Street Eyes
Trick or Treat
We'd heard about the old lady's stash for years.
Every
dumb mother and his son talked about it, their eyes glowing, mouths slavering,
minds calculating the numbers better than a think head or cybercrazy
calculator.
“She's
a near dead bitch, man,” Queer Kid tells me, his shriveled head ranting
in that high pitched voice of his from my other shoulder, the ugliest son of
Satan you'd ever seen right there attached to me, always talking schemes as if
a germ of an idea had an ice cube's chance in hell of growing in that peanut
brain of his. “And she' rich, man, loaded to the teeth with greenbacks.”
I
wanted to shake the fool to his senses, like I'd tried a hundred thousand times
since we were kids, wanted to try and jar something in him loose so as it might
go back together with a little old-fashioned sense. He was always coming up
with schemes, always pretending like he'd thought them up for himself, when he
hadn't, as if I hadn't been standing right there in his shoes listening to this
fellah or that chick telling us all about things.
I
knew as much about the old lady as he did, maybe more. I didn't need to New Age
guru or Potato Eye to picture the senile bitch pacing around in that uptown
mansion just waiting for someone, anyone to come and lift her lid for her.
“It's
got no Spy Guy either, nothing more than the wall, man,” Queer Kid went
on. “Just those lazy lobs on the wall and you know how bad those fools
are. We could take them with spit, man. You know we could.”
“Just shut your crap,” I told him, trying to
sort out the thoughts in my own head. When Queer Kid went on like this, I got
kind of dizzy, too, as if his thinking drained my thinking by thinning our
blood.
Lot's
of people in the zone talked about going after the bitch, all talk, no guts, or
at least not enough guts to take on the Lazy Lobs, who liked to hurt any street
freak they could catch. Even the Potato Eyes didn't like those gigs, spinning out the future doesn't make a dude bullet
proof. I had guts enough, but didn't trust rumors to tell me the truth about
anything. Maybe I could have hired a New Age to check the webs to see what her
credit looked like, though rumors said her stash was in old fashioned, one
hundred percent green stuff, the kind of stuff nobody bothered to print these
days, not with ATMs and ITRs and all that kind of
thing. Who needed a wallet when a store could scan you? I'd heard talk of
people slicing ITR's off people's foreheads, but
never known one to work in a scanner afterwards.
But
cash?
Who
even remembered back that far? God knows I'd seen a wrinkled fiver from time to
time, changing hands among the zoners like a holy
relic. Store keeps even took them, selling them off to the collectors downtown. The old Soviets, they say, still
relish all that cold war stuff. If she had it and had it in quantity, then
maybe it was worth a trip inside, for a look and lift. Maybe we'd be sitting
pink when we got back, and we could even afford to hire one of those
Laser-fakers to cut me and Queer Kid free, giving him or me our own set of
limbs.
Yet
I worried over the lack of a stash, wasting our tick tocks on a goddamn ghost
dance, not to mention the chance we'd take getting heat. I didn't want to get
blasted over no false alarm, if you dig my thinking.
“And
what if there ain't any money?” I asked. “What happens if we take
the tube up
there, get passed the lazy lobs and
all we find is a house and a rotting old bitch?”
“There's money there,” Queer Kid said in such a
way as I almost believed him, that scratchy voice of his speaking the way the
gurus do when got the sight.
“How
do you know?”
“You think the lazy lob people would let her live
like that if she didn't?”
I had to look
at Queer Kid twice, just to make sure it was him speaking this drift, it sounding
too sane to come out of his mouth no matter in what voice.
Everybody
knew how little the Lazy Lobs liked drift, how anybody who didn't have a load
to spend didn't stay on the wall side like that, let alone in the kind of house
people said she had, all crumbly and dank, like something haunted. Maybe the
Lazy Lobs wanted her to die, too, without a blood to pass her bucks to, Lazy
Lobs legal-eagles drafting up their swift kits to take what was left over once
the old chick cashed in. Legal Eagles and Lazy Lobs tearing
that old house down stick by stick.
“Well
we can dream all we like,” I said. “You and me
won't get our hands on that stash.”
“Why not?” Queer kid asked.
“Look
at us,” I said, waving our hands in his face. “Even if we get in
past the Lazy Lobs on the wall, how would we walk around in that neighborhood
looking like this?”
“We could,” Queer Kid said. “This is
Halloween.”
Again, I stared at him. You just didn't get two sane things
out of that head in one day without wondering how. His plan spread through my
head as if transmitted via blood, I saw the whole naked thing, us walking out
of the zone in a street full of screamers -- all of them scaring themselves by
dressing like us.
“You're
crazy,” I said, and spat, but let the idea drift over me. The door jams
and spy guys we could skim through, and maybe we could do the street, if nobody
looked too close.
“I'm
not and you know it,” Queer Kid said, losing a little of the clarity from
his eyes, a rush of hormones coming over us as he thought his dirt.
“All
right,” I said, infected by his desire, it clouding my thinking like it
did his. I was floating by the time we stepped off the uptown tube and scared
we'd catch sight of a street sweep, though none made a pass. No one saw our fingers flash
over the pad or us slip in the wall door when it opened.
Now
we'd been inside a time or two, but never just standing there. It was always
grab and run. You don't site-see when you're snatching a screamer. Sure, a few
lazy lobs stared at us, panic flashing into their eyes the moment me and Queer
Kid started down the street, but with all the screamers rushing around, the
lazy lobs got over it.
“They're
falling for it,” I said, as if I didn't believe it myself, or didn't
believe even a lazy lob could be so stupid. Only then did I catch the manic look in
Queer Kid's eyes, and saw how his pale pink tongue slid across his shriveled
lips as he stared back at the screamers.
“Don't
you go and do anything we'll be sorry for,” I told him.
“I
don't know what you mean?” Queer Kid said in a distant voice.
“We're
here to get the loot not as tourists,” I said. “You leave all the
sweet meat alone.”
A woman with her child came near us. The woman looked
shocked, but the little screamer giggled, wiggling its little fingers at us. We
wiggled back. Queer Kid said: “Trick or Treat?”
The woman glanced sharply at Queer Kid's shriveled head,
her eye widening into dark coins. Maybe she figured it was a trick, one of
those TV ventriloquists, making that head speak instead of the proper one. She
hurried away.
“That
was stupid,” I told him and then pushed on. He seemed to know the way,
over the lazy lob cobble stone streets and unwired store front windows. This
place was a picnic for any zoner. And everywhere we
saw screamers, screamers prancing down the street singing out their "trick
or treats," all of them dressed as if they'd come from the zone, looking
just like rads like us, some wearing four arms,
others with three eyes, but none with two heads which made them look at us.
They asked if we'd sewed our heads one and how we got the shriveled one to
speak, nodding I told them `a chip.’ Queer Kid's hormone swirled in me
and only by keeping the rich bitch vision in my head did I lure Queer Kid
away. Sweat poured down our sleeves
by the time we got we got to the house and stood on the sidewalk out side its
gate. Queer Kid sniffed.
“It's sort of creepy,” he said.
“So?”
He shrugged and
didn't stop me when I pushed open the gate and walked in, its hinges wailing
like a house jack, drawing stares from passing lazy lobs, all of them wondering
why anyone would pay a visit on a place like this.
“What
do we do now?” Queer kid asked when we reached the porch.
“Ring
the bell,” I said, and lifted our hand to punch at the illuminated orange
button that was straight out of a history book, no peep jeep announcing us, no
spy guy winking at us through the glass. Just that button.
Deep
inside, a shrill bell rang, like a frail voice yelling for help, then quiet
with only the stumble of footsteps sounding beyond the door. The dark curtain
parted. A face squinted at us from the other side, so wrinkled and pale, it looked as if it had already died. It looked puzzled
and opened the door.
“Yes?”
she asked, brushing back her stringy hair, a ragged at a witch-bitch though
with no evil look in her eyes.
“Trick
or treat,” me and Queer Kid said, holding out
our bag, though a minute later, Queer Kid dragged me into the house with him as
our hand covered over the old lady's mouth. She tried to cry out but the Queer
kid hit her with our other hand.
“Shush
now, lady,” he said in so sweet a voice it scared me.
Her
eyes bulged. She muttered a protest through our fist. Queer Kid hit her again.
She calmed down. Then Queer Kid tore off her shirt.
“Stop
that,” I said. “All we want is her money.”
“That's all you want,” Queer Kid said, drooling
over her as he tore everything, her gray flesh like a dead fish's, and she
screamed and screamed as our hand tightened.
“She's
a virgin,” Queer Kid said. “I can smell it.”
“Don't be disgusting,” I said. “She has
to be ninety years old.”
“I
don't care I want it,” Queer Kid said, as I jerked our hand away from the
old lady's mouth, releasing her scream. It stopped Queer Kid and brought a
puzzle look to his face. The screaming went on and on, and he looked more and
more confused.
“Stop
it,” he told her.
She
just screamed.
Then he hit her. Hit her hard with the back
of our hand. Hit her so he head rolled back and we both heard the snap of her
neck. The screaming stopped. Her eyes opened with surprised, and then she
sagged.
“Ah,
damn, now look what you've done,” I said.
“You went and killed her.”
But even that didn't change his expression and a moment
later, Queer Kid was yanking open our pants and pulling out our instrument, and
pushing it at the old lady's mouth, my screams replacing her screams as Queer
Kid humped and humped and humped, pumping every orifice until the body grew
stiff and we grew limp.
“You're
an ass!” I said when he was finally done. “Here you go and have to
ruin everything. Now how are we supposed to find the money?”
Queer Kid shrugged, sagging a little after expending
himself. He looked like he wanted to go to sleep, and then, woke only at the
sound of sirens. We looked at each other, somehow knowing the lazy lobs were
coming here, some sensor in the house announcing us, that we never figured on.
“We
got to get out,” I said.
“What
about the money?”
“Forget the money,” I said. “You don't
know what these people will do to us if they find us here -- especially after
what you did.”
Already someone pounded on the door, and we could see the
faces pressing in at the glass.
“Out
the back, quick,” I said and started towards the rear of the house,
stumbling over whole rooms of antiques the woman didn't know were antique,
finding a way through the maze to the kitchen and the door out into the back.
We plunged through and found ourselves confronted with a yard of brambles and
weeds, a rusted push-type lawn mower standing among them. Behind this, a ten
foot spiked fence made escape that way impossible.
“Around
the house,” I said, and turned and followed the path along the house,
back towards the front, hearing the sounds of people inside the house, lights
flashing on and off as the lazy lobs rushed through the rooms with their night
beams. By this time, they'd found the body and seen what Queer Kid had done.
I
didn't hear the shots at first, or mistook them for some other sound. But I saw
Queer Kid's head explode and felt his warm brains splatter on my face. The wave
of pain came next, and I must have passed out. I woke here, with tubes in my
arms, and wires on my fingers and toes, and the grinning man at the lever tells
me to expect a real jolt.
“Oh
it won't kill you friend,” he said. “It'll just hurt. And keep on
hurting. In fact, friend, we're going to keep you alive, a long, long time.”
Then,
the grinning Lazy Lob hit the switch.