Young Writers Society

MORAL ZERO

PART EIGHT

By Set Sytes

HOTEL

The next day Red seemed quiet and sullen. As if through sleep he had had something stolen from him. He lay on his mattress and said little to nothing. Mr White went to the bathroom in the hall and showered and came back and Red was still lying there.

Are you okay?

Yeah.

Are you sure?

No.

Mr White sat down on his bed and smiled sympathetically at Red. What’s wrong amigo.

Red shook his head. It’s not just now. It’s all time. Runnin back and forth from the beginnin to the end. I don’t know if I can explain it.

Try. For me.

Red twisted his lip and took a deep breath and exhaled. I feel caged man, real fuckin caged all the time. It’s like, like I’m a bird of prey in the tiniest of damn cages, like it can’t even move not one feather but it’s got this strength y’know and the muscles never weaken not one bit, ‘stead they just get stronger the less it moves. And its eyes are black man, real fuckin black like some kinda jet stone I dunno. Red gestured vaguely like a magician as he talked.

That’s how I feel see, and I don’t think that cage should break, no I don’t, part of me wants it to but I don’t think nobody else gonna want it to. This is my outlet, right here, shit like what I been doin since you met me. Way before you met me. This is keepin me safe, y’know, this is keepin everbody safe. Sure it’s not cool, I know that, but it’s the best opportunity. And maybe I don’t tell my girlfriend but maybe she don’t wanna know, or maybe she does, yeah she would, but fuck, a man’s gotta have somethin to keep for himself don’t he? It’s that bit of sanity left in a wounded man, and what’s better – that she don’t know or that I wreck her to fuckin pieces?

Red stood slowly and reached for his cigarettes and lit one. He sat on the bed next to Mr White. A grey angel burst into being, shivering out of his mouth as he spoke.

Not talkin about sex here, I mean this shit would break her but there’d be no end to it. Should a man or even a woman tell everone everthin? Fuck man. The closest person I ever got to was her and she don’t know half. Should she? If I say it all then it’s like it’s all flushed outta me, you know? Like I siphon it off to her and she cracks up and can’t handle it and I got nothin left. A man gotta have secrets cause, well, what else is there to keep in the cage with me? Fuckin magazines? Ain’t no room to read, ain’t no room but to brood and keep to myself and shiver in the heat. Yeah that cage gets real fuckin fierce inside. Don’t nobody else touch those bars.

Red leaned back a little and crossed his boots. His cigarette blistered away in his hand but he had barely stopped to smoke.

I dunno man, my mind just gets so hot it burns, it fuckin hurts man. Like, it’s like somebody struck up a fire inside and is stokin it about with every thought, like these thoughts ain’t passed through but engineered in this huge foundry with steam hammers and hissin metal and everwhere’s goddamn smoke, y’know, and you can’t see and you choke and you can’t breathe and it steams up your goddamn eyeballs and you can feel them turn to fuckin jelly. Well, yeah. I think and I can’t stop it and it comes in like swingin pokers. My brain man, it goes white hot and glowin like, like I dunno, and my brain starts bubblin like some fella not me placed it in a vat, and if I let it I feel like it’s turnin to glue, this white magma or fuckin whole fat cum at some alien temperature. You see man, my mind gets like this all the time and I feel like I can’t see anymore, like I’m blind with lust y’know?

Mr White didn’t say anything but nodded vaguely and Red took a heavy drag on his cigarette and coughed. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fuckin rapist or nothin cause that ain’t how I roll, but that don’t mean to say the deviance in me couldn’t get stirred up so fierce that bad fuckin shit could go down. I mean shit does go down, but I fair don’t think I seen the worst of it. No man, there’s fuckin danger signs stamped up around my brain like a broken fairground or some goddamn industrial accident waitin to happen. I mean, I dunno, maybe Johnny has the right idea. In a way. Killin someone, the ultimate expression of affection. Lettin out the demons. Extreme violence as, like, a desperate display of love, you know what I mean?

Mr White frowned. If it’s so bad all this, could you not change, somehow? Is it possible?

Yeah I could change, well no, ah shit I dunno, but I’d have to want to and I don’t. I just don’t want to. See I hate it, I really hate it man, but I love it too, I love it cause it’s me. It’s like a drug and turnin my mind up to a thousand and droppin out is my fix. I need it. I would be someone else without it. I’d be you man.

You wouldn’t be me. You’d be someone else. You wouldn’t be me.

Whoever. I fuckin hate it but it’s me and I wouldn’t change that for nothin and she couldn’t change that and she wouldn’t even if it fuckin killed her, even if her heart split into a thousand bloody bits and she killed herself she wouldn’t tell me to not be me. That’s why I fuckin love her, and that’s why sometimes a man gotta keep some things to himself.

I think we all do, maybe. I don’t know.

Yeah, I know man. I don’t know either. Red let out a long sigh that was half yawn and half exhaustion from life and Mr White had to fight the urge to yawn himself.

A drink? Mr White offered.

Red grinned at last, and twirled his feet something ridiculous, whisking them around like the blades of a chopper or like some terrible breakdance until he fell off the bed and rolled to his feet where he stood up laughing a little. You buyin? he asked, his eyes shining. Yeah you are. I’m gonna find me some real hot ass tonight. Needs fuckin must.

Mr White wondered how he could go straight back into it after his troubled rant, but he guessed the rant itself answered that one.

Frustrations? said Mr White, smiling a little sadly.

Always, buddy. Always.

BAR

They went to the bar, Red telling dirty jokes and laughing along the way, while Mr White smiled, happy that Red was in a better mood. When they arrived he ordered Red a drink as prompted, and Red ordered two more for himself.

The feeling of relief in another’s lifted spirits soon changed.

Red got drunk quickly, very quickly. He did not stay in Mr White’s company but moved about trying to pick up girls. Within a couple of hours sat watching him Mr White couldn’t bear the sight. Red seemed desperate, a strange, lost dog, shot down by girl after girl in his frustration. All charm seemed a caricature, his grin almost pained, his laughter hysterical, his tomfoolery causing others to shake their heads out of embarrassment on his behalf, or pity, or contempt or disgust. To say Red was trying too hard was an understatement. Mr White could not say whether the observation was more cringing or depressing.

After two hours Mr White left Red to it and returned to the hotel, feeling defeated on Red’s behalf, as if somehow tied to his soul, if there was indeed a part of Red that was acknowledging his own failings that night.

HOTEL

I think I’m a bad person White, Red said, his head lowered and his hands rubbing over the sides of his face, contorting his cheeks about like a waxwork and his eyes all bleary and downcast. He had returned two hours later from the bar, looking drunk and tired but not altogether insensible. Mr White correctly judged he must have stopped drinking, perhaps run out of money. He came in and sat down with abject weariness on the floor, his back against the wall and his legs splayed, looking sorry for himself.

Mr White looked over at him. Why do you think that?

Cause I am. Red sighed. Sometimes I think I’m even worse than Johnny.

Don’t be crazy.

I mean it. I mean, Johnny is cold and rational or thinks he is and does things according to some bullshit purpose. I’m a man of passion. I should be doin good. Johnny does all this extreme stuff right, stuff you kinda can’t comprehend, kinda don’t even fit on the scale of good and evil, it’s just somethin way out there right? Like some bushwhacker way out there on the plains on his own in some storm. I’d say Johnny’s got no morality at all, that he just like observes it from afar as though it’s somethin fuckin foreign and amusin, but he does. You ever see him hold a door open for a girl? Or all these little other things he does. He’s got manners and such forth. I reckon he’s got this, this appetiser of good morals he carries around with him on a big silver platter, and the big fuck-off main course of killin is somethin different, and he hides it with this appetiser on a platter. Or like some necktie and clean shirt to try and disguise the fact he’s covered in blood. It’s like he thinks he can stave off judgement. If he prances about doing all these little bits of goodness it’ll distract everone from the death and keep him on the fuckin right.

Mr White tried to imagine Johnny Black prancing, and shook his head. How does this make him better than you?

I dunno, Red sighed. I mean, it’s like he’s a nice guy somewhere. I mean he’s a psychopath of course, but a nice one. Ah fuck, what am I sayin. He’s psychotic. But he’s off the scale. He ain’t even human. That’s what makes me worse. I’m as human as they come and what have I done with it? I done bad things, that’s what.

You never struck me as having done anything really bad.

Maybe, maybe not. It’s little things become big things. I bet Johnny never lies. I bet Johnny stays true on all the little things, but it’s the little things that’ll fuckin get you. Red glanced at Mr White and his face looked sad and red and beaten. Did you see that chick come outta my room in District Twelve? You know the one.

Yeah.

She was cryin a lot.

Yeah.

That’s what I mean man. She was kinda drunk, well so was I, and I persuaded her to cheat on her long-term boyfriend. I persuaded her and I persuaded her and it weren’t hard and I fucked her. When we were all done she wouldn’t stop cryin, I mean really sobbin her little heart out. You know what I did? Fuckin nothin. What could I do? I were the son of a bitch who’d got her into this in the first place. I just sat there sayin nothin doin nothin starin at the wall. All about me she is gatherin her clothes and puttin them on and cryin black makeup down her face and I’m just sittin watchin the wall.

Red crawled to the mattress and lay on it and smeared his face with his hands. He pulled the blanket over him. Then he turned to his side, away from Mr White, and he looked at the wall just as he’d said he’d done.

Did you want to do something? asked Mr White softly.

More than anythin, said Red, and his words were muffled and cracked. He curled up in the blanket like he was much younger than his years. You know how I told you that my brain just asks me if I give a fuck, and I never do. Well that’s a fuckin lie. I give ten tons of fucks, at least I do when I’m not fuckin turned on. I wish I didn’t. I wish to hell I didn’t, but I do man. I wanted to hug that bitch so goddamn hard, but what could I do? What could I fuckin do. I was the son of a bitch. And I been it all my life. And I didn’t feel nothin for her, nothin but guilt and pity. Pity that she let a bastard like me into her life.

You could change, said Mr White quietly. He felt sad, but more than that he felt confused and distant. As though he relied on Red to guide him through this world. To tell him that the real things were fake and the fake things real. That nothing was true except what was believed to be.

Yeah? Red said bitterly. If I wanted to, right? But there’s too much of me don’t want to. I can’t change man. I got this illness in me and I’m all torn up inside. Y’know, I push everthin into bein as sexual as it can be, and it’s like I wanna live in a world where everone fucks everone. Where everone cheats on everone. Where everone is a stinkin bastard and bitch and nobody cares and everbody fucks like pigs and nobody fuckin cares. And if I weren’t feelin such a sorry cunt right now I’d be fuckin turned on just by that. Fuck.

Red sniffed and moved a hand up to his face, seemed to scratch it or something and then moved it back down to his side. He shifted his weight about as though it was a dead weight and his body was something to lug sullenly around and connected to his mind only by a thin chain.

I’ve led a good life, he said at last. But I done a lot of bad things. Can you be a good man and do bad things?

Sure you can, said Mr White soothingly. It’s the intent that makes the man, not the actions. He wasn’t sure if he believed this or not, but he said it anyway.

I been lyin mostly. That’s the real sin ain’t it. The world breaks down from it. What kinda world is it where a guy can lie? One of betrayal. There’s no trust in anythin and it’s cause of people like me. No wonder Johnny hates me.

Johnny likes you. In fact I bet he’d warm to you a fair bit more if he heard all this.

Red sniffed again. Yeah, he’s got a funny way of showin it.

He’s got no way of showing it. It’s just his way.

Yeah. Well. I don’t get him at all. I don’t get why he does all that shit. How he can kill someone, just, just for its own sake, y’know? Just for the fuckin fun of it.

I don’t think that’s why he does it.

What then.

Mr White paused, feeling the wretched sadness in Red’s voice. He looked down at him. I think he knows that the best anybody can be is when they’re dying.

Red didn’t say anything for a while. Then, How’d you mean?

Mr White shrugged. Just that. I don’t think he’s got any hope in humanity but for that. Seeing the best in someone. When they finally come true. Nothing else matters then, I guess.

Mr White climbed under his sheets and stripped. Come on, off to sleep with you. You’ll feel better tomorrow.

Alright. Red took off his blanket and sat up and pulled his boots off, and fell back down. He sat up again and then stood up, looking at the window. His hands were clenching and unclenching. Mr White looked at him and his face was pained and confused. As though held by some secret agony. He stood that way for a minute and just when Mr White was about to say something his face dropped to nothing and he laid himself like an old man back down on the mattress and turned himself away once more.

He let out a deep, long sigh, as if the world had betrayed him. I don’t know how to live White. I don’t know to live a good life. I mean what’s a man without lies? How can you go through life and not lie? Ain’t a single person anywhere that could do that. He coughed to himself and then added, like the afterthought of a child, Life is hard.

Mr White looked at the back of Red and felt really sorry for him. He knew that maybe he shouldn’t but he did. He looked like an animal that had lost its mother. He wanted to hug Red but he didn’t. He didn’t know why he felt so sorry, he couldn’t put real words to it, but it was as if Red was not a man but some broken idea, some sense of freedom lost and betrayed and tethered in the name of goodness, in the name of some fucking thing. There was once a man called freedom, and the man had been forced to live.

Minutes dragged by in silence and they both settled further into bed. At one point Mr White thought he heard a muffled sob, but when he opened his eyes and listened intently he heard nothing more. He fell to sleep.

Mr White woke up some indeterminable time later, as if roused by some sound, like the shutting of a door. He looked around blurrily, muddled. Red was gone. No thoughts passed through his still dream-addled mind, and in his tiredness his eyes dropped shut again and in the morning he would have no memory of this waking.

STREET

Red moved slowly through the district. He did not make eye contact with others. He saw but he did not observe, did not understand. His feet moved without his control. Things appeared to him only in their image, without depth or value, useless in any respect but visionary. It seemed to him that he moved through water, but he did not feel perceived as such by others, in fact he did not feel perceived at all. They were only images, not really real, and they blurred and melded with his own dreamings and all mental ideas and prompts that burst like bubbles from the muck.

He saw hookers and trees. He saw girls and shadows. Mud and lights. Tits and dogs. Lust. Pink light and erection. Girls and lights. Grey and red. Buildings and erection. Anal and mud. Cop. Stone ground. Tree like a skeleton and a beggar. Laughter and crying. Someone stabbed. Red and grey. Rats around overflowing bins and hookers. Smashed glass and drugs. Men in coats and pink light. Blue light. Lust. Anger. Lust. Water.

Bench. Cat.

He sat down and petted the cat. It was thin and black and it purred at him, seeing no danger in his dull, unfocused eyes, in his sunken, zombie movements. He was another animal, an animal lost in the night. It looked up at him with shining white eyes.

You don’t have to be sick, Kidd Red, it spoke, without moving its mouth. It was low and rumbling and comforting, as if the earth itself was conversing.

Mmm. He smiled strangely. His hands stroked the cat’s head with submerged grace. He tickled it behind the ear.

You don’t have to be sick, and foul, the cat continued. It spoke slowly, wisely. You don’t have to be full of perversion. You don’t have to have a red soul. A red line coming down. You don’t have to corrupt and be corrupted. You don’t have to act more than you are, be filthier than you are, impress upon others a sickness and disgust not so strong as you play it to be.

Red shook his head, smiling sadly. It’s all I have, he mumbled. It’s everthin I have.

The cat purred.

There’s this . . . this hole.

I know.

You gotta fill holes up. Holes are for puttin things in.

The hole is not you.

It’s all of me.

Red smelled the scent of sex on the breeze and he looked up but there was nothing to see and he looked down and back at the cat. He dropped his hands from its body and opened his mouth.

There’s somethin just not right about this life. His voice was low and sombre. It’s so goddamn stale. It’s so fuckin banal and painful. There’s nothin to it. It’s just this whole string of nothin. Wasted potentials and empty livin. It all rings so hollow. I never been able to get over it.

The cat seemed to nod at him, and he continued, his voice cracking. Nothin means anythin, nothin means anythin to anyone. I want everthin from life and I get nothin in return. I have to take more. I have to take more and more and I still get fuckin nothin. But what choice do I have? If I give up . . . Well. Then I wing my way to oblivion and a graveside with nobody standing over it. Why do you think I push myself, push everone around me? I’m trying to extract some fuckin sensations out of life. Drawin it out like . . . like some blood from a broken fuckin vein. I’m trying to be goddamn alive. I’d like to experience life before I die, wouldn’t you? He stared at the cat through blurry eyes and it stared back at him.

Wouldn’t you? he said again, his voice mumbling lower and lower, turning near indistinguishable from the very rumble of the world. Wouldn’t you. Wouldn’t you.

BAR

Red slept until the late afternoon. Mr White watched Red sleep and then he wandered the street outside the hotel, blinking in the light. He felt a creature of the night that no longer belonged under the judgement of the sun. There was nothing for him out there and he came back and turned the TV on and once more it was pornos and torture horrors. He switched unenthusiastically between the two. Back and forth. When Red was finally up and dressed they went to the bar. This was Mr White’s suggestion. Red nodded and smiled but his mind did not seem to be in place.

When they had entered the bar and met Johnny, waiting for them as always, and had their first drinks, Red seemed to pick up, becoming animated once again. He looked at the women around him cavorting so close in their outfits proper and improper, women of all shapes and sizes and ages, all faces and all races, the augs and the implanted and the all-natural, those who gave him the eye and those who didn’t, those who wiggled and drank and those who talked seriously with each other, deeply engaged in more intelligent conversations than Red could follow, and he laughed and laughed. A joke known to nobody. Perhaps not even him.

His eyes lingered on the voluptuous rear end of a woman in a short brown jacket. She moved confidently and she turned as though feeling his gaze on her and she smirked at him and turned away. Red’s eyes blinked indolently and he smiled like a cat and swivelled back in his seat.

Sure she ain’t too old for you? Johnny Black’s eyes bore into Red’s.

Ah, for fuck’s sake man.

You never did explain to me why pedophilia is wrong, let alone murder. Johnny’s eyes glinted. Relishing the argument.

For fuck’s sake. Not this again. It just is, alright?

Ah. It’s one of those arguments.

Look. It’s takin advantage of people, alright?

And why is that wrong?

Because . . . It harms them. I know you don’t give a shit about that.

Tell me why it’s wrong.

It’s not right is it? So it’s wrong.

Fantastic argument. Must everything in this universe be one or the other? Why attach a moral value to it at all? If I pick up a coin from the floor and put it down again, was that right? Was it wrong?

You think killin someone is . . . morally valueless?

Now we’re getting somewhere. Should it be?

A fuckin sane person would say yes.

Don’t get me started on what constitutes sanity. Tell me again why what I do is wrong.

Don’t do unto others as they would . . . as you would not have them do unto you. Um.

How poetic. We’ve been through this before.

If we have I weren’t listening.

Of course. So . . . don’t do unto others . . . Why not?

It’s hypocritical.

Except they are not me. I am as separate from others as I could be. Whatever goes for them, it in no way follows that it goes for myself. I can justify killing others without supposing that I should then accept them killing me. We are different creatures.

Some things just fuckin are. There’s no talkin to you.

There’s that argument again. Some things just are. Are you talking about some definitive morality?

I guess.

If a majority of others think what I do is wrong, fine. But the majority ain’t never definitive, and claiming the majority is always right sets some very poor precedent. Johnny inhaled and exhaled a black puff of smoke. Now, if we go by internal morality, and of course, all moral judgements anywhere are self-interested, directly or indirectly . . . well any random choice of moral values could come about. Anybody could pick and choose anything. Taking socks out in the dark and throwing them into different piles. Let’s see now . . . Torture is good. Rape is bad. Am I doing it right? No? Torture is bad, but good if they’re hiding secrets. Rape is bad, but good if the victim’s a bad person themselves. Bad if they’re a woman, good if they’re a man. Thievery is good if you’re stealing from the rich to the poor. Murder is good if you’re killing a thief or a trespasser. Capital punishment is just fine. We must kill if we are to teach others not to kill. This is how it’s done, is it?

Yeah, just like that, Red said sarcastically. I can’t put it plainer then some things just are. I know you don’t see it that way. Maybe I don’t say it’s all for sure, but that’s how I see the world and that’s how most people see and that’s how I continue to. Tellin people there ain’t no fuckin definitive morality, that really ain’t gonna do no good.

Perhaps God judges us. Do you think he offers us that definitive morality, that he’s the final arbiter who knows what’s wrong and right?

If that’s what you believe.

Johnny Black took off his hat, raised up his arms and looked up as if to the heavens. God! he yelled out. It’s me God! Johnny Black! If you think anything I’ve done in my life is bad or wrong, smite me down as a wicked sinner else I’m going to keep on doing it, over and over! I will keep killing, God! I will keep torturing and raping!

Keep your fuckin voice down! Red hissed.

Johnny Black grinned and put his hat back on. If there is a God, and he is some moral arbiter, you got to factor in two things. First, there is no way of us knowing what this unknowable cosmic force thinks about what is right. He could be thinking murder is just fine and applauding whenever we get on with it. It is, after all, natural within us to rape and kill. He certainly ain’t been consistent with any punishments we could conceivably attribute to his divine interference. Hell, there’s enough infanticide and other divinely sanctioned wickedness in the old books to put even me to shame for my “misdeeds”.

But I won’t go on, all that problem of evil shit has been done to death. There’s the second factor though. Why should I care? God ain’t me. Well, he could be. Johnny Black smiled and winked. But I am my own person. My morality is my own to hold. I do not care if some big moral judge sits up there in the sky. I’m down here, doing things my way. Alone. Nobody holds rule over me. I don’t surrender that to anybody.

Brilliant. I don’t know why we have these conversations.

You don’t enjoy them?

I don’t know. I’d rather be fuckin.

A doer not a thinker.

Whatever. Red got up and moved through the bar to approach the woman in the brown jacket. Johnny and Mr White watched him through the ever-changing gaps in the crowd. They watched him appraise her and saw her look at him cockily, smiling with a curled lip. Soon they were in quite animated conversation, the woman laughing and Red laughing also, but with considerably less self-assurance. He kept shifting his weight and looked a little put out.

Mr White was the first to break the silence between them. Do you really think Red is a paedophile?

No, said Johnny. I know he ain’t. He’s just an easy target.

Mr White raised his eyebrows. How do you know he isn’t? After all that you’ve said to him.

Johnny put down his whiskey. If we took his conquests of teenagers as all the evidence there was, then he might be an ephebophile, potentially a hebephile at worst, not a pedophile. But Red is none of those. He does not value a child’s body and he does not value innocence.

Red said to me once that there is no such thing as an innocent girl.

There ain’t no innocence in any human. Any suggestion of innocence or right to such is taken as soon as we are possessed into existence. But that’s another matter. No, Red ain’t no pedophile, as some of society may be quick to vilify and lynch him as. Ignorant as most are in such matters, and yet perhaps with good hearts. Sometimes. But Red has no predilection for such things, no set type. There is nothing innate and incurable about his fetishes, merely the wandering lusts of the slavering dog. He just gives a lot less of a fuck about age than most people.

Does that mean that he’s . . . not that bad?

You’ve heard what I got to say about good and bad.

Red confessed to me that he thought he was a bad person. Mr White put a hand up to his mouth, as though he felt such a thing should be secret and he had in some way committed a small betrayal. His hand moved at the last second to scratch his head, hoping the cover-up of such a silly reaction was fluid to the eye.

But not from this, said Johnny, not looking at Mr White.

Not from this. Mr White repeated the words as if he had to ask himself.

Johnny nodded. Red is going his own way, as we all are, for better or worse. In sickness and in health he goes. But there is something ill about his manner. He does not believe in what he is doing. He believes he is living a crude and ugly life, full of sin and devoid of meaning. He thinks there is no help for him, that it is how it is and must be.

He smoked and closed his eyes and smoked again. There is only one person that can change Red and that is Kidd Red himself. The question is, is there anyone who could ever give him a good reason to?

I think I feel sorry for him.

Johnny peered at Mr White curiously, and then looked back to his drink. I advise against that.

Mr White said nothing for a while and thought to himself, glancing at Johnny every so often but there was nothing to see. He sipped his water and put the glass back down, observing the way the lights of the bar refracted through the liquid, taking on some new otherworldly quality that seemed to fit it better than before.

If he is not . . . predisposed to such things, started Mr White again, hesitantly, Then why are most of his partners underage?

Johnny paused for a second. Three reasons come to mind, he said matter-of-factly. Firstly, Red, like many men, and a lot of women too, is attracted to youth and vitality. He is also attracted to the enthusiasm of the young, the unjaded mind, the absence of sexual cynicism and the weariness of moral complacency that decorate one as they drag out their time on the earth. Perhaps also too he is attracted to a lower IQ. A simpler, less demanding . . . lover. Johnny said the last word as though he considered it ill-fitting of a man such as Red.

I’ve never heard you defend him like this, interjected Mr White, genuinely surprised.

Johnny smiled briefly. Don’t expect a repeat performance. He took a drag on his cigarette and continued. Secondly, there is the whole issue of the law, particularly here in Rule. That’s why most of us are here, to use this ridiculous place as a playground. The place I come from is a little . . . lawless. Actions go unpunished.

Mr White thought he saw the trace of a snarl on his countenance and a flash in his eyes, but then it was gone and Johnny continued.

The laws here are here to break. Even I respect the artificial freedom that it gives you, the sense of power over that which rules over you, that which you got no say in. There is some sense of personal victory in it. Even if all it boils down to is point-scoring against a pointless authority, in a larger world such as ours that pride of one-upmanship is needed to keep us on the level, to prevent the sheer scope of impotence from cracking our brains like eggshells. And Red too, Johnny added, can be quickly pleasured by the mere thrill of doing something somebody somewhere has said to be wrong, even if a few hundred metres away the same thing is now right.

Johnny took a deep breath and exhaled and then took another long drag. Lastly. Lastly . . . He breathed out a flume of smoke. Red has been acting at being bad for so long that he’s convinced even himself. If I thought he was intelligent enough I’d say he was even acting at having convinced himself. He’s overacting. He thinks this is all he can be and so he pushes, starving for attention on one side of the fence if not the other. Most men must see themselves as either good or bad. The former seems out of reach to him. A man needs something to be reckoned as. Red wants people to think he is worse than he is.

Johnny shook his head in silent condemnation, as if this need of justification through others was Red’s true vice. It’s pretend bad, he said. Pretend good and pretend bad in everyone, all make-believe moralities.

And you? Mr White knew the answer before it was spoken.

I ain’t acting, said Johnny in his smokehouse voice, stubbing out his cigarette in such a manner that it seemed to signal to Mr White some ultimate finality in things to come.

Mr White shook himself and looked up to see Red sit back down amongst them. He looked over Red’s shoulder and saw the woman looking over at them coolly before turning away.

What happened with that woman? Why didn’t you, um, get with her?

She were a bit too real for me, Red murmured, his brow narrowed. He reached for his drink, frowning slightly. I’d rather go for simpler pickins.

What did she say?

Red played with his hair and bit his lip. She said . . . she said she likes to see the devil in another’s eyes.

Mr White whistled through his teeth. She sounds like Johnny.

No. She’s somethin else.

She’s one of us, said Johnny.

Red nodded. I think so.

Mr White looked from one to the other but nothing more was said. He tried to see the woman again but she had gone.

An hour later and Mr White was feeling in a rather exuberant mood. Perhaps something to do with the succession of drinks. He raised his glass into the air and the other two looked at it lazily as if cynics expecting magic. He cleared his throat.

A toast!

Red picked up his own glass with supreme nonchalance and gave it a waggle. Johnny gave a long blink and then touched his own lightly with the tips of his fingers.

What is it?

Mr White hesitated. To, um, friends!

Johnny rolled his eyes.

Yeah, fuck off man, said Red. To sex!

Defying predictability are we? said Johnny drolly.

To anal?

You’re on a roll.

To us! Mr White exclaimed with affected enthusiasm.

Again, fuck off. Mr White looked at Red who stuck his tongue out in response.

To freedom?

You romantic, snorted Johnny. How about . . . to individuation.

What? said Red.

To ourselves.

Alright.

I like it too, said Mr White.

Uh-huh.

Mr White raised his glass again which had fallen considerably lower in the air in the preceding half-minute. To ourselves!

Red clanked his glass, sending the liquid slipping about inside. Johnny’s glass touched the others silently.

To ourselves, the others said in their own particular way.

Mr White smiled and Red grinned at him. Johnny looked at them wryly.