Splatterpunk's Not Dead Page 3

  Kyle was no longer aroused. He looked frightened. “Okay. But first, make me a drink.”

  #

  A smile threatened to peek from Samantha’s normally stern, overworked face. “Jordy, Jordy, what have we here?”

  Jordan was pleased to present a design for which he was tremendously proud. He’d used the fabric like a madman, cutting and altering, pinning and adjusting to Kyle’s disdain. Kyle certainly had changed. Didn’t enjoy the attention and praise of being a human model like he used to. But the design Jordan created on his body—with only two accidental pokes with a pin—was awe-inspiring.

  The dress was now pinned back on a mannequin. He arrived to the warehouse early to prepare it before Samantha got there. That and he was speeding like a freight train and needed something to occupy his time. He’d made a sketch of the design before Kyle, in a fit if irritation, ripped off the cuts of fabric that had been pinned back over his body, showcasing Jordan’s raw creativity. No matter how many sketches he’d done, trying to free the designs that were trapped in his mind, he had to have the human canvas of Kyle to work with to break the chains that bound his creativity. It had worked before, and by the response Samantha gave him, it appeared to have worked again.

  She stood to the left and then to the right, looked the fabric up and down, holding her chin in a way that indicated serious consideration. Had she not liked it, she would have rolled her eyes and ordered the fabric recycled. Probably would have told Jordan never to grace her mannequins with such atrocious rags.

  “I like it,” she said. It wasn’t quite the response Jordan expected. “I want more like this.” She looked Jordan in the eyes. Her face contorted like someone put a rotten fish under her nose. “You look like hell, Jordy. Up all night on this?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Get some sleep.” She looked at the mannequin again. “I like this. It has flair, elegance, it’s chic. I want more. I don’t know what you did and I don’t care. Sometimes you find your creative foothold and realize that there’s only one way to unlock the brilliance within your mind. If you’ve found it again, Jordy, don’t let go.”

  #

  Kyle was hardly in any shape to drive or even walk, so Jordan did his best to act as a crutch for his old friend as they hobbled down the street from the club.

  “Must’ve drank too much,” Kyle slurred.

  “Almost home,” said Jordan.

  By the time they made it into Jordan’s apartment, Kyle collapsed onto the floor then crawled to a couch where he did his best to sit up, unable to do so. He kept flopping over like his spine was made of jelly.

  “I think,” Kyle said between his eyes closing as if from extreme fatigue, “Someone ... put something ... in my ... drink.”

  Jordan prepared fabrics and located his sheers. From his position on the floor, like a mad genius amongst the tools of his trade, he looked up at Kyle passed out on the couch. He’d never had a reason to use GHB before, but wow did it make a person vulnerable.

  Jordan tried unsuccessfully to get Kyle to stand. He tickled him, told him a dirty joke, even grabbed his package hoping to arouse him and maybe bring some cognizance into those listless eyes.

  How the hell was he going to work with a mannequin that was about as lively as a fresh cadaver?

  Standing back, Jordan grabbed the bottle of vodka he’d been working on. He was numb. Worked better in that state of mind. The alcohol seemed to balance the drug cocktail he’d been fueling himself with. In times such as this one, he had to stand back and have a drink, feel the burn, blink away the lack of sleep.

  Problem was Kyle really did look dead.

  Jordan’s heartbeat accelerated. His mouth went dry. He just about dropped the bottle, but managed to place it upon a bookshelf without averting his glassy stare into Kyle’s eerily open eyes. A fly landed on one of those unblinking eyes. The dead don’t blink flies away.

  An overwhelming instant of panic washed over Jordan. He rushed to Kyle and placed his ear to Kyle’s chest. Jordan felt body heat, but that didn’t mean Kyle was alive. If he had just died from an overdose he would still be warm.

  A thumping heartbeat rattled through Jordan’s ear. Good, Kyle was alive. Very alive. In fact...

  Jordan pulled his head away. Sweat oozed out of his pores creating a shellac on his face. It wasn’t Kyle’s heartbeat he was hearing—it was his own and it was frantic.

  Grabbing Kyle’s ankles, Jordan pulled his body off of the couch, horrified at how loose his joints were, how his head lolled off the cushion and hit the throw rug like a fallen bowling ball.

  This time Jordan pushed a couple of fingers into Kyle’s neck, searching for his carotid artery. He felt nauseous, his mind spinning almost as if he’d consumed a preposterous amount of booze on an empty stomach. He couldn’t be sure he felt a damn thing in Kyle’s neck.

  Jordan slapped Kyle’s face. “Wake up, damn you! Wake up!”

  Jordan shrank backwards, crawling into a sort of fetal position at the edge of the couch. Couldn’t take his eyes off of Kyle, lying on the floor like someone waiting for a chalk outline.

  After maybe two minutes Kyle made a noise and shifted. Jordan let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding the entire time. He stood and now it was quite clear that Kyle was indeed alive. His breathing was so shallow that it was difficult to detect.

  “Oh...my...god,” said Jordan. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  Kyle didn’t respond. Just lay there, eyes now closed.

  Feeling as if the high he’d spent most of his adult life chasing had completely vanished, Jordan chopped up a few lines on a side table next to the couch. He inhaled, rubbed his nose, made facial expressions like he was on the verge of overdose, then looked at Kyle lying there incapacitated. He was better this way. Wouldn’t be able to bitch and complain. He’d done a lot of that last time. Almost became too distracting for Jordan to work.

  Yes, Jordan thought, this will work out just fine.

  Jordan stripped Kyle down to his skivvies and burned the midnight oil, working feverishly on his latest design.

  #

  “Good god, Jordy,” Samantha said, “You look like you’ve been run over by a garbage truck, but this design is something to behold.”

  Jordan, sporting a five o’clock shadow and eyes that looked like they’d been dipped in blood, smiled halfheartedly.

  The design was sketched on a piece of paper with colored pencils. The paper was smudged and torn as if it had taken two trains, a few buses and a taxi to get there.

  “I want you to see something,” said Samantha. “Follow me.”

  Jordan followed. She continued to speak as they walked into her studio.

  “I took your last design and personally sewed a prototype.” She pulled a sheet off of a mannequin to reveal the dress. “I think there are a few things we can tweak, but I can see this one on the runway.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Jordan, circling the dress, imagining his name on the tag.

  “You’re doing good work, Jordy. Keep it up. I like seeing you working again. This world needs Jordy Theaker.”

  #

  With every week that passed, Jordy dropped off another sketch, each one riskier than its predecessor. Samantha couldn’t quite decipher a theme, but Jordy was certainly looking to create new trends. She’d even shared a couple of his designs with a few fashionistas she trusted, all of whom claimed to be excited to see Jordy Theaker working again.

  Samantha had to admit that she was disappointed with Jordy’s general demeanor. With each design he delivered he was more languid and distraught than before. She could appreciate the artist going to great lengths to tap into his creative force, but at this rate he was going to join the 27 Club. She would have to straighten him out a bit for appearances and interviews. With the work he was producing, he was once again going to be quite a fixture in the fashion world.

  As she left the warehouse, she said to her interns, “I’ll be back in a littl
e while.”

  She took a taxi to Jordy’s apartment. Knocked on the door but nobody answered.

  He didn’t live in the best part of town. Couldn’t afford to. Just standing in the hallway made Samantha nervous. She couldn’t help but think about the possibility that something nefarious had taken place. A drug deal gone wrong, some homophobic thug on rampage.

  The door was unlocked. Deciding that Jordy wouldn’t mind if she stepped inside for a welfare check, she turned the handle and gently pushed open the door.

  “Jordy? Jor—” The smell caught her by surprise.

  She probably should have called the police and waited in the hall, but she saw Jordy sitting in a chair across the room and ran to him.

  Littered around him were pill bottles, a syringe and a blackened spoon, a small mirror coated with a powdery film. Around his neck was a sign he’d made that said: Live fast, die young, leave an exquisite corpse.

  “Jesus.”

  Something about the odor in the apartment didn’t sit well with Samantha. Jordy didn’t appear to have been dead for too long. He certainly wasn’t decomposing yet. She guessed that he had taken a massive dose of drugs last night, a mix of opiates and speed that his heart couldn’t take.

  Samantha wasn’t aware that she had been looking around the living room until she saw something through an open door down the small hall that led to Jordy’s bedroom. A flash of color and something glistening.

  She used her cell phone to contact the police. Told them that she dropped by a friend’s house and found him dead.

  She then walked to the door in the hallway, unable to refuse the macabre pull, because deep down she knew there had to be a reason for the stench. The door was open enough to see something, but she couldn’t tell what it was. The color intrigued her, set her senses on fire in the best and worst ways.

  The hinge sighed as she pushed the door open. Samantha caught a scream in her throat as she witnessed the most disturbing and beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. It was horrible, revolting ... and the smell!

  The body had been dead for weeks. It was crudely fastened to what appeared to be the legs of a circular wooden table. The body hung limp, its rotting flesh slowly dripping onto the floor into small puddles of gore. There was a rod protruding from the wooden base that the corpse was fastened to with wire and rebar. Though the dress, no, gown it wore was exquisite, there were dark patches where the sticky rotting flesh beneath had fused to the fabric.

  This was Jordan’s masterpiece. This was the piece that would awe the world of fashion.

  On the floor in front of the macabre mannequin was a sketch of the gown. The paper was filthy, perhaps dirtied with rot that had transferred onto Jordy’s hands while he pinned the gown in place.

  There was as knock at the door. Someone said, “Police!”

  Samantha grabbed the sketch, folded it and placed it into her purse.

  The police found her staring at the macabre beauty that centered the bedroom like something out of Ed Gein’s wet dreams. They ushered her into the hallway, assuring her that everything was going to be all right.

  She had the design.

  Yes, everything certainly was going to be all right.

  Beware! The! Beverage!

  Jeff Strand

  The secret ingredient in Rocketship Energy Drink turned out to be Martian blood. This surprised most of humanity, even though there was a big green alien on the can. The slogan was "It'll power you to Mars!" but still, how could anybody have expected such an odd ingredient in the bestselling beverage on the market?

  Originally, the populace of Earth assumed that Rocketship was just another energy drink, like Red Bull or Monster. As with the competition, it was filled with chemicals with names that sounded like vitamins but which the human body did not actually need to function properly. It had a lot of sugar even by energy drink standards, which humanity would later learn was necessary because it's extremely difficult to mask the wretched flavor of Martian blood.

  "What's that you're drinking?" asked Malcolm, a typical teenager, three months before the horrific secret of Rocketship was revealed to the world.

  His best friend Charlie held up the can. "It's the best thing ever. It's like they sucked the adrenaline out of an Olympic athlete and made it into a carbonated beverage. Honestly, if I had to choose between getting to second base with my lab partner Kim and having a serving of Rocketship, I'd pick Rocketship!"

  "You're full of day-old guacamole," said Malcolm. "No way is the drink that refreshing."

  "Try it."

  "Not with your germs all over the can."

  "Trust me, if you try this drink, you won't worry about germs ever again!"

  With such a passionate endorsement from a close friend he trusted, Malcolm had no choice but to give Rocketship a try. He accepted the can from Charlie and took a great big swig.

  It tasted like cough syrup that had been enhanced by about forty-five sugar cubes. It was goooooood. Where had this drink been all his life? Why had he wasted so much valuable liquid ingestion on water, orange juice, and breast milk when he could have been drinking Rocketship?

  He wanted to say "This has changed my life!" but he was worried that Charlie might think that was a little weird, so he said "Mmmmm!" instead.

  "Good, isn't it?" asked Charlie.

  "Can I have the rest?"

  "No," said Charlie, reaching for his drink. "You may not."

  "Do you have more in the fridge?"

  "No."

  "Why did you hesitate before you said no?"

  "I had to think about it because I couldn't quite remember if there was any in the refrigerator or not. But then I remembered that there wasn't any. It's all gone. Sorry."

  "If I look in your fridge right now, are you sure I won't find more cans of Rocketship?"

  "You do not have permission to look in there."

  "I'm going to check."

  "All that's in there is my dad's Rocketship. He'll beat you to death if you take any of his. You know he'll do it. Remember how mad he got that one time we snuck some of his whiskey? Remember? Imagine that times a trillion."

  "Then can I have another sip of this one?"

  "I'd rather you didn't."

  "I'll barely drink any."

  "Please return my can to me."

  "But the rush of energy is like nothing I've ever encountered!" Charlie had been right—Malcolm was not the least bit concerned about any germs that might have been on the can. He felt like he'd never be sick again! He felt like he could leap over tall buildings! He felt like he could break elephants over his knee! He felt like every single molecule in his body had the strength of six molecules!

  "Give me back my Rocketship," said Charlie, narrowing his eyes in a stern manner.

  Malcolm felt like he could break somebody's neck—say, for example, Charlie's—and steal his drink.

  He could do it.

  "How much is this stuff?" Malcolm asked.

  "Four bucks a can. You can get it anywhere."

  Though Malcolm felt powerful enough to do so, he didn't think it was a good idea to murder his best friend over something that cost four dollars. He had enough money in his wallet to buy two-and-a-half cans without breaking any necks, so that seemed like the better approach.

  "I've got to go," he said.

  "But we were just about to watch the second movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy again!"

  "Sorry. I need my Rocketship."

  "That's not cool."

  "You can always give me one out of the fridge."

  Charlie hesitated. "Do you promise that you'll replace it?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you promise?"

  "I already said yes!"

  "Are your fingers crossed?"

  "No. We're not six, Charlie. And if crossing fingers was a legally binding loophole in a promise, I could just say I crossed my fingers because you would have no way of knowing if my fingers had been crossed or not. So I promise that you don
't have to worry about me resorting to six-year-old rules of behavior and trying to escape my debt."

  "Do you swear on your mother's life that you'll replace the Rocketship?"

  "My mom isn't going to die if I don't keep a promise. That's not the way the Supreme Being does things. If it were, I could swear on Hitler's life and then purposely never replace the drink, just to be rid of Hitler."

  "Well, Hitler's been dead for about seven decades."

  "I know, but I meant that if somebody in World War II had wanted to kill Hitler, they could swear on his life and then break the promise. I should have used a more contemporary example. But you get my point, right?"

  "Swear to me on Hitler's death that you'll replace the can. That way, if you break the promise, Hitler will return from the grave, and you just know he'll be up to no good, because Jewish people are still very much with us these days."

  "I swear on Hitler's death," said Malcolm. It occurred to him that they were spending a lot of time worrying about a product that would require a ten-minute round trip to obtain. That seemed weird. Why was he so anxious not to be without Rocketship for even a few minutes?

  Was it possible that the drink had adverse effects?

  Nah. Something that made him feel so energetic could not have a downside. Things that made you feel good were rarely harmful.

  Charlie stared at him for a long moment. A very long moment. A moment long enough that Malcolm could have gone out to get the Rocketship and been back. It was actually kind of creepy.

  "Okay," Charlie finally said.

  He went into the kitchen and returned with an unopened can of Rocketship. It took him another couple of minutes to work up the willpower to hand it over to Malcolm.

  Malcolm popped open the top. The enticing aroma made his nostrils sing in a not-literal-but-rather-figurative manner. He took a drink, and once he'd taken that first drink it was a quick progression to the second, and from there he moved rapidly to the third, and then the fourth through twelfth drinks were combined into one long steady gulp.