Makin' Latex

(A prelude to our Performance coming up this Saturday)

“Is this what you were expecting to find?”

He crouches down beside the body, peering at the peculiar angle of the man’s neck. A train rumbles past, its sound wiping out his reply as he reaches forward with a fountain pen, pointing at a smashed web of circuitry embedded in the corpse’s chest, just under the collar bone.

“What was that?”

“I said yeah. This is exactly what I was expecting to find,” said Cartwright.  ”The fights are on again.” 

#

Cartwright looked the photos over.

“Eight bodies in eight months. All in better-than-perfect shape, all enhanced with adrenal nets and neurojump webs.” He handed the tablet back to his assistant, grimacing. “Dumped on or near the tracks. And we’re nowhere with this. We have no story.”

The two of them leaned back against Cartwright’s car, watching the police work the scene. Cartwright turned away, squinting up at the undulating glass tower behind the fence. The moon was reflected again and again in its curved surface, multiplying itself.

“You’ve got The Rat,” his assistant murmured.  

“I suppose I do,” Cartwright said. He dug his hands into his pockets.

#

The black walls of the plank shed rattled as a freight train rumbled overhead. The Rat sat on the edge of the rusted steel frame cot, wrapped in a tattered blanket, and coughed. A notched wooden chair rested against the wall nearby.

“I’m a wealthy man, you know,” he muttered. “I just can’t get to any of it. They’ll kill me if they so much as scent me.”

“Right,” said Cartwright, stepping forward carefully. “You were saying.”

“I was saying that I can tell you all about the fights if you got what I need. I was saying that I know everything you want to know. The Merchant of Bones, I shook his hand. The Open Lady, I kissed hers. The Cat, the Butterfly, I know them. I know them. But you have to pay me, or you get nothing.”

Cartwright reached into his coat and the Rat flinched. The reporter eyed him, pulling a stack of hundred dollar bills from his inside pocket and laying it carefully on the chair.

“It’s not enough,” The Rat hissed.

“It’s enough for you to start,” replied Cartwright. “And then if I figure you’re telling the truth, it’s enough to bring you more. Of course, if I get enough - if we bring them down - then you got nothing more to fear, right? You can get everything back.”

The Rat shook his head, grinning humourlessly. He reached for the chair. He thumbed the bills.

After a long moment, clutching the money with both hands, he bowed his head.

“First person you’re going to want to see, when you get in, first person you’re going to look for is the Maitre-D’. He looks like a servant but he’s the one running the show. You miss him, you got nothing. With him, the whole thing grows back like a hydra with all of its heads.”

“Who is he?”

The Rat flashed an angry look at Cartwright for a moment, forgetting himself. The expression quickly faded, and he returned his gaze to the floor.

“He’s masked. Like they all are. You do this right, you’ll know who he is before I do. But it doesn’t matter. Does it? You have no idea. You don’t know anything.”

Cartwright scowled. “I know enough. I know that they hold these goddamn fights every month just so that the freaks in the audience can get their kicks. And every time they do, one fighter - the loser - dies, and they dump him out by the tracks. So I know they gotta be close, and I know that we got about a month before it happens again.”

The Rat grinned again. “I told you,” he said. “You don’t know anything.”

He twisted the bills in his clenched fists.

“It’s not the loser you’re finding. It’s not one fighter that dies. For every one you find, there’s a dozen— look, the ones on the tracks - the ones you keep coming across. They’re not in the fights at all, my friend. They’re the invitation. And you don’t have a month. You found the new one, what, yesterday? Then, Mister Cartwright, the fights are tonight.”

Cartwright took a step back.

“Get your friends together. You’re going to need them. I’ll tell you where to go,” The Rat said, clutching the money to his chest. “Then you’ll see. Then you’ll see how this all works, and how many fighters die. And you’ll see what they do with the ones who don’t, and what that’s got to do with freaks getting their kicks

And the light caught the Rat’s eyes as he began to laugh his wheezing, whispering, desperate laugh.

#

Story: Ray Fawkes
Performance: Ego Assassin and Kink Engineering - Saturday May 19th at Torture Garden Toronto.