a vial in a cranny of a cubby in the corner of the marble hall
You couldn't tell him he was looking for something. He wouldn’t have believed you. He couldn’t have, belief wouldn’t have him – not in the marble house. I don't think anyone lived there. People came to visit though, stayed to visit. He would bump into them, not remembering “the death of masculinity”.
He kissed a ghost, at one point. It was passionate, and longer than their conversation. It wasn’t quite pornography, but it was informed and deformed, a rare kind of love, to suck life into the face of a memory. It wasn’t his memory - he’d been fragged by his teammates and left with a hole through the hippocampus. He didn’t deserve any preserved memory, I don’t think. But he got some of her tongue, and that makes me happy, like the rogue jury that saved the scoundrel. Follicle filaments brushed his fingertips, and something began to foam out from their lip-locked intersection, a byproduct of sense-making propositions, a biohazard, but okay for ghosts, if dissolving, lysol-like.
Under the marble columns was a cubby, the place
where his addictions tumbled out of pocket linings, the addictions that didn't really
deserve the credibility of back alleys, but had greater mystique in sleep, a
strong hold and a gentle release. Mummies controlled the release, their noodles
would squirm and turn when it was time for a new term.
There was dust in the vial. He tapped out crumbs. Some
old crusted powder. A ghost-grade kranque. He’d just gone through a suitcase
that wasn't his. It belonged to a friend of a friend. It had things of value,
but those things likely had tracking devices hidden on the molecular level. But
there was also a hypodermic syringe with maroon stains on the inside and some
on the lip, a forlorn residue. There were cobwebs and wormholes in that place.
The tracking devices were sending signals via satellites, subspace, necromites,
to Great Boys who might have been interested in his whereabouts, and/or the
conjunction of himself with their dormant suitcase items.
They might have been interested, they have not have been, but
he knew a secret about the hypodermic syringe in the cubbyhole that no one else
knew, except maybe ghosts from the marble foyer who were neutral on the
subject. The syringe could be used as a shield. Information could pass through
with nothing incriminating escaping, only inconsequential discharge. A certain
class of black hole.
Dust spun in whirls from the air ventilation
system, wheezing drafts through a smirking duct. A rogue star above dropped a
bit of cool shine through the marble foyer. Black holes were out there, but
they could be almost anywhere. Black holes could suit a sunny afternoon, experienced
on the microscopic level, or not experienced. There were supplies somewhere,
weren't there?
He'd called Locin, and Locin had answered. Oh,
just answering his call, all personal-like, made him feel so special. Locin,
his Locin. He didn't think Locin had a heart, but he had gold somewhere. Not
anywhere obvious, he didn't WEAR gold, but he thought Locin might have been one
of those people who ate it in pills as a supplement. He might even have taken vitamine,
which has snowberry extract in it, and can only be picked on doubletake pikeways
in the dead of winter, deep in the forest of the super-rural sprawl, beware of
gods... You're unlikely to ever taste vitamine unless you're high up on the
supply chain, or you've circumvented the supply chain entirely, and unlearned
many things, and picked a lot of berries, and fallen on many paths.
Locin's sweet, almost deadpan voice, denoting hard
facts about inventory, connoting a friendly good-natured camaraderie in
business, distanced by a thousand yard dissociation, the fifty yard wink,
betraying no secret, but offering graciously his part of the agreed-upon
information exchange. The voice was a rocket rush, and a plateau, but the man
was not available. Oh, the heartbreak, all those chemicals revved up and ready
to go, but the captain of the fleet wasn't around to lend a vehicle.
Well, time will parse his whine, taxes paid to the
welfare cosmos. It doesn't help him now, it seems like empty words, whispering
to columns of the marble hall, but - hey, blink, you're not paralyzed anymore.
I don't know where you should go, but you might want to help me out by getting
out of bed and going to work or you're going to be out of a job and I won't
have any financial resources. Do it for me, buddy. We're in this together.
Ф