Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny Read Free Page B

Indulge yourself. It’s what we’re here for.”
    “It’s not what I’m here for,” I said steadily. “I’m here on business. So stand aside.”
    He didn’t move, his unblinking eyes fixed on mine, his gaze full of a malign intensity. “No-one ever leaves the Dragon’s Mouth, Mr. Taylor. Not really. They only pop out for a while, then they come back. Who else knows you as well as us; who else can provide you with what you really need? You belong here, Mr. Taylor; you know you do. Come with me. Let me lead you to your old cubicle. It’s still here. Nothing’s changed. Let me prepare the needle for you and pop up a vein. You never really left; the world outside was just a cruel dream. You’ve always been here, where you belong.”
    I laughed right in his face, and he actually fell back a step. “Dream on,” I said. “I’m a lot more than I used to be.”
    The Host rallied almost immediately. “Are you sure I can’t offer you a little taste, Mr. Taylor? On the house, of course.”
    “Don’t tempt me,” I said.
    The Host stepped gracefully to one side, bowing his head, admitting defeat. For the moment.
    “Be seeing you, Mr. Taylor.”
    “Not if I see you first,” I said to his elegantly retreating back.
    I looked around the chamber, and various significant details loomed up out of the slowly swirling smoke. The old place hadn’t changed since I was here last. Hiding from a world that had broken and defeated me, in pretty much every way there was. I hadn’t so much lost hope, as thrown it away; because hope hurt too much. The sheer weight of my life had become too much to carry, and I couldn’t stand to see my reflection in the eyes of my friends. I’d failed; at everything that mattered and a few things that didn’t. So I came here, to the Dragon’s Mouth, asking only for pain’s ease and forgetfulness. For the one thing drugs could give you that was better than pleasure—the cold, quiet comfort of feeling nothing at all.
    There were hanging silk curtains and embroidered standing screens, to provide privacy for those who still cared about such things. Tables and chairs and camp beds, scattered in little clusters. Shadowy grottos and cells cut deep into the dark stone walls. Blood and piss and vomit on the floor. And all around me, men and women and other things, lost in dreams and might-have-beens. Dying, by inches ... but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel much for any of them. No-one comes to the Dragon’s Mouth by chance. Everyone knows what happens here. You have to want it, and choose it, in the same way you’d choose a gun or a noose or the razor’s blade.
    And I had wanted it so very badly once upon a time.
    I shook my head hard. I’m not normally one for dwelling in the past or regretting old mistakes. The tainted smoke curling on the still air was getting to me. I moved forward, making my way carefully between the packed tables and chairs, and stepping over the occasional dim shape on the floor; looking about me for the elf. A few people turned their backs as I passed them. Either they knew me, or they didn’t want to know me. I didn’t recognise any faces.
    Two Hydes were fighting in a pit gouged raggedly from the stone floor. Overmuscled forms, with taut skin and bulging veins, they slammed together again and again, tearing at each other with clawed hands and bared teeth. Blood and sweat coursed down their distorted forms, and they grunted and snarled like beasts, while a few languid spectators roused themselves to lay bets on which Hyde would survive. The dead Hyde would be recycled, so as not to waste any of the drug. Junkies know everything there is to know about making a drug go further.
    A cyborg from some future time-line was main-lining a fierce and nasty future drug called Blood. Tech implants protruded from his grey flesh, discharging sudden bursts of static. His eyes glowed golden as they rolled up into his head, and his slack mouth was full of metal teeth. You can