Stairway to Heaven

This is a terrible idea. This is the kind of thing that begins a sordid front-page news article or a ghost story passed down between teens. ‘Four children of our city’s mid- to high-level politicians were found dead near the edge of the underworld. They were on their way to see a sordid, semi-legal art show. This is truly an indictment of the times we live in.’

Brandon doesn’t bother saying any of this out loud. He said he thinks this is a bad idea when he first came out the side door of his parents’ mansion to slide into the backseat of Kai’s car and Kai laughed and said he needed to get out more.

So Brandon stays silent and passes the time it takes them to get to the show’s location staring out the window and imagining tomorrow’s headlines.

Their neighborhood is the best in the city. There’s no emotion or particular sense of pride behind that knowledge. If you weren’t aware of any recent world events, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was just a typical American mid-size city. The buildings are neat and tidy. No fences to be seen. There’s plenty of trees. People walk their dogs, for fuck’s sake. You could almost forget the sky is gray instead of blue.

Technically, the city’s called New Boston, but nobody calls it that. They just call it the city. There’s no other cities left.

That gets harder to forget as the car speeds closer to the underworld.

If the city’s the remnants of American society, the underworld’s their reminder of exactly where the other members of society have gone. The underworld’s an area both physically and on every other level below the city. It houses all the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free that the elites feel would be undemocratic to turn away entirely and nevertheless, it’d be unimaginable to fully let them in.

Brandon, Kai, and Kai’s friends (they have names, but he usually sees them as a semi-high, semi-funny monolith) aren’t actually going into the underworld. There’s a police

 security checkpoint to go through and a curfew and they’d check their IDs. They have fakes, but it’s better not to risk it.

No, the art show’s right on the edge. Close enough to be technically legal. Far enough to be slumming it.

As they get closer, the buildings get shabbier. The locks on the doors get more prominent. The windows get bricked up or covered by cardboard. By the time Kai pulls up outside the venue, Brandon’s completed drafting the speech his father will be giving at his funeral.

“Well, we’re here, kids,” Kai says brightly, getting out of the car. Friends One and Two follow, neck-deep in some stupid inside joke. Kai keeps the driver’s side door open to stick his head back into the car and give Brandon an unimpressed look. “Get your ass out here.”

“Do we really have to go?” Brandon tries, halfheartedly. “It’s not like there’s no pictures online.”

Kai’s look turns even more unimpressed. “There aren't any pictures online. I swear, it’s like you don’t listen to a thing I say. They don’t allow recordings in there. Nobody knows what’s on display other than what you can get from the posters. Stop being a pussy, come on.”

And, embarrassingly, that’s all it takes for Brandon to follow his friend into the house.

They flash their tickets at the bouncer to be let in. The structure looks like a mix between a nightclub and a private residence. Black, with some plasterwork left over from before the apocalypse. As soon as they step through the door, Brandon has to blink several times.

It’s getting dark outside, but the inside of this place is even darker. That is, until he sees the spotlights over the exhibits.

There’s one pedestal in every room, above the crowd. The one closest to them is—

At first glance, Brandon thinks it’s just a child. And then, slowly, he starts to realize the proportions are all wrong. It’s a birth defect. The kind that hasn’t been seen in the city since they made abortion legal.

It’s barely dressed, just in a black shirt and shorts. Brandon stares at it until he feels Kai pull on his sleeve, propelling him over to the next room.

There’s a dozen exhibits and each one’s more horrifying than the last.

Twin girls joined at their hips.

A grown man with limbs as thin and frail as paper, folding himself into increasingly unlikely shapes.

People without limbs. People with tails. Something that looks like a child with stubby wings growing out of its shoulder blades. Brandon isn’t even sure that it’s alive until it moves.

The last room holds a woman whose entire body has been horrifically burned. She stares down at her audience through empty melted eye sockets.

Brandon has to hold a fist to his mouth for a few minutes until he’s sure he isn’t going to vomit.

That’s when Kai pulls him along to a side door.

There’s a bouncer at this one, too. Kai passes him a stack of meal tokens and, just like that, the door’s open.

Brandon’s about to ask what makes this room worth paying extra when he gets pushed into it.

There’s a table with a variety of weapons. A butcher knife, throwing stars, daggers, a scalpel, a pistol, a rifle.

There’s a stool in the center of the room.

And on the stool, there’s a person. They’re about Brandon’s age, twenty or so. They’ve got close-cropped hair that’s been bleached blond, with vague hints of reddish brown at the roots. Their skin is pale white and their eyes seem to be sunken in, surrounded by shadows. They’re dressed in a white button-down and white, skin-tight pants.

They smile when Brandon comes in. “Hey, sailor,” they rasp. A shiver runs down Brandon’s spine even as he feels like he’s being let in on some private joke.

Kai pulls the door shut behind them. “Alright.” He rubs his hands together, heading straight to the table of weapons. “Which one do you want?”

Brandon blinks. It takes him longer than it should to break eye contact with the person. “What?”

Kai rolls his eyes. “What do you want to kill it with?”

The nausea hits him like a train. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Bran, don’t chicken out. What do you think we paid extra for? You can pick a weapon and kill it. It’s fine, it comes right back.” He laughs at Brandon’s expression, mistaking it for disgust at the person rather than his friend. “Fucked up, right? Puts all those other freaks to shame. You’ll love it. There’s such a rush. Nothing like it.”

“How many times have you been here?” Brandon asks. His throat feels hoarse.

Kai shrugs. “A couple. Here.” He holds out the pistol, evidently fed up with waiting for Brandon to make a choice.

Brandon takes the gun automatically and then just stands there, holding it. This might be the stupidest he’s ever felt. His face is burning. Why the hell are they here? What the hell is wrong with them?

“Hey,” a raspy voice says. Brandon spins around to see that the person’s gotten up and is standing in front of him. They’re still smiling. 

They take his hand and wrap it more firmly around the pistol, putting his finger on the trigger. He realizes, for the first time, they’re wearing white gloves. A sick contrast to the feeling of the slick metal in his hand. “It’s fine,” they continue. “First time’s rough. I’ll be alright. You’re not a bad person if you enjoy it.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?” he asks. His voice is strained. He feels, absurdly, like he’s about to cry. He’s not the one that’s getting killed.

“Not really. Here, you can do it fast.” They gently, gently move his hand and he lets them press the gun to their forehead. Once the barrel’s touching their skin, they lower their hands.

His fingers are trembling.

“It’s okay,” they repeat, softly, like a teacher talking to a child. Their smile turns a bit sharper. “If you feel really bad, leave me a tip, huh?”

“Come on, pussy, just do it,” Kai snaps.

It’s more of a muscle spasm than any firm decision that makes Brandon pull the trigger.

He quickly realizes, watching the puddle of red mixed with clumps of bone and brains spread around their prone body, why they were wearing white. It’s a striking image for sure.

He keeps staring at it until he hears Kai’s fly unzip. He looks over to see his friend shucking his slacks off. For the second time that night, he’s almost rendered speechless, barely managing to stammer, “What are you doing?”

Kai grins. “Well, we paid for the full hour. They’re not gonna bother us. Who’s gonna be able to tell? In for a penny.”

Brandon watches his friend kneel over the body. There’s adrenaline still coursing through his veins. It feels like the few times he’s tried cocaine multiplied by a hundred.

Brandon puts the gun down on the table.

The body doesn’t really look like it belongs to anyone anymore. They didn’t look like a person in the first place, did they? No, not really. They’re not people anyway. They’re exhibits. And besides, they’re paying customers.

Brandon unbuttons his pants.

They’ve paid for an hour. Besides, it’s fine. They’ll tip.

↠ ↞

M wakes up with a gasp to the feeling of a sheet over their face. Thank god for Arty. None of the other bouncers ever remember to put something over them before they throw M into a grave.

It doesn’t take them long to push the shroud off and sit up, gasping for air. At least there’s no soil down their throat this time. Thank god for that, too. Small mercies.

And then they look down and suddenly they’re not in a thanking-god mood.

Their shirt’s torn open. Half the buttons are missing. And their chest is covered in dried cum.

For a second, they just stare down at themself. They haven’t cried in a while. Crying’s useless. It doesn’t accomplish anything. Crying won’t get them out of this shitty place and this shitty job where people pay to do whatever they want (and whatever means whatever,

evidently). Crying won’t make anyone give a shit about what happens to a mutant freak in the richest city in America.

They cry anyway, one gloved hand covering their mouth so that it sounds more like they’re choking.

There’s a knock on the door. They pull the shroud up around their shoulders, wrapping it like a cape. “Yeah?”

Arty pokes his head in. Their grave’s in a separate little area behind the house, with only one door leading out to it. The bouncer sits down on the plastic chair he keeps out here for this purpose specifically and lights a cigarette.

To his credit, he doesn’t comment on M’s half-naked, jizz-covered state. He barely looks at them as he takes a draw and passes the cigarette to them. Their throat feels raw, but they take a long drag anyway.

They sit in something approaching comfortable silence until the older man rumbles, “You look like shit.”

They bark out a laugh. “Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”

He cracks a smile. His eyes flicker over to them and the smile fades. “Want me to ban those assholes?”

They wrap the shroud tighter around themself. “Did they tip?”

He frowns. “M.”

“Did they?”

There’s a sigh. He thinks they’re being facetious. They’re not. They need the money. Would they be doing this if they didn’t need the fucking money?

Some of this must get across in their blank stare because Arty says, “200.”

“On top of the 50?”

“Yeah. But M, is it really worth it?”

They take another drag and pass him the cigarette, standing up. “Get out. I’m not decent.”

He scoffs and heads for the door. “You’re never decent.”

They cheerfully flip him off as he leaves.

It takes them about half an hour to get all the cum off. Another hour to come close to feeling clean again.

250 meal tickets.

Even trade.

↠ ↞

They do shows at night, so, in the morning, whoever’s turn it is to go buy groceries goes out to the rest of the city and tries not to get stared at by the normals. (After all, you have to pay to stare.)

This means that none of the kids are ever on the list to go out, both because the rest of the group wouldn’t want them out alone and because most of their differences are too obvious. Luna, the little person, goes sometimes. She can pass as a normal child and most people don’t look close enough to notice her. Most days, though, it’s M. Which is fine by them. It gives them a chance to see how the luckier people live.

It’s almost egregious, how well off the city is. Almost a million people living at the same level (or so they’re told) that most of America was at before the bombs. What

ridiculous extravagance.

They walk, bag in hand (everyone has to bring a reusable bag to go shopping, because New Boston cares about the environment), towards the market. Every time they do this, Arty offers to write them a list. Every time, they tell him they can remember everything. Every time, they forget at least one thing, but that’s really part of the fun.

The twins, Alice and Bea, want whatever chocolate M can find. They don’t really have enough to be buying chocolate unplanned, but the 250 from last night will cover a nice bag of Snickers. (They’re not branded. Of course they aren’t, but they’re basically Snickers.)

Luna needs shampoo.

Arty’s out of cigarettes.

The other bouncers want booze. Again. M’s not buying that. They also want sandwiches, which they’ll allow.

Venus wants a new T-shirt. She can’t see what they say, but she loves graphics. (Ridiculous. They have people putting silly phrases on T-shirts when the underworld’s starving. This is good, M reminds themself. This is what a good life looks like. This is what a good city is.)

Zack wants pizza. He’s eight. Of course he does. They’re getting him some broccoli and he’ll have to eat one before he gets the other.

Emma wants challah bread. Zoey wants strawberries. Will needs more pain meds.

And, as ever, M needs some more formaldehyde.

It’s a nice day. The birds are singing (there’s birds in New Boston, miraculously, horribly). They don’t hate it here.

They walk into the market and immediately lock eyes with one of the boys who tipped them 200 meal tickets yesterday.

He stares, guilty and pale.

They stare back, stony and sharp.

He turns tail and leaves the market.

They take a breath, closing their eyes. It’s a good city. It’s a good day. It’s a nice walk.

They start picking out groceries.

They forget the strawberries. Zoey forgives them.

↠ ↞

The underworld is awful. Everything’s awful these days, but the underworld seems worse because it’s next to something that’s so close to functioning. It wouldn’t seem so bad by itself, but the juxtaposition to society makes it a shantytown.

It’s the remnants of Old Boston (which the old people called just Boston, because they had the luxury of not having to think about what would come after them), bombed out and rebuilt with much worse materials. They say that the city used to have buildings called ‘skyscrapers’. You can still see a couple where they sank down into their foundations and then toppled over, floors intact. Nowadays, people live in the collapsed apartments, old walls used as floors and ceilings, windows used as doorways. There’s vegetation everywhere, plants that never existed in nature. Then again, radiation is natural too.

M slows down in their walk, as a two-headed rat runs by in the gutter. Two-headed things used to only survive a couple days, the medical books say, when they can find them.

The sight of the thing that isn’t supposed to be alive reminds them of Jude. The last time they saw him, he was sitting out in the cold, so still that the snow had collected on his shoulders and head. He was pale as the sky. It hurt to look at him too long.

They had to stay twenty feet away and wear gloves. Seb had gone through the sores by that point and they didn’t bother him anymore. He rolled up to the other boy and told him that if he froze solid, he’d be a pain to bury. Jude didn’t reply, but his smile got just a little wider.

It was around then that M knew they had to leave.

Them and their brothers have all been through something so awful that nobody would be able to imagine what the events had even been, let alone what they had felt like. They’d all three of them crawled out of the same grave.

Then again, so had Alice. And Alice had never wanted anything to do with any of them.

But the three of them: M, Seb, and Jude. They’d always been a unit. Ever since the other twenty-one of them died. They’re a triangle, the strongest shape.

So why did M leave to go to this city they hate and be raped by strangers almost every night except Saturday, the lord’s day?

Well. Jude is a human piece of graphite. Touching him would kill most humans. He’s been radiating out whatever the scientists pumped into him for almost twenty years now and it shows no sign of decaying. At least, not quickly. And he’s insane. Obviously, anybody would be insane if they were in that much pain for that long, and M knows he should be terrifying, but he isn’t for the simple fact that they love him.

And Seb is crippled, but he’s stronger than ten humans combined. He can make his wheelchair move as fast as a car (back when more people had cars). He never misses when he shoots.

And M’s just M. Who else would they be?

(On the rare occasion that they’re alive during the night, they stare up at the ceiling and carefully don’t think. Seb makes fun of them for crying all the time when they were children, but he doesn’t know. They have to believe he doesn’t know what happened, or they’ll have to stop loving him.)

They sit in what passes for a park, outside a little daycare center where the underworld’s children go while their parents are at work. There’s trees, carefully tended, somebody’s pride and joy. Flowers, small and hardy, weeds mostly. A community garden full of unnatural things.

They would love it if they didn’t know how the other half (the other 20% to this 80) lives. Their vindictive pettiness is like a baby. They hold it to their chest and nurture it an ever so tenderly make sure that it gets stronger. It’s the only luxury they let themself possess.

The bell rings, faintly audible through the schoolhouse walls. Kids come flooding out, five to twelve years old. The school is underfunded in the same way everything is ‘under’ here. M watches a thirteen year old girl without arms snap at a younger child to hang on to her sleeve.

The young kid looks at M, that unsure five-year-old expression that says they haven’t decided whether to cry.

M grins, showing their teeth.

The kid laughs, delighted, and they see that their tongue is forked.

The older girl catches M’s eye and pulls her sibling along, suddenly faster. She knows that if their parents ever run out of meal tickets, she and the young kid might be put up on display along with M.

M gets up and starts to make their way up, up, up to the edge of the underworld. There’s a long staircase leading to the checkpoints where a line of day-laborers is waiting to get home. On the brick wall where the line is leaning or sitting or resting their weight, someone’s scrawled the words, ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

M’s mouth twists. Heaven. What a fucking joke.

↠ ↞

The formaldehyde injections were painful at first. Now that most of their nerve endings have rotted away, only the skin at the edge of the rot still screams in agony. It’s better.

They stab the syringe into their shoulder; the veins lower down long ago having decayed. There’s an almost instant relief at the cool sensation trickling beneath their skin, numbing everything. They tip their head against the headrest of their only comfortable chair, worn and shabby as it is, and exhale for what feels like the first time that day.

They don’t have to open their eyes to know that the hesitant gait footsteps belong to Venus. The burned woman is probably their best friend, by virtue of proximity. “What,” they say, not moving.

“Are you done doping up?” she asks. “We’ve gotta get ready for tonight’s show.”

“No,” they reply, purposefully flippant. “I don’t think so. I’m tired. I don’t feel like whoring myself out tonight.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Miss Ma’am.” Venus sits down on the floor, poking at M’s leg. “I’ll tell everyone to cancel the festivities. Heaven forbid you don’t feel like it. Not when you have so many other career options you could go to.”

“Alright, alright,” M mutters, using their foot to push the woman away as they finally open their eyes. “You’re laying it on a little thick. I got it. I’ll be up.”

She snorts out a laugh. As she listens to M putting the syringe kit away, the remaining good humor fades like tea leaves in a cup left unattended. “How bad is it?” she asks.

M looks down at their arms and considers lying to the blind woman...but what’s the point? She knows exactly how bad it is. Black rot has grasped its way up to their collarbones. Their fingers are starting to get bloated. Skin’s been sloughing off for weeks now. Their feet aren’t much better off. It only gets worse with every time they die—and they die eight times a week.

“Bad,” they say.

“You could take a night off,” she offers. “He’d let you if it means you get to keep making him money later.”

They give her an unimpressed look she can’t see. “Freaks are a dime a dozen around here.”

“Not like you. Most freaks don’t come back to life once you gut them.”

They push themself up to their feet. Venus is smart; she’s talked about her time at college in Old Boston before, about her useless Humanities degree that hadn’t gotten her shit except a job as an elementary school teacher that barely paid the rent for her and her cat even before the bombs had come. She’s smart, but she didn’t grow up Poor. Lower-case poor, sure: starving artist poor, try-hard student poor. But not Poor. She never knew what it is to work yourself to the bone and through the bone because you simply have no other choice. M tries not to hold it against her.

“Get out,” they say, just light enough to be playful. “I have to make myself decent.”

“You’re never decent.” With that, Venus gets up and lets the door slam behind her.

M looks at themself in the mirror and tries not to scream. They could go down to New York. Just go down there. They’d learn to live with the radiation until it stopped affecting them. They’d get to have Jude’s head in their lap and Seb’s jokes hanging around them like smoke, they wouldn’t have to do this anymore because deep down, deep deep down, M knows that they don’t want to die.

It’s the kind of knowledge that would wreck them if spoken aloud because what’s the point of knowing something impossible? Voicing it would just be admitting that they’re miserable, that they hate the situation they have no choice but to stay in.

But they do. Staring at their blackened arms, dear god, they know they do. And if going to their siblings didn’t mean admitting that they can’t take care of themself, on their own merits, such as they are...well, then things would be different.

M starts cleaning the weapons. Things have always been the same.

↠ ↞

It takes them a second to recognize the man. When he walks in, they have their smile already in place: polite and friendly but just mysterious enough to be seductive. And then they realize it’s the prick who left them with dried cum all over their clothes and the smile curdles.

He avoids eye contact with them, heading straight for the weapons table. He was so meek and timid last time. He doesn’t look timid when he picks up the butcher knife. “I wanted to see,” he says, still not looking at them. “If it’d feel different when it’s a knife, y’know?”

They make their body still. Sit in the chair. Move if he tells them. They’ve been doing this job for a while. “It definitely feels different to me,” they say, trying for playful and landing at bitter.

He looks up, then. “Yeah, but you can’t really feel it,” he says. It’s not a question. Clearly he’s already convinced himself of the truth of that statement.

Still, they open their mouth to contradict him just as he swings the blade. They thought they’d eradicated all the self-preservation reflexes out of their nervous system, but one of their arms still flies up to block the blade, sending it into the bone of their forearm.

His brows furrow. He looks like a child who hasn’t gotten the present they asked for.

“You can’t fight back.”

It’s that, more than the pain. Him telling them that they simply can’t. Of course they can’t. They were made to be the runt of the litter, the one who’s smart and not strong, the one who has to rely on their siblings for every fucking thing, the only useful quality they have is dying—

“Why?” they snap. “What are you going to do? Kill me?” If Seb were here, he’d tear the man apart with claws and teeth. If Jude were here—if Jude were here, the man would already be dead, a squealing, pale mess on the ground. But it’s M. It’s M and they can only talk. “How does it feel knowing you have to kill someone just to get your dick in them? Nobody else will take it? You’re a decent-looking guy, you’ve got money; if no woman will agree to fuck you, there must be something deeply wrong with you. Do you ever think about that, late at night? Stare at the ceiling and wonder what the fuck is in your head to make you so damn sick?”

“You fucking bitch,” he says, his voice getting shaky as he reverts to known patterns of behavior. “See if I ever come here again. See if you ever get my money, I’ll complain to your fucking boss—”

“Yeah, do that,” they say. For some reason, they feel calm. They feel like, impossibly, they have some power here. “Tell him. Tell everybody that you paid for the undead whore and they didn’t let you jack off onto their body without putting up a fight. Have your daddy sue the fucking establishment.”

They have a second to see the fear in his eyes before the knife hits the side of their head.

↠ ↞

They wake up unmolested.

It feels like a victory until they take their shirt off and the rot is up to their neck.

Thomas Malinovsky (he/him) is a Russian-American writer currently residing in Northern Virginia. His work is scheduled to be published in Anarchist Fictions Journal and has been in George Mason University’s Volition and The Forge. He is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Government and English at GMU, where he works as a consultant at the Writing Center.