Some Party
An urban horror.
I
They had lost Jason somewhere along the way.
The cab reeked of cigarettes and bile. Tariq couldn’t be sure if it had smelled that way before they sat inside or if they brought the stench with them. There were six of them packed into the van then; Gus and Moira, still pawing at each other hungrily in the backseat; Natalia and Khris, his arm draped lazily around her shoulder; Kanya, talking to the driver up-front; and Tariq, squished piteously up against the smudged driver’s side window in the middle row, watching the cabbie weave through the Friday night traffic.
Jason had been fine when they got to the absinthe bar off Ludlow. At least, Tariq thought he had been fine. He was struggling to remember. The night was already a thick-blooded haze of good liquor and bad beer. His bowels churned beneath his seatbelt and the garlic on his breath from dinner made his eyes water. Jason had been fine, Tariq told himself again. He had told himself the same when Jason staggered off into the bathroom past the dart-board, told himself the same when Jason’s pallid face came poking out from behind the door, told himself the same when an errant dart caromed off his forehead and his head went crack against the door-frame, told himself the same when he was the only one sober enough to stick his friend and forty dollars in another cab and slur out a half-remembered address to the driver. Jason had been fine.
Jason was gone, though, and they were moving on. Kanya had picked out the next place, said it was really cool, said there was never a line because all the pro-bros and corporate types who went out north of Houston never went there.
“I hope Jason’s okay,” Tariq said out loud, to no one in particular. Gus broke free of Moira’s lips long enough to laugh from the backseat. No one else said anything. Kanya was still talking to the driver about… something. Movies, maybe? It was hard for Tariq to hear. He felt as if the absinthe had swam up through his ears. The world was an echo of the bar he left, or the echo of some other bar, or maybe the echo of the thousand bars that lined 2nd Ave up and up and up -
The cabbie kicked them out around the corner, saying he didn’t want to turn down the street. Kanya thanked him anyway and handed him a fifty-dollar bill. Nobody even checked the meter, Tariq thought. It was 11:49 PM.
The street was indistinguishable from any of those other residential blocks that flared off the avenues downtown — big brownstone spokes off neon wheels. Tariq’s head was starting to hurt. He needed more drink. There was nothing around that looked remotely like a club. It was all tall stoops and blackened windows and trash cans tied to spiked latch-gates. Kanya kept leading them further and further down the street, until Tariq could make out the color of the stoplight at the intersection on the other side. Just when he was about to ask where they were going, Kanya turned, walked up a gilded set of marble steps, and pulled twice on an ornate door-knocker in the shape of a goat.
Tariq had expected her to go back with him, but Kanya had disappeared when Jason fell down outside the bathroom back at the absinthe bar. Tariq had looked for her briefly, but Jason was rolling and moaning on the floor and he had quickly given up. After he had called the cab and loaded Jason up, Tariq had gone back inside to find Kanya waiting by the bar with the rest of the group. They hadn’t seemed to notice her absence — but they had never noticed his either, for that matter. Where did you go? Tariq had asked her. Jason’s all fucked up.
Kanya hadn’t answered, but had turned to face him. Her eyes were bright, but her face… there had been a strange look there, Tariq thought. He couldn’t be sure of anything — the absinthe had kicked in at that point, but there had been a strange look there, hadn’t there? It had been something pale and far-off, something crooked — like the refraction of an expression. It was if her face had been sculpted by someone who had only heard about what people were supposed to look like — a bad copy printed on cheap stock.
Fuck, I’m fucked up, Tariq thought. The rest of the group hadn’t noticed anything wrong back at the bar. Everything must have been fine, he told himself. Gus had started making out with Moira at that point. Khris and Natalia were talking, nose to nose. Jason’s all fucked up! Tariq had said, even louder that time, to rouse them. Kanya hadn’t answered. No one had answered. The next thing they had known, Kanya had started telling them all about this club and they were all outside, hailing a cab.
He couldn’t say why it was nagging at him, why no one could say where Kanya had gone, or why no one could say when she had left or when she had gotten back. Tariq replayed the night: they got to the bar… they drank… Kanya was there… Jason… the bathroom… Kanya was gone… just standing there, then gone… Jason passed out… the cab… Kanya came back…
The sound of an old hinge snapped Tariq back to the brownstone. The door at the top of the steps creaked open. A rush of sound spilled out from the crack — the smooth undulating bass of a dance-beat layered atop the din of stomping feet and garbled voices. Tariq cocked his head around Khris’s shoulder, but he couldn’t see who had opened the door. “We’re in the mood for a party,” Kanya said.
Whoever it was, they slammed the door in Kanya’s face. All sound dropped out. It was if the party within had just stopped. The street filled back up with not-so-distant horns and sirens and chatter. On their block, however, all became still.
Louder this time, Kanya said, “Hey! Asshole! We’re in the mood for a fucken party! Didn’t you hear me?!”
She kicked the door. Nothing happened.
“Fuck is this place?” Gus asked.
“They’re not going to let us in, let’s just go — ” Natalia began, but just as she beckoned Khris to leave, the door swung back open. As suddenly as it had stopped, the night rekindled with the sounds of club-tunes and bad decisions.
A man stood in the doorway. He wore pastel shorts and brown boat-shoes and a crooked bucket-hat atop his mop of curled hair. His eyes were alight with booze and expectation, but his face… his face…
“What the fuck, bitch?” the douchebag asked, raising an angry beer bottle in Kanya’s direction. She snatched the bottle out of his hand before he could react. The guy’s eyes narrowed in fury. Again though, his face, Tariq thought, what’s wrong with his face?
Kanya broke the bottle upside his head. Those lively eyes rolled back into his skull and he toppled back through the doorway.
They all started shouting at once:
“Holy shit girl what the fuck!” and “what the fuck you doing?!” and “fucking crazy” and a simple “oh, shit,” from Gus.
Tariq watched as Kanya stepped over the threshold and entered the apartment. She took a few steps past the unconscious douchebag before looking back, gesturing to the others to follow. The rest of the group stood, unmoving, looks of incredulity still dripping off their faces. Only Tariq seemed unsurprised.
He watched as Kanya stared at them expectantly. Her eyes were full of mischief and pride, but her face looked just as it did at the bar; vacant and twisted and sallow in the hall-light, devoid of expression. It was the same face he had seen on the douchebag before she hit him. It was the same face he had worn as she hit him: even as his eyes had darkened and rolled back, Tariq had seen his mouth and cheeks and brow and jowls hang stiffly from the ruddy weight of his face, seen that blank, facsimile expression remain etched and settled on his pimpled skin.
“Fuck it,” Moira said, and stepped up into the doorway.
The rest of them followed swiftly after. Tariq was the last to remain on the top step, looking down at the man splayed out across the floor. His face was awash in the sickly mustard glow from the hall-lights. His eyes were closed, but Tariq could see he still wore the same void expression. He could have been awake but for his eyes, could have been in pain, could have been joyful, sad, content… could have been anything. Anything and nothing.
“Tariq,” Khris called over his shoulder, “let’s go, it’s fucking lit in here.”
When Tariq finally stepped through the door, he took care to make sure it wasn’t locked before closing it behind him.
II
The hallway ran down the length of the building and past a stairwell. Tariq tried to glance upward, but the first landing was thick with old furniture and dusty tarps, and anything beyond was obscured by the angle of the railings. The light beat down with an ugly fluorescence. The sound of music and bodies sent his head spinning.
The door at the end of the hall opened into a cavernous apartment. Tairq entered to find Khris and Moira scurrying off for drinks, Gus and Natalia leaning against the wall to wait for them, and Kanya talking to another man, who was leaning up against a half-rotted stud that ran from up from the floor into the shadow above. All the dividing walls within the apartment had been torn down and the high ceilings stretched across the darkness.
The apartment was massive, and Tariq could make out the crumbling remnants of splendid vaulted arches where the entrances to the old rooms had once stood. The floor was rough concrete, the walls torn wallpaper. Tariq saw that the pattern printed upon the walls matched the door-knocker outside: an old goat’s head, eyes crossed and beady, with a matted snout.
Tariq tapped Kanya on the shoulder.
“What is this place?” he asked.
Before she could answer, the man on the stud cut in: “Want a drink?”, he said.
Tariq turned to consider him more closely; tight-fitting black pants, fading leather jacket with paint-stained t-shirt visible beneath, and down-tucked painter’s boots. His hair was greasy and long and his low cheekbones sat poorly in his sunken face. His nose was hooked and short and his lips drawn and chapped. Just like the douchebag and Kanya, his expression was as blank as the floor beneath them, but his eyes glinted with something that looked like malice.
“Kanya,” Tariq turned back to her, shouting to be heard over the noise, “Kanya, are you okay? Can we talk?”
“The bar’s over there!” Kanya shouted back.
“Kanya, where are we?”
“Get a drink, Tariq, shit.”
“Kanya, maybe we should go outside and call Jason.”
“Who’s Jason?” asked the man on the stud.
“Her boyfr-” Tariq began, but Kanya cut him off.
“Let’s dance!” she shouted, grabbing leather-jacket by the arm and slipping into the crowd.
Tariq found Gus and Natalia where he left them. Moira and Khris had returned with cocktails for all of them. In the half-light, the drinks looked an ugly bruised-purple. The pulsing strobes above sent strange reflections through the ice, and for a moment Tariq thought he saw something moving inside the glass. He blinked and Khris brought the drink to his lips and took a big swallow. The thing, whatever it was, was gone.
“Hey we got you one!” Moira shouted, pressing a purplish drink into Tariq’s outstretched hand. She clinked her glass against his and threaded her arm beneath his elbow, forcing his hand up to his mouth. As Moira pounded it, Tariq closed his lips tightly against the cocktail. It broke strange against his mouth — cool and hot at the same time. For half-a-heartbeat he thought he felt something try to pry open his lips and rush inside, but Moira let her hand drop and he quickly pulled the glass away.
“I think we should go,” Tariq said to the group.
“You kidding bruh, this place is sick,” Gus said. “And it’s fucking packed. These drinks were free man, open fucking bar. Did anyone even pay to get in?”
“Nah fucking Kanya decked the dude at the door, remember?” Khris laughed.
Natalia brought her hand to her mouth in exaggerated shock. “Oh shit that was fucking sick, I forgot about that!”
Tariq cocked his head at her. “That literally just happened, what are you talking abou — ”
His friends melted into the crowd before he could finish. Gus and Moira went off to dance, Khris and Natalia pushed their way through the throng to stand by the bar, and Kanya was still nowhere to be seen. Tariq was standing by the door awkwardly, staring down at his full glass, when a shadow crossed the strobe-light in front of him.
Leather-jacket stepped beside him and leaned a shoulder up against the wallpaper. He took a long sip from his drink — a light lime-colored mixture inside a crystal goblet that reminded Tariq uncomfortably of the absinthe curdling in his stomach.
“What’s your name?” leather-jacket asked him.
Tariq pretended he didn’t hear. “Have you seen my friend?” he asked.
“Which one? The cute one?”
“She has a boyfriend,” Tariq said instinctively.
Leather-jacket laughed. “For sure. You look like you aren’t having a good time.”
“Look,” Tariq said, only half-aware of how drunk he must sound, “I don’t know you, man. Do you know where my friend is?”
“Why do you think I know where she is?”
“Because you were just leering over her, man, which is also not cool.”
“Because she has a boyfriend? Would it be cool if I leered over her if she was single?”
“I mean if she wanted to, sure, I guess.”
“Why, do you have a boyfriend?”
“No I fucking don’t, so.”
“So do you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Get leered over.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Tariq walked into the crowd, feeling leather-jacket’s eyes at his back all the way. He pushed into the rabble and desperately scanned the dance-floor for Kanya. The entire center of the apartment was packed with sweat and booze, moving and grinding and kissing to the beat. The song kicked up just as Tariq was trying to push his way back out, and he felt the crowd constrict around him. A sundry of leather and velvet and suede and cotton sloshed together in a drunken ballet. He saw guys in hoodies and guys in ties, girls in cocktail dresses and girls in jeans and high-tops. There were people ten years older than him and kids who barely looked old enough to drive, let alone drink. Their eyes gleamed with the glare from the strobes and the reflections of each other.
Everywhere Tariq turned, he saw that face. The same face Kanya had first put on at the absinthe bar. The face the douchebag had worn as he tumbled to the linoleum. The face leather-jacket had aimed straight at him, when his eyes loomed hungrily above. They danced fast and loud, that big pack of nothings, with joyful drunken eyes glinting off stone-carved skin.
Suddenly, a hand came down on his shoulder.
III
Tariq whipped around, nearly spilling his drink, to see Kanya looking up at him. Her face was still oddly blank, but her flesh was flushed and her eyelids hung half-closed and sunken. She slurred her words:
“There you are. Come on, it’s starting.”
“Kanya, I think I’m going to go,” Tariq said, avoiding her gaze. Something about the disconnect between her soused eyes and her impassive face was too discomforting to look at. He scanned the crowd one more time for the rest of his friends. She pulled at his arm again and shoved her face closer to his.
“I said, it’s starting. Don’t you want to see? Everyone else is already downstairs.”
“Kanya, I don’t care. I don’t know these people and I want to go.”
Kanya let go of his arm. She put one hand on her hip and brought the other to her lips to take another sip of her drink. It left an inky stain.
“Tariq. Where are you going to go?”
He sputtered, “I’m going to fucking go home! Jason’s all fucked up, maybe at the wrong address, I don’t even remember what I said to the cab driver, fuck — we should go.”
“Fine,” she said.
“Fine?”
“Fine. Let’s go get everyone and go then. They’re downstairs.”
“Don’t — I actually want to go Kanya, I’m not kidding.”
“So? Let’s go get everyone.”
“Text them,” Tariq said, but Kanya shook her head and turned away. He groaned and followed her out of the dance floor and towards the bar.
They pushed past the chaotic queue of people congregating by the ramshackle bar. Tariq turned and caught a glimpse of the bartender standing up from behind the scrap-wood countertop. He was wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, jorts, and a ley. He had wrapped a piece of elastic around the base of a gigantic foam-finger #1 and doffed the thing on his head like a cap. Everyone was laughing that dead-faced laugh while he lined up a bizarre assortment of goblets and glasses and tumblers and mugs, all of which were filled with the strange purplish drink Tariq still held in his hand.
Before Kanya pulled him past the throng, he quickly reached out and slammed his full drink down on the bar. As he moved away, he thought he caught a glimpse of the bartender turning to watch him go, but a tall man in a puffy vest blocked his path, snatched up Tariq’s old drink, and started to chug. Kanya turned a corner past the bar, walked down a short hallway, and opened a narrow door on the left side.
A ladder opened up into a small hatch on the floor of the room. Empty sheet-metal shelves surrounded the trap, but the room was barely large enough for two people to stand abreast. Without a word, Kanya stepped into the well and began climbing down the ladder.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Tariq nearly shouted, but Kanya’s head had already disappeared below the floor. He stood for a moment, weighed his options, and swung down onto the ladder.
The descent was brief; Tariq could see Kanya already stepping off the ladder beneath him. She crouched down and exited the chimney through a waist-high hole at the bottom, carved into the stone opposite the ladder. Tariq looked back up and was struck by a wave of claustrophobia. He felt as if he was climbing down some massive mortared drain. The chimney was barely wide enough for his shoulders to pass through, and his back kept brushing up against the rough-hewn stone behind him. It was too narrow to turn around at the base of the ladder, so he squatted down and reached back to grab the lip of the hole, pulling himself out and through. It was only when he reached the bottom did he realize all sound from the party upstairs had stopped — as suddenly and completely as it had when the front door had slammed in their faces.
IV
The hole led to another cavernous chamber, even larger than the apartment above. The walls stretched up into shadow. Tariq wondered how the ceilings could be so high, when he did not remember climbing down more than a few yards.
The room was dominated by a chrome-plated catwalk that ruddered down the center. It came to an end several yards away from the chimney. A throng of people had clustered around both sides of the catwalk, and a few were sitting on easy-chairs and beanbags near the front. The back of the catwalk was obscured by a purple velvet curtain that took up most of the rear wall, with nothing to either side; just dun stone and mold and nitre. Softbox lights had been erected on tall stands all around the catwalk, but the crowd would have been shrouded in darkness save for the dim glow of incandescent light-bulbs that hung suspended from unseen ceiling-fixtures. Tariq couldn’t see the far walls to either side of the room, so lost were they in the shadow. The lights seemed to hum with an uneasy shade of purple.
No one spoke. The room was dead silent.
Tariq padded quietly over to one corner of the catwalk, looking for Kanya. He heard footsteps on the ladder behind him and turned back quickly to see a few more people clambering out of the chimney. They came two, three at a time, looking normal as anyone upstairs — except for the faces, of course. Looking around, Tariq saw the assembled crowd all bore the same expressionless aspect as the revelers above. It disturbed him to think how accustomed he was becoming to it. He touched a hand to his own face, as if to reassure himself that laugh lines still drooped from his mud-brown eyes, and his cheeks still puffed like bellows when he exhaled. The alcohol in his system was fading fast and he felt sobriety creep up on him from beneath the dull weight of his headache.
Without a word, Tariq pushed gently through the assembled crowd on the left side of the catwalk. He saw no sign of Kanya, but Moira and Khris were leaning their elbows up on the chrome nearby. He made a bee-line for them, trying his best not to shove anyone. When he was a few steps away, the lights cut out.
Tariq stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t even see the person in front of him. He waved his hand in front of his face and still saw nothing. The blackness sifted down through his other senses. His hearing was dulled, his mouth felt dry, and the unmistakable scent of bleach wafted up his nose. It washed out the scents of sweat and booze that had filled the room just moments before. He tried to step forward and trod on someone’s foot.
Without thinking, Tariq said, “Sorry.”
The lights came to life. Tariq was nearly blinded by the harsh spotlight that burst down onto the center of the catwalk. It was quickly joined by several softboxes and a few more spotlights that must have been hanging from the ceiling. The light-bulbs above the crowd remained dark, and the light spilling out from the fixtures washed the close faces in shifting hues of purple and blue. Their blank features hung heavy with strange shadows, and their eyes danced with anticipation and drink.
Tariq felt something twist in his gut. “We need to get out of here,” he muttered, still half-drunk. “Something’s wrong.”
“SOMETHING’S WRONG!” a voice shouted over a loudspeaker, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Tariq nearly jumped out of his skin.
“WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!” the voice called again.
Tariq could hardly breathe. He twisted and turned, but the press converged on him, blocking off all escape routes. He dared not shove, and he dared not make a sound.
“SORRY!” the voice shouted. Anywhere else, Tariq would have laughed at the fight-night MC affectation, but not there. Not on that night, not in that deep, dark place.
The lights spun and focused on the velvet curtain. Tariq glimpsed Gus and Natalia standing on the opposite side of the catwalk, looking raptly at the line where the curtains parted.
And, sure enough, they did. Out from behind the curtain stepped a gaunt woman with sunken eyes and a shallow brow. She wore a threadbare red nightgown laced with pink and accented with ochre frills, and held a shot-glass filled with a purple drink in her hand. She sashayed down the catwalk, stopped at the end, and began her turn.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KI-DD-ING ME?!” the voice cried out.
Oh no, Tariq thought, oh no, please, oh no. He struggled to push his way out of the crowd, but the bodies pressed in around him. He shoved and grappled and tore at shirt and jacket alike, but there were too many of them. More still flooded out from the hole that led to the ladder, dozens trickling forth like ants, filling up the entire room, puddling together and stretching back into the grasping darkness.
On the catwalk, the model smiled. Her tepid face cracked open and out beamed a wide clutch of shimmering white teeth. It was the first smile Tariq had seen all night. The model raised the shot to her lips, toasted the crowd, and drank deep.
“TEXT THEM!” the loudspeaker boomed.
The rest happened too slowly to bear and too quickly to see. Tariq recalled trying to forget what he saw even as he saw it. A hempen noose descended from the ceiling over the end of the catwalk. Still smiling, the model looped the noose around her neck and tightened. Tariq couldn’t have looked away even if he wanted to, so thick were the bodies around him. His throat felt raw. But I’m not screaming, he thought.
The model gave three quick tugs on the rope, as if signaling some longshoreman. Whoever they were, they answered.
A hidden trapdoor thudded open beneath her. She plummeted through without making a sound, her head jerking to the side with a sickening CRACK. She hung limp while the echo of it flew out across the crowd — crackrackrackrackrack. Someone above quickly hauled the rope upward, yanking her high into the vaulted shadows, her legs twisting feebly from under the torn hem of her nightgown until they too ascended into the darkness. She vanished.
Tariq desperately tried to break free, but hands descended on him from all sides. They held him tightly, forcing his chin up and his eyes open, grasping his hands and wrists and ankles and chest. He saw Moira grabbing the hem of his jacket, Khris looping behind him to hold him by the collar. He kicked and bit and tore. Then, he screamed. He screamed as loudly as he could, screamed until the hall was thundering echoes, screamed until the bloodbeat of booze fled his temples and the fog between his ears sped out in fury and fear. His throat cracked and flecks of blood billowed into the spotlights.
“DON’T — I ACTUALLY WANT TO GO, KANYA. I’M NOT KIDDING!” said the voice from the loudspeaker.
The curtains parted and another model stepped out. They were clad in leather shorts and a silk tank-top. Beneath, one of their nipples had been cut off and the other was pierced with what looked like the horn of some animal. Their right ear was gone, replaced by another horn. They walked forward onto the catwalk, shot-glass in hand, until they reached the end.
“FINE?” said the voice.
The model drank their shot. They too smiled widely, revealing three missing teeth and a black tongue-ring. When they wiggled it toward the crowd, everyone laughed a dead-faced laugh. The only face that showed any emotion was the one above them on the stage, and soon it too had been threaded through a fraying brown noose.
“I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT I SAID TO THE CAB DRIVER, FUCK — WE SHOULD GO!”
The model tugged three times. The trap opened beneath, a life went down, and a body came back up. It too rose into the darkness and out of sight.
V
And so it went.
One by one they strutted out onto the catwalk, clad without rhyme-or-reason in sinister accoutrement; animal bones and torn gowns and bloody shifts of motley and emerald and cobalt. One by one they turned to face the crowd, one by one they took their shot and looped the noose around their necks. At each stage of their ritual the loudspeaker would crackle and the voice would call out, winding back through the careless words Tariq had said throughout the night, those innocent little protests and musings that had become death-sentences under the bright lights.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU — CRACK — I DON’T KNOW YOU, MAN — CRACK — SHE HAS A BOYFRIEND — CRACK — WHAT IS THIS PLACE? — CRACK — I HOPE JASON IS OKAY.
CRACK. Tariq finally started to cry when he heard Jason’s name. Jason, he thought, oh God, Jason got away. Thank God Jason got away. Thank God someone got away.
He wondered dimly when it would end. Before long he saw people on the outskirts of the pack start to move to the sides of the velvet curtain and disappear beyond its folds. Yet even as more and more members of the assembly took their turn as models, the crowd never really seemed to dwindle, and Tariq could have sworn more kept filing down the ladder to replace each victim.
Their hold on him never wavered, and soon enough Tariq ceased his struggling. They clutched him just as tightly, but even if they had let go he wouldn’t have tried to run. Not anymore. He was numb to the deaths on the stage, barely conscious of the dozens of bodies that fell and swayed and bounced upward into the void. He wondered how long it would go on. He wondered how many times he had spoken since they left his apartment.
But wait.
Would it go past that? Who said it would stop where the night began? How many times had he spoken today? How many times had he spoken yesterday? Did they have a model for every sentence he ever uttered in his life? Would someone hang for the first time he said I love you? Would someone die to the tune of his first prayer? Would a person go silently up into the black while the crowd listened to the voice mock a baby’s coo? “Ma-ma,” it would say. CRACK. “Da-da,” it would say. CRACK. “Bub-ble.” CRACK.
Finally, it was Kanya’s turn. Tariq hadn’t even heard the last dozen or so bursts from the loudspeaker, had barely made note of the faces of the last score victims. He was brought to the moment by the sight of her eyes, those two cheery green pools shimmering from within the ugly pallor of her frozen face. She wore the same clothes she had arrived at the party wearing, but hanging from her temple like an elaborate crown were two curved ram’s horns, ringed by a circlet of teeth. She whipped off the crown and bowed. The crowd cheered.
Tariq forced himself to keep his eyes open as Kanya arrived at the edge of the catwalk. The cheering grew even louder. His captors’ grips tightened as their eyes brightened with the thrill of the climax, even as their faces sunk deeper into impassivity. He could barely tell one apart from the other — they swam around him, bodies pulsing and pumping, hands extended toward the ceiling as if in blessing, mouths open blankly as they shouted out with an ecstasy their faces did not betray. The noose descended from the ceiling.
Kanya grabbed it with the thumb and forefinger of her drink-hand, the other still clutching her horned crown. Her eyes twinkled cloyingly as she half-looped it over her neck, took it off, put it on, took it off — looking like Mary Pickford in the middle of some half-baked gag. The crowd ate it up, their cheers mingling with raucous laughter.
“JASON’S ALL FUCKED UP!” the voice said diligently. Kanya raised the shot-glass to her lips –
“NO!” Tariq screamed.
The crowd fell silent. The loudspeaker clicked off. All were still.
One by one, the hands clutching Tariq fell away. They knew he would not run. They knew before he himself did. Tariq felt his face seize up. The pain and fear and incomprehension that had been etched there melted away, leaving only the milk-coffee pigment of his cheeks and the dulled red flush of a fast-fading drunk.
The boozy haze may have been gone, but it had been replaced by a different sort of fugue-state altogether. Though he didn’t remember telling them to, Tariq’s legs moved forward, and the throng parted before him. Moira and Khris gave him slight nods of approval as he glided past them, but other than that, no hint of understanding passed their empty faces. He reached the edge of the catwalk before he was fully aware of what was happening, but by that point, it was too late to turn back.
Steeling himself, Tariq clambered up to the platform. He looked down at Kanya. He did not need to try very hard to keep his face blank, after all he had seen, after all expression had been sucked from him. If she caught a hint of the feint, her own face gave nothing away. She too nodded at him, stepped aside, and extended the noose.
The crowd watched as he reached out to take it from her. For just a moment, their eyes met. Something must have moved within his own, because Tariq saw fear dash across Kanya’s, even if just for a second.
A second was all it took.
Tariq snatched the crown from her other hand and rammed the sharp ends of its horns into her throat. They crossed, one over the other, and burst forth from the other side. Her drink fell and shattered against the chrome. Blood spewed out of Kanya’s jugular and covered both him and the crowd on the other side of the catwalk. A gasp went up from the audience, but before they could react Tariq grabbed the rope above the knot and tugged three times. The trapdoor opened beneath them and they both fell through.
VI
Tariq rolled as he landed, tossing the crown aside. Kanya’s body splattered down next to him in a jet of blood. Tariq tumbled forward and burst out from under the skirts of the raised catwalk into the tight clutch of easy-chairs and beanbags that lined the front. He barreled through the crowd, snatching up an chair from underneath some woman and smashing a tall man in a puffy jacket across the face. Their hands reached for him but he bowled through, breaking out into open concrete and half-sliding through the rathole at the base of the chimney.
He heard the tremendous thunder of footsteps screaming for the ladder as he ascended. He dared not turn around, but he felt the ladder buckle and strain beneath the combined weight of a dozen hands. They’re trying to pull the whole thing down. Tariq scurried as fast as he could to the top of the well. He grabbed the lip of the stone chimney and hauled himself out, kicking madly downward at foes unseen. He sprinted out of the closet, slamming the door behind him, not even bothering to look for a lock.
Around the corner, the bar was empty. Where once had gathered dozens of drunken dancers and dispos there remained only empty glasses and the thick stains of contact. Even the #1 bartender was gone. Tariq barely slowed as he sprinted for the exit. The door to the hallway was open.
As he rushed past the stairwell, a dark figure vaulted the railing and knocked him to his knees. It spun him over on his back and began pummelling his face, his chest, his shoulders, anything it could reach. Tariq tried his best to block the blows, but the thing was far stronger than him. He caught a whiff of cigarettes and old leather, and the beating stopped long enough for him to see leather-jacket straddling him. His face had broken into a cunning grin, and his greasy hair hung sweatily over one eye.
“You dead cunt,” leather-jacket said, “we’re going to cut you open and gang-fuck your guts.”
Leather-jacket produced a blade from somewhere and stabbed at his chest. Tariq somehow caught the knife. Hot blood poured down his wrist and pain exploded in his brain but he held on, twisting and jerking the blade left and right in an attempt to loosen the grip. Leather-jacket pushed down on the handle, cutting deeper and deeper until Tariq swore he could hear the sawtooth groan of steel on bone.
Then, suddenly, from behind them both, a voice:
“Hey, bitch.”
Leather-jacket looked up as Tariq craned his neck backwards to see.
Douchebag was rising from his torpor, clutching the gash on the side of his head.
“What the fuck, bitch, who let you in?”
Tariq kicked leather-jacket between the legs and felt the bigger man’s grip go limp. Tariq twisted the knife, spun it around, kept it steady in his bloodied hand even as it threatened to slip out, and rammed it into leather-jacket’s ear.
Leather-jacket’s mouth opened in shock. Blood welled up behind his eyes. A single crimson tear tumbled down his cheek. Tariq pushed forward on the handle, and leather-jacket’s right eye popped straight out of his head. It bounced off Tariq’s brow and rolled away.
Tariq kicked the body off in time to see a horde of blank-faces appear in the doorway at the end of the hall. Face twisting in fear, Tariq shot up and bolted for the door.
“Yeah, yeah and stay out!” douchebag shouted as Tariq pushed past him. He chanced a glance over his shoulder in time to see the no-faces descend on douchebag, pulling him into their midst.
The next he knew, he was outside, running. There were footsteps behind him, also running… there was nothing behind him… they were crying for blood… they were silent… there were sirens… a cat wailed… a girl laughed… the trees and the dark buildings and the far-off stoplight spun and twirled in a kaleidoscope of blurred neon and night. He would go on to remember a raised hand, a fount of blood, the rotten-sweet smell of faux-leather seats, the gruff rasp of a pinched-face man asking him where he wanted to go, the sight of street lights whirring past through a stained window, the beautiful feeling of keys in his pocket, the front steps, words spoken, hands cleaned, doors locked and a bed waiting…
Hangover.
Deep beneath the Earth, in a place as old as the city itself, a crowd gathered for the fashion show. The sun was rising outside, but the only light in the depths came from the glamour of the softboxes above the catwalk. The last few stragglers were taking their places along the edges of the crowd. Two young men in acid-washed jeans and graphic t-shirts had just finished sponging some blood off the edge of the platform. A third was emerging from beneath the scaffolding with a bloodied horned crown, cleaning its edges with a damp cloth. The three of them vanished into the crowd when they were done. For a short while, all was silent.
Within a minute, the loudspeaker came to life:
“NO!”
The velvet curtains parted and out stepped a young woman in a crop-top and wide-hemmed trousers, with white sneakers on her feet and a cocked cap on her head. She padded shyly along the catwalk, teasing her narrow hips and flaxen hair with soft hands. In one of them, she held a shot glass filled with something purplish. Dark shapes moved and stirred within the glass. When she reached the end of the platform, she gave one — two — three good turns.
“TAXI!! PLEASE, TAXI!!!” said the loudspeaker.
The woman stopped her twirling. She gave the crowd a coy little toast before pounding back the swirling liquid in the glass. Her once-blank face broke into a comfortable, cute smile. She tossed the glass into the crowd with a giggle, where a haughty young man with coiffed hair caught it gingerly and passed it off to his girlfriend. A noose descended from the ceiling and the young woman looped it around her lithe little neck.
“UH… 1687 PITCAIRN ST. AND PLEASE, HURRY!”
The woman tugged on the noose; one — two — three.
CRACK.
