Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

Zoe snapped the rubber band on her wrist.

“When it’s over, I will.”

Before she ditched school, Zoe went into one of the bathrooms, locked herself in a stall, and got out the straight razor. When she’d cut herself before, it had always been with skinny little double-edge blades she’d shoplifted from the mall. She’d never used anything like the straight razor, and the sight of it now-big in her hand, a tarnished metal blade with a bone grip-made it even more intimidating. It still carried a faint scent of her father’s aftershave. She didn’t want to do anything to spoil that, but she knew that this was the price she’d agreed to.

She tugged at the rubber band on her wrist, but she didn’t snap it.

Zoe wondered if Absynthe ever cut herself, or let someone cut her. She knew kids who gave each other ritual scars, mostly because they were too young or too broke to afford professional tattoos or piercings. Absynthe, she thought, might have been fierce enough to play games like that. She might even have offered some of her own blood so that Zoe wouldn’t have to cut herself. Why not let her, if she offered? Zoe had fooled Emmett once. She could do it again. But the bell had already rung and Absynthe was gone, back to class. No option there. No option but one.

Her arms were off-limits, she knew. Just the thought of it brought back bad, dark memories of the days before and the weeks after her father’s funeral when she’d cut herself just to feel a different kind of pain for a while. In the stall, Zoe undid her pants and quickly, without giving herself time to think about it, made a shallow slash across the upper part of her left leg.

She took a few sheets of toilet paper and dabbed up the blood. It was only a surface cut, but Emmett said that all he wanted were a few drops, so she thought it should be enough. When the blood stopped flowing, she wrapped the red-blotched sheets in more toilet paper, pulled up her pants, and stuffed both the razor and the bloody paper in her pockets.

When she left school the hall clock said it was one-thirty. That meant she had to be back in no more than two hours. She walked quickly down the familiar, inexplicable path that always led her to Emmett’s. Before, the walk had always seemed timeless and Emmett’s shop had always magically appeared in front of her, right on cue. This time, however, the walk felt like it took forever. Zoe grasped at every vague landmark. A pink awning on a Laundromat. A shuttered bodega. When she saw a little church with Korean characters on the roof, she started running and kept running until she saw the shop.

She stopped for a second to catch her breath, then went and pushed on the front door. It was locked. The sign in the window said CLOSED. Zoe cupped her hands and peered through the glass. As always, it was cave dark inside, and she really couldn’t see anything but the counter and the first few record bins by the door.

She banged on the glass with her knuckles. The door shook and rattled, warped and loose in its ancient wooden frame. After knocking for a minute or so, to her relief, Zoe saw Emmett coming from the back of the shop. He unlocked and opened the door, but only halfway.

“Yeah? What do you want?” Emmett asked.

“Hi. I’m here for my dad’s record,” said Zoe, still a little out of breath.

Emmett stared like he’d never seen her before. “What? Your father made a record? Was he in a band? What was it called?”

“No. My dad’s record. The one where his soul lives.”

“Hey,” said Emmett, “I don’t know what you’re on, but I don’t have time for this.” He started to close the door, but Zoe caught the edge and pushed her way inside. The two of them stood across the empty space by the front counter, just looking at each other. Zoe was breathing hard and Emmett stared at her blankly.

“Look, kid, if you know the name of the record you want, maybe I can find it for you. But I can’t stand here all day playing Name That Tune.”

“Emmett, it’s me,” said Zoe. “Why are you acting like this?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I found the back room with the soul records. You let me use the Animagraph.”

“I don’t know what the hell an ‘Animagraph’ is, and the soul records are against that wall under the Al Green poster.”

“Not those soul records, the ones in the back room that people can’t see.” Zoe turned to the back of the shop, to the room where the Animagraph and the special records were stored. The entrance wasn’t there. The dirty beaded curtain was gone. The wall was solid.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Did you change your mind about the price? Do you want something else? I brought what you asked for.” She reached into her pocket and retrieved the bloody tissues. She held them out to him.

Emmett took a step back, his eyes widening. “What the hell are you doing, kid? Are you crazy?”

“Emmett, please. I just want to take my father home.”

Emmett held up his hands, palms out, as if trying to hold Zoe off. “Listen, I don’t know if this is the crank or the acid talking, but I just run a shop. I buy and sell old junk that no one wants.”

“I know, and I want to buy something from you.”

“With that? I don’t think so.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Nothing from you, with your bloody Kleenex. I sell real merchandise to people who can pay for real. If someone can’t pay, I find someone else who can. And you, kid, can’t pay.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” said Zoe miserably.

“That part I believe. Now it’s time for you to get out. I have a business to run.”

“Please don’t do this. I’ll give you whatever you want,” Zoe said. She pressed a hand to Emmett’s chest. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

“You don’t have anything I want,” he said, and pushed her away.

Emmett grabbed her by the upper arm so hard it made Zoe gasp. He pulled her to the front door, opened it, and shoved her through. Zoe stood in the gray alcove between the bright street and the enveloping darkness of Emmett’s shop. As he closed the door, she felt a tickle in her ear. It was as if some invisible presence were leaning over her to whisper a secret.

“I know you cheated me. That wasn’t your tooth,” said the phantom voice.

She turned, but Emmett was gone and the door was locked.

Zoe banged on the glass. She screamed and cursed at him. She kicked the door. There was no response, no help there. No way to fix things. There was nothing but ruins. Ruins that she’d made.

She started back to school, slowly and miserably. She wiped tears from her face and the snot from her nose with the underside of her sleeve, not caring how she looked or who saw her. Then she began to run. She ran by instinct, following the blind path away from Emmett’s as she always did, but now full of fury and reckless anger. She ran against red lights. The sounds of squealing brakes and drivers’ curses were a distant, meaningless noise in her ears. The world had collapsed into a narrow tunnel of pain and loss. All she could hear in her head was a single word pounding over and over again, No, no, no, no, no. .

Zoe hadn’t run from her father’s funeral but now she wanted to run forever. To obliterate herself in motion. No past. No future. It was tempting. She could make it happen. All she had to do was cross against a red light and stop in the intersection. There wouldn’t be any squealing brakes. There wouldn’t be time. Just the thud of a car’s bumper into her side and then nothing. Nothing forever. How beautiful that would be.

It was two-thirty when she got back to the school. She was sweating and shaking. Going back to class wasn’t an option. She went around the building to Absynthe’s secret corner, curled up against the fire door, and closed her eyes. She tried to sleep, hoping she could find Valentine. She took off her rubber band and threw it under some half-dead bushes with the beer cans and cigarette butts.