Piss and Vinegar

“There weren't always dragons in the Valley? Do you have any idea what that means?”

The man seated across from me has a round belly, but a hard face.

And he stinks. I could taste the change in the air when he entered the room.

Maybe the table isn’t wide enough and I'm sitting too close… maybe the room is too small and the air has nowhere to go…. In any case, I can smell his body odor from here. It's almost like he’s pissed himself. But there’s a vinegary tang.

Really not the smell you'd expect from a police officer.

But considering how surreal this week has been.... I guess a little rancid body-stink isn't that big a deal.

"I already told Officer Gomez, I don't know what that line or any of the others mean. How would I? But I'd almost be willing to bet, they don't mean a thing. They don't seem like anything-- other than the psychotic ramblings of a murderer. All I had to work with is what I saw from the photos."

"That's why I'm here Mr. Frank. The photos, I'd like to know how you came by those images." His lips twitch as he speaks, like he's unsure of his words. It's an oddly delicate expression on such a large man.

"You're kidding, right? My boss said your people send us those images? As part of an unofficial leak."

The officer interrogating me smiles-- and what had he to smile about, given the context?

The gesture never touches his eyes. Those stay cold and focused. They glint on the surface, but quietly hint the impression of something deeper: caverns of inky darkness. They say you can read a person by looking in their eyes....

All I can read is a silent warning. And I don't want to look any longer.

"... No, Mr. Frank there was no unofficial leak. Not this time.”

The realization strikes me: this entire time, I don’t think I’ve seen him blink. Or at least if he has, I’ve missed it.

And now that I’m actively yearning for this small concession to normalcy, the intensity of his stare is all the more unbearable.

His expression... The smell in the room....

It's too much. It's distracting.

I can't seem to focus.

When I speak it's like I'm hearing my own voice from a distance: "It had to be your people... who else could have given us those photos?"

I can feel my pulse racing, a drum beat in my carotid. I force myself to breath naturally. I don't want him to know I'm nervous.

That see-through smile vanishes and this new face is worse. His face seems to stutter, only his eyes remain steady: "Give me the name of your source."

"I never had a name. I'd only received the crime scene photos secondhand from Claire Baptiste. She's my boss over at the Valley Brief. I told you, she said your people sent us the photos. I believed her because who else would have access to them-- they had to be from someone close to the investigation."

"And you weren't suspicious of her?"

"No, why would I be?"

The caverns in his eyes open up and I know he is not satisfied with what I've offered.

I guess it's the mark of a shitty journalist, but I truly never thought to question our Claire about our source.

Now, here in this stifling room across from this terrible gaze I'm beginning to understand: one can be close to the investigation without being on the right side of it.

"Your source." His voice seems to tremble under the weighted strain of a livid, dangerous impatience. I can almost see his anger seething beneath the surface. And I'm afraid he's about to erupt. "The images you've provided to Officer Gomez, and which you've written about in your articles, these are entirely new to our investigation. When we catalogued the crime scenes there were never any words written on the floors, in blood or otherwise. Only broad smears. Whoever took those pictures and sent them to your publication, that person accessed each and every crime scene long before we did. Before the messages you published were erased from the scene and withheld from forensics. I need your source. Tell me everything you know."

I really don't have the information he wants.

I really believed the pictures came from the APD.

If I could help the investigation I would!

His eyes seem to yawn wide like a veiled sky. They no longer glint. They are great pools of empty, a darkness so complete they cast no reflection. And when his voice spills forth it is painful to my ears: "Speak."

I have to I tell him everything I know.

***

First Mayor Bunting had been murdered-- in the first floor bathroom of the Albany City Hall. A janitor had found his remains early in the morning. Then real-estate mogul Charles Packer-- or rather his remains-- had been found in the parking lot of one of his shopping plazas. After that Mark Landry, one of the wealthiest bankers in the USA, was murdered on the balcony of his high rise penthouse. Then Jim Schumer, a stock jockey, was killed in the game-basement of his second mansion. And lastly Tony Mancini, the "Neighborly Car Dealer" was found shredded and literally slow-cooked in his indoor sauna.

And what did they all have in common besides the messy details of their deaths? They were all quite wealthy. Billionaire Mayor Bunting was commonly billed as "The Richest Politician in the USA", and the richest of the recent high profile murders. But the others weren't far behind. They all lived lavish.

And the nation gawked. After all how often do you see the rich and powerful and elite so unceremoniously butchered?

Yes we'd all known-- and most of us had taken some sick fascination with the fact-- that these kings among men had been so utterly discarded.

But I hadn't been prepared for the intensity of actually seeing those images, when Claire passed them along to me. At first they didn’t seem real.

I did not lift the print outs off her desk.

I did not want to touch them.

But I could see the top image. And...

The sight of those hacked up pieces really drove the point home: These might have been the elite, but in one thing they were utterly relatable: they were made of meat and bone just like me.

And now they'd been unmade and their blood had been used to paint grisly poems on their killing floors.

Humans had been stripped down to their parts and I had forgotten to speak when Claire said:

“A source at the APD sent us these, and I want you to write a brief on the messages found at each crime scene."

***

... An anonymous source close to the investigation has indicated that writing has been found on the floors at the scenes of each murder. The words, which are believed to be written in blood of victims are as follows:

"There weren't always dragons in the Valley. But they grew from the wild like weeds. And now they make their lairs within us, where they speak with the mouth of greed." (Mayor Jonathon Bunting)

"They chew our minds and hollow us out, they hide inside and cannot be found. They gnaw our souls and they take control, our wills drown and die without a sound." (Charles Packer)

"The dragons move the bodies of men, they make us puppets and hoard our ruin. But their bitter game is at an end, vile secrets bared by the shifting dunes." (Mark Landry)

"You will never see them in the flesh... unless you dig, cut, and pull them out. But I here bring them into the fresh, read these words- permit your soul to shout!" (Jim Schumer)

"By my blades these five dragons are slain. By these words the truth will be revealed. A spell of deep truth has here been played: the dragons no longer be concealed!" (Tony Mancini)

Regarding the murders, the Mayor's Office made the following statement....

***

"That's all I know."

My own words rouse me as if from a dream. The smell of vinegar and pee is thick in my nostrils, heavy and harsh like a burning fume.

The officer interrogating me still seems ready to crack from anger. The skin on his face nearly convulses. And...

And I see....

No, that can't be. It's not possible. It has to be a symptom of my exhaustion and my imagination and this goddamned smell. But it looks like his eyes are writhing. Like the dark within his pupils is swirling, coiling in on itself.

I have the impression of a shadow within a shadow, in the form of a serpent, hiding behind the darkness of his unblinking eyes.

But I look closer and there's nothing. Just stern eyes, clearly losing patience.

"Those pictures..." His voice is full of malice. I feel myself flinch and shrink in on myself. Up until now I'd mostly considered myself brave. Up until now I hadn't realized I could be so easily cowed.... By an angry looking cop merely stating my name.

"Those pictures were given to you by the murderer, or someone aiding them."

"I.... I didn't know. I thought it came from you guys and-"

"It didn't and you shouldn't have assumed." The twitch in his lips cracks into a sneer, however brief.

"I realize that. Now. But at the time--"

He shakes his head and interrupts me: "I'm not concerned with excuses. We both know what you should have done. And now you need to make it right. You will help us catch him."

I'm about to ask what he expects of me when I surprise myself with a nod and an “Absolutely.”

***

By the time I leave the police department it is night.

My head is aching. It’s a dull pressure. Like my head is full enough to pop.

It feels like I’d spent days in that interrogation room, rather than hours.

All to make sure I received the plan correctly.

To make sure it really stuck. So I can carry it out and bring that murderer to justice.

I feel confident. But oddly enough, I doubt I could write out my instructions. I can’t really articulate them. Can’t really focus on them. It’s like I’m full of a powerful instinct and I know it will carry me true.

I’m not worried. I'm happy to help them catch the murderer.

I start walking back to the office.

I know it’s night but I don’t want to go home now.

Not yet.

The concrete under my feet feels like a wilderness. The grit and the garbage plastered on the road side, these things are of nature. The moss of a sleeping city.

And I am wandering exactly where I'm supposed to go.

It's a strange sense of power and purpose, I don't know where it's come from but I allow it to embrace me and guide me.

My key fob is in my hands, the receiver on the door beeps and I hear the latch mechanism disengage. I pull the door open.

The air is still, all the lights are off-- But I can see perfectly well by red glow of the exit signs.

A thought solidifies in the action center of my brain: it is time to search Claire's workspace.

It's odd. I should be nervous. Obviously if she finds out what I'm doing-- or even that I'm here after hours-- I could be fired. But I'm as calm as still water.

And strange as it is to say, I really hadn't known my intention until now. As though I'd set my body on autopilot.

Now I'm here, aware and following through.

The top drawer contains pens, markers, and other office supplies. The next drawer down is locked, but the lock seems flimsy.

I force it.

It's completely empty.

She's already removed the evidence of her involvement, and she's probably no clumsy enough to come back to the office. But I will follow my directives, just in case. I pull an explosive out of my pocket. I didn't even know I had it but now that it's in my hands it seems so right.

I watch in awe as my fingers work the wires-- and I hear a noise. A click and a wooosh and a soft meaty thud, and there's an explosion of pain between my shoulder blades. My whole body tenses up and I collapse then my eyes and my mind close to black.

***

"He's awake."

"Good." It's Claire's voice. "Let me talk to him first. Just step out for a minute."

Her voice is so loud it hurts.

Where the hell am I? Why can't I see? Am I in the ER?

"It's okay, he's tied up. He's safe and if I need you, you'll be right at the door."

Then I feel her fingers against my face, pulling away some fabric. A blind fold.

The light pierces my eyes and my brain pulses. It's a pain unlike any I've ever felt: intense and internal.

I groan. I feel my consciousness slipping.

"Yeah, it hurts. I know. But it will pass."

"What's going on?" My own voice is like thunder, my skull is scorched by a white hot pain. I shudder under the weight of it and whisper-- even that is so loud it hurts-- "Claire?"

I strain against my memory. What happened? Why are my wrists tied?

Claire's voice: "You're waking up from the Dragon Spell. Lights will hurt a lot. So will loud sounds. That's why Cutter and I were whsipering."

"Dragon spell? What the fuck are you talking about? Who the fuck is Cutter?"

There's a panic pushing up against my throat, and it's only a matter of time before that bubble bursts and soaks my brain in wild, primitive fear.

"What's the last thing you remember? Push yourself, it's the quickest way to recover."

"Yesterday I was at the police station. They wanted to ask me a few questions, about the piece I wrote for the Brief."

"And how long were you there?"

"I... I don't know for sure. A long time. Hours. It felt like an eternity."

Claire's hand squeezes my shoulder and then rests on my arm. "You were there for more than a few hours. You've been missing for 4 days."

"What?!"

"We, um... We didn't know if you'd make it. We didn't know if they were planning to kill you or.... Turns out they'd decided to use you."

"Four days? How is that possible?"

Her voice seems to tremble. "The Dragons put you under the Spell. It's.... Kind of like hypnosis. Or brain washing. They suppress who you are, and give you new directives. Their directives. Takes a bit of time to overwrite a person's brain like that. Even for them. But it's powerful. Hard to resist, and in most cases it means utter control. They hoped to use you to get to Cutter. And me."

"Bullshit. Dragons hypnotized me? Bullshit. What's really going on why the hell am I tied up?"

I open my eyes. The pain is less than it was.

Her face betrays no lies. But what she's saying is the stupidest nonsense I've ever heard. So it's obvious, she's out of her mind.

My own mind is starting to get back into gear. Thoughts are connecting and I'm beginning to feel like the pieces of me have been clumped back together. She and somebody named Cutter-- shit! That's gotta to be the killer!

They've got me tied up. The killer has convinced Claire that dragons are real, and that I'm.... Working for them?

I feel an impulse of fear and it's clear as day.

"Claire. Listen to me very carefully. This guy Cutter, I don't know what he's told you but he's out of his mind. You have to know that. Please Claire for the love of God, untie me and let me go. If he's who I think he is, he's actually killed 5 people already, please I don't want to be number 6!"

"Cutter is not out of his mind, he'll prove it to you."

"Jesus fucking CHRIST Claire! He tore people to literal pieces-- He's a goddamned murderer!"

Then I hear him speak, from beyond the door, his voice is soft, but filled with what seems to be a quiet weight of self importance: "I'm not a murderer. I've never physically harmed any person on this Earth. Other than you when I shot you with that taser. Sorry about that. But those bodies you saw in the pictures... Those weren't people anymore. They stopped being people long before I got to them. "

He's speaking with utmost conviction and crazy self-belief.

My legs are shaking, I remember the terrible, brutal gore of those pictures. I know what this man is capable of.

My mouth is dry as sand and I gasp for some words.

All I manage is a choked; "Please. Oh Fuck. Please let me go."

He shakes his head, and I feel tears rolling down my cheeks.

"Relax brother, I'm not gonna hurt you. I can't let you go yet, because it's not safe. If you've still got a trace of the Spell on you, you'll end up back at the precinct, even if you don't mean to. And then you'll lead them here."

Then he nods. "I've not killed any people. Only destroyed Dragon Lairs. There's only one way to prove the truth. I'll have to show you."

At that Claire stands and leaves. My heart claws its way up my throat.

What is he going to do to me?

“Relax buddy. She’ll be back in a minute.”

When she returns she’s pushing a man in a wheel chair. He's tied down and he smells like piss, and I wonder if they’ve been torturing him.

“Can you smell that sour urine smell?”

I frown and nod.

“That’s the dragon’s musk. It’s the chemical they release when they’re scared. It makes humans more docile. More suggestible. They used it to prime you for their hypnosis.

Cutter points at the man’s eyes. “They look wrong don’t they. Yes. You can tell they’re off. The piss and vinegar smell clouds your judgment. Normally, you wouldn't even notice it, but the spell I wrote in their blood warns the human brain to look out for their tricks.... That's why we needed it published! Now if the air were fresh—”

He flips a switch and an overhead exhaust fan kicks on. “--you’d see right away. Those eyes are not right.”

I swallow. Cutter. What he’s saying is insane, but…. memories are filtering to the surface of my mind. Hours spent breathing in the fumes of that interrogation— what I’d thought to be the body stink of a cop with no bladder control. I remember my head getting dazed, clouded. I remember an image: deep, black eyes that seemed to contain writhing darkness of serpent form.

Claire speaks: “Fresh air is one of the antidotes to their toxin. Another is light.”

She hands cutter a knife and a face shield.

Cutter punctuates his words with a sweeping gesture of the knife: “I’m about to start digging."

The man’s eyes dart from me to Cutter.

Cutter reaches over and slices away the man’s gag.

He speaks in a flurry “He’s crazy! He’s a fucking psychopath. Please I have a wife and kids!”

Cutter turns to the begging man and says, “I know exactly what you are. And you know you’re not going to escape by begging. Your best chance is to come clean. Why don’t you explain to my friend how your kind bears and houses your young?”

“What the fuck!? Are you kidding me?”

The man looks at Claire, and cries out “Please lady, I don’t want him to hurt me!”

She nods. “I know you don’t. But it’s gonna hurt pretty bad isn’t it, when the light hits you.”

He hisses at her and turns to me, “Come on guy, you’ve got to help me.”

Cutter laughs. “Pathetic. You know my friend can’t help you, he’s tied up just like you are, only for different reasons. If you aren’t going to tell him what I asked, then I’ll start digging.”

He steps forward with the knife, and the man shrieks “Okay! Okay! Bastard! If I speak, you'll let me go?”

Cutter shakes his head. “No. I said coming clean was your best chance for survival, but it’s still pretty much zero. I’m going to make sure you die and I’m going to make sure it hurts. But the longer you speak, the longer you delay my blade searching you out."

The man stays silent and Cutter seems utterly patient with this deliberation.

Then the man groans, it’s almost like a growl.

He looks at me and says, "He's fucking crazy!"

Cutter still seems calm but I notice his knuckles are white. He's gripping the knife quite hard, and I notice the skin on that hand is pocked with ugly burn scars.

Then the man in the chair yells "you have no right to kill me!" and starts to spit at Cutter.

Claire, with a fluidity and speed I'd never seen from her forces a new gag into the man's mouth, and ties it tight. It looks painful but he seems not to notice or care.

Cutter's voice is cold as ice: "Since he won't speak, I will. Dragons infect healthy humans, and chew out the bits of brain that make them them. They devour the soul and kill the self, but leave the body in perfect health. These corpses with flowing blood, these are their lairs. Their disguises and their shelters. When dragon's wish to mate, they'll use their lairs' bodies to conceive and bear human children the same way healthy, willful humans do. They'll raise the children normally until the child is old enough to receive an egg."

He grimaces as he speaks. "When my brother hit puberty.... My parents-- no, the monsters pretending to be my parents-- infected him. They fed him an egg, and it hatched. He suffered. I remember his anguish, I remember him knowing something was wrong, knowing that he was losing himself. I remember him begging the things we thought were our parents to take him to the hospital, and I remember them clapping their hands and laughing. And talking right through him. They told him: 'Snake your way to the front of his brain. There's a cluster of nerves there you can use to make the boy twitch and dance.'"

He coughed, or more likely choked up. Then his nostrils flared as he spoke. "They were so proud of their little hatchling, taking his first steps towards my brother's death."

I notice there's a tear rolling down his face. "I loved my brother. His name was Jonathon Bunting. And the demons who murdered my parents years before I was born and wore their skin and used their bodies to make me and Jonathon as vessels-- they murdered him too."

"I remember his last words-- not his body's last words, his. The last thing he did before his soul was fully devoured was warn me: 'I've been fighting, Calvin, fighting with something inside my mind. It's taking over and it's going to finish me off very soon. I hear it taunting me everyday. Even now. He says I'll be dead and gone and my body will be under his control. Our parents. They put something evil inside of me, snuck it in my food. And they're gonna do the same to you in a couple years, unless you run. You've got to run.'"

Cutter shudders and slides his free hand across the scars on his knife hand. "The one that took my brother was especially evil, even for their kind. He enjoyed burning me. He was bigger and stronger, and he'd hold my hand against burning candles. I remember him watching as my skin blistered and hissed. I remember his laugh. Same sound as my brother's, only my brother had never laughed at someone else's pain. And I remember him-- the monster sniffing at the smoke as it rose from my wounds, seeming to savor it."

"One morning, I tried to fight back... I was weaker, but our struggle managed knock over one of those candles."

Here Cutter looked away from me and towards the man in the wheelchair. "You know, these dragons are actually terrified of fire? Isn't that funny? They're terrified of anything that can destroy their lairs. Because if their lairs are destroyed they are thrust out into the light and the air, and these things are deadly to them. And the one who had my brother's body was still quite young. Driven by his fear, he fled the house. I followed right through the open doors, and I never looked back. The house-- really it was a mansion-- did not burn to the ground, but the news papers reported that I died in the fire. Unfortunately the Dragons survived."

He looks at the knife, and seems to pull himself out of a pool of bad memories. He waves the blade before the other man's face and says "I've used this knife to dig many dragons out of hiding. Eventually I find the ones who murdered my brother and my parents or I'll die trying."

Then without a warning, he thrusts the blade into the man's neck. I'd never seen a man stabbed before, but I expected some struggle or shock on the man's face. Some show of panic and pain. There is nothing. His face looks as though it has instantly fallen to sleep, utterly relaxed and unmoved. His eyes have gone dark, and his head lolls forward.

Blood has soaked Cutter's arm and he's working with the blade, severing ligaments in the man's neck. No resistance from the man in the chair, he's like a a corpse with a beating heart.

I think I'm about to vomit.

Cutter slices through the last bit of skin and the head is detached. He holds it up the air. And the story he was telling is so much bullshit. He's murdered a man before my very eyes.

His voice is unmoved: "They usually manage to escape the skull when you start cutting. Sometimes they zip back down the phagus nerve and I'll find them in the stomach. Other times they'll use the spinal column like a highway. Point being they can hide in a good may places. And it's important to root them out and make sure they're dead. Otherwise, they could conceivably be transplanted to a new body. But before we dig any deeper, I want to show you the inside of the skull, their inner lair."

The sound I hear when he chisels into the dead man's skull is a wet squelching crack, it's revolting-- I feel my stomach heave but there's nothing to bring up.

"I'm sorry. I know this is tough to watch, especially your first time. But you need to know."

He uses the butt of his palm to hammer the blade, and more skull is cracked away. I can't help but think of a street vendor hacking open a coconut with a machete.

I'm still dry heaving when he finally pulls the fractured plates aside and shows me the cavity that should contain a brain.

It's all wrong. Just a void, a chasm of flesh. There are strings of tissue, almost like a web, but there's no brain to speak of. I feel my lips trembling and I'm not sure whether its disgust or fear or shock that's shaking me so.

"See, no brain. No self. This man, whoever he was, has been dead for a long time. The dragon has been making him dance, just a biological puppet, nothing more. Keep looking."

I want to leave, but I'm tied to the chair. And I can't pull my eyes away from the butchery before me. I watch in sick, painful fascination as this man is stripped of all flesh, and flayed too the bone. And there, within the rib cage, there's a squirming mass. It's not the heart, it's on the wrong side.

Cutter points with the tip of his blade. "Ha! See that? There is is!"

He drives the blade like a wedge, between the ribs and cracks them open.

The man's right lung is pulsating.

"This couldn't have been a better placement! Watch closely. Exposure to the light destroys these little fuckers, and it happens quickly. But I want you to see what we're up against."

When he slices the lung open a monster leaps out. It's about the size of a small bat, and looks similar except for it's long, snake like tail. It has no hair, only ugly white scales all wet with blood.

It hisses, and lunges towards Cutter's face, it's claws vying for purchase on the shield and it's jaws snapping angrily.

He flinches and then laughs. "Ha, they get me every time."

But I'm barely registering his words. The creature's wings are starting to drip. That's the best way to describe it.

I see scales and skin sloughing off all over, and the splayed bones once exposed begin to splinter in the light. It's jaws yawn wide, and it screams, but it's a pitiful, disgusting gurgle of a sound.

It falls to the ground and the three of us watch it writhe and squirm in a puddle of it's own black ooze, like it's melting into tar.

The room is silence for about a minute, then Cutter removes his face shield.

Claire pulls out a thinner, thankfully clean, knife. She cuts my bonds and looks me in the face and nods. "There's a good many out there... Wanna help us hunt for more?"

***

***

Here's the music I was thinking about while writing.