Chapter 4: A Grisly Ending

Chapter 4:

A Grisly Ending

Jude gazed at the Phantom ruefully. There was a horribly mutilated dead body on the floor of the sewer, and a rather insane-looking ambig in a phantom mask panting, glaring at hrim, and drooling slightly. In a flash, s/he was inches from Jude’s face, and clutching hir by the lapels.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Xela breathed in hir Phantom voice. ‘Why do you torment me? What did you do to this child?! Do you not realise who you’re dealing with?’

‘Uuuuhhhh- uuuuuhhhh’ Jude’s voice caught in hir throat. S/he couldn’t make the words come out. This was hir first encounter with a cadaver since hir childhood, and it had to be marred by an insane ambig in a Phantom costume.

‘OK, this is what is going to happen,’ said Xela. ‘I’m going to tie you up by your biggest toes, wait for them to dislocate, and then I’ll start on your eyes. You need a dash of red there-‘

‘I’m not the murderer!’ Jude squeaked. ‘I didn’t mean to trespass; I just happened upon the body just like yourself!’

‘Prove it!’ hissed Xela.

‘I can’t. I just- have this extreme fear of dead people. It really- bothers me... so, um- so to confront the fear, I’ve decided to actively seek them, um, out, and to help them out, you know? You can ask my therapist!’

‘You are crazy,’ Xela concluded. ‘That story is so ludicrous that it couldn’t not be true.’

The two were quiet for a moment. They gazed forlornly at the corpse. It was only in this instance, when face-to-face with someone just as pathetic as themselves, that they realised how far they had gone.

‘Sooooo..... what now?’ Jude asked.

Xela remained silent.

‘Do you want to like, investigate or something?’

Xela turned on hir heels and brusquely walked from the place, dragging the corpse by the ankle. Jude hesitated a moment, took a deep breath, then followed hir.

‘So what do we do now? Identify the body? Or (ohmygod!) an autopsy?!’

Xela did not respond. S/he started climbing the ambighole ladder, throwing the child’s corpse over hir shoulder.

At the top, Jude looked up at the theatre. ‘Do you live here?’

‘Affirmative,’ Xela grunted.

‘It looks kind of- run down.’

Xela responded with a tempestuous look.

‘But nice! Homely!’

All of a sudden, a net fell from the rafters, encompassing Xela and the corpse. As Xela struggled to break free, hir mask fell off slightly, exposing hir face. S/he gnawed at the ropes with a frantic, rabbit-in headlights kind of motion. Jude danced around the trapped thespian frantically.

‘What should I do? I can’t cut it...’

But Jude broke off, as standing in front of them was an ambig in leather boots and a trench coat, smoking a cigarette with a debonair attitude, a lead pipe clenched in hir hand.

Xela gasped and said, Phantom-like, ‘who the fuck are you?!!!’

There was no answer.

‘Get this net off me! Who do you think I am?! It’s you – isn’t it? You’ve been invading my theatre! Do you know what I do insurgents?!’

Leslie Stoker kicked the back of Xela’s feet so that s/he buckled over; before the Phantom could recover from the assault s/he was brutally bludgeoned and fell once again, unconscious and slightly concussed. Hir feet were bound, hands also, and Leslie was dragging the semi-conscious dramatist into hir own domain, up the steps, with fluorescent dye accumulating on hir back.

Jude was left behind with the body. S/he danced around yet again, indecisively, and attempted to grab the cadaver’s hand in order to move it. After a second’s thought, s/he decide that s/he couldn’t and followed the other two.

A groggy Xela was dumped in the centre of the auditorium’s stage, and suddenly all the spotlights went up, shining brightly into hir face, making vision impossible to obtain. Xela could not help but admire the dramatic air with which her attacker was conducting neuself. Ropes were tied to hir hands, raising hir up into the air in a sort of mock-crucifixion stance.

S/he was left there, in the stress position, to regain full consciousness, which took several minutes. Meanwhile, Jude, hyperventilating, was pacing up and down the auditorium floor. ‘Are you going to kill hrim?’ s/he would ask every so often, but upon receiving no response, would continue pacing.

Finally, a face appeared very close to Xela’s. ‘Who – (s/he took a drag) - are you?’ Leslie Stoker asked, blowing the smoke in the now-unmasked Phantom’s face.

Xela didn’t think the question honoured a response. Hir perfectly smooth skin was reflecting heavily in the undampened light. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!’ hir scream ended in a growl. ‘You plebianic trespassing maggot! You freak!!!!!! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!!!!! You’re fucking Genghis Khan, ‘big!!!! You mongoloid filth-snapper!’

Leslie took a drag of hir cigarette and outed it on Xela’s untempered skin. The pain made Xela’s body twitch, but s/he would not satisfy hir torturer with a scream. S/he looked with willful defiance into Leslie’s eyes.  ‘You murdering piece of entrails!!!!’

‘I’m no murderer,’ s/he replied.

‘Then where did that body come from, ‘bigdem?’

Leslie’s eyes widened, confused. S/he shot a quick glance at Jude.

‘I know it was you, don’t deny it.’

‘Why?’ asked Xela. ‘Why would I leave a body on my own doorstep?’

Leslie could see reason behind the argument. S/he cut the ropes binding the disgraced actor and s/he fell in a heap to the ground. Xela got up and stretched. ‘Aaaaahhhhhhh that’s better!’

And with that, s/he casually walked up to Leslie, grabbed the pipe and bludgeoned hrim roughly with it. S/he fell to the ground with a surprised grunt, and trace amounts of blood dripped from hir head. ‘Defect.’

*********************************

Green. Everything was green.

S/he looked at the ground; the normally blue gravel was blanketed by a thick layer of mucus-like algae; and after idly turning around to address the deep sea diver, s/he noticed it too was shrouded the malachite scum. S/he bobbed around for a while, contemplating the unusual circumstances; then something caught hir attention. S/he glided towards the corner of the tank, staring at the cylindrical bubble-device; it was not bubbling; s/he understood this to be odd.  S/he decided that there was not much that could be done, and floated in place, thinking about the colour green.

Green. Does s/he like the colour green? S/he’s unsure, as this is the first time s/he’s ever seen the colour. S/he thinks for a moment and decides that that is a lie, as s/he has seen broccoli being cut up on the counter adjacent her tank, and s/he is quite sure that broccoli is green. After thinking about broccoli, s/he begins to list all the green things s/he has seen: broccoli, mold on cheese, Aloe Vera, watermelon. Hir vision begins to blur, and things begin to spin. Maybe s/he’s thought herself into this state; no, it’s not that – something isn’t right. S/he swims to the glass wall of hir tank and tries to look out; there’s too much algae, the glass is nearly opaque.

Hir breathing is off; hir gills are straining to pull in oxygen. S/he sinks to the bottom of the tank to conserve hir energy, using hir pectoral fins as rudders to churn the water in an attempt to circulate some oxygen towards her gills; s/he’s desperate.

The water begins to bubble; slowly at first, but then feverishly. The temperature is rising exponentially; the water is boiling. Steam begins to rise around hir and the water quickly evaporates until s/he is completely surrounded by smoke; something is burning.

S/he awoke. The putrid smell of burning plastecine was real. Lying beside Leslie on the cold wooden stage were the remnants of hir cigarette pack, charred to ash. S/he crawled pathetically towards the pile of ashes and pawed through them, desperately rooting for survivors. When s/he found none, she went immediately for Xela’s throat.

‘Y-o-o-o-o-u-u-u-u!!!!! You ruined them! You – you (no this isn’t happening, it’s not, it can’t be) you burned them all! They had so much potential!!!!!’

Xela fought hir off half-heartedly; in the emotional state Leslie was in, it did not take much effort.

‘Now we’re even. Let’s get to work.’

‘What the fuck do you mean get to work? What work?! And HOW am I supposed to do that while experiencing cold turkey withdrawal?!’ 

‘It’s been five minutes since your last cigarette,’ Jude piped up.

‘That’s not the point, little weirdy ‘big,’ Leslie said, and to Xela: ‘I’m not doing any work for you or anyone else, especially not The Tobacco Killer! You’re on your own.’ 

‘You’re such a prim don!’ Xela exclaimed.

‘Will you BOTH stop bickering!’ yelled Jude, and both the other two collapsed into startled silence. ‘You two are such selfish megalomaniacs! You’re both so pathetic! Have you forgotten about the body?’

There was a silence. Xela broke it, as was hir profession.

‘What do you want with this body?’

‘I’m just here to experience this,  to go on with my life. I don’t want to continue being afraid of dead people! And so far it’s working, because the corpse seems to be the best company in this room!’

 Xela turned back to her adversary. ‘And you? Or are you just a fan of gratuitous violence?’ 

Leslie ignored the stinging remark and replied ‘It’s not me, it’s my fucking parent’s work. I’m just wrapping it up. What about you? What does the Phantom want with a dead child? Take hir back to your lair?’

‘It’s my theatre,’ said Xela. ‘My turf. I consider this act –‘ s/he gestured at the body. ‘To be one of war.’

‘Well, I’m not the expert here,’ said Jude. ‘What do we do next?

*********************************

What they ended up doing next was examining the remains. On a slab in the make-up room, the darkly charred former child presented a strong contrast to all around it. Leslie picked at the flesh.

‘This is odd...’ s/he murmured. ‘Very odd indeed’.

‘Yeah, you don’t find dead bodies every day, hey?’ joked Jude, clearly apprehensive of the situation.

Leslie stared at hir sceptically. ‘What I mean is, this is odd because there’s no skin.’

‘Well, of course not. It’s been burnt off,’ Xela replied, clearly in awe of the stupidity s/he supposed to be around hir.

‘No, genius,’ replied Leslie. ‘There’s still whole chunks of flesh, so there should be skin, at least on some of the parts. But no, it’s been cleanly removed.’ 

‘By what?’ asked Jude.

The three of them stared at the corpse contemplatively.

‘So... you’re sure that the cause of death wasn’t this gash?’ Jude asked, pointing at the large hole in the crotch. S/he didn’t actually touch it, but the others noticed that Jude was uncomfortably close to the body, yet did not falter in hir determination.

‘I wouldn’t think so...’ muttered Leslie, rooting around in it. ‘Although blood degrades relatively quickly, this doesn’t appear to be an open wound. It’s likely something of a scar.’

‘A scar that looks like that- my god!’ exclaimed Jude, yet s/he did not seem to be exclaiming out of horror, but rather excitement.

‘It does indeed look odd,’ stated Leslie. ‘It looks like– like- I can’t even describe it! It’s horrific!’

‘Hang on a minute! Ha-a-a-a-ang on....’ Xela began. ‘I’ve seen that somewhere before... somewhere- where was it?’

And thoughts began flurrying through hir head, as if in free fall, as if they were sparkles in sparkly lava lamps, and then, suddenly, one clicked.

‘Come with me!’ s/he yelled, and belted off into the heart of the theatre. Further and further backstage they went, past rows of woebegone sets and props, down a flight of mouldy stairs and into the cellar. Here, Xela began shuffling the books and plays, searching, searching for –

‘What are you looking for?’ Leslie asked, always the sceptic.

‘Hang on- there!’

It was an old, dusty manuscript of a play by Aristophones, and adorning the cover, and inside were photographs of ancient Greek busts - and full statues. On the cover, situated on a large statue of a Goddess was –

‘It’s the same thing!’ cried Jude. ‘The exact same wound!’

‘How is that possible?’ Leslie demanded. ‘It looks exactly the same. It’s like mimicry!’

‘It’s here, too!’ cried Xela as s/he extracted from a pile of scripts an archive replica from the library of Alexandria.

The others joined in the search and soon had nearly a dozen examples of the strange phenomenon.

‘Okay,’ said Xela, spreading the manuscripts out on the floor. ‘What do all of these have in common?’

‘That’s odd,’ murmured Jude. ‘These are characters in the novel, yeah?’

‘Play,’ said Xela. ‘Not a novel’.

‘Play-whatever,’ said Jude annoyingly. ‘Well, these characters are all referred to a she. Not s/he. It’s in this one too, so it’s not just a typo, in Aristophanes and the Egyptian one they’re both “she”’.

‘But –‘ said Xela, hir brain working furiously. ‘That means – ‘

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ said Leslie. ‘They just said that in those days because they didn’t have neuter. It was before gender neutralisation. How does that help us?’

‘You really are thick,’ said Xela.

‘Fuck off, you melodramatic mistake,’ replied Leslie, hir fingers itching for the feel of tobacco.

‘Don’t you see?’ asked Jude. ‘These are all one sex or gender or whatever –‘

‘Yeah, the femails, I think they were called,’ recalled Xela, frowning at hir lack of remembrance.

‘Yeah, females! That’s what “she” means,’ concluded Jude. ‘And they all have these wounds that aren’t really wounds at all. These wounds in the groin that our little victim has as well...’

‘So you’re saying –‘ began Leslie. ‘You’re saying we have a dead female on our hands.’

‘Exactly!’

‘Holy fuck!’

‘Shite!’

‘God, I need a cigarette!’

And so they kept looking up facts, searching through the three thousand years of history for potential clues, for who would kill a woman. They filed through witch-burnings, Holocausts, human sacrifices, bizarre teen bonding rituals and military outings.

Around three hours later, they had enough motives to fill a file cabinet, but no way to veto or substantiate them. They decided to take another crack at examining the body for clues.

‘The skin appears to have been peeled off by a sharp implement,’ said Leslie. ‘possibly a carrot peeler, or a fillet knife or fish gutter... we appear to be after a crazed sushi chef.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Jude, removing a bit of matter from between the corpse’s toes. ‘Could be bone, or, plastic, or something.’

Xela and Leslie stared at each other.

‘You just touched the body,’ Xela said incredulously.

Jude stopped and stared. ‘Oh my god I did! I have to document this!’

And out came hir daytimer and Jude began marking down every detail of hir experience. This continued for quite some time until- 

‘Hey! Gary Busey! What did you extract?’

Jude looked at Leslie and put away hir book. ‘Um, I don’t know... some kind of fragment, plastecine, or...’

Suddenly, a shining light in the periphery of Jude’s vision eclipsed and s/he was plunged into a psychedelic montage in which the images had actually occurred.

S/he was seven, the year before hir plunging into madness. Hir family had taken hrim to the ocean, the last great ocean, and they spent several weeks on the seafront. On a Tuesday evening, s/he was running along the beach and tripped over something half buried in the sand. It was a large scallop shell, and it had cut hir foot. As the blood dripped onto the sand, Jude stroked the offending shell affectionately.  It had the most peculiar, the most unique sort of texture s/he had ever felt. 

Images once again catapulted themselves from hir subconscious. It was now only a few hours before, and s/he was reading a book documenting the final years of the Great Library of Alexandria. The librarian, the last Egyptian librarian, was set upon by a horde of Christians... she was skinned to death... using.... and who spent time directly adjacent to the theatre? It made sense!

‘I’VE GOT IT!’ 

The other two looked at hir.

‘By God,’ said Xela. ‘I think the little shit’s a genius. Well, shit? What have you got?’

‘It’s... a seashell,’ gasped Jude. ‘And it’s an old method of torturous execution, used predominantly by Christians!’

‘Those arse tumours!’ cried Xela. ‘That explains the garlic.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Leslie. ‘Garlic is supposed to ward off vampires, not goblins!’

Xela responded with a malicious look, as s/he took out a lengthy cigarette holder, and lit up with a respectable Zippo. As s/he exhaled a thick cloud, Leslie began to shake with rage and frustration. The shuddering grew worse with each drag that Xela took, and eventually fountains were pouring from hir eyes, and s/he was sobbing. 

‘You’ve – sob – smoked all this – sob – time?! That’s – sob – evil!’ 

And behind the mask there was a pause, almost like an expression of pity. Then Leslie sobbed ‘fuck you’ and turned away and the pity was gone.

S/he sat alone while the other two tried to work out an action plan, now that they had chief suspects in mind. After about twenty minutes of the at-times-philosophical trade-off, Leslie re-appeared, with an altogether determined look etched upon hir face.

‘I know what to do.

‘Phantom! You said these Christians break into your theatre periodically, yeah?’

Xela nodded. ‘They somehow break in whilst I’m asleep. I don’t know how, but they do it silently.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Leslie dismissively. ‘Phobia ‘big!’

‘Yes?’ Jude responded apprehensively.

‘What was it you said those pills that you pop sporadically are called?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Jude firmly. ‘They’re nitroglycerin for my nerves, so I don’t get angina I guess, but if you think I’m giving them away to you to get high, it won’t even-‘

Leslie raised a hand to silence hrim.

‘You two go to sleep. Or pretend to, at any rate. I’ll enact my plan.’

‘Um, why should we go with your plan?’ Xela asked aggressively.

‘Because,’ replied Leslie. ‘I’ve never been this long without a cigarette before, and yet my mind is as clear as a May sky. I should be rolling on the ground, utterly insane, and yet I am functioning, thinking and speaking above par. This is weird. But it would be a shame to waste. Now go to sleep before I put you to sleep.’

And s/he disappeared into the darkness. The other two looked at each other, shrugged, and lay down in opposing make-up lounge chairs.

‘What do you think hir plan is?’ Jude asked after what s/he estimated to be quite some time.

‘There’s only one thing it could be,’ muttered Xela. ‘Vengeance.’

‘You think so? For what, exactly?’

‘Look, dustbin, what happened to that –what is it called– girl is representative of everything that has marginalised us from this post-unification dystopia. S/he, or rather, she was killed because she was different. She was killed by people who want to get rid of differences, who want to chase me from my domain with garlic, who want you to be afraid of corpses, because that’s what’s normal. It’s hyper-uniformity. It’s essentially the sum of everything that has gone dwangy since neutralisation. And we need to get it back, hard.’  

‘That speech was half Che Guevara and half Die Antwoord,’ Jude murmured.

All of a sudden, there was a commotion from outside the theatre that sounded exactly like a very vocal cat doing battle with a cement mixer.  Hurrying outside, the pair were greeted by a most welcome image; a stereotypical occultist, complete with a rusty amulet, caught in the same net that Xela had been only hours before. Leslie emerged from behind a plinth.

‘Got one!’ s/he said, grinning the first true grin the other two had ever seen on hir face. ‘It’s good, right?’

‘Mate,’ said Xela, walking in a semi-circle as if around a particularly precious bit of wildlife. ‘You thinking stress positions followed by a rigorous course of cigarette burns would do the trick?’

‘A good a plan as any,’ agreed Leslie, and thanks to the lighting rod, it was lights out for the Christian. 

*********************************

Six hours later, the unfortunate theist was looking at an upside-down image of Jude.

‘Enough stress positions?’ s/he called out.

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ said Leslie, righting the Christian.

‘Oi, hang on,’ said Xela, emerging from the darkness. ‘You’ll need this.’ And s/he pulled out a finely crafted cigarette from hir robes and tossed it to Leslie. The latter caught it, amazed, and quickly said ‘Thank you’ before turning back to their prisoner.

‘OK, Lion-bait, this is how it’s going to work. Do you want to talk to us, or do you want to talk to our friend?’

The prisoner struggled to put words together. Six hours in a stress position will do that. ‘Who – who’s your friend?’

‘I was hoping you’d ask that,’ replied Leslie maliciously. ‘Jude- fetch her.’

‘HER?!’ yelped the cultist. ‘No – not her. I’ll reprieve, please. I need not contaminate myself.’

‘Fantastic!’ said Leslie. ‘Who is she?’

The Christian swallowed. ‘Some missing girl. From pre-neuter times. Somehow escaped the purge.’

‘Well, that’s our point. HOW?’

‘She was found by representatives of our group a couple years after neutralisation. She was living in Cité de Soleil, in Haiti. At the time it was the largest slum in the world. That was before this place, you know. But I mean, this is all hearsay.

‘Apparently... because you know, she portrayed characteristics of the Devil, so she was um – made an example of. Skinned and frozen. In a perpetual state of dying. Why not make a hell on Earth?’

‘What’s your name, Ambig?’

‘Alastair.’

‘So she was murdered years ago, why are we finding her now?’

‘It was a ritual! For generations! Take the cryogenically preserved half-corpse out of the freezer and scare the children with it. You lot just happened upon where we hid her.’

‘Thank you Alastair. That’s all I needed to know,’ Leslie concluded. S/he gestured to the other two.

‘So? You believe hrim?’ Xela demanded. ‘This girl’s been dead for four hundred years and they just keep reviving her to torture her for her genitalia? I’m sorry, that’s a bit far-fetched.’

Leslie paused. ‘Is it? After all the shit we’ve seen?’

‘Well... actually, now that you mention it...’

‘The point is,’ Leslie pressed on. ‘Phantom, how’s your organ playing?’

‘Not the greatest. Why?’

‘I need you to learn the Requiem Mass. As quick as you can. Go!’

Xela, puzzled, went off to practise.

‘Jude, I need all the nitroglycerin you can give me. Then I need you to go to the wardrobe department and-‘

‘What are we going to do?’

Leslie gazed at Alastair. ‘We’re going to give them a requiem mass. One that shall never be forgot.’

*********************************

 ‘And I hereby lay in state the dearly departed, Alastair Godfrey Smythe, in the hope that hir ascension into the afterlife is none too troublesome. Amen.’ The macabre priest turned back to the Holy Water and dipped hir forefinger in it. ‘Play on, organist.’

Music, fantastic music of mourning shattered the air in an orgy of sound waves. Down the corridor came the body, draped in a five-pointed star, carried by an assortment of ambigs clad in eclectic masks and robes. None of the cultists had yet noticed anything amiss.

Unfortunately, Xela had not had the opportunity to perform in quite some time; s/he missed it. S/he stood up mid-chord, thrashing hir head back and forth, clearly milking the character for all s/he was worth.

‘The organist! What’s with the organist?!’ An ambig in the crowd yelled, gesticulating.

The procession stopped, and so did Xela, staring back at the gawking crowd.

‘IT’S THE PHANTOM!’ someone screamed, and panic overtook the place.

‘A-HA!’ screamed Leslie, stripping away hir attire. S/he had been at the front of the procession, clad in a mask with a hawk-like nose. Beside hrim, Jude did likewise. S/he had been dressed as a minstrel.

 There was chaos on the floor of the church. The screams of terror reverberated through the pipes of the old organ, producing a cacophony of beautiful noise.

‘And so finally,’ began Leslie. ‘We can have a small portion of justice. Just a tiny bit of reprieve for the sufferers of cruelty around the globe. Christians, I’ll be the first to admit it’s a small victory. But it is a victory nonetheless. I’ll leave it to my comrade to summarise.’

And s/he pointed at Jude, and while Xela pounded the organ, to which active nitroglycerin had been taped inside the pipes, where maximum vibration occurs, Jude leapt onto a pew and exclaimed ‘SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!’

And there was oblivion.

***   finis   ***