Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,134
first one is free.”
“That’s meant to be a mirror, isn’t it.” Kane returned to the unfinished painting. “The blue made me think of water. It’s someone making love to a reflection.”
“Someone,” said Elaine.
“Narcissus?”
“I call it: Lick It Till It Bleeds.”
“I’ll make a point of attending the opening.”
“There won’t be one unless people leave me alone to work.”
“Then I’ll be getting along.” Kane seemed to be standing without ever having arisen from the chair. “By the way, I wouldn’t shove that. New lab equipment. Never know about impurities.”
“I don’t like needlework anyway,” Elaine told him, dipping into the phial with the attached spoon. She snorted cautiously, felt no burn. Clean enough. She heaped the spoon twice again.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Already she could feel a buzz. Trust Blacklight to steer her onto something good.
She was trying another spoonful when it occurred to her that she was alone once again.
Blacklight secured the lid of the industrial chemical drum and finished his beer. The body of the designer drug lab’s former owner had folded inside nicely. Off to the illegal toxic waste dump with the others. Some suckers just can’t tell which way the wind blows.
“Did you really land in a flying saucer? he asked, rummaging in the cooler for another beer.
Kane was scowling over a chromatogram. “For sure. Looked just like a 1957 Chrysler 300C hubcap.”
Blacklight puzzled over it while he chugged his beer. The prettiest girl in his junior high—her family had had a white 300C convertible. Was there a connection?
“Then how come you speak English so good?”
“I was Tor Johnson’s stand-in in Plan 9 from Outer Space. Must have done a hundred retakes before we got it down right.”
Blacklight thought about it. “Did you know Bela Lugosi?”
Kane jabbed at the computer keyboard, watching the monitor intently. “I’ve got to get some better equipment. There’s a methyl group somewhere where it shouldn’t be.”
“Is that bad?”
“Might potentiate. Start thinking of another guinea pig.”
At first she became aware of her hands.
It was 1:01:36 am, said the digital clock beside her bed. She stepped back from the painting and considered her hands. They were tobacco-stained and paint-smeared, and her nails needed polish. How could she hope to create with hands such as these?
Elaine glared at her hands for 43 seconds, found no evidence of improvement. The back of her skull didn’t feel quite right either; it tingled, like when her Mohawk started to grow out last year. Maybe some wine.
There was an open bottle of Liebfraumilch in the refrigerator. She poured a glass, sipped, set it aside in distaste. Elaine thought about the wine for the next 86 seconds, reading the label twice. She made a mental note never to buy it again. Stirring through a canister of artificial sweetener packets, she found half a ’lude, washed it down with the wine.
She returned to Lick It Till It Bleeds and worked furiously, with total concentration and with mounting dissatisfaction, for the next one hour, 31 minutes and 18 seconds.
Her skin itched.
Elaine glowered at the painting for another 7 minutes 19 seconds.
She decided to phone Allen.
An insomniac recording answered her. The number she had dialed was no longer in service. Please...
Elaine tried to visualize Allen. How long had it been?
Her skin itched.
Had she left him, or had he driven her out? And did it really matter? She hated him. She had always hated him. She hated all that she had previously been.
Her body felt strange, like a stranger’s body. The leotard was binding her crotch. Stupid design.
Elaine stripped off her leotard and tights. Her skin still itched. Like a caterpillar’s transformation throes. Death throes of former life. Did the caterpillar hate the moth?
She thought about Allen.
She thought about herself.
Love and hate.
There was a full-length mirror on her closet door. Elaine stared at her reflection, caressing her breasts and crotch. She moved closer, pressed herself to the mirror, rubbing against her reflection. Making love to herself.
And hating.
Pressed against her reflection, Elaine could not ignore the finest of scars where the plastic surgeon had implanted silicone in her once-flat breasts. Fingering her surgically constructed vagina, Elaine could not repress the memories of her sex-change operation, repress the awareness of her former maleness.
Every instant remembered. Of joy. Of pain. Of longing. Of rage. Of hatred. Of self-loathing.
Of being Allen.
Her fists hammered her reflection, smashing it into a hundred brittle moments.
Blood trickled from her fists, streamed along her arms, made curling patterns across her breasts and belly.