Cedar Sanderson is doing N'inktober, so I'm going to follow along and do what I've been trained to do by the Raconteur Press Postcard books: come up with a story to match her visual prompts. I can't guarantee that I'll have a complete story for every image, but I'm going to at least try to come up with a scene, a start, or an idea!
Verklempt Crawfish
The rain was coming down in sheets, pounding out a staccato rhythm on the roof of the bureau car. Strobing lights slipped between and through the drops, leaving afterimages of advertisements for sex, drugs, and seedy discount chop shops. Sometimes all three at once.
“Mada’chod. I hate it down here in the Bends.” Hems smacked the console, kicking the wipers over to high. Water flew from the windshield in an aggressive arc.
“Don’t let HR hear you say that. You’ll get a lecture on cultural sensitivity.” I gestured at the intersection ahead. “Turn here.”
We rounded the corner to face a crimson neon sign urging marks to COME IN AND FIND THE REAL YOU! The motion, the light from the sign, and the arc of water from the windshield all came together for an instant, creating the temporary illusion of of spray of blood.
I’m not superstitious, but that struck me as a bad omen. Hems was still on his probationary period, learning the ropes. I’d picked him up as my new junior barely two weeks ago. He In that time, we’d seen three corpses, each with the same cause of death. Body face down with a halo of dried blood around the head. Exit wound the size golf ball at the back of the head, down toward the base of the skull.
And not a single damn one with an entry wound.
“There.” Up ahead, I could see the flickering sign for the Spare Change. Hems nudged the car forward and into a parking spot.
In ages past, it had been a grand opera house. They’d ripped out most of the interior and replaced it with pods that could be configured on the fly for the needs of their clients. Whatever those needs might be. So long as you had the cash, the staff at the Change would set you up for whatever you wanted, then carefully forget that it had ever happened.
Hems killed the engine. It died with an electric whine, leaving us sitting a half block down from the line of benders waiting to get into the Change. He sat back and crossed his arms.
“So. Why are we here?”
“I have a hunch. Don’t give me that look. You stick around long enough, you’ll start getting them too. The Change is the one thing all the victims had in common. Each of them was here a week before their death.”
Hems shrugged. That was old news. “You going to make me sit and wait again?”
“Nah.” I patted myself down. ID, cuffs, service revolver. Good to go. “Time for you to earn your paycheck. Pull around. I want you watching the back.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Think we’ll get a runner?” There was excitement in his voice. Just a hint, though. He was eager, but not too eager.
“Yeah. If this goes down the way I think it will, though, it won’t be our perp. It’ll be their next victim.”
Hems blinked. “Crap. OK. Bag and tag?”
“Bag and tag. Full containment protocol, even if they look normie. I’ll give you ten minutes to get suited up and into position. Got it?”
Hems nodded. I threw the door open and swung myself out. The heat, humidity, and rancid smell of the Bends all hit me at the same time. I put my head down and ignored the stares of the fish men, she-bulls, octo-dudes, and even stranger benders as I made my way down the line to the door of the Change.
The ox-head bouncer gave me a bit of a hassle, but not much. Just enough to give the staff a chance to shuffle a few things out of sight into the back rooms. I didn’t push it. I was looking for a murderer, not some kids swapping blowfish venom.
“Boff fay ok, he’ll meet you infide.” Whoever had bent the bouncer had done a lousy job on his dental work. Probably because they’d put all their effort into grafting on new muscle. He looked like he could pick up the building and dribble it.
I gave him a careful nod as I slipped past into the club. There were a few kitsune benders and a couple of normies loitering there, dressed in various bits of costume. Various doors and hallways led off to different segments of the club. A couple of naked foxlings stumbled by, carrying a covered silver serving platter bigger than the both of them put together. Whatever was inside was still steaming, and smelled like scorched seaweed.
One of the doors slammed open as a bear wearing a pinstripe suit bounded through. He shipped his head around, spotted me, and jumped to two feet.
“Officer Claus.” Unlike the bouncer, the bear had not skimped on his dental work. His voice was oily smooth. “Are you visiting us for business, or pleasure?” The smile in his voice did not reach his eyes.
“Business, Peyter.”
“How unfortunate. Do you have a warrant? Or maybe it is a slow night, eh? You think you can come to my place, maybe hassle your inferiors, hmm?”
“I don’t have a warrant, Peyter. Not this time. What I do have is three dead bodies.” I lifted my chin. “I’d rather not see it become four. The only thing they seem to have in common is they visited your place. So - here I am. Tell me. How’s business? Hire any new girls lately?”
He cocked his head, considering. I didn’t break eye contact. After a bit, he made his decision. Shrugged. “Strange you should ask. Yes. Three.”
“Is one of them a pisser?”
Peyter’s nose wrinkled in a sneer. “That’s our word, Claus. You don’t get to use it. But yes. One of my new girls is piscine, if you must know.”
“Let me guess. Shellfish. Young. Prefers single clients. Normie clients.”
Peyter’s eyes narrowed. “Are you yanking my chain, Claus? Do you know Annette?”
“No. Until now, I didn’t even have a name. Can I talk to her?”
“No.”
“Peyter. Please.” I closed my eyes. Exit wounds without an entry. Opened them again. “I think she’s a para.”
Peyter hesitated. I saw him wrestle with his conscience and loose. Or maybe win. He spoke slowly. “She is with a client now.”
“Fuck!” It had been long enough. Hems should be in position. “Where?”
“The Ballroom.” Peyter dropped to all fours and barked something at the loitering staff. A kitsune dressed like a ballerina uncoiled herself from where she had been lying and bounced over to me.
“She will take you. I have another place to be.”
His way of saying he wouldn’t help me, but he wouldn’t hinder me, either. I turned to the kitsune. “Take me to the ballroom. Quickly.”
Peyter roared. The cat-girl jumped, turned in midair, and bounded down a hallway leading back into the depths of the building. I took off after her, fumbling with my revolver.
The kitsune lead me down winding halls filled with strange scents and even stranger noises. Whistles, clacks, and screeches echoed around me. I caught up when she stopped in front of a pair of oversized wooden doors. She gestured at them wordlessly, then turned and ran back the way we had come.
I took raise my gun, yanked open the door, and shouted “Freeze!” before I saw what was in the room.
The room had once been decorated with red velvet. The material was filthy wet and rotting now though. Bits of dank, waterlogged carpet poked up through the muck covering the floor. Given the cleanliness of the rest of the place, the state of the place had to be intentional.
A sweeping staircase led up to a balcony. I caught a glimpse of a decaying four-posted bed, festooned with torn and tattered lace. There was a shout and a commotion from the balcony. I moved into the room, keeping my revolved trained on the staircase.
As I moved, so did a figure on the balcony. A human-sized crawfish in a filthy ballgown appeared. Someone else behind her moved in the shadows. I heard cursing, then a door slam shut.
I kept the gun trained on the bender at the top of the stairs. “Annette? I have a few questions for you.”
At first glance, Annette’s bend looked top-notch. Then she took a few slow, shaky steps down the stairs. In better light, bits of her carapace looked like bad stitchwork, the cheapest sort of cosmetic bend. Reddish-green fluid leaked from the seams between plates. A sickly sweet smell, strangely enticing, wafted down to me from the top of the stairs. Pheromones. I backed away to the door, back into fresh air spilling in from the corridor.
“Ahm Annette, sugah. You comin’ for some lovin’?” Her words were strange, with hesitations and accents in the wrong places. I ouldn’t tell where her voice was coming from.
“Annette.” I kept the gun up. “I’m Claus. I can help you. Do you know what is happening?”
She stoped midway down the stair and giggled. “Know? Mistah Claus, I asked, asked, asked far it.” She started running her hands over her body slowly, caressing herself, smearing muck and filth into the gown. She shivered as she went. “It is so much,” she panted, hands moving faster as she spoke. “So much bettah to give than to get, Mistah Claus. Let me show you.”
At the last, her mouth parts spread open wide with a spray of blood and bile. Something within her jaws wiggled and twisted, a white, grub-like thing with a blood-red ring of needle-sharp teeth. I started in horror as she reached up and pulled the foot-long parasite from her mouth with a wet moan of pleasure.
“TAKE!” She reared back to throw the worm at me.
I fired without thinking, squeezing the trigger twice. One bullet exploded the worm in her hands. Another more took her in the chest, cracking the chitin covering her chest. She slumped agains the banister, grasping it with one hand, mouth still wide open.
“More.” With her free hand, she grasped the cracked carapace on her chest and yanked. It burst open with a shower of puss, exposing a seething, wriggling mass under her ribcage. She coughed, then plunged her hand into her chest, trying to pry out one of the parasites.
I emptied the revolver. Reloaded. Emptied it again.
When there was nothing left moving on the stair, I leaned over and threw up until I had nothing left in my stomach.
Hems was waiting for me out back in a full white hazmat suit. There was another figure in a bright orange suit lying on the hood of the car, hands cuffed behind its back and zip ties binding its feet. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle.
Hems pulled back his hood and tossed me a canister of antiseptic. “You were right. Normie came running on right on time. What happened to the perp?”
“Call it in. We’re going to need a squad. She’s dead.” I sprayed myself down as best I could, then grabbed my cold coffee from the car and used it to wash my mouth out.
“So who do we have here? An accomplice?”
I spat out coffee. “Told you. He’s a victim. Just wanted to get his jollies with a bender. She was a parasexual. Rare, but I’ve come across it before. Their bend includes symbiotic parasites that have a direct connections to the pleasure center of the brain.”
Hems looked queasy. I rinsed and spat again. “Paras get off on infecting people with… fuck if I know what this was. Looked like some sort of worm.”
“How… how does that happen? I mean, did her bend go wrong?”
I thought of the size of the worm. “No. It was engineered for a human body. She’d infect them. Then a week later - it would escape.” I help my fist up behind my head and opened it up. “Boom. This guy’s lucky. We’ll help him avoid that particular consequence of his one-night stand.”
“Mada’chod.” Hems looked green.
“Now you know why they called in the experts for this one.”
Hems hesitated. “Why didn’t you have me come in with you?”
Might have been wrong. Contamination risk. Needed you outside. All the little lies ran through my head. The truth was simple. Hems was a good kid. If stuck with the service, he’d see his own Annettes. Eventually. I’d drink myself to sleep tonight, trying to forget watching her pry a parasite out of her own ribcage. He didn’t need that yet.
I clasped him on the back. “Just a hunch. If you think this was weird, wait until you have to inspect a bender kitchen. Call it in, otherwise we’ll be here doing paperwork all night.”
Oh, wow. This needs to be more. Also, so very noir and science fiction.