Young Writers Society

MORAL ZERO

PART FOUR

By Set Sytes

BAR

They found Johnny Black in the bar the next day. Sat in the same spot. He watched them come to him and he nodded slightly as they sat down next to him. They didn’t know why they came to him. They didn’t think. They just did.

The usual, said Red.

What’s that? said the bartender.

Oh. Rum and mixer. The orange one. That one, yeah. Iceless. No ice.

And for you? The bartender looked at Mr White.

He’ll have the same.

Red gave his card and they swiped it and he signed his scrawl and got cashback and Mr White thanked them both.

Where did you go? asked Mr White nervously, turning to Johnny. Last night, I mean.

Johnny shrugged. Somewhere. He was sipping his whiskey and he was staring at the wood of the bar top.

I bet you got up to some sick shit, said Red. Another grand adventure in psychopath land.

Perhaps.

Red shook his head. I don’t get you man.

Johnny said nothing.

All that talk yesterday, murders and torture and shit. That was just talk?

What do you think.

How the fuck you live with yourself man. That’s just totally fucked. You got no morals?

Coming from you. There’ll be plenty baying when your neck’s on the rope.

I don’t do anythin bad. Not like you. Not like that.

If you say so.

Red rolled his eyes. Yeah I fuckin say so. He turned to Mr White. Why the fuck we here with this guy? But he didn’t stand up. He didn’t move away.

Everything is made up of two things. Things that can’t be done and things that can be done. That’s all there is. Things ain’t wrong just because somebody says so. They’re just things.

Red took a mouthful of diluted rum and reached for his smokes. What the fuck you talkin about. Course there’s fuckin wrong. Some things are disagreed yeah. But, like torture for no reason? How’d you justify that?

The history of ethics is a history of changing minds. Good or neutral things turned bad. Bad things now accepted. There’s ain’t no definition to any of it. No absolute. There’s nothing to know, just to put forward, to draw back.

Red snorted. What about somethin like, like pedophilia? You sayin that ain’t wrong? Red puffed on his cigarette, looking down at the floor, his boots swinging back and forth on the barstool and kicking the bar.

I’m saying that a crime is the product of its time. And, by extension, the law. Once innocuous things are now called evil. Things once wrong are taken back into the fold. Our law ain’t careful and measured, it’s something cultured in a vat. Sometimes it gets mutated. People only really notice when something’s wrong when there’s a disparity, when the law has stopped fitting the time and grown out malignant and pompous, and there comes a chasm between the two. Then there comes an ugly mood. Justice can’t have independence. There’s gotta be some modernising, no looking back, no conservatism for law if it is to survive – and it’s only lived by the skin of its teeth so far. Times it’s got so big and sprawled, so ungainly and unfitting to the happenings and prevailing moods around it that it has come close to collapse.

Red looked from Johnny to Mr White and raised his brow and then looked back again. And murder?

Ah, murder. The pure amorality.

Immorality, Red corrected, helpfully.

Amorality. Law and order and morality and all that are just fixtures to make things work as we’re told are supposed to. To make people get along. It’s a community thing, there’s nothing right or wrong about it, just what we give them. If God exists then that don’t change nothing, he doesn’t have the authority no matter what anyone says. That kinda authority is impossible once you give another free will. You can’t give a guy a choice but only if he obeys you. If he wanted authority then he’s failed. Why is it his to wield anyway? I didn’t give him it. I don’t acknowledge that kind of command, why should I? Because of a system of reward and punishment? As if the world ain’t already that. How can such a system make anything right or wrong? It makes people selfish and scared. It’s pure self-interest and that’s how we got to this state of affairs. A beautiful morality, that is. No, there’s no moral arbiter. There ain’t nothing but us.

What about do unto others as you would have done unto you? suggested Mr White timidly.

That old maxim. That old maxim presupposes that the “other” is equal to the “you”. It’s wrong in that. It’s an unproven assumption. I ain’t no other. I’m me. I ain’t the same kind of human. There’s no reason that I should treat them as I want to be treated. And even if I were the same, the maxim still holds no reason. Why should I do unto them as I would have done unto me? Because I’m told to? I’m expected to? It don’t make me a hypocrite if I never expect something mutual out of relationships, out of connections with others, and why should I?

Mr White stayed silent. He didn’t know. He knew that some things were just wrong, but he couldn’t explain why. They just were. But that feeling itself was fading, slowly. Blacks and whites were turning to greys. There was some vague concern within him that he may end up fighting with his own sense of morality, and perhaps losing it entirely.

Red had turned to face away from them both to better peruse the growing crowd, and became intent on analysing an attractive twenty-something woman who had just walked in. She wore a leather dress, skin-tight about her chest and loose past her thighs, and her face was assured and smirking. As Red was thus engaged, a middle-aged woman in a scarf and a long beige overcoat tripped over his outstretched boot. She sprawled onto the floor. Red uselessly tried to stifle a smile, and then said he was sorry. He was about to add that it wasn’t his fault, but stopped himself.

Johnny stepped forward, and leant down and took the woman’s arm. Let’s get you up, he spoke kindly, and lifted her to her feet. She looked at him, smiling, and then losing the smile as she looked into his eyes. She mutely nodded her thanks, her eyes on the floor. Red’s boots now withdrawn to hook on the stool.

You take care of yourself, ma’am, Johnny touched his hat respectfully.

She nodded again and managed a faint smile, and she scooted off, gathering her coat about her and not looking back.

Red looked at Mr White, grinning, his head back. Did you hear that? Ma’am. I ain’t never heard someone say ma’am in real life. Does he think he’s in some black and white movie or somethin?

Mr White didn’t say anything but pursed his lips and tried to smile with his eyes, wanting to humour Red without insulting Johnny. Johnny ignored them both, pulling the brim of his hat lower over his eyes and sipping his whiskey.

You gonna kill her later, J-man? Mr Polite? Red raised his eyebrow and curled his lip a little. He continued to be ignored.

You like the older girls huh? Her tits weren’t that big you know, Red sneered. I seen bigger.

These women ain’t your objects, Red, said Johnny coolly.

I never said they were.

Their curves ain’t for your attention.

Well they got it. Red peered at Johnny cockily. I know you look too.

Know much, do you? drawled Johnny.

Red ignored this, and pressed Johnny again. What’s the matter, don’tcha like big tits?

Johnny blew a ring of smoke and said nothing.

What, ain’t you gonna answer?

Another ring of smoke.

I’ll take that as a yes then.

You’ll take what I give you. The question is both impertinent and irrelevant to my concerns.

Ah. A fancypants cunt answer.

A more clever cunt than you, Johnny smiled meanly, and drew out another cigarette and lit it.

More drinks passed along with the time. Mr White went to the bathroom while Red wandered through the crowd, making cheeky comments to random patrons and trying to find the most interesting girl in the room.

Johnny was standing with his back to the bar when a short girl came up to him. She was dressed in a black corset over a black frilly dress, with pink fishnets and knee-high strapped red boots. Glitter was on her face and her hair was in pigtails, decorated in pink lace. Her breasts were pushed up obscenely by the tightly tied corset and the top of one was tattooed in little hearts. She wore a dog collar that sparkled.

Fucking hell, said Johnny under his breath.

Is that your friend? He’s hot. The girl looked in Red’s direction, twirling her hair between her fingers flirtatiously even though Red currently wasn’t facing her.

His name’s Kidd Red.

Do you think he’d like my pussy?

Johnny put his hands to his face and then removed them. No.

No?

He prefers assholes.

The girl giggled. Oh, really?

Johnny didn’t say anything.

I hope he’d like my asshole, then.

You talk like him.

Is that a good thing? The girl finally turned her face to Johnny, but he wasn’t interested in making eye contact.

It’s a thing.

Mr White came back from the bathroom and as soon as he returned Johnny left wordlessly. Mr White stood uncomfortably by the girl in the corset and looked at Red as he walked unsteadily off with the woman in the leather dress, navigating through the other patrons and stumbling into a table as he passed.

Why do all you women go for him? Mr White ventured. He’s, well, he’s an asshole.

The girl at his side watched Red too and smiled. Yeah, but he’s a fuckable asshole.

You sound like him.

The girl looked at the back of Red wistfully as he departed the bar with the woman. We’re all the same breed, she said, and walked away from him.

STREET

It was three and a quarter hours later and Red was in an alleyway near the bar getting fucked.

His hands splayed on the wall, dirt creeping into his fingernails, crumbling down as though the wall was the decaying state of the world and the fierce, half-pained pressure of his stance was that which was taking it down.

He heard the slap before he felt it, and the pain was quick and white. He yelped. Other things came, and he felt claw marks, felt savaged by animals.

Do you fucking like this? The woman’s voice snarled in his ear and his hair was wrenched tight.

He said nothing.

I said do you fucking like this, slut?

He grunted. He was loathe to answer her. He did not want to hear his own voice. To hear it would be to come back, to acknowledge who he was and what he was doing here.

She mauled him and he murmured yes, as low as he could. It replayed in his mind a hundred times on a loop, over each other, forming a dumb chorus, a cacophony of yeses. He shuddered.

It wasn’t enough for her. She thrust harder, and commanded him to tell her what he wanted.

Silence.

Slap.

Fuck off!

Slap.

He grit his teeth. Fuck my ass. His body felt a warm wash of shame. He covered himself in it like a blanket and his head swam and his body prickled and he stiffened and leaked.

Louder.

He shook his head desperately and then, Fuck my ass! The full length prickling again, like pins and needles all over. There were spikes in his brain. Thin fleshy spikes, probing and stimulating.

Good boy.

He was clutching hold of his masculinity as though a drowning man on a lifebelt, but it was slipping, slipping wet and sticky through his fingers.

His body was on some new switch, feeling the extension of her inside him, pulsing, unnatural. For moment after long moment he was one of his toys, one of his conquests.

But no, he was hers.

His breath was staggered, rushing, coming all at once or not at all. His insides were full, too full, as though the thing was going to burst out his throat in a fountain of white blood. Every instance of retreat he was hollow, an empty cave, an oblivion waiting for the universe to come in. In that half a second he lived a lifetime as a thing without filling. A vacant lot. An uninhabited hovel. Some stretch of desolation waiting for its purpose, its fulfilment.

The next half a second the world would move in. His body would explode, a shuddering apocalypse, an end of times that tore him apart. He was ruptured, intestines to jelly, organs died, and still the thing mushed his body up. He felt like he was backed into a tree, feeling it split him, use him, bouncing on the thing as the smallest ragdoll.

He felt fucked in his very soul.

The hammering continued as endless cycles of the universe born and dying, a rebirth from every death. The claw marks were near lost to him now, but the insults volleyed back and forth like rocks in his head, clanging against the insides with boundless energy. They dropped into his gut where he nourished them with his intestinal jelly, and they jumped up and down like a stomach ache.

He made as if to vomit, but nothing came, not even a retch. After a few seconds a thin hang of drool took from his lips and ran to the floor, the only part of his soul that could escape the bombardment.

The rest stayed for the show. The final denouement was at hand. One could not leave before the curtain call.

He was a lost thing, and nothing was blocked out, everything was integral. The woman groaned and the augment inside him began to release. He was flooded, a reservoir to her pleasure. He was infused.

Good boy.

BAR

We need to decide on where we’re going next, said Mr White. They were all sat back at the bar. Red shifting in his seat.

Who says I’m done with this one? Red mumbled around a straw as he blew bubbles into his drink.

We’re going to District Twelve, said Johnny. We got to keep moving.

Who says? Red shot up, taking his mouth off the straw.

I do.

We can vote on it. Make it a democratic decision. Mr White crossed his arms.

There’s only three of us you cock, said Red. How’s that gonna work. Unless you side with Johnny like a goddamn kiss-ass.

Mr White went red and Johnny snorted. I don’t believe in democracy.

You’re joking? Mr White looked aghast.

No.

I mean, I know it’s not perfect -

You can say that again.

- But still.

Still nothing. Every man woman and child should have their full right of choice. Any democratic decision leaves out the minority. Those figures in the minority might have some pretty damn good ideas on the world.

And what if they don’t?

And what if they don’t? Johnny echoed. It’s still their choice and they should be free to make it. Take that away and you rob a man of his autonomy, his will. He is no longer his own person but the person of the Majority. Every figure should be able to live without having to slunk along in the footsteps of some pitchfork group, should be able to live without someone else breathing down their shoulder and steering their knife and fork as they eat. When you’re a minority, you’re nothing.Everybody who’s been a minority knows that.

But the world would be in chaos! Mr White protested.

It already is, and we’re still no more free. It don’t matter where the state of the world goes, the first maxim is to allow a man his choice, and give him the personal responsibility of each and every one of them. Don’t make him ride on the coattails of others and have to put up and excuse and apologise for what others decided and counted him out on. It don’t matter if the world goes crazy with all doing their own mad thing. That’s the first tenet of the world. Once you got autonomy, then the rest follows. But that has to be set in place first.

And this means what for us? Mr White said helplessly. We all go our separate ways?

Johnny smoked and said nothing.

So wait, what about when someone’s rights infringes on yours?

Don’t say rights, Johnny sighed. It means nothing. It’s law speak. As if you’re supposed to be expecting to be protected by someone else and have them stand up for what you think you deserve. It’s a soundbite. We don’t need that. Human choice is an inalienable fact, is what it is.

Alright, so what about when someone else’s choice infringes on yours.

Let it infringe. I can infringe back. If you ain’t got the strength to fight back then maybe someone somewhere will make one of their choices be protecting the weak.

So maybe a group of people, murmured Mr White, tentatively, Maybe a group of people want to make that protective choice, or any kind of choice that they all agree on… and they as a group, maybe a really big group, infringe on you . . .

Johnny didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared at the wall smoking, and then he grinned widely. Alright. Alright Mr White. I see where you’re going. Then how about we got free reign over our choices up to when they infringe upon another’s.

You mean the choice not to be killed or tortured? Mr White said quietly.

Johnny grinned again. Aha. He beckoned to the bartender and she came over.

Yeah?

Whiskey for my friend here.

I don’t - started Mr White.

Whiskey for my friend here. He laid coins on the table and she went off.

Thank you, said Mr White sheepishly.

Yeah.

You called me your friend.

Johnny closed his eyes. No I didn’t. He fixed Mr White with a Look that made him go red.

We’re friends now? said Mr White hesitantly, after a long pause.

When did I say we weren’t?

So that means we are?

No.

You respect me now though.

Johnny coughed and leaned his neck back as if looking to the sky. Lord. What do you want my respect for?

Mr White shrugged, embarrassed.

The whiskey came and Johnny pinged it with his fingers over to Mr White. Drink up. And we can talk. But don’t get any funny ideas. There ain’t no me-and-you. There’s just me. And then there’s you.

Red had been flicking his eyes from one to the other without saying anything this whole time. Finally he ruffled his hands through his mess of hair and put his hand on his chin, blinking wearily. If you’re gonna go back to all that then I’m outta here. I ain’t got no truck with this shit.

With what shit? Johnny turned to Red, as if he had forgotten he was there.

With this political shit.

Johnny raised his eyes to the ceiling and down. Lord. All shit is political, Red. You can’t avoid that.

Like hell I can’t. I just get on with my own life. I do. Not. Care. About any of this otherwise shit. I just want to live my life.

Your life may well be affected by it.

Whatever. I’m still livin it. I’m doin it my way, by myself, with whoever wants to come along for the ride.

Of course. Johnny turned back to Mr White, causing Red to frown. I think me and Red might share not completely alien views, but perhaps his are less . . . erudite.

Whatever, muttered Red, and stood up. I’m gonna go find me some girls. He walked off with a thumb cocked in his belt and the other running his hands through his locks.

I don’t think he’s interested, said Mr White, looking after him with a slightly concerned expression.

It complicates his world view. Johnny didn’t watch him go, but sat at the bar and smoked.

His world is pretty small, Mr White observed.

Of course it is. It’s only got him in it.

Johnny had been gone for an hour. He hadn’t said where he was going he had just up and left. Red was half laid down in the far, shadowed corner of the bar, blowing blue smoke from his mouth. A thin trail of blue wisped its way from the end of his cigarette.

What are you smoking? Mr White sat down beside him, back from the bathroom.

Blue snake.

What’s that?

XE. Red blew another big cloud of blue.

Okay.

It’s a drug, said Red helpfully.

I know what it is, said Mr White. Then, after a pause, Why’s it called blue snake?

Red shrugged.

What does it do?

Red shrugged again. Somethin. Not much. It’s just, like, a relaxant, y’know?

Yeah.

You want a puff?

No thanks.

Johnny returned a short while later, his head down as he approached their corner. Red stood up like a jack-in-the-box.

Johnnyyy! Red stumbled forward and, before Mr White could put his hand out, wrapped his arms around Johnny’s frame, right around his dark jacket for his hands to clasp each other at his back. He was leaning forward a little, his head pressed against Johnny’s chest, his eyes closed and a wide cat-like grin stretched across his face.

What are you doing. Johnny looked down at the beaming figure pinning his left arm to his side. His right arm was holding a black cigarette, the lit end trailing the thinnest smoke signal up into the air.

I’m huggin you man. Red squeezed a little.

Johnny lightly tapped the end of his cigarette on Red’s head. A crumble of hot ash fell into the nest of hair but went unnoticed.

Why?

Because we’re friends and I like you. Hombre.

Oh dear. Johnny took a couple more draughts and once again used Red’s hair as an ashtray. Please stop.

Nope. Red buried his face in Johnny’s chest.

Johnny grazed the end of his smoke onto Red’s bare arm.

Fuck! Red yelped, instantly letting go and spinning off. Goddamn!

It appears I’m free now, said Johnny dryly. He moved his drink over a few inches to the right.

Is that drink for me? Red rubbed his arm, distracted by the movement and the slosh of amber nectar inside polished glass.

It is if you want it to be.

Red grabbed the drink, the affront of being burnt forgotten. Does this mean we’re friends?

Johnny sighed, loudly, and stubbed the last of his cigarette in the ashtray on the bar. It means whatever you want it to mean.

Is that a yes?

No.

Two hours later they moved into District Twelve. Mr White wasn’t about to argue, and Kidd Red was drunk and high on XE. He was legless and giggling and they had to carry him through the checkpoint.

DISTRICT 12, HOTEL

Mr White wasn’t a man of action. He wasn’t a man of words. He was the watcher. The listener. He had learned that the quieter you were the more you sank into the background, becoming almost like the scenery. People forgot you were there. And so they revealed more. That self-check that makes you act with a bit more decorum, a bit more dignity and integrity, perhaps a bit more ethically around new people, people not in your inner circle? That wasn’t there when around Mr White.

He watched, and he listened, and inside his head he filed reports and wrote biographies and analysed everything with a fine tooth comb, judging it against his own character, reading people and their conversations like fiction. Making the slightest of adjustments to himself, as if grooming himself for some intangible position, some omniscient all-acting job, held at task to build himself a model human. Emotions on the outside. The mechanisms for emotion on the inside.

He learnt like a scholar.

No, not like a scholar. Like a man of professional distraction, a man that clung to boredom and apathy as livelihoods. A man seeking life in others. He dissected people in his brain, and tossed them aside when they proved of no interest, as they so often did.

Johnny Black and Kidd Red had so far proven far more interesting than anyone he had met before.

He didn’t consider himself a bad person. In fact, he didn’t consider a good person either. When he came to think about it, he didn’t really consider himself much of a person at all. He was just a mind, a mind taking in the external. Things he knew he should care about he often didn’t, or felt that any care summoned in his breast was artificial, a mechanical response devoid of soul. He had emotions, sure, but they were principally devoted to himself, the him that was cut off from the outside world. The mind alone. He knew he could feel things for outside influences, for other people, but for large stretches of time they felt isolated and disconnected to varying degrees. He made up for this by what he felt was a tremendous bout of acting, so lifelike that it often convinced him, and was like second nature. If somebody close to him was upset or in pain, he would act accordingly. Sympathetic. Reassuring. Whenever he thought back to these moments, however, he was slightly paranoid that he was too stilted, too short on words, too by-the-numbers. He said what he thought people wanted to hear. By and large, he was right, and he was right because he had listened for so long.

Mr White was unclear as to his position in the world, but he assumed it to be completely insignificant one. He was a blip on nobody’s radar. He was a ghost in the machine.

When other people tried to engage him it made him uncomfortable. The less he knew them the less the comfort. The greater the engagement the less the comfort. Sex was a challenge. Thankfully sex was unnecessary. But he had the potential to enjoy simple social interaction, even to have fun, and when it was forced upon him by the right people at the right times it could dig him out of his shell.

Johnny Black and Kidd Red were the right kind of people. They were not your everyday men. They were fringe men. Outcasts, exiles. Men of horror and absurdity. Men free of tethers, men unchained. Beasts and devils. Geniuses and madmen. Psychopaths. Judge jury and executioner. Moral zeroes. Glorious fools riding the wave, the wave of shit and fear and nothing.

There was more to learn from them than from the rest of humanity.

Mr White found himself attracted to them, like a fly attracted to hot shit. Like a moth attracted to the light, that when turned out, flutters around blind and crazy and free in the darkness. They were rubbing off on him, their ways like musical terrorism to his ears. He was easily impressionable and always had been. Red and Black were easily impressing and always had been. He was being charmed, seduced, and he lapped it up in all his lust and fear and nightly sweats. Every time he looked at them he could feel the admiration nestling within him, or something like it, and he wondered and kept on wondering why there was so much to like about the very worst of people.

Mr White didn’t have sex. He didn’t fuck and he didn’t make love. He kept himself to himself, and all his greatest pleasures had been known in his own company. He masturbated religiously, devoutly and zealously. He was tied to his organ like it was the only touch he ever desired. It wasn’t – he wanted so much more, so much greater – but all of these were unattainable, because all of these things were imaginings. None of them could exist. All the women and men and more. All the beasts and demons. All the things, all the things in the universe were in his universe and his universe was a fantasy.

He had lived whole lives of masturbation. Shut off from the outside world, lusting and self-loathing and yet also apathetic and distant, his body feeling like some alien plant, some wall decoration. His mind hallucinating, dreaming. Great visions. Feelings of genius, of sexual dominance and submission, of worlds and their people conquered and terraformed. Feelings of disgust and love. A sexuality of fiction.

What had Red said on the night they had first met? The fantasy is everything. It was all about the fantasy. It always was, always is.

Mr White was weary, inescapably weary. But then again he always was, if not in body then in mind. He finished his glass of water and climbed into bed. There was silence from next door, and he guessed that Red has passed out.

Mr White sighed and settled down. He ran his hands down his body to the place where there was still feeling and gripped it tight. Another night in Rule.

THE WHITE DREAM

There was a room of pale faces. An audience hall lined with figures. They were clad as ladies and gentlemen, in elegant ballroom dresses and tuxedos. Their heads were all blank and smooth, without form or feature, like white eggshells. They all faced him in the centre. Nobody moved or spoke. There were no mouths, no expressions. It was as though being under the judgement of hundreds of statues.

Silently, the room shifted inwards. It got smaller. The figures got closer.

He wanted to edge away from the people but they surrounded him all sides. All four walls were shrinking in, almost imperceptibly. The people crowded. Without a single movement, they came closer. Fifteen metres. Ten. Five. Two. One.

They clustered in, their faces right up to him. He couldn’t speak for terror. His skin dripped with liquid fear and he felt even this judged, appraised with condescension and sneers, even though no emotion was displayed by the pale faces. But the mood was palpable and prickling.

You are useless, sir. The buzzing flat-spoken words came from behind him, and he span around, but there were just more empty faces looking at him in silence.

You are nothing, sir. He span around again but there was no sign of a culprit, no sign of mouths.

This won’t do, sir.

You are a maggot, sir.

You can’t be enough, sir.

You just won’t do, sir.

You are a nobody, sir.

The torments in all their gentlemen’s decorum came thick and fast, battering him from all sides and yet none he could see as he span hopelessly on his feet, weeping down his shirt.

I am me! he wailed.

Silence.

Silence.

All the ballroom dancers in their eggshell heads opened up mouths, huge black holes that took over most of their face like gaping pits of oblivion and without a single other movement they screamed laughter at him. Every figure assaulted him with the same conformed hating, mocking laughter, and it sounded like the tidal buzzing of flies or a thousand buzzsaws or the screech of static.

Then, as though they were on rails, they rushed in at him.

He woke up.