Conrad Williams - Decay Inevitable

“You don’t want to see, I promise you. It’s best you don’t see.”

Elisabeth would back her up, craning her neck to look at whatever was coming towards them. She’d pull a face and nod. “I’m with Catriona on this,” she’d say. “It’s probably best all round if you just sit tight. Maybe, if you’re quiet, it will go away.”

Joanna woke him from this uneasy snooze. He found he had been crying.

“How long have we been on this train?” he asked her, in an attempt to deflect her curiosity.

“You’ve been asleep for an hour or so. Whatever an hour means here.”

The crisp, authoritative voice burst out of the tannoy soon after, as if invited by Will’s impatience.

“We shall shortly be arriving at Mash This,” it said. “Please ensure that you take all your belongings with you. Have your tickets ready for inspection and leave no blood or body parts behind. Enjoy Mash This and be sure to travel with us again soon.”

Will collared the inspector as the train drew alongside the platform. Three children in swimming costumes were waiting to climb on board, shepherded by a lifeguard in mirrorshades with a shark bite the size of a dinner plate in his abdomen.

“What’s in Mash This?” Will asked.

“Whad idn’t, sir? Bash Thid id the playboy cabidal of our liddle world here. Ib you can’t bind a good tibe here, you bight as well be dead.”

They presented their tickets at the booth and were waved through onto the station concourse. Grunge music was being played at ear-splitting volume from speakers set into the ground that were as regular as cats’ eyes.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t think I had anything specific in mind,” Will said. “But take your pick. I think we’ll find it here.”

A taxi pulled up alongside them. A yellow cab that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the streets of New York, if the driver had been able to do something about the bubbled and blistered appearance of his skin. “Blowtorch,” he said, conversationally as they piled into the back seat. His eyes followed them in the rear-view mirror. They were large and vivid, almost obscenely big, like orbs of white icing on a sticky treacle cake. “Hurts like nothing you would believe, until the nerve-endings get fried off. Wife had it arranged. Hitman with an imagination. Not what you want, really. But the last laugh’s with me. I lied when I said I’d leave her everything. She’s in the hospital now. Tears streaming down her bloody face. ‘Pull through, Freddy,’ she’s whining. ‘Attaboy. You can do it!’ I tell you, it will be a tragedy if I come out of this. I’m having a fantastic time. But listen to me blabbing on. Where can I take you?”

“I could do with a drink,” Will said. “Know any good bars?”

“Do I know any bars? If people had nicknames around here, mine’d be Freddy ‘Bar-knower’ Fisk. Sit back and enjoy the ride. I hope you remember it after a night out at the place I’m going to take you to.”

The ride was like something out of a nightmare. The road was a trampled approximation of flatness, comprised of ancient speakers and strobe lights. Music was everywhere; rock competing with opera, acid jazz trying to subdue hip hop, reggae jousting with bhangra, all of it at volumes designed to make the ears retch.

Walking wounded shuffled along pavements or sat in recesses away from the throng nodding their heads to the variable beats. Great palaces of litter had risen from the sides of the road and faced each other across the traffic, a death’s door Vegas. Edged with flashing lights, they begged and bossed passers-by to come and watch dancing girls, and lose their money at the gaming tables. Other, less obvious attractions jostled for attention: gladiatorial bouts; suicide pits where failed souls could watch how-to videos by people who had checked out properly; mutilation chic clinics where those embarrassed by their wounds could glitz them up into this season’s must-haves.

Freddy dropped them off opposite a bar with a neon sign depicting a man drinking endlessly from an unlabelled bottle of hootch, his eyes turned into plus signs. The bar was called Cunted? You Will Be.

“I could come and pick you up later. Literally!” Freddy offered.

Sex alleys away from the main drag were rotting rat-runs filled with booths where the depraved could let loose the desires that convention and legality had forced to be hidden in life. Any permutation of animal and human was available, whether it moved around on the hoof, paw, webbed foot, or flipper. An old man whose mouth was a blood bath filled with dental equipment was standing on the doorstep of one of these cess-pools, stroking his chin while a bouncer challenged him to come up with something new that he couldn’t show him inside.

Gargling slightly, the dentist’s victim said: “Shaved cat used as a dildo on a superfat woman while a black guy, who’s being sucked off by a birthing goat, slams her tits repeatedly in the passenger door of a Peugeot 206.”

“I’ll get back to you on that one,” the bouncer said.

“Christ,” Will said. “Let’s get a drink.”

Inside Cunted? barstaff were trying to clear up the aftermath of a small war. Tables and chairs had been overturned. People were hitting each other with the abandon that comes with the knowledge that it won’t make a single bit of difference. Will and Joanna found a place at the bar; a bartender slid a couple of cocktail menus their way.

“I’ll have an Eggy Chin,” Will said, picking a drink at random.

Joanna said, “Piss on Your Chips.” The bartender went about magicking the drinks from the bevvy of shakers and bottles beneath his bar.

The entertainment, as far as Will could discern any beyond the brawl that was gradually being brought to an end, consisted of topless dancers on a stage going through a number of tired routines. Weary of the constant music, Will studied their injuries, which seemed to be fairly tame, apart from in the case of one lithe blonde who was gamely trying to dance with the branch of a tree rammed through her chest.

“Have you seen any more people like the ones you left behind at Gloat Market?” Joanna asked.

“Not yet, and I hope I don’t. That was too creepy. It was like looking at a series of really old photographs of your family and seeing your own eyes replicated in a person from each one.”

Jolted into remembering what he had seen in the mirror after his experiences with George and Alice, Will fingered his lower arm and his shoulder. Both areas felt sore and much too soft for his liking. Their drinks came. Will’s was some kind of hellish nog and spirits brew, while Joanna’s looked as if it had been drawn from a dodgy tap in the toilets.

Will excused himself and made for the gents, promising to come back quickly. He slalomed around the dregs of the fight, easily dodging punches thrown by the bloodied sacks staggering into each other, and pushed his way through a door bearing a medical diagram of a cross-section of the male generative organs. Bodies were piled up in the urinals, sleeping off the violence and the vodka. In the single cubicle, slumped on the seat, a man was trying to have sex with a woman who was fading from this place. Will watched, horrified, as he saw how it happened. How it would be for Joanna if her husband carried through his promise. The man didn’t seem to notice as he thuggishly, drunkenly lunged his hips into an area that was greying out, failing, rippling to nothing in his hands. Will caught a glimpse of skeleton, little more than a dim X-ray suggestion, and then the man was alone, reality slowly dawning on a face made imbecilic with booze.

Will averted his eyes, remembering what he had come here for. He unbuttoned his shirt and gingerly tugged back the two halves, almost swooning when he saw the spread of decay. His flesh resembled bacon that had been retrieved from the back of a fridge many, many days after it should have been consumed. It glittered and flashed iridescently. The patch on his shoulder had reached over to his chest and was consuming the pectoral on the left side. His right arm was completely infected, to a point just above his wrist. But for all that, he felt fine. As fine as it was possible to be, in the middle of a fever dream shared by all the poor bastards who were walking the tightrope between life and death.