The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.

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      “For what case, specifically?”

      “You know how the maniacs start, Clair. Bedwetting, fire—”

      Clair nodded to names on a whiteboard: four postmortems scheduled for today alone. “Autopsies are backlogged, Carson. The human kind. And I’m short a pathologist.”

      “Please, Clair?” I lifted the bag of dead cats and tried to appear needy.

      She shook her head. “There’s not even a case file to assign to the work.”

      “Clair …”

      “Sorry, Carson.”

      I was three steps gone when I turned and emptied the bag onto the gleaming table. Clair’s eyes flared. “What are you …” A tailless carcass caught her eye. She frowned and leaned closer to the charred husks that had once been living creatures, reading every mark and torment on the pathetic remains.

      “Put them in cooler eight,” she said. “I’ll invent a case number.”

      Gregory’s fingers tapped the keys of the computer on his desk, developing software for precision heat delivery in ceramic coatings applications. It was supremely boring. The company was located in Birmingham, but there was no need for Gregory to work on-site. In fact, he’d only visited the headquarters once, when he interviewed for the position. Because of his unusual health history, he’d undergone a trial period, but surpassed his employer’s expectations several times over. He worked an average of a dozen hours a week, though he billed for thirty. And was still lauded for his productivity and “elegant” shortcuts.

      He stood from his chair, stretched, ran a few faces found in a recent magazine – Congestion-free at Last; Travel Opportunities Await; Concerned About Inflation? – then went downstairs to find fuel.

      The carpeted stairs led to Gregory’s living room, low black-fabric couches and chairs with burnished-steel frames, the floor polished oak parquet, the lamps mere stalks with globes. The entertainment center held a large-screen television and the latest audio devices, including surround sound. The other rooms were decorated in the same spare and sleek fashion.

      Gregory had bought the house after qualifying for his inheritance. The first month his sole furnishings were a mattress on the floor, table and chair in the kitchen, an overstuffed reading chair and lamp and a television to provide items to talk with the morons about.

      Life had been simple and perfect.

      Three weeks after Gregory’s arrival Ema had visited unexpectedly. He inspected his visitor via the door lens, seeing a pink pendant floating between a double chin and milk-white cleavage. For a split second his knees loosened and his breath seemed to stick in his throat. Inhaling deeply, he’d opened the door with a broad expression from a dishwasher-soap ad, You’ll Say WOW at Sparkle-Clean Dishes!

      “I knew it’d take you for ever to invite me over,” Ema said, already apologizing. “I hope you’re not angry with me dropping by and—”

      “It’s a wonderful surprise. I’ve just been working.”

      Ema entered the living room. “Goodness, where’s the rest of your furniture?”

      “I, uh, haven’t had time.”

      “You brainy types. We’ll start at the stores this weekend.”

      “I … have someone helping me already,” Gregory invented, aghast at the prospect of spending hours in Ema’s company, his face going into spasms with the effort of matching her enthusiasm for each color and pattern and item of furniture.

      Ema clapped her hands. “You hired a decorator!”

      “He’s coming this week,” Gregory said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

      Cursing his fate, he contacted a decorator minutes after Ema padded away. The man arrived the next day, a leather-trousered robot that walked as if it were dancing. Gregory’s instructions had been simple: “Make it look like someone lives here.”

      “Don’t you live here?” the decorator replied, puzzled.

      Gregory felt his intestines begin to constrict as his mind raced to find the solution. Then the deco-robot clapped its hands and laughed as if in appreciation of a joke. “Oh, wait … I get it. You want a lived-in quality. Something comfy. No problem. I just need your preferences in style, colors …”

      Gregory retreated to his Faces room, digging through magazines and expelling gases from his painful tubes. Five minutes later he handed the man a page from a magazine. “This is it.”

      The deco-robot studied the page, puzzled again. “Danish ultra-Modern. Not what I picture as old-shoe comfy.”

      “That’s what I want,” Gregory said, tapping the photo. “It looks easy to care for.”

      “I’ll contact sources, show you photos. I’ll call soon with choices in—”

      “No,” Gregory said. “You do it. Colors, furniture. Everything.”

      The man showed confusion again, but Gregory spoke four words he’d found helpful in dealing with the robots.

      He said, “Price is no object.”

      The decorator said, “Whatever you want, sir.”

      The empty spaces had been filled with couches, chairs, sleek floor lamps, accessories such as the red glass vase on the mantel. Above the mantel hung a huge, multicolored mish-mash the decorator had called “an abstraction redolent of Kandinsky”.

      Interested in the odd phenomenon of hanging someone else’s scribbling on one’s walls, Gregory had borrowed books on modern art from the library. He now knew what Kandinskys were, but couldn’t understand why. The only works he understood were by Andy Warhol. Products, packages, people, faces, all reduced to flat simplicity and repeated endlessly in different shades …

      Warhol knew.

      Gregory continued to his kitchen and blended organic power bars with almond milk, honey, protein powders and vitamins, drinking the foaming concoction. He felt a rumble in his bowels as the food filled his stomach, a sharp pain in his tubes, the new food pressing vapors from his body. His knees loosened and his face went slack. His hands began to shake and long-gone voices filled his mind.

      “You have splendid vodka tonight. And such food!”

      “Carnati, piftie, mamaliga. Tuica made from plums as sweet as your mouth. Call Petrov and Cojocaru. And, of course, sweet Dragna. Tell them time grows short and we must enjoy our remaining nights to the fullest. Hurry, then we’ll go select tonight’s robots.”

      Gregory leaned against the counter and caught his breath.

      What happened?

      It was the remnant of a dream, he knew. He had built a wall between him and his dreams, but on rare occasions images pushed through. He must have dreamt last night, a piece of dream finding a crack in the wall. He looked around the room, needing to focus on something beyond unbidden voices and pictures.

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