The primal seed

There wasn’t room in the narrow alley for two fire escapes, so the buildings on either side shared one, which I thought was nice of them. Below the fire escape was a chain link fence, which meant that the entire alley was blocked by metal up to a height of four stories. A fat man with a goatee and a red Waldo hat sat in a lawn chair on the sidewalk and took people’s money. Twenty bucks got through the gate in the fence. I’m sure, if the police ever came, his defense would be that he didn’t know, and wasn’t responsible for, whatever people did on the other side.

Irfan paid and led us under the fire escape and around a corner. Someone had painted a road sign on the alley wall, like something Wile E. Coyote would stick in the ground to tempt the Roadrunner. It was really well done too, with a huge cartoon arrow and everything. It said ESCAPE THE GORILLA CITY, like everyone in New York was just a bunch of mindless apes living out their biology and we were treading the only way out.

Concrete steps to our right led down to a basement door, which was propped open. Beyond was a wide hall with carpet that had been worn flat. It was also torn up in places, and there was some bits of debris huddling in the corners as if it had been kicked there over years of use, rather than swept. On the floor were bits of plaster and other litter — anything small enough to be pressed into the flat carpet rather than swept aside by swinging feet. It seemed like this place had been abandoned. Smelled like it, too, but only in the background, under the haze of cigarettes and weed.

We walked a good two hundred meters down the subterranean passage in near total dark, following the giggling college kids ahead of us. Another group of friends was maybe ten meters behind. We turned right and went through a set of double doors, chained open. The space beyond was illuminated by black light, and I heard music. Some crappy neo-industrial warm-up band. There were some punk kids milling, too. Just past them on the right side of the hallway was a wide, shallow-stepped staircase going up to a large open space above.

“Oh, shit.” I smiled as we walked in. “Is this a theater?”

I hurried up the steps.

It totally was — one of those fancy movie houses from the pre-war era with the balcony seating and the single giant screen. Only this place had clearly been abandoned long ago. The screen was gone, leaving a stage-like gap over the mezzanine. The box seats that ran around the walls on two levels gave the place a Colliseumlike vibe. The high, domed ceiling had been painted midnight blue back in the day, but the paint had chipped and fallen in spots, revealing the white plaster underneath. In the dim light, it looked exactly like stars, as if the ceiling itself were a shadowy portal to a real night sky. Lines of neon lettering filled the apex of the dome where I’m sure a chandelier had once hung. It seemed like they were floating in space:

THERE WAS NEITHER NON-EXISTENCE NOR EXISTENCE:

THERE WAS NO REALM OF AIR, NO SKY BEYOND IT.

THERE WAS NEITHER DEATH NOR IMMORTALITY.

THERE WAS ONLY ONE, BREATHED BY ITSELF:

AND APART FROM IT WAS NAUGHT.

AND THEN CAME DESIRE,

THE PRIMAL SEED.

-RIG VEDA

Graffiti filled the walls, and not just the usual names and colorful street slang. There was some genuine street art, some of it quite good. Rows of folding seats sloped up under the large balcony to the original entry two stories above us. Someone had hung heavy curtains in the archways. A small crowd was already inside, hanging in small clusters, as people do. Near us, there was a group of three people standing together. They had turned to look at us as we walked in. The woman in front had a Mohawk and some kind of reflective contact lenses that made her eyes glow blue-white, or so it seemed. There was a tattoo over a heavy scar that ran around her neck that made it look like her head had been completely severed and then sewed unevenly onto her neck with dark cord.

Sitting with a handful of people on the upper level, looking out over it all, was the Kingfish. He was far enough away that I don’t think he could see me in the crowd.

I walked up the slope to get a better view of the place, and that’s when I saw him. Behind the bar. I think it had been the coat check or something like that, but someone had erected a long hutch and filled it with bottles. Bastien was one of three bartenders. The other two were girls. Figures.

Irfan stood next to me in a very self-satisfied way, like a bellman waiting for his tip.

“You’re not gonna survive this. You know that right? No matter which one of them you choose, you’re still going to die.”

“Everyone’s going to die.”

“Not me,” she said, taking out her phone and fading back into the growing crowd.

A guy across the way from me nodded at Bastien. He had a shaved head and a long beard and he was standing near a giant circular pit that had been built in the middle of the open space. The vertical metal spikes that lined it, like a wicked fence, were charred black. I caught a whiff of ash.

Bastien raised a hand in greeting.

He knew everyone. And everyone knew him.

I made my way through the crowd. People eyed me. I admit, I was looking pretty tame in my flower-print Keds, Gordon Liu T-shirt, and lavender purse, but then I’m sure it was the black eye more than anything. I stood next to the bar and waited for a chance to push to the front. It look awhile. Everyone was fueling up in advance of the show. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in a gilded frame on the wall. It had been broken, but one fractured piece remained. My eye was starting to heal. The dark under it had faded from the day before. I could maybe hide it if I went full-on Goth.

I saw an opening and pushed in. It took him a minute to notice me leaning against the bar. He stopped when he saw me. He smiled that lazy Elvis kinda smile.

“You didn’t have to send your pet, you know,” I said. “You could’ve just asked me to come.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to find the place. Besides, I didn’t want to take the risk of you saying no.”

First Lyman. Then Bastien. “Why do guys think that’s some kind of justification?”

“You’re in trouble, Cerise.” He was serious. “Be mad if you want, but I was just trying to help.”

“Me in trouble? You’re the one who ran. Both of you, actually. Tell me, why is that?”

“See.” He looked up in frustration. “This is what you always do. Why do you automatically assume those things are related?”

“She had one of your tarot cards.” I nodded to the deck resting on the hutch behind him.

“Did she? Sure it was mine?”

He swiped it and shuffled once, faster than I expected, and drew a card again one-handed. He slapped it down in front of me with a ring-covered hand without even looking at it.

“Was it this one?”

The Devil. It was facing me upright, which means he drew it reversed.

“I’m sure you have more than one deck,” I objected and pushed it back.

He took it. “What can I get you? On the house.”

“Umm.”

I looked at the back shelves to decide. Next to all the clear vodka and neon blue gin, were odd-shaped jars and bottles, some stopped with frayed cork and labeled in handwriting: Dried Mockweed, Anthemum, Malefoil Extract. The latter was a tiny vial barely larger than my thumb. I had to lean across the bar to read it.

“What the heck is malefoil?”

“An astringent.”

He pulled down a clear jar down the third shelf. It was full of dried caterpillars with strange spindly growths erupting from their heads, like over-sized unicorn horns almost as long as the animal itself.

“And this is ophiocordyceps. Used to make love potions.”

“Potions, again. Is this some kind of new hipster thing?”

He blurt-laughed and shook his head, like I was a real hoot. “What’s wrong with a good potion?”

“To make someone fall in love?”

“Absolutely. You ingest chemicals that alter your mind on a regular basis, along with half the city. And the other half takes pills to improve their mood or to stop being anxious or to get an erection.”

I scrunched my face.

“The parasite hacks the nervous system of its host. Alters its mind. Urges it to do things it wouldn’t normally do.”

“Such as?”

“Such as turning ants into suicide bombers. Once infected, the insects climb to a spot above the nest — the home they’ve spent their whole life defending — and clamp their jaws down on a leaf in a death grip. They die, and the fruiting body of the fungus erupts from their heads and rains spores down on all their little comrades.”

Someone bumped into me as they passed. The place was packed now, more than The Couch ever was. I didn’t like it.

“So what does a love potion taste like? Please don’t say semen.”

He laughed again, genuinely, bending over slightly with the giggle, and then smiled at me warmly. He reached down and produced a long-necked, blue-green glass bottle from under the counter. It had a geometric pattern etched across its exterior.

“Share one with me?”

“No, thanks.”

“Why not?” He uncorked the bottle and handed it across the bar. “If we drink together, we’ll fall madly in love with each other forever and ever.”

I sniffed. It smelled like urine and beeswax.

“So what you’re saying is that you’d need a potion to fall in love with me.”

I handed it back, and he leaned closer and smiled, his face inches from mine. He looked at my lips with his smoky eyes. We stayed like that, neither of us moving.

“You need one of those cool names,” he said. “Like Banksy. Or Invader.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You should take credit for the school mural. Lots of people are impressed. I doubt you’d get in much trouble.”

“What mural?”

“Okay. Whatever. But why do it then, if not to make a splash?”

“Because people don’t think art matters,” I answered too quickly and more than a little defensively. “They think it’s silly, the first thing you can cut from the school curriculum when money gets tight. But it does matter. It’s important, maybe the most important thing there is. If I take credit, then it’s not about the work anymore. It’s about me and what kind of person I am and how many guys I’ve slept with and whether I broke any laws. It shouldn’t be about me. It shouldn’t even be about the art. It should be about the effect it has, how images can change someone’s whole perspective on the world. In an instant. Prison to playground. It’s almost — ” I stopped.

“Magical?” he said.

I shrugged.

“You know, I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me at one time.”

He took an order from a man in front of him, and I watched him fill it, deftly turning bottles with his ringed fingers, dropping ice into the plastic cup, and handing it on.

“How come we never went out?” He set a glass of water in front of me.

“Because you hooked up with my best friend,” I said, taking a drink. “Practically on sight.”

“Whatever.” He leaned back against the hutch, relaxed. But it was bittersweet. He almost seemed hurt. “I’m not a mind reader, Cerise. You said like two words to me that whole night.”

“I’m shy.”

“You were wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Please Don’t.’”

“I’m really shy.”

“Come on . . . You were encouraging her to flirt with me. I saw you. What was I supposed to think?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I was not encouraging her to flirt with you.”

“Then what do you call it?”

“You were both sitting at a four-spot. Separately. Next to each other. Taking up eight seats total. I was just being respectful of the other patrons waiting for a table by suggesting you sit at a table together since you weren’t doing anything but talking to each other anyway.”

“Patrons?” he mocked.

“Whatever. It’s not like you left me much of a chance to say anything in the three seconds between when we arrived and your tongue was down her throat.”

“Hold on. That thing with the seats was at the all-night diner. After the party. You do remember the party, right? As I recall, you got blitzed out of your mind and were dancing shirtless with Chaz the Magnificent.”

“Chaz is gay.”

“Chaz is bi,” he corrected.

“Really?”

He nodded solemnly, as if to underscore it was a true fact, 100% verified.

“Wait. How do you know that?”

The music got louder then and drowned out all conversation. I sat at the bar and listened to the DJ set while Bastien took orders from patrons, glancing back to me at every chance. He joked and flipped bottles as he mixed and jerked his head a little to shake the wavy locks out of his eyes. He flirted with the ladies — but not too much. I tried not to watch him. Whenever he caught me, he smiled back. I glanced around the crowd and up to the small groups standing near the edge of the balcony. Everyone was drinking, but I didn’t see any bottles or anything. Just red Solo cups.

The mood shifted quickly as the DJ set got harder. The music was shit, but whatever. That crowd didn’t want music. They wanted sonic rage. Very quickly, head bobbing turned to pushing and a mosh pit opened directly in front of the stage. Those at the back ran up the sloped walkway and began smashing and tearing at anything they could break free: loose drywall, wood molding, seat cushions, whatever wasn’t so solidly attached that human limbs couldn’t kick or rip free. They flung it around like beach balls as a concert, but eventually each piece made it to the spike-lined pit. In minutes, I could see a good-sized pile poking from the gaps between the bars.

And then they lit it. It burned slow at first, but as the fire grew, it stirred the air, hot and dry like a dust devil turning in the desert. Bastien hopped back over the bar then, pulled his vest down, took my hand, and led me into the crowd. We went right to the pit, when the music stopped suddenly. There was a second of silence, but before anyone could speak, a discordant mix of overlapping audio clips burst through the speakers on the stage: political speeches, the explosions of war, sitcom laugh tracks, drilling, logging, traffic noise. It got louder and louder and louder until I actually had to squint. I was about to cover my ears when the sound collage broke and I heard the simple spoken words from the beginning of an old familiar song.

I am the god of hellfire and I bring you . . .

“Fire” by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. 1968.

I practically shrieked. I turned to Bastien, mouth wide open.

“You totally told them to play this!” I accused. I had to yell it into his ear in order to be heard.

He raised his arms like he was an innocent man and he had no idea what I was talking about. I grabbed his hand and pulled him deeper into the crowd, my hips swaying. His hands went on them right away and we started dancing as the song hit the first refrain,

Fire!

To destroy all you’ve become.

While we were dancing, his friends at the bar passed a dozen or so large metal goblets into the crowd. The revelers kept the cups high to keep from spilling, lowering them only to take sips as they passed. Bastien took one and put it to his lips. He grimaced as he swallowed and passed it to me.

“What’s this?” In the dim light, all I could see was dark liquid.

He closed his eyes and his head fell back like the high was hitting him. He lifted his hands in the air and let the jostling push him to and fro. I took a sip and coughed. It was thick like runny syrup and tasted sour-bitter, like vinegar and yellow bile. With the swallow, a prickly mash of ground peppercorns poked the back of my throat like tiny needles and made my eyes water. I felt my heart burn — not my stomach. It was like my heart really was on fire inside my chest.

“Shit . . .”

My eyes watered. I sniffed. My stomach gurgled angrily. But I held it and passed the goblet along. It went around like that a few more times. I took a tiny sip when it came back but passed the third time around. Bastien saw, stopped the cup, and tilted it to my lips so far it ran from the sides of my mouth and down my shirt between my breasts. Across the swaying crowd, I saw Mohawk-woman take a drink from a goblet and breathe green fire, like she was a dragon. People cheered. She took another swallow and did it again. Another man’s eyes glowed red. Not the whites. Just his irises. He stared at me in hunger.

Whatever I had drank was working. A strange high came, like a dark hood pulled over my mind, and I felt the pang of uncertainty, that feeling I got every time I tried something new, unsure how my body would react or what would come next. I had the sensation first of floating in visible sound. A murmuring chant vibrated into my ribs and yanked my mind left and then right like a whiplash current, like it was trying to shake my last inhibitions out of me.

“Let’s go up to one of the booths.”

Bastien pointed to the old box seats that rimmed the floor.

I looked to him, eyes dulled from the high. He smiled and kissed my neck. My skin was dewy with sweat and I felt hips lips slide over them. He had his ringed fingers on my curves and was playing them like a violin. His erection was pressed hard to my ass and I leaned my head back as his hands slid up over my chest. I opened my eyes and saw symbols floating across the ceiling, moving but not moving, like how a room spins when you’ve had too much to drink. I hadn’t seen them before. They glowed, and I thought they must have been painted in some kind of reflective chemical that caught the firelight.

Bastien led me out of the crowd and up the sloped archway that ran along the far side of the old theater, and from there to to the box seats on the second level. There was another bounced there keeping the VUPs — very unimportant people — from going up, but Bastien just nodded to him and the man let us pass.

He knew everyone, and everyone knew him.

“Irfan said my soul sparks,” I breathed, barely able to walk straight.

“Like a live wire,” he said.

We went right to the front, to the first box, which had a high view of the stage and the pillar of fire that turned now like a dancing god. There was a fancy bench with a maroon cushion. It looked like something you’d find in a hall or foyer. We dropped onto it and his hands ran up my body. I was so aroused and high by then that I did nothing but bend sideways and stick out my ass. He slid closer until our pelvises were touching. His hands went up my shirt and under my bra. My nipples were already erect and his fingers brushed back and forth over them. I moaned and he pulled my jeans down in hard tugs. His fingers fumbled between my thighs. And before I knew it, he was in me. A single thrust that barely made it across my labia. Because my body rebelled instantly.

I stumbled forward, leaving him sideways on the bench. I braced myself against the balustrade, skirt still hiked over my waist. I wanted to say “I feel sick,” but I was going to puke, and if I even opened my mouth, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop it.

I had only moments.

I stumbled out of booth and down the hall, using the wall for balance as my hands alternated between fixing my jeans and holding back the inevitable. I took a wrong turn at the base of the sloping hall and stopped abruptly at a doorless nook that I imagine had been a closet. There was a heavy curtain drawn across it, which is exactly what I wanted: privacy. I ripped it open and saw three animal skulls on poles that fanned out from a heavy base of polished stone. In front of the poles sat a skinned rat with a crown of wax, as if a candle had burned to the skull and left the hardened dribbles as spires. Someone had painted words on the wall:

REAP THE HARVEST

I lost it right there. I vomited with such force that it knocked the carcass over. The rat tumbled against the three poles, which were braced against each other, and they fell with a clatter, like brooms. I stumbled back until my butt hit the other wall. I laid my head against the crumbling plaster for a moment while I regained control of my stomach. I didn’t look in the nook again. I stole a glance at the mark on my hand. That’s when I was aware someone was looking at me. Whoever it was stood on the wrong side of the hall for it to be Bastien. I thought it must be the bouncer, come to see what had made all that noise. But it wasn’t.

“Kell.”

She said she’d find me. And she had. She was standing there, staring. Her hair was up in a clip and she had a new bag. She was wearing a brand new loose knit pullover that hung off one shoulder. I knew it was new because I’d never seen it before and because it was totally in season. Looked expensive. But not Chanel expensive.

I smiled. I was so happy to see her.

She saw my open jeans and the panties pulled awkwardly over my crotch. Bastien appeared just then, fixing his belt. He stopped when he saw the two of us.

Just then I caught a pair of eyes watching us mischievously from just around the curve. And a collar.

Irfan.

Kell pulled my colorful jersey from her bag and tossed it to the ground next to me before turning and heading for the door.

“Kell!” I struggled to my feet, snatching my jacket on the way.

“Stay away from me,” she said as she walked.

I was closer than Bastien and I stumbled forward, half propelled by the downward slope of the hall, and reached her first. I ran into her, nearly knocking her down, and grabbed her arm and she turned to pull away. I saw her face then. She wasn’t mad. Or maybe she was, but more than that, she was scared. Terrified, really. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and I could see where she’d been crying, even before she saw me.

“You act like you’re this really good person,” she said. “But you’re not.”

I knew that face. I’d given it to her before. It was the ‘Please take the world away, I can’t handle it right now’ face. I’d given her that face at least twice before. And she had done it. She rolled up her sleeves and pushed it all back. Now it was my turn and I was fucking it all up.

I had my jacket in one hand, so she pulled out of my grip pretty easily and trotted for the exit.

“Kell . . .”

Bastien passed me then. Without Kell’s support, I fell back on all fours. I grabbed his leg and he tripped. Kell passed the bouncer and disappeared into the heavy crowd. Bastien stood to go after her, but I jumped up pushed him back, hard, and he stumbled into the wall. I think he was tipsy, too. He tried to move around me to the left and I stepped in front of him. He moved to the right and I did the same. I was holding onto him, using him like a crutch, and there was no way he could shake me short of pushing me down.

I think part of him really wanted to.

Irfan stepped closer, like she was enjoying it.

“Gonna hit me?” I asked him.

I tried standing straight and found it easier than before. I slipped on my jersey jacket for courage. The tiger logo on the back was from Uncle Wen’s kwoon. I put up my fists. They swayed with my balance.

Bastien’s jaw was set and thrust forward. His gaze caught the bruise around my eye. He turned to Irfan.

“This is you, isn’t it?” he accused.

“Pick on someone your own size,” I said.

“You think she’s innocent?” He pointed. “You think this is an accident? She’s trying to cause trouble.”

“You don’t know that,” I objected.

“For fuck’s sake, Cerise. That’s what they do! You have no idea what her kind used to do to people. You have no idea how long it took to bind them or how many people sacrificed everything to see it done.” He turned to Irfan. “You’re going back in. Tonight. She let you out and I felt sorry for you and that’s on me. But now you’re going back.”

Irfan looked like she wanted to rip his eyes out. She hissed at him then. Like an angry cat.

But she had planned her revenge well.

“POLICE!”

The single voice broke loud over the crowd and chaos fell like a thunderclap. The music cut and everyone started yelling. I remember thinking that it was very important for some reason that I not get arrested. Again. Wait, had I been arrested? Yes, I’d been arrested — a couple times, thank you very much. I couldn’t remember why just then, but it was all very cool, I assure you.

I think my idea was to follow Bastien, who seemed to know a way out. Or at least, he was confidently leading Irfan away from the scrambling, yelling crowd, which suggested that was a good way to go. But I couldn’t move. I looked down at large black hands around my waist. I felt myself being lifted from behind as if I weighed nothing. I was slung over a man’s shoulders and hauled off.

“This isn’t over,” I yelled to Bastien as I was carried away in rapid, shuffling steps.

The bouncing action put up-and-down pressure on my stomach and I vomited again, all down the man’s back. He cursed at me, over and over, with a raw talent that would make any sailor proud, including quite a few about my cunt, which made me realize my jeans were still open. But he didn’t let me go and he didn’t slow down. He took me to a stairwell. He started panting heavy on the way up.

“Let me go!”

I wanted to hit him, but his back was now wet with red-purple slime from my stomach amid bits of chewed pizza.

My next distinct memory is of looking down at my flower print Keds, planted on the lip of the roof. I remember wanting to make very sure they had a good grip because the rest of my body was leaning backward over the side. The very large black man who had carried me now had ahold of the front of my jersey jacket, which was Kai’s jersey jacket that he gave me the night we found out I was pregnant. The flaps were bunched in the man’s hands. A square yard of silk were all that was keeping me from falling.

It was dark on the roof, so it took me a moment to see Kingfish walking toward me. He didn’t look happy. But then, he was still wearing his sunglasses, so it was kinda hard to tell.

“You know how much money this place makes?” he asked. “No fire code. No liquor license. No liability insurance. No minimum wage. If it weren’t for the payoffs, this would be the best business I got.”

I smelled smoke. Like, a lot of smoke. Like maybe the building was on fire. And there were sirens approaching.

“We gotta go, boss,” the big man urged.

“It’s not my fault!” I objected. “I didn’t call the cops.”

“Woman, do I look like a fool? First night you show up, the cops put the squeeze and the building catches fire. That ain’t no effin coincidence. You connected to it. Somehow.” He held up a heavy finger. “I told you, Spence. I told you, you was trouble. I told you to stay away from my man. I told you to stop scaring my peeps. I want you to contemplate that. On your way down. With some luck, you’ll survive and get a chance to make it right.”

“Make it right? Falling four stories isn’t enough?”

Just then I noticed someone else on the roof — not as tall as the guy who held me but tall enough, and stocky. He was in a short leather jacket. He was walking toward us expressionless, as if he were taking a stroll in the park and not across the roof of a burning building. Fish and his guy had their backs to him, and with the dark and noise, they didn’t notice at first. Not until he was just steps away.

I recognized him. It was the cop-looking guy who’d followed me into the Sour Candy. Fish’s man heard the scuff of gravel and turned. Feeling spry in my colorful tiger kwoon jacket, I took the opportunity to bust out a little wing chun — not that I really know any. I twisted free, ready to kick some ass. At least, that was the intention. But I was still a little wobbly and not thinking terribly clearly and when I pivoted, my foot landed awkwardly on the lip of the roof and I tumbled over the side, just as Fish had wanted.

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018. You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta.

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The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

cover image by Chiba Kotaro

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