kagablog

Flaming cars adorned the streets like Christmas decorations. Gangs of looters roamed the wreckage, pecking at things like carrion birds. Party music thumped from the Dead Duck and drunken strangers were dancing in the streets. A group of sailors were harassing a grinning Symb, kicking it out across the road and jeering at it. The Symb was still swaddled in the remnants of Buddhist robes and possessed a vaguely human face, now disfigured by greenness and insect-like appendages. Its body was a deep emerald, split by carapace joints and crab-like casing. It smiled stupidly with a mouth full of loose human teeth, its newly formed mandibles flicking out from caved-in cheeks. Romeo the Dealer was approaching from the inner city, eyeing the gang warily. He was talking on his army-issue walkie-talkie, raygun dangling within easy reach.

“Romeo Delta Tango Foxtrot,” he signed, scanning this way and that. “It’s out on the midnight wire – Number Nun gunned down at the docks.”

“I think you should maybe blow town babe,” Karolina K-Star answered from a safe location.

The sailors had placed a generic red and white lifesaver around the Symb’s neck and were dousing it with diesel. He watched coldly as they set it on fire.

“No, I’m going to stick around for awhile,” he answered.

The Symb was miraculously unaffected by the flames. Its remaining human parts crisped up like bacon, but the symbiote formations remained, impervious to the heat. The lifesaver warped and the robes went up in flames. Yawning spaces appeared in its green body as the organic burned away, revealing a spindly, inhuman frame fraught with distortions. The would-be lynch mob had gone suddenly silent, backing away as the Symb turned to face them. It was fondling its ovipositor with a clumsy affection, flaming like a torch. It began to wander about, grinning insanely, accidently setting fire to things. The lynch mob dissolved in a disturbed fashion while the Symb clattered down a nearby alley, lighting up the all the walls.

“How could I leave when things are just starting to get interesting,” Romeo said before signing off.

The lobby of the Shell Sea was in a dire state. The clerk hefted an AK-47, listening to an old wireless splutter out panicky news reports about the burgeoning chaos. Stragglers in seersucker suits argued with hobos in the corridors. Some partially developed symbiote-sufferers were writhing in the pot plants, kicking over things and spilling abandoned bottles of grog. A fully developed Symb clung to the ceiling, licking at the light bulb with a long human tongue. Romeo paid very little attention to all of this and went straight up to the thirteenth floor. He kept an apartment beyond the backstage area, and it could only be reached via a secret doorway sequestered in the back of a musty old closet. He pushed past the dusty old stage costumes, cranked open the door and ascended into a dim space illuminated by giant bay windows. Bright blue and yellow neon throbbed rhythmically through the glass, illuminating a ludicrous clutter of equipment. Parrots and Toucans chittered in giant wicker cages, creating a constant burble of conversation. The irregular flashes just barely illuminated a coated figure hidden in the shadows. A large pistol gleamed in its trembling, malformed hands. Romeo bustled about, talking to himself, oblivious to the stranger.

“One…and then another…then…” he muttered, switching on a coloured lamp.

The kaleidoscopic light illuminated the half-insect face of Judas, trembling in the depth of a movie director’s canvas chair. Antennae flickered sickeningly in the half-light causing Romeo to recoil.

“Fuck me Mary,” Romeo whispered, shocked by Judas’s transmutation.

The scrap metal had been stripped from him and he was dressed in a shabby raincoat and a pair of striped pajama pants. Metal bracing lined his legs, but it was obvious that his transformation into an alien being had temporarily restored his ability to walk. He smiled sheepishly at Romeo.

“Out selling pleasure to little boys in spike heels?” he giggled conversationally, leveling the oversized blaster at the Dealer.

“Weren’t you?” Romeo replied, regaining his stride and lighting up a black cigarette.

Judas slouched, squirming slightly with discomfort. His broken skin was greenish and frog-like in its slickness. He was also creamy with sweat; a perspiration which caught in the many fine facets of his newly forming carapace. His goatee still remained though, stained a hideous orange from excessive carrot consumption. Romeo could just make out his eyes, which had turned the shiny black of an insect’s.

“Where’s my money Judas?” Romeo asked, leaning against a bank of hardware.

“Ah!” Judas smiled, displaying a set of emerging mandibles. “As you may have noticed, I hold in my hand a pistol.”

“Really? I thought it was a cigarette lighter.”

“Oh it is no ordinary gun I can assure you,” Judas slurped. “It is a Soul Gun and it fires cloud bullets; etheric projectiles which injure not the body but the sno-globe. Why even after the body is gone, the cloud bullets ensure that the soul is damaged for a good many incarnations.”

“Quite,” Romeo smoked, unimpressed.

“It’s quite strange really,” Judas mused, trailing off for a moment.

“You know…my predicament,” he hinted lasciviously.

“I thought that I had achieved some sort of sexual nirvana – which, of course I had! Endless heaven…Oh how I longed for some human pain after the first day.”

He paused for a moment, scratching at the base of one of his flickering antennae. A piece of his scalp fell off, like cheese from a pizza. He looked at it with disgust, brushing it beneath a chair with his foot before rambling on.

“When the pain came though…Ah, even the pain was joy. Tears spilled in utter and absolute pleasure. All above were the stars, each one an angel with a permanent erection. The night was a slavering cunt, wide open, cold and quivering. Each tear was drool…Sex sweat Sundays…”

He seemed to trail off again, not quite sure of himself, lost in the thrill of confession. Romeo observed with icy interest as he spoke.

“Now of course it becomes the antithesis. An agony. It wrenches apart my collarbones. It rearranges my ribcage. I look in the mirror and see it sliding barbed wire tongues into my mouth. This was my first experience of pain! Why, even as I speak to you now, I am shaking with ecstasy.”

He seemed to gather himself, holding up the shiny gun with renewed vigour.

“Need I say more?” he smiled. “Now give me a fucking carrot before I ventilate your soul.”

Romeo the Dealer stubbed out the black cigarette and folded his arms.

“I’m sorry Judas, but you should have done your homework. I’m a Canaanite, one of the last of the Painbreed. I don’t have a soul, so that hairdryer is useless.”

There was a long, awkward silence before Judas slumped down, panting wetly. The Soul Gun sank uselessly to his lap.

“Typical,” he muttered with an all-consuming bitterness.

“Really Judas, you should have come to me as a friend.” the Dealer smirked. “I could give you a couple of carrots, but tell me, will it really make a difference to your ‘predicament’?”

“Yes.”

“Junkie mentality.”

With incredible swiftness, Romeo snagged a carrot from a shelf and tossed it to the wooden floorboards. Judas lost all composure in a heartbeat, descending upon the root vegetable with an almost predatory savagery. He devoured it in seconds and Romeo the Dealer watched as the green in his shelled skin paled and flickered momentarily toward a flesh tone of sorts. A moment of human clarity descended upon him and he seemed to suddenly realize the depth of his affliction, as though for the first time. Romeo watched him with a sort of dead interest, lighting up another black cigarette. They exchanged a glance in which Judas conceded that Romeo had made his point. He began to drag himself painfully off the floor and back into the chair. By the time he he was seated, he was green again.

“You guys are finished you know,” Romeo announced blithely. “Too revolutionary, always wanting to corner the market.”

He cracked a can of cola and took a swig, flopping into a nearby dentist’s chair.

“Take me,” he bantered on. “Supply and demand, its best. Besides, The Soft House has had enough of this extraterrestrial vice shit. They’ve assigned a special project to you from the military strike force outside the zone. His name is Bronski Glass.”

“We’ll just…bribe him I guess?”

“Sorry. No pleasure center. He’s had his brain amputated.”

“Amputated? Does he like Mozart?”

“It’s like a bad joke,” Romeo swigged.

“No wait…it IS a bad joke,” he added with deadpan alacrity.

“He’s also been working with a mole, slowly scoping out the imp’s weaknesses.”

“What!” Judas exclaimed. “Who sold us out!”

“Michelle of course,” Romeo smoked. “I think it was even her idea to approach Mister Sister and sticky-tape some sort of alliance between the Buddha and Bronski Glass. Why, I’m pretty sure it was her who even gave them the bright idea of offering frogfuck freebies to you boys, to get you all roped and soaped.”

“If that wench wasn’t already crucified!” Judas gritted. “Maybe she really is God’s daughter…Traitor, runs in the family I suppose…”

“Mister Sister may be unaware of the extent of her dealings with Bronski Glass. I think she is going to play the Big Buddha the same way. Might be some leverage, if you looking to get square for the greenies.”

Judas sighed phlegmishly and stared out at the neon. Membranes licked over his oversized eyes, catching in the pellucid light.

“Getting square isn’t going to change the fact that I’m completely frogged up,” he admitted miserably.

Something like a smile twisted his stained goatee.

“I suppose you have to admire Michelle’s gall bladder,” he sniggered. “She’s the little crucifixion that could.”

“So what will you do?” Romeo asked.

“I’m running out of track,” Judas flumped. “Maybe I’ll head down to the beach, work on my moon tan. What else is there?”

“Not much I suppose.”

“Oh well.”

Judas raised the Soul Gun to the side of his head and smiled blackly.

“Pow,” he said, pulling the trigger.