Richard Kadrey: Blind Shrike

Lulu looked at him, puzzled. "Nothing happened to me. You're the one who got stomped, 'member sugar?" She laid her hand on his cheek. The hand was cold and the skin was stiff, like dried-out leather.

"What happened to you?" Spyder repeated more insistently.

Lulu kept smiling. She had to. She had no lips. All the flesh from the lower part of her face had been cut neatly away, leaving her with a permanent leer. She wore a low-cut shirt and her dry white skin was criss-crossed with old scars and stained stitching. Spyder thought of the cheap boots and vests he'd bought on teenage roadtrips to Tijuana. Bad leather sewn together crudely and carelessly. Most disturbing of all were Lulu's eyes. They were gone. Over her empty sockets torn scraps of paper were taped, each with a smeared, childlike drawing of an eye.

"What the fuck happened to you?"

The exposed muscles around Lulu's mouth twitched a little. She reflexively pulled away from Spyder and covered her face with her hands, then quickly lowered them. "Oh my god, " she said. "You really had your brains rearranged last night."

"Tell me I'm fucked up," Spyder said. "I've been seeing the most horrible shit all day. Monsters. Buildings that aren't there. Dead people."

"Not dead, most likely," Lulu said. "There's a whole lot more range between dead and alive than they taught us when we were kids, Spyder."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's a lot no one taught us. Deep, dark secrets. Other worlds. Other kinds of people. Hidden, but right in front of us."

"This is a mistake."

"I wish. There's monsters in the world. Some of 'em were born and some were made. I was made."

"This isn't happening. I'm still in the alley. I'm knocked out and I'm dreaming."

"I'm so sorry, darlin'. You're not ready for this. You were never supposed to see or know about it."

"Know about what?" Spyder shouted. "What are you?"

"I'm Lulu, baby. Just Lulu." She sat down next to him again, a horrible, broken toy. "You're just seeing another part of me. And I'm so sorry for that." Tears fell from her empty eye sockets, staining the paper drawings taped there.

Spyder walked across the room and sat on the floor with his back against the counter. "I refuse to accept any of this," he said.

Lulu got up and locked the door to the studio, then sat back in the chair in front of Spyder. "Darlin', we've known each other since we were six years old. You're the first person I came out to," she said. "I guess I'm coming out again."

"As what?"

Lulu leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee. "Please don't touch me," Spyder said. She withdrew the hand.

"I'm not really a monster," said Lulu. "I'm a damned fool, but I'm not a monster. I just got into something a little over my head."

"That part's obvious."

"I just had my eyes opened, so to speak," she said, -pulling her exposed muscles into a smile. "Just like you." She slid down next to him on the floor, careful not to let her body touch his. Spyder shifted away from her a few inches.

"Remember four, five years back when I was all strung out on oxy? I couldn't work. Couldn't do much of anything but steal and score."

"You still owe me a CD player," Spyder said.

Lulu let out an airy laugh, like wind through a keyhole. "Rehab didn't work. Then, I met some people through this dealer. They said they could get me clean. Make my hands steady, so I could work again. Did I want to try it? Of course, I said Yes."

"When was this? I remember you getting better in rehab," said Spyder.

"Jesus, Spyder. I didn't last a week there," Lulu said. "I wouldn't let you visit, remember? I always called you? I checked out and was on the street scoring until I met these people."

"Who were they?"

"Real monsters. Born monsters," she said. "But I didn't know that back then. They offered me the deal of a lifetime. I'd get clean, get healthy and get my talent back. They promised they could make me better than ever. Can you imagine what that meant to me back then?"

"How'd you end up like this?"

"You know how dealers are. The first one's always free. Then the price just keeps going up. You got a cigarette?"

Spyder pulled a pack of American Spirits from his jacket pocket, took one, gave one to Lulu and lit them both. They smoked in silence for a few moments.

Lulu blew a series of small smoke rings through the center of bigger rings, something Spyder had been watching her do since junior high. "The price for giving me back my life was my eyes," she said, "They said that sight's mostly in the brain and that in this Sphere of existence, they could make it so I'd see better without them." Lulu took a long drag off the American Spirit. Spyder wanted her to stop talking. "They were right, only they didn't tell me it wouldn't last. Every year or so, my sight would start to go and they'd show up, ready to deal. They'd already taken my eyes, so they took something else each time. Stomach. Liver. Skin. I don't know what all anymore. But not my heart. You'd be surprised what you can live without, but not your heart." Another long drag. A cloud of blue smoke. "Each time, they'd do their little voodoo so my body'd keep going, till the next visit. No one ever noticed the difference. When they took my eyes I saw a whole new world. The world, I guess, you're seeing now. Shit, Spyder, no one knows anything. All the teachers and cops and priests and shrinks they sent us to, they don't know what's really going on. When I saw the real world, knowing how long I'd been blind scared me a lot more than the monsters."

"You think this is some kind of goddam gift?" asked Spyder.

"For you it is. You got it for free. It cost me a little more."

"Fuck this world and fuck this gift."

"I'd rather fuck your sister."

"I'll trade you for your mom."

"Deal," said Lulu. She stuck out her hand, the traditional end to a stupid joke that they'd done since they were kids. Eventually, Spyder shook Lulu's hand.

"Goddam," said Spyder. "It is you, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

Spyder slid his arm around Lulu's shoulders and pulled her to him. She hugged him and laid her head on his chest. They sat on the floor until the sun went down and the studio was dark. People knocked on the door, but they ignored them.

Many years ago, Ishtama was the mother of birds, Setuum was the mother of fishes, and in a golden city in the south Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes-her body decorated with human skulls, serpents and lacerated hands-gave birth to the first man, Mixcoatl.

Mixcoatl's sisters were the stars in the sky and he brought one to Earth to be his wife. Their children were the human race.

As much as Mixcoatl's wife loved him, she missed her sisters and longed to visit them in the sky. Mixcoatl went to Apsu, the lord of the birds, to ask him to fly his wife back to heaven. When Mixcoatl arrived, however, Apsu wasn't there. His wife, Tiamut, told Mixcoatl that Apsu had been murdered by his Shadow Brother, Marduk. Apsu was a friend and Mixcoatl grew very angry at this news. He climbed to the top of the tallest mountain in the world and cut out Marduk's heart with an obsidian knife, throwing the Shadow Brother's body into a deep gorge that led to the center of the world.

When Mixcoatl went home, he told his wife what he had done. She was afraid. "Our mother, Coatlique, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, is dead. Your Shadow Brother, Huitzilopochtli, burst from her breast in battle armor and a bone sword."

Mixcoatl told his wife, "I have no brother, shadow or otherwise."

His wife said, "Before she died, our mother warned that at some moment in our life, all men and women -create their shadow form, born from their desire and rage. These shadow forms do not manifest themselves in flesh unless called into being by an act of violence or madness, a blow at creation itself. When you rashly killed Marduk, you bought forth your Shadow Brother and released pure chaos into the world. Huitzilopochtli is you reborn as a soulless void. If you do not destroy him, he will kill you and take your place."