Emma had lived maybe 35 years, give or take a few. In all of them many inconsequential things had happened, one time she had decided that she felt ashamed that she preferred Tom Sawyer to Huckleberry. Another time picked at a scab too much and a darkness crept into the wound, it became red and angry and she was struck with fever. The scab, the fever, Huckleberry, all these things seemed very consequential when they were happening. She was sure the fever would cause catastrophe or that the spirit of Huckleberry would entomb her. Emma sought treatment from a healing woman who lived in the sewers and while she had no way of knowing that meeting would be consequential, it was an unseen blessing; for no intelligible reason the crone woman living in the sewer who possessed far more wealth and intrigue than she seemed found a craving for Emma, something between an envy for jubilance, motherly love and a desire to exploit her summoned a repeat invitation, work reading through old books for information of plants or chemicals and then stripping the glue with solvent out of those very books and melting the old papyrus into glass cylinders for which the crone would concoct various serums.
Everyone deserved to have some work in their life that they could feel good about. Emma was selected by pure luck to survive in the world and eventually thrive and she hated ripping poppy pods off the stems anyway so she thought she’d kill 2 birds with 1 stone and give the 2 new girls some work to do like the crone gave to her. It was frustrating and sticky work in which while she was to do, she had no inclination for it. Senna however, possessed ample inclination. Jedda’s inclination started at a slower roll, she was cautious, she didn’t like to slice the pods on a cutting board like Emma suggested, they kept rolling when she put the knife to them. Emma probed both girls with questions, to which Jedda never attempted to answer and never could have because her sister was much quicker to the gun and her tongue fired a bigger caliber.
Jedda had met nice people before, their gifts and favors always had to be repaid. Emma, Ish, Chen, all the people in this building, most of whom she hadn’t even talked to yet, could be just as maligned as the other people who had taken advantage of her. Her sister was smart and scrappy, but she was quick to jump and easy to fool. Jedda was not, she believed herself to be slow, partially because of the simple fact that when things got too fast she was apt to get lost or have trouble following. When they first walked in the building and Ish was speaking very fast about the many rules about the building her head started to spin. But also she had learned that if she slowed down her mind a little she would notice a lot more about her surroundings and about people. When it came to slicing poppy pods, her sister was better at it and faster. Senna’s fingers were long and thin just like the rest of her and they manipulated the small pods and rolled them in her fingers and along her nails which were white and brittle and her knuckles cracked when she applied pressure to the knife which had been freshly put to the whetstone by Isherwood the canopy of the pod gave way and a divide opened up like Moses parting the sea and out of it came something nearly as divine. The nectar of opium.
Senna eventually sliced her finger and required a first aid break, when she returned the task of slicing the pods her deftness was not injured. After slicing them, Senna would squeeze out the latex onto plastic sheets with a wood spatula, she required only a single demonstration of the task. Jedda didn’t like to slice them on the cutting board like Emma had suggested and she had to demonstrate multiple times before Jedda decided she would prefer to hold the poppy pods in her hand and squeeze it taut, it allowed the knife to more easily slice through the dried flesh of the pod, it was satisfying, but took longer.
Like her sister, Jeddah had bleach blonde hair, along with a small nose and delicate lips. She was a frail thing, built like a dove, her skin took a gray color in the line and her bones were brittle from malnutrition.
Emma ha spread out a tarp in the flat that was left by the 2 women, Sarah and Delialah and they all scored and squeezed hundreds of poppy pods. Senna had started only picking the biggest ones first, she had squeezed out even more liquid than Emma had.
“Where do these come from?” Senna asked
“Just outside the FPZ. It grows naturally in the Santa Monica mountains.”
“No way.” Senna said
“I’ve been seeing clouds over those mountains the last few months.” Jedda added.
“This is the biggest harvest I’ve ever had. I think it might have rained up there.”
Rain was as mythical as Moses. The most precious thing that was simultaneously a vessel for constant threat. Water falling out of the sky, It seemed like a heavenly thing to Jedda, that water could appear from the sky. Her world was so dry and chapped. It wasn’t like something real, like the poppy pods, like the floor they were sitting on, like the knives they were holding. Water falling out of the sky was something ephemeral and divine that defied the intellectual and cynical reality they lived in, something that people say they had seen but never offered proof of, and Jedda liked to receive proof of things. Rain was like ghosts, the chupacabra or God. Or Moses. Jedda knew these things weren’t real, but a deep intuition told her that rain was in fact real, she could easily imagine the taste and the feeling of it on her skin. She held a pod up into the california orange that was waning in the widow and looked at it closely before squeezing the skin taut pricking it, letting some of the goo out. She touched it and smooshed it between her fingers, so that it would string out thinner and thinner like elastic until it snapped.
“It’s kind of like water.” Jedda said
“It’s thinner than usual. Usually it’s more viscous.” Emma said.
Neither girl knew what that word meant, Senna nodded her head, but Jedda queried the odd woman in the corner, who turned out to know many things and she did not shy away from explaining things to the girls. Jedda had never met another woman like Emma, she didn’t comb her hair and laid on her back with her legs crossed, her dirty bare feet dangling in the air while talked much about plants and small critters that she had learned about from a woman she kept referring to as a crone and how they could be used to cure fevers, give vitality and to keep men’s penises from getting too soft when they got very old.
Emma, knowing that she had closed the distance on the 2 girls, gathered up the sap and brought it to her flat to dry.
--
Ish immediately dropped the lockpicker on the ground and he gagged, he was cusping his hands hard over his ear, but soon vomit swirled in the back of his throat and his world began to spin and he brought hands to his mouth to catch the algae meal that was being expelled from his mouth.
“That one is Satumi.” Ish said to Levy as he exited the crate.
Ish had forgotten what was going out outside, a storm worse than those on Jupiter was raging and the dust stung his face which was made bare from the brawl. He looked towards the sound of the klaxon, the flood lights had been automatically activated and there was yelling accompanied by flashlights which penetrated like wayfinders in the nebula of dust. Ish crouched behind a sharp corner housing crates of supplies and waited, soon enough the 2 ancillaries that had found the bodies came charging in and Ish shot them both in the back. The leading man took 3 rounds to his torso and went limp, he tumbled lifelessly to the ground without making a sound. The trailing man ran with long powerful strides and he had time to react to the demise of his partner, there was space in the moment to turn his head and he saw the barrel of the gun bearing down on him. The ancillary yelled something profane before the bullets cracked and a sting like venom hit his chest. He too hit the ground and rolled, but his mind was clear. The shrouded figure in the dust approached him with the gun trained on him before the void came all at once.
Ish looked around and saw the revolving lights of a blaring klaxon and the penetrating flood lights, but none of the movement looked human. It was the rhythmic automatic movement of gyros and motors so he returned to the crate and found Levy trying to lift Satumi, who was slowly regaining consciousness. The lockpicker was trying to stand, but kept stumbling and leaning over. Every time he would stumble he would take a moment to steady himself, but once he lifted his torso up the world would start spinning and he’d fall back down. Then Ish could see blood was pouring out of a laceration above his ear. The first man too was in poor shape, Levy had broken multiple bones in the man’s neck and shoulder and he could not turn his head without excruciating pain. Levy was helping Satumi to his feet.
“Your face.” Levy said, looking over at the 2 men who looked drunk.
“I know.”
Ish came close to Satumi, who now had the where with all returned to him.
“Hey kid, are you okay?”
Satumi chuckled when he saw the faces of the men who had just beaten the shit out of him and his crew. He didn’t answer Ish and instead challenged Levy to another fight.
“Old men like you have accumulated too much luck. Let’s go again.”
Ish rubbed the boys hair, it was long and stringy and the kid seemed to enjoy it. He looked at Ish after he was done like a dog that wasn’t ready to be done having its ears scratched.
“You’re gonna come with us. Sorry about how this has to go.” Ish said
Then Ish walked over and shot the 2 drunkenly injured men in their heads.
Levy was holding Satumi up, but he jerked away from Levy towards Ish between the death of the first man and the second, but he stumbled and quickly realized he wasn’t feeling as good as he thought because he lost his balance only to be caught by Levy.
Satumi started to cry and clasped his hands to his face to shield his pride. These were 2 men he had grown up watching, people unlike his father, who was reserved and never took risks. Ish and Levy were the physical embodiment of the call for adventure that young men such as Satumi were prone to feeling and his pride demanded the minimum of covering his face to hide the streaks of tears that clumped into mud as it mixed with the dust clinging to every part of him.
“We need to leave now. We can mourn them later.” Levy said.
Satumi mustered himself and said “There’s a bomb in his bag” while pointing at the now dead lockpicker.
Ish quickly searched the man and found a bomb, it was a ramshackle device with a low yield, but of familiar design. Ish stacked the 2 corpses on top of each other and set the bomb between them, he laid out a 3 minute fuse and then the trio dissolved into the storm.
They escaped the way they came, the only difficulty being Satumi’s waning mental status and the swelling on his face sealing his eyes shut. He kept asking to take breaks, in which Satumi would fall asleep. Ish and Levy knew this was a bad sign and they half expected they’d have to do something terrible. When they returned to their district the dust was still in force and the trio returned to their tenement just as the first light was dawning. Chen was sitting in his chair asleep with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, the barrel of old Beatrice shining brightly against the dim bulb he used to read his magazines. He awoke steadily to the chime on the door and the crinkle of the sound traps and immediately went to the aid of Satumi, they laid him out on the old concierge desk and Ish ran to find Emma. Satumi was mumbling about catalysts and carbon molecules, he would fall asleep quickly if Levy wasn’t rousing him. Chen wasn’t skilled in healing like Emma, but he had seen many wounds in his time outside the walls. Chen ran his fingers carefully all throughout Satumi’s stringy hair and then checked them for blood.
“Only blood is from his nose. He has bleeding inside his brain.” Chen said
Emma appeared at the top of the steps and Satumi looked at her. She was like a ghost, a thin ghost white as bleach with dark iridescent streaks that swirled and morphed like the time he took LSD in the basement of the brothel with Bella Finklestein. The ghost floated down the stairs and now Satumi could see that it was carrying something that it set down next to him. Satumi wasn’t scared of the ghost even though as a child he had been kept awake by night terrors in which demons would come sit at the edge of his bed to watch him. This ghost was sort of like an angel, but not as heavenly. What the ghost was carrying and had set next to him did however seem malign. He reached his hand out to touch it and felt that it was smooth before the ghost pushed his hand away. Then he saw Ish clear as the first time he put on glasses at the top of the stairs with a backpack, he also realized Levy was holding him like his mom used to hold him, he was humming a soft song. Chen was talking to the ghost, he too was clear as a day without dust. The ghost was answering, but not with words. Chen would speak and he’d hear familiar sounds that he knew were words, but wasn’t sure what they meant. Then the ghost would make a sound in reply, a harmonic wail that was not unpleasant.
Ish offered her his bag, his kit was much more substantial than Emma’s.
“Use all of it if you have to.” Ish said
“Get the pressure cooker.” She said to Ish.
Ish couldn’t think of any reason why she’d need a pressure cooker, but he ran hard up the stairs to get it. The roar of the stomping caused by leaping between the steps woke most of the tenement. Ish tripped at the top, slammed into the ground, his shin impacted into the last stair, but he didn’t feel it or allow the fall to interrupt his momentum. By the time he returned from his apartment with the pressure cooker and a battery, a crowd had formed. Jedda and Senna were standing at the top, along with Maggie carrying Toby who was softly stirring from the commotion. Toby was a well tempered baby and didn’t cry much, he just cooed and clawed at his mothers breast as she rocked him up and down. Ish almost ran right through them, until he saw baby Toby stretching his arms and yawning.
“Coming through.” Ish yelled and then he glided down the stairs in 2 long steps.
Satumi had since stopped stirring like baby Toby was, he was motionless on the table and his hands and feet had curled back into themselves. Ish looked at the boy, surrounded by people who were all frantically jabbering like the mangey birds that hopped around the garbage pile at the back of the building. Emma and Chen were laying out materials from her bag on a blue pad while Levy looked at the boy's face, holding him like a newborn puppy and singing a tune to him. Ish felt at a loss for what to do next and he felt ashamed. Ish had tried to escape all of this, the abject horror and sin that he carried around and spread like leprosy. He tried isolating himself in a colony of 1, but he never felt right. The rebel stance always called to him. Ish had left the underground formally a decade ago and the year prior decided he was done scheming, done robbing, done smuggling. But Peg was too easy to victimize and after returning to his old life for 8 hours he had already killed 4 men and now Satumi was going to die. He didn’t have the inclination or the psychometric profile to heal like Emma, he wasn’t soulful like Levy and wasn’t capable of giving new life like Maggie. He was just--
“Hey! Fill it with water and crank the battery!” Emma shouted.
California orange was creeping through the door, the crowd on the step had swelled and was not shining. Ish plugged in the pressure cooker and Emma loaded it with various surgical utensils from her bag. The one that Ish was most concerned about looked like a large screw and a socket wrench married and had a mean tempered baby unlike Toby. Ish only could think of one thing that might be useful for. He looked at the staircase and saw the entire community was watching. David had joined his wife and was now holding baby Toby, the 2 new girls were solemn, Walter, Miss Byron, JohnnyTip Toes, Elba, Mary and all the rest of the people of crumbling tenement were looking at the attempted resurrection.
“David, you’re on door duty.” Ish said.
David jumped a little and then handed baby Toby to his tiny wife, he grabbed Ol Beatrice carefully and gingerly checked if the safety was on before he descended the stairs, wading through a thicket of people to get to the door, which hadn’t been locked. He peaked outside and saw that daylight was well broken in, the dust was settling.
“Seal her.” Ish said.
Emma had lined up a dozen vials and instructed Chen to pull up various quantities in little plungers she pulled out of the pressure cooker. She stuck an old world IV kit in the boy’s neck and it squirted blood.
“Levy, hold this tight.” Emma said, gesturing to the IV which was spurting blood.
“We are going to drill a hole through his skull.” Emma said after.
Ish thought that absurd, he knew little of medicine, but he thought about a hundred reasons why this would kill the kid. He’d seen Emma dole out vials of medicine, treat wounds, nurse feverish people back to health. He also saw her cast spells, crush herbs with a pestle and chant in tounges like a senile nun. One time Emma disappeared beyond the walls for days following a dream, she came back with lots of different herbs and trinkets that she swore up and down were channels of something sinister, but useful. Ish trusted her to a point and even enjoyed the spectacles she put on, they spoke to something deep in him that satisfied him, but she had spent too much time with the Crone that everyone thought was a witch. And now she was about to drill a hole into young Satumi’s brain, but the reason to Ish sounded more like medicine than witchcraft, and the boy looked already mostly dead anyway. He was curled up like a fiddlehead, as rigid as a warped plank and his breathing would sometimes almost stop, but then sometimes speed like he had just run a marathon. Ish had watched many men die and knew that it was creeping in on Satumi like the dawn outside.
Ish had a momentary epiphany and charged back up the stairs, he returned with a power drill.
“Will this help?” Ish said
“Yes” Emma replied
Ish took some old wire out of the bag and hooked the pressure cooker battery to the drill while the bit sterilized inside. When he finished hooking the small wires together he handed the drill to her and felt proud of himself.
While watching Emma, he thought her to be a sleek vulpine figure, acting with absolute authority. She wasn’t someone who naturally pursued or desired a position of power, she merely existed in the world to accomplish the things she saw fit to accomplish, which to most other people seemed absurd. One time Ish found her crouched on the sidewalk like a little goblin scribbling patterns in an old noteback, there were ants and she wanted to learn about their behavior. Emma had been watching them for hours because she wanted to understand why the ants sometimes moved with coordinated effort and why they sometimes seemed to roam aimlessly in circles. She was completely unperturbed by the complex weaves of social and power dynamics. Here she was, ordering men about with an absolute autocracy that the LAFPZ fantasized about. The chaos of the situation needed a person to generate a plan and Emma was by far the most qualified to do so, Ish certainly wasn’t going to drill into Satumi’s brain. At that moment Ish found her very beautiful.
Emma unpacked sterile gloves and donned a facemask.
“Hey lift the lid off” She said to Ish
Ish unlatched the lid of the pressure cooker, but fumbled it and it crashed into the pot splashing scalding water onto everyone. He picked it back up and held it like a butler. Emma held the drill with 1 hand and then inserted the bit. Then she started knocking on Satumi’s head as if it was a hollow compartment. Emma knocked all over multiple times and then selected her spot.
“All 3 of you hold his head still. Let’s give him 2 vials of opium.” She said like a captain.
Then she drilled into his skull. First there was the smell of burning hair that then turned metallic. A plume of dust not unlike what might have spewn out from a drill going through plywood floated like a cloud into the faces of the 3 men, then gurgles of blood started spewing and finally a loud pop like a gunshot, which startled everyone involved except Emma. Before the pop was done echoing in the building Satumi’s body had unclinched, all the air left his lungs and his chest sunk in and did not rise again. Ish felt that moment to be very long, he could have taken a few breaths in and out during it, but he just held his, he wanted to save it for the little asian boy who used to beg him to buy him a sassafras candy or let him shoot his gun. Then finally Satumi sucked in air and let it out again like any person might. Then he did it again.