The Urban Book of the Dead (9 page)

I hated the dog, I knew what it had been used for, I shouted at Jay “That’s bloody Cerberus mate, not Jed’s mongrel bullterrier.”

The love affair between the two did not last long. As the dog scrambled in the sink pots broke and flew. The dog’s weight and strength caused a plate to spin out from under it as it tried to get a footing. The plate stuck in the side of Jays head, half way in, and in a daze gripping his head and swaying, he continued, “I want that fucking dog!”

Jay pulled the plate out of his head, looked at it and threw it away, it cluttered on the cooker, knocking a pan of old curry on the floor. The dog jumped down and licked it up with all three heads.

As Jay’s head knitted together he grabbed hold of a squeezy bottle from the kitchen side cabinet “This stuff will chill it out.” He said.

I looked at Jay still damaged in his mind “No. Jay. No. You have no idea what acid does to those sorts of dogs I was at a party once . . .”

Jay squirted the dog. I took hold of him and at a run, held back and tugging him, my feet straining to move him wildly, got him into the living room and closed the door.

A head burst through the door. Bits of plywood separated by cardboard packing fell to the floor. The dog looked friendlier. Its head blinked and focused on Jay’s hand. Suddenly a bone appeared in Jay’s hand.

Jay said startled looking at his hand “How the fuck . . .”

I butted in “Its imagining things and making them real. By Christ I hadn’t considered that.”

Jay looked behind him sensing something. I saw what was behind him as he moved. A giant rabbit stood on its hind quarters, long incisors nearly a foot long and eyes that reflected so much light they were bright beams that cut holes, burning holes in the back of Jay’s Indian hoody as he moved away. He got out of the range of its vision.

The dog broke more of the hole away by shaking its head. The bits just fell away. I looked back at Jay, he was a fucking liability, he had somehow, magic or some other means, got a rope and he was approaching the dogs head with a lasso as a home made choke chain.

Jay moved his head to the side and the dog did the same “nice dog” he pleaded coolly.

I shouted at him, maddened “don’t do it Jay; you’re pedigree chum for that dog, without the inconvenience of a tin.”

Jay lassoed the dog’s visible head, and then the whole dog came crashing through the door. The dog’s muscles had the appearance of bunched up cables, every sinew stood out of its black coat. It turned one of its head’s at me with contempt, nodding an open mouthed, cunning and haughty contempt. Its limbs appeared to defy gravity with steps of a thunderous canter and bounce, not because like us it was weightless but because of shear compacted strength.

Now, jay weighed absolutely nothing, he was minus weight, a spirit. The dog looked like it weighed three hundred pounds. The out come was obvious to any one who wasn’t recovering from major brain damage and had no common sense any way. The effect reminded me strongly of a party I had been to many years ago where some one fed their bullterrier an acid tab; minus twenty screaming girls with tooth injuries and plus one giant rabbit, which some people would have been seeing anyway. But Jay was playing his part as the owner.

That’s what happens when you’re at a party in a large crowded flat, listening to raga and watching some chav as they became known. In a white ‘England’ base ball cap and an ageing boyish face with a knowing and fond expression on his face crouched with his arm around his bullterrier, feeding his dog looking up trustingly, a handful of dog biscuits and LSD tabs. Doing nothing about it but wondering along with others in the know, looking at each other and the dog owner as we sat on the floor ‘what will happen next, what absurd demonstration could possibly result from this wicked act’.

As the dog chased the rabbit with thunderous, destructive strides, in circles around the room, leaping over the settee every time they came around, with me now stood on it leaning back against the wall, the rabbit turning around to try and bite its attacker as it ran. Jay was crashed into a wall and immediately disintegrated, droplets of Jay with his translucent face etched on them, the eyes searching around in every drop, fell towards the floor and the dog stopped chasing the rabbit, mesmerised it caught drops on its smoky tongues, making a sizzling noise. Feathers filled the room and started to attach themselves to the droplets in little fluttering wings. The rabbit paused, catching its breath and happy to be out of the action. The remaining arm of Jay attached to the rope, tried to pull the dog back, muscles taught.

I tried to distract the dog by taking over the rabbit, I spread my fingers and imagined invisible strings to the rabbit, as I waved my fingers in the air and swooped my arms, the rabbit leapt to the dog and tapped it on the back. One of the heads moved around, the others carried on lapping up Jay with a stink of sulphur from the reaction of contact and red smoke. The dog’s eyes happily hypnotised. The rabbit pulled up the fur on its arms revealing pink muscular flesh. The rabbit struck a Mr Universe pose to show its edible body off to the full, an arm tensed, a front leg squatted. Finally the dog relented and turned around fully, snapping at it with all three snaking heads. I made the rabbit hop away fast and the dog took chase. In my hand appeared a magicians hat and rabbit and dog leapt into it one after the other. I placed the hat on my head and it thudded and bulged, then with a final yelp went silent. I took it off and looked in it, there was nothing to see, I decided the hat did not suit me and cast it aside.

I opened the door and went into the kitchen, what was left of the door buckled and scraped, dragging its frame. Once in the kitchen I opened the council house orange cupboard where the boiler was and took out a rusty metal bucket and mop. I went back into the living room to where a pool of Jay lay on the floor, the reflection of his face looked at me sad and agonised, making attempts to knit into a three dimensional being. I mopped him into the steel bucket, feathers and all. I poured Jay out onto the sofa and he slowly reformed, his molten face gave out a groan, slowly he reformed, I placed the arm that had been attached to the dog next to him.

I put his head under a cushion. He let out a “Ahh” then said “I need to rest for a bit Jon” his eye lids flickering in shock and pain, he held up a fleshing out hand. Jay sat up momentarily and folded his feathery wings over his eyes, I left him there. I opened the shattered door that ground against the red chord carpet, and entered the kitchen. The wind was thankfully blowing the outside smoke away from the broken window, and I set about putting back together the large pieces of glass. It was calming and intellectually stimulating, exactly like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle, I told myself my head would come back together just like the window as I completed it, and it did.

Jay came in looking much better and shaking his head he looked in my cupboards and he demanded nicely “I need some food Monster! You’ve nothing in and moneys useless here. Well nearly.”

“Let’s go a walk and find some then.” I said “Not sure what other people do for food here, there’s always magic but personally I’d like a look around this place.”

Jay shook his head, “magic’s banned or heavily regulated here Jon; they don’t do that for food. Well; Okay it’s polluted out though, this place isn’t living in the same sense as the Earth, and it isn’t a self regulating organism. It’s more alive in the sense of a provider from the imagination; consequently God has let it get rather polluted.” Jay shook his head and scratched it. “First thing you’ve got to do here when you take over is make the place sustainable.”

“Where do you go to eat?” I asked

“Well, from the little I know about the place, there’s a McDonalds around the corner, people exchange organs there for burgers, and of course the organs grow back. The McDonalds just got dumped here when as I was saying some one died in their toilets of heroin overdose, a sacrifice to the great god McDonald no doubt at all.”

I got my bandana out of the draw of my bedroom, and a spare one for Jay, we soaked them with water in the kitchen and put them over our faces. We opened the front door and ran out. A mini had crashed into a traffic light outside since it could not see where it was going and the traffic was held up, all the cars were wrecked, not because they had crashed but because, I guessed, cars appeared here wrecked with their occupants from crashes down below; that’s how they got here. One Porsche was nearly totalled, the back and front wheels nearly touching, how ever the driver was able to drive it form his new elevated driving position, his wings cramped and with his head out of the missing windscreen, the car was on flames and plumes of smoke from it followed us down the street, the cars were honking.

Along the street we walked; crumbling houses from down below were just dumped here when occupants died, in a very messy not very straight line. We tripped on crumbling bricks and loose gutters as we danced along, almost in the foggy air, Jay whistling the theme from the snow man.

We got to McDonalds and went to queue in the line, there were four manned cash registers that were handing out receipts, money could be exchanged, but payment was demanded in a quarter pounder of flesh. Next to the registers, guillotines similar to what you find for cutting paper, however here they were used for cutting limbs off, usually hands, and people were yelping all over the place having their hands cut off for the sake of a burger, calmly putting there arms in the machines whilst young people in catering caps and small red spots that dribbled pus; drudgingly smiled and chopped them off; I looked at one person served a burger “have a nice day” came the motto as the guy picked up the burger he was offered with his remaining hand, “cheers” came his friendly reply, staggering out clutching his burger and arm stump at the same time as some one else came sweeping past with a mop, cleaning any spilt blood and ectoplasm. I suspected these limbs were then recycled as food. Then I in fact noticed an arm being fed into a meat grinder in the processing area, and some one patting the mince that came out into burgers.

There were dismembered hands crawling all over the place, scuttling with blurred speed on their five legs. One hand cut off some one who had the looks of a young thief, made straight for the cash register as the thief nodded it punched the till open and held up a handful of cash to the thief as he nodded eagerly. The queen’s head appeared to smile from a held fiver as though attached to a five legged body. A staff member slammed the till shut, cutting off two of the hands fingers and trapping the cash. The hand was immediately swept up by another worker with a butterfly net, whose job it was to catch the hands.

The man with the butterfly net went on with his work until he suddenly threw up his head and turned away in disgust. The sight that had greeted him was a female hand with red varnished nails, being took from behind by a large hairy male hand beaded with sweat.

I looked away myself and in my new range of vision saw another hand metamorphose into a transparent bristling spider, every hair on the back of the hand stood up on its translucent body. The spider jumped off the counter onto Jay’s face. Jay stood still as its transparent body magnified and distorted his features, pulling at his lips and eye lids with its legs. It ventured a leg into Jay’s mouth, which he bit off and swallowed with a gulp. The injured spider fell off and dragged its body along the floor amongst shuffling shoes.

“You wanna eat here Monster?” said Jay turning to me and giving a cough under his bandanna mask which ruffled it.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the machine as I replied “I hate to think what the cheese is made from.”

I turned and looked him in the eyes passing a knowing signal “No; lets see if they still have a skip out the back like they used to.”

We went to the back of the building into a court yard and the metal dumpsters were still in place. Jay opened one and withdrew a black plastic bin bag. He held it up and made a tare and peered in. then he looked up and smiled at me, withdrawing a cheese burger which he held up. A beetle as big as the burger inside dropped out onto the ground, it was sapphire and emerald coloured. Jay picked it up as it wriggled its legs and put it back in the burger, then; pulling down his bandanna he took a bite that had an audible crunch “They taste better than the burgers” He said, smiling with bulging cheeks.

I rooted in the bag and drew out my own burger, a ‘chicken’ burger. The bread was limp and stale, but it had a dank smell of cooked meat that was enticing. I pulled two like sized bugs out of it and took a bite. “Mmm” I said “Yummy”. Then added “We really should have took them home and grilled them like the old days”. We sat down on the bag and ate our meals. Jay got out a chicken burger from the bag under him and took a bite “I think this is testicles” he said unconcerned.

The burger did not agree with me, it seemed to be ripping its way through my digestive track and my stomach was not as solid as it used to be. Loud rumblings could be heard and Jay looked around with his arms out tensed, ready to dive for cover, then looked at me “Jon! I thought he’d sent a fucking tank for us.” Food here seemed to be a risky and unnecessary exercise like taking drugs.

“I’m going to take a look how my Gollum’s doing” I said. I located the back of my mind where his image was located and looked into myself. Redd was sketching a map with his to him large pen on a scrap of paper, his scroll was uneven but the map was detailed, it showed three levels and marked off toilets and a cloak room, there was a room on the top level marked with an ‘x’. A fire escape ran around the back of the building to different levels of the complex, and Redd had marked each one with a sketch of a padlock. Redd was aware I was looking in on him and looked up and surveyed the room so I could see it properly.