24.

24.
    Hunger. It had been a long time since he’d known it in a form so raw, so abrasive. Garrett wasn’t afraid, though -- why should he fear hunger? Hunger couldn’t kill him. His stomach would continued to eat him up alive and he’d grow smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a speck on the asphalt, and his stomach would grow to man-size and sprout a nose and eyeballs and limbs. And the mouth -- the mouth would swallow up the night, or at least he suspected it could, since it was attached to such an unsatisfiable organ -- every minute, hunger, hunger! And perhaps his stomach would have its own stomach, and it too would eat the first up then walk around in rags and beg and smile and fool everyone, because what they’d think was a man would really be a stomach, lecherous and filthy. For all he knew, maybe he too was already a stomach! -- and sure, why not? It would explain why he felt this empty all the time. He craved -- he didn’t know what he craved, but he knew he couldn’t have it, because someone would always keep it away from him, intentionally starving the stomach and the stomach’s stomach because -- ! Oh, he didn’t know why!
    It was silly, really. He chuckled. A stomach! He must have been awfully hungry. But there was something a bit frightening about it all, like waking up from a nightmare and being unable to shake the raw fear of it.
    He propped himself up on his mattress and drank from the water jug left behind. It tasted like piss. And he ached! Ache, hunger, ache! The whole routine was getting quite tiring. For a moment, he studied his arms. New bruises, moulted burgundy in colour, had appeared that morning. Across his skin these seemed to creep until they consumed both his arms and began to turn a greenish hue, as if his flesh were rotting…
    Garrett blinked the vision away. Funny, how he was always having to do that now -- remind himself that bruises didn’t creep, that his stomach wasn’t going to eat him, that the colors running up and down the walls were just rays of light… Yes, he’d forgotten about that one.
    Nearby, he heard footsteps, and for a moment had trouble distinguishing whether these too were a trick of his nasty mind. They weren’t. In the entrance of his lair of dust stood Amphion, one hand resting on that silly pistol of his. He wished the officer would keep the thing away! It was such a crude weapon -- phallic, almost. The very sight of Amphion and his gun made him sick. It was funny, the way the officer’s head looked like it was ablaze -- didn’t he like that hair, at one point? -- no! He hated the man, hated everything about him; he too self-righteous for a man so unkept. There was crud beneath his fingernails -- dirt and disease and blood.
    “Garrett! Where is everyone?” demanded Amphion.
    He giggled. “Gone, Love, gone. Casper and his w***e took all my pretty children, took them away so I can’t find them.”  
    “What’s wrong with you?”
    Garrett glared at Amphion and wondered what it would be like to draw a cut across that smirchless forehead. The thought made him shiver. Yes, the skin would peel back like a woman’s parts, and blood would run down those stony cheeks and bright lips. Oh, he could be an awfully violent person sometimes -- he admitted to that.
    “Garrett,” Amphion repeated, “you look just about on death’s doorstep.”
    “Just about there, just about!” a smile spread across his inky lips. “I’m going to walk my body right down to the potter’s field first, though.”
    “You’re insane.”
    “I can’t hear you -- I think I’m dead.”
    “Come on with it! What happened to your little crusade?”
    “My crusade?” howled Garrett. He cackled. “It was mine, until you took it from me. Ain’t that right, gunslinger? You just had to have your way with those police buds of yours.”
    “The NSPD sabotage was your idea! You’re the one who forged all those documents.” He didn’t like Amphion’s voice. It was pathetic to hear a grown man whine. “And look where it’s gotten us -- a lawsuit. Was this what you had in mind?”
    Garrett was beginning to get fed up. His head felt funny -- he didn’t want to talk with anyone right now, not now when he’d rather be in bed. Or in the potter’s field. It was an excellent idea, actually -- was there a more ironic place to die than a graveyard? “Mine, mine, mine,” squawked Garrett. “What now -- I’ve got a monopoly on this whole rotten mankind? Am I responsible for every crook and pimp out there, now? Damn good job we’ve made of it!” He stuck his fingers in his mouth and gnawed on the nails. It was a habit he’d picked up recently -- nerves were the cause of it, he suspected. “And maybe now, I guess you’ll go ahead and blame the atomic bomb on me next?”
    At this remark, a grotesquely smug look settled across Amphion’s face. “Well, do you blame yourself for the atomic bomb?”
    “You’re a painfully funny man, Love.”
    “No, it’s just a curiosity of mine.”
    Amphion crouched on the ground. From its holster, he drew the pistol and began to clean the goddamn thing. As if he really needed to -- it looked brand-new. “I read your file.”
    When he made no answer, the officer continued. “Your real name is Pavel Gussev. You lived in Moscow until it was destroyed in the Minute War in 1962. Your brother, Kirill Gusev, was killed by a shockwave.  In 1964 you came across the pond on a freighter with your mother.”
    Garrett felt his body grow cold. There was something that clawed at the back of his mind, a spectre of a vision which he felt the instant desire to push away. More madness -- that was all it was. He wrestled it all into those dark little cubby holes of his brain that were too far away to lay seizure on him. “Kirill isn’t dead,” he whispered. “Maybe now, but not on the crossing.”
    “I found his death certificate. It’s from 1962.”
    “No, no, he came across with us… peddled around country with me; he was a hard man, a very wicked man, and I didn’t mind it a bit when he dropped me here. Good riddance!”
    “He’s long dead,” muttered Amphion. He was trying to be consolatory -- Garrett could tell that much -- but his face was a mere covering; there was anger and indignity in his voice. What a fool! Garrett knew what he saw when studied the officer: vice and smut culminated in human mass.
    “Kirill was alive,” hissed Garrett. “I saw him bang mama on the coffee table.”
    At first Amphion recoiled in shock, but his eyebrows quickly sloped into lines of disgust. “That’s awful!”
    “But it’s true.”
    “Where did you come up with that?”
    “After the freighter, they put us in one of those dumpy units -- bed sheets smelt like sex and the carpet like tobacco,” the words came rushing out of Garrett’s mouth. “I was awake one morning -- couldn’t sleep -- and there was some light coming through these thick curtains, it was all greasy and yellow, and there was this coffee table, right beneath the light, and it fell across his back, her hips…”
    “… Stop it!” snarled Amphion. “You’re disgusting.”
    In a daze, Garrett sat up. His whole body felt heavy with an unseen weight. There were invisible strings tied to his arms -- it Amphion’s fault, all his fault -- and these were attached to bodies, so many bodies, and the streets were red -- no, not red, he was here now in Old Seattle. Why did he keep forgetting that?
    Amphion took a deep breath. “There was another adult listed with you and your mother. Karl Valstein -- your mother’s boyfriend, I think. Is that who you remember?”
    “My mother didn’t have a boyfriend. We came across with Kirill.”
    “Garrett, the man who… violated your mother…”
    “… Shut up!” hollered Garrett. “My brother dealed out drugs in New York and boozed his liver dry in Portland. He gave me this cut --” he jabbed a finger at the scar in the corner of his mouth, “ -- and made me do… things. Oh, don’t look at me like I’ve lost it! He was a monster, and maybe he died to me long ago, but his heart was beating long after we landed here. Kirill didn’t… he didn’t die.”
    “He did,” Amphion spoke slowly. “Right in front of your eyes, too. He disintegrated, just like that -- there was nothing left at all, no closure. Maybe it was hard for you to understand that he was gone so you…”
    “… No!”
    Never before had he seen Amphion frightened, but when he shouted the man looked as if he’d seen a demon. His head hurt. Ache, hunger, ache. The pictures, those pictures in the cubbies of his mind, were trying to get to him again so he directed his attention to his body. “I’m dying,” he whispered. “Of the same thing that took Bess away. Thought I could stop it, but….!” He paused to catch his breath. That too was beginning to leave him. On Amphion, his eyes locked. “Everything was fine, before you came along. Clean. I thought you were clean but you brought your filth with you! It’s that damned harlot of yours, isn’t it? Couldn’t resist touching her -- oh where’s your God now?! Hiding from you. You’re a wicked, wicked man, Love.”
    “Rachel wasn’t a w***e, you crazy b*****d!”
    “Don’t you see it? Your type’s going to continue to breathe out and fill the air with your sick until every last child drops dead of AIDS.”
    “AIDS?”
    “Yeah, you heard me right.”
    All at once, Amphion’s face cracked with laughter. Garrett blinked, and wondered if the officer was beginning to loose his mind too.
    “He -- Bess, I think that’s what you called him -- he had the same symptoms as you, did he?”
    “Every bit o’ the same disease; that’s what I said. Bruises, cuts, sweats, and puking his brains out. It’s all right here, buddy boy.”
    “Did Bess come across on a freighter too?” asked Amphion.
    “That he did, Love, that he did.”
    He was laughing. Amphion was actually laughing! More than ever, Garrett wanted to hurt the man.    
    “What’s so damn funny, officer?!” he exclaimed. Amphion did not stop -- his chest rocked and his breath came in spasms, as if he were fighting to contained himself. “Just what’s so damn funny?!”
    “You don’t have AIDS,” said Amphion. “But you are dying of cancer.”
    For the first time, Garrett realized the shakes in Amphion’s chest weren’t caused by laughter -- the officer was crying. “It’s Leukemia, probably,” continued Amphion. “I’ll be damned if it’s not. You all have it, you Russians -- cancer, that is -- they’re dropping dead in hospitals in swarms a day because of it. Oh, Garrett, you wouldn’t believe me if I said it, but… we were all so innocent. Americans are starting to get sick now too. It’s all this radiation that’s floating about. Just look at me! Lung cancer. Thought I beat it years ago, but it’s back. It’s the same story with the NSPD’s Commissioner. No one could have predicted it would be this bad. Funny, you think of the atom bomb and you see all this great power and destruction but the truth is, it’s so much more than that! The destruction is only the beginning.”
    Garrett sprang from the ground and drove his fist deep into Amphion’s gut. Gasping for air, he dropped like a rock. Garrett towered over the cop as he doubled over, simultaneously wheezing and vomiting.  One foot struck Amphion across the temple and he flopped to the ground. With the tip of his boot, Garrett nudged the man over onto his back and planted a foot on his neck. For a moment the officer lay totally helpless, within his power to kill and to crush. A bloody shiver yet again wracked his body.
    “You brought all this one my head,” shrieked Garrett. “I want you out. Now! And if I ever seen your nasty face again, I’ll split it open. Hear me?”
    When Amphion nodded, Garrett allowed him to stand. The officer, however, did not scamper out like a frightened creature, but held his head erect as he plodded from the building with steps heavy and ponderous.
    Garrett collapsed, shaking like a madman. His eyeballs hurt, but whenever he closed them all he could see was red, and bodies burning, disintegrating like powder -- he should just rip his eyelids out, and that would be it!
    Inside, it felt as if his whole body was coming loose and floating away on him. He wanted things to be this way, for his whole being to come apart into thin air, leaving no memory of the whole, only parts, and bits and pieces of things he wished he could do away with.