Decay Inevitable

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.

The woman from the cubicle lodged in his thoughts. How her face had aged and crumbled as she fled towards death. The rictus of her mouth leered behind Will’s eyes. This was how Cat had gone. And the others, no doubt. He remembered his grandfather dying. It had been a dignified death, the doctors had said, something Will’s father had repeated whenever the subject came up. A dignified death. Did any such thing exist? After witnessing this, Will doubted it. Death was a down and dirty affair. You could wear a freshly pressed suit and your nicest tie as you prepared for the end, but your bowels didn’t give a fig for that when it came. A death during sleep, in a comfortable bed with the family holding hands around you, was the best way, he had thought. But someone would have to wipe the sputum from your face as the death rattle took hold of you. Someone would have to take the shitty sheets and burn them after you were carried out in a box or a bag. Death wasn’t dignified. Ever. It wore a joker’s costume and slipped a whoopee cushion under your backside as you relaxed into it. It shoved an exploding cigar in your mouth as you struggled for those memorable last words.

Will washed his face as best he could with the foul water in the basins and dried himself on the sleeves of his shirt. The light in here wasn’t the best kind, hardly flattering, but he knew he would never be able to look at himself again without being able to see that grinning loon pressed against the flesh, trying to break free. The harlequin, the skull beneath the skin.

“HAVE ONE OF these,” Joanna said, reeling against him as he fought his way back to the bar. “They’re really very good.”

Will sipped some of her cocktail and ordered a fresh one from the bartender.