The sex of the thing was indeterminate. Under the dissection lights, though, it became clear that whatever it was didn’t fit into taxonomy as humans understood it. Miller and Jinks peeled back its various layers, leading Jinks to breathlessly ask, “Is this turning you on?”
Miller, scalpel in hand, covered to his elbows in gore, stopped cold. “What?”
“Well I’m wondering if maybe it’s putting out some kind of residual psychic energy. I’ve been dry as the Sahara for weeks and now I can’t stop thinking about boning you.” Behind the plastic shielding of her helmet Jinks bit her lip. “Or it.”
Recognizing that his partner might be compromised, Miller carefully removed his scalpel from the thing. “You want,” he steadied his voice to remove the sound of judgment from it, “to have sex with the dead alien?”
From what felt like the center of the room’s ceiling, a disembodied voice said, “Who says I’m dead?”
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
Being dragged along the cool, damp grass was almost pleasant at first. My body was being elongated by the tension between its own weight and being pulled along by the forearms, and for a moment or two it felt like a good idea just to be there. Then I heard the foreign words that sounded like Russian but probably weren’t and the growing noise of the surf. Without meaning to, I drifted back down into a darkness deeper than the night. When I came back up again, the surf was definitely louder. Closer.
Opening my eyes, it took me a few seconds to focus. The grass lurched underneath me in spurts, causing my stomach to roil. I managed to lift my head enough to see there was a man on either side of me, each dragging me by my wrists. Their sparse conversation was in a language I didn’t understand but it mostly sounded like complaining. Probably about the bulk of this stupid American they were getting rid of.
The flat, manicured lawn between Mitnick’s house and the sea didn’t have any thing to hook my ankles onto, and trying to pull on my arms would only alert them to my consciousness. I tried to pierce through the dark matter in my head to figure out how I could get the leverage to work free. I tried to determine if the Bruiser was still around, but I couldn’t see anything but the feet of the two dragging me.
Somewhere far away I could feel the wind pick up, coming in stronger off the ocean, as if just lifting right off the cliff face to splash everything in a fine spray. Someone spoke in English, “Say hello to Sergei for us.” It may have been meant for me, but someone else laughed.
I was staring at one of pair of shoes, my consciousness telling my body to move with a growing urgency that was still very distant, when a new noise barely rose over the surf. There were two or three quick swishing sounds, feet against the wet grass, and then a hard crack, and something landed in front of me not far from where the shoes had been. It took me a moment to recognize the white blob as one the Russians. Ukrainian? Belarusian? Definitely one of the younger men from the billiard room. He didn’t look upset or irritated now, he was just laying out across the grass, having released my arm, his mouth slightly open and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
A glimpse of bare, smooth legs, darting fast out of my field of vision. Somewhere off behind me there was a surprised, guttural grunt over more of the quick sibilant noise, and another hard smack. The air pressure changed around me as something else hit the ground. Then there was nothing again but the quiet and the surf against the cliff.
A hand on my shoulder rolled me so I was facing the sky. Cool hands on hot cheeks, I heard muttered Italian, Sophie crouched over me, the cream dress she was wearing light against the stars. Relief crawled into whatever evocations she was muttering as my eyes began to flutter. I focused on her, her concern blending into a relieved slight smile, the combination of which produced an, “Idiota.”
She pulled me into a sitting position, quickly enough that it generated an involuntary grown from the both of us. Ignoring that she said, “You must get up.” To either side of me were the two thugs, twitching in unconsciousness, and I thought it could be a mighty fine idea to join them for a nap. Instead, I looked over my shoulder to see that I was within meters of the cliffside. I couldn’t help but think that if Sophie had been a few minutes later the problem would have solved itself.
Instead I tried to clear my head and when I had gotten some of the fog out of that I moved to stand. Sophie put my arm over her shoulder and walked me a few meters, far enough to determine I could move on my own. With that, she gently untangled from me and said, “You need to go.” She handed me something, pushing it into my hand. Looking down I saw the short, hard cylinder of the steel-cored umbrella. Despite the dry night she had brought it with her anyway.
Good call, I thought blearily, the quickness with which she had used it to dispatch the two men an impressionistic blur in my memory, framed by the borders of my injuries. Partially to be careful and partially to make sure I could, I bent down to wipe it on the grass. I didn’t see any blood come off it, but it was dark and the umbrella black.
Almost as an after-thought I asked, “What about you?”
Sophie undid a knot she had made of her skirt to hold it up, causing it to fall to its full-length. She fluttered it out, then tilted her head back to run both her hands through her hair, straightening the dishevelment out of it with an ease that only made her more beautiful. She came back smiling, a new creature emerging from her adjustments, ready to go back inside as another guest, perhaps having too good a time. “I will find a way home,” she said, and I believed her.
It was a song so old that no one could say for certain who wrote it. It had been covered by everyone from Lead Belly to Nirvana and spoke of a mystery, the woman who hid in the pines, and a murdered husband. And in some places, if a troubled woman with a bruised face or a broken heart sang the words, legends said the pine girl would step from where the cold wind blows to take revenge. Johnny didn’t believe any of that and he laughed when he slapped Becky’s face.
They found his head in a driving wheel, but his body was never found.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
I ignored Sophie’s warning even as the room filled with Russians bristled. I quickly returned to biggest of them, a bruiser with prominent ears, resolving my features into an embarrassed smile, continuing to play the moron, but one that had caught on. Seeing my features finally arrange themselves into some manner of intelligence, Ears put a hand on my shoulder to firmly guide me back to the exit. Knowing I shouldn’t, I couldn’t help but shrug his hand off. A moment boiled between me and him, supercharging the room. Feeling brittle as a China plate I gave him a smile and said, “Sure, yeah, I’ll go look for him.”
I quickly walked out. I looked over my shoulder to see him smiling like a predator through the crack between door and jamb before he firmly closed the door behind me. I felt my skin burn with an ancient kind of humiliation as the tension defused into chattering sounds on the other side of the door.
With nothing better to do I followed Ears’ instructions. Lost as I was at least it might take me back outside where the house was easier to navigate. Following along in the silent hallway I could hear the party out somewhere in the house, a steady throb that was translating into dull ache behind my eyes. After half-a-dozen turns through the mansion’s inner labyrinth, I was glad it wasn’t any closer to the festivities as I came to an external door. I stepped through it, causing some security apparatus to beep at the shell of the house being momentarily broken, probably alerting someone, somewhere. I was just grateful it didn’t sound a full-fledged alarm.
I stepped out onto a green, grassy veranda, covered by a lattice of white woodwork supported by a grid of more Grecian pillars, these ones small and numerous. The moonlight filtered through the vines that sparsely grew through the framework overhead and I could hear the surf pounding against the cliffside that Mitnick’s house rested not far from. I walked towards that, feeling the gentle wind cool the skin on my face, the moon’s light almost cleansing. Breathing deep, regaining my balance I began to think about what I might do next. If there had been any doubt that Sergei had at least been known to Mitnick’s crew, their reaction had 86’ed that. But why were they so reluctant to admit he existed? Even the instructions out to here weren’t an admission of that, just a way to get an idiot out of the way. If a comrade was missing, why didn’t they have questions for me? That left only a few conclusions.
I hardly noticed the beep from the door, naval gazing as I was, trying to puzzle things out. As it was I barely got myself turned around in time to block the first punch and only partially at that. It was like deflecting a Christmas ham. The Bruiser from the other room was there and he didn’t let that stop him, swinging with his other fist, catching me in the ribs. I might have been able to do something about it, but his two friends swarmed in from the sides, kicking and punching, sending me down. It just became a confusion of shadows after that, them never letting up, punctuating the air with blows. Somewhere in there was enough to disengage my brain and the night didn’t even have moonlight anymore.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
At my abrupt entrance everyone stopped and stared at me, surprise quickly resolving itself into hostility as the Russians realized none of them knew who I was. Judging by the black leather jackets and tattoos peeking out from collars and cuffs of their dark clothes, I had stumbled on Mitnick’s boys or some kind of punk rock mortician meeting.
By the distance from the main party I bet this is where their boss had some of them stowed away, keeping everyone placated with vodka and herring. Now that they had found lady companionship, they weren’t too happy about being interrupted. Fortunately, all eyes were on me otherwise someone might have noticed Sophie’s surprised recognition.
The one with the cue stick stopped using it as a pretend phallus and shifted it to one hand as you might a club. He said something I didn’t quite catch, but I’m sure it was some variation of “Who are you?”
I went to raise an apologetic hand, prepared to leave the bunch when I noticed the man sitting next to Sophie, barely older than a fresh-faced recruit. He was very close to her indeed, and had a hand placed on her knee, perhaps there due to some joking or maybe with some encouragement. That tiny thing stopped me as surely as he had pointed a pistol at me. I felt my jaw reflexively clench, as if prepared to take an incoming fist.
When my withdrawal from the room wasn’t immediate the man with the cue stick repeated himself. The words, increasing in hostility, brought my attention back to him. He wasn’t the most senior of the men, maybe half-a-dozen in all. There was a variety of ages among them, but he was on the grayer end of the scale, a buzzed cut mafia middle manager with hair thinning at his temples. His ears stood out prominently from his head and I had to control a sudden urge to pin them back to his skull. Instead I blinked moisture out of my eyes and said, “Sorry, what?”
One of the men behind Ears began to get up, a big bruiser who easily picked up the young dirty blonde who had been sitting in his lap to set her aside. Some part of me noticed that Sophie and all the women appeared to be fine and unthreatened, which should have made it easy to leave. I continued to stand there.
Ears made a small gesture for the bruiser to hold back, thankfully wanting to show some patience in the boss’ house, and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
I brought out my best sugar-on-top American voice and smiled past a sudden pain in my forehead and swelling feet. “Sorry fellas.” Knowing I should exit immediately or endanger everyone I instead said, “You seen Sergei around?”
The growing heat of promised violence in the room went as cold as the vodka that I desperately wanted a sip of now. Ears shifted his weight to his back foot, narrowing his eyes to an evaluating stare. “Sergei?”
“Yeah, Sergei,” I repeated, all polite and oblivious. “He’s Ukrainian. Like you.”
That caused a slight bristling. Ears said, “Russian.” In the background I noted Sophie getting up and moving slightly to the side, readying herself for whatever might happen next.
“What?”
Ears gestured to himself and the others, “Russian.”
“Oh.” I blinked in a confused fashion, which I didn’t have to fake. Mitnick had Russians in his house. I covered this up by saying, “I thought that Ukraine was, you know, a part of Russia.”
Ears laughed in a way that suggested it might as well be, but said, “No. It is its own country.”
I followed with something that I knew was the wrong thing to say. “My mistake. But that’s a like asking you boys to know the difference between someone from Georgia and Mississippi.”
That caused more puzzlement, Georgia being both a U.S. state and a former republic of the Soviet Union. This resulted in further fuming – like most tough guys when someone started to speak about something they didn’t understand, it made them feel stupid. Lesser. Not a position they were happy to be in.
Having gotten everyone off balance, I pushed a bit more, “So you fellas seen Sergei? He’s a Ukrainian.” I smiled, having met enough Eastern Europeans to know that blissful American cheer would antagonize them further, but unable to stop. As if all this wasn’t enough I threw in, “He’s usually with that crazy brunette? The pale one.”
One of the men shot up, nearly spilling his drink. Another, an older vory at the back, so pale I had thought he was wearing a white shirt, leaned past the two girls that were flanking him to stare accusingly at the younger man. Judging by the number of tattoos and the prominence of the elder’s tattooed star, it was good for his longevity that the younger man quickly gave a believable, bewildered shrug. Ears remained still, keeping everyone else in their place, his squinted eyes, belying a low heat. “You know Sergei?”
I smiled, making like an idiot, happy that we were getting somewhere. “Yeah. We met at the Factory.” Thinking about what Sartre had said about allowing Mitnick’s crew into the club I gave Ears a sly look and said, “Say – haven’t I seen you there with him?”
The growing anger in Ears went out like he had snuffed a candle, so much so I thought I could see the smoke trailing off him. I should have paid more attention to that. Instead I listened more to what he said next. “Sure.” He stepped forward and almost put a hand on my shoulder, but stopped, thinking better of it. Instead he pointed at the door I came in and said, “Go out,” followed by a series of left and right directions. Trying to mentally follow along, I was fairly certain the instructions would take me back outside.
I gave a quick glance to the rest of the crowd to see the other men setting down drinks and moving to stand, getting ready to help me leave if I didn’t. All the women were staring anywhere but the source of the conflict, attuned to the possibility of violence and desiring nothing but to avoid it. Except for Sophie. Behind the men she glared at me, her eyes dilating with the clear message that it was time for me to leave. She couldn’t have made her intentions more clear if she had been signaling with me semaphore.
