Atom. Steve Aylett
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the rain to the brownstone.
In the lobby he smartened himself up, then entered the elevator. Joanna probably called on some old woman whose only companion was a spaniel temperamental in the head. Simple enough. Fourth floor.
Well alright the place was a little creepy but was this not America land of the free? Let them have their dim wallpaper and dense doors.
Everything cruised around his own movements as he walked the hallway, so dreamlike he looked down to check for rollers. Microdread pinwheeled over the carpet, approaching him like a tide. His hair strained to stand on end, curling to question marks under its freight of grease.
Here was the door - ATOM AND DROWNER stencilled on blurglass. He rang the bell and after a pause the door burst open like an exit wound, gusts of methane clouding past him.
He stepped into the waiting room, which was a sky churning with fire and sonic explosions. Igniting magnesia stained the air and wind ripped expectation into ribbons. Here were heavens gone astray and panicking like bats, blinding his forehead and releasing a hailstorm of crisis. ‘Mr Atom?’ called Turow above the storm, his clothes ballooning with superstatic. ‘Are you available for business!’ He knuckled airtrash from his eyes, squinting agog through an atmosphere churning with near release. And the wind re-directed, buffing a sight-line through the roiling smog.
A resinous spine and ribs were suspended in midair, levitating in theatrical smoke. And amid the creeping fluorescence, inquisition fumes and white hot theta flashes, boomed a voice as though amplified through 50,000 watt speakertowers. And it said:
‘An office is a machine for dying.’
Turow began screeching like a vulture, mouth dry. He saw himself, diaphanous in his lack. This encounter was the very litmus of his courage and his face turned reflex blue. He found himself running, beyond his control. The building spat him out like an olive.
2 THE NUMB TOWN
Atom pulled on his pants and took the firepole to the garage. Drove through a dogma pageant, Cockroach Centrefold on the stereo. A bullet licked the paintwork. ‘What happens,’ he thought, ‘when the hitcher and the driver are equally murderous?’ Looking at this town with an honest eye was like biting into candy with a mouthful of cavities.
A bricolage block on Crane housed Madison Drowner’s apartment. Two guys were sparring on the sidewalk with boxing gloves made of tempera meringue. Passing them, Taffy saw the gloves were actually wooden heads removed from statues of the Virgin Mary.
Upstairs, Maddy ushered him in, walking away. ‘How they hanging.’
‘Geometrically.’
‘And I was just mixing some antifreeze.’
‘Guess I could use it. Guess we all could. Jed needs servicing.’
‘Of all the wild suggestions.’
‘Just a torn gill. We had a visitor came asking for it. It’s a cliché out there, baby.’
Maddy built a freeze to the sacred dimensions. Sometimes Atom wished he could kiss her brain directly. Her eyes, in defiance of the prevailing trend, were open. She was an angel as real as the bones in her body. ‘You’re warped, Taff. All that glee - it aint healthy.’
Atom took the glass of blue. ‘Health is subjective. I believe I’m evolving.’
‘Sure - into a dead man.’
‘Where’s your imagination?’
‘In the medicine cabinet.’ She regarded him over a drink. ‘You on a prank, Taff? Your forehead’s beating like a heart.’
‘Sanity’s a virginity of the mind, baby. Gimme a shock absorber.’ She lit one up between her lips and passed it to him. He breathed it in. ‘You know a girl by the name of Kitty Stickler?
‘Sure. Standard-issue blonde. All distinguishing marks removed. Rejects men who never noticed her. Rumours of a brain but nothing conclusive. Sings at the Creosote Palace.’
‘That a gun club?’
‘All the charm of a live bait store. The chandeliers are rubber - they don’t take any chances.’
‘Sounds like my kinda venue.’
‘Yeah - crash dummy heaven.’
‘That’s what I’m counting on. The greatest high in this graveyard nation is to have an effect.’
‘Effectiveness.’ She stood close to him, looking into and through his eyes. ‘They got a detox program for that?’
Atom chuckled. ‘You and your wet mouth.’ He pensively regarded his gasper. ‘I nearly depend on you, baby.’
‘You make me laugh,’ she said, ‘with your threats.’
The Creosote Palace was the last word in public disorder. Espousers of philosophies as diverse as Malraux gathered under one roof to engage in boisterous deceit and explosive arrogance. The only hope of distracting these bastards was to push a bubblehead on stage and get her wailing.
That was Kitty Stickler, up there singing a Beige Kidney standard which listed the surgical assaults all sexes were told they favoured for the female form. She chirped without irony, having undergone every cosmetic procedure on the list. Her body was so media-aligned it barely registered on the retina. She seemed unable to bend. Somewhere was a knot - someday it would give.
Atom entered, reversing the air’s ionic charge. Probability statistics polarised. Trying to detect the girl, he refocused until she fuzzed into view, singing like a lollypop. Even at this bandwidth she was like a flashy ad with no trace of a product. Atom strode between the tables, approaching the stage before the flow of his void coat. He stepped up.
‘Excuse me, ma’am -’
‘- Hey!’
‘- the name’s Atom, I need to ask some questions, in total confidence you understand. You know a guy waves the name Joe Aniseed?’
‘What the hell d’you say you are?’ Up close she was like a phantom, her face airbrush-blurred. ‘Get the hell off my stage.’
‘You involved with the peltman Harry Fiasco?’
‘Ram it up your ass!’
‘Just the facts, ma’am.’
The audience were getting attentive, sensing some sort of activity on stage.
‘I don’t know no Aniseed and I aint seen Harry for weeks or more - hey Sam get this shithead off my stage!’
Sam, stripping a chainsaw in the wings, frowned briefly at a disembodied voice.
The crowd perked up as Kitty, powered only by limelight, stalked petulantly off stage.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Atom, ‘if you’ll indulge me. I have assigned a musical note to every grade of human lie. Here’s my rendition of the President’s inaugural address.’ And he took out a clarinet.
Dr DeCrow gave cadaverous - except for his mouth, which bulbed and pupped like a monkey’s. Ghoulish as bones in a canvas bag, he stood by a table lamp for the old uplit mask effect. ‘I deem it a thorough success, Mr Candyman - and one that has afforded me a great deal of pleasure.’
‘That’s as may be sir,’ said the fat man in the hotel armchair. ‘What’s now required is that we recover the organ. It cannot be allowed to leave this city.’
‘A simple enough task, after all.’
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, doctor, it’s that simplicity is a blank screen inevitably pelted and abused by the peanut gallery. Now leave by the back way sir - I don’t want Turow barging in here and getting into a state.’
The door banged open and Turow hung in, staggering. ‘I am beginning a nosebleed,’