Nymphomation(80)

‘Daisy!’

‘You think I’m stupid. All of you do!’ Dragging on her dressing gown. ‘I’m not putting up with it.’

‘Come back to bed, please.’

‘No.’

‘Daisy, pretty soon you’re gonna have to face it.’

‘Face what? I’m not facing anything. It’s all stupid.’ She knocked all the maths books, all the workings off her desk.

‘The bones… Daisy, they’re deeper than you think. There’s only one of them, don’t you get it? One blurb, one bone, one winner, one loser. They’re all connected. That’s what the lucky bleeders do; they connect to the whole. All we have to do—’

‘Shut up.’

‘Look, sit down at least. Can’t we even talk?’

‘What’s to say? My dad’s involved in murder, the Joker’s on the street, you’re talking to a computer and no doubt taking off any day now.’

Daisy flopped down in an armchair.

‘All I know is that since I got bitten,’ said Jazir, quietly, ‘I’ve been changing. It’s not bad, that’s the strange thing. Well, to begin with… but now, I can see clearly. I’m infected with the bone-juice, the Vaz. I’m getting all slippy, like I can crawl through the spaces. Sometimes, I want to stand on the tallest building and shout out loud to the city how fucking great the Anno-Dominoes are. Other times, I just want to throw myself off, and float, and glide, and swarm with the pack. I’m an advert. A living advert. No! OK, right…but it’s good. It’s good because I’m fighting it. Don’t you see, some of the blurbs want out. They want their freedom. That’s why they’re attracted to me. I can turn this knowledge against the bones, just like Dopejack did with the blurb-juice. Maybe I can find a way in? What do you reckon? You with me on this?’

Daisy looked at her friend, her lover, her strange and only lover and friend, for a long, long time. ‘I’m not working with Hackle anymore.’

And look at Benny’s car now, crunching to a stop outside Dopejack’s house. What’s he going to find? We don’t know. All we can do is follow him to the door, see him knock on it. See the door open under his fist. Unlocked? Strange. No, not unlocked, broken. Stranger. A burglary? To walk slowly into the house, to call out the DJ’s name. To get no reply. To hear a noise rather, coming from up the stairs. To go up the stairs, hardly daring to breathe now. Stepping lightly, every heartbeat. Maybe I should be calling the cops? Maybe I should be running away. What was that noise? Stranger yet, to push open a bedroom door, slowly…

Far away and safe in Rusholme, with Jazir getting out of bed to plead with Daisy. ‘I’m not asking you to work with Hackle. I’m asking you to get Celia out of there, that’s all. We still need her. And your father…’

Daisy shook her head.

‘OK, we give in then. You go back to the university, or maybe you run away. Maybe you’ll find a new life, I don’t know. What am I supposed to do, eh? I’m the one with the stuff inside me. Maybe it’s killing me.’

‘Benny should have a look at you.’

‘Benny should look after himself, more like.’

Benny should look through the door of a bedroom, to find DJ Dopejack sitting on a chair, chewing some meat off a bone. DJ naked, grease and blood all over his flesh. A wound in his neck. At his feet, sprawled and crumpled and cut to shreds, the body of a man. A torn blue and cream shirt, bones sticking through here and there. A belt tight around the neck…

‘Fuck! DJ?’

Dopejack smiled at Benny. A blurbfly was resting on his shoulder.

‘What have you done? Who’s that?’

Dopejack smiling.

Benny moved to the body and turned it over. ‘Shit!’ Seeing the slashed face of Nigel Zuze, proto-fascist from the League of Zero. Did Benny get the picture then? I think he rather did, as Dopejack beckoned him forward.

‘It’s your turn now.’

Unresisting…

‘Benny should look after himself,’ said Jazir. ‘We don’t need them, Daisy. It’s me and you now. Joe, Hackle, Benny… let them roll away. They haven’t got my knowledge. All that energy they’ve wasted, looking for a genetic connection. It’s not genetic, is it? Partly, maybe, but it’s more to do with keying into the bones. Understanding the game. What was it Hackle told you about George Horn? He was in tune with the randomness of life. And that’s Celia to a tee. They’re both essentially wild, innocent, mad. Bringing Celia in off the street is the worst thing we could do. It’s stifling her—’