Joseph D'Lacey - Snake Eyes

“All the procedures are in place for good reasons. I can assure you that safety is the first priority.” She gestured towards his couch. “Why don’t you sit down and we can get the examination out of the way.”

Johnson sank into the cushions and said, “Off.” His viewer, already blank, died. Dr. Weaver carried a small medical pack with her, the size of a wallet. She brought it out of her inside jacket pocket and approached him.

“Take off you vest. Shoes and socks too.”

“What?”

“You’ll be more comfortable. This won’t take long, Officer Johnson.”

She looked into his eyes and ears with her delicate scopes and scanned his chest and head. The tiny clicks and hums of the equipment reminded him of insects. Apparently satisfied, she replaced the small pack in her jacket.

“Raise your arms.”

“What for?”

“Glands. Come on.”

While she checked under his arms for swelling he looked at his own chest where he could see the tattoo. It seemed to have turned around. He was sure the head had been facing upwards before.

“Why the tattoo? Is that your idea too? They call me Spider now, you know.”

“Everyone gets something different depending on the job they’re doing and the area they’re doing it in. It isn’t always tattoos either. We give them piercings, scarrings, familiars, projections—whatever allows them to blend in to their surroundings and prevents them from being identified.”

She ripped open the panel on the front of his leather striders and yanked them down a few inches before he could even protest. He imagined she must have done such things a thousand times to a thousand stunned officers. With practised fingers she prodded his inguinal area for swelling and abnormality.

“Everything seems to be fine.”

She smiled at him and then pulled down his underwear. Before he could cover himself up again she closed her velvet warm mouth around his penis. Johnson tensed, unsure of what to do.

“Is that part of the examination?”

She didn’t answer.

When they’d finished, Johnson lay on his bed and watched Weaver dress; disguising her femininity and curves beneath flattening underwear and the angular lines of her suit. When she was done there was no trace of the woman he’d discovered, only the doctor, and in her eyes no recollection or acknowledgement of what they had done.

“You’re a Soothsayer now, Spider. How does it feel?”

“I’ll tell you when I notice something happening.”

She laughed then, as if he’d made a joke.

“Can’t you call me Johnson?”

“No. No one can now. You’re in character. Who knows how long you may have to stay that way?”

“Will you check on me again?”

“I doubt it”

She left then, without another word.

He lay there thinking about her for what seemed like hours but when he checked his clock only a few minutes had passed since she’d walked out the door. Lying back, he luxuriated in the rumpled covers, surrounded by smells of cinnamon spice perfume mingled with their sexual fluids. Had she turned off the surveillance while they were doing it? Was it actually some kind of further psych test? And what about the Sooth, he wondered, when would it start to work?

Did I get a bad batch? Did he rip me off?

When he got up to go to the bathroom he noticed something that looked like a twisted wire protruding from the upper corner of his bedroom to the left of the bed. As he approached it to look closer, he saw another one directly below it where the walls met the floor. Surely, this clumsy workmanship wasn’t JHD approved. He got down on his knees and inspected the intrusion.

The vine, if that was what it was, was a deep green; a lush green that hinted at plentiful rain in misty valleys. Along the three or four inches that were visible, tiny spearhead shaped leaves and spiraling tendrils reached out for purchase. Growing at an upward angle, as it was, towards the centre of the room, it had found no such support.

The one growing downwards from the ceiling was similar but slightly longer. He shrugged and went to take a leak. The pest control manager in his block would be hearing from him.

Around the apartment he found several shoots attempting to invade. He knew they were only weeds but they caused him to think about mould and dry rot and other organic proliferations. He wanted them gone; they signaled decay and disuse. Deciding he couldn’t wait until the pest control manager did his job; he walked around the flat and snapped off every shoot. By the end he had a handful. He imagined that they were squirming slightly in his grip and when he’d thrown them into the trash he washed his hands in disgust.

Next, he checked his viewer and found that the disc had evaporated just as the dealer had said:

“Don’t worry, man, it won’t leave dust on the scanner. They disappear clean. No trace.”

When he checked the tube he found there were only eight Saturns remaining. He had no recollection of taking a second one. Either the dealer had stiffed him or Weaver had taken one with her for analysis.

Johnson hid the tube under his mattress and got dressed. It had been a good day: he’d got laid and he had broken into his desired area of enforcement. It was time to celebrate.

“You hear about the weed, Spider?” Fury was leaning in towards him.

All the conversation so far had been shouted over the thump of the music but Johnson’s concentration was slipping badly now. He tried to focus on the ring of faces sharing his table, particularly Fury. He had to learn to stay sharp even when he was bombed. Saying Sooth seemed to have done wonders for his social life in a matter of hours, but how did they know? Had the dealer told them, or was it just the fact that people had started to accept him anyway? The bartenders certainly seemed to know what he liked to drink—they placed it on the bar the moment they saw him walk in. With a contraction of his will, he managed to bring everyone back into sharp relief and get his mind on the matter at hand.

“What weed?”

“It’s a mutation or something. Growing in every part of Tier Two.”

“Sure. I got some in my place. I snapped the little fuckers off and threw ‘em in the trash.”

Fury looked shocked.

“You didn’t get bit?”

Johnson laughed.

“Course not.”

“Well you were lucky, man. This weed thing is carnivorous.”

“Fuck you, Fury.”

“Seriously. Guys, isn’t the weed carnivorous?”

Everyone around the table nodded, suddenly serious.

“See, Spider, no shit. I heard this old lady came home to find her poodle tangled up in the grip of this fucking vine. It was sucking the dog dry. She called the pest guys and they burned it. Took the root out and everything but it just keeps growing back. It’s everywhere. “

“Guess I better get some weed killer.”

“You can try, but they say it doesn’t do any good.”

Johnson shrugged. He was too high to care about rogue plants. Fury and the rest of them, Ragman, Pincer and Dorff were either shitting him or too high to make any sense at all.

He sympathised. Now was not the time for intellectual or taxing conversation.

“Hey, guys.” He said. “Let’s do a Mist rota.”

They all nodded.

“Who wants to come back first?”

Fury raised a hand.

“I will.”

So Johnson and Fury fought their way through the dancers, drinkers and hustlers into the cramped back corridor which led to the stinking restrooms. At the end of the corridor there was a small knot of regulars taking various kinds of drugs before rejoining the endless communal bender that was McLaughlin’s. Spider rolled a Mist cone and handed it to Fury to light. Fury inspected his handiwork.