Crime Rave (24 page)

3:25 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital

L
inda Kang lies in her hospital bed, acid reflux burning its way up and down her throat. She burps, hoping it will relieve the gurgling in her tummy, but it does nothing. She can’t remember who she is, to boot. Amnesia is like a word on the tip of your tongue, except the word is you. Linda feels empty, save for the bile rising in her gullet. Her stomach aches. The burps taste of the bland chicken Kiev she never should have tried given its rubbery texture and over-boiled color. The green Jell-O reminded her of
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
, and did nothing to settle her stomach. She presses the call button, hoping the nurse can help.

“What can I do for you, honey,” Nurse Underwood croons in a sickly saccharine voice that makes Linda shudder. And burp.

“I’ve got a horrible stomachache and—” Bile rises in her gorge. Linda swallows it down, grimacing. “I’m having the worse acid reflux.” Linda wants to vomit from the horrible taste in her mouth.

“Let me go get you some Pepto-Bismol.” Nurse Underwood watches Linda stifle another burp, her face souring as the material settles. “And maybe a sucker or two to get that taste out of your mouth?”

Linda nods, grateful, but creeped out by a spark of cruelty she sees behind the nurse’s eyes.

Nurse Underwood leaves the room, out to the stairwell to catch a quick smoke and think about how much pain the girl is in, enjoying every second. Each breath of smoke in and out brings her more and more pleasure. She reminisces.

The first time Nurse Urzula Underwood hurt a patient on purpose was an old lady, ninety-something, who had lost her speech. Her motor coordination was shot and she had no way to communicate other than crying. Which she did around the clock. Her paper skin showed every vein, but Urzula would prick her again and again with the IV, the flesh instantly bruising and sometimes bleeding. Urzula got a reprimand for carelessness, but nobody ever suspected it was far from an accident. That Urzula would jab the needle in and watch the old lady’s face as it contorted in pain, wailing, tears flowing from eyes so pale every blood vessel was visible. Pathetic old creature. She died a few days later, stroke in her sleep. What Urzula never knew was that the old lady had a night terror about the nurse, which caused the massive embolism that graciously took her before Urzula could get to her real plan. Hundreds of patients, and counting.

In her room, Linda has a bad feeling. Worse than the acid crawling up her throat. Something about the nurse makes Linda’s stomach churn even harder, an ocean storm in the middle of her system. The pain and cramping in her esophagus intensifies.
Where’s the damn nurse
, Linda thinks.
The goddamn station is right there!
She can see it from her bed.

Nurse Underwood takes her time and lights another smoke as Linda’s frustration mounts.

Nurse Underwood saunters back into the room, reeking of cigarette smoke. The smell makes Linda gag.
Oh crap, this is not gonna stay down.
Linda lurches out of bed, grabbing for the myriad wires around her and tries to make it to the bathroom. Nurse Urzula pretends to help.

“I’m gonna hurl!” And before Linda can look away from the nurse’s cold smiling eyes, throw up she does.

The stream of vomit, dyed green from the Jell-O, lands down the front of Nurse Urzula’s uniform, coating it and her bare arms. The nurse begins to scream as the acid from Linda’s belly burns and sizzles her skin, red welts rising and splitting open. Nurse Urzula Underwood writhes in pain, collapsing to the floor as her skin bubbles and boils off. The screams from both Linda and Urzula draw more nurses, who add to the fray as the skin on Nurse Urzula’s arms gives way to bone. Linda collapses, her burps on hiatus, and all of a sudden remembers who she is.

3:35 PM The Roswell Institute

I
n the bowels of the bowels of the underground facility where several of the more dangerous hybrids are kept captive, Tiburona, the shark girl, feigns eagerly awaiting her lunch. Kept in one of The Institute’s typical cages, a break-proof plastic/glass alloy that affords neither her nor any of her floormates even an iota of privacy, save for the Japanese
shoji
screen that partitions off the corner with the sink, overhead shower, and toilet. Not that
she
has any direct neighbors. She’s been, shall we say,
unsociable
since she left the lab.

Tiburona sniffs. Food is on its way. Steak. Prime rib.
Poison
. She is convinced They have been poisoning her food. Something to make her docile, malleable. Something to make her thinking cloudy. She’s sure of it. Hasn’t eaten in two weeks. Even though she’s fucking starving, turning her back to the camera, shoving the food down her pants and flushing it down the toilet after an appropriate amount of time.

The orderly arrives with a tray featuring a bloody steak, a glass of liquid chum, and what looks like a pound of seaweed. Tiburona’s flat face snorts.
I can’t believe they think I want to eat that green shit. That’s dolphins, assholes.
The orderly hates his rotation down here, and the shark girl’s pupilless black eyes make her look like a doll or a monster. Soulless either way. A black hole where things go to die. Expressionless save for the sneer that displays her rows of sharp teeth, stark against her chocolate gray skin.

“Prime rib,” he says. “Your favorite.” His voice comes in through speakers.

Tiburona glides to the cell door and smiles. He tries not to show it, but he’s terrified. She sniffs. “Don’t worry, honey, I can’t hurt you.” She throws herself against the glass. The orderly screams and pisses his pants. Tiburona laughs, watching the vein in his neck throb with anxiety and the new smell of ammonia curbs her appetite only slightly. She imagines biting into him, tearing the flesh, lapping up his blood as he paws at her back, futile attempts to stop her. God, she’s so hungry.

The orderly slides the food through a slit in the door and tries not to run after turning away from the shark human hybrid. “Pussy!” Tiburona yells after him. “Don’t forget your balls, bitch, you left them on my plate!” She cackles. The laugh expands, hysterical. When she’s finished, ten minutes have passed.

The smell of the meat is tempting. Maybe just one bite. I’m so hungry.
But the poison! The poison! They’ll control you. They’ll play tricks on you. They want your mind.
But I’m so hungry! One bite can’t hurt. Just one bite, a small one. Maybe if I rinse it in the sink?
No, stupid girl, they put the poison inside, maybe they even give it to the cows in their food, you can’t WASH it! You can’t EAT it!
But I have to eat something! I’m starving!
Patience, pet, patience. You’ll get your meal. You’ll get it all right, and how you should have it: fresh and screaming.

Tiburona’s discussion with herself comes to a quick halt when she smells Doctor Fleischer’s distinct palette of Chinese tofu and beef topped off with nips of vodka coming down the hall.

The doctor isn’t sure about this.
She’s not ready for an op out in the world.
Her behavior is too erratic. She needs more training. Maybe years of it before she can socialize.
Doctor Fleischer debates returning to Colonel Ransom and convincing him otherwise, but knows nothing’s going to change that man’s mind when it’s made.

The shark girl sits with her back to him when he approaches her cell. Such a fascinating specimen. An aquatic vampire, born that way, not made or turned like other brethren in The Institute. Her second, third, and fourth sets of teeth, down since birth, made it impossible for her mother to nurse. Doctor Fleischer is convinced this has caused general distrust and anxiety issues with regards to humans, and especially women. A lack of human connection and empathy development since birth. In profile, her flat face works around the steak, her smacks and chops grotesque on the otherwise silent floor.
Mein Gott
, they were lucky to have found her.

In the Roswell Institute’s regular population sweeps looking for rogue aliens and other anomalies, they found Tiburona’s x-rays in a dentist’s office. She was a biter. The dentist was researching methods to remove the extra layers of teeth, but had yet to find a way since they were fused into her skull palate. Institute emissaries told her mother she’d be in a boarding school facility while they tried to fix her teeth. “All I want is for my daughter to have a normal life,” she said. But she wasn’t sad to see the child go. The last schoolmate Tiburona had bitten almost died and the plastic surgery bill had bankrupted the family.

The time since has not improved conditions for the shark girl. Not only is she being trained as a soldier and all the violence that entails, The Institute has been trying to make more of her. So far she’s carried three babies to term, but they always emerge normal. She’s wanted to keep them, but they were incinerated. No room for norms at the Roswell Institute.

Doctor Fleischer has no idea that the moment Tiburona’s break with reality fossilized was when they took the third baby away. Tiburona’s mind fractured, beyond fixing. But she’s a good actress, learned it in her soldier training.

Something else The Institute doesn’t know is that Tiburona doesn’t only crave blood, she wants souls: It is the smog goddess Kaleanathi’s voice she hears in her head. The only company she has in her neverending solitude.

“Hiya, Doc,” Tiburona says, chomping away on a bunch of nothing, stuffing bits of steak into her trousers.

“I’ve got some great news, T. You’re going out on your first mission.”

Tiburona freezes.
No fucking way!
She feigns a big gulp and turns. “Serious?”

“As a drone attack.” Fleischer cackles at his own joke. “Colonel Ransom has requested your participation in a very important and highly sensitive mission to bring back the alien girls currently in police custody.”

“Those cunts who always escape?”
Those
lucky
cunts,
Tiburona thinks.

“Those exactly.”

“I fucking hate those assholes,” Tiburona sneers.

Doctor Fleischer taps the glass. “Now, T, we need those girls brought back here alive. You are going as second team, back-up in case things go pear-shaped. You’re to take orders from the team leader and hang back. You understand?” Dr. Fleischer frowns, watching Tiburona’s mind race.
This is it! This is it!

The doctor pushes a button in his pocket and within a moment a team of human soldiers clomps down the hall to escort Tiburona to the rest of the extraction team, all awaiting suits and orders.

“Let me use the toilet first.” She forces out some pee from her human-looking genitals and quietly drops the pieces of meat into the toilet, flushing them. Tiburona’s hands shake from excitement and hunger.
Keep it together, girl, keep it together.
And she does. Nobody suspects that Tiburona has sent herself on an entirely personal mission:
It’s dinnertime, bitches
.

3:45 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital

D
etectives Red Feather and Günn watch as Nurse Underwood is rushed to the ICU on a gurney, the sheet covering her soaked with a thick and sizy substance the color of blood but not quite. They exchange a glance colored by trepidation and enter the room from where the nurse was just wheeled out.

“We’re Detectives Günn and Red Feather, we’d like to—”

“I killed someone!” The girl interrupts. She’s been waiting for them to show up.

“I think the nurse is going to be okay,” Red Feather hopes.

Linda gnaws on her lip. “Not her. My dentist. You have to lock me up before I do it again. And keep your distance!” She shouts, her voice taking on a crazed edge.

Günn sets up the camera while Red Feather asks, “Start from the beginning, okay? First, what’s your name?”

She looks right into the camera. “My name is Linda Kang and I’m a murderer.” She burps. Looks scared. “They never got me that Pepto-Bismol. I’m afraid it’ll happen again. Keep your distance!”

Günn leaves for the Pepto, the image of the melted nurse fresh in her mind and upsetting her already loop-de-looping stomach.

“Calm down, Linda. Now, who do you think you killed?” Red Feather takes out his notebook.

“My dentist, aren’t you listening? I already told you that!”

“Well I guess you did the world a favor then, right?” The moment the joke leaves Red Feather’s mouth he regrets it. Günn walks in with the pink bottle and hands it to Linda who gulps deep.

“Fuck, this isn’t working either.” She wipes her mouth and burps pink chalk. She stares pointedly at Red Feather. “Are you even allowed to say things like that?”

“Not really. And especially not on camera. It’s been a strange day.” Red Feather clears his throat. “So, your dentist? Tell me about him.”

“I didn’t mean to kill him I swear. I was having these problems with my gums, see, bleeding all the time. Even when I’d brush with the softest toothbrush. So he starts giving me this stuff to take every day. He said it was medicine, but it wasn’t. He was poisoning me.”

“So you killed him?”

“Well, whatever he was giving me made me sterile, and when I went to see him, I figured it out. And I was so mad. And he didn’t deny it, either, Detective. And he was scared of me. And dude, I was so pissed, you can’t imagine. I’ll never have a family because of him. And my stomach was hella upset from the hormones the gyno gave me and I—” Linda looks embarrassed. “Well, I accidentally threw up on him and he melted. Like the Wicked Witch when she got the water on her? It was gnarly.”

Red Feather’s eyes widen and he bites his cheek to keep from laughing. Günn isn’t even listening, her mind back at a breaking point of denial after the explosive interlude with blob girl Una O’Doole.

“He melted?” Red Feather asks.

“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy! You saw what I did to that nurse. It was like that, but I got him right on the face and he liquefied.” Linda hangs her head, ashamed and trying to soothe the esophageal spasms that clench her throat.

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“It was too crazy. Who would believe me?”

“Okay, Linda. I’ll look into this. Although, I can’t recall any reports of melted bodies coming through the PD. I’d surely remember that.” Any minute Red Feather will either burst out laughing or bite through the skin in his cheek. Linda can tell.

“You are SO not taking me seriously!”

“I am, I am.”
He’s not.
Red Feather clears his throat. “You, uh, remember anything else? Maybe something about the rave last night?”

“Snippets here and there.” Linda’s brow furrows as she thinks back. “Hey, is there a Korean restaurant around here?”

“Down the street, why?”

“Whenever I had an upset stomach as a kid, and after all this weird puke started, the only thing that settles me down is kimchi. Can you please get me some? Please? I don’t want to hurt anyone else. And my stomach is killing me.”

“No problem. Now, the rave last night?”

“Um, yeah, so I’d been really depressed after the dentist killed my uterus. My friends thought that if I tried Ecstasy then I’d feel better. Better living through chemistry and all that. They kept emailing me all these articles about the medical benefits of E for trauma and I felt so shit already, I figured it was worth a try.” Linda pauses, chewing on her lip again as if that would help the memories return and her stomach settle.

“I find that it helps to close my eyes when I can’t quite remember something,” Red Feather suggests.

Linda leans back, burps, rubs her chest in a circular motion and closes her eyes, continues chewing on her lip, and her eyes flash open. “Oh shit.”

“What?” Red Feather asks.

“I puked on someone else. But I don’t know if he died.”

“What happened?” Red Feather coaxes.

“I was high on E and the house was so crazy I lost my friends. Some dude came up to me and started massaging me. I was so messed up I let him, even though he kind of looked like a neo-Nazi. He was wearing this, like, ’70s kinda wig, but I could see he had a shaved head under. Super cut, like muscles made of brick. He gave me another E, which I took. I’m such an idiot. And then he wanted me to pay him for the E.” Linda’s face flushes. “But not with money.”

“Sex?”

Linda looks surprised and nods. “Yeah, a blow job. Even though he told me the pill was a present. I was confused and so high and he forced my head down, right in the middle of this foyer with paintings and so many people. I’m mortified. I promise, Detectives, I will never ever do drugs again.”

“So he coerced you into oral sex and then what?”

“I threw up,” Linda snorts. “All over his crotch and he started to dissolve. Like Dr. Johnson before. And then I just left him there. Oh I’m gonna be sick. Get away from me!” Linda starts dry heaving and stumbles into the bathroom, the IV trailing behind her like a string puppy. Red Feather and Günn hear her retching.

Red Feather finds a patrolman in the hallway, asks him to go down to the Korean and pick up a half-pound, make that a pound of kimchi. The officer gives him a funny look, but takes the money and goes.

By the time Red Feather returns Linda is back her in bed, a distinct green tinge to her skin that reminds him of the alien girl Secrete.

“Your kimchi will be here soon.”

“Oh thank God! I mean, thank
you
, Detective.”

“What else do you remember?” Red Feather prods.

“I can’t.” Frustrated, Linda feels the wheel in her stomach turning again. She rubs her belly, as if that would help.

“Maybe these will jog your memory?” Red Feather shows Linda the Polaroids of the survivors. She doesn’t recognize anyone. And her two friends are absent. For the first time Linda’s stomach takes a break from its churning, from grief rather than calm.

“Do you know how we can get in touch with their families?”

Linda shakes her tear-filled face. “I don’t know. Neither were in touch with anyone, just bad histories all around.” Linda breaks down.

“I’m so sorry for your losses, Linda. This isn’t easy.”

Linda nods, blowing her nose on the sheet edge. Red Feather hands her tissues.

“Thank you for your help. Call if you think of anything, okay?”

Günn packs up the video camera—a zombie not even aware of her surroundings—and leaves just as the patrolman enters with a tub of kimchi. “Oh finally.” Linda uses the wooden chopsticks and tucks into the food, her stomach settling the moment she smells the fermented cabbage goodness. Red Feather shakes his head, watching her devour the spicy concoction from the hallway.