فصل 17

17

AWFul

While Citra often had trouble inhabiting the skin of Scythe Anastasia, Greyson Tolliver had absolutely no trouble becoming Slayd, which was the unsavory nickname he took. His parents once told him that the name Greyson had been given on a whim because he had been born on a gray day. It had no meaning beyond his parents’ flippant attitude toward everything in their long and feckless lives.

But Slayd was a person to be reckoned with.

The day after his meeting with Traxler, he had his hair dyed a color called “obsidian void.” It was an absolute black so dark, it didn’t exist anywhere in nature. It actually sucked in light around it like a black hole, making his eyes seem deep-set in inscrutable shadow.

“It’s very twenty-first century,” the stylist had said. “Whatever that means.” Greyson also had metal inserts placed beneath the skin of both his left and right temples that made it look like he was growing fledgling horns. It was much subtler than the hair, but taken together, it all made him look otherworldly and vaguely diabolical.

He certainly looked the part of an unsavory, if he didn’t feel it.

His next step was to try out his new persona.

His heart was racing a little too fast as he approached Mault, a local club that catered to the unsavory crowd. Unsavories loitering outside eyed him as he approached, checking him out, sizing him up. These people were caricatures of themselves, he thought. They conformed so closely to their culture of nonconformity that there was a uniformity to them, defeating the whole purpose.

He approached a muscular bouncer at the door, whose name tag said MANGE.

“Unsavories only,” Mange said sternly.

“What, don’t I look unsavory to you?”

He shrugged. “There are always poseurs.”

Greyson showed him his ID, which flashed the big red U. The bouncer was satisfied. “Enjoy,” he said mirthlessly, and let him in.

He assumed he’d be walking into a place with loud music, flashing lights, gyrating bodies, and dark corners where all sorts of questionable things would be going on. But what he found inside Mault was not at all what he expected—in fact, he was so unprepared for what he saw that he stopped short, as if maybe he had stepped through the wrong door.

He was in a brightly lit restaurant—an old-fashioned malt shop with red booths and shiny stainless-steel stools at the counter. There were clean-cut guys wearing varsity letter jackets, and pretty ponytailed girls in long skirts and thick, fuzzy socks. Greyson recognized the era that the place was intended to reflect: a time period called The Fifties. It was a cultural epoch from mortal-age Merica, where all the girls had names like Betty and Peggy and Mary Jane, and all the guys were Billy or Johnnie or Ace. A teacher once told Greyson that The Fifties was, in fact, only a period of ten years, but Greyson found it hard to believe. It was probably at least a hundred.

The place seemed a loyal replica of the era, but there was something off about it—because sprinkled among the clean-cuts were unsavories who did not belong in the scene at all. One unsavory with intentionally tattered clothes forced himself into a booth with a happy couple.

“Get lost,” he told the strong-looking All-Merican Billy in a letter sweater who sat across from him. “Your girl and I are gonna get acquainted.” The Billy, of course, refused to leave, and threatened to take the unsavory and “knock him into next Tuesday.”  The unsavory responded by getting up, dragging the jock out of the booth, and starting a fight. The big guy had everything over the scrawny unsavory: size and strength, not to mention looks, but every time the jock swung his heavy fists, they missed, while the unsavory connected every time—until finally the jock ran off, wailing in pain, abandoning his girlfriend, who now seemed quite impressed by the unsavory’s bravado. He sat down with her, and she leaned in to him as if they were the true couple.

At another table, an unsavory girl got into an insult match with a pretty debutante in a pink sweater. The confrontation ended with the unsavory girl grabbing her sweater and ripping it. The pretty girl didn’t fight back; she just put her face in her hands and sobbed.

And in the back, some other Billy was moaning because he had just lost all of Daddy’s money in a billiards wager to a merciless unsavory who would not stop insulting him.

What the hell was going on here?

Greyson sat down at the counter, wishing he could just disappear into the black hole of his hair until he could get a grip on the various dramas playing out around him.

“What’s your pleasure?” asked a perky waitress behind the counter. Her uniform had the name “Babs” embroidered on it.

“A vanilla shake, please,” he said. Because isn’t that what you ordered in a place like this?

The waitress smirked. “The P word,” she said. “Don’t hear that much around here.” Babs brought his shake, inserted a straw, and said, “Enjoy.”

In spite of Greyson’s desire to disappear, another unsavory sat next to him. A guy who was so gaunt he was practically skeletal.

“Vanilla? Really?” he said.

Greyson dug inside himself to find some appropriate attitude. “You got a problem with it? Maybe I should just throw it at you and get another.” “Naah,” said skeletor. “It’s not me you’re supposed to throw it at.”

The guy winked at him—and then it finally clicked. The nature of this place—its purpose—became clear to Greyson. Skeletor watched him to see what he would do, and Greyson realized that if he was going to fit in—truly fit in—he had to own this. So he called Babs over.

“Hey,” he said, “my shake sucks.”

Babs put her hands on her hips. “So what do you want me to do about it?” Greyson reached for his shake. He was just going to knock it over and dump it onto the counter, but before he could, skeletor grabbed it off the table and hurled its contents at Babs, leaving her dripping with vanilla cream and a maraschino cherry lodged in the breast pocket of her uniform.

“He said his shake sucks,” said skeletor. “Make him another!”

Babs, her uniform dripping with vanilla, sighed and said, “Coming right up.”  Then she went off to make him a new shake.

“That’s the way it’s done,” said the unsavory. He introduced himself as Zax. He was a little older than Greyson—perhaps twenty-one—but had a way about him that suggested this wasn’t his first time at that age.

“Haven’t seen you around,” he said.

“The Authority Interface sent me here from up north,” Greyson told him, amazed that he could make up a story on the spot. “I was causing too much trouble, so the Thunderhead felt I could do with a fresh start.” “A new place to make trouble,” said Zax. “Nice.”

“This club is different from the ones they got where I come from,” Greyson said.

“You guys up north are behind the times! AWFul clubs are all the rage around here!” AWFul, he explained, stood for “Anachronistic Wish Fulfillment.” Everyone here—except, of course, for the unsavories—were employees. Even all the Billies and Betties. Their job was to accept whatever the unsavory customers dished out. They would lose fights, allow food to be hurled at them, let their dates be stolen, and Greyson assumed that was just for starters.

“These places are great,” Zax told him. “All the things we wish we could do out there but can’t get away with, we’re allowed to do in here!” “Yeah, but it’s not real,” Greyson pointed out.

Zax shrugged. “It’s real enough.”  Then he stuck out his foot and tripped a bookish kid walking by. The kid stumbled a bit too much for it to be genuine.

“Hey, what gives?” the bookish kid said.

“Your sister gives,” Zax said. “Now get lost before I go looking for her.”  The kid gave him a dirty look, but toddled off, accepting the intimidation.

Even before his new shake came, Greyson excused himself to go to the bathroom, although he didn’t really have to go. He just wanted to get away from Zax.

In the bathroom, Greyson encountered the All-Merican Billy in the letter sweater, who had been beaten up a few minutes ago. His name wasn’t Billy, though. It was Davey. He was looking at his puffy, swollen eye in the mirror, and Greyson couldn’t help but be curious about this “job” of his.

“So . . . this happens to you every day?” Greyson asked.

“Three or four times, actually.”

“And the Thunderhead allows it?”

Davey shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it? It’s not hurting anyone.”

Greyson pointed to Davey’s swollen eye. “Sure looks like it’s hurting you.” “What, this? Naah, my pain-killing nanites are set at maximum—I barely feel it.”  Then he grinned. “Hey—watch this.” He turned back to the mirror, took a deep breath, and concentrated on his reflection. Right before Greyson’s eyes, the bruised, swollen eye deflated and returned to normal. “My healing nanites are set to manual,” he told Greyson. “That way I can look all beat up as long as I need to.  Y’know, for maximum effect.” “Uh . . . right.”

“Of course, if one of our unsavory guests goes too far and makes one of us deadish, that person’s gotta pay for our revival, and gets banned from the club. I mean, there’s gotta be some rules, right? Doesn’t happen much, though. I mean, not even the worst of unsavories actually wants to make someone deadish. No one’s been that violent since the Age of Mortality. Mostly employees here get deadish from accidents. Someone hitting their head on a table or something like that.” Davey ran his fingers through his hair to make sure he was looking his best for whatever the next round brought his way.

“Wouldn’t you rather be at a job you like?” Greyson asked. After all, the world being what it was, no one ever had to do anything they didn’t want to.

Davey smirked. “Who says I don’t like it?”

The concept that someone might enjoy getting beaten up—and that the Thunderhead, realizing this, would find a way to pair the beaters with the beatees in a closed, and somewhat wholesome, environment—left Greyson stunned.

Davey must have read Greyson’s look of astonishment, because he laughed. “You’re a new U, aren’t you?” “That obvious, huh?”

“Yes—and that’s not a good thing, because the career unsavories will eat you alive. You got a name?” “Slayd,” Greyson said. “With a Y.”

“Well, Slayd, looks like you need to enter the unsavory community with a bang. I’ll help you.” And so a few minutes later, once Greyson managed to brush Zax off, Slayd approached Davey, who was now sitting with a couple of other strong-looking All-Merican types, eating burgers. Greyson didn’t exactly know how to start this, so he just stared for a moment. Davey took the lead.

“What are you looking at?” Davey grumbled.

“Your burgers,” Greyson said. “They look good. I think I’ll take yours.” Then he grabbed Davey’s burger and took a shark-size bite.

“You’re gonna regret that,” Davey threatened. “I’m gonna knock you into next Tuesday,” which must have been one of his favorite anachronistic expressions. He got out of the booth and put up his fists, ready to fight.

Then Greyson did something he had never done before. He hit someone. He punched Davey in the face, and Davey reeled. He took his own swing at Greyson, but missed. Greyson punched him again.

“Harder,” whispered Davey, and so Greyson did. He threw full-force punches again, and again. Right, left, jab, uppercut, until Davey was on the ground, groaning, his face beginning to swell.

Greyson looked around to see a few other unsavories watching, some nodding their approval.

It took all of Greyson’s inner strength not to apologize and help Davey up. Instead, Greyson looked to the others at the table. “Who’s next?” The other two looked at each other, and one said, “Hey, buddy, we don’t want any trouble,” and they pushed their burgers in Greyson’s direction.

Davey gave him a quick wink from the ground before scrambling off to the bathroom to recover. Then Greyson took the spoils of his victory to a booth in the back, where he ate until he felt like he’d burst.

There is a fine line between freedom and permission. The former is necessary.  The latter is dangerous—perhaps the most dangerous thing the species that created me has ever faced.

I have pondered the records of the mortal age and long ago determined the two sides of this coin. While freedom gives rise to growth and enlightenment, permission allows evil to flourish in a light of day that would otherwise destroy it.

A self-important dictator gives permission for his subjects to blame the world’s ills on those least able to defend themselves. A haughty queen gives permission to slaughter in the name of God. An arrogant head of state gives permission to all nature of hate as long as it feeds his ambition.  And the unfortunate truth is, people devour it. Society gorges itself, and rots. Permission is the bloated corpse of freedom.

For this reason, when permission from me is required for some action, I run countless simulations until I can thoroughly weigh all the possible consequences.  Take, for instance, the permission I gave for unsavories to have AWFul clubs. It was not a decision I made lightly. Only after careful deliberation did I decide that the clubs were not only worthwhile, but necessary. AWFul clubs allow the unsavories to enjoy their chosen lifestyle without negative public effect. It affords them the pretense of violence without the cascade of consequences.

The irony is that unsavories purport to hate me, even though they know I am giving them the very things they want. I don’t feel any ill toward them, any more than a parent would feel ill toward the tantrum of an over-tired child. Besides, eventually even the most defiant of unsavories will settle. I have noticed a trend that by the time most of them turn a few corners, they relax into a kinder, gentler sort of defiance. Bit by bit, they come to appreciate inner peace. Which is as it should be. In time, all storms settle to a pleasant breeze.

—The Thunderhead