Kissing Carrion (13 page)

At first, a smear of black at the horizon—darkness on darkness. Then a stick-figure, draped in grey. The grey deepens, cross-hatches. She is an old woman now, whose hair hangs like frosted lead. Her shoulders scrape the sky.

They are twenty feet away. Nineteen.

With every foot, she is more inevitable. Her face smooths from faint stippling to moon-pale, and equally disinterested, features. She raises her head to greet them, brushing her bangs aside.

She smiles.

And their headlights catch her glasses.

God—

(No.)

Abruptly, the world is two white circles. White on white. The dark is gone, and Nothing takes its place.

Hank, Jeannie and Booger freeze, caught in their glare.

They see themselves reflected in her eyes.

* * *

Far away, Myron Sokoluk's crayon snaps in two.

* * *

Hank swerves, too late. His kick snaps the brakes. They tumble past Arjay in a clumsy arc, and come down hard. Three tires blow simultaneously, hubcaps drawing sparks across the gravel. They strike a handy fence-post and up-end, wavering a moment, before flipping over backward.

The gas tank goes a second later.

It's all a bit too quick for any last thoughts.

* * *

Back at the gas station, an officer exiting the rest room exclaims as an orange flower blooms against the sky.

* * *

Arjay walks on.

She passes the shell of Hank's car, cracked wide and bleeding blazing lines of oil across the asphalt—steps over one and onto part of another, leaving a sizzling black smear. She doesn't feel the flames; the damage she has done here is nothing to her. She isn't sad, or particularly elated. Just full.

For a while, at least.

She turns her back, and leaves it all behind.

North, always north. This is her country. Its frozen soil holds her up, as winter creeps a little closer with every step she takes. It knows her hunger. It knows her need.

Toronto. And Myron.

And—then?

Arjay was born at five in the morning. The Hour of the Ox. When the dead bell rings. Her father lived in a house full of carefully preserved lovers who never answered back, never grew old—just a bit dustier, and less elastic. From this house her mother ran, naked to the Winnipeg night, into the street to flag down the first truck she met. Arjay came a half-year later, suited in blood—her mouth full of half-eaten placenta.

Her mother took one look at her, and let go.

Now she moves, a canker on the world's dreams, past the houses of the unwary. A circle of darkness follows, constant and pure, impinging briefly on all she touches. Leaving scars. A rising flood, leaking through the ill-kept seams of neat yards and tidy gardens. A draining slough of numbness. Sleep.

And visions which vanish, on waking. Yet remain.

Arjay knows her path well. An inner compass keeps her steady, marking off the miles.

She has an appointment to keep.

Speak to me for Gods sake.

There are worse things than death,

though you and I are not likely

to experience any of them.

—Pat Lowther.

—. . . TWO, THREE. OKAY:
Looks like we're go.

This is session seventeen, research project 4.7, Freihoeven ParaPsych Department; we're interviewing subjects whose professions are associated, prospectively, with the accumulation of psychic fragments, and this particular tape will be filed under the heading of Job 37.

Anyway, uh—how's that mike sitting? You comfortable with that?

 

—Yeah, it's okay, thanks. (
Pause
) So . . . what do you want to know?

 

—First off? Well, first off . . . why this? Pretty—odd—career to specialize in, by most people's standards.

 

—I guess. (
Pause
) You mean
gross
, though. Right?

 

—Okay, I'll be a little more specific: You own your own business—a cleaning business. And you clean up . . .

 

—Blood, mostly. Blood, brain-matter, decomposed flesh; sick, shit, kinda bugs feed on sick, shit, dead people. All that.

 

—How'd you decide to get into it?

 

—Um. (
Pause
) I've always cleaned, always been a cleaner. I never really went through any other jobs, when I was a kid—always did like janitorial work, maid service, hotel cleaning staff jobs, whatever. Because that was what I grew up around, right? My Mom, her Mom. They used to take me around when they were cleaning up office buildings, 'cause they couldn't pay for anybody to watch me at nights. One time when I was almost one year old I even drank some solvent 'cause I was crawling around in the supply closet while they bagged shredder waste two floors up, and my Grandma wanted to call 911, but my Mom was like: Hell
no
, they'll take her away from me for sure.

 

—Jesus. What'd she do?

 

—Just made me drink milk 'till I puked, made me puke again, made me keep drinking milk. She thought that'd get rid of the burning inside my mouth, and I guess she was right; I remember I was all swollen up for a week after, though. I mean, I could breathe, but I couldn't eat for shit. (
Pause
) And I
still
hate fucking milk.

 

—So you're working as a cleaner . . .

 

—Yeah. And I started my own service, right, 'cause I thought why not? I'm bonded, got a good record, so getting the licenses was easy enough. So, my third or fourth appointment, when I'm just settling into it—this guy was a lawyer, and he used to drink 24/7. Never a hair out of place, but you could
smell
it on him the minute you walked in, like he slept in a bathtub full'a vodka. Now, his regular day was Thursday, but when I come in, first thing I find out is he'd shot himself sometime the previous Friday.

So I call the cops, call the family; the M.E. comes and fixes time of death, means and method. It's not a
crime
scene, 'cause no crime's been committed; guy just checked out with this big-ass hunting rifle he kept in the closet, and the force of the thing was so heavy his whole skull sort of exploded, shot like ninety percent of his brain out the top of his head onto the carpet he was lying on and the wall behind. And he stinks. And the family are freaking out, A) 'cause they loved the guy and oh my God how could he
do
a thing like this, we never knew and blah blah blah, but B) 'cause they own the building, and they think they're
never
gonna rent the place out after this.

So I said: “I could do it.” And they let me. And I did.

 

—How?

 

—Dumb fuckin' luck, mainly, 'cause I did
not
know what I was getting into. First off, you got brain dried hard on everything, and when brain dries it's just like epoxy or shit. Didn't have time to find someplace to buy the kind of disposable haz-mat suits we wear now, with a breather and everything, so I did the whole thing in about three layers of clothes—some sweats, a pair of overalls, a big jogging suit over that, plus rubber boots and dishwashing gloves and a big scarf wrapped around my head. Thought I was gonna melt away in the heat, and I had to burn it all afterwards, anyway.

So I went at the brain with a snow scraper I had out in the truck, and I got most of it that way; used a bristle-brush on the rest, and about ten bottles of industrial bleach. I had to sand the floor and varnish it over, but the fact he did it on the rug made it a little better than if he'd done it, say, in bed, or what have you. Bed's a motherfucker to clean if you even can, which most times you just can't.

When I was done, though, it was the craziest thing, 'cause it basically looked exactly like it'd always been supposed to look that way. Like he was never there at all.

 

—Was that why you kept doing it?

 

—A hundred to five hundred an hour is why I keep
doing
it. You get me?

 

—Absolutely. (
Pause
) Pretty high equipment costs, I guess, though.

 

—Eh. Not when you buy in bulk, so much: Suits, chemicals, what have you. Or the brain machine.

 

—The “brain machine”?

 

—Oh yeah, it's cool: This big truck-mounted steam-injector thingie. Whenever we have a job that looks like it's gonna take all day, we bring the brain machine in and it just melts all the crap up and sucks it into a tank, like gettin' dirt out of a rug. And that's a
real
fuckin' life-saver.

No, the all-star pain in the ass is paying for time on the medical waste incinerator, because the guys running that thing make you pay a big extra fee unless you've got at least a hundred pounds of shit to burn, minimum. So these days, we have to keep the waste on ice out at the warehouse 'till we've got enough for a trip—and that can get seriously disgusting. (
Pause
) You're not using my name, right?

 

—No, just like we discussed. Total anonymity.

 

—Then I'll tell you this much: First year or so, I used to take it down the dump, torch it myself. To keep us in the black ‘till we built up a regular client-base. I remember one time, this
serious
de-comp job—chick was so slimy, she was practically jelly. So I spent about two hours out there throwing plastic bags full of maggots on the fire, and those things, when they go up? They sound just like . . . popcorn.

 

—Uh-huh. (
Pause
) You started out using bleach—what kind of chemicals do you use now? Special stuff?

 

—Ancient Chinese Secret, buddy ruff. No, look, seriously—we're selling that information over the website now, in Start Your Own Business FAQ-packs that go fifty bucks a pop. So what do you think: Am I gonna give it away to you for free? Please. We're doin' fine; I don't need the PR
that
much.

 

—Granted.

 

—It's a going concern, crime-scene cleanup. You know? And there's two reasons for that—well, three. Number one: Firepower. Number two: Drugs, 'cause drugs'll make you think and do some crazy fuckin' things. And number three . . . people are just a lot more
alone
than they used to be. No family, no friends. Nobody to give a shit. Even in the same building, the people you see every day—you think they're gonna give a shit if you go missing? Most they'll be doing is sitting around going: Jeez, haven't seen Mrs. So-and-so for a while. 'Till the bugs start comin' down through their ceiling. (
Pause
) And then they'll call me.

So. That it?

—Um, no . . . (
Pause
) What—what would be the weirdest job you ever did, in your opinion?

 

—You mean messiest?

 

—I mean weirdest.

 

—It's
all
weird. (
Pause
) But you're talkin', like . . . “psychic fragments”-type weird. Right?

 

(
Pause
)

 

— . . . well, yes.

 

(
Pause
)

 

— . . . okay.

So. This guy killed himself while squatting; hung himself from the doorknob. And the house he did it in, it wasn't exactly abandoned, but it hadn't been checked for a pretty long time. Anyway, real estate agent found him. And he didn't want to tell the property-holder, 'cause then the holder calls the cops . . .

 

—Like with the apartment, with that first guy.

 

—Yeah, just like that. 'Cause it's always the same story with these pricks.

So the agent calls us. ‘S obvious what happened, and there is
not
a lot of the guy left, anyway. It was summer, it was hot; he was probably in there, like . . . basically, he melted. Okay? Cranial fluid came out through his face, spinal fluid through his back. Fluid, generally. All this—crud.

 

—Brain machine time.

 

—Serious. Except we didn't
have
the machine yet. (
Pause
) But that was why we were gonna do it, right? 'Cause we know if buddy pays us to dispose of a body for him, we're gonna be the people he calls in to do his dirty work for the rest of his life. And I won't lie, man—we
wanted
to be those people, why the fuck not?

—And now . . . you are.

 

—Yeah.

So . . . back then, the whole company was just me and the S.O., basically—my “significant other.” So this was pretty big of a coup for us. And ‘cause we're bankin' on this little windfall, him and me decide we're gonna do what we were never able, up ‘till now: We hire a third person. This girl, let's call her—Rosa.

I was the one knew Rosa, from my maid days. Sat her down, told her about the company, what the job was gonna be about. But we didn't have the puke book back then, either, and—

 

—Sorry. “Puke book”?

 

—Yeah. It's this book at the office we got now, full of photos from real bad blood scenes, and we run it past everybody who comes in, 'cause if they heave right there then this probably ain't the career they wanna get into.

So I don't know. I don't think she really
got
what she was sayin' “yes” to, even after we got her all fitted up in the suit, the breather, showed her how to do everything . . . not even then. Not 'till she went in there, and saw it.

But anyway. We get to the house, and just the night before, we'd suddenly figured out how if we bring Rosa along then we're gonna have to fake like it's all been approved already. So the S.O. sets up a video camera, like we're taping it for the cops, which they like us to do—they want to know what went where, after all the shit's been squared away. In point of fact, it's just in case buddy wants to screw us over, but how's she supposed to know?

I'm humping in the disinfectants, and he's pissin' around with the camera, and Rosa's out there parking the truck, so she comes in last. And because this guy did it from the doorknob on the front door . . . well, I guess it just didn't occur to me. How when you walked in, you were basically walking right over all the—stuff—that used to be
him
.

And that smell. More like a taste than a smell, really. 'Cause you get it worst in your mouth, all the way at the back, even with the breather. Like it's comin' up from inside
you
.

You do get used to that too, believe it or not. Eventually.

But Rosa—

She steps in, hears that sticky sound, looks down. Sees what she's steppin' in. And when I see her face I think for sure she's gonna run right back out the door, but instead, she runs
in
—into the house, away from the camera. Through the doors into what used to be the kitchen.

Well, we gave her about an hour, 'cause it took that long to get the absolute worst of this guy up. And then I go in, like: Okay Rosa, c'mon, man.

But.

No Rosa, for one thing. All right. So she's gone upstairs, obviously, or out the back. Or something.

Try to open the door to the backyard, but that sucker's locked—more like nailed shut, maybe ten, maybe twenty years ago. So I yell to the S.O., and he goes to check upstairs, and I go down in the basement. And there's . . .

 

(
Pause
)

 

. . . at the bottom of the stairs, there's this—I walk into this patch, this sort of—spot. And it's really cold. Really, really . . .

I thought I could sort of hear her, too, just for a second there. Like she was far away. Like she was—yelling.

 

(
Long Pause
)

 

Well, we get the rest of the guy all cleaned up—fast as we fuckin' can—and then we take the camera, and we get the fuck out of there. And we don't tell the agent, and we don't know who the hell else to call about it—her relatives? I don't even know who they are. Cops? Please.

A couple days later, we do an anonymous 911 call to say she was missing. But nothing ever came of that, I know of.

And a week after that, we finally put in the tape and looked at it.

 

(
Pause
)

 

Well?

 

— . . . well, what?

 

—You wanna know what was on it. Right?

 

(
No Answer
)

 

Okay.

First, it's just static. Not even the house, or the guy, or any of us. And then it kind of gives a jump, or a blip, or the light changes or something, and—

—Rosa, right there. But she isn't
there
. I mean . . . she's somewhere, right? But not the house. Not the way we saw it, anyway.