The Atonement Tango, page 5
“Yeah, kinda,” Michael told him. His stomach had knotted again, tighter than ever. “Look, thanks for letting me poke around. I guess my manager gave me the wrong info. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“No problem,” the super said, tapping the pocket with Michael’s envelope. “No bother a’tall, DB. Hey, you want to leave a note or something for Krieg? In case he actually pays the goddamn rent?”
“No,” Michael answered. “I’ll stop by and see him in person sometime.”
* * *
Michael heard the door open, then close, followed by the patter of several hands slapping the floorboards. When he heard the snap of a switch and saw the wash of yellow light fill the front room, he stepped out of the bedroom where he’d been waiting.
“Krieg,” he said. “I know it was you. You’re the bomber.”
Michael didn’t know what he’d expected as a reaction. Surprise, certainly, and perhaps fright as well. Or perhaps anger. He got none of those, and felt a wash of brief disappointment. The centipede-like body was heavily bandaged; the two rear hands were booted, not unlike Michael’s own leg. The joker’s mantis head swiveled toward him. Round and pupil-less dark eyes stared as the fingers of its several hands flexed and unflexed on the floorboards. The insect mouth opened, and the voice that emerged sounded cartoon-high and thin. “You were supposed to be dead,” Krieg said.
“So were you.” Michael was bare-chested, his injuries visible: the scars, the splint still on his middle left arm, the stub of his lower left arm sticking out uselessly. He thumped hard on the bass membrane with his right hand, ignoring the pain. He shaped and tightened the sound, focusing it on Krieg’s body. The concussive blast hit the joker, knocking him over and sending him tumbling against the wall of the room. The joker squealed and struggled to right himself. The front of his body lifted, his front two hands outstretched toward Michael.
“My Lord God…” Krieg began, then seemed to choke on the word as Michael brought his hand up again, fisted as if ready to strike the drums of his chest again. Michael saw Krieg swallow hard. The mantis eyes blinked; his front two hands were clasped together now, as if in supplication or prayer. “Yes, my own death is what I wanted as well,” he continued, “but the Lord saw fit to intervene. I was ready for that, but just as I pushed the button, another joker shoved between me and the stage. It … whatever it was … had a hard carapace, and that shielded me from the blast. It wasn’t until I woke up in the hospital that I heard on the news that you’d survived too.” The face scrunched in a scowl. “I suppose … I suppose this is what the Lord wanted of me. It was His hand that saved me. Like Isaac, who Abraham was ordered to kill, I was spared. As for you, you only lost an arm and broke a few bones. Hardly the punishment you deserved.”
Michael struggled to keep his voice calm. He wanted to beat on his chest, wanted to pummel the joker with a fatal barrage of percussion: as he’d once done with the Righteous Djinn in Egypt, as he’d done to others in Iraq. His missing left arm throbbed, as if it heard his thoughts. “God had nothing to do with it, you fucking idiot!” The words were hoarse and loud, ripped from his throat as he shouted. “God didn’t want dozens of jokers to die. God didn’t want Shivers and S’Live and the Voice to die. You did, you bastard! You did!”
Blink. The mantis head looking briefly toward the ceiling as if searching for words there. “Leviticus 21:18—‘No man who has any defect may come near the Lord’s altar: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed.’ Look at us, Drummer Boy. We are cursed for our sins. Psalm 37:38—’But all sinners will be destroyed; there will be no future for the wicked.’ Don’t you see? There you were, you and your fellow abominations, making a mockery of the Lord with your celebration of your disfigurements, with all the other sinners and cursed ones shouting your praises and buying your records. And you … you especially, pretending that you were doing good in the world: the great DB, raising money for charity with one set of hands and raking in more money with the other. Accepting the idolatry of the cursed ones. The aces—they’ve been raised up by the Lord God, gifted by Him for their goodness in their souls. But you … you’re just a joker like the rest of the cursed ones.”
“Just a joker?” Michael raged at the man. “You think that’s all I am?” Again, he beat on his chest: two strikes, this time, directed right at the man, the low pounding reverberating. He saw Krieg’s body respond; ripples moving down the long tube of its body. It will be easy. Quick. That body’s fragile and soft …
Krieg cowered, and Michael stopped. The joker raised its front hands again. “You must know you’re a sinner like the rest,” he said, “even as you pretend to be as good as the believers, even as you prance on your stages. You, more than any of the others, are a symbol of all … of all that is wicked in this world … and the Lord spoke to me. He said … He said…”
Krieg was weeping now, whether from pain or from fear, Michael didn’t know. Tears flowed from the bulging eyes. The bandages on his body were showing spreading splotches of red: the concussion of Michael’s drums had torn open the wounds underneath. “He said that as penance for my sins … for the awful curse that He placed on my body as the sign of my corruption.” The rows of hands underneath Krieg’s body were now impotent fists, curled up on the scratched wooden floor. “My task, He told me, was to cast you screaming with torment into Hell, so that all can see His order, so that others would follow my path and purge all the joker abominations from the earth.”
“You’re a sick, sick bastard, Krieg. You know that?”
The joker sucked in air. “You can’t understand. You don’t even believe in God or in His truth. But you will—you’ll scream for His forgiveness as you writhe in agony for eternity in the afterlife that awaits you. While I was in the hospital, I prayed and I prayed. I asked the Lord why He let you live, and I could hear Him telling me that His will would be revealed. Now I know why. He had a task for you. You intend to kill me, don’t you?”
Michael nodded. “You don’t think that’s what you deserve for what you’ve done?”
“For what I did to jokers?” He gave a laugh that sounded like chitin rubbing together. “No, I don’t—that was only what the Lord demanded of me, to demonstrate to Him I had repented.” Michael’s hands curled, all of them, and he took a step toward the joker, ready to end this. “Listen,” Krieg said imploringly. “I failed the Lord in my past, back when I was normal, when I was preaching His word. I wasn’t a good man then. I was prideful. I gave in to lust and envy and greed, and the Lord saw each of my transgressions. Look at me now; anyone can see the mark of sin He’s placed on me. No, for you to kill me will be a sign of His blessing and forgiveness. He’ll take my soul from this wretched, horrible body, and clasp me in His arms to carry me to Heaven. So go ahead,” he told Michael. “Do it. Do what the Lord God commands. Kill me, and show the world what you and the other jokers really are.”
Michael ached to obey. He imagined S’Live and Shivers and the Voice calling out to him to avenge them, imagined he heard all of those Krieg had killed and wounded screaming for the man’s blood. Seeing this creature shattered, broken, and gone would assuage the sense of impotence that haunted him, the sense of being adrift without purpose.
It would. It must.
The mantis watched him, waiting. Blood had spread further on his bandages. So easy. Michael’s fist opened, closed again. He brought them down on his chest, all at once, and the sound shook the walls of the apartment, rattling everything around them.
But the thundering roar was unfocused, his neck throats yawning wide open. Krieg cowered on the floor as if waiting for the blow to strike, his round, bug-like eyes closing. Slowly, they opened once more.
Michael slid his phone from his pocket. Still watching Krieg, he tapped a few buttons. “Detective Black,” he said to the voice that answered, “I have someone you’ve been looking for…”
* * *
He could hear the sound of someone playing bass inside the house in Cincinnati … No, he decided, not a string bass, but a synth keyboard bass. The bass line continued as he knocked, as the door opened. A woman looked out at him—she could have been taken for a nat if it weren’t for a spray of glowing, iridescent freckles across her cheeks and nose. Her lips curled into a moue of distaste.
“DB,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Bethany,” he said. “Hey, is that him playing? How is he?”
“You’re a little late asking.” She hadn’t moved, still holding the door half-open.
Michael nodded. “I am, and I’m sorry. I won’t make any excuses. Just … I’m sorry. I should have come by weeks ago. If you want me to leave, I will.”
There was a distinct pause, giving Michael time enough to wonder whether she’d just shut the door on him before she stepped back and held it open for him. “Come in,” she told him. “He’ll want to see you.” Even if I don’t. The appended clause was silent, but he heard it.
She led him to a room at the back of the house—he remembered it from previous visits: a little studio that Bottom had built in a spare bedroom, where Joker Plague had put down demo tracks for their first album. Bethany opened the door and the bass line swelled in volume. “You have a visitor, love,” she said, and left quickly.
Bottom was sitting behind a Korg keyboard wearing a Joker Plague tee, his left hand on the keys, the right sleeve hanging entirely empty, not even a truncated remnant like his own hanging out. The entire right side of his donkey-like face was scarred, the fur of his muzzle burned off to reveal pink, wrinkled skin. He wore a patch over the missing eye, the elastic weaving around his huge ears. Michael couldn’t see the missing leg, hidden behind the Korg’s stand.
Bottom’s thick-lipped and toothy mouth creased into a smile as he looked up. “DB! Michael! Man, it’s good to see you!”
“You too. Honest. Look, I should’ve come by before—”
Bottom held up his hand. “Stop right there,” he said. “I know what Bethany thinks, but I don’t hold it against you. It’s been rough for everyone, and hey, I hear you found the little bastard who did it. Hard to believe that he was a joker…” Bottom stopped, and Michael saw a tear race down from his remaining eye. “Sorry. I still get choked up and emotional, thinking about that day. Poor Jim, Rick, and Ted…”
It took a moment, but Michael realized Bottom was referring to the Voice, S’Live, and Shivers by their given names. As if they were just people. As if they weren’t defined only by their appearance and what the wild card virus did to them. Michael had nearly forgotten their real names. “… all those people in the audience, our fans…” Bottom’s body shivered as he shook his head.
“I know, Bott…” Michael stopped. Niall. Bottom’s actual name is Niall … “I know,” he repeated. “I know, Niall.” His own voice quavered in sympathy.
“Yeah, I’m sure you do.” Niall gave a long sigh, a sniff through the huge nostrils at the end of his muzzle, then tapped out a line on the keyboard. “Can’t change what’s happened, though. I’ll never play bass guitar again, but I still have an eye to see and one good hand, and I can sit down at a keyboard, so I don’t need the leg. I figure with the Korg and its bass patch…”
“What I heard sounded pretty good.”
Niall grinned. “I’ve been practicing. How’s the drums? The arms?”
“Healing,” Michael told him. “I’ve been practicing, too.”
“Excellent. Tell you what, let me kick up the studio track for ‘Self-Fulfilling Fool’ on the computer. I’ll just silence the drum tracks and the bass…” He paused and glanced back at Michael. “That is, if you have the time, and if you want to.”
Michael unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it back to reveal the drum membranes. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Niall grinned again, then turned back to the computer hooked up to the studio speakers. “Here we go, then. You ready?”
“I don’t know,” Michael answered. “We’ll find out.”
The click track counted off the beats, then Ted’s—Shivers’—guitar started in with the introductory, gritty power chords. The familiar sound of his guitar made the room shimmer in Michael’s eyes, remembering being on the stage as they played this song a few hundred times. He blinked, feeling moisture running down his cheeks. He counted off four measures, tapping the snare on his chest and looking at Niall, ready at his keyboard.
Then Rick kicked in with the keyboard, Niall’s synth bass boomed, and Jim’s voice launched into the melody. Michael loosed an explosive crescendo down the toms. He could feel his missing arm moving from habit, leaving a single, empty beat in the run.
It didn’t matter.
For the next few minutes at least, he could almost believe that his world was whole again.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Leigh
Art copyright © 2016 by John Picacio
Stephen Leigh, The Atonement Tango
