Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

The monster steps back but watches him carefully. “I understand you want a favor.”

Niko nods. It hurts. “You’re very understanding.”

From down below a funhouse whipcrack snaps before a ragged scream.

“I understand you would like a ride down,” the monster continues, oblivious to the noise and Niko’s sarcasm.

“Yeah.”

That aqua scrutiny. I cannot meet that unremitting gaze for long.

“You are in a great hurry to be in a world of pain.”

Niko shrugs. “Oh well.” Heated wind rushing up from the abyss ruffles his hair.

Geryon stares. The gargoyles have returned to their horrific human pigeonshoot and crouch now upon the crenellation with their granite backs to Geryon and Niko. “I cannot willingly do this,” the monster finally says.

Niko forces himself to stand and holds on to a merlon for support. Oh man. “Then I’ll walk.”

“You would never make it.”

“I’ve come this far.”

“Yes.”

They regard one another. Finally Niko sighs and breaks the stare. His eyes throb as if he’s looked away from a bright light. He slowly bends to pick up his clothes. Pain lights up his hamstring so he squats instead. The cuts on his arches spread and tears spring to his eyes. Putting on his clothes may truly kill him. He fishes out his underwear and turns them inside out and feeling like an invalid steps into them. Tries not to think that they were recently worn by a dead man he just threw off a cliff. Glances at his ragged shirt and shakes his head. Hisses as the fabric rasps the shoulder that scraped the merlon in the fight.

The jeans are stiff and ripe with blood and dirt and shit and sweat and piss, but damn if there isn’t a single tear in them. He struggles into the pants and tries not to cry when the denim slides across his bite wound.

Buckling his belt Niko becomes aware of the monster looking on in what he thinks is amusement. “What?”

“You tucked your shirt in.”

Niko stares down. So he has. “Well. You never know who you’ll run into. Maybe my elementary school principal is down here.” He buckles his belt and painfully shrugs into his torn and filthy jacket.

“Mr. Wilson. He is.”

Niko stops with the jacket halfway on and stares at Geryon who stares back without returning a thing. Niko shrugs and works his arms the rest of the way through the jacket and shoots his hands through the cuffs and pats the pockets. Son of a bitch. He fishes out the Swisher Sweets and sees the cabbie also tucked a box of whitehead lucifer matches into the pack. He tamps the battered half full pack against his unbitten thigh while gazing around the Battlements. Ramhorn rears back holding a bald old man by the torso. Pignose shouts Pull and the poor soul flies away.

Niko looks away from the dwindling strangled scream and offers the pack of cigarillos to Geryon. “Smoke?”

Sudden orange light stains spooncarved stone and turns the aqua eyes a filmy yellow. Geryon reaches toward the pack but stops. “We are not supposed to.”

Niko shakes the pack. “Live a little.”

“Well.” The monster plucks a cigarillo from the pack.

Niko taps out one for himself. He pops a match alight against his thumbnail and as it lights the matchhead grinds onto the nail. As it spits and smokes there Niko calmly wipes it off against his jeans. He holds his hand up and stares at the burnmark on his thumbnail. Coals to Newcastle. “You ever have one of those days?” he asks the creature before him. He’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. The unlit cigarillo trembles in his hand. Silently the monster takes it from his fingers as if Niko is a child and puts both cigarillos in his hard gash of a mouth, and when he pulls them put again they’re lit. He hands one to Niko and returns the other to his lipless slit. It’s like a toothpick in that enormous head.

Niko leans back against the wall and takes a long deep drag. His eyes water and his head throbs and he feels bitterness at the back of his palate and rasping in his throat and harshness in his lungs. It’s wonderful. The nicotine goes straight to work, do not pass GO. Niko once read that every cigarette subtracts ten minutes from a smoker’s life. Yeah well this is the most pleasant little suicide Niko’s ever committed, and certainly the best feeling he’s had since he stepped through the gate. On his deathbed he doubts he’ll want these ten minutes back.

Geryon smokes his cigarillo down to the nub in one enormous pull. No smoke emerges from his mouth or beakish nose when he exhales. If he exhales.

A few minutes later Niko flicks the burning butt onto the walk and goes to grind it out but stops when he remembers he is barefoot as a hick. The soles of his feet are shredded wheat. That’s gonna be awfully inconvenient.

Geryon eyes the smoldering butt and says nothing.

Niko forces himself to take his weight from the wall. Sparkling fish swim in his vision. “Okay. Gotta go. Gotta gig.”

“A moment. I forget that you have barely arrived here.”

“Feels like I’ve been here all my life.”

Something in the monster’s face intensifies the violence intrinsic to its form. His great stone wings rustle. “I mean only to say I forget that you are not accustomed to how we go about our business here.” He sets a pale blue writhing hand against his massive chest. “We are servants. Our roles are narrowly defined.” He counts off on his varying wormy fingerbunch. “We carry out the punishment of the damned. We prevent escape. We maintain order.” The fingerbunches lower. “Your presence here upsets a balance. We have few rules for dealing with mortals who come here. But we do have protocols. We are not to unwarrantedly molest mortals on their journey in. But when those mortals try to leave—” A monstrous shrug. “Well, you know their stories as well as I do. The Park is easy to get into and very difficult to leave. Like marriage, the pundits tell me.”

Niko registers the monster’s eloquence only dimly. The mellifluous voice has gone hollow and distant and without content. Niko nods but he is fading out. Like a junky. “This is all very interesting,” he hears himself say, “but I really need to be going.” He steps away and wonders absently how many steps he’ll get before he passes out.

But Geryon holds up a muscled arm. “What I am telling you is that I cannot willingly carry you down. I can only follow orders.”

Niko frowns. Brings a hand to his face to rub the aching flesh. Knows the monster’s trying to tell him something but feels thick and slow and stupid and can’t mine meaning from the words. Can barely link the words together as coherent information.

A recent memory surfaces and the voice of a titan sounds in his mind. FIND THE MONSTER GERYON AND CALL HIM BY HIS NAME. ORDER HIM TO TAKE YOU DOWN WHERE WHAT IS WILLED MUST BE.

Oh. He gets it now. He cocks his head at the cubist face of the monster standing patient and immense and inscrutable before him. Pearlescent depths of aqua eyes. Those frightening alien pupils. He could pulp me like a rotten prune. How much to trust a monster such as this? What choice do I have? He senses that the monster wants to help him. What he cannot figure out is why. But ascribing human motivation to such a being is useless.

Niko draws a breath to clear his muddied mind and unearths one of the old keys. “Then Geryon,” Niko says, translating as he goes and paraphrasing to fit his circumstance, “in the name of the power by which I go this sunken way across the floor of Hell, carry on your back my mortal flesh down to the lower depths, for I am not a spirit to move through air.”

The monster nods thoughtfully. “Nicely put. You need the injunction, though.”

“This has been willed where what is willed must be.”