White and Other Tales of Ruin

some form of illumination — weak emergency lighting, or more often borrowed light bleeding down somehow from the surface. Some were pitch black. These they traversed as quickly as they could, relying on senses heightened by fear. And deep inside, Tom tried to trust fate as well. He desperately believed that they would have never come this far if an unseen, pointless death down here was all that awaited them.

They heard and felt intermittent signs of pursuit, from a rattling explosion, to a subtly decreased pressure on their eardrums as a heavy door was opened in some distant tunnel.

Eventually, finally, Tom climbed a rusted iron ladder, shoved a manhole open with his shoulders and helped Honey up into the open air.

He stood panting in the deserted street, his right foot and ankle a heavy weight of pain, the cool night air kissing his bleeding wounds as if to soothe. Honey stood next to him and looked around, nodding and sighing quietly. She knew where they were. A hooker has to know the city, she’d said as they took the lift into the underworld. Tom wondered if she’d been a whore forever, but they’d have plenty of time to get to know each other properly. Plenty. The idea that they knew virtually nothing about each other, and yet they were fleeing together for their lives, seemed far too romantic to take seriously.

Looking around, diverting his attention outwards, seemed to ease the pain. They were at the very edge of the city. Tom could even see the enclosure wall, eighty feet high and well lit, it’s top spotted with bored guards.

Honey pointed across the street at a low, curved doorway set in the face of a blank concrete facade. The building was huge and square, more dismissive of aesthetics as any in the city. There were hardly any windows, and those that were there appeared to have been boarded up. Its bulk seemed to swallow the light. Even though a misty rain was falling, there were no reflections from its damp walls.

Above the doorway hung a glowing axe, dripping neon blood onto the heads of anyone who chose to enter.

“That,” said Honey, “is The Slaughterhouse.”

Tom had only been inside a few clubs in his time. Mostly they were visits marred by too much noise, too many drugs, too much drink, too much body chopping… just too much. Artificial he may be — cloned, grown, extruded, constructed and programmed — but Tom was not a man of extremes. The Baker had told him that those who resorted to extremities of existence had lost sight of the beauty at its heart. At the time Tom had found it difficult to understand, but after the old scientist died and the years went by he began to see the truth in the words. Most of those who wandered the streets at night, seeking enjoyment or satisfaction in the arms of mindless experimentation, had lost the simple ability to live. They needed more, and more, and more, without giving themselves the chance to get used to what they already had.

Tom’s club visits had been out of interest in other people, not to find anything for himself.

He’d been to The Club at the End of Time, Fuck-Shit and Hell, among a few other. In one he was mugged, in another he was hit on, in the rest he was ignored. He’d hated every one of them.

The Slaughterhouse… it was as much a club as Krakatoa had been a slight pop. The Slaughterhouse was a world. The second Honey opened the main front door and they passed beneath the axe, that world launched its attack on Tom’s senses.

They were in a corridor not unlike some of the tunnels they’d just been fleeing along. There were a few barred windows in the walls, payment booths, but more like viewing holes in prison doors. There was nobody behind them and Honey did not give them a second glance. The floor was uneven, and in the low light Tom could see what he thought were shattered bones forming its covering, the curve of a skull here, the ragged end of a snapped femur there. His balance was thrown and he held out his arms, staggering at every step. He tried not to look down. He was sure… certain… that the bones must be false. Must be.

Waves of smoke frolicked in the air, disturbed by mysterious draughts. A skein of rich fumes settled around Tom’s head. He breathed in, unable to resist the spicy hint of forbidden pleasures, feeling the sense of them settling into his nostrils and setting his blood aflame.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What, the smell? It’s a mix of everything the club stands for. They extract it, concentrate and vent it over newcomers. Gets them ready. Gets them hot. You’re smelling drugs, fear, sweat, rage, sex and burning bone.”

Burning bone. Tom looked down at the floor and an eye socket stared back.

There was a sudden explosion ahead of them, pounding through the air, hitting his already bloodied ears and stealing his balance. He sagged against the wall. It was slimy to the touch, and the slime smelled of sex. Unconsciously, still reeling from the blast, Tom touched his fingers to his tongue and closed his eyes. He could have been eating pussy. He snapped his eyes open again, wondering what was happening to him, why he was drifting away when those things were here, they’d found them, they would blast The Slaughterhouse until Honey and he were dead.

“Buzz ‘n’ Chaos!” Honey shouted. She turned to Tom, a crazy grin on her face. “You’ve never heard or seen live music until you’ve seen these guys.”

It sounded more like inclement weather than good music to Tom, but he followed Honey through a pair of heavy doors and into the club itself.

Outside, in the corridor, they could have been almost anywhere.

But anywhere was never like this.

The place was a riot of humanity, a deep sea of people, a swarm of experimenters indulging their most devilish whims, the air redolent of highs and sex and a vibrant freedom. The music of Buzz ‘n Chaos stalked the air like a rogue dragon, setting glasses shaking on tabletops and teeth rattling in skulls. There was shouting, screaming, sighing and crying, arguing, talking, wailing and laughing. And there was movement everywhere. The designers of The Slaughterhouse had never allowed economics or gravity to hobble their decadent dream.

The room was the size of the building containing it, but it looked impossibly larger. There were no windows. There were no internal storeys, only platforms, staircases, open lifts, glass slides, chains suspending swinging floors. On every visible surface people sat or danced or stood talking, sipping drinks and smoking and wiping exotic drug patches across their tongues or eyes, eating, climbing sleeping and fucking. Lots of fucking.

It reminded Tom of a giant ant nest, but here all the ants were seeking only one thing — enjoyment. And enjoyment, Tom realised within seconds of entering, came in all shapes and sizes.

“Holy shit!” he shouted above the cacophony. “Honey, what the hell are we doing here? These people are wasters, freaks, chopped because they can’t — ”

But Honey did not let him finish. “This is my thing, Tom, where I like to be when I’m not being fucked and beaten and spat on. I know I’m artificial so I can’t be chopped, but these freaks as you call them make me feel… normal. I’m a whore but that’s no worse than most of these. And much better than some. Love me, love what I do.”

He didn’t know what to say. A woman walked past with grotesque gashes across her body, a dozen inches long, their edges pouting around thick strips of cardboard to prevent the wounds from healing. She grimaced, and it may have been a smile. “Oh God, Honey.” Even he was surprised at how much desperation and disgust came out in his voice.

“You told me you loved me,” Honey said, moving in close so that she could talk into his ear, “and yet you don’t know a thing about me. You don’t know what I like to eat or do, whether I have religion, what books I read.”

“You like to dance,” Tom said. “You like to be held. You like puppets.”

“Puppets,” she said. She barked a hard laugh, stood back with her hands on hips and Tom realised that she was exasperated. She looked up as if searching for someone in this multi-level altar to pleasure.

“It’s what you told me,” Tom said, trailing off. The band seemed to be between songs, but the volume in the place had not relented.

“We’re all puppets, Tom,” she said. “Especially us, the likes of you and me. Artificials. I don’t like puppets, I like those who cut their strings and rebel. Watching that Chinaman’s show outside the brothel… it makes me really look at myself. It makes me think about who pulls my stings, and how beholden I am to them. These people here — the chopped people and the lost artificials — they shed their strings long ago.”