Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

September 14, 2113When Brian turned nine, his father sent him to officer training. Brian did well there. He was disciplined harshly, but never abused. And he was always respected for his talent for war and his passion for getting things done. He was nineteen when he graduated academy. Within his division, he retained his respect, and became its commander at twenty-five, albeit partially due to his father.

Wilco snickered as he remembered how his father always did what he could to capitalize on his son’s potential.

In the end, savvy only got the old man so far. The host had him killed only a few years back. It made Wilco wonder if being closer to the host was really what he wanted. Not that he had made any progress in that since becoming commander. That schizophrenic dancer wouldn’t even recognize Wilco if he walked into his office right now. But he was probably already growing impatient to meet Grakus.

But then, Grakus would be gone as soon as the host and the world grew bored of him.

Wilco turned to the door where he left that little bastard. Not a sound came from it. Not a sound in over an hour. Not a single yelp. Wilco had tried walking in to make sure Teddles was doing it right, but the door was locked.

So there he sat on that wooden bench, watching beautiful nurses pass him by in that ugly corridor.

Wilco never suffered abuse because he had a father who knew how to avoid it. No one else in Chicago had such a skill. Or such a father. The military had it easier, but even they only joined having tasted the alternative. Everyone Wilco worked with, ate with, lived with, everyone he ever met in his life was off in some way. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Some were completely bat shit, but even the ones who could carry on a normal conversation did so with an undertone of madness. Some tried to hide it, and in a way that made them even stranger.

“Commander.”

Wilco looked up. Approaching him was Rouge. Ironed black suit with a stark-white scarf, round glasses, a clipboard, and a team of doctors to agree with everything he said. As Administrator of Hospitals, Rouge was in charge of every medical facility within Chicago’s walls—except for the one at Rush University, of course. Like any citizen, Rouge wasn’t allowed in there. Wilco found this funny for a number of reasons.

“And what is so refined a man as Mr. Rouge doing at this table for kids?” Wilco always found himself speaking a little eloquently when he was speaking with Rouge, like he was reaching up to pull him down.

“The newcomer is drawing everyone’s attention,” Rouge looked at his shoulder as a drop from the pipes above landed on his white scarf. “The host has asked me to see if you haven’t botched the attempt at finding out who he is.”

Bullshit.

Wilco folded his arms, sat back. “I’m taking care of it.”

Rouge looked down at his clipboard, pretending to be looking at something more important than Wilco. He looked back up, squinted as he looked around. He walked to the door behind which Teddles was working. “Tell me you didn’t leave him with the freak.” He turned back to Wilco for an answer.

Wilco yawned.

Rouge worked hard to hide his nature from the people around him. But sometimes he got just angry enough for the savage inside to flare in his eyes. Teddles wasn’t a freak. Not by Chicago’s standards. Teddles was just retarded or something. But of the monsters Chicago produced, all of them were afraid of Marcus Rouge.

The proper madman put his hand on the doorknob, twisting just enough to see if it was locked. Pale, bony fingers that were red at every joint like permanent bruises. He looked down. “If Teddles kills him, the blame will fall on me,” he took a deep breath, spoke slowly. “Why couldn’t you just do your job? Hold him in a cell and get the underhost.” His fist shut tightly.

Wilco was silent. He always went silent when he saw Rouge’s hands. They reminded the commander of everything he didn’t have the right to forget. They reminded him that nobody aside from himself and his father was immune to Chicago’s abuse, not even those who would eventually make it to the top. In fact, the ones who made it to the top were usually the ones most in tune with what it means to suffer. Rouge was possibly the best example of a Chicago success story.

Rouge’s madness was rooted deep into his life, but if he were sane enough to analyze it, he would have identified his earliest memory of it at five years old. His brother, Jean-Claude, had just died. Fever. Rouge was devastated. His older brother meant everything to him. He tried hard to endure, as his brother would have had him do.

His mother didn’t try.

She had always been insane, Lady Rouge, but she kept her distance—at least from Marcus. From a distance she would watch them play for hours at a time. She was a single mother all their lives, but kept things in order. When Jean-Claude passed away, the fibers of yarn that held her together unraveled all at once.

She sat Rouge down at the late Jean-Claude’s bedside. She made him touch his brother’s body, put his mouth on it. She made him watch as she cut him open, scooped his fluids out with a coffee mug, made him drink. She stored the body in a freezer, and every meal would serve a piece of it to Marcus. She made sure he ate all of it, believing that her first-born son could live inside her second. When the corpse had been consumed in its entirety, she would sometimes call little Marcus to do a chore. Other times she would call Jean-Claude. Either way of course meant Marcus, but his mother would see one or the other. Sometimes she would tell Marcus to leave the room so she could talk to Jean-Claude alone. When Marcus found this impossible, she beat him.

Marcus would spend his adolescence and adulthood going only by the name Rouge, because growing up, it was the only constant. He acted like a man when he was around men, doing everything he could to present himself as normal. But there were no normal human beings in Chicago, least of all Rouge.

Doctors often found Rouge in tears as he chewed on the refuse of bio-hazard wastebaskets. And Rouge was present for nearly every birth in Chicago to eat what was left when the procedure was complete. It was even rumored that a gynecologist once caught him eating a stillborn.

Rouge took his mangled hand from the door, straightened his glasses. “We both could hang on the cross for your calamitous lack of understanding.”

Calamitous lack of understanding? Wilco thought. Did you steal those words from one of your rejection letters?

Ten years of Rouge’s life was spent trying to make it as a doctor. Ten more were spent trying to get into Rush University; ten unsuccessful years trying to reach the one place that could free him from Chicago. After all that time, thinking he was making progress, he received a letter from the university politely asking him to stop trying.

Tempting as it was, Wilco never brought this up out loud.

A stretcher carrying a screaming man came flying through. The two men kept staring at each other as it passed between them. Water flowed through the pipes above them. A buzz saw started whirling somewhere far away.

Rouge stepped forward, tilted his head down as he held his stare across the hall at Wilco. Light from a bulb on the ceiling flashed across his glasses, turning them into lights of their own. “I’m waiting for some strategy, commander.”

Grab a placenta sandwich and calm down, there’s my strategy. There was always that special time of day to torment a psychopath. And there were special ways of doing it to Rouge. But there were places Wilco wouldn’t go. And there were reasons he wouldn’t go there.

Aside from being the most twisted in the twisted city of Chicago, there was another thing that distinguished Marcus Rouge from his peers. Through everything, Rouge was the only one who ever fought back. He knew he deserved better in a city of people who gave up thinking they deserved anything. He gave everything he had to make himself the man he knew he could become. And he failed. Many times. Over many years. Finally, when everything he was willing to give was gone, what was left belonged to Chicago. Had he been born to Wilco’s father, he probably would have been underhost by now, but then that would have meant he’d have died a long time ago. But then, maybe not Rouge.