Alex Shakar: City in Love: excerpt

MAXIMUM CARNAGE

A sentor is a mutant of craven science. The top half of a sentor is the top half of a man. The bottom half is a motorcycle.

Right now the sentors are attacking P.S. 96 in Flushing, Queens.

The only one who can stop them is Roxor.

There is a girl named roxanne. It sounds like Rocks Anne. My name is Roxor. Roxor spelled backwards is roxoR. It is the perfect name. The x is safe in the middle.

. . .

Kenny with the big head is giving his superhero report. His superhero's name is Incman. He holds it up. He reads from the back and we look at the front.

Incman gets his powers from different kinds of incs he drinks. If he drinks disappearing inc, he disappears. If he drinks India inc he teleports to India. If he drinks indelible inc he will not bleed.

Incman is nothing compared to me.

. . .

The sentors are riding around the playground. They have beards and they shout war cries and fart black smoke. They have come to kidnap the girls. They need the girls for food. On their black leather seats, they will carry the girls back to their laboratory and pump out their girl blood. Girl blood fuels their engines. In the laboratory, the girls will be pumped. Pumped and pumped.

. . .

Roxanne

The class is looking with big eyes. roxanne takes her hand away, and it lies on the desk like a dead dog.

Roxanne, Ms. Manolo is saying with her square mouth. Can I see you outside?

They start to crackup as she walks down the aisle. The talk is in the green hallway, in front of the closed door. There are thin hair wires in the door window, and thin hair shadows on the floor squares.

Roxanne, please don't think I'm punishing you. But what you were doing is not appropriate behavior in a public place. Would you like someone to talk to about it?

roxanne shakes her head.

I think it might be a good idea. Why don't you talk to our counselor, Ms. Featherbest, okay? You like Ms. Featherbest, don't you? She's very nice.

Ms. Featherbest has very nice handwriting. Like this.

. . .

The playground is filled with puddles of blood. I come, but not in time to save Kenny. His big head is a big flat tiretread of flesh and red hair. The sentor who ran over Kenny's head sees me and revs his engine and charges. He charges with a lance which is a pointy pole. I am not worried. When the lance hits me in the chest it doesn't even go through my skin. Nothing can go through my skin. The lance breaks in half. And the sentor says uh-oh. And I pick up the sharp half and push it into the sentor's curly chest. And it makes a squishy sound. And when I take it out again there is a red wound. And I do it again and I make a wound inside the wound.

. . .

Tony with the soft voice is in the front, doing his superhero report. His superhero's name is The King of Kings. The King of Kings comes from Kings County, which is Brooklyn. The King of Kings has all the powers of all the Kings. He has King Arthur's sword and the strength of Conan, who was a king too. The King of Kings has a crown and a big robe.

Thank you Tony. That was very creative, Ms. Manolo says.

. . .

Once I was a little boy. Some say once I was a little girl but that's a lie. One day, I was walking out on the shore of Flushing Bay, walking out on a dock of wood, tossing pieces of rock into the scummy water, and I slipped. No, I didn't slip. It wasn't my fault. The old rotting wood broke and I fell like falling through a trap door. I dropped like an anchor no like a rock into the scummy contaminated water, where there was a sunken submarine from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that sunk when the Brooklyn Navy was on a secret mission to Queens. And it was radioactive and so the water was contaminated with radioactive contamination. And when I came up out of the glowing gooey water, I was Roxor, the most powerful superhero in Queens, and the whole city too.

Skin like armor. Skin like rock. Nothing goes through.

And now in the playground, I step over a spinning wheel and a jerking arm, and I move into the battle, and I leave footprints of sticky blood. A sentor sees me and pops a wheelie and comes at me with a trident which is like a big fork. But I don't flinch, I don't even blink, and the points of the trident break off like the points of a plastic fork. The sentor skids out and scrapes his side against the scrapey playground, ripping off pieces of skin and paint. I pick up the points of the trident, and put them into the sentor's face. I put one of the points into his forehead and it sticks there. I put the other two points into his eyeholes. The point that went into the one eyehole falls out and the eyeball is stuck to it and comes out too. The point that went into the other eyehole stays in but the eyeball gets pushed out and slides down the sentor's face, down into his beard, and it hangs there like a piece of food.

I laugh. I pull out my sausage and splash the dead sentor with piss. I piss and laugh as the piss steams off the dead ugly face.

. . .

Holy shit, his soft voice says. What do you think you're doing? You can't use that. This is the Boys room. Can't you read?

Tony stands in the doorway. He is all bright in the bright white squares.

. . .

In the playground, they ride in a circle around the group of girls, and their tires leave a rubber ring. The girls are scared. Tony runs up to hit one with his lunchbox, and a sentor takes a stiletto which is a knife that pops out and puts it into Tony's neck. Tony falls to the ground and his lunchbox falls to the ground and opens next to his head. The engines roar and the mouths shout and one of them yells Hey Roxor I heard you once were a whining little girl a slutty whining little brat of a girl and that's what you'll always be, so give up, give up and join the other girls, and I say That's a lie and your flesh will be my proving ground, your sorry mutated hide is not long for this world you mutant and your mutant ass is mine. I pull the knife out from Tony's throat and from the knifehole Tony's blood spurts into his open lunchbox and mixes with the red punch leaking out of the punchbox through a straw. I go up to the sentor and I put the knife in so deep that my hand goes all the way in.

I take out my hand and the knife has blood all over it, and I say to the sentor, Look at the mess you made! That's very bad of you. Clean it up now. Lick it clean.

And the sentor opens his mouth and licks it clean.

. . .

The boys are on the one side of the playground and the girls are on the other side. The boys have their pieces of paper out and they are talking about their superheroes.

What are you looking at?

roxanne has her picture out too, but they try to grab it and so she puts it away.

Paul with the fat cheeks says go away go play with the girls.

suck my dick!

Shouldn't have said it. The boys laugh so much they never stop.

The girls see roxanne coming and whisper and move away.

roxanne goes through the gate into the kiddy park. It is full of animals. There is a horse, and a whale, and a hippopotamus, and a giraffe. They are made out of the same thing as the playground which is concrete. Yesterday, there was a little book lying on the sidewalk. It had pictures. It said once upon a time, all the animals were happy, and there was a boy and a girl, and they all lived together and played in a land with trees and grass.

Then bad things happened. But one day it will be like that again.

. . .

The monitor isn't looking and roxanne sneaks out through the hole in the fence and runs down the street. It is a windy day, and a newspaper is flying in the wind. The pictures spin and the words twist. What would it be like to be the picture? Or the twisting words?

The comic book store has millions of comics. The best one is Violator. Violator grabs the little badguy and first he takes his head and pulls it halfway off his neckbone. Then he jumps on the badguy with feet that have claws, over and over until the badguy is a shriveled up pile of skin and blood. He does it again and again until he is very tired and sweaty and drooling.

Uncle Edward has a blue anchor on his curly chest. Anchors sink but his doesn't. In the bathtub it bobs on the water.

. . .

Poor little badguy, you're no match for Roxor. You're too puny. You need protein. Sausage has lots of protein.

I stand with my hands on my hips. And the sentor opens his mouth and I smile. Everywhere in the playground there is carnage. There is blood and bodies and flames coming out of burning sentor engines. And Paul lies on the ground and his fat cheeks have been torn off and his skinny tongue is feeling around for them and he is crying. And the windy sky is red like a wound, and P.S. 96 is redder like a wound inside the wound. And there are broken windows, and there are booming noises from the guns because now the sentors have guns, and uh-oh.

That's not how you do it.

Let me show you.

The older boy presses up from behind, and his hand is reaching into his pocket and his knuckles are bony, and he puts a quarter in. There are older boys in the arcade, and there are colory lights and sounds and joysticks with knobs that look like candy. He puts his hands over roxanne's hands on the gun. The badguys pop up in windows and doorways and get blown away, and when they die they scream and blood explodes out of them, and when they die he presses his body and he is bony and she is squished up against the game.

. . .

Two of them have uzis which are little machine guns. They pull the triggers and the gunholes light up and boom. But I am not worried. I yawn and I stretch my arms. The hot bullets zing off my chest. It doesn't hurt. The bullets are like raindrops from the clouds. I walk toward them and reach out with both hands and take the guns away from the sentors. My turn, I say. I squeeze the triggers and watch the bullets go into their bellies until they are bloody messes. They try to get away, and I shoot out their back tires and they skid out, and their hearts and intestines and livers and stomachs spill out from their opened-up bellies when they scrape across the concrete.

. . .

Lunchtime is already over. Ms. Manolo is mad and she makes a mark in her book, and everybody waits for roxanne to sit down. Marcus with the sticking out teeth is holding up his picture. His superhero is Garbage Man. By day Garbage Man is a garbage man. By night he is a man made out of garbage.

He is master of the element of garbage. He can make a garbage storm. He can make a garbage avalanche. Wherever there is garbage, Garbage Man has power.

. . .

A sentor has got Ms. Manolo and he takes his sword and shoves it up her, up to the handle and Ms. Manolo moans and whines. I walk up and reach into her legs and take the sword out. And I swing the sword, and I slash red stripes into the sentor. And the boys are watching, and they cheer:

Finish Him!

and I swing the sword and cut off the sentor's head. And the head flies through the air. And the head is still alive, because cut-off heads live for ten seconds. That's what it says in Violator. So the cut-off head is still alive flying through the air, and it watches the place where it used to be, where there is a colory fountain of blood. And the cut-off head's eyes watch me as I reach my fist into the spouting neckhole and I pull out the whole spine, and I hold it up so it moves and creaks in the blowing wind. And everyone cheers. And I turn my face up to the windy sky and I laugh Ha Ha! And I grab the headless sentor by the shoulders and I hump the empty neckhole.

. . .

Thank you Marcus, that was very inventive. Now Roxanne, come up and tell us about your superhero. Ms. Manolo sits straight on her seat, blinking and smiling like a commercial woman. The class is looking. Whispering.

my superhero is the greatest most powerful superhero in Queens and in the whole city

Yeah right

You hush, you've had your turn. Roxanne, louder please.

my superhero

His skin can't be pierced! the Sentor shouts but then can't speak anymore. I slice him like a salami into fifteen pieces.

superhero in Queens

Another one begs for mercy but I crave maximum carnage. I cut him open and I reach in and I fold him and I turn him inside-out.

once he was a little

Whining little brat of a

into the scummy water

Wound inside the wound I make

was contaminated with

Lick it clean I laugh

and when she when he came up

His skin can't be pierced! the Sentors shout.

and his skin can't be pierced by a sword or bullets or even a chainsaw or even a chainsaw made out of kryptonite. Not by anything in the universe.

Big deal!

Roxor! What a stupid name!

Superheroes don't change from girls to boys. You gotta have a girl superhero.

Quiet, children. It's her hero. It can be any way she wants.

I know how to kill him!

Me too!

do not!

Children.

The bell rings.

Have a nice day. Don't run.

I know how to kill him! One of the Sentors wheels off to the kiddy playground and picks up the concrete horse and comes back with it. Take this, Roxor!

The horse comes down like a rock. I try to catch it and hold it, but I fall down on my knees because it is so heavy.

Another sentor rides off to the kiddy park and rips out the giraffe. He comes back and throws it on top of me. It is so heavy that I fall down.

Then they toss the hippopotamus on top.

Then they toss the whale. It lands with a crunch.

They are piling on, piling and piling on, shouting.

We'll show you how to deal with Roxor.

There are pieces of light and playground between their arms and legs, but there is no breathing. A bony elbow. A knee. A sneaker. Hands and knuckles. They shout and crunch. They are too heavy. And the concrete is scrapey and hard and no breathing

We got you now. We'll give it to you good.

Get the picture.

Come on Roxor, let's see your dick, let's see it.

Where is it? The picture. Come on.

Roxor's dead. Dead. Say it. Say it. Say it like you mean it.

Finish Him!

The pile stops moving.

You Lose!

They laugh so much they never stop.

Insert coin to continue.

But then they stop.

Something rises up out of the carnage.

A picture and twisting words.

I rise into the wind and I fly.

And everyone looks up.

I circle in the circling wind.

I fly high above the playground.

So high the cement looks smooth like the sky.

So high the animals look like real.

So high that Brooklyn and Queens are the same thing.

ARCADIA INC.