It opens on three Triads and the sound of panicked stampeding. The Center pistol whips Watty across the face with a sound like a bat cracking a foul ball. Two more file into the back ranks.
“Just what the frag do you think you’re doing?” Jynx storms from behind the bar, meeting the group of Chinese gunmen head on.