Lucifer's Pit...by aeon
Anger burned a hole in his mind like hot, molten steel and melted its way
down past his heart, through his soul, pooling in his gut. He swallowed
several times as it passed his throat, enjoying the taste each time. All
emotions tasted good, but anger was one of the best: sweet and thick and
fiery-hot. Aside from what he carried in the torn black Eastpak slung over
his left shoulder, anger was all he had at the moment. Anger was plenty,
though. He let it seethe for a while, building, and pushed open the door.
The bar exploded in his face as he walked in, stepping over his would-be
mugger's dying body. A brown stench hit him head-on, alive but dying. It
assaulted him with piss and blood, cheap polluted beer and cheaper, dirtier
sex: the usual things. Oh, yeah -- and fire, too. This was, after all,
Lucifer's Pit. 95 degrees outside (at least: the thermometer on his jacket
was broken and refused to go higher than that), hotter inside already, and
there was a decidedly non-cheery blaze in the fireplace, something that
could have been a pig, could have been a dog, roasting over the flames,
already burnt black and peeling. A couple of black, peeling, diseased
vagrants were standing around with forks, pissing into the flames and
picking pieces off of the right flank -- that didn't mean it wasn't a dog.
Probably safer than pork, anyway.
Some of the sex peeled itself off a moldy table and walked over towards him,
ran a hand through his greasy, unwashed and rain-damp hair, another finger
under his trenchcoat and up his leg towards his crotch. Old, used, brunette
sex: nothing worth looking at, but with social security and welfare
basically worthless to her, she needed to make money, too, was the argument.
She smiled as her arthritic finger traced a shaky line up his leg, then
gasped and pulled away suddenly, her hand dripping blood from a two inch
slice near her thumb. Ignoring her complaints, he pushed her aside and
readjusted the knife she'd just jarred loose, careful not to accidentally
cut himself and infect his blood with whatever might have been and probably
was in hers. She wandered off somewhere in the bar, crying and whining, and
got forgotten quickly.
A few people looked up at him as he walked past, but most were intent on
screwing, drinking, or watching the band on-stage. "End of Love" or "Death
of Hope" or "Sunny Flowers of Joy and Peace" or something, they were called;
just another cover band getting paid way too much money for too little
talent, still recycling 2oth century grunge music and Led Zep tunes.
Those that did look at him saw nothing out of the ordinary: no tattoos, no
earrings, no nose-chains or genital piercings, no leather or denim or spikes
or blue hair or imps sprouting from his shoulder. And no chrome. He didn't
wear metal at all. Ever. Some whispered that it was cuz he was allergic to
the alloys they used in everything nowadays. They were wrong, but like a
writer he wasn't giving any secrets away.
What he wore instead was a matching set of dark greys: oilskin Outrider
trenchcoat (complete with the aforementioned thermometer, a barometer,
clock...
(...and everything else today's young nomad cyberpunk vagrant could ever
need, all for only 1500 credits, plus global, federal, state, county, city,
dome and corporate taxes, void where prohibited by law, do not remove this
tag...)
...and none of which worked properly in this humidity anyway), loose pants,
ass-kicking boots, T-shirt, and wide-brimmed hat, the last of which he
removed as he approached the bar. The boots were purposely left muddy, along
with the white-now-greying-socks, which along with the rest of the greys
made for good skulking. Blacks tended to catch light and turn it unless they
were pure matte, which was hard to get, whereas dark greys moved with it,
absorbed it, became a part of it. That's what he thought, anyway. His
friends thought he sounded like a fucking mystic, and insisted on wearing
shiny black leather coats with chrome buckles.
They were dead now.
Walking to the bar, he watched one of the patrons pass out on the floor
under a barstool, vacating the seat. He was careful not to step entirely on
the guy's face. Sort of. The barkeep glanced in his direction and nodded to
let him know he was next, walking the other way to help someone closer. He
waited.
It wasn't a long wait, but the anger didn't care. He watched, almost
passively, as the anger built inside of him for no particular reason now. He
glanced at the web of screens above the bar, relaying stock returns, video
game results, game shows, Keno numbers, some dumb trivia game nobody was
playing, music videos, even some dumb children's program with a chromed
dinosaur, teaching virtual morality to a group of web-toddlers, barely out
of diapers but already wearing a full set of trodes across their foreheads.
This stuff was supposed to be cool now ... figures. Fashion was always about
twenty years too late.
One of the screens was snow, tuned to a dead channel. Dead? Hmph. There was
more life there than there was on any of the other screens, he thought, then
quickly wiped it from his mind, anger overwriting philosophical mumbles. A
black fly crawled across the glass on one of the screens, then into a crack
in the side of the set, disappearing as the barkeep appeared. It wanted to
mean something. He almost let it, but decided to order a drink instead.
"Anything," he said, not looking at Lou. "As long as it's not on fire."
"Yeah," Lou mumbled. A minute later, the barkeep was back with the drink,
something greenish and room-temperature. He didn't ask what it was, just
took it and drank it. He wasn't kidding about the fire, either. House
specialties usually ran in either of two extremes: somewhere below
"Slurpee-temperature," yet still somehow liquid enough to swallow, or stuff
that singed your throat if you weren't chromed all the way down to your
gullet, if you had one (only 5K credits, plus taxes.) As he finished the
drink without enjoying it, he heard her behind him. The sex. The old chick.
"That's him. He cut me," she said, phlegm-encrusted voice quavering. This
was turning out to be a rather eventful day, all things considered.
He turned, his hands on his lap, and nodded his head just a touch in
greeting, neither admitting nor denying the accusation. Her pimp was bright
purple, skin tinted to match his shoes (or maybe the other way around). He
stood about seven feet tall, which probably meant bone grafts or gene
manipulation, and, at thirty or so, was about half her age. He had a knife
out, of course; guns were a no-no in the Pit, because someone uninvolved in
the dispute could get killed (of course, Lou kept an old machinegun mounted
on the corner of the bar, to make sure that in an emergency, if innocents
were going to be killed, they'd all go at once along with the guilty ones).
The knife the pimp brandished was rather impressive, though, a knife which
would have glittered evilly if it could have glittered, if it could be evil.
But that was just his left brain thinking for itself again. He ignored it
and turned up the anger a notch.
He (the pimp) was metalled up in typical cyber-nouveau-riche-punk fashion,
both arms and left leg, probably juiced up so high on rust inhibitors and
lubricants that the half a brain he had left was dead already, just
impulsing.
That would make it much easier.
As Bozo came forward with the blade, thrusting low (probably too low to hit
anyway), he crescent-kicked the blade aside, lightly touched his gloved
fingertips to the guy's forehead, and went bolt for his mind. No flash, just
results. Using what he had within him already, the anger from his previous
victim, he attacked viciously yet simply, knowing that as he used the
emotion within him, he'd assume that of his victim. It was part of the life
of a psychic vampire like himself; capture and release, give and take,
always an exchange between victim and killer, and always a blurred line
between who was hunter and who was prey.
Thoughts were very easy to steal once you'd learned how to stop stopping
yourself. Emotions were even easier, lying on the surface of people's minds,
ready to be manipulated and copied. When one was jacked up on chemicals, be
they drugs, alcoholic beverages, or the artificial freon-shit that made
implants possible, it became exponentially easier to enter.
Anger tore itself free from the back of his mind, and like a hot lance
through flesh it snaked into the pimp's mind, shorting synapses and
shredding grey matter along the way before returning home seconds later, a
few memories larger, a few emotions wider. The pimp, unable to do anything
but watch as his mind was ripped away, collapsed and began what would be a
very slow rust. His predominant emotions, greed, envy and lust began to drip
their way down from the mind they now resided in, spreading through nerves,
latching onto veins, enlarging and becoming. He waited for the desire to
overtake him, already craving money, women, sex, blood, emotions, life,
death, drinking, darkness, nothing...
As these last few overtook him, he chanced a glance downward, unable to
hate, unable to worry, unable to care, at the body he now stood on, at the
body whose emotions now overtook him. Flesh to flesh, dust to dust, mind to
mind.
He kicked the now-mindless drunk aside and sat heavily on the barstool like
a vampire having drunk greying blood, ignoring the pimp rusting on the floor
and his whore keening and the television sets mumbling. Glancing around the
bar, he briefly wondered about all of the emotions, all of the thoughts
which drifted around the room, seeking release. They didn't really matter
after all, did they? So many different emotions, so many different desires.
What was the difference? Anger, Joy, Sadness, Greed, Lust, Revenge. They all
came to the same thing in the end, didn't they? The same nothing.
Aside from what he carried in his torn backpack, he had only his apathy --
it was all he had. It was enough. More than enough.
He watched the flies crawl in and out of the television set, and had another
of the greenish things just for the hell of it.
They tasted faintly.
