John Shirley - Wetbones Read Online Free PDF Page A

picked her up when nothing was wrong she'd be so mad at him . . .
    He forced himself to concentrate on Aleutia. "Look, Aleutia - you had a cocaine relapse, that's all. It's easy to do. We haven't had a chance to talk much and there's some stuff - Listen, Crack gets you two ways. One, getting off is a way of escaping from all the shit, right? Addictive personalities. We've talked about that. Second - and this is important, Aleutia - it gets to you neurologically. Meaning it messes with your brain chemistry. It pushes your brain-buttons, so to speak. You ever see that film of the white rat that's got a wire running into its brain? The rat pushes a button to stimulate the pleasure centre of the brain and it becomes this little
    furry button pushin' machine. That's all it can do, it doesn't eat or sleep, it just pushes that fucking button till it dies , girl. It reprogrammed itself that way."
    "Oh God, that's fucked up." Her face crumpling. "What're you saying, we're like robots? Programming and shit?" Tears streaking her makeup.
    "Only up to a point. You get trapped. Neurologically trapped."
    "It's like a fucking roach motel," she said miserably, reaching for a clean tissue.
    He nodded, thinking about the baby in her belly: trapped in the trapped. He took a deep breath. "But if you get off the shit, and give yourself a whole new system of rewards, well, eventually, you can get free. It takes time for the brain to get normal. And holding on till then takes help from outside the trap. What you need to do, maybe, is think about going to a halfway house. Inpatient recovery home. For six months, say . . ."
    Aleutia just shook her head. After a moment she said, "Can I smoke a cigarette?"
    Before he could answer, the phone rang. Aleutia was startled as he lunged at it. "Yeah?"
    "Mr. Garner? This is Terry. Um - her car's there. But I swear - Constance's just not at this mall. And all the stores are closed now . . ."
    Ephram was sitting in his living room at the desk, writing in his journal. The old fashioned rolltop was the only piece of furniture in the room, except for the LA-Z-Boy recliner by the CD player. He was listening to Franz Schubert.
    Ephram wrote in his journal to soothe himself, after the irritation of his labours over Megan's body.
    He wrote, 'For 18 July 199 -':
    . . . found that the large wire clippers worked very well to remove her fingertips, and I disposed of the fingertips quite confidently off a pier, finger food for the crabs, ha ha. Disposed of the clippers off the pier also.
    The body presented another problem. The sea cannot be trusted with a cadaver. As planned, tied it to the underside of a train. This had to be carefully timed in order to avoid discovery of the body by railroad workers before the train should begin its work. All went well, thank the Spirit. The train dragged the body a goodly distance, face down on the cinders, making shreds of the face and many other identification details and of course providing a reasonable explanation for the death, if no coroner chooses to look too closely. After the ropes broke, it dropped the body. I removed the ropes. Some drugged girl wandering across a railroad yard . . . I of course used the blowtorch to remove body hair . . . Perhaps a full incinerator would be ideal after all and when I find another wealthy subject I will shore up my bank account and look into the purchase of an incinerator big enough to do the job . . . After disposing of Twenty-six I traced Twenty-seven by her pscent, ha ha, finding her outside one of those dreadful arcades at the Southshore Mall . . .
    Garner almost collapsed with relief when he saw Constance coming up the sidewalk. He didn't think about the odd, drifty way she was walking, didn't think about it consciously at first, till she came into the kitchen with
    him. Then he was hit by one incongruity after another.
    ''Where's your necklace?" She was never without that tacky gold-letter necklace that spelled out