The Cipher (30 page)

What will happen?

Because
anything
could happen. I could wake up and my hands could be alligators, I could roll over and find my internal organs turned to shrill and individual mouths, find myself turned to livid garbage, corroding on the bone like the slick pulp of rotten fruit, something that decency if not kindness commends to instant burial in a Hefty bag. Or worse. It was like falling in a bottomless pit, literally endless, exponential dissolution in as many ways. No end in sight. You might say.

As I lay, sunk and drifting, past hearing (if there was anything left to hear; the hall had gone silent some time ago), the odor of the Fun-"hole changed, blending to a warmer reek, harsher, iron, stink like pain and what you do to get there. Hot smell.

And in the heated silence: giggling, slow and sly glissando, deliberate as the sensual strop of the knife, and I smiled too, scared smile, lips like rictus and the heels of my cold hands pressing into my eyes so hard I saw the familiar miniature constellation that upped my fear because it meant that some of my responses would, still, be normal, that even I wasn't fucked up enough for what might happen, what this new malicious giggling might portend. What exactly would a process find funny, anyway? And no one could help me. And I couldn't get away.

love you

And the cold rising burn of my erection.

And the sink of bile in the back of my throat.

It was hard to tell, then, if I was asleep or awake. Mostly awake, I think, because parts of me hurt, in various stages, feet, back, legs, neck. The hole that was my hand kept up an incessant mocking throb, just to remind me of the bad old days, you thought things were twisted then, huh? Huh.

From the hallway I heard nothing: not Nakota, not Randy or Malcolm, the Church of the Transcursing Dumbshits or the mask they worshiped, of course I was in a very poor position to call anyone dumb. All alone. In the dark. Serves me right, but would it have served me righter if I was smarter, or is this the real price you pay for not thinking things through? Driftwood, punished by a whirlpool.

As I lay adrift in that continuous night, I heard sounds that kept my eyes sealed, flutter and burn behind the thin shield of my lids, consciously abetting the lash crust of mucus.

Just in case.

"—cops,
man! He could be dead in there for all we know!"

Nakota, calm and superior: "He's not dead."

"How the hell do you know?"

"How do you know he
is?"
Malcolm, the closest voice to the door. "It hasn't been that—"

"It's
been
three—"

A voice I didn't recognize, it sounded drunk. "Guy been in there three days and
counting."

"Who're you," a sneer from Malcolm, "Mission Control?" and just to shut him up I spoke.

"I'm not dead," I said, my eyes gently struggling to open, the lashes gluey with dried crumbly mucus. "Just blind."

Not true: vision sharp but somehow still distorted, as if looking through heat shimmer or faintly bubbling water, the dirt and angles of the room newly crooked and vast; and with dry reluctance turning my sight to myself. And saw at once beneath the surface of my coated skin— and oh shit so
much
was coated now, both arms covered, shoulders, chest and back, so much had happened while I'd been away, While You Were Out—and what I saw was not my physiology, the humdrum process of blood and bones but what those blood and bones were becoming.

Had already become, in some spots.

Motes swarmed, slow dazzle, great glittering gouts of surges tiny^as electric sparks, and where their waves touched became no shore at all, no blood and bone but part of the new, the latticing of some vast personal underpinning, I had been right to speculate on the worst.

I was becoming a process.

All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself?

You're really fucked now, I told myself, too shocked to be frightened (but was I really? Tell the truth for once in your life), looking at all of me: see there, at the tips of my fingers, see those whorling specks? And there, in the bend of my elbows—flexing, staring—some bright new pockets as neat as the holes a gardener digs, ready and waiting to be filled; with what?

What am I, I thought, right now?

They were talking to me: "Nicholas." Randy, too exhausted to be relieved, maybe he would rather I was dead, I imagined a lot of people might feel that way, and now let's hear from their spokesperson: Nakota, peremptory, instructing me to say something,
talk
to them Nicholas, right, talk to the nice people as they talked at me, asked questions, but I held my hands up to the weak skittering light and watched their creature motions, especially around what had been the palm of my right hand, nexus for the change: see what happens when you let the devil in?

I started to cry.

Randy, yelling something but not to me. Nakota's harsh answer, all her answers were. Turning onto my back, tiny hardened clumps on my lashes and my tears rolled, shiny little balls, across the floor to the Funhole, jumped in like cartoon swimmers into heaven's Olympic-sized pool. I felt a cool convulsive movement in my bowels and I shit, once, a handful of little hard cubes against the seat of my crusty jeans, rolling as I moved, cute and painless down my pant legs, mute zircon shine on the dusty floor, tender by-products from the recently human.

Nakota. Her voice.

"Nicholas? Will you talk to me?"

No I won't. Even though you're the only one who wouldn't back away screaming. The only one who'd like me better this way.

The mask spoke.

Like a tape jammed to ON, instant loud oration about flux, change, capital
C,
we must surrender to the Change, like telling Nazis we must corner the market in six-pointed stars, telling them—it seemed to me, though at this point I would win no points for accuracy—that what they least imagined, the points too far to see, they would reach, they would become. Not all, of course—what good is a religion, even a backdoor one like this one, if just anybody can go to heaven? What good's a club if you can't keep some people out? But most, all of whom greeted this screed with fervent revival moans, hungry bullshit eaters and their daily bread and I was on my knees, fists clenched and mouth wide, Get out of here get the fuck out of here but nobody heard me because I wasn't making a whole lot of sound, I tried to scream but only hoarseness, maybe my vocal cords had spontaneously mutated to rubber bands or angry eels or something even less imaginable, and still I wept and still the mask talked and through it, the only one, Nakota:

"Nicholas," with all the precious tenderness I could not believe, a depth of the love she had never felt or cared to, feelings like organs undeveloped, unmissed by her and unsuited, too warm for the cold world through which she moved, "Nicholas, let me in. Please. You need me now."

And I wanted to.

I wanted to so bad I almost did. Because I was
tired,
you see, tired of being alone, of rolling through the darkness of my own change, of standing between herself and a consummation she had maybe been born for, far more so than me because I was just Joe Nothing, just Mr. Ordinary Asshole who by tripping had fallen in much too far, grappling in endless sloppy circles until I was so tired I almost went for the door and maybe even tried but tripped again, isn't that just like me, fell on my face and my forehead hit the floor, it hurt, just like a regular person I had hurt myself. And I recalled, triggered sting of memory, an ice-pitted sidewalk outside somebody's party and Nakota, fierce pratfall onto her ass, on her back, I heard the bony smack as she fell to lie mouth open, making a silent sound, and me, anxious scramble over to her, are you okay? And she reached up to my succoring hand and yanked me down, hard, I fell onto my knees and then I saw the silent noise was laughter.

And that was just like this.

But things were different, now; things had
Changed.

No
way.
No fucking way.

Hands and knees and on my feet, braced as I rose, I was shaking from the inside out and I put my mouth against the door, lips mashed and moving against the wood, and I said, with the clear diction of absolute truth, "If you all don't get your asses away from this door and out of this hallway I'm going to come out there and
do
things and I'm going to start with
you,
Malcolm," and without thinking I reached out my hands

through the door

and grabbed hold of someone, I felt a headful of hair in my grip and I banged that head, boom, against the door, once again for good measure because I knew just by-the feel that it was Malcolm's, knew it before his squeal and bucking jerk to escape and I released him, grinning to myself and glad to have hurt him, heard Nakota's happy gasp and felt, yeah, her touch on mine, felt the strong greasy heat of her greed and "I'll break your fucking hands," I said, and squeezed, brutally hard, kept squeezing, increasing the pressure until she finally screamed, till I felt her body, independent of her will, try to get away. And I let her go. With regret. Because no matter what it still felt good to touch her.

"Everybody but Randy," I said, "get the fuck away from this door."

A pause, then a timid voice saying, "Randy ain't here."

"Then go
get
him, asshole."

A longer pause, unsteady shuffling, they wanted to stay but they were scared. The head cleared its throat and I reached up, pounded as high as I could, where I thought the chin might be.

"You shut up too," I said, and it did.

"Nicholas?" Randy's voice, shaking. He hadn't gone far. Maybe he'd been hanging around to watch me rip off Malcolm's head, a pleasant thought but more effort, etcetera. Had to save my strength, after all. Because it
wasn't
after all, not yet, stay tuned.

I was shaking too, I had to sit down, I was sitting down without trying, slipping bonelessly to the floor. I tried to peek under the door since I was down there anyway, but all I could see was the toes of some oily biker boots.

"Nicholas? It's me. Randy." A pause. "Shrike said you broke her finger."

"Good. Next time it'll be her neck. Are all those assholes gone?"

"Pretty much." Cautious. Like talking to a. tiger. "What happened?"

"I'm tired," I said. "I lost my temper." My hands lay clasped like prayer, dovetailed by my tired face and I looked at them, the maggoty dance of the shine inside and with a snarl of exhausted disgust ripped them apart, one from the other and a gluey sucking sound and one of the fingers of my right hand appeared to adhere to my left and Randy was saying something, I didn't hear him, I started to laugh from the perfect depths of my revulsion as the motes beneath my skin roiled and dribbled into a living tattoo: NAKOTA.

"Eat shit," I said.

"What?"

"Nothing. Randy, can you board up the door or something?" '

"I'll be doing good if I can keep the fucking cops away, man. You don't know what it's like out here, people are just acting crazy, you know? Just crazy. The neighbors, Shrike's fucking friends, everybody. I can't do anything about it, I can only kick so many asses." His voice still trembled, the vibration of depleted anger, weariness, even tears. The idea of Randy crying was strangely pitiful, maybe because tears were nothing I thought of in conjunction with Randy.

"It's that goddamned Malcolm," he said. "He's worse than she is, you know? Shrike, she's just
out
there, you know, like a cat or something, you know how a cat will do when it wants out? Just keeps hanging around the door and scratching and crying till you get tired of its bullshit and just let it out."

Or in.

"But him, he keeps stirring them up, you know, showing them the fucking video and talking about how the head's some kind of hotline to the Funhole and he's the man with the clue. And then he was getting into this shit that you're dead, you know, since you're in the picture now, and-"

"What?"

"The video—I saw it too. You're in it now."

Dull fear, what was left to be afraid of, now? Faint embarrassment. "What am I doing?"

"Changing, kind of. Getting—lighter. Like you can see through you, you know? What's the word, transparent, yeah. You're transparent."

"Do I say anything?"

"No. You really don't see much of you," oh boy, a joke? No. "Just enough to know it's really you. Shrike freaked, at first. Malcolm was pissed, but now he's got it all turned around that only he knows what the hell's going on." He took a deep, deep breath, like trying to put out a fire from within.

I didn't want to talk about the video; instead I asked him, "What does Vanese say about all this?"

"Vanese." Another breath. "She won't talk to me. I call, she hangs up, or her mother says, Don't call her no more, she's upset. I
know
she's upset, man! Last time I saw her, she said, Don't come by me anymore until all that shit's over with. She said, I don't need that shit."