Chapter 1.0

Elevator Bugaboo

     "Go, go gopher boy. Throw the dog a bone, would ya? I’m sweatin’ like a pig and workin’ like a bitch."
Quips. Adrienne was filled with them. Chaos: the office buzzed with the steady hum of anarchy. Laser scanners illuminated patches of the darkened room, and small office lamps poured over nonsensical papers and diagrams. The stench of sharpie and hardware made Tristin’s head spin as he shook his hair out of his eyes. His brain rattled in his skull, and he gasped as his knees buckled, bringing what felt like fifty kilograms of paper crashing down on Adrienne’s desk.

     Adrienne towered gracefully over the stack of documents as he set steely eyes on Tristin’s shriveled frame. "Git – git up. You’re young. You can stand Skippy. God to Jesus! I didn’t ask you to make that many photocopies. Listen, boy." His heavily creased face, rough and square like something out of a black and white Frankenstein film took on the properties of stone. Adrienne studied the tower of paper quizzically and stepped backwards, his suede shoes rustling against the carpet.

     "You said as many as I could carry…you wanted a lot." Tristin murmured breathlessly as he pushed himself off of the desk and into an upright position. His upturned nose and prominent cheekbones only added to his indignant composure. Just the sight of me pisses people off, he ground his teeth together and prayed he wasn’t thinking too loudly.

     "I didn’t want you to kill the rain forest though, Skippy." Adrienne risked a glimpse at the blinking skyline taunting them from beyond Plexiglas. Tristin watched Adrienne heave in deep breaths, and blow them out. The back of his double breasted suit jacket looked fit to explode as his muscles bulged and he grew into some big, green monster. Deep, down inside Tristin knew that kind of stuff only happened in movies, though. Damn he wished he were in a movie.

     "Rain forest?" His lips moved numbly. If Tristin’s life were a film, he imagined right now a nice freeze frame would pop up, and he would do a voice over:

     Welcome to my pathetic life as an over-worked wage slave. I bring executives their coffees and put up with their verbal abuse only because I need to pay the rent. I would try to climb the corporate ladder, except I’m not really sure what this company does. That would be awkward. “Hey, Tristin – so do you enjoy what you do here?” Hm. “Uh, yeah. I guess. What is it that I actually do here?” This pointless job exists only to keep unskilled workers like Adrienne Vanderschit and myself employed (and therefore contributing to society).

     Tristin’s glazed brown eyes sharpened. His fantasy freeze-frame popped from his mind the second he noticed Adrienne looming over him, his lips moving slowly and darkly while every muscle in his tanned face twitched. No wonder Adrienne ate so much. Every movement he made required the cooperation of every ligament in his body.

     "Forget this. It’ll make good scrap paper. Rain forest is before your time, kid. Go get me a yogurt from the cafeteria and grab yourself something to eat. You’re too skinny." Adrienne tossed a couple of coins Tristin’s way and sat down at his desk, disappearing behind Mount Paper-Stack.

     I’m twenty-two not twelve, is what Tristin might say provided he actually grew balls someday. He sighed and loosened up his tie. "Thanks." The coins felt hot pressed against his sweaty palms, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass. A freebie was a freebie.

     He ducked into the empty hallway and swung theatrically to face the elevator, his vision cloudy and his head spinning. The doors must have understood his pain and frustration for they parted instantly; unfortunately, the inside of the elevator was not nearly as empathetic.

     As soon as Tristin stepped inside a putrid odor forced his gag reflex to reel uncontrollably. His eyes started to water and he could feel the bile clinging to his throat as it climbed into his mouth. Something reeked of rotting meat.

     His wary eyes worked over the young man standing beside him. The disdainful glance he cast him was casual yet recognizable. Social etiquette still applied, even when something rancid befouled the air. Tristin didn’t spend too much time gawking at the boy’s wiry frame, or his dirty face. He took special precautions not to notice the tattered white T-shirt, and bloodstained jeans.

     The elevator boy stared straight ahead, scratching stiffly at a ribbed scar coiling around his ear like a shriveled shrimp. Tristin located the source of the rank smell: a brown duffel bag, bulging at the seams lay by the stranger’s feet. Mucus and blood seeped through its fibers, staining the polished elevator floor. Disgusting.

     Tristin’s ribs suddenly experienced a slight bit of turbulence as his heart crashed against the bars of its cage.

     “Sorry…” the stranger’s voice was unusually soft and lisped. He took his two cleanest fingers and cleared his greasy hair from his eyes, grinning to display a bunch of missing spaces where his teeth should have been. Tristin now had permission to stare, and stare he did. His initial judgments converted to a pity-induced fondness when he realized this nervous boy couldn’t have been much older than eighteen.

     The poor boy consisted of a mixture of all that was eerily disturbing and all that was inherently adorable. His eyes were heavily lidded but unusually sharp, and his face appeared oddly corpse-like and emaciated with certain features disproportionately emphasized.

     “I had to-to get this. I had to drop this off. It’s bad meat. Sorry. That’s why the bag is bleeding. It’s bad meat.” His words were almost practiced and he turned away robotically.

     “Drop it off?” Tristin’s brows knit together and he opened his mouth, the urge to vomit not so overwhelming now that he had grown semi-accustomed to the ‘bad meat.’ The doors swung open once again, leading into a dimly lit corridor filled with identical office doors.

     “Sorry it smells so bad. I just had to drop it off. Please…” He trailed off and grinned, gesturing into the hall.

     “Wait…wait…don’t you mean pick it up?” Tristin found himself ushered out of the elevator hurriedly. His one-minute-companion waved his fingers wildly, and shook his head, pursing his lips into a forgiving pout. “This isn’t even the floor I’m supposed to be on – hey!” He pounced at the elevator but it slid shut quicker than he could move and he was stuck on some floor miles away from the cafeteria with blood smeared all over the bottom of his dress shoes.

     Tristin’s utter bewilderment left him rooted to the spot. He bet if he were a cartoon character, his eyes would be the size of saucers right now.

Disclaimer: I did not write, nor do I claim to have written the lyrics to Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. I do not own any sort of rite to the song. War Pigs is the property of Black Sabbath

Part I Illusory

Prologue 0.0

Coup de Grace


     The sky above him bled; the East started to puss over with thick, milky clouds. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the engorged knob at the end of his knee. Panic thickened the mucus in his throat and he gurgled out the lyrics to the only song he knew all the words to: Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.

     "Generals gather in their masses… just like witches at black masses."

     The tune resonated in his hollow mouth. He didn’t know why he was singing; it seemed like such a cliché. As his mind grew fuzzy he lost control of what he said.

     "Evil minds that plot destruction…" His dull eyes, dead and lifeless might as well have been painted on his pale face. He knew his singing wasn’t making it any easier for the hooded young boy packing his severed leg into a duffel bag. Judging by the gagging noises and the boy’s ghosted face, this was hard enough already. Funny – he thought he was the one being minced here. Shouldn’t this be hardest on him?

     "Sorcerers of death’s construction…" His head rolled to the side. An almost toothless man brandished his torn gums in an exaggerated cringe, his face twisted in agony. There was nothing vindictive about this act of brutality. It was just business. If he didn’t know any better, he might assume these people did not want to take him apart limb from limb.

     "In the fields the bodies burning…"

     Glazed over features set in stone, rippled, cracked and crumbled. Everything fell apart in an instant. A shadow crept over the shriveled ligaments hanging from his thighbone and another young stranger with his shirt collar pulled up over the lower half of his face splashed him with a plastic water bottle. He winced, and wrinkled his nose, unsure as to whether the gesture was out of pity, or spite. It was probably pity. Or at least he would like to think it was pity.

     "As the war machine keeps turning…"

     Dry winds carried dust and the stench of freshly sliced meat between buried metal structures, and composts of black ashes. Dry winds carried away so many things he couldn’t ever have back.