MEMP’IS
BOOK
FOUR – “WITCHCRAFT”
(Friday,
January 5, 2035)
In
his lozenge, Norlin stabbed the com... waiting for pickup.
Its blinking light was a harbinger of messages waiting, probably
unpleasant. Before him... and atop the
paper mail (bills, and vaguely threatening letters he'd stuffed beneath the
package from Sunland Rest that Francine had brought) was a plain, old fashioned
piece of foolscap with four names... wll, maybe
two... upon it...
Terushka Batter
Lola, from Angola
Peg Reilly
Liz Sapoi
There was breathing on the other end of the line, but no
voice. "Peg?" Norlin coaxed.
"Peg Reilly?
"She's not here," replied a high-pitched voice...
a very young person pretending to be old, Norlin
reckoned, or the other way around.
"Go away..."
"It's Officer Norlin,
Peg. I have received your
transmission."
"Officer Norlin... oh, I'm
sorry, you must be working late..."
"Day
and night," the Corporal rolled his eyes, "courtin'
trouble, so you don't have to..."
"Oh...
I'm afraid there's nothing very interesting to report since you took that
horrible dog man away. The lights were
on in this Ohio hydro, the back lights.
A man came out with a dog, and on his way back that tall skinny-armed
fellow, his arms are not that thin on the bottom but the top of his arms are
shallow. He was in the hydro, Ohio, EastAmerica hydro, and the cop's girlfriend who showed up
in court as Victor's sister was just coming in, in her hydro. A small green
hydro double-parked this weekend, then went off. Last night, skinny arms had a shirt that
covered the top of his arms."
"Good work, Peg.
How's our friend, Iowa."
"Ohh... Officer Norlin! You tease!
He's been quiet, lying low, I think... that's
what criminals do. No Eileen, no Venus, no
man-in-a-cap drawing on Eleventh Street or Spanish people. Been so cold I don't bother much. I hope the heat will return on soon."
"Listen...
yeah..." Norlin said, "we
have some people in C-Squad, very high up, need your help. They can get you a work-release from MAU
tomorrow afternoon... they want to hold a very important meeting."
"Will
it be in a warm place?" Peg inquired, hopefully.
"I'm
sure of it," Norlin said, not even sure whether
that was a lie or not.
"Then
you can count on my help. Health,
security and property..." Peg recited, proudly, "I'm an old girl, who
still remembers the way things used to be..."
"That's very nice..." Norlin
began
"Though
I don't have much security and no property to speak of, and my health isn't all
that good either, where Hannibal hit me and Officer McCoy stepped on my foot,
but I will do all that I can. If that
Wabash Cannonball couldn't do away with me, a few lifestyle criminals and dog
prostitutes won't, either!"
"Good
girl."
Norlin broke the connection, drew
a line through Peg's name, dialed again.
"Liz? Liz Sapoi?"
"Hello? Hello?" an angry old voice shot
back. Dogs yapped in the
background. "Who is this... and
what have you done with my family?"
It was Terushka Batter. Norlin had already
spent more than fifteen minutes... nearer twenty... in coaxing her to accompany
him to Stimwood in her own personality.
"Sorry, wrong number," the Corporal said,
disguising his voice. Norlin hung up, with a vicious sigh. A scab on his chin split open, and blood
dripped to the HRI-approved formica
of his countertop. The silence magnified
the horror of the Paul Parchette Show, which had been
unfolding in the background like dirty floodwater creeping up a yard... rife
with snakes, biting flies and, perhaps, white alligators...
"The Trouble Factory's rats on the street have a new
slice of cheesecake to despoil..." said the entertainer as Norlin picked up the com, held it between mortal and
supra-mortal planes. Black brows and
beard bristling, hairy palms erupting like caterpillars from his blue, ruffled Importancy Shirt like the manifestation of a thousand
adolescent warnings from Abstinence-Only Educators in a public school... "your neighborhood paperboy!
S'alright with me, I never trusted paperboys,
since before the k'ball... where's the paper in the Jatesville
Journal and where is the boy. Trust me, they're midgets... every kebbin' one; midget spies, spyin'
on all of us but hey! what's the Tee Eff coverin' up about those cold cuts in their CI's
fridge? But don't mind me... I'm only a
monkey!"
Norlin dialed, watching the old
hands of his old, analog clock creep towards midnight. A tired, far-away voice replied.
"Vona Rae? Vona Rae Sletcher, it's Corporal Norlin, from the Trouble Factory. And how are you tonight? Listen, we've caught a break on corruption at
the FexMarket, but I need your help. Tomorrow, right. There's going to be a summit at Stimwood Academy, and you're invited! Did you hear me, Vona Rae, invited! Your community needs you, Barataria needs you.
I need you... Vona Rae?
Hello?"
"I still need twelve zekels,"
he heard her answer over chimes generated by no computer fashioned in Hell or
on the earth. "I've got
loyalties. If it were to my advantage to
do so, I'd let you in on them. But my
first loyalty is to my belly - to keep something in it so it won't consume
itself with gastric acids..."
"A'right," Norlin mumbled, "you're
covered."
The hour passed, as did the day - Friday to Saturday -
Father Time's hoary visage melting and, on a plane beneath... probably composed
of an illicit, crystal pre-Kball vitrescence...
the intrepid, pink-cheeked countenance of the New Man floated towards Becoming;
a gas-suffused corpse bobbing in murky water as Norlin
finally opened the package that his father had sent him - discovering an
ancient cigar box, filled to bursting with old, EastAmi
currency and EABI files referring to the Fex Market,
a great, white hunk of shit and purgative therapy at Gandalkin
Institute, 2010. Paul Parchette waved and bowed out of the Peevee,
replaced by the silhouette of a shadow, holding an old-fashioned shadowy
telephone.
"Mister Night!" beckoned the apparition.
"Sir... Mister..." a voice replied... young,
male, at the brink of panic, "I... I'm skating on the edge. My world's a dream - I feel consumed by a cold,
pitiless fire... I burn; yet, I burn with ordinaryness. How do I escape collapse, entirely, into the
fissure of this vissure?"
"Disregard of the psalma
leads to art," the distinct radio voice responded, "fantasy, and
lifestyle criminality. Ponder, instead,
architecture. The Becoming is the end
stage of a purifying process, by which the nestations
of New Psalmatic architecture meld with cartoons of
the old debauchery... associated with discarded, stringless
guitars... and both can thereby dissolve into each other..."
"Sir?"
"That which self-annihilates cannot fear
annihilation... can I make myself any kebbin' clearer?" answered Mr. Night and
the exhausted Corporal deserted the clamour of the
city for a few precious hours of pastoral repose.