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Absolute Unit 9.
9.Trent leaves thehospital and boards a bus for the West Side. We have traveled through this area often with Bill, its avenues like the treads of a scuffed and shit-speckled sole. The sidewalks fronted by grimy restaurants and dim stores, filled with people sucked dry and wrinkled by their problems. In a year or two, the luxury condos and trendy coffee shops will arrive, and these crowds will need to find new, worse places to live. As an entity who suffers from what the news calls “housing insecurity,” we sympathize with their plight. In contrast with the shabby block around it, Tricky’s Tacos is shiny red and white, with a mural of a sparkling-blue skull on its bricked flank. It’s that dead time between lunch and dinner, and there’s nobody waiting to order at the stainless-steel counter. A bored lady sits behind the register. In the back, a cook grunts as he runs a scraper over the smoking griddle. It smells like charred meat and Fabuloso.Even without reading Trent’s
Absolute Unit 10.
10.Trent beats ourprediction, stumbling for three more minutes—and five blocks—before he drops to his knees, energy spent. He twists around, to better greet his creeping doom, and raises his hands. “Listen,” he says. “I know ... I know I messed up ... ”That’s the understatement of the year. Bill was nobody’s idea of a competent professional (his tombstone will probably say “Nobody Misses This Asshole”) but he never turned a standard-issue shakedown into a very public butchering. You might excuse dear Trent by saying it’s his first time, but there are no learning curves in real life. We know this better than most. The lady raises the knife over her head, muttering something lost in the honking and growling of cars. Traffic is stalled in both directions, drivers leaning out their open windows to scream at her (“Bitch, couldn’t you kill him on the fuckin’ sidewalk?”), but nobody makes a move to intervene. If she swings at Trent, perhaps we c
Absolute Unit 11.
11.Pink Bunny turns, waving for us to follow him down a narrow corridor lit by construction lights jury-rigged along the ceiling. The spooky glow makes the graffiti sprayed on the concrete walls look like blood splatters. Trent mutters something under his breath about turning back, until Carrie plants a boot against his rear and shoves him into the building. “This is bad,” Trent hisses.“This is the job,” she whispers. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen weirder.”Stopping in front of another metal door at the end of the hallway, Pink Bunny bends over and punches a ten-digit code into a small keypad embedded in the doorframe. As he does, we notice that the costume’s waist has a zipper that runs all the way around. That certainly makes sense. How else could he go to the bathroom without taking the whole costume off?Carrie wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?”We sense it via a thin strand we plugged into Trent’s olfactory nerve: a faint floral scent, mixed with a whiff of poop. And
Absolute Unit 12.
12.The mini-car’s enginewhines more shrilly than usual, and Carrie white-knuckles the wheel. “Something’s wrong,” she says, pumping the brakes. “This crap-bucket’s going sludgy on me.”“Maybe when you hit that old lady, you damaged something,” Trent says. “Car this size, I’m surprised you didn’t bounce right off.”“It’s fuel-efficient, okay? Big Jim likes to save money.” She smacks the dashboard, a move that miraculously convinces the mini-car to fix its attitude. The engine settles back to a high-pitched purr, and she relaxes her grip on the wheel. Trent spins the radio dial, settling on a station pounding out last century Bristol trip-hop with a beat that sounds like robots morosely fucking. “When I’m driven around, I prefer a Rolls-Royce.” He grins, bobbing his head to the music, loving this chance to dig into her. “Luxury rides like that are truly on my level.”“In order for anyone to reach your level, they’d have to take a boat to the Mariana Trench, strap some
Absolute Unit 13.
13.From nothingness we emerge, into a red fog that reminds us of those first moments in the sunlit murk off New Jersey, when we were nothing but a strand of tissue no longer than a fingernail, thrashing amidst bored fish. From our furthest reaches, we receive damage reports: some tendrils burnt to a crisp, mewling their pain to the void. Others vaporized entirely. We are not concerned. So long as just a few of our cells survive, we can overcome, stabilize, regrow ...Actually, we are a little concerned.No, that’s a lie. We are very concerned.What has happened to us?The tendrils circling the brainstem issue fresh reports: Trent’s heartbeat is normal, along with his breathing and other vitals. No severed nerve endings, no drops in temperature that would indicate a severe bleed. Trent’s eyes are closed, and we can hear nothing through his ears except for a vague humming. It sounds like a distant machine.The humming fades as the red fog clears, revealing a gray bea
Absolute Unit 14.
14.Trent opens his eyes. He’s in a windowless storage room, its sides lined with shelves loaded with canned goods, bags of flour, boxes of dried meats. Through the thick steel door comes the roar and clang of a kitchen in mid-shift, chefs yelling in Spanish as they wrestle with a tide of orders.Trent winces at a line of pain around his wrist. He’s handcuffed to a floor-to-ceiling pipe, the cuff tightened until it threatens to break the skin. He tries to stand and the cuff smacks against a flange, stopping him in a crouch. He plops back onto cold concrete, tears brimming in the corners of his eyes.Stop it, we tell him, hoping he’ll somehow hear—and wonder of wonders, he does.I can’t, he thinks at us. Then: Wait, you weren’t a dream?No.“God,” Trent says, scratching at his neck and arms with his free hand. “Am I fucking losing it?”Calm down. If you don’t, we’re not getting out of here.Despite our request, Trent’s heart speeds, his forehead beading with sweat despite the
Absolute Unit 15.
15.At the sightof trouble, the worker in coveralls drops his hose and runs for the kitchen door. Angry Fox socks his rifle to his shoulder, aiming at that fleeing head, but Pink Bunny shoves the barrel aside with an oversized paw. Pink Bunny says something muffled by plastic and fake fur. Angry Fox shouts back, louder but equally unintelligible, before ripping the barrel from his friend’s grip. The worker disappears into the building, the door slamming behind him. The forgotten hose rolls across the concrete, spurting water.“The hell is this?” Big Jim asks, more amused than angry. Trent and Carrie, of course, know exactly what this is. All these furries had to do was look up the pizza restaurant’s address. The weapons suggest they’re not here to order an extra-large Gut Bomb and a side order of garlic knots. No fool, Carrie ducks behind her car. Trent stands frozen between Big Jim and the Mountain. Angry Fox strides forward, raising the rifle again, y
Absolute Unit 16.
16.Carrie stomps onthe gas, propelling her car down the alley at its laughable top speed. “Duct tape in the glove compartment,” she says. Trent retrieves the tape and wraps three long strips of it around his shoulder. How am I looking in there?Good, we reply. His blood loss slows to a seep as the vessels clot, and his other vitals seem normal enough, considering everything he’s endured over the past several hours. Maybe they can set him up in a hospital room next to Bill.At the end of the alley, Carrie turns onto the main avenue without checking for traffic, leaving startled drivers honking in her wake. She takes a deep breath, exhales loudly, and destroys Trent’s fragile calm: “We messed up back there.” “No shit,” Trent yelps.“Big Jim’s expanding into cocaine. He hates the stuff, says it means too many cartel people up his ass, but since the state’s legalizing weed soon, he’s got to find another line of business.”“Why doesn’t he just sell legal weed?”
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