Moral Zero (5 page)

M
r White smiled at the statement, his cheeks reddening a little. So, it’s not really about people then? It’s all physical?

Kinda, kinda, Red nodded.
Well, no. It’s more than half psychological – that’s how you get the best orgasms. But it’s real narrow, like fantasy thoughts, based on just like cutouts of the person in front of you, I guess. Like they’re some character in your head, some cartoon of depravity. I dunno, I guess it changes. But there’s certainly a lot of shit you leave outta the equation. A girl’s IQ never did turn me on. But then again, I ain’t attracted to “people”, as such. Red used air quotes around the word, raising his eyes as if it was a make-believe concept. Well, attracted yeah, but not sexually. I’m attracted to body parts, not people. Not real people. I dunno. People in my head. People in their head. Pretend people with real bodies. It’s all a, all a –

Are you i
ncluding male body parts?

Red shifted on his feet, and moved to the mirror to sort h
is hair, his back to Mr White. Well, no. Girls got much more interestin body parts than guys. Guys only got one, girls got . . . He counted off on his fingers, mouthing the numbers. Seven? I dunno. A girl could have the personality all-over of a guy and it wouldn’t phase me. Could I even fuckin tell the difference? It’s all about the body when it’s where it matters.

Including guys now girls?

Course. It’s done pretty good these days.

What if t
hat one good guy part remained?

Red shrugged.
Sure. Plenty of places to stick it. For me to stick it. In him. Her. Fuck’s sake, he laughed. And I know what you’d say – ditch the rest, is that one guy part enough? It ain’t pretty the rest of it, so that one part really gotta live up. Gotta be some real distance between the impressiveness of that part and the girl-ness of the rest. Prob’ly. I guess I ain’t thought it through too much, Red lied. But hell, I’m sober right now! Who knows what rum will bring me one day.

Red finished rustling his hair into a carefully messy position suitable to his tastes and looked at himself in the mi
rror, admiring his reflection. Damn, he said. Right, to the bar?

Again?

Red smiled.

STREET

In the end Red went to the bar on his own. Mr White had declared that he felt too ill and tired, just not up for it at all, and after a bout of persuasion to go anyway, involving such convincing lines as “but you’ll miss out on all the tits man”, Red had finally given up and gone by himself. Mr White had apologised numerous times but Red had rolled his eyes and swatted them away and told him that it was cool, no worries. He might be back tonight, he might not.

Mr White would find that sitting in a scummy hotel room by himself without anything to do might be in fact worse than a repeat visit to the bar and another adventure in feeling sick. But he was full of exhaustion and his stomach gurgled unhappily and so he stop
ped himself going out after Red and sat on the bed thinking and ordering room service. After that all that remained to do was while away the hours through endless masturbation.

Night fell on the world and
Red was outside to bathe in the blackness. He had been kicked out of the bar for falling over and accidentally knocking and smashing other patrons’ drinks, and for hassling women, including reaching over the bar to squeeze the chest of the bartender, declaring his tip was for her to take her top off. These slights might have been forgivable if he been able to operate his wallet, or if its contents had advertised themselves promisingly. Without money, nothing was allowed. The world and its inhabitants were only freely used and abused to the rich.

I like ruinin
their sanctity, Red said, slurring slightly. He was just outside the bar, next to a homeless drunk wrapped up in coats and cardboard. The man had remained confused and mute to Red’s ramblings, not that it had stopped him from continuing, expostulating on his sexual proclivities to the man-shaped sounding board. Listening and not understanding.

I like rippin
them off that fuckin pedestal, said Red. With all their thoughts and intelligence and – and pride and confusion and principles and shit, and reducin them to this gibberin mess, y’know, this stupid mewlin, thrashin animal.

Red
coughed and waved his hands as if weaving patterns in the air. Stupid and senseless. Covered in shit and cum and piss and cryin for more. You know man, if you make someone horny enough, if you take them right to the fuckin edge and over it, you can make them do anythin. Fuckin
anythin.

The drunk stared at him. He stared down at his own sick on his ragged shirt and then with unfocused eyes he looked back at Red.

I’ve made girls eat their own shit, Red continued. He staggered a little and then righted himself. Like, respectable girls. Give me long enough alone with em and I could make most do it, I can make em do things that’d make em puke if they thought of it sober. That’s sober from sexual delirium, see. They don’t need to be drunk . . . though that can sure speed things along a bit.

The homeless man
shivered and shook his head, shook his head to the world.

Red finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the wall. I’m gonna go man, gonna find another bar, another home, y’know?

The man watched him leave through blurry eyes, and pulled the pieces of cardboard closer around him.

Red found another bar and made acquaintance with it. He ordered more drinks and the bartenders served him placebos, non-alcoholic drinks disguised as alcohol, but he was in too much of a carefree state to realise. He left his drinks after only a few mouthfuls and forgot to go back to them for the rest of the night, engaged as he was in smutty conversation with a giggling gaggle of teenage girls, dressed as near to his satisfaction as he could reasonably ask for. They found him entertaining in his casual crudeness and clustered around him, prompting him for a good hour for more obscene answers to sexual questions, which he was more than happy to provide. Whether they thought him a mere clown or not did not much enter his appreciation of the scenario, delighted as he was with their exposed cleavages jiggling as they laughed, and watching their pert and fleshy young rears protruding from their tiny skirts and skin-tight pants as they left the throng to go to the bathroom.

Eventually, though,
most of them got bored with his words and antics and wandered off to entertain themselves elsewhere. Most, not all.

A shadow appeared on his right, and Red sensed some presence of something not quite human, or at least nothing like him. He turned his head drunkenly, his cock still lodged in the girl’s asshole. Standing softly lit by an overhead lamp was a cop.

It was wearing the unique badge and insignia of the district, nothing interesting, no artist’s design. Black on black and numbered, robotic. Its uniform gleamed, polished, em
otionless. Faceless. Genderless. Red assumed there was some expression behind the faceplate, but it was a difficult idea to keep a firm grasp of. The form before him betrayed nothing. It did not shift on its feet or tap its fingers or fold its arms. It did not seem capable of sympathy, did not seem like it could be reasoned or bargained with. It would be like pleading to a machine. Such was the intended effect.

How old is this female?
The question was barked and the voice artificially distorted and processed, as though talking through a computer.

The girl span her head, shocked out of her own pleasure. Her form twitched and it made Red’
s cock jump inside her. She quickly drew breath in a manner not completely dissimilar to being anally penetrated but she said nothing and they stayed locked together. It was too late to pretend otherwise. Red thought, perhaps, objectionable goods were best hidden.
              Seventeen, he lied calmly.

The age
of consent here is twenty-five.

Tha
t’s what I said, twenny-five.

The cop raised
its stick and put its black gloved hand down to its gunbelt as if anticipating trouble. I’m taking you under arrest.

I’m on
board with you there, officer. Red spun his cat grin and his head lolled back.

The cop approached, hands moving to its belt to withdraw handcuffs. Red pulled out of the girl, relishing as always in the sigh as she was evacuated, and moved his hand to the end of his cock
as it came out into the shadows and he curled his fingers and threw something at the cop which hit the faceplate and stuck. The black gloved hands went up and Red was off, dodging gunshots, his jeans held up with one hand and his half-erect cock still out, pointing and swinging like a broken signpost into the darkness.

Corners after corners turned, backstreets run down, hiding in the gaps in old buildings and inside porn shops and moving again, furtive and paranoid, and hiding in a dumpster and then out, walking until he felt safe, safe enough, and here he was, tired and drunk and denied his sexual release. The adrenaline was wearing off and he felt a little sick.

He
lay in a gutter, on his back looking up at the stars. The points of light beckoned to him, flirted with him, looked sadly down at him and he looked dumbly back at them. A light breeze whispered over his face, his eyes watered a little. A couple, hand in hand, stepped over him, temporarily blocking out his view. A few women walked towards his splayed out form and then walked past. His eyes flicked onto their faces but they were conservatively dressed and unattractive and he turned his eyes back to the stars before he could meet their glances of disdain. His hand moved to his groin but it was too much effort and he let his hand flop back to the ground. He tried once more, and flopped once more, theatrical in his drunkenness.

He tried to recall what things used to be like, so many years ago, but it was like thinking of someone else, some young boy who was not him and who was only a fiction. He knew vaguely that this wasn’t always the way, that there were things before, things to grab onto and not let go. As they were stolen from him, as his childhood was taken by the world, he had had to find something new. The fancies of a kid were no longer appropriate in an adult world. There had to be something an
adult
could cling onto, could desire and nurture and fantasise about – and there was, and he had found it, and it had erased almost everything else in him.

Nothing else could arouse in him such interest, such excitement, such love for the real world. He was the hedonist among hedonists.
The pervert god.

The dreams of old, the dreams of the young had become off-limits, barred by squirming pink tentacles, puckering and oozing and wet with juices. His dreams, his desires and ambitions were now all lurid, obscene, full of heat and weeping fury. Passion so intense it could break you down, make you cry, rip yourself apart, rip another apart. Passion to kill. An intimacy so depraved, so sickly, so
sick
, that it rushed through your body like magma, taking control of everything, making you sweat lust, unfocusing your vision, turning you inside out, turned you vacant, pig meat to rut, to feel a crazed obsession, pounding, pounding his heart faster and faster until it hummed, until it burst, until it bled all over his insides and the blood melded with the rest of the magma and steamed and hissed and the steam blurred out his eyes.

There was nothing like it. He became an animal, a higher being, a holy spirit – a devil guiding the flesh. Writhing and thrusting, commanding and obeying, feeling, connecting, joining, creating and destroying, he touched at the coattails of raw power. To be godlike in his godlessness.

It was all there was, for there was nothing else left to him. He was just thankful that all there was was just enough.

Two hours later and a slightly sobered up Red had met up with Mr White back at the hotel and convinced him to leave. Red had assured him of the fun to be had in District Ten, despite acknowledging that there was only a single, prime illegal, that being (here he muttered under his breath) a ban on all anal activity. Not that conducting themselves in this otherwise tolerant district could possibly be relaxing what with Red being such a connoisseur of the excretory side of life. But Mr White was happy to follow him wherever he led them, and he did so. Red was insistent not to dally around, not even stop for a bite to eat, and Mr White found himself having to walk faster than usual in order to keep up to his pace, which eventually slowed the further they got from the area, though Red continued to look  about him like a twitching animal.

The streets slid on all sides as if they were on rails.
Theatre backdrops turned on some hidden winch, a scenery on repeat, re-using buildings, trash, people.

They passed little cracked bulbs nestled in grating coming out brick walls with the bricks crumbling
and broken. Some buildings looked as if they had suffered some air raid or street bombing and if anything they passed looked repaired it was work without effort or hope, as if the builders could not summon any care for anything in these streets. Everything was covered in graffiti. Most of it was people just making their mark, leaving a name and a guess at a date for who knew what day was what in Rule. Much of the graffiti was obscene and sordid and some of it was anti-authority and some of it was dark and cruel.