Chapter Three: The Feed

Chapter Three: The Feed

Aside from their apparently diminutive size, Zane didn’t know very much about Gideon’s parents, but one thing he liked about them was their decision to mirror every wall in the spacious living room. Zane loved mirrors. He found himself to be as beautiful as others must also find him to be and could while away an entire day studying his perfect self. In addition to the wonderful view, it was within the realm of mirrors where his secret room lay—beyond the glass, and before the glaze, and only for him.

At the moment, though, the mirror was only a mirror; he admired himself and nothing more. At thirty, he could pass for twenty-five—younger if he dressed right. According to his mother, he was the very image of his father, with his sun-streaked blonde locks and slender muscular form. The only difference, his mother had said, was that his face, although like his father’s, was a gift from an angel. He could never fault her there; his face was wonderful to behold. He’d never met his real father or even seen a picture, but he must have been a handsome man indeed.

Aside from birthing him, his mother’s only real legacy was a tattoo that stretched across his back and down the back side of each arm. The artwork depicted two large black, bird-like wings interlaced with arcane markings that—in all the years since—he’d never been able to decipher. Could have been, his mother was truly inspired from above and it was angelic script. More likely, though, she was insane. “From an angel, to an angel,” she’d repeated as she poked at him.

Meant as a gift—one of the few she’d ever given, and a fact that made it all the more special—his mother had created a masterwork upon his skin with nothing more than a sewing needle, two bottles of ink, and a stone’s quantity of patience. She’d finished the wings approximately twelve hours before his eighteenth birthday—eleven hours before he killed her.

Without being aware he’d gone there, Zane found himself staring into the room from the other side, from the doorway of his room beyond the mirror. This was good. He could think there, be alone there—maybe add a window at the back…maybe see Annie on the other side, see where she went.

But he couldn’t. There was much to do. The show would be his time to shine. Then he could come back. He could come back with an angel—his drop cloth angel. Slowly—like wading against a current—he stepped toward the door, toward himself.

He passed from his room with the force of a fired bullet, staggering him as he became whole once again. After a few seconds of blinding white that circled his head like a hurricane, he looked up. The face in the mirror was bleeding, bleeding from the mouth. He’d bitten his tongue again. He didn’t like the taste of his own blood. It was bitter. Not sweet like some of those he’d known—known and drank from. His mind began to wander…to faces, to places…

But, the show. The show must go on, and he was the star; Archangel was the star. Practice, he thought. Practice makes your good better and your better best.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he took a long breath and let it out, then lowered his arm to hang at his side. Relaxing his limbs like a runner before the gun, he began to practice. First, he emitted a polite chuckle, with a slight nod. Then he bent, laughing hysterically, and slapped his knee, but his eyes never left the mirror. Then, like a waning South Seas storm, he abruptly relaxed and took on the long distance gaze of a grief stricken survivor, stooped, and without hope.

Reaching with a finger, he traced the dry eyes and frowning mouth of his partner, leaving a sweat smeared outline on the glass. Zane searched his reflection for moisture and found none. Crying was the one thing he couldn’t do on demand. Not even thoughts of his mother during her final moments raised a tear.

Moving on through his routine, he cleared his throat and spoke to his endless image, “Me? My name is David. David Jackson. I write fluff pieces for music magazines…I’m in sales… I’m an insurance claims adjuster…a friend of your uncle’s…”

Then he tilted his head and whispered, “Yeah, I don’t believe me either.” He spat at his reflection.

On a nearby stand, Zane found a large, oversized remote and pushed buttons until he found the right one for the stereo. You sure do have all the toys, Doc, he thought.

From speakers secreted somewhere in the high ceilinged room, an eerily luminous keyboard followed lightening and waves as they crashed and Jim Morrison crooned. Zane swayed with the lizard king, singing along, “Into this world we’re thrown…”

He could definitely relate with Jim Morrison. His words touched something deep within Zane that he saw as a kindred path, cohorts in the cause of chaos. Although Zane had been born after Morrison’s death, he mourned the years they never shared. They would have been a hell of a pair—Jim with his words, Zane with his art—feeding each other’s inspiration as muse, as brothers.

Wailing along, Zane rode the storm.

From underneath the music there came an unfamiliar, annoying, warbling. Zane spied the phone on a stand across the room but made no move to answer it. Leaving the call to the answering machine, he killed the stereo and entered the kitchen.

The machine picked up and, from the room he just left, his own voice, said:

“Hello..? Hello..? Is there anyone there?”

At least Zane thought it sounded like him, but different, like a close impersonation. Maybe it was him, maybe it wasn’t.

Zane smiled as he waited. “Gotcha,” said the machine, “I’m not available to take your call right now. Busy, busy. So leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

Beeeep.

“Cute. You’ve changed my greeting. That was not entirely intelligent of you. Very amusing, though, Zane,” was Doctor Gideon’s tinny, not-very-amused response. “Listen. Call me as soon as you get this. We need to talk.”

Grabbing the extension from the charger on the kitchen counter, Zane thumbed the talk button and sighed theatrically into the phone. “Kinda busy here, Doc—and it’s David. I already told you that. You say Zane again and I’m hanging up. Two weeks. You gave me two weeks. Say what you have to say and make it quick.”

Holding the phone away from his ear as the doctor spoke, Zane peered into the refrigerator. “Hi, Annie,” he said, and pinched her cheek. Aside from the head, there was just a lonely cluster of condiments and a pitcher of water. Great.

Against the protest of his grumbling stomach, he closed the door and sat down at the kitchen table. He’d put all the leftovers in the freezer and didn’t feel like thawing anything for later. Also, he was getting kind of sick Annie. What he really wanted right then was a nice big bowl of Fruit Loops.

No cereal, no milk—he was normally more prepared. He’d been on his way to get those, along with a change of clothes, when he’d met Annie. Damn Annie. Damn boring tasting Annie.

As he listened to the doctor, Zane leafed through the flyers he’d brought back from his premier foray into Toronto. Surely, his angel could be found somewhere among them.

“Zane, I’m only thinking of your best interests. I can’t help you from here. If something—anything—goes south on you, my boy, you’re on your own. We don’t cross borders. It’s just not done.”

“David—and it looks to me, Doc, like I just did, so drop the jilted bitch routine. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Besides, I’m hot at this end and ready to fucking rock,” he said, referring to the video cameras he’d installed that morning. “Wanna do a check? I’ll send you the link and do a visual.”

“Yes, I suppose. Say, you’re not going to skin an Eskimo or bite the heads off any penguins, are you?”

“You’re not very PC, are you Doc? It’s not Eskimo, it’s Inuit—and no penguins. I heard they taste like chicken, and you know how much I hate chicken.” Zane blinked at the small computer screen, having a hard time focusing at first.

“I thought we were doing fine here in Chicago, but this…”

“This what? This project that you have no control over?” said Zane. As he typed away at the keyboard, he pictured that safe little man sitting in his cozy little den, tasting the dark side one teaspoon at a time—sipping the violence vicariously through Zane and others like him. Fucking Jerk.

“There,” said Zane, clicking send. “Oh, by the way, I’ve brought that table in from the foyer. You remember. The one you bought from that Scandinavian sadist in Florida, the one with all those body piercings?

“No. Definitely not. I—”

“Well, I can’t work without a table, can I?”

“Where’s my dining room table?”

“I kinda broke it.”

“You kinda broke a three-thousand dollar oak table?”

Zane chuckled. “Clog dancing accident. Don’t ask.”

“Clog? What?” Then, the phone sighed, “Never mind. Just be careful with—”

“Thanks, Gideon. I’m touched you care.”

“My table, Zane…be extremely careful with it. It’s priceless.”

“Yeah, and where’d you get the money for it?”

After a sigh of resignation, Gideon said, “You, Zane…among others, but mostly you.”

“Now, was that so hard? Come on, Gideon. Nobody loses. I feed, you get the feed, and the viewers get to watch. Only gonna be one loser here and she won’t be in a position to care.”

“Jesus, your optimism never ceases to amaze me.”

“And you’re not optimistic?”

“No. I’d consider myself to be more of an opportunist. That said, I still believe this venture of yours is nothing short of insane. Will you even be ready by Thursday?”

As Zane left the computer and headed for the dining room, he began to feel dizzy—something that had begun the month before, and had since become a daily occurrence. He’d come to recognise this hostile takeover as a battle with a demon. He was sure of it. He could see it in his head as an absence of himself, a vacuous draining force that supped at him as though he were a seven course meal.

When the sweats came, swelling across his stomach and down the backs of his legs like a pair of dead mice, Zane knew he was in for more than a mere skirmish. Next, he could expect the flickering blackness; the struggle for his eyes, his brain, and fragments of his past. Then, there was the pain. Oh, the electrifyingly magnificent pain. The demon truly was a worthy adversary.

The attacks had taken on a frantic nature lately—like the last gasp of a trapped badger—which led Zane to believe he must be winning. What other explanation could there be? Gideon didn’t know about the demon, and Zane would never tell. How could a man like Gideon ever presume to understand?

“Yeah, Thursday,” Zane said, focusing his will upon ignoring his invader, “Have you ever known me to miss a shoot?” Then, his mouth said something he didn’t know it was going to say, but thought was funny nonetheless. “You know, you can be a real crotch-crust sometimes, Doc—a real cunt.” The demon may have been his enemy, but he sure spoke the truth.

The demon was closer, grasping for him from the inside—scratching, pulling. Zane swayed, willing the blight away as a child would with a persistent bogyman. Through the oily black vortex swirling ever larger, he said, “Look, I gotta go. We good?”

Pain flared in his skull, racking him with a body shudder. Gideon might have said something, but he wouldn’t have heard. Zane had a hard enough time keeping his fingers closed on the phone. “I said: Are we good?”

“Are you deaf, boy? I just told you.”

As drool began seeping from his mouth and ran down his chest, Zane walked to a corner of the room and slid down the wall. “Must be the phone. Sorry. So, what did you say?”

“I need you to come back to Chicago this weekend. There are some papers here for you to sign.”

“Papers?”

“Saturday afternoon. I’ll see you then.”

“Sure.” Zane forced the needed air through his vocal chords. Cradling the phone in both hands like a pet scorpion he waited, and would as long as he could. “Your minute’s been up for a while, Gideon. Plans to make, people to bake,” he mumbled into the receiver.

“Don’t worry,” said Gideon, “it’s nothing bad.”

Nothing bad. Check. “‘Kay, bye,” Zane mumbled. Weekend. Check. Go see Gideon. Check. He keyed END, let the phone fall from his fingers, and collapsed onto his side. He wanted to dig a hole through his skull—free himself, expel the pain. But he knew that’s what the demon wanted; it wanted free access, a doorway in. Zane was smart, Zane was wise; he wouldn’t be fooled by any damn devil. This war would be won in inches. There was nothing he could do but wait. Wait for either victory or defeat. Zane clenched his teeth, tucked himself into a ball, and screamed and rocked like the ghost of Axl Rose’s career until the battle reached a fevered pitch.

* * *

The sun had tripped over its own shadow and fallen behind the couch sometime before Zane pushed himself away from the floor. The darkness outside the Chalet seemed absolute. Even the stars shied away from him for reasons only another star could fathom. Could have been, Zane thought, they were embarrassed for the beautiful naked man laying in a pile of his own feces, and felt he needed privacy. Maybe it was just cloudy with a chance of empathy.

He quickly checked his face and hands for blood, then breathed a sigh. He was still handsome—stank, but unblemished. Rolling away from the puddle, he plodded in the direction of the laundry room to find a mop and some plastic bags.

After cleaning his mess and showering, he returned to the kitchen and stood by the table, staring down at the flyers he’d been leafing through earlier while talking to Gideon. Eenie-meanie-miny-moe, he thought, then lifted one away from the rest. The lucky winner read:

National Cancer Society of Canada

Memorial & Fundraiser

Tomorrow. It wasn’t perfect—cancer victims were creepy—but chance had spoken.

He was happy again. Not even an image of cancer-tainted meat could bring him down; like peas and carrots, he could eat around the bad parts. His spirits were on the mend and the pain was receding. He’d won. The demon was gone.

So what he couldn’t remember the name of his old high school or how to do long division. The demon was more than welcome to keep that shit. “My name is David,” he said to the flyer, “and I’m gonna make you love me.”

They always did.