Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (2 page)

“It wouldn’t. And I won’t. I’m a fucking brick wall, man. The stuff I’m on now doesn’t even speed up my heart. It doesn’t do shit, in fact. That’s the problem.”

“Have you looked in the mirror lately, Al? You get any more ripped, your muscles will probably split through your skin.”

The thought actually made me grin for a second. Then reality crashed back in. “I can’t get any more ripped, damn it. That’s why I’m calling you.”

He hesitated. “No. I can’t, man. Not in good conscience. It’s too dangerous.”

“Fuck your conscience.”

“Al, man. There’s no need to—”

“And fuck you, too.” I hung up the phone. Thought about throwing it across the room, let it smash into the wall. But, as much as Ricky may not want to admit it to his other clients, I knew damn well that there were plenty of other chemical fish in the sea.

I switched on the computer and listened to it hum to life. I like computers. They’re so goddamn useful it’s amazing anyone got by without them. So much information, so easily obtainable. Plus, they’re like a human. You can keep upgrading them, adding new RAM and hard drives and video cards. There’s always something else you can do to make them a little better.

I had a few bookmarks stored, online shops for different chems. But I’d tried most of them through Ricky over the last months. There had to be something else.

An hour into the search and I was starting to lose hope. Vague searches weren’t working. Things like
Steroids Online
or
Muscle Building Supplements.
Finally, my Hail Mary play turned up something. I searched for something simple—
Buy Steroids in Atlanta.
Hard to get more direct than that.

And it worked.

The top results were the same bullshit sites I’d seen a dozen times, but I combed through them and on page six of the results, right about the time I was starting to give it up, I saw a result that looked promising. I clicked it and watched as a knockoff version of Craigslist filled the screen. Shady shit on there, things like
Evening Companions
and
Help With Your Problems
buried alongside
Electronics
and
Collectibles.

I’d never seen anything like it, but after you see some of the shit the internet is home to, it’s hard to be surprised.

The listing I found was too perfect to believe.

Gain muscle mass! No matter your size or figure, bulking up is possible! Get the body you want—no side effects!

It was followed by a local number that was practically begging me to call it.

So I did.

I got an answer on the third ring. A lot quicker than Ricky had ever answered my calls.

“Yes?” The voice was nothing special. A man, impossible to tell the age. Just a common baritone.

“I’m calling about the ad online?”

“Which one?”

“The one for muscle mass?”

“Oh. Well. What is it you want?”

“I need to get bigger. I’ve hit a plateau and the stuff my usual guy’s giving me isn’t helping anymore.”

“Okay. Well, I can probably help you. But it’s costly.”

“I’ll pay.”

There was a long pause. “How much do you want this?” The voice had dropped to a near-whisper.

“More than anything.”

Another pause. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have someone close to you? A brother, a lover? Even a pet?”

I glanced at Upchuck. He’d plopped down in front of the trophy case and was licking his balls like they were ice cream. “Yes. A dog.”

“Bring it. And five thousand dollars.”

I hesitated, but only for a second. “Okay. No problem.”

He gave me the address and told me to be there in two hours, then hung up.

It was a long wait. I left twenty minutes early and did fifteen over the speed limit all the way there. I expected a business, some run down little shithole in a bad part of town. Instead, I ended up parked on the sidewalk in front of a house that looked a hell of a lot like mine. A little suburban community, first home on the left. Two stories, manicured lawn. I double-checked my GPS to make sure it hadn’t led me astray, then checked it again on my cell phone with the maps application. Everything said I was in the right spot except my gut.

I tucked the envelope with the guy’s cash into my waistband, clipped Upchuck’s leash to his collar, and we climbed out of the car.

The door opened before I was able to ring the bell. The guy standing in the doorway looked like a skeleton. He was thin to the point of being disgusting—I could probably fart and knock him over. His skin was like chalk, eyes sunk back into his head and sitting atop purple bags that were bigger than his biceps. His gaze jumped from me to Upchuck and back again.

“I’m here about the—”

“Come on in.” He moved to the side and I started into the house. Upchuck had other plans. He barked twice, then let out that low growl that dogs do when they’re about to bite. He didn’t like the look of the guy any more than I did.

I dragged him into the house anyway. He’d never been a fan of strange places—or people—so I was pretty much used to it. The guy didn’t seem to give a shit either. He didn’t give Upchuck a second glance and motioned for me to follow him.

“You okay, man?” I asked as we walked down a bare hallway. I had to pull Upchuck every step of the way. “You sick or anything?”

“I’m fine. I just don’t sleep a lot.”

I glanced through the open doors we passed. Nothing remarkable. A den with a recliner and a midsized TV. A bathroom with seashells on the shower curtain. The hallway ended at a closed door, with an open one on the right. The man led us through the open door.

It was a bedroom he’d converted into a kind of home office. Three computer monitors lined a desk, with a matching trio of computer towers visible underneath it. The desk was cluttered, lots of notes scattered among wires and wire cutters, bulbs and screwdrivers. A pair of envelopes that looked a lot like mine—one of them a lot thicker—sat to one side of the desk.

“So ... advertising online. That’s not risky?” I’d never felt the need in my life to break the ice, but the guy’s nonchalant, disinterested demeanor was starting to make me feel a little like Upchuck.

He shrugged. “No risk, no reward. Besides, cops have more important things to do than try to bust people on a web site offering blowjobs for twenty bucks a pop.”

I held out my hand. “I’m Al.”

He stared at my palm a moment, and then leveled his eyes back to mine. “Mark.” He didn’t bother shaking hands; he just sat there, looking back and forth from me to Upchuck and back again.

“So ... here’s your money.” I offered him the envelope and he tossed it to the desk beside the other ones.

“You’re willing to do anything for this?”

I nodded.

“I need your dog. And I need you to wait here. You should say goodbye.”

My breath stuck in my throat for a second. “What? Say goodbye to who?”

He jerked his head slightly, gesturing toward Upchuck.

“No. You can’t have my fucking dog, man.”

“Why did you think I told you to bring it, exactly?”

“I—” What had I thought? The truth was, I hadn’t. I didn’t give a shit. The muscles. My body. Those were the things that mattered. When he’d said to bring Upchuck along, I hadn’t given it a second thought. The allure of his promise held too much sway. “No. I can’t give you my dog.”

He studied me a moment, then nodded. He pushed the envelope back across the desk. “Okay then. Have a good day.”

“You’re serious?”

He nodded.

I looked at Upchuck, who’d sat down beside me and was staring up at me, waiting to leave. He’d been a hell of a good dog. My companion, especially after Rhonda had left. She’d tried to take him but I promised her that she’d get the house before she’d get the dog, which was to say that there wasn’t a chance in hell of her getting either one. But he’d been a fifty-dollar pound rescue. As much as I liked him, it seemed like an investment in my body that I couldn’t pass up.

I’ve heard of alcoholics and crackheads stealing their momma’s jewelry to get the money for their next drink, their next hit. I know a guy who used to be the world’s biggest homophobe who now trades his ass to any man willing to give him twenty bucks or a dime of good meth. I’d never understood how you could let something get hold of you like that until I looked at my dog and realized that, if he could help me hit two hundred sixty-five, letting him go made sense.

“You guarantee this will work? That I’ll break this ceiling and start gaining muscle again?”

Mark shrugged. “If that’s what you really, truly want. Then yes. It will work. You’ll get what you want.”

“Guaranteed?”

“Guaranteed.”

I bent over and hugged Upchuck, stroked under his chin the way he liked and nuzzled his face a minute, then offered the leash to Mark. He slid the envelope back to the pile and walked around the desk.

“Wait here.
Right
here,” he said as he took the leash. It was the first time since I was a boy that I remember actually crying. Not much—just a couple of tears that I rubbed off in a hurry—but still, they were there.

Upchuck was muscular, and it took every ounce of strength Mark had to pull him out of the room. I was expecting my dog to bite his scrawny ass, but he surprised me.

Mark got to the closed door at the end of the hallway and glanced back to me before opening it.

A moment later, he was able to drag Upchuck through the door and close it behind him.

The house went quiet, but only for a few minutes. Upchuck’s barks punched through the walls, short vicious ones I’d never heard him use before. Angry, threatening barks.

The feel of the house changed. The scent of metal rushed in, the sweet, metallic taste of copper filling my mouth. My ears popped as the pressure changed, and each breath became a struggle. I was pulling air in, but it was so thin it barely seemed to have any effect on my screaming lungs. There was a sound like air rushing through the window of a car on the highway. Upchuck stopped barking and let loose a long, high-pitched whine that died with a yelp.

All the sounds and scents receded, plunging the house back into an abominable silence. The sound of the doorknob turning almost made me scream, and Mark came back into the room.

Without Upchuck.

In his right hand, where the leash had been moments earlier, he was clutching something else.

He walked back around the desk and sat down, then placed the item in front of me.

A syringe. Identical to the hundreds I’d used in the past, except for its contents. It was filled with a fluid blacker than used motor oil. Five ccs of pure darkness.

“That’s it?” I said. “You take my dog and my money and expect me to inject myself with whatever the hell that is?”

“I don’t expect you to do anything. I’ve seen so many different kinds of people that I know you can never count on them to act the way you expect.”

“This is a fucking joke. I want my dog back. And my money.”

He shook his head. “That’s not possible. This is yours. You bought it. It’s not for anyone else.”

I leaned forward, flexing my neck muscles and slapping on my most intimidating snarl. “Give me back my dog.”

“Your dog is gone.” His right hand rose up from behind the table and pointed a handgun at my chest. I wasn’t much on guns, but I’d seen enough TV to know it was a 9mm. And that no matter how ripped I was, that bullet could tear through my muscle and organs like a chainsaw through a birthday cake.

We stared at each other for a long while. I was three of him. Maybe four. But that little candyass hunk of metal in his hand gave him the advantage, and we both knew it. I stood and backed toward the door.

“The needle,” he said. “Take what’s yours.”

“I’m not using that.”

“You came here for it.” He smiled. “I suspect you will. But whether you do or not, you’ll take it with you.”

Another minute stretched out to seeming days. I took the syringe. It was like picking up an icicle—the cold stung my skin. I didn’t let Mark see the pain, though. It hadn’t bothered him. It damn sure wouldn’t bother me.

He followed me out and, twenty minutes after I arrived, I was back on the road for my house, alone and more pissed off than I could ever remember being.