Mr. Dowling nods violently, then sticks a finger up each nostril, picking both at the same time. Kinslow acts as if that’s totally normal. Which, for the clown, it is.
“Albrecht Dowling, do you take B Smith to love and to hold, to share your mind and empire with, to rule by your side and hold dominion over everyone here?”
Mr. Dowling rolls up the snot he has gathered and flicks it at Kinslow’s head.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” the mutant grunts, then turns to me. “B Smith, do you take Albrecht Dowling as your partner?”
I wait for him to continue, but he stops there.
“Is that it?” I frown.
“Well, you said to keep it simple,” he chortles. “If you want, I can ask if you plan to obey and honor and share your body with him, but I didn’t think you’d be into all that.”
“You thought right,” I huff. Then I glance at the homicidal clown. This is my last chance to back out. He’d probably go wild and kill me if I turned him down in front of everyone. And maybe that would be for the best.
But hell, what sort of a girl would I be if I went and spoiled my own wedding?
“I do,” I declare solemnly.
“Then I now pronounce you clown and zombie, husband and wife,” Kinslow declares. At that point there’s a booming sound and the cannon shoots out the biggest ball of confetti I’ve ever seen. It slams into the wall above us and explodes, tiny white flakes drifting everywhere, covering myself and Mr. Dowling like snow. As I laugh with surprise and everyone starts clapping thunderously, Kinslow adds with a giggle, “You may kiss the bride.”
“There’ll be no–” I start to retort, but before I can finish Mr. Dowling leaps across, rips off my veil, grabs me tight and plants his lips on mine. As I struggle fiercely, I feel him push something into my mouth with his long, black tongue.
Breaking free, I spit it out and spot a thick slug glistening on the floor at my feet.
“You son of a bitch,” I shriek, slapping Mr. Dowling as hard as I can.
“Sorry,” he chuckles inside my head, flashing me the closest thing he can get to an apologetic smile. “I couldn’t resist!”
“Do that again and this will be the shortest marriage in history,” I snarl. But since there’s no point blaming the lunatic for his actions, I don’t take too much offense, and moments later I link my arm with his and the pair of us step down off the platform to parade among our subjects, accept their congratulations and embark on our life together as a happily–well, madly–married couple.
TWENTY
We don’t spend too long doing the rounds. I can tell that Mr. Dowling is bored now that the ceremony is over. He wants to move on. He forces himself to mingle for a while, since some part of him knows it would be rude to cut out immediately, but he’s an impatient bunny.
“I think we should retire for the night and spend some quality time alone,” I tell him, offering him an excuse to leave early.
The clown wrings his hands and nods eagerly, then stands on his toes and waves flamboyantly to everyone.
“We will take our leave also,” Owl Man murmurs, coming forward to kiss my cheek. “I wish you all the happiness in the world, Becky.”
“Like I’ve told you before, it’s B,” I growl.
“I know,” he smiles. “But how disappointed would you be if I stopped annoying you now?”
I laugh warmly at Owl Man as he retreats, then give Rage an evil glare, letting him know his card is marked. He flips me the finger and slinks away without saying a word. I don’t envy Owl Man his choice of assistant. I trust Rage about as much as I’d trust a sackful of rabid rattlesnakes.
Mr. Dowling treats everyone to a final wave, then propels me out of the chamber. He’s humming something–it’s a mix of several different tunes–as he hops along, dragging me with him.
“Where are we going?” I ask, shaking confetti from my scalp and dress.
“The bridal suite,” he giggles.
“Slow down,” I snap. “Remember our rules? There won’t be any fun and games tonight.”
“Of course there will. A wedding isn’t a wedding until it’s been given the full nuptial stamp of approval. But don’t worry,” he adds as I get ready to rear up on him. “This will be a mingling of our minds, not our bodies.”
“Yeah, well, that’s okay then,” I mumble dubiously.
Mr. Dowling leads me to a chamber far from his personal quarters and the cavern where we held the wedding ceremony. This feels like it’s on the outskirts of the complex, even more removed from the central hub than the zoo.
It’s a tiny room, smaller than any of the others I’ve visited. The walls have been painted white and there’s a four-poster bed in the center. I eye the bed beadily, but then I spot Mr. Dowling’s electrocuting wand and relax. Seems like he’s telling the truth and this is going to be just another mental sharing session. I’m cool with that.
Mr. Dowling keeps humming as he powers up the wand. I circle the bed, checking out the rest of the room. It’s bare, no flowers or anything else to show it’s meant for a bride and groom, but at least there are no body parts lying around.
“Hey, we didn’t have any flowers at the wedding,” I suddenly note.
“I was going to pick flowers for you,” he says, “but I promised no more killing.”
“That doesn’t extend to the plant kingdom,” I laugh.
“I see no difference between humans, animals and plants,” he says. “A vow is a vow. If I made an exception, I would find it hard to limit myself. Honoring my promise will be difficult. My only hope is to cut out killing entirely.”
“You know,” I mutter, “maybe this will work after all. I was skeptical about us–I still am–but we might have a sliver of a chance.”
“I hope so,” he says earnestly, pausing to look at me. “You are my lifeline, the only one who can possibly help me recover my senses.” He gulps, then flexes his mouth several times. I think he’s making faces, until he shocks me by moaning softly and doing something I never thought to hear.
He speaks out loud.
“You are my hope.”
The words come out in a croak, barely audible. But I can tell it took all that he had to focus his senses and force his lips to work the way they once did. I’m touched by the gesture, more than I thought I could be.
“You poor bastard,” I cry. “If I can help you, I will. I can’t promise success, but I’ll try my hardest.”
The clown sticks his right hand under his left armpit and makes a farting noise. I laugh. He’s not mocking me. He just can’t help himself. But, with my help, maybe one day he can. I thought I was doing the wrong thing before the wedding, but now I’m positive that I was right to accept his proposal. If I can be the saving of Albrecht Dowling, maybe I can ultimately be the saving of the world itself.
Smiling warmly, I lie on the bed and let Mr. Dowling squeeze a sponge over my face. He does it softly, lovingly, and it’s water for once, not blood—I suppose any sort of liquid helps conduct the current.
The clown lies down beside me. We stare at one another shyly, and in this quiet moment we’re a normal couple on their wedding night.
Mr. Dowling strokes my cheek. He’s calmer than usual. I want him to speak again, but he doesn’t break the silence. I don’t think he can. With a smile, he lifts the wand and looks at me questioningly, offering me a choice.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, covering his bony, mutilated hand with mine. “I want to merge with you tonight.”
He nods happily, kisses my hand, then gently presses the wand to my forehead. Electricity shoots through me. The world turns whiter than the walls. I fall happily into the void of our shared consciousness. He opens himself up to me completely. It’s a beautiful, blissful moment, one of the sweetest I’ve ever known.
Then we crash in flames and everything goes to hell.
TWENTY-ONE
It’s clear, as soon as our minds join, that he’s granted me access to the very core of his
psyche. It’s like he strips away everything to reveal his soul to me. He doesn’t just share his memories, but his feelings as well, his dreams, his fears. Will I finally see the horror that transformed a good man into a psychotic clown?
There’s a rush of images and a swell of emotions, too much to process all at once. But one face is clear in the tsunami—Dr. Oystein’s. It’s the first time Mr. Dowling has let me browse any of his recollections of the doc. I’m fascinated to find out what happened between them and how they drifted so far apart.
But as soon as I fix on an image of the doctor, something clicks inside me. I sense my brain automatically switching to a specific track. It’s sort of like when I used to focus on a crossword puzzle, but I’m not trying to find a word this time—without knowing how, I’m somehow searching for Schlesinger-10.
I’ve tried to probe Mr. Dowling’s brain before, on the trail of the venomous virus. He’s always batted away my awkward, amateurish jabs with ease. But this is different. Suddenly, without meaning to, I’ve become a battering ram. I plow through the clouds of memories and mental barriers, bulldozing everything aside, driven by a force I don’t understand to find out where he stores his apocalyptic vial.
My actions shock Mr. Dowling. He wasn’t expecting a concentrated assault. This isn’t the B Smith he’s come to know from our previous couplings. It’s not the B Smith I know either. I’m not in control of my mind. It’s doing things I hadn’t planned, things I didn’t know I could.
While we’re both reeling, stunned by this lightning-fast twist, I zoom in on the resting place of the lethal liquid. Mr. Dowling screams wordlessly and I feel him wrench away from me, severing the link between us. I know instantly that I’m in trouble. I’ve betrayed him, and I now pose more of a threat to him than anyone ever has. The only reason Dr. Oystein hasn’t come after the clown is that he dares not act as long as his nemesis holds the virus that could wipe out humanity in a matter of days if unleashed.
I now know where the vial is being stored. It’s here, underground, in a room that only Mr. Dowling knew about before I pried the information from him. He didn’t tell any of his minions where it was. He didn’t trust them with such sensitive details, not even Kinslow. If Dr. Oystein had known that, he could have had the clown assassinated years ago. But there was always the risk that Mr. Dowling had left orders for the virus to be released if he was killed.
That risk doesn’t exist anymore. Mr. Dowling’s cover is blown. If he lets me walk out of here, I could take the vial with me or just tell the doc to set some snipers on the clown. Either way, Mr. Dowling can’t afford to let me leave. He can’t afford to let me live. He’ll have to kill me. The difficulty for him is that we’re both lying on the bed, zoned out, helpless.
I try to will myself out of the mental zone and back into my body, but it’s impossible to rush the process. We usually recover from the shock at roughly the same speed, but sometimes I’m on my feet before him, sometimes it’s the other way round.
While I’m waiting for the whiteness to recede, I focus on calming myself down. I can’t afford to panic. If the clown recovers before I do, he’ll finish me off and that will be that, nothing I can do to stop him. But if we return to consciousness at the same time, then the one who is more composed will have an advantage.
I tune into soothing thoughts and memories. I try not to think that my life is on the line. I don’t worry about wasting this chance to return Schlesinger-10 to Dr. Oystein. I’m a bottle floating on top of the sea during a storm. If I get washed ashore intact, all well and good. If I shatter from the force of the waves, so be it.
Heh—the secrets of the universe as revealed by Zen mistress B Smith!
Time normally passes quickly when I’m bonding with Mr. Dowling. There’s so much going on, so many memories to tap into and exchanges taking place, that minutes fly by like seconds. But he’s not interacting with me now–I guess he’s busy trying to force his mind back into his body–so time starts to drag. It feels like I’ve been suspended in this void for hours.
“Come on, come on…” I mutter, imagining a hand and a watch, staring at it as the seconds tick by oh. So. Slowwwwlyyyyyy.
Finally the whiteness starts to fade. The material stretched across the top of the four-poster bed comes into focus. As I stare at it numbly, lips opening and shutting as if I’m breathing, I realize that fingers are clenched round my throat. Mr. Dowling is strangling me, forgetting, in his haste to kill me, that he might as well be choking my big toe. Hell, I don’t even have lungs anymore.
I chill and let the clown carry on strangling. I want him to think that I’m still out for the count. My fingers are tingling and shaking the way they always do when I’m recovering. I’m waiting for them to steady. Then I’ll strike.
As I’m gathering myself, Mr. Dowling pulls back and his face pops into view. He’s grinning crazily, but I can see alarm and dismay in his expression. He’s just realized the uselessness of what he’s been doing. Inside my brain he croaks, “No good!”
“Damn right,” I snort as he lets go of my throat and looks for something to stab into my skull.
Mr. Dowling’s gaze snaps back and his eyes widen—he thought I was still in cloud cuckoo land. He bares his teeth and throws himself forward. But he’s too late. The B is back!
As the clown comes for me, I swing a hand at him. The bones that he so thoughtfully grafted onto my fingers slice effortlessly through the flesh of his cheek and he pulls away, screeching.
I realize, as I scrabble after him, that I’ve never seen the clown in a fight. He hasn’t needed to get his hands dirty before, always able to rely on his mutants and babies, as well as the sense of terror that he instills in most people simply through his eerie presence. I know he’s a genius. I know he’s spooky as hell. But what’s he like with his fists?
To my surprise, he’s pretty nimble. Whirling like an acrobat, he kicks out at my face and connects with one of my fake ears, which stabs into my scalp. It stings, but I’ve endured way worse than that in my time. Even if he ripped the ear off, it wouldn’t be a biggie. I’ve been worked over by experts. It takes a lot to hurt me now.
Snarling, I throw a punch at the clown’s nose. He tries to block my incoming fist, but he’s too slow. If it had my full force behind it, I think it would do serious damage, but my hand is shaking, so it only strikes a glancing blow. Still, it pops the eyeball that was pinned to his nose and knocks him aside.
Lurching to my knees, I clutch Mr. Dowling and wrestle with him on the bed. We’re both grunting like pigs as we struggle to gain the upper hand. If anyone was listening outside, they’d think we were having a wild wedding night.
The clown latches on to my right cheek with his teeth. He shakes his head from side to side and rips off a chunk of flesh. I shriek and punch him in the ribs. He huffs and scratches at my eyes. I try to knee him in the groin, but only catch his thigh. He gets a hand into the hole where my heart should be and gropes around inside my chest.
“Sod this,” I mutter, and headbutt him.
He wasn’t expecting that. It knocks the wind out of him. He falls away from me, eyes spinning. I raise an elbow and slam it into the side of his neck. He chokes and collapses, eyes bulging. I punch him in the ribs a few more times for good measure. Then I get off the bed, wobble a bit, clutch one of the posts for balance and wait for the dizziness to pass.
When my head is clear and my legs are steady, I study the gasping clown. He looks pathetic. He knows he’s in dire straits. He tries to crawl away from me. I flex my fingers, getting ready to punch him again.
Then I spot the wand and smile. Mr. Dowling took control of the wand in all of our sessions. He never let me zap him. It was always a case of ladies first, even tonight when he was more tender with me than at any time before.
As the injured clown struggles to regain the upper hand, I turn on the wand and carefully–lovingly–press it to his temple. He spasms and his eyes roll. Spit flies from his lips. He collapses. I zap h
im again. And again. One last, lengthy burst of electricity, enough to put even an elephant out of action.
And that’s the end of it. He can’t fight back. There are no weapons in the room, but I don’t need any. I can drive the wand through the back of his head, or use my finger bones to dig through his skull. Scrape out every last scrap of brain. Go get the vial of Schlesinger-10. Find my way to the surface. Give the virus to Dr. Oystein.
The world is saved. The battle is over. The day is mine.
“That was too easy,” I chuckle.
And, as if that acts as a self-serving jinx, the door to the room flies open. My head snaps round and I spot the babies outside, filling the corridor as far as I can see. Their eyes are glowing red. Their jaws are gaping, fangs glinting in the flashing glare of a set of Christmas-tree lights.
“daddy,” they say softly, staring at the clown. Then their heads swivel and their gaze settles on me. “she hurt daddy.”
Before I can say anything to defend myself, they sweep forward into the bridal suite, the way they used to sweep forward in the plane in my dreams, and, in a wave of bloodthirsty white, they attack.
TWENTY-TWO
The babies swarm over me and drive me back onto the bed. They rip at me with their fiercely tapered nails and fangs, shredding the material of my beautiful wedding dress, which quickly turns a crimson shade in many places as blood starts to flow. I scream as dozens of them chew on my arms and legs. A few tear the crown from my head and start tugging on the nails that Dan-Dan hammered into my skull.
My screams intensify as the miniature monsters rip apart the patchwork of skin that Mr. Dowling stitched across my metal ribs, then start snapping off the ribs and digging around inside me, pulling out the wires and tubes that had been so recently installed.
I feel like I’m in hell. It was never this painful in my nightmares. I stare wide-eyed at my assailants and beg God to end this soon if He exists.