Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Sketch in my Notebook (Part 8): September 4th, 1998

I got stuck on a little storytelling bit right at the end of "The Crown of Pluto," so to clear my head, I spent the day working on "The Return of Dr. Necropolis" instead.  It felt good to get outside the world of Wanderhaven for once and--most especially--to tell a different, more adult kind of tale.

This one is pretty spicy.  You have been warned.

***

The Return of Dr. Necropolis

Chapter 7: September 4th, 1998

“N-Doxy Test Results (trial 2): dosage upped to 20mg.  Subjects appear to show enhanced signs of mating behavior versus placebo group.  Increased physical contact (i.e. touching, grinding) as well as increased signs of overt desire on the floor (i.e. kissing, groping).”
“Or maybe that’s just the way the kids dance these days,” Frank muttered.
 
He lowered his notebook and sighed.  With his free hand, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to banish the leading edge of the headache he could feel coming on.  It was no use.  Out in the pit, bodies writhed and melded together, hands in the air, hair flying in every direction, the thrum of the beat driving them onward like a pulse.  Lights flashed red and blue intercut with a strobe that made it look like the kids were sometimes dancing in stop-motion.  Frank had never heard whatever song the DJ was spinning.  It something about voodoo, spirits, God-knew-what, but it didn’t matter.  What mattered was the rush of the beat, the bodies twisting together, the gestalt fueled by alcohol and N-Doxy administered in 20mg doses and God alone knew what other kinds of drugs.  Frank shook his head, pulled his pen from his pocket again, and laid his notebook back on the railing overlooking the pit that served the club as a dance floor.  
“Despite best efforts, test conditions are compromised.  N-Doxy may be effective in the subject group, but the placebo group is mimicking observed behavior.  Impossible to control for other chemical variables (alcohol, etc).  Conditions sub-optimal for scientific evaluation.  However, larger dosage may show more overtly visible results.”
Or they might kill someone, Frank thought.  He pulled the bottle with the fifty milligram samples from his jacket pocket.  Still, that probably wouldn’t happen unless the kid’s already high and has some kind of systemic reaction…
“Hey!  You the guy with that shit?”
Frank whirled, slamming the N-Doxy bottle back into his jacket pocket.  He turned slowly, felt his face heat.  “What?!”  He had to shout to make himself heard.
The girl was maybe five-foot-one, with fierce blue eyes and the most amazing red hair that Frank had ever seen.  It was straight, parted on the side and hanging down like a curtain in front of her face.  She was wearing a thin white tank-top with a black gear on the front beneath a single word, “Rage”.  Her shirt was soaked through with sweat, and Frank could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra because he could see her nipples straight through the fabric.  Her breasts weren’t big, but still he had to struggle to take his eyes off of them, to force himself to look at her face.
She was maybe nineteen years old.
“Come on, man!” the girl yelled.  “My roommate Jackie said she got the best stuff ever off’a you, and now she’s in the bathroom blowin’ some dude.  Girl’s a prude like nobody’s business, so whatever that shit was, it must be off the hook.  How much for a taste?”
“How old are you?” Frank asked.
“The fuck do you care?” the girl snapped.  “I came to score, not get interviewed by some freakshow for the local paper.  You gonna sell to me or what?”
Frank shrugged.  “I’m curious.”
The girl stepped in close, let her body rub against Frank’s.  “Curious, huh?  I think you just wanna fuck me and then write about it in your little book there.”
She reached for the notebook, but Frank held it away—back behind him, so that her reach brought their bodies closer together.  “I’m not the one who came over here looking to score.”
She lunged and snatched the notebook out of his hands.
“Hey!” Frank called.
She started reading through the pages.  “What the fuck, man?  You runnin’ some kind of experiment or something?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Frank said.  He grabbed her elbow and led her back towards a quieter, less crowded part of the club.
“Yeah?  Says here you got a stronger version in your pocket there.  Where’s that at?”
Frank sat her down at one of the tables and then pulled the fifty milligram bottle from his jacket pocket.  He held it up.  “I got it right here.  What’re you gonna gimme for it?”
The girl fished in the pocket of her jeans.  “I got twenty bucks.”
“Twenty bucks?  I give you one of these, and in twenty minutes, you’ll be begging to go down on me.  How ‘bout we get outta here instead?”
The girl made a face.  “Come on, man, that’s disgusting.  What are you, like thirty or something?”  
Frank ignored the question.  “What’s your name?”
“Jaynie.”
“Yeah?”  Frank smiled.  “Listen, Jaynie… I’m just tryin’ to pay the bills, y’know?  Genetics is cool and all, but I got loans to think about.”  He held up the bottle.  “When I get the formula right, this shit’ll be worth its weight in gold.  ‘Til then, I’m just field-testing it.”
“Then let me have some.  I’ll be your guinea pig.”
Frank considered giving it to her and then waiting ten minutes.  She might think he was old now, but if he gave her fifty milligrams of N-Doxy, it wouldn’t matter in a quarter-hour.  She’d be all over him.
But his conscience nagged at him.
Idiot, he thought.  This is no way to be a drug dealer.  Still, he couldn’t help it.  He looked at her and shook his head.  “I’ll give you the twenty.  The other shit’s too dangerous.”
Jaynie threw his notebook at him and then leaned back from the table, giving him attitude.  “The fuck’s wrong with you, man?  I’m not gonna OD or nothin’.  I can handle it.”
“I’m not worried that you’ll OD,” Frank said.  “I’m worried that you’ll wake up in a gutter after having been at the center of six-way gangbang.  You seem like a nice girl.  I wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”
“Dude, you are obviously trippin’.  There’s nothin’ nice about me.”
“That’s the offer,” Frank said.  “You want the twenty, gimme twenty bucks.  You want the fifty?  You gotta come back to my place, so I can keep an eye on you.”
“You’re a perverted fuck, you know that?”
Frank shrugged.  “It is what it is.  You can bring your friend if you want.”
Jaynie stared at him.  “That’s supposed to make it sound less perverted?”
“It’s supposed to make you feel safer.”
“It’s not workin’,” Jaynie said.  She ran her fingers through her hair and then leaned in over the table and looked at Frank closely.  “Is that shit as good as you say it is?”
“I’m not the one who came here looking,” Frank said.  “But it worked for your friend, and that wasn’t even the good stuff.  I got the good stuff right here.”
“Shit,” Jaynie said, “I must be crazy.”  She stood up and grabbed Frank by the collar.  “Come on, let’s get out of here before I change my fucking mind.  And if this shit ain’t the bomb, I am so gonna kick your ass.”

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