Penny Dreadful by Will Christopher Baer Page B

everything at once. His skin, bright and tingling as if he could peel it off and give it a shake. The small hairs on his neck. The enamel of his own teeth. He felt like time had folded around him and come to a complete stop. He and the Fred had been trapped together in a window, a bubble. They had fallen into one of those little plastic paperweights filled with water and artificial snow and the Fred’s throat had been soft and white and sweetly exposed and Chrome had been unable to think of any reason not to sink his teeth into that skin and simply pull it open. The blood had washed over his face, it had filled him with a sickness and joy that were fleeting. It was like an orgasm, of course. But the comparison was such a cliché it pained him to consider it.
    He was a werewolf, a ripper.
    He grinned. Très diabolique, non?
    Now he took off his shirt, rinsed it and put it back on. He glanced down at the street, where Mingus paced nervously along the sidewalk. The Breather was freaking out, truly. He had looked at Chrome with such horror and disbelief that Chrome had laughed out loud. Mingus had seen what he did. He had seen him kill and Chrome hoped this would not be a problem.
    Dead face yawning. My own warped face in the mirror. I had acquired the habit of examining it whenever I found myself alone in a bathroom. Otherwise I tended to forget exactly what I looked like. I promised myself this was not such a bad thing, and hardly a clinical condition. I looked like no one and it was nothing to worry about. I pissed confidently into Moon’s toilet, then climbed into his shower. The pipes groaned and the water was so immediately hot that I felt a little faint.
    Moon had a surprisingly dainty assortment of hair products. Honey and clove shampoo. Conditioner made from dead silkworms, pasteurized goat’s milk and raw egg whites. A silicone-gel hair thickener and eucalyptus hair mist. The poor bastard’s hair was thinning, wasn’t it. It was turning to ash. Moon’s hair was vacating. The water crashed down and I dreamed on my feet. I saw Moon through the shower curtain, his hard white belly jutting against the sink and his face moist with sweat. I watched as Moon mournfully tugged another grassy fistful from his skull, then checked his gums for bleeding with a sigh. I watched him give the cat a bowl of dry food and leave the radio on to kill the terrifying emptiness in his apartment and I hoped that he felt a little better when he was out on the street. That he was suffering nothing more than the melancholy dreaminess of a distracted, middle-aged cop. And I wondered, as Moon must, how many years did he have left before he stumbled, before he stepped through the wrong doorway and shuddered from the tug of a bullet never seen, never heard.
    Now I pulled on pants and wandered through Moon’s apartment, my hair wet and smelling like a field of poppies from Moon’s shampoo. The average person has a serious accumulation of shit. Personal shit and sentimental shit. Valuable shit and shit they don’t need. But Moon had almost nothing that was his. Nothing to remind him of anything or anyone. He had a couch, a chair, a television. He had a screwed-up cat. He had a broken record player. He had a punching bag, a heavy one. It was covered in a year’s worth of dust, though. Dead skin and cat fuzz and pollen. I gave it a passing jab and choked in the sudden, swarming cloud. Moon has a dartboard but no darts that I could find. There were no photographs, no trinkets. There were no books. I remembered that Moon bought one used book at a time and when he was done with it he traded it for another one.
    The apartment was just silent. A wide pocket of nothing, a vacuum.
    I could feel a mild panic attack coming on and I suddenly wanted to be sure that Moon was not dead or gone. I walked down the hall to the master bedroom and nudged the door open. Moon slept flat on his back, snoring softly. A small television was placed precariously atop a