Osman Lives (1)

Genre: Multi-Genre, mostly horror. Stream of Consciousness POV

Cold air filters through your mouth, its invisible body has a sensation of hunger when the mouth is dry. Dark brown hair slicked back, I lean against the alley way, century old homes filled with ghosts. Pop a benzo. It tingles, little shooting stars that make you feel for a moment. There's blood pools dredging against your boots, right at the heel. Snow collects on the branches like candied memories without song. The corpse stench lifts up from your nose, so you'll smoke a cigarette. A replacement for that long virus. They say, they lie. Tastebuds bump in the middle of your tongue before they flatten. Loneliness sucks down deeper in your throat, eating glass, it's under 20 out here.

Past the gates of the alleyways, the dried blood crusted over the metal the way that rust changes color. Deep blue eyes change the way a chameleon's chandelier glimmers under lamplight. Rows with wheels of the dead are carried away. Skin peeling off the tips of their fingers like cancer. Filthy, I creep through the darkness weaving in and out of traffic. Animal noises are somewhere far gone, ravaged from scavengers in the world that's ours now. When you least expect it, they come from the darkness of their homes. Feral, ever changing, ever evolving animals. Ever see a mountain lion with rams horns? Me neither, but apparently, that's what's happening to them. They're resisting whatever this is and we're the ones paying for it.

No one is going to fuck with someone stepping around the ground without a hazmat suit. My trench has holes outside of it. Any stranger might mistake me for the homeless, the nameless, the damned. I keep the papers close to my heart in case someone puts a damn bullet through them. Letters discarded, splattered names. Steam rolls from the sewers, and I taste her on my lips. Her face now murky, a memory you can no longer feel. There's something sinister about how the winter wishes you'd disappear.

My hands find my way towards a lug of a warehouse. They're selling metal. I tap against the window, watching it creak just ajar. On the other end, a wide eyed meth head looks back at me with vibrating eyes. I'd pluck and eat like an cherry. Just one dark brown eye. There's a gruff to his voice when he speaks. My partial not my fault slender frame and bloody knuckles press against the other side. Got to make sure this asshole doesn't slam it my face. I will eat it, if he pisses me off too much.

"Yeah, I need gold droplets. Don't fuck with me today."

"Have you seen the corpses they're wheeling around lately? What kind of psycho buys bullets? We're all going to die."

"Did I ask you for your opinion? What'll be this time?"

"You got any Ambien? I need to sleep."

"Sounds like you have needs that I don't care about right now. You got my bag or what?"

If I just twist my finger quickly, I can pull that fuckin' eye right out of his socket. A crispy crusted sleepless edge around his sockets. Dreamin’ of something that doesn't exist. His new God, the Ambien walrus. Mans got a day left or less. He's twitching, which tells me his time is short. I can hear the wheeze in his breath, troubled cells. He smells like burnt rubber. Melted on the cement. No one is going to come and scrape him off.

He tries to slam the window shut, and I point my knife just one centimeter away from his eye. I love it when their eyes dilate. Cold sweat in the winter.

"The bag. I won't ask again."

His right hand that is obscured by the door. I hear the jingle before he pushes the whole coin bag of droplets from the opened hole. Listening to it clank to my feet, I pull up a brown envelope between my two fingers. Suns disappear from the colors of his eye as I pull the knife away. It'd taste putrid from him. That eye.

Cocktail cherries used to be my favorite. Picking up the bag, I can hear three bullets in there. Droplets of affection. Opening up the bag I smell them, holding my tongue against the metal, licking its poison. God is great, the sounds of wheels are behind me, God is good, the skin sludge falls to the cement. Animals fight for the filth. Their eyes bloodshot and deranged. None of them like us much anymore, besides my house cats. I feed them strange jerky, I make in the middle of the night. Out of anything I can find. These are the deals we have to make to survive. I don't know if I'll make it this time round.

Standing in the ice bath that's winter, if I was glass, my whole body would crack up. Zig zagged pieces on the ground. You see the hot air from the sewage. There are some people alive. Some people just eat paper. Their books. Chew at anything that sticks in the belly. Shitting blood is more real than the men in hazmat suits and white cloths screaming about the end.

Pushing the stained glass doors open, there she lays. Untouched, still infertile. There's a cleft between her breasts and you can count her ribs. She hasn't defecated herself yet. I wonder if she even can. An eternal sleep where dreamers lie awake for hours to hear her breath.

The altar is shaped like a canoe on a table, she's naked just the way she told me of her end. Come to the world violent, burnt to a crisp at the end. Her skin is still soft. A milky way that people can get lost in if you spend your time stroking it too long. Oils slick against the skin. All the candles smell like her in the morning. It's been months now. I've been counting the days talking to her. She doesn't move. She has been invisible since birth, and now she's worshiped. I wash the insides of her arms and legs. My wife smells of lilac and lavender.

Her body is wrapped around dead flowers. All the ones I found and ripped out from the soil during the spring. Faded red, pink, orange, white, purple, and greens, all around her body. She wears it, her armor, her becoming it's raw. Tea lights follow around her body from the crown of her head to the heels of her feet. Always lit. Always glowing. Her red colored hair has started to fade to the brown she has always hated. She has never opened her eyes.

I kiss her mouth and tell her all the bad things, I've done but she never judges me. Her feet is starting to turn grey, like stone. Its hardened the way a body isn't supposed to. I hate that she's fading away. This virus turned people into sludge, my wife is becoming stone. What virus? The Great Big Lie. I keep forgetting the point of our life here. There's this untainted grace in her expression when she sleeps. I touch the side of her arms and tell her we'll go to the park before sundown. She hates when it's dark in the winter out here. I tell her she can have whatever tea is left in the cabinets. She told me before she slept, Nietzsche wrote about this abyss.

4 DAYS BEFORE

Her limp body fell into mind. Fatigue was instantaneous. As if all the caffeine in the world could suck out all her nutrients. Her fingers clasp around mine, I'm holding her in the high ceiling dusted library we made. Long panels of stained glass colors changing the shades of our faces. Her breath is shallow, involuntary wheezes. Air filtered falling away from her tongue in my mouth. She makes strange animal whines, as she rests on the tops of my shoulders. I love listening to every part of her even the parts that no one understands.

She says her body feels like a ghost, her body is weakening by the hour. Perhaps we didn't keep her farther away from people. Her shoulder blades are weak, my salvation deer. She tells me she loves me even when we no longer take ourselves out anymore. No one is allowed to touch these parts of herself. We're still swaying, but I'm doing all the leg work. Her legs start to go limp. For a second, I taste the blood in her mouth before she says she needs a nap.

Radio waves live in my brain. I tell her I'm weak without her. I feel every bone in her body harden as her eyes flutter. She reminds me how often the naps are needed for her brain, since there's no one else like hers. Cradling her in my arms there is a distant scent of coconut and floral petals. It drifts in and out of my nose.

I tell her not to leave me.

She says, if she dies let the cats live on her flesh. There is no joke under her tongue, in the most literal of senses, she smiles. Lifting her from her waist I carry her to bed. Sunlight lies to me in the winter. It'll be cold soon. Her body is weightless underneath my arms. As if we're drowning in water, and she floats, away, away from me.

I rest her on her side and she wraps around my body as though she was made of vines swallowing me whole. There is a golden light that lives in her eyes, she says before she falls asleep.

3 DAYS BEFORE

In the future, there's a scanner device that tells you if their body is in a coma. Back in the day they were those white press on ones to the forehead. Told temps. All the new tech is separated by certain sections of the city. They just blocked out all South City. Let the old folks die out here. People smuggle in tech through the underground railroad. Exploded the block offs by the blue suits. But they gone now. The whole organization crumbled to bits during the civil war. People switched sides. Money provides. You catch wind of new tech through whispers if you keep your head to the cement, carefully listening to the names, streets, places, the way to pin point any location at all. At your desk there is piles of ledgers with names overwritten by other names in cursive. It looks like scribble shit. Some people call it art. This is where some of the dead live.

Smooth soft, gold. Bullets load themselves like the names of my dead friends. They provide me grace with this injustice that has befallen on humanity. My wife's body hasn't stirred in a day. She hated the sounds of gun shots, and not even one through the ceiling penetrated her awareness. Sleep state subconscious. Delirium drugs hit, amen. There's a wine barrel filled with Xanax bars. One finger over her lip, and it lays ajar. We can't fix this. Not this time. No movement. Angels die, when she goes. It's all my fault. Paranoia as the wheels clank against the fucked up roadways. Deserted for the dying kings of this world. Crush three. The chalk stained lips resemble crack on a bad Tuesday. When the calmness hits, nothing can stop the brain waves from feeling the euphoric state of the middle ground. Crunch more glass down your throat and you're back in the middle ages. Everything is different. Memories feels like lies. Fantasies. Projections of what is supposed to be.

You kiss her lips and move them back to the middle. Foreheads touching, sweat mixing its smoothie. The scents roll in, you nudge her, you whisper, you worship her. Emptiness that lives on a beggar's hands. You tell her you'll figure it out.

Unlatching the door, a birthday present. Inside the keyhole is a ripped up paper that reads: stained glass star to the east. People might wish they never lived in a historic district with mundane laws. Preserve history, become a ghost.

On Grand there's a sewage cap that leads through manmade tunnels that lead to the underground railroad. It can fit an entire family through the holes. You're surrounded by archaic piping, and it smells like lukewarm bodies. In my right hand is a jug mixed with blood and olive oil. It has a crusty brown color, it wobbles with my body as I climb through the tunnels. I have one ear phone playing music, the other is listening to the sounds around me. It's chilled in the air, but I'm sweating bullets underneath this damn trench. You get used to the smells after a while. If you listen closely you can hear the remaining people wandering the streets. Some are looking for the tunnels. Everyone is looking for a way out of South City. Not enough bullets to get to the other side. They're starving enough people to reduce the population. The people in the county mostly already died, just became fireflies in the skies.

At the edge of the tunnels is a person who guards the gate. I slap my fist on the metal window. It slides left and a man with a ugly curled mustache matches my face. His face is painted, and there's glitter on his lips.

"Stained glass window to the East. For Dr. Hector."

"Ah, it's only you. You come for another hit?"

"My barrels full."

"Not looking like that. There's a party in the underground tunnel. You're going to have to blend in. Before we send you off." His expression is sinister. "I know you hate tight clothes."

"At this point, it doesn't matter. Throw my size through the window. I know the drill. I have juice."

"Good boy."

He slips leather and cotton black clothes through the window. There's tech inside the track jacket. It has white stripes. The way BLEEP used to have, but that company is long dead now. Just ashes. Brands blend together like forgotten orchestras. Over the track jacket is a bomber jacket with tech that leads from the shoulders to the wrists. A screen pulls up, new name. Michal Margote. It made me think of maggots. That felt fine. The fit wasn't as tight as the door man suggested. I did hate the knee high boots. They were steel toe. I would crack a skull without struggle.

Slipping through the gate, he eyed my hair. "Mmm it gives off homeless chic. I don't think I like it."

"Well fix it. I don't have all day."

Colors illuminated on the walls, cave rave, the old days except these were all transplants from the Inner City. You knew they were paying in blood to be here. Orgies of long lanky bodies gardens danced around the walls, shadows following them. You felt the snip off from the back of your neck. It itched, the pin pricks of the man's fingernails gliding over the back of your neck. He had GOD IS DEAD tattooed on his Adam's apple. His name was Victor Charlmane. He wasn't just any doorman, he was the guy. One wrong move and he'd gut you. Man, woman, or child. He didn't discriminate. The underground railroad was his home and business. Victor and Dr. Hector contracted people like me. No dead weight. Easy jobs. Minor chaos. Professionals. That's the game.

"Ah, see you'll blend in. I added one streak of red in there. I know it's your favorite."

"Where the fuck is Dr. Hector?"

"Touchy. What happened to you in past few days?"

"She's in a coma. I need that device. You know what happens when she dies."

"I hate when money goes sour. You'll find Dr. Hector near the North wall. He has your bike. Sorry about her. All the gems get cloudy in time. Best not to have reservations. Not in our world."

Dr. Hector wasn't hard to find, he's usually doing blow near the North Wall with a pistol resting on his hip. Any woman who touches him he goes into full cannibalism. He loves the way their fingers taste between his teeth. The juices he says that make woman superior. Word is most women steer clear of Dr. Hector and let him tinker off in his corner. Most people are warded off by all the bones he covers against the wall on his side of the tunnel. He rearranges them by date, sometimes he names them. It's not their real names. Identities are lost in his mouth. It's not the craziest thing I've ever seen. We've been doing business on the sly for about a decade. His skin was pale. Never got most sunlight. Surprised he hasn't croaked or his heart has given out. He says he's mostly cyborg at this point. Might live to see the world explode.

For all of his insanity, he did engineer a motorcycle for the people in South City. He dreams of a world where we're both connected. Inner City and South City. One lives in somewhat normalcy with high tech and the other stops dying in the streets. It's the worst class war. When tech took over, and exploded nuclear waste in South City that they called it a pandemic, but it's just radioactivity. It's killing us in droves. Dr. Hector was able to create fuel for the bikes with dead corpse juices, and olive oil. Figured if they could make vegetable oil cars, it wasn't a hard exchange because of the organic chemistry inside of our bodies. He called it beautiful rot.

Dr. Hector turns coked out of his mind without body parts in his mouth. He smiles in my direction. With two fingers he sips espresso. There's a hunch for his back he pretends to have but he's made of metal. He looks frail on purpose to gather resources. Victor and him created a mud home that connected to the tunnel. He beckons me through the passageway and slams the door shut standing up straight, spittin wet 6'5. His bones gleam a rich starry blue. He calls the main fluid to his human life, it's mostly dying. We're all dying in one way. Some philosophical bullshit. He pays me well, and gives me the news. We feed on each other in different ways. I ignore his cannibalism, but I still give him hell for it. He doesn't even need them. He just likes the surprise.

"That tech you're going to get is superb. They have a few lying around. They're mostly not needed in the Inner City. People are half human. All the functions that stopped working are replaced by robotic mechanisms. Found some old rich fucks huddled away in the Inner City. The clue is written on their door."

"Can you give me any more than that?"

"The locator is on your wheels. I'm just a silly old man. It beeps and you'll feel the warmth on your fingers when you're getting closer. When you pull up the screen. You'll know. It has a household name. No one forgets."

"You said they're old, how the fuck will I know about them?"

"Oh, that's right. South City doesn't get the news from the Inner City. It's an experiment that went wrong. One of the prestigious universities. You can pick between the two to make a wild assessment. It's that family. One of them is bedridden. Wouldn't it be nice to let them die off, the good way?"

"I'm not a saint. You're asking the wrong person for that sort of formal good bye. I'll steal their tech and kill them. They won't even see me."

"You're so different from her in so many ways. Sorry about your wife. They say, the ship is sailing for South City. Won't be long before the Inner City quarantines the place and makes the old land theirs again. You sure you don't want what I'm having? Immortality. Humanity's holy grail?"

"I'll consider your offer. She isn't dead yet. Coma."

"Right. Right. How insensitive of me. Well, looks like the time is up. Off you go. You got 2 hours of leeway before the system notices your error. Fuckin' AI is the all seeing eye as they say."

"How do they feel about your coke habit?"

"Better than my cannibalism. When you're an asset. They don't kill you raw. Not the way you do. Not the way they should."

***

SKC. The name of your bullets. You'd only need two for safe measure. They didn't have their names on them. Just their nicknames. Keeps the Inner City questioning. Victor says there's a whole conspiracy about the work I do, like some deranged cult following. The doctor says it keeps them human. Parts they miss most so, they don't forget. You'll see them on neon stretches of graffiti, and have partial fake names following you like an advertisement before you take that rollercoaster, before they punch the ticket, before you're strapped down, before each drop feels like you're dying by your stomach's weight.

The lights are loud with sound. She would hate it here. Beaming neon lights surrounding the whole Inner City as if nightlife doesn't exist. There's some Asian festival going on with paper lanterns on every street corner, smells of food trucks lined up and people shoulder to shoulder on the cement. Some chic ass Inner City, they made some of the buildings taller. Kept the old ones and renovated it. Doesn't seem like the Midwest. Some tropical clusterfuck. Plants grow out of every window, and people seem jovial. There's no poverty in the Inner City. Everyone is thriving their best lives. Shit, even I know some people out here. When we decided to stay they broke contact. Couldn't fathom we would help a dying city. Who knows what names they go by now.

Street names are the same. Less potholes. Smooth driving through the Inner City. You wish you left the South City. You wish you didn't have to be here. You put your other ear bud blasting the music at full volume and ignore the sites. You have two hours. In and out. That's the job. There's always something that someone doesn't want to do, but when you force the hand. It becomes second nature. You breathe differently. You feel different. Your identity is strapped to that one thing. Climb the fuckin’ mountain and get your bag.

Pulling up to the house it resembles the historic district in South City. Pressing the tech on your wrist you see stained glass on the door panels, the church looking ones. Some northern star replicas. There's a slew of vine covered cupids in the front of the yard. You assume Catholic or Christianity, or what it used to be. Religion is kept underground. The AI cyborgs quarantined all the crazies and threw them in South City to die. The new world was meant for the open minded. The creatives. During the war, the religious folks were the craziest motherfuckers walking the streets. Some Hitler reincarnation. Cyborgs weren't having that. It was a bloodbath. They met their maker in the end.

From the screen on my wrist, I pulled out the blue pill. You can see heat signatures this way. The code on the screen turned off their security system for about an hour. It would take less. Revving my engine lightly, I slide the wheels to the side of the building. Hiding the bike in some obscured ferns. Monstera. It was all the rage about a decade ago.

Back door, quiet. A small dog greets me and I snuff out its breathing with some ether drug Hector gave me. Lights out. It didn't kill it. Sort of wobbled until it passed out near the kitchen island cabinets. The whole house smelled of potpourri. Some 80s hell. You can hear the TV in the other room blaring. A woman is laughing clinking her martini glass against her nails. The rest of the house feels empty. Maybe two people. You hear his laugh.

“This is the best part.”

Is it?

You recognize the voice, it's a distant gargle. Raising the gun, the voice booms like a television ad that never ends. You see that orange tan reflecting on the screen. You could recite the words over and over if you wanted to but, there's a pit in your stomach. These people were supposed to be killed in the war. Disposed. Dying in South City. In luxury they sit on their thousand dollar couches, drinking liquor and laughing. They laugh. The back of his hair is like someone put the hair through a blender. It sticks up. Eh. The fucking 90s. What did he have that was worth saving?

“MAKE-”

Pop. A whistle, and the avalanche at the back of his head spreading out. It's messy, but you don't want to see his face. You don't want to recognize him from before the war. The martini glass drops. They laughed.

Pop. Her head caved in slides against the couch. No noises, just the squeak of their bodies sinking into the furniture. You stare at the TV screen blaring the same tongue, and you pop it right down the middle. As if the fucker were still alive to watch the country fall. You move around the couch and find a medical desk covered with tech. There is only one thing you wanted but you open your backpack and pull everything off the shelves. There's no longer static blaring, just your thoughts collecting themselves. The job was done in fifteen minutes upon entry.

There's parts of you that can't help but stare at the lasagna that used to be their faces. Holden to the doughy bits of their skin. Money melting off their jaws. You see the abomination before you, the obese man with tumors the size of soccer balls all over his arms and legs. His blood drips a neon green liquid. Whatever he was, the only human part of him was the past.

Stepping back into the Inner City the lights gleam blurry sigils around the air. Peace on Earth. The barrel is empty now, but you stick it on your side. For safekeeping. For memories. Rolling the bike backside, you rev your engine.

You'll be back in South City within the hour. At the corner of your eye, you see the cult neon glitter words scribbled onto a side house like a mural. Osman lives in the darkness. He rides for us.

Tch. Screen pulling up on your wrist. Reverse the security code. Black pill pops out. The body shakes when it returns to normal. Hands grip the handles. Tiny red bumps form on your palms before they dissipate. It's in the blood. It's everywhere. It's in the air. They lied. They laughed. They all died.

To Be Continued…

[ Stream of Consciousness POV by Emil Ottoman: Autocannibalism, Insatiable, Dance. I’ve been working on this off and on. Part two incoming.]