Richard Kadrey: Butcher Bird

She was gone. Spyder started after her, but when he tried to take a step, his legs shook so much that he fell against the alley wall. A few minutes later, Lulu came outside looking for him and helped him back into the Bardo Lounge. Spyder noticed that Lulu didn't seem to see the large dead demon lying nearby in the alley. Together, Spyder and Lulu got very, very drunk.

Four

Traffic Jam

It was light out when Spyder woke up, but his eyes refused to focus, so he couldn't read the time on the Badtz-Maru clock radio near the bed.

His head felt as if someone had scooped out his brains and filled his skull with broken glass and thumbtacks. When he tried to sit up, every part of his body ached. He rose slowly to his feet and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Spyder's shoulder throbbed and when he switched on the bathroom light he saw why.

There was a long gash running across his shoulder and down his chest. He had a black eye, a swollen lip and his arms and ribs were spotted in livid purple bruises. Spyder remembered the scene in the alley. It wasn't a dream. He had been mugged.

Blood from the gash had dried on his skin, gluing part of his white wife-beater to his chest. Spyder stood under the hot shower until the blood softened and the water soothed his knotted muscles.

When he stepped out of the shower, he left the wet shirt draped across the towel rack beneath the framed Lady from Shanghai poster that Jenny hated. The gash on his shoulder burned and his headache was coming on strong behind his eyes. Spyder slapped on some gauze squares and taped them down with white medical tape.

Christ, he thought, I was supposed to call Jenny last night and tell her I was going to be late. She must be pissed. Then it hit him, as it had hit him almost every morning for weeks: Jenny was gone. She'd packed up and moved the last of her stuff to LA. That's why he'd gotten so drunk with Lulu. It was the one-month anniversary of her desertion.

No fucking way I can put ink on anyone today, he thought. It was already after one in the afternoon. Spyder didn't want to go to the studio, but he needed to call his clients and reschedule. He dressed quickly into battered black jeans, steel-toed Docs and the largest, loosest gray Dickies shirt he could find in his closet. A pile of Jenny's abandoned textbooks were stacked at the back, The Gnostic Gospels, Heaven and Hell in the Western Tradition, An Encyclopedia of Fallen Angels. Spyder slammed the closet door.

The warehouse Spyder rented was across town from the tattoo studio. He usually rode the Dead Man's Ducati-the bike he'd bought cheap from a meth dealer he knew down in Tijuana; the previous owner had gone missing and did Spyder want first dibs?-but he felt too shaky for two wheels today. He called a cab and waited by the curb in the warm afternoon sun.

"Do you have the time?"

Spyder was so out of it, he hadn't seen the tall man in the gray business suit approach him. The man was bald, but tanned and healthy-looking, with deep wind and sunburn creases on his cheeks. It took Spyder a second to answer.

"Uh, no. Sorry."

"No worries," the man said with a slight shrimp-on-the-barbie accent. "Lovely day."

"Yeah. Great," said Spyder

"You all right, mate?"

"Just a little hungover's all."

The businessman laughed. "That's how you know you had a good time," he said, and clapped Spyder on his sore shoulder. "Cheers."

As the man walked away, Spyder saw something attached to his back. It was sort of apelike, but its head was soft, like a slug's. It had its teeth sunk into the man's neck and was clinging onto his back by its twisted childlike limbs. Spyder wanted to call out to the man, but his throat was locked tight in fear and disgust. The parasite's head throbbed as it slurped something from the businessman's spine.

Spyder took a step back and his shoulder touched a rough wooden pole planted in the ground through a section of shattered pavement. Pigeons and gray doves were nailed up and down the pole. Animal heads were staked around the top. An alligator. A Rottweiler. A horse. Other more freakish animals Spyder couldn't identify. Each head was decorated with flower garlands and its eye sockets and mouth stuffed with incense and gold coins, like offerings.

Across the street, a griffin, its leathery wings twitching, was lazily chewing on the carcass of a fat, gray sewer rat. Emerald spiders the size of a child's hand ran around the griffin's legs, grabbing stray scraps of meat that fell from the beast's jaws. The spiders scrambled up and down the griffin's hindquarters. Gray stingray-like things flapped overhead, like a flock of knurled vultures. A coral snake lazily wrapping itself around the sacrifice pole stopped its climb long enough to call Spyder by name.

Spyder's head spun. He stepped into the street, flashing on the demon in the alley the night before. The mugging had been real. Had the monster part been real, too? He leaned his head back. Spinning in the sky overhead were angels with the wings of eagles. Higher still crawled vast airships. Their soft balloon bodies glowed in the bright sun, presenting Spyder with profiles of fierce mythological birds of prey and gigantic lotuses.

A cab turned the corner onto Harrison Street and Spyder frantically flagged it down. "Haight and Masonic," he said to the driver, trying not to sound as deranged as he felt. Spyder slid into the backseat and as the driver pulled away, he peered out the cab's rear window. The businessman was on the corner, talking to three pale men in matching black suits. Their clothes and general formality reminded Spyder of bankers in an old movie.

One of the bankers stepped forward, reached into the businessman's chest and pulled out his heart. Turning stiffly, he dropped the organ into an attache case held up by another of the trio. That done, the third banker used a knife to carefully peel the businessman's face off. The cab turned the corner and Spyder lost sight of them.

Five

Communication Breakdown

"How you voting on Prop 18?"

Spyder looked up. The cabbie looked exhausted, Spyder thought. One of those guys in his forties with eyes that make him look ten years older. His skin hung loosely on a gray, unshaven face.

"The companies make it sound like it'll put more cabs on the street, but really it's just going to screw up the medallion system even worse and give all the power to the big cab companies. We aren't employees, you know. All us cabbies are freelance. I owe money the moment I take my cab out. The moment I touch it. A cab driver has the job security of a crack whore. Worse than slaves, even. We're up at the big house begging the master for more cotton to pick."

"I'm sorry, said Spyder. "I don't know anything about Prop 18. I don't vote:ever."

The driver shook his head. His black hair stuck out at odd angles, as if he'd been sleeping on it just a few minutes earlier. "Voting's not a right, you know. It's not a privilege. It's your duty. My daddy died in the war so you could vote."

"Hey driver, uh," Spyder looked at the name on the man's taxi license, "Barry. Do you want to play a game?"

"I don't think so."

"There's a $20 tip in it for you. "

"Are you a cop?"

"No."

"Fag?"

"No."

"You from the cab company?"

"No, Barry."

"What kind of game?"

"Don't rush getting me to the Haight," Spyder said. He leaned his head against the window. It was cool on his forehead. "Take your time. Let the meter run. As we hit each corner, you're going to tell me what you see.

"What's on the corners you mean? Like buildings and people?"

"Exactly. Big or small. Whatever strikes your fancy."

"Give me a for instance," said Barry. "Like this corner."

"Okay," said Spyder leaning forward to peer out the windshield. "That semi up ahead. The blonde eating a taco in front of a bodega. The mailbox painted like a Mexican flag. That blimp shaped like Garuda."